The Pistoleer (22 page)

O
n the afternoon they had their famous standoff, I was getting my hair trimmed by Wanda May up in my room. Violet kept coming by to see how much longer we’d be, telling us the parlor was full of horny galoots waiting to be serviced and the other girls couldn’t take care of them all. It was true. That summer in Abilene was the hardest-working I ever knew. The house was operating every hour of the day and night. But making all that money was hard on Violet’s nerves. The richer she got, the bitchier she got. She got to where she wouldn’t stand for anybody taking a break longer than to ease their bladder or eat a quick meal. “Time is money, ladies!” she’d say, clapping her hands like she was chop-chopping a bunch of coolies. She damn sure didn’t chop-chop
me.
She knew I wouldn’t have stood for it. I would’ve left there in a Kansas City minute and gone to work for Dapper Dan Foster or Louella Sweet. The both of them were always trying to get me to switch to their house. They wanted me for the same reason Violet didn’t get bossy with me—I was Bill’s special girl and everybody knew it.

Bill liked me special because he knew I was a fool for killers. I’ve never been able to explain it and I’m not about to try now. But the first time he was with me he must’ve smelled it under my perfume or felt it in my bones. There’s something about a killer that’s always set my blood humming and made my skin jump at their touch. And
Bill,
well, I’d go so hot under his hands I’d let steam. Even if Violet hadn’t allowed Bill the run of the house for free, I never would’ve charged him a nickel. He sometimes went to other houses, of course, men naturally craving variety like they do, and he sometimes went to some of the other girls in Violet’s. But mostly he came to me. It increased his pleasure to know how much I thrilled to the touch of his killer hands. Hell, we all of us got our ways.

Violet didn’t charge Bill because he was so damn good for business. Other men wanted to take their pleasure wherever Bill took his. They wanted to sit at the same poker tables and drink from the same bottles and mount the same women. I brought Bill to Violet’s and a heap of business followed Bill. It’s why Violet Hayes wasn’t about to take a chance on losing me to Dapper Dan or Louella.

Anyhow, just when Wanda May finished my hair, Violet came to the door again and said she had a special party waiting on us in the Meadow Room. It wasn’t unusual for some flush galoot to buy himself two girls at once—or even three, if his hankering was that much bigger than his pecker and his common sense—and that’s what the Meadow Room was for. It was called that because it’s about how big the bed in there was.

So me and Wanda May followed Violet down the hall in our shimmies—and who do we find waiting in the Meadow but Wild Bill and another fella. They were sitting at the small table by the window with a near-empty bottle and two full ones, and they were grinning at us like wolves. I knew right off what they had in mind. Bill always was one for whorehouse adventure. I took a quick look at Wanda May and saw her staring at the stranger with her mouth open. “Here they are, boys,” Violet said. “The best in the house. Y’all have a real nice time, hear?” And she scooted on out and shut the door.

The other one was a good bit younger than Bill, tall and good-looking. Myself, I always preferred the sort of handsome that’s got some wear on it, like Bill’s. At first I figured this one for a gambler, dressed as he was in a black suit and long string tie. But then I looked square into those gray eyes and I knew exactly what he was. My blood suddenly sang it to me. Then it struck me
who
he was—hell, we’d only been hearing about him for days. Just then Wanda May said, “Johnny? John Wesley?”

He looked at her close for a minute, then jumped up all bright-eyed and said “Hannie Willingham! Be God
damned
!” He grabbed her up and swung her around, the two of them laughing like kids. Bill and me looked at each other. I silently said, “
Hannie Willingham?
” and we busted out laughing too.

“Hellfire,” Wes said, hugging Wanda to him while she kissed him all over his neck and face, “I knew this sweet thing back when I was learning to cowboy in Navarro County.” Bill smiled in that lazy way of his and poured us all a drink. “Damn world’s getting smaller all the time, ain’t it, Little Arkansas?” I said I didn’t know Wes was from Arkansas, and him and Bill laughed like that was the best joke they’d heard all day.

