Ghost Town: A Novel by Robert Coover

his cigar stub, is shootin up other folks’ cows and runnin their herds off. Thet thar’s a capital offense throughout the whole goddam Terrortory. Reckon we may have no choice but t’string yu up fer thet one. Jest t’be proper, y’know.
    Less a course yu hightail it out thar’n brang em all back agin.
    How’m I gonna do thet? They went off ever which way.
    Shit, I dunno, sheriff. It’s yer fuckin neck, yu figger it out.
    I kin see thet rapscallion aint gonna rectify his heinous misdeeds.
    Nor even repent of em. He’s a hard case.
    Only trouble is, whar kin we hang him? They aint no trees out here.
    We kin use the chuckwagon, says the fat man, taking up a coil of rope and cutting off a length with a butcher knife. Ifn it aint high enuf, we’ll hitch up the hosses’n drug him along behind it.
    Hole up thar, buttbrain, says the one-eared mestizo with the eyepatch, rising to his feet. Aint nobody messin with the sheriff, not while I’m deppity.
    Yeah? And whut yu gonna do about it, yu scumsuckin greaser?
    I’ll show yu whut I’m gonna do, yu mizzerbul dumsquizzled lardass, snarls the mestizo, throwing away his white stick and hurling himself at the fat man with his whittling knife. The fat man is caught off guard and the knife rips into his groin, the cigar butt popping from his lips as though triggered out by the invading blade, but he manages to plunge his own butcher knife deep into the mestizo’s belly, both men grunting and staggering back before lunging at each other again.
    Hey! Jest wait up thar, fellers! he shouts, raising his rifle. Stop thet!
    Now dont go botherin inta other folks’ bizness, sheriff, says the old fellow with the squinny, batting his rifle away. This aint none a yer concern.
    But—!
    Others grab him and pin his arms back. It’s outside yer fuckin jurisdiction, sheriff, they grunt, raising him off the ground and roping his ankles together.
    Defense is not a significant part of either man’s technique. They just go at it freestyle, cutting each other over and over; it’s more a matter of pace and persistence than artfulness as their bloodied knives, catching the light from the campfire, flash in and out of each other’s bodies. His deputy loses his other ear and his voice pipe, no doubt more within besides; the fat man’s smile is widened from ear to ear, his stiffened handlebars snicked to a brush, and his belly’s so punctured his guts start to spill out; but neither man gives an inch. Whuck, whuck, whuck , the knives go, and nothing he can do but watch, both men blinded now by blood and injury, taking blow after blow after blow, the other men of the posse cheering them on, laying bets on the side, pushing the antagonists back into it if they chance to stagger apart. Finally, the butcher knife breaks off in the mestizo’s ribs and, as the disarmed fat man slumps to his knees, the mestizo finishes him off in the slaughterhouse manner by stabbing him two-fisted in the back of the neck.
    His minced-up deputy stands there, weaving about, still wearing his crushed bowler and the broken blade in his chest, his body sliced open in a hundred places and showing its inner regions, but with his own bloody knife outthrust as though ready as ever to take on all comers. The fire shimmers patchily on his chopped-up face and casts a hulking shadow on the chuckwagon behind him.
    Awright, awright, deppity, we take yer point, says the brawny lout irritably. But whut about our goddam cattle?
    The deputy, his vocal cords cut and dangling from the hole in his throat, cannot reply, but he turns to the bald ocarina player and gestures with his knife.
    Reckon he wants yu t’pipe us a tune on yer sweet patayta, says the bespectacled hunchback.
    The man cups the instrument in his large bony hands, bends his gleaming dome toward the fire, and once again imitates the moan of lowing cattle. Almost instantly, about as fast as the fluttered shuffle of a deck of cards, the prairie fills up all around with