Dutch Uncle

by Marilyn Durham

  ‘I never saw them! I heard that old woman cluck about some kids, but I never knew which ones she meant. I didn’t know! I was just waiting for you or Rosie to show up and—’

  ‘And lead you to my money. That’s all you had the brains to think about, wasn’t it, George? You smelled out my girl and took her. You tried to root out my money. And when you got it you were going to turn me back in to the law for the reward!’

  ‘No, I wasn’t! I helped you get out, Frank. Don’t forget that. I made all the plans. Rosie never thought of it. She wouldn’t have done it, even if she’d had the sense to think of it. I was the one who bribed the guard, and got you set up with money and clothes when you got loose; not her! Without me, you would still be in Yuma right now, dragging leg irons and breaking your back on those rocks. And she’d be dead anyway. You owe me something for that!’

  ‘I guess I do. My girl run off, afraid of me, because of a damn baby you give her, and died of a fever from it. My money’s lost or spread out across the territory instead of sitting safe and easy the way it has been the past six years, without nobody knowin’ it was even there except Delia, and she couldn’t have touched it without your help. While I was laying out in the desert this past month, frying my brains out every day and spending the nights with the ague from a cold ass and an empty gut, you was snug in some hotel or whorehouse. I owe you just a hell of a lot, George, and I’m obliged to you for reminding me.’ He pulled Jake’s gun from his belt and fired point blank at Ramey before the other man could cry out a last protest.

  There was a rumbling in the tunnel beyond him as something gave in to the shock of the explosion. Ancient dust billowed out of the tunnel mouth as the rumble faded into a gravelly trickle.

  Jake struggled to sit up and did so, even though the effort made the pit grow black for him for a moment. He expected he would be next. But Becker was admiring the old Colt; rubbing the warm barrel on the sleeve of his shirt to burnish it. He ignored Ramey, who didn’t move again.

  ‘Hope you didn’t mind me borryin’ your piece,’ he told Jake calmly. ‘It sure does the job, don’t it? My pappy had one of these, or almost like it. A Confederate piece, but it was all right. Called a Griswold and Grier. Brass frame. Pretty fair copy. Them damn Yankees had all the patents, but they didn’t have all the gunmakers by a long sight.’ He put it in his belt again with a sigh and looked down at Jake. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m about tuckered out. For the past week I haven’t slept no more’n a she-cat in season.’ He saw Jake’s tenseness and smiled at it. ‘What’s the matter? Did I get you worried?’

  ‘Well, you’re kind of sudden, and I wasn’t ready for this mine to come down on top of me. What are you going to do with me?’

  ‘Nothing but straight business, if you’ll have it that way. I told you that before, just like I told him I was gonna kill him. Say, are you hungry? I got some jerky and tack here.’

  ‘Have you got any water?’ Jake asked, fearing that food would turn on him now, even though he had fasted since breakfast. Becker brought him a canteen and held it to his mouth. Holding his head back for a drink put a strain on his injured chest, making him wince and spill the water. Becker looked concerned.

  ‘Say, I bet you hurt like hell. Tell you what, I’ll fasten them irons in the front for you, so you can rest on your back. You’ll be a sight more comfortable. I can’t do anything about the collarbone, though.’ Surprise, and the certain knowledge that he didn’t have a chance to take Becker in a struggle, kept Jake quiet as the change was made. It did make some difference.

  When he was shackled again, Becker took him under the arms and helped him scoot back until his shoulders were against the wall. For a while after that he couldn’t do anything but lean there and try to keep from making any sound until the pain ebbed.

  When it did, he breathed a shaky sigh of relief and opened his eyes again. Becker put the canteen beside him, and brought him a filthy blanket and a piece of hardtack.

  ‘You just try to gnaw on that when you can. I know how getting busted up can make you thirsty and tetchy in the gut at the same time. I’ve been hurt a few times myself. The jerky would make it worse, but that tack will stay down if you take it slow.’

  He wrapped another blanket around his own shoulders and stretched out on the floor, close to the foot of the ladder, with a small saddle pack for a pillow.

