Dutch Uncle

by Marilyn Durham

  ‘That cover it?’

  ‘Jacob Hollander,’ she began. He put the coin in her palm and folded her fingers over it. ‘I don’t want that!’

  ‘I’ll bring her little stuff back in the morning, then,’ Jake said unfeelingly.

  ‘Why? Will you tell me that? Why are you like this? I was trying to make — peace with you, and you just ignore my efforts. You don’t spend a penny on those children, except for the little it costs you to feed them and to try to make drunkards out of them. Oh yes, I’ve heard about the beer that Paco is allowed to lap up when he goes with you. You don’t care a snap of your fingers for them, or for anybody. If it were up to you, they’d never have a bath or a change of clothes. You treat them like a pair of hunting dogs! But if I try to do one decent thing for them, out of pity, you throw it back in my face.’

  ‘They don’t need pity.’

  ‘I’d like to know why they don’t! Look at them — no family, no home. Sleeping in a jailhouse, locked in a cell by you. Living on beans and beer three times a day unless I give them something else. Hanging around saloons, picking up all kinds of filthy language and habits.’

  ‘It’s better than going hungry.’

  ‘Well, children need more than just food! They need some security and love and attention from someone who thinks they’re more than just little animals.’

  ‘I still haven’t heard your bid,’ he said. ‘Have you got some better place in mind for them?’

  ‘I’ll find one,’ she said, tight lipped. ‘Anyplace would be better than here with you.’

  ‘I won’t argue about that. You find the place and we’ve got a deal.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’ she asked warily.

  ‘Sure! What place did you have in mind, the workhouse or the county orphanage, if there is one?’

  She whirled around and stalked away from him, arms straight at her sides, the gold piece still clenched in her fist.

  He had expected her to throw it back at him. He sighed for it, and wondered what pleasure he had expected to get out of, baiting Carrie. It was true that anger warmed her face to youth again and brought a deeper color to her icy blue eyes.

  He examined the remains of his cigar with sudden distaste. It was going to be a bad night, when Carrie started looking good to him again. Especially since she had just made it clear she had washed his name off her blackboard years ago. He threw away the cigar and went in to chase the brats to their cell.

  Urraca, having first resisted wearing her new shoes, was now just as adamant about removing them.

  ‘All right, sleep in ‘em,’ said Jake. ‘But take your dress off. And remember what that thing in the corner is for. I’m not running a hotel here, with clean sheets every day.’

  Though she was deaf, he always spoke to her directly, leaving it to Paco to make the necessary interpretations. But now, as she started to unbutton her dress, he wondered if she could hear after all. She could cry and shriek; she wasn’t mute. He sat down on the bunk and watched her struggle with the buttons.

  ‘Come here, Urraca.’ Paco turned to look at him questioningly, but she continued to fumble with the dress.

  ‘I can do it for her, tío,’ Paco said, but Jake stopped him with a gesture.

  ‘Urraca, come here.’ But she had seen his hand move, so he couldn’t be sure. She came, solemnly, and he inexpertly unfastened her dress. The buttons were small jet rosettes that closed with heavy thread loops, more for decoration than use. He wondered at the craziness of women who put such traps in a kid’s clothes and expected her to get out of them alone.

  ‘Sonofabitch,’ he whispered in exasperation when one of the little black balls broke off and bounced away. He saw the corners of Urraca’s mouth turn up in a little cat smile.

  He abandoned the rest of the job to Paco and went out to sit with his feet up on the table that served as a desk in the front room. He had nothing to do until his second patrol, sometime after ten.

  On the table was a brown bundle of mail with a scribbled note from Clem. He started to toss it on the floor with the other mail, which he hadn’t bothered to open since he took the job, when he saw that some of it consisted of ‘wanted man’ flyers. He glanced at the note. It stated the obvious. Clem must want him to start hunting bounty now, to make another story for his seedy journal.

  Opening the bundle without enthusiasm, he thumbed the uninteresting catalogue of horse thieves and offhand killers. Only the last one deserved more than a cursory glance. The man in that picture had such a look of country innocence and utter astonishment at being included in the rogues’ gallery that Jake paused to snort at the popeyed wonder of him. Below the picture was a doggedly thorough Pinkerton description of his person and habits.

