Savage Guns

FIVE

It sure was a fine day. Critter thought so too, and farted his way up the valley, scaring lizards and offending horseflies. The two-rut road ran beside Chippy Creek, where the red-winged blackbirds were festooning the red willow brush and making a racket.

I was packing a slicker and a bedroll, just in case, because May is as fickle as a bored wife. I let Critter pick his own pace, which was a jog. I didn’t know when I’d get out to Crayfish’s big ranch, or whether anyone would be awake. But it didn’t matter. It was May, and the whole world was happy to be alive.

You have to wonder where Crayfish got that name. Or how I got to be stuck with Cotton. There’s no telling about parents. My pa, he told me up in New England, everyone gets named for a virtue. The women are Faith, or Charity, or Temperance. There’s men named Serene or Parsimony. One feller from Vermont named Diligence Brown showed up in Doubtful, and he was a bookkeeper. But down South, pa said, people scratch where they itch. Now someone named Crayfish simply has the itch for crayfish, and someone named Toad, that’s what he’s like. I’ve knowed a couple fellas named Toad, and it fits. Or sometimes a Southern boy gets named for something that scared his ma. I knew a Funeral Jones once, right out of Macon, Georgia. And my uncle was named Digger. That’s what he did. I had an auntie named Sweet and I once knew a Candy Cane too. I prefer the Southern method of namin’ babies. It’s more honest. I don’t care much for Cotton, but it’s better than Boll Weevil. So I already knew a piece about Crayfish just from his name. Tell me the name of a Southerner, and I’ve already got a handle on him. I knew two Turkeys and three Chickens and one Buzzard, two Possums, and a Packrat, and all of them born south of the Mason Dixon Line. One feller from Alabama was called Possum Pilgrim, and it was a puzzle. I knew a Pecker Smith once, but didn’t want nothing to do with him. I met a Carolina gal named Sassy once. The fellers called her Peach Fuzz, but that’s because her skin was fuzzy. Only girl I ever met with a mustache and a hairy chest.

Crayfish, he mostly had Southerners on his spread. And they had Southern names, too. Like those that got kilt by King Bragg, namely Foxy and Weasel Jonas, and Rocco. That’s what I was riding twenty miles each way on a May day to find out about. Foxy and Weasel were from South Texas, and there ain’t nothing worse, especially down around Waco. Seems like ever time I had trouble bite me, it was someone from Waco. I don’t have kindly thoughts about anyone from Waco or a hundred miles in any direction from Waco. I don’t think anyone in Waco ever growed up straight or true. I wish someone would build a fence around Waco and not let anyone out. There was a rumor that Crayfish came from outside Waco, but I wasn’t gonna hold it against him until it got proved. There’s always a bad rumor or two floating around Doubtful, Wyoming.

It was a long ride, but I didn’t mind. I quit a couple of times, and let Critter chomp on anything he could get his buck teeth around, while I looked for snapping turtles along the creek, without no luck. I’ve been meaning to catch a couple of snappers and give them to my deputies. I know Rusty, he’d like one, but them other two, DeGraff and Burtell, they might not know what to do with a snapper. Give ’em to a lady, of course. You never know. Maybe some gal in Doubtful is pinin’ away for a snapping turtle, seeing as how lots of women have the same nature as them turtles.

Critter got into a commotion while I was wetting a stump at the creek, and next I knew, he had a prairie rattler between his teeth and was shakin’ it every which way. That fat rattler was not taking it kindly, but it was pretty cold for rattlers to be out, so all it did was wiggle some until Critter bit it in two and left the two parts dancing in the grass.

“Critter, don’t you never do that to my arm,” I said. “I got all my fingers and I’m keepin’ ’em.”

Critter yawned.

Pretty soon I began seeing bunches of T-Bar cattle. They was all ornery little things; Crayfish wasn’t much on breeding. Admiral Bragg, he was buying good shorthorn bulls and crossing his range cattle on them, and getting more weight, but Crayfish didn’t give it a thought. Them cows was chopping that tender May grass right off, and there was sure a lot of them skinny beeves chewing down the range, but I didn’t much care. A man’s got a right to ruin his ranch if he chooses, and Crayfish was the sort who’d chomp her down to dirt and then move on.

