Cockeyed at High Noon

By Garry Disher

Quinn? Sure, I knew Quinn.

A motion picture about his life and times? Hell, I was the man that shot him. You’d do better making a motion picture about me.

Besides, he was nothing but a punk.

I don’t give a good goddam what the books say, son, I know what I know. I was there. Everyone else is dead.

Memory skewed by time? Why, for two bits I’d break that there recording machine over your head.

For two bucks and a fifth of bourbon I’ll tell you my Quinn story . . .

It was in Lockjaw that I stopped my running. I rode out of the east with gold in my saddlebags and a heaviness in my heart and saw that Lockjaw was the place to hang up my guns. I remember resting a while at the head of the pass that day, watching the town go about its business in the noonday light, knowing from the sleepy main street, gleaming white houses and rich grazing land that a man with something to hide could settle in Lockjaw and never have to account for his past.

I touched my heels to Barrel’s flank, cried ‘Yeehaa,’ and rode on down the incline and into the town. They were brewing coffee in the Cactus Arms saloon. A man in shirtsleeves swept the boards clear in front of the barbershop. A tumble of children crossed in front of me on their way back from the schoolhouse. At the Mills Boon stage depot passengers were boarding the 4.10 coach to Yuma. Outside the jailhouse the sheriff was nailing a wanted poster to the wall—but the face wasn’t mine and the name wasn’t Cody, so I rode on by. I saw all these things in my ride down Main Street, exchanged nods and howdies with a dozen folk, and lost any doubts I might have had that Lockjaw was the place.

I dismounted at the Silhouette Livery Stable, booked Barrel in for a service, and found a room in Ma Cartland’s boarding house situated on the corner of Thataway and Main. Wyatt was the name I travelled under then. It had been a while since I’d used Cody.

Ma Cartland eyed me speculatively. ‘You fixin’ to stay long, Mr Wyatt?’

White-haired, old, haughty, spoilt, draped in a fluffy pink gown, cradling a puffed-up white dog in her arms, she had a smothering presence. ‘Fixin’ to settle down here,’ I told her.

She eyed my Colt. She didn’t need to say anything more, and the moment I was alone I unbuckled my gunbelt and packed it away. The good people of Lockjaw didn’t wear guns. They weren’t fussed that I was a stranger but they were fussed that I was a stranger wearing a Colt .44 Pacemaker low on the hip, so I took off that gun and I hoped I’d never have to wear it again.

I slept for the remainder of that first day and all of the first night. I’d been four days on the road, pushing hard, putting distance between myself and the people who had put a price on my head. I awoke with a sense of purpose and relief the next day. After sampling Ma Cartland’s coffee and grits, I bought myself a new set of clothes and crossed the street to the Titles Office. Twenty-four hours later, I was the owner of the Fourex, a small spread on the south side of town. A week later I bought a herd of longhorns. I had put the past behind me.

The first year passed peaceably enough. I kept my head down and nobody bothered me. I bought all my provisions in Lockjaw, occasionally stopping by the Cactus Arms for a shot of whiskey and a round of five-card stud with Doc Marten, the consumptive gambling man who was a permanent fixture in the place. Now and then I’d talk a while with Donna, the sharp, knowing owner of the saloon, or one of her girls. The temptation was there, but I didn’t take it. Sheriff Marshall dropped by the Fourex a couple of times. I was wary around him, but not unduly concerned. Marshall was a weak man, bored, with little to do. Mostly I worked the ranch: it meant everything to me, it was all I wanted out of life.

Then in the spring of eighteen and seventy-eight I met two people who were to turn my life around. The wealthiest man in those parts was a rancher called Rochester. My place was a mere pimple on the northern boundary of the Bar B Q, Rochester’s spread. A widower with two small children, Rochester was tall, brooding, vigorous, a man of natural-born authority and power. He owned the town; he owned the people in it.

One evening Rochester invited me to dine at the Bar B Q. His children showed me into the house, a boy and a girl aged six and eight. They were tireless, chattering charmers both of them, in the care of their governess, Miss Heyer.

