The crowd was going nuts, but I could barely hear them. I felt the familiar coolness in my face and the steadiness of my hands as the rational qualities of my nature and the extended panic attack of the unimaginable deserted me.
I stepped in close to keep him from getting the maximum leverage of his swing and then watched as he bobbed and weaved into a Dempsey roll. He slipped to his right with my jab and then delivered a powerful undercut to my unprotected side.
I grunted and then reset my footing, lowering my elbow to block the punch that immediately followed. Cly ignored my footing and applied both hands into my ribs, and that was a mistake.
The clacking of Cliff Cly’s jaw sounded like the snap-shuffle of a deck of cards, and he staggered back. I stood there in the center of the ring, and he moved toward me with a great deal more caution this time.
The temptation to pound the living daylights out of the younger man was great, but I was betting I’d drawn enough attention to myself by just being in the competition.
Cliff came barreling in, maybe thinking that if he got in tight I wouldn’t be able to use my greater reach. He crouched, and I figured he was going to put it all on the line with one good, solid strike. I was right except that he did so with his head and not his hands, swiftly flinging the back of his skull up and into my face in a debilitating head butt.
I had seen it coming in that last second and turned, but the majority of the force deflected from my nose and into my left cheekbone and brow. The effect was a blinding amount of blood that flowed from the cut at my cheek.
I backed away, swiping at my eye with one of my toweled hands. It hurt and felt like half my face had ballooned to the size of a softball. I smeared the blood back with the shoulder of my shirt, and I was relieved to make out shadows moving in the rapidly closing eye, but for now I was effectively blind to my left.
He had come out better in the impact, but not by much. He shook his head-evidently he had come close to knocking himself out with the illegal move. When he looked up and could finally get a read on me, he smiled at the damage to my face.
Cly stepped forward and feinted with his left but brought a jab back up with his right; when he withdrew from the punch, he dropped his guard just as I’d told Henry he would.
I responded with a quick jab from my left. He was off balance and started to fall away. I could have just let him go, but I was tired and angry and wanted it really over. I stepped after him and watched with my one eye as he raised his right to block the anticipated left that had stung him twice. It was another mistake, and his last for the evening, as I’d anticipated his move and had already brought a roundhouse haymaker down into the side of his head.
You can hit a man in a lot of different ways, ways I’d learned in the rough-and-tumble high-plains bars as a boy, ways I’d learned in the inner trenches of Big Six football, in the Marine Corps, and in more than a quarter- century in law enforcement. You can hit a man to embarrass him, hit him to blood him, hit him to knock him down, or you can hit a man to lay him out.
To my absolute dishonor, I hit Cliff Cly with the intention of the last.
His jaw bounced off his chest, and I could see that his neck muscles didn’t work just before he pitched over backward, taking the metal pole at the corner, three lengths of rope, and at least two other people with him.
There is a sound that bodies make when they hit the ground, and there is no way to describe it. I’ve heard that sound in motels, bars, football, and battlefields, and it is this sound that brought me back.
There was a great deal of screaming, yelling, and confusion as I approached to see if he was still breathing; he was, but he lay still, with only his chest moving. I guess he had been the crowd favorite and there must have been a lot of money placed on his potential victory, because as I stood there a folding chair clattered against the back of my head and a few more flew onto the platform. I stumbled out of the ring and started pushing my way toward the back hallway, but even with my limited view from one eye, I could see that the entire crowd was now involved in nothing short of a melee. I tripped over another folding chair and went down as the mob swallowed me.
I started to get up, but a familiar hand planted itself against my chest, and the Bear ducked as more chairs sailed into the ring. There was a crash of glass near the bar, along with more screaming and yelling, and I could hear fighting that didn’t sound like the kind sanctioned by the Powder-River-Pound-Down. Henry crouched guard over me and pushed someone away while dodging an airborne bottle that smashed on the floor and showered us with shards.
I was staring at his hand as he continued to smile like the Cheyenne always do in battle. I tried to blink my left eye but couldn’t tell if I had, and then allowed my head to fall back to the floor as he asked in a perfectly conversational tone, “Did you know your daughter is getting married?”
10
October 29, 11:55 P.M.
In 1948, at the Jimtown Bar, two hundred yards north of the Cheyenne Reservation, Hershel Vanskike killed a man. He was involved in a side-room billiards game when two traveling gentlemen from Chicago noticed the sport and asked to buy in. It was inquired as to whether they had the where-withal to join the game, and they assured the local cowboys that they did.
The cowhands, not assured, asked them to exhibit the funds. The gentlemen from Chicago displayed over two thousand dollars in small bills.
Thus assured, the locals agreed to let them participate, but after a few hours of losing and drinking too many whiskeys, the Chicagoans grew irritable, and one of them, whose name was John Boertlein, began abusing an Indian rancher who was seated at the bar. He poked the Indian with a pool cue and asked the “chief ” what the locals did for fun around these parts.
The middle-aged Cheyenne ignored him and continued drinking, slowly bringing the pungent liquid to his lips with his elbows seemingly attached to the bar.
The man from Chicago told the “chief ” that he had plenty of wampum and jabbed the Indian with the pool cue again, leaving a small, blue chalk dot on the Cheyenne’s white shirtsleeve.
The bartender took a step away, bracing his hands on the bar.
Boertlein prodded the Indian again and asked if he knew where he and his friend, whose name was Bud Ardary, could find a few squaws for the night. He left another blue mark.
The Cheyenne remained silent and took the final sip from his shot glass.
Bud Ardary, the other gentleman from Chicago, broke from the pool table to join in on the fun. Boertlein poked the Indian on his other arm but still didn’t get any response. Instead, the Cheyenne put his empty glass back on the bar surface, tipped his hat to the bartender with his right hand, and rose. Boertlein, sensing that he was about to be totally ignored, grabbed the Indian by the shoulder as the Cheyenne turned toward him, but the Indian stepped by him and headed for the door.
John Boertlein had a puzzled look on his face as he stood there.
Ardary pulled his friend toward him in time to see a thin line of red blooming across his buddy’s dress shirt where the blade of a knife with an edge like a scalpel had sliced the Chicagoan’s abdomen.
Ardary pulled a pistol as the Indian opened the door, and Hershel Vanskike, realizing that the last man to draw his gun in these situations was likely the first to end up dead, snatched a natty little. 32 from his own waistband. Ardary fired at the Cheyenne as he stepped through the door. He missed. Sensing some movement to his right, he then extended his. 38 toward the pool players, and Vanskike pulled the trigger on the. 32.
I looked up at the big Indian seated next to me. “Damned Indians, they always get you into trouble.”
He nodded. “I think that was my Uncle Art, the one who moved up to Rocky Boy.”
I looked back at the report. “I can see why he moved.”
It was viewed as a clear-cut case of self-defense, and the autopsy revealed three more bullets from previous altercations, but Vanskike still received nine months in the county jail. There were also the usual amount of D amp;Ds on his record and public intoxications with a smattering of aggravated assaults, but most of Hershel’s criminal activities had tailed off a good thirty years ago when the old outlaw had grown accustomed to painting the
