“King Bragg, he done us a favor,” Rusty said. “Them three buried out in the potter’s field.”
“Don’t start thinkin’ that way. Murder is murder.”
I stomped out, headed for Jasper Turk’s Livery Barn, where I was keeping Critter these days. Critter didn’t like it at all. He liked being out on a pasture, with the sun and wind and rain and snow on him, and a chance to bite anyone come close.
He wasn’t exactly the friendliest nag, and sometimes I thought to shoot him, bam, right between the eyes, and send him to the cat food canner. Critter and I, we were growing ornery side by side.
I didn’t much care for this place, but in a town the size of Doubtful, I didn’t have much choice. Turk, he treated horses worse than he treated people, and that always ticked me off. Only, he was careful no one ever saw him at it. But I could tell. I’d lead Critter toward Turk, and Critter would lay back his ears and start clacking his molars and I got the picture real good.
I found Critter gnawing pine off the planks of his pen.
“Wreck your teeth,” I told him.
He snorted. I stepped in and he bit me on the forearm. I always allow him one bite, but if he bites again, we get serious.
“You ain’t got teeth hard enough to draw blood, you old coot,” I told him.
He bit me again, this time gnawing on my shoulder.
“Cut it out!”
He snorted, so I raised a knee to his ribs, and he whoofed up some air, and tried to lay a hoof into me. I dodged just as he kicked with his right rear and whirled around to nip my ear.
“You sure are ornery this afternoon,” I said, but he paid me no heed and was calculatin’ how to kick me in the crotch. He’s a smart horse, all right.
“You been in here too long,” I said. “We’ll take some air.”
He lowered his ugly head and shoved it into my chest.
“Yeah, I like you too,” I said.
Critter could get sentimental at times. We’d been partnering for nine years, and he knew me better than I knew myself. He was a good horse, not fastest at all, but with bottom. That bottom, that no-quit running, saved my life a time or two. So I sort of got along with him, at least most of the time.
I put a bridle on him and watched him lip it, working it with his tongue. He always did that. He hated a bit with a big curb in it, and had a conniption if I got too bossy. But now he settled down, so I brushed him good and led him into the aisle, where I blanketed and saddled him, after kneeing the air out of him so I could pull the girth up tight.
Turk was nowhere in sight, which was good. I didn’t want to see anyone, not after getting hanged and shot that very morning. It sure seemed like a long time ago, between sitting in Belle’s crapper and saddling up Critter.
I let myself out of the livery barn, leading Critter, and then I got on board. He was stiff-legged while he was deciding whether or not to pitch, but finally he sighed and I knew him and me were going to get along on this day.
But it was already deep into the afternoon, and Crayfish Ruble’s spread was miles up the valley. Maybe I should go in the morning. But I decided against it. The last thing Crayfish would expect to see would be the sheriff of Puma County riding in seven, eight o’clock in the evening.
I steered Critter toward the jailhouse, which stood solid and tan, built of sandstone and intended to last a while. I wrapped Critter’s rein around the hitch rail, just in case, and wandered in there.
Rusty was playin’ euchre through the bars with King Bragg.
“I’m heading up the valley to talk to Crayfish. You’ll be on duty here,” I told him.
“You sure you want to go at this hour?” Rusty asked. “Can’t it wait?”
“No, it can’t. A man gets hanged in the morning, he wants answers by sundown.”
“Pay me overtime then,” Rusty said.
King Bragg stared at me. “Ask Crayfish why he shot his own men,” he said.
FIVE
It sure was a fine day. Critter thought so too, and farted his way up the valley, scaring lizards and offending horseflies. The two-rut road ran beside Chippy Creek, where the red-winged blackbirds were festooning the red willow brush and making a racket.
I was packing a slicker and a bedroll, just in case, because May is as fickle as a bored wife. I let Critter pick his own pace, which was a jog. I didn’t know when I’d get out to Crayfish’s big ranch, or whether anyone would be awake. But it didn’t matter. It was May, and the whole world was happy to be alive.
You have to wonder where Crayfish got that name. Or how I got to be stuck with Cotton. There’s no telling about parents. My pa, he told me up in New England, everyone gets named for a virtue. The women are Faith, or Charity, or Temperance. There’s men named Serene or Parsimony. One feller from Vermont named Diligence Brown showed up in Doubtful, and he was a bookkeeper. But down South, pa said, people scratch where they itch. Now someone named Crayfish simply has the itch for crayfish, and someone named Toad, that’s what he’s like. I’ve knowed a couple fellas named Toad, and it fits. Or sometimes a Southern boy gets named for something that scared his ma. I knew a Funeral Jones once, right out of Macon, Georgia. And my uncle was named Digger. That’s what he did. I had an auntie named Sweet and I once knew a Candy Cane too. I prefer the Southern method of namin’ babies. It’s more honest. I don’t care much for Cotton, but it’s better than Boll Weevil. So I already knew a piece about Crayfish just from his name. Tell me the name of a Southerner, and I’ve already got a handle on him. I