Miss Georgette, as everyone called her, had green eyes in a smiling, spirited face. She was about twenty, a sweet, gentle, uncomplicated creature whom the children clearly adored. Her type was not unusual on the frontier. A young woman of good education and breeding, she had come west to do good works. She was alone in the world, her parents having died of the fever when she was twelve.

I bowed. ‘Miss Georgette.’

Miss Georgette touched her hand to mine. ‘Mr Wyatt,’ she said gravely, her voice a soft, husky murmur.

She turned then to attend to the children hanging upon her skirts—but not before I witnessed a moment of appraisal in the green eyes that had roamed briefly across my face. Her loveliness was muted by simplicity, so I might easily have overlooked her if it had not been for that look. Now I could not get her out of my thoughts.

A short time later, other guests began arriving. Donna was there, in the company of a silver-haired man calling himself Robert James Lee Budgie, vice-president of the Indian Pacific Railroad Corporation. Now, that interested me. Lockjaw was served by the Mills Boon stage line. There was no railroad thereabouts. But I had no time to dwell on that, for soon we were called to the dining room.

The talk was civilised, the wine and brandy flowed freely, and Rochester’s Chinee cook had fared well with the yearling calf. I held my own in the conversation, but it was a queer business. I was among robber barons, hard men who wore a veneer of respectability. What would they have made of me, had my past been revealed to them?

You listening to this, young fella? I’d been barely out of kneepants when I killed my first man, at the siege of Vicksburg. By the time I was fifteen I could ride and shoot and kill as well as any man. The rallying cry was the Confederacy, but the Confederacy meant nothing to me, just as the Union would have meant nothing had I been born north of the Mason-Dixon line. I was indifferent to collective solutions or creeds, hostile to being organised by any man or outfit.

The confusion and turmoil of the War Between the States gave me the cover I needed to operate alone. I spent those long years pillaging plantation houses, raiding banks, intercepting payrolls, looting the quartermaster’s store. I carted boots and horses across the line and returned with wagonloads of sabres and carbines.

When things got hot for me I rode a while with Quantrell’s Raiders, true scum, vicious, rapacious men. That’s how I first met Quinn. I soon got out, but it was one of the disappointments of my life to see hoodlums from both sides spreading through the west after the war, bringing their ugliness with them. Men like Quinn. They would steal on a whim and kill without motive. If hired for a job they pulled a cross. If there had been any honour in my line of work, those men surely dirtied it.

I felt increasingly out of time and out of place. And note this: it was a final act of treachery by Harley Quinn that drove me to find a safe haven in Lockjaw and begin a new life.

Back to Rochester’s dinner party. I remember hearing laughter at the head of the table, where Rochester sat with Miss Georgette on one side of him and Donna on the other. Something Rochester had said, some rough-edged aside, had discomposed Miss Georgette. Her breasts heaved and a slow flush spread to her throat and shoulders. Her eyes caught the sympathy in my gaze and she quickly looked away. Rochester paused a moment to sip from his glass, his fleshy lips coiling on the rim, and continued with what he was saying.

I looked to see what Donna was making of him. She was doing all the laughing. It was a loud, rich, freewheeling laugh that issued from the pit of her belly. She was beautiful and sophisticated but there was a hard, experienced edge to it all the same, as if she were permanently disillusioned with whatever life had thrown into her path. She seemed to be paying a lot of attention to Rochester that evening, resting her hand on his forearm, leaning close to him. I couldn’t help but notice her skin in the lamplight. It fairly glowed, dark and rich like a costly liquid. I guess a lot of men in Lockjaw knew that skin. A lot of men had heard her sing at the Cactus Arms, too, and seen the sinuous animal intensity that animated her. ‘M’Donna,’ they’d cry. ‘M’Donna.’

It struck me then that Donna and Rochester were lovers. I mused on that. If she were to become the new Mrs Rochester, then some adjustments would have to be made in the household. I’d witnessed the surreptitious kick she’d landed on the hound that slumbered on Rochester’s hearth rug, and the unutterable looks of boredom she’d directed upon his children.

