“Next time I tell you something, you best listen.” Sturm worked the bolt quickly, spit one shell out onto the dirt, and reloaded. He slid the rifle back into the scabbard. “That was your first and last warning,” he said, slamming the door. “Next time it’ll be your skull I crack. I will open your head and let the light of God inside.”
They nodded, but wouldn’t take their eyes off the ground.
“Good. I hope I’m making things clear here. Now,” he gestured at the litter. “This place better goddamn sparkle before I come back out. Start with that casing right there,” he said, pointing at the spent shell. “Your family and mine have a contract. You will do your job or so help me Christ you will suffer the consequences.”
* * * * *
Everyone followed Sturm through the back door and into the pens.
Frank and Chuck went down to the center of the aisle to the lioness cage. Sturm turned and walked backwards slowly, addressing the men and the dogs. “Take a good close look gentlemen. You’re gonna be wagering on these canines very, very soon. You’ll place all your bets through the office upstairs.”
Girdler sat outside Bo-Bo’s room, whittling away at some stick; he watched the dog owner’s with amusement. He looked like he desperately wanted to be asked what he was doing, but nobody said anything. Sturm ignored him.
The aisle stretched away from them, to either end of the building, with stalls on both sides, thirty in all. They had built a chute that ran from the lioness cage to the auction yard floor.
Everyone got a good close look at the cat that had been chosen for the fights that night. Frank was hoping that one of the dog owners would kick the cage or spit on the lioness, just to piss Sturm off, but the dog owners just flung quiet insults at the cat.
She stared at the men, coiled tight on the blanket and wooden pallet Frank had put in the corner farthest from the door, right next to the gate that opened out to the chute. She never blinked, never moved a muscle except for the flicking tail. “You sure this thing ain’t stuffed, and that tail is some kind of machine?” one of the hunters asked.
The taxidermist spoke up, his voice loud and scratchy in the dusty air, like a worn needle settling into the groove of an old record. “If I had indeed preserved that creature, as you say, it would be the proudest moment in my career. What I achieve in my work is nothing but a crude mockery of this, this beautiful specimen here.”
The lioness yawned. The teeth were something to see.
“Exactly,” Sturm said.
* * * * *
After the tour, everyone walked down the chute, through the auction yard floor, and out through a special gate, arguing about what dogs were the most dangerous and how long the lioness would last. The dog owners kept together and claimed the far left side, under the chalkboard. Frank and Chuck waited at the mouth of the chute, on backside of the one wall of the auction yard that wasn’t seats.
Once everyone had gone through the floor and settled into place in the bleachers, Sturm stood way back in the chute, letting the anticipation build. He turned to Frank, talking low and fast. “I want that lioness to last at least four rounds. You got that? I want her to finish that last one strong. Then we’ll get ’em in the fifth. I want it to look like she can go seven, eight easy. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
Sturm went down the chute and out into the cage, raising his hat. The men erupted. The sound barreled around the auction yard main floor and bleachers, rattling the tin roof. It rolled into the back barn aisle like thunder, pricking every dog’s ear, making the lioness hiss.
Sturm was dressed the same as the night he faced down the lioness. Boots, jeans, and a cowboy hat. He took off his hat and banged against his knee a few times, knocking off the dust. Under the blinding sodium vapor lights, every detail seemed magnified. Sturm’s head was deeply tanned from the forehead down; his skull was an off white, like an Easter eggshell that had only been dipped into the dye halfway. If you got close, you could see black dirt beginning to collect in the wrinkles and crevices of his scar across the back of his head. The scars on Sturm’s tan, hairless chest now looked like five great furrows of ash.
He raised a hand to get everyone’s attention. “Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Now, I promised you something special here tonight.” He let himself out through the gate at the far edge. “You’ve all seen them dogs. You’ve seen that cat. In just a few moments you’re gonna be putting your money where your mouth is—but right now I’m going to have to take just one more moment of your time, before we open the betting.” He padlocked the gate shut. “Tonight, that cat will take on as many dogs as it takes. But tonight, tonight is just the appetizer.” Sturm climbed up the edge of the cage and propped his boot on the cover, bouncing the whole thing slightly. “Tomorrow night, well, that’s the main course.” He spit onto the bare dirt floor of the pit. There was no sawdust this time. No blood would be hidden. “Tomorrow night, three of them cats are going to fight a goddamn grizzly to the death.”
For a split second, it was quiet enough that Frank could hear a dog licking itself three pens back. Then the men exploded.
* * * * *
The next thing Frank knew Girdler was passing him, the Kodiak on a dog leash, lumbering placidly behind him. They passed under the wall, and the shouting got even louder. Girdler soaked it all up. It was just a taste of his moment in the sun, when he got to prove to everyone that he was a goddamn genuine mountain man, and that bear was truly lethal.
Bo-Bo didn’t look lethal. He looked sleepy. His lower lip hung away from teeth the size of .45 shells, wagging sluggishly from side to side as he loped along on his curiously pigeon-toed stride. If wasn’t for the great gashes his four inch claws left in the dirt, he almost resembled a gigantic, shaggy teddy bear. Girdler walked him leisurely in a circle around the cage and back up the chute.
Frank and Chuck stepped well back and gave the man and bear plenty of room. Girdler walked his bear down the aisle like he was taking a horse for a walk and went back to Bo-Bo’s special quarters.
Sturm got everyone simmered down enough to yell, “That’s tomorrow.” He let that go for a second, then yelled, “Tonight!” and turned his cowboy hat upside down.
Jack came down, carrying a mason jar filled with twenty-nine of Sturm’s checks. V-shaped slices of each of the dogs’ ears had been stapled to the checks. Each check was blank, just waiting to be filled out and signed by Sturm, just for bringing their dogs to the fight. Jack dumped the jar into Sturm’s upturned hat as Sturm said, “We’re gonna draw these names out at random. Soon as the names are read, well pretty soon after, the house’ll issue its odds.”
Of course, it was all a show. Jack had the whole sequence memorized. Frank had taken a good long look at each of the dogs and ranked them according to the most dangerous down to the least. Jack memorized the dogs and spent a few minutes in the back, arranging the checks into the seemingly random order, twisting them into a tight circle, then fanned out the ends, so it looked like it was just a big wad of knotted up paper. When he dumped them into Sturm’s hat, it just turned them right side up, so they would be easier to read.
Jack reached into the hat, pretended to search around for a bit, and pulled out the first check. He handed it to Sturm. Sturm read the result and held up the check for everyone to see. “Desperado! Desperado!” For the first round, Frank went for a dog a little on the slow side. Not too weak, but not too strong either, compared to the other twenty-eight dogs. He wanted to see what the lioness would do with a fighting dog with still plenty of fight left, at least compared to the pound dogs.
A stocky guy still wearing sunglasses and at least a couple hundred dollars on each ear and a thousand on his fingers came down. He took the check from Sturm, folded it once, and tucked it into his back pocket. A few of his buddies shouted encouragement in Spanglish at him. He went through the office upstairs and down a flight of wooden stairs into the aisle behind the scenes. He went down the aisle, got Desperado, and waited. The dog knew damn well something was up, and began to growl.