by Robert Knott
The kid nodded.
“You mean instead of watching your goddamn head explode,” the kid said. “That’s a goddamn .50-caliber.”
“That it is,” the teamster said.
“That would have took your fucking head right off,” the kid said.
“Yes, it would,” the teamster said.
“That damn thing is meant to drop buffalo, elk, and bear at two hundred, three hundred yards,” the kid said.
“She don’t want me dead,” he said.
The kid shook his head.
“Well, she sure is different,” he said.
“I’ll raise you on that,” the teamster said.
“How did you know, though,” the kid said. “That there was not a fucking round in front of that goddamn hammer?”
“I didn’t,” the teamster said.
The kid stared at him, then shook his head.
“She’s done that before?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re goddamn a flip side of most fellas under the gun. Holy hell.”
“How so?”
“Well, hell, you know, you seen it in your soldiering days. Surely you seen it?”
“Some. I’ve seen it some.”
“Some? Bullshit,” the kid said. “You have seen it more than some.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I can tell these things,” the kid said. “You been further around hell and back more than most folks have dug around in a potato sack.”
The teamster laughed.
“I ain’t no killer, though,” the teamster said.
“Well,” the kid said. “I seen a good number of men in front of a barrel pointed at their head, but I’ve never seen one smile like you done.”
“No?”
“No, hell, no,” the kid said. “Mostly they cry or pray or beg. Begging, mostly. Carrying on about their mothers or their youngens. Begging, trying to get sympathy.”
“Got no kids,” the teamster said. “No mother, either, my mother died long ago.”
“Pee or puke or mess themselves is common,” the kid said. “They do that, you know?”
“You would know,” the teamster said. “You are a killer.”
“I’ve had to do what I’ve had to do,” the kid said.
“Oh,” the teamster said. “You have done more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have it in your blood,” the teamster said. “It’s instinctual. It comes natural to you.”
The kid stared at him.
“It’s okay,” the teamster said. “She saw it in you and you have inspired her.”
“Inspired her?” the kid said with a glance to the house. “Inspired her to do what?”
“I can’t say for certain,” the teamster said. “But I have noticed her shifting. Changing. The targeting of the Sharps and other things.”
“What other things?”
“Fucking you, for one.”
“Whoa,” the kid said, “I . . . I thought . . . ?”
“It’s okay, kid,” he said. “It’s okay . . . You remember when she was telling you about Appaloosa and all the horses and horseshit and all the people?”
“I do.”
“Well, she meant something altogether different than having a problem with all the horses and horseshit and people.”
“What kind of different?” the kid said.
“That is why she said there is one too many people there,” the teamster said. “There is one person in particular that she has on her mind and in her sights. I thought she maybe had forgotten about it. But I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“I might be wrong, but I think you have inspired her, given her a newfound need.”
“For what?”
“To kill.”
“Kill who? Somebody in Appaloosa?”
The teamster nodded as he turned his eyes to the house.
“You remember I told you her daddy was killed before I found her traveling with the goddamn crazy fucking gypsies in the Borax Flats?”
“I do.”
“He had a vendetta,” the teamster said.
“Her daddy?”
The teamster nodded.
“What kind of vendetta?”
The teamster leaned in a little.
“Well, her daddy did some bad shit. He was really a no-good sonofabitch, as far as I can tell. But she feels he was taken away from her. Said he got worse and worse. One thing led to another and he got himself shot through the throat by a lawman. Damn near killed him, but it didn’t, and he was sent to prison. Years later he broke out and set out to kill that lawman that shot him and sent him to prison, but the lawman killed him instead.”
“And this lawman is in Appaloosa?”
“He is.”
The kid shook his head.
“And you think I have fucking inspired her to kill him. Kill a lawman?”
The teamster shook his head and pointed at the kid.
“What?” the kid said.
“You,” the teamster said.
“Me?”
The teamster nodded.
“You think she wants me to kill him?”
The teamster shrugged.
“She has not said . . . but.”
“But what?” the kid said.
“I don’t know for sure,” the teamster said.
“Thought she wanted to fucking help me?”
The teamster said nothing.
“She’s the one with the guns,” the kid said. “She’s the fucking sharpshooter.”
The teamster nodded. “But is she a killer?” he said.
The kid did not take his eyes off the teamster.
“Her old man was a killer,” the kid said.
The teamster nodded.
“But is she a killer?” the teamster said.
“She’s capable, I say,” the kid said. “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You’re her husband,” the kid said.
“What difference does that make?” the teamster said.
“You know killing,” the kid said. “You are no stranger to that.”
He shook his head and smiled broadly at the kid.
