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Published in Zane Grey Western Magazine, June 1970.
Fate works in a manner unreasonable and paradoxical; men are driven by desperation to plunge headlong into the depths they have spent their lives trying to avoid or escape. There is on record the suicide of a man who, rather than fight a duel in which he had an even chance of surviving, chose the certain path and shot himself the night before. . . .
“All my life,” wailed Joey Donory, “I been a scringin’, scrawlin’, whimperin’, gutless yellow coward!”
He paused as if for response, but none was forthcoming. The wind sighed mournfully and monotonously outside his shack; except for this noise there was silence. Which is not surprizing, considering that Joey was entirely alone. Nor was his aloneness surprizing, for Joey was raving in his way, and he raved only in solitude. Never had he been known to express a deep emotion in public, or lift his voice with undue feeling. In the presence of strangers or unfriendly acquaintances he maintained a dumb and prayerful silence; even among his few friends he was not garrulous. And the reason thereof cut him to the marrow. Even now he raised voice and spoke bitterly on the subject.
“Yah! I ain’t even got the guts to talk back at ’em. They kick me around and make wisecracks and razz me till the world turns blue, an’ never a comeback I got. An’ it gets worse, the older I get, ’cause a grown man ain’t s’posed to take things like a kid does. Whata break I get!”
Maudlin tears gathered in his bleared and reddened eyes as he reached uncertainly for the ominously dark bottle which stood at his elbow. This he shook anxiously, showing some slight relief when a sensuous and throaty gurgle came from within. The relief was brief, however. He drank long and sadly, then began his rambling monologue again, which monologue was becoming rather incoherent.
Joey Donory was not an imposing man. He was young but he did not look it, nor did his manner suggest it. He was short and wiry with a slight stoop, a long neck, and a sun-wrinkled melancholy face set off by long drooping whiskers. Those whiskers were his solitary pride. All else was bitterness. Born and bred in an environment where most men were large and imposing, his lack of size was bad enough, but his handicaps were more than physical.
“An’ it ain’t so much me bein’ thataway. Most of the real bad hombres wasn’t so big. Lookit Billy the Kid; no bigger’n what I be. ’Tain’t tallness and ’tain’t beef. It’s what ya got in ya, an’ I just ain’t got it. Why’nt I? How’n thunder ’d I know? Lackin’ the necessary heft fur fist fightin’ I oughter be a wildcat with knives an’ guns, but knives gimme the creeps an’ the feel of a gat upsets my belly. I should oughta stayed on th’ ole man’s ranch up on the Sour Water Range where folks knowed me an’ where I coulda kept outa their way.
“An’ lookit me, too,” his voice rose, embittered, for, just as many lonely men do, Joey was in the habit of talking aloud to himself. “Look here at me, top hand and first class miner, ’spite uh my size! How many those big hams can make that brag? How many fellers runnin’ loose, cow punch’ an’ miner too?
“An’ kin I keep a job anywheres? Like hell I kin! Some big ham starts bullyraggin’ me till I up and clear, or else I lose my nerve so bad and fall down on the work so bad, I get th’ ole can. Me, what oughta be drawin’ as good wages ’s any man in the Copper Basin country. An’ now what’m I goin’ do? Broke—no way uh gettin’ any money—outa grub—an’ that dam’ Bull Groker ridin’ me till the world turns blue an’ I can’t even keep a job dish-washin’ f’ fear he’ll come in an’ poke me in the jaw just to be comic. Wish I had the guts to give ’m the works—f’ I’s a man I’d shoot ’m s’ fulla holes he’d look lika open windy.
“Today he slaps me on th’ back s’ hard I spill my liquor all over m’ shirt front n’ ’en, ‘Haw! Haw!’ he laughs, ‘Haw! Haw! Haw!’ th’ big ham!”
Again the bottle for which Joey had spent his last dollar was tilted upward and Joey’s mumbling profanity and self-pity merged with sounds indicative of liquid refreshments.
