Dutch Uncle

by Marilyn Durham

  Sánchez looked startled, then began to swell into a defensive posture. ‘It is mine! We made an agreement.’

  ‘And you broke it!’ She saw Jake. ‘What are you standing around for? Make him put it back, or put him in jail. That’s my tent until he pays me what he said he would!’

  ‘Deel, you shouldn’t be outside like that. Take my coat or something,’ said Clem, preparing to cover her where she least needed it. She shoved him out of the way, advancing on Sánchez.

  ‘Keep your own clothes on, Shorty. Listen, you chiseling little greaser, I’ve been waiting for that shipment for a month. I’m down to the dregs!’ She turned on Jake again. ‘He agreed to pay me six barrels of whiskey and twelve barrels of beer for that thing four weeks ago. His wagons have been down to Agua Prieta and back three times since then, and I still don’t have any of it. Until I get it, that tent is mine. Make him put it back!’

  ‘This woman is telling lies! I told her the whiskey was hers the moment my tent was in place. Her whiskey is on its way. Ramón’s sons are bringing it. My tent is in place. It was a gentleman’s agreement, Señor Hollander, and she is not a gentleman now.’

  ‘You bet your ass I’m not a gentleman, and I’m not a fool either. No whiskey, no tent, and that’s flat!’

  ‘Deel—’ said Clem.

  ‘Later. Listen, Jake, I’m a practical woman and I’ve got a pretty thick skin, but I’m fed up with this little crook trying to cheat me and put me out of business. Have you heard the kind of stuff he’s been telling people about me and my girls? I can’t even get my house painted since he told all his relatives I’d put the evil eye on them! And all because he couldn’t get a free lay while his wife’s out of town.’ She stabbed a long finger at Sánchez. ‘Something for nothing, that’s his motto. He’s got it tattooed on his prick!’

  ‘She is putting a curse on me!’ shrieked Sánchez, covering his crotch with both hands.

  ‘Deel, for God’s sake—’ Clem begged, seeing that the town’s women were beginning to join the crowd.

  ‘Now, just calm down,’ Jake began, but Prudencia rushed into the group suddenly to defend Sánchez from the harmful finger.

  ‘Cochina! Perra! Ramera!’ she screamed.

  ‘Calling your three sisters?’ Delia asked her. ‘Mind your own business, you nickel dose of clap.’

  Prudencia swung her arm back for a skull-cracking blow, but Delia calmly pushed her in the face before it unwound and sent her sprawling back into Sánchez’s arms.

  ‘All right, that’s enough now!’ Jake said, but Prudencia threw herself at Delia with another scream, grabbing two handfuls of red hair for an anchor. Delia’s fingernails raked her, and the two of them fell to the ground.

  The tent fell, too, as the men dropped their ropes and came running to see the fight.

  Jake made several attempts to reach into the struggle, got his hat knocked off and his shins kicked, but managed to seize Delia’s waist as she came up on top again, and dragged her off Prudencia. There were cheers and applause from the crowd as she fought to get away from him.

  ‘Just let me brain this bitch, and then I’ll take an ax and chop the damned thing down myself!’

  ‘It’s down, for Christ’s sake! It’s down! Look!’ He grabbed her jaw and twisted her head around. ‘There, are you happy? Now, cool off. Aaa!’ he warned Prudencia, just getting to her feet again with murder in her eye. ‘The fight’s over. Take her inside, Sánchez. Paco, you go with him and order some food.’ His arm still full of Delia, he swung around to look for Paco and found Carrie standing behind him.

  ‘I’ll see that they have a proper breakfast,’ she said coolly. ‘You seem to have your hands full. Clem, Mr French wants to see you about his Easter advertisement.’ She captured a child with each hand and wheeled them away from the cantina.

  Jake released Delia. Clem didn’t stir.

  Delia seemed to regain her good humor immediately. Her breasts still heaving, her eyes glowing with victory, she began to preen herself, running her fingers through her hair to claw it into a rough order. Her robe hung open, showing off her splendid body. There were whistles from the men in the street. The town’s women left the group.

