Tinker's News

Cripple Gorge gets its name from what you can’t see. The gap sneaks up on wanderers. It can’t be seen from a distance, and it’s barely seen up close. Many passers get thrown off their horses at the very last second, and the gorge swallows the bodies. Bandits, gangs, and outlaws use it as a passage to remain hidden. It’s a fine place to hole up. It’s where we go to lay low every time Lucky Winters gets himself in trouble in the neighboring town of Coalrise.

This is the third time I’ve had to scoop his ass up and haul him out of a situation in Coalrise. The town was hardly quiet before Lucky made himself known, but he added a certain volatility that kept the local law enforcement on their toes. The tornado of chaos he is known for is his biggest pride, holds it close to his chest. 

He was in a real state when I found him. Nearly dead and delirious from the beating. Speech slurred and very difficult to understand. One eye swollen all the way shut. He began coming to once the early dawn breeze hit his face. As we rode alongside the peeking sun, I caught him tucking a smirk into his cheek.

“Lucky,” I said.

He didn’t look at me when he said, “Aw, Nellie. I don’t wanna go back to the gorge. It’s real up the spout living in there like that!” It was hard to figure out what he was spitting sometimes. I reckoned it’s the bodies. The smell. How awful it reeks when it’s sticky and warm.

“Will you tell me what kind of trouble you got into this time?” I said.

“There’s a new tender at the saloon. Heard he’s real easy to trick. Thought I could nab whatever coin was behind the counter and get a drink while I was at it. Lord, this town! We could settle down in Coalrise if we weren’t such bad eggs. Or maybe that’s what they like over there. There were some real scummy folks drooling over their whiskey.

“That town is so darn nice, I tell ya. They got a fid of tobacco for barely anything! The mongrels are getting bad, though. They come to the back of the saloon, bark until they’ve woken up every child in town, and get free meat right out the back. The bartender shouldn’t go and feed into them like that, ya know? Otherwise, the damn dogs will never leave. Think I could score some free meat if I yip and yap up a storm?”

“If anyone could,” I said.

Lucky looked at me, finally, and puffed from his cigar like he was already daydreaming about his next heist. “This bartender. His name is Reid, and he does not have red hair! Reid is a real loon. Lets anyone into his establishment. So, I walk in, and I say, ‘hey there, good sir. Mind if I get a splash of whiskey?’ And he, no doubt, says, “why, yessir,’ because, ya know, that’s his job. But then I look to my left, and I see this real fat hustler, and he’s all staring at me! I say to him, ‘anything I can do for ya, pal?’ The guy was offish, so I tried not to let him bother me, but you know I can’t resist from time to time. Didn’t bite, didn’t say nothin’ so I leave it be. 

“Now, I’m chatting with good, ole Reid, and order some bait. He really is a nice feller, but half his face is burned, have I mentioned that? No, I do not think so. Poor, ole Reid. His face looks like it was torn open, sealed, and melted all over again. Wonder if anyone’s asked him about yet, or if they’re too scared. I ain’t too scared, but mind you, I’m trying to make nice with him before thieving.

“He asks me how I found myself in Coalrise, and I tell him this is where the love of my life tried to kill me.”

The first time I had to pull Lucky out of a mess. It was a few years back, at the lake by the town windmill. Lucky heard her cries first. We saw the splashing. We heard all that commotion. I didn’t trust it, not one bit. Lucky and I had conned too many people to fall for it, but Luck was feeble-spined when it came to damsels. 

Against my advice, Lucky saddled up his horse and charged after the drowning girl. She was fast, slipped out of his grasp, and had him in a headlock. I waited, angry that he hadn’t listened to me, and wanted him to learn a lesson he never would. Later, I found him bruised, choked, and smitten.

“I miss Sue Bonner,” Lucky said, blissfully catching the sun. “I loved how skinny her head was, and how big that one tooth was, and how dirty her hands were. My ideal woman! She stole all my money.”

Our money.

“I remember when she grabbed my neck, and sometimes, I still feel her hands there. You know what I said to Reid?”

When a gal has your life in her hands, she wants to marry ya.

“That’s right, you lunk-headed coot! Sue Bonner nearly killed me, but Coalrise is where she was born, raised, and died, and I’ll die there too if they’ll let me.” Lucky became flushed with pink and did a little hop. He pulled a tin of tobacco out from his pocket. He rolled a blanket, perhaps in her honor. 

“What’ve you done tonight, Lucky?” I asked him. 

He resumed his storytelling tone. “I’ve had a few glasses at this point. Some feller with bony fingers is playin’ the piano, you know the guy, and everyone is singin’ songs about exactly what we were doing. ‘Course, I slipped behind the bar a few times, danced with Reid like we was old buddies, but really I was snaggin’ the coins that hid below the bar. You shoulda seen how much a got, Nellie! I’m rejoicing. All of a sudden, I hear that fat man say to his grouchy patron, ‘that tender should be locked up for lookin’ like that,’ and his buddy agrees!

