Forty Times a Killer Read online

  His face aglow, he said, “Well, what do you think? Isn’t it great, huh?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “A . . . what’s the word? . . . spectacular show, Little Bit. With me as the hero and you as . . . as . . . well, I’ll think of something.”

  “On stage in a theater, Wes? Is that what you think?”

  “Maybe. But probably outside in an arena. We’ll have drovers and cavalry and Indians and outlaws and cattle herds and stagecoaches and . . . hell, the possibilities are endless.” Wes leaned closer to me and the shifting firelight stained the right side of his eager, handsome face. “I’ll be the fearless frontiersman who saves the fair maiden from the savages or captures the rustlers singlehanded, stuff like that.”

  “Sounds expensive, Wes. I mean, paying all those hands and—”

  “Damn it, Little Bit, that kind of thinking is the reason you’re not destined for greatness. I’ll get rich backers, see? They’ll bankroll the show for a cut of the profits.”

  Wes smiled at me. “Hell, we got three hundred dollars for the horses and traps of them dead men back at Honest Deal, so we already got seed money.” He read the doubt in my face and said, “It can’t fail. Nobody’s ever had an idea like mine and nobody else is going to think of it. Man, I’ll make a killing and a fortune.”

  He again made a banner of his hands and grinned. “John Wesley Hardin’s Wild West Show! Damn, I like the sound o’ that.” He let out a rebel yell that echoed like the howl of a wolf in the silence. “Little Bit, it’s gonna be great!”

  Around me, the pines were black, and they leaned into one another as though they were exchanging ominous secrets. I felt uneasy, like a flock of geese had just flown over my grave. “What do I do, Wes?”

  “Do? Do where?”

  “In the show, Wes. What do I do in your Wild West Show?”

  Wes’s eyes roamed over me and I was well aware of what he saw . . . a tiny, stunted runt with a thin, white face, boot-button brown eyes, and a steel brace on his twisted twig of a left leg.

  I wasn’t formed by nature to play any kind of western hero.

  John Wesley was never one to get stumped by a question, but he scowled, his thick black brows drawn together in thought. Then his face cleared and he smiled. “You read books, Little Bit, don’t you?”

  I nodded and held up my copy of Mr. Dickens.

  “Then there’s your answer.” Wes clapped his hands. “You’ll be my bookkeeper! And”—he beamed as he delivered what he obviously believed was the snapper—“a full partner in the business!”

  I said nothing.

  “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy with that proposition.”

  “I am, I really am.”

  “Then why do you look so down in the mouth you could eat oats out of a churn?”

  “Because the thought just came to me that before you can do anything, Wes, you’ll have to square yourself with the law.”

  John Wesley sighed, a dramatic intake of breath coupled with a frustrated yelp that he did often. “Little Bit, are you talking about Mage again?”

  “Well, Mage for starters, but there are others.”

  “Mage was your friend, wasn’t he?”

  “Not really. We were together a lot because he wanted to learn how to read and do his ciphers.”

  “Negroes are too stupid to learn to read,” Wes said. “Hell, everybody knows that.”

  “He was doing all right. He liked Sir Walter Scott.”

  “He wasn’t doing all right in my book,” Wes said, his face tight. “Mage was an uppity black man who needed killing.”

  I smiled to take the sting out of a conversation that was veering into dangerous territory. When Wes got angry bad things happened.

  “Ah, you were just sore because he beat you at rasslin’,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I bloodied his nose, didn’t I?”

  I nodded. “You done good, Wes. Mage was twice as big as you.”

  “And ugly with it.”

  Wes was silent for a while. A breeze spoke in the pines and a lace of mist frosted by moonlight drifted between their slender trunks. I fancied that the ghosts of dead Comanches were wandering the woods.

  “You know what he said, don’t you?” Wes asked.

  “Let’s drop it. It isn’t that important.”

  “You know what he said?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t feel good that night. My leg hurt and the salt pork and cornpone we’d eaten for dinner wasn’t sitting right with me.