  WANTED. FRANCIS RAWLS BECKER,

  ALIAS FRANK BECKER, ETC.

  Escaped from the Territorial Prison in Yuma, Arizona, where he was serving a ten-year term for robbery, having on the 22nd of December, 1873, robbed the Wells Fargo Express Co. of $10,000 while posing as an employee, wounding in the commission of the crime the Express Office Clerk, James T. Bray. Becker escaped from Prison on the night of March 6, 1880.

  Frank Becker is twenty-five years old, five feet ten inches in height, weight about 150 pounds. He has prominent blue eyes, short, pug-shaped nose, pale blond or tow-colored hair, and a ruddy complexion. He bears a recent scar on his face from the corner of his right eye to near the corner of his mouth from a wound inflicted on him with a trowel by another prisoner.

  His occupations are known to have been wagon driver, farm laborer. His criminal occupations are robber, pimp, and confidence man. He is a known gambler and may be found in the company of gamblers, tricksters, and prostitutes.

  He has no known relatives in the territory, but he is said to have had a common-law wife before his imprisonment, a Mexican woman known as Gringo Rosie . . .

  Jake let the front legs of his chair down flat on the floor with a thump. He read that paragraph a second time.

  . . . They may be traveling together. The governor of the territory of Arizona has authorized the payment of a reward of two hundred dollars for his capture, dead or alive.

  THIS MAN IS DANGEROUS

  P.N.D.A.——Agency

  Jake read the circular a second time, then folded it slowly and put it in his inside vest pocket. He sat motionless until Paco put his head around the door to say good night. Then he gave a short bark of a laugh and took his long legs down from the table.

  ‘Hit the bunk, Paco. I’m going to take the second turn around town.’

  ‘It ain’t time yet, Chake.’

  ‘What are you, a Swiss watch? I may play a little poker first, okay?’

  But once out in the street he passed Patchy Murdoch without recognition, because Gringo Rosie had once had a scar-faced lover who had just escaped from jail, and Delia Moon had a scar-faced unwelcome visitor. Jake was eager to see if he was worth two hundred dollars to anybody, dead or alive.

  9

  He went into the Golden Moon, stiff legged as a dog exploring an unfamiliar alley, but after the first minute standing in the hall checking the crowd he began to relax. The air was thick with smoke, the house was packed, the noise was abrasive. To Jake’s senses it felt like home.

  Paco’s scarred bandido was working the box at the faro table. His scar was a disappointment.

  It wasn’t a fresh pink two-hundred-dollar gash from eye to mouth. It was an old, well-healed indentation across the man’s brow, possibly from a saber cut honestly earned in some distant battle. Also, he was too old. He looked as if he had used up the first twenty-five years of his life twice.

  But the kid was right about one thing. He didn’t look as if he’d used them making friends.

  Delia saw Jake just as he had about decided to leave as quietly as he came in. If she was surprised or relieved to see him there, she hid it well, beckoning to a pock-marked man in richly gartered shirt sleeves to take her place at the blackjack table while she rose to greet him.
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  Her face was powdered whiter than the last time he’d seen her, making her carroty hair more flamboyant. Her eyes and cheeks were heavily painted, and she wore a purple-and-gold satin gown so loud it seemed to hum. It occurred to him that she might be color blind.

  She gave him an ivory smile and held out both hands. ‘I thought you were mad at me, Highpockets. Did you finally come down to see how it’s done?’

  Heads turned in the room to see who she was speaking to, and there was a fleeting silence before the play resumed. The town at large had watched his movements, and everybody knew he had both avoided the Moon and given the cantina girls a cold eye. Some people even approved of this unnatural celibacy in a public figure, but most of them were skeptical about it. Now it seemed that he was not only human, but also amusingly slow to admit it.

  Delia took his arm when he would have turned away. She had a good grip, he noticed. She was nervous, after all.

  ‘Let me show you around the place, marshal. You left in such a rush the last couple of times, I didn’t get a chance. I think it’s the best-looking house in New Mexico.’

