Paradise Sky

There was three doors along that upstairs hall, but he and them women was so loud up there I didn’t have any trouble knowing which door they was behind. There was also smoke drifting out of a wide crack at the top of the doorway, and I could smell that it was tobacco smoke, strong enough to be that of a cigar or a pipe.

I practically ran to that door, and, lifting my leg, I drove my boot into it.

26

The door cracked loudly, swung back, and slammed against the wall.

It was a little room filled with smoke and the smoke was wrapped around a bed and some of it rose up and grew thick and covered the ceiling like a cloud. On the bed were two nude white women, both of them striped with blood and crying, and there was a colored gal bent over the end of the bed rail, her head lying against the sheets, her face turned from me, and Golem, fully dressed, had a whip in his hand—a whip made of cloth and a wooden handle. He was holding the cloth and snapping that wooden handle upside that colored gal’s head. She looked to be unconscious, as she was just dangling there, not trying to move away from the blows. Blood had dripped down from her and was on the bed and on the floor.

Golem turned his head and showed a mouth full of a big black cigar. It was the source of the smoke that filled the room. I raised my pistol. His forehead had that mark of ash on it, and that was to be my spot to shoot.

“Deadwood Dick,” he said, around that fat cigar.

“Big bastard,” I said, and I was about to squeeze off a round but was denied the pleasure.

Golem wasn’t so out of his head thinking he was some Jewish monster who couldn’t be hurt that he didn’t have the sense to whip that poor woman’s body around in such a way it come in front of me and spoiled my aim. After he pushed her forward and she went tumbling to the floor in front of me, he wheeled and ran toward the open window behind him, grabbed at a rifle leaning against the wall, and jumped. That big bull of a man went through that open window with that rifle as easy as if he was hot molasses sliding along a greased pan.

Ru

Instead of jumping out the window, I decided on the stairs. I wheeled and stepped over the girl on the floor—for that’s really what she was, a girl—and was in the hallway, down those stairs, and out the back so fast I don’t really remember the trip. Next thing I knew I was outside and ru

“He’s got a pistol in his boot,” I heard a voice call out. I looked up and seen it was one of the white girls. Little beads of blood caught the light as they fell from her mouth and nose and dripped down not more than half a foot in front of me.

“Obliged,” I said, and moved on after my intended target.

I came alongside the stockyard pens, which was packed with longhorns. There was cow manure that had oozed from out of the lot and under the pen slats, and there was enough light I could see Golem had run through it, for there was his big boot marks. I eased along careful-like then, staying close to the pens, trying to not take to mind what I was stepping in, for it was near ankle-deep.

The cows was stirring restlessly, and I seen that the tracks I was following had ended. There was cow manure on one of the slats of the pen where he had climbed up and had taken off through their gathering. I climbed up carefully and looked out over the cows. I seen Golem moving through them, trying to stay low and slide under their necks. One moment I’d get a good view, then a cow would take his place, then Golem’s head would bob up, and then he’d stoop and be gone again.

It was a crazy thing to do, but I put my pistol in my coat pocket, worked my way to the top slat of the fence, and stepped off of it. I landed a foot on a cow’s head, leaped to another’s back, and then another. It was easy enough to do, as they was so tight in that holding pen.

Then there was a shot. A cow that hadn’t done anything but walk a thousand miles to be a steak di

That shot and my fall got the other cows frightened, and they began to shove and push and thud about even more, and then one fell over the dead one. I was just able to avoid its horns as I worked to my feet, but this had started other cattle stumbling, and pretty soon there was a big, kicking pile of them.

There was another sharp snap from Golem’s pistol, and if it hit anything I’m not in memory of it. The cows went loco. Horns flashed, hooves thumped, beef rushed by either side of me. I grabbed a ru

Another shot was fired, and a cow bought the farm—threw its head forward and stuck its horns in the dirt so hard it flipped, like an acrobat trying out a failed headstand. Cows was bumping against me. A shot rang out, and Golem managed to pop him another cow. He wasn’t shooting anywhere near me, but he was hell on cattle.

I’d been damn lucky and had only been shoved about. I was well beyond the gap in the fence and had rolled up against a building wall. As fortune would have it, those cows turned toward the lights and the sounds of the cowboys in the streets. The cowboys was firing guns off and yelling, which meant more than one of them had been unwilling to turn in their pistols and would most likely be spending a night in jail.

The cattle was hastening through that alley like they was being shot out of a ca

I hauled myself into a doorway as the longhorns charged by me. When their numbers thi

There wasn’t much light down that alley, but there was plenty of stinking trash barrels and plenty of shadows to go with them. I pulled the Colt from the other pocket and, armed with two revolvers, started down that alleyway feeling as if I was naked. There was all them barrels, of course, but it was still about twenty feet before I could reach one to hide behind, and a bullet might pass through one, meaning they wasn’t necessarily all that good a protection, though they was working for Golem in that I didn’t know exactly where he was hiding. But I reasoned he hadn’t had time to reach the other end and make his way into the street. Won’t lie to you: hesitation came over me for an instant. Then I remembered Win and how we had been on that hill in the dark, the sweet sound of her flute when she was happy, that so-fine kiss, and then there was that stinking, bloody cowhide wrapped around me, holding me tight like a fist squeezing a grape. Golem pulling Madame and my Win from the wagon, those men in a lusty crowd around them, Madame’s mutilated body, Win naked in the firelight, that blank look she had as she turned her head toward the wall. It put steel in me, brother. Cold blue steel.