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  Abe’s Revenge

  Zukie Lee stood tied to a tree and stared death straight in its dirty, bearded face. Above him a woodpecker hammered at a branch – a stabbing noise that made his sore head hurt even more.

  Zukie’s light blue eyes were fixed on the man who was stood twenty yards in front of him. The man was bare-headed and held in one hand an almost empty bottle of whiskey, and in the other a .36 Navy Colt.

  ‘Yer didn’t ‘spect fer this ter heppen, did yer, Lee?’ the man slurred, and then taking a swig from the bottle he roughly wiped his mouth with his gun-hand.

  Zukie fought to get the sufficient amount of saliva in his mouth, so that he could answer the question.

  ‘Abe, this ain’t the way; this ain’t genner bring Sarah back to life,’ he pleaded, both his fear and the scorching sun in the cloudless blue sky causing the sweat to pour from his brow.

  ‘She’d still be alive, ‘ceptin’ her havin’ got involved with the likes of yer, and every lowlife like yer!’ Abe cried.

  Zukie considered his former friend’s point – and still concluded that Abe blaming him for his sister’s suicide was rather unfair.

  Sarah had been like every other good-time girl in Custer’s Saloon: fine for a ride but not much else. She’d been temperamental, highly-strung and far too fond of imbibing Red Dog. It had been her mistake that she’d fallen in love with Zukie, merely because he’d extended her more courtesy in the bedroom than was usual among the rough men of these parts.

  ‘Abe, why don’t ye set me free, and we’ll see ‘bout burying Sarah proper. I’ll pay fer a decent funeral. Ye and me, we’re kin; there ain’t no need for sech foolishness as this,’ Zukie declared, trying to keep his trembling voice even – trying to talk this drunken, grief-stricken man out of committing cold-blooded murder.

  ‘Thet’s jest where yer wrong, Lee – yer an’ me was kin,’ retorted Abe. ‘Now, ‘sposin’ I were to let yer go, yer’d go crawlin’ on yer belly straight to yer ol’ buddy Sheriff Zimmerman, an’ I’d be swingin’ ‘fore nightfall.’

  ‘I would not,’ replied Zukie firmly, angered despite these desperate circumstances by the insinuation that he was a toady to the forces of law and order. Sheriff Zimmerman was a card-playing friend, nothing more.

  ‘Shet up!’ Abe roared. He staggered, almost entirely overcome by grief, drink, and the scorching heat.

  ‘There ain’t no way of yer wormin’ yer way out o’ this one, Zukie. Now, what I’d be partial to doin’ is shootin’ yer up, ‘ceptin’ that we was once friends, and I ain’t got it in me to put one between yer legs, as yer deserve.’

  As the man spoke, Zukie anxiously scanned the rolling stretch of prairie beyond the house he’d built with his own hands not two winters ago. He was searching for the telltale cloud of dust that signalled the approach of Sheriff Zimmerman on horseback, the man finally come for that hand of poker they’d arranged to play the previous evening.

  Of all the goddamn times, thought Zukie despairingly, the lawman could have chosen to be late it was now…

  ‘I ain’t feelin’ so pert,’ Abe moaned, and it was indeed clear that he was having trouble maintaining a vertical position. The hand holding the gun shook evermore fiercely. ‘I’d best be gettin’ this over and done with.’

  ‘Abe… Abe…’ Zukie repeated, his eyes widening as they stared at the barrel of the pistol.

  ‘It ain’t no use – take a las’ look at the world, Lee, ‘cause yer ‘bout to leave it,’ Abe said tiredly, his voice no longer thick with anger.

  ‘Do ye think,’ Zukie finally managed to squeal, ‘that ye’ll get away with this? They’ll hunt ye down like a dawg, Abe, and they’ll kill ye.’

  Unbelievably, Abe’s dusty, sweat-smeared face broke into a sudden grin. His few remaining front teeth were cracked and discoloured.

  ‘Sech considerations ain’t of no account, Lee, ‘cause after I’ve shot yer I’ll be turnin’ the gun on maself,’ he said.

  With this the smile vanished and Abe’s fishlike right eye squinted almost shut as he aimed the gun. With such concentrated effort his hand shook only slightly, while above Zukie’s head the woodpecker obliviously continued its remorseless hammering – rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat…

  ‘Abe…’

  The gun fired and something that felt like a branding-iron scorched across Zukie’s right cheek. The woodpecker abruptly ceased its hammering and flew away as Zukie’s head crashed back against the tree with teeth-rattling force.

  This second violent blow, received so soon after the first, was sufficient to cause his legs to buckle and the impenetrable black mist to again drift across his eyes. In the split-second before he lost consciousness Zukie saw Abe lifting the gun to his head, and he moved his lips to protest against a second needless suicide when...

