by Ed Kurtz
“Listen,” I started.
“Just a minute, partner. No need to get riled any.”
“Who’s riled?” I spat.
I was.
“I only wanted to let you know—let both of y’all know—that it looks like I got some good information out of Goliad.”
“That fast?”
I didn’t believe him. Telegraphs were lightning fast, to be sure, but there were plenty of other details to consider, too. Getting the message to the right person, for example, not to mention the time it took to track down that sort of difficult information.
“Like I done told y’all, I know some good old boys in Goliad,” he said with a grin.
Horse apples, I thought. Horse apples and dog shit.
I said, “All right, then—what have you got?”
The grin broadened, slicing across his big face.
“Not so fast,” he said. “Way I see it, between my hospitality this morning and my additional work on y’all’s behalf this evening, the two of you owe me a little something in return.”
“There it is,” I said. I was sobering up quicker than I wanted.
“Don’t misunderstand me, sir,” the marshal said. “It’s not that I won’t pass this information along to you and your lovely friend—” The nerve of this rube! “—I merely want for us all to come to an amicable arrangement that benefits all parties equitably.”
I should add here that though Marshal Willocks tended to turn a pretty phrase with more than a few five-dollar words peppered in, he pronounced them so poorly that he sounded more the fool for saying them. I might have laughed right in his face had I not been so irritated. So too, I was eager for the man to get to the damned point.
“Let’s have it, Willocks.”
The grin faded. I didn’t think he cared much for my impertinence, which sat just fine with me.
“You ever hear tell of an outlaw name of Bartholomew Dejasu?” he asked me.
“Are you just collecting hard names now?”
“Killed five men, and that’s just in Texas. There’s papers on him in the Indian Territory, Arkansas, and the New Mexico Territory for almost a dozen more, on top of a handful of robberies and a fair amount of rustling down through into Mexico. This one is the sort whose neck was made for rope, if you catch my meaning.”
“We ain’t bounty hunters,” I said. With that, I steadied myself and turned for the stairs. The room tilted some, but I did my best to hide it.
Willocks launched to his feet and cut me off at the bottom step. I thought he was going to put his hands on me again and I tensed up. He didn’t.
“Now, wait just a damn minute,” he said. “I could easily have thrown your friend in the hoosegow for what she pulled with Lenny today on the street. That’s assault, plain and simple, and I just let it blow right over, didn’t I?”
“Boon’s in room five,” I told him. “Go arrest her.”
“Knock that malarkey off. I don’t aim to arrest her and you know it. I’m just saying we’re all friends now, and friends help each other out, damn it.”
“Help yourself, Marshal.”
I shouldered past him and, grabbing the railing, started up the steps. I recalled there being fewer of them earlier in the day, but if I had to climb a hundred of them to get clear of Willocks, that was what I’d do.
Halfway up, I was startled to find Boon standing a few steps down from the top, her arms crossed over her chest and leaned up against the wall. She’d been listening to the whole conversation, though the stone face she wore betrayed no thoughts on the subject one way or another.
“How do, Boon,” I said.
She looked past me to the marshal at the bottom of the stairs.
“Information first,” she said. “Then we’ll get your man.”
“Ah, hell,” I said.
Willocks licked his lips and thought it over.
“See, I figure it’s your turn to pay out a favor, after today,” he said. “Matter of fact, when it’s all said and done, I’ll have done you two favors and you only one for me.”
“All favors ain’t created equal,” she said.
“That’s a fact, Miss Angchuan.”
The smooth son of a bitch had been practicing the name after she wrote it down for him. I just knew it. He sure as hell hadn’t said Splettstoesser in all the time we’d been talking.
“I’ll tell you what,” Willocks continued. “Meet me for breakfast at the diner on Willoughby—Edward here can find it. We’ll jaw over the particulars and you can make up your mind then.”
“And the information you promise?” Boon said.
“Make it eight o’clock,” said the marshal. “We’re not farmers.”
“Or bounty hunters,” I reminded him.
“Eight o’clock,” Willocks said, and it was the final word on the matter. He left, and I went the rest of the way up to where Boon still leaned against the wall.
“Horse apples and dog shit,” I said.
“Get some rest, Edward,” Boon said. “Tomorrow may be a long day.”
“And the day after that?” I asked, worried that we were entering into some kind of long game.
She said, “Maybe longer.”
Was that a phantom of a smile on her lips? Who knows? I made a noise and grumped back to my room without another word.
I lay in bed for what felt like a while before finally drifting away into a dreamless sleep. In the meantime, I tossed, turned, and worried. I worried that this Willocks really did have information worth hearing, and that Boon would soon locate her father, kill him, and probably end up dead, or in prison, or forever on the run. I had no intention of following her through the first two, and the third did not sound too pleasant either. Alternatively, the slippery bastard might have received word on Boon’s mother, whereupon a happy reunion could take place. This was a lovelier outcome to ponder, but also one in which I would have no place. Either way, I feared I was soon to lose Boon.
Chapter Five
I was downstairs drinking halfway decent coffee, remembering the marshal’s noxious brew, when Boon appeared all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to say, “Let’s go.”
