The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western

The Riding Lesson

They crouched with their rifles in the pineapple field, watching a man teach his son how to ride a horse. It was the summer of 1902 in Hawaii.

They hadn’t said anything for a long time. They just crouched there watching the man and the boy and the horse.

What they saw did not make them happy.

“I can’t do it,” Greer said.

“It’s a bastard all right,” Cameron said.

“I can’t shoot a man when he’s teaching his kid how to ride a horse.” Greer said. “I’m not made that way.”

Greer and Cameron were not at home in the pineapple field. They looked out of place in Hawaii. They were both dressed in cowboy clothes, clothes that belonged to Eastern Oregon.

Greer had his favorite gun: a 30:40 Krag, and Cameron had a 25:35 Winchester. Greer liked to kid Cameron about his gun. Greer always used to say, “Why do you keep that rabbit rifle around when you can get a real gun like this Krag here?”

They stared intently at the riding lesson.

“Well, there goes 1,000 dollars apiece,” Cameron said. “And that God-damn trip on that God-damn boat was for nothing. I thought I was going to puke forever and now I’m going to have to do it all over again with only the change in my pockets.”

Greer nodded.

The voyage from San Francisco to Hawaii had been the most terrifying experience Greer and Cameron had ever gone through, even more terrible than the time they shot a deputy sheriff in Idaho ten times and he wouldn’t die and Greer finally had to say to the deputy sheriff, “Please die because we don’t want to shoot you again.” And the deputy sheriff had said, “OK, I’ll die, but don’t shoot me again.”

“We won’t shoot you again,” Cameron had said.

“OK, I’m dead,” and he was.

The man and the boy and the horse were in the front yard of a big white house shaded by coconut trees. It was like a shining island in the pineapple fields. There was piano music coming from the house. It drifted lazily across the warm afternoon.

Then a woman came out onto the front porch. She carried herself like a wife and a mother. She was wearing a long white dress with a high starched collar. “Dinner’s ready!” she yelled. “Come and get it, you cowboys!”

“God-damn!” Cameron said. “It’s sure as hell gone now. 1,000 dollars. By all rights, he should be dead and halfway through being laid out in the front parlor, but there he goes into the house to have some lunch.”

“Let’s get off this God-damn Hawaii,” Greer said.

Back to San Francisco

Cameron was a counter. He vomited nineteen times to San Francisco. He liked to count everything that he did. This had made Greer a little nervous when he first met up with Cameron years ago, but he’d gotten used to it by now. He had to or it might have driven him crazy.

People would sometimes wonder what Cameron was doing and Greer would say, “He’s counting something,” and people would ask, “What’s he counting?” and Greer would say, “What difference does it make?” and the people would say, “Oh.”

People usually wouldn’t go into it any further because Greer and Cameron were very self-assured in that big relaxed casual kind of way that makes people nervous.

Greer and Cameron had an aura about them that they could handle any situation that came up with a minimum amount of effort resulting in a maximum amount of effect.

They did not look tough or mean. They looked like a relaxed essence distilled from these two qualities. They acted as if they were very intimate with something going on that nobody else could see.

In other words, they had the goods. You didn’t want to fuck with them, even if Cameron was always counting things and he counted nineteen vomits back to San Francisco. Their living was killing people.

And one time during the voyage, Greer asked, “How many times is that?”

And Cameron said, “12.”

“How many times coming over?”

“20.”

“How’s it working out?” Greer said.

“About even.”

Miss Hawkline

Even now Miss Hawkline waited for them in that huge very cold yellow house… in Eastern Oregon… as they were picking up some travelling money in San Francisco’s Chinatown by killing a Chinaman that a bunch of other Chinamen thought needed killing.

He was a real tough Chinaman and they offered Greer and Cameron seventy-five dollars to kill him.

Miss Hawkline sat naked on the floor of a room filled with musical instruments and kerosene lamps that were burning low. She was sitting next to a harpsichord. There was an unusual light on the keys of the harpsichord and there was a shadow to that light.

Coyotes were howling outside.

The lamp-distorted shadows of musical instruments made exotic patterns on her body and there was a large wood fire burning in the fireplace. The fire seemed almost out of proportion but its size was needed because the house was very cold.

There was a knock at the door of the room.

Miss Hawkline turned her head.

“Yes?” she said.

“Dinner will be served in a few moments,” came the voice of an old man through the door. The man did not attempt to come into the room. He stood outside the door.

“Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” she replied.

Then there was the sound of huge footsteps walking down the hall away from the door and eventually disappearing behind the closing of another door.

The coyotes were close to the house. They sounded as if they were on the front porch.

“We give you seventy-five dollars. You kill,” the head Chinaman said.

There were five or six other Chinaman sitting in the small dark booth with them. The place was filled with the smell of bad Chinese cooking.

When Greer and Cameron heard the price of seventy-five dollars they smiled in that relaxed way they had that usually changed things very rapidly.

“Two hundred dollars,” the head Chinaman said, without changing the expression on his face. He was a smart Chinaman. That’s why he was their leader.

