Webb's Weird Wild West Read online

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1999, 2011 by Don Webb

  [“Acknowledgments” shall constitute an extension of this copyright page]

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  DEDICATION

  For Gardner Dozois,

  Who Gave Me Tons of Confidence

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  These stories were previously published as follows, and are reprinted (with some editing, updating, and textual modifications) with the permission of the author:

  “Jesse Revenged” in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Vol. 10, No. 12 (Dec 1986); reprinted in Isaac Asimov’s SF-Lite Bantam-Doubleday-Dell (1993). Copyright © 1986, 1993, 2011 by Don Webb.

  “A Note to His Publisher” in the hardback anthology, Copper Star, distributed as part of the 1991 World Fantasy Convention. Copyright © 1991, 2011 by Don Webb.

  “Seven Four Planting” in a limited edition surplus book with The Bestseller and Other Stories, Chris Drumm Books (1993). Copyright © 1993, 2011 by Don Webb.

  “Innocents Abroad” in Blood from Stones (Fall 1999). Copyright © 1999, 2011 by Don Webb.

  “A Half-Dime Adventure” in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Vol. 14, No 10 (Oct. 1990). Copyright © 1990, 2011 by Don Webb.

  “Billy Hauser” in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Vol. 15, No. 14 (December 1991). Copyright © 1991, 2011 by Don Webb.

  “Common Superstitions” in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 10 (Oct. 1988). Copyright © 1988, 2011 by Don Webb.

  “Sabbath of the Zeppelins” in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (April 1994). Copyright © 1994, 2011 by Don Webb.

  “Gravy Run” in Truckers/USA (the Nation’s News Weekly for the Trucking Industry) Vol. 4, No. 45 (Nov. 3, 1987). Copyright © 1987, 2011 by Don Webb.

  “The Martian Spring of Dr. Woodard” in New Pathways #16 (July 1990). Copyright © 1990, 2011 by Don Webb.

  “Night of a Thousand Eyes” and “A Rune for Rebirth” are published here for the first time. Copyright © 2011 by Don Webb.

  JESSE REVENGED

  The community of Oneida had become Amarillo, Tascosa was beginning to fade into the dust, and a few weeks ago Admiral Sampson blockaded the navy of Admiral Cervera in Santiago Bay. It was the summer of 1898. Robert Ford, the man who shot Jesse James in the back, had left the Ozarks and moved to Amarillo. He lived in the third floor of the yellow-painted wooden Amarillo Hotel. He’d changed his name to Aubrey Sorrentino and affected an Italian accent.

  He sits on the wide porch of the Amarillo and slowly fans himself. Lesser men would’ve been blinded by the gleam from his refulgent ebon leather boots. But Aubrey sits with his boots up, face lit by the black light, and sips very slowly a Texas Tumbleweed.

  Aubrey doesn’t know that his doom is already coming by train from California.

  He’s plotting how to extend his hotel bill. Maybe he’ll borrow money from a wealthy rancher using his phony Count title and his phony Old World charm. The reward money from shooting Jesse seventeen years ago has long since been converted to wine, women, and song. He’ll have another cigar by and by.

  Heavy rain last night and the ridiculous wooden cobbles the city bought in the spring have begun to swell. Every now and then one pops out of the grid shooting eight or ten feet into the air. The horses hitched in front of the hotel are getting a mite skittish. Aubrey wishes it were cooler.

  In California having completed his lecture on philosophical conceptions and practical results William James boarded an eastbound train. His brother Henry had arrived a week before ostensibly to autograph copies of just-released In the Cage at a Navajo bookstore in nearby Arizona. They had a private car.

  William didn’t speak to Henry until they passed through Tombstone. He’d just corrected proofs of Human Immortality. He was still peeved at Henry for siding with Frank and against him on the ideas of the specious present. In Tombstone he recited the James brothers creed to break the silence, “Never rob from a friend, a Southerner, a preacher, or a widow. Amen.”

  “Amen,” said Henry.

  Henry opened up a small hand-tooled leather valise. Inside were two pairs of pearl-handled revolvers. One pair had been Jesse’s, the other was Frank’s who was too old for this. Henry handed Jesse’s guns to William.

