Boone's Lick

by Larry McMurtry

  I think he was about ready to come out with it when we saw somebody come slipping up the road—the somebody was Neva.

  “Hello,” Uncle Seth said. “It’s nice to see you’re well.”

  He could see her clearly, because the clouds had finally blown away and there was a big bright moon.

  “Hello,” Neva said, and that was all she said. She went right on past us, toward the freight yard. If she had any adventures in Boone’s Lick she didn’t share them with us.

  “Say, look out for Granpa,” Uncle Seth called after her. “He’s out with his old cap-and-ball again, looking for panthers. Don’t yowl or he might shoot you.”

  “I don’t never yowl,” Neva said. “Anyway, I don’t think that old pistol of his will even shoot.”

  Then she was gone.

  “Besides being hardheaded, the womenfolk in this family are closemouthed, too,” he said. “The only way you’re going to know what one of them does is if you catch her at it.”

  Then he didn’t say anything for a while, and we were nearly to town.

  “What was that you were saying about the Cheyenne Indians?” I asked. I was determined to find out something, even if it wasn’t anything I particularly wanted to know.

  “Oh, I was thinking about that elk Mary Margaret claims she saw,” Uncle Seth said. “The Cheyenne explanation would be that there was an elk somewhere who realized that us Cecils were getting poorly from being so underfed. The elk might have been an old elk, who had been thinking about dying anyway. So the elk decided to give it up, so we could have some proper vittles for a while. Baldy Stone came along and the elk put his spirit into the horse Baldy was riding. It looked like a horse but Mary Margaret seen deeper and realized it was an elk. So she shot it, just like she said. If you ask her thirty years from now what she shot that day Baldy and his deputies requisitioned the mules, she’d still say she shot an elk. And if you believe like the Cheyenne believe, then she was right.”

  “But there are no elk around here,” I pointed out.

  “No, but there are a few left in Kansas,” Uncle Seth said. “That’s probably where it came from—Kansas.”

  The explanation took me by surprise—I didn’t know what to think about it.

  “But Ma ain’t a Cheyenne Indian,” I mentioned.

  “Women and Indians are a lot alike,” Uncle Seth assured me. “In some ways they are just alike.”

  “Then Ma didn’t lie?” I asked.

  “Oh no—Mary Margaret don’t lie,” Uncle Seth said. “She seen an elk, just like she told the sheriff.”

  “You don’t think it could mean Ma’s crazy?” I asked.

  Uncle Seth looked at me as if I was the one who might be crazy, for even considering such a thing.

  “No, Mary Margaret ain’t crazy, any more than the Cheyenne Indians are crazy—at least most of them ain’t,” he said.

  By then we were smack in the middle of Boone’s Lick, right outside the saloon.

  5

  WILD Bill Hickok sat at a table at the back of the saloon, smoking a thin cigar. He wore a buckskin jacket a lot like the one Pa wore, only Pa’s was always filthy from buffalo grease or bear grease or something, whereas Wild Bill’s looked as if it had just come from the tailor. He was playing a hand of solitaire when we walked in, his chair tilted back a little.

  I guess he made it clear that he didn’t want company, because there was nobody at any of the tables just in front of him. All of the customers were either crowded up at three or four tables near the front of the saloon or else were standing at the bar.

  Uncle Seth didn’t let the empty tables stop him.

  “Why, hello, Seth,” Mr. Hickok said, when we approached his table. “You’re still keeping your plinking rifle safe from the damp, I see.”

  “Hello, Bill,” Uncle Seth said. “This hulking lad is my nephew Sherman—Shay for short.”

  To my shock Mr. Hickok settled his chair, stood up, smiled, and shook hands with me courteously.

  “He’s no kin of William Tecumseh Sherman, your former commander—or was he your former commander?” Uncle Seth asked.

  “No, the little frizzy-hair terrier never got to order me around,” Mr. Hickok said. “The two of you can have a seat.”

  I noticed when I was taking a chair that several of the fellows crowded up in the front of the saloon were looking daggers at us—they didn’t like it that we got to sit with Mr. Hickok and they just got to sit with their ugly selves. Uncle Seth didn’t give them a thought.

