Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine December 1953 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Pulp
Publisher: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Published: 1953-12-16T05:00:00+00:00

Nobody’s All Bad

W. R. Burnett

An unusual and “different” story by the author of LITTLE CAESAR, one of the modern high-spots in the field of crime writing…

I’M CONVINCED THERE’S A HEAP OF nonsense wrote about this here so-called Golden West. I ain’t what you’d call a reading man, but since I been old and infirm, as you might say, I been kind of doing some perusing, and I don’t find no truth in books nohow. Leastways in books I know.

Take these here Western novels now. Hogwash! Plain, unadulterated hogwash. There’s always a vilyun black as ink, and a hero white as snow, and a sweet little schoolmarm or sech a matter in the offing, as you might say, and that there’s a Western novel. Even a Mexican’d laugh himself sick. I’m telling you, life in this here Golden West didn’t go by no formulas. It was a lot better and a lot worse than most people knows about.

Take that Lincoln County War where Billy the Kid done his high, wide and handsome riding. Let one of these here writing fellers take it up and what do you reckon he’d make of it? A massacre or a holy war, yes, sir, and Billy the Kid’d be a poor misunderstood angel or a demon with a forked tail, spitting fire. Tain’t in the cards that-a-way, gents. Tain’t all one way or another; it’s mixed. Howsomever, that ain’t what I starts out to say. I starts out to tell you about Billy the Kid.

Well, personally, I could never see nothing to get excited about in this here Billy the Kid. Good enough boy, as they grew ’em out here in them days, and as fine a shot as ever used a six-shooter. Kind of a bashful-acting boy, somehow, though he was always a-laughing and a-kicking up his heels, as you might say. Nerve? Yes, sir; that boy had nerve and lots of it. But still there was a God’s plenty of men with nerve in these parts, gents. It wasn’t no outstanding virtue like sobriety would have been; far from it. But what I’m getting at is this, even if I am shying away from it like a yearling: the truth ain’t never been told about young William Bonney, which was The Kid’s name.

The Mexicans around these parts are locoed over Billy, El Cheevito, they calls him, and they talks nonsense and rubbish till it gives an old-timer the bellyache. Good enough boy; but no demon and no angel, that’s my contention. Maybe there was a hundred boys in this here Southwest as nervy and as plucky as The Kid, but they wasn’t put in The Kid’s circumstances, as you might say, and so you never hear tell of them.

There’s a heap of chance in this world. Things goes by chance a whole lot. I’m telling you, and I’ve seen plenty. How about that time down to old Alex McSween’s adobe in Lincoln when the Murphy boys burnt the McSween boys out and peppered ’em with lead when they come through the door? Yes, sir.

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