Charlie and Gringo Meet the Chicken Lady: An Old West Tale

By Tyler Daswick

 ***

I knocked on the door to Cranky Al’s General Store and stepped back and crossed my arms. “I can’t believe this. It’s Sunday.”

Gringo turned his head and looked at me and raised his ears.

I rolled my eyes. “Gimme a break.”

There was no answer. I sighed and smacked the frame. Maybe he couldn’t hear. “Al! It’s Charlie. Gringo’s here, too.”

“I’m coming! Quit your godforsaken pounding.”

I dropped my hand, and a moment later Cranky Al appeared. His nose curled like an old wolf and he squinted behind his glasses, which made his eyes look two different sizes. He pulled out a watch. “You’re late.”

“Sorry. We were held up at the shop.”

“Should’ve planned ahead.”

I glanced at my horse but Gringo just flicked his tail. “Well, is it still a good time to help out?” I asked.

Cranky Al stowed the watch. “As good as any. Come on inside. Wipe your boots.”

I stamped a few times and went to follow the shopkeeper. Gringo put a hoof on the steps but Cranky Al stuck out a pointing finger. “Woah woah woah. No animals in here.”

“Oh, Al, it’s alright. Gringo’s here to help. He’s sorry, too.”

Gringo narrowed his eyes at me.

Cranky Al pushed up his glasses. “Absolutely not. He stays out. You’re not here long anyway. You’re running errands for me.”

“Oh.” It came out a bit too eager, and Cranky Al shot me a mangy look. I stuttered for a moment. “What-whatever you need.”

Cranky Al grunted and walked back toward the counter and I followed him. Gringo climbed the steps and stuck his head through the door before it could close, and I shot him a warning look.

Cranky Al’s General Store was once a Dustpan staple. Prospectors and diggers were coming from all over the southwest to work the silver mine, and Al jumped at the chance for big business. His place had everything: Choco-bars, Mexi-bars, margarita mix, trail mix, fruit ropes, real ropes, bull horns, a French horn, plus things you could buy off-book, like the buffalo skull behind the counter, or the real-live dynamite everyone was certain he kept hidden in his safe. This had been the finest store in the territory, but since the mine flopped and the whispers of silver were proven false, it had done little more than soak up the Arizona dust.

Al stepped behind the counter and I leaned on the customer side. “What do you need first?” I asked. I glanced over his shoulder at the mirrored cabinet. The cracks were still there. I swallowed.

Cranky Al took a long breath. “Well you can get your elbow off my counter, for one.”

I stood up straight.

“For two, take these crates.” He hoisted a pair of milk crates and passed them to me. “Go up to the Chicken Lady’s house and grab all my bottles. Been up there for weeks and weeks. Grab them and bring them back down here.”

I looked over my shoulder at Gringo. He was looking at us and his eyes were huge and round. “The Chicken Lady?” I asked Al. “Are you sure?”

“Don’t talk back to me. Yes.”

I hesitated. Cranky Al leaned his head forward a little and raised an eyebrow. I glanced again at the cabinet and felt another flush in my face. “Alright. Right now?”

“Right now.”

I gulped and took a crate in each hand and headed to the door. Gringo ducked out and I pushed the door wide with my foot. I was halfway down the front steps when I turned back. “Hey, Al?”

He didn’t look up.

“Sorry again. I know that cabinet’s important to you.”

Al looked like he was going to say something, but then he settled back into his slump. “Those bottles better not be broken when you get back.”

*** 

Gringo and I walked side by side down Main street. I swung the crates. It was a beautiful day. “How soon do you think he’ll let us go?”

Gringo squinted for a second. He cocked his head to the side.

“Yeah, not until later, I bet.” I sighed. “I was supposed to go over to Susanna Susan’s tonight.”

Gringo looked at me.

“Nope, still nothing like that.”

On the edge of town we passed Patty Patsy’s Quick Patch Physician and the Golden Falcon U.S. Post Office. Both were closed today. Patty went to church at Humble Heart Chapel on Sundays and Gretchen March, our postmaster, spent her days off hunting quail on Aburrido Peak, near the old mine site. She had invited me and Gringo one time but my dad wouldn’t let us go. I was ticked. That would’ve been real cool, shooting and hunting and running around up there.

Past the Golden Falcon, the road started sloping its way up the mountain toward the Chicken Lady’s house. The mansion had been impressive once, they say, but now the paint was flaking in big ugly patches and the roof slanted something awful to the right. No one had seen the Chicken Lady in years. Kids said she was a ghost and adults said she was a recluse. Whichever, she never came down, and hardly anyone went up. She was all alone.

We hiked closer. I stopped swinging the crates and held them to my chest. “Can’t believe we have to come up here,” I said.

Gringo didn’t answer. He was looking at the house with a funny sort of concentration on his face. I tapped his shoulder. “You good?”

He glanced at me for a half-second and raised his shoulders. He looked back at the house. Weird.

