The Thicket (16 page)

T
he morning was hot as a rabid dog in an overcoat. The way I fit in that saddle made me chafe and burn, had me wanting to cinch up my manhood so it wouldn’t rub. About noon we stopped and let the horses blow and had another one of them biscuits, which was enough work for an hour and gave you the impression you had eaten more than you had, because they lay in your stomach pretty much like a stone.

When we got to where we felt the horses were rested and we had them grained, we took them down to a little creek to drink, but just a little, so they wouldn’t bloat up with all that grain in them. After we done that, we was coming up a hill leading them when we heard a large bit of cussing and the Lord’s name being taken in vain pretty frequent. At the top of the road we seen a colored fella riding from the direction we had come on the back of a big mule. He was riding fast, bouncing the way a mule will bounce you, which was what was making him cuss. I recognized him right off because of that pale place on his forehead. It was the swamper from the jail. Spot.

He raised a hand when he seen us. As he got up close, he stopped and slid off the mule, which didn’t have a saddle and had to have been rough riding. He said, “I come looking for the sheriff.”

“They done gone on ahead of us,” Jimmie Sue said. “What you all het up about?”

“It’s about Harlis,” he said.

“Someone get a better lick on him with a biscuit?” Jimmie Sue said.

“He’s done been shot in the belly this time,” said Spot. “And it’s a lot worse than a biscuit.”

“I’ll say,” Jimmie Sue said.

“It was that damn whore,” Spot said. “No offense, lady.”

“I’m taking a little,” Jimmie Sue said. “But go on.”

“I come to the jail to pour out the slop jar, you know, and I had to have the cell opened, and Harlis come there with his gun and the key and opened it up. I went in and got it. I wasn’t but just outside the cell when that whore come in smiling, one they call Katy, and she said, ‘I come to see my cousin.’

“Well, now, Harlis, he says, ‘Why don’t you come to see me? I ain’t got no cousins to talk at.’ I don’t know them was his exact words, but I think it’s in the corral more or less, cause I wasn’t paying all that much attention. I put the slop jar by the door, went to do some other work I had to do in there, and about that time Katy pulled out a little pistol from her purse and said something like, ‘Don’t bother locking up. Just let him on out or I’ll shoot a hole in your gut.’

“Now, then, I was looking toward the back door, thinking maybe I could run out of there fast-like, but she waved the barrel of that gun at me, said, ‘Get over there, nigger.’ I knew she meant me, so I went over and stood by the wall near the cell where she was pointing. Harlis had done closed the cell back, and he said wasn’t no way he was going to open that cell, so she shot him. He caught a blue whistler in the stomach, sat down against the bars of the cell, and pissed himself. He wasn’t dead, but he sure wasn’t happy. He was moaning and taking on something terrible. Then Katy pointed the gun at me, said, ‘You want one, nigger?’ She meaning me—”

“We got that,” Jimmie Sue said.

“—so I said, ‘No, thank you,’ and she says to me, ‘Now, you pick up them keys and let him out.’ I couldn’t have picked up them keys any faster than had they been a gold coin. I opened the cell door and let him out. He come out smiling, and he says to me, ‘Go over and get that there slop jar,’ and I did. I brought it to him and he dumped it on Harlis’s head, and then went to forcing it down over his noggin. Harlis was screaming and trying to get away, but there wasn’t no doing it.

“That jar is one of them wide-mouth ones like the sheriff likes cause he can rest his butt comfortable on it, and so in time it got forced over Harlis’s head, though it split a little as he done it. It made a big mess. By the time he got that done, Harlis was bled good, and his fire had done blown out; he was just ashes on the other side, so to speak. I don’t know if he drowned in that stuff or the stomach shot got him, but one was as good as the other in the long run. It was right then I had a thought if I didn’t run for it I was going to be dead next, so I broke and made like a rabbit, hit that back door so hard it come off the hinges, and me and it went out into the back there. A bullet come past me like it had to meet someone downtown and was late, and gave me a hot kiss on the ear as it passed. I went over the little ridge back there, and there was people peeking out of their houses and the like, but nobody was moving in the direction of the jail. Next thing I know I seen the fat man and that woman on horses, which she had brought with her saddled and ready to go, no doubt, and they was riding fast along the street. I seen that Fatty had a rifle in his hand, one he had taken from the office there, and then they was gone.”

