Boon by Ed Kurtz (smallest ebook reader txt) 📗

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