100 Malicious Little Mysteries

Big Mouth by Robert Edmond Alter

Hardesty had just got his eggs going well in the bacon fat with the three bacon strips crackling around them, when his old enamel-chipped coffee pot leaped off the rock and spilled itself, grounds and all, in the sand. Then he heard the flat whap of a rifle.

He sprawled in the sand beside the bullet-drilled pot and raised his head. About a hundred yards up the slope, west of his camp, was a hardwood ridge. He figured a good rifleman could get a clear shot at him from there. He hunched up his knees, preparing to crawl to his tent for his Winchester.

The second slug hit the smoking frying pan and sent it into a spin. Hardesty ducked his head away from the spattering fat. His eggs went all to runny goo when they hit the ground, and for a moment the pool of hot fat continued to sizzle and spit in the sand. He looked around as his canteen jumped with a toomp and started to bleed a silvery guzzle of water through its bullet wound.

Figured he missed me on that first shot, he thought. But a man don’t miss another man with a rifle three times running — not and hit a coffee pot and a frying pan and a canteen. Fella up there knows what he’s doing.

Hardesty knew what he was doing, too. Nothing. He was pinned down proper and there was nothing he could do except stay that way and wait his turn.

His enamel drinking cup was on his tin plate on top of the packing box he used as a table when he wasn’t using it for something else, and he watched the cup spin away as the hidden rifle whapped again. That was a good shot, he thought. A damn good shot.

A tin of peaches, standing on the box next to the place where the cup had been, fell over with a moist thop. Next, a really sweet shot sent the tin plate skimming off in a crazy oblique, and finally a hole appeared in his dishwater-gray tent.

There was a sense of hesitation as he stared at the opening in the tent. Abruptly, the fore pole snapped in two and the forward section of the tent crumpled like a skirted old lady falling to her knees.

Figured so, Hardesty thought. That lick he gave the tent flap was the first time he missed. Takes some shooter to pick off a tent pole at that distance.

He craned his head to the left and looked down an alley of scrub at Shingles, his mule. If he goes to drill her, he thought, then I’ll kill him. Don’t care what it takes, I’ll get him.

He started crawling towards the tent. He thought he had it figured now. It wasn’t a killing; it was a joke, western style. Most of the Indians and the gunslingers and all the rest of that lawless bunch were long gone now, but occasionally you still came across a rowdy who was a hangover from those old ripsnorting badmen days — one of that wild restless breed who hadn’t quite been able to make the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.

They, the restless ones, went drifting across the plains daydreaming about the Kid and Jesse and Earp and, in the monotony of their frustrated loneliness, a sort of simple-minded, outraged madness gripped them, and they figured the only way they could assuage the fury was by busting loose. That’s what the fella on the ridge was doing now, busting loose, giving himself a good laugh.

Thing was, though, Hardesty wasn’t a joking man, had no sense of humor at all. He crawled up to his baggy tent as a bullet went phut in the sand right in his face, and he blinked and spat, and crawled on under the canvas and reached for his Winchester.

But the game was over. He could hear the muted clack-clack of hooves moving off down the stony draw beyond the hardwood ridge. He went over there, anyway, just for a look around. Didn’t discover anything, though; no clue as to who had shot up his camp. The few U-shaped hoofprints in the sand told him nothing. And the prankster had had enough sense to gather up his empty cartridges.

Hardesty went back to camp to change to his town trousers and shirt and jacket.

He went to Stag, which he and all his isolated neighbors called “town.” But it wasn’t. It was simply a ramshackle landmark whose existence depended solely upon the needs of the men of the desert. It sold; it did not give. It did not have a church or any civic buildings or any homes. You either brought money to Stag or you stayed away. It had that much honesty.

Hardesty went into the store which had the sign “Post Office” tacked on it and answered, “Um-hm,” when the storekeeper said, “Hello, Hard. How’s the pickings?”

“Want a new coffee pot, pan, canteen, cup—”

“Getting yourself a new outfit, hey? You must’ve struck a pocket out there,” the storekeeper said without a hope of an answer, because he knew Hardesty was an uncommunicative, if not inarticulate, man.

