Showdown at Possum Trot Read online

  *****

  Middle of the night come a knocking at the door.

  Jake cursed, rolled over, got up eventually, stumbled on the piss pot, cursed again, then opened the door.

  It was Jim Clark, the neighbor up the road to town. He looked like he’d seen the dead.

  “What in tarnation got into your head that needs my attention at this hour of the night?”

  “A fire!”

  “A fire where?”

  “At the back of the Rusty Bucket. The men are trying to throw water on it but it got going pretty bad.”

  “On my way.”

  Jake splashed some water on his face, threw on his gunbelt and was out the door. As he rode out the yard he was followed by a second horse and rider.

  When they arrived the fire was mostly out but about one third of the structure of the Rusty Bucket was gone. Jackson Charles was wandering about, bemoaning his loss.

  “What happened here?” said Jake.

  “Somebody started it,” Jackson said.

  “How do you know?”

  “There’s a pile of ashes from the stack of wood they used to get a fire going up against the back side of the building. That’s where it spread from.”

  “How can you be so sure somebody set it going?”

  “A little girl saw it. She told me.”

  “What little girl? Where is she?”

  “She’s gone home now. Her name is Sally Swenson.”

  “Does anybody else know this girl saw it happen?”

  “Everybody does. I told them.”

  Jake groaned and slapped his hat against his thigh. “Now Jackson, I know you are disturbed by this tragedy. You can’t help that. And I know that your thinking might be a little off just now, but what you done just put that girl in danger. Whoever started this fire will not want anybody to know about it.” Jake tapped his boot on the ground and watched Jackson’s face. “Where does she live?”

  “Around behind the General Store. Third house on the left.”

  Jake turned around to speak to Galen but Galen was gone, and, strangely enough, so was the firearm off his side.

  *****

  While everyone had been concentrating on the aftermath of the fire the figure of a man crept through the town. He moved behind horses tied at the post, around barrels stacked up in alleyways, along the sides of houses. He made no sound.

  He paused to look back at the commotion surrounding the Rusty Bucket and then turned into a side street.

  The moon was a gibbous moon, just rising behind him to the east. It cast just enough light for him to make his way through the tangle of darkness.

  He paused in the middle of the street and looked back once more at the calamity of the Bucket, then slowly rotated 180 degrees scanning the row of houses before him. He thought he heard someone move alongside the horse stable at the end of the street and stood there, frozen for a while, until he was convinced there was no one around.

  The house in front of him had no light coming from within, only the milky glow of the moon sliding down the walls and windows.

  The man approached and moved from one window to another circling around the house. Finally he stopped at the second window on the right-hand side and entered it.

  One minute later a gunshot was heard throughout the town.

  *****

  Next morning two men entered the Angel Dust and sat at the bar. Oscar, the barkeep, approached. The men asked to speak with Horse Diggins. The barkeep stated emphatically that Horse Diggins came down the stairs for no one, not even the second coming of Jesus Christ. One of the men pulled his gun and shot a hole in the ceiling. Horse Diggins came down and stood behind the bar to face the two men, one all in black and the other wearing a badge.

  “What can I do for you gentlemen?” Horse said.

  “We came to report a fire in the neighborhood,” said the sheriff.

  “I know about that,” said Horse.

  “We figured you knew about that, probably even before it happened.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Maybe you’d like an education on the subject.”

  “Don’t know that I need one.”

  “You got no choice in the matter because when we git ready to talk no haystack on the road is going to stop us.”

  Horse flashed a puzzled look.

  “Now look, I won’t go into the reasons for the motive you might have to do harm to your competitor, that’s way too obvious even for a simple man like me. What I will tell you that your man, Rudge, the one that works for you. . .”

  “He works for a lot of people. I take no responsibility for him.”

  “I didn’t ask you to take responsibility, now did I? . . Yet.”

  Horse looked a little nervous.

  Jake continued. “. . . that man Rudge, who works for you,” He paused and froze Horse with an icy glare. “that man set that fire last night.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Jake took his ancient, slow time answering. “We know that ‘cause he told us.”

  Now Horse looked troubled.

  Jake raised his hand to calm him. “Sure,” he said. “We could have thought he might be lying, how under pressure he’d say most anything. But then he told us something pretty interesting.”

  Jake stopped and watched Horse’s face. Horse tried to look unstirred but failed.

  “Do you know why he set that fire?” Jake leaned over the bar so the brim of his hat almost touched Horse’s forehead. “Come on, Horse, A smart man like you would know the answer to a simple question like that.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s curious. Turns out, we didn’t know either. Leastwise, not up to this point in the story. We were prepared to do some powerful speculating over the next few days. You know, piecing things together how all this happened.”

  “I wish you luck with that,” said Horse.

  Jake laughed. “Oh, I’m sure you do, Horse. I’m sure you do.” He laughed again and nodded. “You see, we were prepared for speculation, yes indeed we were. . . but then he told us why he set that fire. So pay attention, this gets better.”

