STORM RIDERS by James Hitt
Author’s note: “This is opening frame of my novel, Storm Riders”
As True As—
One early afternoon, I was lounging at the bar nursing a whiskey when he pushed through the swinging doors. A shaft of mid-morning light followed him inside, illuminating swirling dust motes. I lifted my glass and offered a smile. As usual, he appeared grateful for my favors. Since his wife passed on, I provided his only female companionship. My attention involved nothing more than kindness. He was well past sixty winters, and I sympathized with his loss.
We never knew his real name or we had forgotten it, so we called him Pappy because of his white hair and beard. Though colored like me, his lighter skin pointed to a mixed parentage. As a border town, El Paso encouraged a wilder element, and rumor said when he first arrived twenty years before, no man dared insult him. He was fast with a gun and faster to take insult. Now too old for such shenanigans, he continued to carry a sidearm, so ancient the ivory handles had turned a light brown, matching the color of his skin.
The Four-Square Emporium made most of its money from an assorted crowd. While a number of white boys frequented the establishment, especially at night, Mexicans and colored men like Pappy comprised the majority of the clientele. Even during the middle of the day, we kept the interior of the Four-Square dark. We seldom cleaned the front windows, heavy with dust. A single kerosene lamp hung from the ceiling, the wick kept low so the tables around the walls lay deep in shadows, which attracted customers rather than repelled them. In the evenings, when the girls came out—and we hired the best-looking girls in southern Texas—the darkness concealed the men from their wives and sweethearts.
As for me, I billed myself as “The Black Lily” and belted out songs. Though past thirty, I knew the boys, colored and white alike, still considered me handsome, yet I never sold my favors like the chippies. Still, I liked the way we lit the saloon. The shadows made me appear younger, which in my business was good business.
Other than me and the bartender Jake, whose wrinkled face said he was older than God, the place stood empty as usual for that early in the day, and the thump of Pappy’s boots echoed off the walls. He laid a book on the bar, my copy of The Life of John Westley Hardin as Written by Himself. The printer released it the previous year, after Hardin’s demise. After reading it, I loaned it to Pappy, which was another reason we got along. I read books. In those days, most women, regardless of color, didn’t read unless they read the Bible or Ben-Hur.
“I thank you very much, Lily Darlin’,” he said.
I laid a hand on the book. “Was Hardin as dangerous as he claims?”
“I didn’t really know him. We spoke a few times. Seemed a nice enough fellow when sober. As for being dangerous—I’ve known a lot of men who fit that description. When I was trailin’ herds to Sedalia, Wichita, Dodge, I met most of the famous ones—Hickok, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp. Hell, Earp ran Hardin out one of those towns, though I forget which one.”
“How is it a colored fellow like you met so many of these gunmen?”
“In those days, a third of the drovers were colored fellows, freed slaves looking for new lives, though that wasn’t exactly the case with me. I was punching cattle as early as ’58, and believe me, those were hard, bitter days. Skin color didn’t mean much under those circumstances.”
“Who was the most dangerous man you ever met?”
Without hesitation, he said, “His name was Waco—Waco Joseph Callahan.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.”
He reached into his coat pocket and brought out another book with paper covers, an A. D. MacPherson Wild West Dime Special. He dropped it on the bar. Of all the companies that printed dime novels, A. D. MacPherson produced the cheapest. The covers curled at the edges, the spine cracked, the pages loose. One more reading would find it in tatters.
“Last week, I picked this up at the general store. I read it straight through that night.” With his index finger, he tapped the book, The Comanche Kid on the Trail of the Six, number four in the series with the promise of more to come. The cover drawing showed a man in a saloon much like the Four-Square. He held a smoking .45 in one hand, a tomahawk in the other, and a half-dozen bodies lay scattered at his feet. His wore a rawhide-fringe shirt, breeches, and a feather in his hatband. His facial features said he was a full-blooded heathen and took special delight in dispatching the white villains.
“Go on, take it. It’s yours, darlin’” Pappy said. “Enjoy it, though it is mostly a pack of lies.”
“The Comanche Kid?” I viewed Pappy with a jaundiced eye. “Is he this Waco-whatever-his-name? You’re saying you met him, too?”
“No, darlin’, I didn’t meet him. I was there the day he came into the world. We rode together. He was as close to a son or a brother as I’ll ever have.”
“I thought he was a made-up character. You know, like Deadwood Dick.”
Jake ambled a few feet closer, moving so slowly I swear I could hear his joints creak. His ancient eyes perused the cover. “Long before I ever seen a penny dreadful, I heard stories ’bout the Comanche Kid, though I figured most of them was bullshit.”
I laid a hand on Pappy’s arm and searched his face for any hint of duplicity. I saw none.
To Jake I said, “Pour my friend a drink. I’d like to hear his story.”
The ancient bartender brought a glass from under the bar and poured two fingers of whiskey, the most Pappy allowed himself on any given day, and a cheap price to pay for hearing a good story. He didn’t appear to take offense at my insignificant bribe.
He sipped the whiskey, distillery made, and rolled the shot glass between his palms. “In my whole life, only one other person knew the whole story. She’s gone two years now. As a matter of plain fact, I’ve wanted to tell it for a long time. I just doubted anyone would listen.”
“Is it true, this story?”
“As true as my memory.” He took another sip of whiskey, enjoying its taste, one of the few pleasures left to him. “I witnessed a lot with my own two eyes, and what I didn’t, people with no reason to lie filled in the missing pieces. I forget a lot these days. By noon, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast. Don’t matter. I remember every detail of the time I rode with Waco. Even now, twenty-year past, I see him as clear as I see you.”
Outside, clouds moved in. The shadows within deepened.
“I was a kid, no more than thirteen, when I ran away from my master in Louisiana. He may also have been my Pa, though he never claimed such. At any rate, I wound up in the Texas Panhandle where slaves and cotton didn’t matter. A white rancher, Captain Callahan, hired me. He didn’t care where I came from. He only cared his riders give him an honest day’s work.”
For the next hour or so, Pappy told his story, his deep bass transporting me to a vision of yesteryear.
