Boon by Ed Kurtz (smallest ebook reader txt) 📗

clerk there referred us to a rancher by the name of Wadsworth, and Wadsworth happened to be in town that morning for a meeting of Longview’s aldermen, of whom he was one. The meeting was across the street in the municipal building, so we stood around like ne’er-do-wells and waited for the town’s big men to come back out again.

When they did, the clerk poked his bald head out of the office and pointed to a round fellow in a green checkered suit, with a tar-black moustache that drooped down past his chin. He didn’t look like any rancher I ever saw, but the clerk said he was. Wadsworth jawed with some of the bigwigs for a spell, then checked his pocket watch and ambled over to where we were standing.

“Mr. Wadsworth,” I said.

“Pack off,” he said in an unmistakably English accent.

He pushed past us, which was easy to do with all his girth, and rolled right into the Cattlemen’s Association office.

I said, “That weren’t nice.”

Boon grunted. She didn’t think it was, either.

She went in first, me fast on her heels. A door slammed somewhere in the back when we got back inside. The clerk looked at us with an apologetic grin.

“Guess I might’ve mentioned he’s kind of a gruff character.”

“Me, too,” Boon said. She went directly for the back to find the door that had slammed.

“Hey,” the clerk hollered at her. “You can’t go back there.”

I put my hand on his shoulder and flashed my teeth at him.

“You don’t want to try stopping her,” I said.

“I—I don’t?”

I shook my head.

“Just looking out for your interests,” I said.

The clerk nodded that he understood. As soon as he was done nodding, I heard a loud bang that was followed by the sounds of wood splintering. There was a good bit of shouting—Mr. Wadsworth, I supposed, as Boon never was much of a shouter—and then another bang. After that, Wadsworth just kept shouting, “Help, help.” And like that.

“The marshal is right across the street,” the clerk said.

“That a threat?” I asked him.

“Hell, no,” he said. “Just a warning.”

Wadsworth reappeared from the back, his face pink and flushed and pouring sweat. Boon was right behind him, giving him the occasional shove to keep him moving.

“Christ Jesus, Henry,” he moaned to the clerk. “Did you not hear me call for help?”

Henry motioned with his head to me. Wadsworth looked at me like I’d only just appeared in the room at that moment. I smiled.

“You was a bit rude to us just now on the boardwalk,” I advised the rancher. “My friend here does not take easy to rudeness.”

“This damnable creature is your friend?” he said.

“Best and only one I got,” I said. “She only wanted to ask you a simple question, but you went and made it more difficult than it needed to be.”

“She broke my door down.”

“I heard that.”

“What do you people want? Money?”

“Henry,” I said, “he always listen this good to people when they’re talking to him?”

Henry just looked at his feet.

“I am going to fetch the marshal,” Wadsworth boomed. “Shoot me in the back if you like. You will not leave this office alive if you try.”

“Then we’ll all be dead,” Boon said.

Wadsworth had started to move, but that stopped him in his tracks. For a minute that felt like an hour, all four of just stood there looking at each other. Nobody even had a gun out. Just four people in an office, sort of paired off, waiting for somebody else to do something.

It made me a right smart nervous, so I did what I almost always did, which was fill the quiet with my voice.

“All right, then,” I said, slapping my hands together. “I reckon we got off on the wrong side of the train, here. Mr. Wadsworth, my friend and I are looking for a gentleman name of Arthur Stanley who, I believe, hails from the same corner of the Earth that you do. Good ol’ Henry here recommended to us that you might be the man to talk to about that, which is how come we waited to accost you after your meeting with your pals over there. Now, seems to me maybe your meeting didn’t go too good, or mayhap you got a sour stomach, or could be you’re just a disagreeable son of a bitch. But the fact is that you said, and I’m quoting real direct here, pack off. I think we can all agree that’s a powerful impolite way to address a stranger and it’s on account of that that my good friend here busted up your door.”

Boon said, “Correct.”

“So, how about it, Mr. Wadsworth? You’re the big man around here and us just drifted in from no place to speak of, which to my way of thinking means the decision ought to be yours.”

Wadsworth blinked.

“What decision?” he said.

“About whether you aim to just answer the God damned question or if we’re going to escalate this to something even more unpleasant than it already is.”

Wadsworth blinked faster. Boon moved around to stand beside him. Henry shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then back again.

“What was that name again?” the rancher said.

“Stanley,” said Boon. “Arthur Stanley.”

“You going to kill him?” Wadsworth said.

“Probably, yes,” she said.

A smile stretched out beneath Wadsworth’s moustache, slow and slimy.

“In that case,” he said, “please accept my apology. I have, as a matter of fact, been acquainted with a fellow Briton who answers to that name, and upon our last discussion he expressed an intention to throw in with some ranchers down in the Hill Country. Seems there’s quite a passel of small operators down there he’s interested in taking over and throwing out if he can get his hands on the big operator’s money. Nasty, nasty man. Word is he made a small fortune illegally dealing in slaves before the war and some bad dealings with the Orient before that.”

“That is true,” Boon said.

“Thought he could do for Texas what happened in California with the Chinamen.