The Shootist

Gillom Rogers slept late, then yawned downstairs to the dining room. The regulars, the two railroaders and the teacher, had long ago breakfasted and gone, and the house was quiet. His mother sat opposite while he ate, sipping coffee and appraising her son as though to sustain a conviction that he could not yet be a man. Shave or not, tall or not, handsome or not, profane or not, intractable or not, seventeen, she believed, was still a boy.

Gillom nodded toward the rear room. "He in there?"

"Yes."

"What'd you feed him? Horseshoe nails and a cup of coal oil?"

"Sshh. He'll hear you."

"Who gives a damn."

She recalled washing out his mouth with soap when he was ten. "School this afternoon?"

"Hah."

"What, then?"

He tilted his chair to reflect. "Let's see. The Connie first, I guess."

"They won't serve you."

"I'll get roaring drunk, then go on down the Line and raise hell till they throw me in the juzgado."

"Gillom."

"Well? Mind your own business."

In the entry, a clock ticked.

"Don't speak to me that way," she said. "If your father were here, he'd—"

Gillom banged his chair down and braced his hands against the table as though to tip it over. "I've told you, Ma," he warned. "Don't talk to me about him. Don't ever. I won't have it."

"I am not to use his name in your presence."

"That's what I said."

It was a boyish call to battle she must accept. If she stood her ground, told him the truth, she might gain an enemy, but if she permitted him to bully her into retreat, she lost more than a skirmish: she lost a son. So she mustered herself. She met his scowl with a composure seventeen could never match.

"I love you," she said. "You know that, and take advantage of it. But the truth is, I loved him more. I always did, I always will."

He let go of the table, then did not know what to do with his hands.

"If it grieves you, I will never mention your father again. But I will speak of my husband whenever I wish."

She won, temporarily at least, and at what cost she could not estimate. He saucered his coffee, blew to cool, then attacked again, as the young do, this time from the flank.

"School. It don't amount to a hill of beans. I can learn more around town."

"I hope so."

"I know so. Who do you think moved in with us yesterday?"

"His name is Hickok. William Hickok."

"Hah."

"He's the U. S. Marshal in Abilene, Kansas. He told me."

Gillom drank a noisy triumph. "Are you dumb, Ma. Wild Bill Hickok was shot dead in Deadwood twenty-five years ago."

"I don't believe you."

"In the back. He was playing poker. The cards he held— they call it the 'Dead Man's Hand.' A pair of—"

"Gillom."

"I saw his guns, when he got off his horse yesterday. A pair of nickel-plated Remingtons. He carries 'em in holsters sewed to his vest."

"Who?"

He could not saucer his excitement. "Ma, we've got the most famous gun man in the world nowadays! Living with us, right here on Overland Street! Oh, he's mean. He's killed thirty men!"

"Gillom, you tell me!"

"Hold your hat. J.B. Books!"

Bond Rogers' cheeks flamed. She rose, turned, steadied herself with the chair back. She stared at her son, then swept from the room.

"Come in."

She entered, but couldn't decide whether or not to close the door behind her. If she left it ajar, Gillom might overhear. If she shut it, she put herself at the mercy of a violent man, perhaps a depraved. She left it open but set her back to it and clutched the knob.

"Mr. Books."

"Mrs. Rogers."

"You are J. B. Books."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You have rented my room under false pretenses."

"Sometimes I advertise, sometimes I don't."

"I will not have anyone of your stamp under my roof. I demand that you pack up and leave."

"I'm sorry."

"This is my room, I remind you. I want you out of it within the hour."

"I am sorry. I can't."

"Why not?"

"I don't propose to say."

"You will not go!"

"No."

"That is your last word."

He considered her, a rag of amusement at the corners of his mouth. "You have a fine color, ma'am," he said, "when you are on the scrap."

Confused, angered by the compliment, Bond Rogers whirled, stumbled against the door, and slammed it shut after her, only to confront her son. He stood in the hall, eavesdropping as she had suspected, but his expression stunned her. He regarded her with the same acuity, the same deliberation, the same glimmer of amusement she had just fled from, and the discovery that she might be mistaken, that he might be a man after all, not a boy, that she might in fact be alone with two strangers, both of whom had gained admission to her house under false pretenses, terrified her. Gillom did not move. She fled from him to the telephone on the wall, lifted the receiver from the hook, spun the crank, and adjusted the mouthpiece to her height.

"Central? Will you please connect me with the City Marshal's office? I don't know the number, I haven't time to look it up. Marshal Thibido. Thank you."

Moses Tarrant, who owned a livery stable on Oregon Street, stopped in the Acme Saloon. The place was almost deserted, since the gambling rooms were upstairs. A penurious man, Tarrant drank little and, when he did, held it well, but on this day he could no longer hold the news he had to tell. During the osmosis of a nickel beer he informed the barkeep that J. B. Books was in El Paso. He knew Books was, he said, because he had the man-killer's horse in his stable. To Tarrant's surprise, the barkeep heard him with indifference, continuing to polish glasses with his apron and to rack them. Disgruntled, the liveryman drained his glass and departed. The instant he had gone, however, the barkeep left his bar unattended, climbed the stairs with unusual celerity, and announced to a table of five men playing draw that J. B. Books was in town. Among the players was a man named Shoup and one named Norton.

"I'm the City Marshal. Walter Thibido."

"How do you do."

"I'm told you are John Bernard Books."

"You are told right."

