Showdown

Chapter Eighteen

Karl Tolan had never forgotten how his three-year-old sister Daisy died. He still had nightmares about it. He was seven at the time.

He'd been playing behind the crude slab cabin his father had built when he heard a cry unlike any he'd ever heard Daisy make before.

She was off playing on the edge of their property. She liked to pick "pretty flowers," as she often tried to say. What she picked was dandelions.

Karl's mother was inside making bread, his father off trapping.

The cry.

His body wanted to do two things at once—freeze in place and run. He was afraid to find out what had happened to his sister.

He forced himself to go to her.

Her tiny hands were raised almost in prayer to the sky, blood running from them as blood ran in gouts from her mouth.

He knelt next to her, the cry scaring him as nothing ever had, screaming "What's wrong, Daisy? What's wrong, Daisy!" until his mother pushed him out of the way and put her fingers in Daisy's mouth. Daisy cried louder and louder; not even her mother's fingers could halt the plea.

His mother pulled pieces of glass from Daisy's mouth. Karl had a hard time recognizing what they were at first, they were so bloody. But then he recognized where they had come from. He'd broken a bottle yesterday while he was playing games by himself. He swore to pick up the glass when he was finished playing. Otherwise his father would take a strap to him.

But he'd forgotten somehow. And now Daisy, who had apparently mistaken the broken glass for pieces of candy, had started stuffing the glass into her mouth, not only cutting herself but swallowing some of the tinier pieces.

Daisy lived less than ten hours. The way his folks glared at him, he didn't have to ask if they blamed him. Of course they did.

They buried her on a hill where the winds were like cool magic in the spring months and where the surrounding trees took fire in the autumn.

Less than a day after they buried her, some coyotes dug her up and ate most of her. His father killed them, but by then it was too late.

His mother never recovered. Two years later, she smashed a bottle one night when his father was on one of his trapping trips. Karl was so sound a sleeper, he didn't hear the breaking bottle or the rest of it. She hadn't screamed, made a fuss. Which had been very much like her.

She hadn't wanted to take any chances. She slashed both her throat and her wrists. By morning, when he woke up and found her on the far side of the cabin in her bed, her skin was blue-gray in color. He had never seen her eyes so sad. Not scared. Just plain old sad. He'd done it, he knew. When he'd helped kill his little sister, he'd helped kill his mother, too.

After his father got back and they buried her, he got out his long piece of leather and went to work on Karl. He drew blood. He slashed his buttocks to the point where Karl's legs were numb, not just his buttocks. Finally, Karl fell to the floor, sobbing, pleading for his father to stop.

A few minutes later, he heard the father outside. There was just the one shot. Karl knew immediately what it was. He'd have a lot of work to do, burying the two of them. He wanted good, deep graves.

He worked a full day and a half on those graves and he was proud of them. He shot and killed six coyotes in the process. For headstones he took large round rocks that sparkled like fool's gold and drew their names in heavy pencil.

He knew the coyotes would get them, but by then he'd be gone—and damned if he wasn't. Just going on eleven, he packed everything he owned and jammed it all into his father's carpetbag and then headed off to Dexter, the small town to the north. He'd already pretty much forgotten about his folks. They'd never especially liked him and he'd never especially liked them.

Who he couldn't forget was Daisy. Poor little Daisy.

Big for his age, and already with a frightening temper—it not only frightened other people, it also frightened him—he set off west.

Three weeks shy of his fifteenth birthday, he met Rooney in a most unusual way. He was standing on a street corner in Denver and happened to see Rooney, a red-haired runt, snatch a bag of groceries from an old woman. Rooney took off with the groceries. A cop just happened along. One of those coincidences that happen in real life but that you could never get away with in books or on the stage. The cop started chasing him and was closing on him.

Until Karl offered his services by innocently stepping into the cop's path and nearly knocking the man down. The thief got away. What Karl got was screamed at by the bully-faced copper.

