"It ain't Elmira's fault I got jaundice," July said. "I caught it in Missouri at that dern trial."
It was true that he was still fairly yellow, and fairly weak, and Elmira was losing patience with both states.
"I wish you'd turn back white," she had said that morning, although he was noticeably less jaundiced than he had been two weeks before. Elmira was short, skinny, brunette, and had little patience. They had only been married four months, and one of the surprises, from July's point of view, was her impatience. She wanted the chores done immediately, whereas he had always proceeded at a methodical pace. The first time she bawled him out about his slowness was only two days after the wedding. Now it seemed she had lost whatever respect she had ever had for him. Once in a while it occurred to him that she had never had any anyway, but if that was so, why had she married him?
"Uh-oh, here comes Peach," Roscoe said. "Ben must have been a lunatic to marry that woman."
"According to you, all us Johnsons are lunatics," July said, a little irritated. It was not Roscoe's place to criticize his dead brother, though it was perfectly true that Peach was not his favorite sister-in-law. He had never known why Ben nicknamed her "Peach," for she was large and quarrelsome and did not resemble a peach in any way.
Peach was picking her way across the main street of Fort Smith, which was less of a quagmire than usual, since it had been dry lately. She was carrying a red rooster for some reason. She was the largest woman in. town, nearly six feet tall, whereas Ben had been the runt of the Johnson family. Also, Peach talked a blue streak and Ben had seldom uttered three words a week, although he had been the mayor of the town. Now Peach still talked a blue streak and Ben was dead.
That fact, well known to everyone in Fort Smith for the last six weeks, was no doubt what Peach was coming to take up with him.
"Hello, July," Peach said. The rooster flapped a few times but she shook him and he quieted down.
July tipped his hat, as did Roscoe.
"Where'd you find the rooster?" Roscoe asked.
"It's my rooster, but he won't stay home," Peach said. "I found him down by the store. The skunks will get him if he ain't careful."
"Well, if he ain't careful he deserves it," Roscoe said.
Peach had always found Roscoe an irritating fellow, not as respectful as he might be. He was little better than a criminal himself, in her view, and she was opposed to his being deputy sheriff, although it was true that there was not much to choose from in Fort Smith.
"When are you aiming to start after that murderer?" she asked July.
"Why, pretty soon," he said, although he felt tired at the thought of starting after anybody.
"Well, he'll get over in Mexico or somewhere if you sit around here much longer," Peach said.
"I expect to find him down around San Antonio," July said. "I believe he has friends there."
Roscoe had to snort at that remark. "That's right," he said. "Two of the most famous Texas Rangers that ever lived, that's his friends. July will be lucky not to get hung himself. If you ask me, Jake Spoon ain't worth it."
"It's nothing to do with what he's worth," Peach said. "Ben was the one who was worth it. He was my husband and July's brother and the mayor of this town. Who else do you think seen to it your salary got paid?"
"The salary I get don't take much seeing to," Roscoe said. "A dern midget could see to it." At thirty dollars a month he considered himself grievously underpaid.
"Well, if you was earning it, the man wouldn't have got away in the first place," Peach continued. "You could have shot him down, which would have been no more than he deserved."
Roscoe was uneasily aware that he was held culpable in some quarters for Jake's escape. The truth was, the killing had confused him, for he had been a good deal fonder of Jake than of Ben. Also it was a shock and a surprise to find Ben lying in the street with a big hole in him. Everyone else had been surprised too — Peach herself had fainted. Half the people in the saloon seemed to think the mule skinner had shot Ben, and by the time Roscoe got their stories sorted out Jake was long gone. Of course it had been mostly an accident, but Peach didn't see it that way. She wanted nothing less than to see Jake hang, and probably would have if Jake had not had the good sense to leave.
July had heard it all twenty-five or thirty times, the versions differing a good deal, depending upon the teller. He felt derelict for not having made a stronger effort to run Jake out of town before he himself left for the trial in Missouri. Of course it would have been convenient if Roscoe had promptly arrested the man, but Roscoe never arrested anybody except old man Darton, the one drunk in the county Roscoe felt he could handle.
