“I stood it for five years,” I said.
“You couldn’t beat a confession out of me five years ago, you couldn’t do it now. I’ll never confess. You hear me? Never!” Cable ran his tongue over dry, cracked lips. “Now draw your weapon and get it over with.”
“I told you, I’m not armed.”
He jerked the scattergun up, jabbing with it—a gesture meant to be provoking. But his hands shook so much he couldn’t hold it straight. “Go on, you son of a bitch, kill me, get it over with!”
Understanding broke in on me then. There was no fight in Cable, no resistance, the attempt at provocation as meaningless as it was desperate. There was only fear, guilt, a hopeless resignation. He had lost more than money, more than his health; he had lost the will to live.
“You want me to kill you,” I said. “That’s it, isn’t it? You want me to put you out of your misery.”
It was as if I’d slapped him across the face. His head jerked, his eyes bulged; he took a step toward me, jabbing again with the shotgun. I didn’t move. There was no need to defend myself.
“You can’t stand the thought of slowly wasting away, but you don’t have the guts to finish yourself off. You figured I’d do it for you, goad me into it if necessary.”
“No!”
“That scattergun isn’t loaded. It’s as empty as you are.”
Cable tried to stare me down. The effort lasted no more than a few seconds. His gaze slid down to the useless shotgun; then, as if the weight of it was too much for his shaking hands, he let it fall to the floor, kicked it clattering under the workbench.
“Why?” he said in a thin, hollow whisper. “Why couldn’t you do what you vowed you’d do? Why couldn’t you finish it?”
“That part is finished,” I said. “All that’s left is for you to tell the truth, and you will sooner or later. You won’t have a minute’s peace until you do, I’ll see to that.”
I put my back to him and walked out.
DOC CHRISTMAS
I was relieved to find the town marshal’s office open for business on a Sunday morning. Of course church services are held early in such provincial settlements as Box Elder, and lawbreakers and disturbers of the peace have little respect for the Sabbath. The marshal’s name, according to a sign on the door, was Seth Jennison. I straightened my coat, adjusted my hat, smoothed the brush on my chin, and entered.
The man seated at a cluttered desk—Marshal Jennison, a fact attested to by the star on his vest—was a large, sturdy individual of some forty summers, his ovoid head devoid of hair except for a thin ruff above the ears and two patches like tiny grass hummocks at the crest. I recalled seeing him among the other citizens gathered on the river flat upon Homer’s and my arrival in Box Elder. There was an air of calm authority about him, an unflappability, that I found reassuring. Some guardians of the law are less than accommodating to a man in my noble profession, judging me solely on the somewhat unorthodox but effective methods of attracting patients that Homer and I choose to employ in our travels.
“Well, now, Doc Christmas,” he said. If he was surprised to find me in his domain, he showed no indication of it. “What can I do for you?”
“I wish to lodge a complaint.”
“That so? What kind of complaint?”
“One of the citizens of your community threatened my life some twenty minutes ago. My assistant Homer’s life as well. In no uncertain terms, I may add.”
“Who did the threatening?” he asked, but I had the sense from the furrowing of his brow and the tightening of his jaw that he knew the answer before I gave it.
“The blacksmith, Elrod Patch.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The man is a philistine,” I said.
“Won’t get no argument from me on that. Philistine, troublemaker, and holy terror. What’d he threaten you and Homer for? Body’d think he’d be grateful after you yanked his bad tooth free of charge.”
“He claims it was not the painless extraction I guaranteed.”
“Oh, he does.”
“It is his contention that he suffered grievously the entire night, and that he is still in severe pain this morning. I explained to him that some discomfort is natural after a difficult extraction, and that, if he had paid heed to my lecture, he would have understood the necessity of purchasing an entire bottle of my Wonder Painkiller. Had he done so, he would have slept the sleep of an innocent babe and be fit as a fiddle today.”
“What’d he say to that?”
“He insisted that I should have supplied a bottle gratis. I informed him again that only the public extraction was gratis, but he refused to listen.”
“Just one of his many faults.”
