King of Spades (31 page)

“Then what about that shooting here the other night? That Bullneck fellow getting gunned down?”

Ransom sat a little straighter. He wondered if the group had recognized him.

“Bullneck had it coming. He was so crooked he could spit around a corner.” Ames turned to Judge Todd. “By the way, Judge, nobody's brought in a complaint on that yet, have they?”

“No.”

Ames nodded. “You see, there you go. No complaints. The coward never started West, the weak died on the way.”

Maule sneered. “What about those road agents hereabouts? That Curly Griffin and his gang, for instance?”

“Look, when we finally become a full-fledged state, we'll take care of the Curly Griffins in our own good time.”

“Lord, let's hope so.”

John Clemens had nothing to say. He drank moderately. The California investors sat smiling to themselves and waggling fat brown cigars.

Judge Todd mused aloud. “Strange case, that Curly Griffin fellow. They say he's a whale of a fellow when sober, and hell turned loose when drunk.”

Ames held up his whiskey as if in toast. “Gentlemen, Deadwood has to be a great place. It just simply has to be. It is the one hope left in the Western Hemisphere that man shall erect, in time, a society in which no one individual and no one clan shall be accounted superior to the other.”

Ransom spotted a gray louse wriggling on the soiled woolen shirt of the miner next to him along the bar. The louse was fat, couldn't quite make it over the prickly edge of the miner's gray shirt collar. It wriggled and struggled. It made Ransom feel delicate in the belly and he shrank from the miner. As he watched, yet another louse appeared from under the fold of the collar. It crawled as if following a well- marked route. It bumped into the rear of the first louse; stopped. It waited for the first louse to make it over the edge. The two of them were exactly like a pair of fat ewes,
one waiting for the other to make it over a low spot in a prickly fence. Had there been more lice, Ransom was sure they too would have waited in line.

A thought abruptly shot through Ransom's mind: “It was terrible of me to fall into Katherine's arms the minute I got woman hungry.”

Ransom poured himself another tumbler of red whiskey, drank half of it down in a single draft. His stomach reacted with a single hopping motion.

Another thought shot through his mind. “Better get rid of Katherine, somehow.”

Ransom downed the rest of the whiskey. He gripped his empty glass so hard it began to scrinch in his hand.

When he looked again at the miner's soiled collar, the two lice had vanished.

There was suddenly a hell-fired commotion outside No. 10. The next thing, a man on horseback came larruping in, banging the swing doors apart.

“Speaking of the devil!” Maule exclaimed.

Ransom instantly recognized the wild horsebacker. Curly Griffin. Ransom slowly sat very erect.

People in the front part of the saloon scrambled out of the way. Chairs upset, tables tipped over. The horse craned up its head, its eyes wild opals. Foam lay sprettled over its roan coat. The rider too had wild eyes, of such a light-blue cast it was hard to see where the blue began and the white left off. Curly had been drinking.

Curly was a handsome fellow. A lash of silver-blond hair lay across his forehead, his shoulders swung wide on each toss of the horse, his clean-run legs held the horse clipped close. His clothes were flashy: a bossy felt hat, blue-serge suit, high black leather boots, silver spurs. He was armed with gun and bowie knife and wore a pair of dried human ears on his watch chain.

Curly's eyes roved savagely silver over the crowd. He gave himself a great stretch, insulting.

For a moment all sound fell away.

Curly called out loud and clear. “Bence, set me up a horse's neck.” Curly gave his roan a lash over the butt with the ends of the reins. “Hup-up, Queenie, we'll take it right at the bar.”

The horse moved forward in a series of restrained prancings. It couldn't rear because of the hanging gas lamps and it couldn't run even tight-stepped because of the crowd. Its shod hoofs crunched rolls of thunder into the board floor.

Bence blinked; then, equal to the occasion, set out a bottle.

Curly sneered. “Now, Bence, don't rouse me up with the sight of just one bottle. Set 'em all out. Every last one of your whiskeys. I'm particular about my firewater. I likes a chance to select.”

Bence obliged him.

“Bence, friends, this is my night to howl.” Curly poured himself a full glass of whiskey and downed it all in one fluid motion. “Bence, I'm a wolf on a horse tonight.”

