by Ralph Cotton
As the cat leaped down and shot away along the edge of the boardwalk, Jane jerked the cork from the bottle and stared at the half inch of amber rye whiskey as she swirled it around. “What the hell?” she said submissively to the amber liquid. “All you ever did was try to help.” Out of habit she wiped the tip of the bottle on her sleeve, raised it to her lips and drained it.
“There was too much working against you,” she added, dropping the empty bottle to the dirt between her boots and staring down at it in contemplation.
Twenty minutes later when the black wavering lines took the form of two riders leading a three-horse string, Jane looked up from her dark musings and batted her red tearful eyes. “Oh, hell, Dawson and the Undertaker.” Even as she spoke she eased up and tried to turn away before they spotted her. But she was too late.
“Jane . . . Jane Crowley, wait up,” Dawson called out to her before she could duck around the corner of the saloon and disappear into an alley.
Damn it. . . . She stopped, turned and tried to look surprised. “Who’s there?” she called out, as if not immediately recognizing the two lawmen. “Oh, Dawson!” she said, feigning surprise. “Caldwell!” She gave a bemused but stilted smile. “How the hell are you, pards?” She staggered a bit in place.
Caldwell and Dawson shot each other a glance, each of them seeing through her feigned behavior. “Jane, didn’t you see us ride in?” Caldwell asked, looking concerned. “Are you all right?”
“Well, hellfire, yes, Undertaker, I’m all right.” Even as she spoke to Caldwell, she nodded at the sweaty three-horse string he led behind him, each horse carrying the remains of its former owner tied down over its back. “I’m a hell of a lot better than some I’m seeing today.” She reformed her crooked smile and offered one that appeared more authentic. “Who’ve you got tied down there?” She walked toward them and stopped at the edge of the boardwalk for a better look at the bodies.
“The Higginses,” said Caldwell, “Brady, Earthen and Lars. Do you know them?”
“Hell yes, I know them,” Jane said, craning her neck for a profile look at the grim faces. “I know their cousins, Mose and Shorthand Higgins, too. I’d count on them being along any time if I was you.”
“We are,” said Caldwell. “The Higginses were all riding with a bunch we chased across the border two weeks ago—caught up to them this morning early. There’s a five-hundred-dollar bounty on each of these three. Maybe more on Mose and Shorthand.”
“Oh . . . ? You’ve taking up bounty hunting now?” Jane asked, standing unsteadily and having to take hold of a post for safety.
“No, we’re not bounty hunting,” Caldwell said with patience. “But we’d like to get you to—”
“You’re wasting your breath asking her, Jed—she’s drunk,” Dawson said flatly, cutting him off. He looked at the empty bottle lying in the dirt. Then he looked Jane over, her disheveled condition, her red and watery eyes.
“Well, thank you very much, Marshal,” she replied sharply. “We’ll take that into consideration before ever voting me into office.”
The two lawmen stepped down from their saddles and led the horses the last few feet to the iron hitch rail. Jane stepped down and leaned with both hands on it. “Is that what brings you here? You come to announce my drunkenness to the white Christian public?”
“No,” said Dawson, spinning his horse’s reins onto the rail. “We heard you and Shaw were here.” He looked around. “Where is he?”
Without answering, Jane said, “For your information, Marshal, I’m not drunk. But I do have a steam boiler running in my head. So it would be best for all three of us if we tried to speak kindly to one another.”
“Fair enough,” said Dawson. “You go first.”
“Obliged,” said Jane. She steadied herself and asked in a civil tone, “What were you telling Undertaker he’s wasting his breath asking me about?”
“We thought we’d get you to witness who these three are, since you said you know them. We’re going to need the bounty money for supplies. Who’s the sheriff here?”
“Oscar Watts,” said Jane. “He’s old, half-blind and can’t hear worth a shit. You would not want to leave him to face Mose and Shorthand alone.”
“We won’t,” said Caldwell. The two lawmen turned a searching glance out along the trail they’d ridden in on.
“Where will we find Sheriff Watts?” Dawson asked.
“A wild guess?” Jane answered with sarcasm. “At his office, unless he’s wandered off again.” She squinted off along the dirt street, then looked back up at them. “Expenses, eh? Doesn’t the U.S. federal government pay your expenses?” Jane asked. “What kind of miserly bunch are you working for?”
