Buckskin

by Robert Knott

  “What?”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “My apologies,” I said as I opened my arms wide. “By all means, carry on, please. I’m all yours.”

  So far in our short time getting to know each other, I could see that Martha Kathryn was not just a free spirit. She was livelier than most women I’d ever had the pleasure of dallying with. Besides being carefree, up to this point she had not been at all demanding or in the least bit needy. Never bringing up anything serious or off-putting.

  She was her own woman and was smart as a whip. She said she lived in Boston when she was in her teens, where she attended school, but she was vague about her history. She seemed to be educated and well read on many subjects. My time at West Point, being in New York all those years, provided me a comfort with women of substance. But there was also something about her that made me think that she was a woman with a past. A woman not void of trouble.

  But to that point, I liked women of trouble. I was attracted to them. I like, in general, the company of women, more than that of men, and had pretty much made a habit of having more women friends than men. Even if they were sometimes whores, I preferred the company of women.

  Women were tougher by nature, because they had to be, to bear children and put up with ignorant men. The war left plenty of widows. I’d seen women through the years who’d mustered pure resilience and resourcefulness. A woman’s basic will to survive never ceased to amaze me.

  We had spent the final few hours of the night rolling around in bed, and now the clock was working its way toward a new day. And after the consumption of copious amounts of wine, the drunkenness added a stimulating bit of sass to her animated soliloquy.

  I was also without my clothes. I was sitting up against the headboard with the bedding across my lap, watching her with a perfect bit of awe. As she was getting to what seemed to be the escalating end of her performance, there was a knock on the door.

  Martha Kathryn stopped and we both looked at the door.

  There was another knock.

  I pulled my Colt out of its holster that was hanging on the bedpost.

  20

  The knocker spoke up.

  “Very sorry to interrupt, but I’m looking for Everett Hitch.”

  “Book?”

  “It is,” he said. “Sorry, Everett.”

  “What is it?”

  “Marshal Cole told me to find you.”

  “Hold on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I got up, helped Martha Kathryn down from the bed.

  “Book?” she said.

  “Deputy Daniels,” I said. “When he’s not doing law work he’s got his head stuck in a book.”

  I pulled on my trousers and tossed her a robe.

  “Not sure, but I think you might have been about to get to the best part of your one-leg oration,” I said.

  “What is it?” she said as she put one arm and then the other into the sleeves of the robe. “Why would Marshal Cole be looking for you at this time of the evening?”

  “Don’t know,” I said. “I suspect I’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Must be important.”

  “Better be,” I said.

  I buttoned my trousers and pulled on my shirt. And as soon as Martha Kathryn got the robe tied on and settled, she opened the door. Hefty Book was standing there with his hands in his pockets and a glum look on his round face.

  “Sorry, Everett.”

  “You said that.”

  His cheeks were redder than normal. He removed his spectacles and glanced over my shoulder to Martha Kathryn. He nodded at her and smiled.

  “Virgil told me to find you right away.”

  “You found me.”

  Book nodded.

  “What is it?”

  “Got some shooting going on.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  Book nodded and I closed the door slightly.

  “My goodness,” she said.

  “My apologies.”

  I sat and pulled on my boots.

  “No, my gosh. I understand. It’s just, well, this time of night. It is just so unexpected.”

  “It is,” I said. “Be right back.”

  She nodded, then I stepped out into the hall with Book and closed the door behind me.

  “Who’s shooting who?”

  “Not real sure what is what, but I think it’s between the miners. The McCormicks and Baptiste.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “One of McCormick’s men was shot.”

  “Dead?”

  “No.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was up on the north end at Lenora’s place.”

  “Lenora’s place?”

  “The whoring place on the far north end,” Book said.

  “They got into a shootout there?”

  “I guess so. Apparently one of McCormick’s men had just got done with his business upstairs, and as he was on his way out, there were some words. He was shot by one of Victor Bartholomew’s men. At least that is what he said.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Doc Burris has him at the hospital,” Book said. “He’s gonna be fine.”

  “He was on his own? There at Lenora’s?” I said.

  “So he says,” Book said. “Don’t know all the particulars.”

  “No sign of Ed Hodge and the others?” I said.

  “No,” Book said.

  “Hodge I’m sure will be on fire about this,” I said.

  “No doubt,” Book said.

  “Any idea where Victor’s men are?” I said. “Where they went?”

  “Boston House,” Book said.

  “How do you know?”

  “The fella who was shot said he got on his horse and followed them there.”

  “He got shot and followed them?” I said.

  Book nodded.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said.

  “It wasn’t bad. He got lucky. Bullet clipped his vest and caught a piece of flesh on his side. He was bleeding good, but he was okay.”