I glanced at Miss Georgette. It was clear to me that the lovely young governess was thinking along similar lines. She was watching Rochester intently. Pain crawled across her face. She loved his children, loved that dog, as though they were her own.

More of that rich laughter, Donna tipping back her long throat. It was infectious and I felt an elbow nudge me as R. J. L. Budgie hunched over to cackle in my ear: ‘That’s M’Donna.’

I stared at him. The leer left his face and his features settled into their familiar scowl. ‘She’s got a good head on her shoulders,’ he said. ‘She’s investing in the railroad. What about you, Mr Wyatt?’

‘What railroad?’

Ex-governor of an insignificant state and now a hack for a large corporation, Budgie relied on his man-of-the-people appeal to get him through the day. ‘Why,’ he said expansively, ‘Indian Pacific is putting a line right through Lockjaw. It will mean jobs and prosperity for everyone.’

I asked for more details. ‘Ask Rochester,’ Budgie said vaguely, dismissing me.

I let the matter drop and talked guns for a while with Sheriff Marshall. We’d both heard about a revolver that never needed reloading, a useful thing in a shootout. Meanwhile I was acutely aware of the drama being played out at the head of the table. That young, innocent, yearning girl; her accomplished rival; the man seated between them, successful, well-bred, beautifully dressed. I can’t deny that I felt a twist in my heart. But I could not let myself love Miss Georgette, and if she knew who I was, she would never love me.

After a while I grew tired of all the talk. A life on the edge had not prepared me for endless small talk and civility. Finding an appropriate moment, I bowed to the women and shook hands with the men and took my leave.

Rochester saw me out. We lingered on the stoop, talking idly in the light from the moon, watching the nigger saddle Barrel. Then Rochester looked at me keenly and said, ‘Did Budgie mention the railroad?’

I nodded. Something was coming up and I waited, all my senses alert.

‘You might want to invest,’ Rochester said.

‘Mebbe,’ I said shortly.

Rochester watched me, his head tipped to one side. He was a powerful man, accustomed to getting his way in the world. ‘We’ll more than make it worth your while,’ he said, ‘on account of your losses.’

I stared at him flatly. ‘What losses?’

‘Didn’t Budgie tell you? The line goes slap-bang through the centre of your spread. I’m prepared to offer you cash right now and a parcel of shares when the line goes through.’

‘You must be joking,’ I said harshly.

I swung into the saddle. ‘No man touches my Fourex,’ I said. Jerking Barrel’s head around, I cried ‘Yeehaa’, touched my heels to his flank, and cantered away from the Bar B Q and into the biggest trouble of my life.

It started modestly enough—broken fences, missing stock, a dead steer fouling the waterhole. Unfortunately, incidents like these are the natural hazards of ranchers, scarcely evidence enough in my case to convince the world that Rochester was trying to force me to sell out—not that there was anyone I could go to, for they were all in Rochester’s pocket.

But one night I woke to find the barn burning, the horses screaming in fear and pain. Later a low-down son of a bitch took a shot at me as I was examining mystery tracks in a dry gulch in back of the homestead. My stock began to fetch unaccountably depressed prices at the market. My provisions cost me more and arrived damaged. An Indian Pacific attorney wrote to say that he’d found irregularities in my deed to the Fourex. And a rancher whose spread also bordered on to Rochester’s was bushwacked and left for dead.

Then for some reason the harassment stopped and I assumed that Rochester had given up on me. I didn’t see him around, and someone mentioned that he had gone back east on business. From time to time I saw Miss Georgette in town or riding the prairie sidesaddle upon her Arab. She was polite enough but distracted, anxious, as if nursing some heartache.

I thought I had gone a long way to banishing her from my mind but one afternoon I encountered her in circumstances that burned her image permanently on my brain. I happened to be walking Barrel along the crick that divided the Fourex from Rochester’s spread when I heard singing. The voice had the sweetness and clarity of a songbird and I dismounted to investigate. There, in a broad, still pool under the hanging willows, was Miss Georgette, singing a slow, sad ballad and gently splashing the river water over her long, gleaming flanks. She stretched her arms to the dimpling sunlight and stood to her full height. The breath caught in my throat. Taking in the boyishness of her thin hips, I felt an unbidden quickening in my loins. I was transfixed.