“Two hundred and fifty dollars. Where’s he at?” Greer said.

“Next door,” the head Chinaman said.

Greer and Cameron went next door and killed him. They never did find out how tough the Chinaman was because they didn’t give him a chance. That’s the way they did their work. They didn’t put any lace on their killings.

While they were taking care of the Chinaman, Miss Hawkline continued to wait for them, naked on the floor of a room filled with the shadows of musical instruments. Lamp-aided, the shadows played over her body in that huge house in Eastern Oregon.

There was also something else in that room. It was watching her and took pleasure in her naked body. She did not know that it was there. She also did not know that she was naked. If she had known that she was naked she would have been very shocked. She was a proper young lady except for the colorful language that she had picked up from her father.

Miss Hawkline was thinking about Greer and Cameron, though she had never met them or even heard about them, but she waited eternally for them to come as they were always destined to come, for she was part of their gothic future.

Greer and Cameron caught the train to Portland, Oregon, the next morning. It was a beautiful day. They were happy because they liked riding the train to Portland. “How many times now?” Greer asked.

“8 times straight through and 6 times we got off,” Cameron said.

Magic Child

They had been whoring for two days when the Indian girl found them. They always liked to whore for a week or so in Portland before they settled down to thinking about work.

The Indian girl found them in their favorite whorehouse. She had never seen them before or heard about them either but the moment she saw them, she knew they were the men Miss Hawkline wanted.

She had spent three months in Portland, looking for the right men. Her name was Magic Child. She thought that she was fifteen years old. She had gone into this whorehouse by accident. She was actually looking for a whorehouse on the next block.

“What do you want?” Greer said. There was a pretty blonde girl about fourteen years old, sitting on his lap. She didn’t have any clothes on.

“Is that an Indian?” she said. “How did she get in here?”

“Shut up,” Greer said.

Cameron was starting to fuck a little brunette girl. He stopped what he was doing and looked back over his shoulder at Magic Child.

He didn’t know whether to go on and fuck the girl or find out what the Indian girl was about.

Magic Child stood there without saying anything.

The little whore said, “Stick it in.”

“Wait a minute,” Cameron said. He started to shift out of the love position. He had made up his mind.

The Indian girl reached into her pocket and took out a photograph. It was the photograph of a very beautiful young woman. She wasn’t wearing any clothes in the photograph. She was sitting on the floor in a room filled with musical instruments.

Magic Child showed the photograph to Greer.

“What’s this?” Greer said.

Magic Child walked over and showed the photograph to Cameron.

“Interesting,” Cameron said.

The two little whores didn’t know what was happening. They had never seen anything like this before and they had seen a lot of things. The brunette suddenly covered up her vagina because she was embarrassed.

The blonde stared silently on with disbelieving blue eyes. Whenever a man told her to shut up, she always shut up. She had been a farm girl before she went into whoring.

Then Magic Child reached into the pocket of her Indian dress and took out five thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills. She took the money out as if she’d been doing it all her life.

She gave Greer twenty-five of them and then she walked over and gave Cameron twenty-five of them. After she gave them the money, she stood there looking silently at them. She still hadn’t said a word since she’d come into the room.

Greer sat there with the blonde whore still on his lap. He looked at the Indian girl and nodded OK very slowly. Cameron had a half-smile on his face, lying beside the brunette who was covering up her vagina with her hand.

Indian

Greer and Cameron left Portland the next morning on the train up the Columbia River, travelling toward Central County in Eastern Oregon.

They enjoyed their seats because they liked to travel on trains.

The Indian girl travelled with them. They spent a great deal of time looking at her because she was very pretty. She was tall and slender and had long straight black hair. Her features were delicately voluptuous. They were both interested in her mouth.

She sat there exquisitely, looking at the Columbia River as the train travelled up the river toward Eastern Oregon. She saw things that interested her.

Greer and Cameron started talking with Magic Child after they were three or four hours out of Portland. They were curious as to what it was all about.

The girl hadn’t said more than a hundred words since she had walked into the whorehouse and started to change their lives. None of the words were about what they were supposed to do except go to Central County and meet a Miss Hawkline who would then tell them what she would pay them five thousand dollars to do.

“Why are we going to Central County?” Greer said.

“You kill people, don’t you?” Magic Child said. Her voice was gentle and precise. They were surprised by the sound of her voice. They didn’t expect it to sound that way when she said that.

“Sometimes,” Greer said.

“They got a lot of sheep trouble over that way,” Cameron said. “I heard there was some killings there. 4 men killed last week and 9 during the month. I know 3 Portland gunmen who went up there a few days ago. Good men, too.”

“Real good,” Greer said. “Probably the best three men going I know of except for maybe two more. Take a lot to put those boys away. ‘1`hey went up there to work for the cattlemen. Which side is your bosslady on or does she want some personal work done?”

“Miss Hawkline will tell you what she wants done,” Magic Child said.

“Can’t even get a hint out of you, huh?” Greer said, smiling.

