“And about Hale too. He knows all about that, and he’s liked you ever since. He thinks it was pretty damn nice, the way you treated that hombre, and he wants to buy you a drink.”
“Well, that’s different.”
“That sounds more like it.”
“Tell him soon as I finish my nine o’clock round, I’ll be over, but I’d rather he started the others off first, so if we want to talk, we can do it quiet and not have a lot of whooping and hollering going on account he’s put out free drinks.”
“He’ll like you for that, Rog.”
I wasn’t taking his drink, but if he came in there to buy me one and I turned it down, he might plunk down his money and walk out. That wouldn’t do for what I had in mind.
At seven of, the first bottle came out of the ice, where Ike had been twirling it and feeling if it was cold enough. Jake cut the wire, the cork hit the ceiling, and foam spilled out. Glasses were lined up on the bar for ten feet now, dozens and dozens of them, and Jake began filling them. Davey cut another wire, another cork popped, and Jake took the second bottle. Eighteen or twenty glasses were ready, and Brewer picked up one. “To the Union, one and indivisible forever!”
“’Ray!”
They began to yell and drink. But they crowded around him too, and for me that was bad. I got my high chair and took it to Rocco. “Maybe, tonight at least, we could find a place for Mr. Brewer to sit.”
Rocco ran over with it and Brewer raised his glass to me like he was some kind of duke and I bowed back as elegant as I could. Then he climbed up on it and hooked his heels over the foot rest. He was a head and a half above the crowd. As Jake refilled his glass a slim man in a red shirt, with two guns on his hips, came in. He blinked when he saw the celebration, but Rocco went over, handed him a glass, and said all drinks were on Mr. Brewer, so drink his health. Brewer raised his glass at him, and he nodded with a quick, pale grin and took a sip. Then he drifted over to the edge of the crowd. He was facing Brewer, but his eyes began running over the room. When he saw me, he shifted his glass from his right hand to his left. I took a stroll down the room, past the croupiers counting money, and as I moved he turned. When I stopped at the dollar table and gave the wheel a spin, he was between me and Brewer, about six feet from me and the same distance from the chair, with the three of us right in line. The clock said one minute of.
Two men came in wearing guns, one of them with his coat buttoned tight. They had a hangdog look to them, and Rocco, instead of handing them a drink, came over to me. “Roger—”
“I’m watching every move they make.”
“All right, boy.”
“And stay away from Red Shirt.”
“Him too?”
“I think so.”
At nine a big man came in, with a red beard and both hands in his coat pockets. He took a quick look at the room, spotted first the two that had just come in, then Red Shirt over near the bar. Then he whipped a red handkerchief out of one pocket. Red Shirt reached for his gun, the one on his left hip with reversed stock, and got it out. But I drew with the handkerchief too, and before he could shoot I plugged him, through the head. And while he was falling I shot again, for the place where his head had been, and Brewer pitched over. After that it was like one of those lantern slides, where the boy chases the butterfly to the end of the pier, then falls in to the fishes, but it takes six pictures to show what happened in one second. I threw myself backward over the roulette table and rolled, and when I hit the floor I had three tables between me and the men near the door. The big man was already shooting for me, and I shot at him once and missed. I had to get closer, and ran on my knees and one hand up toward the front, and he was doing the same on the other side of the tables, to get me. He raised up and I shot again and he dropped. I turned toward the other two. I only had two shots left and I couldn’t waste anything. But they were legging it for the door. I got one of them in the back as he started through the door. The other one I got outside, as he was jumping on his horse. It went galloping down the street with him hanging to one stirrup.
“Duval, who killed George Brewer?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Don’t trifle, boy. Who killed him?”
“I heard what the doctor said, what Mr. Rocco said, what these other witnesses said. They say I shot twice at this unidentified man, and that one of those shots killed Mr. Brewer. They say I took cover back of the roulette equipment then, and shot the big man Hoke Irving. They say I got the little man as he was leaving, and the other one outside. So I guess if anybody killed Mr. Brewer, it had to be me. But if I leave guessing out and tell it like I remember it, all I know is this man here started to draw and I started to shoot. From there on I’ve got no clear recollection of anything until I saw that horse go running down the street, and I never even knew Mr. Brewer was dead until I got back inside. Nobody regrets it more than I do. But I’m under oath to tell you the truth, and I’m telling it as well as I can. And I’m certainly not trifling with you.”
“That all you got to say?”
“Yes sir, it is.”
It was the City Marshal, and he started his inquest as soon as the wagon came back with the man the horse had dragged down the street. First he put me under arrest and detailed a deputy to guard me. Then he picked six men out of the crowd to serve as a coroner’s jury. Then he sent for the same doctor that wanted to cut off my arm. Then he told everybody to hold up their right hand and swear that the evidence they would give before him would be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Then he began examining witnesses, first the doctor, to get him to pronounce the dead men dead, and tell what they died of. Then Raymond Brewer, to identify his brother. Then a whole flock of people, practically everybody in the place, and a fellow that had just got in a few days ago from Nebraska got all excited when he identified Hoke Irving, but nobody had names for the other three. Then he had all five bodies laid out in front of the bar, and drew over them one of the oilcloth covers for the roulette tables. Then he began taking testimony. He was cold, tough, cold, and official with everybody, and you couldn’t tell what his opinion was, if he had one. When I got done, he asked the jury if there were any questions they wanted to ask, and after some stuff they got me to explain, about where I was when the shooting started, where Irving was, and where I took cover, he told them to consider their verdict. They whispered a minute or two, and then the one he had appointed foreman got up and said: “We the jury empaneled to consider the deaths of George Brewer, Hoke Irving, and three unidentified men, find that the first-named came to his death by gunshot wound inflicted by one Roger Duval in an unintentional, unavoidable, and accidental manner connected with the discharge of his duties as guard in the Esperanza gambling hall, and that the other four were killed by the same Roger Duval as a lawful and necessary measure to prevent murder, larceny, and other crimes the deceased had conspired, intended, and attempted to commit on the said premises which Duval was hired to guard.”
“Do you order the said Duval held?”
“We do not.”
“Release your prisoner.”
The deputy gave me a clap on the back, and right away the place went into the craziest hullabaloo you ever heard. They yelled for me, stomped on the floor, shook my hand, and hollered at the bartenders to give me a drink. I didn’t want any drink. I wanted to be alone. But they wouldn’t have it that way, and I had to stand there at the bar pretending to believe I was a hero. And then all of a sudden you could hear a pin drop. The men from Brewer’s mine had picked him up and were carrying him out when Raymond Brewer must have said something, because the Marshal called him over.