Ralph Compton Blood Duel

Chapter 5

Jeeter Frost had a crick in his neck from looking over his shoulder. He did not expect anyone to be after him, but he had not lasted as long as he had by being careless. For the first hour he used his spurs more than was his wont. The gruella, as always, did not let him down.

Jeeter was extremely fond of the mouse dun, so much so that once when a Comanche tried to steal it, Jeeter spent half a day whittling on the warrior, doing things not even Comanches did to captives.

Now and then Jeeter reached back and patted his saddlebags. He could not wait for sunset. He marked the slow crawl of the sun toward the western horizon with an impatience rare for him. He did not have many good traits, not by society’s standards, at any rate, but patience had always been one. Those who knew him well, and they were few in number, sometimes commented that he was the most patient person they knew.

Jeeter had to be. He had learned early on that in order to survive on the fringe of lawlessness he must not indulge in rash decisions or rash acts. Haste led to an early grave and Jeeter hoped to live a good long while.

The thought made Jeeter grin. There was a time when he did not care whether he lived, a time when he woke up every morning certain he would not live to admire the next sunset.

He lived by the gun, and the gun was a cruel mistress.

The gun. There were days when Jeeter wished he had never set eye on a revolver, never held one, never fired one. Maybe then he would never have killed anyone. Maybe then he would not be a marked man. Maybe then no one would have heard of him. Maybe then he would not be wandering the prairie, an outcast, with no family, no home, and no prospects other than the surety that one day someone would prove to be faster or cleverer.

Funny thing. Jeeter did not live in dread of that day, as he once did. He wouldn’t run from it—he couldn’t run from it—so what was the use of fretting? He had learned a few things over the years, and one of them was that life was too short to spend it worrying about something that would happen one day whether he worried about it or not.

For a few minutes there back in Coffin Varnish, Jeeter thought that day had come. The Blights were supposed to be tough, a tight-knit clan that stood up for their own, and woe to the outsider who crossed them. Temple Blight, especially, had made worm food of more than a few. But the way he came walking into that saloon, as big and confident as you please, not bothering to draw his six-gun until he was over near the bar—he might as well have asked Jeeter to put a pistol to his head and shoot him.

Jeeter did not have many talents, but the one talent he did have, the one talent that separated him from the herd, was a talent for killing. As his grandmother would say, God rest her, he was a natural born killer.

That might not seem like much of a talent to some. You pointed a revolver or a rifle at someone, and you shot him. Or you stuck a knife between his ribs. Or you bashed him over the head with a rock. Or you roped him from behind so the noose settled over his neck and then you dragged him from horseback until his neck was stretched to where the head was almost off. Or you got him drunk and poured kerosene on him while he slept and set him on fire. Jeeter had done all of that and more.

The truth was, the talent did not lie in the killing. Anyone could kill. The talent showed itself in how the killing was done. Not in the shooting or the stabbing, but in never, ever giving the other hombre a fair break, in never, ever giving him a chance.

Take the Blights. The moment Jeeter heard them ride up, he drew his Lightning and ducked under the table. Not many would have thought of that. Some would have sat there stupidly waiting for the Blights to confront them. Some would have hid behind the bar, which was the first place Temple Blight looked. Some would have run out the back, but that would only postpone the inevitable.

No, Jeeter had done the one thing the Blights never expected. He had taken them completely by surprise. That was his talent. The knack for always catching the other fellow off guard. For always doing the one thing—the one thing—that meant he would live and the other person died. It was a knack most lacked, and it had kept him alive longer than most in his circumstances had a reasonable right to expect.

Some would say that alone made his talent worthwhile, and Jeeter would agree, to a point. Yes, he was still breathing. But there was dead and then there was a living death, a life of hand to mouth, of always looking over one’s shoulders, of never being able to trust, to care, to love. A life as empty as the emptiness of the grave, only, yes, he was still breathing. But that was the only thing he had to show for his talent. The only really good thing about it.

Until now.

