Boon

by Ed Kurtz

  Matter of fact, that was how it was just about as soon as we made one another’s acquaintance. Though we ended up staying in Texas for the most part all that time, at first it was her idea to go farther east, through Arkansas and up to Tennessee. Seemed my being an Arkansan appealed to her more logical instincts and she figured I’d be of some use around those parts. More to the point, she’d met a drummer in Abilene, not long before she met me, who claimed to have had some dealing with a Briton by the name of Arthur Stanley. Said drummer told Boon he was absolutely, positively certain this Stanley was headed for points east.

  We loaded up on provisions and spent a few days in Longview, a railroad town on the Southern Pacific line that was so new there wasn’t any paint on the buildings, and we holed up in a hotel to plan the journey. The bigger towns were our focus: Texarkana, Little Rock, up to Memphis. We’d spend at least two or three days in each, get what we could get, and plan accordingly.

  Third night in Longview, I wandered down to a little watering hole with BLACK’S SALOON painted on the front and two heavy doors made of the same lumber as everything else in town. Boon stayed behind in the hotel, studying a map. I sat alone for a while, drinking warm beer, and when the crowd started to thin out I switched over to whiskey. There was a lookout perched in a chair by the big front doors, a shotgun across his lap, but he was asleep and snoring something fearsome. Once in a while the bartender would give the lookout a disapproving look, then go back to cleaning glasses or whatever else he did to appear busy. Eventually it got to where there wasn’t anybody left in the place except the boys playing faro in the back and a drunk passed out on a table by the windows—and of course me.

  The bartender said, “Town’s growing some fast.”

  “Looks like it,” I agreed.

  “You with the railroad?”

  “I am not.”

  “Just passing through.”

  I nodded. He noticed my glass was empty and filled it back up from the bottle. I hadn’t asked him to, but I wasn’t unhappy that he’d done it, either.

  “See all kinds come through here, what with the railroad,” he mused. “All kinds.”

  “Englishmen and Siamese women?”

  The bartender scratched his chin and thought it over.

  “English? Sure. Can’t speak to the other one. Lots of cattlemen come from England for some reason.”

  “That right?”

  “English and Irish,” he said. “Sure.”

  “Ever heard of one called Arthur Stanley?”

  “Mister,” he said, “I heard so many names since I came to Longview I’ve forgot almost all of ’em. Ain’t enough room in my head for that many names.”

  “Too bad,” I said, and I finished off the whiskey.

  I laid what I owed in coin on the rough timber bar and rose to leave. The bartender took the money and called after me before I made it to the door.

  “But if it’s a cattleman you’re looking for,” he said, “the Association has an office right here in town. Just across from the municipal building that houses the marshal and the jail and the mayor and all that. Be open come morning. Maybe they’ll of heard of him.”

  I said, “Obliged.”

  Naturally, I reported this to Boon when I got back to the hotel. And naturally, she was for checking with the Cattlemen’s Association in the morning. And just as naturally, our plans—which is to say her plans—got shot right to shit as soon as we went about that particular piece of business. The clerk there referred us to a rancher by the name of Wadsworth, and Wadsworth happened to be in town that morning for a meeting of Longview’s aldermen, of whom he was one. The meeting was across the street in the municipal building, so we stood around like ne’er-do-wells and waited for the town’s big men to come back out again.

  When they did, the clerk poked his bald head out of the office and pointed to a round fellow in a green checkered suit, with a tar-black moustache that drooped down past his chin. He didn’t look like any rancher I ever saw, but the clerk said he was. Wadsworth jawed with some of the bigwigs for a spell, then checked his pocket watch and ambled over to where we were standing.

  “Mr. Wadsworth,” I said.

  “Pack off,” he said in an unmistakably English accent.

  He pushed past us, which was easy to do with all his girth, and rolled right into the Cattlemen’s Association office.

  I said, “That weren’t nice.”