"I've seen your face in the papers, but I wouldn't recognize you. Must of been a young picture."

"I'm handsomer now."

The marshal was not of a mind to banter. He appeared to have dressed in his best bib and tucker for what was to him a momentous, possibly a historical, occasion—in a serge suit and a clean shirt and a brass badge and, on his right hip, in a new holster, the Peacemaker he carried only on Sundays.

"Have a seat," Books offered.

"Don't think I will."

Books noted that he held his hat in his left hand and kept his right free, his collar crimped him, his shoes squeaked, and most important, that he was breathing hard with responsibility. This signified he had nerved himself to make the supreme civic sacrifice if necessary, which made him unpredictable, which made him dangerous.

"Breathe easy, Marshal. You are closer to your gun than I am to mine. Besides, I seldom kill anybody before noon. How did you know I was here?"

"Mrs. Rogers' boy spotted you, and told her. She telephoned me."

"So you welcome me to El Paso."

Thibido was more interested in mortality than irony. "I sure as hell do not. She claims you told her you were Wild Bill Hickok or she'd never of rented you a room. She wants you out of it. I don't blame her."

"Neither do I."

"So do I want you out, Books. I checked my bulletins before I came over, and didn't find anything I could hold you for. I wish I had of. But I want you out of town. We've got five railroads here and they'll be glad to sell you a ticket to any damn where."

"I won't be hurrahed."

"I'm not trying to. I'll buy the ticket."

"For purely personal reasons."

"Purely personal."

"Such as?"

"Such as I've been marshal a year now and I like it. I sleep at home and my wife is a good cook. I've got six deputies in uniform and we draw city pay the end of every month. I don't have to depend on fines. Such as about all we have to handle is drunks and cardsharks and a robbery and a knifing now and then and what I don't need is a genuine rough customer like you. You dally here and you'll draw trouble like an outhouse draws flies. So I want you on your way far away. Directly. Today."

"I might not be inclined."

"Then I will by God incline you. I told you, I have six deputies and I can badge as many men as I need. We will smoke you out or carry you out feet first, and the Council will back me up. So you say which, Mr. Gun Man. It's your funeral."

Books considered him. By the end of his peroration he was red in the face and breathing harder and shifting from foot to foot on his squeaky shoes. He was also flexing and unflexing the fingers of his right hand and saying inside, probably, a prayer.

"I can't go," said Books.

"Can't?"

"No. I am in a tight."

"You'll be in a worse."

"Not worse than this. I have a cancer."

"A cancer?"

"Of the prostate."

"That's too thin."

"Ask the doc, Hostetler. That's why I came down here from Colorado, to see him. He examined me yesterday. I don't have long. I will die in this room."

Walter Thibido was a small muscular man in his forties. He looked at Books and his face worked. Suddenly he dropped into a chair, bent forward, elbows on knees, face in hands, and through his fingers expelled relief.

"Whoo. Whooeee."

He reminded Books of someone who had just stepped from a Turkish bath into a cold shower.

"I tell you the truth, Books. When I came here I was scared," he said, smiling through his fingers. "I know what a man like you is capable of when he's cornered. On the way I wondered who'd get my job, and if the Council would give my wife a pension, and if it'd snow the day they put me under. Whooeee."

He shook his head, straightened up, found his hat. "Cancer. Cancer," he chortled. "Oh, that's rich. By God that's rich. When I think of the close calls you must of had, and now this. The great killer doesn't die of lead poisoning or a rope necktie after all—he's done in by his crotch!"

He realized what he was saying. "Excuse me if I don't pull a long face. I can't."

Books was silent. And perceptibly, as he went unchallenged, the marshal was restored to full fettle. He had done his duty and survived. He had not had to draw his weapon. He had been handed his dignity and authority on a silver platter. To the best of his knowledge, his conscience and prostate were in excellent shape. He leaned back, hooked his thumbs in his vest.

"I'm a lucky man, Books. We had bloody hell in El Paso a few years back. Wes Hardin was killed over on San Antonio Street six years ago. John Selman blew his brains out. Then George Scarborough killed Selman. Then some tough—Will Carver maybe—killed Scarborough. Before that, Dallas Stoudenmire killed Hale and Frank Manning killed him. Oh, we've had more than our share. Well, when they hired me last year I thought, This is a new century, the hard cases have killed each other off, the wheel of fortune has finally stopped, I can be a peace officer and stay healthy and someday die in bed. Then Mrs. Rogers on the telephone. I thought, My God, I was wrong, here she goes again. There is just one killer left and by God if he doesn't decide to dance one more fandango and in my town. I will have to face him. Today your string plays out, Thibido. J. B. Books is going to put out your light today. But you're not, are you?" He smiled jovially. "Cancer. If that isn't rich."

"You talk too much," Books said.

It was as good as a slap. Walter Thibido recoiled, then grimmed up and regained his earlier truculence. "As much as I damn please." He stood. "I will ask Hostetler. But I believe you. You stay put right here, where I can keep an eye on you."

"Where would I go?"

"That's right, where would you? Say, by the way, how long does he give you?"

"He doesn't know. Maybe six weeks."

"Six weeks."

"You can do me a favor, Thibido."

"I owe you one. Or Hostetler."

"Keep it under your hat I'm cashing in."

"Why?"

"My being in El Paso, maybe that's news. Dying is my own business."

"All right. Anyway, I don't want some tinhorn trying to cut your time short. Or making a liar out of Hostetler. And you can do me one."

