The Last Crossing (14 page)

Titus dropped down on the buckskin’s neck, and sat there panting for a spell, hefting them clippers in his hand as the horse heaved under him, trying to rise. Then Titus starts to pounding on its neck, smack smack, no more expression on his mean little mug than if he were shingling a roof. Every time them clippers landed they popped a grunt out of that horse that shook him all the way down to his legs.

Joel was giggling beside me. “That old horse run fire ants up Tite’s pants. He gone be sorry. When Tite’s finished licking on that neck, it’s gone be soft as butter. You could rein him with a thread.”

I called out, “That horse ain’t your property, Titus.”

Titus just kept whaling away. About the time I feared he was going to kill that horse, Titus scooted his buttocks off the mustang’s neck. It come up like a colt on new legs, dazed, all atremble, coat slippery with sweat.

The Kelsos swarmed him. Joel clamped teeth to a ear; Titus snared a hind leg with a rope, jacked it up, tied it off fast and neat. Left standing on three legs that horse weren’t about to fight. They bridled him with the spade bit, threw on the saddle, Titus swung up, settled his seat, gathered the reins. Joel whipped the rope off the hind leg.

The mustang fired straight up, slithery as a eel, slammed down stiff-legged and squealing, timing its kick to pitch Titus over its head. But Titus righted himself, flopped back in the saddle, nailed the rowels of his spurs to the mustang’s shoulders, raked it back to the flanks, gouging hard. They whirligigged round that corral, Joel bellowing, “Burr on a blanket! Stick him, Tite! Stick him!”

Titus can ride, dirty little tick. That mustang gave it his all, but when he couldn’t buck his torment he tried to outrun it. Dog with a tin can rattling on its tail, it fairly flew, eyes wild and bulging, hooves drumming panic clear to where I hung on the rails.

Titus just let the buckskin gallop, reins slack, yipping, spurring cruel, leaning into the turns as they tore around the corral. Made me
think of a crazy man’s mind going in circles. All at once, Titus hollered for a way out the asylum. “Open the gate!”

Joel cracked it wide. The mustang cut for the gate directly, legs churning, nostrils flared. Titus Kelso sitting the horse easy, no more expression on his face than a face on a coin.

Almost at the gate, horse going hard for open prairie, Titus jerks the gee rein hard to his hip. Spade bit caught the mustang’s mouth like a fish hook, bent that butter-soft neck like a bow. Horse slid to his haunches in a spray of dust and dirt, eyes rolling. Titus braced himself, toes aimed skyward in the stirrups. Rail splintered when they crashed into it, a dry crack flat as a rifle shot. Felt the corral fence jolt even where I stood, jumped like a live thing under my hand. Everything went slow, Titus sliding out of the saddle, horse turning jelly-spined, a piece of broken rail sticking out of its chest, one hoof tapping the corral poles as he slumped like a mudslide.

Joel and me scrambled over the fence; Titus lifted his eyes to us as we run to him. All he had to say for himself was, “Son of a bitch shied straight into the fence.”

“You reined him into that fence!” I shouted.

Titus flattened a thumb on the side of his nose, snorted blood from it. “Ain’t you going to ask me how I’m faring, Mr. Dooley?” He was cold as a witch’s teat.

“I seen how you turned that horse into that fence, you mean little chigger!”

“I turn what I turn for a reason. Man or horse,” was all he said.

I considered telling Custis what had happened, but I held my peace. I don’t believe I could have persuaded him there was intention to what Titus Kelso did. Custis would have explained it away as mishap. He fancies himself the expert on human nature, but he don’t examine himself. Many a time I’ve heard him say, “A soft answer turneth away wrath.” But he’s short on soft answers himself. Custis just had to contradict Lucy Stoveall where she was sore, which is dangerous to do with a woman as wrathful as she is at present. He couldn’t help but tell her she’s crazy to moulder in that busted wagon when she can have
his room and feather bed just for the asking. Or that he ain’t going to cart her off up north to find her worthless husband.

