The Last Good Day, стр. 5
“No need for that,” B.W. said.
“Mind your own business, Injun.”
“You his papa?” B.W. asked.
“No. He just hangs around, helps out a little. I feed him and let him sleep in the stable. Tries to steal my money every chance he gets.”
“Don’t have a mama?” B.W. asked.
“Mama was a whore. A cowboy shot her couple years ago for stealin’ his money.”
“They catch him?”
“Didn’t try. Don’t nobody care what happens to whores.”
“What about his papa?”
“Ain’t answerin’ no more questions.”
The boy walked up. He couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve. “I took care of them, Mr. Harden,” the boy said.
Harden gave the boy an angry look and looked back at B.W. “If you don’t come back for them tonight it will cost you more money.”
“Be back tonight,” B.W. said.
Harden checked the money, put it in his pocket and walked away.
When B.W. went in the saloon, four big men with straggly beards and thick muscular bodies wearing coal dust overalls were holding Rance against the bar. Two of the men were hanging on his good arm, one holding the bad arm, and the other one with a handful of his hair, tilting his head back and pouring whiskey down his gullet. Several other men were standing back from the bar with whiskey glasses in their hands, yelling, “More! More! More!” A bald-headed bartender was leaning on the bar with a smile on his face and two young whores were holding the piano player’s head back, mocking the scene.
“Let him go,” B.W. said.
The one pouring the whiskey stopped pouring and stepped in front of Rance, holding the bottle.
“What’s that you said there, chief?”
“I said, let him go.”
“This Johnnie Reb wanted a drink,” he said and everyone laughed.
“War’s over, let him go,” B.W. said.
The other men were still hanging on to Rance.
“Figured you would enjoy this considerin’ the uniform you wearin,’” the one with the bottle said.
“You okay, major?” B.W. asked.
“Kinda woozy,” Rance said.
Everybody laughed. The whores let go of the piano player and joined the laughter.
“For the last time, let him go,” B.W. said.
“And if we don’t?” the man with the bottle said.
“Then I’ll have to insist.”
Everyone laughed again.
“How you goin’ to do that? You’re kind of outnumbered,” the man with the bottle said, prompting another round of laughter.
“You’ll be the first to know,” B.W. said and eased his right hand under the handle of his tomahawk.
The man waved the bottle at B.W. “Got no more patience with you, chief,” he said and reached for a .44 on his hip. It was the last thing he would ever do.
B.W. gave a heave upward to the handle of his tomahawk, grabbed it in midair and hurled it across the room, splitting the man’s skull. His gun hand fell away from the gun The whiskey bottle fell from his other hand and they both crashed to the floor.
B.W. drew his Colt, pointed it at the men holding Rance and they let go and backed off.
“I’ll shoot the first one goes for a gun,” B.W. said.
Everyone looked at the dead man as his blood pooled around him on the floor. Nobody moved.
“Think that bath’s going to have to wait,” B.W. said.
“Think so too.” Rance turned his head, squinting his eyes trying to focus on the man on the floor.
He pulled the .44 from the dead man’s holster, stuck it under his left arm and pried the tomahawk out of the man’s bleeding skull and pitched it to B.W. He pulled the pistol from under his left arm with his right hand and pointed it at the crowd as they backed out of the saloon and ran for the livery stable.
Several of the men from the saloon ran out on the street, shooting at them. When they ran in the stable the stable boy was holding their horses saddled, waiting for them.
“You better get out of here quick,” he said.
“Thanks,” B.W. said. “You want to go with us?”
“Let me get my things,” he said.
“We don’t have time,” Rance said but the boy ran to a hay stack anyway and pulled out a small feed sack and ran back to the horses.
“I’m ready,” the boy said.
“Get on the roan,” B.W. said.
“We can’t take the boy with us,” Rance said, looked at the saddle on Buck, grabbed the saddle horn and swung up in the saddle. “Where did we get another saddle?”
“I stole it,” the boy said. “Well, Harden stole it first.”
“You can’t go,” Rance said.
“He has to now,” B.W. said.
“Damn,” Rance said. “All I wanted was a bath.”
The sound of angry people was almost to the livery. The boy and B.W. mounted and Harden came running in, buttoning his pants.
“What the hell you doing,” he said. “Where you takin’ that boy?”
B.W. spurred his horse and galloped toward the blacksmith, kicked him in the chest as he rode by, knocking him down. They rode into the night with bullets whizzing past them.
4
They rode hard by the light of a full moon until they felt the miners had given up the chase.
Rance slowed Buck to a walk and B.W. and the boy brought their horses to him.
“Okay, explain,” Rance said.
“Bout the boy?” B.W. asked.
“Of course ‘bout the boy.”
“Don’t have no kin, was being beat on by that blacksmith. Had to get him out of there.”
“That’ll do for me. What’s your name boy?” Rance asked.
“Thomas Travers,” he said. “Call me Tommy.”
“You set a horse real good, Tommy,” Rance said.
“Thank you.”
“I owe you for your help back there, B.W.,” Rance said.
“Makes us even. You on your own next time though,” B.W. said.
“Fair enough,” Rance said. “We need to get out of these uniforms.”
“And get the boy some shoes,” B.W. said.
“And me and you a new hat,”