Magic Child looked out the window at the Columbia River. There was a small boat on the river. Two people were sitting in the boat. She couldn’t tell what they were doing. One of the people was holding an umbrella, though it wasn’t raining and the sun wasn’t shining either.

Greer and Cameron gave up trying to find out what they were supposed to do but they were curious about Magic Child. They had been surprised by her voice because she didn’t sound like an Indian. She sounded like an Eastern woman who’d had a lot of booklearning.

They’d also taken a closer look at her and had seen that she wasn`t an Indian.

They didn’t say anything about it. They had the money and that’s what counted for them. They figured if she wanted to be an Indian that was her business.

Gompville

The train only went as far as Gompville, which was the county seat of Morning County and fifty miles away by stagecoach to Billy. It was a cold clear dawn with half-a-dozen sleepy dogs standing there barking at the train engine.

“Gompville,” Cameron said.

Gompville was the headquarters of the Morning County Sheepshooters Association that had a president, a vice-president, a secretary, a sergeant at arms and bylaws that said it was all right to shoot sheep.

The people who owned the sheep didn’t particularly care for that, so both sides had brought in gunmen from Portland and the attitude toward killings had become very casual in those parts.

“We’re running it tight,” Greer said to Magic Child as they walked over to the stagecoach line. The stage to Billy left in just a few moments.

Cameron was carrying a long narrow trunk over his shoulder. The trunk contained a sawed-off twelve-gauge pump shotgun, a 25:35 Winchester rifle, a 30:40 Krag, two.38 caliber revolvers and an automatic.38 caliber pistol that Cameron had bought from a soldier in Hawaii who was just back from the Philippines where he had been fighting the rebels for two years.

“What kind of pistol is that?” Cameron had asked the soldier. They had been in a bar having some drinks in Honolulu.

“This gun is for killing Filipino motherfuckers,” the soldier had said. “It kills one of those bastards so dead that you need two graves to bury him in.”

After a bottle of whiskey and a lot of talk about women, Cameron had bought the gun from the soldier who was very glad to be on his way home to America and not have to use that gun any more.

Central County Ways

Central County was a big rangy county with mountains to the north and mountains to the south and a vast loneliness in between. The mountains were filled with trees and creeks.

The loneliness was called the Dead Hills.

They were thirty miles wide. There were thousands of hills out there: yellow and barren in the summer with lots of juniper brush in the draws and a few pine trees here and there, acting as if they had wandered away like stray sheep from the mountains and out into the Dead Hills and had gotten lost and had never been able to find their way back.

…poor trees…

The population of Central County was around eleven hundred people: give or take a death here and a birth there or a few strangers deciding to make a new life or old-time residents to move away and never to return or come back soon because they were homesick.

Just like a short history of man, there were two towns in the county.

One of the towns was close to the northern range of mountains. That town was called Brooks. The other town was close to the southern range of mountains. It was called Billy.

The towns were named for Billy and Brooks Paterson: two brothers who had pioneered the county forty years before and had killed each other in a gunfight one September afternoon over the ownership of five chickens.

That fatal chicken argument occurred in 1881 but there was still a lot of strong feeling in the county in 1902 over who those chickens belonged to and who was to fault for the gunfight that killed both brothers and left two widows and nine fatherless children.

Brooks was the county seat but the people who lived in Billy always said, “Fuck Brooks.”

In the Early Winds of Morning

Just outside of Gompville a man was hanging from the bridge across the river. There was a look of disbelief on his face as if he still couldn’t believe that he was dead. He just refused to believe that he was dead. He wouldn’t believe he was dead until they buried him. His body swayed gently in the early winds of morning.

There was a barbed-wire drummer riding in the stagecoach with Greer and Cameron and Magic Child. The drummer looked like a fifty-year-old child with long skinny fingers and cold-white nails. He was going to Billy, then onto Brooks to sell barbed wire.

Business was good.

“There’s a lot of that going on around here now,” he said, pointing at the body. “It’s those gunmen from Portland. It’s their work.”

He was the only one talking. Nobody else had anything to say out loud. Greer and Cameron said what they had to say inside their minds.

Magic Child looked so calm you would have thought that she had been raised in a land where bodies hung everywhere like flowers.

The stagecoach drove across the bridge without stopping. It sounded like a minor thunderstorm on the bridge. The wind turned the body, so that it was watching the stagecoach drive up the road along the river and then disappear into a turn of dusty green trees.

“Coffee” with the Widow

A couple of hours later, the stagecoach stopped at Widow Jane’s house. The driver always liked to have a cup of “coffee” with the widow on his way to Billy.

What he meant by a cup of coffee wasn’t really a cup of coffee. He had a romance going with the widow and he’d stop the stagecoach at her house and just parade all the passengers in. The widow would give everybody a cup of coffee and there was always a big platter of homemade doughnuts on the kitchen table.

Widow Jane was a very thin but jolly woman in her early fifties.

