Peacemaker

By the time Amos Bell decided to kill the man at the card table, nobody in the Red Lantern could quite remember what had started it. Some said the stranger had bumped Amos’s elbow while reaching for the bottle. Others claimed he had laughed at the wrong moment. The bartender swore it was over nothing more than a hat being set too close to Amos’s whiskey, though even he admitted that sounded too stupid to be true.

Whatever the reason, Amos had gone from quiet to furious in less than a minute.

“You think that’s funny?” he asked.

The stranger looked up from his cards. He was a broad-shouldered man with gray beginning to show at his temples and a face that suggested he had long ago lost interest in proving much of anything to anyone.

“I don’t think much of anything,” he said.

A few men at the table smiled.

That was enough for Amos. He stepped away from the bar and turned fully toward the stranger, his gun hanging low on his right hip, tied down with a thin leather thong. Every man in the room noticed the way his hand drifted near it, but the revolver itself drew just as much attention.

It was an old Colt Single Action Army, though there was nothing ordinary about it. The steel had dulled with age, and the engraving had been worn smooth in places by years of hands and holsters. Even so, it was beautiful. Vines, leaves, and delicate little flourishes curled along the barrel and frame, their lines softened but still intricate enough to show the care that had gone into them. The pale grips were bordered with thin silver inlay, yellowed slightly with age. Whoever had made the gun had spent too much time on it, the way a preacher might spend too much time preparing a sermon for people who had already decided what they believed.

The stranger glanced at the revolver and then back at Amos.

“Friend, I think you ought to finish your drink.”

Amos’s face tightened. “Don’t call me that.”

The stranger gave a tired little sigh. “Fine.”

Something in that tone made Amos angrier than any insult would have. He could feel the weight of the Colt against his thigh, and it seemed heavier when he was angry, warmer too, though he knew that was impossible.

He doesn’t respect you.

The thought came as naturally as his own breath. Amos stared at the stranger, and another followed almost immediately.

He thinks you’re afraid.

The man had already turned back toward his cards, which Amos took as an insult of its own.

“Stand up.”

The whole room went quiet.

The stranger looked at him again, and there was no anger in his face now, only disappointment.

“You don’t want to do this.”

Amos smiled because the revolver felt warm against his leg and because the thought inside his head was certain.

You’re faster than him.

“I surely do.”

The stranger stood, and Amos went for the gun.

The two shots came so close together that half the men in the room later argued over which had been first. Amos Bell stood still for a moment with a look of genuine surprise on his face before folding at the knees.

His bullet had gone into the wall behind the stranger. The stranger’s had entered just below Amos’s breastbone.

Amos hit the floor hard, and the beautiful revolver skidded away through sawdust and boot tracks. For several seconds nobody moved.

Then the stranger looked down at him, shook his head, and holstered his weapon.

“You damned fool,” he said quietly.

Amos was still breathing when they carried him out of the saloon, though not for long.

The revolver stayed behind.

Cal Mercer picked it up ten minutes later.

He had been sitting near the back wall through the whole affair, nursing one beer for nearly an hour because he was down to four dollars and had no immediate plan for earning more. He had been saving toward a horse of his own, though lately food, beds, and bad luck took every dollar. He was lean, sunburned, and experienced enough to know that most trouble was easier to avoid than survive.

He had carried a gun since he was sixteen, but he had never thought of himself as a gunfighter. He had killed two men in his life, and neither occasion had left him eager for a third.

The dead man’s revolver, however, was something else.

Cal turned it over in his hands and studied what remained of the engraving. The scrollwork was beautiful even though time had nearly erased parts of it. Some of the little leaves had been rubbed almost flat, and long stretches of the vines were little more than ghost lines in the steel. There was lettering worked into the metal at the butt of the gun as well, but most of it had been swallowed by wear and grime. Cal rubbed his thumb across it and decided he could make out an e and an m, though he would not have bet money on either.

He worked the action once and felt how smooth it was, smoother than any revolver he had ever handled.

The bartender watched him from behind the counter.

“That belonged to Bell.”

“Not anymore.”

“I suppose not.”

Cal checked the cylinder and found four cartridges remaining.

“Man like that shouldn’t have owned a gun this pretty.”

The bartender snorted. “Man like that shouldn’t have owned a gun at all.”

Cal glanced toward the front doors where Amos had been carried out.

“Was he always like that?”

The bartender thought about it for a moment before shaking his head.

“No. He came through town maybe three months back. Quiet enough then. Didn’t talk much, didn’t bother anybody. Then he won that thing off some gambler passing through. After that he started getting mean.”

“Mean how?”

“Not mean exactly.” The bartender frowned. “Touchy. Like he was waiting for somebody to give him a reason.”

Cal looked down at the gun again. It rested perfectly in his hand.

