The Shootist

Jack Pulford ran the faro layout at Keating's, one of the ninety-six saloons in El Paso. He was noted for his toilet and his skill with a revolver. A singularly handsome blond man of forty or so, he was shaved by a barber, and since his hands, as he said, were the tools of his trade, and the dealing of faro required that they be on constant display, he also had the barber trim and buff his fingernails. He wore a low-cut linen vest and a clean white silk shirt every day. The shirt was set with diamond studs. He carried a small .36-caliber Smith & Wesson in an unobtrusive but businesslike holster high and handy on his right hip. Pulford was acknowledged the best pistol shot in west Texas. He could draw and fire with astonishing rapidity and accuracy, and practiced often with targets before an admiring audience on the town baseball field. It was gossiped that he had killed a man in Abilene, and a deputy sheriff in Lander, Wyoming, and although neither killing could be verified locally, they were fact.

One exploit, however, on a February night in 1899, had guilt-edged his status in El Paso. Dealing faro then at the Gem, handling both the case and cage himself, he had been accused of bracing the deck by a man named Cleo James. Pulford slapped James twice, returned his losses, and had him ejected. James took his grudge elsewhere, embellished it with liquor, obtained a gun, returned to the Gem, and began firing at Pulford as he entered the front door, much to the dismay of the clientele. It was an error of judgment compounded by the distance between him and his target. Pulford sat in the back room, the gambling room, of the saloon, framed by the doorway. James had fired four shots at him by the time the gambler rose, drew, aimed, and killed him with a single round through the heart. A bull's-eye at such long range, and under fire, was incredible. A tape measure was produced. Between the place where James fell and Pulford fired, the measure was eighty-four feet, three inches.

He was presiding at the table one night in late January, two years later, when one of the players remarked that J. B. Books was in town, holed up in a boardinghouse on Overland. But everyone knew. The game continued. And very bad off, the player added, very bad off. Dying of a cancer.

That stopped the game. The informant was closely questioned. He had it on the best authority. He'd heard it from a friend who'd heard it from Thibido himself, the marshal. Books was cashing in.

For some reason everyone glanced at Jack Pulford. "That's hard news," he said, studying the sheen of his fingernails. "There was a man I could've beat."

No one at the table doubted him out loud.

He had been taking laudanum only at night, two spoonfuls, one at bedtime, one four hours later. This afternoon the pain would not allow him to wait until bedtime. It was his first dose during the afternoon.

Relieved at once, he picked up his newspaper and began to read an article headed The Bloomerite of '01:

There is much discussion going on now in regard to woman's dress on the bicycle. A New York writer furnishes the following on the bloomer question. It's a hard question to answer. A year ago women who blushed at the mere mention of bloomers now wear them gladly, defiantly, and gracefully. True, the bloomers are almost as voluminous as skirts, but at any place frequented by women cyclists about the metropolitan district it is quite apparent that the bloomers are shrinking slowly but surely. Women talk now of the full bloomer, the three-quarter bloomer, and the half-bloomer. When the fractions get a trifle smaller, the bloomer will have shrunk into tight-fitting knickerbockers.

Black satin bloomers are a common sight on the great Brooklyn bicycle road running to Coney Island. As a matter of fact, the bloomer habit is much stronger in quiet Brooklyn than in dashing New York. Perhaps it is because…

"Come in."

Bond Rogers had knocked. "Mr. Books."

"Mrs. Rogers. What is your opinion of bloomers?"

"I beg your pardon!"

He rustled his newspaper. "I was reading about them. They have become the rage in New York City. It says that women who blushed at the mention of them a year ago now wear them 'gladly, defiantly, and gracefully.'"

She had gone as crimson as his pillow. "I came to see—" she began. "What was it? Oh yes, what you can eat. I mean, if you can have what I'm serving tonight."

"No, you didn't."

"I wish you would stop contradicting me."

"I wish you would say what you mean."

"Very well. I'm sorry about the other day, after Mr. Dobkins left. The reporter."

"After I kicked him out."

"I apologize for my lecture. It was probably unchristian of me. And also my breaking down when you told me of your—your affliction. I'm sorry. I realize no one else would take you in. So I wanted to say, I will do whatever I can for you."

"Thank you. I can eat anything. I am sorry myself that I struck your hand away. I guaranteed not to be a burden to you, and I have been too proud, most of my life, to take help from anybody. I will have to learn. Do sit down a minute."

"Well."

"Please do."

She took the straight chair. "Is the doctor sure? That you have cancer?"

"He is."

"Isn't there anything he can do?"

Books indicated the purple bottle. "He gave me that. It's a painkiller—laudanum."

"Laudanum? Isn't that habit-forming?"

"So?"

She realized. "Oh. Yes. How silly of me."

He considered her. "Mrs. Rogers, are you afraid of me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Those guns in the closet. What you've done with them. The kind of man you are."

"Up to two months ago you'd have had every right to be. Afraid. A lot of people have been. But not now."

"I hope not."

"You may have been afraid of too much," he said. "Widows sometimes are, women alone. My being here will help you get over that. Maybe I will be good for you."

"Good for me?"

"Yes. I have never been afraid of anything. Cautious, yes, but that's different. Maybe I can bring out the spunk in you. I'm sure it is there."

The turn of the conversation disquieted her. She rose quickly. "I must get started with supper." She moved toward the door.

Since her back was turned, and she could not see the effort it required, he hauled himself upright. "Before you go, Mrs. Rogers, there's a favor I'd like to ask. I have been in this room too long. I wondered if you would go for a drive in the country with me tomorrow morning. I will hire a hack."

"Tomorrow? Oh, I couldn't, Mr. Books, thank you just the same. Don't you know about tomorrow?"

"No."

"President McKinley will be in El Paso. There's to be a parade, the McGinty Band will play, and all the school children are to march, carrying flags. He's expected to speak in the plaza. I couldn't miss that."

He leaned on the back of the armchair. "Are you sure that is your reason?"

"I certainly am."

"I wish you would reconsider. If there is a big shindig downtown, that's fine. We can skin out of town with no one the wiser. I do not care to be seen. Just for an hour or two?"

"Mr. Books, I appreciate—"

"You don't care to be alone with me. O.K., have your boy come along for a chaperon."

"It isn't that, I assure you. I've been widowed only a year. People would—"

"People." He scowled. "Ma'am, if I have to work on your sympathy, I will. This may be the last chance I will have. Doc Hostetler says there will come a day when I can't get out of bed. Before that day I want to see the world again—the skies and spaces—and I do not fancy seeing it alone. I have been full of alone lately. All we have done, you and I, since I moved in here, is scratch at each other, and then apologize. Well, if I am going to die in your house, I think we should try to be friends. So I wish like hell you would go with me. I apologize for the language."

Bond Rogers had not imagined he had that many words in him, or that much eloquence. It was true: under the menace, below the profanity, at the end of the fuse of violence which smoldered always, was the child with a stubbed toe who needed comforting. She had come upon that child in Ray, although the qualities which obscured it were kindly in his instance rather than reprehensible. Behind her husband's smiling face was a soul. Under this man's coat there were guns. She wished with all her heart that she had loved Ray more while she had him, and let him know it. For suddenly it was too late, he was gone forever. This man, awaiting grimly her response, would decline day by day, but die he would, just as surely as Ray, and much more terribly, and under her roof, too. It seemed to her that she must not make the same mistake twice. She feared what Books was, she despised what he had been, but she had taken him into her house and permitted him to remain when he had informed her almost casually that his case was hopeless; the least she could do in his last days, then, was to extend a kind though decorous hand. She searched for a text, and found it. "And the greatest of these," she sermonized herself, "is Charity."

"I will go with you," she said.