I ain’t no authority on the fair sex, but I know better than to go controverting a angry woman. With her sister so foully murdered, how does Custis expect Lucy Stoveall to see reason, be anything but bitter mad? Her last grip on Madge is the rage she’s feeling, and she ain’t about to let it go. Custis’s talking sense to her isn’t about to pour cold water on it, only stoke it stronger.

Unlike Lucy Stoveall, Custis won’t let his anger show. It’s the war he’s mad about, the waste of it. He sits on his hoard of precious fury like a miser sitting on his gold. Neither Lucy Stoveall nor Custis Straw are ready yet to forget the dead. In quiet moments, I’ve seen all them dead soldiers walk across his face.

It drives him to distraction that he can’t hide himself from me like he does everybody else. It’s a burr under his foreskin that I know his thoughts so well. He’s forever boasting he owns a cross-bench mind, but he don’t fool Aloysius Dooley. What Custis calls thinking for himself is just a excuse to poke a stick in somebody’s eye, stir up trouble. He jokes about going unarmed, says a empty holster is his guardian angel because the only thing certain to get somebody hanged in lawless parts is to shoot a man who don’t carry a weapon. But that ain’t the whole truth. He’s scared to trust himself with a gun. I reckon the war taught him a man can develop a taste for killing just like he can for whores, cards, or whisky. So Custis won’t touch a weapon, for fear it will tempt him.

He’s all affection and pity for tail-enders because when he’s taking their side or uplifting them, he don’t feel his own shortfallings. I told him a sociable, sensible man keeps off certain topics, and don’t take the part of unpopular folk.

“Give me an instance,” he says, “where I did that.”

“Well, like arguing with the Missouri man who said the niggers ought to be shipped back to Africa and you saying that if we paid them passage and back wages owed for a couple hundred years of labour they’d likely jump at the offer.”

“What else was I supposed to say? I happen to believe it,” he barks at me.

“It’s a dangerous opinion to offer to a man of strong convictions primed with three-quarters of a bottle of whisky.”

“I got my rights,” is all he says.

Well, I got my rights too. He’s got no business aggravating my customers, making the whisky go sour in their bellies. And he hogs that table to himself by the window like he homesteaded the spot. What’s more, Bible reading is worst than darky music for spreading glumness. I’ve seen jolly fellows flinch at the sight of his Bible. Makes them think of their mothers praying for them somewheres.

Speaking of customers, there goes that blamed Danny Rand, rapping a coin on the bar-top for service. A man wants a drink, he ought to ask for it pleasant, not crack away with his money, waggle his empty glass at me like a whore’s ass. A saloon-keeper’s life is a cross.

CUSTIS
Maybe carrying that belt off with me wasn’t such a good idea. I can’t stop worrying over it in my mind and worrying over it with my fingers. Aloysius once said to me his old Mam was always clicking her rosary and when she wasn’t, she was always thinking she ought to be. He said those beads were the bane of her life. I reckon that the belt that murdered Madge Dray is turning into my dusky rosary. I know every inch of it by heart already, same as Mrs. Dooley knew her prayers. I see it in my sleep, can’t escape it waking. A length of wide, thick leather, black, stained, nicked, scarred. Ordinary, clumsy brass buckle. Three brass studs on the tip of it as if they’d been put there to add sting to a whipping. The sight of them stings me, makes me regret I took Madge away from her pleasure that evening. If I hadn’t, she might be alive today. A working man’s belt, cinch for a roustabout, trapper, muleskinner, saddle tramp. That doesn’t narrow things down. You could fit Fort Benton’s quality in a canoe; the ordinary folk would fill a couple of steamboats.

I can scarce keep from fingering it in my pocket now, but Aloysius’s watching me from behind the bar like an old mother hen. It was a mistake to have shown him the belt as soon as I got back from the jail and to have inquired of him if he had seen anyone wearing it. First thing he asked was what was behind my question. When I told him it had choked the life out of that poor girl, Aloysius shook his head hard and kept repeating, “No, I ain’t seen that on none of my customers, and I don’t want to see it again. Put that out of sight. My sight and yours, Custis. That ain’t a keepsake a sane man clings to.”

It’s risky to question too many about the belt because I don’t want those with an unfavourable opinion of me to be reminded of my association with little Madge. But last night I took it down to Mr. Robert E. Lee’s laundry and bathhouse, inquired whether he’d seen this particular item when stowing the clothes of his customers who’d come to him for a soak. The Chinaman smiled at me and shook his head, saying he didn’t look too close at any of the duds came into his care for fear of seeing the wildlife in them. After that, we smoked two pipes of opium. When I got back to the Stubhorn, I sat on my bed staring at that belt, trying to summon up some recollection of it on my own.

Two pipes of opium and that belt before bed were a bad combination. No sooner had I dropped off into a light sleep than those torches that had led Madame Magique’s parade started to wave in my dreams, blobs of fiery jelly marching up and down Front Street, over and over.

Next and all of a sudden, Madge Dray was on top of me, naked, tiny-breasted, squatting over my hips, lewdly parting her sex, sliding down on me, mewing like a cat. I tried to lift her off me. But then my pleasure rose up in me too fierce and I gave way to it. When I did, she started to shrink smaller and smaller until she was scarcely bigger than my prick, just a silky sleeve stroking my lust, a doll not a girl. And all the time this was happening, I knew how wrong a thing it was.

This morning my drawers were stiff with the stains of a callow boy. I can’t stop wondering where that terrible, evil dream arose from. The Bible says, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” A dream isn’t a
thought, but it surely is a close cousin to one. Last night made me feel almost as ashamed as if I’d really done the thing people accuse me of.

A shadow falls across my table, I feel a gush of warm air, hear the flap of swinging doors. Who’s paused on the threshold of the Stubhorn but that English bill poster, looking fresh as a new-picked daisy. A real, genuine English toff, the kind of handsome young man women whisper about behind their fans when he swans into a room. Tall, slim, clean-shaven, pale-blue eyes, one of those Roman beaks that whichever lady it points at, it points at willing prey. Lounge jacket, fawn waistcoat, Shepherd’s plaid trousers, low-crowned bowler cocked jauntily to the side of his head. A whiff of lemon verbena. English tailoring and courage in your costume – it makes a man stand out. I’ve never dared further than black broadcloth.

Aloysius is awestruck by the Englishman’s glory, and the dirty gunsel draped over the bar, garments rotting off him, pastes a sneer on his mouth on account of all that finery. The Englishman’s polished ankle boots head for the bar. Same as fresh shit gathers flies, he’s made to attract trouble.

“If I might impose on you,” the Englishman says to Aloysius, “I’m seeking a Mr. Potts. Have you seen the gentleman this morning?”

The saddle tramp wades in before Aloysius can answer. “Hey, darling, be polite and buy a drink from the man before you jump all over him with your goddamn questions.”

“Quite so,” the Englishman says coolly. “A gin, if you please, landlord.”

Aloysius ducks down under the counter; there’s a great clinking of glass and he produces a bottle of oily-looking gin that must have been distilled about the time Noah built the ark. It’s an apology the way Aloysius pours it.

The Englishman pays and lifts his drink to Aloysius. “Cheers,” he says.

The rowdy at the bar passes comment. “Gin’s a whore’s drink.”

I’m not sure the Englishman understands where the hardcase is pushing towards. If he does, I’ve got to admire him, he’s bland as custard to the offence.

“A drink for whores and bugger boys,” adds the saddle tramp.

“I daresay,” remarks the Englishman, picks his glass up and ambles towards an empty table.

“Don’t prance away from me,” says the hardcase. “I’m talking to you.”

I catch the Englishman’s eye. “Care to join me?”

“Honoured and delighted.” He takes a chair. “Charles Gaunt.”

I give him my hand. “Custis Straw.”

I hoist a looksee over Mr. Gaunt’s shoulder. The fellow at the bar is muttering something to Aloysius. Aloysius shakes his head in disgust and turns away from him. Mr. Gaunt takes out a snowy handkerchief and dabs at the sweat on his upper lip. The day promises to be a scorcher; in a couple of hours the Stubhorn will be hotter than the hubs of hell.

Mr. Gaunt nods to my Bible. “You were at your devotions when I entered, sir. I have interrupted them.”