The Long High Noon (24 page)

“I believe that.”

“Maybe so, but if her heart was broke it sure didn't affect her appetite. By the time she took sick I bet she bent the scale at two hunnert. Galloping her was like trying to hang onto a sack of beans in a runaway wagon. What about you? Ever marry?”

“Yes, sir. Still am.”

“Hell you say.”

“Even so. We sleep in what you might call separate bedrooms. Hers is in Boston, Massachusetts.”

“Same issue?”

“There was several, but I calculate that one topped the list.” Frank swallowed a hunk of clam; it went down without chewing. “Ever hear from Cripplehorn?”

“I heard he tried to get into pictures, then went back East and died.”

“I heard the same, though it was a tame fit of apoplexy. He's laying in a Sisters of Charity home in Atlantic City, New Jersey, drinking his supper through a straw.”

“I don't envy them sisters. I don't know how you put up with him in that shack in Frisco.”

“He was a big sissy. I took the borrow of his toothbrush once and never heard the end of it. He was always saying how when he got rich he was going to trade that ivory eye for a glass one made in Vienna, hire some fellow named Mo-nay to paint it.”

“I'm surprised you didn't shoot him.”

“I considered it, but he talked so pretty I figured I'd miss him. It was like listening to Scripture.”

“He was a tinhorn through-and-through. I don't believe he ever read a book, much less wrote one. He got himself into some silk-hat company somehow and remembered everything he heard.”

“He weren't stupid. Them vendors in that tent in the Strip kicked back half of every pail of beer they sold. He kept the tally in a bitty notebook.”

“I'd bet a good saddle he never showed it to that Sheridan Weber.”

The assistant director, a consumptive-looking New Englander with a ladylike strut, blew his whistle. They had five minutes before the next take.

Randy said, “I'm going to shoot him next.”

“He's just doing his job.”

“I'm going to shove that whistle down his gullet first.”

Frank changed the subject. “You know, we just missed each other in Carson City last year. I checked in to the Empress Catherine just after you checked out.”

“I caught the last train to Gunnison. Sewing-machine drummer I run into in the vertical railway said he talked to a fellow named Farmer there last week. Said he packed a forty-five Remington.”

“You should stay off elevators. One day that door may slide open and there I'll be.”

“I thought the whole point of this confab was to put that to rest.”

Frank paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. “You talking truce?”

“No, sir, I don't speak that lingo.”

They slurped soup in silence for a minute.

Frank said, “I don't like leaving no job half-finished. That director fellow says we wrap next week. He's hosting a party at the Watering Hole.”

“I reckon I'll see you there.” Randy stood and picked up his bowl. “Whatever happened to that Dutch ear, by the way?”

*   *   *

The place was got up like every saloon in the West, or what some easterner thought it would look like. A fat naked woman lollopped in a chaise longue in a scrolled frame above the backbar, drilled through with authentic-looking bullet holes, and an eight-gauge shotgun was growing dust on a rack made of elk antlers above a Faro table where a group of extras sat drinking and not gambling. The string band that had played throughout the production to create a proper mood played a piece composed for the piano players who would accompany the showings. The director made a speech, said nobody's money was good in the joint beyond the first two drinks, and sat down at a table with the female lead and the brave lieutenant who'd led the suicide charge against about ten thousand Apaches, a young Shakespearean actor from Hartford, Connecticut. The female lead didn't appear to object when the director put an arm around her and squeezed a breast.

Randy had come there straight from the set, where the assistant director was shooting second-unit to fill out the rest of the reel, and cast him as a stove-up stagecoach driver. He wore the costume he'd been given from the wardrobe grab-bag—sweat-stained Stetson with the brim turned up in front, shirt made of ticking, patched dungarees tucked into stovepipe boots with the heels ground down by dozens of pairs of feet. He spotted a pair of slumped shoulders he knew as well as his own at the end of the packed bar. He left the fake Indian he'd been talking with in the middle of a drunken gripe and went over to tap one of those shoulders. He wore his Colt in a prop holster, his old one having worn out in the Oklahoma oil fields. The new one was stiff enough to hold a flagpole; the pistol slid out every time he'd mounted to the driver's seat.