Three blocks away, Rooney fell into step with him and said, "You could come in handy, kid."

The "kid" thing amused Karl. Rooney looked several years younger than he did.

From then on, the two became friends of a sort, even though Karl didn't especially like Rooney or trust him or have any respect for him. Friends—even though Rooney thought Karl was stupid, sneaky, and too often reluctant to do what Rooney told him to—friends of a sort.

All these years later, in a saloon in Junction Gap, waiting for a train that was still several hours away, talking to the man he didn't like, trust, or have any respect for, Karl Tolan said, "You think they figured out we paid off Valdez to give us the key?"

"Not all men are stupid, Karl."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that not all men are stupid."

"Meaning me."

"Uh-oh, Karl's having his monthly visitor again."

"I hate when you say that."

"Yeah, well, there are a few things I don't like to hear you say, either."

"Yeah? Like what?"

"I don't want to argue, Karl."

"Just gimme one example."

Rooney sighed. "You'll just get pissed the way you always do when I offer constructive criticism."

"C'mon, just one example."

"You never fucking take a bath."

"Oh, yeah? I took a bath last week."

"That's just my point, Karl. You need to take a bath more often than once a week."

"What, so I can look like some dude the way you do?"

"See what I mean? I offer you constructive criticism—and at your request, mind you—and you go and get pissy on me."

"Nobody's getting pissy."

Rooney smiled. Pure ice. "Yeah, I noticed that."

"Maybe I won't be goin' to St. Louis with you, after all."

"Fine. It's a free country."

"Maybe I'll go to California."

"Whatever you want to do, Karl. It's up to you."

"Yeah," Karl said, sounding almost mystical, "California."

Rooney just couldn't seem to resist.

"Is this," he said, "anything like the time you were going to go to Montana or anything like the time you were going to go to Alabama or anything like the time you were going to go to Mexico?"

"You really don't think I can pull away from you, do you?"

Rooney gave him his most superior smile. "I was just asking, Karl. Just asking."

With seven hours to go before train time, Rooney told Karl he was tired and would get some sleep back in his hotel room. Emphasis on his. Usually, the two men shared a room, not exactly being in the robber baron category.

This time was different. And for a good reason.

Before heading back to the hotel, Rooney stopped off at a shop, bought himself a couple of good stogies and some magazines to read on the train during the daylight hours.

He also used this time to plan on how he was going to break into Karl's room.

For his part, Tolan went to a whorehouse. He paid six dollars for a lady with an ass of considerable size and a mouth as nasty as a cowhand's.

"You make good money on a gent like me," Tolan told her. "I'm quick."

When she saw how quick, she said, "You sure weren't kiddin' about bein' quick. You're about the quickest man I ever seed, in fact."

As he walked to the hotel, Tolan kept chewing on her remark. Quick, huh? He didn't mind himself sayin' he was quick in a joshin' sort of way. But the way she said it, he wondered if she really was joshin'.

Thinking about it soured him.

And then all of Rooney's superior bullshit came back to him too. Not takin' a bath often enough. Just because Tolan wasn't a dandy like Rooney. Just because Tolan found taking a bath to be a really complicated task. You had to take your clothes off, you had to lower yourself into the tub, you had to soak and scrub and get soap in your eyes and fart in the water, and then you had to get up and dry yourself off and put your clothes back on—it was an additional burden if you had to take your clothes to some Chinese laundry in advance—and then you had to put your socks and your boots back on. Who the hell wanted to spend all that time doin' all that bullshit?

Besides, splash on a little bit of that smelly stuff he bought off that barber in Idaho that time, who could tell you hadn't taken a bath?

What he should do now was get on a horse and ride as wide of that sawed-off little prick Rooney as he could.

That's what he should do.

But much as he hated to acknowledge that Rooney was right, he'd tried it so many times before. Got right up to the point of leaving—told Rooney off right to his face—and then just couldn't quite do it. Couldn't quite get on the horse. Couldn't quite leave.