"Capital." It was the first genuine smile she had seen on his face. "Let's make it ten o'clock. Just for an hour or two. Invite your son along. And will you ask him to trot down to the livery in the morning and bring us a rig?"

"Yes," she said.

"I am very much obliged," he said.

She decided to test Gillom. She had not been invited anywhere by a man for a year. His reaction might reveal something she should know.

She told him, but he was inscrutable. He said that was swell. She learned nothing.

Then she added that he was invited too. His face lit up like a fiesta. He smacked a palm with a fist. "Hot damn!"

"You'll miss seeing the President."

"Who cares? How many men's McKinley killed?"

"I scarcely—"

"J. B. Books and us! Gosh, Ma, d'you think he'll bring his guns along?"

"I hope not."

"What if somebody sees him that hates him? What if there's a shoot-out and we're in on it?" Gillom crouched, drew, and fired his finger. "Bing! Bang! Bango!"

What his mother learned about her son was not what she had expected to.

At ten o'clock Books donned his vest and frock coat, which was tailor-made in the Prince Albert mode but single-breasted rather than double, so that he had quick entry to his vest, adjusted his Stetson, started, then returned for a spoonful of laudanum. He had determined to leave his pillow but, given the torment his rump would be sure to take in a gig or a buckboard, he did not believe he could do without the intercession of the drug. It was his first morning dose, though he relied on it afternoons now, as well as nights.

Mrs. Rogers waited for him on the porch. He took her arm. Gillom Rogers waited behind a team on the front seat of a phaeton—not a gig or a buckboard but a phaeton—a black four-wheeled, spring-seated, gilt-spoked, folding-top equipage fit for a king or a president or the madam of a high-priced parlor house.

"Mighty stylish," Books commented.

"I didn't think you ought to ride in any old hack, Mister Books. Mose Tarrant had to dust this one off. He says he don't rent it too often, except for funerals. Hop in, ladies and gents!"

"Keep to the back streets," said Books.

"Yes, sir."

Books opened the door, seated his landlady and himself in the rear. Gillom took the reins and clucked. The team stepped out smartly.

Their way was eastward. The streets were empty, for most of El Paso's populace and traffic had gravitated to the plaza for the McKinley parade and speechifying. Brass music drifted down the hollow thoroughfares. Between closed and shuttered stores the drumbeats loitered. Gillom chauffeured them north and, as the political discord faded, followed San Antonio Street out of town along the valley of the Rio Grande.

It was a drear day. Under a gray sky, under an impassive mountain, under a crow which accompanied it for a time, the phaeton rolled, the only sounds the inquiry of the crow, a grit of pebbles, a creak of harness, the snort and footfall of the team at a trot. Weather in west Texas this time of year depended on the whim of wind. When it came down the pass from the north as now, snow was not uncommon, though transient, but an immigrant wind from the south, from Old Mexico or the Gulf, turned the valley tropical overnight, drenching it often with rain and bloating the river into flood. When either of these winds desisted the hours were dry, the sun shone, the air glittered.

In the front seat, his jacket collar up against the chill, Gillom tended to his knitting. Books asked his guest if she wished the top raised. She did not, thank you. She was protected by an ankle-length coat, her head and shoulders by a shawl of black wool.

They dusted through Ysleta, a huddle of small adobe houses and a church with a broken cross. Children with brown and ancient eyes stared after them, and starving dogs gave chase. Then they were out under the gray sky again, into the silence and the long, long valley. They passed between vineyards, the vines sere and leafless, between barrens of stub corn and the winter tatter of squash and beans and melons. They saw a yoke of oxen in the distance, plodding toward the edges of the world.

Books leaned forward, pointed at a line of cottonwoods. His driver nodded, reined the team off the road and into a field and to a stop alongside an acequia, or irrigation ditch. He gangled down, tied the team, and opening the rear door, bowed low.

"Time to stretch your legs, folks."

His passengers alighted. From a pocket he slipped a pint bottle, offered it to Books. "Time to grease your tonsils, too."

"Gillom Rogers! Is that whiskey?" demanded his mother.

"Heck, no, Ma. Tiger milk."

Books accepted the bottle. "Do you want him to have this?" he asked her.

"I do not."

Books put it away in a pocket of his coat. "Take a walk, son."

Gillom chewed a lip. "Don't call me son, Mr. Books. I have a name."

"Take a walk, Gillom."

The youth looked at one, then the other, grinned as though he knew a secret, and left them, traipsing down the ditch.

Books took Bond Rogers' arm and walked with her along the acequia. The water was swift and clear, a gift from the Rio Grande and the law of gravity. The cottonwoods which lined it were immense, a hundred years old, and the leaves were winter gold.

"He needs a father, and a woodshed, and a strap," said Books. "Why don't you marry again?"

"Are you feeling all right?"

"As well as can be. Why don't you marry again?"

"That is none of your affair."

"I do not have time to be polite."

"Very well. I haven't been asked, for one thing. For another, I loved my husband and still do."

"Why?"

"I can't count the reasons. He was splendid with Gillom, for example. They went to ballgames, fishing, to bullfights over in Ciudad Juárez, everywhere together. Ray played cornet in the McGinty Band, and Gillom would sit through every concert."

"Ray. What did he die of?"

"A stroke, they think. He simply failed to come home for supper one evening. They found him slumped at his desk."

"He was lucky."

"No. He was forty-one."

Books strolled thoughtfully at her side, hands clasped behind his back. "Did he leave you much?"

"Just the house, which we built. By means of a large loan at the bank. And Gillom, of course."

"He worries you."

"You noticed. He certainly does. He refuses to attend school, preferring to hang around Utah Street. Today is the first time I've seen him with whiskey, but I'm sure he drinks when he can. He curses. He has stolen from my purse. He comes in at all hours and won't account to me. If his father were here it would be different, but he isn't."

"Why do you say that?"

"Woman's intuition. Male logic. He loved Ray deeply. Now he hates him for dying and hates me for living. He even hates himself, I suspect—I'm not clear why. Perhaps he thinks he must be the man of the family now, and fears he may not be man enough, and therefore must prove it." She stopped. "How I grieve for him. He bears a grudge against God, I guess. I can't reason with him—all I can do is mother him, and he doesn't want that."

Books had halted. "You could give him another father."

"Who? One like you? So he could be taught how to handle a gun and murder and carouse? Oh, he respects you all right—he's in absolute awe of you. He'd shine your boots if you asked." Her tone grew harsh. "Oh no, thank you, J. B. Books! Don't you dare be his dime-novel hero! Don't you dare let him love you and respect you the way he did his father—ever! You're not worthy of it!"

She glared at him. Books scowled at her, then put hands behind back and resumed their promenade. "Can't you send him away?"

She caught up. "On the next train if I could. El Paso's no place to rear a boy, especially if one is alone. I have a cousin in Massachusetts, and near her there's a private school, the Milton Academy. I'd give anything to send him there for a year or two—but five hundred dollars might as well be the moon." She tightened her shawl about her. "Let's leave the subject. Please enjoy your outing. Why should you care about us anyway, Gillom and me? You have concerns enough of your own."

He turned to one of the cottonwoods and put his back to it comfortably, letting the trunk take his weight. He said, "I have no one else to care about."

The statement disarmed her. She joined him, leaning herself against the trunk, which was five feet in diameter. These trees had great gnarled roots twisting down into the acequia, stealing from it in all seasons their stature and endurance.

"Are you married?" she asked.

"No. I was once. I was eighteen. She died, trying to have a girl. So did the child."

"I'm sorry. You should have married again. The right woman might have changed the course of your life."

"I doubt it. I have a sudden nature."

