Boon by Ed Kurtz (smallest ebook reader txt) 📗

asked in the first place, though I already knowed it was you.”

I slammed my glass down on the bar and turned around, whiskey dribbling from my beard onto my shirt.

“I do not care for the disparaging language you employ, you son of a bitch.”

Truth be told, I was trying to sound a little like Boon. Of course, if Boon had heard him talk the way he’d talked to me, things would most likely have already escalated to violence in one fashion or another.

The jasper grinned some more and held up his hands, palms out.

“Hey now, no hard feeling, pard.”

“I ain’t your pard, cocksucker.”

“Christ Jesus, you’re a touchy old bastard.”

“I’m an old bastard, all right,” I said. “And a right mean one. Now if you got a point to make, make it quick before I make you eat this glass.”

“I expect that would upset my stomach,” he said. He was still grinning. I had half a mind to make him chew the glass until there wasn’t anything left of his big mouth.

Instead, I stood up so that he could see the belly gun I had stowed in my belt. He looked at it, then back up at my face. He wasn’t grinning anymore, but he sure didn’t look scared, either. The bartender, on the other side of the chip, looked downright terrified. He popped the cork out of that rye again and filled my glass without my asking before scattering through a backdoor to the side of the bar. It was only then that I knew I was in some kind of trouble. My first thought, I’m more than a tiny bit proud to say, wasn’t about my own sorry ass but rather the ladies back at the hotel. Whatever the hell this was, it was bigger than just one loudmouth cocksucker.

I pulled my belly gun and jammed its barrel against the soft spot in the hollow of the jasper’s throat.

“Let’s have it, then.”

“Figured you could guess by now, Edward.”

Edward.

I’d been sweating a bit—fat man’s curse—but my whole damned body turned cold at the sound of my own name.

I said, “Stanley.”

The jasper said, “There you go. Not quite as stupid as you look.”

“Where is he?”

The jasper shrugged. I pressed the barrel harder against his throat and glanced quickly around the small room. The old drunk was gone, and so was most everybody else who was sitting around when I first came in. Whether or not the dandy was there when I arrived, I couldn’t say. But he was for sure and certain there now.

Dressed to the nines in an emerald frock coat, matching brushed cotton trousers, and a Safford vest of crimson, the dandy wore a felt derby, perched jauntily on his mess of bright red curls, and smoked a long brown cigarillo that he pinched between forefinger and thumb. When he smiled at me, I saw that he was missing the very same front tooth I’d had knocked out back in New Mexico. I didn’t think it was going to make us friends.

“You ought to’ve killed Sam Gay,” he said with an Irish lilt.

“That son of a bitch came after us in Grizzly Flats?”

The Irishman nodded his head.

“That son of a bitch.”

“Made it back to Frisco.”

“He did.”

“How’s his mouth?”

The Irishman chuckled at that, but he did not answer the question.

“Your friend,” he said instead, “appears to be under the impression that Mr. Stanley is her sire.”

“She does.”

“Not quite looking for a happy reunion, though, is she?”

“She ain’t.”

My guts twisted up inside me. There were two of them here, but how many more were in their posse? They’d seen us come into town; surely they’d seen us register up at the hotel, too. And if they knew even just a small bit about Boon, they’d be mighty careful in their advance on her. I jabbed the jasper at the bar again with my Derringer.

“Well,” the Irishman said, “a reunion she shall have. You, I am sorry to say, are not invited.”

“Maybe I’ll just blow your friend’s brains out the top of his pointy little head,” I said.

“Maybe you will.”

The jasper said, “Christ, Bill.”

The Irishman, Bill, offered an empathetic face to the jasper.

“He won’t hurt you, Monty.”

“He had better not,” came a voice behind me. A familiar one.

An English one.

“Pop,” Monty whined, “he’s got a fucking lady’s gun on my neck.”

Pop?

Keeping the Derringer where it was, I craned my neck just enough to catch sight of Arthur Stanley standing between the two swinging doors. He held one aside with his left hand and leaned against the other. In his right hand was an Army Colt Dragoon, a .44 just like Boon’s.

“You will do me the courtesy of releasing my son,” he said, “and in return, I shall do you the courtesy of not shooting your balls off.”

“I’d sure appreciate that,” I said. “Kind of fond of the old boys down there.”

“I figured you might be.”

“Trouble is, that’s nothing to say you won’t shoot me right in the face.”

“That is true. I said nothing of the kind.”

“And then there’s the matter of our common friend.”

The Englishman’s lined face drooped.

“That creature is no friend of mine,” he said.

“Say, Monty,” I said, keeping my eyes on Stanley. “Your old man anywhere near as shitty to you as he is to your sister?”

“Sister?” Monty said. “The hell are you talking about?”

“Bullshit is what he’s talking about,” Stanley said. “This is not a man who understands anything about family.”

“Boonsri’s about the best kind of family I ever had or heard of,” I said. “You’d think yourself lucky to have her if you wasn’t such a filthy fucking puddle of wet horse shit.”

“Pop?” Monty whined. “What the hell is he talking about?”

Finally, I turned back to the quivering shit at the end of my belly gun and said, “Turns out you got yourself a half-sister, Monty. Damned finest woman I ever knew, never mind that your Pop over there sold her like she wasn’t anything to him or anybody else. Did her mama the same way, too. Guess