But this time, dammit—

And then he got one hell of a good idea.

Rooney knew that this was not without risk. If Tolan caught him, he just might think of all the ways Rooney had pushed him around, humiliated him, stolen from him, and generally been what you might call a real bad friend.

So.

So he had to be very, very careful.

He had to get Tolan's money and then clear the hell out. He had a horse waiting for him at the livery. He hoped that he would be a good ten miles away before Tolan ever figured out what had happened.

Getting into the room was no problem. He'd merely slipped the desk clerk some extra money.

That was the easy part—the only easy part.

Tolan could turn any room he squatted in into something that even barnyard animals would shun. There was Tolan's stench, for one thing. Rooney opened the window. There was Tolan's messiness, for another. You wouldn't think a carpetbag could hold such a cornucopia of junk—reeking clothes; a collection of photographs depicting bovine naked ladies; an array of patent medicines that offered to cure every disease known to men of all colors, creeds, and political persuasions; and fruit that was now covered with maggots. Tolan had been told by some barfly somewhere that fresh fruit was one good way of holding scurvy at bay. The trouble was (a) you couldn't always find fresh fruit and (b) fresh fruit didn't stay fresh very long and (c) Tolan hated fresh fruit. He claimed he always got pieces of it stuck in his teeth and spent half the night lying in his bed with a quiver of toothpicks trying to get rid of the aggravating little chunks between his rotted black teeth.

Not that a, b, or c made any difference to Tolan. Anytime they were anywhere near fresh fruit, Tolan would buy some and toss it into his carpetbag. And leave it there to rot. Who the hell wanted to lie awake half the night picking pieces of apples or plums or pears from your teeth?

Such was life with Tolan lo these many, many years.

Rooney searched for nearly fifteen minutes, stopping every time he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Once he got nervous enough to excrete a sheath of cold sweat that covered his entire body. Another time his bowels clenched with such force that he doubled over. Damn.

None of the warnings turned into anything.

He went back to work. Under the bed. Under the mattress. The bureau drawers. The closet. The closet shelf. Nothing nothing nothing.

And then the most dreaded place of all: the inside of the carpetbag. Easy to imagine pit vipers in the deep, dark interior. Or hellfire-breathing dragons from the medieval fantasies of his boyhood reading. Maybe it was the portal to Hades itself and would suck him in with the force of a vortex.

Whatever it was, he knew it would be vile. God, just touching the outside of it was slimy enough. Imagine the inside.

He closed his eyes, held his breath, and began to insert his arm when

He heard noise in the next room. His room.

His first thought was that Prine and Neville had found them. But how, with the head start they'd had? And how, when they had no idea where he and Tolan had been headed? He thought of the old man in the ghost town saloon. But how could the old man talk? Rooney had killed him personally. He'd checked his pulse at neck and wrist. Dead for sure.

Then who the hell was in there?

He realized what was going on soon enough. A hotel. Daytime. This was the busiest time of day for hotel thieves. They'd figure that most gents who stayed in a place like this would be drummers or traveling businessmen of some kind. The perfect time to toss a room and steal any and all of its valuables.

Frustrated that he hadn't found any of Tolan's money, he decided to have some fun. He'd kill the bastard who was in his room, was what he'd do. Then he'd wait for Tolan to show up and rob him right at gunpoint.

I want your money, Tolan. Or I'll kill you right here on the spot. And when he got the money, off he'd go. Points unknown. Tolan would never find him again, because Tolan would be dead.

For the first time in decades, Rooney would be a free man. No more dragging Tolan along. Being embarrassed by him whenever they were in polite company. Always worried that he'd get some dumb-ass idea to steal the money that Rooney had had the initiative to go out and steal himself.

Drawing his Colt, he crept out of Tolan's room, tiptoed to the adjoining room, and then flung the door open.

And it opened, all right—just fine and dandy, it opened. But the sight it opened on was enough to make Rooney slump against the door frame.