“Good morning to you also, madam,” I replied. “Mind if I finish my coffee first?”
“They got coffee at the diner, don’t they? Let’s go. We’re wasting sunlight.”
Neither of us even knew what was what yet, and still we were wasting sunlight. I glanced at the clock behind the bar, and I was chagrined to note that the bar was not open at that early hour. It was a quarter to eight. Plenty of time to finish my coffee and still make it over to the meeting with Willocks. The day was already off to a poor start.
We got to see a bit more of Darling that morning, walking as we did from one end of Main Street to the other, then down Willoughby to the Widow Perkins’s diner. Somebody, probably that same boy I’d seen the day before, had been at the street-raking again. There was a saloon that captured my interest, but it was of course still locked up from the night before. If Darling had anything approaching a sporting section, it was not in evidence. Frankly, I was getting sick and tired of the town’s righteous cleanliness. It made me itch all over to get someplace else and quick.
Along the way, I expressed my mistrust of Marshal Willocks.
“Ought to be a foregone conclusion,” Boon said to that. “You oughtn’t trust anybody, especially when you just met them.”
“So, you don’t trust him either?” I asked, wanting to be sure.
Boon slowed to a stop and turned to look at me like I had three heads, all of them stupid.
“Edward,” she said, “I don’t even trust you.”
That stung some.
Willocks was seated by the window when we walked in, poking with a fork at a mess of bacon soaked in its own grease. Nearby, a dowdy woman in a blue-checked dress and an apron twiddled her thumbs and watched him fuss with the bacon, rapt. The Widow Perkins, I presumed. At least Boon wasn’t likely to find a man eating his breakfast
so damned fascinating.
Boon said, “Marshal.”
“Have a seat,” said Willocks, his mouth full. “Both of you.”
She sat first, across the table from him. I sat beside her. Willocks grinned at Boon. The Widow Perkins looked offended by it. I wanted to be anywhere else but that diner.
“I’d recommend the flapjacks,” the marshal said, “but anything is good. She’s a right fine cook, that Missus Perkins.”
“Oh, Tom,” said Missus Perkins, turning pink in the face.
Any appetite I had was mostly gone. I ordered coffee.
“What do you propose, Marshal Willocks?” Boon said, ignoring Perkins and thereby forgoing breakfast.
“Straight to business,” Willocks said. “Measure of a smart woman. I like that.”
“I grew up around people I couldn’t talk to,” she said. “Small talk makes me nervous.”
“All right, then. Let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we?”
He forked another strip of bacon into his mouth and smiled while he chewed it, setting down his fork and patting his face with a red and white napkin. The Widow Perkins deposited a cup of coffee, black and steaming, on the table in front of me. It tasted so good, only a dram of whiskey could have improved it.
The marshal pulled open one side of his jacket and withdrew a folded piece of paper from an inside pocket. This he unfolded carefully and, shoving his plate to the side, spread out on the table for us all to see.
It was a truebill for one Bartholomew Dejasu.
REWARD
$200
IN GOLD COIN
to be paid by the U.S. Government
for the apprehension of
BARTHOLOMEW DEJASU
Wanted for Murder, Robbery, Arson
and other acts against the peace
and dignity of these United States
Thomas D. Willocks,
City Marshal
Darling TEX
Underneath this great wall of ink was a line drawing, probably based on a photograph, of the wanted man in question.
I said, “What’s the D stand for, Tom?”
Boon sighed and didn’t let the marshal answer. I doubted he would have, anyway.
“Get to the meat of it, Marshal,” she said.
“You’ll understand my position that no bounty can be double-paid, which is to say you can take the coin or the information, but not both. And only when you bring Dejasu in—alive.”
“And how much did you pay for this information you claim to have?” she said.
“It ain’t negotiable, Miss Angchuan.”
“He’ll just keep that two hundred for himself,” I said.
“Probably it will go to the marshal’s office, yes,” he said. “Nothing mercenary in that.”
I scowled at him and drank my coffee.
“How am I to know the information is any good?” Boon demanded. “Or worth a tinker’s damn? Or that you got anything I’d want at all in the first place? Seems like a terrible lot to take on blind trust, which isn’t how I do business, Marshal.”
I remembered what she’d said about trust on the way there. My heart ached at the thought of it.
“Ain’t how anybody does business,” he agreed. “Leastways nobody I ever heard of. No, ma’am, it’s an unusual situation all around.”
“One you’re in control of,” Boon added.
As usual, Willocks met that with a grin. “Seems that way, don’t it?”
My coffee finished, I rose from the table and reached for my hat.
“I guess I’ve heard just about enough,” I said. “You holdin’ all the cards and us with our trousers down? No, sir. I don’t think we’ll be doing business after all.”
He raised both eyebrows at me, then turned his surprised expression on Boon. I could see what he was doing, which was silently asking her if she agreed. Because she was the boss of the operation. Did I feel unmanned by that? Probably some.
Boon drew in a long breath through her nose and let it out slowly through her mouth.
“Here’s my offer,” she said after a moment. “I’ll bring you your man, and alive if in any way possible, and you’ll give me that information you say you got from Goliad. But if you don’t, or if I don’t judge it any good or useful to my purposes, you will pay me the two hundred in gold coin just the way it’s printed on that fancy bill of yours.”
