The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western (3 page)

The people just didn’t give a shit.

“So a few deer get in there. That’s no big thing. The minister is kind of crazy, anyway,” was their general reaction to putting a fence around the graveyard in Billy.

• The Governor of Oregon •

Greer, Cameron and Magic Child went over to the blacksmith’s shop to get some horses for the ride out to Miss Hawkline’s in the morning. They wanted to make sure the horses would be ready when they left at dawn.

The blacksmith had a collection of strange horses that he would rent out sometimes if he knew you or liked your looks. He’d had a bucket of beer along with his dinner that evening, so he was very friendly.

“Magic Child,” he said. “Ain’t seen you around for a while. You been someplace? Hear they’re killing people over Gompville way. My name is Pills,” holding out his beer-friendly hand to Greer and Cameron. “I take care of the horses around here.”

“We need some horses in the morning,” Magic Child said. “We’re going out to Miss Hawkline’s.”

“I think I can do you up with some horses. Maybe one of them will get that far: if you’re lucky.”

Pills liked to joke about his horses. He was famous in those parts for having the worst bunch of horses ever assembled in a corral.

He had a horse that was so swaybacked that it looked like an October quarter moon. He called that horse Cairo. “This is an Egyptian horse,” he used to tell people.

He had another horse that didn’t have any ears. A drunken cowboy had bitten them off for a fifty-cent bet. “I bet you fifty cents I’m so drunk I’d bite a horse’s ears off!”

“God-damn, I don’t think you’re that drunk!”

And he had another horse that actually drank whiskey. They’d put a quart of whiskey in his bucket and he’d drink it all down and then he’d fall over on his side and everybody would laugh.

But the prize of his collection was a horse that had a wooden foot. The horse was born without a right rear foot, so somebody had carved him a wooden one, but the person had gotten confused in his carving, he wasn’t really right in the head, anyway, and the wooden foot looked more like a duck’s foot than a horse’s foot. It really looked strange to see that horse walking around with a wooden duck foot.

A politician once came all the way from La Grande to look at those horses. It was even rumored that the governor of Oregon had heard about them.

• Jack Williams •

On their way over to Ma Smith’s Cafe to have some dinner, Jack Williams, the town marshal, strolled out of his saloon. He was going someplace else but when he saw Magic Child, whom he liked a lot, and two strange men with her, he walked over to Magic Child and her friends to say hello and find out what was happening.

“Magic Child! God-damn!” he said and threw his arms around her and gave her a big hug.

He could tell that the two men did not work for a living and in appearance there was nothing about them that one would ever remember. They both looked about the same except they had different features and different builds. It was the way they handled themselves that was memorable.

One of them was taller than the other one but once you turned your back on them you wouldn’t be able to remember which one it was.

Jack Williams had seen men similar to these before. Instinctively, without even bothering with an intellectual process, he knew that these men could mean trouble. One of them was carrying a long narrow trunk on his shoulder. He carried the trunk easily as if it were part of his shoulder.

Jack Williams was a big man: over six feet tall and weighed in excess of two hundred pounds. His toughness was legendary in that part of Eastern Oregon. Men with evil thoughts on their minds generally stayed clear of Billy.

Jack Williams wore a shoulder holster with a big shiny .38 in it. He didn’t like to wear a regular gun belt around his waist. He always joked that he didn’t like to have all that iron hanging so close to his cock.

He was forty-one years old and in the prime of health.

“Magic Child! God-damn!” he said and threw his arms around her and gave her a big hug.

“Jack,” she said. “You big man!”

“I’ve missed you, Magic Child,” he said. He and Magic Child had fucked a few times and he had a tremendous respect for her quick lean body.

He liked her a lot but sometimes he was a little awestruck and disturbed by how much she looked like Miss Hawkline. They looked so much alike that they could have been twins. Everybody in town noticed it but there was nothing they could do about it, so they just let it be.

“These are my friends,” she said, making the introductions. “I want you to meet them. This is Greer and this is Cameron. I want you to meet Jack Williams. He’s the town marshal.”