"What the hell're you doing in my room?" he said.

"You're s'posed to be the smart one, you figure it out." Tolan's Peacemaker was pointed right directly exactly unerringly at Rooney's head.

"You mean while I . . ."

Tolan smiled that dark rotted smile of his. "While you were robbin' my room, I was robbin' your room." The smile vanished. "Get in here and close the door."

"Thanks for inviting me into my own room."

"You're more than welcome."

Rooney closed the door and went over and sat down. The bed squeaked. A bird had left a streak of white shit on the window in Rooney's absence. Now he had Tolan to contend with.

"Guess what I found?" Tolan said, and held up an envelope that Rooney recognized right away.

"You bastard."

"For a smart man, you can be pretty dumb sometimes. Slitting a hole in the side of the mattress and shoving the envelope in there. All them little strings hanging out when you cut it open—hell, they led me right to the money, Rooney." The grubby smile again. "You, on the other hand, you didn't find nothin', did you?"

"You sonofabitch, Tolan."

Tolan stood up, confidently opened Rooney's envelope, peeked inside.

"I'm gonna have me one hell of a time in California, Rooney."

"Give me my money."

"Why the hell should I?"

"Because it's mine."

The smile. "You were tryin' to do the same thing to me. If you'da found it, you'da kept it."

"Tolan, listen, this is the most money—"

"You don't have to tell me, Rooney. This is the most money we ever had at one time. Least, that I know of, anyways. You pro'ly stole this much from me over the years, but I didn't know anything about it."

He crossed the room in three steps and slashed the barrel of his gun down across Rooney's jaw. A fireline of blood opened up instantly.

He stepped away. He knew that if he hit Rooney again, he wouldn't be able to stop hitting him. Too much anger stored up for too long. Too much humiliation. He'd heard Rooney making jokes about him to other people. Tolan knew how the sight of him disgusted people. Ever since little Daisy ate that glass, he'd been ugly. As if the same ugliness on his soul was now on his face. Both to his face and behind his back, Rooney had commented on this many, many times. Too many times for Tolan to handle any more.

"How was you gonna do it, Rooney, if you didn't find it in my room? Wait till it was dark and then backshoot me right before the train rolled in? You'd be in Denver by the time they figured out who killed me. Then it would all be yours."

"Why the hell'd you hit me?"

"Because I'm sick of your bullshit. Sick of the way you look down on me. You think I don't know how ugly I am? You think I don't see when women get sick inside when they see me? You think I don't know what all your fancy friends think when they see me? I think about it all the time, Rooney. And every time I think about it, I hear you laughin' in the background. You got a real mean laugh, Rooney. And half the time you're fuckin' laughin' at me."

This time Tolan used his fist, hooking it up under Rooney's jaw, knocking him back flat on the bed. Now there would be a bruise through the line of blood Tolan had opened up.

"I'll tell you how it's gonna be, Rooney. You 'n' me are goin' to Denver together. I'm keepin' your money till we get there. I'm gonna take your gun. You won't have no weapon. And if you try anything on me, I swear I'll kill you on the spot."

"What about my money?" Rooney said, closing his eyes, apparently from the pain of Tolan's fist.

"When we get to Denver, you get half."

"Half? What the hell're you talking about, half?" He came up off the bed angry. Rage had revived him. "Half? Bullshit."

"Half. Or nothing. Up to you."

"Why the hell should you get half?"

"Well, for one reason because you wouldn't give me even half if you were in my place. So I'm being generous. And for another reason, the money I take from you should clear us for all the money you stole from me over the years."

"Half," Rooney said. "You sonofabitch." Then, bitterly and to himself: "Half."

"It's up to you."

"So you're with me till train time?"

"You ain't gettin' out of my sight."

"Maybe you'll change your mind, Tolan. Maybe you'll start thinking more clearly."

The bad teeth once again. "I wouldn't bet on it, Rooney."