Boon

by Ed Kurtz

  It wasn’t like I worried she’d ever do anything to harm me. I didn’t worry about that at all. It was the unknown—the unknown and the unknowable. Men fear what they can’t sort out for themselves. Always had, always would. That was how come so many men acted so big when inside they felt so small. In my experience, every man felt small. The bigger he acted, the smaller he really was. And I was small as a bug. Small and afraid. There was so much I couldn’t figure, and a lot of the time Boon was at the top of that particular list. Sometimes I acted big, too. God knew it didn’t fool her.

  Nothing ever fooled her.

  The screaming didn’t last long, though at the time it sure felt like it did. Probably it only went on for about five minutes, and after that things were relatively quiet. Quiet enough that I could hear the horses browsing the short grass from where I sat. I could also hear soft voices in the cabin. I made no mistake about it; Boon rarely raised her voice. She could put more fear of God into a man with a whisper than any man could with a shout. I reckoned there was more than enough fear to go around inside that cabin.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I didn’t see Tom Willocks ever come out of that cabin.

  Boon I didn’t see until dawn. I slept out under the stars. I guessed she’d slept in the cabin, with Franklin Merrick, if she slept at all. I was eating peaches out of a can and wishing hard for some coffee when she came out and said, “We’re going west.”

  “West Texas?” I said.

  “More west than that,” she said.

  She crammed her hat down on her head with the little red feather bouncing in the breeze and she stepped up into the palomino’s saddle. Franklin appeared in the doorway, watching her. She touched the brim of her hat in his general direction as she reared the horse around. Franklin nodded.

  I tossed the can into the grass and hurried to my mount.

  “What about Willocks?” I said, jabbing the beast to catch up with Boon.

  “He talked some.”

  “What’d he say?”

  She didn’t answer for a while. I turned in the saddle to look back at the cabin. The door was already shut, Franklin’s breakfast cookfire putting smoke up the chimney. A short while later, we rode down into an arroyo and I couldn’t see the cabin anymore. We followed the arroyo up into some hill country a ways where we crossed over to a trail that wasn’t much more than some muddy wagon ruts. I hadn’t really bothered to check my mount’s shoes when we bought her, and I was hoping to Christ the mud didn’t suck them right off her hooves.

  “California is what he said,” Boon said, some time after I’d asked her about it.

  “San Francisco?” I said.

  “Thereabouts.”

  “Where you’re from.”

  “I’m from Siam.”

  “Where you grew up, then.”

  “After Connecticut,” she said.

  “Right back to where you started out,” I said. “One big damn circle.”

  “I wasn’t really following her trail before. I was after him.”

  “Your pa.”

  Boon nodded.

  “You think he’s still somewhere in Texas?”

  Boon shrugged.

  “Willocks dead?”

  Boon shook her head. “Not when I left him he wasn’t.”

  “Your friend going to kill him?”

  “Not my business,” she said. “Franklin sure don’t cotton to lawmen, though.”

  “I gathered that,” I said. “Can’t say as I blame him. California, then.”

  “California,” Boon said.

  She was holding the dead cowboy’s pocket watch in one hand and staring hard, straight ahead.

  Part Two

  Revelation

  Chapter Seventeen

  A couple days’ ride west from Merrick’s cabin, Boon led us into some growing town on the Texas-New Mexico line that seemed to exist just for the sodbusters kicking shit on the periphery. There had been other towns, but this was the only one that had the two things she was looking for: a livery stable and a railroad station. She sold our horses to the trader at the livery without anything anybody would call negotiation, which is to say she got buffaloed. She knew it and didn’t appear to much care, apart from her apparent grief over parting with Pim. Aside from me, I guessed Pim was just about her only other friend and I could see plain as day how it pained her. All we had left was our guns, my knife, and whatever we could carry in our saddle bags and pockets. With what she got for the horseflesh and saddles, she purchased two tickets. When the clerk asked where to, she told him, “Santa Fe for now.”