  William said, “I see you’re already interested in the dense symbolism and complicated characterization that will come to dominate your later work.”

  Henry nodded grimly.

  As the warm stars of the Panhandle night begin to shine through the lavender and orange Texas sunset, Aubrey makes his way to his room. He opens his last bottle of Kentucky bourbon and dips his pen in the inkwell the Chinese boy had brought. The two civilizing claims that the six-year-old city of Amarillo has are a five-story hotel and two Chinese gofers, Joe Fong Yang and Joe Fong Yin. Aubrey begins the 37th chapter of his autobiography, Robert Ford My Story. Aubrey writes, “To Carthage I come, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang about my ears. Since I had developed elephantiasis in my testicles six months ago in New Orleans I was tone-deaf. So I went to Amarillo.” He is referring to Carthage, Texas but the words—at least the first string of them—are St. Augustine’s. The man who shot Jesse James in the back is not above plagiarism. Aubrey takes a long swig of bourbon and decides to stretch his legs. He locks his bio carefully away in a Confederate Army strongbox.

  When Aubrey reaches the door of the Amarillo no more sunset remains. He walks toward the depot, a thousand schemes hatching in his brain. A swarthy man lights a kerosene lamp in front of a buffalo hide tent.

  MADAME ROSA

  Reader and Adviser

  Palm—Head—Cards Read

  The tent’s new. The hides smell and look a little stiff. Aubrey walks up to the swarthy man. “How much?”

  “Palm read ten cents. Head read ten cents. Cards read fifteen cents. Triple reading thirty cents.”

  Aubrey hands the man a quarter and a nickel. The man sticks his head through the folds and says, “Triple reading.” Aubrey enters. The man walks up the street toward the saloon.

  Rosa an ancient and enigmatic gypsy quietly and efficiently does the three readings. Across the candles she stares sad and sullen at the elderly stranger. Finally she says, “You’ve got troubles.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like death. I can see in your palm that someone’s coming to kill you. Someone influenced by the novels of Ivan Turgenev. Someone who’s an excellent marksman and a damn fine writer.”

  Aubrey feels his bowels turn into cold aspic. He’s naked without a gun belt. But he still appreciates the value of money, he’ll get his thirty cents worth. He asks Rosa, “This someone, does he come alone?”

  “No. I feel he’s traveling with an older bearded man. An older man who distrusts all monistic absolutisms.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No. Just the two. Coming from the direction of the setting sun.”

  Aubrey knew the first man was Henry, the writer. The second could be either Frank or William. Both were good shots—maybe as good as Jesse. He couldn’t remember if the subject of monistic absolutisms came up when they were planning bank jobs.

  “Are they going to kill me?”

  “They’ll try. I think the younger one will succeed.”

  “But it’s not certain?”

  “Mister, if I thought the future was fixed, would I charge thirty cents trying to help people avoid it?”

  Aubrey is relieved.

  Outside the tent another wooden cobble rockets into the air.

  The train stops around midnight to take on water and coal near the eastern Arizona border
. Henry awakens. He’s forgotten the photographer. Dammit. He’d promised John Singer Sargent pictures of the shootout. Henry wonders if they should call the whole thing off. They’ve done that too often waiting to the end of this novel or that book. Maybe they can hire a photographer in Amarillo. The train begins rolling.

  Aubrey Sorrentino buys the swarthy man another watered whiskey. Four drunk cowpokes simulate a poker game near the saloon door. Aubrey shows the Romani a wad of bills. The outer bills are U.S. currency, the inner and more numerous are Confederate boodle. The Romani chai smiles and pulls a knife from his belt. He plunges the knife into a photo of Henry James laying on their wobbly table. The chai has bad teeth. Aubrey buys the man a bottle and then heads back to his hotel.

  Aubrey’s sleep is fitful but no more fitful than any night since he shot Jesse. Phantoms of the remaining James brothers appear every night. Sometimes singly. Sometimes the whole gang: Frank James, William James, Henry James, Josiah Royce, Herman von Helmholtz, Ford Maddox Ford, and Doc Holiday.

