Читать книгу Rattler - Barry Andrew Chambers - Страница 8

It was settling the Spurlock-McMahon feud that brought me to the attention of The Service. That summer, I received a letter requesting my presence in St. Louis. The invitation was on government stationary and it said that I was a prime candidate for The Service. Included was a train ticket and twenty-five dollars spending money.

I’d heard of The Service, but was unclear as to the duties involved. At any rate, I looked at it as a free trip to St. Louis.

The city known as the Gateway to the West was a bustling, exciting place. It was huge. Dance halls, saloons, and theatres spread out for blocks. They were lit up so brightly, it was hard to tell whether it was day or night.

When I got off the train, I went to the Hotel D’Arms on Olive Street, as instructed. I was to meet with the director the next morning and had some time to myself.

The innkeeper suggested a restaurant down the block, noted for it’s fried turkey sandwich and cold beer. It was early evening and the eatery was getting busy. I sat at the bar and ordered the fried turkey sandwich and sweet tea.

Munching happily on the sandwich, I did not see the rough-hewn cowboy enter. He walked straight to me and thumped me behind the ear.

“Hey!” I cried as I turned.

“You’re in my seat,” he said in a gruff voice.

I moved down two stools and gestured toward the stool I’d been sitting on. “Be my guest.”

The cowboy took my old seat and ordered a whiskey. Then he looked over at me and growled, “You sure give up your seat easy.”

“You said it was your seat.” I figured logic would appeal to him. It didn’t.

“First come, first served. It’s your seat,” he said.

I smiled. “I bequeath it to you.”

The witticism sailed over his head. The man had no sense of humor. “You give up too easy Tenderfoot. You’re a yellow backed coward.”

The challenge had been issued. A piece of turkey stuck in my throat. I tried to wash it down with the tea, but all that did was choke me. I started to cough like a madman. The cowboy walked over and shoved me.

“What’s the matter…coward? ’Fraid?”

I backpedaled into another customer who made no effort to stop my action. Suddenly I was on my back, looking up at a painting on the ceiling. It looked religious in nature with winged devils flying over the flames of Hades.

“Get up boy.” The rough cowboy stood over me. Before I could reply, he pulled me up by my shirt collar and started slapping me.

That was enough. I pushed back, putting the weight on my back foot. The cowboy didn’t move. He laughed.

“Are you crazy?” I yelled. “Are you plain loco?”

“Yeah, I’m—”

While he was busy replying, I threw a fist straight at his nose. It caught him by surprise and I was pleased to see blood spurting from his face as he did some backpedaling of his own. The customer who I ran into was still in his place with a Colt revolver sticking out of his belt. I didn’t think. I just grabbed the gun.

“Wha…?” the customer protested.

I pointed the Colt at the customer. He didn’t say another word. Then I wheeled on the cowboy who was advancing on me.

“Stop right there, mister,” I commanded.

He did.

“I’ve had enough of this and it stops now.”

The cowboy smiled and took two steps toward me. “You don’t know how to use that.”

Actually I’m quite good with firearms. Rifles, pistols, derringers, bow and arrow, you name it. My father was a short, small-boned man who suffered from bullies. To equalize his lifestyle, he learned guns. He became quite the expert sharpshooter.

I’m not a fast draw, but my father taught me well. I could core a silver dollar at twenty-five paces. I aimed the Colt low.

“One more step and I’ll blow your knee to pieces.”

He hesitated and for the first time, the cowboy looked worried.

I continued, “Do you know what kind of damage a bullet at close range will do to a man’s knee? I mean, forget the blind, searing pain. That will be the least of your worries.”

The cowboy’s eyes turned down, looking at the barrel of the gun.

“The cartilage will just blow through, tearing muscle along with the bullet. A spray of blood—your blood—will splash against the wall behind you.”

I nodded toward the barkeep. “Yes sir. The gentleman behind the bar will have a real mess to clean up.” My eyes shifted to the barkeep. “I hope you’ve got a lot of clean towels.”

The barkeep nodded dumbly.

My eyes shifted back to the cowboy.

“And you…you’ll spend the rest of your life with a nub. After tonight they will have to amputate, because the bullet will sever tendons, dividing the lower part from the thigh.”

Not being a doctor I had no idea of the damage, but having read a McKenzie Medical Digest for a stomach ache, it sounded good.

Although the cowboy grimaced, he kept up a strong bravado. “You’re not going to shoot me. You don’t have it in you.”

I cocked the trigger. “I beg to differ.”

His face fell. Then he did an odd thing. He picked up his whiskey glass and downed it in one gulp.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He didn’t reply. He turned the glass in his hand with a simple three quarter turn of his wrist. The whiskey glass caught the light from the overhead chandelier. It wasn’t blinding, but it was bright enough to catch my attention. In an instant, the Colt was knocked out of my hand and I saw a fist headed for my face.

I woke up in a bed. My face hurt and my neck hurt. And my back wasn’t feeling too good either. My eyes focused on a lamp that hung on the wall. In the room was a chifforobe and a chair. It looked like my hotel room, but mine had a chifforobe on the opposite wall.

Standing over me was an old gentleman holding a glass of something brown.

“Where am I?”

The old man held my face up to the light. “Open your eyes.”

“They are open.”

“Wider.”

I had not realized that my lids were half closed. The room was dim, but the lamp hurt my eyes.

“Open,” he said gently.

Against my better judgment, I opened my eyes full wide.

“Look at me,” he said.

“Are you a doctor?”

“The best one in St. Louis.” He gazed into my eyes. “You’ll live. That bump on your head was what worried me.”

I reached back and felt the swelling just above my neck. “Ow!”

“Relax.”