  “We had a spot of trouble earlier in the day,” Uncle Seth said. “I believe my niece may have stopped by to talk to you about it.”

  “Oh yes, Miss Geneva,” Mr. Hickok said. “She’s a fetching lass, if I do say so. I fed her a big juicy beefsteak and she put it away so quick that I fed her another. That young lady can eat.”

  “It was generous of you,” Uncle Seth said. “If I hadn’t just et I’d have a beefsteak myself.”

  “What was the trouble?” Mr. Hickok inquired.

  “Oh, Baldy Stone borrowed all our mules, and the girls thought he was stealing them. Then Mary Margaret shot Baldy’s horse. At the time she was under the impression that the horse was an elk.”

  The part about the elk, which struck me as so curious, didn’t seem to interest Wild Bill Hickok at all.

  “Now why would Baldy Stone need to borrow a passel of mules?” he asked.

  “He was hoping that good mounts would attract a posse,” Uncle Seth said. “I believe he has had about enough of Jake Miller and that bunch over at Stumptown.”

  “Well, I don’t agree with his thinking,” Wild Bill said. “You can get shot just as dead off a good horse as off a bad horse. The quality of the posse is more important than the quality of the horses. How many posse men does he have signed up?”

  “One, himself,” Uncle Seth said.

  “It would take a gallant fellow to ride off alone to tackle the Millers,” Wild Bill said. “I haven’t noticed that Baldy is that gallant.”

  After that there was a silence. Wild Bill seemed to be thinking about something. The bartender came over with a whiskey bottle and two glasses. Uncle Seth accepted a shot of whiskey, but waved off the second glass.

  “This youth don’t drink,” he said. “But I do. You might just leave that bottle—that way you won’t have to be traipsing back and forth. It’ll give the dust a chance to settle.”

  Uncle Seth had spoken politely, something he didn’t always bother to do, but the bartender, who was a feisty little fellow with a scar just under his lip, took offense at the remark.

  “There’s not a speck of dust on this floor,” the bartender said. “What do you think I do all day and most of the night?”

  “Just leave the bottle—there’s no need for a dispute,” Uncle Seth said.

  “What does he think I do all day and most of the night?” the bartender asked Mr. Hickok, who didn’t reply. The floor of the saloon had so many cigar butts strewn on it that it would have been hard to find much dust, but there was a pretty good pile of mud just inside the door where several mule skinners had scraped off their boots.

  “That man has been working too hard—it’s made him touchy,” Uncle Seth said. “I get touchy myself, when I’m overworked.”

  “Let’s hear more about this expedition to arrest the Millers,” Mr. Hickok said. “The Millers have never disturbed me personally, but that goddamn Little Billy Perkins, who runs with them, has done me several bad turns.”

  “Little Billy has few morals—few to none,” Uncle Seth said.

  “He won’t need morals, if he crosses me again,” Mr. Hickok said. “It would be doing a favor to humanity to dispose of Little Billy, and I’m in the mood to do the favor.

  “If the pay is decent, that is,” he added.

  He finished his little cigar and flipped the butt across the room. Then he pulled three more slim cigars out of his shirt pocket and offered one to Uncle Seth and one to me. He was a very polite man.
/>   “This boy don’t smoke, either,” Uncle Seth said. “Mary Margaret is determined to raise him Christian.”

  “I doubt it will take,” Mr. Hickok said, smiling at me. He lit his new cigar and tilted his chair back again.

  “I believe Sheriff Stone is prepared to offer you fifty dollars for your services, Bill,” Uncle Seth said. “He only offered me five dollars, a sum I looked askance at.”

  Wild Bill Hickok laughed heartily at that piece of information. He seemed so relaxed and so friendly that I couldn’t figure out why Uncle Seth had seemed nervous about going to see him. Behind us, the men in the front of the saloon didn’t seem relaxed at all. Several of them were still glaring at us, a fact both Mr. Hickok and Uncle Seth continued to ignore.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to enjoy being offered forty-five dollars less than me, if I’ve got my subtraction right,” Mr. Hickok said.

  “You’re accurate, both as to the sum and the opinion,” Uncle Seth said.

  Mr. Hickok blew a smoke ring or two and looked thoughtful.

