Chapter Five
A light, dry snow was falling as Ed rode the buckskin down the main street of Litch. The town didn’t look much different than it did five months before, and if anything the weathered buildings and sparse plant life seemed to fit the harsh season better than the springtime.
Ed turned north on the cross street, rode a block and a half, and stopped in front of the Iris. The sign hadn’t been touched up in the good part of the year, and from the buckling texture of the paint, the sign looked as if it might acquire more of a hieroglyphic aspect through the winter ahead.
Inside, Mrs. Porter cast her appraising eye on him. “Yes, sir?”
“I’d like to see about a room for the month.”
Her eyes narrowed upon him. “Have you stayed here before?”
“Yes, I stayed two separate nights back in May. I shared a room both times with the same man. I believe you called him Mr. Shepard.”
“I see. Well, there are more rooms to let at the present. Would you like one by yourself?”
“I wouldn’t mind it.”
“It’s a little more, is all. Not double. The meals are the same, of course. You say you expect to stay a month.”
“At least to begin with.”
“That should be all right.” She twisted her mouth, as if she were reluctant to mention money too directly for fear of losing a boarder in the lean time of the year. “I’ll need fifteen dollars for the first month. That covers room, meals, bath once a week, and laundry.”
“My clothes?”
“Yes, within reason.”
“How much would it be if I shared a room?”
“Twelve.”
“A room to myself would be fine.” He laid a ten-dollar gold piece and a five on the counter.
“Very well.” She opened the registry book and turned it around to him. “If you could sign here, please.” She lifted the two coins without a sound as he dipped the pen in the ink bottle. Before he had finished signing, her voice came out, higher now and almost cross. “You’re the blacksmith boy.”
“I was. For the last six months I’ve been doin’ ranch work.”
“And now that you’re out of work, you come here.”
“My money’s good.” He felt his resentment rising, and he realized he had been too sharp. Turning the register back to her, he took on a calmer tone and said, “I’ve minded my money all right, and I can get through the winter. My idea right now is to look around and see if there’s an opportunity.”
“That’s your business,” she said, a little smoothed out. “And as far as that goes, if you have anything you’d like to put in a safe, I have that as well.” When he didn’t answer, she pushed a key toward him. “You’ll be next door to Mr. Shepard.”
“Thank you.” He took the key and went out to fetch his belongings.
During supper, he kept his eye out for Ravenna, who didn’t appear until it was time to clear the dishes. When she saw him, she did not show surprise, so he imagined Mrs. Porter had cautioned her. For his part, his pulse quickened each time she came into the room. She looked the same as before, her hair perhaps a little longer, but there was no aura about her to suggest that her situation had changed.
After the meal, he went to his room. Although he wanted nothing more urgently than to get Ravenna off to one side and find out more about her circumstances, he knew he should not seem too impatient. He remembered Jory’s comment about the steam engine, and he told himself he had plenty of time ahead of him.
Alone in his room, he pulled off his boots and stretched out to rest after the day’s ride. He covered himself with his wool coat and stared at the ceiling. Before long, however, he began feeling restless. The sounds of Mr. Shepard coughing and clearing his throat came through the wall. Ed kept his arms crossed on his chest beneath the coat and tried to relax, but he felt like flinging the coat away, jumping to his feet, and slamming his fist into the wall. The guttural, hawking sound kept up. It was going to be a long winter.
After less than an hour of trying to relax, Ed sat up, swung his feet around, and pulled on his boots. He needed to get out and see what went on in this town after dark.
Two doors down from the livery stable where he had left his horse, he found an establishment called the Rimfire Saloon. The place was empty except for the bartender, so Ed took a spot at the bar and ordered a glass of whiskey. It would take him a while, as the taste of liquor did not appeal to him very much. The bartender, a red headed man with a coarse complexion and swollen, spotty hands, poured the drink and went back to his stool beneath an overhead lamp, where he was etching something into a dark piece of leather about a foot square.