At that moment I noticed a movement on the opposite bank. A hand appeared from a tangle of tumble weed and crept toward Miss Georgette’s petticoats heaped neatly on a dry, flat river stone. There were black hairs on the back of that hand, and before I could act, it snatched up Miss Georgette’s clothing with a triumphant cry and R. J. L. Budgie revealed himself. All his features were hooked toward the centre part of his face in a mocking leer.

Miss Georgette froze, doubled over, her poor thin hands darting this way and that to hide her charms. ‘You dog, give them back.’

Budgie pursed his lips in consideration. ‘What’s it worth to you?’

‘Why you, you . . . ‘ she said.

Budgie leered. ‘The children’s governess, cavorting bare-assed naked in broad daylight? What will Rochester think?’

Miss Georgette tossed her fine head, spraying jewels of water about her shoulders, and advanced on Budgie, naked and unashamed. Oh George, I thought, noting the taut buttocks dimpling and flexing. Budgie meanwhile was goggling at her, uttering snuffling giggles as she drew nearer, picking her way across the submerged stones. She reached the bank and he scrabbled back, still taunting her.

I chose that moment to reveal myself. Standing where Budgie could see me, I levelled the Axminster I kept strapped to Barrel’s saddle and called, ‘The joke’s gone far enough. Give the lady back her clothes.’

Miss Georgette swung around, spluttering, ‘Joke? Hardly a joke, Mr Wyatt.’

She was right. She’d caught me in a thought-error. ‘Harassment,’ I said. ‘Quit harassing the lady, Budgie. Give her back her clothes before I drill you where you stand.’

Budgie flushed. He flung down the skirts and petticoats. ‘You’ll regret this, Wyatt.’

‘People have been telling me that all my life,’ I told him. ‘Now get lost.’

He blundered away among the trees. ‘Miss Georgette,’ I said, head averted, bundling the starchy, frothy, cotton garments into her arms. Then I turned my back while Miss Georgette patted herself dry and drew on her skirts. I could hear the soft rustle of fabric on her skin. I felt tense, alive, every nerve ending acutely receptive.

But I got a grip on myself and beat myself mercilessly: What do you think you’re doing? This is a sweet, chaste, innocent creature, and you are a man of the world, I told myself firmly.

Gradually I recovered. A moment later I felt her soft touch on my quivering back. ‘Mr Wyatt,’ she said meekly.

I turned. Her chest heaved. So did mine. Abruptly we both looked away.

‘Shall we walk a way, Mr Wyatt?’

I fell into step with her and we followed the path beside the water. Her long skirts brushed the ground. My spurs tinkled like temple bells. Insects buzzed in the breathless air. Above us a hawk wheeled in the sky.

Miss Georgette spoke first. She sighed. ‘You must not think ill of me, Mr Wyatt. The sun was so warm, the day so still, the water so inviting.’

‘I understand.’

‘I knew you would. You’re a kind man. I have seen your way with pets and children.’

I felt choked up inside. How could I tell her that I was a man with a past? That I had the blood of a dozen men on my hands? That I’d purchased the Fourex with gold bound for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Fort Garrison? That people had good reason to consider me cold, prohibitive, unimpressed?

Yet I was also a man driven by sadness and a deep hurt. Kindness and warmth had always existed in me. And here, for the first time, a young, sweet, boyish creature had recognised and drawn out those qualities. Miss Georgette understood me. I had not let myself love her before that moment, for she was temporarily unavailable, owing to her misguided attachment to Rochester, but now I felt hope.

Until she said suddenly, passionately: ‘Oh, why is he so blind?’

I raised my eyebrow inquiringly. ‘Miss Georgette?’