"One."

"Let me see your guns."

"In the closet. On my vest."

A bantam rooster again, Thibido squeaked to the closet, pulled the curtain aside, felt for the vest on its hanger, and one at a time, with a kind of reverence, brought out the Remingtons. "Jesus." He inspected them professionally. "Just like I heard. Made to order."

"They were."

"Double-action?"

"Faster."

"But less accurate."

"Not if you know how."

"Modified, I suppose."

"A special mainspring, tempered. I had the factory file down the bents on the hammer, too. You get an easier letoff when you put pressure on the trigger."

"Five-and-a-half-inch barrels."

"Greased lightning."

"I'll stick to a Colt's."

"You do that."

The marshal cocked his head. "I could take them, you know. Now."

"But you wouldn't."

"Wouldn't I?"

"No." Books spoke evenly. "Because if you did, I'd go out and buy a gun, any gun. I can still get around. Then I'd come for you. Your deputies would swim the river. You'd be alone. You and I know how it would turn out. It would snow the day they buried you. So put my guns away."

It was the maximum Walter Thibido would take. He turned to the closet, and when he had pulled the curtain he fixed his hat on his head, spread his legs, and spoke as evenly as Books had.

"I also heard you are as mean a son of a bitch as ever lived. Well, you be a son of a bitch while you can. I told you, when I walked in here I was scared. No more. I'm not the one going away. You are. So be a gent and convenience everybody and do it soon. Six weeks is too long. I'll see you aren't lonesome. I'll drop in to cheer you up and watch your progress. And I'll do you another good turn."

Books waited.

"The day they lay you away, I will shit on your grave for flowers."

Books adjusted his crimson pillow. "That is a damned handsome suit you're wearing, Marshal."

A line of burros humped high with firewood for sale passed the house, coerced into a trot by a Mexican with a long cactus switch. Walter Thibido and Bond Rogers stood on her front porch.

"He is J. B. Books, isn't he?"

"Yes, ma'am, he is."

"I wouldn't have let him in the door had I known."

"I wouldn't have let him over the city limits."

"Surely he's going now."

Thibido hemmed and hawed. "Mrs. Rogers, I want to talk to you about that."

"You didn't back down!"

"I surely did not. But I'll put it to you confidentially, Mrs. Rogers. He won't be here long."

"Marshall, when my roomers find out who he is, they'll leave like scat. I can't afford that. They are my livelihood. Do you mean to tell me I can't decide who lives on my premises and who doesn't?"

"Ma'am, he's—" He clamped his jaw. "He won't be here long."

"He certainly won't!"

She was diverted. The ice wagon stopped, and she ordered fifty pounds. She watched closely as the iceman cut the block, weighed it, wiped off the sawdust, tonged the block onto his shoulder, then directed him to take it around and in the back way and mark her card, which was tacked by the door. Thibido meanwhile pondered how to soft-soap her and looked her over and concluded he wouldn't kick if he were required to snug up to her some cold night and hoped Ray Rogers had appreciated what he had at home.

"You represent the law," she began again.

"That's what I'm getting at, Mrs. Rogers. From a police standpoint, it's safer to have him here, where I can keep an eye on him, than letting him run loose. He's a dangerous man. He won't harm you, he's not that kind—guns and gunplay are his bread and butter. If he goes to leave, you telephone me right away."

"But my roomers. When they learn—"

"Don't tell 'em. We'll keep it amongst the three of us. That's counting your boy."

"I couldn't sleep. Just the thought of such a man, sitting there hour after hour—"

"In the meantime, the city will be much obliged to you."

"Gillom says he's killed thirty men."

Walter Thibido had other matters to attend. He struck an official pose. "Mrs. Rogers, I give you my word. He won't be with us long."

Denver, Colo., Jan. 22—This morning Claude Hilder, aged nineteen, shot Emma Douglas and Harry R. Haley, and then killed himself. The woman will probably recover. Haley is dangerously wounded in the lungs. Jealousy caused the tragedy. Hilder's brother, a returned Philippines soldier, killed himself recently, his mother also dying as the result of self-inflicted wounds. The family is said to be tainted with insanity.

Books put down the El Paso Daily Herald. He thought: This is where I am. A room in a rooming house on Overland Street in El Paso, Texas. I will be here until March, maybe, or April. It is the last place I will be. I had better have a close look at it.

The room was commodious, perhaps eighteen by twenty-two. The floor was wood, oak possibly, which would be dear in these parts, and the Wilton carpet was patterned with red and purple roses. Beside the bed and before the washbowl hooked oval rugs of orange and black had been laid to protect the carpet. The furnishings were quality, too: the leather armchair in which he sat; a library table between it and the bed, which was brass; under the bed a china slop-jar, along its rim a row of cherubs playing harps and providing musical accompaniment while you pissed; a straight chair; and the massive chiffonier, with five drawers. On the table, on a large doily, stood a lamp with two bulbs and pull-chains and an ornate shade. The material resembled isinglass, but it was frosted, and under this crystal coating blue, brown, and green birds of paradise were painted, so that when the lights were on the effect was vivid, almost magical. The birds seemed to take wing. On the table, under the shade, sat a glass candy compote, its cover in the shape of a stem of grapes. The compote was empty. He valued the washbowl, mirror, and towel rack. Shaving might be difficult later on, but at least he would not have to leave the room to manage it. The wallpaper featured sprays of blue and golden lilies against a white background, and there were two pictures, framed and under glass. In one, the smaller, a noble Indian sat astride his pony on a rocky promontory, surveying a wilderness with sorrowful mien. In the other, the setting was a woodland glade, and a tranquil pool about which, gazing at their reflections in the pool, knelt several nymphs, clad just diaphanously enough to reveal their rather buxom charms. They were not alone. Spying upon them from the foliage was a gang of half-men, half-goats, with horns and hoofs and hairy tails and legs, who appeared to him to be working up a lust to leap and lay hell out of the nymphs. The ceiling fixture was two bulbs suspended in glass domes. The closet curtain, on a rod, was green muslin. There were two windows with lace curtains, and the one to the south being raised, the lace was stirred by a breeze. He saw a shadow on the wall.