Ed stood with his elbow on the bar and took in a view of the place. It was a common-looking saloon, with deer antlers on two walls, a dusty stuffed bobcat up on a shelf behind the bar, and a five-foot set of Texas longhorns over the door. On a sideboard behind the bar sat a two-quart jar with a mound of rattlesnake buttons in the bottom.
After a while, the front door opened, and an old man came in. He wore a high, tobacco-colored wool cap with no beak, and a long ulster of about the same color. Although he walked with a halting step and tapped the floor with his stick, he did not seem in danger of falling over. He headed for a table not far from the bar and took a seat facing Ed.
When they had exchanged nods, the old man said, “How go the wars?”
“All right, I guess.”
“Snow let up.”
“That it did. Not much of it, really.”
“No, not much. But we know what time of year we’re movin’ into. Short days, long cold nights. Hear the crickets inside now.”
The red-haired bartender appeared with a glass of whiskey. He set it in front of the old man, who nodded and waved him off as if to say he didn’t need anything else. Ed turned away to look at his own drink and to keep from staring at the other patron.
The old man’s voice came up from his place at the table. “From here, or holed up for the night?”
Ed shifted to face him. “Just came to town. Think I might stay a while.”
“There’s worse places. Better ones, too.” The man lifted his glass and took a drink, moved his lips outward and back, and let out a satisfied “Ahhh.” Then he hunched his shoulders up and gave a tense shake. “That’s the good stuff,” he said. “Does what the hearth fire can’t.”
He opened his overcoat and took off his cap. He had straggling hair, mostly gray and with just a few wisps on top. Under thick brows, he had brown eyes with yellowish whites, and his lower face had a scattering of gray stubble. He blinked a couple of times, yawned, rubbed the corners of his eyes with both hands, reached inside his coat, and brought out a pair of spectacles, which he put on. After a long sniff he took another drink of whiskey.
“What do you do for work?” he asked.
“I just finished six months on a ranch. Season ended, of course.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s not a big item right now. Ranch work.”
“So I thought I’d look around for a while, see if anything comes up.”
“No harm—oh, well, I guess there could be.” The old man reached into his coat pocket and produced a gnarly, dark brown pipe with a long straight stem. With his other hand he came up with a leather tobacco pouch. Looking down his nose, he stuffed the pipe and lit it. A cloud of smoke hung in front of his face and began to disperse. The old man swiped at the smoke to clear it away, then wrinkled his nose and spoke. “Who were you ridin’ for, if you don’t mind my askin’?”
“Cal Tompkins, out east and north of here.”
“Oh, uh-huh. Who’s his foreman now?”
“I don’t know that he has a foreman as such, seein’ as he does most of the bossin’ himself, but Homer Dugdale is his right-hand man.”
“Homer. Sure. You got along with him, I imagine.”
“Everyone does.”
The old man sucked on his pipe, then palmed the bowl and drew on it some more until he put out a solid puff of smo
ke. “You can sit here at the table if you want,” he said. “There’s room.”
“Thanks. I think I will.” Ed picked up his drink and carried it to the table. He took a seat at the old man’s left, partly to make the speaking and listening easier and partly to be able to keep an eye on the bar and the front door.
“My name’s Flood,” said the old man. “Tyrel Flood.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Flood. I’m—”
“No need to mister me. Just call me Tyrel. And what did you say your name is?”
“I didn’t yet. It’s Edward. Edward Dawes.” “Edward, eh? I think I knew your father.”
Ed flinched. “Really?”
“The Prince of Wales. Ha-ha-ha.”
“I don’t know him.”
“Neither do I, not personally. But there’s been lots of Edwards, including the Black Prince. All just a joke, you know.”
“Oh, sure. No harm.” Ed watched as Tyrel frowned at his pipe and pulled another cloud of smoke out of it. Then he said, “As far as that goes, you can just call me Ed.”
“You’d think one name’s as good as another.”
“I guess so. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Well, if you do, you’ll see it’s not true.”