Bill didn’t waste any time warming things up. He never did. He caught hold of the hem of my shimmy and tugged me over beside his chair. “What you got on that evil mind, you bad ole injun fighter?” I said, running my hand through his long yellow hair. Wes and Wanda sat on the edge of the big bed, sipping their whiskey and nuzzling some, but also watching as Bill took out his pistola and rubbed the barrel up along the inside of my leg. He slid it real slow all the way up under my shimmy, and when the tip of it touched my bare cunny, I grabbed a fistful of his hair and held on tight. He grinned up at me like the devil himself and stroked me gently with that iron thing till my legs got all trembly and I was breathing through my mouth and cussing him low. He’d never done
that
to me before—and there he was, doing it front of Wes and Wanda May. He kept at it till I thought I was going to faint from the pure pleasure of it. He suddenly pressed the pistol up hard against me and cocked the gun—and I let a moan and fell on him like I’d been hit behind the knees.

He sat me on his lap and held the gun up so everybody could see the barrel shining with my wetness. “
Mag
-gie!” Wanda May said. She was grinning big and her eyes were all lit up. “Whoooo!” Wes said. “Somebody’s having herself a
good
time.” And do you know I believe I blushed? Me, Maggie St. John, the belle of the Abilene whores, blushing like a schoolgirl. I couldn’t help but laugh with them. “Well, somebody else looks to be enjoying the company too,” I said, and gave a pointed look at the front of Wes’s pants. It looked like he had an ear of corn stuck in there.

Next thing you know, we were all of us bare-assed and in that big ole bed—and Lord, what a time! It started out Bill on me and Wes on Wanda, the both of them humping like broncos but fighting like hell to keep from being the first to shoot off, and me and Wanda doing everything we knew how with our hands and hips and whatnot to make our man come first. All that contesting got so wild the bed gave way and hit the floor like it was going to bring the whole house down. Wanda claimed she’d got Wes off before I had Bill, which I knew to be a lie and which Wes said was absolutely not a fact. While we were arguing about it Violet swung open the door with a look on her face like she expected to find dead bodies on the floor. A bunch of grinning galoots were staring in over her shoulders. Bill flung a pillow at her and hollered, “Shut the goddamn door, woman! This ain’t no sideshow!” For months afterward me and Wanda could make each other burst out laughing just by imitating that look on Violet’s face.

We sat on the broken bed and passed the bottle around, and I noticed Wes’s heavy manhood showing signs of life as he admired my titties—they were something to admire in those days, if I say so myself. Wanda slid over by Bill and took hold of his long skinny thing and said to it, “Pardon me, sir, but haven’t we met someplace before?” And that got us going again—this time me on Wes, Wanda on Bill. It started out another contest, but we all got too involved in what we were doing to give a damn who shot when.

We went at it all afternoon, now and then stopping to rest a little, take a drink, have a smoke. At one point, Wanda ran her finger along one of Bill’s scars and asked him if he could remember where he’d got it. It was bright pink and thick as a curtain cord and ran from his left collarbone to under his right arm. “The McCanles scrimmage,” Bill said. He was scars from neck to knees, and could tell you how he got every one. The long ones were from cuts and the tight puckered ones were from bullets. All Wes had was a tiny pale one on his lip where he’d been punched once and a little pinched one on his arm where a Yankee soldier had winged him. “Unless you die young, Little Arkansas,” Bill said, “you’ll look like this one day. Probably worse, since you got more of them looking to kill you than I do. With me they get a reputation. With you they get a reputation
and
a reward.”

Bill used me to show Wes some humping positions he’d learned from a Pawnee medicine man back when he was scouting for the army. Damn if some of those ways weren’t new to
me.
A couple felt pretty nice, but most were so god-awful awkward only an injun would’ve been fool enough to do it that way. Then me and Bill watched Wanda slide down under Wes and pleasure him with her special “tongue and titty trick.” Then they watched me treat Bill to a trip around the world. Then me and Wanda teamed up on Wes while Bill recovered some of his sap—and then we doubled up on him too. All afternoon it was nothing but wet nakednesss wherever you turned or put out your hand.