No tap was needed. Frank sensed his presence and turned quickly from the bar, resting his hand on his Remington. He had on a regular suit of clothes and a pearl-gray bowler he'd swiped from Wardrobe, also a stiff slick holster just like Randy's, with a tie-down that made a two-handed draw unnecessary and a hammer thong to keep the pistol where it belonged.

“How do, Frank?” Randy spoke as if they hadn't seen each other only last week.

“Not so bad, Randy. Yourself?”

“Middling.”

“I forgot to ask you how you found L.A.”

“I got off the train and there it was.”

The conversation lapsed. Both men looked embarrassed after this exchange. They'd talked themselves out in the tent commissary. After so much time they had only the one thing in common.

“Where you want to do this?” Randy asked.

“It's still light out.”

They went outside, Randy first on account of his leg. He'd sooner expect a priest of the faith to backshoot him than Frank.

It was suppertime. Traffic was light. They waited for a streetcar to pass, then stepped out onto the asphalt and faced off.

There was no need for talk or signals, no whenever-you're-readies or dropping of bandannas: That was for Jack Dodger books and moving pictures. When each man was satisfied the other was set, they went for their pistols.

Both men were at a disadvantage. They were unfamiliar with the fast draw, which hadn't existed before eastern fabulists invented it, and slower than any movie pistoleer; but Randy had an edge. Frank forgot about the hammer thong, and fumbled with it when the Remington didn't clear. Randy's slug pierced his heart just as he got the rig loose. Frank fell cruciform on his back in the middle of Cahuenga Boulevard and didn't twitch.

Randy didn't bother to check for signs of life; he'd known the outcome the moment the pistol pulsed in his hand. He dropped it back into its holster and turned away.

A crowd gathered around the dead man, some of them cowboys from the Watering Hole drawn by the familiar sound of gunfire. The director and his two leads hung back in the doorway. A police officer in harness came blasting his whistle to clear a path. No one paid any attention to the elderly bean-slinger hobbling in the opposite direction.

On the sidewalk, Randy whistled an old cattle lullaby, waiting for the next streetcar to come racing along. When it did, he stepped out in front of it.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Loren D. Estleman
has written more than seventy novels and has won Shamus Awards for detective fiction, Spur Awards for Western fiction, and Western Heritage Awards. The Western Writers of America has awarded Estleman the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contribution to Western Literature. He lives with his wife, author Deborah Morgan, in central Michigan. You can sign up for email updates
here
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BOOKS BY
LOREN D. ESTLEMAN

Kill Zone

Roses Are Dead

Any Man's Death

Motor City Blue

Angel Eyes

The Midnight Man

The Glass Highway

Sugartown

Every Brilliant Eye

Lady Yesterday

Downriver

Silent Thunder

Sweet Women Lie

Never Street

The Witchfinder

The Hours of the Virgin

A Smile on the Face of the Tiger

City of Widows
*

The High Rocks
*

Billy Gashade
*

Stamping Ground
*

Aces & Eights
*

Journey of the Dead
*

Jitterbug
*

Thunder City
*

The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association
*

The Master Executioner
*

Black Powder, White Smoke
*

White Desert
*

Sinister Heights

Something Borrowed, Something Black
*

Port Hazard
*

Poison Blonde
*

Retro
*

Little Black Dress
*

Nicotine Kiss
*

The Undertaker's Wife
*

The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion
*

American Detective
*

Gas City
*

Frames
*

The Branch and the Scaffold
*

Alone
*

The Book of Murdock
*

Roy & Lillie: A Love Story
*

The Left-Handed Dollar
*

Infernal Angels
*

Burning Midnight
*

Alive!
*

The Confessions of Al Capone
*

Don't Look for Me
*

Ragtime Cowboys
*

You Know Who Killed Me
*

*
A Forge Book

 

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication