Boon by Ed Kurtz (smallest ebook reader txt) 📗

cluster of saloons and whorehouses just behind us. And the foreman was striding right out into it.

“His camp’s one of those up ahead,” Boon said low.

“Terrific,” I said. “So, why are we stalking him like we’re braves on a God damned buffalo hunt?”

“Because he could have stayed back there,” she answered, which didn’t mean a thing to me.

But I sorted it out once we got within sighting distance of the camp. There, among a cluster of tents surrounding a well-built fire in the center, the bossman joined three other white fellows, two of whom clutched at two young women. Chinese women. And from the looks of things, far from willing participants in their fun.

“Sporting girls?” I wondered aloud.

“More like captives,” Boon said.

“Explains why Droopy there didn’t stick around to have his poke back yonder.”

“It does that,” she agreed.

“And that look of him you didn’t like.”

“Seems I’m to his taste.” She curled her lip in disgust. I couldn’t blame her. But I still only barely understood.

“Bad hombres, then,” I said. “How you want to play this?”

She told me. Finally, I understood.

I said, “Shit.”

Then I went shambling into the camp, stumbling this way and that, laughing under my breath and mumbling something so incoherent I didn’t even know what the hell I was talking about.

“Whoa there, stranger,” one of the men said. Until the foreman showed back up, this was the only one without a gal to grab at. “Wrong camp.”

“Billy Joe?” I slurred. “That you, old son?”

“Ain’t no Billy Joe here, you old drunk. Move along.”

“Shit and hellfire, you look just like Billy Joe.” I surveyed the scene up close as best I could with one eye half-shut to look as drunk as I wished I was.

“Christ, Clete,” said a rangy one with his long, wiry arms wrapped around one of the girls. Now that I could see her a lot better, I didn’t think she could have been much older than fifteen, if that. She regarded me with wide, pleading eyes. The other gal didn’t look at anyone at all, her eyes on the ground, like she’d just about given up the ghost. “You’re just sour there ain’t enough flesh to go around. Though I ’spect I reckoned the chief here might of come back with more company.”

He grinned at the foreman, who shook his head and spat in the fire.

“God damnedest thing,” the bossman said. “Wasn’t a whore in town but the white ones, but don’t you know a woman comes in says she’s Siamese.”

“Sia-what?” said the rangy one.

“Siamese, you stupid ass,” said the thick, blond-bearded boy who was grappling with the other girl. “Like Chang over there.”

He sort of lifted his chin in a vague direction. I gave a good approximation of a whirling stumble so that I could point my eyes in that same direction, where I found the dim shape of a man in the dark, apart from the main camp, seated on the ground and peeling a potato.

“How do, Chang,” I called to him. He didn’t even look up.

“Why don’t you fuck right off out of here,” said the sour one.

“Hell, he’s just knocked out on tarantula juice,” said the rangy man. “Most like a grub rider. That right, jack? You riding the grub line, you old bum?”

“Grub line,” I parroted. “Hee, hee.”

“This son of a bitch got back-kicked in the head, is what it is,” said the thick boy.

“Wait a fuckin’ minute,” said the foreman. He seized me by the shoulders and pulled me close enough to the fire to make out my face. “This is the fat bastard came in with the Siamese girl.”

“Then where’s his girl now, chief?”

“Yeah,” the boss said. “Where’s your Siam girl, bud?”

“Lost her,” I told him. “No good at poker. Lost my horse, my stake, my girl. Shit, I ain’t even ate yet. Got any beans?”

“Drunk fucking grub rider,” the sour man grumbled. “’Cept he can’t even ride.”

“Lost my horse,” I said. “How’s about them beans?”

“You see any damned beans?” he roared, half-rising from the log he was squatting on. “Get out of here!”

He swung an arm in the air at me like he was squatting at a mosquito. Beside him, his rangy friend fished a bottle with no label out of the pocket of his buckskin jacket and took a long pull.

“No beans,” he said, “but plenty of this.”

He dropped the bottle and with both hands, lifted the girl from his lap and shoved her at me hard. The girl yelped. The rangy man cackled. I caught her before she stumbled right into the fire.

The sour man griped, “Oh, for shit’s sake, Deke! I ain’t even had my turn yet and you turn her over to a bum!”

The girl grabbed fistfuls of my shirt as he stood up, fire in his eyes, and she said close to my ear in a syrupy accent, “Please help me.”

I heard the distinctive click of a hammer being pulled back on a sidearm and looked quickly to see which of the men was about to draw down on me. None of them held any iron. That was when the ball went up.

I smelled that familiar rotten egg smell as soon as that old Colt barked and a second later the sour man grunted with the impact of the bullet in the middle of his chest. He threw both hands to the wound, blood seeping in between his fingers, and he dropped back over the log. The rangy one leapt to his feet and the thick boy hurled the other girl away from him as the foreman finally went for his Peacemaker. Boon took him, next, slamming a round right into his left ear that blew out a plum-sized hole on the other side of his head in a dark spray of blood and brains. The boss dropped dead to the dust and I went for his unfired pistol, which I turned up at the rangy man, expecting him to fill his hands faster.

I expected wrong. The thick boy had a Moore’s