  “I thought we was going farther than that,” I said.

  “I don’t like to think too far ahead,” she said. “Muddies up the waters and makes it hard to concentrate on what’s right in front of you.”

  “You sure think a fair piece behind you,” I said to that. We had been walking back into town on the main road, but she stopped of a sudden and gave me a cool look. She was wearing the same clothes she’d taken from the Red Foot Saloon and I was in the only duds I had to my name at that time. Neither of us had touched any soap for a while and we looked almost as bad as we smelled. People noticed, and I noticed them noticing, but Boon only seemed to notice me.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Come out with it.”

  “Never you mind it.”

  “I mind it,” she said.

  A buckboard hitched to two mares came trundling up the street behind us. I put my hand on Boon’s arm to guide her out of the way so that we could continue our argument without getting flattened. She jerked her arm away from me and punched me with her other hand, right in the middle of my chest. She wasn’t the stoutest or strongest woman I’d ever met in my life—I’d seen a few rarities in carnival settings I wouldn’t have wanted to meet on a lonely street at night—but a good punch hurts no matter who throws it. Added to that was where I got hit, which knocked the wind right out of my lungs and sent me staggering back with my arms going ’round in circles.

  The buckboard driver shouted a string of blue curses at me and I could hear a woman having a good laugh at my expense. After I managed to scamper back, away from the buckboard, I tripped over my own feet and dropped like a sack of potatoes right into the street. My .44-40, still in the scabbard I’d borrowed from Boon, flew from my hands and landed somewhere behind me. I watched as the buckboard continued on by and when it passed, I watched Boon storming away in the other direction, back toward the railroad station.

  A drover whose odor was in fierce competition with my own moseyed over to where I sat in the mud, my legs splayed out in front of me, and looked down at me.

  “Christ,” he drawled. “You ain’t got to get knocked down by no woman looks like a man in this town. There’s plenty of ’em in corsets and face paint right up the street at Cricket’s, don’t cost you but a dollar.”

  I did not share the drover’s view that Boon looked like a man, even if she did dress like one. I guessed he hadn’t gotten that good a look at anything apart from her hat and pants, but my blood was up from the argument so I took a hold of one of the old boy’s ankles and yanked it hard. The drover dropped right down into the mud beside me. I still couldn’t see who the woman was that had laughed at me, but I could hear her laughing again then. The drover, on the other hand, wasn’t laughing at all.

  “You sumbitch,” he said.

  I felt sort of bad for him on account of he didn’t know what he was talking about, but then he launched himself at me like a mountain lion and I didn’t feel bad anymore. Mostly I just felt muddy and pained where his fists rained down on my face and shoulders and neck.

  The drover knocked one of my front teeth out before I gathered my wits enough to pull the knife from my boot and stick him in the thigh. I was aiming for his ribs but everything was such a tangle of limbs in the mud that I just sank the blade into whatever flesh I could find. The drover screeched like a crow and r
olled away from me, clutching at the hilt.

  “You kilt me,” he cried. “God damn you, you kilt me.”

  “Crippled you, maybe,” I said. “Be wanting that blade back.”

  He planted one hand on his leg and wrapped the other one around the hilt, and when he pulled it out there was a dark gout of blood that jetted up and splashed down into the mire between us. For a second I thought he was actually going to hand the knife over. Instead, he turned it ’round and came at me with it.

  “Hold it, Les,” said someone behind and kind of above us.

  The drover froze and glanced up. I followed his lead. Standing there was a fellow in a long, brown duster and a flat-brimmed hat, his hand resting on the bone handle of the iron in his rig. Pinned to his chest was a sheriff’s star.

  “Sumbitch stabbed me, Earl,” the drover whined.

  “Let’s have that toothpick,” Earl said.

  The drover, Les, gave him my knife.

  “That’s my personal property,” I said.