  ‘Free show, boys,’ Delia’ crowed, watching the women leave. ‘Just to let you know what you’ve been missing if any of you are still throwing your money away in that cockroach club across the street!’ She held up both arms like a winning prize fighter. Then her eyes came to rest on Clement Hand, tight-faced and silent, still holding his proffered coat. She let her hands drop to her hips.

  ‘What do you want done with your damned tent, now that you’ve got it down again?’ Jake asked her. ‘Who’s going to haul it back up the street for you?’

  Delia licked her lips, watching Clem. ‘Let the little bull thrower keep it. I just wanted to show him he couldn’t get away with anything behind my back. But tell him if I don’t get my whiskey by this weekend I’ll put a hex on him that’ll set his britches on fire.’ She laughed happily. ‘You should have seen those little runts sneaking that tent out of my yard this morning. Like a bunch of ants kidnapping a snake!

  ‘Your sister’s calling you,’ she told Clem.

  ‘If you’re ready to go home now, Delia, take my coat and cover yourself up,’ Clem said quietly.

  To Jake’s surprise, Delia sighed and began to wrap her kimono around her waist, letting Clem drape his coat over her shoulders and take her arm. They were almost the same height and still looking at each other steadily.

  Without turning her head she nudged Jake with her free elbow and said, ‘Keep an eye on that Mex for me, honey, will you?’

  Jake watched them go, frowning, until he realized he was the last man left in the middle of the street.

  He walked into the cantina still looking thoughtful and ordered his usual breakfast of tortillas and chorizos. He favored the hot country sausage that Sánchez’s old mother made, because he supposed that the amount of chili she put into the pork was more than enough to overcome any disease lurking in the body of a Mexican pig. With the food, he had beer. Sánchez had no respect for coffee, so there was no use ordering it in his place.

  Sánchez examined him shrewdly as he ate. ‘Señor Hollander, you are not well.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘No, no. I am seldom deceived. As the son of the best curandera anywhere, I see things others would not notice, perhaps. You are pale and silent. Your fade does not have the rudiment complexion of good health this morning.’

  Jake shifted his attention to Sánchez, unwillingly snagged on this latest shard of speech.

  ‘It is the bruja, is it not? I saw you coming from her house last night. You need have no fear. If she has poisoned you or put a love spell on you, my little queen will cure you. She knows all herbs, roots, remedies. Tell me what food or drink the bruja gave you and my mother will do the rest.’

  ‘You’ve got your English twisted, Sánchez. Delia may be a bitch, but she’s no witch.’

  Sánchez laughed indulgently. ‘Bitch — witch. That is very comical, patrón. But I understand all English very well, and it is witch that I mean. Do not cross her, patrón, or you will see what she can do, even without her evil eye. Now, she has other help. That scarred man who is in her house is worse than a brujo.’

  ‘Ramey? What do you know about him?’ Jake asked, suddenly interested.

  ‘Come into my office and I will show you something.’

  Sánchez’s office was a pantry-sized room smaller than Jake’s quarters. It was furnished with a heavy table and chair, a strongbox that must have come to the New World with Cortes, and a ten-year supply of wanted posters and express bills furnished by the stage line. Jake stood in wonder at the montage of ugly faces and assorted charges that papered the four walls.

  It took Sánchez a moment to find his man, but the face was unmistakably George Ramey’s. Army deserter, renegade, slaver.

  ‘Slaver? This poster is ten years old, but that’s still pretty late for
slave trading. Who was he supposed to be selling to who?’

  ‘Indians, señor. Indians to the Indians, and Indians to any rancher or hacendado on either side of the border who wants them. It still goes on. I myself have known cases.’

  Jake had a sudden recollection of his first meeting with Delia, when she refused the kids. ‘Sell them to Sánchez,’ she’d said. ‘He’ll buy anything.’ But he didn’t quote her to the cantinero.

  ‘What’s Ramey doing in town now?’ he asked.

  Sánchez shrugged. ‘Who knows? But it is sure to be something very bad, and very profitable for him, I think.’

  Remembering that he had a wanted poster of his own, Jake felt for it to see if Sánchez knew anything about Frank Becker. But the paper was no longer in his vest pocket. He thanked Sánchez for the information and started to leave1 then paused.

  ‘By the way, Delia says you can keep the tent, as long as she gets her whiskey by the weekend.’