"It's my turn to pry. How long have you been—been a gun man? Perhaps I should use the term the paper did the other morning—it has so much more dignity—a 'shootist'?"

"I don't think of myself as either."

"You don't? Well, if not, what are you?"

"I have earned a living several ways. I speculated in cotton, down in Louisiana. I bought and sold cattle once, at the railhead in Kansas. I struck a little gold. I have made a good deal at cards over the years, and lost a good deal, too. In general, I have had a damned good time. Till lately."

"Lately, yes. Have you relatives?"

"I used to have, over in San Saba County. I don't know where they are."

"What about friends?"

"No."

"None at all?"

"I have always herded by myself."

"Do you mean no one will come to see you? Or people you'll want to send word to, that you are—"

"Going to perdition? No."

"I'm shocked. I pity you, truly. To have no one now—that is indeed a tragedy."

"Here comes Gillom."

He dawdled toward them, pitching stones into the ditch.

"What does 'J.B.' stand for?" she asked quickly.

"John Bernard. What is yours?"

"Bond."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Bond."

"How do you do."

He moved away from the tree to meet Gillom. To her surprise she noted, when they met, that her son was taller than Books. She had never looked at the man-killer that way. She had equated notoriety with height. Suddenly she saw a pistol in his hand.

"Ever fired one of these?" Books asked Gillom.

"A couple times. A guy I know, name of Cobb, let me fire his Colt's. He's got two beauties."

"Want to try this one?"

"Gee, do I!"

"All right." Books pointed. "See the knot in that trunk yonder? It's about sixty feet away. Stand, aim, and fire five rounds. Easy when you pull. It's a hair trigger."

"Why not six?"

"You keep the hammer chamber empty. An extra safety. Never load six unless you're sure you will be using the weapon."

"Oh. Why such a short barrel?"

"Speed."

"Oh. O.K. Ma'll have a conniption, though." Gillom took the Remington, faced the cottonwood, raised his right arm, aimed. "There's no sight!"

"Close in, you don't need one. Steady now. Take your time. Pull easy."

Gillom fired five times, slowly, re-aiming after each round. The shots were muffled by leaves and the lowering sky, and fell like a single syllable upon the ear despite the intervals between rounds, for the echo of one explosion was fused with the explosion of the next round. Through a haze of powder smoke the youth turned, his expression one of such wonder, such ecstasy, that it was almost grotesque, to find Books with a second pistol in hand, a few feet away, aiming at a knot in the tree adjacent to his own target.

The man fired five times, even more deliberately, and lowered his arm.

Gillom jumped to him, returned his weapon, then dashed to examine the two knots while Books reloaded immediately from a box of bullets.

"My spread's no bigger'n yours! Hey, damn if I didn't tie you! Hey, look, Ma!" Gillom whooped. "I tied 'im! Look!"

She had not moved, did not move.

Books put the guns away inside his coat. He appeared disinterested in his marksmanship. Together they walked back to Bond Rogers. Gillom strutted.

When they approached, her lips were a thin, stern line. "Why did you do it?" she accused the man.

"A weapon wants firing regularly. Otherwise it fouls when you need it."

"You mean, the main purpose of this drive was to shoot those guns?"

"That was one. I had others."

"I want to go home," she said. "Now."

"If you wish. Here."

He gave Gillom the pint bottle. Gillom winked at him, grinned at his mother, and shoved it in his jacket.

Bond Rogers' fingers worked the wool of her shawl in frustration. Striding to the phaeton, she opened the rear door herself, seated herself. Books joined her. Gillom untied the team and climbed aboard. Instead of taking the reins, however, he stepped up and sat facing his passengers on the top of the front seat. Just then the gray sky above them was slit by a knife of blue, and such was the position of the sun behind the ceiling of cloud that the vehicle and its occupants were encompassed by light. It was a phenomenon.

Gillom gazed at the gun man as does a pup its master. "Mr. Books, how many men have you killed?"

"Gillom, you have no right to ask that," his mother rebuked.

Books considered his questioner. "I disremember," he said.

"How could you kill so many?"

"Gillom!"

"Everybody has laws he lives by, I expect. I have mine as well."

"What laws?"

Bond Rogers was dismayed. Yet she waited, evidently as curious as her son.

"I will not be laid a hand on. I will not be wronged. I will not stand for an insult. I don't do these things to others. I require the same from them."

To untangle his tongue, Gillom made a face. "What I meant was, how could you get into so many fights and always come out on top? I tied you."

"I had to," said Books. "It isn't being fast, it is whether or not you're willing. The difference is, when it comes down to it, most men are not willing. I found that out early. They will blink an eye, or take a breath, before they pull a trigger. I won't."

As miraculously as the sky had opened, it was sealed, and the three sat once more in chill and shade. A wind mourned through the dry leaves of the cottonwoods. The team stomped, restive.

"Do you regret the life you've lived, Mr. Books?" the woman asked.

He looked a hole through Gillom. "I regret I quit school too soon. And frittered away my young years in bad company. At that age, I was too big for my britches."

"I was thinking of your victims."

"Mrs. Rogers, I have never killed a good man."

"How do you know? It's the Lord who should judge, surely, not weak, mortal creatures like us."

Books lay back against the leather. He seemed weary. "From my observation, ma'am, the Lord has not made a very damned good job of it. Let me put an individual at the business end of a gun and I will judge as well as He can."

That evening he perused his newspaper. He noted two items in particular, the first in the humor column:

"Last night, when I accepted Harry" said Miss Stockson Bonds, who was suspicious as well as homely, "he kissed me on the forehead."

"The idea!" exclaimed Miss Pepprey.

"I wonder why he didn't kiss me on the lips," said Miss Stockson Bonds. "Oh, horrors! Probably he had been drinking!"

"Very likely," said Miss Pepprey. "That is, if he proposed to you."

The drive into the valley and the tensions between mother, son, and himself, strung as taut between the three as telephone wires, had worn him to the bone. Pain made the paper rustle in his fingers. He had had to take two doses of laudanum since their return, and he could wait no longer for another. He took a spoonful.

The second item was an advertisement:

Yes, August Flower has the largest sale of any medicine in the civilized world. Your mothers and grandmothers never thought of using anything else for Indigestion or Biliousness, Doctors were scarce, and they seldom heard of Appendicitis, Nervous Prostration or Heart Failure. They used August Flower to clean out the system and stop fermentation of undigested food, regulate the action of the liver, and stimulate the nerves, and that is all they took when feeling dull and bad with headaches and other aches. You only need a few doses of Green's August Flower, in liquid form, to make you satisfied that there is nothing seriously the matter with you!

He stripped to his longjohns, used the slop-jar, opened the windows, pulled out the lamp, and got into bed, pearl-handled Remington under the covers, black under his pillow.

Pain woke him at one o'clock. The analgesic effect of the laudanum was of shorter duration now. He had another spoonful, and slept again.

He woke again just after four in the morning. This was a new agony. It was as though two iron screws were being rotated inch by inch into his pelvic region, laterally, from hip to hip, and upward, from genitals to navel. In too much haste for the spoon, he tilted the bottle. Pressure on his bladder would have roused him in any event. Taking the slop-jar from under the bed, he squatted over it and waited for relief. Frequently, such was the state of his plumbing, he had to wait three or four minutes to achieve flow.

He closed his eyes, conjecturing drowsily whether or not he had made a mistake after all, allowing Gillom Rogers to target-practice with one of the guns the day before. At a certain age, boys fell in love with firearms more readily than with girls. Some of them never recovered.

He opened his eyes. They sent to his brain the impression of a shadow upon the lace curtain of the window at the south. His brain resisted the impression. It was four in the morning. The moon would have declined. He squinted.

The shadow moved.