“He demanded a free bottle. Naturally I did not knuckle under to what amounted to a blatant attempt at extortion.”
“Naturally. That when he threatened your life?”
“In foul and abusive language.”
“Uh-huh. Any witnesses?”
“Other than Homer, no. We three were alone at the wagon.”
“Well then, sir, I’m afraid there’s not much I can do unless he actually laid a hand on you or Homer. Did he?”
“No,” I admitted, “not then. Is he as violent as he appears to be?”
“He can be, though mostly he’s a big wind. Far as I know he’s never killed anybody human, just a horse once, so it’s unlikely he’ll follow up on his threat.”
“But he would go so far as to subject Homer and myself to physical abuse, would he not? And/or to damage my wagon and equipment?”
“He might, if he was riled enough. He threaten to do that, too, bust up your wagon?”
“He did.”
Marshal Jennison sighed. “I’ll have a talk with him, Doc, try to settle him down. But he don’t like me and I don’t like him, so I doubt it’ll do much good. How long you fixing to camp in Box Elder?”
“Business was brisk last evening,” I said, which was not exactly the truth. “We anticipate it will be likewise today and perhaps tomorrow as well, once word spreads of my dental skill and the stupendous properties of my Wonder Painkiller.”
“I don’t suppose you’d consider cutting your visit short and moving on somewhere else?”
I drew myself up. “I would not, sir. Doc Christmas flees before the wrath of no man.”
“I was afraid of that. Uh, how long you reckon Patch’s mouth will hurt without he treats it with more of your painkiller?”
“The exact length of time varies from patient to patient. A day, two days, perhaps as long as a week.”
The marshal sighed again, a bit gustily this time, I thought. “I was afraid of that, too,” he said.
MARY BETH GREATHOUSE
Getting away to meet Jim was considerably easier on Sunday than it would’ve been any other day. When Mother was alive she made the Colonel attend church services sometimes, but he was not religious and had not gone once since she died. But he had no objection to me going. I’d arranged with Etta when she delivered Jim’s note to come by and pick me up early Sunday morning, and Father didn’t suspect a thing when I told him. I said the reason I was taking my picnic basket along was that Etta and I intended to have our lunch down by the river afterward; he didn’t question that, either, hadn’t a clue that my riding clothes were bundled up inside.
Etta and I went to church, endured one of Reverend Harper’s antisin sermons, and afterward rode to her house where she lived with her brother Tom. She’d have let me borrow her buggy, but the only way to get to where I was going was on horseback. She had a way of wrapping Tom around her little finger, and she talked him into lending me his piebald for the afternoon. The horse wasn’t nearly as fleet or sure-footed as Southwind, but it felt good to sit astride a regular saddle instead of the sidesaddle the Colonel insisted I use. He would have had a conniption fit if he knew I no longer needed it for the reason he thought I did, and hadn’t since a month or so before Jim was railroaded into prison.
Our old rendez
vous spot was up near the Knob, where a network of narrow, shallow, brush-filled coulees crisscrossed the high ground—a little-used part of open-range cattle graze before the horrible winter two years ago. There were so many cattle back then that some wandered up that way and got themselves lost or trapped; hundreds had died in those coulees seeking shelter and forage in vain during the string of blizzards. One of these days nesters might stake their claims there, too, though it would be a hardscrabble life for those that did; there was little water for irrigation that far up and away from the river.
Valley Road took me most of the way, old cattle trails the rest. Cowhands used to ride up there every now and then to hunt strays, but mostly the section was deserted. No one other than Jim and me had cause to go there any more.
I had explored the high ground along the base of the Knob often enough to know it well, and had found a favorite spot—a kind of bowl-shaped grotto where one of the smaller coulees pinched into a dead end. The ground in the grotto was mostly flat, sandy smooth, with a little spring along one side where chokecherries grew among the rocks. The only way into it was through a declivity so narrow neither cows nor horses could squeeze through; even a big man like Jim had to turn sideways. Coyotes, swift foxes, marmots, and other small animals came there to drink in spring and early summer—you could tell from their paw prints—but you hardly ever saw one in the daytime. You couldn’t ask for a more private place.