Then the driver, carrying a ceremonial cup of coffee in his hand, and the widow would go upstairs. All the passengers would sit downstairs in the kitchen, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts while the driver would be upstairs with the widow in her bedroom having his “coffee.”

The squeaking of the bedsprings shook the house like mechanical rain.

Cora

Cameron had brought the trunk full of guns into the house with him. He didn’t want to leave the guns unattended in the stagecoach. Greer and Cameron never carried guns on their persons not unless they intended to kill somebody. Then they carried guns. The rest of the time the guns stayed in the trunk.

The barbed-wire drummer sat there in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in his hand and from time to time he would look down at the trunk that was beside Cameron, but he never said anything about it.

He was curious enough, though, about Magic Child to ask her what her name was.

“Magic Child,” Magic Child said.

“That’s a pretty name,” he said. “And if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re quite a pretty girl.”

“Thank you.”

Then, to be polite, he asked Greer what his name was.

“Greer,” Greer said.

“That’s an interesting name,” he said.

Then he asked Cameron what his name was.

“Cameron,” Cameron said.

“Everybody here’s got an interesting name,” he said. “My name is Marvin Cora jones. You don’t come across many men who’s middle name is Cora. Anyway, I haven’t and I’ve been to a lot of places, including England.”

“Cora is a different kind of middle name for a man,” Cameron said.

Magic Child got up and went over to the stove and got some more coffee for Greer and Cameron. She also poured some for the barbed-wire drummer. She was smiling. There was a huge platter of doughnuts on the table and everybody was eating them. Widow Jane was a good cook.

Like a mirror the house continued to reflect the motion of the bed upstairs.

Greer and Cameron each had a glass of milk, too, from a beautiful porcelain pitcher on the table. They liked a glass of milk now and then. They also liked the smile on Magic Child’s face. It had been the first time that Magic Child had smiled.

“They named me Cora for my great-grandmother. I don’t mind. She met George Washington at a party. She said that he was really a nice man but he was a little shorter than what she had expected,” the barbed-wire drummer said. “I meet a lot of interesting people by telling them that my middle name is Cora. It’s something that gets people’s curiosity up. It’s kind of funny, too. I don’t mind people laughing because it is sort of funny for a man to have the name of Cora.”

Against the Dust

The driver and the widow came down the stairs with their arms in sweet affection around each other. “It certainly was nice of you to show that to me,” the driver said.

The widow’s face was twinkling like a star.

The driver acted mischievously solemn but you could tell that he was just playing around.

“It’s good to stop and have some coffee,” the driver said to everybody sitting at the table. “It makes travelling a little easier and those doughnuts are a lot better than having a mule kick you in the head.”

There was no argument there.

Thoughts of July 12, 1902

About noon the stagecoach was rattling through the mountains. It was hot and boring. Cora, the barbed-wire drummer, had dozed off. He looked like a sleeping fence.

Greer was staring at the graceful billowing of Magic Child’s breasts against her long and simple dress. Cameron was thinking about the man who had been hanging from the bridge. He was thinking that he had once gotten drunk with him in Billings, Montana, at the turn of the century.

Cameron wasn’t totally certain but the man hanging from the bridge looked an awful lot like the guy he had gotten drunk with in Billings. If he wasn’t that man, he was his twin brother.

Magic Child was watching Greer stare at her breasts. She was imagining Greer touching them with his casually powerful-looking hands. She was excited and pleased inside of herself, knowing that she would be fucking Greer before the day was gone.

While Cameron was thinking about the dead man on the bridge, perhaps it was Denver where they had getter: drunk together, Magic Child was thinking about fucking him, too.

Binoculars

Suddenly the stagecoach stopped on top of a ridge that had a meadow curving down from it. There was an Old Testament quantity of vultures circling and landing and rising again in the meadow. They were like flesh angels summoned to worship at a large spread-out temple of many small white formerly-living things.

“Sheep!” the driver yelled. “Thousands of them!”

He was looking down on the meadow through a pair of binoculars. The driver had once been an officer, a second lieutenant in the cavalry during the Indian Wars, so he carried a pair of binoculars with him when he was driving the stagecoach.

He had gotten out of the cavalry because he didn’t like to kill Indians.

“The Morning County Sheepshooters Association has been working out this way,” he said.

Everybody in the stagecoach looked out the windows and then got out as the driver climbed down from his seat. They stretched and tried to unwind the coils of travel while they watched the vultures eating sheep down below in the meadow.

Fortunately, the wind was blowing in an opposite manner so as not to bring them the smell of death. They could watch death while not having to be intimate with it.

“Those sheepshooters really know how to shoot sheep,” the driver said.

“All you need is a gun,” Cameron said.

Billy

They crossed the Shadow Creek bridge at suppertime. There’s nobody hanging from this bridge: Cameron thought as the stagecoach drove into Billy.

There was an expression of pleasure on Magic Child’s face. She was happy to be home. She had been gone for months, doing what Miss Hawkline had sent her to do, and they sat beside her. She looked forward to seeing Miss Hawkline. They would have many things to talk about. She would tell Miss Hawkline about Portland.