I leaned back on a soft, eiderdown pillow. It was just like the one in my room. Upon feeling it, I was thinking of taking it home with me. “Where am I?” I asked for a second time.

“Room 34 of the Hotel D’Arms.”

That figured. Room 32 was mine.

“Is this your room, doctor?”

“Nope. It belongs to the man who brought you in and called me.”

A good Samaritan. “Where is he?”

“He’s down the hall taking a bath.”

I nodded, but didn’t understand. “I have an appointment tomorrow morning.”

The doctor shook his head. “You need rest. That bruise isn’t going away any too soon.” There were no mirrors in the room, but the doctor produced a hand mirror from his bag. “Here you go.”

On my forehead was a dark, purple spot. The mark of Cain. I was not going to make a very good impression on my potential employers. The door opened.

“Ah, here’s your friend now.”

Coming through the door was Harlon Shanks, my future boss and current good Samaritan. He wore a bathrobe and had a wet towel draped across his shoulders. Of course at that moment, I didn’t know his name when he walked in the room, but I’d seen him before. He was the cowboy who punched me out.

There are different ways for The Service to approach candidates. If a man showed an extraordinary skill in gunplay or fisticuffs, he would be marked by The Service and contacted. Then he would be tested for how smart he was.

The Service saw that I was smart in handling the Spurlock-McMahon feud but they needed to test my physical skills, which is what Harlon Shanks proceeded to do in St. Louis. To tell you the truth, I thought I’d failed miserably, but Harlon was impressed.

“I’m not very good with my fists,” I told him.

“Nonsense,” Harlon said, waving me off. “You pack a mean punch. For a moment there, I thought you’d broken my nose.”

I squinted at his nose which now sported a bandage. It was hard to see if I’d actually done any damage.

“You showed other qualities we like Mr. Foster.”

“I did? Like what?”

“When I immediately started in on you, you were slow to anger. You held yourself at bay, displaying a cool temper.”

I was tempted to tell him that it was because I was scared to death.

“And you showed calm. Here I am, a big bruiser, threatening you. You didn’t flinch. In fact, you made a joke.”

Again, I was tempted to tell him I didn’t flinch, because I was frozen in fear.

“We need men who are slow to anger and can think on their feet. Your little speech about the bullet in the knee”—Harlon shook his head and grinned—“that showed quick thinking and imagination. And I can tell you’re very comfortable with a gun, even when it isn’t yours.”

So I retired as a teacher and went into training as a special agent of The Service. I was taught how to pick a lock, how to read counterfeit money, and how to use my fists. For a while, I thought they were training me to be an outlaw.

“You need to know the world of the criminal,” Harlon told me. “You don’t have to live the life of one, you just need to understand them.”

I qualified on their shooting range with one of The Service’s highest scores. I was just glad they didn’t test me on my quick draw, which was poorly lacking.

The Service had a course in memorizing. In a month’s time, I was able to remember faces, scars, moles, mustaches, plus dates, times, and other numerical exercises. My observation skills were tested. I could remember clothes, horses, all sorts of useful information.

They also had me run, jump, crawl, climb, and swim through a wooded area they called “The Trail”, or as we trainees called it, “The Trail of Hell”. Some guy from West Point designed it. The first time I tried it, I didn’t make it halfway through. The Trail was supposed to train me for survival and to last through a rigorous, physical fight. At the end of six months, not only could I complete The Trail of Hell, I could slice through it like a knife through butter.

My hands grew rough and firm. My muscles hardened. I had more energy than I’d ever had before. As a teacher, my life was sedentary, soft. The Service toughened me up.

I was also trained in the art of pugilism. I learned to throw a whale of a haymaker. I was taught balance and counterbalance so I could throw a man twice my size, by using his momentum.

One day I was called into the director’s office. He was a man of white hair and rough skin. His name was Hansel, like the fairy tale, except Hansel was his last name.

“Come in, Mr. Foster.”

“Yes sir.”

Mr. Hansel sat behind a very large oak desk with a stack of papers scattered across it. His handshake was as firm as the gaze he held on me.

“How is your training going?”

“Very good sir. I have a week left.”

He opened a file and jotted a note inside it. When he closed it, I saw my name on it.

“We’re assigning you a code name. You will never use it in public. It is a name that only you and certain operators in The Service will know.”

I nodded, hoping it would be an easy name to spell.

“You will be known as “Rattler”. We logged it into your file.”

“Rattler,” I repeated. “Yes, Mr. Hansel, thank you sir.”

He stood up, signifying it was time I left. He gave me another firm handshake, and I walked to the door. I turned. “Mr. Hansel? Why Rattler?”

He smiled and nodded to himself. “The name “Daisy” was already taken.”

I thought Rattler was a much better name.

When I finished my training I was given an agent’s license and issued a badge and a six-shooter. The weapon was from a gunsmith in Connecticut. I’d never heard of the brand name, but was assured that it was a quality firearm. I liked its heft. It felt right. It felt like it had been made especially for my hand.

For the next seven years I lived in Dallas, Topeka, Salt Lake City, Denver, New Mexico Territory, and San Francisco. I went wherever I was needed. In Utah, I was part of a gang that robbed mining payrolls. Somewhere along the line I was found out and almost hung. Instead, the gang’s boss decided to stick a Bowie knife in me. I was left for dead, but found by another agent who was playing the outside man on the case. Harlon Shanks. He got me to a doctor who decided the huge knife had missed my vital organs. I was laid up for several weeks after that.

Since joining The Service, my body has been thrown down a mine shaft, shot twice in each shoulder, knifed in the gut, and I broke my leg jumping off a cliff. There’s no other job in the world I’d rather have.