Jim’s horse—a different one than he’d had before, a chestnut gelding—was picketed under a rocky overhang outside the entrance. I left Tom’s mare beside him, first untying the blanket from behind the saddle, then stepped through the declivity and straight into Jim’s arms. He started to say something, but I stopped it with a kiss, and not a chaste one, either. I had done nothing since Etta brought his message but think about being with him again here. We’d been alone together at Keystone, but he’d been preoccupied and busy and there hadn’t been much passion in our embraces, at least not on his part. Now I could feel it stirring in him the way it was in me.
But then he stood me off at arm’s length and said, “Easy, now, girl. We’re here to talk.”
“Not about what happened the other day?”
“Partly. I don’t want you coming to Keystone any more, for both our sakes.”
“All right. Then we’ll meet here from now on.”
“But not often enough to make anyone suspicious. The most important thing right now is to avoid trouble.”
“You’ve decided to stay, then.”
“It’s the only way, Mary Beth. Going away with you would be a mistake we’d both regret. I won’t be driven off my land by your father or anyone else, and I won’t rest until my name is cleared.”
He told me about his confrontation with Rufus Cable. “I don’t relish the thought of hounding a sick man, but I will until he breaks and confesses.”
“You really think he will?”
“I do. It’s a matter of time and pressure. Just knowing I’m around, watching and waiting, will prey on his mind.”
“But what if he works up enough nerve to come after you with a loaded shotgun?”
“He won’t. It took all the guts he has to face me with it unloaded, hoping I’d kill him.”
“And meanwhile?” I said. “It will take money to rebuild Keystone, a lot of money. Where will you get it?”
“I’m going to look for a job, starting tomorrow.”
“Oh, Jim…”
“I know anything I can get right now won’t be much, but it’ll be a start.”
“If you’d only let me help…”
“No. We’ve been all through that. I won’t take handouts from you or friends of yours. I have to do it on my own.”
“But it could take a long time … months, years. What about us, meanwhile?”
“We’ll keep seeing each other whenever we can.”
“Up here once a week or so. That’s not enough for me. Or for you.”
“It has to be. We can’t get married right away, you know that.”
“Why can’t we? The Colonel wouldn’t have to know about it. No one would.”
“Sneak off to Billings, do it on the sly? No. Somebody would be sure to find out about it, and that’d just make things harder on both of us. I want to marry you, more than anything, but when I do the time and the situation have to be right.”
Lord, he could be stubborn! But there was no use arguing with him when his mind was made up. I stepped away from him, shook the blanket open, and spread it out in chokecherry shade next to the spring—dry now, its bottom webbed with cracks.
As intent as Jim was, he hadn’t noticed the blanket before. He said, “Why you’d bring that?”
“To sit on, why do you think. Are you hungry?”
“Hungry? I don’t know … I didn’t bring any food.”
“I did.”
I went out to Tom’s horse, fetched the little bundle wrapped in waxed paper from the saddlebag—the picnic basket was too bulky to bring—and took it back into the grotto. I sat on the blanket, and after a few seconds Jim sat beside me. Not close enough to suit me; I scooted over until my hip touched his. “Cold fried chicken and hardboiled eggs, thanks to Etta,” I said, but I didn’t unwrap the bundle yet. “We’ll eat in a little while.”
“Why not now?”
I slid over next to him and showed him why not now. I slid my arms around him and pressed my body against his and kissed him, a long, hard, wet kiss that I could tell left him as shaken as it did me. It had been so long!
But he said, thick-tongued, “No, we’d better not.”
“Why?”
“You know why. What if … well…”
“I didn’t get caught five years ago.”
“Lucky thing you didn’t. We have to be sensible. We—”
I caught his hand and put it on my breast. He tried to draw it away, but I held it tight, looking into his eyes, my breath coming quick and unsteady.
“Mary Beth, no…”
“Jim, yes.”
And I had my way.