“He find many reasons?”

“Plenty.”

Cal smiled. “Looks like he finally found the wrong one.”

He slipped the revolver into his belt, and it fit there as though it had been made for him.

The Colt seemed to bring him luck after that, or at least that was what Cal told himself.

He won thirty-seven dollars in a saloon in Agua Fria and another twenty-two the following night. He bought a new shirt, paid for a room with a mattress that did not smell like livestock, and spent too much money on steak.

People noticed the gun, and Cal enjoyed that part.

A man would ask where he got it, and Cal would tell the story of Amos Bell, usually leaving out the part about Bell starting the fight over nothing because that made the story less dignified.

“He went for it against a man who was quicker,” Cal would say.

If someone asked who, he said he never got the man’s name. If they asked whether he had simply taken the revolver afterward, Cal grinned and replied, “He wasn’t using it.”

That always got a laugh.

The gun looked good on him. He knew it because people said so and because sometimes, when he caught himself reflected in a window, he looked like a different sort of man than he had before. Not a drifter or just another hired hand moving from one ranch to the next, but someone worth noticing. Someone dangerous.

You look like a man they ought to remember.

The thought came often enough that Cal stopped questioning where it came from.

His first real fight happened in a place called San Oro, when a boy at the bar called him “old-timer.”

Cal was thirty-two. The boy could not have been more than nineteen.

“Say that again,” Cal said.

The boy blinked. “What?”

“What you called me.”

The boy grinned uncertainly. “Old-timer?”

A few people laughed.

Heat moved through Cal so quickly it surprised him.

He’s making fun of you.

The boy saw the change in his face and held up both hands.

“I was joking.”

Make him apologize.

Cal stepped closer. “Then apologize.”

The boy’s grin disappeared. “All right. Sorry.”

Not enough.

Cal stared at him while the room went quiet.

“I said I’m sorry.”

He still thinks it’s funny.

His hand hovered near the revolver until the bartender leaned forward.

“Mercer, you don’t want trouble in here.”

For one strange second, Cal thought he might shoot the bartender instead.

The thought frightened him badly enough that he stepped back, turned, and left without finishing his drink.

Outside, the night air cooled his face. Cal walked halfway down the street before stopping beneath a darkened awning.

“What the hell was that?” he whispered.

The revolver rested against his hip while a horse shifted somewhere nearby. For a long moment there was nothing.

Then the thought came faintly, almost kindly.

You would’ve had him.

Cal looked down at the gun and forced himself to keep walking. He told himself he had been drinking. He told himself the thought had been his own. By the time he reached his room, he almost believed it.

A week later, outside a hotel in Benson, a man drew on him.

The argument had started over a horse neither of them owned. By the time Cal realized how absurd that was, the other man already had his hand near his holster.

He thinks you’ll back down.

Cal didn’t.

The man reached first, but Cal fired first.

That evening, while cleaning the revolver by lamplight, Cal noticed something strange. A curl near the cylinder that had seemed nearly rubbed away now had a clean edge to it, and one of the tiny leaves along the barrel had veins he could have sworn were not there before.

He turned the gun over. The e and m were still there on the butt, but now he could make out a p at the beginning.

For several seconds he held the gun close to the lamp, trying to decide whether the new letter had really appeared or whether he had simply missed it before. In the end, he set the revolver beside the washbasin and told himself poor light could make anything look strange.

The next man died after reaching for a shotgun when Cal accused him of cheating at cards.

The dealer had already backed away from the table and told Cal to take his money. The man Cal accused had called him a liar, but even he seemed more interested in leaving than fighting. For a moment the whole thing hung there, balanced on nothing more than Cal’s willingness to let it go.

He knew he should.

Walk away if you want.

The thought surprised him, and his hand loosened at his side.

Then the voice came again, softer this time.

But they know who you are now.

Cal looked around the room. Nobody laughed. Nobody even moved.

You’ve earned that.

The man across from him glanced toward the door.

Don’t let him take it away from you.

Cal knew what was happening. He knew it with enough clarity that the knowledge should have frightened him.

Instead, he stayed.

When the man went outside, Cal followed him.

The man reached for the shotgun.

Cal was faster.

Afterward, he walked back into the saloon and watched the room make space for him. Men shifted their chairs. A card game went quiet. One fellow standing near the bar stepped aside before Cal even reached him.

Cal should have been ashamed of what had just happened outside.

Instead, he liked the way the room moved.

Later that night, the engraving looked deeper again. More of the vines had returned, and the lettering on the butt was beginning to emerge with them.

Cal poured himself another whiskey and left the gun on the table.

The third man Cal killed died in an alley behind a saloon after saying Cal’s reputation was mostly luck. The insult had not even been directed at him at first, but by then that hardly mattered.