  ‘But of course she will get her whiskey. She has the word of a Sánchez on that. Unless’ — he smiled blandly — ‘something should happen to it on the way. It would be a great pity if those cursed Apaches should take it into their heads to raid the wagons and steal her whiskey. Because, as I told you, it was her whiskey, as soon as we made the bargain of gentlemen.’

  He flicked a bar towel at the swarm of flies settling on the remains of Jake’s breakfast. ‘But the Apaches also are not gentlemen. Who can say what they will do?’

  *

  Jake strolled the streets aimlessly, feeling disconnected and ill at ease. He wasn’t happy with the feeble way he had resigned himself to spending the rest of the month in Arredondo at Clem’s first plea this morning. He could say he had little choice, but that was a blushing lie because he hadn’t even made an attempt to get away before he gave in.

  And for a man who was so universally needed last night, he sure as hell was unpopular today. Where was everybody? Neither Carrie nor the kids were in the Arrow office. Delia and Clem — he still hadn’t come out of the Golden Moon.

  What went on in Delia Moon’s head? She gave him funny looks and told him bad lies; led him on— It had occurred to him late last night that when she offered to take the kids she might have been working around to inviting him to move in with her, and then only turned peculiar because of his own thick-headedness.

  Would she behave like that? Women didn’t like to do the asking, he knew. But plenty of them did, anyway, and he was usually disposed to let them. It saved a lot of time and money.

  He hadn’t turned her down last night, and she had still been trying when he left. But this morning she looked right through him and walked off with Clement Hand, who couldn’t buy five cents’ worth if Delia was selling at a dollar a ton. Was she egging Clem on just to spite Carrie, or to make Jake jealous?

  The raw vanity in that thought made him snort. That woman didn’t have any more use for him than she did for Rosie Robles’s kids.

  He loitered in front of French’s, frowning at his own reflection in the window, and that of the Golden Moon behind him. He needed a shave. He usually shaved first thing in the morning because his beard was beginning to show a lot of gray. He saw Clement Hand in the glass, coming out of the Moon with some sort of ledger under his arm.

  By God, he wouldn’t give the kids to that whore across the street if she paid him in gold. She might sell them to Ramey.

  He ought to go over there and arrest Ramey and collect that two-hundred-dollar reward.

  But he’d have to take him fifty miles to court by himself. And then wait six months to a year to collect the money.

  If the money was still being offered.

  Ramey wasn’t worth six months of Jake’s time.

  It beat the hell out of him what Delia would want with those kids. She must want to sell them to Ramey. Well, she’d play hell. They must have some relatives, somewhere, however strange the word might be to Paco. All Mexicans had relatives by the dozens. If Carrie couldn’t find a good place for them here, as she’d promised, he’d wire Yuma before he left town and see what else he could find out about Rosie Robles.

  There was bound to be somebody who would claim them, and he wouldn’t refuse to pay their fare, or even make a little side trip on his way to El Paso to drop them off.

  He stopped on the corner by the Silver Man, searching for a cigar. In the field behind the cantina the tent had blossomed again. Its blue and red pennants fluttered frantically in a strong northern breeze. There was some sort of lettering on the canvas walls that the men were blotting out with a coat of yellow paint.

  Rosie Robles did have somebody back in Yuma, Jake remembered suddenly. Frank Becker. That fact was what had sent him down to Delia’s last night to begin with.

  The poster had described Rosie as Becker’s common-law wife. A fancy title for a pimp’s property. But if he was Rosie’s man six years ago, what else might he be? Paco once said his papa was with the devils in hell.

  Frank Becker had been shut up for all Paco’s life in a place they called ‘Hell on the Colorado’; Jake had read that term in the Police Gazette. He must be back there again by now, unless he was lying dead out in the Yuma desert. Nobody had ever really escaped from Yuma penitentiary.

  As he was staring at the tent a match flared under his nostrils, startling him. Remembering the cigar in his mouth, he bent to get it lighted from Patchy Murdoch’s match.

  ‘Want to play some cards, Dutch?’

  ‘That’s the first good word I’ve heard today.’ Jake grinned, relieved to give up thinking. ‘I hope you’ve got plenty of money.’

