Ambrose pushed his goggles up on his forehead. You can’t be doing that.
Oh, I can’t, can’t I?
You gots to be a lingrist or something. A senator. The word gots to be around a long time. Work its way into convocations. Official. Folks got to agree.
So why can’t you and I agree? I’m practically an aristocrat, nearly a blueblood, and in addition to that a northerner. In other words
Ambrose thought about it. Why not. So that crow blind yonder’s a bunker, and the pre-vert we’re chasing killed them fellers?
Walton blinked. Exactly.
The men had begun howling with laughter; a deputy had been caught masturbating in the blind.
Walton called a meeting and informed the men that this deputy would now have the nickname “Onan.” He described the Biblical masturbator, which caused a few sniggers among the troops.
Self-abuse, the Philadelphian admonished, is no laughing matter. Onan, your pay is hereby docked.
The men grew solemn.
Their leader clasped his hands behind his back and began to study the brown-stained grass for traces of further evidence. In the last few weeks, he had been trying to create descriptive nicknames for each deputy in hopes that it would bring them closer together and help him, Walton, tell the fellows apart. “Loon” and “Red Man” had caught on quickly and tipped him that these aliases must be psychologically and/or physically descriptive; if they were mildly insulting as well, the humorous aspect further aided the men’s memories. The head deputy imagined that his subordinates bandied secret nicknames for him as well. “Sarge.” “His Majesty.” He wondered if they had conversations about him. They must. Aside from alcohol, tobacco, gambling, whores and a taste for mindless violence, what else did they have in common but Phail Walton? Often at night, as they bivouacked under the stars, he pretended to sleep, even committing counterfeit snores so that he might hear what they said about him. He’d recruited them from everywhere. Bums, mostly. Drunks. Criminals. Men “on the lam.” While they suffered in steadfastness, loyalty, courage and obedience, they were cheap and easy to replace.
Look here, Ambrose called. Tracks go this a way. Peers like he made off with one of these fellers’ horses. Stole the guns and this one’s boots. Look how little his feet is. Like girl feet.
Add thievery to the list, Walton said. Mount up!
Shouldn’t we bury these fellows here? Loon asked.
Shall I describe a certain pervert? Walton said. We’re in pursuit? Besides, I think our last two grave-digging volunteers have joined their fellow deserters. I’m onto that “scam” and we’re fast losing men.
But it ain’t Christian, Loon persisted. I was brung up to bury folks. My daddy was a gravedigger and my granddaddy before him was too and my great-granddaddy and all my uncles and so forth was. My brothers was and one tomboy sister a bull-dyke. We all gravediggers is what I’m saying. We dig good ditches and privies, too. So I’m jest making a point. You got a man with a talent, me, it’s a dang shame not to let him exercise his God-give gifts. What you think there, there, you, nigger—what’s ye name agin?
Ooh, Mister Walton, Ambrose sneered, I agrees with the white fellers. He glared at them, one by one. Loon with his missing ear. Onan stepping from the bunker, smoking a cigarette. An as-yetun-nicknamed deputy picking his teeth and on down the line.
Why don’t we jest ignore the heat and spend a hour digging giant holes to stick these dead strangers in? the second-in-command snided. And then why don’t we climb in this here smelly-ass bunker and sang a few hymns, too? Recite some Bible scriptures? Sang Christmas carols?
The deputies were shamed.
Walton gave his dark-skinned lieutenant a fond, thankful look, and the two men smiled at one another with unabashed collegiality.
Mount up, Walton called, but everybody had already.
5 THE MOB
EVENING AT LAST IN OLD TEXAS. THE PARCHED OAKS LINING THE street. The dry throats of whippoorwills. The ladies of the town in their mourning color numbly lugging pails of water uphill from the well to fight fires arisen from cinders that combust upon landing like flies raised from hell. One elderly woman collapses in the street and, spilling her water, begins to wail. A younger woman takes up the buckets and totters back down to the bottom where buzzards hop off and where, flat under a bristle of scrub brush across the tracks, a wild cat ragged in its coat of dust waits, dying of thirst, twitching with the ray bees.
The judge, meanwhile, was hiding in the cluttered back room of the town clerk’s office stuffing a valise with confidential records in case he had to blackmail his way out of this brouhaha. The clerk, and Justice of the Peace Elmer Tate, and Hobbs the undertaker and a passel of business-owners, all killed, were to be memorialized in a ceremony the following Monday, and the judge expected to be asked by their widows to say a few words about each man. He was in a slight panic because he didn’t know any of them. He was always drunk on his stops here which had winnowed from bimonthly to once or twice a year. He usually passed sentence without remembering from one case to the next what he’d said. Most of the time he couldn’t even find the tiny office they provided him.
He looked up to see the bailiff watching him from the door. A Winchester rifle in one hand.
Oh, said the judge. He shut the bag and buckled it.
I don’t give a good got-dern what yer stealing, the bailiff said. Such cares is for the living, which I no longer count myself among. Did ye want to see me before I left?
I did, yes. Are ye shot?
Naw. The bailiff raised his shirt and revealed the purple anus of his wound. Stobbed a tad but it ain’t the first time.
You might want to get that looked at, the judge said. Or the rest of us ’ll stop counting ye among the living too.
The doc’s dead. Shot thew his thoat, among other places. And I’ve had worse than this anyway. The pain ’ll remind me of Smonk’s treachery.
I could write ye a statement to similar effect. In the meantime, go on lower ye tunic. I get the picture. He opened a pocket of his valise and removed a flask. Cheers, he said and drank and dabbed his lips with a handkerchief and took a seat on one side of a small writing table and waited for the bailiff to roll a stool across and sit opposite him, laying his cap between them.
What’s that in ye jaw? the judge asked. Hard candy?
Naw.
My ulcer’s griping. A rock of candy ’ll help sometimes. But that’s neither here ner there because my ulcer ain’t gone git no better until we do something about this Smonk dilemma. Cause now that you done shot them gun-killers instead of arresting em for questions, it’s no way to link Smonk to em. Is it.
I reckon not.
You reckon right.
Preciate it.
However. I’d like ye to listen real careful to a letter I got. He un-crinkled a piece of paper so oft-clutched in his sweaty palms it was thin as tissue. I’ll skip the personal references and things I deem beyond ye and jest read the particulars. To save time. He cleared his throat again. To the attention of Judge et cetera et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Ah. Here. “It is of Urgency that You come preside in the E. O. Smonk Trial. No Town has ever suffered more than Ours bedeviled and beset upon as We have been by this Devil or Homunculus or What Ever He claims to be He lives several Miles outside Town in a large Manson He comes to Town Saturday Nights and wrecks Havoc on
