Boon by Ed Kurtz (smallest ebook reader txt) 📗

“Last known whereabouts,” I said, gnawing on the cold venison and remembering the wolf meat fondly. “Not much to start with.”

“We’ll go about it the way we always do. Ask questions.”

“We been doing that near three years now,” I complained. “This is a hell of a lot of country to hide in.”

“And this one with more reason to hide,” she agreed.

“Can’t shake the feeling we’re getting farther away from where we want to be,” I said, “instead of closer.”

“There’s no place you need to be,” Boon said, folding the paper back up. “It’s my ride and you don’t have to come along if you don’t like it.”

“I didn’t mean…”

“I’ve got to have a moment,” she said.

That was Boon’s code for needing to make water, and she rose to wander off into the darkness to do so, the conversation effectually closed.

Three years come September. Three years since she saved my hide and recruited me to help her hunt down a father meaner than Satan and a mother who was probably dead. Three years of the sole friendship of my whole life, though I didn’t suppose I would ever really understand Boonsri Angchuan. And it wasn’t on account of her being a woman or coming from faraway Siam. It was just because she was Boon.

When she returned from her moment, she doused the fire and slid into her bedroll, her Colt within reach as always.

Way I figured it, if God was willing and the creek didn’t rise, we’d reach Red Foot before noon assuming we lit out before dawn.

Chapter Seven

Red Foot was a God damned disaster.

First of all, we did not arrive before noon. We didn’t even arrive before nightfall. The delay was on account of the stupidest cow in the entire history of Texas. If there was ever a dumber one, I couldn’t account for it and didn’t want to know about it. This one was bad enough.

Things went from bad to worse after we finally rode into that stinking little hole in the ground called Red Foot, but first—and you will pardon my language—that fucking cow.

It was a brown and white Hereford heifer, and it wandered right up to us on the remains of a riding trail that looked untrodden for a hundred years. Where it had come from was anyone’s guess, but since it was only Boon and me, our guesses were the same: the dumb beast must have gotten separated from a drive and gone unnoticed. How it meandered so far from any and all known cattle trails was known to the cow alone.

Cussing and kicking at the cow didn’t do anything to dissuade it. Boon called shoo, shoo but it didn’t appear to know that part of the vernacular. Occasionally we’d pick it up and leave the critter behind, but it always managed to keep our scent and it caught up eventually, like a coon hound. This went on for hours. The fool thing decided we were its drovers now.

My vote was for shooting it and being done with it. Boon, who was not permitted by the Federal Government of the United States of America to vote on two counts, vetoed that measure. The cow lived.

Then, coming on late morning, the Hereford idiot’s real drovers showed. There were two of them, one tall and thin, the other short and round. They looked like they ought to be telling stale jokes on a stage someplace back east. Instead, they rode full chisel toward us and the infernal cow, who I’d taken to calling Shitbrains. To my surprise and disappointment, Shitbrains did not trot off to her true caretakers with elation in her huge, stupid eyes. In fact, she ignored them altogether and kept bouncing along the trail beside us. That was sufficient evidence for the drovers to presume cattle rustling was afoot, whereupon they got to shouting some of the bluest curses I’d ever heard and opened fire with their rusty revolvers.

“We hang rustlers here in Texas, you bastards,” called the tall one.

“Just shoot ’em,” shouted the fat one. “Let the Lord figure it out.”

“Take your God damned cow,” I screamed back at the drovers. My voice sounded shrill and womanish in my ears, but I was in a frantic push to kick the hell out of my mount’s ribs to get clear of the cowboys’ wild shots. “We don’t want it!”

“Now they don’t want it,” the fat one cried. This was punctuated by another shot, though from which revolver I couldn’t say. I looked over my shoulder to see how close they were and found good old Shitbrains close to heel, galloping for all it was worth to keep its pace with us. I swore to myself if those fool cowboys didn’t kill us, I’d eat every square inch of that cow, right down to the hooves.

“You get the old man,” the tall one said. “The Indian is mine.”

“Cut off that Injun’s nuts for me,” the fat one said. “I’ll make it into a ’baccy pouch.”

Christ, they thought she was a man. No wonder they weren’t letting up with those shooters. I reckoned they’d be in for a huge surprise once they pulled the breeches off her corpse.

But Boon wasn’t interested in dying that day. She gave as good as she got, pulling her Colt and firing three shots in quick succession. None of them hit the drovers, but they slowed down and pulled away from one another, one after her and one after me. It was either a good-sized drive that could afford the temporary loss of two of its bone-headed men, or a small one that was doomed to fail anyway. It didn’t much matter to me. I was just trying to stay in the saddle and above ground. In the meantime, my opinion of cowboys was not improving.

While the tall one galloped after Boon, her imaginary testicles on his mind, the fat one rode with surprising speed at my tail. I couldn’t see how his girth didn’t break