Books did likewise.

Deliberately, without waste motion, and soundlessly, he lifted the slop-jar to a place between the library table and the armchair, out of the way.

Kneeling by the bed, he bunched the sheet and blankets lengthwise and eased the black-handled pistol from beneath the pillow.

As he let himself down by the bed onto his back, one hand on the frame under the mattress, gun in the other, he became conscious of a second shadow, this one in the curtain folds of the western window. So there were two of them.

He crabbed himself under the bed—not at the center, under the bunched covers, but at the side. The fingers of his left hand clenched the frame.

The curtains at the south window were parted by the head and shoulders of a man. He hesitated, adjusting his vision.

Extending his arm, the intruder fired four rounds into what resembled a sleeping figure in the center of the bed. After the last he climbed rapidly over the sill into the room.

Simultaneously, there was a gunflash through the west window and, having fired, the second assailant propelled himself through it with such awkward force that he tore the curtain from the wall.

Standing over the bed, the first man let go a fifth, an insurance, round into the bunched covers.

In close confines, the reports were like detonations. The floor of the room seemed to heave. The walls of the room hurled thunder at each other. Six rounds had been fired within twenty seconds, five by the man who had entered through the south window, one by the man through the west. Books had counted.

Using his left arm, levering his upper body into the open like a reptile striking from a crevice, he fired twice at the man to his left, the west, heard the smack of lead into flesh, then recoiled below.

The man grunted, fell backward, shrouded in lace, crashing against the washbowl to the floor.

Still crouched over the bed, the first intruder fired at Books's gunflash, and the bullet splintered a corner of the library table.

Instantly, levering himself even with the upper edge of the mattress, Books fired once at him. He staggered backward to the wall, dropped his empty weapon.

"Don't kill me, Books, oh Christ don't kill me!" he screamed. "I'm shot out!"

Books came cautiously to his knees.

There was ample light now. The bunched bedcovers were on fire.

Through the flames, Books watched the wounded man crawl toward the south window, flop himself on his elbows over the sill in the crazed hope he could fall out of the house to safety.

"I'm gutshot, Books!" he yelled. "Jesus Christ, don't murder me!"

Raising the Remington over the blazing bedclothes, Books sighted on his enemy's rectum.

"You tried to kill me," he said hoarsely. "So long, you murdering son of a bitch."

He fired. Ranging half the length of the spine, shattering vertebrae and destroying the central nervous system, the .44 slug drove the body halfway through the window.

Books placed his weapon on the carpet.

Twisting then, he reached, got a grip on the rim of the slop-jar, lifted it high, swung, and doused the flaming bed with urine.

The door of the room burst open.

A stench sickened them. Black powder smoke blinded them.

One of the railroad men, a gnome in a nightshirt, balding and elderly, with watering eyes and hairy ankles, edged tentatively into the room and turned on the ceiling fixture.

At the door, the other railroad man, the middle-aged schoolteacher, Bond Rogers, and her son Gillom drew incredulous breath.

J. B. Books sat beside the bed in his underwear. He stared vacantly, not at them but at a wall patterned with sprays of blue and golden lilies.

Below the mirror and washbowl, both of which were blood-spattered, a dead man lay on his back, a revolver in his hand, his mouth open, his winding sheet a web of torn curtains.

A foul steam rose from the blackened stew of the bed.

Another man seemed to be attempting to climb out of the south window, out of the house. But he was still, his legs spraddled wide. And from between his buttocks, through the denim of his pants, a dark stream welled as though he were excreting blood.

To wake from a sleep of peace, to look into that infernal room, to outrage the nostrils with the odors of terror and death and madness therein, was to have a presentiment of Hell itself. Those witness at the door stood as though nailed to the floor. The railroad men turned heads. The schoolteacher tried to shriek and, unable, commenced to wail.

"Telephone the marshal, Mrs. Rogers," ordered Books. "The rest of you, get the hell out of here."

In flannel dressing gown she waited in the parlor for the marshal. Gillom could not sit. She had even had to remind him to put on his trousers. Barefoot, he paced up and down before her.

"God," he said.

He ran a hand through his rat's-nest hair.

"God!"

He swept a toe along the fringe at the base of the sofa.

"God, Ma, did you see that? That's the way it happens, Ma—the real thing! My God, he got both of 'em! They must've come through the windows, guns going, and he's so fast, he killed 'em both! You wait—half this town'll be coming by our house every day for a week, gawping and pointing! Will we ever be in the papers, too! J. B. Books in a shoot-out right in our house—we can brag on this the rest of our lives!"

She had never seen him so excited. His face, his eyes, were feverish. And suddenly she hated her son. Her home, the home she and Ray had dreamed of and saved for, had been desecrated. If her departed husband knew, and she had no doubt he did, he could not in an eternity forgive her. And she hated Books. She had let a killer into her house, let him buy her forbearance and charity and the adoration of her boy for the pottage of four dollars a day. She remembered them together yesterday, Gillom as tall as the gun man, shooting at tree trunks, competing yet sharing in a false and deadly virility. She shuddered again to explosions and yells. A viper of revenge entered her bosom.

"You respect him, don't you, Gillom?"

"Wouldn't you?"

"You worship the ground he walks on, don't you?"

"Damn right I do!"

"You think as much of him as you did of your father, don't you?"

That brought him up short.

"Don't you?"

"I told you, Ma. Don't talk—"

"He's dying," said Bond Rogers.

"Who?"

"J. B. Books."

"Hah."

"Of natural causes. He told me the other day. That's why Doctor Hostetler has been here twice. He has a cancer."

"I don't believe it."

"It's only a matter of time—several weeks perhaps. That's why he wanted to go for a drive yesterday. He said it would be his last opportunity to see the world."

"You're lying."

"Have I ever?"

"He'd have told me. He likes me a lot."

"He's dying, Gillom."

He understood at last. He believed at last. She could have cut out her tongue. For his reaction was as startling, and as frightening, as a shot in the dark of night.

Gillom turned his back on her. A string of reserve was pulled in him. He sank awkwardly to his knees and buried his face in the seat of a chair. He sobbed. He stained with his tears the velours of the chair, an overstuffed of which she was particularly choice. His hands tore the antimacassars from the arms. He cried as desperately as he had at another bereavement.

She had wanted to hurt him, her own flesh, and hence to do herself injury—but not to this terrible extent. She had hated him momentarily, and hated Books. Gillom would hate her now, and Books, too, and have in time his own vengeance. If the man in the corner room had taken life tonight, she was guilty of a sin almost as grave. Given the secret of death to keep, she had used it instead as a weapon, and by means of it, on impulse she had robbed a seventeen-year-old of hope. On the slate of his future, she knew now, Gillom had begun to chalk a new image, and with one cruel stroke she had wiped the slate blank.

In a cold dawn, in a cold house, Bond Rogers sat, watching through her own tears her son grieve the loss, in less than two years, of two fathers.

"Who were they?"

"Ben Shoup, the one you shot in the ass."

"Shoup."

"The other name of Norton. Two no-goods, not from around here. Know them?"

"I recollect the name Shoup back in San Saba County when I was a kid. I had family there."

"Well, they knew you. And I knew sure as death and taxes we were due for something like this." Thibido sipped from his coffee cup. "Came in the windows, did they? How'd you manage?"

"I was up taking a leak. I stayed under the bed till I placed them, then came out shooting."

"Just like that, two more notches." The marshal glanced at the blood-blotched mirror and washbowl, and at the dried rivulet in the carpet under the south window. He shook his head in disgust. "Place looks like a damned slaughterhouse. Smells like it, too."

"They must have heard I was hanging up my irons for good. Figured I couldn't defend myself."

"They found out."