‘Mr Rochester,’ she explained sadly. ‘I cannot let myself love him—not when he surrounds himself with men like Budgie, not when he gives his attention to that painted creature from the Cactus Arms. Can she seriously be considered as a wife and a mother to his children? She is fatally shopsoiled.’ Turning to me beseechingly, Miss Georgette said, ‘They will bleed him dry—can’t he see that?’

What could I say? ‘Well, I mean…’

But she was walking again, intense and passionate. We came to a clearing and she put her hand on my arm. ‘There’s a mystery in Mr Rochester, some deep sadness in his past. I know that I can uncover it, if only he would let me.’ She looked away sadly. ‘But he is not yet available to me. I must hold myself in readiness until he is.’

To strangle the cry in my throat I took out my harmonica. Soon tones of longing, heartache and loneliness wailed and sobbed in the still air of the clearing. Miss Georgette watched me, head cocked, listening intently. When she had the rhythm she began to sing along with me, a hushed, bitter-sweet melody. It was a moment of astonishing gravity and beauty.

I saw Miss Georgette home, tipped my hat to her, cried ‘Yeehaa,’ and rode Barrel back across the sagebrush plain to the Fourex. I can say that I retired a little from life in the days that followed. I dreamed of Miss Georgette. I dreamed that she would recognise and appreciate my essential goodness. A chaste kiss. Her thin form trembling in my embrace. Her sweet submission on our wedding night. Only by punishing and rewarding her exactingly could I form her, tear off her chrysalis, make her mine forever.

Of course, what I should have been paying attention to in all that time was Rochester. It seems that he had grown impatient and decided to fix me once and for all.

My first inkling of trouble came the day I saw him handing a wad of cash to a stranger outside the First International on Thataway. I remember that I was hitching Barrel to the rail next to the telegraph office at the time, taking the time to tie a firm knot (too often would you see guys simply wrap the reins around the rail one turn, so you’d be distracted by thoughts of the horse wandering away).

Anyhow, they were watching me. The stranger was tall, with the slightly down-at-heel look of a decent man who makes an honest buck where and when he can find it. His hat was pushed casually to the back of his head, revealing a wry, bony, genial face. He was standing next to his horse, a weathered old hack you wouldn’t look twice at. ‘Falcon,’ I think he called it, when he finally rode off.

I went into the telegraph office. ‘Who’s the stranger?’

Woody Grizzly looked up at me from under his green eyeshade. ‘With Rochester? That’s Cliff Hanger, the Pinkerton’s man.’

I nodded thoughtfully. I had a pretty good idea what Rochester would be wanting with a private detective. Armed with my description and a few facts, this Cliff Hanger would start retracing my movements over the past couple of years and uncover secrets that were best kept buried. Rochester wanted a lever to use against me.

Sure enough, a week or so later, just on high noon, I rode in from the range, tied up outside the Cactus Arms, and came face to face with The Kid.

You know the type. You’d see his quick and glittering hunger and meanness in every saloon in every town in the west. He didn’t make a move straightaway, just waited until I had propped myself at the bar and tossed down a shot of whisky and started on a beer chaser. I could sense his curled lip.

‘Don’t look like no gunfighter to me,’ he said.

I swallowed my beer.

‘Don’t look like he killed no dozen men. Don’t look like he robbed no banks.’

Over in the corner, Doc Marten fanned his cards and drawled, ‘Drop it, Kid. Go on home to your Ma.’

The Kid sneered. ‘Stay out of this, old man. Me and Cody here—sorry, me and Wyatt here—have got some unfinished business to attend to.’

I turned to look at him. A young, sulky face, undernourished skinny frame, right hand itching over the Widowmaker riding low on his hip. I turned away again.

He came closer, jostling my drinking arm. Beer sloshed over the bar and dripped on my boots. ‘Well, hell,’ the Kid drawled. ‘Cain’t even drink without spilling his liquor.’

I signalled to the barman for another beer. He poured it, worry lines creasing his face. ‘Kid,’ he said, ‘don’t make trouble for yourself. You just ain’t fast enough.’

It seemed the whole town had the lowdown on who I was. Clearly the Pinkerton’s man had uncovered plenty and Rochester had wasted no time in spreading it around, hoping every quick-draw punk in the county would come running to Lockjaw to prove himself against me.

