Ralph Compton - Bluff City

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Skagg managed to raise his head and look Clay in the eyes. “You’re fast. Maybe the fastest I ever saw.”

Clay said nothing.

“Tell me the truth.” Skagg sucked in more air. “No scribbler could beat me with his fists and a six-gun. Who are you really?”

“No one in particular.”

“I’m asking nice. I don’t have long, and I’d like to know your name. The name of the man who killed me.”

Clay Adams sighed. “In another life I was known as Crooked Nose Neville Baine.”

Skagg’s eyelids fluttered. He seemed about to keel from his saddle, but somehow he steadied himself and said, “I heard tell you were dead.”

“I am. I go by Clay Adams now, and only Clay Adams.”

“But your nose?”

“It got fixed.”

“I’ll be damned.” And with that, Skagg Izzard died, his huge form oozing to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

Clay stared down at the body. “I’m trying not to be,” he said. Shaking himself, he replaced the spent cartridges, twirled the pearl-handled Colt into his holster and reined the claybank around. He started onto the stone bridge but had only gone a few yards when he saw a rider at the other end. Instantly, his hand flew to his Colt. “Who’s there?” he challenged.

“Who do you think?” came the soft reply.

“Please, no.” Clay flicked his reins and was across the bridge in moments. His eyes confirmed what his ears had heard, and in his anxiety he blurted, “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

“What else?” Melanie Stanley said. “I was following you.” She had on a black riding outfit, with a black hat and a black quirt. Unlike a lot of women, who rode sidesaddle, she rode as a man would ride, her dress hitched up halfway to her knees.

They stared at one another, neither showing an inclination to speak. Melanie’s face was in shadow and impossible to read; Clay’s a mirror of torment. Finally he said, “It’s dangerous for a woman to be on her own this far out from town at night.”

Melanie motioned with her quirt at the sprawled forms. “It’s dangerous for men, too, I see.”

“You don’t seem as shocked as I expected.”

“It’s not as if you haven’t killed before,” Melanie said. “Or have you forgotten those two outlaws you knifed to death?” She bit her lower lip. “I wonder how many more.”

“I’m not Jesse Stark. To me, people aren’t bugs to be squashed whenever I have the urge.”

Melanie motioned with her quirt again. “Is that what this was about? Does it have something to do with Stark?”

“It has everything to do with him,” Clay said. Impulsively, he gripped her wrist. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

“Let go,” Melanie said.

“Please,” Clay beseeched her. “You don’t realize what is at stake. You don’t know how much finding Stark means to me.”

“I won’t ask you again.”

Clay looked at his hand on her arm. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean—” He broke off, his features downcast.

“Let me see your pistol,” Melanie requested.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Why?”

“Humor me.” Melanie held out her hand.

Reluctantly, Clay slid his revolver from its holster and placed it on her palm. “Don’t cock it. It has a hair trigger.”

“I know a little about guns,” Melanie said. She examined the Colt with great care, running her hand over the cylinder and along the barrel. “Pearl handles. Nickel-plated. Etching. And a hair trigger? They don’t get any fancier than this.”

“I suppose,” Clay conceded.

“Only one kind of person carries a pistol like this,” Melanie said. “Some people call them leather slappers. Pistoleros, the Mexicans say. Gunslingers, gunnies, gun sharks. Need I go on?”

Clay held out his hand. “May I have it back now?”

“What’s the matter? Feel uncomfortable without it?” Melanie pointed it at him. “I just saw you commit two murders. Legally, I am obligated to turn you over to the marshal.”

“Do whatever you want,” Clay said, and as he said it, his right hand became a bolt of living lightning and relieved her of the Colt. Shoving it into his holster, he slapped his legs against the claybank.

It was a full minute before Melanie caught up. “You and I have a lot to talk about, Mr. Adams.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“My real name is Baine. Neville Baine. I was born in Indiana. When I was eleven my folks went to visit my mother’s sister and left me home. It was the middle of the winter, and right after they left, it snowed for five days. They couldn’t get back and I couldn’t get out. I was in the hayloft, forking hay down for the horses, when I slipped and fell. I hit my face on the ladder and broke my nose in three places. I didn’t know what to do so I didn’t do anything, and a week later, when my folks showed up, the bone had started to mend so they left it be. Only thing was, my nose was bent in the middle. Bent bad. The other kids took to calling me Crooked Nose. One day when I was fifteen I was talking to a girl I liked and a neighbor boy started poking fun at me, calling me Crooked Nose and teasing the girl for liking someone so ugly. I hit him. I hit him hard, again and again and again. I hit him so many times, I thought I had killed him. So I lit a shuck. Ended up in Kansas. I worked at all sorts of jobs, and everywhere I went, I was teased about my face. Then I met Dave Mather. Mysterious Dave, they call him. A leather slapper. A pistolero. A gunslinger. Gunny. Gun shark. Shootist. He took a shine to me and taught me how to use a pistol. How to use it so no one would tease me ever again. I was in a few shooting scrapes and word got around. After that, everyone left me alone.” Clay abruptly stopped. He had not meant to tell her so much, but once he started he could not stop.

“Dear Lord,” Melanie breathed.

“There is more if you want to hear it.”

“There is nothing I want to hear more.”

Clay grimly continued. “Jesse Stark tried to rob the bank at Whistler’s Flat. You know about that. What you don’t know is that I tried to stop him. The townsmen mistook me for one of his men and shot me. I made it out of Whistler’s Flat but Stark found me and beat me until I was dead. Or so he thought. Then he rode off.”

“So that’s it,” Melanie said.

“I didn’t die, though. I healed. So did my nose. He broke it worse than that time I fell from the loft, but when it mended, my nose was a normal nose again. I was like everyone else. Crooked Nose Baine was gone.”

Clay drew rein in the middle of the road. Taken unawares, Melanie was a shade slow in doing the same. She twisted in her saddle and asked, “What’s wrong? Why did you stop just when I was beginning to understand?”

“Do you? Do you realize how important this is to me? I have been given a new chance. Call it a miracle, call it the hand of the Almighty, call it blind luck, but I can start my life over.”

“When do you intend to begin?”

“I already have. I cut my hair short. I shaved my mustache. I bought new clothes and a new hat and took a new name.”

“Was all that before or after you came to Colorado to kill Jesse Stark?” Melanie asked.

“Does it make a difference?”

“Indeed it does. Yes, your nose is as it should be. Yes, you changed everything about you that you could. But you are still the same man you were before. You are still a killer.”

“Only when I have to be.”

“Wrong, Clay. You are completely, utterly wrong.” Melanie gazed at the stars and at the road and finally back at him. “You’re deceiving yourself, is what you are doing. You are out for revenge. You want to kill Jesse Stark for what he did to you.” She gave a sharp intake of breath. “My God. Now I understand why your hand was shaking when you held that gun to Stark’s head. It wasn’t that you were scared. It was because you wanted to kill him so badly. Why didn’t you?”