SETH JENNISON
It was hellfire hot in the blacksmith shop, at least fifteen degrees hotter than the day outside. Patch stood banging away on a red-hot horseshoe with his five-pound sledge, drenched in sooty sweat, when I walked in. Wearing his mule-hide shoeing apron and getting ready to shoe a skewbald stallion waiting in the stall. He hammered with a vengeance, as if it was Doc Christmas’s head forked there on his anvil. The whole left side of his ugly face was swelled up something wicked, about twice the size it’d been yesterday.
He glared when he saw me. “What in hell you want, Jennison?” The words didn’t come out in a lisp as they had in the willow flat, but in a kind of snarly mumble that you had to pay close attention to understand.
“A few peaceable words, is all.”
“Got nothing to say to you. My mouth hurts too much to talk.” Then, Patch being Patch, he went ahead and jawed to me anyway. “Look at what that gawdamn tooth puller done to me. Hurts twice as bad without the tooth than it done with it in.”
“Well, you did volunteer to have it yanked.”
“I didn’t volunteer for no swole-up face like I got now. Painless dentist, hell!”
“It’s my understanding you threatened Doc Christmas and his assistant with bodily harm.”
“Run to you, did he?” Patch said. “Well, it’d serve both of ’em right if I blowed their heads off with my twelve-gauge.”
“You’d hang, Patch, and you know it.”
He tried to scowl, but it pained his face and made him wince. He gave the horseshoe another lick with his sledge, then picked it up with a pair of tongs and dropped it into a bucket of water. Watching it steam and sizzle, he said, “There’s other ways to skin a cat.”
“Meaning?”
“Just what I said. Other ways to skin a cat.”
“Patch, you listen to me. You do so much as harm a hair on Doc Christmas’s or Homer’s head, or damage that wagon of th
eirs, I’ll slap you in jail and see you stay locked up as long as the law allows.”
“I ain’t afraid of you, Jennison.”
“Ought to be, if you know what’s good for you.” I said it quiet, but as hard underneath as that iron horseshoe in the bucket.
“I know what’s good for me right now—some of that bastard’s painkiller. It’s the genuine article, even if he ain’t. And I aim to get me a bottle.”
“Now, that’s the first sensible thing I heard you say. Whyn’t you and me mosey on down to their wagon so’s you can buy one.”
“Buy? I ain’t gonna buy something I should’ve got for nothing.”
“Oh, Lordy, Patch. Doc Christmas never promised you a free bottle of his painkiller. All he promised was to draw your busted tooth at no charge, which he did.”
“One’s free, so’s the other,” Patch said. “Ain’t nobody cheats Elrod Patch and gets away with it. Nobody!”
Well, that was some ironical coming from the biggest cheater in Box Elder, but I didn’t say so. Just wasn’t any use trying to talk sense to the man. I’d have got more satisfaction wasting my breath on a cottonwood stump. But I gave it one last try before I took myself out of his contrary company.
“You’re warned, mister,” I said. “Stay away from Doc Christmas and Homer and their wagon while they’re in my jurisdiction. And that goes for Artemas Jones, too.”
“Who?”
“The printer fella you half threatened in my hearing yesterday.”
He curled the half of his lip that wasn’t swollen. All it did was pull his grimy mustache out of shape and give him a comical lopsided look. “Another bastard,” he said. “Coldcocked me when I wasn’t looking.”
“With good cause, according to witnesses. Keep your distance from him, too. You’ll damn well regret it if you don’t.”
All I got for an answer was a mutter and a snort. And then a look at his fat backside as he turned toward the forge.
It was too hot and I was too sweat-simmered myself to go anywhere but the Occidental House for a cold beer. As cold as you can get in Box Elder in the summer, Tate Reynolds not being stingy when it comes to buying ice to pack his kegs. Ned Foley wasn’t behind the plank today, Sunday being his day off, which was too bad because he’d have been cheerful company while I had my beer; Ned’s one of my oldest friends, and almost as good a cribbage player as I am. The bartender today was Ed Smeed, who always looked as if he had a bellyache and was about as talkative as a mule. There wasn’t anybody among the other few customers I felt like conversing with, so I stood off by myself to sip my beer. Which didn’t quite quench my thirst, so I decided there wouldn’t be any harm in having another.
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