  Boon grunted. She didn’t think it was, either.

  She went in first, me fast on her heels. A door slammed somewhere in the back when we got back inside. The clerk looked at us with an apologetic grin.

  “Guess I might’ve mentioned he’s kind of a gruff character.”

  “Me, too,” Boon said. She went directly for the back to find the door that had slammed.

  “Hey,” the clerk hollered at her. “You can’t go back there.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder and flashed my teeth at him.

  “You don’t want to try stopping her,” I said.

  “I—I don’t?”

  I shook my head.

  “Just looking out for your interests,” I said.

  The clerk nodded that he understood. As soon as he was done nodding, I heard a loud bang that was followed by the sounds of wood splintering. There was a good bit of shouting—Mr. Wadsworth, I supposed, as Boon never was much of a shouter—and then another bang. After that, Wadsworth just kept shouting, “Help, help.” And like that.

  “The marshal is right across the street,” the clerk said.

  “That a threat?” I asked him.

  “Hell, no,” he said. “Just a warning.”

  Wadsworth reappeared from the back, his face pink and flushed and pouring sweat. Boon was right behind him, giving him the occasional shove to keep him moving.

  “Christ Jesus, Henry,” he moaned to the clerk. “Did you not hear me call for help?”

  Henry motioned with his head to me. Wadsworth looked at me like I’d only just appeared in the room at that moment. I smiled.

  “You was a bit rude to us just now on the boardwalk,” I advised the rancher. “My friend here does not take easy to rudeness.”

  “This damnable creature is your friend?” he said.

  “Best and only one I got,” I said. “She only wanted to ask you a simple question, but you went and made it more difficult than it needed to be.”

  “She broke my door down.”

  “I heard that.”

  “What do you people want? Money?”

  “Henry,” I said, “he always listen this good to people when they’re talking to him?”

  Henry just looked at his feet.

  “I am going to fetch the marshal,” Wadsworth boomed. “Shoot me in the back if you like. You will not leave this office alive if you try.”

  “Then we’ll all be dead,” Boon said.

  Wadsworth had started to move, but that stopped him in his tracks. For a minute that felt like an hour, all four of just stood there looking at each other. Nobody even had a gun out. Just four people in an office, sort of paired off, waiting for somebody else to do something.

  It made me a right smart nervous, so I did what I almost always did, which was fill the quiet with my voice.

  “All right, then,” I said, slapping my hands together. “I reckon we got off on the wrong side of the train, here. Mr. Wadsworth, my friend and I are looking for a gentleman name of Arthur Stanley who, I believe, hails from the same corner of the Earth that you do. Good ol’ Henry here recommended to us that you might be the man to talk to about that, which is how come we waited to accost you after your meeting with your pals over there. Now, seems to me maybe your meeting didn’t go too good, or mayhap you got a sour stomach, or could be you’re just a disagreeable son of a bitch. But the fact is that you said, and I’m quoting real direct here, pack off. I think we can all agree that’s a powerful impolite way to address a stranger and it’s on account of that that my good friend here busted up your door.
”

  Boon said, “Correct.”

  “So, how about it, Mr. Wadsworth? You’re the big man around here and us just drifted in from no place to speak of, which to my way of thinking means the decision ought to be yours.”

  Wadsworth blinked.

  “What decision?” he said.

  “About whether you aim to just answer the God damned question or if we’re going to escalate this to something even more unpleasant than it already is.”

  Wadsworth blinked faster. Boon moved around to stand beside him. Henry shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then back again.

  “What was that name again?” the rancher said.

  “Stanley,” said Boon. “Arthur Stanley.”

  “You going to kill him?” Wadsworth said.

  “Probably, yes,” she said.

  A smile stretched out beneath Wadsworth’s moustache, slow and slimy.

