Dutch Uncle

by Marilyn Durham

  ‘Hey, there, Uncle Jake, I think you just struck the mother lode. Little something in her britches for a bonus.’

  ‘You were wasting your wit teasing her, Gebhardt. She’s deaf.’

  ‘Oh, I know that, marshal. I was just having a little fun.’ Jake’s hand snaked into his pocket and made a fist around the roll of silver dollars. Shifting Urraca to the left side, he threw all the force of that silver-weighted fist into Augie’s grinning face. He felt his knuckles pop as Gebhardt’s nose crunched under them. The spurt of blood that followed and the sight of Jake’s business face reduced the levity of the others to a murmur.

  ‘The next sonofabitch I ever catch making fun of this kid is going to be wearing his face inside out!’ He turned away without waiting to see if Augie could get up or not.

  ‘Get my hat, Paco.’

  He hoped to hell he hadn’t broken his hand.

  They were both such a mess he halfway hoped Carrie would see them, be rightfully outraged, and carry the kids off for a bath, so he could clean himself up and get back to Patchy. But she didn’t come. She wasn’t in the office. She hadn’t even brought the usual bucket of water over to the jail that morning. The bucket was there, but it was less than half full. It wouldn’t begin to clean him, let alone Urraca.

  ‘What in blazes were you doing under there?’ he asked her in exasperation.

  ‘She was trying to catch that cat that’s going to have babies, Chake,’ Paco answered for her.

  Jake exhaled a hot word as he went into the cell room. He came out immediately, searching the corners.

  ‘Where’s that carpetbag with your other stuff in it?’

  ‘You got it, tío, remember? But it don’t have nothing good in it now. You smoked all the cigars.’ He trotted into Jake’s room and brought it out, opening it.

  ‘Hey, Chake, somebody left a bottle of whiskey in here and it got empty.’

  Jake snatched the bottle from him, then took the carpetbag. It was indeed empty now. He stood looking down at it, not moving. Paco waited for it to be tossed back to him. Urraca sat on the tabletop, wiping her nose.

  ‘All right,’ Jake said after that silent moment. ‘Down to French’s for some more clothes, then off to the barbershop for a bath. I could keep a string of Chinese fan dancers cheaper than you two.’ His words were still rough, but the tone was muted and his face was benign enough to make Urraca smile her cat smile at him. He put the carpetbag back in his room himself and closed the door when he came out.

  ‘Come on, Urraca. You smell like— Jesus, so do I!’ He picked her up again, gingerly putting his arm with the already ruined shirt sleeve under her bottom.

  *

  They lingered in the dry-goods store until Ezra French had to light up his pipe in self-defense, while his old wife picked out a change of clothes for each of the children and a shirt for Jake.

  From there they went to Patterson’s bathhouse, where Jake drove out two earlier arrivals so he could bathe Urraca. Paco took care of himself. When they were both clean, with their black hair clinging to their skulls like wet seal fur, he made them dress in the corner with their backs to him while he bathed.

  ‘You still got soap in your hair,’ Paco told him as he was dressing. Jake didn’t answer the charge. His fingers briefly brushed the hair at his temples, where the shoe blacking he’d been using to cover the gray had washed away in the bath.

  When he was ready they marched in file to the lavandería and left the filthy clothes, then back to the cantina for an early supper. Sánchez smiled paternally at the children as he slid bowls of hot stew onto the table before them.

  ‘Well, my little mineros. How is it with that mine you got behind the jail? Did you strike silver today?’

  ‘They sure as hell did,’ Jake muttered, watching the last of his poker winnings disappear into Sánchez’s pocket. ‘About eleven dollars’ worth.’

  Nevertheless, after supper he bought them each a sack of horehound drops, and they began a slow stroll around town.

  ‘That’s nasty,’ Paco said, taking the first several drops out of his mouth to examine them.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Jake answered absently. Paco returned the candy to his mouth and licked his palm clean.

  They stopped to look at the tent. More flags were aloft now, and there were candles set out on either side of the entrance path in paper sacks weighted with sand.

