Dutch Uncle
Page 4
Across the street a crowd had assembled. Jake glanced past them without interest, then looked a second time when he realized they were watching him. They were miners, logically; but miners combed, pomaded, dressed in their Sunday best. Their absorption in him was beginning to stir the hair at the nape of his neck when Paco and Urraca scrambled out of the stage behind him and the driver dropped their filthy, fat carpetbag into the dust at his feet. Jake turned quickly to catch his own valise before it got the same treatment.
‘Thirty-minute stop here, mister, if you want to get a bite to eat. But don’t take any longer than you have to, will you?’
Jake nodded. ‘What’s that across the street?’ he asked. ‘A lynch mob or a shotgun wedding?’
The driver glanced at them and grinned. ‘A little bit of both by this time, I expect. If you eat in the station here, it’s on the ticket. Anywhere else and it’s on you. Thirty minutes.’ He reached for the mailbag as two stable hands came out for the animals.
Hernando Sánchez stood in the doorway of the cantina picking his teeth and greeting the incoming passengers with a casually raised hand. He was a small, slender man with the assurance of a bullfighter and a face that wore the benign melancholy of a plaster saint. The face and hand gave casual absolution to each arriving guest until he saw the two children.
‘Hey, mocosos. Be off!’ he snapped with a quick turn of the hand into a fist.
‘They’re with me,’ said Jake as he entered. Sánchez was instantly contrite.
‘A thousand apologies, patrón. I thought they were my own. Come in, little soldiers. Forgive my mistake, eh? Such fine strong boys! Almost big enough to be caballeros. What is your pleasure, patrón?’
‘A whiskey and two beers. Small ones.’
Sánchez turned in the direction of a bundle of rags at the end of the bar. ‘Un aguardiente y dos cervezas, por favor.’ The bundle stirred and raised itself into the specter of a skeletal old woman in a colorless rebozo, who had been dozing on a stool. She drew the two beers and brought them to the cantinero’s hands, then returned to get the whiskey.
‘What will you have to eat, señor? We have an excellent stew today. Very nourishing and wholesome. There is nothing in it that I would not eat myself.’ Sánchez had been taking lessons from patent-medicine advertisements that a store clerk read to him.
‘A little information, first,’ said Jake.
‘Whatever you wish.’ Sánchez turned his head to check on the old crone fumbling a bottle off the shelf. As he looked, she uncorked it and started to put it to her fallen mouth. Sánchez picked up a small revolver from the shelf beneath the bar and put a shot into the wall over her head. There were startled cries from some of the customers, the old woman squawked like a parrot, and Sánchez repeated distinctly, ‘UN aguardiente, por favor.’ She poured out the drink hurriedly and tottered forward with it. Jake noticed that the wall was heavily pocked with holes in that corner.
‘Gracias, little queen,’ murmured Sánchez, taking it and setting it before Jake. He seemed to notice the heavy silence in the room for the first time.
‘It is nothing, señores, nothing at all. Relax yourselves and have good appetites.’ To Jake, he said, ‘My little mother is so deaf, sometimes she doesn’t hear my voice. Ah, the frailties our loved ones have to bear when they grow old. Also, she drinks a bit too much. It is very bad for her liver. If I did not care for her so tenderly, she would be dead by now. What did you wish to know, patrón?’
‘Is there a place in town called the Golden Moon?’
‘A den of iniquity. Yes. A house of shame and great expensiveness. You should have nothing to do with such a place. I have heard that they’ — he leaned forward to whisper — ‘put drugs in the drinks there. A man goes in — they drug him, they rob him. He gets nothing of what he went in for, because they are all witches, you know. They only do it with the devil.
‘When he wakes his pockets are empty, and they throw him out in the street.’ His voice rose suddenly. ‘Get out, you pig! You have no money. We don’t want you.’ Jake froze, the focus of every eye in the room. ‘Like that,’ said Sánchez, concluding in a normal tone. ‘Also, the bruja who runs it, she has the evil eye.’
‘Where is it?’