  ‘Oh, God, I’m done in,’ he sighed. He looked at the pale square of sky visible through the mine shaft. ‘It’s sunup.’ He yawned. ‘I reckon by this time all your friends are awake. They’ll be missin’ you sore.’

  His breathing quickly deepened, while Jake sat watching him with a puzzled frown. In a moment he began to snore.

  21

  Jake sat brooding over those words. ‘Your friends will be missing you sore.’ — He had always been proud of the fact that he never counted on friends to do anything for him, much less miss him. But now he wondered. Somebody would miss him, certainly. Paco, for one. He’d promised the kid he wouldn’t go away while he slept; he’d be awake soon, and asking for him. So would Carrie, and Clem. Even Sánchez would expect him to come in for breakfast.

  What would they think — and do — when he didn’t show up? They’d have to know something was wrong when they saw he was gone, because a man didn’t just run off in the middle of the night without his coat, or his valise, or even a horse to carry him away, damn it!

  They’d look for him. Then what? Somebody would find his gun belt, since it had been dropped at the most traveled end of the town street; that would be a dead giveaway.

  Then he remembered it would also be a time-wasting false lead, because he and Becker hadn’t gone north from that point; they had swung all the way around the town and come south.

  But Sánchez knew about Becker, if he gave it some thought. So did his cousin Ramón. He’d shown them both the poster. Of course, he hadn’t given either of them any indication that he was more than casually interested in the man. Hell, no, he’d been too clever for that, hadn’t he? So they might not think of the poster, after all.

  What else?

  Delia knew about Becker, and the money, and possibly even where he and Becker were tucked away right now.

  Lots of luck there, he told himself bitterly. She knew because she had been the one to sic Frank Becker on him in the first place, in an effort to get a piece of what was in that carpetbag. Becker must have left her thinking she would get it, too. Or else he hadn’t left her alive at all.

  That possibility didn’t give him any pleasure, even when he was hurting like hell in the dark. She deserved something for her greed, but he didn’t bear her enough of a grudge to condone the spoiling of that cream satin throat.

  He leaned his head back against the rough wall and closed his eyes. His shoulder had stopped hurting so much, but his ankle was beginning to swell inside the thin leather boot. He wished he dared to move, to remove the boot while he still could.

  So nobody would know where he had gone or why, and there wasn’t a decent clue left to tell them. And the people most likely to care about the matter had other things to think about this morning: settling the new women, cooling off the disappointed miners. Burying Urraca.

  They’d be doing that early this morning with or without him. When he didn’t show up they’d think he was holed up somewhere, drunk or sulking because the cavalry wouldn’t give him an escort yesterday. Or too fainthearted for funerals. No, too guilty. Because he had as much to do with Urraca’s death as Ekman did, or more.

  The lantern guttered out while he was considering that, leaving him in the dark with more pain and remorse than he had been able to feel for a long time.

  She had been running from him as much as she had been chasing that cat. He’d scared her white, handling Paco the way he did. Carrie had told him that. So that later, when he was trying to get her out of harm’s way, she’d— God! He must have been put in the world to kill cripples. First the Yaeger boy, now Urraca.

  It was
n’t a thought he could afford to dwell on, injured and in the dark. He tried to turn his mind to something less destructive.

  Carrie.

  Carrie loved him; she had said so yesterday. He hadn’t been much interested in her finer feelings at the time, he recalled. Still, she loved him. Would she believe he would disappear in the middle of the night just to escape the unpleasant duty of burying Urraca and giving comfort to Paco?

  Why not? He hadn’t left her much reason to believe otherwise. Hadn’t he been stopped from running out on them yesterday only by her throwing herself into his arms and his bed? And he certainly hadn’t allowed her to think for a minute that that interlude meant anything more to him than simple physical relief.

  No, he had made it pretty clear to her last night about what he thought she was good for, when she tried to put him to bed. He was too much of a realist to deny the thought, even now, when he could use a beneficial doubt about himself. Still, the memory of her face when he made his blunder shamed him.