The bottle bumped on the table. Joey, prone though he was to exaggerate his troubles, a failing characteristic of those to whom life has been over-rough, was really in desperate circumstances. He was, as he had said, broke, and though there were plenty of jobs for such as he, a barrier stood in the way. Any job he took would entail coming into daily contact with large, rough and ready men. He shuddered and became nauseated. Physical fear was more than a fault of his; it was a black incubus, a monstrous cancer, born in him and nurtured by fear and a realization and contempt of himself. And it was growing with the years. He knew unreasoning fear of arrogant men and bullies, and always among any gang of men there is a bully—maybe a nasty-minded tyrant, maybe a blatant jackass who is at heart good-natured—but a bully just the same. From job to job Joey flitted until he was broken—a mass of quivering nerves—about ready for the psychopathic ward.
“Never, in all m’ fool life, have I did one blame thing which could possibly be called courageous! All m’ life. When I was a kid, I didn’t mind—never kept no job over four months—when they started ridin’ me I started ridin’ for new ranges. Good thing I learned up to bein’ top hand on m’ ole man’s ranch ’fore I started driftin’. Minin’, that come natural. I picked her up easy, workin’ in short snatches. ’f I’d had eddication I’d a been uh minin’ engineer. Used to when I’d quit uh job, I’d not worry—go get ’nother ’un. Stummick’s turned on that. Los’ what little nerve I ever did have.”
Joey laid his head on his arms and wept. What seems trivial to others is the pure essence of Hell to the sufferer, and the incubus of realized cowardice is the worst that haunts manhood. From that orgy of weakness and tears, Joey Donory rose with an iron resolve crystallizing in his liquor-muddled brain. He had reached the state in which even the most trivial discomforts loom monstrously and with deathly portent. And Joey’s troubles were not trivial.
“Better t’ be dead than t’ be yellow!” he muttered, a light of almost feral desperation growing in his weak reddened eyes. “ ’f I thought it’d get better—but I’ve been thinkin’ that fur twenty-five years an’ it gets worse. T’morrow I won’t have the nerve—got to decide tonight. Already decided—goin’ kill m’ fool self!”
He paused and looked around with a sort of dreary triumph, aware that he had made a statement dramatic and fraught with dire portent.
“Goin’ kill m’self,” he repeated. “Then they’ll see!”
He felt suddenly invested with a deep, dark significance. Somberly, and with a brooding majesty slightly affected by a wobbling walk, he crossed the room and, after some uncertain fumbling, jerked open a drawer. A cold blue glitter of steel winked up at him. Joey Donory’s soul shrivelled within him. He covered his face with his hands and reeled away.
“Oh, m’ Gawd,” he groaned, tears of humiliation and helpless fury flooding his eyes. “I ain’t even got th’ guts to bump m’self off!”
He raised his head, hopelessly. The night wind blew drearily, and faint on its whisper came the far off blare of a tinny talking machine. The noise conjured up a mental picture of the Elite Saloon, that dive of iniquity where men talked loud, drank hard and died suddenly. Out of the depths of self-abasement and alcohol, an idea fantastic and paradoxical was born. Joey Donory turned cold at the mere conception of that idea, but he was past the borderline of desperation.
“They say Demon Darts hit town today,” he whispered to himself, cold sweat beading his brow.
The merriment in the Elite was in full swing. Men reeled, shouted and swung the shrill-voiced ladies of the resort, but man or woman, drunk or sober, they were all careful to leave clear a generous space near the end of the bar. In the center of this forbidden spot, throned in somber regality and crowned with a brooding and sinister aloofness, stood Demon Darts in all his glory. Your true killer is ever the actor, the perfect showman.
This particular gunman was almost a legend in the Copper Basin country, though he had never before honored the locality with his presence. For that matter, he was almost traditional all over the West. Lurid and terrible were the tales of his deeds, and no one, looking at the great dark bulk of him, and at the sinister, lined face with the narrow, cold, merciless eyes glittering beneath the heavy black brows, could doubt that there was a large measure of truth in most of those tales.
All the local bad hombres were silent and subdued. Even—nay, and especially—Bull Groker, the burly miner who ruled supreme over the Copper Basin fighting men, had seen fit to make an early and unobtrusive exit. He breathed a frank sigh as the saloon doors swung shut behind him, guided by his careful hand; and at that moment a smaller figure heaved up suddenly in the gloom and a set of thin steely fingers clutched his arm with a nervous grip.
“Donory!” said Groker with disapproval. “Ain’t I tell you early in the evenin’ not to come foolin’ ’round where they’s men?”
“Is Demon Darts in there?” hissed Joey, unheeding.
The unexpectedness of the question almost rendered Groker speechless, and he could only find words as follows: “Uh, yeah, why, uh, yeah, he is, but whata you want—”
Joey had already pushed past him, and Groker, burned up with curiosity to know what the most arrant coward in the country wanted with the most notorious killer, followed him. Joey had not been in the Copper Basin many months, but even so he had endured enough at the hands of Bull to assure that worthy of the smaller man’s lack of courage. Now he noted that Joey was white-faced and was shaking as if in the grip of a chill.
In an element rude and elemental where human passions are frank and blatant, shocks and surprizes may be expected. Jars unexpected and sudden had come to the hardened sinners who frequented the Elite, but it is safe to say that never were they so jolted out of their cynic callousness than that night. The unexpected frightens, and it was with a sudden icy chill of real horror that the drinkers, dancers and gamblers heard a sudden voice blat: “Demon Darts! He’s the shrinkin’ vi’let I’m lookin’ fur!”
Dancing, drinking, gambling stopped as if the participants had all been struck dead. A cocktail shaker slipped from a nerveless hand and crashed on the floor like the crack of Doom. There in the doorway, with his arms still wide spread holding apart the swinging doors, and with his mouth still gaping from yelling those frightful words, stood Joey Donory.
Joey Donory had yelled at Demon Darts. Strong men held their breaths and waited for the skies to fall. The watchers blanched, fearful lest the insulted gunman include all present in the sweeping doom which must inevitably mow down the lunatic in the doorway.
As for Darts, he had jerked about at the sound of the voice, his hand shooting to the big black gun at his hip; but he had not drawn and now he stood eyeing the intruder somberly. To the horrified watchers that stare was an assurance of sudden death in its most grisly form, but a close observer would have noted not a little amazement and bewilderment in the killer’s icy eyes. Not in years had any man addressed Demon Darts thus. The not inconsiderable few who had called with the intention of giving him a one-way ticket to the next world had been either wary and subtle or blazing and passionate, but one and all had accorded him the respect due him. Yet here this shrimp—that made it more sinister. Darts did not know Joey. Had the maniac been a giant it would have been easier to understand, for notwithstanding the time-honored adage that Colonel Colt makes all men equal, few people really believe it, and still are prone to think that a blazing gun is more effective in the hand of a big powerful man than in the hand of, say, one of Joey’s proportions.
Now Donory strode forward and the people gave back as if he were a leper. He saw all eyes turn from him to the man who stood alone at the bar and with a sinking feeling he knew it was the killer. The sight chilled him to the marrow but he was wild with drink, with desperation engendered by a lifetime of humiliation, and to a lesser extent, by the dramatics of the moment. Even in this deadly hour he was aware of the intense stares and they went to his head. Always Joey Donory had craved to be the center of attraction. Now he was It with a vengeance and as he had burned all his bridges, he would make the most of the moment.
He walked up to the silent and somber Darts and eyed him insolently.
“D-Demon Da-arts!” he sneered, unable to keep his voice from shaking a little or the cold sweat from beading his brow. “A hell of a gunman you are, you lousy tramp!”
A sudden and really painful gurgling gasp escaped the onlookers. Joey instinctively shut his eyes and awaited the end. But in a couple of seconds he realized that he was still alive and his eyes jerked open—wide. Darts had not even drawn; he was eyeing the smaller man with a strange expression growing in his eyes. Darts moved quickly but he did not think quickly. However, an idea was fermenting in his skull.