Ed raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
“For one thing, you need to hang on to the same name. Once they take to callin’ you Ed, you’d best not change to Hank, then to Oliver, and so on. So for you, once your name’s Ed, it’s better than any other one at random.”
“I follow you.”
“And as far as namin’ someone to begin with, they’re not all the same either. Maybe there’s not a big difference between Edward and Theodore, as they can both end up as Ted, but even at that, they wouldn’t be any good for a girl. Furthermore, as far as boys’ names go, Henry or Andrew are just better names than something like Dode or Dupe, and yet I’ve known fellas with those names.”
“I suppose.”
“That’s why, when they get a good name for a king, they hang on to it, like Looie or Henry or Edward. So you see, you’ve got one of the best names in the world. Now me, for example, it would have been a hell of a lot easier if they’d called me Tyler, especially since he was president at the time, but Tyrel was an old family name. And even at that, it’s better than Axel, which some men have for a name. To my ear, if your name’s Axel, you lived a thousand years ago and burned down one another’s wood castles.”
“You’ve got it all worked out.”
“Still, Axel’s better than Dode. If my folks had named me Dode, I’d be sweepin’ up in a train station somewhere.”
“How about last names?”
“People don’t pick those, unless they’ve got a good reason, like a personal history they’d like to get rid of or the name doesn’t sound good in English. For example, you come from Germany and your name’s Snotter, maybe you change it.”
“Something like Snyder.”
“That’s right. Or maybe you go into a grog shop and come out happy with the name of Mead, or you go into a vintner’s and come out rosy-cheeked and calling yourself Portwine.” Tyrel started laughing, then laughed some more, and seemed unable to stop. At last he settled down and said, “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to have to listen to someone laugh at his own jokes.” He took off his spectacles and wiped his eyes. “I do it all the time.” He went into another laugh, shorter this time, then pulled himself out of it and took a drink from his whiskey.
Ed, meanwhile, said nothing. He found it amusing, but not quite enough to laugh at.
Tyrel wrinkled his nose. “So tell me about yourself.” He lifted the tip of his index finger, which had a yellow, ridged fingernail that looked as thick and hard as horn, and dug into the bowl of his pipe.
Ed pursed his lips, thought for a second, and began. “Not much to tell. I was orphaned early on, got adopted and grew up on a farm, went to work in a blacksmith shop for a year, then tried my hand at cowpunchin’, which I already told you about.”
“No wonder you jumped when I said I knew your father.”
“Did I jump?”
“Not very high. But that’s the way it goes. Very few people know when to keep their mouths shut, especially around strangers.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
Tyrel paused from digging in his pipe. “Sure. It’s like the fella who’s waitin’ for a streetcar. Another man comes up and asks, ‘D-do you kn-know what t-time it is?’ The fella is wearin’ a watch, but he points with his thumb to the fella standin’ next to him. So the stranger says again, ‘D-do you kn-know what t-time it is?’ ‘Sure,’ the other one says. He takes out his watch and tells him, ‘It’s half past two.’ The stranger says, ‘Th-thanks,’ and walks away. Then the man who told him the time says to the first fella, ‘Hey, what’s the matter with you? You’re wearin’ a watch just like I am. Why wouldn’t you give him the time?’ So the first person says, ‘D-did you w-want m-me to g-get a k-kick in the ass?’”
Ed laughed along with the old man this time. “That was all right,” he said. “It had a good surprise.”
“I guess so. Some people look for the lesson, like somethin’ about talkin’ to strangers. But really, there isn’t any, not if you consider the fella that asks the first question.” Tyrel turned his pipe over and rapped it on the tabletop, and a small pile of black grains spilled out. “There’s another one, about a fella in Mexico who wants to buy two tickets to Culiacán, but it’s in Spanish and it doesn’t translate worth a damn.”
“Oh.”
“And it has to be acted out. Thrust of the hips. Play on words with culo and culi. Funny as hell, though.”
“I bet.”
“It’s all funny.”
“Everything?”
“If you want it to be. At this point.” He went about putting tobacco in his pipe again. “How about you? You don’t talk much.”