Books considered him. "Only three people knew—Doc Hostetler, the landlady, and you. How would you guess the word got around?"

"Not from me," lied Thibido quickly. "My profession, you learn to keep your eyes skinned and your mouth shut."

"Mine too," said Books.

They drank the coffee Mrs. Rogers had brought them. It was six o'clock in the morning. Several of Thibido's deputies had arrived with him and removed the bodies. The landlady had stripped the bed and, taking the sheets and blankets into the back yard, burned them, but the stink lingered in the room.

"Goddam fools," Thibido reflected.

"Who?"

"Shoup, Norton. All they had to do was hold their face and hands and you'd be in a wooden box and they'd of had the last laugh. How long now, Books?"

"I don't know."

"What's the doc say?"

"He doesn't."

Thibido smiled. "How you feeling? A little more poorly every day?"

"That's damned unkind of you."

"It was damned unkind of you to come to El Paso to kick the bucket." Walter Thibido tilted his chair and made himself comfortable. "I blame myself for this hash. I should of badged some good men and tied your legs under a burro and hurrahed you out of town the day you showed—but I didn't. I shed a tear, I sweet-talked Mrs. Rogers into letting you stay, I guaranteed her you wouldn't be here long. I'm sorry for her. Well, what I'll do, I'll post a man outside the house nights from now on. That'll cost the town three dollars a day. And ten dollars apiece to plant Shoup and Norton out of the taxpayers' pockets. Death and taxes, Books—what I just said. Keeping you alive long enough to die natural is costing us a pretty penny."

"I don't need a man outside."

"No? You may not, but I do. Things like last night make me look bad. Hell, there's already a crowd of loafers out front on Overland, gabbing and pointing. Maybe the Council could charge admission and get back a little." His wit pleased him. He elaborated. "We'll put up a sign—'See the Famous Killer, Ten Cents! Ten Cents More to See Him Draw!"

"Not three minutes ago," commented Books, "you said in your profession you'd learned to keep your mouth shut."

The marshal stiffened, but his response to the slur on this visit was milder than it had been on the first. That had been a dress-up occasion; he had never before been face to face with a reasonable facsimile of J. B. Books; he had come prepared to lay down his life for the law if necessary. Now he condescended to an invalid, a man with one foot, one leg in fact, in the grave, and the other going, and he could afford to be at ease. He knew where the Remingtons were now, and he had every advantage of time and proximity. He rose, set his cup and saucer on the chiffonier, reseated himself, and crossed his legs.

"I'll speak my mind, Books. And I'll post a man starting tonight. We're not going to turn a decent woman's home into a shooting gallery. Shoup and Norton may be out of the way, but this town's full of hard cases who'd sell their souls to put your name on the wall. I'll see it don't happen."

Books was interested. "Who?"

"Jack Pulford for one. Runs the faro layout at Keating's."

"Gamblers. All bluff and no balls."

"Not this one. Straightest shot I've ever seen, and cool as a cucumber. Couple years back he got off one round here, under fire, through the heart, and they measured. Eighty-four feet. Through the heart."

"Who else?"

"Oh, a Mex name of Serrano. El Tuerto, they call him, 'Cross-eye.' He'll rustle a bunch of cattle over the river, sell 'em on this side, then rustle 'em back and sell 'em to the same outfit he rustled 'em from in the first place. A real cutthroat. I wouldn't turn my back on him in church."

"Who else?"

Thibido rubbed his chin. "Well, I've got a kid in my hoosegow now—Jay Cobb. His dad runs a creamery. Cobb's only twenty or so, but I'll hang him before he's thirty, or somebody will. Gun crazy—been toting one since he was big enough to lift it. I've got him in for thirty days on assault—broke a salesman's jaw with a butt. Oh, he's a wild kid. About like you were his age, I expect."

"Who else?"

"They'll do. Any of that three would prize to do you in. Any time you'd like to put 'em under, and clean up this town, yourself included, Council'll pay for the lead and four first-class wakes. How about it, Books? Do a good deed for once in your life."

Books examined a fingernail. "You'd miss us when we were gone Thibido."

"Miss you? Sure, like the piles." He became grim. "I've already had run-ins with Serrano and Cobb. Pulford'll kill somebody else someday. They all need killing, and so do you." He pointed a finger. "You haven't looked at a calendar lately, Books. This is nineteen-ought-one. The old days are dead and gone and you don't even know it. You think this town's just another place to raise hell. Hell it is. Sure, we've still got the saloons and the girls and the tables, but we've also got a waterworks and a gashouse and telephones and lights and an opera house, we'll have our streetcars electrified by next year, and there's talk about paving the streets. They killed the last rattler on El Paso Street two years ago, in a vacant lot. First National Bank's there now. We had the President of the United States in the plaza yesterday. Why, you can have ice delivered right to your door! Oh, we've still got some weeding to do, but once we're rid of the Pulfords and Cobbs and Serranos we'll have a goddam Garden of Eden here." The marshal's civic satisfaction was almost palpable. "Which leaves you, J. B. Books. Where do you fit into the progress? You don't. You belong in a museum. To put it in a nutshell, Books, you've plain, plumb outlived your time."

"A nutshell?" Books set his cup and saucer on the splintered library table. "You couldn't put it in a barrel with no bottom. You are the longest-winded bastard I ever listened to."

Thibido bristled. "Is that so? Well, I may be windy, but I'm not contrary! When my time comes to die I will, I won't drag it out! Why the hell don't you?"

Books smiled. "I'm sticking around for your sake. When I am gone, how will you earn your pay? Checking door locks? Finding the lost cats for old ladies? You need me, Thibido. A man like me keeps you frisky. When I pull out, you'll go to grass."

"Horseshit!"

Books sobered. He was tired. He looked away, out a window, at the sunlight of another day. "You better mull one thing. When I die, part of you dies too. Maybe the best part."

Marshal Walter Thibido jumped to his feet. "I've heard about enough!" he rasped. "Kill two men before breakfast and scare the daylights out of law-abiding citizens—I won't take any Sunday school lessons from a low-life like you! Three dollars a night to guard a nickel-plate pistolero who's on his way anyway—you're not worth it, Books! Your whole rotten life hasn't been worth three cents!" Emboldened by his own oratory, he put a hand around the butt of his everyday Colt's. "Sympathy shit. What I should do is put you out of your misery," he threatened.

Deliberately, using both arms of the leather chair, Books pushed himself erect. As though there were no one else in the room, he stepped to the closet, pulled the curtain aside, and leaned against the wall. He faced the marshal, one hand at idle rest on the jamb near which hung his coat and vest.

"You've worn out your welcome, Thibido," he said. "Now scat."

"Don't give me orders, Mr. Man-killer." The marshal removed his hand from his gun butt, however. "I'll go when I'm ready. You'll go when you have to. Just do it soon. Get a move on. Die as damn fast as you can. It'll be a blessing."

"Want to see my specials again?" Books inquired.

Walter Thibido backed toward the door. "I don't scare any more, Books. Maybe you had me buffaloed the last time, but not now. Not in the shape you're in. So don't ride me. I don't scare."

"Neither did Shoup and Norton."

It had gone too far. Thibido knew it, but did not know how to extricate himself gracefully.

"You wouldn't gun down a peace officer," he claimed, without much assurance.

"Wouldn't I? What in hell would stop me? Fear of hanging?"

Bond Rogers sewed up the bullet holes in the mattress, remade the bed, and cleaned the mirror and washbowl. She did not speak to Books, nor he to her. Not until she was on her hands and knees, scrubbing dried blood out of the Wilton carpet under the south window, did he acknowledge her presence.

"Thibido says there's a crowd out in front of the house."

"There is."

