Magic Wagon Page 9

  Big Mouth inched his head around to sight Rot Toe, then started crawling for the spot where Albert had let him in. "Let me out," he was whispering, "let me out."

  Albert was laughing so hard, looked as if he was going to go to his knees. Me and the crowd weren't doing bad neither.

  Albert unhitched the place where the net lapped over, and Big Mouth, looking a lot less full of himself, crawled between it and flopped his naked butt to the ground.

  A tall, gangly fella with a nose like a sun-dried cucumber smiled at Big Mouth and said, "Think you got him strangled yet, Harmon?"

  Harmon didn't say a word. He stood up, and stiff as a soldier on parade, he walked off, his white rear end spotted with dirt, the sound of laughter rumbling like little, sharp thunders behind him.

  * * *

  When it turned dark, Albert hit the stage lanterns and got ready for Billy Bob to make his Cure-All talk. But two things happened right off to upset the apple cart. When I slipped behind the curtain to get Billy Bob to tell him it was time, he was gone. Wild Bill was still on the hand truck, and he was at the end of Billy Bobs stoop, his guns still cocked and pointing to where Billy Bob slept. I went over to the head of the stoop and seen there was a dime novel lying there, parted, facedown. I picked it up. It was Texas Jack, Deadwood Pistol Demon, or The Shot That Never Missed. It was one of the few dime books ever written entirely about Jack, though he come up mentioned in a few others.

  I seen that the place it was open to was about the time Texas Jack was supposed to have backed down Wild Bill. The story said Jack opened his coat, showed his pistol, said "Name's Texas Jack," and stared at Hickok in a menacing manner, which I reckon was what he was doing to Billy Bob.

  According to the book, Wild Bill said, "Jack, I have heard how fast and accurate you are with your revolver, and I confess that I want no quarrel with you," then Hickok turned and walked off, shaking a little.

  Albert stuck his head through the curtain. "What's going on?" Then he seen there wasn't no Billy Bob.

  "He's gone," I said. "After Texas Jack, I reckon."

  "Damn." Albert stepped inside and rubbed his hand over his mouth. "We got a problem here, Little Buster."

  "Well, Billy Bob does, as that's the real Texas Jack."

  "Look, I can't go in no saloon, Little Buster, and I bet that's where he is."

  Albert eyed me a moment. I sighed.

  "You got to go talk him back to the wagon before there's some trouble."

  "He don't listen to me."

  Someone outside yelled, "There going to be a show or not?"

  Albert stuck his head out from behind the blanket and said sweetly, "We just getting some things ready, any minute now."

  When he pulled back inside he said, "It can't be helped, Little Buster. You got to talk him back."

  "I don't even like him."

  "I know."

  "Oh, all right. I'll do my best."

  "That's all I'm asking," Albert said. He picked up four juggling balls, a bottle of Cure-All from the rack, put his smile on, and went out to face the crowd.

  I took off the derby I had on and put on my cap. I figured if I got killed I wanted to be wearing my cap and not no damn derby. I slipped out the back of the wagon, moved around to the edge of the stage.

  Albert was juggling the balls and the bottle. "What we got in this here bottle," he was saying as he juggled, "is a miracle. That's right, folks, I ain't shy to say it, a miracle. You got piles? Don't answer that. They's women folk in the crowd. You got a belly bothers you when you eat spicy foods? Things just ain't right for you couple times a day, if you know what I mean? Your sight failing you some? We gots what you need right here, the little miracle, our Cure-All.

  "Now, I know what you're saying to yourself You're saying ain't no way I can afford a thing like this, a thing that is such a miracle, such a gift of medicine and the angels.

  "Well now, it ain't free. I admit it. It does cost you something, but consider this. It fortifies the belly, makes the heart strong, and the list of folks that we have sold this Cure-All to and have come to us satisfied—no, not just satisfied, grateful, that's the word, plumb grateful to the point of crying—is endless. Never an unsatisfied customer.

  "Now, I know what you're saying. Why don't he get on with telling us the price? Well, I'm coming to that, ladies and gents, I am. But I got to tell you that there ain't no medicine like this medicine. This will help you keep your youthful vigor and keep all your steps straight and your sight keen. It ain't even bad on taking out stains and using for a wash in your mouth to kill them smells you get from eating.

