Blood and Gold

I was young and life surged strong in me and I dearly wished to remain part of this land. I wanted to live and go on living, but an inner voice told me that this could only be to my disadvantage in the fight to come.

Bass Reeves once said that a man who clings too tenaciously to life will hesitate before going to the gun, maybe hoping for another way, maybe hoping for a miracle.

With men like Lafe Wingo and Ezra Owens, that moment’s hesitation was all the edge they needed and their victims, lying pale in dust-blown graves across the West, could testify how wrong it is for a man to put his trust in miracles.

Me, I decided right there and then as we sought a likely spot to camp, best I put my trust in a miracle of steel and walnut made by Sam’l Colt and do my testifying with five rounds of lead.

Sure, maybe I was getting too big for my britches, but remember I was but eighteen and couldn’t yet grow a man’s mustache. You can’t put an old head on young shoulders, and looking back, I realize I should have been a lot more scared than I was, and believe me, even then I was plenty scared.

We were still a couple of hours north of the Brazos, and Wingo decided we should rest for an hour before we made the crossing.

I helped Lila boil coffee and fry up some salt pork, and then while the others ate, she took me aside and slipped off a chain from her neck with a little silver cross on the end.

“Wear this, Dusty,” she said. “It will help.”

I took the chain from her and put it around my own neck, feeling the warmth of Lila’s body still on it. “You don’t think I’m going to make it through the day, do you?” I asked.

Lila opened her mouth to speak, found the words dying in her throat and shook her head, her eyes misting.

I tapped the Colt at my waist. “I’m pretty good with this thing, you know.”

The girl looked over my shoulder at Wingo and Ezra as they sat hunched over a hatful of fire. “Dusty,” she whispered, her lips very close to my ear, “shoot them in the back. Destroy them any way you can. You can’t stand up to those gunmen in a fair fight. They’ll kill you for sure.”

I was neither shocked nor surprised, because I’d given some thought to that very idea and had pretty soon rejected it.

“If I killed those men like that, I’d maybe go on living, Lila,” I said. “But it wouldn’t really be living, because every single day of my life I would remember and die a little death.”

“Dusty, those aren’t men. They’re animals,” Lila said. “You’ve killed animals before and they don’t lay heavy on your conscience.”

I nodded. “I’ve killed my share of deer, but deer aren’t men.” I held her close to me. “Lila, out here there’s a code—a code that dates all the way back to the days when gentlemen settled quarrels with a duel, and it demands that you meet your enemy honorably and face-to-face. Now maybe it’s an outdated code, but where Western men gather to talk, they still judge the actions of others by that code.”

I saw the puzzled look in Lila’s eyes, her complete lack of understanding of the West and Westerners, and I found myself groping for the right words. “I was raised hard, but even so, I was taught to believe in that code and I can’t turn my back on it now.”

“Then you’re a fool,” Lila snapped, breaking away from me.

I watched her walk back to the fire, my heart heavy. Was she right and was I wrong?

I shook my head. No matter what happened, I didn’t want to be known as the man who shot Lafe Wingo and Ezra Owens in the back. There would be no living with myself after that, and there would be no living with others, men who would be quick to judge and slow to forgive and forget.

I had to draw the line somewhere, and I drew it now. Killing a man in fair fight was one thing—cold-blooded murder was quite another, and I’d have no part of it.

Killing from ambush was Lafe Wingo’s way. It wasn’t Dusty Hannah’s way.

After an hour, we headed south once more, and this time Wingo told me to ride alongside of him.

Around us, the flat land was thick with mesquite, tasajillo, yucca and skunkbush. Heat hazed the pale blue sky above us. The sun’s brightness was subdued, like it was shining behind a steamed-up window. But the day was hot, and sweat stained the front of my shirt, turning the faded blue a darker color.

I rode beside Wingo in silence for a few minutes, feeling the man’s hate like the heat of a campfire. Recent events had taught me to live with awareness, to notice and sense what I had not noticed and sensed before. My more innocent days, the days when I saw other men as a human beings and not potential enemies, were long behind me, maybe never to return.

In most men, hate springs from fear or envy, but not in Wingo, since I knew he neither envied nor feared me. His hatred sprang from his own need for self-approval and from his humbled gunman’s pride.

I knew, as he did, that he could not let me live to spread talk that I’d whipped him with my fists. His reputation was at stake and he couldn’t let it founder on the sharp rocks of idle frontier gossip.