Boon by Ed Kurtz (smallest ebook reader txt) 📗

Willocks agreed. “Thing like that gets written up in all the papers.”

“Expect it does.”

“Even in other countries. They know about it in England and such.”

I nodded.

“On the other hand,” Willocks said, “a whole damn town can burn to the ground and ain’t nobody knows anything about it if they ain’t heard about the town in the first place.”

“No reason to know it, then,” I said.

“And things folks don’t know about, they don’t care about, either.”

“I guess not.”

The marshal was silent for a several long minutes, like he was letting me think over what he’d said. I wasn’t thinking about it. Mostly I was thinking about how many of them I could get to before they killed me. I arrived at an estimate of two, which wasn’t a number I liked too much.

Willocks lifted his bandaged right paw and examined it like it didn’t belong to him. The bandage was getting dirty with trail dust and red was beginning to seep through.

“Bleeding again,” he said.

“What you told her true?” I said. “About her mama in California?”

“My man in Goliad heard from his contact in San Francisco,” Willocks said. “Seems there’s an old Siamese woman goes by the name of Pimchan does the cooking and washing up in some horrible Barbary Coast cathouse. Too old to fuck, I reckon.”

“Probably not too common a name.”

“Not anywhere that ain’t Siam,” he said. “Which is how come when your bitch gets there, my friends’ll be waiting for her.”

“Probably she’ll expect that.”

“She ain’t dumb,” he said.

“That’s for sure and for certain,” I agreed.

“But don’t you worry none. They’ll get her. And they’ll bring her to me.”

“That right.”

“That’s a fucking promise.”

“You do have a mouth on you, Marshal.”

“Only when my blood is up.”

He sort of half-grinned, half-frowned. With his face as beat up as it was, it was hard to tell what he was going for. Thinking about that, I got to chuckling a little. Then I was sure it was a frown he was aiming to make.

“You know what I think is funny?” he said. “What I was saying about nobody knowing or caring about a shit-hole town like Red Foot. You and your breed bitch burnt it right to the ground, the whole God damned town, and I ain’t never seen one word printed up about it. And I read all the papers, Dutchman—not just Texas rags, but St. Louis, Cheyenne, New Orleans. All the good God damn over. It just don’t capture the imagination the way something like that fire in Chicago does.”

“Never thought of it that way, Tom,” I said.

“You can call me Marshal Willocks or you can just say Marshal, but if you call me by my Christian name like we’re friends one more time I will knock you out of that saddle and trample your head.”

“That’s right understandable, Marshal Willocks,” I told him. “I think you’re right that we should be all formal-like, the way things are. You may call me Mr. Splettstoesser.”

“Fuck you,” Willocks said. “That’s what I’ll call you.”

“Easier to say.”

“Here’s how things are, Dutchman. You was some famous outlaw, or you done something everybody knew about? Sure, then I’d have to be sure I brought you in. Wheels of justice turn slower than Christmas, but that’s the way it is. ’Cept that ain’t how this is.”

“Do tell.”

“Me and my boys here are riding back to Darling without you.”

“That so.”

“Be my plan.”

“And I don’t ’spect that means you’re going to turn me loose.”

“It don’t.”

“Lynching,” I said.

“Call it whatever the hell you want,” Willocks said. “Nobody ever going to hear it, anyway.”

“Simple out here.”

“Couldn’t be simpler.”

“Harder in San Francisco.”

“Not yours to worry about.”

“On account of I’ll be dead by then.”

“That’d be the reason.”

He kept his eyes on me but didn’t smile or frown. He just looked. I broke the look and turned to see if I could still make out Revelation behind us. The prairie was pretty flat and there was still some view, though getting smaller in the distance. I could see steam from the train at the station and smoke further out that I couldn’t identify. Could have been anything. Unless you were looking for something in particular you didn’t tend to linger on things like that. Folks had their own problems to look after.

The nag nickered underneath me. I said, “This poor beast been watered proper?”

“Probably shoot it after I’m done with you,” said the marshal. “Put it out of its misery.”

“Some Apache do that,” I told him. “When a warrior falls, they kill his horse so he has something to ride into the other world.”

Willocks laughed.

“Some shitty horse to have to ride in heaven,” he said.

“Better than walking.”

The marshal just grinned and, almost imperceptibly, put the heel of his boot to his piebald mount’s side and rode up ahead. We rode most of the rest of the day in relative silence, apart from the odd chatter amongst the deputies, none of which had anything at all to do with me. One of them, a hulking brute who kept at the back of the convoy, said nothing at all and occasionally dry-shaved his face with the blade of his knife. I supposed all of them had killed their fair share of men, maybe women and children too, but this was the one I’d have bet killed more than anyone else among us. I wondered where a town dandy like Tom Willocks had become acquainted with rough men such as these.

Afternoon melted into twilight in the slow, colorful way it did on the Staked Plains. We moved parallel to the Caprock Escarpment, which loomed darkly to the east with a bank of gray thunderheads overhead, floating on the bruise-colored horizon like a head on a glass of beer. I wasn’t ever sure whether or not I believed in the same kind of God most folks—at least white folks—tended to talk about, but a view like that sure made a man feel small. I could have almost forgotten about the straits I was in looking at the world as