Greer and Cameron were smiling softly at the intensity of Magic Child’s and Jack Williams’ greeting.

“Howdy,” Jack Williams said, shaking their hands. “What are you boys up to?”

“Come on now,” Magic Child said. “These are my friends.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack Williams said, laughing. “I’m sorry, boys. I own a saloon here. Any time you want there’s a drink waiting over there for you and it’s on me.”

He was a fair man and people respected him for it.

Greer and Cameron liked him immediately.

They liked people who had strong character. They didn’t like to kill people like Jack Williams. Sometimes it made them feel bad afterwards and Greer would always say. “I liked him.” and Cameron would always answer, “Yeah, he was a good man.” and they wouldn’t say anything more about it after that.

Just then some gunshots rang out in the hills above Billy. Jack Williams paid no attention to the shots.

“5, 6,” Cameron said.

“What’s that?” Jack Williams said.

“He was counting the gunshots,” Greer said.

“Oh, that. Oh, yeah,” Jack Williams said. “They’re up there probably killing themselves or killing off their animals. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck. Excuse me, Magic Child, I’m sorry. I’ve got a tongue that was hatched on an outhouse seat. I’m saving it for my old age. Instead of whittling, I’ll stop cussing.”

“What’s the shooting about?” Greer said, nodding his head up toward the twilight hills towering above Billy.

“Oh, come on now,” Jack Williams said. “You boys know better than that.”

Greer and Cameron smiled softly again.

“I don’t care what those cattle and sheep people do to each other. They can kill everyone of themselves off if they’re going to be that stupid, just as long as they don’t do it in the streets of Billy.”

“That county sheriff from Brooks. Up there’s his problem. I don’t think he ever gets off his ass, not unless he’s looking for a piece of ass. Oh, God, I’ve done it again. Magic Child, when will this tongue of mine ever learn?”

Magic Child smiled up at Jack Williams. “I’m glad to be back.” She touched his hand gently.

That pleased the town marshal of Billy whose name was Jack Williams and who was known far and wide as a tough but fair man.

“I guess I’d better get along now,” he said. “Glad you’re back, Magic Child.” Then he turned to Greer and Cameron and said, “Hope you boys from Portland have a good time here but just remember,” he said, pointing at the hills. “Up there, not down here.”

• Ma Smith’s Cafe •

They had some fried potatoes and steaks for dinner and biscuits all covered with gravy at Ma Smith’s Cafe, and the people eating there wondered why they were in town, and they had some blackberry pie for dessert, and the people, mostly cowboys, wondered what was in the long narrow trunk beside their table, and Magic Child had a glass of milk along with her pie, and the cowboys were made a little nervous by Greer and Cameron, though they didn’t know exactly why, but the cowboys all thought that Magic Child sure was pretty and they’d sure like to fuck her and they wondered where she had been these last months. They hadn’t seen her in town. She must have been someplace else but they didn’t know where. Greer and Cameron continued to make them nervous but they still didn’t know why. One thing they did know, though, Greer and Cameron did not look like the kind of people who had come to Billy to settle down.

Greer thought about having another piece of pie but he didn’t. It was a nice thought. He really liked the pie and the thought was as good as having another piece of pie. The pie was that tasty.

They heard half-a-dozen more gunshots back off in the hills while they were finishing their coffee. All the shots were methodical, aimed and well-placed. It was the same gun firing and it sounded like a 30:30. Whoever was firing that gun really thought about it every time they pulled the trigger.

• And Ma Smith •

Ma Smith, a cantankerous old woman, looked up from a steak she was frying for a cowboy. She was a big woman with a very red face and shoes that were much too small for her feet. She considered herself big enough every place else without having to have big feet, so she stuffed her feet into shoes that were much too small for them, which caused her to be in considerable pain most of her walking hours and led her to having a very short temper.

Her clothes were very sweaty and stuck to her as she moved around the big wooden stove that she was cooking over on a night that was already hot enough by itself.

Cameron counted the gunshots in his mind.

1…

2…

3…

4…

5…

6…

Cameron waited to count the seventh shot, but then there was silence. The shooting was over.