  The next thing Zukie Lee knew he was waking up in his small box-bed, the window above open and a cool breeze entering the room. Beside his bed were stood two men, one small and smartly dressed in black trousers, a black shirt and a waistcoat, a gold chain stretched across his round belly.

  The other man was lean and dressed in faded blue jeans, a checked shirt and brown boots. The five-pointed badge that he wore and the two holstered Colts on his belt indicated that he was the lawman of these rough parts.

  ‘Welcome back to the world, Zukie,’ said the smaller man abstractly, as he gripped the young man’s wrist and felt his pulse.

  ‘Abe?’ Zukie managed to croak.

  ‘I guess he’s plum dead,’ said the lean lawman, slightly tipping his white hat in a mark of respect. ‘Blew his brains out right there by your tree. My figuring is that he thought he’d done you and so he did himself. Anyhow, reckon we’ll have to postpone that hand of poker for a little while, Zukie, though not for too long – I aim to win back the seven bucks you took off me last time.’

  The injured man smiled wanly and gingerly felt his face. ‘I feel pert as a rutting buck, ‘side from my right cheek. Did ye have to stitch it, doc?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ the small man replied, letting go of Zukie’s wrist. ‘Might as well know now you’ll carry a mighty scar there for the rest of your days. Other than that, except for a couple of big old bumps your head’s just fine. Now, would you care to enlighten me and the Sheriff as to what this was all about? I thought you and Abraham McCulloch were friends.’

  The Sheriff said, ‘I ain’t no Pinkerton man, but I’ve been having some thoughts concerning all of this, and I guess the problem was with you fooling around with Abe’s sister, and of her killing herself with strychnine early this morning. That’s why I was late getting here today, on account of her suicide. ‘Course, once I did get here I just turned right aback around to go get the good doctor.’

  Zukie sighed and closed his eyes. Quietly, he said, ‘Abe crept up on me while I was out branding cattle; knocked me spark out before I knew what was hap’nin. Woke up to find myself lashed to that tree, with him telling me ‘bout Sarah’s suicide – first I’d heard of it.

  ‘Lucky fer me he was so sozzled, fer I reckin that was what spoilt his aim. It’s a damn shame – I never had nothing ‘gainst Abe, he was a likeable feller, but he had a beef with me on account of what Sarah did.’

  ‘Why you in particular?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘’Cause the girl thought I loved her, I guess,’ Zukie said quietly.

  ‘The note she left said as much – now, I guess that you can treat this as a lesson to keep your pants on and not go fooling around with grave-bait,’ said Sheriff Zimmerman firmly. ‘It’s ‘bout time you settled down, Zukie, and stopped drinking and whoring. You’re twenty-seven, man – old enough.’

  ‘She was a nice girl,’ Zukie said defensively.

  ‘She was a whore, and whores is whores – they ain’t n
othing but trouble,’ replied the Sheriff bluntly. ‘I guess I spend half my time sorting out all the problems they make for, what with fellers waking up in the morning with their pockets empty and so turning mean.

  ‘Now, I reckon that you’d better be getting your rest, while me and the doctor attend to that corpse that’s lying right outside.’

  ‘I’ll be right-as-rain and fine-and-dandy by tonight,’ declared Zukie jovially. ‘Us three can take a hand of poker then, if ye like.’

  ‘You can get some rest, Zukie Lee, and count your lucky stars you’re still on this good Earth,’ said the doctor sternly.

  ‘I guess we’ll call around by-and-by,’ Sheriff Zimmerman said, and patting Zukie’s shoulder he and the doctor then left the room to attend to their unpleasant duty.

  The following ten years saw Zukie Lee follow the Sheriff’s advice. For he settled down with a decent and God-fearing woman who kept a stern eye on his drinking, and the couple were soon blessed with two beautiful twin daughters.

  Zukie rose at dawn and together with a couple of hired hands spent his days moving and branding his cattle, selling them at a profit and ensuring that his family wanted for nothing.

  Sheriff Zimmerman and the doctor were regular visitors to this contented household, Zukie ensuring that he devoted two nights a week to poker, liqueur, and talk.

  It was noticed by both his friends and his wife that he frequently fingered the long white scar on his cheek. When he occasionally spoke of the tragic circumstances that had led to him receiving this scar, he never gloated about his lucky escape, but rather dwelt on how sad it was that a man and a woman had died for no particular reason.

  One fine morning he watched with paternal pride as his daughters ran excitedly about the house, dressed in identical blue-and-white checked dresses and with their hair in bunches. A wagon with two horses was waiting just outside; his wife would be using this to take her and the two girls to visit her mother some fifty miles away in Towash.