Dawson looked embarrassed. “We don’t have time to wait around for expense money,” he said. “We’ve got too many outlaws on the run. As soon as we deal with Mose and Shorthand, we’re pushing on across the border.” He looked all around again and asked, “What has Shaw found out for us?”
“Yeah, where is he anyway?” Caldwell asked.
“He’s not here,” Jane said, growing tight-lipped at the mention of Shaw’s name. “Why? Would you rather have him witness the Higgins brothers for you?”
“No,” said Dawson, “your witness will do. Where’d Shaw go?”
“No place that I’d want to be,” Jane said. “He left me in the middle of the night, like every other no-good son of a bitch I’ve ever given my heart to.” Her words ended in an emotional tremor.
Dawson and Caldwell looked at each other. To keep her from breaking down in front of them, Dawson asked, “Is he drinking?”
“Oh yeah, he started drinking again,” Jane said. “No sooner than we got to this pig-rut of a town, we both went on a wild drinking spree. I’m still trying to sober up enough to find my ass with both hands.” She nodded toward a dingy sheriff’s office down the street. “Sheriff Watts is the man with the star here. He’ll take the Higginses off your hands, and he can tell you what happened to Shaw. I can’t bear to speak of it.”
“What are you talking about, Jane?” Dawson asked in a firm but level voice. “What’s happened to Shaw?”
Her eyes welled with tears. “I just told you I can’t bear talking about it,” she sobbed.
Caldwell stepped forward. “Where are you staying, Jane?”
Crying into her hands, she gestured toward the boardwalk where she’d been sitting. “Right there is my home from now on,” she sobbed. “I’m never moving from this spot.”
“Where’s your horse, Jane?” Dawson asked.
“He left me too,” said Jane, sniffling and wiping her eyes, trying to take control of herself.
“You sold your horse?” said Caldwell.
“What if I did?” Jane said in defiance. “It was mine to sell.”
“Where’s your gun?” Dawson asked, noting the empty holster on her hip.
“I threw it away,” Jane said.
“Threw it away?” asked Caldwell.
“Yeah,” she replied, “I threw it away . . . or lost it, or sold it. Hell, I don’t know! Do I look like somebody who ought to be carrying a loaded firearm?”
“Shaw was sent ahead to scout out Madden Corio’s gang,” said Dawson. “Did he do any good?”
“None that I know of,” Jane said. “But the way we were drinking and fighting, I suspect he wouldn’t have confided in me anyway.”
Dawson looked at Caldwell with a grimace and said quietly between them, “This is what I’m always afraid of with Shaw.” Then he asked Jane, “Which direction did Shaw go in?”
“How the hell would I know?” Jane retorted. “Most likely he crawled off into the badlands along the border. Ain’t that generally where he goes to shut himself off from everybody?” She paused in dark reflection, then added, “And to lick his wounds?”
The two turned their eyes back to her. “Lick his wounds?” Dawson asked. “Is he wounded?”
Jane hesitated, but finally said, “Yeah, he’s wounded. S
omebody shot him in the head.”
“My God,” said Caldwell.
“How bad?” asked Dawson.
“I don’t know.” Jane flung her arms, as if tossing off any knowledge or responsibility on the matter. “I ain’t a doctor and I ain’t God. I can’t answer neither of your questions.”
“Who shot him?” Dawson asked.
“Was he in a gunfight?” asked Caldwell.
“Hell no, it wasn’t a gunfight, Undertaker,” Jane said to Caldwell mockingly. “There’s nobody alive could take Shaw in a gunfight.” She looked at Dawson. “I don’t know who shot him. I found him shot in his bed. Luckily he was still alive. . . . I went and got the doctor—”
“In his bed?” Dawson asked, cutting her off. “He was shot in bed?”
“What did I say, Marshal?” Jane snapped. “Yes, he was shot in his bed—in his sleep.” She tossed her hands again, taking a step back as if feeling crowded and put upon. “I don’t know who shot him, or how, or why. I only know he was shot. He nearly died. Now he’s left me.” Her eyes welled again. “I don’t know where he went. He could be wandering around out there like some mindless idiot for all I know.”