  “He said that no white boy could draw his blood and live. Then he said that no bird ever flew so high that could not be brought to the ground. He was talking about a shooting, Little Bit. He planned to put a ball in my back.”

  “Mage shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Damn right he shouldn’t. And he shouldn’t have tried to pull me off my horse, either.”

  I made no comment on that last and Wes said, “All I did was shoot him the hell off’n me.”

  I felt his angry blue eyes burn into my face.

  “You would’ve done the same.”

  “I guess so. If I could shoot a revolver, I might have done the same.”

  “Everybody in Texas knew it was a justified killing. Everybody except the damned Yankees.”

  “That’s why you should make it right with them, Wes,” I said.

  “Damned if I will. Since when did the killing of an uppity black man become a crime?”

  “Since the Yankees won the war.”

  Wes spat into the fire. “Damn Yankees. I hate their guts.”

  “A lot of Texas folks think like you, Wes.”

  “And how do you feel, Little Bit? Until real recent, I never pegged you as a Yankee-lover.”

  “Wes, my pa died at Gettysburg, remember. How do you think I feel?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I forgot about that. You got no reason to cotton to Yankees, either.” Wes grinned at me, his good humor restored. “I’ll pour us some coffee, and before we turn in, we’ll get back to talking about my Wild West Show for a spell.” He frowned. “Damn it. We’ll have no Yankees in it, unless we need folks to shovel hoss shit. Agreed?”

  “Anything you say, Wes. Anything you say.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I Don’t Enjoy Killing”

  I saw John Wesley Hardin being born, I was with him when he died, and in between I was proud to call him my friend. He was everything I wanted to be and couldn’t.

  Wes was tall and slim and straight and moved with the elegance of a panther. He’d a fine singing voice and the very sight of him when he stepped into a room set the ladies’ hearts aflutter. Many men admired him, others hated him, but all feared him and the wondrous things he could do with revolvers.

  Like England’s hunchbacked king, I was delivered misshapen from my mother’s womb. My frail body did not grow as a man’s should, and even in the full bloom of my youth, if you’d be pleased to call it that, I never weighed more than eighty pounds or reached a height of five feet.

  Do you wonder then that I admired Wes so, and badly wanted to be like him? He was my noble knight errant who sallied forth to right wrongs, and I his lowly squire.

  I think I know the answer to that question.

  And why I pledged to stay at his side to the death.

  As I told you earlier, we were headed for Longview to visit with Wes’s kin for a spell, but he wanted to linger where we were for a day longer.

  “This is a pleasant spot and we can talk about my idea some more. Sometimes it’s good to just set back and relax.”

  I had no objections. I felt ill and my leg continued to give me trouble.

  The day passed pleasantly enough. I sat under a tree and read my book and Wes caught a bright yellow butterfly at the base of a live oak. He said it meant good luck.

  But when he opened his hands to let the butterfly go, it could no longer fly and fluttered to earth, a broken thing.

&nb
sp; Wes said not to worry, that it was still good luck. But he seemed upset about the crippled butterfly and didn’t try to catch another one.

  The long day finally lifted its ragged skirts and tiptoed away, leaving us to darkness and the Texas stars.

  Wes built up the fire and put the coffee on to boil. Using his Barlow knife, he shaved slices of salt pork into the pan and said there would be enough cornpone for supper with some leftover for tomorrow’s breakfast.

  I was pleased about that. It was good cornpone, made with buttermilk and eggs, and I was right partial to it back in those days.

  After supper we talked about the Wild West Show, then, as young men do, about women. After a while, I said I was tired and it was about time I sought my blankets.

  I stretched out and tried to ignore the pain gnawing at my leg.

  Night birds fluttered in and out of the pines making a rustling noise and a puzzled owl asked its question of the night. A pair of hunting coyotes yipped back and forth in the distance and then fell silent.

  I closed my eyes and entered that gray, misty realm between wakefulness and sleep . . . then jolted back to consciousness when a shout rang through the hallowed quiet.

  “Hello the camp!”