He spoke for the first time: “Ya tired uh livin’, feller? Don’t ya know I’m just as liable to plug ya as look at ya?”
The audience shivered in an ecstasy of anticipatory fright.
Joey was getting shaky. It was not courage but a sort of insanity that was keeping him up, and his knees began to rattle. He wanted to get this over with before he lost all his nerve and broke down. Of course, suicide was his object. Badgering Darts to make the gunman kill him. A quick ending (“They don’t have time ta suffer when they stop my lead,” the killer had boasted), a way out without using his own hand, courage for which he lacked—moreover, the empty honor of leaving a certain glamor about his taking off, as the man who had baited the terrible Demon Darts. And now Darts seemed inclined to prolong the agony and Joey went wild. Maybe the Demon thought so little of him that he would not even waste powder on him!
“Go on!” he shouted. “Shoot me, why don’t ya?” He tore open his shirt and crowded forward almost against the staring gunman; his voice broke in a great sob sounded like fury to the crowd. “Ya always bragged yore victims didn’t kick after ya pulled the trigger! Go on, if ya got the guts of a louse!”
“Listen here!” said Darts in a strange, strangled voice. “You got no call to be pickin’ a fight with me. I ain’t never even seen you before!”
The feeling was growing. This fellow was some terrible gunfighter, so terrible that even Demon Darts would be no match for him. Else how would he dare the Demon? He must know he had a cinch, to thus face Darts empty-handed and goad him to wrath. What was the cinch? Gunmen planted in the crowd? T.N.T. under the floor? Derringers up his sleeves and inhuman skill at using them? Cold sweat began to appear on the brow of Demon Darts. He was far from being a coward, but this was ghastly! This fellow knew he had him—Darts—in a triple cinch, somehow! There is nothing so numbing as the experience of a man who has for years been used to frightened respect, and is suddenly confronted with someone who not only seems to hold no fear of him, but to actually be contemptuous of him. The higher a man values his own prowess, the higher he is likely to value the untested prowess of a scornful foe. Most gunmen are high-strung—human panthers—a panther is a terrible fighter, but the flutter of a girl’s handkerchief will sometimes stampede him. Demon Darts began to shake like a leaf. His hand fell limply from his belt.
“Don’t you go pickin’ no fight wi’ me,” he said thickly and with some difficulty. “I got no quarrel wif you. Le’s—le’s have a drink an’ forget it.”
Joey scarcely knew what the man was saying. All he knew was that this nightmare was being prolonged. He went temporarily crazy.
“You ain’t nothin’ but a big false alarm!” he screamed, seeking wildly for insults which would sting this man out of what Joey thought to be a contemptuous indifference. “You big tramp, I ain’t even got a pocket knife and you got on two guns! Yo’re yellow! Yo’re a lousy, yellow, low-down thievin’ coyote that ain’t got the guts to drill a man only in the back—”
He stopped for breath, perceiving as though through a fog that Demon Darts, blue about the lips and ghastly as to eye, said nothing. Entirely distraught, Joey slapped his face with resounding force. At that, Darts ducked wildly and gave a strangled cry.
“Ya ain’t goin’ to force me into no one-sided slaughter-fight, ya coldblooded murderer!” he screamed. “If ya kill me, ya gotta do it—now!”
And reeling like a man blind-drunk, he crowded past Joey and ran blunderingly to the doors, plunging through them into the night—to be seen no more in the Copper Basin country.
Silence lay like a black pall over the Elite Saloon. Joey, dazed, entirely incapable of coherent thought, moved mechanically and without conscious volition toward the door. He could not yet realize what had happened. Men and women cowered back from him, horror mirrored in their eyes.
At the side of the door stood Bull Groker, and this worthy croaked hoarsely like a frog as Joey neared him. The dreary portent of the noise drew Joey’s lackluster gaze and Groker made infantile and futile motions with his feet as though he would flee but could not. Then with a heroic effort he said, after several gagging false starts:
“M-m-m-mister D-D-Donory, b-be ya goin’ to drill me?”
