The Holdout

THE SUN LOWERED BEHIND the ranges as he finished his words at the weather-beaten cross atop the ridge. He reached out and touched the name etched into the plaque where the timbers met and covered it with a rough and pebbled hand. As the gold-red ball disappeared behind the distant high peaks he replaced his hat, went over to Napoleon, and heaved himself up into the saddle with a grunt. Astride the bay horse he went down the slow grade of the ridge to the house below, casting a thin shadow on the desert brush. To the east he saw the car coming down the winding road.

“Ah, hell,” Henry Grady said. “Here we go, boy.”

It was a black Ford Model 48 with whitewalls and a thin red band around the hubcaps. The same car that had visited twice before. It stopped in front of the house. The driver’s door opened, and the lawyer got out with the car still running.

Grady cantered Napoleon over and dismounted. He hitched the horse to the post outside the house, patted its neck, brushed his hands off against his work pants, and sauntered over to the lawyer. The same lawyer that had visited twice before. The same rumpled grey three-piece suit and hair slicked back under his grey hat and pinched, fleshy face with his nose dead-center twitching like a rabbit’s, holding a burgundy leather briefcase by his side. The same lawyer who knew Grady purchased the twenty-acre spread in 1907 when it was a patch of desert with a ridge and a view of the high ranges. The one who knew Grady had built the little low house and barn himself at the base of the ridge and kept cattle until some bad seasons and high demand from the nearby city of Las Vegas left him with none. The same lawyer who knew just about everything.

“It’s been another week, Mister Grady.” The lawyer nodded at the house. “Have you made a decision?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“No sale.”

The lawyer seemed to sway a little and gripped the briefcase tighter in his hand. “Are you certain? It’s a handsome offer. It’s never been more handsome.”

“I’m certain,” Grady said. The lawyer rattled the briefcase. “Mister Grady, I have the documents here. In a few minutes, with your pen to paper, we can ensure there won’t be any further trouble. You’ll live out your days in luxury. All you have to do is sign.”

Grady held a moment. “Time was I’d jump at a score like your client’s,” he said. “Those were some good days. Long gone now, though. So you go on back, and tell your man I appreciate his interest, but I ain’t interested myself.”

The lawyer stiffened. His hand trembled as he reached for the door of the Ford.

“Very well, Mister Grady. I’ll tell him.” The lawyer opened the sedan’s door and put the briefcase inside. “You won’t see me again, so I wish you luck in what happens next.”

Grady nodded. “I don’t know when they’ll come for you. I would leave by morning if you can. That’s free counsel, Mister Grady.”

“I don’t expect to light out.”

“I thought not. Goodbye.”

The lawyer got in the car and closed the door. Grady went up to the window, and the lawyer rolled it down.

“Will he come with ’em?” Grady asked.

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“Man wants my spread bad enough, he ought to come himself.”

“Maybe that’s so. I honestly couldn’t tell you.”

The 48 pulled out of the lot, skittered onto the road, and kicked up eddies of dust which swirled in the taillight glow. Grady stabled Napoleon and went to the bottle of rye in the house pantry. Drinking a glass at the table he looked up at the weathered boltaction Krag rifle with the brass scope hanging over the kitchen.

—

CARLO RINALDI SAID HIS vision of the West came to him in a dream. He was standing in the desert, and he saw a white stallion standing in the desert which reared and burst into light. From the light emerged a brilliant white city of pillars. When he woke, he knew his destiny was to build the Oasis in the Nevada desert—Your Refuge In The Mojave!

The truth was that when construction on the Dam began in 1931, someone had to keep the workers on a steady diet of liquor and gambling. Rinaldi’s organization came in, and the profits rolled back to New York, but since the feds got Capone on taxes, there was talk of more scrutiny to come. So, in 1933 he renovated the Continental in the south of Las Vegas and moved his operation westward, including a retainer of fifty enforcers. As more people rolled into Vegas by the month, he envisioned a metropolis of houses and hotels and tables where their money would turn into his money. He invented the dream, and he liked the white stallion because he liked watching Tom Mix ride one on the screen.