  Jake stopped talking and just watched Horse.

  Galen spoke up. “We’ll be going now. . .”

  “Wait a minute,” said Horse. “You’re not going to tell me the rest of the story.”

  “That’s right,” said Galen. “We’re not.”

  A smirk crossed Horse’s face. “You don’t have a story.”

  Jake grinned like a man with a winning hand. “That’s for us to know,” he said, “and you to worry about.”

  Galen tapped his finger on the bar. “While you’re thinking about that I thought we’d leave you a little token of our visit, seeing how you been so hospitable and all.” He paused for effect. “Ah! I almost forgot. Before I do that, I should tell you the fate of your man Rudge.”

  Jake held up his hand and tilted his head in a clear warning to prevent Horse from distancing himself once again from the man Rudge.

  Horse watched Galen with an irrepressible glint of anxiety in his eyes.

  Galen waited in the icy silence.

  “I shot him,” he said.

  The two men watched an expression of relief cross Horse’s face.

  “But before he left us,” said Galen, “well, that’s when he told us the whole story.”

  Horse swallowed noisily. “Where’s the body?”

  Jake chimed up. “Oh, I reckon it’s about half way down the Pedernalis on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.”

  Galen had his gunfighting stare on Horse. Horse faded backwards half a step.

  “Back to the business at hand,” Galen said.

  Horse swallowed.

  “The token,” Galen said, “the token. Yes. What we promised to leave you with to remember our visit.”

  “Careful what you do, gentlemen.”

  “Oh, we’re careful,” said Galen. We’re always careful.” An evil smile cro
ssed his face. He glared at Horse. “I killed maybe 42 men, Horse Diggins, about the same kind of scumbag as you, and I was always careful.” He let that set in a beat. “Now, what is your prize possession in this house?”

  “Everything is my prize possession,” he said.

  “Something must be more value to you than the rest,” said Galen.

  Horse shook his head.

  Galen looked around, then gestured over his shoulder. “Take that statue over yonder. The one of the naked woman with no arms all twisted about like she is.”

  Jake laughed. “That’s not just any naked woman, Galen. That’s the Venus de Milo.”

  Horse spoke with some pride. “It’s a copy I imported all the way from Italy.”

  “That’ll do,” said Galen.

  And in one swift motion he reached over, stole the gun out of Jake’s holster, swung around and shot off Venus’s right foot.

  Horse gasped and reached under the bar.

  Galen had already rotated the gun back around to eyelevel and with one smooth, quick motion pointed straight up Horse’s nose.

  “Bring your hands above the bar,” he said, “real slow-like.”

  Horse hesitated, eyes burning, sizing what he was up against. Water dripped in the sink. The clock rocked its perpetual pendulum back and forth.

  He brought his hands to the top of the bar.

  Galen waved the gun over Horse’s face as if selecting where to put the next slug, then slowly holstered it back where it came from.

  He held him in his glare a moment then they turned left the bar.

  Outside, Jake pounded Galen on the back. “What an outrageous display of skill and cunning, my good and faithful friend,” he said. “That was bodacious fun.”

  “Nah,” he said. “He’s just lucky I didn’t shoot off her tits.”

  *****

  And somewhere along the trail headed north into the dangers of Indian Country was a solitary man, hoping to find a better life in a different kind of hostile world, the hand that held the knife shot completely off, his arm wearing a large bandage generously provided by the brand new doctor in town.

  TWO

  Horse sat at his desk for two days and two nights. If he’d been any hotter under the collar steam would have shot out his ass.

  He went over the visit he’d received from the sheriff, Jake Paxton, and his sidekick, Galen Clay, word by word, expression by expression, trying to tease out whether they knew something about his connection to the fire at the Rusty Bucket or they were just bluffing a bad poker hand.

  The other part of his brain was hatching a plan of revenge. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth, he thought. Maybe two teeth for a tooth. Fuck it. Why not the whole mouth! It’s one thing to have a sheriff in town. That’s bad enough. It’s quite another to have him and his wily partner come around to make a fool out of him.

  On the third day he got up and went downstairs to the main floor of his Angel Dust Saloon and surveyed the damage. There was only one damage, small, and at the same time, large. To someone who didn’t know any better it‘d hardly be noticeable. To him, it was like a chest wound to the fragile might of his pride. The right foot of his beloved statue of Venus de Milo was shot completely off.

  Crissy saw him coming down the stairs and got up from her post to greet him. She knew he’d been in a funk for days because there had been none of that regularly painful mischief he always had for her.

  Yet she knew he was even more seriously dangerous when not engaged in some kind of daily abuse. As if the small transgressions kept the big ones down below the surface. He pushed her away as she approached.

  The other girls tried to look invisible. There was going to be trouble.

  *****

  “I still think it’s ironic as hell,” Jake said, “that for years you went around killing a whole bunch of people for the great wide-open state of Texas and now you want see if you can put people back together again.” He tossed a burnt biscuit at Galen. It bounced harmlessly off his shoulder and crashed into the wall with a clacking sound.