He eased himself off his pillow, edged along and around the bed and down the other side to the wall.

He hunched and, bending his left arm, thrust it swiftly through the open window and along the wall of the house like a hook. When his fingers met something, he seized it. He pulled.

Gillom was hauled along the wall by a suspender until his face was less than six inches from J. B. Books's face. Then another hand reached through the window and took him around the throat.

"You little bastard! You spy on me again and I'll nail your slats to a tree!"

The man had his throat in both hands now. "Recognized me, huh? Told your ma, didn't you? Who else did you blab to?"

"Mose," Gillom choked.

"Speak up!"

"Tarrant. At the stable."

He was lifted off his feet, shaken the way a terrier shakes a rat. "God damn you, boy! If you were mine I'd whip your setter so raw you'd stand the rest of your miserable life!"

Gillom did not resist. And as suddenly as he had been seized, he was let go. Books's face seemed to deform into ridges and furrows. He groaned. He went down on his knees inside the room, heavily. He turned his head sideways and rested, cheek down, on the windowsill.

Gillom withdrew a step and waited, rubbing his throat. Presently he asked, "Are you O.K., Mister Books?"

"O.K."

"Are you ailing?"

"Not as well as I might be."

Gillom chewed a lip. It was an unpleasant habit, chewing a lip and looking sour, as though he were eating himself and disliked the taste.

"Can you draw as fast, though?"

That brought up Books's head. He was prepared to let the boy have it again, both barrels, but the look on the face so near his was one of such unabashed awe, such flop-ear, wagtail admiration, that his anger was cooled, his pain assuaged.

"How did you know me, son?"

"Your guns."

"I had my coat on."

"I watched you. Through the window."

"I can't abide a skulker. If you want to see me, knock on my door like a man."

"Yes, sir."

"What about my guns?"

"Everybody's heard of 'em. Gosh. And you. You're the most famous person ever came to El Paso."

"It doesn't please your ma."

"She don't understand. Hell, she don't have the least idea who we've got living with us."

"But you do. And you can't keep your mouth shut. If you don't henceforth, I will come down hard on you."

"I will."

"Why aren't you in school?"

"Well, I quit."

"I can't tolerate a quitter, either. When you start something, finish it. Or don't start."

The boy was silent. Books grunted, got slowly off his knees. "Whatever you do, don't lollygag. Go do something useful."

Gillom grinned. "What do you do useful?"

Books was silent now. Divided by brick, they could not see each other.

"Can I fetch you anything, Mr. Books?"

"No."

"Can I shine your boots?"

"No."

"I must clean the room."

"Go ahead."

Aproned, her hair done up in a kerchief, Bond Rogers entered, carrying as subterfuge a dustcloth, a cake of Bon Ami, and a carpet sweeper. The room needed less than a lick and a promise, but she had schemed to have housework an excuse for him and a distraction for herself. She simply couldn't walk in and stand, back to the door again, or sit opposite him and have it out, she hadn't the courage. But by moving about, by keeping busy, half her mind on what she was doing, half on what she was saying, she might not only survive the ordeal, she might achieve what she wanted. She planned first to dust, and while doing so to remind him of the lie he had used to cheat his way into her house, and then, as he writhed with guilt, and as she ran the carpet sweeper, she could persuade him to betake himself elsewhere, perhaps to a den of iniquity more suitable to his appetites.

It went wrong from the start. In order to evade his eyes, to put the menace of the man in the armchair behind her, rather than dusting she began to scrub the washbowl. But that placed her next to the closet, in which hung his vest, and the proximity to his firearms gave her the shudders. She knew, too, that he was considering her, and probably her backside. She held the cake of Bon Ami to her nostrils as though it were smelling salts, but what she sniffed was vice, gunpowder, foul language, and the stench of death. And just as she opened her mouth to indict him again for taking criminal advantage of an alias, he spoke:

"I apologize, Mrs. Rogers."

"Apologize."

"For taking Hickok's name in vain."

"You should. But I will not accept it. The only way you can show repentance is to leave."

She scrubbed righteously, waiting.

"What is the sound I hear every half hour or so? Down by the corner. Like wheel rims on a wagon."

"Oh. Probably the streetcar. It passes our corner every half hour."

"The streetcar?"

"Yes. Mule-drawn. We've had them in El Paso for some time. They cross the river, too, and run back and forth from Ciudad Juárez. Mr. Books, I was asking you to leave."

"When will I have the honor of meeting Mr. Rogers?"

"My husband passed away last year."

"I am sorry."

She rinsed the bowl. "When my other roomers hear who you are, they will go, I can't stop them. This house is all I have—the income from it—and there's a loan against it at the bank. If I lose that income—"

"What did he do?"

