Gunlaw

Gunlaw 16

He looked at me that time, the last time, just the once. Turned his head, a skull turning on a stick, and saw me with his eyes, still that blue and fever-bright. Didn't say nothing with those dry lips, only looked and waited.

And that's the thing with a waiting eye, the blue eye of an old man dying, the black eye of a gun, the placid brown of a horse seeing but not knowing – you get to wondering who's looking through it, and where they are, and what they're waiting for.

Nine years that six-shooter had waited for me, it had waited my whole life. Nine summers that took me from swaddling cloth to faded jeans, too big and too wide for a skinny boy. It waited all those days until the one on which Jim Bright killed my father. Jim Bright they called him. Sometimes Jimmy Quick, sometimes Jimmy Sharp. Fast enough for a gunslinger, folk said. Too dark of heart ever to take that pledge though. The stories they told about Jim Bright and the Dead Walker would keep you awake all night listening for the creak of a door.

I took Father's gun to the corral. Maybe I should have gone in the dark of the moon with only starlight to glimmer on the horses' backs. But I went in the dusty day under the same unforgiving sun that saw my father draw too slow and take a bullet rather than give one out. It seemed a fair sum, the way Jonas told it. Two men, one bullet. Dai Gunder would be boxing him even now, in raw pine and spike-nails, before the flies got busy. And Jim Bright already on his way, riding out into the barrens. One job done, on to the next.

Flounce came to the rail when she saw me, sniffing for sugar or carrots, two other mares following her over, a roan and a pale that Seth Hartson brought in off the Dry. She came sniffing, drawn by the question. What's Mikey got? That questionmark enough to shift the weight of her in the heat of the day, little swirls of dust lifting with her hooves. The curiosity stayed in her legs though, no hint of it in her eyes.

A horse has waiting eyes. It's in their nature. Waiting eyes, big and dark and liquid. There's no fear in them, not of a gun leastways.

I stood back from the rail. The gun didn't feel heavy. It didn't shake. Cold purpose in my hand. A horse is for riding. My father could have ridden out of town. He didn't have to stay. Trouble would have blown through, tumbled on the wind. He could have gone a-visiting and Jim Bright would've rode on his way. Father wasn't a gunslinger, not even a free-fighter, for all that he grew up in the shadow of Ronson Greeves. He only had a gun because a friend gave him one. Closer than brothers he said they were, him and his friend. Handed him a gun and headed west, this brother. Like it was a gift and not a death warrant.

The horse watched me. Flounce Father called her, for her way of walking, but a horse only carries a name like they carry a rider. It's no more to them than saddle and tack.

I came in close. Close enough to feel the warm wetness of her breath, to feel the pickle of moisture and the depth of her snort. Sounds took on new clarity, the soft clomp of her hooves in the dust, the high song of birds unseen against the sky, the rumble and creak of distant wheels back along Main.

"You don't want to do that, son."

"I ain't your son, Jonas Brook." He'd come up behind me without dropping so much as a footstep.

"Your father loved that horse, Mikey."

"He should have ridden out," I said, feeling the weight of that gun at last.

"Wasn't in him to run, Mikey, not your Pa."

That wasn't true though. He'd run before, backed down, given way. He compromised every day. Marriage is a compromise he used to say – and he stayed married every day. Something made him choose this day out of all the rest, and make it the day he took his stand.

"It's not–" Not what? Not right? Not Fair? Even at nine I couldn't ask for fair anymore.

"Don't shoot the horse." Not an order, a plea. The crack in Jonas' voice made it sound like he loved old Flounce. Of course Jonas knew more than horseflesh rested on the moment.

"Why not? Isn't she mine now? Are they gonna hang me for my father's horse?"

"Your Pa—"

"Loved this horse?" The anger in my voice surprised me. "He should've loved us more."

"Mikey—"

But if you point a gun long enough it will shoot itself. I've wondered since where the decision was made. At what place along the line was it stolen from me? When Jonas told me not to? When I stood on tiptoes on the high back of Father's chair and lifted his belt from the larder peg? When he chose to make a stand rather than run?

The look in that horse's eye . . . nothing, just a waiting eye with a whole other world watching out from the other side.

"Why do you even care, Jonas Brook? Soon as she's lame she'll be dog meat and leather. And there's plenty across the Dry don't see a horse as nothing but good eating, an odd-shaped cow is all."

"A horse ain't a cow, boy. Anymore than a man's a—"

"Ancient times they'd have killed the horse to carry the man on his way from the grave." The trigger pushed hard against my finger. "Ancient times they'd have slit her throat, dug a bigger hole, pushed her in. I don't e-"

The bark and the kick of the gun cut off any reply Jonas might have had to that.

Point a gun too long and it will shoot. There's a lesson there. About choices, about the illusion of choice. About how we all got so many things pointing our way, across the years, and all our choices are stolen before we even know they were there to be made.

We both knew it that day. Jonas and I. We both knew that bullet would reach out, tear in, punch through. That big dark eye ruined, bone and blood and horsehair all tumbling after the slug long after it had gone its way. The tremble in four legs, the wobble, that last breath drawn in, half snort, half neigh, and so many pounds of dead flesh falling.

I took my father's gun from its holster. It held six bullets and I spent them all.