Rinaldi was a big man. He liked nice suits and fine hats shipped from Alessandria. His black hair had touches of grey, and he liked to slick pomade in until it held a mirror sheen and work wax into his trimmed black moustache, so it highlighted his wide shark-grin smile. Though his hands were plump, soft, and manicured they were shared with unusual vigor at many social functions.

Rinaldi liked saying that everybody in the world is a friend you haven’t made yet. Coming from New York he was also a nut for baseball, so he liked to run things by a three-strike rule. He’d try to be friends once, and anyone who didn’t want to be friends got a strike. He would come nicer, friendlier, a second time, and if you said no, that was strike two. He’d come a third time, nicest of all. If you said no after all he’d done to try and be friends, that was strike three, and you were out.

A Bowery delicatessen owner was the last one to get three strikes, and the police had to chisel him out of four separate concrete lumps pulled out of the Hudson. The note his wife received said there were twelve in the river, but four was all they ever found.

—

NOBODY SHOWED BY DAWN. Grady woke with the sunrise. He strapped his gun belt and holster with the .45 Schofield revolver to his waist and made sure there were six in the chamber and another twelve studding the belt. In the morning light he saddled Napoleon and rode toward the city outskirts.

At the Desert Rose Diner, with Napoleon hitched to the water trough outside, he ordered ham, eggs, bacon, and two hot strong cups of coffee. He caught a few eyes holding their gaze on the Schofield while he ate, and he smiled and nodded at them. When he finished, he added two nickels to the bill and went across the street to Granger’s Supply, where Lloyd Granger was at the counter reading the paper.

“Mornin’, Lloyd,” Grady said.

Granger looked up from the paper, and his eyes lit up behind his polished round spectacles. “Morning, Henry! Mighty fine to see you. What can I help you with?”

“Fixin’ a few things.” Grady moved around the barrels and stacked pallets. “I need three bags of nails and a can of kerosene.”

Granger weighed the nails in paper bags and tied them off in canvas wrapping. He hauled up a tin gallon of kerosene from behind the counter. As he tabulated the cost, Grady looked out the window and saw a black Ford 48 coming down the street which slowed to a crawl and stopped in front of the diner.

“Lloyd, you ever see that sedan around here before?” Grady asked. “The one parked outside the diner.”

Granger peered out the window. “Hard to say, seems there’s more of them around here every day.”

“One just like it been coming ’round my place.”

“Is that developer still on you to sell?” Granger asked. “You know, Chester Davis was in yesterday. He’s selling the Bar T.”

“That a fact.”

“Yep. That makes close to the full amount of land so they can build that glitzy-big development. If I had to guess, I think it’d just be you and Marsh and Peterson remaining.”

“Both of them sold last week. It was me and Davis left.”

“Oh.” Granger cleared his throat. “Well, you know, Chester seemed pleased enough with what they gave him. Suppose if you’re the last one to sell, they’ll set you right. Maybe you’ll get one of those nice new homes they’ll build.”

“I gave ’em my last no last night.”

“Oh. Well, I figure you know what you’re doin’, then.”

Grady looked out at the street. The sedan was still, but he made out shapes moving behind the windshield.

“Lloyd, you still keep a shotgun under the counter?”

“Well yeah, ’course I do, Henry,” Granger said. “I’m gonna go have a word with who’s in that car, and if it gets out of hand, I’d ’preciate you keepin’ a bead on me.”

Granger’s eyes went wide. “You think they mean trouble?”

“I aim to find out.”

“I mean, I keep it back here in case, Henry, but I didn’t ever figure on having to use it.”

“I didn’t say you had to, just that you might. You stay here and watch by the door. If it looks bad, lay down fire. Don’t worry about me, just let fly until you can’t anymore, then light out and call the law. Simple as that.”

“Well, hell, wouldn’t that be something. It’d be just like the old stories.”

“Just like ’em.”

Grady paid Granger and took the package under his left arm. He walked across the street, watching the sedan, and strapped the package to Napoleon’s hindquarters. He looked back and saw Granger standing in the doorway of the supply store with one hand behind his back. Then he turned and walked over to the sedan and stopped at the driver’s side door.