  "And I tell you, ladies and gents, it ain't nothing but two bits a bottle. That's right. Two bits. I know it's hard to believe that something like this, a miracle in a bottle, comes this cheap. But it do. You see, we ain't here just to get your dollar, we're here to see you cured of your ills and made happy, and this here e-lixer is the thing to do it. Two bits, ladies and gents, two bits. Who's first?"

  I looked at the crowd, seen he had their attention, went on around behind the wagon, and started up the street.

  Thunder rumbled behind me. I turned to look. The sky back there looked dark even for nighttime.

  Skinny had seen me, and he had left the crowd and was coming up the street toward me. I waited until he caught up. When he did, he turned and looked back toward the brewing storm, then back at me. He leaned forward, and with the peppermints on his breath overpowering his other smells, he said into my face, "Things is going to get bad."

  I got a little chill. I thought of that other skinny fella that wasn't right in the head, and I thought of him grabbing Papa by the coat and saying about how the wind was going to blow us away.

  I didn't say anything to Skinny, I just nodded, went on over to the saloon, him following like a pet duck.

  When we got to the boardwalk Skinny stopped and sat down, his back against the wall, his bag of peppermints between his legs.

  I smiled at him.

  He took a peppermint out of the sack and began sucking on it.

  I took a deep breath and went inside.

  * * *

  Outside you could feel the storm coming, inside you could feel the same thing.

  Billy Bob was over to the bar, leaning on it. Riley was putting a beer in front of him and looking around nervous-like.

  At the back I seen that Blue Hat and Jack were at their same table. Blue Hat was looking at Billy Bob with a sort of slow burn, Texas Jack was trying to look bored and was sipping a glass of beer.

  It was noisy in there, people chattering like squirrels, but it was an edgy kind of noise. I figured them chatterers could feel the tension between Jack and Billy Bob and were gleefully waiting for the first signs of bullets and bloodshed, not considering that a stray load could splatter what little smarts they had against the saloon wall.

  While I was standing there, some of the crowd from our show drifted in, and after a quick look around, they joined the rest of the folks at the far left of the saloon and started to talk, never taking their peepers off Jack or Billy Bob.

  To make matters worse, Billy Bob had his head turned toward Jack's table, and I'll bet you a chicken to an egg that Jack could feel those eyes on him as if they were two stones sitting on his head.

  I made my feet move, went over to Billy Bob, and stood slightly behind him. "Billy Bob," I said softly, so he wouldn't think I was some fool sneaking up on him, "you need to come on back to the wagon. We're up to the Cure-All talk."

  "You and the nigger do it," he said.

  "But you're better at it," I said.

  "I know that," Billy Bob said, "but I've come over here because I don't like being insulted, especially when it was a cowardly insult, kind you don't knows happening to you."

  He said that part loud, and when he finished, the saloon went quiet as a church and all eyes turned to Texas Jack.

  Jack looked over at Billy Bob, pursed his lips and said, "Is that a fact?"

  "Since it come
from a washed-up old geezer like yourself," Billy Bob said sweetly, "I couldn't take it for real at first."

  "It was real," Jack said, and he stood up.

  Blue Hat had gone cold on his stare, and when Jack stood, he got up and quietly faded away. Riley, over behind the bar, scratched the back of his neck casual-like and stepped briskly to the back, opened the door, and stepped out of sight.

  "Billy Bob," I said, "forget it."

  "Go back to your nigger," Billy Bob snapped, "and get out from behind me."

  Sounded like good advice. I moved over to the left with the rest of the crowd.

  "Maybe you ought to go back to the nigger too," Jack said, and he started easing around the tables toward Billy Bob. He got his foot hooked in a chair as he went, and tried to shake it off, and he got plumb crazy about it, started hopping around trying to get that chair rung off the top of his foot. We all held our hearts in our throats while he bounced about, because his face was getting red and puffy, and there ain't nothing like embarrassment to make a man come out shooting.

