The Last Shootist (10 page)

“
Gillom!
You bet on fights? We got a dog and a badge' goin' at it tonight!”

“Oh, no. Don't gamble, but I'll watch.”

“Okay. Maybe we'll let you referee.”

Gene asked his buddy the bartender for a glass of water, drank half of it, and then clambered from a stool on top of the bar counter.

“Okay, you topers! You betting fools! We've got a badge' going against a kille' dog in the storeroom tonight! Phil's got the most ferocious canine I've ever seen and I've got a hundred dollars says so!”

A Texas cowboy jumped up. “Take half a thet bet!”

Card games were hastily concluded, cattlemen rising from the tables, pushing away from their suppers and grabbing their drinks to shuffle off to the back room.
Can't miss this,
Gillom figured.

Rhodes pointed to one of the bigger wranglers. “Phil, get you' vicious beast.”

The tall cowboy nodded and headed outside. Another drinker shouted, “I'll put fifty on a badger's nose any day!”

Gene jumped down from the bar counter, took Gillom by the arm, who asked him, “Where is this badger?”

“Got him in a barrel, in back. Too mean to let around loose.”

They followed the pushing crowd into the back storeroom, where stood a large wooden rain barrel in the middle of the bare dirt floor with a clothesline leading under it. Oil lamps held by several customers threw murky shadows among the wooden cases of bottles and supplies in the saloon's dusty storeroom. There came a loud barking as Phil Early led his large mongrel in, half wolf itself, at the end of a stout rope. Bettors moved away as the fighting dog was led up to the barrel and got a whiff of what was inside. The dog snarled saliva as it cut loose with another volley of barking.

Another cowboy jumped into the lamplight's circle. “Another hundred dollars on that vicious mutt!”

Gene Rhodes held up both hands, stepping forward. “
Wait!
We've gotta have a referee!… Gillom, you do it.”

“Awww, he's a friend of yours,” a local complained.

“No, surrah! Just rode into town. Barely know him and he's not bettin', eithe'. Gillom will pull fai'.”

Time held still as everyone looked at the teenager.

“Well, okay, I guess.”

“I'll cover the badger!” yelled a sport.

Shouts of enthusiasm as one of the badger bettors grabbed Gillom by the shoulder to talk low in his ear. “Don't pull too hard, kid. Choke the badger and he won't fight as good.”

Gillom scratched an ear. “But I
like
dogs.”

Bets were made and wads of cash flashed as Phil Early dragged his thoroughly enraged mastiff away from its enclosed prey, passing close enough to mutter to the kid, “Twenty dollars for yah, you half choke that badger.”

Chewing his lip, Gillom was confused, uncertain who to favor, since either betting contingent was certain to be unhappy with the outcome, and hence with him. All eyes were on the young referee now, as he rubbed sweaty palms on his clean Levis and moved forward to pick up the end of the clothesline.

In the stillness, a lone voice. “Be fair now. Give 'em room to scrap!”

The sportsmen edged back against the walls and boxes in the stuffy, darkened room, as the bartender readied himself behind the barrel. Phil knelt beside his excited dog, growling encouragement in its pointed ear.

“Kill 'im, Cajun. Rip 'im apart!”

The bartender looked the young ref in the eye. “Ready?”

An overexcited spectator couldn't stifle. “'S gonna be bloody!”

The barkeep tipped the barrel backward and Gillom Rogers gave a tremendous yank on the line and out of the bottom of the barrel popped a porcelain chamber pot, which bounced and rolled across the floor with a hollow ring.

The surprise stretched across Gillom's face suddenly gave way to anger as he realized he'd been played the fool. Hoots and laughter exploded on all sides with the betting men convulsed, backslapping one another.

“Didcha see him choke that badger?”

Quick as a fox, Gillom's Remington was in his right hand and cocked as he blasted the chamber pot to porcelain bits. A startled silence among the laughers, then Gillom Rogers smiled.

“
Killed
'im, too.”

It was safe again to laugh, so the pranksters did. Back in the saloon, the bartender raised a beer mug and tapped Gillom's glass. “Here's to that badger.”

Gillom smiled good-naturedly and met his new friends' toast.

