Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Having lost faith in the law and having seen me shoot, Durrance made me a financial proposition: he’d add $500.00 bounty to the sheriff ’s reward if for some reason Quinn was brought in dead.

I was a Carolina Watson and a farmer, not a hired gun, but I guess you could say I’d become a desperado, if that word means a man driven to desperation by ill fortune. At thirty-six, after a hard year in prison and a hard escape, I had no prospects-nothing to show for those long years of toil and deprivation but an undeserved criminal record and a forsaken family, pining away in the rough hinterlands beyond the Mississippi. I was deter-mined to make a fresh start in southwest Florida and avoid any more trouble and equally determined to succeed here in Arcadia in what might well be my last chance to seize hold of my life and take it back. If money was what was needed, a man could not be squeamish about the means, and anyway, I would be doing a good deed. Arcadia’s citizens were tired of Quinn Bass, who was a menace to society, even this one; the time had come to put a stop to him. Yet no matter how often I told myself this young killer was better off dead, I had no right to deprive him of his life as a business proposition.

Or so I was counseled by that promising young farmer Edgar A. Watson, first cousin to Colonel Robert B. at Clouds Creek in South Carolina and justly proud of that man’s good opinion. Plain Ed Watson or E. Jack Watson, accused killer and prison fugitive, was another matter. E. Jack Watson had his heart set on Durrance’s bounty and the sheriff ’s reward both.

Thus my mind went back and forth and forth and back, never admitting until after it was over that I knew all along I would kill Quinn Bass. For a Watson of Clouds Creek, this was dishonor. I had to accept that, and I did, and I do today. I will only say that many a prosperous businessman and proud American honored for his enterprise in his community got his start in unmentionable dealings such as these.

“All right,” I told Durrance, “let me think about it.” I went over to the jailhouse and got deputized by the sheriff, then went back to Durrance, told him I’d thought about it till my brain hurt and here were my damn terms, take ’em or leave ’em: “You pay me half your bounty in advance and I will do it.” He yelped, “Hell, no, I ain’t payin no advance! Suppose somethin goes wrong?” However, he shortly came around to my position.

One evening later that same week, I was standing at a bar with Tommy Granger when the man I awaited came banging through the doors and paused to scan the place. What I saw in the bar mirror was a whiskered runt whose lumpy hat and a big lumpy tobacco chaw made his head look too big for his squat body. To avoid being noticed, Granger turned away too quick-a bad mistake with a mean dog that has a nose for fear. When Bass caught his movement, Granger froze-mistake number two-then nudged his drinking partner with his elbow-number three. “That’s him,” this idiot informed me.

When Bass strutted up, I took no notice, didn’t even turn around. Annoyed, he sought my eyes in the bar mirror, sizing me up in an uncouth curled-lip way that told me the sheriff had wasted no time letting slip that he had deputized a stranger who was after that reward. “Lookit these two stupid turds! You boys signed on with any outfit yet? Will fuckin Durrance, maybe?” He spat on the floor between our boots. “Any sorry sonofabitch would take his orders from that shitty bastard ain’t no kind of a man at all.”

Not wanting to toss him any bone to gnaw on, I inspected my drink, which of course enraged him. “You some kind of a dummy, mister?” He slapped my upper arm with the back of his hand. “I’m talking to you, shithead. What’s your goddamned name?” He had half a mind, he said, to put me out of my fuckin misery right here and now, because I sure looked like some skunk on the run from someplace where folks would take my execution as a favor.

Arcadia in 1893 was no different from any pest hole in the backcountry: not to defend yourself against abuse only invited more violence. I could tell by the show of his dirt-colored teeth that Bass had mistaken my silence for a coward’s fear, yet was galled by the fact that my gaze in the mirror was steady. Either this stranger was ignorant of Quinn’s reputation or indifferent to it-unforgivable!

He was panting. “Let’s me and you two yellerbellies get acquainted,” he said in a curdled voice. When Granger grinned, too eager to oblige, Bass hoisted a tobacco-yellowed forefinger in front of his nose. “Yank this lever, friend,” he said, shifting his chaw to the other cheek. “Just for the fun.”

Tommy’s stiff grin, pasted on his face, might have looked more natural if he were dead. He pretended to grab his pecker through his pants-“How about you yank this one, Quinn?” When Bass ignored this, waiting for him, he yanked Quinn’s finger, knowing full well that when he did, the other would open that brown mouth-here comes the joke-and let fly a jawful of tobacco spit into his face. Having permitted this, Granger turned to me with an aggrieved expression, wiping his nose and mouth with the back of his sleeve-a backwoods ruse, because his long frame was already uncoiling. Being drunk, Bass followed Granger’s eyes and the roundhouse punch cracked him hard in the black bush of his chin and knocked him sprawling.

Tommy had all the time in the world to put Bass out of commission by kicking him fairly and squarely in the balls. Having failed to do so, he was in fatal trouble. Already Bass was reared up bloody-lipped onto his elbows, his knife upright in his hand. Savoring what was coming, he shook his head to clear it before rolling up onto his feet. “self-defense,” he reminded the onlookers almost amiably, and after that he was not smiling anymore.

Granger threw me a whipped look, backing up against the bar. “We sure ain’t lookin for no trouble, Quinn! Hell’s fire, Quinn, you wouldn’t want no man for a friend who let another feller spit his chaw into his face, now ain’t that right, Quinn?” He turned to me because he could not face that knife one moment longer. “Ain’t that right, Jack?” He aimed to drag me into this, he was counting on Oklahoma Jack to save his ass.

Quinn had backed off enough to give them fighting room. “Come on,” he rasped, holding the knife high.

Granger fumbled his Bowie out and stared at it as if astonished to find a weapon on his person. When Bass shot me a warning look- Stay out of this -Tommy’s nerves let go and he kicked off from the bar, launching himself with a godawful squawk like a dying goose. In a moment, they were down rolling around, holding each other’s wrists. Granger was big, rangy, and strong, and pretty quick he had Bass’s arm twisted up behind his back. Dropping his knife, Bass squawked, “Ah fuck! Okay, okay!,” growling at Tommy to let go. “Okay by me, Quinn!” that fool cried with a kind of sob and let go his own knife, too.

Bass grabbed his knife and sprang astride Granger before he could get up, holding the weapon to his throat; Tommy stretched his arms wide as the Christ Himself on the sawdust floor. His eyes were darting, trying to find mine; he was coughing pitifully, too scared to talk. Because Granger had struck first, in front of witnesses, Bass could play with him or take his life for free or maybe both. He poked the man’s chest with small stabs through his shirt, drawing red blots, then raised the point to the tip of Granger’s nose. “Slit nostril, maybe?” Bass panted, very excited and all set for the last panicky thrash of self-defense that would trigger and excuse the fatal thrust.

Never having met a man I disliked so much so quickly, I already had enough of him to last a lifetime. Stretching out my boot, I toed Quinn in the buttock. He twisted around on me quick as a viper. “That your fuckin boot?”