Each time Cal was faster, and each time the voice grew clearer.

See?

Faster.

I told you.

At first he had hated the voice. Before long, he began to wait for it.

His name started traveling ahead of him, and men recognized the gun before they recognized Cal. That pleased him more than it should have.

In Tombstone, a stable boy asked whether he was the Mercer who had killed two brothers in Benson.

“They weren’t brothers,” Cal said.

The boy shrugged. “That’s what folks say.”

Cal almost corrected him again, then stopped. Two brothers sounded better, and by the time he left town that was how he told it too.

By then, the Colt looked almost new. The engraving had returned with remarkable clarity, and the steel carried a darker, richer shine than when Cal first picked it up. The lettering on the butt was clearer too, though he still could not make out the entire word.

He preferred not to try.

Eventually, the trouble became that nobody wanted to fight him.

Men who might once have traded insults looked away. Card players became unusually polite. Bartenders poured his whiskey without making conversation.

At first the thought pleased him.

They’re afraid of you.

Soon the voice found a way to turn even that against him.

They think you’re all reputation.

That was worse.

Cal began searching faces for disrespect: a smirk, a whisper, two men talking too quietly when he walked past, a laugh from the other end of the room. Everywhere he went, he found something, and the gun was always there to explain what it meant.

In a town called Providence, Cal finally met Henry Vale.

Cal knew the name. Most men who carried a gun did. Vale had a reputation for being one of the fastest men still walking, though he seemed to have very little interest in proving it.

Cal found him sitting alone in a saloon eating beans from a chipped white bowl. He was perhaps forty, maybe older, with a narrow face, tired eyes, a dusty coat, worn boots, and a revolver on his hip plain enough to have come from an army surplus crate.

Vale looked up once when Cal entered, took him in without interest, and went back to his beans.

That simple lack of concern bothered Cal more than open disrespect would have.

Cal ordered whiskey and watched him in the mirror behind the bar.

He knows who you are.

Cal drank.

He isn’t impressed.

Another drink.

Maybe he thinks he’s faster.

By the third whiskey, Cal could hardly hear anything else.

He turned toward the table.

“You Henry Vale?”

Vale finished chewing before answering.

“Sometimes.”

A few men near the door shifted uneasily.

Cal smiled. “Funny.”

“Wasn’t meant to be.”

“I heard you’re quick.”

Vale sighed. “Who told you that?”

“People.”

Vale looked back at his bowl. “People say all kinds of things.”

“Maybe they’re wrong.”

“Probably.”

Cal stepped away from the bar.

“You calling me a liar?”

Vale looked at him for several seconds.

“No.”

He thinks you’re scared.

Cal felt his pulse in his fingertips.

“You don’t seem too worried.”

Vale glanced at him, then back at the bowl.

“I’m trying to eat.”

Several men moved farther away.

Cal could feel the Colt against his leg, warm and ready.

You’re faster.

His hand dropped.

Henry Vale’s revolver fired once.

Cal never saw him draw.

The shot struck beneath Cal’s ribs and turned him sideways. He crashed into a table, knocked over two chairs, and fell onto his back while the Colt landed beside him in the sawdust.

For several seconds he could not breathe. The ceiling above him seemed impossibly far away, and somewhere in the room somebody shouted for a doctor while somebody else said there was no point.

The voice was gone.

Cal turned his head toward the revolver.

For the first time since he had picked it up at the Red Lantern, there was almost no trace of age left on it. The steel had taken on a deep, dark shine, and every line of the engraving stood crisp beneath the lamplight. The vines were complete now, every leaf and curl restored as though the gun had left the engraver’s bench that morning.

His eyes moved toward the butt.

The lettering was no longer worn.

A single word stood sharp and clear enough to read from where he lay.

PEACEMAKER.

He began to laugh, though it hurt badly enough that the laugh became a cough.

Henry Vale approached slowly, holstered his own weapon, and looked down at Cal with an expression that was neither triumphant nor angry.

Mostly, he looked tired.

“You should’ve left it alone,” Vale said.

Cal tried to answer, but his mouth was dry.

Vale’s eyes moved toward the Colt. He crouched and picked it up.

“No,” Cal whispered.

Vale did not look at him.

He turned the revolver once in his hand, then stopped. For a moment his expression tightened, as though some small instinct had warned him to put it back where he found it.

He didn’t.

The lamplight caught the restored scrollwork along the barrel. Vale studied the engraving, thumbed the hammer halfway back, and tested the action.

“Beautiful gun,” he said.

Cal tried to lift a hand toward him, but it fell back into the sawdust.

Vale kept turning the revolver toward the light, admiring the engraving.

The change in his expression was slight, almost nothing.

Cal knew that look.

He had worn it himself.

Stories From the Dark
Original Fiction • Nine Sixteen Supply Co.