“Me?” said Joey in a mechanical but ghostly whisper. “Naw—I come here to see Demon Darts—it’s him I wants.”
“He’s in Californy by this time,” said Groker with a vast whimpering sigh of prayerful relief. “Mister Donory, I wanta thank ya for not havin’ killed me. I know I been kinda offensive at times, but ya knowed it was just my friendly hearty way. I’ll take care not to do it no more. Will ya not be sore at me, Mister Donory?”
“No!” whispered Joey, still in a daze.
“L-l-lemme shake yore hand, please sir, Mister Donory,” gulped Groker, almost weeping with relief; he shook Joey’s limp hand with awe, but his instincts were all for kissing it. Then he moved away to the bar, looking back over his shoulder and walking with stiff, automaton-like steps. The other men in the place stood staring spellbound. As yet they were incapable of thought.
As Joey opened the doors to depart, someone touched him respectfully on the shoulder. He turned to meet the admiring gaze of one of the wealthiest mine owners in the Copper Basin country.
“Mister Donory, I’ve been wanting to meet a man like you for a long time; a man all fire and steel, but with perfect control of himself! You’re just the man to handle some big deals I’m planning. I’ve had a lot of trouble with the men lately but under you, they’ll be lambs. You’ll pardon me if I say this was a big surprize. I should have known, though, that you have too much self-control, that you’re too big to fool with such small calibers as Bull Groker and the like. Like all real gunmen, you were just waiting for a fellow who was more on your level, weren’t you?”
“Er-ya-ump—” gurgled Donory, staring wildly.
“Sure you were. And, Mister Donory,” the last in a low confidential voice, “don’t think I’m intruding, but why do you have it in for Darts?”
“I ain’t—I don’t—” began Joey, finding partially coherent speech.
“The true old type of Western gunfighter,” said the mining magnate admiringly. “You fellows don’t have to have a grudge—it’s just to see who is the best man!” He slapped Joey rather timidly on the shoulder, evidently much awed at the new-risen celebrity. “You come around—no, I’ll come around to your shack tomorrow and we’ll talk business.”
“Ahh-uh-ayeah—” garbled Joey. “Uh-uh-goo-goo-night—”
“Goodnight, Mister Donory!” came the respectful chorus from the entire crowd.
Donory drifted out into the darkness, walking like a man in a trance.
“Strange nuts, these real gunfighters,” said the magnate to the wan and pallid crowd. “Cold as ice—yet he was a flaming firebrand when he was calling Darts.”
“Gimme a drink,” said a cowboy suddenly. “By Judas, I kin hardly believe it yet. Say, fellers, this here is somethin’ ya kin tell yore grandchillern. That ya saw Demon Darts take water an’ back down—take a cussin’ an’ a rap in th’ pan, an’ run like a jackrabbit. Believe me, it’s Mister Donory from now on out with me. Who ya reckon he is, anyhow?”
“Lord knows—” “Tex Slade, maybe—” “Gotta string of killin’s nine mile long, I bet!” “Anyway, Darts shore knowed him—” “Yeah, he plumb turned blue when Donory come in—” “An who’da thought it, him bein’ so mild like—” “Them mild ones is the real bad ’uns—” Thus the saloon buzzed with semi-hysterical conversation.
Back at his shack the situation was beginning to dawn on Joey.
“By golly!” yammered that hero wildly. “I plumb bluffed the liver outa Darts, not intendin’ to, an’ he took it on the lam!”
Joey was shaking as from an ague.
“Musta been clean outa my head! Thank the Lord I’m still alive. An’ now, by golly, I got a reputation that I’ll never have to defend an’ which nobody’ll question ’cause Darts is such a bloody devil. I went out to get exterminated—” A slow grin overspread his homely countenance which of late years had known few grins. “By golly, they was a killin’, ’cause right there Yellow Donory was exterminated an’ in his place now is Mister Donory—what I care if I ain’t really brave? Long’s people remember tonight, no man’ll dare start anything with me! An’ here’m I, Mister Donory, with a man’s job I kin keep at last, an’ a man’s rightful respect.”