  Jake ducked into the opening and glanced around. All the canaries and parrots had been transferred to the tent. Their stridence, added to the torrid heat trapped under the canvas, gave it an exotic, tropical air. Most of the girls were busy primping because the miners would be coming in from outside town by seven o’clock. It seemed that most of the contents of the cantina’s second floor had been emptied into the tent, too. Blankets and ropes formed modest partitions between the cots.

  He declined Prudencia’s offer to let him be their first customer and whistled to the kids, who were already at the canary cages trying to let the birds out. They continued their stroll.

  As they approached the Golden Moon, two of Delia’s girls came out on the porch, very demure in summer dresses and carrying parasols, to take their semiregular walk before they went to work.

  When they saw Jake and the children they turned and fell in step with them instead, giggling with Paco, flirting with Jake.

  They were both young and had passable bodies, but their faces were pitted and coarsened with smallpox or acne, and their teeth were so bad they both covered their mouths with their fingers when they laughed. But Jake was feeling indulgent if not attracted, and in a short time had one of them hanging on each arm, while the children ran in front.

  They left the borders of the town and took to the desert road for half a mile; farther than either Jake or the girls had been from town since arriving. The sun was a solid-looking orange ball swathed in purple haze, just settling on the upper peaks of the western Hassayampas. The girls exclaimed over its beauty in loud voices, as if they had never seen it set before. Jake was watching a wagon approaching at a fast clip from the direction of the mines.

  It held Carrie and another of the League women. Her frozen face went by him as he and the girls moved to the side of the road. He had the forethought to remove his hat and place it over his heart, which brought gales of laughter from the young whores and not so much as a backward look from the straight-backed women in the wagon.

  Dust from the passing wagon billowed up over their heads and spoiled the girls’ taste for desert exploration, so they turned away from the rough scrub.

  By the time they returned to Arredondo, twilight had begun to soften its raw ugliness with a mellow gloom. After their brief retreat into the desert air the familiar town smells of coal-oil fumes, wood smoke, kitchen grease, and boiling coffee seemed especially pungent. The street, seldom filled until after dark, was quiet now at the supper hour.

  The girls hurried away up the steps into the Golden Moon. Old Mrs French nodded to Jake and the children as she sat in her yard working a dip of snuff up under her upper lip with a dexterous matchstick.

  The tap-click and murmur from the pool hall were as academic as ever. The Happy Apache glowed with hospitality through oilpapered windows. Dugan was still open for business at the Miners Supply.

  They paused on the corner of Hassayampa and the Mesilla stage road and Jake sighed, savoring a secret peace, his chamois belt once more tight against his belly, his morning doubts allayed by a chance discovery with comic implications that only he would ever be allowed to appreciate fully.

  He glanced in the direction of the tent and found it so illuminated with lanterns from within that the lettering on its side stood out clearly in spite of the hasty paint job.

  It said MOONEY’S MARVEL SHOW. He laughed out loud at that, and Paco laughed with him without even asking what was funny.

  Carrie and Clem were waiting for them outside the jail. Clem seemed to be trying to persuade Carrie of something.

  ‘Good evening, Jake,�
�� said Clem. ‘We were just out here to tell you there’s a League meeting in a little while, if you can come. And Carrie has something to say to you, too.’ There was more metal than usual in his voice when he prompted her. ‘Carrie?’

  Her chin rose. ‘Mr Hollander, it seems I exceeded my authority last night when I asked you to resign. I’m told I’m very much in the minority in the wish, so I hope you will reconsider, for the sake of the rest of the League, and stay the rest of the month.’

  It was a touching recantation. Jake almost felt sorry for her as she stood there stiff as a gatepost, her hands squeezed together in front of her, making her enforced apology. But he could see that her fuse was burning pretty short and that anything he said in reply might be taken ill; so he said nothing, only nodded to her and tried to pass by. But that wasn’t going to be allowed either.

  ‘There!’ she told Clem. ‘I hope that makes you happy. You see how much good it does to try to be civil to him. He’s too liquored up to even answer.’ Jake, who hadn’t had a drink in hours, turned in surprise.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been following your exploits today,’ she said. ‘You’ve certainly been giving the town something to be proud of, haven’t you? Brawling behind the feed store. Dragging that little girl into the bathhouse with all those men in there to see her. Letting Paco run in and out of saloons and bawdyhouses looking for you, while you sit and gamble.’

