True Grit

FOUR

I was sick the next day. I got up and went to breakfast but I could not eat much and my eyes and nose were running so I went back to bed. I felt very low. Mrs. Floyd wrapped a rag around my neck that was soaked in turpentine and smeared with lard. She dosed me with something called Dr. Underwood’s Bile Activator. “You will pass blue water for a day or two but do not be alarmed as that is only the medicine working,” she said. “It will relax you wonderfully. Grandma Turner and I bless the day we discovered it.” The label on the bottle said it did not contain mercury and was commended by physicians and clergymen.

Along with the startling color effect the potion also caused me to be giddy and lightheaded. I suspect now that it made use of some such ingredient as codeine or laudanum. I can remember when half the old ladies in the country were “dopeheads.”

Thank God for the Harrison Narcotics Law. Also the Volstead Act. I know Governor Smith is “wet” but that is because of his race and religion and he is not personally accountable for that. I think his first loyalty is to his country and not to “the infallible Pope of Rome.” I am not afraid of Al Smith for a minute. He is a good Democrat and when he is elected I believe he will do the right thing if he is not hamstrung by the Republican gang and bullied into an early grave as was done to Woodrow Wilson, the greatest Presbyterian gentleman of the age.

I stayed in bed for two days. Mrs. Floyd was kind and brought my meals to me. The room was so cold that she did not linger to ask many questions. She inquired twice daily at the post office for my letter.

Grandma Turner got in the bed each afternoon for her rest and I would read to her. She loved her medicine and would drink it from a water glass. I read her about the Wharton trial in the New Era and the Elevator. I also read a little book someone had left on the table called Bess Galloway’s Disappointment. It was about a girl in England who could not make up her mind whether to marry a rich man with a pack of dogs named Alec or a preacher. She was a pretty girl in easy circumstances who did not have to cook or work at anything and she could have either one she wanted. She made trouble for herself because she would never say what she meant but only blush and talk around it. She kept everybody in a stir wondering what she was driving at. That was what held your interest. Grandma Turner and I both enjoyed it. I had to read the humorous parts twice. Bess married one of the two beaus and he turned out to be mean and thoughtless. I forget which one it was.

On the evening of the second day I felt a little better and I got up and went to supper. The drummer was gone with his midget calculators and there were four or five other vacancies at the table as well.

Toward the end of the meal a stranger came in wearing two revolvers and made known that he was seeking room and board. He was a nice-looking man around thirty years of age with a “cowlick” at the crown of his head. He needed a bath and a shave but you could tell that was not his usual condition. He looked to be a man of good family. He had pale-blue eyes and auburn hair. He was wearing a long corduroy coat. His manner was stuck-up and he had a smug grin that made you nervous when he turned it on you.

He forgot to take off his spurs before sitting down at the table and Mrs. Floyd chided him, saying she did not want her chair legs scratched up any more than they were, which was considerable. He apologized and complied with her wish. The spurs were the Mexican kind with big rowels. He put them up on the table by his plate. Then he remembered his revolvers and he unbuckled the gun belt and hung it on the back of his chair. This was a fancy rig. The belt was thick and wide and bedecked with cartridges and the handles on his pistols were white. It was like something you might see today in a “Wild West” show.

His grin and his confident manner cowed everybody at the table but me and they stopped talking and made a to-do about passing him things, like he was somebody. I must own too that he made me worry a little about my straggly hair and red nose.

While he was helping himself to the food he grinned at me across the table and said, “Hidy.”

I nodded and said nothing.

“What is your name?” said he.

“Pudding and tame,” said I.

He said, “I will take a guess and say it is Mattie Ross.”

“How do you know that?”

“My name is LaBoeuf,” he said. He called it LaBeef but spelled it something like LaBoeuf. “I saw your mother just two days ago. She is worried about you.”

“What was your business with her, Mr. LaBoeuf?”

“I will disclose that after I eat. I would like to have a confidential conversation with you.”

“Is she all right? Is anything wrong?”

“No, she is fine. There is nothing wrong. I am looking for someone. We will talk about it after supper. I am very hungry.”

Mrs. Floyd said, “If it is something touching on her father’s death we know all about that. He was murdered in front of this very house. There is still blood on my porch where they carried his body.”

The man LaBoeuf said, “It is about something else.”

Mrs. Floyd described the shooting again and tried to draw him out on his business but he only smiled and went on eating and would not be drawn.

After supper we went to the parlor, to a corner away from the other borders, and LaBoeuf set up two chairs there facing the wall. When we were seated in this curious arrangement he took a small photograph from his corduroy coat and showed it to me. The picture was wrinkled and dim. I studied it. The face of the man was younger and there was no black mark but there was no question but it was the likeness of Tom Chaney. I told LaBoeuf as much.