I turned. ‘What’s your name, Kid?’

‘No name,’ the Kid snarled. ‘I come and I go. No name.’

I nodded, turned back to my beer.

‘Your sister sleeps with nigras,’ the Kid said. ‘Your mother is so old and ugly now, even the horses over to the Silhouette livery stable wouldn’t want her.’

Well, that did it. Quite apart from the thought-error and stereotyping, no low-down, yellow-bellied son of a bitch was going to insult my women and get away with it. ‘Take it back, Kid.’

‘Won’t.’

‘Will.’

As if by magic, the gun appeared in his hand. He was quick, make no mistake about that. If I’d been packing my Pacemaker, if I hadn’t hung up my holster and turned my back on the past, the Kid might have got the drop on me. I gulped.

But at that moment, Donna materialised behind the Kid. She had a chair in both hands and she slugged him with it. The chair splintered as if it were a stage prop, the Kid’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, and he dropped like a stone. A kind of relieved exhalation spread through the room.

‘Damn, Donna,’ I said.

I’d wanted a crack at him, for then the solution would have been in my hands. ‘Damn.’

‘Don’t I get any thanks, big boy?’

She weaved toward me through the cowpokes and gamblers, her breasts riding high and proud, her eyes relishing me. ‘Wouldn’t want no holes in that pretty hide,’ she said, placing her palm flat on my chest.

I winked, clicked my tongue. ‘That’s M’Donna.’

‘My room, big boy.’

I sighed. ‘Oh, Donna,’ I said, my tone heavy with regret. I sighed again, and touched my fingers to her cheek. ‘Donna, Donna, Donna.’

Did she understand? A long moment passed. I braced myself. No woman likes to be rejected.

But then she smiled. It was frank and generous. Donna was a diamond under it all. We smiled together, shrugged, sighed philosophically. She understood.

I went out. The town was quiet as I walked down the sidewalk, climbed into the saddle, rode out, but in my wake there was an unmistakeable ripple of mingled apprehension and respect.

News travelled fast. The next day, fresh after riding the purple sage, I was consuming coffee and beans in my kitchen, lifting a cheek from the chair from time to time, when I heard a horse pull up in the yard outside. Rochester? Sheriff Marshall? I fanned the door on my way out and saw that it was Miss Georgette.

I watched her dismount. Her colour was high, her eyes flashing. Waves of alarming heat rushed through me as she drew near. Then, for the first time, I knew the crushing dominance of her lips, the bruising strength of her arms. My heart pounded, wild pulsations affecting every nerve in my body. Great shuddering sighs racked us and our energies surged together as though we were a bold eagle gliding over the vast prairie.

But then, the unimaginable. Miss Georgette pressed her—you know, her toilet area—hard against mine in a frank and knowing gesture and I heard her murmur eagerly through swollen lips: ‘Oh, Mr Wyatt. Did you really kill all those men? Did you really rob those banks?’

Some temporary madness must have come over her. Humiliated at such a frank display from my darling, I tore myself away. We stood apart, panting, staring at one another. ‘Miss Georgette,’ I said, reaching out a puzzled, imploring hand.

There was a moment’s bewilderment, then anger, and finally mortification. I saw the desire ebb in her eyes. She swung wordlessly onto her Arab and cantered away, leaving me in a state of confusion and misery.

In the days that followed I dumbly went about my business. Were they alike under their skirts? Another possibility occurred to me, no less hurtful. Had Rochester rebuffed and so thoroughly ignored Miss Georgette that she had looked for cheap physical solace with me?

Was that all I was good for?

But no. When I had time to gather my tumultuous thoughts together I realised what had happened. The poor girl had finally acknowledged our mutual attraction and, momentarily derailed by the power of it, had given it an inappropriate expression. I knew that in her normal state she would gladly wait for me.

I observed her closely whenever our paths crossed after that. Sure enough, Miss Georgette flushed if she saw me, cast down her eyes, hurried to the other side of the street with a mortified little cry.

