Ed Gorman - Showdown

"Thank you very much, Mrs. Lattimore," Neville said in a voice so formal and polite that Prine actually quit shoveling food into his mouth for a few seconds. "You and your husband have already done plenty, and I plan to pay you back as soon as this is all done with."

"Why, we're practically neighbors, Mr. Neville. So there's no call to talk about paying us back. I'm sure you'd do the same thing for us."

Neville looked confused briefly. Somebody was turning down his offer to pay them back? He was used to paying people off. Money was the currency, not friendship. That was startling enough. But then, she'd said that he would do the same thing for her. But would he? Prine could see this thought process. It would be too much to say that Neville was having any kind of conversion to the goodwill of the common man here, but clearly he was forming a favorable impression of these people.

"Yes," Neville said, "I guess I would do the same thing for you."

He glanced at Prine as he said this. Prime gave him a doubtful look.

They left just as dusk was streaking the sky with its richest colors, the colors that only Eastern potentates were said to possess, colors that were the secret treasures handed down from ancient Egypt, colors, or so it was claimed, that no other civilization could duplicate—mauve and purple gold and green the color of a cat's eye.

Both men huddled inside their ponchos. They knew that soon enough the land would shimmer and shine with frost. Ice might even cover the creeks and the river by the time of the midnight moon.

Distant drums, having nothing to do with them, came from Ute camps scattered around the hills to the west.

Neither man said much. There wasn't much to say. Once in a while they'd piss and moan about how their asses hurt from their saddles, how the dropping temperature was beginning to test the strength of their ponchos, how when it was all over a bed would feel very good.

Neville, of course, had small moments of rage. Obviously, the man couldn't help himself. He'd start thinking of his sister and he'd go wild for a few minutes.

Their first stop came around nine o'clock when they saw the remnants of a mining town. An entire block of businesses were boarded up. Maybe two dozen tiny houses stood dark. Somebody had shot out all the stained-glass windows in the church.

The whipping and whining wind didn't exactly help Prine's sense of desolation. My God, not only had the gold boom gone bust in this place, he wondered if a plague hadn't visited it. He thought of images he'd learned about in school, how in medieval days the bubonic plague would literally wipe out the entire populations of some small towns.

They tied their horses to a hitching post in front of the saloon. The batwing doors, silhouetted against dim, flickering lamplight from inside, hung on one hinge each. A player piano badly out of sync and tune rolled through "Camptown Lady," somehow making it sound like a dirge.

Prine was so tired that all sorts of silly childhood images came to him. Ghosts, inside; or ghouls, the spirits so hideous there weren't even any names for them.

They took their rifles with them.

The way the wind was whipping, one of the batwings tore free and fell to the floor. Prine pushed on inside.

The sight before him resembled a stage set that had been deserted long enough to be shrouded with thick, dusty cobwebs. A long pine bar was on the right wall, a long dusty mirror running parallel to it. Empty tables and chairs filled up most of the space except for a small stage against which the player piano was pushed. Rats were everywhere, paying no attention whatsoever to the intruders. There must have been a dozen good-sized rats on top of the piano, scurrying about in frenzy. Needing, wanting—but not finding—food.

Only after a time did they cast their tiny red eyes on the newcomers. You could almost hear them begin to calculate what these strange upright creatures would taste like.

Neville shot three of them. The explosion of his Sharps was almost loud enough to tear the wide chandelier above them from its mooring.

"Happy now?" Prine said.

"I don't have the right to shoot rats?"

"You don't have the right to waste ammunition, is what you don't have."

In the mere, drab light, Neville's face filled with blood.

"I guess that was pretty stupid."

"You won't get any argument from me," Prine said.

Prine began to walk around the saloon. He wondered how long it had been since this place had heard and seen human revelry. The rats might dance on some spectral midnight. But it had been a long time since saloon gals had prodded old sourdoughs to drink some more of the watered-down liquor, and high-kicking dancers had exposed their frill-covered bottoms to the delight of the all-male audience.

Prine heard it first. He thought it was just one more variation on the eerie tones the winds made. But after it sounded two or three times, he recognized the gasping noise, like that of a man who couldn't catch his breath. A drowning man, perhaps.

Neville had climbed the stairs and was inspecting the second floor. Prine stayed on the ground floor, trying to find the source of the strange sound. He finally located it behind the bar, the one place he hadn't thought to look.

The old man lay on his back. From the dark circle on his filthy gray shirt, Prine assumed the man had been shot in the chest. He'd been hit in such a way that he couldn't breathe well. When he tried to speak or call out in simple syllables, the words would stop somewhere in his throat and he would clutch his throat with both hands, as if his throat had been cut.

Prine grabbed the only source of light, the ancient lantern on top of the bar, and held it down to the man. The wound, as he'd guessed, was in the chest, though further away from the heart than he'd suspected. There was a wooden box on top of the back bar. Inside, Prine found two canteens. They were both full. He untied his bandanna and soaked it with water.

He spent the next ten minutes exhausting the full extent of his medical knowledge—pulse points, eye dilation, breathing, consciousness. None was very good. The old man muttered words from time, to time but nothing Prine could understand.

Neville showed up and watched as Prine cleaned up the old man's wound so he could get a better look at it.

"They figured he was dead," Neville said. "They weren't far wrong."

"He going to make it?"

"Take a miracle."

"Didn't find anything upstairs. But this must've been a nice little place at one time."

Maybe because they were talking, maybe because the old man knew how close he was to dying and he wanted to talk to somebody—whatever, he sat up a little and fully opened his eyes.

"You ain't them, is you?" he said. His teeth were blackened stubs. His mouth was circle of scabs. He had to blink his eyes to focus. "No, I can see you now. You ain't them."

"They shot you?"

Phlegm clogged his chest and throat.

"They didn't see nobody in here except ole Midnight, so they just figured they had the place to themselves. They wanted to sleep before nightfall." He started coughing up blood. Prine held his frail upper body until the coughing stopped. "When they found me—I always sleep in the back room—they figured I might tell the law on them. Stupid bastards. Closest town is Claybank, and an old man like me ain't never goin' to Claybank and live to tell about it. The one named Tolan, he's the bastard that shot me." Then: "Midnight! Midnight!"

Prine wondered if the old man was hallucinating. There was no evidence of anybody else in the place. Maybe the old man was recalling a childhood friend.

But the old man grew more and more agitated, cried louder and louder for this "Midnight!"

And damned if Midnight didn't put in an appearance. A raven of vast proportion and eerie gaze, it didn't simply fly through the air, it smashed its way, the flutter of its wing violent as a terrible storm. It landed on the bar above the old man. Perched there, looked down at him.