“Now, I might’ve been stealing from Reid, but I had to defend his honor. I leap over the bar, you shoulda seen that, and I end up in the stool next to the man who’s had a little too much to drink. I say to him, ‘Son, I hope I don’t hear you talkin’ about Reid like that.’ This man, oh lord, he got so angry. ‘You can’t call me that until you can grow a beard, boy,’ he says. He grabs me by the damn collar and starts slapping my face like I’m a little calf!. Now, I ain’t gonna stand for that. At that point, I was ready to duel, but… pleasantries. He hit me in the face. This man had big hands, the biggest I’ve ever seen. It hurt! I swear it, I was plannin’ on fighting back, but then something stirred inside me. Call the bean master! Next thing I know, I smell the sheriff, and he despises me. Remember the lynching bee?”

The second time I rescued him. We stole and sold horses for a bit. Big hosses and stocky ponies. The sheriff nabbed Lucky on the one weekend I was off on my own. I suppose Weston was there, the Coalrise gun store clerk. He was with me. I did not want to leave Lucky by himself, but he insisted I go. The clerk’s little cousin had been swiped up by a gang and taken into the mountains. Weston sold revolvers, but he didn’t know how to use them. Lucky said he could handle the trade. He said it was just the same, with or without me.

A young girl’s kidnapping, a presumed rape, a shootout between me and five loons. How odd it is to look back on such an event and only remember the aftermath.

Weston and I rode back into town, his poor cousin sitting on the back of my horse, her head gently bumping my spine as we trotted. There was a real stir in Coalrise. A hanging to be. The women wear their big hats and men holler at death. They were selling tickets to this one. And who was to be in the noose was none other than that devil, Lucky Winters.

Overconfident and shameless, Lucky was caught with the prized Appaloosa. I recall the beast quite well. He wore a light tan coat and was covered in freckles. He could have been a horse for the rich, but this particular Appaloosa kicked a shoe straight into a boy’s skull. 

The sheriff of Coalrise had a soft spot for Lucky, despite Luck’s claims of hatred. The man let him get away with harmless crimes here and there. When Lucky was found with the stolen Appaloosa, some higher up lawmen happened to be passing through town. Including, a US marshal.

“At that time, I had never been in a scrap like that. To avoid it, I thought the only thing I could do was shoot the biggest one!” Lucky hooted in reminiscence. “God, you and Weston were only gone for two days, and the trouble I got into! Jiminy! One night in the cell, next day a date with the noose. I’d say they were overreacting, but what could I do? I ain’t scared of death when it touches my throat. All that was going through my head was, damn, it’s a shame my oldest friend in the world ain’t here to see this. But you were!”

Lucky had been giving the town of Coalrise his farewell speech, his grand finale. The details of what he said slipped my mind as I had been occupied with thoughts of storm myself. I had scrambled to the top of that windmill, overlooking the hanging, and the twisted audience. I could have missed, hit Lucky in the neck or given myself away, but either way he was a dead man.

“When that shot rang out and the roped snapped, I knew it could only be you, bailing me out once again. I didn’t even get a chance to find my breath before having to lose it some more in our run out of town,” he said.

We had reached the lower entrance to the gorge, and as we slapped our horses’ heinies, I realized I still hadn’t heard the end of reason for this bout of trouble. “Lucky, why do you bring up your hanging?” I asked him. It was a hard tale to relive, even in distant memory. I resent him every time he brings it up. At least I appear to be the hero.

“I’m tellin’ ya this for one purpose. Listen up, coot,” he demanded. “Just a little while ago, while I’ve got myself twisted up into this bar fight. The sun started to come in through the windows, and that was almost the last thing my left eye sees as it gets swollen shut. I would’ve liked to appreciate the beauty if it hadn’t occurred to me that it had been a long time since I had used the necessary, if ya get me. But now, I’m laughing so hard ‘cuz my attacker is so red in the face, and Reid is hiding behind the bar, and all I’m thinking about is the shit that’s gonna run down my leg if I don’t find a way to relieve myself in the next minute!

“That ole sheriff looks me in my one open eye and says, ‘Lucky Winters, why do you always saunter back here?’ and I say, ‘Sir, there is far too much to do in Coalrise.’ But then you show up, Nellie. At dawn’s break. I love dawn. Before I’ve got shit running down my leg, you slide in, grab my arm out from under the fat man, and I’m free! All that trouble ‘cuz I stuck my neck out for Reid, the non-redheaded bar dog.”

How quiet he became. For all the years I had known Lucky, he only kept his mouth shut when he was sleeping. Even then, sometimes the demons of night would claw at his lungs and have him speak nonsense in the darkness.

“I am sorry to bring up my lynching bee, Nellie. But I was thinkin’ maybe you’d be less angry with me today if you’d remember me at my very worst. I didn’t mean to land us in the gorge again. Damn, I hate it down here.”

When Lucky behaves himself, we sleep in a barn, cushioned by hay, and the sheriff pretends like he doesn’t know we’re there. There’s a slight smell of goat scat that circles our nostrils, but you get used to it after a while. It’s not nearly as dreadful as the rotting bodies at the bottom of the gorge. 

At the other end, we heard hooves stomping on the clay lands. “Already?” I groaned. 

“I’m real apologetic, Nell.”

“I’ll do it again, Lucky.”

Whether it be bandits or law enforcement, something was coming down Cripple Gorge. We had a grotesque strategy for avoiding detection. Me and Lucky both found bodies bigger than our own, crawled underneath, and prayed we wouldn’t get trampled. Lucky said the same thing every time. “If it’s my turn to be squished to pulp, I want to see lots of deviltries from ya! Ain’t no reason to be nice except when there is.”

It was hard to figure out what he was spitting sometimes.