  Eventually he got the chair shook off and made the end of the bar and stood there. He and Billy Bob were about fifteen or twenty paces apart. Jack had his left hand on the bar, his right was high at his side, pointing slightly inward toward the pistol at his middle. I seen that the hand on the bar was fluttering slightly, about as much as Billy Bob's legs were shaking.

  "You handled that chair real well," Billy Bob said, and he let his lips pull up into a little smile.

  "You should have been like your pa," Jack said, his voice cracking a little, "taken your insult and gone on. Live a lot longer that way."

  "Ha!" Billy Bob said. "What's for me to back from. You didn't never back down Wild Bill Hickok, and you know it, and you won't back me neither."

  "You sure?" Jack asked, almost politely.

  Billy Bob nodded.

  Somebody in the saloon chickened out. I heard him go through the bat wings, and when I turned to look they were swinging shut, and Skinny had walked over to take hold of them and look in. Maybe he didn't know exactly what was going on, but he knew it was exciting.

  I looked back at Billy Bob and Jack. Silence was so heavy, had someone coughed about then, there'd have been shooting. I wanted to say something to Billy Bob, something that would make this whole thing stop, but nothing came to mind. And I sure as hell didn't want to draw attention to myself lest he and Jack decide to start in on me first.

  It was Jack that finally spoke, and he'd gotten the iron back in his voice. "Can I have your nigger when you're dead?"

  "You can have that damn boy too," Billy Bob said. "But you got to get me dead first."

  Jack took his hand off the bar and shrugged his shoulders. He said evenly, "You want to do this, kid?"

  "You started it," Billy Bob said.

  "What if you say you're sorry."

  "Nope. You say you are."

  "Nope. You know how many men I've killed, kid?"

  "Ain't none of them me."

  "That's the way you feel about it then?"

  "Yep."

  Jack stretched his neck, like his collar had gotten too tight. "Guess this is it, huh, boy?"

  "Reckon so," Billy Bob said rolling his shoulders.

  And Jack went for his gun.

  He wasn't fast at all. I could have beaten him. Anyone could have. He was washed up, plain and simple.

  But Billy Bob . . . well, try and picture this. One moment Billy Bob had his hands by his sides, the next they were full of pistols and the pistols fired and the left side of Jack's face jumped off in a spray of blood and bone and went all over the bar. Billy Bob cocked and fired both pistols again, and before Jack could so much as wobble, he caught two more bullets in his chest, and when they hit a spray of blood squirted out of his back and covered the wall behind him. I tell you, it was enough to make a billy goat lose his chow.

  It couldn't have been long, but it seemed like Jack stood there for a week, this surprised look on the side of his face that wasn't blowed off and finally he folded up like a cheap pocketknife and flopped backwards to the floor, hitting his head so hard it sounded like thunder.

  The saloon froze and the smoke from the pistols froze and no one breathed, until from the background someone said softly, "I'll be a sonofabitch," and that was what let the mortar loose. The world started to move again, the gun smoke twined upwards to the ceiling and Billy Bob put the pistols in his sash and let out a heavy sigh that was a cross somewhere between happiness and relief.

  The chatter started again, louder and edgier than before, churning out fast and snappy like the loads from a Hotchkiss gun, and the crowd moved toward Billy Bob, and it was like little toads moving toward the king frog so he could croak loud and long for us, show us how it was done.

  Riley, who had been peeping around the edge of the back door, came on out, tiptoeing and smiling. He leaned over the bar and looked at Jack, then he went around and bent over him.

  "Dead," Riley said.

  "You don't say?" Billy Bob said. "You mean splashing some beer on him won't bring him around."

  Blue Hat came forward then, and things got quiet. We'd sort of forgotten him in all the excitement. He turned and looked at Billy Bob, then he walked over and looked at Jack. He bent down like Riley had done, and when he stood, he had Jack's pistol in his hand, which, by the way, Jack hadn't even managed to clear from his holster.

  Blue Hat turned, holding the pistol loosely by the grip with a thumb and forefinger. He looked at Billy Bob. "I don't want no trouble," he said.

  "That's good," Billy Bob said, but he sounded disappointed.

  Blue Hat dropped the gun on the bar.

  Riley, quick as a snake, sidled up to it, smiled at Billy Bob and said, "I'd like that as a souvenir."