He adjusted the crimson pillow under him. "I have to say I am sorry again. I assure you I am. Their names were Shoup and Norton. I have never heard of them in my life, or seen them before that I know of."

"But they're dead."

He raised his newspaper and pretended again to read. She continued to scrub. He lowered the paper.

"Not long ago you told me I am a vicious, notorious individual utterly lacking in character or decency. If it will satisfy you, I will say amen to that. But I remind you. They came here to kill me. I did not have one damned thing against them."

She did not respond. He raised the paper, and after a minute lowered it again.

"I defended myself, that was all. As any man worth his salt would do."

"My roomers are gone," she said. "The first thing this morning. Now I have no income except from you. Thanks to you, I am dependent on a dying man, and his guns. I have already lost my son. Now there's every possibility I will lose my home."

He reflected. "We are both in a tight," he admitted. He frowned. "I will make it up to you, ma'am. I swear on a stack of Bibles."

He waited, but she would not speak. When finished, she picked up her bucket and studied the carpet.

"Does the livery have a telephone?" he asked.

"I think so."

"Will you telephone them for me? Tarrant, that's his name. Tell him to come over here. I want to see him. Today."

"I am Books. How much of a bill have I run up at your establishment?" Moses Tarrant could only stare. "How much do I owe you?"

"Seven-fifty for the horse. So far."

"How much for the hire of the phaeton?"

"Ten dollars."

"Ten dollars!"

"Includes the team."

"It better. So, seventeen-fifty. All right, I want to sell the horse."

Moses Tarrant had a cold. With each breath he snuffled. From a pocket he drew a damp, dirty bandanna, unwadded it to locate an area as yet unused, located one, wrapped the bandanna about his nose, blew loudly, examined the area to see what he had blown, wadded the bandanna, and returned it to his pocket.

"Mr. Books, you joshing me?"

"I am not."

"You already sold that horse."

"The hell I have."

"You did so. This morning. Mrs. Rogers' boy, what's-his-name, come down and told me you wanted to sell. I give him a hundred dollars for it."

Books hauled himself from his chair. "What in hell did you do that for? It isn't his horse, it's mine!"

"He told me! Just like he did about that phaeton! He told me you told him—"

"Tarrant, you have lost a hundred dollars."

His meaning did not immediately penetrate. When it did, a look of tragedy too real to be four-flush gripped Moses Tarrant's features. Perhaps he tried, in order to estimate the dimensions of his loss, to calculate how many nickel beers a hundred dollars would obtain. A fit of coughing overtook him. In dire straits he scanned the carpet and the corners of the room for a place to spit and finding none, took out his bandanna and employed it for the purpose.

"But he told me, that kid—"

"I don't give a damn what he told you. It's my animal, not his. Do you still want to buy it?"

"Reckon I might."

"I thought as much. I will have two hundred more for him."

"Two hunderd!" Tarrant hawked. "He's fistulowed!"

"Of course he is. And you should have him cured by now—you know how. Cauterize and the air will heal it. Otherwise he's in good condition."

"I might go a hundred."

Books glared at the liveryman. "You cheap snotnose. You know damn well you will sell him for a lot more because he belonged to John Bernard Books. Two hundred, and I will throw in my saddle. Cash."

"A hundred fifty?"

"Two hundred. Do you want to argue with me?"

"What about my bill?"

"You throw that in."

"That's three hundred seventeen-fifty! I ain't made of money!"

Books considered him. To avoid the consideration, the liveryman used his bandanna for lack of anything better to do. He snuffled; he blew. He coughed; he spat. But when done, when his respiratory problems had been temporarily solved, his pecuniary remained, and he was still the center of attention.

"Robbery," he insisted.

"So was stealing him from a kid for a hundred dollars."

Tarrant accepted the inevitable. Reaching into a pocket, he extracted a long leather snap-top purse which bulged, fished out a roll of bills and, wetting his thumb, peeled off two hundred dollars.

Books handled the bills with care, by the corners, and spread them on the library table to disinfect. "Now you take damned good care of that horse."

"Robbery."

"And on your way out, ask Mrs. Rogers and her son to come in here."

When they appeared, after several minutes, Books stood behind the armchair, arms folded across his chest, his attitude controlled but temperish.

"Boy," he said without preamble, "you sold my horse to Tarrant this morning. You kept the money."

"Gillom!" his mother gasped. "You didn't!"

"Speak up," Books ordered.

"What if I did? How much'll you be riding from now on?"

"That's theft, or something kin to it. You got a hundred dollars for him. Where is it?"

Gillom chewed a sullen lip.

"I don't know what to say," Bond Rogers appealed. "Gillom, you make me ashamed of you. I can't—"

"Stay out of this," Books interrupted. "All right, son, produce that money or I will turn you upside down."

Gillom produced, and unfolded, two fifty-dollar bills.

"Give it to your mother."

"But it's yours," she protested to Books.

"It will pay for the bedding," he said. "And some of the inconvenience. Take it."

With a small bow and a smirk, Gillom placed it in her hand.

"Now I wish you'd leave us, ma'am. I want a few words with him."

It was an injunction. She started to say something about prerogative, then deferred to the male and left them, closing the door behind her.

"Now then, son," Books said. "You account to me."

"I told you. The name's Gillom."

"The name's 'thief' as I see it. And you'd better account to somebody."

"I don't have to. You got your money."

Books moved from behind the armchair. "You know, I started to take a liking to you. You are making it mighty hard for me, though. The more I learn about you, the less I approve. Catching you spying on me. Quitting school to smart-aleck around Utah Street. And now this, selling my horse out from under me. As I understand it, you are a sorrow to your mother."

"So are you."

They were chin to chin. They were like two cottonwoods, but the ditch between them was deep, not shallow, and the water in it tainted.

"What did you plan on doing with the money?" Books asked.

"I planned to get the hell out of here."

"And do what?"

"Buy a gun and some fancy clothes. Kill a few barflies and get me a reputation."

"Don't get cute with me," Books warned.

"Don't you bullyrag me."

"If this house had a woodshed, we would do some business you wouldn't get over in a month of Sundays."

"Well, it don't. And you're not my father."

"No, thank God."

"Even if you would like to go to bed with my mother."

Books slapped him.

Gillom lunged, half in anger, half in fear, throwing one arm about the man's neck, the other about his waist. They grappled. And suddenly, to his amazement, almost to his dismay, the boy found his strength superior. They wrestled into the chiffonier. Gillom braced himself against it and, as the man seemed to give way, to collapse, with a shove threw him backward onto the bed.

J. B. Books lay on his back, breathing hard, shielding his face and his helplessness with a forearm. Gillom Rogers bent over him, triumphant.

"Haven't I learned a lot, though?" he gloated. "I'm as good with a gun as you. And you can't fight for sour apples, not any more you can't. So you just remember, Mister Blowhard —I've got my own laws now, just like you, and I live by 'em. I won't be laid a hand on either, or showed up. And I won't be treated like a kid, ever again."

Books groaned. "You sneaking little bastard."

Gillom laughed softly. "Hah. You dying old son of a bitch."

East of El Paso several miles the Rio Grande in its meanderings had divided, and by division formed between its halves an island. Consisting of some twenty acres of sand and brush, it was inhabited by snakes and insects, by bilingual cattle being rustled to and fro between Texas and Mexico, and by humans of two disreputable sorts: those commercially interested in the transit of the cattle and those preoccupied with their own transit between the jails of one country and the wide-open spaces of the other.

