Hackamore 4
Five or six times a
day he goes out onto the boardwalk outside the cantina door and stands
there, taking the air and looking the place over.
He leans up against a post, cool and calm and acting like he owns the town.
Hell, he does own the town and everyone knows it: every man, woman
and child in it. Even the dogs cross the street to keep out of his reach.
They all know.
Big dog gets the meat; that's the way it goes. That's the way it always
goes.
A man walking past does it real small, pretending to be interested in
something across the street, maybe, and giving only sidelong glances to
where he leans against the post; and if his eye's caught, the man will flush
and look away, real awkward and scared. Respect, that's what it is, the way
they kowtow to him. It's how they show they know he's in charge. None of
them like looking him in the eye, but hell, they know he's there. He
usually just grins at them, doesn’t bother with them unless he has a point
to make or a lesson to give; content that they're walking small in front of
him.
It's different with the ladies. He likes the ladies. He likes admiring
them and he likes them to admire him right back. He's real polite, always,
so he smiles and tips his hat, says a quiet Nice day, Ma'am. Usually
they flutter and gasp, and their menfolk get red-faced and scared, and tow
them to the opposite side of the street while he laughs. Some of the
younger ones, though, they drop their gaze and look at him through their
eyelashes and lift their skirts an inch or two, pretending it's to get out
of the dust but really so he can see their pretty ankles in their tight
little boots. He wonders how they'll take to it, if he ever gets the chance
at them. Real well, he reckons. They'll learn fast, the ones who are
begging for it with their downcast eyes and blushes.
Every single one of 'em knows he's there. He likes that. They all know the
big dog who's keeping the townsfolk pretty well ground down. He's had a lot
of practice at it; he knows how to buffalo a man or a town, how to bully
until they sneak away, crawling like the lily-livered worms they are. But
even worms will turn if they're stamped underfoot beyond what they can
bear. Trying to close a town like this off to the man you're gunning
for—well, that's a two edged knife, that's for sure. Going out to sniff the
air and watch the folks edge past on the boardwalk, is his way of being
ready, of knowing what the worms are thinking of doing before the worms
themselves do.
So yeah, he goes out to remind them and keep 'em cowed, but mostly it's just
to take a sniff at the air, to try and sense what the townsfolk are thinking
and doing, watching the people go past. He's got to know the town well.
It's a pretty old place. A man would almost think he's in Mexico, what with
all the white adobe buildings and there being more greasers around than real
Americans. There's even a real fancy church in the main square, so big its
shadow stretches all the way to the bone orchard right on the edge of town,
just like those big missions in Cuidad Juarez or Sonoyta.
He doesn't often work this far north or this far west. This isn't his
country. The border is the place he knows best. Hell, he'd bet that in his
time, he's ridden at least once into every dusty town and village twenty
miles either side of the Rio Grande. Some of them are so small, a man can
spit over them and not even have to hawk it up. If he can find enough spit,
that is. It's a dry and dusty country down there. California, now, is
greener. It's real pretty country around here, north of the border. A man
might get to feel right at home, 'specially when he finds a bright-eyed girl
willing to give him the time of day and show him her pretty ankles.
Not that it's his first time in California; just his first time taking a job
here. He came to California in… when was it now? '66, that was it. Late
'66, that time he chased Clara from Abilene clear to San Diego. Reckon she
thought he wouldn't look for her this far west, and some of the men he was
working with just laughed and said he should leave it. It's not his style
to leave it, though. Just not his style.
She was quite a piece, was Clara. Not now, though. She isn't quite a piece
now. Not that he killed her for running out on him, mind, not even though
she'd shamed him deep by doing it. Hell a woman doesn't have a right to go
unless a man gives her leave or throws her out, and even when he's finished
with her, she should walk small around him. It's more… more womanly. Clara
hadn't acted womanly like that, but still he hadn't killed her. He hadn't
even cut her real bad. He'd just cut her a little bit, to remember him by.
Lord, she was everything a man could want, once. These days, she'll have to
do all her best work in the dark, that's all, or find a man who ain't too
picky about what he gets for a dime a time.
He doesn't like being laughed at. Nobody does it twice..
.
.
.
He leans up against the cantina door frame and tilts his hat down over his
eyes, shading them against the sun. It's only spring, but already the sun
is high and hot. The brightness makes his eyes ache. McHugh and Williams
are on the other side of the street, sitting in the shade of the biggest
store in this one-horse burg, playin' cards and using a barrel for a table.
McHugh raises a hand to show he's seen him. He nods back.
