David Gates - Blood Money

Duquesne fell silent. The two men rode the rest of the way without talking.

They walked their horses in through the corrals and drew up in front of the main house. Neither of them dismounted. A few Hagerty hands were on the porch. A few more gathered, curious as to what might be about to happen. Placido Geist and Duquesne sat their horses, waiting for it as well.

“What’s your object?” the sheriff asked him.

“Not to get killed, or you either,” the bounty hunter said. “Nor to kill any innocents.”

Duquesne had a twelve-gauge scattergun resting across the pommel of his saddle, a holstered.45 on his hip. “We’ll see how that works out,” he said. “Let’s hope they’re respectful of the office of the law.”

A tall man, weathered but only in his late twenties or early thirties, stepped out onto the porch and looked at the two men on horseback. There was nothing friendly in his gaze. His look was in fact more hostile toward the sheriff than toward the bounty hunter. His name was Peter Hagerty.

“You know me,” Placido Geist said. “I killed your brother. And you’re also well aware he invited it.”

The tall man moved forward out of the shadow of the porch overhang and into the sunlight at the top of steps. “He was a boy,” he said, his words rusty. “He chased whores, he was unlucky at cards, he couldn’t break a horse, he didn’t have the stomach to brand a calf. I’ve looked out for him since he was three years old. He was a featherweight. I knew that, but I cared about that kid. And when you shot him down in the streets of Dime Box, you were too quick for me then to stop it.”

“I’m too quick for you now, son,” Placido Geist said.

“You’re a murderer,” Peter Hagerty said. “And you,” he said to Duquesne, “you stood by and let it happen, and you stand by now.”

“Not quite the same,” the sheriff said. “I stood by then so as not to see you dead alongside your brother. I’m here now to back this man up. There’s enough fault to go around.”

Peter glanced away. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Yes, it does,” Duquesne said. “Your father put a price on this man’s head.”

“This man answers for what he did,” Peter Hagerty said.

“I’d rather answer for what I haven’t done,” Placido Geist said mildly, and both Peter Hagerty and the sheriff looked at him in surprise. “For my failure of nerve, for not speaking up, for lacking courage, for never being bold enough with women.”

Hagerty and Duquesne stared at him.

“We deserve to be told the truth, all of us,” Placido Geist said. “Me included.” He dismounted, letting the reins trail.

He was a short, stocky half-breed. Peter Hagerty, standing tall on the porch, overtopped him by a good three feet.

“Your brother was a boy, yes,” Placido Geist went on. “He was a rotten boy, a spoiled boy, and sooner or later he would have gotten what was coming to him. I’m sorry it had to be me, but it would have been somebody. You’re welcome to try and kill me, if that gives recompense.”

The bounty hunter took off his sombrero and scaled it onto the ground. “I’ve hunted men, but I won’t be hunted,” he said to Peter Hagerty. “Your father offered any and all comers a bounty of twenty-five thousand dollars to whoever killed me. Is he ready and able to do it himself?”

Peter turned abruptly and went into the house.

Duquesne, sitting his saddle, blew out his breath. “You’re trying a man’s patience,” he remarked to the bounty hunter.

The old man nodded. “This family is trying mine,” he said. “They want a reckoning. I want a night’s rest.”

“At what cost?” Duquesne asked him.

“Whatever the market will bear,” Placido Geist said.

Duquesne wasn’t about to cross him. He’d known men who could be placated, or persuaded. The bounty hunter was obdurate as stone.

They brought Farragut Hagerty out onto the porch, carrying him in a bentwood rocker, his son Peter taking half his father’s weight, and a Chinaman in a cook’s apron taking the other half. They were like pallbearers. Old man Hagerty had an Indian blanket thrown around his shoulders, the folds bunched in his lap, his hands beneath the blanket. Placido Geist thought about the gun he’d had under his napkin when he shot Simon Straw.

But there was no life in Hagerty’s limbs. He had barely the strength to sit upright. One side of his face was knotted and frozen, the skin tight enough to burst, the other side lazy and drooping. His mouth was crooked, slack with drool. Placido Geist knew him for the victim of stroke. Hagerty’s eyes were still alive, though, filled with fury and resentment, the look of a man insulted, an insult he was helpless to revenge. His very flesh had failed him, and his anger at this final indignity burned hot enough to make his waxy skin glow from within.

He stared at Placido Geist. “This man should hang,” he said. His voice was papery. The bounty hunter was surprised he still had the power of speech. “Hang,” he rasped.

Peter Hagerty looked up at Duquesne, still on horseback. “We’ve got rope,” he said. “And enough men to see justice done. Are you thinking to stop it?”

“Let’s talk about hanging,” the sheriff said. “Your baby brother persuaded a couple of your cowhands to lynch a kid who’d crossed him over a whore.”

“You heard that from the whore,” Peter said.

“I heard that from the whore,” Placido Geist corrected him. “You know it to be true. So does every man standing here.”

“Every man standing here works for my father,” Peter said.

“You know damn well I’ll take the gun over the rope,” the bounty hunter said. “And this bunch can kill me, of that I have no doubt, if it comes to that, but I’ll drop a good five of them first, and you’ll be the first one to fall.”

“Hang him,” the old man growled. Spit was running down his chin. He vibrated with palsy.

“You’re never going to be the man your father was, Peter,” Placido Geist said. “Maybe you can be a better one. He requires an injury to be redeemed, but this isn’t your grief. I shot your brother dead. He was a boy who needed killing.”

“You can’t ask this of me,” Peter Hagerty said.

“I can ask,” the bounty hunter said. “You live with your choices. You can keep faith with a dead man, or a dying one, or you can choose to accept different results.”

“He was my brother, damn you.”

“He was a ne’er-do-well. You have it in you to be the man your father expects. You have it in you to be the man you might expect of yourself. You’re assuming too great a burden.”

“You’re talking to stay alive.”

“I’m talking to keep you alive, boy,” Placido Geist told him. “I’d regret having to kill you, but regret won’t get in my way if you force my hand.”

“Hang him,” old man Hagerty whispered furiously. The violence of his inner thoughts seemed the only thing sustaining him, his life suspended on a thread, like the thread of saliva suspended from the corner of his mouth, silvery as a cobweb and nearly as insubstantial.

“What’s it going to be?” Placido Geist asked Peter Hagerty.

“Your father’s anger will haunt you, either way you choose.”

“Aw, piss on it,” Peter muttered, defeated.

In the charged silence, the sound of the lever gun being cocked was as crisp as a coin dropping on a marble bar. None of the men turned, careful not to break their brittle truce.

“These people sheltered me,” the kid holding the Winchester ‘94 said. “I owe them for that kindness.”

Duquesne glanced over his shoulder, not shifting his weight or altering his posture. “And who might you be?” he asked.