  When he didn’t appear this morning she was just going to think he had recuperated his spirits enough to be down at the Golden Moon in bed with that conniving Delia.

  He had made a fine mess of everything. Nobody would waste time looking for him, and Becker was never going to believe he didn’t know where the money or that damned carpetbag was.

  Becker was crazy. He’d killed Ramey like, a fly on the wall. But he wasn’t crazy enough to believe Jake’s unlikely story, or to let him up out of this mine alive, with or without the money.

  He was going to die down here with Ramey, and be picked clean by the desert ants. He had wondered a few times lately, when he couldn’t sleep, where he would be and what he would be doing in ten years’ time. Now he knew.

  On that thought, inexplicably, he went to sleep. Dreams came to indict him that were much like his waking thoughts. Carrie told him what a poor excuse for a man he was and always had been. Urraca fled like a rabbit through endless mazes of back-yard trash while he followed her, mired in mud, held back by every obstacle that had let her pass, and the wagon wheels thundered closer with a sound like an approaching train.

  He felt Paco’s light body in his arms again; heard him ask, ‘You won’t go away?’ And he answered, ‘I won’t go away,’ while all the time he was wondering how soon he could put the kid down and slip off, as he always had before. How many other voices had he heard asking, ‘You won’t go away?’ It had always been like the shot that started the race to freedom, because what had be ever dreaded more than he dreaded need?

  A slight noise woke him with a start that sent the hot pain running again. He gasped, and heard Becker say, ‘Hurtin’ pretty bad, ain’t you?’

  The man’s air of friendly concern maddened him. Becker behaved as if they were old friends, and the trouble was in some way Jake responded to him. He ought to be a lot madder at Becker than he was. If he was going to die here, he ought to have the privilege of being angry with his executioner, yet he couldn’t seem to make himself feel that way. Instead of the comfort of anger, he had nothing but a profitless curiosity about the whole Becker—Rosie—Delia intrigue. And if he wanted anything besides life and freedom and a stiff drink to numb his pain, he wanted to know what it was about them that was going to be the death of him in a little while.

  Becker climbed up the ladder and went to take, care of the horses. Although it must have been broad day above-ground, nothing but the palest twilight came down the shaft. Jake was left alone in the pit so long he began to be gnawed by a dry-mouthed certainty that Becker wasn’t coming back. Panic swelled in him. He’d rather Becker came back now and shot him like he had Ramey than leave him like that.

  But at the same moment he realized the ladder was still in place and he might be able to crawl up it and die in the sun instead, he heard a foot strain the top rung again. The old wood creaked threateningly as Becker descended into the mine.

  ‘Bet you was gettin’ worried about me comin’ back, huh?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘One of the horses strayed off. Both, in fact, but I caught one. I had to find him some kind of graze, too, and that ain’t easy out here.’ He rummaged in his pack. ‘You hungry now? I sure am. How about a bit of jerky?’

  Jake took it willingly because he was famished. When he had washed it down with some of the water from the canteen, he asked, ‘What are you going to do now, Becker?’

  ‘I was hopin’ you’d tell me.’ He shuffled around in the dark for something. ‘You know, I’m not much of a planner myself — let the damn lantern burn out. Never was. I find a lot of people like to plot and plan, and I let them do it if they want to. I just wait and follow along. You might think that’s dumb’ — he struck a match and grinned at Jake — ‘but you’d be surprised how good it works out most of the time.’

  He used the match to find Jake’s last two cigars; put one of them in Jake’s mouth and the last one in his own, and fired another match to light them. ‘Much obliged,’ he murmured, and settled back on his blanket.

  ‘I’d hate to play poker with you,’ Jake told him.

  ‘Would you?’ He sounded pleased. ‘Poker was never my game, but you might be right. You ain’t so easy to figure yourself, you know. Does that come from playing poker all the time? Bluffin’, they call it, don’t they? Sit tight and say nothing. By damn, you’re a real boss when it comes to that. I figured you’d start dickerin’ and complainin’ a little when I come back. Most people don’t like the dark much. And bein’ alone in it too long makes you kind of crazy. I know. They put me in solitary half a dozen times back in Yuma.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions about that?’

