“Try again, Shirley,” Davidson told him, disgust in his voice.
“What a silly, silly man you are!” Lone Eagle shouted. “If you had two pistols and a rifle and shotgun beside you, you still would not be able to hit me. It is good they are out of your sight. You might hurt yourself, foolish man.”
Lone Eagle was telling Smoke that his weapons had been hidden as planned.
“Shoot the damned Injun, Shirley!” Dagget hollered in Smoke’s ear.
“All right! All right!” Smoke put a hurt expression on his face. “You don’t have to be so ugly about it!”
Smoke fired again. The slug missed Lone Eagle by a good two feet.
“Jesus Christ, DeBeers!” Dagget said, scorn thick in his voice.
“The pistol was fully loaded, Shirley,” Davidson told him. “You have four rounds left.”
Lone Eagle turned his back to Smoke and hiked up his loincloth, exposing his bare buttocks; the height of insult to a man.
Facing the crowd, Lone Eagle shouted, “There are little girls in my village who are better shots than the white man. Your shots are nothing more than farts in the wind.”
“If you don’t kill him,” Davidson warned, “you shall be the one to gouge out his eyes. And if you refuse, I’ll personally kill you. After I let Brute have his way with you.”
Smoke cocked the pistol.
Lone Eagle began chanting, and Smoke knew he was singing his death song.
He fired again. This time, the slug came much closer. Lone Eagle’s words changed slightly. Smoke listened while he fumbled with the gun. Lone Eagle was telling him to miss him again, and then he would charge and make the outlaws kill him; it was too much to ask a friend to do so. He told him that his death could not be avoided, that it was necessary for the plan to work. That for years it would be sung around the campfires about how well Lone Eagle had died, charging the many white men with only his bare hands for a weapon.
And it was a good way to die. The Gods had allowed a beautiful day, warm and pleasant.
Smoke cocked the pistol and lifted it, taking aim.
Lone Eagle sang of his own death, then abruptly he screamed and charged the line of outlaws and gunslingers. Using the scream as a ruse to miss him, Smoke emptied the pistol and fell to the ground just as Lone Eagle, with a final scream, jumped at the line and a dozen guns barked and roared, stopping him in midair, flinging him to the ground, bloody and dead.
Rex helped Smoke up. “You’ll never change, Shirley,” he said disgustedly. “Do us all a favor and don’t ever carry a gun. You’d be too dangerous. Hell, you might accidentally hit something!”
Smoke fanned himself. “I feel faint!”
“If you pass out, DeBeers,” Dagget told him, contempt in his eyes and his voice, “you’ll damn well lie where you fall.”
“I can probably make it back to the camp before I collapse,” Smoke trilled.
“Stand aside, boys!” an outlaw said with a laugh. “Shirley’s got the vapors!”
“Come on, boys! The drinks are on me.”
As they passed by him, several hardcases jokingly complimented Smoke on his fine shooting.
Smoke looked first at Davidson and Dagget, standing by his side, and then at the bullet-riddled and bloody body of Lone Eagle. “Isn’t anyone going to bury the savage?”
Dagget laughed, cutting his eyes to Davidson. “I think that’d be a fine job for Shirley, don’t you, Rex?”
“Yes.” That was said with a laugh. “I do. There is a shovel right over there, DeBeers.” He pointed. “Now get to it.”
It took Smoke more than a hour to dig out a hole in the rocky soil, even though he dug it shallow, knowing the chief would take the body from the ground and give it a proper Indian burial.
When he got back to his camp, York was laying on his blankets, looking at him, disgust in his eyes.
Smoke flopped down on his own blankets. “What a horrible experience.”
“They wasn’t no call to kill that Injun. He wasn’t even armed and probably was lookin’ for food. You was missin’ him deliberate, wasn’t you?”
Smoke made up his mind and took the chance. “Yes, York, I was.”
“I figured as much. Can’t nobody shoot that bad. ’Specially a man who was raised up on a farm the way you claim to be. You puttin’ on some sort of act, DeBeers. But you best be damn careful around here. This is a hellhole, and they ain’t nothin’ but scum livin’ here.”
“I know. Davidson at first said if I didn’t kill the Indian, he was going to give me to Brute Pitman and then have me gouge out the Indian’s eyes.” Smoke let the mention of his putting on an act fade away into nothing, hoping York would not bring it up again.
York lay on the ground and gazed at him. “I heard of Brute; seen him around a couple of times. He’s a bad one. If they’d a tried that, I’d have been forced to deal myself in and help you out.”
“You’d have gotten yourself killed.”
“You befriended me. Man don’t stand by his friends when they in trouble ain’t much of a man or a friend. That’s just the way I am.”
And Smoke felt the young cowboy was sincere when he said it. “I agree with you. You know, at first, they were going to make you kill the Indian.”
“I’d a not done it,” he said flatly. “My ma was part Nez Percé. And I’m damn proud of that blood in my veins. And I don’t make no effort to hide that fact, neither.”
And judging by the scars on his flat-knuckled hands, York had been battling over that very fact most of his life, Smoke noted.
York followed Smoke’s eyes. “Yeah. I’m just as quick with my fists as I am with my guns.” His eyes dropped to Smoke’s big hands. “And you ain’t no pilgrim, neither, Mr. Shirley DeBeers. Or whatever the hell your name might be.”
“Let’s just leave it DeBeers for the time being, shall we?”
“’Kay.” York took off his battered hat and ran fingers through his tousled hair. “DeBeers?”
“Yes, York?”
“Let’s you and me get the hell gone from this damn place!”
12
There was no doubt in Smoke’s mind that York was serious and was no part of Davidson’s scheme of things in or around Dead River. The young cowboy was no outlaw and had made up his mind never to become one. But Smoke had three days to go before the deadline was up and the posse would strike. He had a hunch that would be the longest three days of his life. He looked at York for a moment before replying.
“I’m just about through sketching Davidson. He has indicated that he would allow me to leave after that.”
“Like I said before—and you believed him?”
“I have no choice in the matter.”
“I guess not. But I still think you’re draggin’ your boots for some reason. But I’ll stick around just to see what you’re up to. Don’t worry, DeBeers. I’ll keep my suspicions to myself.”
Again, Smoke had nothing to say on that subject. “What are you going to do on the outside, York?”
York shook his head. “I don’t know. Drift, I reckon. I just ain’t cut out for this kind of life. I think I knowed that all along. But I think I owe it to you for pointin’ it out.”
“Stay out of sight, York.” Smoke picked up his sketch pad. “I have to go sketch Davidson. Even though I certainly don’t feel up to it.”
“What if Davidson won’t let you leave here like he says he will?”
“I don’t know. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Bridges don’t worry me,” York said glumly. “It’s that damn guarded pass that’s got me concerned.”
The next two days passed without incident. York stayed at Smoke’s camp—and stayed close. Smoke continued his sketching of Rex Davidson, and his opinion that the man was a conceited and arrogant tyrant was confirmed. The man remained friendly enough—as friendly as he had ever been to Smoke—but Smoke could detect a change in him. He appeared tense and sometimes nervous. And there was distance between them now, a distance that had not been there before. Smoke knew that Davidson had never really intended to let him leave. He did not think that Rex suspected he was anything except the part he was playing, what he claimed to be. It was, Smoke felt, that Rex had been playing a game with him all along; a cat with a cornered mouse. A little torture before the death bite.