  She pulled him back into the hall and up the front stairs. He smiled a little at her nerves. That faro dealer had been giving her some kind of trouble, just as Paco said. Jake was in no hurry to relieve her mind. Let her enjoy her drifter’s unwelcome company for a week or more while he checked out his identity with the Pinkertons. Meanwhile she’d have to take the matter up with Clem at the next League meeting, since he wasn’t authorized to do anything more violent than twist doorknobs.

  He slowed his pace deliberately in the upstairs hall, viewing the writhing wallpaper pattern with feigned approval.

  ‘Very nice. How many girls do you have?’

  ‘Twelve. Come on down this way. There’s a back stairs that leads down to my room. We can talk better there.’

  ‘Twelve girls. Does that include you?’

  ‘Would you swim to China if you could ride in a boat?’

  They went down the back stairs into the kitchen, then along a hall to her room, which seemed to be just behind the downstairs game room. It was surprisingly plain, comfortable, and businesslike. A large desk stood in one corner, littered with papers that were lightly weighted by a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. She saw them at the same moment he did and hurried to roll down the desk top over the clutter.

  ‘What’s the rush?’ he asked, smiling.

  ‘No rush. I just wanted to talk to you, and I knew we’d get a big laugh out there if I brought you in here by the direct route, that’s all.’ She motioned him to a seat. ‘Sit down, Jake. Want a drink? I owe you one.’

  He shrugged agreeably, and from a cut-glass decanter she poured a generous amount of what looked like brandy into a heavy glass tumbler and handed it to him. For herself she chose a sticky red liquid in a thimble-sized glass. At her repeated gesture he sat down in her easy chair and tasted her brandy, waiting for her to come to the point.

  ‘What did you want to see me about?’ he prompted, when she didn’t begin at once.

  ‘Oh, nothing serious. Not to me, I mean. It’s about Angelina, my cook.’ Jake looked blank. ‘You see, she’s sweet on those two kids of Rosie’s. They come up here all the time and let her feed them and make over them.’ She twiddled with her glass and looked as sentimental as her face paint would let her.

  ‘Poor Angie. You know, she’s Sánchez’s mother-in-law. At least, her daughter had a batch of kids by Sánchez before she ran off to Sonora with a smuggler. Angie hasn’t seen her own grandchildren for four or five years. I guess these two kids make her homesick for them, or something.’ Her warm brown eyes made an appeal to him as she laughed in embarrassment.

  ‘So it looks like I made a couple of mistakes when I turned down those little brown babies. I made you mad at me, and now I stand to lose Angelina. She’s beginning to talk about quitting me so she can go down to Mexico and see her daughter’s kids. I can’t let her do that. Why, she’s the only decent cook in town. And she can wash out a lady’s unmentionables without rubbing the lace to rags, and make peace between the girls when they get touchy better than I can.’ She shrugged in helpless surrender to the fact. ‘I can’t run the place without her.

  ‘So, I thought, why not make it easy on both of us? You shouldn’t be saddled with a stranger’s kids. Just throw their clothes together in something and send them down to me. Poor little things, if Rosie wanted me to have them it’s the least I can do for her now. There’s plenty of room here. They wouldn’t be in anybody’s way except Angie’s, and she’d be tickled to have the extra trouble. I know she wouldn’t leave me once she had them to look after, and you’d have them off your neck. What do you say, Jake?’

  Jake finished his brandy first, because it was very good brandy and he wasn’t going to be offered seconds.

  ‘I say you tell rotten lies,’ he told her pleasantly. ‘It’s almost embarrassing.’

  Her eyes opened in disbelief. ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t run me up and down two flights of stairs and hide me out back here just to ask for the loan of a couple of wet-nosed kids.’

  ‘I don’t know what else you think I’d—’

  ‘Want with me? I don’t know, but I’ve already seen this pitch worked before. Clem Hand took a big interest in the kids’ welfare the minute he saw them. But what he was really interested in was getting me for a bodyguard against the muckers. Like you said the first time I met you, just tell me the catch and save us both some time. What do you really want, a bouncer for your new faro dealer?’

  Something flickered across her face mingled with real surprise. It vanished before he could read it, but sudden understanding hit him like a wagonload of coal, and he jumped up and made for the bedroom door. She tried to get in his way, but he set her firmly aside.

  The door at the end of the hall led to the game room. He made it in four long strides. It was locked, but the key was in the door.