Everything in this town happens in little pieces, little things that he sees
and hears when he comes out onto the boardwalk to take the air and watch the
folks show their respect. It reminds him of the time he went to the theatre
in Santa Fe, the one where he met Clara, and saw what she called a 'revue
with interludes'.
Little pieces happen all day long if a man watches for 'em, just like those
interludes.
Like the squeal, real loud, that makes him drop his hand to his gun. It's
coming from an alley to one side of the cantina but McHugh and Williams
don't even look up, too busy squabbling over the cards. The squeal comes
again, followed by a grunt. A hog after a rat, maybe, or a snake.
Or like the girl who's walking on the boardwalk across the street. She
stops short before she reaches McHugh and Williams, when she sees them
sitting there. She ducks her head and comes catty-corner across the street
to keep out of their way, her face hidden by the side slats on her bonnet,
her shoulders hunched up against McHugh's whistle and calls. She's doesn't
seem to have seen him where he stands in the shade of the cantina's
overhanging roof, so he lets her go past, grinning at McHugh across the way.
Or like the little breeze kicking up dust along the street. He watches it
blow, the dust devils skittering around like live things, dodging under the
hooves of a tethered horse, blowing around the girl's feet and making her
skirts billow, gusting around the wheels of a buggy. It makes him smile.
It's like they're playing with the place, the way he does.
The devils drop back into dust when the wind fails.
His employer speaks from behind him. "Do you check the weather every hour,
or something?"
"Or somethin'." He turns his head to speak over his shoulder. The
cantina's only dimly lit, the shutters closed across the windows so no one
can see inside, and the man's eyes glint in the shadows.
He and his employer are the only people in the cantina. The owner vamooses
when he's told to vamoose and the girl who works here—a pretty, pretty girl
with hips that sway and hair that hangs down her back like silk—well, she
won’t come near when he or the boys are in the cantina. She doesn't look at
him from under her lashes, or blush, or show her pretty ankles. She curls
her lip and turns her back on him. That riles him, some days. McHugh says
just to take her and be damned to it, but he thinks that might be something
that would make these worms turn. He needs them too cowed to act up. He
doesn't want to prod them into finding their damned backbones and there are
plenty of willing girls an hour's ride north. When this is over though…
well then, before he rides out of town, he'll teach that little greaser gal
how to be real womanly around a man. He'll likely let the boys have her
after, if he doesn't decide to take her with him.
He comes in, closes the door behind him. "It gets hot by the middle of the
day now."
"That's California for you. Summer will be here and then over before we
know it. I want this settled soon. We're losing prime building time and we
haven't advanced more than a few miles. We're losing money by the hour
here."
He's never met this man before. His employer has worked through a land
agent until now, a greasy little lawyer called Dief Kushner. Money sticks
to Dief like flies to a grease pot. But seems that while Kushner's a good
hand at a shady land deal, he's a poor hand at driving a pair of horses on
steep roads in the rain. Dief and his horses and the neat little buggy he
likes driving are at the bottom of a canyon somewhere right now. Dief, said
his employer when he arrived at the cantina, is unavailable. His employer
hasn't introduced himself and seems put out at having to deal with him
direct.
It doesn't matter. What his employer doesn't know is that Dief can't … Dief
couldn't keep his mouth shut when he'd had a shot or two of red eye. Dief
liked to boast about his big business partners. Dief let the names slip,
more'n once.
He knows who his employer is.
For now, though, he'll play the game. "You shoulda let me finish up here
last year."
"If the decision had been solely up to me, I'd have let you finish." His
employer's a fancy-dressed man with fancy manners, in a town suit with an
embroidered brocade vest and a big gold watch chain across his chest. The
man looks like a gambler who's short a Mississippi river boat. A man of
real fine tastes, too; picking up the bottle of tequila and staring at it
like he hopes it'll change into fancy French champagne right in front of his
eyes.
He had champagne once. Sour stuff. He doesn't see what all the fuss is
about. Tequila tastes better and has more of a kick. This cantina keeps a
good one; better than he expected.
It surprises him when his employer pours two glasses and offers him one as
he takes a seat. Dief wasn't ever that polite.
His employer takes a sip of the tequila and pulls a face. "Dealing with the
difficulty that the company was having in the north was, at the time, more
pressing than our business here. Some of those Modesto people were just too
obstinate in refusing to see where their best interests lay. Kushner kept
me up to date with everything you did there to help them see the light. You
did well, by the way."
He nods. He knows that. He got the company everything it needed, every
last acre and every last deed and title, at a bedrock price and no one to
trace it back to his employer. All done through honest, upright land agents
like Dief Kushner.