  ‘Now, ye’re to take care, Cindy, and stick to the usual tracks,’ Zukie told his wife as they finished loading the wagon; and he placed a rifle, hidden from general view, near her seat.

  ‘We’ll be jus’ fine – we ain’t going nowhere near Injun territory,’ Cindy replied.

  ‘I know... But still, I’d be happier if I was going with ye…’ Zukie said with concern.

  Affectionately kissing her placid husband on his scarred cheek, Cindy said, ‘You’re to stay here and take care of that tree, as well as the cattle. Maybe you ought’nt have let them two hired-hands go; maybe you still needed ‘em.’

  ‘Reckin not – they was getting a mite too spensive,’ Zukie answered, and he turned to look at the solitary tree which had died several years before. It stood stark and ugly, an eyesore; but it was too large to demolish with just an axe.

  ‘You still going to use dynamite?’ Cindy asked cautiously, noticing the direction of her husband’s gaze.

  ‘I spoke to the feller at Dyer and Williamson; he said there ain’t nothing to it. I drill out-a-space in the trunk, put in jus’ the one stick, light the fuse, and take cover.’

  ‘It ain’t too close to the house?’

  ‘No – the way he said it, it don’t blow out too far with jus’ the one stick. Whas left I can do with an axe.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure…’

  ‘Sure I’m sure,’ Zukie replied cheerfully. ‘Now, ye and the kids had better get going. And send me a telegram soon as ever ye get there.’

  Having kissed his daughters goodbye, Zukie Lee stood and watched as the wagon gradually retreated from sight, rolling away across the prairie, heading towards the dim, faraway mountains. He attempted to assure himself that his fear concerning an Indian attack was groundless; after all, his wife was taking a frequently-used route that was also patrolled by Federal forces…

  It was best just to keep himself busy until he got the reassuring wire at the nearby post office, he decided. So he spent an hour drilling out a suitably-sized hole in the trunk in which to place the stick of dynamite.

  Finished, he stood back and admired his work, fingering his scar and then wiping his brow.

  His eyes grew a little dim as he gazed at the dead tree, the bullet that had sliced his cheek open still presumably lodged somewhere within it. He remembered Abe and his sister Sarah and he wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeve. Abe had been a good friend, and Sarah had only wanted a little love…

  It had all been so pointless: it should never have happened. Consequently considering his own brush with death, Zukie shrugged and told himself, ‘Just born lucky, I reckin.’

  Lighting a match on his jeans he touched the flaming head to the fuse that hung out of the hole, and ran – but not too quickly – across to where several barrels were stood in a line. Taking cover he crouched with just his head exposed, having been assured by the clerk at the provisions’ store that, properly placed, the amount of dynamite used would cause a fairly localised spread of debris.

  ‘Here she goes,’ Zukie mumbled, as the fuse slowly burned up and then into the hole. There was a sudden explosion as the stick of dynamite was ignited, wood blown in all directions – but nowhere near the house – and Zukie fell violently back onto the dusty ground, where he lay quite still.

  Sometime later Sheriff Zimmerman stood grim-faced, his jaw trembling slightly. All that remained of the nearby tree was a jagged stump, the ground littered with pieces of wood. He watched as the doctor knelt beside Zukie, felt his wrist, and shook his head sadly.

  ‘It’s all over,’ mumbled the doctor, stating what was only too obvious – for there was a neat, circular hole in Zukie’s forehead. Only a little dried blood surrounded the bullet’s entrance site, but for Zukie there would be no poker game this evening or indeed any other.

  ‘I guess the bastard will swing for this, once I catch him,’ said the Sheriff tightly, his hands forming fists as they hung by his sides. ‘I can promise Zukie that much...’

  The doctor nodded – but his thoughts suddenly seemed elsewhere.

  ‘Wonder if it was one of them two hired hands Zukie took on during August?’ the Sheriff then conjectured. ‘If they had some kind of argument over wages or such?’

  Realising the doctor’s continuing silence, Zimmerman scowled.

  ‘Say something then, doc!’ he demanded. ‘What’s on your mind, hey?’

  The doctor stood slowly up. Looking first at the dynamited, scattered wood, he then stared levelly at the Sheriff as he gave his answer:

  ‘I was just wondering, Sheriff, as to how you hang a dead man – because that’s Zukie Lee’s murderer. But for all of that, I don’t think the bullet came from a gun – at least, not this time round. It was, you might say, second-hand.’

  It took several moments for Sheriff Zimmerman to understand the doctor’s point, but then his brooding expression lightened with sudden surprise.

  ‘By God,’ he whispered.

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