“How’d you get ahead of them?” Jimmie Sue said.

“They didn’t come this way,” Spot said.

“Then Fatty lied to Shorty,” I said.

“I don’t know about that,” Spot said. “I don’t know where they’re going, and I don’t know where the sheriff’s going, but I know the way y’all come; you wasn’t hard to follow. I figure if Fatty knows where the sheriff is going, he might be taking a shortcut. I would. I wouldn’t want to face up to Sheriff Winton, Shorty, and Eustace square and on the level. And there’s the hog and all. I was Fatty and that whore, I’d be getting up ahead of them and waiting to bushwhack their asses.”

“Or he isn’t going where we think,” I said. “It could be he lied to Shorty all along.”

“He probably told it true when Shorty was giving him the pistol,” Jimmie Sue said, “but he didn’t mention that quicker way to get there. That was his ace in the hole.”

Spot nodded. “That’s the way I see it. I come to warn the sheriff and tell him about Harlis, on account of he’s been good to me mostly, and I’m thinking I can make a tip on this. I think one is due, don’t you?”

“I don’t know about nothing like that,” I said.

“I think you earned one,” Jimmie Sue said. “When I worked my job at the house back in town, if I bootblacked your boots, I did it to seem like it was out of the goodness of my heart, but actually I was hoping for some extra money. I didn’t always get it, I’ll tell you, and it was a disappointment when I didn’t, me sort of counting on it and all. So I’ll know how you feel if you don’t get any.”

“That didn’t never cross my mind, about not getting anything for it,” Spot said.

“Well, I can tell you now there’s plenty of bootblacking I’ve done to get nothing but dirty fingers for. So you got to brace yourself for the possibility.”

“Jimmie Sue, for the love of God, let all that go,” I said. “What about Harlis? What was done with him? He isn’t still in the jailhouse dead with turds on him, is he?”

“I told folks at the saloon nearest the jail what happened, so I guess they done dragged him out and wiped him off and are getting him ready for the ground,” Spot said. “I’m sort of hoping they clean up after the place, too, cause that part of the job I’m not looking forward to, especially if I don’t get back there for some days.”

“Why wouldn’t you get back sooner?” I said. “We can carry the message.”

“I’ll tote it myself,” he said.

“There’s nothing to tote,” I said.

“Except the words in my mouth, and that’s the way I want it,” he said, and looked at me with his head turned to the side. “Besides, I ain’t having as good a time as you might suspect back in town.”

“We got to catch up with the sheriff, then,” I said. “And right away.”

W
e caught up with them pretty soon, because they had stopped to eat something themselves, and they were just about to mount again when we rode up. Hog wasn’t with them, but I figured he wasn’t far away.

We dismounted, and Spot told them what he told us.

“That goddamn Harlis,” said Sheriff Winton. “I knew he was going to end up deader than a post. It was writ all over him. It’s like there never was a fella more inclined to catch a bullet or a severe beating than Harlis. You took that son of a bitch’s brain and put it in an empty ink bottle and shook it, it would sound like a round of shot in a boxcar. Only reason he worked for me was he didn’t take much money and was too simple-headed to know he might could get shot, so I guess some of it’s my fault. That’s what I get for giving him a job when he didn’t have the head for it.”

“He was dumb,” Spot said. “But what I done told you, that’s news you needed to know, ain’t it?”

“Reckon so,” said Winton, who was, I could tell, still collecting all this information and trying to sort it.

