Arkansas Smith (5 page)

Arkansas Smith, ten years old, finding himself the man of the house, stood at the graveside long after the other mourners had departed. He stared into the open ground, aware of two men waiting impatiently to fill it in, to pack the soil on top of the cheap coffin for all eternity. But he ignored them and was unable to move.

As soon as he walked away and the grave was filled in it would be final. Walter Smith would be no more.

He didn’t want to take that step; as if staying here, refusing to move, would somehow delay the moment when the old man’s death became a part of history. He wasn’t really his father, no blood relation, but the man he thought of as his father anyway. The man who had found him as a newborn, still attached to his dead mother, and promptly named him Arkansas because that’s where they were. Only they weren’t, he would later discover and tell the boy years later, but the name had stuck.

Blood kin or not, the young boy couldn’t have wanted for better parents than Walter and Edith Smith and he was proud to carry their name. 

‘Arkansas.’

The shout came through the mist like a phantom and Arkansas spun on his feet and saw the woman he called his mother standing at the bottom of the hill that served as the cemetery in these parts.

She was waving to him, telling him to come down from there now. His father was dead and only the body rested in the grave. He was with the Lord now and life had to go on.

Arkansas waved back and then once more said a silent goodbye to the man. He turned and caught the stare of the two gravediggers and offered a weak smile, but they bowed their heads to the ground, understanding his grief.

He walked down the hill and met the elderly woman and together they made their way back to the small, two-roomed house at the far end of town. As small as it was, it was going to feel mighty big now with Walter Smith gone.

Winter drew in quickly that year. The summer seemed to bypass the fall and head directly to the sub zero temperatures of the Illinois winter. It was early October and for the past three days freezing rain had fallen and was now giving way to snow. As the temperature dropped further still, the wet ground hardened and ice patches formed. Travelling even the smallest distances became impossible.

Arkansas shivered as he carried the bucket of water from the well. He had found the well frozen over and had had to spend several uncomfortable moments cracking the ice with an axe, the handle of which stuck to his leather gloves. He felt snow fluttering against his face, which made a change from the stinging rain, but he took no pleasure from it.

The snowfall would only make an already hard existence
harder still.

The clement summer had been too dry and the larger part of the crops had failed. They had moved here three years ago from Georgia because Walter Smith saw farming opportunities, but when the old man died all they had been left with were debts and land that had refused to provide bounty.

‘It’s getting colder.’ Arkansas placed the bucket in the corner. He threw another log onto the fire, recoiling from the sparks that shot out, and smiled at his mother. ‘I’ll go and chop some more wood later,’ he said. ‘Just in case the snow takes hold.’

‘You’re a good boy.’ Edith Smith closed her eyes, enjoying the warmth as the flames flickered and danced in shadows upon her face. The wind howled around the building, shaking the walls, the sound of snow tapped the window and rattled the panes of glass.

It made the place seem all the more cosy.

They sat in silence for several moments, the only sound being the logs spitting on the fire and the wind. It sounded desolate as if the world outside had ceased to exist and they were all that remained.

‘You know something?’ Arkansas asked, breaking the silence and poking at the fire with a twig to spread the heat around.

‘What?’ Edith smiled at her son and her eyes for the briefest of moments seemed to glow with a long forgotten youth. Her skin was bright in the warm reflection of the flames.

‘I think you should cook up a big old pot of your stew,’ Arkansas said. ‘Put some warmth in our bellies.’

‘That’d be nice.’
  

‘I can go kill a turkey,’ Arkansas said. ‘Won’t be the same as beef but it’ll go down all the same.’

She nodded. ‘I’ve got some carrots and onions in the root cellar. I’ll do it later,’ she said. ‘Later.’ Soon she was asleep.

The following morning was overcast. The weather matched Arkansas’s mood as he pulled the sorrel to a stop outside the livery stable and dismounted. Rycot immediately ran out to greet him, a smile on his face that was soon replaced by a worried frown.

‘My cart,’ Rycot said. ‘I was expecting it back by now.’

Arkansas looked at the man. ‘The doc didn’t return them?’

‘No.’ Rycot shook his head.

‘Have you seen him?’

‘Who?’

It was Arkansas’s turn to frown. ‘The doc.’

‘No, ain’t seen him since he rode out with you. The horse came in on its own yesterday, but no cart. I thought you’d bring it in when you were good and ready.’

‘Don’t sound right,’ Arkansas said. He thought about the men hiding in the dark. Had they still been there come daylight and attacked the doc? That didn’t
make any sense and he didn’t have time to ponder it too much at the moment. The doctor hadn’t kept to his promise of attending the cabin, but Will had said that was usual for the doc who often went off on drunken benders. Not that it mattered since Will’s fever was close to breaking and he seemed stronger by the hour.