At length the sun rested on the rim of the world, its radiance painting the sky vivid hues of red, orange, and yellow. Jeeter came to a hollow bisected by a dry wash and rimmed with brush. He drew rein and dismounted. Stripping the gruella and gathering wood and kindling a fire and putting a pot of coffee on to brew took the better part of half an hour.

At last Jeeter could settle back against his saddle and relax. He opened his saddlebags and slid out the item he had brought with him from Coffin Varnish. In the flickering glow of the crackling flames, he admired the stalwart hero with his arm around the slender waist of a beautiful young woman as painted warriors closed in from all sides. “Jeeter Frost, the Missouri Man-Killer,” he remembered the newspaperman saying. “His thrilling escapades. His narrow escapes.” He ran his finger across the cover and said quietly, “I’ll be damned.”

A slow smile spread across Jeeter’s countenance. He laughed, a genuinely heartfelt laugh such as he had not felt in a coon’s age. He flipped the pages, wishing he could read the words. So many words, and all of them about him. Or some version of him that others took to be the real him. It was silly, he mused. But it was also—and here he struggled for the right way to describe it.

The moment Jeeter had set eyes on that cover, something inside him had changed. He could not say what or how or why, but he felt it. This penny dreadful, this ridiculous fluff written by someone who had never met him and knew nothing about him but had written all about him, meant there was more to his life than he ever imagined. He was not the nobody he always believed he was. He was somebody. Not somebody important. Not somebody that mattered. But somebody people would remember.

“The Missouri Man-Killer,” Jeeter said again, and laughed. Hell, he hadn’t been to Missouri but three or four times in his whole life.

Jeeter was born in Illinois. He lived there until he was seventeen. He got too big for his britches and took to drinking and staying out to all hours. One night he was in a knife fight. Thinking he had killed the other drunk, he fled, only to learn months later that the man recovered. By then Jeeter was in Texas, where a cowboy by the name of Weeds Graff took him under his wing. Weeds taught him to rope and to shoot and Jeeter learned the shooting so well that when they signed on with the Bar T outfit, it was his six-gun and his newfound talent for killing that held the other side at bay. For a while, anyway, until they ambushed his employer and friend.

Everyone in Texas heard about what Jeeter did next. They heard about the five men he hunted down and killed. From that day on, Jeeter became marked. He could not go a week without seeing what Jeeter liked to call the look. Sometimes the look was one of disgust. Sometimes it was fear. Sometimes it was a glint that warned him he must never turn his back on the person with the glint. Not that he ever turned his back to anyone if he could help it.

For years that had been the pattern of his life. Riding from town to town and settlement to settlement, seeking a place to fit in but not fitting anywhere. He was a square peg and life was a round hole.

And now along came this penny dreadful.

Jeeter sat and stared at the cover until the coffee was hot; then he poured a cup and took jerky from his saddlebags. He sat and sipped and munched and stared at that cover. He could not stop looking at it.

Toward midnight a brainstorm hit him with the force of a thunderclap. He started to laugh and could not stop. He laughed so long, and so loud, that a skulking coyote, drawn by the scents of his camp, yipped and raced away into the night.

Since Chester Luce did not own a gavel, he used a hammer, and since he did not want to mark up the counter with dents, he placed a folded blanket on top of the counter before he struck it with the hammer. “All right, everyone,” he said to get their attention. “This meeting of the Coffin Varnish Town Council will officially come to order.”

Winifred Curry sat next to the stove, sucking on a gumdrop. He had a sweet tooth and gumdrops were his favorite.

Minimi Giorgio sat on a stool by the dry goods section. He was nervous about being there. He gripped the edge of the stool with both hands as if afraid he would fall off.

The huge Swede, Dolph Anderson, seldom sat. He stood with his brawny arms folded across his powerful chest, his cornstalk hair and beard neatly trimmed, as always. “What be so important that you call me from my work?” His English was thickly accented, so much so that everyone else had to listen closely to tell what he said, especially Minimi, whose English was not the best.

Chester came around the counter. He did not like to stand behind it because it made him seem short, even if he was short. “You have heard about the killings?”

“Ja,” the big Swede said.

“Then how can you ask a question like that? It isn’t something that happens every day, and it will have an impact on our community.”

