“Boy, are you out of your gawddamned mind or just born slow?”
“Well, no, Charlie…but they’re gonna be broncs to bust, and with your age and all, I was just…”
Charlie threw his battered hat on the ground. “Gawddamn, boy, I ain’t ready for no old folks’ home just yet!”
“Now, don’t get worked up, Charlie. You’re liable to have a heart attack, and I don’t know nothing about treating heart attacks.”
Charlie turned blue around the mouth and his eyes bugged out. Then he began to relax and chuckle. He wiped his eyes and said, “Shore tell Preacher had a hand in your up-bringin’, Smoke.” He stuck a hard, rough hand across the hat-sized fire. “You got you a man that’ll ride the river with you, Smoke Jensen.”
Smoke took the hand and a new friendship was born.
16
On the slow ride back to the ranch, Smoke discovered that Charlie and Preacher shared one common bond. They both liked to bitch.
And like Preacher’s had been, Charlie’s complaints were numerous…and mostly made up.
“I stayed in a hospital a week one time,” Charlie informed him. “Them doctors found more wrong with me than a human body ought to have to suffer. I swear, if I’d stayed in there another week, I’d have probably died. They told me that no human bein’ could be shot twenty-two times and still live. I told them I wasn’t shot no twenty-two times, it was twenty-five times, but three of them holes was in a place they wasn’t about to look at.
“Boy, was I wrong!”
Smoke was laughing so hard he had to wipe his eyes with a bandana.
“Nurse come in that first day. That was the homeliest-lookin’ female I ever did see. Looked like a buffalo. Told me to hike up that gown they had me in. I told her that her and no two others like her was big enough to make me do that.
“I was wrong agin.
“I want to warn you now, Smoke. Don’t never get around me with no rubber tubin’. Don’t do it. I’m liable to go plumb bee-serk. Them hospitals, boy, they got a thing about flushin’ out a man’s system. Stay away from hospitals, boy, they’ll kill you!”
Pearlie was clearly in awe. Not only was he working for Smoke Jensen, but now Smoke had done gone and hired Charlie Starr.
“Shut your mouth, boy,” Charlie told him. “Afore you swaller a bug.”
Pearlie closed his mouth.
Charlie was clearly taken aback when Sally came out of the cabin to meet him…dressed in men’s jeans. With a pistol belted around her tiny waist.
Wimmin just didn’t have no business a-runnin’ around in men’s pants. They’d be smokin’ cigarettes ’fore long.
But he forgot all about that when she said, “Fresh apple pie for dessert, Mister Starr.”
“Charlie, ma’am. Just Charlie.”
The sun was just settling over the Sugarloaf when Sally called them in for dinner. Steaks, beans, potatoes, fresh-baked bread, and apple pie.
Smoke and Sally both noted that, for such a spare fellow, Charlie could certainly eat.
After Charlie had sampled his plate and pleased his palate, he said, “Bring me up to date, Smoke.”
Smoke told him what he knew, and then what he guessed. Including Tilden’s desires for Sally.
“That’s his way, all right,” Charlie said. Then he leveled with them, speaking slowly, telling them about Rosa. “Way I hear it, Tilden fancied that she was comin’ up on him. But that was her job, hostess at a saloon. Rosa had part of the action, owned about twenty-five percent of it. When I come to in the hospital, after Tilden’s boys drug me, Louis told me what really happened.”
Smoke glanced at the man. “Louis!”
Charlie grinned grimly. “Louis Longmont. It was one of his places. And you know Louis don’t tolerate no pleasure ladies workin’ for him. That’s more Big Mamma O’Neil’s style. Louis was considerable younger then, and so was I. Louis said one of his bouncers saw it all…well, most of it. Tilden was so drunk he got it all wrong. And when Rosa tried to break a-loose from him, he started slappin’ her around. Bad. The bouncers come runnin’, but Tilden’s hands held them at bay whilst he took Rosa in the back room and…” He paused, looking at Sally. “…had his way with her. Then he killed her. Broke her neck with his bare hands. You see, one of them doctors in that damnable hospital told me, once I got to trust the feller, that Tilden ain’t quite right in the head. He’s got the ability to twist things all around, and make the bad look good and so forth. He shapes things the way he wants them to be in his mind. I disremember the exact word the doc used. That buffler-faced nurse come by ’bout that time with some rubber tubin’ in her hands and things kinda went hazy on me.”
“What nurse?” Sally asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Smoke said.
Charlie said, “Me and Rosa was gonna get married in the spring. I was unconscious for several days; didn’t even get to go to her buryin’.” He sighed deeply. “Course, by the time I got on my feet, Tilden and his bunch was long gone. I lost track of him for a time, but by then the fires inside me had burned low. I still hated the man, but I had to make a livin’ and didn’t have no idea where he might be. I been knowin’ he was in this area for some years. I’ve drifted in and out half a dozen times, stayin’ low, watching that low-life build his little kingdom. Then I had me an idea. I’d wait until he got real big, real powerful, real sure of himself. And then I’d kill him…slow.”
Charlie laid down his knife and fork, pushed his empty plate from him, and stood up. “Bes’ grub I’ve had in many a moon, ma’am. I thank you. Reckon I’ll turn in now. Tomorrow I wanna start roamin’ the range for a couple of days, learn all the twists and turns and ways in and out. I seen me a cookstove in the bunkhouse. I’ll fix me a poke before I pull out in the mornin’. Night, folks.”
After the door had closed softly and the sounds of Charlie’s jingling spurs had faded, Pearlie said, “I think Tilden Franklin’s string has just about run out.”