The estate didn’t look any better up close, since now you had to account for the dozens and dozens of chickens clucking and squawking their way around the property. The noise was ingratiating, and Gringo had to be extra careful to avoid stepping in poop. Feathers were everywhere. They floated up in tiny swirls and moved along the ground and stuck onto the poop. The birds pecked at nothing. The smell was awful.

I passed through the front gate and held it open for Gringo. There were more chickens in the little courtyard. The front windows were curtained and covered and the glass was streaked with dirt. You couldn’t see in.

I approached the front doors. They were twice as tall as I was. Gringo came up next to me. “You think we just knock?” I asked.

Gringo nodded.

“Alright.” I took a breath. “Here goes.” I moved one of the crates under my arm and raised the silver knocker and let it fall twice.

There was a thump, a click, and the door swung inward. It gaped wide and bumped against the wall and dust bloomed from the wood. It opened to a foyer, but there was no one there.

“Uh, hello?”

No answer. The chickens clucked behind us.

Gringo looked at me and inclined his head toward the interior of the house.

“No way,” I hissed. “You go first.”

Gringo breathed out of his nose and ducked his head and clopped inside. His bony hip bumped the doorframe and more dust appeared.

“Careful.”

He flicked his tail at me as he passed. I nudged my hat higher up on my head and followed him.

The place was a landscape of dusty, grimy brown. To our right was a disgusting dining room. Cobwebs swooped over the chairs, the table was the same color as the place settings, and the overhead chandelier was laden with wax. On our other side was a pair of waist-high swinging doors leading to the kitchen, and at the far end of the hallway were two more doors splitting off to opposite ends of the house. I lifted my boot and saw we were leaving footprints and hoofprints across the carpet. Were we supposed to clean those up?

“Hello?” I said again. No answer. I tapped Gringo’s haunch. “Do you think she’s here? The Chicken Lady?”

Gringo nudged the swinging doors with his nose and looked at me.

I took a couple steps forward and pushed the doors open and stepped inside. The kitchen might have been lovely back in the day. There was a quaint little breakfast table and a delicate little stove and a nice little nook by the window. Sunlight broke through the dirty glass and lit the place a musty yellow. Then, in the corner there was a—

“Agh!” I started and jumped and banged my hip on the table. “Ow, ow. Uh. Sorry, ma’am.”

The oldest woman I had ever seen sat there, in a wicker chair. Her mouth sucked into her face and her eyes were huge and watery, like a fish. Her hair was crackled and gray and it strained desperately away from her head. She had her hands clasped—together they couldn’t have been bigger than an apricot—in her lap, and her white dress was, was…was very clean, actually. She looked straight ahead, past me.

I straightened up. Gringo poked his head through the doors and he looked and saw the Chicken Lady. He turned to me and raised his ears.

I crouched down into the woman’s line of vision and gave a little wave. “Ma’am? Hi. How are you? I’m Charlie. This is Gringo. He’s my horse. We’re, uh, here for the milk bottles? From Cranky Al’s—I mean, Al’s?”

She didn’t move. 

I took my hat off and wiped my forehead and put my hat back on again. “Is this your house? It’s nice. I like the kitchen. Do you cook?”

Nothing.

I swallowed. “Well, uh, if it’s not too much trouble, I think I’ll just look around here for the bottles—happy to find them myself—and you just sit tight and we’ll just, uh, be on our way, alright?”

Nothing.

I glanced at Gringo again. He had the funny concentrated look on his face again, and he was watching the Chicken Lady very closely.

I took a tiny step forward. “Hey, ma’am, are you alright? Can I bring you something? Glass of water?”

Still no answer. The Chicken Lady didn’t seem afraid. She just sat and looked ahead. I hesitated, then waved a hand in front of her face. She didn’t move. Was she even alive? I looked down and, yeah, her chest was rising and falling. This was giving me the creeps.

The swinging doors creaked and I turned and saw that Gringo had left and gone shuffling down the hallway. Dang. We had to hurry the heck outta here.

I turned back to the Chicken Lady. “I’ll just find those bottles and we’ll be right out. Sorry to intrude.”

She didn’t respond, but I took it as an okay, and I raced around the kitchen, opening cabinets and drawers and looking all over. I found the bottles on a shelf above an empty breadbox. They were lined up in rows. I watched the Chicken Lady out of the corner of my eye as I loaded the crates, but she still didn’t move. Had she arranged them like that herself?

Off in the foyer, I heard a thump, then a clatter. Gringo. Uh oh.

I loaded the last of the bottles and moved the crates to the breakfast table and held up my hands to the Chicken Lady. “Almost done, ma’am. Just going to get my horse.” I left the kitchen and followed the hoofprints down the hall. Gringo had gone into the left-hand room at the far end of the foyer. There was a big streak of lifted dust on the door where he had shouldered it open. I went in.

“Gringo, quit messing around. Let’s just leave already—woah.”

