He didn’t want to say.
“Are you leaving me and the children?”
“No,” he said. “Well, yes, for a short time. Just
until I can find something for us, then I’ll come and
get you and the girls.”
He went first to El Paso, for he heard it was a wild
open town bursting with opportunity. Plenty of trade
and money to be made both sides of the border. It
seemed as good a place as any to get a fresh start. But
after he’d spent his small poke on tequila and whores,
he came to realize the only skills he had to offer that
rough border town were those of a gunfighter. And,
too, if a man needed to slip across into Mexico ahead
of the law, well, it was right there. He scouted for
prospects.
A local businessman had run for county sheriff and
was defeated by what he bodaciously called “a no-
good son of a bitch!” But it wasn’t merely a political
rivalry that existed between the two men—there was
also a woman involved, as there almost always was.
With stealth and planning that is inborn in certain
men who are called to the profession of shootist, Fal-
lon Monroe approached the businessman and made
an offer.
“How you mean take care of?” the businessman
asked over a plate of chili that made his forehead
sweat.
“I guess I could try and scare him off, talk him
into resigning and leaving town,” Fallon said in a
half-joking manner.
“Scare! Shit, Bill Perk don’t scare. He’s too damn
ignorant to scare.”
“I never yet met a completely fearless man,” Fallon
said. “Every man is afraid of something. You just got
to find out what that something is, and it almost al-
ways is his own death.”
“He’ll put a bullet through your heart and piss in
the hole it leaves.”
“You want him gone? That’s all I’m asking.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“That’s a lot of money considering I could do it
myself.”
“If you could have done it yourself, you would
have.” Fallon had that other natural trait of a good
gunfighter: awareness of how much grit a man did or
did not have. The businessman had soft hands and a
soft belly and no heart for bloody encounters. He
wore fine suits and silk cravats and his expensive
boots didn’t show any mud on them. Here sat a fellow
who wouldn’t fight even over the thing he loved most:
money.
The businessman pulled a small, neatly folded ker-
chief from his pocket and wiped his forehead and
beak—real dainty, Fallon noted.
“I could get a lot of others to do it for less than a
hundred,” he said, always the businessman.
“Maybe,” Fallon said, “but my work is guaran-
teed.”
“A hundred,” the man said.
Since it was his first professional job, Fallon acqui-
esced and took the offer—not so much because of
just the money, but to see how he’d like it—killing a
man for the money. He’d killed plenty for free, but
that was because the army and the Indians hadn’t
given him any choice in the matter.
“Point him out is all you have to do besides pay me
the hundred,” he said.
“Deal,” the man said, and pointed him out—a
lanky cautious-looking cuss who came into the saloon
an hour later. He wore big Mexican spurs and stood
under a wide-brimmed peaked hat tipped incautiously
low on one side with a turkey feather sticking from its
band. Shaggy auburn moustaches draped the man’s
mouth. And in that smoky light it was plain to see he
waxed his Vandyke to a fine point the way it glistened.
“There stands Bill Perk,” the businessman said.
“Go on and dust him if you can.”
Fallon Monroe could tell by the way the man spoke
he didn’t believe it possible he could kill Bill Perk so
easily.
“Give me the money,” he said.
The man reached inside his coat and took out his
wallet.
“I won’t be sticking around after, you can under-
stand that, can’t you? All now.”
“How I know you won’t just take off.”
“I do, tell Bill Perk I stole your money. He’s the
sheriff, ain’t he?”
The man smiled, counted out one hundred dollars.
Fallon Monroe counted it, then folded it and put it
inside his hat: a sugarloaf of dark gray slightly sweat
stained.
Bill Perk was talking to a Mexican in Spanish. Fal-
lon didn’t know what he was saying and didn’t care.
He eased up to him from the off side, saw the Mexi-
can’s eyes take note. Swift as that he brought up the
Peacemaker, cocking it as he raised it, saying loudly
enough for everyone to hear: “It’s the last time you
come around to screw my wife, goddamn you!” Bill
Perk turned, his long face full of surprise. Too late.
He had just enough time to see the barrel wink fire—
maybe—not a split second more. The shot rocked
him back on his heels and when he fell, his big spurs
jangled as his legs trembled then fell silent.
“Son of a bitch ought to learn not to cuckold an-
other man’s wife,” Fallon shouted to the stunned
crowd. “I warned him once already. A man’s got a
right to protect his own, don’t he?” Then he strode
quickly out into the cool night, got on his horse, and
rode away.