Sánchez put his hand to his heart. ‘Patrón, why do you wish to go there and become diseased and cursed? Here, we have everything you could wish for, at little expense. Food, drink, soft beds, someone to wash and mend your shirts — Prudencia!’ He snapped his fingers to a stoop-shouldered slattern carrying a tray of stew bowls. ‘Attend to this gentleman.’
Jake stood up hastily and put sixty cents on the bar. ‘Never mind. Thanks anyway.’
Sánchez followed him to the door. ‘Let it be as you wish, then, patrón. But when you have ruined your health come back to see my sainted mother for a remedy. She is the only curandera in Arredondo.’
The crowd across the street was beginning to drift away as Jake came out of the cantina. There were several shots fired in parting, and the sound of breaking glass. Paco and Urraca fell together behind Jake’s knees, but there was no further demonstration. The men scattered in groups of twos and threes to the various saloons.
They left behind them a window, already much cracked and taped, now freshly punished with bullet holes. It bore the words THE ARREDONDO ARROW in semiprofessional letters across its width. He started for it, as a better information source than the barkeeper. When he was still several yards from the walk he could read the smaller inscription, Clement C. Hand, Publisher.
Behind the ruined glass a compact body stood on guard at bulldog readiness, his arms in gartered shirt sleeves, his eyes invisible behind the reflective shield of spectacles.
Jake came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the name and the figure, then turned and angled off down the street instead.
‘Come on, hurry it up,’ he growled at Paco and his sister. Behind them the Arrow door swung open and there was the clatter of light boots on the walk.
‘Hey, there! Wait! Dutch, is it you?’
‘Is he after us?’ Paco panted hoarsely at his side.
‘Dutch Hollander! Hold on!’
Jake slowed down reluctantly, then came to a halt. People on the street had begun to stare at him and his pursuer. He turned and looked back as the smaller man closed the gap between them. ‘Hello, Hand,’ he said in a voice that mustered all the heartiness of a bored consumptive.
Clement Hand was more demonstrative. ‘Dutch Hollander, it is you. I thought you looked familiar when I saw you get off the stage, but how long has it been now, fifteen — twenty years? A hundred? No matter, you look the same. I’d know you anywhere. Where have you been all these years, and what are you doing in Arredondo? Planning to stay? Say, come on back to the office. Carrie’s there. You’ll really give her a surprise!’
Paco listened to the stream of questions with a frown. He tugged on Jake’s coat so sharply that Jake barely restrained himself from kicking him. ‘He don’t even know your name right, tío. Maybe he’s some kind of damn loco.’
Clement Hand beamed down on the boy, not understanding his throaty mutter. ‘Say, are these your little ones, Dutch? I never thought you’d settle down to raising young. They’re a fine pair of boys, though.’
Jake looked frostbitten. ‘They’re not mine.’
‘They’re not?’
‘I’m trying to deliver them to somebody who lives here. Maybe you know her.’
‘I know everybody there is to know around here. But come on back to the office, first. Look, there’s Carrie now, standing out there wondering at me. She didn’t know what made me rip out of the place like I did. She’ll be fretting. I suppose you saw the little rumpus that took place a few minutes ago. It wasn’t anything serious. It’s just that the boys are getting a bit keyed up. But Carrie worries. Come on back.’
He took Jake’s arm and pulled him back to the office door, where the slender figure in a severely tailored shirt and skirt stood waiting for them.
Providence was not a term Jake had ever heard applied to himself, but his mind was less occupied with the word than it was with the fair-haired woman waiting for them. Seeing someone like her again was an accident so rare in his life he had nothing with which to compare it. He didn’t think he was going to enjoy the novelty.
Carrie Hand’s face betrayed no more emotion than Jake’s. She put out a long-fingered, cool hand smudged with ink and said, ‘Hello, Mr Hollander. Are you planning to stay here in Arredondo?’
He shifted some of his luggage so he could take the hand, relieved that she had come to the point so quickly. ‘No, I’m just passing through, Miss Hand. Or is it something else now?’
Her fingers slipped out of his. ‘No. It’s still Miss Hand.’
‘I’m only here until the stage leaves. I’m looking for a place here called the Golden Moon. Could you direct me?’
Her eyebrows lifted. ‘The stage only makes a half-hour stop, Mr Hollander. Will you have the time?’