Ma Smith was angrily fussing around with the steak on the stove. It looked like the last steak she was going to have to cook that night and she was very glad for that. She’d had enough for the day.

“I bet they’re killing somebody out there,” the cowboy said whose steak was being cooked. “I’ve been waiting for the killing to work its way down here. It’s just a matter of time. That’s all. Well, I don’t care who kills who as long as they don’t kill me.”

“You won’t get killed down here,” an old miner said.

“Jack Williams will make sure of that.”

Ma Smith took the steak and put it on a big white platter and brought it over to the cowboy who didn’t want to get killed.

“How does this look?” she said.

“Better put some more fire under it,” the cowboy said.

“Next time you come in here I’ll just cook you up a big plate of ashes,” she said. “And sprinkle some God-damn cow hair on it.”

• Pill’s Last Love •

They slept that night in Pills’ barn. Pills got them a big armload of blankets.

“I guess I won’t be seeing you tomorrow morning,” Pills said. “You’ll be off at daybreak, huh?”

“Yes,” Magic Child said.

“If you change your mind or you want some breakfast or coffee or anything, just wake me up or come in the house and fix it yourself. Everything’s in the cupboard,” Pills said.

He liked Magic Child.

“Thank you, Pills. You’re a kind man. If we change our minds, we’ll come in and rob your cupboard,” Magic Child said.

‘“Good,” Pills said. “I guess you’ll work out the sleeping arrangements OK.” That was his sense of humor after a few buckets of beer.

Magic Child had a reputation in town for being generous with her favors. Once she had even laid Pills which made him very happy because he was sixty-one years old and didn’t think he’d ever do it again. His last lover had been a widow woman in 1894. She moved to Corvallis and that was the end of his love life.

Then one evening, out of the clear blue, Magic Child said to him, “When was the last time you fucked a woman?” There had been a long pause after that while Pills stared at Magic Child. He knew that he wasn’t that drunk.

“Years.”

“Do you think you can get it up?”

“I’d like to try.”

Magic Child put her arms around the sixty-one-year-old bald-headed, paunchy, half-drunk keeper of strange horses and kissed him on the mouth.

“I think I can do it.”

• In the Barn •

Greer carried a lantern and Cameron carried the blankets and Magic Child trailed after them into the barn. She was very excited by the hard lean curve of their asses.

“Where’s the best place to sleep here?” Cameron said.

“Up in the loft,” Magic Child said. “There’s an old bed up there. Pills keeps it for travellers to sleep in. That bed is the only hotel in town.” Her voice was dry and suddenly nervous. She could just barely keep her hands off them.

Greer noticed it. He looked over at her. Her eyes darted like excited jade into his eyes and then out of them and he smiled softly. She didn’t smile at all.

They carefully climbed the ladder up to the loft. It smelled sweetly of hay and there was an old brass bed beside the hay. The bed looked very comfortable after two days of travel. It shined like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

“Fuck me,” Magic Child said.

“What?” Cameron said. He had been thinking about something else. He had been thinking about the six gunshots off in the hills during dinner.

“I want you both,” Magic Child said and passion broke her voice like an Aphrodite twig.

Then she took her clothes off. Greer and Cameron stood there watching. Her body was slender and long with high firm breasts that had small nipples. And she had a good ass.

Greer blew the lantern out and she fucked Greer first.

Cameron sat on a dark bale of hay while Magic Child and Greer fucked. The brass bed sounded alive as it echoed the motion of their passion.

After while the bed stopped moving and everything was quiet except for the voice of Magic Child saying thank you, thank you, over and over again to Greer.

Cameron counted how many times she said thank you. She said thank you eleven times. He waited for her to say thank you a twelfth time but she didn’t say it again.

Then Cameron took his turn with Magic Child. Greer didn’t bother to get out of bed. He just lay there beside them while they fucked. Greer felt too good to move.

After another while the bed fell silent. There wasn’t a sound for a couple of moments and then Magic Child said, “Cameron.” She said it once. That’s all she said it. Cameron waited for her to say his name again or to say something else but she didn’t say his name again and she didn’t say anything else.