Robert Parker - Ironhorse

“The bottom part, the external auditory meatus, antitragus, and lobe, he got to keep, though I’m certain his hearing will be impaired in that ear. Something tells me, though, his well-being is of no goddamn concern of yours.”

“How long ago was he here?” I said.

“Two hours,” Doc Meyer said, “give or take.”

“Do you know if he is still here,” I said, “in Half Moon?”

“I have no idea.”

“Who was he with?” Virgil said.

Doc Meyer took another swig off the whiskey bottle. He belched and swiveled the palm of his hand over the bottle top to remove his saliva and offered us a pull. We declined.

“There were three other miscreants with him,” Doc Meyer said. “I was walking up to my office here when they arrived. They were kind of like the two of you, rather obnoxious and demanding.”

“Mounted?” Virgil said.

Doc Meyer shook his head.

“I did not see any horses, no.”

Doc Meyer folded the ear pieces back up in the cloth and held it above the trash canister.

“Shall I dispose of these pieces, or were you thinking souvenir?”

“We appreciate your time,” I said.

Doc Meyer leaned to his side slightly and released gas as he opened his hand and let the cloth drop to the trash.

“Good of you to stop by,” he said as I followed Virgil out the door.

We stood on the boardwalk in front of Doc Meyer’s office. Virgil puffed on his cigar, thinking. A buckboard came around the corner from the east and stopped. Two tired-looking miners jumped from the bed, grabbed their gear, and entered a boardinghouse. The buckboard moved on west and turned north at the corner of Full Moon Street.

“What do you allow, Everett?”

“Vince and the others did not stable the horses with the livery, that much we know... could be long gone.”

Virgil glanced back through the office window as Doc Meyer turned out his desk lamp and we started up the boardwalk toward Hotel Ark.

“But,” I said, “they don’t feel any threat from this town.”

“No, don’t think they do.”

“And on pure speculation, I don’t think they hightailed it out tonight, either.”

“Don’t?”

“I don’t.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“Nope. Don’t think I would, considering the circumstances.”

“Circumstances being?”

“First circumstance being they lost some of their hands tonight. That being the case, fellows of this ilk got no way of dealing with those kinds of feelings, other than drinking and busting a nut.”

“That’s right.”

“Next circumstance, they would not be expecting us here in Half Moon Junction, so they won’t be skittish.”

“No, they won’t,” Virgil said.

“Far as they know, we are near a hundred miles from here.”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t think they would have the gall or stupidity to check in to a hotel, though.”

“But maybe,” Virgil said.

“Next circumstance is, they got money.”

“They do.”

“If they stayed,” I said, “I think bedding down with whores would be their most astute move.”

“Seems prospect,” Virgil said.

“Don’t you imagine?”

“I do,” Virgil said. “That’d be my summation as well, considering the circumstances.”

A mangy cur stepped out of the shadows from between two buildings in front of us and stopped. He looked at us for a moment and moved on slowly across the street. He sniffed at something, then disappeared behind a rotted section of siding on a blacksmith’s shop. We continued walking until we got to the corner of Full and Three Quarter Moon and stopped.

“They might have picketed the horses outside of town, hidden in a stand of trees or someplace,” I said, “and come back in on foot.”

“Sounds right,” Virgil said. “Come back, gamble a bit, buy a piece for the evening.”

“Probably too lazy, though, considering,” I said. “Been a wearying day for those boys, with all the commotion they’ve had to go through. First, the expectant excitement of the robbery, followed by the shooting and friends dying off. Vince having his helix and concha pieces wrapped in a napkin and sitting at the bottom of a trash bucket in the drunk dentist’s office. They’re going to be in need of some comfort, some mothering, a basic hankering for food, drink, and women. Plus, they got dollars and dimes they stole from the people on the train burning a hole in the bottom of their pocket.”

Bugs were circling the gas lantern again near where we stood across from Hotel Ark on the southeast corner of Full and Three Quarter Moon Streets. Virgil stood with his thumbs in his vest pockets puffing on his cigar, thinking. He pulled out his pocket watch and looked at the time. He looked back to the south and to the north.

“We got four blocks with alleys,” he said. “I’ll look around the backside outskirts, all the way around. You do the center alleys. We meet back here, thirty minutes.”

I looked at my watch.

“We see something,” Virgil said. “We come back here. Put together a go-to-it plan.”

I walked south on Full Moon Street and came to a single-story building on my left with an opening between it and the two-story building next to it. I moved through the opening and walked toward the rear of the buildings. When I got to the back of the buildings I started walking the narrow turns of the alley passage. A few lamps were burning, but for the most part it was dark. Right away, I came upon three horses stalled in a small pen that backed up to a surveying company. Straightaway I could tell they were not our horses. All three were big plow horses. I walked around the pen and came to an empty side alley that connected to Half Moon Street. I walked the narrow alley path to the street and looked around. The street was empty except for the mangy cur Virgil and I had seen before. He was startled to see me. He stopped, looked at me, and walked off slow-like. In a moment, he was gone into the shadows. I turned and came back through the side alley.

Sitting at the top of a dark stairwell, a woman with her back to me was smoking a cigarette. She did not see me as I turned and started back to the east. Up ahead of me, a horse blew and a hoof pawed at the ground. I moved up slowly, and somewhere ahead of me in the shadows, a man coughed.

I stopped, stayed back, listened for a moment, and moved on slowly around the corner. He coughed again. The sound of the cough was coming from inside the outhouse. Whoever was inside had a lamp. There was light streaking out through the cracks between the boards. The dust the horse was pawing up drifted through the shafts of light as I waited. After a moment, the door opened and an old man came out carrying the lamp. He had a thick book under his arm that looked like a Bible.

I thought to myself, There might be an inkling of sanctimony in Half Moon Junction after all. He walked slowly up a set of stairs and ducked inside a rickety tenement quarters, closing the door behind him. I moved on and came to the horse I had heard pawing and blowing. It was a lonesome old gray horse that was trying to loosen up the ground he was standing on. I scratched his nose for a second and kept walking until I came to an opening between two buildings that led me out to Quarter Moon Street.

It was late enough of the evening now; there was no one moving about. I crossed the empty street and walked through a dark divide between two small houses. After about thirty feet I cleared the narrow passage between the houses and found myself on the rear section of buildings that faced both Half and Three Quarter Moon Street.

As I walked on, the buildings started to thin out, and after a short ways I was on the backside of the livery stable just shy of the miners’ yard. I turned and walked between the livery stable and a Chinese laundry, where steam rose from the back half of the building. The Chinese were inside working, talking loudly, as I made my way past their shop and back to Half Moon Street. I heard a pop, followed by another pop. I heard a third pop and realized the sound was a muffled gunshot. The sound came from the west. I started running west on Half Moon Street, past the whorehouse church and past Pete’s Place. When I got to the corner of Quarter Moon Street, a young man wearing underwear came running out from between two buildings and headed in my direction. He was bleeding. He had a gun in his hand and was looking back over his shoulder as he was on the run. He did not realize he was running directly at me in the dark street. I stood stock-still and pointed my long-barrel Colt at him.