July had no doubt that he could find Jake Spoon and bring him back for trial. Gamblers eventually showed up in a town somewhere, and could always be found. If he hadn't had the attack of jaundice he could have gone right after him, but now six weeks had passed, which would mean a longer trip.
The problem was, Elmira didn't want him to go. She considered it an insult that he would even consider it. The fact that Peach didn't like her and had snubbed her repeatedly didn't help matters. Elmira pointed out that the shooting had been an accident, and made it plain that she thought he ought not to let Peach Johnson bully him into making a long trip.
While July was waiting for Peach to leave, the rooster, annoyed at being held so tightly, gave Peach's hand a couple of hard pecks. Without an instant's hesitation Peach grabbed him by the head, swung him a few times and wrung his neck. His body flew off a few feet and lay jerking. Peach pitched the head over in some weeds by the jailhouse porch. She had not got a drop of blood on her — the blood was pumping out of the headless rooster into the dust of the street.
"That'll teach him to peck me," Peach said. "At least I'll get to eat him, instead of a skunk having the pleasure."
She went over and picked the rooster up by the feet and held him out from her body until he quit jerking.
"Well, July," she said, "I hope you won't wait too long to start. Just because you're a little yellow don't mean you can't ride a horse."
"You Johnsons marry the dernest women," Roscoe said, when Peach was safely out of hearing.
"What's that?" July said, looking at Roscoe sternly. He would not have his deputy criticizing his wife.
Roscoe regretted his quick words. July was touchy on the subject of his new wife. It was probably because she was several years older and had been married before. In Fort Smith it was generally considered that she had made a fool of July, though since she was from Kansas no one knew much about her past.
"Why, I was talking about Ben and Sylvester," Roscoe said. "I guess I forgot you're a Johnson, since you're the sheriff."
The remark made no sense — Roscoe's remarks often made no sense, but July had too much on his mind to worry about it. It seemed he was faced every single day with decisions that were hard to make. Sometimes, sitting at his own table, it was hard to decide whether to talk to Elmira or not. It was not hard to tell when Elmira was displeased, though. Her mouth got tight and she could look right through him and give no indication that she even saw him. The problem was trying to figure out what she was displeased about. Several times he had tried asking if anything was wrong and had been given bitter, vehement lectures on his shortcomings. The lectures were embarrassing because they were delivered in the presence of Elmira's son, now his stepson, a twelve-year-old named Joe Boot. Elmira had been married in Missouri to a fellow named Dee Boot, about whom she had never talked much — she just said he died of smallpox.
Elmira also often lectured Joe as freely as she lectured July. One result was that he and Joe had become allies and good friends; both of them spent much of their time just trying to avoid Elmira's wrath. Little Joe spent so much time around the jail that he became a kind of second deputy. Like Elmira, he was skinny, with big eyes that bulged a little in his thin face.
Roscoe was fond of the boy, too. Often he and Joe went down to the river to fish for catfish. Somet
imes if they made a good catch July would bring Roscoe home for supper, but those occasions were seldom successful. Elmira thought little of Roscoe Brown, and though Roscoe was as nice to her as he could be, the fish suppers were silent, tense affairs.
"Well, July, I guess you're between a rock and a hard place," Roscoe said. "You either got to go off and fight them Texas Rangers or else stay here and fight Peach."
"I could send you after him," July said. "You're the one that let him get away."
Of course he was only teasing. Roscoe could hardly handle old man Darton, who was nearly eighty. He wouldn't stand much of a chance against Jake Spoon and his friends.
Roscoe almost tipped over in his chair, he was so astonished. The notion that he might be sent on a job like that was ridiculous — living with Elmira must have made July go crazy if he was thinking such thoughts.
"Peach ain't gonna let it rest," July said, as much to himself as to Roscoe.
"Yes, it's your duty to catch the man," Roscoe said, anxious to get himself as far off the hook as possible. "Benny was your brother, even if he was a dentist."