  “You can have it back when we’ve sorted this all out,” the sheriff said. “I want both of you to come back to the jail with me until I’ve had a chance to speak to a few witnesses.”

  “There a reason you can’t do that right now?” I asked.

  “I was about to have lunch,” he said.

  “I’m the one got stuck with that knife,” Les said.

  “Don’t push me, Les.”

  “God damn it, Earl.”

  “Don’t push me.”

  “God damn it.”

  Once I was back on my feet, I had to help Les up. The sheriff wasn’t about to compromise himself by occupying his hands with it. With Earl behind us, Les and I struggled through the mud up to the boardwalk, where he mostly bounced on his one good leg with one heavy arm draped around my shoulders.

  “I’m bleedin’ like hell,” Les said.

  “I’ll get the doc,” Earl said. “Bring him to your cell.”

  “Cell?” Les said. “Hell, Earl. You gonna lock me up?”

  “I am,” Earl said.

  Les grunted. He was getting blood all over my boots, or at least all over the mud that was caking my boots. I strained to look back in the direction of the train station to see if maybe Boon had seen any of that and, if she had, would she do anything about it. I couldn’t really manage it and didn’t really think she’d stuck around that long. Seemed to me she’d be on the next train to Santa Fe before old Earl ever let me out of his jailhouse.

  I didn’t even know the name of the town I was in.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The jailhouse in whatever town it was had two cells in the back, around a corner so the sheriff didn’t have to look at whomever he locked up in there. I sat in one of them and the sawbones tended to Les in the other. The blade had sunk deep into his thigh. By sheer luck, I’d found just about the softest part of his leg to stab. He pissed and moaned the whole time the doc was in there with him, washing the wound and suturing it up with catgut before wrapping his upper leg with what seemed like every inch of bandage in the Southwest. Once he was done, the sawbones left, Earl locked Les in there by himself, and the doctor and sheriff retired to the front office to discuss payment out of the town funds.

  “That sumbitch married my sister,” Les said after a while.

  “Who?” I asked him.

  “God damn Earl, that’s who.”

  “The sheriff is your sister’s husband?”

  Les nodded.

  “My brother-in-law. Locking up his own kin for getting stabbed by a drifter.”

  “Well,” I said, “I am sorry about that. You talked ill of my friend and I got sore.”

  “I got a mouth on me,” Les said. “Always did have.”

  “Probably better to talk less than more,” I said. I was thinking of Boon.

  Apparently, so was Les.

  “Why’d she knock you down, anyhow?”

  “She’s sensitive about things,” I said.

  “You ever met a woman who wasn’t?”

  “I never met anybody who wasn’t.”

  “Reckon so,” he said with some hesitation. “She a breed?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “I guess.”

  “That what she’s sensitive about?”

  “Sort of. I guess.”

  “Your woman?”

  “She ain’t anybody’s woman.”

  “That kind,” Les said.

  “Sure,” I said. “That kind.”

  The drover snorted. I realized I wasn’t used to his smell yet, so I moved a little closer to the opposite wall. It didn’t help.

  “Just as well,” he said. “I only just got my pay chit from the trail boss this morning. The drive was hell and I’m not sure I’ll do it again, so mayhap it’s best I sit here and save my money ’stead of spending it all on wine and women.”

  “Driving cattle is a job of work,” I said.

  “Almost got to fighting the paymaster in yonder tally shack for shorting us boys,” he said. “Two of us didn’t make it, so way we see things their pay ought to be split up among the rest of us.”

  “You’d of ended up here one way or the other.”

  “Yep,” he said. “Least I didn’t get kilt like them poor bastards, though.”

  My heart jumped a little inside my chest and I wondered if it could be that those dead drovers were the same boys who came at me and Boon outside Red Foot. I didn’t consider it wise to admit any knowledge of the incident, though, so I kept my mouth shut for once.

  “Tough business,” I said. “Driving cattle.”