  “It don’t make sense,” I said. “For somebody to shoot someone, then just hang around.”

  “Bold of them,” Book said. “No doubt.”

  “Stupid,” I said, “and drunk.”

  “Better put,” Book said with a nod.

  “They staying at the Boston House?”

  “No.”

  “What are they doing there?”

  “In the saloon. Drunk, getting drunker, I imagine.”

  “Where is Virgil?”

  “There at the Boston House.”

  “On his own?”

  “No. Lloyd is with him and three deputies: Mark, Cory, and Merced. They are just keeping an eye on the place, making sure nobody leaves. Virgil told me he would wait on you before he confronts them.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Four, it seems.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Book nodded.

  “I got your horse saddled for you.”

  “Good,” I said. “Thank you, Book.”

  “And I got your eight-gauge. It’s loaded and ready.”

  “Be right there.”

  I stepped back into the room. Martha Kathryn was standing with her arms crossed around the robe. I picked up my gun belt and buckled it.

  “Intermission,” I said.

  21

  The kid did not want to see the old man again, not ever.

  “Not fucking ever,” the kid said.

  When he finished, he left the pillow covering the old man’s face and walked out of the bedroom. He slammed the rickety door behind him so hard it busted from the hinges and broke into pieces.

  “Godd
amn it!” the kid said as he walked through the hall toward the front room. “Goddamn it!”

  When he entered the front room, he started pacing. The woman was on a pallet in the corner packing her belongings into an old canvas bag. She lowered her hands to her lap and watched him as he moved back and forth.

  “How come me?” he said. “Why me?”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t know,” she said.

  The kid continued to pace, all the while focused on the tintype in his hand.

  “The sonofabitch,” he said, “the sonofabitch from hell.”

  “Him is,” she said. “Don’t think he coulda come from no other place.”

  “After all this goddamn time,” he said.

  She shook her head but said nothing as she continued to put her belongings into the bag.

  “He’s good and gone now. I sent the sonofabitch on his way.”

  She nodded.

  “I figured,” she said.

  “Not that he deserved the goddamn relief,” the kid said.

  She watched as the kid paced a bit more.

  “I did it for me,” the kid said, shaking his head from side to side. “Not him. Me. I did it for me, you see? Not for him.”

  She nodded.

  The kid stopped pacing and noticed for the first time what it was that she was doing.

  “You’re not staying here?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “Lord, no. Not no mo’. Not one mo’ night.”

  “Why’d you stay with him?”

  “I don’t rightly know.”

  “How long?”

  “Three years off and on.”

  The kid looked around the room.

  “You need help getting your things?”

  “No,” she said as she got up from the pallet and hoisted the bag over her shoulder.

  “You got someplace to go?”

  “I do,” she said. “Nephew nearby. He be real glad to see me.”

  She crossed to the door and opened it. She took one last look around the room and shook her head.

  “Go on, now,” he said.

  The kid followed her as she walked out the door. The night covered by clouds made it hard to see. But he could see her as she walked off up the street of the small town of Trinidad.

  After she disappeared into the darkness, the kid stepped back into the house. He picked up a lamp off the table by the door and threw it against the wall over the pallet.

  He stood there, watching the flames crawl. He found another lamp and busted it into the flames.

  He watched and made sure the fire was going good, then backed out the door. He walked to his pony across the way, put the tintype into the envelope, and stuffed it into his saddlebags, then mounted up. He sat on his pony and watched the house, and waited, as the flames grew taller. He remained on his horse, watching, until the house was completely engulfed in flames. Memories of the old man came scorching in with the heat.

  “Like father, like son,” he said to himself.

  He turned and rode away.

  He rode for a while and thought of all that had happened in the past with the old man, the years in the mountains.

  He remembered the day he left. When he was still a very young boy, after the old man beat him with barbwire. He remembered all the camps and towns in the Rocky Mountains. He thought about how the old man made him work, trapping animals and skinning them. And how he would ride with the old man, trading and selling hides.

  Never knowing his place of birth.

  “Or the goddamn year of it,” he said out loud as he rode.

  He never knew his name, other than Kid, that is what the old man called him. Kid is what the other mountain men in the camps called him, too. So he never knew much difference. After the camps he assumed names through the years, Leo, Ulysses, William, and Roy, but he could never settle on one, and none of those names ever stuck.

  For some reason he remembered all kinds of details from those camp days as he rode away. All those times were playing like clunky out-of-tune hymns in his mind. He remembered the smell of blood, but he also remembered the trappers. The stinking, smelly, no-good trappers were always making fun of him. Talking about his skinny bottom, saying how they would make him their wife one day. And he remembered how he would loosen the men’s cinches every chance he got. Or how he would steal from them, taking their food, whiskey, knives, and guns when they passed out.

