Beginner's Luck (26 page)

“I'm proud of you, boy,” Boggs said, deeply moved. “You was a good larner, or a good liar—I don't know which. There's a lot've people around here what thinks yer a humbug, y'know.”

“They think I'm the Pecos Kid.”

“Ain't you?”

“You arrived with me on the stagecoach, Boggs— don't you remember?”

Boggs cocked an eye suspiciously. “How do I know that wasn't part of yer game? I don't mean to insult you, pardner, but for all I know, yer bullshit all the way down.”

Even my own spiritual advisor doesn't believe me, Duane realized. Everybody thinks I'm a dangerous person, and it does no good to argue. I wonder how many other famous people were fabrications. Is Buffalo Bill really Buffalo Bill? he questioned. They approached the saloon district, and cowboys made way for the crippled man and his escort.

“What happened to him?” somebody asked.

“Maybe,” another voice replied, “he drank some of that turpentine at the Blind Pig.”

Like last Saturday night, streets and sidewalks were crowded with cowboys carrying guns, passing bottles, laughing, arguing, lying, and enjoying recreation on their way from one saloon to another, with stops in between at the whorehouses and cribs. Biggest crowd of all was in front of the Round-Up Saloon.

“Good evening,” said a voice in the night, as Len Farnsworth, publisher
et al.
of the
Titusville Sentinel,
approached.

“Get away from me,” Duane said. “I've got nothing to say.”

“I meant no harm, sir,” Farnsworth said, tipping his hat. “Just wanted to ask your opinion about Saul Klevins. Do you think you're faster than he?”

Boggs pulled his Colt, and aimed it at Farnsworth's
face. “Leave this man alone, or I'll blow yer fuckin' head off.”

Duane heard a mechanical
click
behind him, and for a moment was surprised, because Boggs was beside him, but then the full import of his sensory perception came through, and he dove toward the sidewalk, carrying Boggs along with him, as Boggs inadvertently fired his pistol in the air.

Duane rolled out when he hit the ground, as the street reverberated with gunfire. He landed on his belly, raised the Colt, and saw a heavyset man behind him, gun in hand, taking aim. The planked sidewalk exploded beside Duane's face, but Duane held fast and fired point-blank at the man's shirt.

Smollett felt as if someone punched him on the chest, and it was the last sensation he ever had. His lights went out, and he fell in a clump beside Duane, who glanced around excitedly, heart pounding in his chest.

The street and sidewalk had become deserted, except for four bodies sprawled about. Duane looked to his left and right, holding his gun ready to fire, because he was certain that somebody was drawing a bead on him. He'd killed one of his assailants, and one of the bodies was Boggs, but who shot the other two?

A tall, lean figure emerged from the nearby alley, twirling a gun around his forefinger, a cheroot sticking out of his grin. “How're you doing, Kid?”

“What the hell happened?” Duane asked, rising to his feet.

Clyde Butterfield removed the cheroot from his mouth. “I was walking along, minding my own business, and saw a stranger draw on you, so I shot him.”
Butterfield flipped his gun into the air, caught it behind his back, and dropped it into his holster.

Duane kneeled beside Boggs, rolled him over, and placed his ear to Boggs's chest.

Boggs said weakly: “This is the . . . second time I took a ... walk with you, and second time ... I got shot. Remind me ... to take walks with .. . somebody else .. . from now on.”

“What the hell's goin' on here?” asked Deputy Dawson, strolling onto the scene, gun in hand.

A hoot went up from a nearby alley. “It's Deputy Dawson—late as usual.”

A laugh rippled on the far side of the street. “You can always count on Deputy Dawson to show up after the last shot was fired.”

“I said, what the hell's going on here!”

“Wa'al,” Butterfield said, removing his cheroot from his mouth, “these cowboys here drawed on young Mister Braddock when he wasn't looking, but I happened to be walking by, and we managed to hold them off.”