  They’d had their petty revenges over the years, but now they were going for hot lead. Aubrey’s cheeks still burned at the thought of Henry’s devastating review of Aubrey’s first novel Missouri Christmas in the North American Review. That review had closed publishers’ doors on two continents. He’d show them. He’d kept in shape and could outshoot all of them except maybe Frank or Henry.

  The train pulls into Amarillo about an hour after dawn. The gypsy waits in the shadow of the depot. The James brothers step down. They travel light, only a bag apiece. Their eyes are as cold as an Amarillo winter. The gypsy draws his bowie knife, presses himself flat against the wooden frame of the station. The James brothers talk. William’s going to rent a room. Henry’s going to try getting a photographer. William walks southward and Henry walks northward, gypsy-ward.

  The gypsy shifts slightly preparing to spring. Henry’s predator hearing informs him. Henry drops the suitcase and jumps around the depot’s corner facing the gypsy. The gypsy lunges but Henry’s gun is quicker. A bright red rose blooms in the gypsy’s chest. Henry asks the falling man if he knows of any photographers working in the Amarillo area, but it is too late. Henry pauses to cut another notch in his pistol grip.

  The dining room of the Amarillo Hotel opens onto the main lobby. Aubrey sits, back against the wall, watching the lobby and shoveling down biscuits and gravy. Aubrey chokes as William walks in. William turns without breaking his stride and flashes Aubrey a huge smile. Aubrey knows how George Armstrong Custer, old Yellow Hair himself, felt when he looked up the canyon walls at Little Bighorn.

  William signs in. The manager says, “Gee, Mr. James, it’s an honor to have you and your brother here. I surely enjoyed The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy.”

  “Thanks,” says William.

  William pages back through the hotel’s register until he finds Aubrey Sorrentino. He draws a line through the name and writes in Robert Ford. He pushes the register back to the manager. The manager’s eyes widen but he says nothing only (and almost imperceptibly) nods.

  Robert Ford runs up to his room for the security of his guns. Later on he will almost shoot a chambermaid.

  William makes himself comfortable in his fourth floor room. He sips on the glass of buttermilk he’d got in the dining room. About eleven Henry comes in. From Henry’s haggard hangdog look, William knows there’s not a photographer to be had.

  When noon comes the James brothers go to the wide porch of the hotel. William pulls a revolver and motions everybody off the street. It’s quiet and hot. William steps into the street and shouts, “Robert Ford, I am calling you out.”

  The waiting is intolerable.

  Then Ford appears in an all-black outfit. His black Stetson is edged with Mexican silver. He walks calmly out of the hotel, nodding amicably to Henry who sets on a bench. He steps off the porch. His eyes lock on William with rattlesnake intensity.

  He goes for his gun.

  As William goes for his gun, one of the rain-soaked wooden cobbles shoots into the air between him and Ford. William shoots the cobble. He has a flash of satori concerning human cognitive processes.

  Robert isn’t distracted. His bullet tears into William just below the rib cage.

  Robert wheels and fires at Henry. Henry’s on his feet shooting. Robert misses. Henry doesn’t.

  Henry runs to his dying brother.

  Henry says, “William, you’ve got to make it.”

  “I’m a goner. But we got him. We got Ford.”

  “I don’t want to lose two brothers to Ford.”

  “Get Frank out of retirement. Get him to take up my career so I can be remembered. In my bag I’ve got some notes on the variety of religious experience he should find invaluable.” William’s breathing stops.

  Henry stands. The silence is deafening.

  A NOTE TO HIS PUBLISHER

  George Catlin

  St. Louis

  American Territory

  W. O. Thule

  Egyptian House

  Piccadilly, London

  Dear W. O.,

  I am further along in writing my book than I had imagined I would be by now. So you’ll be glad to know that a copperplate of the MSS. will be coming your way in a few months. I have only one sticking point.

  Something happened in the Yellowstone.