Two men sat inside. One was portly in a plumcolored suit and matching hat, his toadlike face sporting small dark eyes and a pencil moustache. The other was thin, wearing a dark green suit and a black hat perched on top of reedy straw-colored hair and a long face. Grady noticed the bulges in their suits just under their left arms.

“You boys been sittin’ here a while,” Grady said. “Trouble decidin’ maybe. I don’t know what you eat in New York, but the diner does a fine sandwich, and the coffee ain’t bad.”

The man in the plum suit laughed. “Well, thanks for the tip, grandpa. Maybe we’ll stop in after all. Hey, I gotta know, does that old cowboy piece on your hip still work?”

“Ain’t let me down yet.”

“That’s something. We heard some old cowboys like to come out to this diner. One in particular named Grady. That’d be you, right?”

Grady nodded. “As I say, the coffee ain’t bad.”

“Well, that’s swell.”

Grady tipped his hat. “I don’t care for anyone lookin’ for me. You tell your boss if he wants me, he’ll know where to find me.”

He turned and mounted Napoleon and waved at Granger. He half expected a burst of fire from behind, but nothing came as he rode out down the road.

He was halfway back with the sun cresting its highest point when a low automotive rattle rolled up behind him. He turned as the brown Ford came into view. He eased onto the shoulder, and the Ford passed him wide left then pulled hard to the right and stopped, blocking the road.

The two men got out. The bulges in their suits were gone, and they both held gleaming automatics down at their sides. They closed their doors and stood between him and the Ford.

“Well, howdy, Mister Grady!” the man in the plum suit said. “We wanted to have another word.”

“I ain’t interested.”

“Sure. We are, though. See, Denny and me, we had a chat with your friend that owns the hardware store.”

Grady said, “You better not’ve laid a hand on Lloyd.”

The man in green named Denny said “‘Laid a hand’? Mister, we’re civilized. We had a chat, like Pete said.”

“He couldn’t shut his yap, frankly,” the plum-suited man called Pete said. “He told us you ain’t actually Henry Grady, you’re Tom Halliday from Montana, and you used to run with some outlaw crew back when everything was cowboys and Indians. Raised all kinds of hell and robbed banks, he said.”

“He said you dynamited and stole from the railways, like Butch Cassidy,” Denny said.

“He said your crew took out a train in Arizona, killed women and children, and you turned on your gang, linked up with the Arizona Rangers and hunted ’em down to the last man.”

“Said you got some kinda pardon and a new name.”

“Said you took up with those guys in the Spanish-American War after. Remember the Maine?”

Grady eyed them both. “So, you heard all that from Lloyd. That don’t explain why you’re in my way.”

“Had to find out for ourselves. Didn’t we, Denny?”

“Sure did, Pete.”

Grady felt his hands knot up, the old tension coming back into the worn fibers, a sharp liveliness creeping into the worn muscles of the arms and wrists.

He said, “And what d’you reckon?”

Pete shrugged. “I think it’s a lot of bunk myself. Your buddy thought maybe he’d scare us away from you. But Denny’s less sure. I think he’d like to see if you are what they say you are, stack up against one of the last outlaws. Ain’t that right, Denny?”

Denny smiled. “Sure is, Pete.”

“Well,” Grady said, “Seein’s got a hell of a price.”

His right hand went to the holster at the same time their hands came up in silver flashes. The air snapped and popped around him as the Schofield came out. Napoleon reared and whinnied and fell, and he went down with him, hitting the ground hard but hitting right. He bit his tongue and tasted copper but knew to roll and rolled down in the choking dust while the horse kicked the air in agony and ugly perforations glistened in his fine hide. He cocked the hammer back and came up squinting with his arm thrown over the big heavy warm body and the saddle supporting him at the elbow.

They were outlines in the dust, but they were there. In his hand there was thunder and thunder again.

—

RINALDI WAS CHOOSING CARPET colors for the grand foyer of the Oasis. He’d settled on oriental red when they came in and told him Denny Rostrovich and Pietro Bianchi went out to shadow the old cowboy like he’d asked, and they found them out on the road out of town.

