Buckskin

by Robert Knott

  None of them, at least for the time being, noticed us.

  “Reckon that is all of the covey?” I said. “The three of them there and the two with the sticks?”

  Virgil nodded.

  “Most likely,” he said.

  We moved on and entered the billiard room.

  Johnny and Wayne saw us at the same time and lifted off their stools. The big man by their side stood, too, and the chubby gal in his lap fell to the floor.

  “Which one of you shot the fella at Lenora’s place?” Virgil said.

  “Don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Wayne said.

  “How about you, Johnny,” I said. “Do you know what the fuck we are talking about?”

  “No, señor,” he said.

  “All right, then,” Virgil said.

  “All right what?” Wayne said.

  Virgil smiled.

  “You boys can all go down to the jail with us.”

  “Bullshit,” Wayne said.

  “Not bullshit,” Virgil said.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the big man with the chubby gal said as he took a staggering step toward us. He glanced to Wayne and Johnny.

  “Who the fuck are these guys?”

  “I’m Marshal Virgil Cole and this is Deputy Marshal Everett Hitch.”

  The big man laughed and moved closer to Virgil and me.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I heard of you. Glad to get an eye on you. Do you know who I am?”

  “Nope,” Virgil said. “Everett?”

  “I do not,” I said.

  Everyone in the billiard room started drifting to the side of us. Headed for the main barroom.

  “I’m Noah Miller,” the big man said.

  “Did you shoot the fella at Lenora’s, Noah?” Virgil said.

  “You best get on about somebody else’s business before you get my temper up,” Noah said.

  “He the one?” Virgil said to Wayne and Johnny.

  Noah made a gesture to the other two men playing pool to make ready. They set their sticks on the table and stepped apart like they was ready to shoot.

  “You best move on,” Noah said as he adjusted his jacket to show the butt of his pistol.

  One of the pool players did the same. He, too, showed a pistol tucked into his belt. He was a beady-eyed fella with a slouch hat snugged low on his head. He took a step toward us.

  “Like he done uttered,” the beady-eyed man said. “You all best get.”

  By now everyone in the room had cleared out.

  “Was it you?” Virgil said to the beady-eyed fella. “You shoot the fella at Lenora’s?”

  “What if I did?”

  “Have to take you in.”

  “You ain’t taking me nowhere.”

  “You do it?” Virgil said.

  “Well, if I did, I’d be a right smart dumbass to tell you,” he said with a crooked smile. “Wouldn’t I?”

  “You pull on me, you will die.”

  He laughed.

  “There are five of us here,” he said and sneered.

  “I can count.”

  “If I wanted to kill him, I would have,” the beady-eyed man said. “Just like with the both of you. The choice is y’alls to make.”

  “No reason for any of you to die. You can come with us,” Virgil said. “And you, too, Noah, seeing how you are heeled.”

  “No,” Noah said, followed by an arrogant laugh. “I will not do what you want me to do. It’s you that best move on.”

  “Wayne, Johnny,” Virgil said. “You boys heeled, too?”

  Before Wayne and Johnny could answer, the beady-eyed fella went for it and Virgil shot him before he had his gun out of his belt.

  Virgil had his Colt pointed to Noah’s head. Noah froze without touching his pistol handle.

  I had my eight-gauge up and leveled at the second pool player with both hammers back.

  Gun smoke hung around the lamps over the pool table.

  Wayne and Johnny put their hands up.

  Noah held his hands away from his pistol.

  “You sonofabitch,” he said.

  “Little late for name calling,” Virgil said.

  “You won’t get away with this.”

  “Little late for that, too.”

  “You’ll regret this,” he said.

  “Not as much as you.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Noah said. “You’ll need to keep an eye out for some unexpected visit.”

  “Right now,” Virgil said, “you get to make an unexpected visit to the local jail.”

  23

  We locked up the four hands that worked for Baptiste next to the two McCormick hands that we’d locked up the day before. When we were done it was a quarter past two in the morning. Regardless of the hour, I decided to return to the Hotel Windsor.

  I knocked lightly on her door. She did not respond. I tapped again and waited. I turned to move, but then she answered.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s me . . .”

  “Everett,” she said, with a lift to her voice.

  I leaned on the doorjamb and waited. After a few seconds she unlocked and opened the door.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No,” she said. “I wish.”

  “Apologize for the late hour,” I said.

  “That’s okay.”

  “I was enjoying your one-legged performance,” I said. “When we were rudely interrupted. That’s not what you were planning to perform for Appaloosa Days, is it?”

  “God, Everett,” she said as she opened the door wider, grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me into the room. “Come in here.”

  “I should go.”