  ‘Wait a minute, Jake!’ Delia whispered sharply. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Get out of my way, you damned she-mick! You didn’t want anything out of me. You just decoyed me in here so he could run out the front door, didn’t you?’ He jerked the door open, startling the players on the other side.

  The scar-faced man was gone, his place taken by a placid brown whore with gold hoops in her ears. She and Jake exchanged stares for a second, then he shut the door and wheeled around Delia to get to the kitchen at the other end of the hall.

  That door was locked, too, and when he wrenched at the knob it came off in his hand. ‘Goddamnit!’

  Then his spurt of anger with Delia ran out as suddenly as it had flared. The whole thing was ridiculous: he was ridiculous. Every time he got anywhere near the damned woman he found himself playing the rube comic in her private show. He ought to be wearing balloon pants and a checkered coat. He peered out of the window, but he could see nothing. Glancing back, he saw she was out of sight, too.

  When he opened the door to her room she was standing by the desk with the decanter in her hand, watching him with the narrow-eyed scrutiny of a veteran cattle buyer.

  ‘All right, who is he?’ he demanded.

  ‘His name’s George Ramey. Do you want another drink?’

  ‘Where did he come from? I haven’t seen him around, and there hasn’t been a stage in since I came.’

  ‘Say, that’s right,’ she said in mock wonder. ‘I bet he must have used one of those things everybody has around here. What do they call ‘em — horses! I know you don’t have one, but you must have seen them around.’ She held out his second drink with a wicked grin.

  Jake took it. He was feeling like a fool, but he asked stolidly, ‘You’ve been keeping him under cover pretty carefully, haven’t you?’

  ‘Under cover? Why, honey, he’s been sitting out there dealing for the past two nights. You’re the one who’s been under cover. You just don’t get around to the good places.’ She was still watching him in that peculiar way.r />
  ‘What the hell is he doing out here fifty miles from nowhere looking for a damned job?’ he snarled.

  ‘Well, how the hell should I know?’ she yelled in outrage. ‘What’s anybody doing out here? I didn’t ask him. He said he needed a job, and I said I needed a dealer. We had a drink on it and I gave him a deck of cards.’ Then her eyes glinted with amusement again.

  ‘You know, honey, you aren’t the smartest man I ever met. I bet if it wasn’t for your sweet disposition you wouldn’t have any friends at all.’ She pushed his glass with her finger. ‘Drink it and get out,’ she told him without heat. ‘Let me worry about my help. Ramey is honest enough to suit me. And if he isn’t, I can handle that, too. Is there paper on him? No. Then you just run along and roust drunks. And rest up, so you’ll be in shape to chaperon all the little brides when they get here.’ She bit her lip, but the grin escaped her anyway.

  ‘The what?’

  Delia brayed with laughter. ‘The brides, honey. The mail-order virgins — they hope! That’s what Clem really wants you here for — a chaperon, not a bodyguard. You’re supposed to see that nobody gets a cherry till the pie’s been cut. Didn’t you know anything about this?’ She gave the Belfast bray again. ‘I can see you didn’t.’

  Jake frowned. ‘What’s Clem Hand got to do with a bunch of mail-order brides?’ He reached for the decanter absently, but she held on to it.

  ‘You don’t need any more. You smell like a bar towel now.’

  ‘And you smell like the whore of Babylon — any relation?’

  ‘Oh, touchy, touchy—’

  ‘I said, what’s Hand got to do with—’

  ‘He sent for them. They were his idea! You don’t believe me? I thought you knew him. He whooped it up in his paper almost from the moment he got to town. I hear he’s even mentioned it to God a few times in that Sunday school that he and Careful Carrie organized. It’s going to be a — what was that line of his? — “a civilizing influence on the whole town.” And you can bet your balls it will be, because he’s some little persuader when he gets wound up, let me tell you.’ She took a Clemlike stance for a second. ‘Why, when he starts telling you how great it’s going to be here, you get up the next morning expecting to find manna on the streets instead of horseshit. Oh, God, I love to hear him talk!’ She turned such an ecstatic face up to the ceiling Jake thought she must be getting ready to speak in tongues, but she only chuckled and shot him another one of those odd, sharp, amused glances.