Denny had two .45 slugs explode his chest out. Pete had one plug him in the gut, and he’d crawled a little way, which left a trail in the dust like his plum suit sprung a leak, but now, he was on his back with half his head gone. On the road was a dead bay horse with nine rounds in its body and one in its head. Their car and their guns were gone.

Rinaldi was quiet for a minute. When he finally spoke, he had some instructions.

—

THE FORD TOOK SOME figuring out, but Grady had it moving down the road to the spread. One of his bullets had passed through Denny and took out the passenger window, and the air whistled through the car as he drove.

Everything hurt when he got up, but he had got up. Denny was still, but Pete was hollering and scrabbling away in the dust, trying to get back into the car. He’d shared a word—What d’you reckon now—and gave him something to make him stop moving.

He’d stroked Napoleon’s mane, heard heavy withering breaths as blood bubbled up out of the wounds, told him how good he’d been, and saw him free of pain. He’d wiped his eyes, unpacked and unsaddled the body, and put his gear in the backseat along with their pistols and spare rounds.

On returning, Grady hid the car in the barn and went into the house with the package and poured a heavy belt of amber-brown rye and drank it where it mixed with dust and blood in his throat and dropped into his stomach like a warm stone. Grady shook and coughed. When the shaking eased, he reloaded the Schofield. He brought the Krag rifle down from its mounting, wiped it down, and filled it with cartridges, then charged a faded bison-leather bandolier with the leftover shells. He reloaded the two automatic pistols—their boxy slides and magazines were strange edges in his hands. He laid all the armaments out on the table, doctored them with oil where they needed, and knew they wouldn’t be enough anyway.

Grady pried up the closet floorboards and raised up a crate of black powder and a swath of fuse. From the pantry he found six spare canning jars. Each one took half powder and half nails and a sprinkling of kerosene. He screwed tin lids on and punched a nail through each one. He cut twelve five-second lengths from the fuse and fed each one down the holes into the powder, so they stuck out of each jar lid like wild black hairs.

Grady packed his canvas army pack from the closet full of tinned peaches, a matchbox, and his field glasses. With everything collected he went to a rock cluster above the base of the ridge, which formed natural cover and afforded a clear view of the house and barn. He laid out the armaments and the jars and brought his saddle to the cluster and laid his bedroll out. Then he went back to the house, set the powder box inside the front door with the kerosene can beside it, rigged the remaining fuse, and ran it out the door and along the ground to the rocks. He calculated the length—it gave him maybe a shy minute.

He went up the ridge. The low sun blanketed the desert in a deep amber-red, and he heard the cry of a hawk somewhere high. His legs burned with each step. He panted, and his eyes watered and stung. At the summit he reached the cross, wiped his eyes, and stared out at the distant maroon peaks which pierced the far horizon like teeth in the fossilized jawbone of some massive ancient creature.

“I done a damn fool thing, Jessie,” Grady said. “The sort of thing you kept me out of all those years. Good news is it’s prob’ly the last one. I done a lot of achin’ this last while, kept wonderin’ why I couldn’t just let it all go and be happy. I guess when everything goes away, you hold onto what you can. This way you get to keep the view you liked so much. And I’ll be seein’ you soon, more’n likely.”

He came down from the cross. When it was dark, he took a frayed rope from the pack and laid it out in a circle around his bedroll to keep away snakes as their soft bellies were repelled by wild rough fibers. He lay there and thought he heard the twang of a guitar from somewhere in the plain and voices around a campfire with sparks reaching up into that diamond-twinkling void with the translucent ribbon weaved across it. He thought he heard a spate of laughter echo against the rocks. He sat up and looked out, but there was no sign on the purple plateau of sand. With his head cupped softly on the saddle leather, he looked up at the sparkling desert stars and slept.

—

THE MEN ATE BREAKFAST at the Continental. When they were done, they came out to the garage and dispersed into three black Ford 48s. Each man carried a Thompson submachine gun with a 50-round drum magazine, a full spare drum, and his own automatic pistol. With the Fords running, a white Avions Voisin C25 Aerodyne pulled up with two men in the front and Mister Rinaldi in the back. He waved them forward, and the cars moved out in a convoy ahead of the Voisin, the ensemble snaking through the streets of Las Vegas in the early morning light. When they escaped the waking city and slid into the open desert, Mister Rinaldi lit a cigar. He said he hoped the boys ate all right and asked his driver whether he thought he’d look good in a cowboy’s hat.