  Then he remembered the old man and the amount of killing that went on around him. He thought about having to set claw traps. About having to shoot and snare animals and how he would have to drag bloody carcasses from the woods to the camp. And he thought about the old man returning with scalps. He remembered how much the old man liked scalping Indians. How he would scalp Indians, then trade the scalps with other Indians and trappers. Something the kid never understood.

  Blood and killing was something the kid had grown accustomed to, it was a way of life. His whole life was nothing but a goddamn bloody background. Death was all part of the living. He remembered having dried and frozen blood on his hands when he went to sleep and how he hated the cold weather.

  And now, riding away from the fire, he thought about being in the tent under the covers in the cold with the dried blood. And how the old man would always come in drunk. The kid flashed on the vague memory of the old man trying to fuck him and something boiled up in his throat. But he could not remember everything; he had blank spots in his memory that worried him, that made him sick. That woke him up at night.

  The kid leaned over in his saddle as he rode away from the burning house on the outskirts of Trinidad and threw up.

  22

  Virgil stood with Lloyd under the awning of a large coopering outfit on Main Street. They were across the road and down a ways from the Boston House. They moved out from the shadows of barrels stacked high on the boardwalk as Book and I rode up. Both Virgil and Lloyd had rifles in their hands.

  “There you are,” Virgil said as Book and I came to a stop.

  “Virgil.”

  “Sorry to disrupt what you were doing,” Virgil said.

  “What have we got?” I said.

  “Five of Victor’s men,” he said.

  “Book said four.”

  “There were,” Virgil said. “But now there are five.”

  “What’d they do? They shoot somebody, then act as if nothing happened?”

  Virgil nodded.

  “They don’t likely have much in the way of smarts, with all heads pitching in.”

  “Victor?” I said.

  “He’s not with them,” Virgil said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I took a peek through the saloon window over there.”

  “How about the other two we saw with Victor?” I said. “Johnny and Wayne.”

  “Yep. They are in there,” Virgil said. “That’s how I was certain it was Victor’s hands.”

  “What about the other three that are with them?” I said. “Know them?”

  Virgil shook his head.

  “Never seen them before.”

  “They all heeled?”

  “Likely, but they’re not showing leather,” Virgil said. “None that I could see, anyway.”

  “But somebody has a gun,” I said. “And they shot the McCormick hand?”

  Virgil nodded.

  “Yep.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Drinking,” Virgil said. “Playing grab-ass.”

  Book and I moved our horses up and dismounted.

  “Got our deputies posted around the place,” Lloyd said, “just in case Victor’s hands were to somehow slip out. Cory’s up the street here, Jeff’s down the street, and Merced is in the rear alley behind the bar.”

  “Ju
st want to make sure you and me have us a proper visit with them,” Virgil said.

  “You ready?” I said.

  “Sooner than later,” Virgil said.

  I pulled my eight-gauge from its scabbard.

  “You want Book and me to back you up?” Lloyd said.

  “One of you sit by the front door and one by the side saloon door,” Virgil said. “If for some reason they come out before Everett and me, I think it’d be safe to say you can kill each and every one of them.”

  “You sure you don’t want us to waltz in there with you?” Lloyd said.

  “I’m sure.”

  “You got it,” Lloyd said. “Good to do as you say.”

  Virgil nodded.

  Virgil and I crossed the street, walked up the steps, and entered into the main entrance of the Boston House Hotel. There were voices and laughter coming from the bar. The lobby was empty except for the young hotel clerk. He stepped out the door of the small room under the stairs and smiled.

  “Can I help you?”

  Virgil and I had been a fixture for coffee, dining, and drinking at the Boston House. Ever since our first day in Appaloosa, it was a place we visited. But we’d never seen this clerk, and he’d never seen us.

  I moved to him and showed my badge.

  “Just remain quiet,” I said. “Fact, just go on and close the door behind you.”

  Without a word, the clerk did what he was instructed to do.

  Virgil and I stepped through the doors and into the bar without anyone paying us any attention. As usual, even as late as it was, the place was busy. The room was full of smoke, and it was noisy. Everyone was engrossed in his or her own world, talking, laughing, and enjoying their drinks. There was not an empty seat at the bar, and the card tables were active.

  We stood just inside the door and looked for the gun hands in the crowd.

  “See ’em?”

  Virgil shook his head some. He moved into the barroom through the tables and I followed.

  When we got close to the bar, we could see into the side billiard room off the main barroom.

  “There they are,” Virgil said.

  Wayne and Johnny were perched on stools. Next to them was another man. He was big and he had a chubby saloon gal in his lap. They were all watching two other men playing pool.