“I am a teamster,” he said. “A workingman. I play some cards and I make a little money off of saps in town and up and down the road. But that is it. Nothing more.”
The kid stood up and walked out of the spilling light into the darkness and relieved himself. He lifted his chin and closed his eyes up as he wetted the ground.
“Nothing more,” the kid scoffed. “Everybody is a killer . . . Circumstances bend and break all the rules of yours and everybody’s so-called . . . nothing more.”
She pushed open the shutter and called out. She said something to the teamster in a language the kid did not understand.
The kid buttoned up. Then walked toward the teamster.
“What’d she say?”
“You are needed,” he said.
“What for?”
The teamster shook his head.
“Good goddamn,” the kid said.
He moved past where the teamster was seated and walked to the house. She met him at the door. He looked up to her. She appeared extra-tall standing before him in the doorway. She stepped to the side.
“Come,” she said, and pulled him inside.
Then she spoke to the teamster. She said something, again in another language, and pointed toward the barn. The teamster lifted his hat and nodded. Then she looked to the kid.
“Take off your clothes,” she said.
“What?”
“Off,” she said.
“Right here?” he said.
&nbs
p; “Yes,” she said.
She pointed to a bath basin full of water with steam rising above. The kid looked out the door to see the teamster was watching them.
“I want you clean,” she said, as she started unbuttoning his shirt.
He turned his gaze from the teamster to her. He watched her hands undoing the buttons on his shirt, then he considered her magnificent face.
“You want me to kill.”
She met his eye. Then she looked out the door to the teamster. He was staring at them. She closed the door and the kid kicked off his boots.
49
The gunmen we had locked up were all released. The McCormick gun hands walked one way and the Baptiste gun hands went the other. Book and his deputies stayed with them, watching them. The Bartholomew hands all went to Deek’s livery. They wasted no time getting their horses, mounting up, and riding out of town. The deputies followed them for a few miles until they were out of sight and turned back. The others, the McCormick gun hands, walked to a rooming house where Hodge boarded.
Book kept two deputies posted at the rooming house through the night, and had two deputies on the road out of town where the Baptiste gun hands had departed. Virgil’s instructions were only to see what happened. Don’t interfere with any of their comings and goings, but keep an eye on them just the same.
The night proved to be without conflict. And morning, too, was quiet. The McCormick gunmen went to a café for breakfast and did nothing other than linger about. They drank coffee and rolled smokes as they piddled around on the front porch of the hotel.
Midmorning, Virgil and I met up at Doc Burris’s office. He had just delivered a baby and was washing up when we entered.
We followed him into his office. He dropped into his chair behind his desk, and without a word he swiveled around, pulled out a bottle of rye and three glasses from a hutch behind his desk, and poured us each two fingers.
“I have to ask you to join me in a toast,” he said. “In the face of never-ending notions of impending peril, I have to raise my glass to the miracle of every new one that comes into this world. Plus, it’s the only time my wife allows me to indulge. And, please, gentlemen, if you don’t mind.”
We nodded and held up our glasses.
“To Davis Christopher Ridenhour,” Doc said. “Out with the old, in with the new, cheers to his future, to the good he will do, and may all his dreams come true.”
We toasted and drank. And Doc quickly refilled our glasses.
“Hear, hear,” he said.
He drank down his second shot and refilled his glass. Then he removed his spectacles and set them on his desk in front of him. Leaning back in his chair, Doc leveled a serious look at Virgil and me. He smiled and took a sip of his drink before he spoke.
“James McCormick had poison in his system,” he said.
Virgil glanced to me and shook his head.
“You’re sure?” he said.
“I am,” Doc said. “Likely strychnine. But maybe something milder or a diluted-down version of strychnine.”
“You can tell by . . . ?” I said.
“Yes, for certain. What I saw under the scope and by a close examination of this body. His tendons.”
“You can see poison in the body?” I said.
“No, not exactly, but actually, when I first saw James McCormick there in the street and then when we loaded him into the ambulance, I noticed things. And I thought it odd and a possibility then, but I of course was not certain.”
“What did you notice?” I said.
“Well, he didn’t piss himself, for one,” Doc said. “But also just the way his hands were drawn in some toward his wrists and his neck was arched, with his chin raised up like it was. But I didn’t mention it. I needed to be sure, to take a closer look.”
He took a sip.
“What did you see?” I said.
“A few things. Let me show you,” he said. “Poison gets right to these tendons.”
He turned to a life-size skeletal diagram on the wall behind his desk. He pointed with a pointer to show us what areas he was referring to as he spoke.