“You didn’t have that news,” Spot said, “you wouldn’t know that fat ass and his cousin is gonna go a short way and maybe cut you off somewhere and bushwhack you. Or get all the way to the Thicket and warn the others.”

“You know a lot about my business, don’t you?” Winton said.

“The boy and the whore here told me,” Spot said.

“Some of that’s true,” I said.

“I pick a little up by listening at the back door to the jail,” Spot said. “And that’s where I got most of it. I heard what these fellas told you about the fat man, and it all sort of fitted together for me. I think it’s real important that you know about it, don’t you? What I know, I mean, about Fatty escaping.”

“Yeah,” Winton said. “It is, but now you done told me.”

Winton stood there looking at Spot, who was standing there looking at him the way a dog will if it thinks you’re going to drop something on the floor it might can eat.

“He wants a tip,” Jimmie Sue said.

“A tip?” said the sheriff.

“It’s a polite kind of thing to do,” Spot said.

“My tip to you,” said the sheriff, “is next time you got some news for me, you need to know up front you ain’t getting shit for it. And don’t be listening at my back door no more.”

“Then you ain’t gonna get no new news, you think like that, now, are you?” said Spot.

“I reckon not,” Sheriff Winton said.

Spot looked as if his old mama had just told him he was uglier than the yard dog.

“That ain’t no way to treat him,” said Jimmie Sue. “Now, you give him something.”

“I ain’t got nothing for him.”

“You can promise him something and mean it,” she said.

Winton studied Spot, as if looking for a weakness. “How about I fix you up with some biscuits for your ride back, Spot. How about that?”

“You’re yanking my pecker, ain’t you?” Spot said.

“No, I ain’t. I got the biscuits right here.”

“I don’t want no damn biscuits. No one can eat them biscuits, less’n you want to knock a bad tooth out. I was thinking of something more solid.”

“What could be more solid than them biscuits?” Winton said.

Spot fixed an eye on the sheriff. “Some money would be nice.”

“It would be,” said the sheriff, “if a fella had any. Ain’t you one of them that’s about doing something out of the goodness of your heart, just because it’s good and you don’t need any other reason?”

“No,” Spot said. “That ain’t me.”

I glanced at Eustace and Shorty. They were listening to it all carefully.

“Damn,” said the sheriff. “I don’t got to give you nothing. But I’ll tell you what. I don’t get killed, and we make some money out of this deal, all them bounties, I’ll give you a tip then.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know. A dollar?”

“Five dollars.”

“That’s a lot of money, Spot,” said Winton.

“That’s why I want it,” Spot said.

“You are a nuisance. All right, then. Five.”

“It’s a deal?” asked Spot.

Sheriff Winton stuck out his hand. He and Spot shook on it. “Deal,” Winton said.

“I’m gonna just ride along,” said Spot, “so maybe I can keep you from getting killed and make sure I get my five dollars.”

“What if you get killed?” Winton said.

“Then I won’t need no five dollars, now, will I?” Spot said. “You’ll come out ahead, not owing me nothing.”

“He’s got you there,” Eustace said.

“Spot,” Shorty said, “if I am ever in the need of someone to do bargaining for me, would it be all right if I came to you to be my representative?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Spot said. “But I reckon it’ll be all right with me.”

N
ear nightfall Hog showed up. There were vines all twisted up around his legs and snout, and he was muddy and slimy. I reckoned he had found a creek somewhere to snuggle up in during the hot of the day, and when it cooled he had come out and tracked us.

Like I was saying, it was near night, but there was still some light, it being mostly red like a plum on account of the sun was sinking low beyond the trees, and it was just about then, when the last of the light was dying out, that we come upon a trading post setting off the side of the road in some cleared timber. It was right where the road forked, one side not being much of a road, really, but more a path through the timber.

We were still a good ways back from the trading post, but not so much we couldn’t get a good look at it. There were stumps all about, the remains of what had been used to build the place, and a few of them were smoking from fires having been set on them to burn them out.