By the time the room was in shadows we were one whipped bunch. The room was just reeking of sex. The whiskey was all gone and the boys were complaining in that boastful way men do that their peckers were so sore they’d likely fall off. Bill gave me a few last kisses on the tits and belly while he got dressed, but Wanda started fooling around with Wes again before he could get his pants on. “Sweet Jesus, girl,” he said, “have pity on a poor wore-out cowhand.” But damn if all her licking and handling didn’t get that big raw thing up on its feet again. So he crawled up on her and gave Bill a grin that wasn’t nothing but a banty rooster challenge. Bill shook his head in a sorrowful way and said, “Hell no! I guess I’m too old anymore, Arkansas. You win.” Hell, he wasn’t beat, he was just getting bored. He couldn’t wait to get to the card table and a fresh bottle, that’s all. I knew him. After he gave me a good-bye kiss on the nose and went on out, I sat at the foot of the bed and watched Wes and Wanda hump each other sweet and slow.

I’ve had a thousand wild times with men—ten thousand!—but that’s the one sticks in my mind the clearest, even after all these years. Wes and Wild Bill. God damn me, but I loved those fucking killers.

A
few days after Wes got himself squared with Hickok for shooting the mouth off some bad actor from Kansas, I joined him for a breakfast of oysters and eggs in the American House, him and Johnny Coran and Jim Rodgers. We were laughing and going on about the good times we’d been having ourselves in Abilene and about Johnny being so black-assed because somebody’d stole his Mexican head. He’d bought it from a fella in a Missouri guerrilla shirt who’d stopped by our cow camp for a cup of coffee. The fella claimed it came off a Mex who tried to steal his packhorse over in the Red Hills. He’d taken the head to Wichita, thinking there might be a reward out for the horse thief, but the sheriff there said no, he didn’t have a paper on anybody that looked like that Mex. The Missouri fella didn’t much know what to do with the head after that. He said he wouldn’t of felt right to just throw it away, so he’d had it hanging on his saddle horn for nearly a week before Johnny bought it off him for ten dollars. It was still in pretty fair shape, all things considered, only just starting to go rank. It had a hole under its greasy hair in back where the .44 caliber slug had gone in, and a good portion of the forehead was missing where it had come out, but when you put a hat on it you could hardly see the damage. Johnny’d brought the head into town that night and it had naturally drawn a good deal of attention. At first Johnny wouldn’t let anybody else handle it, but after he got drunk enough to get sociable he let the boys have some fun with it, putting a cigar in its mouth and a whore’s pink garter for a headband, such as that. But he was mad as a sunstruck dog when he woke up in some whorehouse next morning and found out somebody’d stole it. “I find the thieving son of a bitch who took it,” he said, “I’ll be taking
two
heads back.” He’d spent all day asking after it in the saloons and whorehouses but never did find out what happened to it.

Anyhow, we’d just ordered up another pot of coffee when who should show up at the table but Manning and Gip Clements, Wes’s cousins. They’d just rode in off the trail and had been hunting for him all over town. They looked tired, both of them dark around the eyes and carrying a layer of dust. Wes was damn happy to see them. He introduced them all around and started to tell about how he’d got the drop on Hickok with the old road agent’s spin when Manning interrupted to say Wild Bill was exactly who he had on his mind. He said him and Gip had run into some hard trouble out on the trail and were wondering if Hickok might try to do something about it.

What happened was this. Manning and Gip had taken over a herd for Doc Burnett after his first ramrod had got himself too badly cut up in a fight to stay on the job. But they had trouble right from the start from a couple of trail hands named Dolph and Joe Shadden. Johnny said he knew the Shadden brothers. “Never had no trouble with them myself, but I know for a fact they can both of them be mean as snakes.” I’d heard of them too, though never nothing good.

The trouble started when the Shaddens refused to take their turn on night guard anymore. They thought the youngsters making their first drive ought to do all the nighthawking since they were low men on the totem pole. Manning told them they could either take their turn on night guard like everybody else or they could quit. They said fine, they’d quit, but they wanted the full pay they’d signed on for back in San Antonio. In a pig’s ass, Manning said. He’d pay them for working as much of the drive as they had—they were at the Red River at the time—and not a damned nickel more. So the Shaddens stayed on and night hawked like everybody else, but as the drive moved through the Nations they never let up trying to cause trouble in one way or another. They kept trying to turn the rest of the outfit against the Clementses and stirred up a deal of discontent. They complained about everything. They were slow to follow orders and always cussing Manning under their breath. They tried to pick fights with the few hands who favored the Clementses. The tension just got worse and worse. Manning and Gip took turns sleeping so they could watch over each other in the night.