Meanwhile I knew that Rochester probably hadn’t finished with me. With great reluctance I strapped on my Colt again, wearing it day and night, out on the range and in the town. Men crossed the street or avoided eye contact when they saw me coming. Sometimes there was a hush when I walked down Main Street—only the dint, dint of my spurs and the dry thud of my boots.

It was a still and brooding day, that final day in Lockjaw. All sounds were amplified under the great dome of the sky. I had parked Barrel, checked left and right, and was crossing Main when slow, slow and wailing, building to a lonely, iconographic note, came the cry of a jew’s-harp. I knew that sound. I froze on the steps of IBM Hardware opposite Ma Cartland’s boarding house and slowly turned, shading my eyes.

A figure stepped out into the sunlight. Tall and expressionless, he wore the kind of ankle-length oilcloth coat that keeps you dry as a bone, a hat tipped low and black over his eyes, a cheroot in his bloodless lips.

He scratched his whiskery jaw. The cheroot scooted from one corner of his mouth to the other. ‘Cody,’ he said.

‘Harley.’

When I’d last seen Harley Quinn there had been a smoking Colt in his fist. A child lay dead at his feet, and he had been daring the good citizens of Candy Mountain to take him. Froth flecked his lips, I recall. You want to make a motion picture about a man like that? Anyway, sickened, I had retreated into the bank with the saddlebags of gold and slipped out the rear door.

‘You ran out on me,’ Quinn said now.

‘I asked you to keep watch,’ I said, ‘not shoot an innocent child.’

Quinn shrugged. ‘She was bugging me.’

We eyed each other. ‘Rochester’s detective found you.’

Quinn shrugged again, then hooked the edge of his long coat behind his holstered Colt. His movements were challenging, deliberate. He was trying to unnerve me, but any apprehension I might have been feeling simply vanished at that point. I mean, Quinn looked good, but show me a man who can draw effectively when his coat-tails are tangling his gun arm!

‘How much is Rochester paying you?’

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. ‘You ran off with my share of the gold, Cody.’

We watched each other in silence. ‘How are we going to do this?’

‘We do it right here,’ Quinn replied, ‘in broad daylight. We stand back to back, count off ten paces, turn and draw.’

‘No worries.’

I met him at the intersection of Main and Thataway, a broad, open arena in the baking sunlight. At the edges of my vision, people were scurrying for cover and there were faces in all the windows. Quinn and I got into position, back to back, his trim backside brushing fleetingly against mine. I wriggled to get comfortable, remembering a friendship lost forever.

Then he said one loudly and he was moving. I turned where I stood and watched him walk, counting his paces. I drew my gun. I cocked it. No, I did not shoot him in the back. At the count of eight Quinn whirled around, snatching for his gun, and I shot him where he stood. He dropped like a stone, his heels drumming the dust.

I stood over him. He was dying, the light fading from his eyes. ‘You cheated,’ he croaked.

‘So did you. That wasn’t ten paces.’

‘Your cheat was bigger than my cheat,’ Quinn said, and that was all he said, for the death rattle sounded then and the life ebbed from his body.

I’m telling you, son—that’s the way it happened.

Anyhow, I straightened, looked around. Cautious heads were showing themselves around doorways and soon people were gathering to gaze upon Harley Quinn’s prone hide. I turned and walked away, people falling back as I passed among them.

Barrel eyed me nervously, his nostrils flaring, one hoof striking the dust. I put my hand to his silky neck and whispered words of comfort. When he was still I swung onto his back and touched my spurs to his flank, called ‘Yeehaa,’ and cantered down the street and out of Lockjaw forever.

People watched me go. I heard their murmured awe.

‘What did he say? Yaahee?’

‘Sounded like Yeehaa.’

‘Yeehaa?’

‘Sort of means Giddap or Forward ho:

‘Couldn’t be forward ho. That’s for getting a wagon train on the move’

And so on.

This was the final stage. I had unfinished business to attend to and I pushed Barrel hard out of town and along the trail that led to the Bar B Q. Rochester appeared as I dismounted, as grave, courteous and impeccably dressed as ever. ‘Mr Wyatt,’ he said.