The trading post had been put together in a hurry, and stupidly, with green logs, and it leaned a might. The logs weren’t all barked-off, and some were cut longer than they needed to be and jutted out here and there. The door was set low down, like it was made that way for someone not much taller than Shorty. The door was fixed to the wall with leather straps for hinges, and you opened it by pulling on a thong of leather. There were animal hides hanging off nails along the outside walls, and there was this right nice seat-swing on the porch, hanging from chains. The wind made the swing move and the chains creak.

I thought we might get some food and drink there, so I was eager to get inside. Before we did, Shorty threw up his hand. “We may prefer to be cautious.”

“That was my thought,” Winton said.

Winton noted there was a remuda of horses out back of the cabin. He said, “Why don’t you drop off that mule, Spot, go back there, and check for the horses them two rode out of town on. I figure this may be the fork they took, as it brings us to the same place. They might not be as far ahead of us as they hoped, or most likely Fatty got to thinking about having a drink. He’s the kind of fella that would like a drink over common sense. I know. I’m a bit that way myself.”

Spot slid off the mule’s back, handed me up the reins, then walked on back and looked at the run of horses. He come back pretty quick, said, “They’re both back there. It’s the same horses.”

“You’re sure?” Winton asked.

“There’s a pinto that the whore was riding, and that bony palomino the fat man was riding.”

My heart started pounding. I was thinking the whole mess could end here, and that Lula could be returned to the bosom of her family, which in the immediate sense, due to a series of recent events, was me and some aunt we didn’t know in Kansas.

“All right, then,” Winton said. “I figure we can go inside and see how the curtains hang, if you fellas are ready.”

“I was born ready,” said Shorty. “But I think we need more of a plan than that. I would suggest that I and Eustace—and we will take the boy here in case there is someone else he can identify from the ferry incident—go inside and see if we can stir some activity. My recommendation is we do not make a direct attempt to arrest if they should pull weapons, but do immediately what is necessary.”

I assumed that to be a long-about way of saying they were going to kill them.

“They don’t have to be killed, do they?” I asked.

“They themselves will be responsible for our determination on the matter,” Shorty said.

“That means he’s going to shoot them, doesn’t it?” I said to Eustace.

“It might work out that way,” Eustace said. “It sure could.”

“Rest of you stay out here,” Shorty said. “Winton, I recommend strongly that you move to the rear, in case someone comes out. But I would stay down low in consideration that Eustace could come out that way and cut down on an escapee with the shotgun. That shot does not care who is in its path. The whore can do as she pleases.”

“That’s right nice of you,” Jimmie Sue said.

“Spot,” Shorty said. “You do as you please as well.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Spot said. “I ain’t got no gun anyway, and I ain’t strong enough to throw this mule at them.”

“Then you are as set as you are going to be,” Shorty said.

Eustace swung off his horse, pulled the shotgun out of a loop on the side of the saddle, got a fistful of shells from the saddlebag, and stuck them in his pants pocket. He patted the pad on the vest at his shoulder, as if to assure it everything would be all right, but more likely to assure himself he was padded up good for the stock of the four-gauge. The mouth of that gun looked like a hole to hell.

I got down off my horse, and Eustace pulled a pistol out of one of the saddlebags and gave it to me. It was one I hadn’t seen before. It was an old converted .44, and heavy as a plow.

Shorty used his ladder to climb down, unholstered his Colt, which seemed extremely large in his little hands, said, “Winton, if you should prefer, take my Sharps there when you go out back, and if anyone should make a run for it, and you got the sight for it in this light, nail him with it. But again, watch for Eustace and that four-gauge.”

“I can do that,” Sheriff Winton said, and dismounted.

“Just make sure you do not shoot a midget or a big colored man coming out the back, because that will be us,” Shorty said. “And there is the boy, of course.”

“Thanks for remembering me,” I said.