Those who knew Bill Perk were not surprised
someone had cashed in his chips for him, nor were
any overly saddened to hear the news. In fact, it made
for good gossip for a time: folks saying as how Bill ate
a bullet for his carnal sins. They took a certain plea-
sure in speculating as to who the vengeful man was,
but even more so as to who the wife was that Bill Perk
had been screwing. It kept them scratching their
heads for the better part of a week.
A hundred dollars for less than a minute’s work
seemed like found money.
And so Fallon Monroe set to practicing his new
profession with deliberate coolness killing half a
dozen fellows all over west Texas and both sides of
the border, retreating often enough back to Okla-
homa to visit Clara and lie low.
“You come and go without a word,” she said.
“That’s the way I am,” he said.
On two of the visits she’d become pregnant, with a
little more than a year separating the baby girls she
delivered. Neither time was Fallon there for the birth
of his daughters. It set Clara’s heart against him.
“I can’t continue to live like this,” she said.
“I make a living for us,” he said.
“You treat me like your whore.”
“I can’t stand doing nothing, sitting around.”
“The railroad is hiring,” she said.
“Railroad? What, laying rails, gandy-dancing, not
me. That’s back-breaking low work.”
“You’ve never said what it is you do,” she said.
“You go away and you come back with money, but
you’ve never said what or how you earn it.”
“Does it matter?”
“If it is something illegal,” she said. “Am I to also
become a widow, or be wife to a man who ends up in
prison?”
These discussions would lead to arguments and he
would leave again.
The next time he returned to Oklahoma she saw
the decline in him. The liquor had finally begun to
take its toll: he’d lost a great deal of weight and he
looked older by ten years.
“No more,” she said. The girls were now six and
seven years old. “They ask me where their father is
and I don’t know what to tell them.”
Things had become too hot for him in Texas. The
Rangers were after him and so were the Texas State
Police. He’d shot one in San Antonio and wasn’t sure
if the man had died or not; it had been a dispute over
a Mexican woman.
“Fine,” Fallon said. “I will take us all north of here.
I hear there is plenty of cheap land in the Dakotas.”
She wasn’t entirely convinced of his motives, but
he vowed that he would find work that would keep
him close to her and the children. They left that very
night, packing what they could into trunks, leaving
the rest. She didn’t understand his haste to be gone.
In Bismarck he seemed to settle down for a time.
“I like it that you’ve changed,” she said. He
seemed at peace for once in his life, but what she
didn’t know was that his visits to the local opium den
had altered his thinking.
Then he got into a knife fight with a man and the
man stabbed him and the wound was nearly fatal. Fal-
lon wasn’t able to get out of bed for a time and Clara
had taken work as a schoolteacher. It was through ru-
mor that she learned Fallon had been seeing a local
prostitute and that the stabbing had been over this
woman. She went to find out the truth and soon
learned it.
When Fallon was nearly healed she confronted
him. He didn’t deny it. It was then she decided she
would leave him.
And the first time he went to town again and came
home drunk and she found him snoring in their bed,
she packed the children and took the stage north to a
settlement called Sweet Sorrow. Weeks before, she’d
seen an advertisement in the Bismarck Tribune for a
schoolteacher and had written a letter of interest and
received one back offering her the job. Fallon had
made it easy for her.
He awoke that night to find her gone along with
her clothes and his children. He wondered how much
he cared, went to town and found his prostitute.
“I am a free man,” he declared to the cyprian.
“Free of what?” she said.
They were already through half a bottle of Black
Mustang.
“I left Clara.”
“What will you do now?”
“Be with you,” he said.
She laughed.
“I’m a working gal, Fallon. But I work for me and
I work for Harry. You can’t stay with me. Harry
would castrate you, or worse.”
“I never liked that son of a bitch,” he declared.
“He wouldn’t like you, either, if he thought you
wanted me to give it to you free.”
Fallon was struck by the coldness in her voice.
“I thought . . .”
She laughed.
“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “I got a man and he
sees I’m taken care of and I don’t need two. Now you
want a turn, Fallon? I mean do you have the money
for a turn? If not, I’m going to have to ask you to
leave.”
“Toss me out? Like that?”
She nodded.
He drew back his fist.
“Don’t,” she said. “I’d hate to tell Harry you
roughed me up. Harry doesn’t let any man fool with
his property. He’d kill you and have the butcher grind
you up into sausage.”
He smashed his fist into her face and she went
down. Then, taking what was left of the bottle, he
stepped over her and reached for the door.