Dr. Robinson arrived in a rush, carrying his little black bag. “It's one of my patients!” he cried, recognizing Smollett sprawled on the sidewalk. He knelt beside the outlaw, listened to his heart, and it was still. “Guess I won't have to amputate his leg.”

“This man's still alive,” Duane said, indicating Boggs.

The doctor mumbled about rebellious patients as he examined Boggs, while a few feet way, sitting behind the bullet-ridden water trough, his suit soaked with water, Len Farnsworth wrote his next headline:

PECOS KID STRIKES AGAIN!

“How's he doing, Doc?” asked the Pecos Kid.

The doctor examined the wound in Boggs's ribs. “He may live, and he may not.”

“Nothing like specificity,” Butterfield declared, removing the silver cigar case from his breast pocket, and holding it out to Duane.

“Don't mind if I do.”

The doctor grabbed Boggs's feet, and a cowboy standing nearby took his arms. The unconscious cowboy was carried off, followed by other men lugging dead outlaws. Meanwhile, Duane's brow wrinkled with mystification, as he stared at Butterfield puffing his cheroot.

“What's on your mind, Kid?” Butterfield asked.

“I was just thinking about something odd, Mister Butterfield. Whenever I'm in trouble, you seem to show up in the nick of time. If it hadn't been for you, I'd be dead right now.”

“I'd do it for anybody. Let's have a drink.”

“I wonder who those cowboys were who tried to kill me.”

“Once a man gets a reputation with a gun, he tends to attract skunks.”

“I want to see how Boggs is doing,” Duane replied. “I'll meet you later for that drink.” He broke into a trot, following the procession to the doctor's office, and all eyes followed him down the middle of the street.

“He's prob'ly the fastest gun we've seen in these parts,” somebody said, “'cept maybe fer Saul Klevins.”

Maybe?
Klevins asked silently, standing in the shadows beneath the eave. How can these fools even compare that kid to me? Why, fer Chrissakes, it was Butterfield who did the killin', not the kid. Muttering to himself about the fickleness of the human race, Klevins drifted toward the door of the Round-Up Saloon.

Vanessa returned to her dressing room, sat in front of the mirror, looked at her face, and tried to make sense out of what had happened. Why are all these people trying to kill Duane?

There was a knock on the door, scattering her thoughts. “Who is it?”

The door opened, and Saul Klevins entered, hat cocked low over one eye, smiling confidently. She rose to her feet.

“I didn't say that you could come in, sir.”

He shrugged, as if he didn't care what she said. “I figgered it was time you and me had a talk.”

She was flabbergasted, because she couldn't think of anything that she had in common with Saul Klevins, whom she'd seen at a distance, and knew to be a gun-fighter. “I'm sorry, but I'll have to ask you to leave. I must prepare for my next performance, and there isn't much time.”

Klevins made no motion toward the door, but instead hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans and looked her in the eye. “Let's me and you understand each other, Missy. That Yankee boyfriend of yers is just about tapped out in this town, and he might even get killed, at the rate he's a-goin'. I was a-
thinkin' that you might need somebody to protect you, and I'm a-plannin' to come inter big money in a few days, git my drift?” He made an obscene movement of his lips.

She was aghast at his insinuation, and fell speechless for a few moments. “I'm afraid you've made a miscalculation, sir. I am evidently not the woman that you think, and I'd like you to leave.”

He raised his eyebrows skeptically. “Don't play the highfalutin Southern belle with me, Missy, because you ain't a-foolin' nobody in this town. When you gets hungry enough, you'll screw a snake fer the price of a potato. It's about time you got serviced by a man, instead of that silly Yankee, or that tenderfoot kid.” He raised his nose in the air, and turned toward the door.

“Even if I were dying,” she said to his back. “I wouldn't let you touch me. If you ever come near me again, I'll call the deputy.”

“And I'll put a bullet in his head.”

The door slammed behind Klevins, the flimsy walls rattled, and Vanessa felt as though she'd just been dragged in muck. Once I was a rich man's daughter, she reflected, and if a man ever talked to me like that, my father would kill him. When the militia fired on Fort Sumter, and I cheered along with the rest of South Carolina, how could I dream it would end like this? she questioned with sadness.