Bence nodded suavely. It was all in the course of business.

The roan kept stepping and staging about. Its never-slip caulks cut little half-moons into the wooden floor. Curly rode her with a snug rein.

Bence waited.

Curly rose in his stirrups and hurled his empty glass completely across the saloon into the fireplace. There was a crash and a tinkle of glass. “Well, Bence, friend, who shall I shoot tonight?”

“How would I know? I don't know what's your mind.”

“Bence, I've decided it's gonna be you.”

“Hold on, why me?”

Curly threw back his head and laughed. “C'mon, Bence, you know why.”

“No, I don't. Why?”

“Or would you rather I ate you blood raw?”

“What'd I do?”

“Bence, you blowed on me and my boys. So I'm going to tongue you.”

“Naw, now.”

“You peached on me, Bence. Told the Army where I was hiding.”

“Naw.”

“Bence, where do you want to be shot? In the head or the heart?”

“The jury won't go for either one, Curly. They'll hang you as sure as shootin'.”

“I'd like to see the goddam jury that'll hang Curly Griffin.” Curly tipped back his bossy felt hat. “C'mon, Bence, where do you want to be shot? In the head or the heart?”

Bence could be as cool as the next man in the face of a young bully's black caprice. “I'll take the head.”

“Why the head?”

“I don't like holes in my shirt.”

“Goddam the shirt.”

“But a hole will spoil it, Curly.”

“All right, damn you, then remove it. Because I favor the heart.”

Bence obliged him. Bence soon stood waiting in his red underwear.

“By God, Bence, you're the only true bullhead here. All the rest of these honyockers are yellow-bellied cowards. Terrible Turks in speech but white mice in action. Bence, maybe you didn't blow on me after all.”

“You're welcome.”

Everybody waited for something awful to happen.

Horse and man undulated at the bar. “But I want to tell you something though, Bence. If you ever open that big loose blab of yours again, I'm gonna shoot you down for sure at last.” Again the horse reared and Curly rode it easy.

“You're welcome.”

Curly sulked with his insulting smile for a moment; then,
exploding within, came up a raging cat. “Damn you, Bence, I'm gonna shoot you anyhow.” There was a yellow flashing pop at Curly's side.

Suddenly Bence began to squeal his anguish as he slowly crippled down out of sight behind the bar. Bence hadn't believed Curly was going to do it.

Curly leaped off his horse onto the bar. He lay his smoking gun down. Then he jumped down behind the bar and hauled up Bence's head. Holding Bence's head viselike down on the round edge of the bar, Curly reached into the flaccid mouth and pulled out the tongue by its tip and cut it off with his bowie knife. He threw the tongue on the bar. Like a little red pepper it lay for all to see. With a cry of triumph Curly picked up his smoking gun and leaped back on his horse.

There were awful gasps.

Somebody had to do something.

Ransom found himself standing in a cleared space in front of Curly and his horse. Ransom stood quietly. A fatherly voice spoke in Ransom's mind: “Aim with the eyes, never the gun. Gut-shoot him.”

Curly stared down at Ransom. “Well, and what do you want, sonny?”

Ransom touched his right hand to his right eye. “Shoot me down too.”

Curly jerked erect. His horse moved under him. “Hold on. Why?”

“Go on. Smoke me.” Ransom smiled full white teeth. He felt all men hang on him. His lean belly was hot. His green eyes were cold. “No risk to you.”

“You better dust, kid. This ain't your play.”

“Smoke me.” Ransom flicked a look at Curly's smoking gun. “You already got your jack out.”

“You got you some kind of ace in the hole then, I take it?”

“No, no ace. Just the king of spades maybe.” Ransom's fingers hung loose.

“And that'll top my jack?”

“Let's try it.”

Curly sneered elaborately. “You little doughgut you, that's the queen of hearts you're holding. Better yet, the whore of hearts. I know all about you and Kate. She's old enough to be your mother, kid.”

“Whore of hearts, is it?”

“One man's trash another man's treasure.”

“Smoke me.”

Curly gave himself another great lazy stretch. “You're just full of barbwire whiskey, kid. You better get high behind before I irrigate your belly.”

“Try it.”