“Jesus. . . .” Caldwell stood staring at her with a stunned look on his round, bearded face.
Dawson stepped in closer and laid a hand on Jane’s trembling shoulder. “Listen to me, Janie,” he said quietly, almost in a whisper. “Did you get drunk and shoot Lawrence Shaw?”
“What? Are you crazy?” Jane shouted. “I love the son of a bitch! How could I do something like that?” She tried to jerk out from under his hand. But Dawson held on to her firmly. “I would have done anything for him,” she cried. “I still would! He left me, I didn’t leave him!” She thumbed herself on the chest.
“Jane, it’s all right,” said Dawson, “you’re starting to sober up. Things always look their worst when the whiskey starts turning you loose.” In the same quiet calm, almost soothing voice he said, “You shot him, didn’t you?”
“I—I don’t know, Marshal,” she said. “I swear I don’t know.” Her eyes looked cloudy and confused on the matter. “We was both so damned drunk, I can’t remember what happened.”
“So it’s just as likely that you might have shot him?”
She stared at him, vexed, unsure. “Hell, I suppose I might have. I was the only one there.”
Dawson fell silent, observing her, letting the events play across her mind. He saw something try to take shape and form itself from within her dark drunken memory. “We’d been arguing—” She paused. “I—I hit him.” She shook her head. “He never even tried to hit me back. I—I left the room in a huff, went to the saloon and drank some more. When I came back . . . he was asleep, on the bed.” As she spoke her eyes revealed more and more terror. She stopped with a gasp. “Oh my God!”
“Go on, Jane,” Dawson coaxed. “Get it out.”
“Oh my God, Marshal,” she repeated, unable to contain herself any longer. “I—I might have shot him. I might have shot the only man I love.” She flung herself against Dawson’s dusty chest and sobbed.
“Might have, Jane?” Dawson inquired, keeping his eyes on hers.
“But if I did shoot him, I didn’t mean to, Marshal,” Jane said, racking her whiskey-soaked mind. “Things are so foggy.” She trembled against him like a woman with a terrible fever.
“Take it easy, Jane,” Dawson soothed. “We’re here. We’ll help you get sobered up and get back on your feet.”
“Oh Lord, Marshal, what have I done?” she said, suddenly letting go. “What have I done?”
Holding Jane to his chest, Dawson looked along the empty street, seeing curious faces appear in doorways. “Take the bodies to the sheriff’s office. I’ll join you as soon as I get her off the streets.” He looked all around and said, “Come on, Jane. Let’s get you to the hotel, get you cleaned up and get some food in you.”
Chapter 6
Dawson left Jane Crowley at a bathhouse behind the hotel, where a young Cajun woman named Raidy Bowe helped Jane undress and step over into a long hot tub full of water. “I expect you know what happened between Lawrence Shaw and me, how I screwed things up for the both of us.”
“Shhh,” said Raidy, soothingly. “You lie back and let me attend to you, Miss Janie.”
When the young woman didn’t give the kind of response she was looking for, Jane continued by saying, “I expect you and everybody else is judging me to be a damned drunken fool. Well, I don’t blame you, Raidy. I am one.”
“No, Jane, I do not judge you,” said the young woman with a Louisiana backwater French accent. “I know you are not a drunken fool.” She helped Jane settle into the tub, then leaned her back until only her head remained above the water.
Jane let out a short gasp before surrendering to the steaming water. “Lord, girl, this water is hot enough to scald chickens.”
“Oui,” Raidy said with an easy smile, “it is hot, but it is good for you. It sweats out the whiskey and its many poisons.” She held a drinking gourd to Jane’s lips. “Here, drink this. It will help to clear your mind. Whiskey makes one forget things of importance, both to ourselves and to others.”
“There’s a lot I’d just as soon not remember,” Jane commented.
“Drink,” said Raidy with persistence.
Jane made a face as she smelled the thick greenish liquid. “What is it, dog puke?”
“It is made from mousse and champignons, and the bark of a tree that grows in the swamplands of my people.”
“Oh, mushrooms, swamp moss and tree bark, how charming,” Jane said translating Raidy’s words with sarcasm. “Just the things I’ve been most hankering for of late.”
