He bellied down in the sawgrass and worked his way into a gully, moving diagonally. He was headed for the trees but upstream. In the spring the gully would flood with runoff from melting snow. In this dry season it was just cracked clay. He hoped he wasn’t raising any dust that could be seen from the cottonwood grove. He squirmed along on his elbows, not lifting his head, the big Sharps cradled across his chest as he crawled. He made an awkward progress, the gun clumsy and dirt itching inside his clothes, sticking to his skin as he began to sweat. His eyes stung. The sun moved toward the meridian overhead, and the sky was white with heat.
The mare trailed her reins to the stream and drank. She raised her head, sniffing another horse.
Placido Geist crawled into the shade and pressed himself against the cold rocks, letting the water trickle over him.
The mare whickered, and then stepped into the stream.
Nothing happened.
Placido Geist held his position. His legs were numb in the cold water. Steam clouded off his damp shoulders.
A kingfisher darted from branch to branch with a call halfway between a rattle and a whistle. Taffeta, taffeta. The bird watched the stream where the mare churned the water, scaring frogs loose from the bank.
Stones rattled in the talus.
Placido Geist carefully adjusted his posture, hoping his legs would hold him up if he had to stand.
Concho Jimmy slid down the rocks, his rifle at the ready and his eyes alert.
Placido Geist cocked the Sharps.
Concho Jimmy approached the mare carefully, looking to either side, and caught her bridle. She seemed relieved and didn’t bolt.
Placido Geist straightened up slowly to ease the cramps in his legs.
Concho Jimmy tied the mare’s reins to a cottonwood stump and started back across the stream.
“Jimmy,” Placido Geist said quietly. His voice carried the hundred yards across the chuckling water.
Jimmy stopped, his footing uneasy on the slippery stones of the streambed. He looked back over his shoulder.
The barrel of the Sharps rested on a rock, steady as the planets in their orbit.
“You here for the money?” Jimmy asked him.
“I’m here for you,” Placido Geist said.
“Ugly horse you ride,” Jimmy said, grinning.
“She came cheap enough.”
“I don’t come that cheap,” Concho Jimmy said.
Placido Geist saw it happening. Jimmy threw down on him with the Winchester, and Placido Geist shot him with the big gun. The .45–70 caught Jimmy Pringle square in the chest and knocked him into the water. Unaccustomed to gunfire, the mare jerked at the reins tied to the stump, showing the whites other eyes.
Placido Geist levered out the spent shell and reloaded, picking his way over the wet stones as he walked downstream. Jimmy struggled to pull himself upright. He had a belly gun, a .44 pistol. He tried to tug it out.
“Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six,” the bounty hunter said. “Leave it alone.”
“You never meant to take me alive,” Jimmy gasped.
“I mean to see you hang,” Placido Geist said.
“I reckon you won’t have the pleasure,” Jimmy said, getting the pistol free.
Placido Geist stood astride him and knocked the gun out of his hand with the butt of the Sharps. “Take your pleasure where you find it,” he said.
He dragged Jimmy up out of the water and threw him onto the bank like a stunned fish. Jimmy was short of breath. Blood rattled in his chest.
“I’ll cost you the satisfaction,” he said, panting.
“At least I’ll have that,” Placido Geist said. He went across the stream and took the lariat off his saddlehorn.
Jimmy, the life leaking out of him, was slow to understand, but when he saw what Placido Geist really intended for him, he thrashed weakly, kicking at the streambed with his heels. “You owe me better,” Jimmy pleaded. “You’ve already killed me once. A decent grave and some Scripture is all I’m asking for.”
“You don’t deserve it,” Placido Geist told him. He made a loop in the rope and threw it over a branch.
“It ain’t Christian,” Jimmy protested. “You can’t do me this way.”
But he could, and did, and there was an end to it.
He left him swinging, and as he rode away, he heard the kingfisher flirting in the cottonwoods. His call echoed back eagerly. Taffeta, taffeta.
Neither Rain nor Snow nor Pride nor Greed
by William T. Lowe
“I don’t do stakeouts any more, Thelma. I’m too old.”
“Then I’ll do it tonight myself.”
“No way. You’re...” I stopped before I said, “You’re too old, too.” I finished with “You’re overreacting.”
She glared at me across her desk. “It’s my post office, and by God, I’ll not see it made fun of.”
She was right, of course. The post office in Fountain is her domain. Thelma Otis made postmaster about the time I made deputy sheriff, and that was light years ago. And Thelma is almost as old as I am. She has refused retirement since she buried her husband.
“Come on, Thelma,” I said. “The tin cans and the toilet paper and the soap on the windows — it’s just kid stuff. Stupid practical jokes.”
Her glare got worse. “Somebody could get hurt. You should have been here the morning we found some squirrels loose in the lobby. Old Mrs. Matthews damn near had a heart attack.”
She went on about the things that had been done to her post office, and I stared at the floor. You’re passing through town and stop to say hello to an old friend, and all of a sudden you get volunteered to babysit a post office.
“We could get sued if we don’t stop this bastard.” Arthritis may have slowed Thelma down, but it has sharpened her tongue. She glanced around to make sure nobody was near. “And on top of that, Hank, somebody’s trying to have me closed down.”
She reached into a drawer and handed me a postcard. It read:
A POST OFFICE IN A SMALL TOWN LIKE FOUNTAIN IS A WASTE OF MONEY.
The message and address were typed: U.S. Postal Service, 30 Old Karner Road in Albany. The postmark was Quartzville, another little mountain town in upstate New York about twenty miles from here, dated ten days ago. Thelma showed me two more cards:
THE QUARTZVILLE OFFICE CAN HANDLE THE MAIL FOR FOUNTAIN.
and:
FOUNTAIN IS TOO SMALL TO SUPPORT A POST OFFICE.
“There’ve been others,” Thelma told me.
“They ever say anything about you?”
“Nope. Never anything personal or libelous.”
“Who else gets these little editorials?”
“I don’t know.” She dropped the cards into the drawer and slammed it shut. “Just somebody with his nose out of joint. He’ll get tired of it.”
“Right,” I agreed. That’s when I should have picked up my hat and left. But Thelma and I go back to high school. She was on the first cheerleading squad the school had. Her parents were criticized for letting her wear a short skirt and jump around. I warmed the bench with some other not-very-fast linemen.
Her red hair turned to rust long ago, but Thelma still gets around. Last year she came over and talked to my Scout troop. Told the boys how the post office used camels to deliver the mail in the Arizona desert, and that William Faulkner had started out as a postmaster, down in Mississippi.