“There is a contraction that occurs,” he said. “Hence what I saw in the hands and neck. And after having a good look under the microscope, I’m certain. There is evidence of poison throughout his body.”
“Is there a way for you to determine how he was poisoned?” I said.
Doc shook his head.
“No, not really,” he said. “I mean, I just can’t say for certain. But I did have a look into his digestive system. Just to see what was there.”
“And?” I said.
“Well, he had some traces of food, digested earlier in the day. And there was some alcohol in his system, too.”
“Early in the day,” I said.
Virgil nodded.
“He didn’t strike me as a daytime drinker,” I said.
“His wife and brother said he was at his office before he went home,” Virgil said. “Maybe that is where it happened.”
“Or maybe he stopped someplace in between the office and home?” I said.
“That could have happened, right, Doc?” I said. “He could have been poisoned in town, then walked to his home?”
Doc nodded.
“If I may,” Doc said. “And let me say before I do that I am of course no officer of the law. But my deduction might be—and it falls in line with your thinking, Everett—that the poison did not do the job as intended.”
“And?” I said.
“And thusly, the murderer or murderers perhaps panicked and decided to finish him off, so to speak. By stabbing him.”
Virgil stared at Doc, then nodded. He got up and walked to the diagram on the wall. Thinking as he studied it, then turned to me.
“What do you figure, Everett?” he said.
“Well,” I said, “it damn sure doesn’t seem like the Bartholomew brothers’ way of doing things.”
“It don’t,” he said.
“They’d just put a bullet in him and leave it at that,” I said.
“No matter,” Virgil said. “We still have to find Victor.”
“After what happened to Ventura,” I said, “Victor will be wanting to find us, I’d imagine.”
“He will,” Virgil said.
“He’s not done here,” I said.
Virgil shook his head.
“Not by a long shot,” he said.
“One thing we know for certain,” I said. “There is one great goddamn good reason for someone to kill James McCormick.”
“Sure the hell is,” Virgil said.
Virgil downed his rye and set his glass on the corner of the desk.
“Appreciate it, Doc,” he said.
“Well, of course,” he said. “Just let me know if you boys need anything else.”
“Will do,” Virgil said. “And let’s make certain this here business goes no place else.”
“Goes without saying,” Doc said. “Goes without saying.”
Virgil smiled, then nodded me toward the door. I drank down the rye and got up.
“Thanks, Doc,” I said.
I followed Virgil. Doc moved out from behind the desk and strolled with us into the lobby.
“So . . . tough,” Doc said. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
We stopped at the door and turned to Doc.
“What is it?” he said. “What’s the great goddamn good reason? For his murder?”
Virgil smiled at me.
“Gold,” I said.
Virgil nodded.
“Makes people do things they otherwise might not do,” he said.
Doc nodded, followed by a shake of his head, and we pushed out the door into the hot afternoon air.
Virgil walked halfway down the steps and stopped, staring of
f across the street. I followed his look. Sitting on a bench under the shade of an awning was Hodge. He was staring at us. Then he got to his feet and walked off down the boardwalk like he was on a Sunday stroll.
“Fluffing his feathers,” I said.
“Showing his ass,” Virgil said.
50
The kid helped the teamster hitch up the mules to the buckboard for another trip. The teamster told the kid this delivery was a standard supply run. A trip he made monthly, picking up grains and sundry feeds from a river store and taking the supplies up to a string of manufacturing outfits along the river.
“I’ll be ending in Porterville,” the teamster said. “A town north, up the river. The opposite direction of Appaloosa.”
“You sure you don’t want me to go with you?” the kid said.
“I am,” the teamster said.
The kid followed as the teamster pulled two more mules from the barn and walked them toward the buckboard.
“I don’t mind,” the kid said.
The teamster smiled to himself as he walked.
“Now, don’t tell me you’re scared of being alone with her . . .” he said. “Are you?”
The kid gave a furtive glance around before he spoke.
“Heck, no.”
“Good,” the teamster said.
“No reason,” the kid said.
“She has her hooks in you,” the teamster said.
“Now, hold on,” the kid said.
“She does,” he said. “And that is okay.”
“She don’t belong to me,” the kid said.
“No. She don’t belong to you, or anybody else, for that matter.”
“She belongs to you.”
“She belongs to nobody, including me.”
“Well, she’s your wife. You married her.”
“We did, and that is that.”
“I don’t plan on making a habit of being the one in her bed,” the kid said. “You can bet your bottom dollar on that.”
“You complaining?”
“Well . . . no.”
“Good.”
“It’s just . . . that . . . well . . .”
“I know,” the teamster said. “Hard to put her into words. There ain’t nothing quite like her in that way.”