I didn’t see no one around, but that was usual enough. The T-Bar was spread over so much land it’d take every person in the state of Missouri to staff it right. So there was simply bunches of cattle gnawing away as Critter jogged himself up the road.

Most horses, a jog is real comfortable, but not Critter. His jog bent my tailbones and sent aches up my back. But it was a mile-eater pace, so I just stood in the stirrups now and then and let Critter ruin his own bones instead of mine. I figure if he wanted to wreck himself, that was his business. Let him; why should I care?

Twilight came, and then night, and the crickets started up, and the air chilled real quick. But I rode into the T-Bar just when the last light was fading. Log buildings made it solid. There was a main house, well lit with lamps, a bunkhouse, a barn, a couple of sheds, and pens. The log house had a comfortable porch stretching across it, facing the mountains, and it looked like a fine place for a man to sip a toddy and eye his empire. The place wasn’t fancy, just solid, but that was not Crayfish’s doing. That’s how he bought it from Thaddeus Throckmorton.

It looked like I was too late to chow down. Lamps were shining from the bunkhouse, and I could see cowboys, mostly in their long underwear, playin’ cards in there. I figured it wasn’t too late to come callin’, so I wrapped Critter’s rein around the hitch rail and banged on the door. I was curious about Crayfish’s domestic arrangements, and when the man himself opened up, I wasn’t surprised. I couldn’t imagine no woman staying with Crayfish for more than an hour or two. A day would be stretching it. A day and night would be beyond imagining.

There he was, wearing his eye patch. This time it was gold. He had a dozen of them, all sorts of colors, and I hardly ever saw him wear a black patch. This here one, gold colored, had a turquoise stone set in the middle.

“You’re looking at the wrong eye, Sheriff,” he said.

“Never saw that one,” I said.

“I got more patches than women got hats. You want to come in, or are you gonna stand there all night?”

He waved me into his lamplit parlor. He was medium short, with black hair slicked straight back. There never was a hair out of place, and the word was that he glued his hair down, using the juice of boiled-up pigs feet. His hair lay so shiny and flat you could pretty near ice skate on it.

“You want something to wet your whistle?” he asked.

I nodded.

“This here’s for guests,” he said, holding up a decanter. “That one’s for me.”

He poured some red stuff into a cut-glass beaker and added a splash. When he handed it to me, I noticed he had a ring on every finger. Then he poured another from the other decanter for himself.

“Always like to treat guests to what’s tasty,” he said.

I sipped. That stuff, it cut a channel down my tongue and scraped the hide off the rest of my mouth. I coughed, swallered, and downed it, expecting to start quaking.

“Mighty nice,” I said.

He leered at me, and sipped cheerfully at his own beaker.

“Strange hour to come calling,” he said.

“Well, that gets me straight to it,” I said. “Say, this is mighty fine stuff, mighty fine.” I sipped again, felt savaged, and swallowed that varnish, feeling it scrape paint off my innards all the way down. “You treat company better than you treat yourself,” I added.

“Well, when I sell this spread, I’m going into the hospitality business,” he said. “This is just a way of fattening my wallet. Give it another year, and I’ll be in some metropolis. I’m thinking Kansas City.”

“What’ll you do there, Crayfish?”

“Run the best whorehouse in the United States,” he said.

“That your dream, is it?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” he said. “Gambling parlor downstairs, fiddlers and pretty bar maids, poker tables, no one walks in except he’s all dressed up, top hat and tails, boots shined, and a fat purse on him too. And upstairs I got the prettiest girls in the world, all refined, bedsheets washed, the girls bathing at least once a week, and perfumed just fine. Ten dollars a pop, and most of it for me.”

“That’s a dream, all right, Crayfish.”

“Beats ranching in Wyoming,” he said. “And I get to graze wherever I want.”

He sipped. I sipped and coughed.

