by Bill Brooks
Little Paris thought as she looked over the latest women’s fashions, Now there is a pair of deuces if I ever saw any. More saddle bums, just what this old place needs. Why can’t the wind blow me in a rich cattleman looking to get un-lonesome, looking to travel the world. No, all the wind ever blows in are types like them two—ferret-faced and big and dumb as mules.
She reminded Cicero a little of that farmer’s wife in Alamagordo that time. Just before he shot her. It wasn’t exactly what anyone would call a case of mutual attraction, that’s for sure. Took fifteen dollars off her and the old man combined, team of horses, nickel-plated pocket watch, some brooches, two shotguns, and a Russian model Smith & Wesson pistol. Sold the whole kit and caboodle in the very next town for eighty dollars hard cash.
The half-wit saw Cicero staring and turned his head.
“She’s purty.”
Cicero did not comment, wondering if his brother had ever had a piece of tail in his life and doubting he had.
“I’ve been thinking,” Cicero said as they sipped their coffees the waiter carried to the table, saying as he did their food would be out shortly.
“What?”
“Maybe we ought to think about hanging round here for a while.”
“I like it here.”
“I don’t mean in this café, I mean in this town.”
The half-wit looked wounded.
“I know what you mean, I ain’t an idjit.”
“Since when?”
“What we gone do here?”
“I don’t know yet, but did you see that big bank on the corner we passed?”
But the half-wit was staring out the window, his concentration the span of that of a child’s. He was watching two boys playing tag out on the street. It made him want to go out and play with them.
“Anyway, I think we’ll lay up here for a few days and see what’s what.”
Then the waiter brought their meals and set them down.
“Be anything else, boys?”
“Some of that,” Cicero said, pointing with his chin toward the woman reading the catalog. “Why don’t you just walk on over there and tell that little piece of tail to come join us.”
The old man turned enough to recognize Little Paris, who came in regular this time of late morning; sometimes she came in even around noon for her breakfast. Generally she ate her breakfast alone. He always wondered if she ate alone on purpose or was it that her evenings and night life were taken up with all manner of men—he had even paid for a visit to her a few times—that she simply needed to not be around them in the light of day?
This old boy’s rude comments filled his chest with hot anger. A man never openly insulted a woman in his day. Told himself were he younger, he’d offer to take the derby-wearing son of a bitch and that ox companion out back and whip a little respect into them. But the cot and one meal and two bits a day the job provided wasn’t something to sneeze at, so all he said in reply to the man was, “Why don’t you?” Then turned and walked away, still fevered with anger at the insult.
“You hear that mouth on him?” Cicero said. “Might be her old daddy, or something.”
“She’s purty,” Ardell said again.
Cicero took two dollars out of his pocket and set it on the table, then said, “Come on, let’s rent a room.”
He made sure to pass near Little Paris’s table but she did not look up even when he said, “We’re staying over to the hotel if this town’s got one. Come look me up and I’ll show you something that will set your hair on fire.” Grunted a laugh and walked out.
Even though she was a whore and she’d had worse than these two, they still smelled like horseshit and gunpowder, and she told herself she wouldn’t screw either one of them for all the tea in China.
It set her to thinking about men in general and her life in particular. She had nearly four hundred dollars saved up. She figured at least two thousand for a fresh start if some wealthy rancher didn’t come along first and offer to marry her—which none had so far in the three long years she’d been working out of the Cat’s Paw. She still had her looks, but for how long? Next year, if she remembered rightly, she would turn thirty years old. The good news was there weren’t any other decent whores in town to compare to her unless a man wanted himself one of those Chinese girls worked in Chinaman’s alley. They all had bad teeth and diseased skin yellow as candle wax and didn’t speak no English, so they couldn’t even tell a fellow what a good fuck he was. She’d tried to get Trout to run them out of town, but the Chinaman paid Trout a percent to let him run them, and even Trout’s love for her couldn’t get him to budge on the matter.
“Man has to eat, Paris; besides, none of them hold a candle to you and you know it.”
Yeah, she knew it, but still every dollar those Chink whores siphoned off was a dollar she could have added to her savings.
She knew Bilk would marry her, but he was too shy and content to stay right here in Domingo. Still, she would have considered it if he’d been older, a little closer to dying, a year or two, maybe, and she’d have waited him out. But Bilk was fairly young yet—he just acted old. And he was tightfisted except when it came to feeding Trout his meals for free in exchange for Trout reading dime romances to him.
Trout would probably marry her if she let it be known she was open to the idea. But Trout had no future and was himself looking for a woman who at the very least owned her own house. Trout was also by nature a lazy so-and-so, always insisting she get on top whenever he bought her services.
The one man she admired and held secret desire for was Jim Glass. But Jim had taken up with that Mexican Luz Otero, the widow. The rest of the men in Domingo were either too old, too poor, too ugly, or all three. Mostly all three. Take those two that just walked out. The one in the derby wasn’t that bad-looking and about the right age, but he had the eyes of a devil, and she could feel trouble coming off him like heat off a woodstove, even if you put aside his nasty manner.