“And a two-gun Texan,” offered the mastiff's owner.

“We're just green-hazin' yah, kid,” added another.

His mentor drew him by the arm away from the laughing crowd.

“You' a good sport, Gillom. That chamber pot's had a long lineage here in the Wolf, and now you' part of that tradition, too. You ready to ride tomorrow up to horse camp?”

“Yessir!”

“Afte' breakfast. Gotta pack a couple horses. Meetcha, say, at nine, down at Tom's stables.”

“I'll be ready, Mister Rhodes.”

“Meanwhile, the pasteboards are callin'. Git a good night's sleep.”

Gillom watched the decade-older man stroll off to the gaming tables, poker fever already upon him. “You, too, boss.”

*   *   *

Gene Rhodes evidently had a big night at the poker table, for he showed up half awake and a half hour late next morning at the stable. And they still had to stop at the general store to pick up supplies. Gillom was surprised to see this teetotaler pack three bottles of whiskey carefully in among his canned goods and sacks of flour and beans in the packs he cross-tied behind the saddles of the two horses he was using for baggage, besides his saddle horse.

“Thought you weren't a drinker, Gene?”

“I'm not. But my wrangle' up at the ranch asked me to bring him some whiskey. For the snakebite, you know?” He winked at Gillom as they mounted and reined their five horses down a residential street, headed at a slow walk west across the Santa Fe railroad tracks till the animals adjusted to their loads.

“How far?”

“Oh, twenty-five miles. That notch you see up in those mountains is my pass. I run a stock ranch for the
remuda
from the Ba' Cross Ranch, big spread the other side of the San Andres down toward Engle. I've got two hundred wild cattle I let graze loose up there, and invite some of the Ba' Cross men up in the fall to help brand 'em and drive my steers down to Engle to sell. Ain't gettin' rich on a herd that small, but it's a livin'. Engle's another cattle shipping town like Tularosa, out in the middle of the Jornada del Muerto. Eve' been there?”

Gillom shook his head. “Never been out of El Paso. 'S why I need to see some of this big country.”

Gene continued his interrogation. “So you finished you' schoolin', set off to scratch you' restless itch?”

“Umm, got into a little trouble, had to quit this senior year, before graduation. School wasn't that excitin', just had to commence my travels a little sooner.”

“Well, nobody will bother you up in the pass. I've given refuge to a number of hard-faced hombres who passed over that lonesome divide while paying attention to thei' back trail. I've cooked fo' several of the Dalton gang, as well as Bill Doolin. The King of the Oklahoma outlaws himself stayed with me for about three months between his criminal escapades. Helluva crack shot. Bill shot a horse that had me tangled up in the rigging, draggin' me. I could have been seriously hurt if Bill Doolin hadn't put him down.”

The buckaroo looked back over Gillom's mounts and tack. “You worked horses much?”

“No sir. We're town folk, never owned any. I picked these two up … cheap, for this trip.”

“Well, maybe you'll get you' chance. I also do that for the Ba' Cross, break thei' green colts and drive thei' refreshed horses down to help out at thei' spring and fall roundups.”

“You're a horse man then, mostly?”

“Yup. Cows are dumb, smelly animals fit only for eatin'. But I sell a few range cattle.”

Gillom agreed. “I'm no cowpuncher, either. Who's this other wrangler up at your ranch?”

Gene smiled. “Call him Jones. He's a rooste', so I wouldn't ask him too many questions, kid. But he takes a shine to yah, Miste' Jones might teach you a trick or two.”

Gillom Rogers' eyes shone.

 

Fourteen

 

About ten miles west of Tularosa the legendary white sands began. Gene halted the horses for a breather and dismounted to stretch his legs. Removing his beat-up cowboy hat, he ruffled his unruly thatch of blond hair that rose up in a crest like a cockatoo's. The broncbuster waved a hand toward the rolling dunes of sparkling white sand as Gillom hopped down, too.

“The gypsum sea. Ain't she beautiful?”

The teenager nodded, drank deep from his canteen. “Makes me thirsty.”

“Those white sands look pure, but they hide treachery and tragedy. The only creature who sleeps out here with his eyes closed is dead.”

“The sands are a dangerous place?”