  “If they paid us fifty dollars apiece that would be a hundred dollars,” he said. “I doubt the town has it. Do you suppose there’s a rich citizen they could ask for a loan?”

  “Well, Rosie McGee,” Uncle Seth said.

  I perked my ears up at that. Rosie McGee lived over the saloon. Once or twice I caught a glimpse of her, fanning herself in front of her window on sultry days. G.T. must have had a few glimpses, too, because Rosie was the woman he wanted to marry.

  “I recall that Rosie harbors a grudge against Jake Miller,” Uncle Seth said. “If she’s still harboring her grudge she might be willing to make the community a loan.

  “That’s the best outlook,” Uncle Seth went on. “If the town hired you, and Rosie hired me, we wouldn’t have to put up with some ignorant posse men who would probably just be in the way.”

  Mr. Hickok blew another smoke ring.

  “I don’t know Miss McGee very well,” he said. “It’s possible that she harbors a grudge against me, too.”

  “She could even harbor a grudge against the town of Boone’s Lick, in which case she might not care to contribute a cent,” Uncle Seth speculated.

  “Seth, it’s time I tried to scare up a card game,” Mr. Hickok said. “I can’t just idle the night away discussing grudges—there’s such a passel of them. But I’ll contribute my services to this Stumptown expedition for fifty dollars—you’ll have to scare up your own wages. I’m available anytime but Friday.”

  “Why not Friday?” Uncle Seth asked, as he got up from the table.

  “I don’t work Fridays—it’s a firm rule,” Mr. Hickok said. “Nice to meet you, Sherman.”

  “You see, he’s superstitious,” Uncle Seth said, as we were leaving the saloon. “All these fine gunfighters have their superstitions.”

  There was a flight of stairs outside the saloon, going up to the room where Rosie McGee lived. Just as we were passing the steps I looked up and saw a little red glow at the top of the stairs—somebody was sitting on the landing, smoking a cigar. A cloud had crossed the moon—all I saw was a little glowing tip.

  Uncle Seth saw it too. He took a step or two, and stopped.

  “Shay, you go on home,” he said. “I believe that’s Rosie with the cheroot. I think I’ll sound her out about the state of her grudges.

  “Look out for Granpa,” he added. “He might still be hunting that panther.”

  Then he turned back, and I soon heard him going up the stairs beside the saloon. The abrupt way he left me on my own gave me a lonely feeling, for some reason. It wasn’t the dark—I walked around in the dark all the time, sometimes with G.T. and sometimes without him. I had enjoyed my visit with Wild Bill Hickok, but now I felt lonely. What I wished was that I could be grown-up, like Uncle Seth—grown-up enough to stop and talk with a woman bold enough to sit and smoke a cigar, at the top of the stairs, outside a saloon.

  6

  WHEN I got home Ma was in the graveyard. I was feeling a little better by then—it was a pretty night and I had walked off the loneliness. There was no sign of Granpa and his pistol but as I was passing the graveyard I saw Ma sitting on a little wooden bench, by the graves. One of Ma’s sisters was buried there, and Granma Crackenthorpe, and my four little brothers who hadn’t made it through the winters. There were some pretty bad winters in Missouri, and our cabin wasn’t chinked too good. G.T. nearly died himself once, but with the help of an old woman who knew about poultices, he pulled through.

  Ma had little Marcy with her—the baby was snoring in the quiet way little babies snore.

  Sometimes I would get a knot in my throat when I came upon Ma sitting in the graveyard. I don’t think a person would sit in a graveyard unless they were sad, and I didn’t want to think about Ma being sad.

  But there she was, not saying a thing, just sitting on her little bench, amid the graves.

  “Hi, Ma,” I said.

  She looked behind me.

  “Seth didn’t come back with you?” she asked.

  “I think he wanted to play cards,” I said.

  Ma motioned for me to sit down beside her on the bench, something she rarely did. When Ma went to the graveyard she usually made it clear that she wanted to be left alone.

  “Don’t be lying for him, Shay,” she said. “Let him lie for himself, if there has to be a lie.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t even know why I lied—it just came out. I don’t know whether Ma cared or not, what Uncle Seth did with Rosie McGee.

