Iron Star by Loren D. Estleman

Author:Loren D. Estleman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

11

PHEASANT’S BLUFF

I been shot three times: Once through the gut, another time in the second toe of my right foot, then again in the flesh of my left calf; or was it the right? I disremember, but it was years later, when I was a public safety officer in Turkey Creek. That first one afflicts me still—the bullet played out next to my spine, which is where the rheumatism settled—but I regret that toe most, because every time I tug off my boots and see the stump, I get to missing Royal Ames all over again.

Folks who was there have called me out betimes for mixing up my years, but you don’t have to ask me twice to fix on March 28, 1886, as the day I lost my friend.

I’d just turned thirty, after ten years in the Nations, which is when most men in my profession contemplate retirement while it’s still our decision. Hickok got his permanent ticket-of-leave at thirty-nine, and Earp told me he was constipated for life after that business in Arizona when he was thirty-three, which may explain why he was such a miserable son of a bitch to get along with. Still is.

I’d been behaving myself long enough the Judge offered to recommend me to President Cleveland for appointment to U.S. Marshal; he was short one at the time and impatient of a replacement. I slept on it. It was a desk job, oftenest filled by generals and former judges, and once you’ve spent a month on your back after a country doctor unscrewed a hunk of metal from your insides wrong way out, the occasional paper-cut is no hardship.

But before he could decide whether to write that letter, the President got off the stick and named someone else to the position. Not having money in the bank nor even the acquaintance of one, I put aside my reservations as to the hazards and oiled my saddle. I’d traded the chestnut, which was too old to cut trail but still good for hauling a cart, along with some cash, for a fine roan gelding: It was retired from General Miles’s cavalry, where it lost any bashful attitude it might have entertained toward the noise of gunfire and the stink of powder and blood, and was tame enough not to try and bite a chunk out of my ass every time I leaned back on the cinch. I called it Geronimo.

Ames, just before he left on the east central circuit, joshed me about that U.S. Marshal deal.

“You didn’t want it anyway, Ike,” he said. “You don’t have the whiskers for the position; the belly neither, with your approach to victuals. I once saw you eat a rotten egg, and compliment the cook after.” Well, it’s true that jail fare in Mexico and that pisshole in Fort Smith hadn’t inclined me toward the sin of gluttony, but I throwed my bridle at him for the remark. If I’d known it was the last time I’d see him I’d have made it evening primrose.

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