Magic Child’s breathing had noticeably changed in sexual anticipation for the bodies of Greer and Cameron. They of course didn’t know that Magic Child would soon be fucking them.

They could see that her breathing had changed but they didn’t know what it meant. They thought she was happy to be home or something.

Billy was noisy because it was suppertime. The smell of meat and potatoes was heavy on the wind. All the doors and windows in Billy were open. It had been a very hot day and you could hear people eating and talking.

Billy was about sixty or seventy houses, buildings and shacks built on both sides of a creek that flowed through a canyon whose slopes were covered with jumper brush that gave a sweet fresh smell to things.

Billy had three bars, an cafe, a big mercantile store, a blacksmith, and a church. It didn’t have a hotel, a bank or a doctor.

There was a town marshal but there wasn’t a jail. He didn’t need one. His name was Jack Williams and he could be a mean motherfucker. He thought putting somebody in jail was a waste of time. If you caused any trouble in Billy, he’d punch you in the mouth and throw you in the creek. The rest of the time he ran a very friendly saloon, The Jack Williams House, and would buy a drink every morning for the town drunk.

There was a graveyard behind the church and the minister, a Fredrick Calms, was always trying to raise enough money to put a fence around the graveyard because the deer got in there and ate the flowers and stuff off the graves.

For some strange reason, it made the minister mad whenever he saw some deer among the graves and he’d start cursing up a storm, but nobody ever took putting a fence up around the graveyard very seriously.

The people just didn’t give a shit.

“So a few deer get in there. That’s no big thing. The minister is kind of crazy, anyway,” was their general reaction to putting a fence around the graveyard in Billy.

The Governor of Oregon

Greer, Cameron and Magic Child went over to the blacksmith’s shop to get some horses for the ride out to Miss Hawkline’s in the morning. They wanted to make sure the horses would be ready when they left at dawn.

The blacksmith had a collection of strange horses that he would rent out sometimes if he knew you or liked your looks. He’d had a bucket of beer along with his dinner that evening, so he was very friendly.

“Magic Child,” he said. “Ain’t seen you around for a while. You been someplace? Hear they’re killing people over Gompville way. My name is Pills,” holding out his beer-friendly hand to Greer and Cameron. “I take care of the horses around here.”

“We need some horses in the morning,” Magic Child said. “We’re going out to Miss Hawkline’s.”

“I think I can do you up with some horses. Maybe one of them will get that far: if you’re lucky.”

Pills liked to joke about his horses. He was famous in those parts for having the worst bunch of horses ever assembled in a corral.

He had a horse that was so swaybacked that it looked like an October quarter moon. He called that horse Cairo. “This is an Egyptian horse,” he used to tell people.

He had another horse that didn’t have any ears. A drunken cowboy had bitten them off for a fifty-cent bet. “I bet you fifty cents I’m so drunk I’d bite a horse’s ears off!”

“God-damn, I don’t think you’re that drunk!”

And he had another horse that actually drank whiskey. They’d put a quart of whiskey in his bucket and he’d drink it all down and then he’d fall over on his side and everybody would laugh.

But the prize of his collection was a horse that had a wooden foot. The horse was born without a right rear foot, so somebody had carved him a wooden one, but the person had gotten confused in his carving, he wasn’t really right in the head, anyway, and the wooden foot looked more like a duck’s foot than a horse’s foot. It really looked strange to see that horse walking around with a wooden duck foot.

A politician once came all the way from La Grande to look at those horses. It was even rumored that the governor of Oregon had heard about them.

Jack Williams

On their way over to Ma Smith’s Cafe to have some dinner, Jack Williams, the town marshal, strolled out of his saloon. He was going someplace else but when he saw Magic Child, whom he liked a lot, and two strange men with her, he walked over to Magic Child and her friends to say hello and find out what was happening.

“Magic Child! God-damn!” he said and threw his arms around her and gave her a big hug.

He could tell that the two men did not work for a living and in appearance there was nothing about them that one would ever remember. They both looked about the same except they had different features and different builds. It was the way they handled themselves that was memorable.

One of them was taller than the other one but once you turned your back on them you wouldn’t be able to remember which one it was.

Jack Williams had seen men similar to these before. Instinctively, without even bothering with an intellectual process, he knew that these men could mean trouble. One of them was carrying a long narrow trunk on his shoulder. He carried the trunk easily as if it were part of his shoulder.

Jack Williams was a big man: over six feet tall and weighed in excess of two hundred pounds. His toughness was legendary in that part of Eastern Oregon. Men with evil thoughts on their minds generally stayed clear of Billy.

Jack Williams wore a shoulder holster with a big shiny.38 in it. He didn’t like to wear a regular gun belt around his waist. He always joked that he didn’t like to have all that iron hanging so close to his cock.

He was forty-one years old and in the prime of health.

“Magic Child! God-damn!” he said and threw his arms around her and gave her a big hug.

“Jack,” she said. “You big man!”

