Katie met Andre and Jimbo both last summer. Jimbo had decided he’d paid Katie enough money to let him knock her around a little. She said that happened enough that she should’ve been used to it, but it came as a surprise almost every time. Getting knocked around was one thing, but Jimbo had her frightened. Andre picked up on it quickly enough and started by flashing that shiny white smile and trying to talk Jimbo down, and when that didn’t work, he shrugged and walked away. Katie thought she was going to have to put up with a good beating, but as soon as Jimbo got distracted, Andre clobbered him on the back of the head with a chair. Katie said Jimbo would still try to engage her every once in a while, but she refused. She had tried to thank Andre in the usual way, but he didn’t want anything to do with it.
She got to thinking he might have been a bit queer after that, but it didn’t matter to her.
She paid him back by buying him a drink, and they drank together and talked all that night. He told her he was practicing to be a showman, and how he wasn’t in town very often, but maybe he’d come into town every occasionally and look her up. He told her about his brother who died when he fell off a horse, practicing a particularly difficult roping trick. He told her about his father, a respectable businessman who beat him and his brother every chance he got before he drank himself to death. He told her about his father talking tall tales about the men of the Wild West when he was sober. He’d spin stories of Cowboys and Indians, of heroes on horseback and pistoleers, and how listening to those stories as a kid were the only times he remembered being happy with his father.
I asked her, “If he didn’t take… payment… how’d you know about his birthmark?”
She smiled and said to me, “He didn’t take it the first time. But I can be persistent.”
I admit I was jealous. I thought Andre was my future. I thought I knew Andre inside and out. But I’d never heard of any of this. Then again, I had history too that I hadn’t shared with Andre. That’s when I learned that everyone has secrets.
Jimbo had come to town about seven hours before I had. He’d spent most of the night drinking and trying to get Katie to break her other engagement to service him. Katie noticed the nice pistol grips coming out of the ratty old holster of his, but it wasn’t until she heard my story that she realized they were Andre’s pistols. Jimbo drank what she figured was a whole bottle while making absolutely no friends, being generally himself. Smelly, loud, and abusive to everyone around him.
“You know,” she said. “He paid up for the week. Won’t nobody care much if he checks out a little bit early…”
I smiled at her, and we put our heads together, coming up with a plan.
I took off for town to get some work done. I figured I was going to need some supplies and I still had plenty of cash, not counting what I recovered from Bob the night before. I went to the mercantile and stocked up on food and coffee beans. I picked up some warm clothes, a blanket, and a tent. There was a black hat I took a liking to, plain, with no band or bangles, so I bought that too. I got directed to the only one-horse wagon in town for sale and over-paid for it, on account of either my skin color or the fact that I wasn’t known in this town.
About halfway through my errands I ran into Billy Crandal. He was heading into the Sheriff’s office to report the fire when he caught sight of me and changed direction, headed my way.
“Hey,” he said, his voice subdued.
“Hey,” I returned, dipping the front of my new hat.
“Jesus, I almost didn’t recognize you. Is… is that Bob Strohman’s coat?”
I looked him in the eyes, unafraid and unashamed. “He don’t need it no more.” Billy looked away for a while, thinking about everything, and then finally he nodded his head.
“Listen.” I said, “Don’t you forget, you promised not to let on who fired the mill.” I reached into an inside pocket of that big duster and saw a look of fear cross Billy’s eyes. Had I changed that much?
I pulled a stack of cash out of my pocket and pressed it towards him. “That’s part of what was stolen out of the mill cashbox,” I said. “The company’s going to need that back, or they’ll write off the whole operation as a loss.”
He took it from my hand. “I was going to the Sheriff’s office to tell them about the fire and the theft, but I swear, I wasn’t going to tell them anything about who done it. I’ll keep my word. But how am I gonna explain the money being returned?”
That threw me off. Even if they were guilty, me taking justice into my own hands was liable to get a rope around my neck. This was the result of me lacking a plan again. I fully thought that when I got the money off Jimbo that I was just going to walk into the Sheriff’s office the next day and hand him a stack of money, saying it was from the mill robbery.
And how was I going to explain where I got it? Say I saw it falling out of the pack of some fellow I saw riding away from the fire? Nobody with a mind sharper than a pig’s would believe that. I had to think about how I was going to get Billy Crandal the money.
“Okay,” I said to Billy. “Law don’t need to know you got the money, you just tell the company about it. They’ll be happy they got the cash, they ain’t gonna ask too many questions. Day after tomorrow, you head out on the south road about a mile, mile and a half. You look for a cross that says, “Opal” on it. It’ll be a fresh grave, but there won’t be a body in it, I promise. You dig into it, you’ll find the rest of the cashbox money.”
He looked nervous, like I’d just asked him to deliver a baby in a snowstorm on a stagecoach in the dark. I shook his nerves up a little bit more, “If the money ain’t there, that means I’m probably dead. You go to the law and you tell ‘em everything, ‘cause it’ll be Jimbo killed me. You tell ‘em you didn’t say nothing before, ‘cause I threatened to kill you if you did. You tell ‘em they might find what’s left of Bob Strohman out in the desert between here and the mill, about a hundred yards from a fresh campsite if the coyotes didn’t drag ‘im any further.”
Billy looked horrified, and I kept talking. “I know it ain’t what you’re used to, Billy. It sure as Hell ain’t what I’m used to either. But they deserve everything they gonna get and more, and you know that. I ain’t askin’ you to kill nobody, that’s what I’m about. I just need a little time.” Billy took a few seconds to mull it over in his head, and he finally nodded his agreement.
I turned to walk away and got a couple of feet when I heard Billy say, “Hey.” I turned and looked at him. “Uhm,” he said, and I saw that chicken fear creeping up on him. “You said to tell ‘em… well, uh… are you threatening to kill me?”
That hurt me. Billy had sat at the same table as me a bunch of times and ate with me. We’d talked outside of work and, though I didn’t love him like I loved Surly Bill and Opal, I considered him one of my few friends. And here he was, terrified of me. “No, Billy. I’d never hurt you, I’d just be pretty damned disappointed if I didn’t get to Jimbo before the law did.”
I finished getting my supplies. I outfitted my new small wagon with a lockbox to hold the most valuable of my items, bought a spade and a pickaxe, and every damned book I could lay my hands on (including two medical books.) I figured my time in this town was short, and I had no idea where I was going to go afterwards. If I was to be living alone for a spell, I might need to know how to take care of myself if I got hurt or sick.
Then, I went to go and buy ammunition. I had to flash a pretty sizable handful of money before the shopkeeper would sell to me, and I didn’t like the way he looked my direction when I put most of that money back in my pocket. Some people would have seen this as an omen.
Wish I had that kind of foresight back then.