"He was passenger agent here for the G & H, the railroad." She picked up the slippery cake of cleanser, dropped it, picked it up again, turned, and the gall of him, seated on a velvet pillow like a potentate on a throne while she did his menial chores, engendered in her the gumption she had needed from the beginning. "Mr. Books, I know all about you." She put hands on hips. "You are a vicious, notorious individual utterly lacking in character or decency."

"Passenger agent. Did he wear sleeve garters?"

"You are an assassin."

"I have been called many things."

"I believe my son. And Marshal Thibido. You've killed I don't know how many men."

"That is true."

"So you are an assassin."

"Depends which end of the gun you're on."

"Rubbish!"

He smiled. "They were in the process of trying to kill me." The smile, the mordant tone, most of all the remark, the common sense of which was unassailable, brought color to her cheeks again in spite of herself. Distraught, she snatched the dustcloth from her apron band and commenced to do the top of the chiffonier. "You misrepresented yourself to me basely, Mr. Books. You took advantage of a widow, a helpless woman."

"I don't know about helpless. You appear to me full of vim and vinegar."

"He said you won't be here long."

"Who?"

"Mr. Thibido."

"What else did he say?"

"That you are a dangerous man—which I scarcely needed telling." She ceased to dust. She bunched the cloth as though to make a weapon of it. "Long or not, I ask you for the last time to leave my house. If you cannot be a gentleman, you can at least take pity on my situation. Sir, I demand that you go. If it will give you pleasure, I will fall on my knees and beg—"

"No."

"Damn you."

"Mrs. Rogers, I can't."

"Can't!"

"I have nowhere to go."

"There are plenty of—"

"I have a cancer."

"You—"

"I am dying of it."

"Oh."

She did not really comprehend. She tucked the cloth into her apron.

"That's why I am in El Paso, to see Doc Hostetler. He took a bullet out of me once. He was here, as you know, and examined me. I have no chance."

She moved past him to the bowl, retrieved the cake of Bon Ami. She was like a woman walking in her sleep.

"Thibido was right. I won't stay long. Two months, maybe. Six weeks."

She crossed the room again, to the carpet sweeper, took it by the handle.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. I am the one helpless. I would leave, but no one would take me in."

Bond Rogers gave way then. She sank to the far side of the bed, covered her face with her hands, burst into tears.

"I know what is troubling you," he said. "Tending me. Well, you won't have to. Just bring me my meals and I will do what else is needed. I guarantee not to be a burden."

She tried to speak but could not.

"I will make it worth your while. I will give you four dollars a day."

She said something unintelligible.

"All I ask is that you keep this between us. It's out that I am in town, I can't help that, the harm's done. But I do not want my condition known. Somebody might get the idea I can't defend myself, and I am in deep enough as it is."

"No, not in my house!" She was sobbing uncontrollably. "Oh, no, please, God, no!"

Shoup and Norton were second cousins and drunk. They were playing billiards in the Acme. Concluding the game, they refilled at the bar and took a table in a corner of the saloon, bringing with them a platter of hard-boiled eggs and flies from the free lunch.

"Bring back them eggs," said the barkeep.

"They're free, ain't they?" demanded Norton.

"You get one egg, not the bunch. Take one apiece and bring 'em back."

Shoup pulled his pistol, laid it on the table. "You talk tough't'me, you slatty sonabitch, I'll part your hair on the other side."

The barkeep was a man named Murray, called "Mount" because, though he was very thin, he was six feet, four inches tall. Stooping, he brought forth a double-barreled Parker shotgun and placed it on the bar. "See this, Shoup? I am very sure with it. You go to put finger to trigger in here and I will fire one barrel and then the other and take off your stones one at a time. Separate. Now bring back them eggs."

Shoup kept one for himself, Norton kept one, Shoup returned the platter to the bar, then sat down again. They put heads together.

"Books," said Shoup.

"Books," said Norton.

"Three blocks from here."

"Three blocks."

"Shut up. I owe 'im from way back, in San Saba County. I owe Books an' you owe me."

"Unh-unh."

"There might could be a way. Two of us, we might could do it."

"I ain't goin' up agin' him nohow," Norton stated, lifting his egg and opening his mouth. "He's too sudden of a man."

Using the barrel of his pistol as though it were his hand, Shoup slapped egg, fingers, and mouth with one blow. Norton's eyes bulged at the impact. He choked on bloody egg. "You craven bastid," Shoup said. "I owe Books an' you owe me."

His landlady knocked and explained that a reporter from the newspaper was waiting on the porch. He wanted an interview.

"An interview? What about?"

"He didn't say."

"Send him in."

Before his visitor appeared, Books rose with some effort, straightened his tie, dropped the crimson pillow behind his chair, thought of putting on his coat, thought better of it, stood waiting.

"Mr. Books, J. B. Books, I'm most pleased to meet you, sir, and honored. The name is Dan Dobkins. I'm with the Daily Herald."

They shook hands. They sat down.

"As I said, Mr. Books, this is a great and unexpected honor. Thank you for seeing me, thank you very much."

"How'd you know I was in El Paso, Mr. Dobkins?"

"Why, it's common knowledge, sir. News like that spreads like wildfire, believe me. We ran the story this morning, that you're here and stopping with Mrs. Rogers and enjoying our salubrious winter climate, so on and so forth. Have you seen it?"

"No."

"Well, it was page one, I assure you."

"What can I do for you?"