  I sat upright and saw that Wes was already on his feet. He wasn’t wearing his guns, but stood tense and alert, his eyes reaching into the darkness.

  Even as a teenager, John Wesley’s voice was a soft baritone, but to my surprise he pitched it near an octave higher and broke it a little as he called out, “Come on in. There’s coffee on the bile.”

  I wondered at that, but didn’t dwell on it because the darkness parted and two men rode into the clearing.

  Men made a living any way they could in Texas when Wes and I were young, and those two strangers looked as though they were no exception. They were hard-faced men, lean as wolves. I’d seen enough of their kind to figure that they were on the scout.

  Astride mouse-colored mustangs that couldn’t have gone more than eight hundred pounds, they wore belted revolvers and carried Springfield rifles across their saddle horns. As for clothing, their duds were any kind of rags they could patch together. The effect, coupled with their dirty, bare feet, was neither pleasant nor reassuring.

  But the Springfields were clean and gleamed with a sheen of oil.

  Whoever those men were, they were not pilgrims.

  One of the riders, bearded and grim, was a man who’d long since lost the habit of smiling. “You got grub?”

  “No, sir,” Wes said, using that strange, boy’s voice. “Sorry, but we’re all out.”

  The man’s eyes moved to our horses. “Where did you get them mounts?”

  Wes didn’t hesitate. “We stole them, sir. But we’re taking them back to Longview to square ourselves with the law.”

  The man turned to his companion, “Lem, how much you figure the paint is worth?”

  “Two hundred in any man’s money,” the man called Lem said. He looked at Wes. “You stole a lot of horse there, boy.”

  Wes nodded. “I know, sir. And that’s why we’re taking him back to his rightful owner.”

  “Who is his rightful owner?” Lem asked.

  “We don’t rightly know,” I said. “But we aim to find out, like.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about that, sonny,” Lem said. “We’ll take the paint off your hands, and the buckskin as well. Ain’t that so, Dave?”

  The bearded man nodded. “Sure thing. Pleased to do it. And, being decent folks, we’ll set things right with the law for you.”

  “We’ll do it ourselves,” Wes said . . . in his normal voice.

  And those two white trash idiots didn’t notice the change! They sat their ponies and heard what they wanted to hear, saw what they wanted to see.

  What they heard was the scared voice of a half-grown boy, and what they saw was a pair of raw kids, one of them a crippled, sickly-looking runt.

  Beyond that they saw nothing . . . an oversight that would prove their downfall.

  It was a lethal mistake, and they made it.

  They’d underestimated John Wesley Hardin, and as I said earlier, you couldn’t make mistakes around Wes. Not if you wanted to go on living, you couldn’t.

  “Lem, go git them horses and saddles,” Dave said. “Now, you boys just set and take it easy while Uncle Lem does what I told him.”

  “Leave the horses the hell alone,” Wes said.

  Lem was halfway out of the saddle, but something in Wes’s tone froze him in place. He looked at Dave.

  “Go do what I told you, Lem,” the bearded man said. Then to Wes, “Boy, I had it in my head to let you live, since you’re a good-looking kid and could come with us, make yourself useful, like. But my mind’s pretty close to a-changing, so don’t push me.”

  Lem dismounted and then, rifle in hand, he grinned at Wes and walked toward the horses.

  “I told you, leave the horses be.” Wes stood very still, his face like stone.

  I swallowed hard, my brain racing. Wes, where the hell are your guns?

  “Boy, step aside,” Dave said. “Or I’ll drop you right where you stand.”

  “And you go to hell,” Wes said.

  Dave nodded as though he’d expected that kind of reaction. “You lose, boy.” He smiled. “Sorry and all that.”

  He brought up his rifle and John Wesley shot him.

  Drawing from the waistband behind his back, Wes’s ball hit the Springfield’s trigger guard, clipped off Dave’s shooting finger, then ranged upward and crashed into the bearded man’s chin.

  His eyes wide and frantic, Dave reeled in the saddle, spitting blood, bone and teeth.

