Rides a Stranger Read online

  “Including the wife?”

  “Yeah, her too, I reckon.”

  So there she was, sitting in that little black buggy with the wind blowing down the grass and letting it back up only to knock it down again, and even a man laced with sweat and sore hands could look upon that sea of green and see it was a damn pretty sight, when the wind waved through it. Mrs. Watts—Fannie—sat there in that buggy looking at me with those eyes looked like the kind painted on the face of a bisque doll, and she was even prettier than the land.

  She said “Hidey,” and I said “Hidey” back and let go of the wire and the wrecking bar and took off my old Stetson and wiped my sleeve across my sweated face while I watched her reach down somewhere under the seat and come up with a mason jar sweating about as much as I was and hold it forth.

  “Would you like some cold tea?” she said, and it didn’t take me very long at all to answer that I would. And each of us stood there holding onto it a moment, looking into each other’s eyes, and you could just feel whatever it was dancing between us like the heat waves you see wobbling off a road in the summer.

  Then she asked did I want something to eat, was I hungry?

  Of course I was, even if I wasn’t, and she reached down into a basket where she’d brought the jar of tea from and I could see other jars in there as well and handed me a sandwich wrapped in butcher paper.

  “Hope you like roast beef and onions,” she said, handing it to me.

  “Love ’em,” I said.

  Then we stood there looking at each other a good bit longer before she said she had to ride on and deliver some of the other men their lunch, and I said, “Yes’m,” because there wasn’t any words for what I was feeling and thinking that I could have said other than yes’m.

  I watched her drive off and my heart wasn’t in any more work that day, or the next, when she didn’t return. Instead it was Flint come riding up and pitched me down a jar of tea and a sandwich without those same loving looks.

  “I was sort of hoping it would be the boss’s wife bringing me lunch,” I said. “It sort of breaks up the meanness of this type work.”

  He looked at me so hard with those dark empty eyes of his it was like looking down the barrels of a shotgun.

  “I ain’t gon’ warn you twice,” he said, and drove off in that rickety buckboard like some sort of king riding in a one man parade.

  Next two days it was the same thing, Flint bringing me and the rest of us lunch, and I’d bet another dollar the other boys were just as disappointed as I was and did believe those sandwiches and that tea didn’t taste as good as when the boss’s wife brought them.

  Then come that Friday there she came, up over the rise in that little black buggy pulled by the bay, and I quick sniffed my shirt to see how bad it was I stunk and it was pretty bad considering the weather had been awful hot for days and days, so bad even the wind laid down and didn’t blow half the time. You could look off in the distance every now and then and see a windmill that wasn’t turning, and the sky was empty of birds flying, and stream water was warm as fever.

  I knocked dust out of my hat by slapping it against my leg and set it back on my head and tried to seem casual about it as she pulled up and stopped. This time I didn’t try and pretend I hadn’t noticed her coming and instead stood there with my hands stuffed down into my hind pockets like I was at some pie dance waiting to be asked to join in a quadrille.

  “Hidey, Jim,” she said, only this time she said it using my first name.

  “Hidey, m’am,” I said back, still unsure what little game we were engaged in.

  I wasn’t completely bereft of the ways of women. In fact I’d known my share of them. But most of them were what you’d call “improper” types—Cyprians, Brides of the Multitudes, Fallen Angels—that sort. Goodhearted girls as long as you had a dollar or two to buy them a drink or afford their ser vices. Sad women, lots of them were, looking for a man richer than a cowboy to take them out of the life and set them up proper. Some made it too, and some drank mercury. But it had been a quite a little time since I’d been in the company of a woman like Fannie Watts, and I guess I was acting like it too.

  We stood there staring, not saying much, and it felt a little like ants crawling in my shirt from the trickling sweat and the anticipation so much so I could hardly stand it.

  “Been a while,” I said.

  “Oh, I had to go to visit my mother,” she said. “But I’m back now.”