‘Tend to my horse. I need to see the sheriff,’ Arkansas said.

That morning Arkansas had decided that Will would be safe on his own for a few hours while Arkansas rode into town to check up on John Lance’s claims, view the documents the man had claimed were lodged with the sheriff.

‘So where’s my cart?’ Rycot asked. He seemed not to grasp the implications of the situation.

‘Search me,’ Arkansas said, and then more firmly, ‘Take care of my horse.’

Lance turned from the window and smiled. ‘That Arkansas Smith gets around.’

‘He don’t look so tough to me.’

Lance looked at the man known simply as Pug on account of his nose having been broken one too many times, and smiled. Pug was Lance’s enforcer and he had been with him for the best part of a decade. Prior to that the big man’s life was a mystery and that’s the way he seemed to want to keep it. Rumours were that he had been a bandit, a killer of men, and violator of women; in short, an all-round sadistic bastard. Lance thought that was most likely.

‘I reckon you could take him,’ Lance said, and he really did believe that. ’Course, Arkansas had a reputation as a fast gun. He’d demonstrated that back at McCord’s place, but then Pug was no slouch himself. If they could provoke some kind of fight and Pug finished Arkansas then that would make things a whole lot easier for John Lance, but if it went the other way then he would have lost a very good man.

It was a risk Lance felt worth taking.

‘I suppose I could,’ Pug said, in his rough nasal voice, which was also the result of his multiple fractures.

The other man in the room was Jake, the ranch foreman, and he smiled conspiratorially at Lance before addressing Pug. ‘You could rip him apart limb from limb.’

Pug nodded and a look of evil crossed his face.

Lance had a thriving cattle business and his Red Rock business premises were perfectly suited to such a growing concern. Situated in the centre of Main Street, lodged between the Diamond Theatre and the First Bank, it was a spacious building where Lance would often entertain clients.

‘Arkansas dead,’ Lance mused, ‘would save us a lot of trouble when we go to take McCord’s spread.’

Pug nodded. He understood what his boss was saying.

‘You’ll have to provoke him into a fight,’ Lance told him. ‘Kill him legally, in front of witnesses. The sheriff gets a bit jumpy – I’d rather not give him anything else to worry about.’

Again Pug nodded but remained silent.

Lance watched Arkansas through the window. For a moment he thought he was coming to the offices but then he veered off and went into the telegraph place.

‘He’s gone in the telegraph office,’ Lance said. ‘I wonder why he’d want to send a telegram.’

Pug shrugged his massive shoulders. He wasn’t much of a one for thinking.

‘Get him when he comes out,’ Lance suggested.

‘I’ll get him,’ Pug said, his voice calm and even. ‘Don’t you worry none about that.’

Lance smiled weakly and watched his man go outside. He knew Pug was good with the gun, fast and usually hit what he shot at. But he couldn’t help feeling that he was sending him to his grave.

Arkansas folded the receipt, placed it in his shirt pocket and paid the telegraph operator.

‘You should get a reply by morning,’ Arkansas said. ‘I’ll be back.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The telegraph officer, a short myopic man, who had been most impressed to notice the telegram was going to the Presidential office in Washington, peered over the top his bifocals and smiled. ‘Yes indeed.’

‘Obliged,’ Arkansas said, and went out into the now powerful afternoon sunshine. The morning cloud had lifted and it had turned into a glorious day, though there was a faint hint of the coming winter in the air.

He had to shield his eyes against the glare and it took some moments for his eyesight to adjust after the
murky interior of the small telegraph office. He looked up and down Main Street – it must have been close to noon now and the town was a hive of activity. Folk walked up and down the street, going about their business. Music escaped from the batwings of the Diamond Theatre. From across the street the dim thud of Rycot at work on his anvil could be heard, perhaps taking the frustration over his missing cart on some unfortunate piece of metal.

Arkansas shook his head. The doc’s disappearance was troubling as was the seeming lack of interest. If Rycot’s horse had come into town rider-less yesterday then surely the sheriff should have undertaken some sort of investigation into the doctor’s whereabouts. Had Rycot even informed the sheriff? Arkansas crossed the street towards the sheriff’s office. He wanted to enquire about Lance’s claims to Will’s place so he could kill two birds with one stone.

‘What did you call me?’

Arkansas had been aware of the big man walking behind him but he had paid him no mind. At first he though the big man had been addressing someone else but then the booming voice sounded again.

‘You ignoring me, mister?’

Arkansas turned and looked at the biggest, most unruly-looking man he had seen for some time. The man seemed to be close on seven feet and equally as wide. He was also as ugly as he was big.

‘I think your ears are playing tricks,’ Arkansas said.

‘What?’ The big man stood rigid, hands hanging at his side, the classic gunfighter pose.