July didn't say it, but the fact that Benny had been his brother had little to do with his decision to go after Jake Spoon. Benny had been the oldest and he himself the youngest of the ten Johnson boys. All but the two of them went away after they grew up, and Benny seemed to feel that July should have gone away too. He was reluctant to give July the sheriffs job when it came open, although there had been no other candidate than Roscoe. July got the job, but Benny remained resentful and had balked at even providing a new lock for the jail's one cell. In fact, Benny had never done one kind thing for him that July could remember. Once when he pulled a bad tooth of July's he had charged the full fee.
July's feelings of responsibility had to do with the town, not the man who was killed. Since pinning on the sheriff's badge two years before, his sense of responsibility for the town had grown steadily. It seemed to him that as sheriff he had a lot more to do with the safety and well-being of the citizens than Benny had as mayor. The rivermen were the biggest problem — they were always drinking and fighting and cutting one another up. Several times he had had to pile five or six into the little cell.
Lately more and more cowboys passed through the town. Once the wild men of Shanghai Pierce had come through, nearly destroying two saloons. They were not bad men, just rowdy and wild to see a town. They tended to scare people's livestock and rope their pets, and were intolerant of any efforts to curb their play. They were not gunmen, but they could box — July had been forced to crack one or two of them on the jaw and keep them in jail overnight.
Little Joe worshiped the cowboys — it was plain to July that he would run off with one of the outfits, given the chance. When not doing chores he would spend hours practicing with an old rope he had found, roping stumps, or sometimes the milk-pen calf.
July was prepared to accept a certain rowdiness on the part of the cowboys as they passed through, but he felt no leniency at all for men like Jake Spoon. Gamblers offended him, and he had warned several out of town.
Roscoe loved to whittle better than any man July had ever known. If he was sitting down, which was usually the case, he was seldom without a whittling stick in his hands. He never whittled them into anything, just whittled them away, and the habit had come to irritate July.
"I guess if I leave you'll whittle up the whole dern town before I get back," he said.
Roscoe held his peace. He could tell July was in a touchy mood — and who could blame him, with a wife like Elmira and a sister-in-law like Peach. He enjoyed his whittling but of course he was not going to whittle down any houses. July often exaggerated when he was in a bad mood.
July stood up. He wasn't very tall, but he was sturdy. Roscoe had once seen him lift an anvil down at the blacksmith's shop, and he had just been a boy then.
"I'm going home," July said.
"Well, send little Joe over, if he ain't busy," Roscoe said. "We'll play some dominoes."
"It's milking time," July said. "He's got to milk. Anyway, Ellie don't like him playing dominoes with you. She thinks it'll make him lazy."
"Why, it ain't made me lazy, and I've played dominoes all my life," Roscoe said.
July knew the statement was absurd. Roscoe was only a deputy because he was lazy. But if there was one thing he didn't want to get into, it was an argument over whether Roscoe was lazy, so he gave him a wave and walked on off.
27
WHEN JULY GOT HOME it was nearly dusk. Home was just a cabin on the edge of town. As he passed the horse pen he saw that little Joe had roped the milk-pen calf again — it was easy to do, for the calf seldom moved.
"You've got that calf broke," July said. "You could probably saddle him and ride him if you wanted to."
"I milked," Joe said. He got the pail, and the two walked to the cabin together. It was a fairly good cabin, although it didn't yet have a wood floor — just well-packed dirt. July felt bad about bringing his bride to a cabin without a wood floor, but being sheriff didn't pay much and it was the best he could do.
It was a high cabin with a little sleeping loft in it. July had initially supposed that was where they would put the boy, but, in fact, Elmira had put them in the sleeping loft and assigned the boy a pallet on the floor.
When they got there she had already cooked the supper — just bacon and cornbread — and was sitting up in the loft with her feet dangling. She liked to sit and let her feet dangle down into the cabin. Elmira liked being alone and spent most of her time in the loft, occasionally doing a little sewing.
"Don't you slosh that milk," she said, when Joe came in with the pail.