  “I reckon you got to get on and take the others their lunch,” I said, testing the waters because I’d just as soon she was gone as to stand there and have to be around her knowing she was as illegal as that whiskey they sold down in the Indian Nations.

  “No,” she said, reaching into her little basket and taking out a sandwich and a jar of tea. “I saved you until last today, Jim. Would you give me a hand down? I’d like to stretch my legs.”

  Well, it just all got better from there on. As we were later lying in the grass together looking up at big white clouds drifting overhead that had no rain in them, I was thinking about the warning Flint had laid on me the first day. But the truth was, I knew that it didn’t matter because nothing good ever lasted very long anyway and you learned to take the good where you found it and expect the worst to come along right behind it.

  Fact, I told myself Flint and the rest could come and shoot me and string me up and shoot me again, and it would have been worth it the way I was feeling just then. I believe a man can die happy if he tries hard enough, and I sure gave it my all. I think the look on Fannie’s face could attest to how much of my all I gave it.

  And so we met like that two or three times a week until I had pretty much fallen down in the well of love over her and was planning how many banks I’d need to rob to give Fannie the sort of life she was accustomed to if she ran off with me when the cold hard truth came down like a bad rain.

  Truth had a name: Junior Bosch. He was another hand working on Watts’s spread. Junior was a good ten years younger than me, and admittedly of a pleasant disposition. On top of which he had dark curly hair and teeth that shone like ivory that caused even some of the old punchers to look upon him with a certain envy.

  It seemed I wasn’t the only one getting those special delivery lunches from Fannie—that she often alternated days between Junior and me as to which of us got our lunch delivered last. And once all the dirty laundry got washed, I learned there were some days when Junior and me both got our lunches delivered back to back. And that little trip she said she took to her mother’s turned out to be a trip to meet up with yet another fellow in Council Bluffs. Most disturbing to me was having to think I was mixing in where Junior might have earlier been.

  The real kicker was, I think Flint knew the whole while what sort of woman she was and was laughing out the side of his ugly mouth at those who’d been fool enough to fall for Fannie’s charm. He fired Junior when it came to light because Junior had a loose mouth on him when he got to drinking and ran the whole tale down in front of me and the others one night. I didn’t get fired because to that point nobody knew about me and Fannie. ’Course, Flint told everybody to keep it under his hat what Junior had spilled, that he didn’t want Mr. Watts hearing such things or he’d fire every one of us. But I knew then and there I was gone.

  So I made a big show of quitting the next day after I learned about the two of them doing the grass dance together—an image that set with me about like a rancid steak washed down by snakehead whiskey. Flint had come up to me first thing in the morning and told me to go dig some postholes up on the west forty. That’s when I told him what I thought about such work—and it was by God the truth even if it wasn’t the real reason I quit.

  But my pride wouldn’t let me come right out and tell Fannie face-to-face what I was thinking, the reason I was quitting. And hers wouldn’t let her ask any deeper than the reason I gave her; I think in a way she was glad I was going.

  And so there I stood and there she stood and you could t
ell it was all broke and never going to get fixed between us and the only difference was I think I cared a whole lot more than she did. Out of work cowboys were as plentiful as ticks on a wet dog, and beautiful young women were about as rare as a butcher with all his fingers, so you can see which the odds favored.

  So she went and got my thirty dollars a month’s pay and handed it to me.

  “I’m sorry things didn’t work out, Jim,” she said, and I could hear the old man inside somewhere coughing and it dawned on me just then he must have known of her dalliances, past and present. How could he have not? And knowing he must have known left me feeling pretty lowdown to think that she done what she done with his knowing it and I’d become equally as guilty. Still, when I looked into those sweet eyes I couldn’t get mad at her.

  “You even feel a little bit bad about all this?” I said.

  She glanced up at me and said, “Well, it all works out somehow, doesn’t it, Jim.”