“I’ve missed you, Magic Child,” he said. He and Magic Child had fucked a few times and he had a tremendous respect for her quick lean body.

He liked her a lot but sometimes he was a little awestruck and disturbed by how much she looked like Miss Hawkline. They looked so much alike that they could have been twins. Everybody in town noticed it but there was nothing they could do about it, so they just let it be.

“These are my friends,” she said, making the introductions. “I want you to meet them. This is Greer and this is Cameron. I want you to meet Jack Williams. He’s the town marshal.”

Greer and Cameron were smiling softly at the intensity of Magic Child’s and Jack Williams’ greeting.

“Howdy,” Jack Williams said, shaking their hands. “What are you boys up to?”

“Come on now,” Magic Child said. “These are my friends.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack Williams said, laughing. “I’m sorry, boys. I own a saloon here. Any time you want there’s a drink waiting over there for you and it’s on me.”

He was a fair man and people respected him for it.

Greer and Cameron liked him immediately.

They liked people who had strong character. They didn’t like to kill people like Jack Williams. Sometimes it made them feel bad afterwards and Greer would always say. “I liked him.” and Cameron would always answer, “Yeah, he was a good man.” and they wouldn’t say anything more about it after that.

Just then some gunshots rang out in the hills above Billy. Jack Williams paid no attention to the shots.

“5, 6,” Cameron said.

“What’s that?” Jack Williams said.

“He was counting the gunshots,” Greer said.

“Oh, that. Oh, yeah,” Jack Williams said. “They’re up there probably killing themselves or killing off their animals. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck. Excuse me, Magic Child, I’m sorry. I’ve got a tongue that was hatched on an outhouse seat. I’m saving it for my old age. Instead of whittling, I’ll stop cussing.”

“What’s the shooting about?” Greer said, nodding his head up toward the twilight hills towering above Billy.

“Oh, come on now,” Jack Williams said. “You boys know better than that.”

Greer and Cameron smiled softly again.

“I don’t care what those cattle and sheep people do to each other. They can kill everyone of themselves off if they’re going to be that stupid, just as long as they don’t do it in the streets of Billy.”

“That county sheriff from Brooks. Up there’s his problem. I don’t think he ever gets off his ass, not unless he’s looking for a piece of ass. Oh, God, I’ve done it again. Magic Child, when will this tongue of mine ever learn?”

Magic Child smiled up at Jack Williams. “I’m glad to be back.” She touched his hand gently.

That pleased the town marshal of Billy whose name was Jack Williams and who was known far and wide as a tough but fair man.

“I guess I’d better get along now,” he said. “Glad you’re back, Magic Child.” Then he turned to Greer and Cameron and said, “Hope you boys from Portland have a good time here but just remember,” he said, pointing at the hills. “Up there, not down here.”

Ma Smith’s Cafe

They had some fried potatoes and steaks for dinner and biscuits all covered with gravy at Ma Smith’s Cafe, and the people eating there wondered why they were in town, and they had some blackberry pie for dessert, and the people, mostly cowboys, wondered what was in the long narrow trunk beside their table, and Magic Child had a glass of milk along with her pie, and the cowboys were made a little nervous by Greer and Cameron, though they didn’t know exactly why, but the cowboys all thought that Magic Child sure was pretty and they’d sure like to fuck her and they wondered where she had been these last months. They hadn’t seen her in town. She must have been someplace else but they didn’t know where. Greer and Cameron continued to make them nervous but they still didn’t know why. One thing they did know, though, Greer and Cameron did not look like the kind of people who had come to Billy to settle down.

Greer thought about having another piece of pie but he didn’t. It was a nice thought. He really liked the pie and the thought was as good as having another piece of pie. The pie was that tasty.

They heard half-a-dozen more gunshots back off in the hills while they were finishing their coffee. All the shots were methodical, aimed and well-placed. It was the same gun firing and it sounded like a 30:30. Whoever was firing that gun really thought about it every time they pulled the trigger.

And Ma Smith

Ma Smith, a cantankerous old woman, looked up from a steak she was frying for a cowboy. She was a big woman with a very red face and shoes that were much too small for her feet. She considered herself big enough every place else without having to have big feet, so she stuffed her feet into shoes that were much too small for them, which caused her to be in considerable pain most of her walking hours and led her to having a very short temper.

Her clothes were very sweaty and stuck to her as she moved around the big wooden stove that she was cooking over on a night that was already hot enough by itself.

Cameron counted the gunshots in his mind.

1…

2…

3…

4…

5…

6…

Cameron waited to count the seventh shot, but then there was silence. The shooting was over.

Ma Smith was angrily fussing around with the steak on the stove. It looked like the last steak she was going to have to cook that night and she was very glad for that. She’d had enough for the day.

“I bet they’re killing somebody out there,” the cowboy said whose steak was being cooked. “I’ve been waiting for the killing to work its way down here. It’s just a matter of time. That’s all. Well, I don’t care who kills who as long as they don’t kill me.”

“You won’t get killed down here,” an old miner said.

“Jack Williams will make sure of that.”