Saul Klevins made his way to the bar, pushing cowboys out of the way. Klevins was furious, the corners of his mouth turned down, and he had a cruel
expression in his eyes. The bartender set a glass of whiskey before him, then quickly stepped away to serve another customer.

Klevins placed his foot on the rail and looked at himself in the mirror. An ugly toad wearing a cowboy hat peered back at him, and that's how he felt following Vanessa rejection. He sipped whiskey, and it stoked his flames, humiliated by a woman whom he considered basically a whore. My money ain't good enough fer her? When Petigru is dead, and she's all alone in this town, she'll come a-beggin' me fer help, and I'll make her eat them words, and a few other things, too, afore I'm finished with her. She'll regret the day she ever threw me out, so help me God, he told himself menacingly.

D
UANE WALKED BACK TO THE
R
OUND
-U
P
Saloon, ready to draw and fire. For all he knew, other skunks were lurking in the shadows, ready to blow him away. At the monastery, in his wildest flights of whimsy, he'd never conceived that such a fate could befall him. A trip to the cribs and a careless word had led to massive bloodshed.

If I never went to the cribs in the first place, this dispute could've been avoided, he admonished himself. Boggs wouldn't have two holes in his flesh, and I wouldn't be the Pecos Kid. The truth of Catholic doctrine smacked him between the eyes. My lust for female companionship has brought me to this sorry pass. If I'm going to live in the outside world, I've got to find a nice, stable woman, and settle down in
the sacrament of marriage, he decided.

The street and sidewalk were crowded with men washed in the light of oil lamps streaming from saloons, while horses were lined at the curb, standing silently like ranks of soldiers, bored beyond compreension. Duane was on his way to the Round-Up, for his promised drink with Butterfield. There's something he's not telling me, and I'm going to drag it out of him if it takes me all night.

“It's the Kid!” said a voice nearby.

Duane noticed people looking at him curiously, and all he could do was walk stalwartly among them, ready for anything. He came to the herd of cowboys in front of the Round-Up, and they parted for the Pecos Kid, providing a clear path to the door. Duane strode among them, shoulders squared, spine straight, hat low over his eyes, with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

He pushed open the door, and it was wall-to-wall men, except for the tiny stage. Duane was taller than most, and searched among the multitudes for Clyde Butterfield, finally spotting him at the bar. Duane tried to move in that direction, but too much living flesh separated them.

A man in striped pants and a black frock coat stepped onto the minuscule stage. “Ladies and gentleman,” he said, “I am proud to present at this time— the beautiful lady you've all been waiting for—The Carolina Nightingale—Miss Vanessa Fontaine!”

The saloon filled with raucous masculine applause, as Vanessa advanced onto the stage. She wore a pale blue dress that reached the floor, a pearl necklace, and pearl earrings. The man in striped pants sat at the
piano and fingered the keys, as she basked in the adulation of her admirers.

Duane pounded his hands, as he stared at her with love, lust, compassion, and tenderness, forgetting Clyde Butterfield and the monastery in the clouds. In the soft glow of lamps, through the haze of smoke, she looked like a visitor from celestial realms. Duane remembered the ride in the carriage, and she'd been a wild she-creature from a far-off Amazon jungle. You never know a woman until you taste her love, he realized.

The maestro finished his musical introduction, and Vanessa launched into her first song, about a brave Confederate cavalry captain leading an impossible charge against foreboding odds, and being cut down in the flower of life, like a cherry blossom falling to earth.

Duane listened to the melodious verses, moved by the tragedy of the officer's death, which he knew to be symbolic of the tragedy of the South. Duane had read arguments for and against slavery, and agreed that it was a sin; even the pope had said so in a special encyclical, but yet Duane also knew that many innocent and decent people on both sides had been swept along by events beyond their control, soaking the soil of America with the blood of heroes in blue and gray.