Robert Coover - Ghost Town

He is met at the campfire by muttering and grumbling, incomprehensible except for the swearwords, which are in the majority but add up to nothing in particular. Tell me that agin, he says.

We said yu done some serious damage to our herd, sheriff, snarls the wamper-jawed lout with the pencil-lined upper lip. In fact it aint thar no more. We’re gonna hafta dock yer pay.

Thet’s good news. Didnt know I wuz gittin paid.

Well it aint much. We figger after tonight’s deevastation yu’re about forty years in debt to us.

And thet dont include our sentymental feelins toward them pore little dogies, says the preacherly graybeard, snatching a lizard off a rock and tossing it into the fire to watch it wriggle. We been left downright bereft.

He eyes them coldly, rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. Well thet’s most lamentable, he says. But whut wuz yu doin with alla them cattle anyhow? I thought yu wuz ahuntin injun scalps.

Well the problem with thet, sheriff, says the hunchback, shoving a chaw of tobacco into his grizzled cheeks, is we’re plumb outa savages. Aint seed a live one with his skin still on in a coon’s age. He spits into the fire to set it sizzling.

But whut about alla them misabused wimmenfolk?

All them whut?

Oh right, snorts the mestizo, glancing up with his good eye from his whittling. Hah! The wimmenfolk!

They heehaw and whistle at that and, while the ocarina player blows a dancehall tune, a pig-eyed fat man with a waxed handlebar mustache rises from his squat for a moment to drop his pants and wriggle his arse at the fire.

Well lets see, says the squint-eyed old fellow with the high manner. I estimate we did mebbe go dig up a ole burial ground fer some deceased scalps. Jest not t’disappoint, y’know. They’re in a saddlebag over thar. They got a unseemly odor about em, but hep yerself.

But thet aint the point. Yu all been deppitized.

Well we undeppitized ourselves, sheriff. It jest warnt no fun. We tuck up cowpunchin instead.

Beats scalp huntin all t’blazes.

Yu eat better too, says the fat man, rebuttoning his breeches. Less yu got some trigger-happy damfool comin along’n drivin off yer larder. The others rumble and growl at that, while the fat man relights a stubby black cigar butt in the fire.

Whut I caint quite figger is whar’d yu git em all?

Git em?

Yer stock.

Well we, uh, we borried em, explains a weedy wall-eyed runt, picking his teeth with a sliver of bone.

Yu mean yu rustled alla them cattle?

Well yu dont hafta put a name to it, sheriff. But how else yu gonna git yu a steer out in these parts?

We jest kinder pass em around out here, y’see, says the hunchback, peering up at him over his wire-rimmed spectacles, his cheek bulging with chaw. He lets fly another load into the fire. It’s how we do it.

I dunno. I aint never read the lawr but I think yu broke it, he says.

They all just smile back blankly at him. Naw. Haw!

Whut’s agin the lawr, sheriff, says the fat man around his cigar stub, is shootin up other folks’ cows and runnin their herds off. Thet thar’s a capital offense throughout the whole goddam Terrortory. Reckon we may have no choice but t’string yu up fer thet one. Jest t’be proper, y’know.

Less a course yu hightail it out thar’n brang em all back agin.

How’m I gonna do thet? They went off ever which way.

Shit, I dunno, sheriff. It’s yer fuckin neck, yu figger it out.

I kin see thet rapscallion aint gonna rectify his heinous misdeeds.

Nor even repent of em. He’s a hard case.

Only trouble is, whar kin we hang him? They aint no trees out here.

We kin use the chuckwagon, says the fat man, taking up a coil of rope and cutting off a length with a butcher knife. Ifn it aint high enuf, we’ll hitch up the hosses’n drug him along behind it.

Hole up thar, buttbrain, says the one-eared mestizo with the eyepatch, rising to his feet. Aint nobody messin with the sheriff, not while I’m deppity.

Yeah? And whut yu gonna do about it, yu scumsuckin greaser?

