The Magic Wagon

Before Elijah hit the ground, Billy Bob flicked his wrist to the left and had Checkers covered. Checkers had one hand to his nose and the other inside his coat.

"Don't shoot me, fella," Checkers said. "I was trying to go for the Indian. I seen what he was about to do and I tried to go for him. I swear, it was the Indian I was after. It's just you're so blooming fast… Grief, but you just might be the son of old Wild Bill. That was the fastest damned draw I ever did see."

Slowly Checkers went ahead and brought his gun hand out. There was a little pistol in it. He lowered his arm down by his side and let it dangle.

"I swear," Checkers said, "I wouldn't throw in with no Indian against a white man."

"Put the gun up," Billy Bob said, "and see if he's dead."

Checkers did as he was told. While he did I smelt something burning, and glancing at the fire I seen it was Elijah's stovepipe hat. The first shot had knocked it off his head and it had rolled into the fire. It was just a black wisp now.

Checkers bent over the body, then stood. "He's dead. Course he's dead. He's got two holes in his head. I could have told you that from over there."

Billy Bob turned to look at where the Bowie had gone. It was stuck just to the right of Hickok's head. Billy Bob reached and pulled it out of the wood, and the knife squeaked free of it like a mouse that had had its back stepped on. Billy Bob stuck it in the belt around his coat.

"Too bad he wasn't white," Billy Bob said. "Would have been my first kill. Hickok didn't count no Indians or niggers, and I don't aim to neither."

"Didn't count spicks neither," Checkers said.

"That's right," Billy Bob said, "no spicks neither."

Billy Bob reloaded his pistol and dipped it back into his left coat pocket.

"Checkers," he said, "you look that body over for money. He got anything you give it to me. I ain't so sure you didn't lead us up here to cheat and kill us, so you don't get nothing out of the deal, not even the twenty for the trip."

Checkers' face went red and he forgot to put his finger in his nose. "That ain't fair."

"Didn't say it was," Billy Bob said. "Don't feel like being fair right now."

"I brought you up here in the rain, it storming-"

"Shut up and do as I say," Billy Bob said. He opened and closed his hands above his coat pockets where the butts of his pistols showed.

Checkers moved his jaw back and forth a few times, then he bent to searching Elijah.

"Don't palm nothing," Billy Bob said. "I would find that disagreeable."

Checkers brought over a pocket watch, a derringer, and a little bag full of bones, dirt, and beads.

Billy Bob put the watch in his inside shirt pocket. "Indians are hell for trinkets," he said, "but what they need to know time for?" He poured what was in the bag into his hand then back into the bag. "What's this?"

"His medicine bag," Checkers said. "Has his powers in it"

"Did him a lot of good, didn't it?" Billy Bob said, and tossed it into the fire. He flung the derringer as far as he could to the back of the cave. "Whore's gun," he said. "That and tin horns."

Billy Bob put the lid on the box, and we went out of there, back down to where Albert waited, me and Checkers carrying the box with Wild Bill in it. It was pretty heavy.

I didn't tell Albert right then all that happened. I figured he knew a lot of the story from the way I looked at him, and I thought maybe he'd heard the shots, though later he said he hadn't. With the storm like it was, and us being deep inside the cave, he hadn't heard a thing.

We strapped the box on the side of the mule, and Billy Bob took to leading it behind his mount. Me and Checkers rode behind him, almost side by side, and behind us was Albert.

We'd gone a mile or so when the storm got so bad every little bit of the sky lit up with forks of blue-white lightning and the thunder roared like there was a ca

About the time all this storm business got built up, Checkers made his play. Maybe he and the Indian had pla

Doesn't matter now. With Billy Bob in front of him, he had the perfect chance to do to him what Jack McCall had done to Hickok.

I seen him go for his gun, and I tried to yell, but with the thunder and lightning like it was, I didn't know if Billy Bob could hear me. But he did, or maybe he'd just been waiting for Checkers to make his play all along. Billy Bob swiveled on his critter, and as he did, I seen there was a smile on his face, like he was about to get a present he'd been waiting a long time for.

The way Billy Bob's hand moved was too fast to be real. I figured it was a trick of the lightning or something. One second his hand was on his knee and the next it was full of pistol and the pistol was cocked.

Only he didn't get to kill Checkers. The lightning did it. It was faster even than Billy Bob, and it reached down out of the sky and hit Checkers' little pistol and there was the sound like a giant whip cracking, then Checkers and his horse exploded and I was wearing some of him and some of his suit and some of his horse.

Billy Bob, with a wail, threw himself off his horse onto the ground and started pounding his hand against the ground, screaming. "I had him beat. My first white man. I had him beat," then he began to cry.

I just sort of sat there, dumbfounded, wearing Checkers, his suit, and his horse. Finally I got down off my horse, led him over a piece, got down on my knees, and threw up.

When I was able to get up, I looked over and seen Albert was helping Billy Bob to his feet. Billy Bob was saying over and over, "I had him beat. My first white man."

Albert helped Billy Bob over to his horse and put him in the saddle. He patted him on the knee. "There's just a whole bunch of white men, Mister Billy Bob. Don't you fret. There'll be others."

"I had him, Albert. I had him whipped fair and square, didn't I?"

"Couldn't have been no fairer or squarer," Albert said, like he was talking to a little kid.

"It ain't right. I had him beat."

"Plumb beat," Albert said.

"By the time Wild Bill was my age he'd done a lot of his killing already," Billy Bob said.

"Things were different then," Albert said. "Folks was more for killing in them times. Got up with it on their minds. They had more niggers to do their work, and there was lots of free time for shooting folks."

"I had him," Billy Bob said, shaking his head. "I had him."

Actually, I had a lot of him. I got a handkerchief and cleaned off what I could and got sick some more.

When I was feeling some better, I went over and stood with Albert and he put his arm around my shoulder. We looked at what was left of Nose Picker Chauncey and his horse. It wasn't much. Just a heap of bones, smoking meat, some saddle leather, and a hunk of checkered suit.

Maybe I should have felt some worse about old Checkers, but to tell it true, I couldn't work up a lot of enthusiasm for feeling bad. I figured after he killed Billy Bob he pla