  Becker latighed. ‘Why, shoot, no. You just fire away. I’ll answer — if I take a notion.’

  ‘What makes you think that carpetbag still has your money in it after all this time?’

  ‘Hasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I told you that. It was heavy enough to feel funny, but what if Rosie double-crossed you and put newspaper in it instead? How do you know you could trust her to keep it?’

  Becker’s cigar glowed and faded. ‘Why would she put paper in it? Why would she still be in Yuma if she found the money? Why would old George have worked so hard to help me break out of jail if the money wasn’t still missing?’

  ‘So Rosie never knew the money was in the bag at all?’

  ‘That’s right. She was a good old girl in her own way, and I thought a lot of her. We even talked some about gettin’ married. But a man can trust a woman just so much. Hell, you know that. Look at what your girl Delia did for you.’

  Jake spared his splintered bones the snort that deserved. ‘I thought she was your girl.’

  Becker cackled. ‘Oh, Lordy, I hope to tell you! She was never anybody’s girl but that old rattlesnake’s.’

  ‘You mean her father?’

  That made Becker laugh again. ‘Father? You talkin’ about old man Mooney, that had the Marvel Show? I seen his old tent back in town. If he was her pappy, they had a funny kind of family life. Like Mister Lot and his girls back in Bible times — if you recollect. No, sir. I thought a lot of hard things about that old sonofabitch while I was shillin’ for him, but I never called him her pappy. What made you think he was?’

  Jake thought about it. ‘She called him Pop.’

  ‘Oh!’ Becker laughed. ‘He had some kind of a old-timey name: Popul-eenus, Pop-pilly-something. Crazy. Hey, I bet she told you how I named him in on the job and he died of a busted heart right there in the jailhouse, huh?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, let me tell you, mister. He was in on the job. We was supposed to be fifty-fifty partners. Only he wasn’t fast enough that time. I got to thinkin’ about some of the little tricks he’d worked on me before, and I decided to work one on him. Instead of throwin’ the bag back in his wagon and runnin’ like hell till he caught up ‘with me outside of town, I just took it over to Rosie. I stuffed all my extra clothes in it, put a few do
llars on top for her to find, and told her to keep it until she heard from me again.’

  ‘Was Rosie part of Mooney’s show?’

  ‘No, she was just my girl, like I told you. Except that she’d caught the mamacita fever and was swelled up too big to come along with me then. She was working as a cook in a parlor house there in Yuma.’ He pulled on the cigar and laughed again.

  ‘Now let me tell you about old Delia. Did you ever wonder how a girl like her could afford a big fancy house like she’s got here? Well, when old man Mooney was in the jail with me she came in bellerin’ like a sick cow for them to turn him loose. Then, when she saw how good they had us both tucked in, she hopped back to the wagon, packed up, and hightailed it out of town with everything the old buzzard owned. That’s what killed him!’ He enjoyed the memory of that for a moment, then noticed Jake’s silence. ‘What’re you so quiet about over there?’

  ‘I was thinking about how smart we all were. Rosie, Delia, Ramey, and me. We all had a chance to open your bag, and none of us knew it at the right time because we were busy—being smart. Now some cat’s probably making a bed on your cash, or the town rats are chewing it up. Urraca took it off to play with, and she’s where your string runs out, Becker.’

  ‘Who’s Urraca?’

  ‘Rosie’s daughter. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, Maria something-or-other. Simple minded.’

  ‘No, deaf, thanks to Rosie.’

  ‘Well, if she really took it and you’re not trying something on me, she can show me where it is.’

  ‘I told you the string runs out there. She’s dead.’

  ‘Dead? Hell, since when?’

  ‘Since yesterday. She ran out in front of a wagon she couldn’t hear coming, chasing some cat; the one I figure is sleeping on your money now.’ He could hear Becker getting up, coming toward him. A match flared so he could study Jake’s face. ‘Hollander, you got more bull in you than—’

  ‘No bull. The kid’s dead. Check me out if you want to.’