  Galen glanced sleepily up at Jake and went on eating his beans and rice.

  Jake started crumbling cornbread into a glass of buttermilk. He felt the disapproving stare of Galen and without looking up said, “Only civilized way to eat cornbread. Otherwise it’s not fit for the pigs.”

  Sabo came in bringing in biscuits, properly cooked this time, and coffee.

  “How many days do we have to put up with these river stones you call biscuits before we get something that don’t break teeth?” Jake flashed a cocky smile at Galen, a smile filled with scraggly teeth.

  Sabo shot Jake a sidelong glance and then went about his business bringing the coffee and the fresh biscuits.

  Jake grinned mischievously. “I guess we should give you a call you when we want to pave the front walk,” he raised his voice, “with something that’ll withstand the rain and tornados we get around here.” He winked at Galen. “Then we could call them Sabo’s flagstones.”

  Sabo shrugged and accidently-on-purpose spilled a little coffee on Jake’s hand.

  “Yeeouch,” Jake said, and flung a biscuit at Sabo but missed, breaking a plate on the wall. Sabo escaped to the kitchen.

  Galen looked up. “Whatsamadder, Jake. You getting your period today?”

  Jake rocked his head, smiled, and glared at Galen. “You wouldn’t know a period from a crack in the wall,” he said, “nohow.”

  Galen glared back. “The only thing you know about women is them whores down at Moon Town. Maybe you been there a little too much lately. Next thing we know you’ll be growing breasts.”

  Jake leaned over the table on his elbows.

  “Okay, my fine feathered friend,” he said. “What I want to know is if you’re gonna make good on your promise to relieve the suffering and misery in our little paradise with your being a doctor and all, now that you done with all your killing. Or, are you gonna just sit here and make misery for the rest of us.”

  “Already started.”

  “Don’t say. Oh, and I already know about the misery.”

  “Hung up my shingle yesterday, down at the end of that little alleyway alongside the General Store.”

  “Well, you must have banker’s hours cause there’s nothing for you to work your miraculous healing powers on around here, sitting at the table stuffing your gut with beans.” Jake watched Galen eat, then made a ludicrous farting sound with his pursed lips.

  To make matters worse he played a Scottish Highland dance in fart music.

  He stopped and watched Galen a moment. Galen was still as a stone.

  “Careful over there, Galen,” he said. “You’ll get winded talking so much.”

  Without looking up, Galen lifted one leg and released a monstrous fart out of his ass. He went on eating as if nothing had happened.

  “Lawdy,” Jake said, and pinched his nose. The look on his face was like he’d just witnessed the most disgusting act at the Side Show. He shook his head. “Oooo-weee!” he said. He banged his fork on the table. Nothing better to do or say, he thought. He scraped up some beans off his own plate and shoved them in his mouth.

  He hadn’t heard an answer to his question about the banker’s hours right away, so he looked up.

  What he saw was Galen’s backside standing in the door, both hands holding his hat in front of him for a moment, then cramming it on his head as he moved out into the morning.

  *****

  Horse paced his office. He’d been downstairs and left. Things weren’t right there.

  He picked up a paperweight, tossed it in his hand a few times.

  The muscle on the side of his face tensed and released, tensed and released.

  He chunked the paperweight against the wall and went back downstairs. To hell with it, anyway, he thought.

  The paperweight lay shattered on the floor.

  The whores were making themselves busy with the cliental. They looked up as he came down.

  He
strolled along the bar, tracing the ledge of it with two fingers. The barkeep nodded. Horse did not respond.

  He stopped and surveyed the room. His eyes fell on the statue of Venus with the missing foot that Galen had shot off. Impulsively, he started in her direction and placed the palm of his hand over her face.

  The girls stopped what they were doing and watched with anxious eyes.

  The muscle in his face twitched again and he leaned into the statue until it tilted precariously. Was a statue without one foot desecrated enough to destroy?

  The girls gasped.

  Crissy left her post but she stopped half way to Horse. She just stood there in the middle of the room, watching.

  Horse dropped his head to his chest, his hand still covering the face of Venus de Milo.

  He waited there a moment.

  Opening his eyes, all he could see was the stub of an ankle where her right foot used to be. What was it Galen had said? To leave a little token of their visit about the fire at Rusty Bucket?

  He let out an anguished cry and pushed the statue to the tipping point.

  Crissy rushed to his side. “Don’t, Horse. Don’t hurt Venus.”

  Horse twitched his head to the side and caught sight of Crissy. He released the statue and it rocked noisily back to its standing plank. In the same motion he flung his fee hand around and backhanded Crissy with such force she fell to the floor, bleeding from her right ear.

  He snarled. He stood over her motionless body a moment, glared at the occupants of the bar, went outside, saddled up and rode out of town.

  *****

  Galen arrived at his new office to find three women sitting on his doorstep underneath the sign that read:

  Galen Clay

  Physician and Surgeon

  Tonics for Assorted Mischief