Six of the former indulged themselves this morning in a recreation known colloquially as "The Stretcher." Two were cowmen, older and wiser and more brutal than their employees, four cowboys. After relieving him of a pistol and a pair of knives, the six had thrown a seventh man to the ground, on his back, and, holding him down, had removed his shirt and boots. Above each of his wrists and ankles they tied a rope and, leading up four of their horses, attached the loose ends securely to the horns of the saddles. While the cowmen sat upon the victim, the cowboys mounted up and clucked the four horses slowly away from him, taking up slack. The lines went taut. The horses walked, step by step, until the victim's arms and legs were extended to the full. The two cowmen got off him. Another step, and another, by the obedient animals, and the struggling man was lifted from the ground, higher and higher, step by step. The horses were halted. The unfortunate captive now hung five feet above the ground, his joints stretched to the limit of physical tolerance by rope and the weight of the four ponies. Suppose now that the cowboys had slapped hats across the withers of the horses, causing them to catapult away. The ropes were stout enough to hold a steer. What must have occurred was the separation of arms and legs from sockets, then the ripping loose of limbs from the body—a literal dismemberment. But the cowboys dismounted instead and, sauntering back, grinning, joined their employers to squat and pass a bottle and to toast their skills.

The object of "The Stretcher" meanwhile hung suspended. He was a man in his late thirties, a man powerful and mustached, but also a man uniquely ugly. One cheek was scarred, and one brown eye, his left, was exotropic; it deviated outward, so that while his vision was in fact unimpaired he seemed to have the facility to attend two different things at once, in two different directions. This gave him an unnatural advantage, for it enabled him to concentrate simultaneously on criminal matters north and south of the border. He was noted for his achievements on both sides. North, it was said, he had murdered by knife; south, he had served time for the rape and strangulation, while drunk, of a girl nine years of age. He was sometimes referred to as El Tuerto, or "Cross-eye."

Presently he was engaged in conversation by the two cowmen. He had failed to deliver a certain number of head by a certain date—cattle neither his nor theirs. Worse yet, he had been advanced a sizable sum. Of this default the cowmen reminded him, and reminded him additionally that they had but to give the word, send the horses, and he would find himself, or various parts of himself, strewn over the valley from hell to breakfast.

The stretched man begged for his life. He was the sole support, he asserted, of a wife and ten small niños. His children would starve, his wife would take to the streets, and he called upon God and the Virgin and the generosity of the Americanos to spare him. He begged at the top of his voice. Sweat poured from his upper body. Blood welled from under the ropes above his wrists and ankles. The horses stood steady, disconcerting insects with their tails.

The cowboys laughed and passed the bottle. The two cowmen pondered El Tuerto's fate. One of them had a notion.

"Books is in El Paso. Some roomin' house. A goner, they say."

"I heard," said the other. "Killed two drifters tryin' to kill him."

"Serrano's's'pose' to be good with a gun."

"May be. Books is holed up, though. He won't come out."

"Shit he won't. He won't kick off in no bed. One of these days he'll come out for the bright lights and one more go-round. That's the time."

They pondered anew.

"Bear and a bulldog."

"You might be right."

"Want to try it?"

"Might's well. Might be fun."

They reclaimed the bottle and, standing, accompanied by the others, moseyed to the stretched man. His body quivered. A few minutes more under such skeletal tension and he would be on the brink of idiocy.

They made him a proposition. They had intended to kill him here, but they would give him a chance. Go into El Paso and wait for J. B. Books to come out of his hole. When he did, find him and draw on him.

El Tuerto babbled a disinclination.

They repeated the offer: agree to take Books on, or they would start the horses. If he killed Books, they would cancel his debt. If, on the other and more likely hand, Books killed him, everyone was square.

Serrano continued to demur.

One of the cowmen cupped a palm, poured from the bottle, and let a little whiskey into the rustler's exotropic eye. He screamed.

The cowmen smiled.

"If it doesn't sound too uppity, Mr. Books, I am the premier photographer hereabouts," said Mr. Skelly. "I have photographed the most prominent citizens of El Paso—male and female. And I'd be pleased—and honored—to do a full-length portrait of you—on the best solio paper. Free of charge."

"Why?"

"Why, why because you're a famous man, sir. Next to Mr. McKinley—I photographed him, by the way—one of the most famous visitors to our fair city in years. It will give my studio —what shall I say?—style. Normally I charge four dollars a dozen for portraits. You shall have a dozen with my compliments."

Books considered him.

"You can send them to friends and relatives—a treasured keepsake."

Mr. Skelly prided himself on his salesmanship.

"That's the time a man should be photographed, sir—when he's in his prime—the full bloom of his manhood. Too often we let things slide until it's too—"

"All right," Books consented.

Skelly clapped his hands. "Fine! Fine! Now if you'll just slip into a coat, please, I'll bring in my camera and equipment. Right on the front porch—won't be a minute, sir!"

When the photographer returned, Books waited by the bed in vest and Prince Albert coat. Skelly put down his case and stood the camera on his tripod.

"The latest, most modern equipment, I assure you, Mr. Books. A Conley eight-by-ten camera with a twelve-inch rectilinear lens—the best money can buy. Now let me see."

He surveyed the room and settled on the open area between the chiffonier and the south window, posing his subject against the wall of lilies. He then stationed his camera, turned the base cogwheel to raise the red maplewood box to the proper height, and turned a second cogwheel to run out the bellows. His focusing cloth was cut from the green baize of a billiard table top. Draping it over the box and his head and shoulders, he stooped to the ground glass and adjusted his bellows to correct focus.

"There. There. I have you now, Mr. Books."

From his case he took a plateholder and inserted it in the camera, then brought out a variety of objects—a tin trough, a wooden handle, a small bottle of alcohol with a wick in the top, a length of quarter-inch brass pipe, and a box of magnesium powder. Affixing the wooden handle beneath the trough, he poured into it a mustard spoonful of powder, set the bottle of alcohol in its holder behind the trough, and attached the length of pipe so that one end opened near the bottle wick.

"What in hell is that thingumajig?" Books inquired.

"Why, my flashpan, sir—a recent invention. There's never light enough indoors—so we make our own. Now one more thing—this powder pops very bright and very slow—a one-twenty-fifth-of-a-second flash. Startles the dickens out of some of my customers—they'll flinch or blink and ruin the whole thing. Are you sure you'll hold still when she goes? When you're under fire? A photographer's joke."

"I am sure."

"If you aren't, I have a headholder outside. Stand it up behind you out of sight—clamps your head like a vise."

"I said I am sure."

"Fine. Now one last thing, Mr. Books. Stand erect, please. And if you won't take offense—please put your hands in your trouser pockets—to draw back the lapels of your coat."

"Why?"

"Well, sir, they tell me you carry your weapons in a most unusual manner. If we could catch just a glimpse—just a glimpse, mind you—of the handles, it would add—what shall I say?—a certain style to the portrait."

Books scowled but shoved his hands in his pockets, squared his shoulders, and Skelly ducked once more under his focusing cloth.

"There they are! Perfect, sir! Now, by George!"

He folded the green cloth, tucked it away in his case, pulled the slide from the plateholder, and striking a match on the seat of his pants, lit the wick atop the bottle. In his left hand he grasped the squeeze bulb, in his right the flash-pan, tilting it at a forty-five-degree angle.

"Ready, Mr. Books? Assume whatever expression you think appropriate, sir—something on the—what shall we say?— threatening side, perhaps. Don't move now—this is for American history!"

Skelly stuck one end of the brass pipe in his mouth and squeezed the bulb and puffed into the pipe and his exhalation blew the alcohol flame through a hole at the rear of the tin trough and ignited the magnesium powder and for one twenty-fifth of a second, while the shutter opened, the room was lit celestially. Instantly thereafter it was darkened by a pall of acrid smoke, and by the time Books had blinked, Skelly had put down the flashpan, extinguished the flame, whisked two cardboard squares from his case, flung up the windows, and was fanning smoke as his subject hacked and coughed and further profaned the atmosphere with curses.