Work is different, these days. Not better, just different. When he started
out in this game, it was all about slipping between Mexico and the United
States as need be, working first for some Texan rancher, maybe, and then for
a grand haciendado, and taking pay from both. He still does that; a lot of
his work is still about land and cattle, water and grazing. But in the last
few years the railroads have come, spreading their tracks all over the
plains and prairies, and now he isn't working for ranchers worrying about
grass and water, but for fancy-dressed businessmen in towns worrying about
profits.
It's still about land, though. What is it the railroad men say? Different
business, same commodity.
His employer's a railroad man. His employer's one of the town-suited
businessmen who've never worked the land, just cut up its face and scarred
it with iron. "We have to move faster here now. The Southern Pacific has
the main track to Stockton and Sacramento well underway."
He grins. "Well, they're a mite bigger outfit, right?"
His employer isn't pleased and shoots him a glare, stiffening right up. "We
have a contract with them. The penalties for failing to build the spur
lines will—" the railroad man hesitates, then nods "— will be uncomfortable
for more people than just me."
He decides that's a threat, but not one that he need worry about.
Uncomfortable, huh? Well, hell, it won't bother him none. He has his job
to do and it ain't building railroads, just clearing the way for the men who
do. "It ain't going to be that easy. Pullin' me north like that… well,
we've given him months to get over bein' shot."
"You were supposed to kill him."
He shrugs. "There were two men, both about the same age, both in plaid
shirts. I shot 'em both, too, seein' as how I couldn't tell which was
which. Can't be helped that the wrong one died."
"Don’t miss, next time."
"I didn't miss last time. I just didn't hit him where I wanted to or as
hard as I meant to." He grins, real slow. "How much time do we have?"
"I have to have that ranch in my hands by the end of next week." His
employer sips at the tequila again, puts the glass down and pushes it to one
side. "Or we all face those uncomfortable consequences. Our plans are to
make Fresno the hub for several spur lines to join the main north-south
route as it cuts through the valley. That land's important to those plans."
"Fresno? You might be better taking the spur through someplace east and
north of here, then." He pauses, thinks about it. In his head, he's
spreading a map over the tabletop, weighing the corners down with stones or
tequila glasses, tracing a finger over the brown printed lines and marks.
"The Hooped C, maybe?"
His employer stiffens up again. "No." He speaks slow and quiet, like he's
considering his words real careful. "I have other plans for that part of
the country. But here… well, I need to get my hands on the deeds to that
land, and quickly. As for him, I don’t just want him defeated. I want him
dead."
"Yeah? What did he do to you?"
"He owns land I want. And he—" His employer stops short and takes a cigar
case from an inside pocket and spends a considerable time choosing one,
looking at each one real careful. "He's in my way in more ways than one,
shall we say. I want him out of my way permanently."
He shrugs. "We shouldn't have given him so much time to get ready for us,
then. From all I hear about him, he ain't stupid."
"You've run off a lot of his workers."
"Not all of them, though. Not by a jugful." He sits back, watches the man
across the table. He shakes his head when offered the cigar case. He
doesn't like smoke. He sips on the tequila instead; it's a good reposado,
as good as sipping whiskey. "Still, I said I'd kill him, and I will. Don't
you worry about that."
"I'm sure you will want to, having failed once." The cigar gets tapped on
the tabletop shaking the ash onto the floor. "I've often wondered why men
like you take to killing for money."
"Well, it's business, ain't it? A trade, that's all, like cow punching or
blacksmithing. There's nothin' personal in it, not for me. It doesn't
matter what your reasons are and why he's in your way. It doesn't matter
who's right and who's wrong—"
"Just who can afford your price?" His employer lights the thin black
cigar. "And I'm paying you a very significant sum."
"Yeah, you are."
And it's true. He's being paid very well. He's being paid so much that he
can live with being jerked up north to Modesto to get them the land they
want, and then being sent back here to start this job all over again. If
they weren't paying top dollar—more than top dollar, and in gold, too—he'd
be fit to be tied over the whole business. The money sure sweetens it,
though. Gold coins like that sweeten most anything.
The railroad man nods. "By the end of next week, mind."
"Sure."
He walks with his employer to the back door of the cantina. The owner is
nowhere in sight and he hasn't seen the pretty girl since he got there this
morning. He checks the back alley. No one around. The only thing to see
the man leave is the hog, a piebald shoat, and it's more interested in
eating the rat or whatever it was it caught, than watching a railroad dandy
walking down the alley.
He smiles. "You have a good day now, Mister Addison. I'll be in touch."
The railroad man's a hard one, he'll give him that. He doesn't start or
swear, or look foolish at being caught out, or even look angry at being
mocked; but just glances back and shakes his head before walking away.