  "I was going to ask that," Blue Hat said to Billy Bob. "Jack said you was just a trick shooter, not a gunman."

  Billy Bob glanced down at Jack's body. A messy, dark puddle was forming under it. "He ain't saying much of anything now, is he?"

  "I ain't never seen shooting like that," Blue Hat said.

  "And you won't again, unless it's me you see. You want that pistol, boy, take it. But unload it first. It would make me a mite more comfortable."

  Blue Hat unloaded the pistol.

  Riley watched him doing it, looking like a dog that had been kicked.

  "You take them bullets," Billy Bob said to Riley.

  "Yes sir," Riley said, just like it was the happiest thing he'd ever done. He scooped up the bullets, put them under the counter about where the Mexicans pistol was.

  "And throw that ugly old liar out of here," Billy Bob said. "And mop up that blood, it's stinking up the place."

  "Yes sir," Riley said. He ducked his hand behind the bar and got that same old rag he'd had the other day, went about mopping the counter off. The rag filled up quick, and I felt my stomach going. I tried to go for the door, but I couldn't make it. I put a hand on the bar and threw up on top of one of the stools,

  When I lifted my eyes I seen Skinny looking at me over the bat wings. Next thing I knew Riley was putting a boot in my butt. "Get out," he screamed, "get out."

  "Hold there," Billy Bob yelled. "Mind who you're kicking. He works for me."

  I turned slightly and seen Billy Bob looking at me and Riley, and he was smiling. He looked ready to draw them pistols again. It didn't take much to know he was liking all this power. Wasn't no other reason he'd have stopped Riley from kicking me out. Any other time he'd have kicked me out his ownself.

  "I'm sorry Mr. . . ." Riley stuttered.

  "Daniels," Billy Bob said. "Wild Bill Daniels. And you go back to doing what you was doing. Get that trash out of here. Then clean up Buster's mess. He's been sick. Buster, come on over here."

  I went. I didn't know what else to do. I hadn't managed to stop the fight, and I didn't know if I was glad Billy Bob was the one who won or not.

  Billy Bob put his arm around me. "What'd you think of that, boy?" he said no
dding at the spot where Jack still lay. Riley was getting hold of the body under the arms and was fixing to drag it out the back way.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Billy Bob didn't seem to notice. He slapped me on the back. "Barkeep. A whisky for my friend here. Whisky on the house."

  That got a cheer from folks, and they started gathering around me and Billy Bob, and suddenly it was hot, real hot, and when I looked around me, it struck me how nobody looked like a person anymore. Their faces had changed. They had the same looks, you see, but there was something about the way they were smiling and the way their eyes looked that made me think that the souls had gone out of them.

  Riley dropped Jack and started pouring glasses of whisky and beer, and suddenly I had a whisky in my hand, and I felt like I needed it, so I drank it, and the next thing I know I had another, and I drank it too.

  "Ain't you got that stinker out of here yet?" Billy Bob yelled at Riley, and nodded at Jack's feet, which were now the only part of him you could see at the edge of the bar.

  "But you said . . ." Riley started, then changed his mind. "Right," he said. He went back and got Jack and dragged him out the back door, and as he did, I got one last look at Texas Jack, Deadwood Pistol Demon, and he didn't look so special. He was just a fat, old, dead man with half his face blowed away. And there probably hadn't never been nothing special about him. He was just a sorry old loafer who lived off a storybook rep more than fact, and it had caught up with him. I figured that story Riley had told me about the Mexican was only half-truth. Jack most likely shot that sucker in the back and Riley's mouth took over from there.

  Well, Riley got the mess cleaned up, and he came back and poured more drinks, and Billy Bob called for more, and I kept finding a whisky in my hand, and I kept drinking it. Each time I looked up from finishing one, the place had changed some. People looked odder and odder, even when I wasn't seeing them through the bottom of a whisky glass. Blue Hat was up by Billy Bob now, and it was like Texas Jack hadn't never been. The tick had dropped off the dead dog and was hooked onto another. The bony saloon girl was sitting on a stool next to Billy Bob and was entwined around him now, instead of the farmer, who had probably stayed home to do a bit of Bible study with his wife.