Curly swung his gun up and laid it between the ears of his horse. He aimed it right at Ransom's eyes. “All right, kid, take a good look at my gun. See that bullet in there all ready and set for the jump?”

Ransom could tell Curly's next move by the skim on his eyes. Ransom smiled. “Let drive, if that's your mind. I've got nothing to live for anyway.”

“Pull, kid, and I'll shoot you down like a sheep.”

Ransom did. He gut-shot him. Curly was quicker, but he was sitting on a stirring horse and his bullet missed. Ransom felt the bullet pass between his arm and his body. It whacked into the base of the bar behind him.

Curly leaned over his horse's neck. Blood rushed out of Curly's belly as if he were vomiting out of his navel. Then Curly fell to the floor.

There was a collective sigh. Then a roar all at once.

“Good riddance!” cried a gleeful voice.

Troy Barb quickly ran up and secured the horse.

Ransom opened his gun, picked out the empty shell with thumb and forefinger, dropped the shell in a cuspidor, clink, replaced it with a fresh cartridge from his belt.

Before men could beat him on the back and thank him for daring to stand up to the terrible Curly Griffin, Ransom ducked outdoors.

 

Katherine stood waiting for him in the entryway, all smiles, dressed in stunning ivory velvet. “Come in, Ransom.” Before he could stop her, she stood on her toes and kissed him. “All is forgiven.” Then she took him by the hand and led him to his easy chair in front of the bay window. She unbuckled his belt and gun and placed them on the table. With a slight pressure she made him sit down.

His eyes were two hells.

“How are you, Ransom?”

“Fine.”

“Poor boy. Come.”

She removed his boots. She lifted first his right foot up on the footstool and then his left foot. Smiling, with the air of a woman who knows she is hauntingly beautiful, she stroked his ankles and soothed his feet over the instep and massaged his calves. Then, as a final touch of wifely solicitude, with thumb and forefinger she took the tuck out of his socks between the big toe and the little toes.

His eyes became two pools of silvery green.

“What's the matter, honey?”

“I don't deserve that.”

“Ransom, I want my husband happy.”

His belly was full of disaster. He felt as if he had ingested a couple of plates of gray ashes soaked in moldy vinegar. He thought: “I'm never going to get out of this.”

Again she reached in with thumb and forefinger, prettily, and unbuttoned his collar.

“Don't do that.”

“Why not? You're my husband, aren't you?”

“I'm not worth it.”

“Come now, my husband. A handsome man never needs to apologize.”

“Kate, I have a soul of mud.”

“Ransom.”

He made a last effort to push her away. Around her it was always as if his belly was in the grip of the suck of a whirlpool drawing him over and down. “Kate, what miserable dogs we all are.”

She took the pushing, and still managed to smile. “Why, Ransom, what a mean thing to say.”

The hells in his eyes came back. “Kate, I just killed another man.”

She shrank visibly. She seemed to wither ten years before his very eyes.

“Kate, why don't you just get an ax and cut off my right hand? At the wrist? Please?” He settled deeper into his easy chair.

She made a sound as if she'd at last lost salvation.

“Or else get the butcher knife and cut off my johnny-nods.”

A withered savage grandmother, torn from her favorite pestle and mortar, looked out at him from Katherine's brown eye.

“Kate, I'm slowly getting worse and worse.” He rolled his head from side to side. “Somebody had better gun me down too. And that right soon.”

A violent shudder went through her body, from her eyes to her toes.

“Oh, you needn't worry that they'll come and get me. Yet. They're all too happy that I did what I did. As happy as a bunch of sheep that somebody got the wolf for them.”

“Who was it this time?”

“Curly Griffin.”

“Him?” She clapped hand to mouth.

“Yes. The one you wondered if I was a lookout for.”

“I was wrong then.”

“Did you know him?”

Her brown eye held steady.

“He said he knew you, Kate.”

“Please, Ransom.”

“He called you the whore of hearts, Kate.” Vomit threatened to erupt in the back of his throat.

She jerked her face away. “So I am Kate to you now, Ransom?”

“Yes.”

“Well!” Katherine's chin slowly set out. “Well! I've had enough at last.” She snapped around, turning her back on him, and gathering up her long ivory velvet gown, slowly moved across the room and went upstairs.