“Leave go my hand,” the boy repeated, twisting the knife hard where it lodged. The knife grating in the joint tore a hoarse screech out of Stevenson and he loosed the wrist.
The pounding piano at the far end of the saloon went silent; the dancers stood still, arms draped around one another; the gamblers sat frozen with cards in their hands.
As Stevenson stood spitted on the knife, the boy pulled the Colt, jammed the muzzle to his head. “Hello,” he said between his teeth. The hotel man’s eyes bulged. Someone entered the saloon and scurried back out again when he saw what was happening. The hinges of the flapping bat-wing doors wheezed in the silence.
“For Christ’s sake, don’t kill me,” Stevenson whispered hoarsely. “I got a sick wife in Missouri.”
Hardwick rose from the table next to the window. The boy swung the pistol on him, Stevenson flinching with the sudden movement. Hardwick spread his hands before him, demonstrating he had no weapon. “Word of friendly advice, son,” he said. “You kill him where he stands – they’ll hang you.”
The truth of this statement contorted the boy’s face. He jerked the knife out of Stevenson and drove it, twice, with blinding rapidity into the man’s buttocks. The hotel-keeper gave a great hollow groan as his knees gave way under him, capsizing him to the floor in a dead faint.
The boy stepped over the body to where the black silk hat had rolled and trampled it savagely under his dirty boots. No one moved as this was accomplished. “None of this was my doing,” he told the room, brandishing the pistol above his head for all to see. “I’m walking now. If this bastard has any kin or friends setting here making plans – you’ve seen my gun. It’s cocked.” He took a step toward the door, then pivoted on his heel and kicked the senseless body in the head. “Hello,” he said to it one last time.
Now he was moving for the door, the hushed crowd falling back out of his path, falling back from the pistol he carried flush against his right leg, falling back from the strange little figure in the scavenged clothes. He thrust open the swinging doors and strode quickly down the darkened street ten paces, whirled around in his tracks to catch anyone pursuing. He did. Throwing up the pistol he called out, “Stand or I’ll fire!”
The figure stopped in the street. “It’s Tom Hardwick. Lower your gun.” He did. Hardwick advanced. “If you’d been anyplace but where you was,” he said, “I’d advised you to kill that man. But there was too much public and it would have looked cold-blooded. There ain’t much law in these parts, but there’s that much.” Hardwick stopped, took a cigar from his shirt pocket, struck a match. He kept on talking around the cigar as he lit it. “You looking to kill that son of a bitch and walk, you ought to put your knife in his belly the second he hit you.”
“I give him a chance to back off,” said the Englishman’s boy.
“Bad policy,” said Hardwick. “Don’t give nobody a chance.” They resumed walking. Hardwick said, “I’d scoot if I was you. That man’s a innkeeper and a publican. I never seen a fellow who deals in whisky that was short of friends.”
“I can’t scoot. I ain’t got a horse,” said the boy.
“You want to ride with us in the morning I can scare you up a horse,” said Hardwick.
For a time the boy walked on without responding. “What would I have to do?” he said finally.
“Whatever circumstances call for,” said Hardwick.
Vogle argued against taking the boy. He made the thirteenth recruit and thirteen being the number around the table at the Last Supper, there could be no worse luck. Hardwick said since the only one who’d died on that expedition was the leader, and Vogle wasn’t leading nothing, what was he worrying about?
Vogle shook his head. “Thirteen’s bad medicine,” he said.
“That’s the Indian in you talking now,” said Hardwick.
6
Harry Vincent, detective, is sitting in a car parked just off Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga Avenue, keeping a grey frame building known as the Waterhole under surveillance. The Waterhole is a cowboy hangout famous in Hollywood, one part speakeasy, one part hiring hall. Inside the Waterhole, cowboys play poker and drink illegal whisky served in china teacups while they wait for picture directors short of extras to drop by and offer them work. Nobody but cowboys and directors ever frequent this establishment; tinhorns and curiosity-seekers are not made to feel welcome in the Waterhole. Even the cops give it a wide berth and pretend they don’t know porch-climber is sold there. Prohibition may be the law, but the police have decided meddling with cowboys and their simple pleasures is more trouble than it’s worth.
I’ve been sitting here for over two hours watching the entrance, hoping to spot Shorty McAdoo among the patrons who stagger in and out of the Waterhole on high-heeled riding boots, but no such luck. There’s no use putting it off any longer; the time has arrived to meddle with the cowboys.
After the hot California sunshine, the shuttered gloom of the Waterhole leaves me blind. I stand just inside the doorway, blinking, smelling the place – horse and sweat, tobacco and leather, the rank fumes of raw alcohol – before I see it. Then I begin to make out smoke, swirling like fog in the light of a few tin-shaded ceiling lamps, coiling and curdling greasy yellow under the naked bulbs like milk poured into vinegar. I decipher a crowd of stetsons, the tall hat-crowns wrapped in smoke, toadstools in a shifting ground mist. The toadstools tip back from cards and rose-patterned teacups containing illegal whisky. The glaring light skates down the faces like water down a cliff. They know I’m not a director, so I’m met with nothing but stony, inhospitable stares.
Directors of Westerns like flamboyance, it photographs well, which accounts for the way these boys are duded up. The bigger the hat, the gaudier the costume, the better the chance of being picked for a job. As I wend my way through the tables to the bar, I can sense their hostility; it’s a little bit like being dropped into a carnival where all the sideshow attractions resent you for looking at them. And it’s hard to ignore the extravagant costuming, screaming for attention the way it does. Beaded Indian vests and brass-studded leather gauntlets, big Mexican spurs with sunburst rowels, chaps of every style – bat-wing, stovepipe, angora – flashy shirts and towering hats, polka-dot bandannas the size of small tablecloths knotted around necks. Streetwalkers dolled up to catch the eye of men they despise.
I ask the man behind the bar to pour me what everybody else is having. Apparently everybody else is drinking flat, cold tea. I hold the teacup the way all the cowpokes do, not by the handle, but wrapped in my fist, and nonchalantly inquire of the bartender whether he’s seen Shorty lately.
“Shorty who?” he wants to know. “They’re all Shorty, or Slim, or Tex, or Yakima.”
“Shorty McAdoo.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re a friend of his.”
“No.”
“That’s good. Because if you did, you’d be a goddamn liar.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Four, five weeks ago. Maybe longer.”
“But generally he’s a regular?”
“Nothing regular about McAdoo. He comes. He goes. Some days he talks. Some days he don’t. Some days he drinks. Some days he don’t. I’d call him pretty unregular.”
“Where do you think I might locate him?”
The big man pushes himself away from the bar, putting distance between us, folds his arms protectively over a baywindow girded in a filthy apron. “What you want with McAdoo?”
“He’d thank you if you were to point me in his direction. There’s money in it for him.”
“He ain’t given to thanks.”
“Then maybe I could do it on his behalf,” I say, taking out the envelope of expense money I’ve been provided with, fishing a ten-spot from it which I lay on the counter. “Where’s he live?”
The bartender eyes the money, but he isn’t sure. “He ain’t going to thank me if you’re police.”
“It’s customary to hire cops with two good legs. You saw me cross the bar.”
“It ain’t a bar,” he says.
“All right, I’ll call it a tea shop if it makes you any happier.” It doesn’t seem to.
“This about that director?”
“What director?” The way I say it he knows I don’t have a clue what he is talking about.