‘There you are,’ Arkansas said, with a smile. ‘They’re doing it again.’ He made to walk off, but then the big man spoke again and this time his words held much more menace. He sounded primed to explode.

‘Don’t turn away, coward. Turn and face me.’

Arkansas did so. ‘You don’t want to do this.’

The big man grinned. ‘You insulted me, stranger. I don’t take that from no man.’

‘I insulted no one,’ Arkansas said firmly. ‘Though, now you come to mention it, you are one stupid-looking, ugly son-of-a-bitch.’

The large man went beserk, which was what Arkansas was hoping for. In the big man’s rage he was clumsy going for his gun and the smaller, far more agile man had covered the distance between them before the big man’s gun had even cleared leather. Before a single shot could be fired Arkansas brought one of his Colts crashing down hard on the side of the big man’s head, knocking him first senseless and then unconscious.

Arkansas bent and disarmed the fallen man. He looked at him for a moment, shook his head and then headed over to offices of the John Lance Cattle Company. The street, which had grown silent during the confrontation, was once more a frenzy of excited activity.

Arkansas kicked open the front door and stepped into the office. Lance was seated behind his desk with a man standing either side of him. Both men wore guns but neither went for them.

‘I just left one of your men asleep in the street,’ Arkansas told them. ‘No doubt you were watching
through the window.’

Lance looked perplexed. He gave a puzzled look to each of his men and then shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

Arkansas walked across to the desk and leaned over so that he was face to face with John Lance. The tension in the room was noticeable, almost a physical entity and both of Lance’s men looked unsure of what to do. It was clear they felt the situation warranted guns, but Lance had obviously told them to hold their fire.

‘Don’t bother with the theatrics for my benefit. Just get your man off the street,’ Arkansas said. ‘The next man you send after me will come back dead.’ He slammed Pug’s guns down on the desk between them.

John Lance was finding it difficult to keep his usual composure. This man called Arkansas Smith had stepped over the line. Here he was in Lance’s own office, his domain, and yet he was shouting the odds. The fact that Lance had two guns against his one didn’t seem to bother him at all.

Lance stood up, not enjoying the way Arkansas was getting to him. The man seemed to have shifted the power of balance into his favour and the cattleman was not used to it. ‘Look.’ He pointed a finger at Arkansas. ‘I don’t know who you are or—’

‘That’s right,’ Arkansas said, cutting the other man off mid speech. ‘You don’t know who I am, or, more to that point,
what
I am.’

Lance’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Consider yourself warned,’ Arkansas said, and with
that he turned and left the offices with the intention of conducting his business with the sheriff. He didn’t reach the sheriff’s office though before the big man, having regained consciousness, challenged him once more.

‘You slugged me, mister,’ Pug said, and stood dead centre of the street, legs wide, arms hanging at his sides, hands curled inwards. Someone had given him another gunbelt and he looked ready to bring his gun into play with one upward movement.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Arkansas said. ‘I’m tiring of you now.’

‘Make your play,’ the big man insisted. An angry bruise was forming on the side of his head where Arkansas had hit him. He was furious over that and knew that this was going to end one way only. There was no avoiding gunplay now that the point of no return had been crossed.

Arkansas stood perfectly still and allowed his eyes to scan the street. Onlookers had gathered and were watching with interest. John Lance was in the doorway of his offices and Rycot had emerged from the livery stable and was watching Arkansas closely, no doubt hoping to witness the fabled fast draw with his own eyes.

‘Go for your gun,’ Pug yelled, ‘or I’ll shoot you down anyway.’

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ Arkansas said, ‘but I warn you I’ll kill you this time.’

The coolness of the other man enraged Pug all the more and he snarled as he pulled his gun and shot,
but his aim went wide, though the bullet did come perilously close to Arkansas’s head and seemed to part his hair as it whistled past him.

Pug didn’t get another chance before Arkansas’s bullet took him in the stomach and spun him around before dropping him to the ground. He groaned in pain but still had some fight, if not sense, and he lifted the Colt, squaring it at Arkansas.

‘No,’ Arkansas said and shot again. This time the bullet took the big man dead centre of his forehead. His head snapped back sharply, sending a spray of crimson onto the air. His tongue slapped his face like fish guts hitting a sink. The last breath from his lungs closely followed and the final beat from his heart came just afterwards.

Arkansas looked across at Lance and shook his head. ‘I warned you about this,’ he said. ‘You send another man after me and I’m going to send him back just as dead. And then I’m going to come after you.’

Coinciding with Arkansas’s second shot, the sheriff emerged from his office and now he walked across the street and stood next to Arkansas. He watched as Arkansas holstered his weapon.

‘I’ll need to speak to you about this,’ the lawman said.

‘It’s a small world,’ Arkansas said, and calmly walked ahead of the sheriff towards his office.