  “In that case,” he said, “please accept my apology. I have, as a matter of fact, been acquainted with a fellow Briton who answers to that name, and upon our last discussion he expressed an intention to throw in with some ranchers down in the Hill Country. Seems there’s quite a passel of small operators down there he’s interested in taking over and throwing out if he can get his hands on the big operator’s money. Nasty, nasty man. Word is he made a small fortune illegally dealing in slaves before the war and some bad dealings with the Orient before that.”

  “That is true,” Boon said.

  “Thought he could do for Texas what happened in California with the Chinamen. Dirt cheap labor, work them ’til they drop dead. Even said he had more prurient business interests in Oriental women.”

  “Slavery,” Boon said.

  “Bragged about it, to tell the truth,” said Wadsworth. “Wouldn’t break my heart were someone to put a little lead in his skull. You don’t look Chinese to me, but I’m guessing he done you some measure of wrong.”

  “He didn’t go to China,” Boon said. “Siam.”

  Wadsworth nodded.

  “Try San Marcos,” he said. “And good luck to you.”

  And just like that, we weren’t heading east anymore. We did make it to San Marcos, and there was something that smelled a lot like a good old-fashioned range war brewing there, but if Stanley was ever there in the thick of it, he’d moved on by the time we got there. All the same, that was my first lesson in how changeable things were going to be for as long as I stuck with Boon. And it was why, sitting in that dingy cell in Revelation, New Mexico, I wasn’t willing to bet so much as a Confederate greyback on the fact that she was still doing exactly what she aimed to do before.

  For all I knew, she was halfway to the Dakota Territory on her way to Canada, but the more I pondered it, the less it seemed to matter. I wasn’t going anywhere until the matter with the sheriff was settled, and the simple detail that it hadn’t been settled quickly was starting to weigh on me in the early morning hours after my night in jail. Of course, Les didn’t seem too fussed about it, but then again, I wasn’t any kin to Earl.

  The next time I saw Earl sure drove that point home.

  Chapter Twenty

  He was cutting off a plug of tobacco with my knife when he meandered back to the cells late the next morning. The blade sliced through neatly, on account of I kept it sharp, and he raised it to his mouth to work it back into his cheek. After that, the sheriff just stood there and stared at me for a good while, letting the chaw soften and idly fiddling with my knife. Eventually, he spit on the floor, wiped his moustache on his sleeve, and said, “Guess I got paper on you, Splettstoesser.”

  “Most folks don’t say it right,” I said.

  “My dear departed mother came from Saxony, God rest her soul.”

  “Mein Beileid,” I said.

  Earl grinned. “Danke.”

  He spit again. It was a bad habit.

  “What’s this about a paper?” I asked.

  “You can pretend ignorance if you want,” he said. “But if I know your name, then you can be damn sure I know what you done.”

  “I’ll have to think on it,” I said. “I’m more than forty years old now. I done all kinds of things.”

  “Okay,” said Earl. “You think on it. You got plenty of time.”

  He grinned, spit again, and left.

  “The hell kind of lingo was that?” Les said.

  “German.”

  “Sounds like a strangled cat,” he said.

  Missus McKenzie, the preacher’s wife, came back ’round a little while later with two fresh baskets. As before, Les dug into his like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. I nodded my thanks to her and sat down on the cot to have a peek. Same as the last one, bread and salt beef, a bit of carrot that was cooked until it was soft. I ate all of it.

  In the afternoon, about one full day after my arrest, Earl returned. He wasn’t chewing any tobacco and he didn’t have my knife this time. He did, however, have someone with him.

  Marshal Tom Willocks.

  “Hi, Tom,” I said.

  “Fuck you,” Tom said.

  He looked like hell. He looked like a man who had taken a beating, and then two or three more of them. One of his eyes had swollen shut but it was starting to open again. The white of it was blood-red. His lips were scabbed with splits and his right hand was bandaged up like a great big mitten. He caught me examining that particular aspect of his injuries and sneered at me.

  “Two fingers,” he snarled.