She told herself she had two choices: save up another thousand dollars or two, or fill her pockets full of rocks and walk into the river.
It was looking more and more that someday soon she’d have to go in search of rocks.
Chapter Ten
The breed stubbed out his cigarette and put the butt into a small drawstring leather pouch tied around his neck.
“Where’d you come by that army jacket?” Jim said, saddling his horse.
“Soldier gave it to me.”
“Looks like it’s shot full of holes.”
He looked down at it, fingered one of the holes.
“He didn’t need it no more.”
“You kill him?”
“You got my ten dollars?”
Hairy Legs looked at the falling snowflakes; they were a wonderment to his skin each time he felt them, like the soft kisses of the kindest woman. His earliest boyhood memories were of snow, of seeing it in his grandfather’s hair and watching it fall across a wide valley. His mother was a blue-eyed Spaniard captured in a raid across the border. His father wanted her because she had hair the color of corn silk and her blue eyes. Said she was sent to him first in a dream. She taught her son Spanish to go along with his Apache. Later he learned the English from whites, mostly the soldiers he scouted for. He liked the way they cussed. He liked the way they drank, too.
Jim went inside the house and told Luz there was a big storm coming but that he and the breed were going to go out and look for tracks anyway. He grabbed his mackinaw off the hook in the mudroom and shucked it on and took the gloves out of the pockets and pushed his hands into them.
“Why are you going with that crazy old fool?” she said. “I’m not sure I trust him.”
He looked at her, then kissed her cheek.
“Damned if I know why I’m going with him either, but if there’s a chance he can track down the ones responsible for what happened out there, then I’ve got to go with it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said.
; “What about the storm?”
Jim shrugged.
“Storm can’t be helped. Longer I wait, less likely we are to cut some sign. Already have lost a day on this as it is. Best get going.”
She took a deep breath and let it out.
“I should get home before the storm hits,” she said.
“Little Jessie was one of the horses, remember?”
She looked suddenly sad. Hers was the little clay-bank sorrel, the last one he and Trout had dragged off to the arroyo.
“I’ll bring you back a horse when I return,” he said. “There’s plenty of wood for the stove and some good books on the shelf if you get bored.”
Reading had become a favorite pastime of his ever since he had bought the place and found a few old books left from when the Bowdres had lived there. He bought more over time as he could find them. Since meeting Luz, most of his free time had been taken up with her. A man only has so many hours in the day to get it all done.
“I’ll mend your shirts,” she said. “And whatever else needs mending.” She still had not admitted to not being able to read.
“You did a good job on my heart,” he said. “Mending it.”
She smiled.
“Go on so you can get back here.”
He stepped out into the swirling snow.
The Indian stood there with snowflakes collecting on the ratty brim of his straw sombrero.
“I only got one horse,” he said to the Indian.
“I can count,” he said.
“We can ride double.”
“No, I’ll walk.”
“It’ll make it a slow trip.”
“What is the hurry? The horses are already dead, the one who killed them gone.”
Hairy Legs looked at the stud.
“That looks like a good horse,” he said.
“It’s a real good horse.”
“Wonder why that devil didn’t kill him too?”
“This horse is too smart to let anyone just walk up and slit its throat. Hell, he still won’t hardly let me even ride him, and I feed him.”
Hairy Legs walked to the corral, keeping his eyes on the ground. He walked completely around, stooped at one point, and placed his hand against the newly fallen snow where there was the slightest pair of cups, then brushed away the flakes. Then he stood and pointed toward the ridge.
“He came in from that way,” he said. “One man. White devil. Puts most of his weight on one leg. Right boot heel worn down. Got a bad left leg.” Jim went over and looked and shook his head, because it didn’t look like all that much sign to him.
He followed the breed as he walked toward the ridge, leading his horse by the reins. Hairy Legs moved steady for an old man, like it was something he’d done all his life and could do it better than anybody else.
As they crested the ridge the rake of the storm’s wind hit them full on, the snow swirling so thick that when Jim looked back he could barely make out the house. Hairy Legs walked around examining the ground, then started down the other side angling off to his left. Jim followed him all the way to where the river bent back around in a wide arc and flowed southward again. He followed as the Apache turned and walked upstream for a hundred yards or so, where he stopped in a bosque of mesquite and cottonwoods that grew from the rich, water-fed soil. Again he squatted and examined the ground. Flakes fell in the river and got eaten up like mayflies by trout.
Hairy Legs brushed a patch of snow away with the palm of one hand over a snowy patch of ground and uncovered horse apples he crushed in his hand and put to his nose.
“He went that way. Kept his horse tied up here. You can see where the horse cropped off some of the mesquite here where he had it tied off. Shit here. Big horse.”
Jim trusted the breed’s judgment now.
“Okay,” Hairy Legs said, extending his thick brown palm. “You pay me now. Ten dollars.”
“We ain’t found him yet.”