"Well, sir."

Dobkins was a spindle-shanked young fellow in his late twenties, with a long nose and yellow shoes and a striped suit and an Adam's apple which was perpetually agitated. He smelled almost romantically of toilet water and talcum powder.

"That's what I came to talk to you about, Mr. Books. You must appreciate, sir, that you are the most celebrated shootist extant."

"Extant?"

"Still existing. Alive."

"I see."

"All the others are gone, I'm sorry to say—Hickok, Masterson, the Earps, Bill Tilghman, Ringo, Hardin, Doc Holliday, Sam Bass, Rowdy Joe Lowe—all the great names."

"That's true."

"The end of an era, the sunset, you might say. You're the sole survivor, Mr. Books, and we're thankful for that—I mean, your reputation is nationwide. This morning's story went out over the wires, and every daily of any consequence will run it. But it's only a teaser. They'll want more. Papers in the East in particular—a colorful figure like you is a hero to the dudes back there. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington—they'll run every word we send. Between us, Mr. Books, we can really put El Paso on the map."

"You're going the long way round the barn, Mr. Dobkins."

"Yes, sir. Well, sir, I would like tremendously to do a series of stories on John Bernard Books, the last shootist."

"A series?"

"Yes. How long will you be with us?"

"Not long."

"Oh. Well, I have a list of questions here." The reporter pulled a small note pad from his pocket. "I've made them up in advance—we could start today, right now, and get together again tomorrow."

"What kind of questions?"

"Let me see." Dobkins opened the note pad, took out a pencil. "There's been so much cheap fiction about gun men, as you know, Mr. Books. Dime novels, myths, downright lies, so on and so forth. I thought I'd get down to brass tacks for once—you know, the true story, the facts—while you're available, before anything happens to you. I mean, I hope nothing does, but—"

"The questions."

"Oh yes. Well, for example, we'd start at the beginning— your young years. What turned you to violence in the first place."

"Go on."

"These aren't questions so much as subjects. Then I'd want to cover your career factually—the statistics, you might say. How many duels you've had. How many victims."

Books nodded.

"I'd like to delve rather deeply into the psychology of the shootist—no one's ever done that seriously. How important is the instinct of self-preservation? What is the true temperament of the man-killer? Is he the loner they say? Is he really coolheaded under fire? Is he by nature bloodthirsty? Does he brood after the deed is done? Reproach himself? Or has he lived so long with death for a companion that he is used to it—the death of others, the prospect of his own?"

Dobkins was extemporizing. Carried away by rhetoric, he seemed unaware that his host had risen and moved to the closet. Books pushed aside the curtain and reached with one arm.

"Finally, I'd like to take one of your duels as an example and dissect it step by step, shot by shot. And afterward, how did you feel inwardly, when you came through unscathed? What were your emotions as you looked down upon your foe, mortally wounded, eyes glazing, breathing his last? What were his dying words? What did you reply? Oh, I see this as a splendid climax—we'll have the reader glued to—"

Dan Dobkins swallowed the rest of his sentence. His eyes glazed. He stared into the muzzle of a gleaming pistol.

"Open your mouth," Books said.

He opened his mouth. The barrel of the Remington was introduced to his tongue by an inch or two.

"Close your mouth. Don't bite down. Make believe it's a nipple. Suck."

Dobkins did as ordered.

"Now," Books said quietly. "Notice I have slipped the safety. This gun has a hair trigger. One fit or fidget and Mrs. Rogers will scrub your brains off the wallpaper with soap and water. Now put your pad and pencil away. Careful."

The reporter was careful.

"On your feet and start backward, toward the door. Don't shake or shiver or breathe—just suck. All right, move."

Dan Dobkins moved in slow motion, trembling, to his feet and commencing a kind of glide backward. He closed his eyes. His Adam's apple convulsed. He moaned.

"I'll open the door. You keep going. Through the entry. Easy."

Barrel in mouth, eyes closed, moaning, the reporter backed through the door and along the entry, Books following step by step. As they passed the parlor, Mrs. Rogers flew to her feet from the sofa. "Mr. Dobkins—Mr. Books, how dare you! What in heaven's name—"

"Be still, ma'am," Books warned. "We're in a touchy situation here."

She froze, hands stopping her mouth.

They reached the front doors. Reaching for the knobs, Books opened both doors and with his left hand spread them wide. He straightened, slipped the barrel of the Remington slowly from the reporter's mouth. Dobkins opened his eyes.

"Turn around."

"Please, Mr. Books, I beg—"

"Turn around."

Dobkins turned.

"Bend over."

Dobkins doubled.

Books stuck the pistol under his belt, steadied himself on his left leg, placed the sole of his right boot solidly against the young reporter's fundament.

"Dobkins, you are a prying, pipsqueak, talcumpowder little son of a bitch," he said. "If you ever come dandying around here again, I will kill you."

He shoved with all his strength. Dobkins hurtled through the doorway and across the porch with such momentum that, striking the edge of the top step with head and shoulders, he somersaulted down the flight and tumbled along the wooden sidewalk until he sprawled in a striped heap halfway to the street.