“It could be the best thing possible to your purposes,” he said, “and you could still demand the reward.”
“Could be,” Boon said.
“You are a hard woman, Miss Angchuan.”
“Could be,” she said again.
The marshal squashed his mouth up to one side, meeting her gaze and giving it a think through.
“A damned hard woman,” he said.
He didn’t know the half of it.
We rode out half past nine, due northwest, with Marshal Willocks’ wanted poster and whatever provisions we could gather in a hurry from the sundries store on Main Street. To my dismay, the sundries store sold no spirits. For that alone, I was glad to get shut of Darling, Texas.
Chapter Six
The sun was high and hot, unrelenting in its punishment for two fools riding up into the grasslands with only the vaguest notion of where we were going and what we were going to do when we got there. We were more or less in the dead center of a big, empty square between cattle trails far to the north, east, south, and west of us, leaving little by way of civilization along the way. That much suited me well enough—I’d had more than my fair allotment of run-ins with cowboys in cow towns and I could do without the odor of them or their stinking charges. Besides, there wasn’t much that depressed a man more than the sight of men working themselves to death for next to nothing just so a few big-wigs at the top of the pile could keep getting richer. I’d decided early in life that work was no way to spend one’s few and short days before that old Angel of Death came calling for his due.
Yet if somebody had asked me the day before what I did to earn my living, I could have laughed and told him I did no such stupid thing, whereas here I was slumped in the saddle with a job of work at hand and, at least for the time being, a profession.
Edward Splettstoesser, bounty hunter.
Jesus.
“Look alive, Edward,” Boon called to me from ahead. She was reading my mind again. “We ain’t but just getting started out.”
“You know,” I called back, “I do believe we are riding right into the heart of Indian Country.”
“We’ve been in the Comancheria for days already,” she said. “Or what’s left of it, anyhow. Still some Kiowa bands about, raising hell. See that smoke over to the east?”
My back stiffened and I looked. Sure enough, a thin gray column rose from the horizon to my right. It wasn’t particularly close, but too close for comfort.
“Nothing like they used to be,” Boon said. “But meaner than ever. I don’t blame ’em none, either. Government’s been warring them to death since they ran out of Confederates to kill. It’ll come to a head soon enough.”
“I’d rather not be in the middle of it when it does,” I said, never imagining for a blink of the eye that I would be.
“If they scalp you, you can just turn that big beard of yours up and wear it on your head,” she offered. “Hardly anybody will notice the difference.”
Boonsri did not laugh often, but when she did it was uproarious. I wasn’t in the mood for mirth. Apart from my anxiety at the volume of her laughter so close to that camp, I reckoned the two of us had already had more than enough Indian troubles.
Barely a year had passed since our run-in with the Mescaleros along the Texas Big Bend, east of Chihuahua. Boon had spotted the smoking ruins of a stagecoach behind an outcropping of rocks and mesquite and insisted on investigating. It smelled like trouble to me and my nose wasn’t lying: no sooner had we gotten within spitting distance of the stage, we were circled by a band of a dozen Mescalero Apaches mounted bareback and armed with
a shiny new U.S. Army repeater apiece.
All but one of them were men, and the one woman among them dressed in the same cotton tunic, leather waist-belt, and knee-high moccasins. Like her fellows, she wore long, loose hair that draped over her shoulders. And like her fellows, she did not appear terribly friendly.
It was her that rode up from the rest, her horse snorting as she neared Boon and me. The woman tilted her head back so that she looked down her nose at us, first me and then Boon. I edged a little closer to my own mount, thinking about going for my rifle and seeing how many of them I could knock off their horses before the end. Without so much as looking at me, Boon said, “Don’t.”
The Mescalero woman said something in Chiricahua to her. Boon listened, gravely and intently, despite the fact that she couldn’t understand a single word, as I knew damn well. At the time, I couldn’t tell if the woman was their leader, or if she was just talking to Boon because they were the only two women there. Did she think Boon was an Indian, too? Didn’t seem likely. Mostly, my mind was just spinning in every direction looking for some hidden solution to our dilemma. When an older man with a hard, square face loped up beside the Mescalero woman and aimed his rifle—a brand-spanking new Springfield Trapdoor—at me, I decided it was too late for solutions.
I raised my hands like I was being robbed. The square-faced man’s eyes widened and he tightened his grip on the rifle before he couldn’t take it anymore and exploded into a fit of raucous laughter. Boon turned redder than any of them, she was so embarrassed by me. But the rest of the braves got to chortling pretty good at my expense, too, so in a way I figured I’d just saved our lives by acting the fool like that.
Then the square-faced man directed a pair of his men to ride up to us, where they jabbered until we understood that they wanted us to climb back up into our saddles. I thought we were being set free, but Boon gathered more from their talk than me.
“Hand over your rifle,” she instructed me. “Slow and easy.”
Her Colt came out and spun on her finger so that the butt faced out. One of the men took it. I wasn’t even through untying my saddle scabbard before the other was upon it and yanking the Winchester free.