As I said, the Swede was a naïve man, but he was a good man at heart, and when he told me the story of the land he’d purchased out West, the farm waiting for him in a town called Baker’s Flats, a place so new and untamed that there wasn’t a sheriff; was, in fact, no real law for three hundred miles to any compass point, only seven town elders who constituted the law and meted out justice; well, when he told me these things in McSorley’s Bar, in New York, the night I met him, and I watched his blue eyes imagining the clear, hot plains, and the freedom they promised, we made a pact over the ale I bought him (because there is nothing in the world better than McSorley’s Ale for pact making) that I would go out West with him, and that we would fulfill our dreams together. He would have his farm, and his wide-open spaces, and his America, and I would have—well, a chance at real liberty.
We laid out by freight that very night. The Swede insisted on taking a coach train and showed me his money, which would pay for two passages, but I told him no, and told him as much as I could of my reason for it, and he was wise enough (though so naïve in other things) to see my point.
Our car was a cold one, but the Swede was used to the cold, even to the point of giving me his coat when he saw the distress I was in, his big, open face splitting into a smile as he said in his thick accent, “Take it. If two men can share a dream, they can also share a coat.”
The night passed slowly. We kept the car door slid open partway, because the Swede wanted to see the moon, which had risen white and stark over the east.
“The East,” he said, “is where stars rise, and the moon too.”
“But the West,” I answered, “is where we’re going, and where your face should be.” So I threw open the door on the other side of the car, and we looked out there together.
We talked about a lot of things that night, about our hopes and dreams for a better life, and he showed me the Colt and the Winchester he’d bought “for the Wild West,” as he called it, and somewhere, just as the sun was pushing the sky from purple to blue, he said the thing I had been hoping to hear, the thing that made me trust him as I’d hoped I could: “You don’t have to tell me what you’re running from. I don’t believe you did it.” And with that he lay down and turned his back on me and slept, and I sat looking out to the west, knowing my chance at liberty was safe.
We traveled a week by rails, till Reading, Pennsylvania, by boxcar, and then by first-class coach. The Swede insisted, showing me the roll of money he had saved and convincing me what I already knew: that the telegraphs weren’t likely to have my picture up on the wall out here yet, and so, this far from New York, I was no longer a wanted man. I balked a little at him spending his money on me, but only a little, because to tell the truth, I was getting sick of the bum’s life and craved a little cleanliness and a good cigar, and the Swede provided all this and good food to boot. And so on through St. Louis and then out to the territories, where the land got flatter but where, the Swede said, he could smell his new farm calling to him. I remember that day because it was the day he first showed me the picture he had of his wife and young daughter, and they were as blond as he was. The girl would be strong when she got older, and they would both join him when he was settled. I half wished, seeing the picture of that pretty blond girl, that she were here already.
It was another half week before we reached Baker’s Flats, by short railway and then by stage and flatbed wagon, and when we got in there and the Swede made claim to his land, it was not a week later that the trouble started and the Swede was dead.
~ * ~
The day after the funeral, being as there was no law for three hundred miles, I began to hunt the town elders of Baker’s Flats, one by one. It was not a quiet thing, and it got louder as it went along, and I have to say that in many ways I enjoyed it. I can tell you now I wasn’t a stranger to killing when it was necessary, and hadn’t been in New York. I kept the picture of the Swede in my mind as I went about it, and I kept the picture of his pretty daughter and wife in my pocket, and I thought about my own freedom, which made the killing easier.
The first was a man named Bradson, who owned the General Store. He had given the Swede and I a hard time right at our arrival in town and had made a remark that had told me all I needed to know about him. We’d walked into his store for some chewing tobacco, and maybe a cigar, since the Swede knew I liked them so much, and when the little bell over the door had tinkled, he looked our way, and a look filled his eyes when he saw us that I immediately didn’t like, and he turned the bald back of his head to us and muttered, not so low that I didn’t hear, “Foreigner,” and went into his back room.
We waited fifteen minutes for him, the Swede with patience and me with growing anger, but he didn’t come out. I had decided by that time that I wanted a cigar very badly, and was about to march into the back room after Bradson, but the Swede took my arm and quietly said, “Let’s be going.” I looked up into his broad face, and I knew at that moment that he had heard Bradson’s remark, too, but had chosen to ignore it. This told me that he was sharper than I’d thought, but I was still mad, and finally he took my arm and said again, gently, “Let’s go.”
I went then, but I came back after the Swede’s death, and I found Bradson where I’d hoped I would, in the back room of his store. It was after dark and the store was closed, but the lamp was lit on his little desk and he sat doing accounts. He didn’t hear me slip open the front door and come in, and he didn’t hear anything again after I cocked the butt of my Colt across the back of his ear and laid him out on the floor. I put a bullet in his heart, at the top, where the top of a circle might be, the start of a circle, just the way the Swede had been killed. There was a cigar humidor on a shelf behind the counter in the front of the store, and I filled my pocket with coronas before I left.
It was a dark night and stayed quiet after my shot into Bradson, and it stayed quiet after two more single shots, each continuing to advance a circle around two more hearts, rang out. There was the liveryman, Polk, who put up some fight and was strong but not strong enough, and the telegraph man, Cooper, who had a beard and was said to abuse his wife. He was in his office, too, with a bottle of whiskey instead of his wife for company, and I left him sprawled next to his telegraph, a bullet in the right of his heart, his spilled bottle inches from his cooling hand.
I hit the hills for a while after that, because I knew they’d be after me the next day. And I was right. I went high up, where it was cold and even colder at night, but I had the Swede’s coat to warm me. Just as it had that first night in the freight car, and I made camp where they couldn’t see a small fire and where I could hear the echo of their horse’s movements a mile off. I waited two days and gave them enough time to get close, and then I fell in behind them and waited for them to splinter off, as I knew they would when they found the false clues I’d left for them that told them I’d gone one of two ways.
They split off just as I’d wanted them to. The two toughest stayed together, and the two weakest, who I wanted to take together, rode off down what they thought to be the least likely trail, which was where I waited for them. I had the Swede’s rifle, and I waited in the V between two rocks, and I almost felt bad when I picked them off because they rode right into me and never looked up. I took them out with two quick shots because the other two were the dangerous ones, and they weren’t all that far away and were sure to hear the gunshots.
The two I took out were Maynard and Phillips, the bar owner and the fat banker, and I know I shot Maynard below the heart where I wanted, but I wasn’t so sure that my shot into Phillips continued the circle up toward the eight-o’clock position, because he didn’t go down right away and almost made me shoot again. But his horse was only carrying the dead body, and when momentum failed and Phillips fell, I took the time to check the body and found I had indeed hit him right on the eight.