  “Goddamn if it don’t,” was the last words I said to that woman, my heart broken, my mind messed up like it sometimes got when I drank the better stuff.

  So I rode on away from there just following the sun because it was as good a direction to go as any, and then here I come to this sign all about no discharging of firearms and population of 756, thinking it wasn’t too big of a town where a man would feel crowded, but not so small either that there wouldn’t be any job opportunities. I needed some grub and to find work of some sort, or me and my horse would end up just another of life’s tragic victims—our bones bleaching on the plains like a lot of others who’d gone in search of something they weren’t ever going to find—men, women, and children. Here and there along the roads you could often see little wood markers with names burned into them half knocked over by the wind and rain and I didn’t feature joining them as part of that grim landscape.

  I never thought my stopping in such a place called Coffin Flats, with such low expectations, would lead to what it did. But then, after my last go-round, I told myself, Jim, don’t even try and guess what is writ in the book of life under your name.

  I just rode on in and tied off in front of the first drinking establishment I found. Place called Bison Bill’s Emporium.

  If the beer was cold and wet and not over a dime a glass, it was my sort of place.

  Chapter Two

  I rested a foot on the rail and waited for Bison Bill or whoever it was tending bar this mid-morning. A one-armed man with handlebar moustaches said, “Beer or whiskey?”

  A chalkboard listed the prices. Beer was a nickel, whiskey two bits, pickled eggs a dime.

  “Beer,” I said, “and two of those pickled eggs.”

  It was early yet to be drinking, but then, I never owned a watch. There was just me and the one-armed bartender and a man sitting by himself in the corner at a table reading a newspaper—holding it up to the window light because it was dim inside the place.

  He lowered his paper when I ordered my beer, looked over the top of the pages at me then went back to reading.

  I put two bits on the bar and the one-armed man picked it up and put it in a big brass cash register after he punched a button and the drawer clanged open. I wondered how much money a big register like that could hold; just weighing my options for a future career as desperado in case nothing better came along. I sure didn’t want to go mending any more fences, even if the ranch owner’s wife was pretty and liberal with her body.

  “What time you put out the regular eats?” I said, plopping one of the eggs into my trap before washing it down with a swallow of beer.

  “Not till the lunch crowd,” he said.

  I ate the other egg and sipped more beer and it was cold and that’s all that mattered, cold and wet, something to cut the trail dust.

  “You in town looking for work?” he said.

  I heard the newspaper rattle behind me.

  “Could be. You know of any?”

  “Not much.”

  I waited for him to come up with a name maybe.

  Some towns are just friendlier than others.

  “Where you hail from, you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Bar Double Z,” I said. “Nebraska.”

  “I fell drunk off a horse once in Nebraska,” he said.

  “I imagine you’d not be the first to do so,” I said.

  It was aimless talk not leading to anything I could see.

  “Noon you say, about the lunch?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  I glanced at the jar of pickled eggs again.

  “You do your own pickling?” I said.

  The barkeep smiled.

  “I seen you,” he said, “I was wondering if maybe you’d come in for the big fight tonight.” He was wiping out the inside of a drink glass, then holding it up to the poor light and wiping it some more.

  “What fight’s that?” I said.

  “Gentleman Harry Ford is in town taking on all comers. Champeen prizefighter from back East somewhere. Middleweight they say.”

  “Middleweight, huh?”

  He pointed to a poster tacked up on the wall just inside the door.

  “Cost you five dollars to get in, but if you can knock the champ out, his manager will give you fifty dollars.”

  “Ten to one,” I said, scratching up under my hat. I needed a bath and a shave and some clean clothes. “Not too bad of odds.”

  “No sir. If I had both arms, I’d fight him myself.”

  “You say all a fellow has to do it knock him out?”

  That’s when the fellow reading the newspaper lowered it and said, “You’d be wise to save your money and your face.”

  I glanced over at him.

