I shook my head. I was not ready to make friends. I said, ‘Do you know the specifics of this duel?’
He nodded. ‘One man is a lawyer, and by all accounts out of his element in such a fight. Williams is his name. He is going up against a ranch hand with an evil history, a man called Stamm. They say Stamm will kill Williams dead, no way around it.’
‘But what are the specifics of their quarrel?’
‘Stamm hired Williams to chase down some wages owed him by a local rancher. The matter went to court and Williams lost. The moment the verdict came in, Stamm challenged Williams to pistols.’
‘And the lawyer has no history of shooting?’
‘You hear talk of gentlemen gunfighters, but I’ve yet to meet one.’
‘It doesn’t sound like much of a pairing. I would just as soon move on.’
‘If that’s what you wish to do.’ Charlie pulled a watch from his pocket. I recognized it as the watch of the prospector he had killed. ‘It is just past nine o’clock, now. You can go ahead on Tub, and I’ll catch up after the duel, in an hour’s time.’
‘I believe I will,’ I said.
The hotel woman knocked and entered to collect our plates and cups. I bid her a good morning and she responded kindly, laying a hand on my back as she passed. Charlie also greeted her, but she pretended not to have heard. When she commented on my untouched plate, I patted my stomach and said I was hoping to slim down for reasons of the heart.
‘Is that so,’ she said.
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Charlie.
The woman’s stained smock was nowhere in sight, replaced by a red linen blouse, cut low to reveal her throat and collarbone. Charlie asked if she would attend the gunfight and she answered in the affirmative, telling us, ‘You men would do well to hurry up and find yourselves a place to watch. The streets fill up quickly here, and people are loath to give up their positions.’
‘Perhaps I will stay on,’ I said.
‘Oh?’ asked Charlie.
We three walked out to the dueling grounds together. As I pushed through the crowd I was pleased to notice the woman’s arm on mine. I was feeling very grand and chivalrous; Charlie brought up the rear, whistling a conspicuously innocent melody. We found our place in the crowd and it was as the woman predicted, the competition for choice locations was fierce. I threatened a man who pushed against her, and Charlie called out, ‘Beware the Rabid Gentleman, you faithful natives.’ As the duelists arrived a body at my back bumped into me once, and then again. I turned to complain and saw it was a man with a child of seven or eight resting upon his shoulders—the child had been hitting me with his boot. ‘I would appreciate your boy not kicking my back,’ I said.
‘Was he kicking you?’ asked the man. ‘I don’t think he was.’
‘He was, and if it happens again I will lay blame with you alone.’
‘Is that a fact?’ he said, making an expression that imparted his belief I was being unreasonable or overly dramatic. I tried to match his eyes then, that I might inform him of the peril his attitude was leading him toward, but he would not look at me, he only peered over my shoulder at the dueling grounds. I turned away to stew, the woman clutching my forearm to soothe me, but my temper was up now, and I spun around to readdress the man: ‘Anyway, I don’t understand why you would show the lad such violence at his age.’
‘I’ve seen a killing before,’ the boy told me. ‘I saw an Indian cut through with a dagger blade, his guts running out of him like a fat red snake. I also saw a man hanging from a tree outside of town. His tongue was swelled up in his head, like this.’ The child made an ugly face.
‘I still don’t think it’s correct,’ I told the man, who said nothing. The child continued to make his face and I turned back to watch the men taking their places in the street. They were easy enough to identify: The hand, Stamm, was in leather and well-worn cotton, his face weathered and unshaven. He stood alone, without a second to assist him, looking out at the crowd with a dead expression in his eyes, his arms hanging slack at his sides. The lawyer Williams wore a gray tailored suit, his hair center-parted, his mustache waxed and trimmed. His second, similarly dandified, removed Williams’s coat, and the crowd watched the lawyer performing a series of knee-bending exercises. Now he leveled a phantom gun at Stamm and imitated its recoil. These pantomimes were the cause of some stifled chuckling in the crowd, but Williams’s face was perfectly serious and solemn. I thought Stamm was drunk or had recently been drunk.
‘Who are you hoping for?’ I asked the hotel woman.
‘Stamm is a bastard. I don’t know Williams but he looks like a bastard, also.’
The man with the child on his shoulders overheard this and said, ‘Mister Williams is not a bastard. Mister Williams is a gentleman.’
I turned slowly. ‘He is a friend of yours?’
‘I am proud to say he is.’
‘I hope you have said your good-byes. He will be dead within the minute.’
The man shook his head. ‘He is not afraid.’
It was such a stupid thing to say, I actually laughed. ‘So what if he isn’t?’
The man dismissed me with a wave. The child, anyway, had heard me; he regarded me with a knowing fear. I told him, ‘Your father wants you to see violence, and today you will.’ The man stood a moment, then cursed under his breath and moved away, pushing through the throng to watch the duel from another location.
Now I heard Williams’s second call out to Stamm: ‘Where is your second, sir?’
‘I don’t know, and I don’t care,’ Stamm replied.
Williams and his second had a private word. The second nodded and asked Stamm if he might inspect his pistol. Stamm repeated that he did not care, and the second took up the weapon to check it. Nodding his approval, he asked if Stamm wished to check Williams’s pistol, and Stamm said he did not. Now Williams approached, and he and Stamm stood facing each other. Despite the show of bravery, it did not seem that Williams’s heart was in the fight; sure enough, he whispered into his second’s ear and the second said to Stamm, ‘If you wish to make an apology, that would satisfy Mr. Williams.’
‘I don’t,’ said Stamm.
‘Very well,’ said the second. He stood the men back-to-back and called it at twenty paces. He began to count it out and the duelists took their steps in time. Williams’s forehead was shining with perspiration, and his pistol was trembling, while Stamm might have been walking to an outhouse, for all the concern he displayed. At the count of twenty they swiveled and fired. Williams missed but Stamm’s bullet struck Williams in the center of his chest. The lawyer’s face transformed to a ridiculous mask of agony and surprise and, I thought, a degree of insult. Staggering this way and that, he pulled his trigger and fired into the body of onlookers. A series of shrieks, then—the bullet had struck a young woman in the shin and she lay in the dirt writhing and clutching her leg. I do not know if Williams noticed his shameful error or not; by the time I looked back at him he was dead on the ground. Stamm was walking away in the direction of a saloon, pistol holstered, his arms once more at his sides. The second stood alone on the dueling ground, looking impotently to his left and right. I scanned the crowd for the man with the boy on his shoulders, that I might make a scornful face at him, but they were nowhere to be found.
Chapter 19
The woman had some work to attend to, and excused herself while I packed my bags to leave. I searched the hotel to say good-bye but could not find her, so I made her a present of five dollars, hiding the coin beneath the sheets, that she might associate her thoughts of me with the notion of a marriage bed, or anyway a bed. Charlie caught me doing this and said he admired the gesture but that my plan was flawed in that the sheets were dirty and would continue to accumulate dirt because the woman had no interest in keeping a tidy business. ‘You are only giving away that money to the next man who sleeps in this room.’