I’ll show yu whut I’m gonna do, yu mizzerbul dumsquizzled lardass, snarls the mestizo, throwing away his white stick and hurling himself at the fat man with his whittling knife. The fat man is caught off guard and the knife rips into his groin, the cigar butt popping from his lips as though triggered out by the invading blade, but he manages to plunge his own butcher knife deep into the mestizo’s belly, both men grunting and staggering back before lunging at each other again.

Hey! Jest wait up thar, fellers! he shouts, raising his rifle. Stop thet!

Now dont go botherin inta other folks’ bizness, sheriff, says the old fellow with the squinny, batting his rifle away. This aint none a yer concern.

But—!

Others grab him and pin his arms back. It’s outside yer fuckin jurisdiction, sheriff, they grunt, raising him off the ground and roping his ankles together.

Defense is not a significant part of either man’s technique. They just go at it freestyle, cutting each other over and over; it’s more a matter of pace and persistence than artfulness as their bloodied knives, catching the light from the campfire, flash in and out of each other’s bodies. His deputy loses his other ear and his voice pipe, no doubt more within besides; the fat man’s smile is widened from ear to ear, his stiffened handlebars snicked to a brush, and his belly’s so punctured his guts start to spill out; but neither man gives an inch. Whuck, whuck, whuck , the knives go, and nothing he can do but watch, both men blinded now by blood and injury, taking blow after blow after blow, the other men of the posse cheering them on, laying bets on the side, pushing the antagonists back into it if they chance to stagger apart. Finally, the butcher knife breaks off in the mestizo’s ribs and, as the disarmed fat man slumps to his knees, the mestizo finishes him off in the slaughterhouse manner by stabbing him two-fisted in the back of the neck.

His minced-up deputy stands there, weaving about, still wearing his crushed bowler and the broken blade in his chest, his body sliced open in a hundred places and showing its inner regions, but with his own bloody knife outthrust as though ready as ever to take on all comers. The fire shimmers patchily on his chopped-up face and casts a hulking shadow on the chuckwagon behind him.

Awright, awright, deppity, we take yer point, says the brawny lout irritably. But whut about our goddam cattle?

The deputy, his vocal cords cut and dangling from the hole in his throat, cannot reply, but he turns to the bald ocarina player and gestures with his knife.

Reckon he wants yu t’pipe us a tune on yer sweet patayta, says the bespectacled hunchback.

The man cups the instrument in his large bony hands, bends his gleaming dome toward the fire, and once again imitates the moan of lowing cattle. Almost instantly, about as fast as the fluttered shuffle of a deck of cards, the prairie fills up all around with grazing cattle again.

With that, they set him down again and unbind his ankles. He picks up the fallen Winchester. Ifn yu could do thet, he grumps, why’d yu make sech a fuss?

Aw, sheriff, dont mind us, says the preacherly fellow with a squinnied wink, as they drag the ruined fat man away into the dark beyond the fire. We’re jest skylarkin, y’know, a little cockeyed fun like cowpokes always do, it’s in our nature. Now why dont yu set down’n hep yerself t’some beans’n buffalo hump.

Aint hungry. He’s starved, more like, but their vittles do not appear to be of the edible variety. Wouldnt say no t’summa that whuskey though.

Haw. A silence descends as though fallen from the star-pocked sky. Bet yu wouldnt.

No one moves. Hard to read their expressions. The fire has died down to coals, painting their faces a deep crimson. Mostly, behind their thick red masks, they seem to be grinning or staring at him blankly. Waiting to see what he’ll do. No choice about that. If he wants anything he’ll have to help himself, and he’s already manifested his wants. There’s a lone bottle standing on a stone just on the other side of the fire, catching its light. Like a taunt. He watches their hands. There’s nothing to be heard in the tense motionless silence but the hushed pop and crackle of the dying fire. Even the cattle seem to have paused in their grazing. He has about decided to shoot the bottle, just blast it away and ask for another, see what happens, but then his deputy leans over to pick it up, squirting jets of blood out of his wounds, and staggers over to him with it, stumbling right through the firecoals. As he hands it to him, his good eye rolls up into the back of his head and he collapses at his feet. The deathly stillness maintains. He wipes the blood off the neck of the bottle. Thanks, deppity, much obliged, he says flatly and, watching them all warily, puts the bottle to his lips.