  “Of bourbon?” I said. “Why, that’s mighty kind of you, Marshal. I don’t mind it I do.”

  “You lowdown son of a whore,” he said, and with his left hand he went for Earl’s sidearm. Earl sidestepped him and planted a hand on Tom’s chest to push him back.

  “Now, Marshal,” Earl said.

  “This son of a whore,” Willocks said.

  “Now, Marshal.”

  “Two fucking fingers,” Willocks seethed. He was looking at Earl but talking to me. “That half-breed Oriental bitch and her nigger friend cut off two of my fucking fingers.”

  This was new information to me. For a moment I didn’t say anything at all. When I did, it was: “Those are terrible unkind words to speak about your fellow human beings, Marshal Willocks, and it is my suggestion to you that you set a spell and pray on it. I can speak to the preacher’s wife about it if you like.”

  Willocks turned toward the sheriff. The sheriff heaved a sigh.

  “Marshal Willocks will be escorting you back to Texas to stand trial,” Earl said. “He’ll read off the charges when it’s time to go.”

  “When’s that going to be?” I said.

  “Mornin’,” he said. “Murder, attempted murder, seems he said something about arson and abusin’ a corpse. Shit like that.”

  “Must have me confused with somebody else.”

  “That ain’t my business if you are or if you ain’t. Judge’ll sort that out. Just a damn good thing I thought to send word around about you, Splettstoesser. I had me an idea you might be somebody worth asking after, and you for sure and for certain was.”

  He grinned like a cat who got his cream. I grinned back, wide and wild. That put an end to that.

  “And the woman,” Willocks said. “The half-breed.”

  “We’re looking,” Earl said. “Nothing yet. Probably long gone, Marshal.”

  “Try Canada,” I said.

  Willocks said, “You shut your fucking mouth.”

  I shrugged.

  “It’s your show, Marshal.”

  “You’re God damned right it is,” he said. “And I’m sure going to enjoy watching you kick when they drop you.”

  That was all Tom Willocks had to say, at least for the moment. He turned on his heel and limped away from the cells, through the office and out into the street. I hadn’t really noticed the limp when he’d come in, but I liked seeing it when he left.

  The sheriff leaned back against the wall, underneath one of the lanterns that Missus McKenzie would come light in a few hours’ time.
He hooked his thumbs under his belt and looked me over like I had six eyes.

  Finally, he said, “You really saw a man’s head off?”

  “That’d be the woman.”

  “The half-breed he’s looking for?”

  “She don’t like nobody calling her that,” I said.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Could be you give her up they’ll spare your neck. You’ll still sit in Yuma a spell, maybe the rest of your days. But you’d be above ground.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “Then swing,” he said. “Makes no difference to me. They’ll find her with or without you.”

  I snorted.

  “Seems to me,” I said, “that she’ll probably find them first.”

  “That what you think?”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Maybe I’ll tell Marshal Willocks that you think that.”

  I snorted again.

  “Do,” I said. “Tell him anything you like. If there’s one thing I know for certain about that woman after all this time, it’s that there’s no thinking ahead of her, and there’s no preparing for what she’s got a mind to do. It just happens and you either live through it or you don’t.”

  “God Almighty,” said the sheriff. “I sure hope I’m invited to the hanging.”

  “Wave when you get there,” I said. “So I can be sure I see you.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tom Willocks already sat in his saddle by the time his deputies brought me out of the jailhouse. The sun was high and bright, the first I’d seen of it since two days before, and I had to squint to keep from going blind as a mole. Willocks must have found that funny, because he chortled the whole time I stumbled up to the horses, knocking into the deputies and feeling my way forward.

  “Get your sorry ass on that nag,” he said.

  I blinked at a skeletal brown horse, its back sagging beneath the weight of a riderless saddle. If I hadn’t known any better, I could have sworn it was the same damned nag I took up in Red Foot.

  “Y’all didn’t come by train?” I asked.