Ma Smith took the steak and put it on a big white platter and brought it over to the cowboy who didn’t want to get killed.

“How does this look?” she said.

“Better put some more fire under it,” the cowboy said.

“Next time you come in here I’ll just cook you up a big plate of ashes,” she said. “And sprinkle some God-damn cow hair on it.”

Pill’s Last Love

They slept that night in Pills’ barn. Pills got them a big armload of blankets.

“I guess I won’t be seeing you tomorrow morning,” Pills said. “You’ll be off at daybreak, huh?”

“Yes,” Magic Child said.

“If you change your mind or you want some breakfast or coffee or anything, just wake me up or come in the house and fix it yourself. Everything’s in the cupboard,” Pills said.

He liked Magic Child.

“Thank you, Pills. You’re a kind man. If we change our minds, we’ll come in and rob your cupboard,” Magic Child said.

‘“Good,” Pills said. “I guess you’ll work out the sleeping arrangements OK.” That was his sense of humor after a few buckets of beer.

Magic Child had a reputation in town for being generous with her favors. Once she had even laid Pills which made him very happy because he was sixty-one years old and didn’t think he’d ever do it again. His last lover had been a widow woman in 1894. She moved to Corvallis and that was the end of his love life.

Then one evening, out of the clear blue, Magic Child said to him, “When was the last time you fucked a woman?” There had been a long pause after that while Pills stared at Magic Child. He knew that he wasn’t that drunk.

“Years.”

“Do you think you can get it up?”

“I’d like to try.”

Magic Child put her arms around the sixty-one-year-old bald-headed, paunchy, half-drunk keeper of strange horses and kissed him on the mouth.

“I think I can do it.”

In the Barn

Greer carried a lantern and Cameron carried the blankets and Magic Child trailed after them into the barn. She was very excited by the hard lean curve of their asses.

“Where’s the best place to sleep here?” Cameron said.

“Up in the loft,” Magic Child said. “There’s an old bed up there. Pills keeps it for travellers to sleep in. That bed is the only hotel in town.” Her voice was dry and suddenly nervous. She could just barely keep her hands off them.

Greer noticed it. He looked over at her. Her eyes darted like excited jade into his eyes and then out of them and he smiled softly. She didn’t smile at all.

They carefully climbed the ladder up to the loft. It smelled sweetly of hay and there was an old brass bed beside the hay. The bed looked very comfortable after two days of travel. It shined like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

“Fuck me,” Magic Child said.

“What?” Cameron said. He had been thinking about something else. He had been thinking about the six gunshots off in the hills during dinner.

“I want you both,” Magic Child said and passion broke her voice like an Aphrodite twig.

Then she took her clothes off. Greer and Cameron stood there watching. Her body was slender and long with high firm breasts that had small nipples. And she had a good ass.

Greer blew the lantern out and she fucked Greer first.

Cameron sat on a dark bale of hay while Magic Child and Greer fucked. The brass bed sounded alive as it echoed the motion of their passion.

After while the bed stopped moving and everything was quiet except for the voice of Magic Child saying thank you, thank you, over and over again to Greer.

Cameron counted how many times she said thank you. She said thank you eleven times. He waited for her to say thank you a twelfth time but she didn’t say it again.

Then Cameron took his turn with Magic Child. Greer didn’t bother to get out of bed. He just lay there beside them while they fucked. Greer felt too good to move.

After another while the bed fell silent. There wasn’t a sound for a couple of moments and then Magic Child said, “Cameron.” She said it once. That’s all she said it. Cameron waited for her to say his name again or to say something else but she didn’t say his name again and she didn’t say anything else.

She just lay there affectionately stroking his ass like a kitten.

The Drum

The slamming of screen doors and dogs barking and the rattling of breakfast pots and pans and roosters crowing and people coughing and grumbling and stirring about: getting ready to start their day beat like a drum in Billy.

It was a silver early-in-the-morning drum that would lead to the various events that would comprise July 13, 1902. The town drunk was lying facedown in the middle of the Main Street of town. He was passed out and at peace with the summer dust. His eyes were closed. There was a smile on the side of his face. A big yellow dog was sniffing at his boots and a big black dog was sniffing at the yellow dog. They were happy dogs. Both of their tails were wagging.

A screen door slammed and a man shouted so loudly that the dogs stopped their sniffing and wagging, “Where in the hell is my God-damn hat!”

“On your head, you idiot!” was the female reply.

The dogs thought about this for a moment and then they started barking at the town drunk and woke him up.

Welcome to the Dead Hills

They woke up at dawn the next morning and rode out on three sad horses into the Dead Hills. Their name was perfect. They looked as if an undertaker had designed them from leftover funeral scraps. It was a three-hour ride to Miss Hawkline’s house. The road was very bleak, wandering like the handwriting of a dying person over the hills.

There were no houses, no barns, no fences, no signs that human life had ever made its way this far except for the road which was barely legible. The only comforting thing was the early morning sweet smell of juniper brush.