"Sorry, sir! A small price to pay—for the photographic art!"

Beaming, eyes shut, he fanned with might and main till visibility was restored. When it was, gratification vanished from his countenance in much less than one twenty-fifth of a second. Books's face was close to his, and the expression on the gun man's face was, whether appropriate or not, unmistakably threatening.

"You are giving me a dozen pictures, is that right, Skelly?"

"Yes, sir," Skelly swallowed.

"All I need is one."

"Yes, sir."

"How many more can you make?"

"From the negative? Why, as many as I care to—I guess."

"And you will care to make one hell of a number, won't you?"

"Why, why should I, Mr. Books?"

"Because I am dying and you know God damned well I am, don't you?"

"I—I heard something of that—what shall I say?—nature, sir. I regret—"

"And you will turn out pictures of the famous man-killer like sausages, won't you? And peddle 'em for a dollar a crack, won't you?"

"Oh, Mr. Books—how could you think—a man in my position—"

"So here's what you do, Skelly. You send me over my one as damn soon as you can, and fifty dollars cash with it. Or I will come down to your place of business and ram some of that powder up your rear end and put the end of a cigar to it and there will be a hot time in your ass that night. Do you follow me, you cheapskate?"

"Yes, sir!"

Jan. 22: Peter Donley, an old-time Arizonan, killed himself with a revolver at Briggs in Yavapai County. He asked a man who was stopping with him to go and get him some whiskey. While he was gone Donley placed a Colt's revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The bullet was a big one and broke his jawbone and neck. It is supposed that he killed himself because he was suffering with the grippe.

He stopped reading to take laudanum. He resorted to it every two hours now, night and day, and had used half the twelve-ounce bottle.

Before picking up the paper he listened to the high ringing sound, iron on iron, like that of clapper on bell, as the nine o'clock streetcar passed the corner on its last run.

He was bone lonesome. Once, years ago, up in the Dakotas, he and three others had staked out a claim, and while his partners had gone off to Deadwood to register it and obtain tools and provisions, he had lived alone on the claim. For two weeks he roughed it in the rain, under a black sky. Later, he had had to kill one of his partners to get his share of the dust, a middling amount but rightfully his. But here, tonight, with a roof over his head, reading by an electric light and listening to a streetcar, people sleeping above him, in the heart of a city, he was lonesomer than he had been up in the Dakotas in the rain, under a black sky.

Jan. 22: An Albuquerque dispatch says: Francis Schlader, the "Healer," who is attracting so much attention in the Territory and elsewhere because of his marvelous power to heal the sick and cause the blind to see, yesterday calmly and bluntly announced that he is Christ. Among his callers night before last was Rev. Charles L. Bovard. Rev. Bovard tells of the interview in the following letter:

"My object was to settle from his own statements just what he claims to be and do. It seemed to me that the Christian people and sensible people in general ought to know what he avows. After several questions of less import, I asked him plainly: 'Do you claim to be Jesus Christ returned to earth?' Looking me steadily in the eye with a demoniac glare, he answered: 'I am. Since you have asked me, sir, I say plainly, I am!' I did not argue with him. Life is too short to waste time trying to teach a jackass to sing soprano."

He slept soundly, but only for an hour. Discomfort waked him then, and though he dozed, on and off, resisting the succor of the drug, in half an hour he could endure the torment no longer. He sat up in bed, and in the dark reached for the bottle with such clumsy desperation that he knocked the glass candy compote off the table to the floor. He swore and, fumbling, found the bottle and put his mouth to the top like a child to the breast.

He thought: For babies and grown men: Ol' Doc Hostetler's El Paso Paregoric.

He had to wait now. The effect of the laudanum was not only of shorter duration but each dose took longer to bring him surcease. He got out the chamber pot and tried for several minutes to use it, but in vain. His bladder was distended; it hung in his guts like a great rock. "You will gradually become uremic," the physician had said when pressed. "Poisoned by your own waste, due to a failure of the kidneys."

He thought: The hell I will. I will stay up as long as I have to. Piss or bust.

After a time the quaking tendons of his calves and thighs would not support him. By means of the bed he hauled himself to his feet, despairing. Any dog could lift a leg. This was what he had come to. A shell of a man squatting over a slop-jar in the dark, praying not for happiness or fame or nerve or fortune but the simple animal ability to unload.

He went to an open window and let himself down on his knees before it. It was snowing. He put out his hands and was pleased by the melt of flakes upon his flesh. Somewhere, out in the night close by, earning his three dollars, a man guarded him, some poor bastard who would rather be home in bed than watch over the life of one who was soon to lose it. He heard a mockingbird, astonished by the snow, singing in a tree. Its song was lovely. For some reason it reminded him of the four lines of poetry Hostetler had recited for him, but he could recall only the first: "Weave a circle round him thrice…" Two other lines were all the poetry he knew:

"Under the spreading chestnut tree/ the village smithy stands…"

He thought: When we were kids, we used to play a game. "I Wish." Well, I wish I had listened to birds more often.

I wish I had more schooling.

I have strayed the western parts of the U.S., it must be the most beautiful country God ever made, and I wish I had paid more attention to it.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride—but I have sold my horse.

I wish the last man I killed, in Tonopah, up in Nevada, had killed me.

I wish I had not been so good with guns so early.

I wish I had been born peaceable.

My strength is gone. That was one of the most shameful things I ever remember, being flat on my back with a stringbean kid laughing at me.

It won't be long now. A month? Three weeks? Two? Jesus.

I wish I had married Serepta, and settled down, and had a son to leave my guns to. I was forty then, and she was twenty-eight.

I wish I had been to San Francisco.

Hostetler said one morning I will wake up and know I can't get out of bed. I have to beat that morning by one. So it is a matter of timing, as it usually is. If I am going to make a move, I must do so before it is too late, even twenty-four hours too late. But first I have to decide the move.

I wish I had sailed on a ship just once, and seen the Sandwich Isles.

I wish I had not left home so young. I would like to know what became of my people.

Bond. A crackerjack name for a woman. She is sorry for me, but she wants me dead and I do not blame her. I was wrong about her. She has class. But she also has plenty of starch in her corset. She speaks up to me. She will scrub blood out of a carpet. She may be a lady on the outside, but inside she is full of the Old Harry, and I have not met many like that. I could love her. Given time, I could make her love me, but that would not be fair. Given time, I could straighten out that boy. Somebody had better do it soon, or he will go the way I did, or worse. Given time. I wish I knew why he hates me. Not three days ago he thought I was ace high. Given time.

I wish I had not been such a loner all my life.

I wish I had been more worthy of love, and given a damn sight more.

God I wish I had it to do all over again. I would do it better.

He left the window and tried the pot again, this time with a dribble of success, then got back into bed and touched each Remington to be certain it was where it should be.

He thought: Shoup and Norton were names I really did not know, but there are three I will remember: Jack Pulford; Serrano; Jay Cobb. They would sell their souls, Thibido said, to put my name on the wall.

So. I had no show to win before. Now I have. It is a game of draw poker now. I am the dealer now, not a God damned cancer. Not death. I can call the play. I can hold my pair, my guns, and draw three cards:

One. I can lie here and die slow.

Two. Or I can blow out my own brains. But I have too much sand for that. Besides, it has no style. There would be no honor in it. It is not the way that J. B. Books should go.

Three. The third card. Or I can pick my own executioner.

I wish I knew which one of them is the sure shot. I wish I knew which one deserves to kill me.

What was that line? Yes. "Weave a circle round him thrice…"

Pulford.

Serrano.

Cobb.