“Bet you' boots. Not as bad as the Jornada Del Muerto on the othe' side of those mountains, though. That's where the Apaches used to attack, constantly. Known as Scalp Alley.”

Gillom watched his companion take a sack of Bull Durham out of his shirt pocket and begin to roll a cigarette. The wrangler's hands were rough and one finger appeared to be permanently cramped.

“What happened to your finger, Gene?”

“Oh, knife fight, cut the tendon. Same bout bent my nose. Don't carry a gun, but I fight when challenged.”

Gillom shifted his heavy saddlebags off the black gelding and onto the Mexican saddle of the bay mare he'd been riding. “Gonna ride my stronger horse through the pull of this loose sand.”

“Good idea,” agreed the shorter wrangler, striking a sulphur match off a copper rivet on his jeans. “Smoke?” He offered his lit cigarette to his companion.

“No thanks.”

“Bad habit.” Rhodes pulled a green coupon from the tobacco sack, and held it up for inspection. “But I'm hooked on these coupons. Four of 'em are good for a dime novel from Munro's Library in New York City. They've got all the best stories—Dickens, Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson. I'm gonna read all three hundred and three a those books if I don't cough up a lung first.”

Gillom grinned. He liked this literate horseman with a penchant for harboring killers like himself. He now understood why lonely bank robbers and cow thieves sought this genial host out. The kid swung back up onto J. B. Books's big saddle.

“Daylight's burnin', boss.”

*   *   *

Their plod through the sparkling white sands was slow going and the glare off the dunes shimmering in the afternoon sunlight really tired one's eyes. But finally they were through the dunes and began pulling the last five miles of double track wagon road up, up into the deep notch in the San Andres Mountains. On either side westward ran a ridge of black cedars drawing the two men and five horses higher until they reached a dark mountain at the head of the pass, seventy-four hundred feet high. Around this summit was a hidden country of grassy parks and cedar motes, gentle slopes and low rolling ridges of juniper, with wide, smooth valleys falling away to the north and south.

“My ranch up here is homestead land, and since I control the spring on it, my cattle can range free out into miles of unfenced graze all about in these mountains. I just have to flush 'em out come spring and fall to burn my ‘61' brand in and sell 'em. Hell, I'm better at breaking horses and driving cows than I am at owning them,” Gene explained as they rode ever upward.

They reached Five Springs at dusk, greeted by bats from a nearby cave dipping down for evening drinks in one of the springs. Rhodes's ranch was a single-room, flat-roofed fortress of red stone, maybe fourteen feet by eighteen, with a fenced yard on a low red flat expanse, looped about by the canyon. Out behind were several horse pens, but the maybe twenty mounts were all resting tonight in the biggest, farthest water pen in which another spring bubbled up. To its rear the ranch was protected by a mountain of red sandstone, while across the trail on the other side it faced a mightier mountain of white limestone. Five springs gushed forth at the contacts of red stone and white. It was a fine spot for a horse ranch.

“My daddy Hinman's house was only six miles away, that's how I came to know this hidden spot. Man could get lost up here for months.
Hallo the house!
”

They reined up outside the fence and waited, so as not to startle anyone inside. Gillom saw smoke rising from the stone chimney. There were no windows in the cut stone, so the front door opened tentatively until they were recognized.

“Gene, you rascal! Welcome to what's left of supper!”

“We can cook some more, if you'll help wrangle these packs.”

A fair-skinned six-footer with reddish blond hair ambled out to help Rhodes untie his packs. The man was built from the ground up and armed with some kind of pistol in his right holster. He was somewhere over forty, 170 pounds, and he never took his pale blue eyes off Gillom.

“Who's this smiling gallant?”

Gene Rhodes watched both armed men take the measure of each other.

“This is my new friend, Gillom. From El Paso.”

The heavily freckled man with the sandy mustache hefted loaded saddlebags, but never turned his back on the young stranger as he sidestepped back to the house.

“Gillom
who
?”

Rogers hoisted his own heavy saddlebags to follow the men inside.

“Gillom's good enough. What's yours?”

Gene Rhodes stopped at the doorway. “This is Mister Jones. And don't you bulls start pawing around fo' turmoil ah I'll kick you both off my ranch.”