‘Rochester.’

‘Coffee?’

‘I didn’t come here for small talk, Rochester.’

At that moment the screen door banged open and Miss Georgette appeared at Rochester’s side. She was tousle-haired, an unhealthy flush on her skin, as if she had recently risen from her sickbed. ‘Miss Georgette,’ I said, lifting my hat.

Miss Georgette blinked. She yawned absently and scratched her thigh. She closed her eyes briefly, the lids heavy, the lashes resting on her plump cheeks. Then she opened them wide and looked up at Rochester’s hawklike face. ‘I thought you said he—’

‘You thought he said I was dead?’ I interrupted.

She shrugged.

I had intended to shoot it out with Rochester, but here was an opportunity to reveal his crimes and true nature as well. Miss Georgette surely knew that he was fatally shopsoiled and could not be considered as husband material on that count alone, but it wouldn’t hurt to reinforce the notion by revealing his vaunting ambition and greed.

Keeping one eye on Miss Georgette, I said: ‘Rochester, you rustled my cattle, poisoned my waterhole, burnt my barn.’

Miss Georgette yawned.

‘When that failed,’ I went on, ‘you hired a detective to look into my past. You knew that nameless youngsters would try to make a name for themselves by going up against me.’

Miss Georgette scratched her breast. I could hear the scrape of her fingernail; I saw the barely covered flesh move under it.

I cleared my throat. ‘Finally you sent Quinn against me, knowing he wanted me dead and could beat me if anyone could.’ I paused. ‘He lost.’

Looking full at Miss Georgette I concluded, ‘Your crimes and true nature stand revealed, Rochester.’

Rochester frowned, looked at the sky, tapped the toe of his boot in the dirt. Miss Georgette tugged at his sleeve. ‘Honey’ she pleaded. ‘Come back inside.’

I have to say that it didn’t go quite as I’d imagined it. ‘Corruption,’ I said. ‘Greed. You’re shallow and evil, Rochester. I call on you to draw.’

Rochester drew before I’d finished the sentence. He fired, missed. I fired and missed

This went on for a while We both felt exposed there in the open and headed for cover, me to the horse trough, Rochester into the barn Miss Georgette remained on the stoop, wringing her hands, screaming, stuff like that.

A dry click in the stillness. The hammer of my Pacemaker had fallen on an empty chamber Rochester heard it. ‘You out, Wyatt?’

‘Yep,’ I said shortly.

‘So am I.’

He edged into the open. I got to my feet. We eyed each other warily. Eventually I said, ‘It’s finished, Rochester. I’m leaving. Take the Fourex, it’s yours.’

He laughed bitterly. ‘Mine? Budgie’s you mean. He bled me dry. He made a fool out of all of us. I’ve lost everything.’

Miss Georgette was staring at him open-mouthed. ‘Lost everything?’

‘The lot. I’m sorry, honey.’

She stamped her slender foot. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

He shrugged sheepishly. ‘Like I said, I’m sorry.’

She was clearly confused. ‘It’s not supposed to go like this. You saw that I was the right woman for you after all. My reward for waiting was clearly laid out. Now you say it’s all gone? I can’t believe it.’

She turned her back on him contemptuously. ‘Take me with you, Mr Wyatt.’

My heart swelled. The wool had finally been lifted from her eyes. ‘Why sure, Miss Georgette. Fetch your Arab.’

‘He’s not mine. He belongs to the children. We’ll buy one.’

I scratched my head. ‘I guess maybe I could rustle up a few dollars.’

She stared at me, puzzled, trying to take it in. ‘But the gold,’ she said finally.

‘Hell, Miss Georgette, that gold is long gone,’ I told her.

‘Shit, shit, shit.’

‘Honey,’ Rochester said wearily, ‘take the horse, he’s yours.’

And there and then that fine young thing strapped a regular saddle to her mount and rode off into the sunset, leaving me to wonder, along with Rochester: Who was that woman, under that mask?

That’s my Harley Quinn story, son. Take it or leave it.