Elmore Leonard: Gunsights

Yet he appeared to be a rider himself, sweat-dirty Stetson down on his eyes, someone who should know better.

A little bell rang inside Moon's head.

Pay attention.

“Are you Dana Moon?”

An official tone. A policeman verifying the name before saying you're under arrest. Or a messenger boy from somewhere.

“You just wiped out a week of tracking,” Moon said. “You know it?”

“I guess it ain't your day,” the man said and drew a pistol and immediately began firing at Moon, shooting him in the thigh, just above his right knee, shooting his horse through the neck and withers, the horse screaming and throwing its head as Moon drew his Colt's and shot the man twice through the chest.

He was a fool after all, not as real as he appeared. But who was he?

One of Moon's Mimbre riders, who was called Red, came back to find his boss sitting on the ground twisting his polka-dot scarf around his leg. The leg looked a mess, the entire thigh bleeding where the bullet had dug its way through Moon's flesh to come out just below his hip bone.

“I never even saw him before,” Moon said. “See if he's got a wallet or something.” He knew the man lying by his horse was dead; he didn't have to ask that.

There were seventeen dollars in a wallet and a folded soiled letter addressed to Asa Maddox, c/o Maricopa Cattle Company, Bisbee, Arizona Territory. The tablet-paper letter said:

Asa Maddox:

That was good news you sent that you have finally got him located. If you do not want to wait for us I cannot stop you, but then we will not wait for you either and will proceed with our plan to get the other one. I think you are wrong in doing this alone instead of with us, but as I have mentioned I cannot stop you nor do I blame you much for your eagerness.

Good luck.

(Signed)

J.A. McWilliams

Moon said, “Who is Asa Maddox? Who in the hell is J.A. McWilliams?”

Red, hunkered down next to Moon, looked at him but did not say anything.

“Well, shit,” Moon said. “I guess I'm going to Benson a week early.”

Florence: May, 1888

The cowboy standing at the end of the Grayback Hotel bar said, “Are you Captain Early?”

From his midpoint position, Bren Early's gaze moved from his glass of cold beer down in that direction.

“I am.”

“There is a man here looking for you.”

The man who stepped out from behind the rangy cowboy, a large-framed man himself, wore a dark business suit, a gold watch chain across the vest, a gray Stetson that looked like it had just come out of the box.

“Are you Mr. Johnson?” Bren Early asked. It was the name of the party he was supposed to meet here in Florence.

Instead of answering, the man walked over to a Douglas chair against the back wall where a maroon felt traveling bag sat waiting.

Bren Early liked businessmen hunters who were conscientious about the clause “Free in Advance” and handed it over before they shook hands and said how much they'd been looking forward to this expedition. Raising his cold beer, Bren Early looked up at the clock on the wall between the back-bar mirrors. It was 11:48 in the morning. He liked the idea of putting five hundred dollars in his pocket before noon. He liked the quiet of a morning barroom-the heat and heavy work left outside with Bo Catlett and the light-blue hunting wagon. He'd bring Bo out a glass of beer after.

The cowboy was still sideways to the bar, facing this way. Like making sure he wasn't going to leave. Or so that he'd see the pistol stuck in the cowboy's belt. Why was this cowboy staring at him?

The man in the business suit was bending over his open traveling bag, taking a lot of time. Why wasn't the money on his person?

Bren Early put down his glass of beer. He heard the man in the business suit say, as the man came around, finally, with the pistol:

“This is for Jack McWilliams, you Indin-loving son of a bitch-”

(Though, the bartender testified at the Pinal County Sheriff's Inquest, the gentleman never got to say the last word.)

Bren Early shot the man with a .44 Smith & Wesson, the slug exploding from the barrel, obliterating the word and taking the man cleanly through the brisket…shot the cowboy dead through the heart, heard him drop his weapon and fall heavily as he put the Smith on the man in the business suit again, not 100 percent sure about this one.

The man was slumped awkwardly in a pole-axed daze, half-lying-sitting on the maroon travel bag, bewildered, wondering how his plan had suddenly gone to hell, staring up at Bren Early with maybe ten minutes of life remaining in him.

“You rehearsed that, didn't you?” Bren Early said. “I'll bet it sounded good when you said it to a mirror.”

Blood seeped out between the man's fingers pressed to his rib cage, trying to hold himself together, breathing and hearing the wound bubble and breathe back at him, sucking air, the man then breathing quicker, harder, to draw air up into his mouth before the wound got it all.

“You should not have begun that speech,” Bren Early said. “But a lot of good it does advising you now, huh?…Has anybody an idea who this man is?”

J.A. McWilliams of Prescott, a supplier of drilling equipment and high explosives, according to identifying papers. The cowboy with him remained nameless-at least to Bren Early, who left Florence with Bo Catlett and their blue hunting wagon as soon as he was cleared of any willful intent to do harm.

McWilliams. It was a somewhat familiar name, but did not stir any clear recollections from the past.

Benson:May, 1888

For nearly a month Dana Moon lived in Room 107 of the Charles Crooker Hotel, waiting for his wound to heal. With the windows facing east it was a hot room mornings, but he liked it because it gave him a view of country and cottonwoods along the river. In the evening he listened to train whistles and the banging-clanging activity over in the switch yard.

He had planned to come to Benson a week later to visit the whorehouse and maybe call on Katy McKean and see if there was a future respectable possibility there.

Now Katy McKean was calling on him. The first time she came he wondered: Will she leave the hotel room door open?

No, she didn't. She sat in the big chair between the windows, and Moon, sitting upright in bed, had to squint to see her face with the sun glare on the windows. He couldn't ask her to pull the shades. After her second visit he got up and struggled one-legged with the horsehide chair, moving it all the way around the bed and after that, when she came, the good view was to the west.

Well, how have you been?…Fine…I hardly recognize Benson the way it's grown…Has it?…You live with your folks?…Yes, and three young brothers; a place down the river a few miles…Bren ever come by to see you?…Now and then.

It required three visits from her before he asked, “How come you aren't married with a place of your own?”

“Why aren't you?”

“It hasn't been something I've thought about,” Moon said. “Up till now.” (Why was he saying this? He had come to town to visit the whorehouse and look at possibilities only.)

“Well, I haven't met the man yet,” the McKean girl said. “They come out, my dad looks them over. The best he gives is a shrug. The drag riders he won't even speak to.”

“Your dad,” Moon said. “Whose choice is it, yours or his?”

“He knows a few things I haven't learned yet,” the McKean girl said. She wore boots under her cotton skirt, the toes hooked on the sideboard of Moon's bed, her knees raised and a little apart. He couldn't see anything, but he was aware of her limbs and imagined them being very white and smooth, white thighs-Jesus-and a patch of soft hair.