“Get out you damn drunkard! I’ll have Harry on
you! You wait and see!”
Later he heard the pimp, Harry Turtle, was look-
ing for him, Harry and some of his gang. And Fallon
found himself hiding in a dark alley and stayed in it
till the first gray dawn came again. Somewhere he had
lost his nerve, or it had been stolen by the whiskey
and dope. His hands trembled as he rose shakily. He
stumbled down the alley. The town was quiet. The
quiet spooked him almost as much as the thought of
Harry Turtle and his boys catching up to him.
He knew he must try and find Clara, that she
would save him. She’d always been there for him—
until this last time. His anger welled inside him at the
thought that she wasn’t there now. Because of you my
life has turned to hell, he thought.
He went to the stage lines, found the ticket master
there alone, smoking his pipe, enjoying a cup of cof-
fee. The man looked up beneath bushy eyebrows, his
forehead wrinkling, the dome of his bald head a splat-
ter of brown spots.
“A woman and two kids buy a ticket here the other
day, day before that?”
The ticket master ran it through his mind, said,
“No.”
“She had to,” Fallon said in a plaintive voice.
“Was no other way she could have got out of here!”
Ticket master said, “Woman come in about two
weeks ago and purchased three tickets, but not the
other day. She left the other day on the stage—her
and two little girls, like you said.”
“Where to?” Fallon said.
Ticket master scratched behind his ear.
“Can’t remember where exactly she was bound
for.”
“Give me a list of stops along the way.”
“You want a ticket?”
“Far as this damn mud wagon goes,” Fallon said.
Ticket master said, “It’ll cost you thirty dollars all
the way.”
Fallon realized he was flat broke.
“Just write ’em down for me, the stops, then.”
Ticket master wrote them down: Bent Fork, Tulip,
Grand Rock, Sweet Sorrow, Melon, Grass Patch, and
Hog Back.
“She turns around in Hog Back,” the ticket master
said.
Fallon took the list, went to the door, opened it,
looked both ways up and down the street. He didn’t
see Harry Turtle or any of his known associates. But
he did see a piebald tied up in front of the hotel.
The son of a bitch looks like it wants to be stolen,
Fallon told himself.
15
Jake and Toussaint arrived at the Swede’s while
the sun was
still trying to lift its fat white belly out
of the cold fog. Five fresh graves nearly dug several
yards from the cabin. Tall John stood leaning on a
shovel wiping sweat from his face with a silk scarf.
Will Bird sat on a pile of dirt smoking a shuck, hav-
ing just said to John, “I never done such hard work,
not even building windmills in Texas is this hard.”
Five caskets lay in a row waiting internment.
“Marshal,” John said as a way of greeting when
Jake and Toussaint rode up.
Jake nodded, looked toward the house. Thank-
fully, a stiff northerly wind dragged away the smell of
death.
“You close to finishing up here?” Jake asked.
“Pert’ near. Soon as we finish up this last grave,
we’ll put them to rest.”
Will Bird called to Toussaint from where he sat
smoking.
“I don’t reckon you got any liquor with you?”
Toussaint cut his gaze to the younger man. He
knew Will Bird only slightly from his itinerant visita-
tions to Sweet Sorrow, had heard through rumor that
Will was once the lover of the late prostitute Mistress
Sheba, killed by Bob Olive. Had heard more recently
he was courting the young woman who’d started a
hat shop in town. Toussaint didn’t know why any
town needed a hat shop for women; such was the
foolishness of white folks. Such information of course
meant little to him. It certainly wasn’t enough for
Toussaint to pass judgment on Will Bird one way or
the other. The boy was like a lot of other shiftless
white men he’d come across on the prairies: not all
bad, not all good.
Toussaint stood in his stirrups to relieve his back-
side.
“No, I’ve got no liquor,” he said.
Will Bird looked at the last of the shuck held be-
tween his fingers then took a final draw from it before
stubbing it out in the dirt. Standing, he took his
shovel in hand and said, “Mr. John, let’s get this fin-
ished up. I’d like to get my day’s pay and treat myself
to a whiskey or two.”
Jake said to the undertaker, “When you’re finished
here, I’d appreciate it if you stopped by Karen Sun-
flower’s place and pick up Otis Dollar and take him
back into town with you.”
“Why, whatever is wrong with Otis?”
Jake explained it, as much as he knew.
“Why, that Swede is becoming a regular villain of
the prairies,” Tall John said. “Poor Martha . . .”
The stiff wind ruffled their clothes.