She upbraided him. After the shove, he had gone down on one knee. It was the most savage, most unjustified thing she had ever seen one person do to another, she said, and if she were a man she would horsewhip him for it. Suddenly he reeled up, his face like chalk, and twisted, and fell heavily against a wall. He stood for a moment, head bowed in agony, then put the flat of both hands against the wall to support himself and began, hand by hand, to work his way along the wall in the direction of his room. She feared he might collapse. She came to him and touched his hip as though to assist him. He struck her hand away, muttering that he would tend himself. When he reached the open door he gathered himself, lunged, hands extended, and lowered himself face down upon the bed. She asked if he wanted her to telephone the doctor. He shook his head no.

"Very well," Bond Rogers said. "I'm sure you are in no more discomfort than poor Mr. Dobkins, lying out there on the sidewalk. And if you are, Mr. J. B. Books, it serves you right."

Hostetler found him supine upon the bed, his head pillowed.

"You all right?"

"Yes."

"What happened?"

"I kicked a reporter out of here. It damned near tore me in two."

"Excitation of the cells. You can't do that kind of thing any more, you know."

"I know now. Here, I'll get up."

"No, don't. You lie there and I'll sit by you."

The doctor closed the door behind him and took the armchair by the bed.

"First things first, Doc. I forgot to ask. How much do I owe you?"

Hostetler smiled. "You're a man after my heart, Mr. Books. They usually ask that last, if they do at all. Oh, make it a dollar for the drug and four dollars for the two calls. Don't get up."

"In the closet, in the coat pocket, my wallet. Help yourself."

"I will later." From his bag the physician pulled a book bound in brown leather. "I promised to bring you this. Bruce's Principles of Surgery. There's a section on carcinoma you can read if you wish. I've turned down the page corner." He laid it on the library table. "Now." On the table he set a twelve-ounce bottle filled with purplish liquid. "Here you are. Your medicine."

"What is it?"

"Laudanum. A solution of opium in alcohol."

"Opium? Can't that get to be a habit?"

"It can. An addiction, in fact. But in your case—" The doctor shrugged.

Books scowled. "Yes. What's it taste like?"

"Terrible. But there's a consolation. You'll likely have dreams."

"Dreams?"

"Amazing dreams. Perhaps you'll even have visions. Are you much of a reader?"

"No."

"I confess I am, since we're in private. There's an English poet, Coleridge—Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He took opium habitually for a time, as I understand it, and waking one day, wrote down a poem he had composed in his sleep. Based to some extent on the vision he'd had. Quite a phenomenal thing. Kubla Khan, it's called. I can recollect the first two lines and the last four. Let me think." Charles Hostetler removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Ah, yes, 'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure-dome decree.'"

"Xanadu? Where's that?"

"Who knows? Some strange and oriental sphere of the imagination. Probably in the Near East. Khan must have been some kind of potentate. The last four lines I find unforgettable. 'Weave a circle round him thrice/ And close your eyes with holy dread/ For he on honeydew hath fed/ And drunk the milk of Paradise.'" He shook his head. "What it means, I'm sure I don't know, but it certainly has a lilt to it."

Books was looking at the laudanum. "The milk of Paradise—at least there's alcohol in it. What's the stuff for?"

"It's the most potent painkiller we have."

"Oh. How much do I take?"

"As much as you need. When you need it. Prescribe for yourself. A spoonful should do you at first."

"Later?"

Hostetler put on his spectacles. "You'll require more and more. It will have less and less effect, I'm afraid."

The two men were silent. A dwindle of sunlight touched the bottle on the table between them, refracting a purple image upward onto the crystalline lampshade, where it nested raucously among the blue, brown, and green birds of paradise. The silence was one of mutual reticence. Books did not care to ask, Hostetler had no desire to respond. So they waited, each for the other. It was the doctor who broke a path, even though oblique, for both of them.

"I haven't much of a bedside manner," he admitted. "Never have had. In a case like yours, I'm damned if I can be cheery. And poetry's no help."

"You're sure it's cancer."

"Unquestionably. I wish I could do more, Books, but I can't. Someday we'll lay the monster low, I'd bet on it, but that's in the future, probably long after I'm gone myself. The present is where we are now."

Books unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. "You said last time I can still be up and about a while yet. For how long?"

"I don't know. But you will. One morning you'll wake and say to yourself, 'I can't go out any more. I couldn't even dress myself. Here I am, in this bed, and here I'll stay.'"

They were silent again.

"God damn it," Books said.

"Yes. God damn it," said Hostetler.

"A hell of a way to go," Books said.

"A hell of a way to go," said Hostetler.

Books laid a hand on the Principles of Surgery, then withdrew it. "You told me it would be a hard death. How hard?"

The physician closed his bag, stepped to the closet, reached inside for the coat, and brought out a wallet. "How much did I say? Five?"

"All right, Doc. How hard?"

"Five, yes. Beware of morbidity." He replaced the wallet and pulled the curtain.

"I want to know, Hostetler. What will happen to me?"

Hostetler tucked away his own wallet, came behind the leather chair, and picking up his bag, placing it in the seat, put both hands on the back. He was a short, stoutish man of sixty or so, with short gray hair and benign blue eyes. "Unless you insist, I'd rather not talk about it."

"I insist."

Hostetler pursed his lips. "You will waste away. The process will be slow at first, then rapid."

"Waste away?"

"Loss of flesh. Known as 'cachexia.'"

"What else?"

"The bones of the face become prominent. The skin takes on a grayish cast. You will be a pretty awful sight. No one will dare tell you, but you will. Pretty awful."

"What else?"

"There will be increasing severity of pain. In the lumbar spine, in the hips and groins."

"What else?"

"Must we go on?"

"Yes."