  Wes ignored him. The man was done.

  Wes and Lem fired at the same instant.

  Unnerved by the unexpected turn of events, Lem, shooting from the hip, was too slow, too wide and too low. Wes’s bullet hit him between the eyes and he fell all in a heap like a puppet that just had its strings cut.

  Never one to waste powder and ball, Wes didn’t fire again.

  But something happened that shocked me to the core.

  Despite his horrific wound, his face a nightmare of blood and bone, the man called Dave swung his horse around and kicked it into the darkness.

  Wes let out a triumphant yell and ran after him, holding his Colt high.

  They vanished into the murk and I was left alone in silence.

  In the moonlight, gun smoke laced around the clearing like a woman’s wispy dress wafting in a breeze. The man on the ground lay still in death and made no sound.

  A slow minute passed . . . then another....

  A shot! Somewhere out there in the dark.

  Uneasy, I picked up a heavy stick that lay by the fire and hefted it in my hand. Small and weak as I was, there was little enough I could do to defend myself, but the gesture made me feel better.

  “Hello the camp!” It was John Wesley’s voice, followed by a shout of triumphant glee.

  The black shades of the night parted and he walked into the clearing, leading the dead man’s mustang.

  I say dead man, because even without asking I knew that must have been Dave’s fate.

  “You should’ve seen it, Little Bit,” Wes said, his face alight. “Twenty yards in darkness through trees! One shot! I blew the man’s brains out.” He laughed and clapped his hands. “If he had any.”

  Without waiting for my response, he said, “Now we got a couple more ponies to sell and two Springfield rifles. Their Colts are shot out and one has a loose cylinder, so I’ll hold on to those.” His face split in a wide grin. “What do you reckon, Little Bit, am I destined for great things or ain’t I?”

  I didn’t answer that, at least not directly. “John Wesley, the killing has to stop.”

  He was genuinely puzzled and toed the dead man with his boot. “You talking about these two?”

  “No, I guess not. I mean, the killing in general. You have to think about the Wild West show.”

  “
These men needed killing, right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I guess it was them or us.” I was still holding onto the stick and tossed it away. “Maybe you could’ve let the other one die in his own time and at a place of his choosing. I say maybe you could. I’m not pointing fingers, Wes.”

  “Name one man I killed who didn’t need killing, Little Bit. Damn it, name just one. And don’t say Mage. He was a black man and don’t count.”

  He waited maybe a full second then said, “See, you can’t name a one.”

  “Wes, there are some who say you pushed the fight with Ben Bradley.”

  “He cheated me at cards and then called me a coward. A man who deals from the bottom of the deck and calls another man yellow needs killing. At least in Texas he does.”

  “I was there, Wes. You kept right on pumping balls into him after he said, ‘Oh Lordy, don’t shoot me anymore. ’ I remember that. Why did you do it?”

  “Because in a gunfight you keep shooting till the other man falls. And because only a man who’s low-down asks for mercy in the middle of a shooting scrape, especially after he’s gotten his work in.”

  I was silent.

  Wes said, “Well, did Ben Bradley need killing?”

  I sighed. “Yeah, Wes. I guess he did at that.”

  “Then what’s your problem?” Wes’s face was dark with anger. “Come on, cripple boy, spit it out.”

  “Don’t enjoy it, Wes. That’s all. Just . . . just don’t enjoy it.”

  Wes was taken aback and it was a while before he spoke again. “You really think I like killing men?” he finally asked.

  “I don’t know, Wes.”

  “Come on, answer me. Do you?”

  “Maybe you do.”

  “And maybe I was born under a dark star. You ever think of that?”

  Above the tree canopy the stars looked like diamonds strewn across black velvet. I pointed to the sky. “Which star?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Little Bit. Whichever one you choose will be dark. There ain’t no shining star up there for John Wesley Hardin.”

  Depression was a black dog that stalked Wes all his life and I recognized the signs. The flat, toneless voice and the way his head hung as though it had suddenly become too heavy for his neck.