  No other white man saw this. I have fought with myself for months between vowing to tell it or to keep it to myself forever. I will tell it to you because you are far away in London, and that smoky city doesn’t seem real to me as I pen these lines. Some parts of this tale will appear in my book, but those parts at the end of my tale—those things which run contrary to the “laws” of Nature—- I will tell to you alone. It begins with Wi-jun-jon.

  Wi-jun-jon of the Assinneboin arrived in St. Louis from the Yellowstone, a journey of some two thousand miles by Mackinaw boat, and I was on the docks to receive him. His wild beauty I attempted to capture in paint. He was a striking figure: his leggings and shirt were of the mountain-goat skin, richly garnished with quills of porcupine, and fringed with locks of scalps, taken from enemies’ heads. Over these floated his long hair in plaits, that fell nearly to the ground; his head was decked with the war eagle’s plumes and his robe was young buffalo bull. His quiver and bow were slung and he bore war club and a par flèche shield, made of bull’s neck skin. His bearing was proud, but in the depths of his eyes were fear for what lay ahead; although I credit myself as the only white man who could read those eyes. Mr. Chouteau of the American Fur Company was on hand, and he asked me the meaning of Wi-jun-jon and I translated from the Sioux tongue, “Pigeon’s egg head” and this was the cause of much laughter.

  Wi-jun-jon had a companion whose name I did not learn. But this companion sought me out in the night—I being one of the three persons out of the 15,000 St. Louisians, who could speak Sioux. Although his dialect differed greatly from the Lakota Sioux—mainly in its inclusion of Cree—it provided me with useful practice. He told me that Wi-jun-jon and himself had set out to make a census of white men. They had already met French fur traders and the German-speaking founder of the American Fur Company, Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied, but they wondered at the number of the English-speaking tribe. So they began cutting notches in a pipe. There were few cabins in the first hundred miles, but as river met river they filled the pipe and began to notch his war club. Soon that too was full and they were beginning to worry at the number of notches. One night when the fur traders had tied up the boat, they went ashore and cut a long birch stick. This they filled more and more until they neared St. Louis. When they saw the great camp they threw the stick in the Missouri. This companion asked if I thought there were many more of the English-speaking tribe, and I gravely replied many, many more. Whereupon he said that he would return home, because his mind would be too full of white men.

  Wi-jun-jon did not take his companion’s counsel. He would bravely see what was about to engulf his people. So he j
ourneyed to see cities and guns and balloons and other wonders. I would see him again in the spring.

  It was a cold and hard winter—many in the city took influenza. I was feverish, but only in my desire to paint. Mr. Chouteau purchased a steamboat for the American Fur Company, and I spent many evenings there planning for our expedition in the spring. I heard rumors of Wi-jun-jon. He had made his speech to the President. He had visited the theatre, he had ridden a balloon in Philadelphia.

  He returned on the first of April taking up residence in the ship’s hull—overseeing the trade goods, which were destined for his people. I was greatly curious to see him, but he did not put on deck until we had cast away.

  He was indeed a sorry spectacle. Puss in boots.

  The President had presented him with a military costume—broadcloth of the finest blue trimmed with lace of gold; on his shoulders were mounted immense epaulettes; his neck was strangled with a shining black stock; and his feet were pinioned in a pair of waterproof boots, with high heels. He walked uneasily—“stepping like a yoked hog.”

  Washington had crowned him with an immense beaver hat, which flashed a broad silver lace band, and was surmounted by a huge red feather, some two feet high. His coat collar, stiff with lace, came higher up than his ears, and over it flowed, down towards his haunches, his long Indian locks stuck up in rolls and plaits with red paint. He wore a large silver medal on a blue ribbon about his neck, and across his right shoulder a wide belt to support a broad sword. He wore white kid gloves to carry his two prize possessions—in his right hand a blue umbrella and in his left a large ladies’ fan.

  He saw me and smiled, mistaking my laughter for good cheer. He strutted up to me stiff as a cob on a spindle. He demonstrated the final mark of his metamorphosis. He had been taught to whistle, “Yankee Doodle.” I knew I would have to paint him. I had made a sketch in the fall, but there would have to be two facing plates in my book. I completed both paintings during the two thousand mile trip to the Yellowstone.