"Your water will shut off progressively. The bladder will swell because you can't unload it. You will gradually become uremic. Poisoned by your own waste products, due to a failure of the kidneys."

"That all?"

"By this time the agony will be unbearable, and no drug will moderate it. Hopefully, you will become comatose. Until you do, you will scream."

"Jesus Christ."

Charles Hostetler picked up his bag, walked to the door. His look for the first time was severe, almost angry. "I regret you forced me to be specific, Mr. Books. If you need me, telephone. Good day, sir."

He banged the door behind him. He opened it again at once, re-entered, and closed the door apologetically. "I'm sorry I was short with you. There's just one more thing I'll say. If you stop to think about it, we have considerable in common. Both of us have a lot to do with death. I stave it off when I can. You inflict it when you have to. I am not a brave man, but you must be, by virtue of your avocation. Well, you can be braver now than you have ever been, and it won't help you a tinker's damn. This is not advice, not even a suggestion, just something to reflect upon while your mind is still clear." He studied his shoe tops for a moment. "If I were in your circumstances, I know what I would not do."

"What?"

Charles Hostetler listened, as though to take care he were not overheard. "I won't put it in so many words. It runs counter to the ethics of my profession. But I would not die a death such as I have just described."

"No?"

"I would not. Not if I had your courage. I would not. And especially your skill with weapons."

Books stared at him.

"Good-by."

Books stared at him. "Thank you."

That night he could not sleep for pain. He got out of bed, pulled on the lamp, sat down on his pillow, picked up the book Hostetler had brought, and examined the title page. The author of Principles of Surgery was "James W. D. Bruce, Professor of Surgery in the University of Edinburgh; Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary." The volume had been published in Philadelphia by Lea and Blanchard in 1878.

He found the turned-down page corner and opened the book to the section headed "Carcinoma." He read the author's definition: "This is the occult malignant tumour, whose open condition is termed Cancer." He continued to read, slowly, until he came to this passage, and finished it:

The cachectic state of system becomes more and more aggravated; sleep is gone; appetite fails; emaciation is great, and still increasing; the sallow, wan, cadaverous expression of face becomes more marked; the whole frame grows bloodless; a malignant hectic, as it may be termed, is established; and life is gradually exhausted, in much physical misery.

He slapped the book shut. He could read no more of it. But something, the shutting perhaps, caused an access of pain so excruciating that he sat forward, fists on forehead, and rocked himself. When he opened his eyes he saw the bottle on the table. What was it Hostetler had said? A spoonful should do him at first? He reached for it, uncapped, tipped, and swallowed what he judged was a spoonful of the laudanum. It had a bitter taste. He capped the bottle, replaced it, sat back, waited. Relief came within minutes. It was not so much a cessation of pain as an overture, warm and seductive, throughout his pelvic region, of insensitivity—this accompanied at the same time by a slow flood of euphoria. He was laved, as though by pleasure. He rose from the chair easily, without discomfort, for the first time in two months. He grinned like a boy.

He pulled out the light, got back into bed, settled himself, grinned again, and slept.

He dreamed. He did not have a vision. He dreamed of the gunfight in the restaurant in Bisbee, Arizona, the only scrap in which he had ever been wounded. The two men who had thrown down on him, the men he had killed, were faceless now; he had never seen them before that night, when they had earlier exchanged insults with him at a monte table in a saloon. He had not even known their names. But it had not been either of them who hit him, it had been a third party, a complete stranger, a drunk, a spectator as uninvolved as a spider on the ceiling, who lurched up from a table and a meal and drew and felled Books with a bullet in the belly and walked out of the restaurant picking his teeth. Books had long ago learned that the outcome of most gunplay was unpredictable. Too often, when weapons were pulled and working, it was not the principals who had their way. It was some nobody, some butt-in with a secret compulsion to use a gun once in his life on another human being or to die spectacularly, some six-fingered bastard who couldn't when sober hit a cow in the teats with a tin cup, who rushed from the wings and directed the last incalculable act of the drama. Bat Masterson had said you had to have guts, proficiency with firearms, and deliberation. In short, you had to be professional. He hadn't mentioned the eye you had to have in the back of your head for the dumb-ass amateur. But then, Masterson had always been full of shit.

He dreamed, too, of Serepta, of making love to her and of the sound which issued from her open mouth as she neared her coming. It was like the mourning of a dove at first, an elegy for youth and strength and beauty being spent, and in the spending being lost forever; then swiftening, rising in pitch and power as she achieved orgasm, it was as though her heart were in her mouth, pulsing a song of life for him, an ululation at once tragic and exultant: la, la, la, la, la, la, la. He had never heard another woman make such a sound in sex.

He woke.

Pain woke him.

He pulled on the lamp and squinted at his watch. The laudanum had given him almost four hours.

"You'll need more and more," Hostetler had said. "It will have less and less effect."

He debated hitting the purple bottle again, decided against it.

He thought: That was a peculiar thing, Hostetler saying it before I thought of it. I would have later, probably, but I am glad he did now. There is nothing yellow about it. It makes good sense. A man is a fool to die slow if he does not have to. And I will know when to do it, too, Hostetler said I would. There will come a day. On that day I will take care of it. I am damned if John Bernard Books will go screaming.

He put his right hand on the congenial steel of the gun under his pillow, his left on that of the one at his side under the covers. He had slept with his guns for years. He wondered which of them he would use.

Books thought: No matter.

He thought: Both are friends of mine.