“Let me give you a tip,” said Shorty. “The pistol you are holding is not modern and requires that you thumb back the hammer. I thought it best that those of us with training have the best guns so that we can fire shots off quickly.”

“Seems to me, as someone untrained, I should have one of the better guns.”

“Well,” said Shorty. “You will not have the better gun, and that is the finish of it. You can find a place to hole up with the whore and Spot if you prefer.”

I shook my head. “I’m going in. Lula might be in there, and I’d like to try and make sure no one shoots her, including us.”

“All right, then,” Eustace said. “That long end is what you point at them.”

“I am past humor,” I said.

“Everything is humorous,” said Shorty, “except your own death. But other people will laugh.”

Now, I will not lie to you. I was hoping with all my heart that Lula was in there and safe. I was so scared I could feel my feet wiggling in my boots like a snake trying to crawl out of a slick-sided hole. I didn’t know what to expect, and I believe I had thought this would be more simple than it was turning out to be. I had figured we’d surprise them and say, “Throw up your hands, you’re all under arrest,” and we’d tie them up and lead them back to town. I was having my doubts now, and sick to my stomach to think I might actually have to draw a bead on someone and shoot him. Or end up shot up myself, thrown in a ditch out back of the place for the ants to eat.

The sheriff got the Sharps, and Jimmie Sue wheedled him out of his pistol, and they started out back. Spot said he had to pee, then he disappeared into the bushes with his mule. The three of us, and Hog, started down toward the trading post.

When we pulled on the leather sling and the door swung back, a stink come with it full of bean farts and sweat and something sweet as honey, and that honey smell just made it all the worse. There were three or four lanterns lit up, and they gave about as much light as the damned get in the grave. As we come in, I saw to the left there were four people at a little table playing cards, sitting on stools of different heights. There was a plate of cornbread between them and a bottle of syrup. I could see that good because they had a lantern sitting right next to the plate. I searched their faces, but none of them were Nigger Pete or Cut Throat. They were all white men, but none looked familiar. They all looked as if they had been rode hard and put up wet. They were all staring at Eustace and Hog, as if they were one of a kind.

Back of the counter was a man who appeared out of place, due to being clean and having his hair cut close and his face shaved to a nice pink lantern-lit glow. There was a lantern on either end of the bar he was behind, and the bar was a warped plank over some old barrels. Behind him, on the wall, were three shelves with assorted items on them, mostly bottled goods that I took to be whiskey or beers, a couple of Dr Peppers and Coca-Colas, and a few bottles with colored liquid in them that could have been hair tonic or sarsaparilla. There was another table to our right, but there wasn’t but one man sitting at it, and he was back in the shadows and I couldn’t make out his face, but one thing was sure, wasn’t no one in there Fatty, the whore Katy, Cut Throat, or Nigger Pete.

I stayed on the right side, near the single man at the table. Shorty was in the middle, and Eustace was on the left. Eustace had that shotgun cradled in his arms like a baby. The man behind the counter said, “We don’t serve colored, and you can’t bring that hog in here.”

“That a fact,” Eustace said, and walked up to the plank, his head turned more toward the men at the table, who had now given up their cards to stare at us. “Give me a bottle of whiskey.”

“I said—” the bartender said, but Eustace cut him off.

“I know what you said,” Eustace said. “But trying to avoid a bit of unpleasantness, as my short friend here would call it, I say give me a bottle and I’ll pay for it, and nothing angry will happen. As for the hog, I didn’t bring him. He come on his own. But he don’t want nothing. Let me be sure. You want anything, Hog?”

Hog looked up at Eustace, but I don’t think it’ll be any big revelation to say Hog didn’t ask for anything.

“Nah, like I thought,” Eustace said. “He don’t want nothing. He’s done ate and don’t drink after four. It’s his digestion.”

The bartender studied Eustace, then leaned over the plank and looked down at Shorty. “What the hell’s that?”