“This ain’t a social visit,” he said, not quite making a question out of it.

I wasn’t in no hurry. I just wanted to see if he’d sweat a bit if I didn’t come direct to my business.

“Mighty fine stuff here,” I said, swirling the glass. “Just right for company.”

“Brought it up from Utah,” he said. “Them Saints make mighty fine Valley Tan.”

I figured it was something like that. “I imagine you can afford any hooch from anywhere,” I said.

“I could afford a lot more if I had more land,” he said. “These foothills, they’re not half the pasture that Admiral’s got. Now if I had his spread, I’d been sending you a barrel of whiskey once a month.”

I listened real hard to that.

“I guess you would, if I wanted it,” I said. “But I don’t. I’m not a drinkin’ man, and not a dry man neither. Once in a while, I take a little sauce for the kidneys. My ma, she said do whatever you want, but don’t do it often.”

“Smart woman, I’d say.” He downed the rest of his stuff, and built hisself another, with a generous splash of springwater in it. “This a social call?” he asked.

“Oh, I’ve got me a few questions, loose ends, things that didn’t get tidied up,” I said.

“Well, I’ll be glad to help any way I can, Sheriff.”

The social moment had vanished, that’s for sure. He wasn’t one to sit and yarn with a law officer if he could help it.

“Them three got kilt, the ones working here. You know, I need to git ahold of next of kin. I never let their ma and pa and brothers and all know what happened. That’s a part of being a sheriff. A peace officer, he’s got to send along the bad news. I thought maybe you could tell me something about each of them, and I’ll send along a wire or a letter to their folks.”

He seemed almost to deflate. For a while there he was all ballooned up, trying to look six inches taller than he was, but now the gas was leakin’ from his bag, and he just smiled some.

“Oh, that. Well, I don’t know much. The pair of Jonas brothers never did tell me much about themselves.”

“Where’d you meet ’em, Crayfish?”

“Beats me. I think they were from down deep in Texas but I wouldn’t swear to it.”

“Texas, eh? Well, you Texas fellers can spot each other easier than I can.”

“Why do you think I’m from Texas, Sheriff?”

I shrugged. “Just a hunch. If I got her wrong, you can put me straight.”

“I’m from all over the place,” Crayfish said.

“Well, these Jonas boys. Them that got kilt. The county put them in a potter’s field out of town, seeing as how you didn’t feel like buryin’ your own men. Foxy and Weasel was their handles, but I need to know what names they got christened by.”

“Blamed if I know, Sheriff.”

“They had a ma and pa, and probably got named something like Elmer and Harry, and got the Foxy and Weasel names later. If I’m gonna write their kinfolk, I kinda need the names.”

“Funny, Sheriff, but I never asked. Here, it ain’t polite to ask a gent.”

“Well, at least you know where they came from.”

“Waco, maybe. Someone once told me Waco.”

“They was pretty slick with six-guns.”

“That’s what I want, Sheriff. I got crooks and rustlers and land grabbers to deal with. I need men who know cows and guns real good.”

“You reckon if I just shot a wire off to any Jonas in Waco, it’d get to their folks?”

The rancher shrugged, and downed his whiskey.

“Well, tell me why you hired them. They must of got some sort of reputation, carrying names like that. Now why’d the one call himself Weasel?”

“Weasels is mean, Sheriff. You know that. You can figure it as well as I can. Foxy, too, you get the man’s character without any more than the handle.”

“I guess I sort of do,” I said. “Now how about that other, the third that got kilt by King Bragg. What was he doin’ here?”

“Oh, Rocco, poor devil. Just a drifter. I hired him straight off. I need all the hands I can get, and he seemed fit enough.”

“How do I get ahold of his folks, Crayfish?”

“Blamed if I know, Sheriff.”

“Any reason that King Bragg would pump lead into those three?”

“Yes. He was drunk. He and his pa don’t much care for me. And those three were all of my hands that were in the saloon when he wandered in, looking to cause trouble.” He shrugged. “I guess you know the rest.”

I wasn’t so sure I did.