He said, “Your mother has also identified him. Now I will give you some news. His real name is Theron Chelmsford. He shot and killed a state senator named Bibbs down in Waco, Texas, and I have been on his trail the best part of four months. He dallied in Monroe, Louisiana, and Pine Bluff, Arkansas, before turning up at your father’s place.”

I said, “Why did you not catch him in Monroe, Louisiana, or Pine Bluff, Arkansas?”

“He is a crafty one.”

“I thought him slow-witted myself.”

“That was his act.”

“It was a good one. Are you some kind of law?”

LaBoeuf showed me a letter that identified him as a Sergeant of Texas Rangers, working out of a place called Ysleta near El Paso. He said, “I am on detached service just now. I am working for the family of Senator Bibbs in Waco.”

“How came Chaney to shoot a senator?”

“It was about a dog. Chelmsford shot the senator’s bird dog. Bibbs threatened to whip him over it and Chelmsford shot the old gentleman while he was sitting in a porch swing.”

“Why did he shoot the dog?”

“I don’t know that. Just meanness. Chelmsford is a hard case. He claims the dog barked at him. I don’t know if he did or not.”

“I am looking for him too,” said I, “this man you call Chelmsford.”

“Yes, that is my understanding. I had a conversation with the sheriff today. He informed me that you were staying here and looking for a special detective to go after Chelmsford in the Indian Territory.”

“I have found a man for the job.”

“Who is the man?”

“His name is Cogburn. He is a deputy marshal for the Federal Court. He is the toughest one they have and he is familiar with a band of robbers led by Lucky Ned Pepper. They believe Chaney has tied up with that crowd.”

“Yes, that is the thing to do,” said LaBoeuf. “You need a Federal man. I am thinking along those lines myself. I need someone who knows the ground and can make an arrest out there that will stand up. You cannot tell what the courts will do these days. I might get Chelmsford all the way down to McLennan County, Texas, only to have some corrupt judge say he was kidnapped and turn him loose. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“It would be a letdown.”

“Maybe I will throw in with you and your marshal.”

“You will have to talk to Rooster Cogburn about that.”

“It will be to our mutual advantage. He knows the land and I know Chelmsford. It is at least a two-man job to take him alive.”

“Well, it is nothing to me one way or the other except that when we do get Chaney he is not going to Texas, he is coming back to Fort Smith and hang.

“Haw haw,” said LaBoeuf. “It is not important where he hangs, is it?”

“It is to me. Is it to you?”

“It means a good deal of money to me. Would not a hanging in Texas serve as well as a hanging in Arkansas?”

“No. You said yourself they might turn him loose down there. This judge will do his duty.”

“If they don’t hang him we will shoot him. I can give you my word as a Ranger on that.”

“I want Chaney to pay for killing my father and not some Texas bird dog.”

“It will not be for the dog, it will be for the senator, and your father too. He will be just as dead that way, you see, and pay for all his crimes at once.”

“No, I do not see. That is not the way I look at it.”

“I will have a conversation with the marshal.”

“It’s no use talking to him. He is working for me. He must do as I say.”

“I believe I will have a conversation with him all the same.”

I realized I had made a mistake by opening up to this stranger. I would have been more on my guard had he been ugly instead of nice-looking. Also my mind was soft and not right from being doped by the bile activator.

I said, “You will not have a conversation with him for a few days at any rate.”

“How is that?”

“He has gone to Little Rock.”

“On what business?”

“Marshal business.”

“Then I will have a conversation with him when he returns.”

“You will be wiser to get yourself another marshal. They have aplenty of them. I have already made an arrangement with Rooster Cogburn.”

“I will look into it,” said he. “I think your mother would not approve of your getting mixed up in this kind of enterprise. She thinks you are seeing about a horse. Criminal investigation is sordid and dangerous and is best left in the hands of men who know the work.”

“I suppose that is you. Well, if in four months I could not find Tom Chaney with a mark on his face like banished Cain I would not undertake to advise others how to do it.”

“A saucy manner does not go down with me.”

“I will not be bullied.”

He stood up and said, “Earlier tonight I gave some thought to stealing a kiss from you, though you are very young, and sick and unattractive to boot, but now I am of a mind to give you five or six good licks with my belt.”

“One would be as unpleasant as the other,” I replied. “Put a hand on me and you will answer for it. You are from Texas and ignorant of our ways but the good people of Arkansas do not go easy on men who abuse women and children.”

“The youth of Texas are brought up to be polite and to show respect for their elders.”

“I notice people of that state also gouge their horses with great brutal spurs.”

“You will push that saucy line too far.”

“I have no regard for you.”

He was angered and thus he left me, clanking away in all his Texas trappings.