“That,” said Eustace, “is what we call a midget. That is a short man with a big pistol.”

“And a big dick,” said Shorty.

“That’s something I don’t care to figure on,” Eustace said. “But I want to point out to you, Mr. Bartender, that pistol he’s got is easy for him to level under the plank there so that he can lay down a shot on your balls.”

“It’s in the holster,” said the bartender.

“It can come out,” said Eustace.

The bartender looked at me. “What’s he for?”

“To hold the midget up if I get tired.”

“Why you got a midget with you?” asked the bartender. I heard Shorty sigh.

“Why, that’s my son,” said Eustace. “I noticed he come out white, which means my wife is going to have some explaining. And you know what I think, Mr. Bartender Man?”

“What’s that?”

“I think if I was a fella called Nigger Pete, you’d let him have a drink.”

“I don’t know no Nigger Pete.”

“Then you may be better off than you think. Now put that whiskey on the plank before I go back there and get it.”

“Niggers and pigs both have a smell about them,” said one of the men at the table. He was a squatty fella with a beak of a nose and a mustache that looked like someone had painted it there with charcoal.

“Now, that ain’t mine or Hog’s stink,” Eustace said. “What you’re smelling there is a thick wipe of shit just under your nose.”

The man at the table stirred, but a touch from the fella next to him stayed him on his stool.

Eustace smiled at him, then looked away.

The bartender glanced to both sides of the room, perhaps for help, but no one was moving. I glanced at the back of the place, to the left of the plank, and there was curtain over a doorway. I thought I heard someone move back there. I laid my hand on the pistol I had stuck in my belt.

Seeing there was no assistance forthcoming, the bartender put the bottle on the plank and said, “Just this once.”

“Unless I come back,” said Eustace. “Then it’ll be twice.”

The bartender said, “Give me six bits.”

“Six bits?” Eustace said. “This better be the stuff the angels drink. Get me two glasses. Make that three. Give the kid a Dr Pepper.”

Eustace hoisted Shorty up so he could sit on the plank. Shorty took six bits from out of his clothes and dropped it on the plank. The bartender opened the Dr Pepper and a bottle of whiskey and put them on the plank. He set down two glasses. One for Shorty, one for Eustace. Eustace slid the glass to Shorty, said, “Pass it on.”

I remembered then that Eustace avoided drink. I didn’t pour any of the Dr Pepper, and when the bartender put the whiskey bottle in front of Shorty, Shorty just looked at it.

I turned to look at the man at the table. He was watching me like a chicken watches a bread crumb. Hog was watching him like he was an acorn.

Shorty poured himself a drink. I didn’t move.

“Just sip it to be polite,” Shorty said.

I didn’t pour any. I just picked up the bottle and took a swig. I don’t remember tasting it.

“Here is our situation,” said Shorty. “We are looking for some people. We are looking for a man called Cut Throat, and one called Fatty, and a man called Nigger Pete. Do you know them?”

“I heard tell of them,” said the bartender.

“Okay,” said Shorty. “So we are that far along in our investigation. Let us be more direct and more precise. Have you seen them as of late?”

“I can’t say I have,” said the bartender.

“Here is a thing that should be explained before we continue our conversation. If you say you have not seen them, and we should deduce that you have, well, there could be considerable unpleasantness. Do you understand?”

“See?” said Eustace. “I told you he’d call it unpleasantness.”

“You think that concerns me?” said the bartender.

“It should,” said Shorty.

“Why, I shit turds bigger than you,” the bartender said, and one of the men at the card table let out with a single loud laugh. It was the one with the mustache like a charcoal stain. He seemed to be the bravest one there.

Shorty looked toward the table. “You might best have a chicken bone hung in your throat I hear that again.”

The man moved slightly, turning himself on his stool so that he was facing us. I glanced at the single man at the table on my right. His hand was resting on his pistol. A single drop of sweat went into my right eye, and I wiped it away quickly with my sleeve.