Enemies and Other Western Stories by Gorman Ed

Author:Gorman, Ed [Gorman, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Rough Edges Press
Published: 2015-02-06T16:00:00+00:00

The Victim

I suppose everybody in this part of the territory has a Jim Hornaday story to tell. See, you knew right away who I was talking about, didn't you? The gunfighter who accidentally killed a six-year-old girl during a gun battle in the middle of the street? Jim Hornaday. Wasn't his fault, really. The little girl had strayed out from the general store without anybody inside noticing her—and Homaday had just been shot in his gunhand, making his own shots go wild— so, when he fired. . . .

Well, like I said, the first couple shots went wild and those were the ones that killed the little girl. Hornaday managed to kill the other gunfighter too, but by then nobody cared much.

There was a wake for the girl, and Hornaday was there. And there was a funeral, and Hornaday was there, too. He even asked the parents if he could be at graveside and after some reluctance they agreed. They could see that Hor-naday was seriously aggrieved over what he'd done.

That was the last time I saw Jim Hornaday for five years, that day at the funeral of my first cousin, Charity McReady. I was fourteen years old on that chilly bright October morning and caught between grieving for Charity and keeping my eyes fixed on Hornaday, who was just about the most famous gunfighter the territory had ever produced. When I spent all those hours down by the creek practicing with my old Remington .36—so old it had paper cartridges instead of metal ones—that's who I always was in my mind's eye: Jim Hornaday, the gunfighter.

I killed my first man when I was nineteen. That statement is a lot more dramatic than the facts warrant. I was in a livery and saddling my mount in the back when I heard some commotion up front. A couple of drunken gamblers were arguing about the charges with the colored man who worked there. You could see they didn't much care about the money. They were just having a good time pushing the colored man back and forth between them. Whenever he'd fall down, dizzy from being shoved so hard, one of them would kick him in the ribs. For eleven in the morning, they'd had more than their fill of territory whiskey.

Now even though my father proudly wore the gray in the Civil War, I didn't hold with anybody being bullied, no matter what his color. I leaned down and helped the colored man to his feet. He was old and arthritic and scared. I brushed off his ragged sweater and then said to the gamblers, who were all fussed up in some kind of Edwardian-cut coats and golden silk vests, "You men pay him what you owe."

They laughed and I wasn't surprised. The baby face I have will always be with me. Even if I lived to be Gramp's age of eighty-six, there'll still be some boy in my pug nose and freckled cheeks. And my body wasn't any more imposing.

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