Boon by Ed Kurtz (smallest ebook reader txt) 📗

most always eat with my hands and rarely use a knife except in self-defense. No way for a white man to eat, but it saves time some.”

Almost instantly, he dug his fingers back into the glistening breast of whichever bird he was eating, a crimson ring on his right hand splitting the skin almost as well as a dull knife. It was a repulsive spectacle, though the odor of the meat turned my stomach against me. Even had it been crow, I’d have liked to share in the judge’s repast.

“Tell me,” he said, his mouth full and lips shiny with bird fat, “about your cadavers.”

Boon pulled out a chair and sat. I set down my drinks and joined her and the judge. Men murmured behind us. I didn’t like that.

“Pair of men from a cattle drive, I believe,” she began. “Reckoned a heifer they lost got rustled, though I can’t say as I ever heard of rustling one cow from a drive. Anyway, these poor fellows came guns first and between myself and my partner, we were the superior shooters.”

Boon didn’t talk a lot, but she sure got to the point when she did.

The judge mulled this over, chewing on one side of his mouth and working at something tough. He then poked a couple of fingers into his maw and dug out a bit of gristle, which he deposited right on the table, beside his plate.

“Then you mean to say y’all ain’t looking after no bounty,” he said.

“No,” Boon said. “Not for them, we ain’t. This whole thing was just bad business I wish never happened. All I want is to settle it up proper, so any kin these boys got don’t got to wonder and worry.”

“Boys, you say?”

The judge did not seem to care for that appellation much. He finished chewing, swallowed, and worked his tongue around his mouth in search of stray bits before leaning back in his chair and looking us both over closely.

“What’re you,” he asked Boon, “Injun or Mex?”

“Neither,” she said, an edge to her voice. “I am from Siam.”

“Never heard of it,” said the judge. “That out Californy way?”

“Farther,” she said.

“Oriental is what you are.”

“If you like.”

“Young woman, I do not like one God damn thing about this. Let’s take a look at your corpses, then.”

A small crowd of spectators had gathered by the time we got back outside, drawn no doubt by the curiosity-inducing sight of two dead men slung over horses, one of whom bore a blackening hole through his head starting where his nose ought to have been. I felt some measure of pride relating to the acumen of that shot.

One enterprising moron in a sweat-stained bowler had rolled up his shirtsleeves to have a closer inspection, turning the tall cowboy’s head this way and that. The judge put a stop to that immediately.

“What you got, Henry Rooney, is an unnatural curiosity in things that ought to be let alone,” he barked.

Rooney backed away, stammering and sputtering in offense.

“I was only having a look-see for the public good, Judge,” he said.

“I should of put you in irons the last time you had a look-see at a body,” the judge roared. “Though I can’t figure as a living woman would ever let you.”

Most of the spectators had a hearty belly laugh about that. Boon and I exchanged a concerned look. Rooney scampered away in shame.

The judge approached the four mounts and two dead men. Voices chattered and gossiped. Then, a cow lowed miserably. Heads swiveled, mine included, and there in the middle of street stood that by-God heifer.

“Shitbrains,” I said.

“That the cow?” the judge asked.

Boon agreed that it was.

The judge said, “Hmm.”

First, he examined the fat one—the bastard I’d shot. There wasn’t much to look at. Apart from taking most of his face through that hole I’d made, the rest was burned black and turning to leather from the hot ride to Red Foot.

The judge said, “Hmm.” Again.

Next, he turned his attention to the tall one. The lad Boon had mourned in the tall grass. The judge saw something in the countenance of that corpse that Boon had seen, too. But not me. I was starting to think everybody but me was loco when it came to this particular matter.

“Why, this is just a boy,” the judge said. I thought he sounded mournful.

“Bullets kill just as good when boys shoot them,” I said. “I heard tell about a woman in Little Rock got killed when her girl got to playing with her daddy’s Army revolver, and the girl wasn’t but three years old.”

“But you ain’t no three-year-old girl,” the judge said gravely. “Nor any barefoot Arkansas hayseed’s woman. You’re a growed man, son.”

I reckoned it was rich that the judge of Red Foot, Texas, acted so high and mighty about us Arkansans, like this was any grand place to see, but I kept quiet on that subject. Way I saw things, we were all complicit in the self-same Confederacy, which meant each and every man jack of us was going to answer a few tough questions about that to old Saint Peter when the time came if the preachers were right about any one thing. But the little whiskered cannonball in front of me wasn’t interested in the Final Judgment just now. He had his own judgments to make.

He said, “What’s your name, son?”

“Edward Splettstoesser,” I told him.

“Woo-hee,” the judge said. “I wouldn’t want to be the undertaker responsible for your tombstone. How about this one? The Oriental?”

He jerked a thumb at Boon.

“Boonsri Angchuan,” she said darkly.

“Christ Jesus,” the judge bemoaned. “At least Edward is easy enough. All right, court is in session soon as I finish my supper and get a beer down my gullet. Ten of you men get your asses inside to serve, and somebody scare up Bob Laramie.” He turned an oily forefinger on Boon, and then me. “Bob’s the only lawyering man in Red Foot, so y’all got to share him.”

Boon reached for her Colt, but