  He looked like a banker with his derby cocked to one side and frock coat and checked vest. All he was missing was a horse collar and a necktie. He folded his newspaper and set it beside his coffee cup. I could see the window light glance off a pinky ring.

  “What makes you think I’d lose?” I said.

  He lifted his cup and took a drink, his eyes watching me the whole time like I was a dog he was thinking of buying.

  “I know you cow punchers all think you can fight, especially when you’re all liquored up. You believe you can whip Jesus himself, but trust me, this old boy will use you like a redheaded stepchild. I saw him fight an exhibition in Dodge last year.”

  Well, shit, it sure didn’t help my confidence none having a stranger tell me he could tell just by the looks of me what I could and could not do in a fistfight.

  “Where do I sign up for this Gentleman Harry Ford?” I said to the barkeep, and he smiled like he’d just grown a new arm.

  “The fight’s to be held down at Bucky’s Corral. Starts at seven o’clock sharp. Bring your money.”

  “Goddamn right,” I said, and looked back over my shoulder at the man. He simply picked up his newspaper and tucked it under his arm and walked out into the mid-morning light that seemed to just swallow him whole.

  “Who is that fellow?” I said.

  “City marshal Chalk Bronson,” he said.

  “Awfully sure of himself.”

  “Yes, awfully.”

  I hung around till lunch and bought another beer and dug into the meats and bread and cakes and went off and found myself a table—the same one the lawman had been reading his newspaper at—and sat there eating and sipping my beer like I owned the place. I counted out my money. I was down to seventeen dollars and two bits. Add to that the fifty I planned on winning and I’d be aces once again. Figured maybe I’d sell my horse and saddle and buy a train ticket to California and put both my feet in the ocean just to say I did and then look around for some real opportunity. I heard there was a lot of it out there. These old prairies hadn’t shown me anything but the ass end of cows and fence lines and a sea of grass. I didn’t even want to think of what it was before I took up punching—the faces of the men I’d killed.

  The buffalo was all shot out and the farmers were taking over and it was getting so
peaceful, most of it, it was goddamn pitiful. Everybody knew if you wanted to make something of yourself you had to either go east or west.

  I sat around till the lunch crowd thinned out again then offered to help the one-armed barkeep put away the leftovers. He paid me by giving me a free beer. I thanked him and he poured himself one while four old boys with long beards played dominoes at a table and told each other jokes and laughed and shuffled their ivory.

  “So you think you might know somewhere I could land a little work?” I said.

  “You like whores?”

  “I never held anything against them but me,” I said.

  “Pink Huston is looking for a bouncer at his cathouse.”

  “Shit, wasn’t exactly what I had in mind as a career move.”

  “Career move?” He laughed like hell and swiped the beer foam from his moustaches.

  “You know what something like that pays, bouncing at his hog farm?”

  He shrugged. “You’d have to ask Pink but I imagine, knowing him, he’d want you to take some of your wages out in trade with his gals.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “You see them railroad tracks just south of here when you rode in?”

  “Yeah, I seen them.”

  “That’s where he is. Marshal keeps all the for-sale pussy across those tracks—the dead line, he calls it. Crib whores, Chinese whores, all of ’em. Chalk’s got the biggest hog farm within a hundred miles of here. You can’t miss it—look for the one with the mansard roof.”

  I thanked him and went out and mounted my horse and rode down toward the railroad tracks. I could see a line of shacks and one structure with a mansard roof that looked like it belonged north of the tracks, not south. It loomed above the others. The horse was skittish about crossing over the tracks. I patted his neck in a gentle way and said, “Hell, old son, we been south of tracks like these before.”

  I rode down the one and only street and noticed a lot of the whores had hung out their laundry by draping their underthings and bedsheets over railings, and some were washing clothes in big galvanized tubs set out front of the cathouses. Several of the ladies were sitting lounging around on porches and balconies—the places that had balconies—in their bloomers, and smoking cigarettes and chatting like schoolgirls.