“How will it impact?” Anderson asked.

Winifred stopped sucking on the gumdrop long enough to say, “Shouldn’t we wait for your wife, Chester?”

Chester was about to reply that if she was late it was her own fault when steps thumped on the stairs and down she came.

Adolphina was almost as big as the Swede, and when she came and stood behind the counter, she made the counter seem small. “About ready to start, are we?”

“Yes, dearest.”

“Everyone pay attention,” Adolphina said. “I have been doing some thinking and—” She stopped and looked around. “Where are Placido and Arturo?”

“The Mexicans?” Chester said. “What do we need them for? They aren’t on the council.”

“Neither is Mr. Giorgio but you invited him,” Adolphina noted. “Go get them. They should be in on this as well.”

Chester’s ears grew red at being ordered about in front of the other men. “Is it really necessary? What can they contribute? All they do is laze about their livery all day. They hardly ever mingle with the rest of us.”

“We hardly ever mingle with them,” Adolphina jousted. “No, this is business, and it will affect them, so fetch them and be quick about it. I don’t have all night for this. I have sewing to do.”

“Very well,” Chester said, resigned to a force of nature he could never refuse. “I will be right back.”

The tiny bell above the door tinkled as he went out. Winifred promptly opened the gumdrop jar and helped himself to several more, stuffing them in his shirt pocket.

“You will pay for those,” Adolphina said.

“Naturally,” Win responded. “Put them on my account, if you please.”

Adolphina leaned on the counter. “Mr. Anderson, how is that lovely wife of yours?”

“She be fine,” the Swede answered. “Filippa tell me that if I see you I am to give her regards.”

“She is a daisy, that one,” Adolphina said. “The only woman I ever met who works harder than I do.”

Winifred almost swallowed his gumdrop. It was well known that Chester’s wife spent most of her time above the store reading and eating and whatever else it was that occupied her hours. The mention of sewing had surprised him. Chester once told him that she hired her sewing out to Mrs. Giorgio.

“Filippa is a good woman, ja,” Anderson said proudly. “She be fine wife. I pick well.”

“She had something to do with it, too,” Adolphina said. “Feminine wiles being what they are, probably more than you did.”

“Feminine wiles?” Anderson repeated, saying each syllable slowly.

“It means women are smarter than men,” Adolphina explained. “Always have been and always will be. Most of the great ideas men come up with they get from their women. If it weren’t for us, nothing would ever get done.”

The Swede’s sun-bronzed brow furrowed. “That not be true, Mrs. Luce. I be good worker. I get much done.”

“Yes, you do, I will admit,” Adolphina conceded, and bestowed a look on him that she never bestowed on her husband. “You are one of the few men I know who are worth a damn.”

Win sat up and stopped sucking. “Here, now. I don’t much like being insulted.”

“Then make something of yourself. You are one of the laziest creatures on God’s green earth, Winifred Curry, and we both know it. You stay up half the night, you sleep half the day. You do nothing but pour drinks and precious few of them these days. If it were up to you, if you had enough money socked away, you would close the saloon and spend your days doing absolutely nothing but drinking.”

Win chose not to debate her. Especially as everything she said was true.

A strained silence fell until the bell tinkled again. Chester came in and hurried to the counter.

Placido and Arturo entered but stayed well back near the door. They removed their sombreros. “You have sent for us, Senora Luce?” Placido asked.

“That I did,” Adolphina confirmed, and raked everyone with an imperious glance. “A godsend has been dropped in our laps, gentlemen. I am sure some of you are familiar with what other towns have done with dead outlaws and killers, and I propose we do the same.”

General puzzlement descended. Placido and Arturo and Minimi Giorgio and Dolph Anderson all looked at one another, plainly at a loss. Chester scratched his round chin and said, “I am afraid we do not follow you, my dear.”

“I do,” Winifred said. “My God, Adolphina, you can’t be serious?”

“Why not? I figure we can milk it for a week before the bodies start to stink up the town.” Adolphina grinned and enthusiastically rubbed her palms together. “Now, who here wants to make some money?”