Raidy smiled and held the gourd against Jane’s closed lips. “You must drink it.”
“Well, since I must, here goes.” Jane forced herself to part her lips and drink the concoction, her eyes turned upward to Raidy’s for approval.
Raidy reached down with a free hand and brushed Jane’s wet hair from her forehead. “I did not know that you speak French. Perhaps you learned some from me?”
Jane didn’t answer. Instead she gasped as she finished the liquid. “Don’t tell nobody,” she said. “No offense, but understanding French doesn’t exactly make me feel good about myself. Besides, I’ve found that once folks start thinking you know a lot, they start requiring more of you. As you can see, I’m a drunk. I doubt that I’ll ever be much more than that.”
“Do not be so hard on yourself, Janie,” Raidy said. Laying the gourd aside, she soaped up a thick washcloth and began washing Jane, left arm, then right arm. “Perhaps it is not your fault things didn’t work out between you and Lawrence Shaw.”
“Oh . . . ?” Jane cut her an upward glance. “What do you know about whose fault it was or wasn’t?”
“I hate to pass along gossip,” said Raidy, washing her as she spoke. “But I have heard talk about Lawrence Shaw. The doves all say that he is a difficult man, with a dark past that haunts him.”
“All my men are difficult, and haunted by a dark past,” Jane said with a twist of irony in her voice. “I seem to draw that kind of man like sugar draws flies.” She gave a sad smile and relaxed beneath the young woman’s skillful hands. “Maybe I should say like a stinking carcass draws flies, the way my luck has been running.”
Raidy ran her forearm under the water and washed Jane’s breasts slowly, then her stomach, then lower.
Jane allowed herself to relax more. She closed her eyes and said with a swoon, “This is the best I’ve felt for a long time. I might take up mushrooms and moss on a regular basis.”
“It makes me happy that I am able to make you feel good,” Raidy said. “Relax . . . relax.” Her voice and her hands seemed to work in unison to a slow and soothing rhythm beneath the hot water.
Jane allowed herself to drift, her eyes closed, her lips parted slightly. In a moment of dozing, she imagined Shaw’s lips on hers, and she let herself give in to his long, deep kiss. Lawrence
. . . Lawrence, what have I done . . . ? But before the kiss had ended, she realized it was not Shaw’s lips on hers, stirring her passion; it was Raidy Bowe’s. My God!
“Jesus, Raidy!” she said, shoving the young woman away and sitting upright in the long tub. “What the hell are you doing?” She rubbed a wet hand vigorously across her lips.
“I am kissing you, Janie,” Raidy said, not a bit put off by Jane’s rejection of her. “Was I wrong? Do you not like it?”
“God, no, I did not like it,” Jane said, looking back and forth for a towel to grab.
“You seemed to like it,” said Raidy. She shrugged, moving back in close to Jane, the soapy washcloth still in hand, as if to continue her bathing chore with no more thought to the kiss. “I only kiss you hoping to make you feel good.”
“I don’t want to feel good if that’s what it takes,” Jane said sharply. “Whatever made you think you could pull such a stunt as that?”
Raidy only lowered her gaze and made no reply.
Jane waved a hand toward a folded towel lying on a stand near the tub and said in a shaken voice, “Give me that. I’m getting out of here.” She stood straight up in the tub.
Raidy picked up the folded towel, shook it out and stepped to the edge of the tub. She held it out to drape around Jane as she stepped out onto a braided rug on the wooden floor. But instead of letting the young woman wrap the towel around her, Jane took it from her and began drying herself off.
“I am sorry, Janie,” Raidy said, watching her, reaching in and still trying to assist. “Please do not tell Per-kins what I did. He will fire me, and I will end up back to the line.”
Jane saw a tear form in the corner of the young woman’s eye. “Ah, hell, forget it,” she said, holding the towel against her flat stomach. “After all I’ve been through, I should feel flattered, a pretty thing like you kissing the likes of me.” She gave a forgiving smile and cocked her head in curiosity. “But whatever made you think I’m that kind of gal?”
Raidy looked confused for a second, then embarrassed. “I—I have heard some things. The doves at the saloon say that in the past . . .” She let her words trail into suggestion.