He watches the shoat for a few minutes. It's rooting about in the dust
under the back steps, grunting and whuffling through that big, broad nose.
Sounds like Coley McHugh rutting on a whore. Looks like McHugh, too, come
to think on it.
He can see the muscles twitch beneath the skin when a fly lands on its
shoulder. He levels his gun at it.
"Bang."
The shoat doesn't even look up.
He grins and holsters the gun again. A pretty thing, this gun, with ivory
grips and engraving along the barrel. And that reminds him: the gunsmith
over in Green River should have his new gun ready by now. He'll pick it up
as soon as this is over.
He calls McHugh in. "They want Lancer by the end of next week. We have to
move now."
McHugh waits to be told how. McHugh ain't completely chuckle-headed, but
he's a tagger and a follower. McHugh doesn't get ideas of his own.
He keeps a map of the district rolled up in his saddlebags and sends McHugh
to fetch it. It makes him grin, when he has it spread out and the corners
held down; it's just like he imagined when talking about the Conway ranch.
He wonders what plans the railway has for that part of the district.
McHugh hitches his chair closer. "We burned that field yesterday."
He snorts. "Yeah. That'll scare 'em white-headed."
McHugh shrugs and grins. It's about all McHugh can think up, burning a few
fields. Does what he's told, though and that's worth something.
He looks at the map, and circles on bit of it with a finger. "No more
two-bit stuff, Coley. I'm going to hit Lancer hard tomorrow. We need to
get his men out of the way."
McHugh shrugs. "Sure. I see that. How?"
"See here?" He rests a fingertip on the map. "Lancer has a farm here,
three or four miles from the hacienda. Some greaser runs it for him."
"Can't see why a rancher has a sodbuster on his land, anyway."
"I don't give a damn why. Go find Danny Edwards and tell him to take six of
the boys. I don't want anything standing on that farm by dusk. Kill the
sodbuster, if they find him."
"Women and kids?"
He pauses. Shrugs. It won't bother Danny Edwards. "Kill 'em all."
McHugh nods. Doesn't look like it bothers him none, either.
"Tell Danny to lay a trail right up into the San Benitos. I want something
a blind Chinee could follow in the dark. When Lancer sees what we did at
the farm, he'll follow the trail and we'll hit the ranch, take it right from
under him."
McHugh scratches his beard. Fleas, most likely. "I heard Lancer was still
carrying your bullet from last year. He's not likely to be riding up into
the mountains."
"With luck, most of his men will. Then we get Lancer at home. Go tell
Danny, Coley. Tell him to leave someone to watch and come back and tell us
if it works."
"Want me to go along with him?"
He shakes his head. "Just Edwards and six of the boys." He grins. "You
know who'll be best."
McHugh laughs and nods, probably wishing he could go along. McHugh always
did enjoy a good fandango..
.
.
.
After McHugh's gone to find Edwards, he rolls up the map and takes another
drink. He sits quiet for a long time, letting the tequila do its work,
getting mellow and thinking things through.
The railroad's ponying up real well for this job. Even after he's cut
McHugh and the boys in, he still has one helluva grubstake. Maybe it's time
to think about retiring; finding a nice little ranch somewhere. Raising
horses, maybe. Yeah. Horses. Better than cows, any day. Or better still,
finding a nice little town like this one, maybe, that needs a change of
management. Run a saloon or two, or maybe a bawdy house. He grins. Maybe
Clara's still working down in San Diego and would come and run it for him.
It'll be a step up for her. It'll be real funny to see her face if she has
to run a place where he can take the pick of the girls and never once look
at her.
He reckons it'll all be over tomorrow or the day after. Lancer will be dead
and the railroad will build right over the ranch that the old man's
defending so hard. Tomorrow he'll have so much tin, he won't know how to
spend it all.
He closes his eyes, sliding down in the chair until he's real comfortable.
He pulls his hat right down over his eyes to keep the light out, and lets
himself think about how he might spend all that gold. He might just ask for
all the bits of Lancer the railroad doesn't want. They won't want much,
really, out of a hundred thousand acres; just enough to run their track
across. Wonder why his employer wants the old man dead and what the plans
are for the Conway ranch. He's heard that it's owned by a right pretty
widow woman.
He yawns, and stops thinking for a while. It's quiet. A fly buzzes past
his ear, and even the drone is quiet. He yawns again.
There's a noise outside. McHugh and Williams and some of the other boys are
settled on boardwalk outside the cantina, making sure no one bothers him.
They're laughing out there, and there's a shot or two. Likely they're
playing. With that shoat, maybe, or a greaser.