Jake’s mouth twitched into a fleeting smile, but her brother was taken aback. ‘Carrie, what’s got into you? And what’s all this Mr Hollander — Miss Hand business?’
Jake ignored him. ‘I’m not asking for myself, ma’am. I’m trying to direct the boy, here.’
Her whole posture tightened at that, and even Clement Hand’s face grew sober.
‘You’re not really taking these children down to the Moon, are you, Dutch? Do you know what kind of place it is?’
‘I’ve got a fair idea. But don’t worry about it. They’re expected. Where is it?’
Clem pointed down the street to a two-story house, still unpainted. It was already the most imposing structure in town except for the oddly shaped cantina. Carrie Hand turned on a pivotal foot and went back into the newspaper office. Jake made a movement to leave, too.
‘Stay a minute more, Dutch. Please,’ Clement Hand begged, and urged him through the door and into a chair near his own desk. In the corner farthest from the door a yokel the size of a grizzly bear was cleaning type. He stared at them uncomprehendingly. Paco and Urraca joined him and began a minute inspection of the printing equipment.
‘How long have you been here Clem?’ Jake asked with faint interest. He was still enduring a silent summing up from Carrie across the room.
‘A year this coming May.’
‘Have you always been this popular?’ Jake indicated the seamed window.
Clem laughed too quickly. ‘Oh, that’s nothing. If I’d packed up and left town every time somebody felt like putting a hole in my window— Why, when we first came here and went to press, half the men, in the area took off from work just to come see how the machine operated.
‘I ran off a special edition for them, with all their names and their claim names and a headline that said, “We Struck It Rich in Arredondo.” Some of them got so happy they shot out all our lamps and peppered the roof with so many holes we nearly drowned when the rains came.’ He laughed again and looked at Carrie. She said nothing.
‘Look, Dutch, when I said to Carrie it was providence that sent you here, I meant it. I don’t know where you’re headed or why, but if it’s a job you need I believe we’ve got just the thing for you right here. And I know you’re just what the League has been praying for.’ He seemed to look for Carrie’s support before continuing, but she remained silent, watching Jake, Jake made a steeple out of his fingers and waited.
‘Where are you from now, Jake, if you don’t mind me asking? Tombstone? Tucson? Phoenix or Flagstaff?’
‘San Francisco.’
Clem whistled. ‘Had you been there long?’
‘Two years,’ Jake said, with no intention of expanding any further on his history. Carrie turned back to her desk, but he saw she was still listening.
‘Well, I guess in that case Arredondo doesn’t look like much to you. I don’t know if you’ve had any experience with mining towns. They’re a lot different from cattle towns like Willow Bend. Steadier, for one thing, since they don’t have to depend on a seasonal influx of roughnecks for their money.
‘The money is here, and more of it stays here, even if we don’t have a regular bank yet. But that’s only because we’re so new. You see, Dutch, Arredondo is still so fresh out of the ground that we don’t even have any kind of proper local government! We’re not incorporated into a town; we don’t have a mayor. We’ve yelled our heads off to the county and the territorial government for some attention so we can begin to have a little law here, collect taxes, and make something of the place that would attract more people. But they’re all so busy up in Santa Fe, playing railroad and seeing Indians behind every rock, they haven’t taken the time for us.
‘It’s the damnedest thing — oh, sorry, Carrie — but we can’t even get a sheriff’s deputy out of the county. They say they don’t have the money. We offered to pay the man’s salary out of our own pockets — and they haven’t even had the courtesy to answer our last letter! Here we are, a growing, booming town with a major industry that would turn most other towns green with envy; new people coming in every week, new buildings going up every month — and it’s just as if we didn’t exist.’
Jake sighed faintly. Clem didn’t notice, but Carrie did.
‘So, to make do for the time, some of us have formed the Citizens’ Government League to represent the town’s interests the best way we can. No authority, of course. There are five or six merchants, several saloon owners, the foreman of the Hassayampa Mine when he bothers to come, me, Carrie, and a few others.
‘We do what we can when a problem comes up, but a handful of sober citizens meeting once or twice a week over a saloon don’t have much influence on the bunch of drunks down in the bar.’ He took off his glasses and began to polish them vigorously.
