a trail of gun smoke and dead men to clear
his name.
The big man in buckskins leaned against the wall near the closed door of the barn, which smelled of manure, moldy hay, and the tobacco smoke that drifted in thready clouds. The whole place hummed with the talk of the men gathered around the cockpit, a makeshift ring formed by rough boards.
Around half of the pit was a makeshift grandstand to accommodate those who wanted a close look at the fight that was about to begin. Those who hadn’t arrived early enough to get a seat had to stand around the other part of the pit, and there was plenty of pushing and shoving for position.
Skye Fargo’s lake blue eyes watched as the men jostled one another and crowded closer to the ring. Some of them were well dressed, a banker or two, and maybe a lawyer. Others wore rough work clothes that hadn’t been washed in a while. According to Dodge Calder, Fargo’s friend, one of them was the town marshal.
Fargo didn’t look like any of them. His fringed buckskins seemed a little out of place, and it was clear that he was accustomed to being outside in the open, not closed up in a building like the bankers.
Only a couple of women were present, both of them soiled doves from some local saloon, Fargo figured. Their faces were avid with anticipation, and it was likely that they’d make a good bit of money from the customers who’d be eager for their favors later, after their blood had been stirred by the fight to the death between two roosters.
Money changed hands and bets went down. Fargo heard an occasional nervous laugh, indicating that some of the bettors were a little unsure they’d made the right choice.
On one side of the ring a man with a corncob pipe clamped between his teeth watched as another man took the hood off the orange-colored head of a fighting cock with its comb and wattles trimmed so that its opponent in the coming battle couldn’t grab them with its bill.
The man with the pipe removed it from his mouth and breathed a cloud of smoke into the cock’s face to agitate it, not that it didn’t appear agitated enough already.
Both men wore ragged shirts and denim pants that showed hard use. Lank hair hung down from their sweat-stained hats.
On the other side of the pit, the handler of the opposing cock spoke soothingly to it and almost seemed to cuddle it as he checked on the short, sharp metal spurs affixed to its legs where its own spurs would have been. Fargo couldn’t make out the handler’s eyes because they were hidden by a hat pulled down low on the forehead so that the features were obscured.
“That kid’s been braggin’ about how many fights that big black bird’s won,” Dodge Calder said. He took off a battered hat and ran skinny fingers through his thick white whiskers. “You might wanna make a bet on that cock. Name’s Satan.”
The kid’s rooster was so black that it was almost purple. It stretched its long neck toward its handler as if listening carefully to what was being said. Its wattles and comb had been trimmed like the other bird’s.
“I don’t bet on things I don’t know much about,” Fargo told Calder.
Calder nodded. “Don’t blame you. The Bryson brothers don’t lose often.”
Fargo had known Calder for a long time, and in fact he’d stopped off in Ashland to see him after leading some pilgrims up the Applegate Trail to the Willamette Valley. Calder had been a guide for a few years, which is how Fargo had gotten to know him, but Calder had liked Oregon so much that one year he’d decided to stay and see if there was any gold left in the area that some of the forty-niners had drifted to when the pickings got slim in California.
As far as the Trailsman knew, Calder hadn’t found any gold, but he’d found himself a home in Ashland, a little farther to the south of the gold fields. He’d done some trading and trapping and was making a living for himself one way and another.
Fargo was happy for Calder, but he wasn’t interested in settling down in one spot, no matter how easy it might be to make a living there. He was a natural wanderer, not cut out to be tied to one place for any length of time.
There wasn’t a lot to do in Ashland, and Calder had suggested the cockfight as a bit of entertainment on a Sunday afternoon. Fargo didn’t see much amusement in a couple of roosters trying to kill each other, but Calder wanted to get a bet down.
“I got my money on the Brysons,” he told Fargo. “The kid’s been lucky, but those old boys have been at this a long time, and they don’t like to lose. That rooster of theirs is rough as a cob. They call him General Washington, and he’s won four fights in a row. Fact is, nobody around here will fight against him. That’s why we got such a good crowd. Folks wouldn’t turn out like this to see just an ordinary fight.”
Satan against General Washington, Fargo thought. If the birds lived up to their names it would be quite a fight.
Fargo was about to say something along those lines to Calder, but someone moved a board aside and the referee stepped into the ring. He was the man Fargo thought might have been a lawyer. He walked to the middle of the ring and took a thick watch out of the pocket of his black frock coat. The crowd grew quiet.
“One round of thirty minutes is what we’ve agreed on, gentlemen,” the referee said. “Is that correct?”
The Bryson brothers, who didn’t look like any gentlemen Fargo had ever seen before, nodded.
“Or till our rooster kills that one,” one of the brothers said.
The other brother grinned. The kid ignored them.
“Very well,” the referee said. He backed up a little. “Bill your birds.”
When he said that, one of the Brysons nodded to his brother and stepped out of the ring.
“That’s Hap,” Calder said. “He’s the cheerful one.”
Hap didn’t look cheerful to Fargo. He looked mean as a cornered cougar.
“The other one’s Willie,” Calder said.
Willie looked just like Hap to Fargo. As far as he could tell, they might have been twins.
Willie took General Washington to the middle of the ring, holding the cock’s legs together with its body draped over his left arm. The kid walked up to him, holding Satan the same way. They let the two birds glare at each other, keeping them a foot or so apart. The birds squirmed for a couple of seconds as if trying to escape, but their handlers gripped them tightly. When the gamecocks saw they couldn’t get free, they started to stretch their necks and peck at each other, trying to reach an eye or some other soft spot. Their handlers pulled them back before they could make any contact.
The sparring went on for a short time, maybe half a minute. Fargo didn’t see much point to it. The birds already hated each other plenty. They didn’t need any encouragement.
“That’s enough,” the referee said. “Get ready.”
The handlers backed away from the center of the ring and squatted down with eight or nine feet of empty space between them.
“Pit your birds!” the referee called out, and as he did the handlers released the cocks. The quiet exploded in a flurry of feathers. The spectators pressed around the ring. They yelled, shoved each other, and made more bets.
What happened between the cocks was almost too fast for Fargo to follow. The kid’s bird flapped its clipped wings and seemed to go straight into the air as if on a spring and then to descend on General Washington before the cock had a chance to gain any height. After that, the birds attacked each other, heads darting, feet scrambling, spurs flashing.
Fargo thought that if he’d been more used to cock-fights, he’d have been able to follow what was happening better, but because he didn’t know what to watch for, the subtleties, if any, were lost on him.
General Washington, however, was getting the worst of it. Fargo could see that much. Satan was pecking furiously at the general’s head from his superior position, trying to get at the eyes, but the general was strong and somehow got out from under his opponent and scuttled away to the side. The kid’s rooster backed away a short distance, the clipped tips of his outstretched wings quivering.