He tilts his head to one side, listening. He can hear McHugh's low rumble,
and Pete Martin's voice, loud and mocking. And then…
And then he sits up so fast that he almost falls off the chair. His hat
tumbles to the floor.
Great day in the morning! It can't be. It can't be because the man that
sounds like… well, that man's said to be dead and dead men don't laugh like
that.
He jumps up, grabbing his hat and jamming it back onto his head. If that's
who he thinks it is, he has to get out there before he's short a few men.
He's gonna need them to hit Lancer.
He opens the door quietly. McHugh has his gun trained on the feller
standing in the street.
It's him, all right. Dressed in fancy Mex style, like always, like he don't
care he's half-greaser, and with that damned Army Colt in his hand, ready.
He looks like he's heading out on a Sunday school picnic not facing down
half-a-dozen men who'd shoot him and leave him in the dust, and lose no
sleep over it. He's grinning, saying he picked himself a nice day to die
and who's goin' with him? Means it, too. Damn it, but he hasn't changed,
not one iota. Looks right healthy for a dead man.
"Take him down, Coley!" Pete Martin is so mad he's jumping.
If McHugh tries anything, he'll be buzzard meat even if he manages to get a
shot off. He glances at McHugh and shrugs. Won't matter that much, he
reckons, but he's had McHugh around for a long time and he's useful.
He steps onto the boardwalk. "I wouldn't."
McHugh's raising his gun, but he stops and turns. Pete Martin just stares.
But that damned cabrón
standing out there in the street? Well, he just smiles that huge,
shit-eating grin of his. He's not afraid. He nods. "Day."
Hell, it is. His eyes aren't lying. He'd drunk a toast only three
days ago when he'd heard that one of the best of them had been shot down in
Mexico, helping some stupid peons in some stupid revolution. He doesn’t
know whether he's pleased or not that the drink was wasted. He's always
liked him, despite him being a breed. Come to think on it, doesn't matter a
damn if he likes him or not: he can always use a good gun, and guns just
don't come any better than this.
And maybe with a spindigo of a revolution behind him, one of the best guns
on the border will be looking for work. Hell, if this pans out, if old man
Lancer finds out that this gunhawk's in town, he'll be shitting himself to
hand the land over.
So he nods, answering that huge grin with one of his own. He makes his
smile as welcoming as he knows how.
"Long time, Johnny Madrid."
~end~
January 2011
4,524 words
Note:
I'm being deliberately vague about the exact route and progress of the Southern Pacific's construction of what became known as the Sunset route. From a booklet called 75 Years of Progress (published December 1945): Construction on the western end of the Sunset Route was started December 31, 1869, branching from the Transcontinental line at the newly established town of Lathrop. Only the most optimistic hopes could have prompted the Big Four (Sacramento businessmen Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins and Collis Huntington) to build into the San Joaquin Valley. The great broad region now so productive and populous was then nearly unoccupied. When looking over the proposed route, Stanford and Hopkins and their engineers traveled the upper section of the valley on horseback and camped out. For miles and miles they rode without seeing any sign of habitation, except an occasional sheep border's shack. Many of the valley's large cities of today—Fresno, Merced, Modesto, Tulare and others—were just "railroad towns" in the '70s, founded by the railroad's builders. Traffic was inaugurated to Modesto on November 8,1870; to Merced, January 15,1872; to Fresno, May 28,1872; to Tulare, July 25, 1872; and to Sumner (now East Bakersfield) on November 8, 1874.
In 1870, then,
construction was at an early stage and wouldn't reach Fresno for a couple of
years. But it strikes me that the Big Four, whatever else you can say about
them, were men of vision and determination. So I've taken some creative
liberties with their business practices and made an assumption that they
would contract with the smaller railroad companies to build connecting
spurlines well in advance of the main line reaching the junction – Fresno,
in this case – so that all the lines etc would be in place for a little
joining up that would echo, in a small way, the iconic Golden Spike moment
of the great Transcontinental.
To support this story and because I'm fully behind Pooh Bah in his attention
to 'mere corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to
an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative', I've had a lot of fun
recreating the front page of the Sacramento Daily Record-Union for April 19th,
1870. There are a couple of articles about a certain land war in the San
Joaquin valley and a little item under Railway Affairs in Column 4,
datelined Sacramento, April 18th, all pertinent to this story and
Hackamore in general. I'll stress here that the other articles on the page
are taken from a much later edition of the Record Union, so the recreated
front page isn't intended to be historically accurate. If you'd like to see
the recreated front page and wonder at the adverts, the snippets and
articles, all of which (apart from my three snippets) are real, then go
here:
http://celestialdome.com/LancerFiction/Stories/THERECORD.pdf