Paradise Sky

To show us who was in charge, he went over to a hunk of wood with an ax in it, pulled the ax out, and came back. “I chop wooden leg off,” he said.

“No, you won’t,” I said.

“I chop your leg off.”

“You won’t do that, neither.”

“His leg,” he said, motioning at Cullen.

Cullen said, “I need these legs.”

I rested a hand on my Colt, measured my words so he could understand me. “You hurt her, I will shoot a hole in you. If you live, you will wake up with that ax lodged in your ass so deep it will take all of the town and a team of big mules to pull it out. You savvy?”

He backed up. I reached down, helped the girl to her feet, and gave her the crutch.

The Chinaman said, “She go to work.”

Away went the China girl on her wooden leg and crutch, under the tenting and into the little hovel. I figured I had done what I could and might have made matters worse for her. The Chinaman smiled at us like it was all a big joke and went back to the chunk of wood and slammed the ax into it. I tried to borrow a shovel and a lantern, but our recent dealings had soured him on us. I ended up paying him two bits to rent both. With those and Cramp in tow, we led Satan up the street toward where the cripple had said the graveyard was.

A little breeze came down off the prairie, and it lifted Cramp’s stink and blew it along the street and gave it some serious authority, and before long a promotion. As we come to the end of the street we seen there was a slight rise at the end of it, and on that rise there was a wood-slat fence, and inside the fence was some crosses and large, flat rocks that had been set on edge for headstones. There was a cluster of trees at the back of the graveyard, inside the fence, and I figured those had been planted there, as they looked to be struggling and not of the land’s nature. Another long, hot summer and they wouldn’t be no better than posts for clotheslines.

I looked back and seen the Chinaman going down the street into the town, chattering loud enough we could hear him all the way up the hill, though what he said didn’t mean a thing to us, as none of it was American.

The front of the fence was open, there not being any gate, as few wanted in and none could come out. We pulled Cramp to the back of the graveyard, where the row of trees was, and picked a spot. Cullen held the lantern while I started digging. It seemed as if the more I dug the more Cramp smelled, and that helped me dig faster.

I had put on my old army jacket as we come into town, hoping that might elevate our status, though it hadn’t, and now I paused and unbuttoned it and went back to my work. I had dug about two feet down and two feet wide when Cullen said, “We got some folks coming, and I don’t think they’re coming to pray over the body.”

They was led by the Chinaman, who had a lantern in one hand and the ax in the other. The men with him was white folks, and they was coming at a good and determined clip. Including the Chinaman, I counted eight.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” Cullen said.

I stuck the shovel in the ground, said, “Set the lantern over to the side. Not in front of us, and not behind us.”

Cullen did just that. Now, Satan was nearby, and so was my loop-cock Winchester, but I didn’t want to make a lunge for it and get the ball rolling when it might not be necessary. I had the Colt and the LeMat on me, both of them fully loaded. I was hoping if blood got stirred they would be enough to calm the situation.

When they was into the graveyard and about twenty feet from us, they stopped walking. The Chinaman took a step forward and waved the ax with one hand. “I tell them no Chinaman, no niggers here.”

“You scoundrel,” I said. “You rented me the shovel and the lantern. You’re just mad because I didn’t want you slapping that crippled girl around.”

“Not bury nigger,” he said.

One of the white men, a tall, bearded fellow with a hat so big you could have hidden a horse under it, and suspenders that pulled his pants near under his armpits, said, “This here is a white graveyard. Christian soil.”

“What if he’s a Christian?” I said.

“He’s got to be a white Christian,” one of the other men said. “You others got your own heavens, if you even go.”

There was a grumbling agreement from the crowd on this matter, as they seemed to have given it some serious speculation at some point or another.

“All right,” I said. “We’ll take our dead man and go. No harm done.”

“You got on a Yankee jacket,” said the tall, bearded man.

“We just got mustered out of the soldiers,” I said. “We ain’t fought in no war except against Indians.” It came to me right then that my idea about status had been a stupid one. A black man in uniform in Texas didn’t have no status. Fact was, that jacket was like painting a bull’s-eye on my back, a fact I should have considered but hadn’t.

“I fought against them colors,” the man said, nodding at my jacket.

“We ain’t shot Southerner a one,” I said.

“I say we lynch them, even the dead one.” This from one of the other men, a fellow that looked as if he had gotten his jaw broken at some point and it had grown back crooked.

“If we carry him on, no harm done,” I said. “But he’s starting to stink, so we thought he might need some ground, and he asked for a Christian burial in a Christian graveyard, and here you have it.”

I noticed one of the men in the back was edging to our right. He had a shotgun, which at that range was sure enough a deadly weapon. It could take both me and Cullen out, kill Satan, and kill Cramp all over again.

I don’t know what come over me, but all of a sudden I was through talking. My hand went quick for Mr. Loving’s Colt. I thumbed back the hammer and fired. I hit the fellow with the shotgun a smooth shot in the forehead, and whatever was between his ears that he had been thinking with was knocked out the back of his head.

Then they was all moving.

The Colt, which I had cross-pulled, was in my right hand, and now I cross-drew the LeMat with my left. I was firing them both, moving to the left, then to the right, ducking down, twisting, and firing, shooting as fast as I could, and somehow in the midst of my speed I can say I was taking my time, too. I was willing and accurate, and they was scared and wild.

Bullets cracked near me. I seen Cullen out of the corner of my eye, heard him say, “Ah, shit,” and he toppled over. And damned if that Chinaman, who had stood right up front with that ax in one hand and the lantern in the other, didn’t sort of come unstuck from the night. He dropped the lantern, cocked back that ax, and rushed me. I had mostly shot around him, the ones with guns being more my concern than him. I had fired quick, sometimes two shots to a man. I had emptied the Colt and the nine-shot LeMat. I had just enough time to flick the lever on the LeMat to the shotgun position, and as the Chinaman came up on me, I fired. It was a hell of a blast, and it tore a hole in his chest and put him on his knees. He chopped out at me. The ax went right between my legs but missed my vitals. He was held up by the ax for a moment, leaking his insides, until I kicked his hand loose. He came forward on his face then, his heels sort of snapping up in the air, throwing some graveyard dirt with them.

I went over to Satan, who hadn’t even so much as moved. Wasn’t no figuring that horse. I reckon he was trying out all possibilities. I pulled the loop-cock Winchester off his saddle and went over and found Cullen lying on his back. I knelt down beside him and looked for a wound. A bullet had only grazed him across the head and had knocked him out. I said, “Hell, Cullen, you ain’t hardly touched. You fought Apaches, and now you’re lying on the ground taking a nap and I’m shooting it out.”

I helped him up and got him steady on his feet.

It was then that them four China girls came up out of the dark, rattling along in a little wagon with loops of thin wood over the back of it and a striped tarp that was pulled down off of it and gathered at the rear of the wagon in a wad. The wagon was pulled by a couple of horses. It was the cripple driving the wagon. The others was in the back, and they had carpetbags with them that was near their size. It was like they had been ready and waiting for just such a moment. They said almost together, “We go with you.”