  “No,” she said.

  She closed the door behind her, leaned her back against it, and folded her arms tightly across her waist.

  “I’m so thankful you are okay,” she said. “My gosh, and I’m of course very glad to see you.”

  “Good.”

  “Yes.”

  She was still in the robe that I’d handed to her earlier. It fell open some, revealing her long body underneath.

  “I expected you’d be asleep.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Glad you’re not.”

  “I have been worried.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “Well, of course I should. It’s not every day one gets called in the night to . . . to respond to shootings.”

  “What we do.”

  “Well . . . of course but I was concerned and . . .”

  “Deputy Book could have been less descriptive.”

  “Nonetheless,” she said.

  “Here I am,” I said.

  “Thankfully. I was worried, seriously.”

  “I been doing this business for a long time.”

  “I know,” she said. “And I know we have just gotten to know each other but . . .”

  “But?”

  “Well, I care for you,” she said. “How could I not?”

  “I’m pretty irresistible,” I said.

  She smiled.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “I don’t know how Ms. French, Allie, handles it.”

  “Law work?”

  “Of course the law work, if you want to call it that.”

  “What else would you call it?”

  “Dangerous.”

  “At times,” I said.

  “I just met you, and you have . . . well, I have been face-to-face with what you are doing. What you are about.”

  “Just work. Not necessarily what I’m about.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do. Don’t mean to make light of i
t.”

  “My heart has been just racing.”

  “And to be honest, Allie doesn’t handle our marshaling all that well, so I know what it is like. How you feel. Even though we don’t know each other all that well, I know, I do. Allie is anxious most the time.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “I think she has gotten better about it since she has her own business.”

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  “Security,” I said. “Something happens to Virgil, she knows she will be able to make a living. Take care of herself.”

  She picked up a bottle and showed it to me.

  “Well, I was nervous enough, I moved on from the wine to bourbon,” she said. “Care to join me?”

  “Sure.”

  She poured us a drink.

  “What happened?”

  “Just some drunks, being stupid. Shooting at each other. That sort of thing?”

  “I take it that this sort of thing has to do with the gold?”

  “In part.”

  “Was . . . anyone hurt, Everett? Was anyone killed?”

  I didn’t want to say, but I really had no reason not to answer her honestly.

  “There was.”

  “Oh my God. Someone died?”

  “One.”

  Her eyes went wide.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “A gun hand. He was drunk and he did something stupid.”

  “So, can you tell me? I mean what . . . what happened?”

  “He got out of line and got shot.”

  “By you?”

  “No.”

  “Thank God.”

  “And the others?” she said. “You said there were other drunks?”

  “We locked ’em up.”

  She stared at me, then set down her drink. She took the glass out of my hand and put it on the table next to hers. Then she put her arms around me, rested her head on my chest, and held tight. She remained holding me for a long time without a word. When she pulled away and gazed up at me, her eyes were wet. We stared at each other. Then I leaned down and kissed her softly. Her lips were warm and tender. We continued to kiss and then she kissed me harder. We continued to kiss, long and hard, until I could feel the heat rising between us. Then she took my hands and slid them inside her robe. She rubbed my hands over her body. First on her breasts, and then slid my hand below. Then she closed her eyes.

  24

  The kid had been in the saddle for too long. In the morning he passed a number of houses leading up to a wide iron bridge. A sign let him know it was the Rio Blanco. He rode his pony across, looking down at the deep river valley.

  “Whoa. How about that?” he said to his pony. “Long damn way down there, huh?”

  He continued riding and soon arrived at a small town built in a cluster around a train depot. There were two streets running the opposite direction of each other and crossing in the middle.

  His stomach was aching and he was hungry. It’d been a day since he had anything to eat. He found a hotel with a café. He ate some ham, cheese, and bread. After breakfast he found a room at a boardinghouse. He slept through the heat of the day.

  He considered riding on, but instead settled in at a small saloon across the street. He played some cards with a group of fellas about his age. After some beers he learned they were section-line workers. They traveled with the trains and did maintenance up and down the tracks.

  The kid was doing most of the winning until a strong older fella, a teamster, sat at the table.

  He got the kid’s attention right away. He was a big, handsome fella. He wore a leather shirt that was open, revealing necklaces made of beads and animal teeth. He had a head of thick curly dark hair and a long beard. His forearms were as big as the kid’s thighs.

  After a few hands, the kid could feel the teamster’s eyes on him. The teamster leaned in his chair and took a glance under the table.

  “Them Mexican spurs you’re wearing?”

  The kid peered at him over the top of his cards.

  “They are,” the kid said.

  “You don’t look like a Mexican,” the teamster said.