  ‘Carrie, that will be enough,’ said Clem firmly, taking her by the elbow.

  ‘Wrestling with that woman until she was nearly naked in the middle of the street, while everybody laughed.’

  ‘Carrie!’ She was being dragged away.

  ‘And then strutting around town with those two tarts, like one big happy family.’

  ‘The second one was for the kid!’ Jake called after her. ‘Delia’s going to let him move in and shill for her. I thought he ought to get acquainted with the staff.’ He grinned at the last sight of her face as Clem jerked her through the Arrow office door.

  Paco tugged at Jake’s coat, worried. ‘We ain’t really gonna move in with Deel, huh, Chake? That’s a joke, huh, Chake?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You gonna keep us, ain’t you, tío?’

  ‘Sure, kid. I was just lathering up Carrie. Not that she needs any help.’ Her jealous outburst not only had failed to rouse him to anger; it had even had the reverse effect of making him feel better. He was freed from some cobweb emotion that had stretched between them last night.

  He entertained the kids with three-card monte until it was time to go on his rounds. He performed saloon inspections lightly; ignored loud disputes, and even smiled absently on an eye gouging until he saw the bartender reach under the bar for an ax handle. Jake took it away from him and tapped the near winner behind the ear just hard enough to stun him and allow the loser to crawl out from under. After that he played poker again with Patchy Murdoch in the Silver Man.

  When he came out of the game it was late. There were few people in any of the saloons that night. Most of the action was in Sánchez’s canvas cathouse.

  As he crossed the stage road, heading back to the jail, he heard a single rider coming in from the west. He stopped to watch as the man dismounted in front of the cantina and stood looking around until he became aware of Jake. For a second the figure seemed about to retreat, then approached into the deeper darkness in the middle of the road.

  ‘Say, friend. What’s the name of this place?’

  ‘Arredondo,’ Jake answered from the boardwalk.

  The newcomer chuckled. ‘Well, now. That old daddy I found knew his stuff after all. I’ve been head fo’most and bewildered for better than a week. This evening I called to mind an old granny story I once heard. I caught me a daddy longlegs and asked him how to go. When I put him down he lit a shuck for this direction. That’s pretty smart for a bug that ain’t even got a head. Is there a hotel here?’

  ‘No. Try the cantina there.’

  ‘I’ll be damn,’ said the stranger softly. ‘Looks homey. Got a stable?’ Jake pointed it out. ‘Much obliged. Oh, one more favor, if you’d be so kind. Might be there’s a friend of mine here, name of Ramey. You ever hear of him?’

  ‘Try the Golden Moon.’ Jake started to walk on. He didn’t like conversation at twenty paces in the dark.

  ‘Golden Moon? Fancy house?’

  ‘That’s right. Up the street the other way.’

  ‘That’d be where old George is, then. He likes a soft bed. Obliged again. Expensive, I guess?’

  ‘Well, it’s no mission house.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, I guess this cantina is plenty good enough for me.’

  Jake decided to close the meeting.

  ‘If you can’t find a room there, come on over to the jail and I’ll give you a bunk for the night.’

  There was no answer from across the street.

  *

  Jake went into the jail quietly, checked the kids, locked their cell, bolted the front door, and took the lantern from the table into his room. He closed that door, too. Then he reached under his cot for Rosie Robles’s peculiarly heavy, apparently empty carpetbag, which, he had finally realized that afternoon, must have some kind of false bottom. The key to the bag’s mystery opened a couple of other doors, too. Why Delia had gotten so interested in the kids, for instance. And the tent had given him a clue to the bag itself.

  He hadn’t had the opportunity to look, but he felt a pleasant certainty of what he was going to see when he did, and he had been treasuring the moment all evening, like a secret sweet put away in a kid’s pocket for a future treat.

  But there was nothing under the cot except his own valise. He made a thorough search of the room and then of the whole jail. The carpetbag wasn’t there.