“Tent pole, too,” Hardesty said, and he put down some money and turned on his heel and went through the open doorway into the adjoining saloon where four or five men were playing poker at a table.

They said, “Hello, Hardesty,” and “Want to sit in?” and he nodded, saying, “Um-hm.”

It was a quiet game, because that was the unintentional influence the tall, gaunt, mute, mildly angry, deliberate man had on people. He had very little to say during the game. Sometimes he said, “A card,” or “Check,” or “Call,” or “Raise.”

The game shuffled and chipclicked through the coyote night and the black morning and the chill dawn, and then it broke up. Hardesty’s luck had been in. He pocketed nearly $200. He didn’t have anything to say about it.

He went over to the little hotel and said, “Want a room,” saying nothing when the Mexican clerk said, “Joe tells me you got yourself a new outfit, Hard?” He went upstairs and gave himself a bath and a shave and went to bed.

It was dusk when he returned to the saloon. He bought himself a steak and a bottle and, for about an hour, he sat off in a shadow-pooled corner by himself and worked on the bottle. He left the saloon without any visible alteration in his taciturn disposition.

Hardesty hung around Stag for three days, nursing a few pints, playing a little poker. Then he paid off the hotel, collected his gear from the storekeeper, and he and Shingles went back to his claim.

Hardesty was hunkered over his fire and he had his eggs going, with the bacon fat popping around them, when he heard the thup-thuppity-thup of a rider coming. He looked up and watched the distant man and mount for a moment, and reached behind him and picked up his Winchester and leaned it against a rock near his right hand. After that, he shifted his gaze from the eggs to the rider, until the man was near enough for Hardesty to recognize. Then he ignored him.

It was Tope Jenkins, a young wrangler from over the ridge west of Hardesty’s claim. The cowpoke slowed his bay to a dainty step and let her pick her way into the camp. He smiled amiably at Hardesty.

“Hidy, Hard. Coffee smells good.”

“Um-hm.”

“Hear you had some trouble last month, huh?” Tope said. “Stag folks tell me some joker shot up your camp for a laugh. Bet a quart it was one of them sheepmen south of the valley.”

Hardesty had nothing to say. He lifted his crackling pan from the fire and set it on a flat rock. Then he removed his hat and placed it crown down on the sand and picked up his Winchester and levered the cartridges into the hat. He leaned the empty rifle against the rock again, picked up the hat and scooped all the shells out of the hat and put them in his jeans.

Tope sat up there with his hands folded one on top of the other over the saddle horn, and watched him with a blank expression. Hardesty walked over to the bay and reached for Tope’s rifle with a smooth, seemingly unhurried movement; drew it from the boot and stepped back and began levering the shells into the sand.

“Hey! What’re you doing?”

Hardesty said nothing. He took the rifle by the barrel and raised it over his head and swung the stock against a rock. Then he pitched the barrel into the scrub.

“You crazy coot! What the hell you—” Tope shut up as the tall, gaunt, mute, quietly angry man walked back to him, rubbing his work-grained palms on the sides of his jeans. All at once those hands flashed upward and outward and caught Tope by the belt and levered backward and to the left, hauling him clear of the saddle and dumping him head-and-shoulders into the sand.

Hardesty slapped the nervously stepping bay with the flat of his hand, saying, “Git,” and the bay bolted out of their way, rearing its head and backrolling its off eye.

Tope, outraged, spitting sand and wet curse words, got up on one knee and started accusing Hardesty of a vivid and varied list of vice.

Hardesty hit him in the face and nearly somersaulted him into the fire. He went after the wrangler, getting him by the front of his corduroy jacket and hauling him to his feet and planting a left deep in Tope’s wind, jack-knifing him, and then straightened him up with a right uppercut and followed that with a left-cross, and Tope went into the sand again.

“You crazy old bastard! Why you poundin’ me? What I ever done to you?”

“Because I never told nobody, damn you!” Hardesty cried, losing his temper at last. “You hear me, big mouth? I never told nobody!”