—

GRADY WOKE TO A touch of cool wind. A small fire for the percolator provided coffee, and he drank and ate tinned peaches. In the shade of the rock, he waited until he heard a low rumble from the east and saw black shapes moving in with a cloud of dust trailing behind.

They pulled up in front of the house—three black Fords, like the others, and one sleek elongated white vehicle. Men emerged from the cars, and through his field glasses Grady counted ten of them, all various shapes and sizes, all clad in fine wool suits in hues of grey and white, each carrying a gun with a sleek wiry barrel and a round protruding undercarriage. That was new, he thought. From out of the gilded vehicle came a big man in a long grey coat and a wide black fedora hat.

“I’ll be damned,” Grady said.

Grady reached down for the free end of the long fuse and the matchbox. He struck a match and watched the fuse spark and hiss and fall away from him, a pinprick of smoking light moving in the low desert scrub, winding toward the house. He hoped it wouldn’t be noticed too quickly and went back to the glasses.

The men gathered in a firing squad. The big man had a cigar in his mouth, and he pointed at the house. The guns ratcheted, and Grady heard a fusillade out of thirty gone years as the weapons spat lead in a uniform carronade which splintered the house and shattered the windows. When they were done, the men dropped the round magazines and loaded fresh ones.

Rinaldi gestured to the house. Four of the men walked over with their guns at their hips, and before the door they stopped as the smoking little spark along the fuse line arrived, coursing along the front of the house before disappearing through the crack of the door. They froze, and the house went up in a peal of thunder and grey-black smoke with a heart of flame. The wooden front of the house splintered and burst his hand-built walls into shrapnel. The ignited kerosene spread, and flaming chunks fell everywhere, and the yawning open mouth of the house held a blanket of fire.

Through the glasses Grady saw the four men closest to the blast lying still in the dust. The others were hunkered down by the Fords, which sported cracked windshields. The men rose up slowly, and Rinaldi stood and pointed and shouted.

Grady brought up the Krag, cycled the bolt, peered through the scope, and drew a bead on Rinaldi. The big man’s cigar flapped in his mouth. Grady’s bullet took him in the left shoulder, and the cigar fell, and Rinaldi dropped down beside the beautiful car.

Grady cycled the bolt again and saw one gunman pointing at his hiding place. He put the crosshairs on him and fired and saw a red streak out the man’s back. A reply came, a heavy spatter of lead which splintered the stone around him. Grady dropped, cycled, came up, and fired. His heart pulsated against the walls of his chest as a leaden sonata rattled against the rocks.

When it seemed to dim, he brought the Krag up and spied a man crouched down by the barn, working the jammed action of his weapon. Grady fired. The barn wall took the spray, and the malfunctioning weapon dropped with its owner following it into the dirt. The air snapped, and the scope of the Krag shattered as a round passed through it. Grady felt the hot sting of steel and glass on his face and went down, bringing the Krag clattering to the ground.

He crawled over to the jars and lit a match as bullets whanged off the rocks. He touched match to fuse and pitched a jar down the ridge. It blew with a sharp tinkling against the cars, and he heard a yowl of pain. Grady lit and threw another jar toward the house as one of the gunmen ran out from behind one of the Fords. The jar burst high in a flash, and the gunman went limp mid-run and pitched forward dead with his front studded with shining shards and steel bits.

There was a shot, and Grady clawed at the Schofield. A gunman came up the hill with a weapon belching fire, and Grady put the narrow blade of the sight on him and shot. The man’s head snapped back at the same time Grady took a round hard above the right hip. The sky spun. He fell with his face down in the rock and sand and tasted blood. His side was splitting, and he rolled onto his back to see another gunman bearing down on him. Grady pulled one of the automatics from his belt, and the pistol screamed all its fire at the man. Four rounds spread dark holes in the wool suit, and the man fell in the brush.