  14

  ‘What did you do with the old carpetbag?’ he asked Paco the next morning.

  ‘You got it, Chake.’

  ‘If I had it, I wouldn’t be asking about it, would I? How about Urraca?’

  But Urraca looked at them both with maddening incomprehension when they tried to pantomime the taking of the bag, until Jake gave up in disgust.

  ‘Was there anybody in here last night while I was gone? Anyone at all? Carrie? Clem?’

  ‘No, tío. What you want with that old bag?’

  ‘Nothing. I just wondered what happened to it. Forget it.’

  *

  Urraca had made off with it, he was certain. But there was no use trying to pry its whereabouts out of her. He would just have to watch where she played until he found it. If he made any more fuss about it now, Paco would be telling everybody. Besides, he could be wrong about the whole thing.

  Nevertheless, he thought he would go down to the Golden Moon and drop a line into Delia’s pool to test his suspicions.

  It was still early enough that he expected he would be rousting her out of the bed again, but when he tapped on the door Delia opened it instead of Angelina.

  She was dressed in the green silk kimono with the dragons again, and not much else. Her hair was wild, and there were peculiar red streaks across her face above and below her mouth. Something had happened, and she glared at him as if she thought he were to blame for it.

  ‘Well! Speak of the devil,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe another time,’ Jake murmured, turning to go.

  ‘No, come in here, Hollander! You’re just the man I need to see.’ She looked at him darkly as he passed her. ‘I’ve been robbed!’

  ‘Money or virtue?’

  ‘Oh, you’re so funny! That’s what I needed — a good laugh,’ she said furiously. ‘I just spent half the night tied up hand and foot. Rolled up in a quilt so I nearly smothered, and everybody in the house as deaf as that damn kid of yours—’

  He held up his hands in surrender. ‘Did you see who it was who robbed you?’

  ‘You bet your sweet life I saw—’ She stopped, considering how he was going to receive the revelation. ‘It was George Ramey.’

  ‘Honest George
Ramey?’

  ‘Listen, Hollander, I’ve had about enough!’

  He could see that she had. Her eyes were like coals.

  ‘All right. Give us both a drink and tell me what happened.’

  ‘Come back to my room and I’ll show you.’

  Angelina, who was straightening up the mess when they entered, left at a gesture from Delia. A table and lamp had been overturned; the lamp broken. Kerosene stained the carpet.

  ‘You put up quite a fight,’ Jake said in admiration.

  ‘Oh, I did that after the bastard left, trying to get somebody’s attention.’ She poured two stiff drinks and drank her own immediately, pouring out another while he was still sipping his. ‘Alcohol makes me belch,’ she complained, demonstrating.

  ‘You shouldn’t take it so fast.’

  He settled himself in her chair while she paced the room jerking at the sash of her wrapper.

  ‘Slim — that’s my blackjack dealer — always takes care of my money. I mean, I send him over to the express office every morning with yesterday’s take, and they put it in their safe for me. I just keep enough in the house for my expenses. Last night Slim wasn’t feeling well, so I took his spot, and when we closed Ramey helped me wind things up and count the take.’ She clouded up again, remembering. ‘I feel like a gully, telling you this.’ Then she shrugged. ‘Anyway, we sat and talked and had a drink. I had a stiff neck from sitting so long, and he offered to rub it for me. The next thing I knew, he had his hand over my mouth and nose and was dragging me back here! I thought he was going to kill me, right then. I tried to get loose, but after a few seconds all I wanted to do was breathe, and he just let me fight while he held on, until I passed out. God! When I came to, he had a gag in my mouth and my arms tied. He thought he’d grab a free one while he was at it, but my feet weren’t tied, so I changed his mind about that, the bastard. I guess he really could have killed me, then. I must have been out of my mind — but I was so damned mad! Well, after he slapped me around for a while, he tied my feet, then wrapped me up in a quilt and put me in the chair and tied me to that! Tore up my best sheet to do it. When he was finished he took the money and left. I spent the night beating my bare feet on the floor and trying to wiggle loose. I got turned around enough to kick over the table, but nobody paid any attention until this morning when Angelina came in with the coffee.’