“How hard is it be to find a man who limps and rides a big horse? Ain’t you got no skills at all?”
“Could you at least tell me the color of the shirt he was wearing?”
“Blue,” he said.
“How the hell you know that?”
Hairy Legs offered an off-grin.
“It’s just a guess. Maybe his shirt is red or black.”
“Great,” Jim said. He reached into his pocket and took out the money and tried handing it over, but the breed waved it off.
“Silver,” he said. “No paper.”
“All I have is script.”
“No good.”
“Then you’ll have to wait for me to go to the bank.”
He shrugged.
“This storm is raising hell,” Jim said.
Hairy Legs turned his face skyward, shrugged.
“I’ll wait at the house while you get me my money.”
“You make my woman nervous.”
He grunted.
“I’ll stay in that shed.”
The storm was bearing down with a force now, the snow swirling so thickly they couldn’t see more than a few feet.
“I’ll have to talk to her about it.”
“This one is going to be a bone rattler,” Hairy Legs said, sniffing the air. “Could get ass-deep to a squaw.”
They trudged back up the ridge and down again and walked back to the house. Hairy Legs waited outside. The wind was buffeting now; the snow already had laid down a fresh skin of white over the land, clots of it sticking to the rocks and grass.
Luz was sitting at the kitchen table sipping coffee. She looked surprised to see him.
“You didn’t get very far,” she said. “Did the storm get too much, or did that old man keel over and die?”
“No, he’s outside. He found the tracks of the man who paid us a visit the other night. Only thing is, he wants silver instead of paper money. Means I’ll have to go to the bank soon as this storm blows itself out, which don’t look like anytime soon. He wants to stay around till I get him the money. How do you feel about that?”
The sound of the wind had grown to a low moan.
“Inside the house?”
“He can stay in the shed.”
“It’s already getting cold,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself.
“I can give him some extra blankets.”
“I feel terrible about it him staying out there. It would be treating him like a dog to have him stay in the shed.”
“I can tell him he can come in and sit by the stove.”
She looked uncertain. “Whatever you think is right,” she said.
Jim stepped outside. Hairy Legs was squatting there against the lee wall, his eyes nearly closed.
“You can stay inside by the stove if you want, or I can give you extra blankets to stay out in the shed till this storm blows over and I can get you your money in town at the bank.”
The breed opened his turtle eyes.
“Shed’s fine,” he said. “I wouldn’t want your woman to be afraid.”
“I’ll get you the blankets.”
The sky was nearly dark as night and it not yet noon.
Jim got the blankets and carried them outside and handed them to the Indian.
“Some whiskey would help keep the cold off.”
“You get crazy when you drink?”
“Sometimes.”
“Go on the warpath?”
“Used to. Too old now. Didn’t ever scalp nobody. Got drunk once with Sitting Bull after he left that Wild West show he was in. Fucker could drink like he had two hollow legs.”
Hairy Legs fingered one of the bullet holes in the jacket, let his fingers glide over the few remaining brass buttons as though he was recalling how he’d come by that jacket in the first place. There was something grimly interesting about his countenance.
“I heard about this society back East,” he said. “They call it the Free Love Society. I think maybe I’ll go see what it’s all about. I’ve been thinking about it a long time. M
aybe I’ll go next week or the week after. It might take me a while to get there, but the spring is a good time to start if I’m going.”
Jim didn’t know how much to believe or not to believe.
“Tell your woman not to worry,” Hairy Legs said. “I never did anything bad to people who didn’t deserve it.”
“That should make her feel swell.”
Jim went back in and got the liquor bottle from the shelf and poured three fingers deep into a cup of coffee and took it back out and handed it to the breed. Snow was collecting against the edge of the porch, and they couldn’t even see the ridge now or the tombstones or anything more than a few feet out from the house. It was a wet, heavy snow with flakes the size of poker chips. Jim went and unsaddled the stud and turned him out, made sure there was plenty of grain and water, then set the saddle inside the shed and looked around. There was enough room for a man to sleep comfortably among the saddles and sacks of grain. There were a few cracks the wind whistled through, but with extra blankets it shouldn’t be too terrible. It was his choice, the way Jim figured. Some men, like some animals, weren’t born to live inside.
He stepped out and crossed the yard to the lee side of the house again, where Hairy Legs squatted on his heels sipping his liquored coffee.
“You sure about staying in the shed?”
He nodded.
“Well, I’ll leave the latch undone in case you change your mind and want to come in by the stove.”
The Apache didn’t say anything but trudged off to the shed carrying his cup, and within a dozen feet of distance between them he became like a ghost in the heavily falling snow.
Jim went into the house and shook the snow off his coat in the mudroom, pulled off his wet boots, then went over to the stove and poured himself a cup of coffee and found Luz sitting in the main room, a shawl around her shoulders. She’d lit all the lamps. Her gaze rose to meet his. Wind rattled the windows with the storm.
“Looks like we’re in for a time,” she said.
“Looks like.”