The saloon was cryptlike in its silence. One Dog stood atop the far end of the bar, arms folded, war paint on his face and his naked, sweating chest.
“One Dog has more power than the wampus,” he said. “I will meet him and kill him and take his hair and his head and hold his bleeding head in front of you, whether he calls upon his powers to appear as a man or a wolf or a lowly grasshopper. Remember my medicine.”
There were at least two heavily armed men at each window frame, the glass having been long ago shot out. A dozen or more men spread around the batwings and the front windows. The floor of the saloon was a carpet of dead and dying hoppers, puke, urine, and shell casings.
“We have new and powerful warriors to help us in our battles,” Dog went on. “Let me ask this: who is the fastest and most accurate of the new men—the one who has the balls of a cougar and has killed many men?”
There was some mumbled conversation among the men, but it only lasted a moment until a raspy voice called out from the back of the group, “That’d be me. No goddamn doubt.” The speaker was a rifle-barrel-thin tall man wearing a black shirt and black hat and a pair of .38s tied low on his thighs, the butts of the pistols facing outward. The bone grips of the pistols were scored with neat little notches—many of them. He grinned, although it was a false smile, and he had the eyes of a man who didn’t care if he lived or died.
“I ain’t here to listen to your horseshit, One Dog. I’m after the gold an’ that’s all. I’ll kill you an’ any ’r all of these clowns who need killin’.”
“Good,” One Dog said. “Come here and stand before me. I will hand you my pistol and then I’ll kill you and take your hair.”
This time the gunman’s laugh was real. “An’ when I drop you—ya bigmouth Injun—I’ll take over this band of sows an’ use them to make money. No?”
“Perhaps,” One Dog said quietly. “And perhaps not.”
The gunslinger pushed his way forward and stood below Dog at the end of the bar.
“You said you don’t need a iron to kill me. Hand over that Colt, ya damn circus Injun, flappin’ your yap about how tough you are, how your medicine is gonna kill me. Don’t use nothin’ but your left hand—I see your holster’s on your right side. Tug her out nice an’ easy an’ hold ’er upside down. Fair ’nuff, Chief?”
“It is fair.”
One Dog reached across his waist and slid his .38 from its holster. He held the weapon upside down, and the very tip of his index finger eased into the trigger guard.
“OK so far,” the gunman said. “Now, drop it.”
“I do not drop fine weapons as a goat drops shit.”
“Yeah, ya do—when I tell you to. Now!”
One Dog fired the .38 upside down with his offside hand, putting all six slugs into the gunsel before the man hit the floor.
“You see?” he said to his men. “My medicine is a shield before me. It is stronger than the gunfighter, and it is stronger than the beast, wampus. I will kill it in its man shape. I saw that happen in a vision with the help of the sacred mushroom. You will all join me. Those who fail to help I will kill and take their hair and ears.”
Dog let that settle for a long moment. “Keep good watch. We know not when the wampus will come, nor what shape he will be in when he does come. The one thing we know is that he will be in a man shape when I take his life.”
“Way I see it, if we can plant them strips of black powder around the saloon an’ start raisin’ hell outside, the ’splosives will do lots of our work for us,” Will said. “Plus, Wampus’ll be tearin’ throats—tonight I mean.” He paused for a moment, his face suddenly worried. “Is Wampus heavy enough to set off one of them strips?”
“How much you figger he weighs?”
“Maybe eighty, ninety pounds. A tad less than a hundred-pound sack of grain.”
Ray shook his head sadly. “He’d set one off sure as God made li’l green apples. We gotta leave him here—an’ he ain’t gonna like that, and I ain’t either. I’m kinda used to havin’ him with us. He’s a fighter worth a half dozen of them renegades.”
“He is. But maybe we don’t need to leave him behind. Gimme one a them strips.”
Ray took one of the innocent-looking devices from the box and gave it to Will. “Better back off,” Will said. “I dunno how this is gonna go.”
He placed the strip on the ground. Naturally enough, Wampus trotted over immediately to investigate the thing, sniff it, see what it might be.
Will let him get a stride from the explosive, muzzle down, getting its scent. He began to take another step.
“NO!” Will bellowed in a voice and tone the wolf dog had never heard from him before.
The word—the rawness and command of it—hit him like a lash across his back. Wampus didn’t cringe. Instead, he stood as still as a marble statue, his eyes showing his confusion, his grief at displeasing Will.
“Ray,” Will said, “put a good handful of jerky chunks on top of the stick an’ then back off again.” Ray did as he was asked.
Will walked off a few yards and then called the still-frozen Wampus over to him. He made a big deal over the dog, rubbing his head, tussling with him, scratching behind his ears, talking to him, until the flatness, the pain, left the wolf dog’s eyes. Then Will began to walk, Wampus, as ever, at his side. Will stopped ten feet from the little pile of jerky and waved Wampus on.
Jerky—particularly beef jerky, which this was—had become Wampus’s favorite treat. He trotted a few feet toward the dried meat and then stopped so suddenly he fell forward, his muzzle digging a furrow in the dirt. The scent of the strip, even over that of the meat, had reached his sensitive nose.
Will bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from laughing. Ray turned his back on the scene silently, his shoulders shaking. Both men knew full well a creature like Wampus had all the pride of a good, strong man. Wampus trotted back to Will. “Good boy,” Will said. “
“Well,” Ray said, grinning, “I guess there’s no problem there. Tell you the truth, I’m gettin’ right fond of that ol’ fleabag. Don’t tell him that, though—he’s liable to git a swelled head.”
The men, as they drank their after-dinner coffee, decided not to use the strips that night.
“I say we take down a couple guards an’ mark ’em, maybe scatter their horses if we can, an’ then call it a good piece of work,” Will said, rolling a smoke. “We got somethin’ to discuss, though.”
“Yeah,” Ray said. “We been kinda sweepin’ it under the carpet for a while. Who gets One Dog?”
“Seems to me this’s been my show all the way along. I told you right up front that Dog was mine,” Will said.
“I never noticed there was a boss an’ a hired hand involved here. An’ you got her wrong. I told you
“Ain’t gonna happen, Ray. I’d hate to have to jerk guns against you, but if I had to, I would.”
“You think you’re faster, better’n me?”
“I know I am.”
Ray spat off to the side. “Faster? Sure. Better? Hell no. Fast don’t count for a fart in a hurricane if the slugs don’t go where you need ’em to.”
“Are you sayin—?” Will began hotly.
“Waitaminnit! Goddammit, waitaminnit! There’s a real good chance one or both of us will die in this mess with them outlaws—in which case, we both lose. Or maybe only one of us catches lead. That leaves One Dog to the other, no? So let’s quit this horseshit ’bout slappin’ leather ’gainst men who’ve become friends. It don’t make no sense.”
Will attempted to build a smoke but trembled tobacco all over his lap. After a bit of time he said, “I was way the hell outta line, Ray, an’ I ’pologize. You’re right. An’ for what it’s worth, I’d no sooner pull iron on you than I would on my grandma.”
“Why? ’Cause I’m old, beat up, slow, an’ half-blind?”
“ ’Zactly. She’s deaf, too.”
The two men laughed together and then reached over and shook each other’s hand. The handshake meant something important to both of them far beyond the burying of an argument. Both knew that now they were partners in the true sense of the word. At times they’d argue and curse and call each other idjits and pissants—but each knew his partner would always have his back. How men become pards is a mystery, but that’s what happened