  “Job of work,” Les said. “Like you said.”

  In the afternoon, the cells got darker than they already were, with the way the sun must have ducked down behind the buildings. The only light we got came in from the front office, and it wasn’t much to begin with. I got to pacing the little cell, waiting for the sheriff to complete whatever investigation he was doing so I could get on with finding Boon—assuming she hadn’t already left on the train and got halfway to California by then.

  Someone did visit the cells around that time, but it wasn’t Earl. It was a middle-aged woman, plump and red-faced in a matching cotton dress. She lighted a couple of lanterns for us to see by and brought us each a basket of victuals, the warmth preserved by lacy white towels over the top. Les set into his food immediately, stuffing the bread into his face while getting a hunk of beef ready in his hand to follow. I set mine on the bunk.

  “Where’s the sheriff?”

  “Having supper with his family, I should imagine,” the woman said.

  “Did he talk to them witnesses?”

  “Do I look like a deputy to you?” she snapped.

  “I ain’t got any idea who the hell you are, lady,” I said. “But a man’s only worth his word, and I’m starting to think your sheriff ain’t worth what’s stuck to a shitkicker’s boots.”

  The red-faced woman’s red face turned a lot redder. She sputtered for a minute, trying to come up with something to say, but in the end, she just stomped away and slammed the door on her way out.

  “Preacher’s wife,” Les explained.

  “I don’t care much for preachers,” I said. “What is this damn town, anyway?”

  “Used to be called Agujero Seco when it was Spanish,” said Les. “Means dry hole or some such. Now it’s just Revelation.”

  “Revelation, Texas?”

  “Boy, you are dumb,” he said. “This here is Revelation, New Mexico.”

  “I wasn’t sure if I’d crossed the line or not.”

  “You crossed it.”

  “Fine by me,” I said. “I reckon I’d just about had my fill of Texas.”

  “Well, if you change your mind about that, it ain’t but spittin’ distance from the train station. Could be Earl lets you go if you get back to Texas. I seen him do things like that sometimes.”

  “Wrong way to go,” I told him. “I’m heading to California.”

  Les chuckled.

 
“Right smart late for the rush, don’t you think?”

  “Got business,” I said.

  “With that woman?”

  “With that woman.”

  “You’re a strange fellow,” Les said. “But she seems even stranger.”

  “She is,” I said.

  “What’s her story, then?”

  I took in a deep breath, holding for a spell while I pondered whether or not I felt like telling Les about Boon. Then I let it out, and then I told him. I told him about her saving me from getting my neck stretched and about some of the things we’d seen and done in the three years we’d ridden together. I told him she was searching for her folks but I didn’t tell him why. And I told him that was why we were headed California way.

  “’Cept now you ain’t,” he said.

  “She might still,” I said.

  “Just left you high and dry.”

  I shrugged.

  He said, “Well, I’m right sorry I said words agin’ her to you.”

  “I’m sorry I put my knife in you,” I said.

  Les nodded. So, at least that much was put to rest.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The sheriff of Revelation, Earl, never did come back all the rest of that day. Some deputies came and went, milling about like cows and playing cards, swapping dirty stories about the whores they’d known. The stories stopped cold when the preacher’s wife came back to the jail for her baskets. She looked offended that mine was still full, but she didn’t say anything about it. Les said, “That was real tasty, Missus McKenzie.”

  She smiled at Les. She scowled at me. Then she left.

  I dozed on and off throughout the night. At some point I woke to Les making use of the bucket in his cell left in lieu of a privy. If he smelled bad before, I was starting to wish I was born without a nose then. Instead of thinking about that, I tried to think about Boon, which mostly came down to wondering how far away she’d gotten by then, whether she’d made it to Arizona or if she maybe squirreled off somewhere else. Plans had a way of changing at the last minute with her. You sort of had to let the current take you and not worry about it when riding with Boonsri Angchuan.