“I already told my life story.”
“Such as it was. I’m not one to pry, though.”
“I don’t have the gift of gab.”
“I suppose I do. Leastwise, I don’t like to drink alone.” Tyrel poked at the tobacco with his crusty fingertip. “So you finished cowpunchin’ for the year, and you’re lookin’ around.”
“That’s about it.”
The old man struck a match, and it sputtered into flame. “Well, I been around these parts for quite a while, so if there’s anything I can tell you, let me know. Be glad to help.” He laid the match over the bowl of the pipe and started puffing.
“There might be one thing.”
“Oh?”
“Have you noticed that some anthills are peaked and made of tiny grains of sand and rock, while others are mounded up and have bits of grass and twigs and pine needles and such?”
Tyrel raised his thick eyebrows above the rim of his spectacles, then lowered them. “Now that you mention it, yes.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. I’d say ants are like people. Different ones have different ways of doin’ things. I know that’s not very scientific. I have thought it would be interesting to take a shovel and dig down into one or two of them anthills, but then I think, why not leave
’em alone? They’re just tryin’ to make a livin’ like everyone else.” He drew out a rich cloud of smoke. “That’s not scientific, either. It’s more philosophical.”
“How about snakes?”
“Oh, that’s different. You’ve got to kill them, poisonous ones anyway, before they do somethin’ to you.”
“Or after.”
“That’s for damn sure.” Tyrel took a drink from his whiskey glass. “Snakes are all gone down into their holes for the winter. Now, they say that’s some-thin’ interestin’ to dig into, is a rattlesnake den. Catch ’em while they’re still hibernatin’, shovel ’em out like pieces of rope, and finish ’em off. Cut their heads off, or throw ’em in a fire.”
Ed glanced at the two-quart jar. “Some fo
lks collect the rattles.”
“They can have ’em.” A puff on the pipe. “I’ll tell you a story about why I don’t like snakes. This happened more’n twenty years ago, when I first came out here. We were buildin’ a station on the old trail near La Bonte Creek—I was a carpenter before my knee went bad—and we were camped next to the job. One mornin’ I woke up, and there was a stinkin’ rattlesnake coiled up in the cast-iron skillet, not six feet from my head. I’ll tell you, I cut his head off with a shovel and scrubbed that skillet a dozen times with sand. Seemed like I couldn’t get the smell out of the pan, but I think I had it in my nose and kept smellin’ it that way.”
“Like a skunk.”
“Somethin’ like that. But a snake smell is more sickenin’.” Tyrel drank the last of his whiskey. He looked at Ed’s glass, which hadn’t gone down much. He seemed to be weighing his options.
Ed spoke. “I’ll be glad to buy you a drink.”
Tyrel paused with his mouth open, and Ed saw the man’s narrow, tapering, yellow teeth, spaced at the tips and with gaps where a couple were gone. “Nah,” said the old man. “I usually have only one drink in here.”
“I’ll pay for this one.”
“Not necessary. He’s already put it on my bill. But I thank you.” Tyrel gathered up his pouch and put his cap on his head, then stuck his pipe in his mouth and pushed himself up with his stick. “If you’re gonna be in town a while and need to kill some time, come by my place. I live on the next street north, last house on the right as you go west. We’ll drink cheaper there.”
“I might do that. What’s the bartender’s name, anyway?”
“Dode.”
“Really?”
Tyrel laughed as he held his pipe with his teeth. “Nah, you call him that, and he’ll think you’re callin’ him Toad. His name’s Henry.” With a half smile on his face, the old man turned and walked away, tapping his stick as he went.
After a couple of days, Ed formed an idea of Ravenna’s schedule. She worked through the morning and noon meals, then had a little time off from two to about four, when she went to work on the evening meal. On the third day, when he saw Mrs. Porter getting wrapped up to go out, he lingered in the sitting room. When the landlady had gone down the steps, he went into the dining room. Ravenna was straightening the chairs on the other side of the table.
Stranger in Thunder Basin (Leisure Historical Fiction) Page 6