"Ain't much to slosh," Joe said.
It was true — the milk cow was playing out. Joe put his rope over by his pallet. It was his most prized possession. He had found it in the street one morning, after some cowboys had passed through. He didn't dare use it for several days, assuming the cowboy who had lost it would come back and look for it. But none did, so gradually he began to practice on the milk-pen calf. If he had had a horse, he would have thought seriously of leaving and trying to get on with a cow outfit, but they only had two horses and July needed both of those.
"The food's on," Elmira said, but she made no move to come down from the loft and eat it with them.
She seldom did eat with them. It bothered July a good deal, though he made no complaint. Since their little table was almost under the loft he could look up and see Elmira's bare legs as he ate. It didn't seem normal to him. His mother had died when he was six, yet he could remember that she always ate with the family; she would never have sat with her legs dangling practically over her husband's head. He had been at supper at many cabins in his life, but in none of them had the wife sat in the loft while the meal was eaten. It was a thing out of the ordinary, and July didn't like for things to be out of the ordinary in his life. It seemed to him it was better to do as other people did — if society at large did things a certain way it had to be for a good reason, and he looked upon common practices as rules that should be obeyed. After all, his job was to see that common practices were honored — that citizens weren't shot, or banks robbed.
He had arrested plenty of people who misbehaved, yet he could not bring himself to say a word to his wife about her own unusual behavior.
Joe didn't share July's discomfort with the fact that his mother seldom came to the table. When she did come it was usually to scold him, and he got scolded enough as it was — besides, he liked eating with July, or doing anything else with July. So far as he was concerned, marrying July was the best thing his mother had ever done. She scolded July as freely as she scolded him, which didn't seem right to Joe. But then July accepted it and never scolded back, so perhaps that was the way of the world: women scolded, and men kept quiet and stayed out of the way as much as possible.
"Want some buttermilk?" July asked, going to the crock.
"No, sir," Joe said. He hated buttermilk, but July lov
ed it so that he always asked anyway.
"You ask him that every night," Elmira said from the edge of the loft. It irritated her that July came home and did exactly the same things day after day.
"Stop asking him," she said sharply. "Let him get his own buttermilk if he wants any. It's been four months now and he ain't drunk a drop — looks like you'd let it go."
She spoke with a heat that surprised July. Elmira could get angry about almost anything, it seemed. Why would it matter if he invited the boy to have a drink of buttermilk? All he had to do was say no, which he had.
"Well, it's good," he said quietly.
Joe almost wished he had taken a glass, since it would have kept July out of trouble. But it was too late.
After that one remark the meal went smoothly, mainly because no one said another word. Joe and July ate their cornbread and bacon, and Elmira hung her feet in the air.
"You take that medicine," she said to July, as soon as he had finished. "If you don't, I guess you'll be yellow the rest of your life."
"He ain't as yellow as he was," Joe said, feeling that it was incumbent on him to take up for July a little bit, since July would never take up for himself. He had no real fear of his mother — she whipped him plenty, but her anger never lasted long, and if she was really mad he could always outrun her.
"He's too yellow for me," Elmira said. "If I'd wanted a yellow husband I'd have married a Chinaman."
"What's a Chinaman?" Joe asked.
"Go get a bucket of water," Elmira said.
July sat at the table, feeling a little sad, while the boy drew a bucket of water. At least they had a well — the river was nearly a mile away, which would have been a long carry.
Joe brought the bucket in and went back outside. It was stuffy in the small cabin. There were a lot of fireflies out. For amusement he caught a few and let them flicker in his hand.
"Want a bath?" July asked his wife. "I'll fetch some more water if you do."
Elmira didn't answer because she didn't really hear him. It was peculiar, but July almost never said anything that she did hear anymore. It seemed to her that the last thing she heard were their marriage vows. After that, though she heard his voice, she didn't really hear his words. Certainly he was nothing like Dee Boot when it came to conversation. Dee could talk all week and never say the same thing twice, whereas it seemed to her July had never said anything different since they'd married.
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