  The kid eyed the pot on the table, then studied his cards. The teamster glanced to the other card players and smiled.

  “You a Mex?” the teamster said.

  “I’m not,” the kid said.

  “You from Mexico?”

  “No.”

  “How come you dress like a Mexican?”

  The kid shrugged.

  “Beats being like every other swinging dick.”

  The teamster laughed to the other card players, then grinned wide, showing his straight white teeth.

  “So it’s your call,” the teamster said.

  “I got no idea,” the kid said with a chuckle.

  “Well, if you don’t, then nobody does,” the teamster said.

  The other card players laughed as the kid bit the inside of his jaw, studying his cards. They were all older than the kid, but not by much.

  “Think I’ll fold.”

  “Now, hold on,” the teamster said.

  One card player, a young fella with a head full of gray hair that was out of his scalp before it should be out, shook his head.

  “You can’t just fold on us,” he said.

  “Sure I can,” the kid said. “I’m doing it.”

  “Okay,” the teamster said. “Fellas?”

  The others showed their hands, then the teamster smiled, showing his teeth again.

  “You are one lucky teamster,” the gray-haired player said as he scooted away from the table. “I’m goddamn done.”

  “What?” the teamster said. “It’s early.”

  “I got enough money left to get properly drunk before I got to go to work tomorrow,” he said. “So that is exactly what the hell I am gonna do. I’m gonna get drunk.”

  The others around the table agreed, saying the same thing, and moved away as the teamster raked in the pot.

  “Suit yourselves,” the teamster said.

  He watched as the card players moved away, then rested his eyes on the kid.

  “You want to play a hand between just the two of us?”

  “Sure,” the kid said. “But why not try me straight-up?”

  The teamster stared at the kid and the kid smiled.

  “Between you and me,” the kid said.

  The teamster studied the kid.

  “You caught on quick,” he said under his breath.

  The kid glanced at the other card players standing by the bar.

  “I could feel the cards,” the kid said. “I know what you are doing. I just wanted to see how good you were doing it.”

  He turned his head to the side and grinned at the kid.

  “You are kind of scrawny for that kind of talk.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  The teamster appreciated the kid’s gall.

  “You have any skills of the trade?”

  “Me? Naw.”

  The teamster smiled.

  “You’re full of shit.”

  “Me? No,” the kid said.

  “You got some skill, I know it.”

  “Naw.”

  “Shit,” the teamster said. “So. Can you deal seconds and not get caught.”

  The kid smiled.

  “Better than you,” he said.

  The teamster smiled as he regarded the other card players. They were now all leaning on the bar with their backs to them. The teamster handed him the deck.

  “Your deal, show me.”

  The kid picked up the deck. He glanced inside the deck. Then shuffled it with grace, moving short stacks and reshuffling. Then he dealt a b
lackjack hand. Then the kid set the deck on the table and nodded to the teamster’s cards he’d dealt.

  “Nice hand you got there,” the kid said.

  Showing was the jack of spades. The teamster stared at the kid, then turned over his face card—an ace.

  “Dice is best,” the kid said.

  The teamster leaned back and smiled.

  “You got your own?” the teamster said.

  “Dice? No, I’m just good.”

  “Let me ask you again: Do you have your own dice?”

  “That is a good way to end up on a spit,” the kid said.

  The teamster nodded.

  “So you do? You got your own sets of loaded devil dice?”

  The kid said nothing.

  “Have I seen you in here before?”

  “No,” the kid said.

  “You live around here?”

  “No.”

  “Where?” the teamster said.

  “Nowhere.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I just got here.”

  “Where did you just get here from?”

  “Down Mexico way.”

  “That explains it.”

  “Just in, seeing the place, really. This is my first stop. Need to work. Need to make me some money.”

  “You got work.”

  “At this point in time, no, I don’t.”

  “No . . . you got work.”

  “You mean doing this?”

  The teamster nodded.

  “I don’t count on it,” the kid said. “Good way to get your nuts cut off.”

  “Better than shoveling shit.”

  The kid nodded.

  “I try not to make a practice out of it,” the kid said. “Or shoveling shit.”

  “What do you practice?”

  “I don’t mind working. I do all kinds of things. I’m a pretty good all-around hand. Hell . . . I like work, keeps my mind busy.”

  “From doing?”

  “Things I ought not, I reckon.”

  “Like get your nuts cut off?” the teamster said.

  The kid nodded and smiled.

  “Like that,” the kid said with a nod and a grin. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “This your home?”

  “This is my home as a matter of fact,” the teamster said. “We like it here.”

  “I don’t even know the name of this place,” the kid said.