  It seemed to me the best thing to do would be to change the subject, to something I felt sure would get Ma’s attention.

  “Uncle Seth wants to take G.T. and me with the posse,” I said. “The sheriff’s getting up a posse to go arrest the Millers, over at Stumptown, and Uncle Seth thinks me and G.T. are old enough to go along.”

  “Did you hear me, Shay?” Ma asked, ignoring my statement completely. “I said don’t lie for your Uncle Seth—and don’t lie for your Pa, either, if he ever comes home again. Let grown men do their own lying—I mean it.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said meekly. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said it.”

  Then Ma put her head in her hands and cried. The baby woke up and began to cry too. I didn’t know what to do, but I didn’t dare leave the bench. I put my arm around Ma, but she kept crying. I knew that when Ma went out to the graveyard at night she went there to do her crying. We all knew that, and took care to give the graveyard a wide berth, if Ma was in it. But this time I had been careless and here I was. Ma cried and the baby cried—I felt for a minute like I might cry too, although I didn’t know of anything I needed to cry about. Mainly I just wished Uncle Seth would show up. He was the one person who could get Ma feeling better, when she was low.

  It felt like Ma was going to cry forever, but I guess it wasn’t forever. She stopped crying and then the baby stopped. Once they were both calmed down, Ma let Marcy nurse a little.

  “I’m glad you didn’t leave, Shay,” Ma said, when she was herself again. “The ability to stay put when a woman’s crying is not one most men have.

  “You’re fifteen,” she added. “I expect you’ll soon have a woman of your own. Take my advice and just stay put when she cries. You don’t have to say anything: just don’t leave. If you can just keep your seat until the crying’s over it’ll be better for both of you.”

  I had no comment on that. At the moment I didn’t expect I’d ever have a woman of my own—I probably wouldn’t need to worry about the crying part.

  “I guess your uncle ran into Rosie,” Ma said.

  I didn’t answer, so she gave me a little poke in the ribs with her elbow.

  “Mind your manners,” Ma said. “Answer me when I ask a question.”

  “He was going to try and see if she’d pay him fifty dollars to go with the posse,” I said. I didn’t think Uncle Seth would mind if I told that much.

  “What? Say that again?” Ma asked, so I sa
id it again.

  “You’re just a babe in the woods, Shay,” Ma said. Then she chuckled, kind of deep in her throat.

  “Rosie don’t pay men fifty dollars,” Ma said. “It’s the other way around—men pay Rosie fifty dollars. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more, depending. But Rosie don’t pay men.”

  I had thought the notion that Rosie McGee would chip in fifty dollars to send Uncle Seth with the posse was a little far-fetched, myself. If the sheriff was only willing to pay him five dollars to go shoot at the Miller gang, why would Rosie McGee want to pay him fifty dollars to do the same job? Of course, the fifty dollars only came up because that was what the sheriff offered to pay Wild Bill Hickok. It seemed like a world of money to me.

  “What was she supposed to pay Seth the fifty dollars for?” Ma asked. She seemed a lot more cheerful now that we had started talking about Uncle Seth. Even without being there, he was helping to cheer Ma up.

  “He seemed to think she’d want him to catch Jake Miller,” I said. “That’s what he and Mr. Hickok were talking about. Uncle Seth wants to take me and G.T. along with the posse when they go to Stumptown.”

  “I heard you slip that in the first time,” Ma said. Marcy was wide awake—she had been trying to crawl lately. Ma put her down on the ground on her belly, to see if she was making any progress with her crawling. Marcy hadn’t made much. She just waved her arms and grunted.

  “You can do it!” Ma said, to encourage her. “Get up on your hands and legs and crawl.”

  Marcy continued to wave her arms and legs and grunt.

  “She’ll figure it out in a few more days,” Ma said. She left Marcy to struggle with the problem.

  “Your Uncle Seth don’t know anything about women,” Ma said, looking at me. “He’s God’s fool, where women are concerned. Rosie McGee won’t give him a cent, although it is a fact that she hates Jake Miller.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer, which meant that in her opinion, why wasn’t any of my business.

  “Can we go with the posse, then?” I asked. I was excited at that prospect, but Ma had been so careful about us during the wartime that I didn’t know if there was much hope.