Monday, August 25, 2008

KID NOBODY in: HEAD FER THE HILLS! - Pt. I

Kid Nobody rode over the hills and into the isolated town of Creighton on a dusty afternoon to clean up some kind of mess. He didn‘t know what kind of mess it was, but the old wizard had made it sound real important.

“I’ll meet you back in Farthing when it’s over,” the wizard told him, “and I‘ll be most interested to hear the results.” Farthing was five towns over, due north east from Creighton.

In between, he’d grifted his way through Golding, swindled by Merryweather, done a-robbin’ in Ha’penny Hills and got a bad reputation in San Alberto. Bad enough to see wanted posters with his face on them, they even printed his real name, too, instead of his handle, which he preferred to go by. Kid Nobody hadn’t spent a lot of time making friends, excepting his horse, Leroy, who he hitched outside the saloon.

***

The piano was tuneless and the women weren’t much on the eyes, but the place was plenty rowdy and well-stocked, so he sat contentedly with his pint of malt liquor, eyeballing the place, looking for a mark. Couldn’t be more than a couple hours after noon and drunken stumblebums were everywhere, plenty of marks to be found in a place like this.

One of the homelier gals gave him a shy wink from across the room. Maybe, he thought. Didn’t appear to be a lot of options, and a man can‘t be all business and no recreation.

The doors swung open. A skinny man burst in shouting about, “I have seen the face of God, and he is pissed! On account of what we done to the Indians.”

The crowd collectively bowed their heads and muttered guilty capitulations.

“Well…”

“Yeah…”

“Got a point there…”

“God’s fixing to punish us, but good,” the ranting man said. Then he ran out to tell the folks at Tibbett’s, the general store, across the street.

“Seems we’ve all done wrong to an Indian, one time or another, isn’t that right, old timer,” Kid Nobody asked the man at the next table, with a smile.

“Not like we done, stranger,” the man said, gruffly, without making eye contact.

Kid Nobody took a swill of his drink and left a decent tip, by his standards, as he got up to leave. He’d found what he was looking for. A man, stumbling for the exit.

***

Kid Nobody stood nerve steady on the boardwalk, watching the stumbling man vomit into the alley beside the saloon. The man held himself up against the wall with one hand, the other tucked into his wretching belly.

“You okay there, partner,” he asked, approaching the man from behind.

The man stumbled a couple steps into the alley. Too easy, he thought.

“Aw, you just need to find a bed to lie down in,” he said, patting the huddled man down for his wallet, “you’ll be right in no time.” Then he felt the barrel of a gun jab between his ribs.

“Whoo-hoo-hoo, too easy, boy,” the man said, wiping his mouth.

Kid Nobody raised his arms in surrender. He looked down and noticed he was standing in the man’s vomit.

“Old trick I learned,” the man said. He took a big gulp of air, swallowed it, and after a couple second began wretching violently, the vomit splattered thinly. He came up laughing, wiping his mouth.

“Gun,” he said, his free hand outstretched, fingers waving it in, “slow like. Seems you ought to know better than to flash your wad in unfamiliar territory.”

After he handed him the gun, the man said, “cash. Come on, now. Be quick about it.”

A gun cocked behind him, a woman’s voice, “it’s cocked and loaded. You scram, or I put a bullet between your beady eyes. This one‘s mine.”

The man with the gun said, “well I got two guns, n--”

She did it. Right between the eyes. The man fell in a heap. Kid Nobody’s ears rang like church bells. He turned in disbelief, arms still raised.

“You can stop surrendering now, handsome,” the woman said, tucking the gun into her garter belt. It was the woman from the bar, “I ain’t going to shoot you, less I have to.”

1 comment:

benzo369 said...

I done wrong to an Indian last night. Good time, too.