  13

  He was sitting in the Silver Man, cradling a full house in one hand — aces and ladies — and a stack of silver dollars in the other, wondering if Patchy Murdoch was going to try to bluff him twice in a row, when he heard Paco coming down the street yelling for him. He didn’t move. Neither did Patchy or any of the others.

  ‘Chake! Chake! Hey, tío!’ Hoarse and out of breath, Paco fell through the door of the bar, followed by a chorus of ‘Hey, boy. What’s the matter, boy? You lost somethin’?’ and imitative ‘Hey, Chake’s.’ Paco rushed up to him, flapping a loose shoe sole.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Jake asked with massive indifference.

  ‘Hey, tío, Urraca’s stuck under the house at Gebhardt’s store and she’s cryin’ like hell!’

  ‘Well, drag her out. Patchy, are you going to play your hand or keep it for a souvenir?’

  ‘They won’t let me get her out, tío. And she’s really scared, man!’

  ‘Who won’t?’ He saw Patchy’s bid and raised it five more. ‘Them damn hombres down at the feed store. They think it’s funny when she yells.’

  ‘All right, just a minute. What are you going to do, Patchy?’ It had come around to him again.

  Patchy, his blotched face working between concentration on his hand and Jake’s face and attention to Paco’s tale, grinned slyly. ‘Why don’t you go on and see to your little girl, Dutch? We can finish this when you get back.’

  ‘The hell! Finish it now.’

  ‘Well, now—’

  Paco began to sniffle beside him. ‘Come on, Chake. She don’t like little dark places, ever since Mama lock her up in a closet once. Anyway, you ain’t got nothing but a bunch of ones there.’

  ‘I guess I’m out,’ said Patchy.

  ‘Goddamn it to hell!’ snarled Jake, throwing the hand down. ‘If you ever do that again, I’m going to—’ He looked at Paco’s face. ‘Oh, all right. Come on, let’s get her out. Get your laugh out, too, Murdoch,’ he growled at Patchy. ‘I’ll be right back.’ He scooped up eleven silver dollars, too many of which had been his to begin with, and followed the boy down the street.

  As they drew near the feed store he could hear Urraca’s toneless shrieks under the laughter of the men tormenting her.

  ‘What’s the matter, girlie? You stuck? Why don’t you holler for help?’ Augie Gebhardt sang as Jake approached them. When Augie s
aw him he switched to ‘Oh, looky here! Here comes Uncle Jake to git you out. Here he comes, bogeyman! Don’t snatch that chile down in that great big hole yet.’

  The group of four or five rubes fell back to let Jake through. He dropped to his knees and elbows, then to his belly, to inspect the hole in the foundation through which she’d crawled. There was something dim and white inside, but it was more than an arm’s length away.

  He struck a match on one of the sandstone blocks and put it through the opening, then tried to squeeze through after it. The white spot was Urraca’s drawers, now filthy wet. She was facing away from him, the way she had gone in. There was plenty of room for her in there and very little for him. Coming back out had been the cause of her trouble. Her skirts had caught on a protruding spike in a floor joist and pulled her dress and petticoat backward over her head as she retreated. She was not only stuck; she was also blinded because her own rump cut off the light, and she was stifled in her own clothes.

  He wedged himself into the hole as far as his shoulders would let him and reached for her skirt, hearing something about himself tear as he did so. When he touched her she began to scream again, and one of her bare feet caught him in the face, hard.

  ‘Stop that, damn it,’ he grunted, trying to fend off her feet with the same hand that was trying to free her. He smacked the dimly seen drawers as hard as he could in such a position and made an additional discovery. ‘Oh, shit, Urraca,’ he snarled.

  When he had torn her skirts free, he locked her ankles together in one hand and began to inch backward, pulling her out after him. A boisterous cheer went up for his success.

  Urraca, mouth stretched into a square, wailed her outrage and terror into his ear, her arms choking him as he tried to get to his feet with her. They were both filthy. His shirt was torn at the arm seam; her dress was unrecognizable.

  Paco was jubilant, dancing around Jake like some savage around an idol. The half-wits surrounding them were grinning and patting him on the back, too heartily; particularly Augie, the older Gebhardt brother. While Augie was still chortling and brushing off the back of Urraca’s tattered dress, he made the same discovery that Take had a moment before.