Cameron had the trunk full of guns strapped onto the back of his horse. He thought it remarkable that the animal could still move. He had to think back a ways to remember a horse that had been in such bad shape.

“Sure is stark,” Greer said.

Cameron had been counting the hills as they rode along. He got to fifty-seven. Then he gave up. It was just too boring.

“57,” he said.

Then he didn’t say anything else. Actually, “57” had been the only thing that he’d said since they left Billy a few hours before.

Magic Child waited for Cameron to explain why he’d said “57” but he didn’t. He didn’t say anything more.

“Miss Hawkline lives out here,” Greer said.

“Yes,” Magic Child said. “She loves it.”

Something Human

Finally they came across something human. It was a grave. The grave was right beside the road. It was simply a pile of bleak rocks covered with vulture shit. There was a wooden cross at one end of the rocks. The grave was so close to the road that you almost had to ride around it.

“Well, at last we’ve got some company,” Greer said.

There were a bunch of bullet holes in the cross. The grave had been used for target practice.

“9,” Cameron said.

“What was that?” Magic Child said.

“He said there are nine bullet holes in the cross,” Greer said.

Magic Child looked over at Cameron. She looked at him about ten seconds longer than she should have looked at him.

“Don’t mind Cameron,” Greer said. “He just likes to count things. You’ll get used to it.”

The Coat

They rode farther and farther into the Dead Hills which disappeared behind them instantly to reappear again in front of them and everything was the same and everything was very still.

At one time Greer thought he saw something different but he was mistaken. What he saw was exactly the same as what he had been seeing. He thought that it was smaller but then he realized that it was exactly the same size as everything else.

He slowly shook his head.

“Where does Pills get these horses?” Cameron said to Magic Child.

“That’s what everybody wants to know,” Magic Child said.

After while Cameron felt like counting again but because everything was the same it was difficult to find anything to count, so Cameron counted the footsteps of his horse, carrying him deeper and deeper into the Dead Hills and Miss Hawkline standing on the front porch of a gigantic yellow house, shielding her eyes against the sun with her hand and staring out into the Dead Hills. She was wearing a heavy winter coat.

The Doctor

Magic Child was very glad to be home and she considered these hills to be home. You couldn’t tell, though, that she was happy because she wore a constant expression on her face that had nothing to do with happiness. It was an anxious, slightly abstract look. It had been on her face since they had awakened in the barn.

Greer and Cameron had wanted another go at her but she hadn’t been interested. She had told them that it was very important they get out to Miss Hawkline’s place.

“911,” Cameron said.

“What are you counting now?” Magic Child said, in a voice that sounded very intelligent. She was smart, too. She had graduated at the head of her class at Radcliffe and had attended the Sorbonne. Then she had studied to be a doctor at Johns Hopkins.

She was a member of a prominent New England family that dated back to the Mayflower. Her family had been one of the contributing lights that led to the flowering of New England society and culture.

Surgery was her specialty.

“Hoofsteps,” Cameron said.

The Bridge

Suddenly a rattlesnake appeared, crawling rapidly across the road. The horses reacted to the snake: by whinnying and jumping about. Then the snake was gone. It took a few moments to calm the horses down.

After the horses had been returned to “normal” Greer said, “That was a big God-damn rattler. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one that big before. You ever see a rattler that big before, Cameron?”

“Not any bigger,” Cameron said.

“That’s what I thought,” Greer said.

Magic Child was directing her attention to something else.

“What is it, Magic Child?” Greer said.

“We’re almost home,” she said, now breaking out into a big smile.

Hawkline Manor

The road turned slightly, then went up over the horizon of a dead hill and from the top of the hill you could see a huge three-story yellow house about a quarter of a mile away in the center of a small meadow that was the same color as the house except for close to the house where it was white like snow.

There were no fences or outbuildings or anything human or trees near the house. It just stood there alone in the center of the meadow with white stuff piled close in around it and more white stuff on the ground around it.

There wasn’t even a barn. Two horses grazed a hundred yards or so from the house and there was a huge flock of red chickens the same distance away on the road that ended at the front porch of the house.

The road stopped like a dying man’s signature on a last-minute will.

There was a gigantic mound of coal beside the house which was a classic Victorian with great gables and stained glass across the tops of the windows and turrets and balconies and red brick fireplaces and a huge porch all around the house. There were twenty-one rooms in the house, including ten bedrooms and five parlors.

Just a quick glance at the house and you knew that it did not belong out there in the Dead Hills surrounded by nothing. The house belonged in Saint Louis or San Francisco or Chicago or anyplace other than where it was now. Even Billy would have been a more understandable place for the house but out here there was no reason for it to exist, so the house looked like a fugitive from a dream.

Heavy black smoke was pouring out of three brick chimneys. The temperature was over ninety on the hill top. Greer and Cameron wondered why there were fires burning in the house.

They sat there on their horses for a few moments on the horizon, staring down at the house. Magic Child continued smiling. She was very happy.

“That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Greer said.

“Don’t forget Hawaii,” Cameron said.