Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Kit laughed her man laugh, the one he thought so fine. She smacked her lips, looked in the compact mirror, and said, “You screwed your own brother, Shellie, now which one of us is worse?”

She was right. That’s what Sheldon thought when he pulled out the gun and pointed it between her red lips. She gave him a surprised smile, her eyebrows raised.

“I wouldn’t,” said Tommy-gun, “unless you want me to blow your brother’s head off.”

In the dime novels they called it a Mexican standoff, but it didn’t feel like they described it. Sheldon’s gaze wasn’t steely, his hands shook like a butter churn, and for a nasty moment he thought he would wet himself. It felt like his life went by in a lazy swish of Tony’s tail, guns pointed at the only two people he had loved, and then the train whistle sounded.

“Train’s coming,” said Everett in the soft voice he used with horses.

Sheldon felt his grip on the gun loosen and he turned from Kit to toss it to the ground. Then he slid off the wagon, but he didn’t step back like his brother. Instead, he looked up at Kit one last time as she snapped her compact shut, tossed it in her bag, and shimmied over to let Tommy-gun hop up next to her.

“Nothing personal, Shellie,” said Kit, putting her hand high on the inside of Tommy-gun’s thigh.

“The train,” began Everett, but Sheldon drew back his hand and slapped Tony hard on the rump, sending the team off at a good clip across the tracks. Tommy-gun reached forward to collect the trailing lines and Everett took a few steps forward, calling something after them, his voice lost in the sound of the train.

They used to call trains iron horses, that went through Sheldon’s mind as it happened. He could never picture the crash, exactly how it looked as Tony bolted and overturned the wagon on the tracks. He only remembered the sound, the crunching, grinding mess of steel hitting bone and wood and whiskey. It was so loud he never heard Kit scream. Maybe she never had time. But he could hear a horse screaming, people yelling, the steam engine hissing, and the bells of the fire engine as it raced up the street even though there was no fire.

A single bottle of whiskey rolled to a stop at Sheldon’s feet, somehow unbroken, a little miracle. He uncorked it and tipped the neck high over his head so the liquor burned straight down his throat. When he lowered the bottle Everett was picking up the pistol and checking the load in the chamber, flicking it shut with a sideways flick, like a cowboy. Sheldon took another swig of whiskey and Everett reached out a hand that held the soft linen handkerchief Maddy had sewn.

“You got lipstick on your face,” Everett said.

Sheldon took another slug of the Corby’s and Everett put the hanky back in his pocket and turned to the wreck. Sheldon had never seen Everett with a pistol, but he seemed to know the gun, holding it loosely at his side as he knelt beside Tony, dodging the sharp, flashing hooves and stroking the straining neck for a last second. The single shot went straight into the horse’s brain and there was a little less noise.

The horse’s blood marked the front of Everett’s coat in a stain so deep Maddy would never get it out. He dabbed at it with his handkerchief as he headed to the dock, holding the gun like a hammer and passing Sheldon with no more of a look than he would give a fence post. When Everett reached Telegraph Point he pulled back his arm and, in the only angry gesture Sheldon had seen his brother make, hurled the pistol into deep water.

Sheldon drained the last of the whiskey, the marks of the woman’s lips still on his face, as he watched his brother cross the river home.

Pack Animals by Peter Sellers

A past EQMM Readers Award winner, Peter Sellers returns this month with a tale based on a Cochrane to Moosonee canoe trip he took himself at age thirteen. Some of the story’s incidents are based on events that really happened, he told EQMM, and he has evoked the Canadian wilderness with a vividness that bespeaks experience there. Mr. Sellers has worked as an editor of mystery anthologies and has many published stories to his credit.

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“I’d stay back from them dogs if I was you,” Nick said.