Grady reloaded the Schofield. Blood coursed down his right side, and he went to the jars and lit and lobbed one after the other until they were gone. His side burned with each throw, but the explosions cascaded, and he thought of cannons in Santiago de Cuba and laughed.

He came out from behind the rock. A wall of flame licked up the side of the barn, and the Fords were burning. A fuel tank burst loudly, throwing a column of smoke and flame into the air. Grady ran down the ridge toward the house.

Rounds spattered at his feet. He fired at a man crouched by the fancy vehicle. Fire burned in his left shoulder, and he yelled and fell. The gunman emerged from behind the car with a pistol centered on him, and Grady drew the second automatic from his belt and emptied it. The gunman went down with his body draped over the car’s perforated cowling.

He got up slow. His left arm was numb, and the hand wouldn’t work. With the Schofield in his right, he limped to the big car and turned to where he’d seen Rinaldi go down.

The big man was holding himself up against the fender with an automatic pistol wedged in his big meaty hand and a streak of blood from the Krag running down his coat. Grady fired and hit Rinaldi in the chest. The automatic dropped, and Rinaldi fell against the fender.

“Jesus Christ,” Rinaldi said as Grady shuffled up to him. “My boys. How?”

Grady held the pistol out, shaking. “I been outnumbered a fair bit but never outgunned.”

Rinaldi coughed. “I know just what you mean.”

There was a crack and a hot numbing punch just under Grady’s ribs on the left side. A sudden warmth started out of the new wound. Rinaldi took something out of the coat pocket he’d fired through and dropped it in the dirt—a holdout gun, a silver single-shot derringer pistol.

“I seen whores use those,” Grady said. His legs buckled, and he dropped to the ground.

Rinaldi slid down the fender onto his back, wheezing. Grady came up on his elbow and pulled himself over in the dust until he was beside Rinaldi. He grunted and felt more spill out and leaned back against the car.

“You got any other tricks?” he asked.

Rinaldi coughed. “No,” he said.

“Ain’t neither.”

Rinaldi looked at the Schofield in Grady’s lap and coughed flecks of red spittle. “You could make things easier for both of us,” he said.

Grady chuckled. “What’ve you seen makes you think I’ve any interest in that?”

They sat quiet for a moment. Rinaldi exhaled.

“I was gonna build something out here.”

“Yeah. I know.”

The pain became a shard of tingling ice in Grady’s chest. His vision started to swim, but he could see dark shapes moving, coming out of the desert.

“My friends are here,” Grady said.

“There’s nobody here but us,” Rinaldi whispered.

“You mustn’t got any friends, then.”

Rinaldi coughed again. Grady looked up as they came into view. There were eight of them, seated on dusky stallions. Some wore dusters and serapes with various patterns, and some wore old Army uniforms. Their faces were familiar but younger. They smiled and helped him up saying they just saddled one for him, and he saw the big bay horse behind them. He looked down at Rinaldi who stopped moving and stared up at the blue morning sky with glassy eyes.

They said she was waiting for him at the fire, and he said nothing but went with them while the burning house and barn and cars sent one dark cloying column upward where the ashes danced in the air. The wind blew the ashes over the cross on the ridge where they floated down and settled on the silent desert plain.

ALEX SLUSAR was born and raised in Saskatchewan, Canada. His writing explores crime, horror, living with nature,and life in the West (in both historic and moderncontexts). After obtaining his Master’s degree inpolitical science, Alex worked in a suite of capacitiesas a political consultant, operative and organizer,and also enlisted with the Royal Canadian Navy.He continues to work in both national political affairs and military defense matters. In 2022 Alexwas selected as an apprentice for the SaskatchewanWriter’s Guild Mentorship Program, which assistsdeveloping writers in refining their craft, andis developing a collection of neo-Western shortstories. Alex divides his time between the provincesof Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec, and can oftenbe found traveling, kayaking on the St. LawrenceRiver, trekking deep in the wilderness of northernCanada or hiking the Sonoran Desert. He tweetsintermittently @axslusar and celebrates adventurethrough photography on Instagram @alex.slusar.