‘Now, I don’t want you to think that this is one of those wild places like Tombstone and some others. It isn’t. The men work hard here. There aren’t any vagrants or loafers. The town is too isolated for them. I guess that’s something we can thank the Apaches for: making it too rough a trip for a saddle tramp looking for trouble. The men are honest and good workers, but on weekends they do want to blow off steam, and then the ladies and children have to keep out of the streets. No real trouble yet, but the danger does exist, and some of us have been concerned about it.’ He looked myopically at Jake.
‘What we need here is somebody to represent the law until the politicians in the capital are ready to give us a little help. We scraped up the money to build a jail six months ago, but we can’t keep anybody on the job to run it. Oh, we had a fellow who lasted a couple of months, then got a fresh attack of the silver fever as soon as he had a grubstake and took off to the hills again. We hired another one, just a kid. He took the job seriously, but he wasn’t old enough to make the men take him seriously. He tried to stop a fight between the Gebhardt brothers and got his arm broken. He quit. It was just as well he did, but—’
Jake was shaking his head, already standing up again. ‘I’m not in that business any more, Clem. Haven’t been for a long time. Sorry. Thanks for your offer, though. It’s been good to see you again.’ That was as far as he could decently go with a social lie.
Clem was looking at him in astonishment. ‘What do you mean, you’re not in that business any more? You’re Dutch Hollander, aren’t you? What other business could you be in, as long as anybody remembers Kansas?’
Jake smiled faintly. ‘That’s just it, friend. Nobody remembers, least of all me. And I don’t use that name, either. It never was my choice to begin with. The name is Jake. Jacob Hollander. And I stay well by keeping out of other people’s fights.’
‘What do you do now?’ It was Carrie asking.
Jake turned in surprise. Several sharp answers sprang to his mind, but he put them away. ‘I play poker,’ he said simply.
She gave a ladylike
sniff of disapproval. ‘That isn’t an occupation: it’s a vice.’
He smiled. ‘Miss Hand, you’re right, as far as most people are concerned. Many are called and few are chosen, as the preachers say. I’m one of the few. I get by, and I don’t take anything from people except what they want to give me — like those preachers.’ He touched his hat brim to her and finished the motion with an imperious gesture to Paco, who reluctantly let go of a handful of inky type.
‘But, Dutch—’ Clem began again doggedly.
‘You’ve been refused politely, Clem,’ his sister said. ‘Mr Hollander is eager to get down to the Golden Moon, and you’re detaining him.’
Jake gave her the ghost of a bow from the door before closing it behind him.
*
The Golden Moon bore no sign to show it was a place of business, but, looking at the size of it compared with the rest of the town, Jake could see that it would need none. Especially when it was painted. He did wonder about the owner’s plans in that direction; a bright pumpkin yellow, or maybe just an old-fashioned, honest cow-yard red. He handed the carpetbag to Paco and knocked on the door.
There was some vocal disturbance at the back of the house, then the shuffle of feet approaching. The door was opened by a fat, brown old woman in zapatos and a calico skirt. He examined her doubtfully.
‘Who’s in charge around here?’ he asked, deciding she wasn’t.
‘She’s asleep. Come back later.’
‘Wake her up. I’ve got something for her.’
The old hag grinned at him nastily, and Jake snorted.
‘Not that! Tell her there are a couple of her relatives’ out here to see her.’ He put his foot in the door before she could close it, and repeated quietly, ‘Wake her up, mama grande, or I will.’
She scowled like a totem pole, but she let him and the children come into the hall while she retreated to the back of the house again.
The walls inside were covered with an Ornate wallpaper the color of raw liver, veined with nameless vines. The carpets were of the same shade, crawling with arabesques, and the walls were heavy with gilt-framed mirrors and pictures of absent-minded-looking nudes. Beyond the hall was a large game room that mocked the gentility of a parlor, with Austrian lamps and plush-bottomed chairs. But Jake could also see an excellent faro layout and several other green-felt-topped tables big enough to seat six or more. The room, which he thought must take up most of the downstairs, was overcrowded in spite of its size, and stale with cigar smoke, sweat, and perfume.