It was the master bedroom. The relative sunniness of the kitchen and dining room didn’t make its way back here. This was the darkest room of the house, so dark you could barely see yourself in the standing mirror, and the fancy candle fixtures on either side of the bed didn’t reflect a single glint. The air smelled like rotten perfume.

Gringo was standing on the far side of the bed, swishing his tail. “Come on, horse,” I said. “We have to go. You shouldn’t be back here.”

Gringo kept swishing his tail. His ears were high on his head and he was looking at me.

“What is it?”

Gringo knelt and leaned his shoulder into the bed. It scooted across the ground.

“Gringo! Don’t!” I hurried forward but Gringo looked up again and hit me with a hard look. I stopped. “What is it?” I repeated.

Gringo nudged the bed again, and it moved another foot. I moved around to his side, and there, poking out beneath the lumpy duvet, was the end of something cornered and rectangular.

My horse looked at me and swished his tail.

I crouched and put a hand on the box. “Gringo, how’d you know this was here?” I looked up at him. He looked back at me, steady.

I pulled the box out from under the bed. It was a plain wooden trunk. The lid had a clasp, but there was no lock.

“What is this?” I asked.

Gringo just looked and swished his tail.

I glanced at the open door. “Do we open it?”

Swish.

I checked the door again. The house was quiet. The Chicken Lady wasn’t going to move anyway. I held my breath, undid the clasp and opened the trunk.

Silver. Stone after stone, grain after grain, piece after piece after piece of pure silver. The rocks were so pristine they seemed to glow, even there, and I felt a peculiar warmth on my face. Gringo took a step forward and leaned down next to me. There must have been thousands in here. Tens of thousands. Hundreds. Enough to build this entire house all over again. Enough to buy Cranky Al a hundred glass cabinets. Enough to bring all of Dustpan charging up here at the slightest rumor of it.

I looked around. It was just me and Gringo. I thought about my dad and the shop and all the cowboys and bandito stories. Their brilliant belt buckles and spurs. Surely, the Chicken Lady wouldn’t miss a small handful, right? I reached down. Gringo tensed. My fingers touched the stones.

A high scream stabbed right through me. The floor shook. Dust rained from the ceiling. The bed rattled. Gringo pinned his ears back and reared up and tried to run but I was running too and we crashed into each other and fell in a heap. I hugged him tight and he was panting like mad and the sound went on and on. I shut my eyes and clamped my hat over my ears and I think Gringo shut his eyes too.

Then silence. The scream stopped without so much as an echo. Gringo raised his head. I looked up. The house was still.

“Do we go back out there?” I asked.

Gringo climbed to his feet.

“You go first.”

We peered out into the hall. Everything looked the same. We crept along the carpet until we were even with the kitchen and I pushed the door open and we looked into the corner.

The Chicken Lady hadn’t moved an inch. She just sat there in her white dress, staring, the same as before.

I stepped a little closer. “Ma’am, was that you, just now? Did you make that sound?”

She didn’t move. Another thing occurred to me.

“Are, are you alright, ma’am? Do you need help?”

Still, nothing. I shrugged at Gringo and he twitched his nose but didn’t offer anything else.

“Is that your silver back there, ma’am? All that money? Is that from the Dustpan mine?”

She was rigid. I sighed and tilted my hat back and wiped the sweat on my forehead. I looked at Gringo. “We better just bring the bottles back. When we’re done with Al we can come back up here and figure out what to do.” I went to the table and made to heft the crates.

A rustle came from the Chicken Lady’s chair. I wheeled around.

She was just as before, but Gringo had recoiled backward, his eyes huge. There, in the Chicken Lady’s hands, was a little piece of glossy paper.

“What’s that?” I asked. Gringo didn’t answer. I went over. The Chicken Lady pinched the scrap tight in both hands. I reached out and took it between my thumb and forefinger. “May I see?”

Nothing, but I tugged it free. The Chicken Lady didn’t move. I held it up and Gringo moved to look over my shoulder.

It was a photograph, an old one, of a man and woman embracing. The man was broad and tall and he had a pickaxe cocked over his shoulder, with his other arm around the woman. She had long, wavy dark hair with a ribbon in it and her dress was youthful and bright. She had a hand on the miner’s chest and was looking up at him, smiling. It was rather pretty, I thought.

Gringo shifted on his hooves and bent and touched the top of the photo with his nose. I looked closer. The man and woman were standing in front of a sign pegged to the rock behind them. I squinted: DUSTPAN SILVER MINE.

My breath caught. I brought the photo down and looked up at the Chicken Lady, and she was looking right into my eyes.

The hair on my arms stood up. I couldn’t look away.

“That’s—” I stammered. The words were lost. The Chicken Lady seemed to break free from something, and she moved, and she raised one ancient, skeletal arm from her lap. A long finger uncurled from her hand, and that finger stopped square across her mouth.

Her eyes widened. My heart pounded.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

Gringo and I bolted from the house as fast as we could.