Texas by the Tail

The boy shrugged casually. 'I wouldn't have much use for one in a place like this, Dad.'

'Well, of course, you won't be here by the time you're old enough to vote.'

'Of course.'

To Mitch, the words seemed an echo of his own voice; something that he had once said pretty much as Sam had said them now. He glanced at Red, and found her looking at him meaningfully.

'I think you'll be through with boarding schools before long, Sam,' he heard himself saying. 'Red- your Aunt Red and I hope we'll be able to run our business without traveling in another year or two, and then we'll all settle down together.'

'Well,' Sam said. 'I don't care particularly about settling down. I'd just as soon travel as not.'

Mitch passed a paper plate of roast beef, murmuring that he needed to get an education before he started traveling. Sam said that Mitch seemed to have managed to combine the two.

'No, I didn't really get an education,' Mitch said seriously. 'My folks couldn't afford to put me in boarding school, or you can bet they would have.'

'What about Aunt Red?'

'What? Oh, well, Aunt Red was just a tot while we were on the road. By the time she was of school age, the family was settled down in one place.'

The boy looked gravely from his father to Red. He nodded, as though to himself, and began buttering a roll.

'Good chow,' he said. 'Did you cook it, Red-Aunt Red, I mean?'

'Why, no, I didn't. They don't allow cooking in the apartment where we are.'

'I'll bet you could cook though, couldn't you? I'll bet you can do anything better than a wife could do.'

'W-What?' Red stammered. 'I, uh, why do you say that?'

'Because Dad has never got married. Again, I mean. You take care of him so good that he doesn't want a wife.'

A deep blush had spread over Red's face. She bit her lip, band trembling as she reached for a piece of fruit. In the heavy silence, Sam looked innocently (too innocently? ) at his father.

'I've got the afternoon off, Dad. Want me to show you around or anything?'

'Why don't you show your Aunt Red around, and let me join you later?' Mitch said. 'Right now I imagine I'd better make my courtesy visit to the Colonel.'

'He's been in the infirmary all week,' Sam told him. 'But I guess you should drop in on the adjutant. He's sitting in for the Colonel.'

'Good. I'll take care of it right now,' Mitch said.

He left the car with them, and headed on foot for the ivy-covered administration building. Crossing the sun-baked parade ground, he skirted a small group of drilling cadets, in the custody of a red-faced man in sergeant's uniform. They were a punishment squad, apparently. Or, perhaps, an awkward squad. Sweat streaked their straining faces, dripping down to darken the gray of their uniforms. To Mitch they seemed like automatons, moving like a single machine. Yet they did not satisfy the sergeant. With a harsh and unintelligible yell he brought them to a halt, molded them into a dozen-odd sweating statues. Then, pacing up and down in front of them, occasionally thrusting his nose within an inch of some supposed miscreant, he spewed out such a threatening and insulting tirade that even Mitch was a little shocked.

But this was a good school. One of the very best, he thought, as he went up the steps of the administration building. The sons of the southwest's elite were enrolled here, and he had only been able to enter Sam with the help of some of his highly-placed hotel friends. It was good-so how could you knock it? How could you object, after a nonage in bellboys' locker rooms, to the discipline in one of the very best schools?

Certainly, Sam never kicked about it. Sam never kicked about anything, for that matter.

Major Dillingham, the colonel's adjutant, might have been created by a drunken Cruikshank or Hogarth, using the parade-ground sergeant as model. Face bloated and beet-colored, he wobbled up from behind his desk as though floated by the balloon of his belly. He proffered a puffy hand which seemed to compress interminably within Mitch's grasp. Then, he teetered to the door and closed it, his pipestem legs, seeming on the point of snapping at any moment, so thin that their puttees appeared to be wrapped about less than nothing, a kind of embryonic invisibility.

He sat down again. He treated Mitch to what had all the aspects of a sternly penetrating stare, except for the absence of eyes, which were presumably lurking within the puffy foxholes of their lids.

'Mr. Corley,' he wheezed heavily. 'Mr. Corley. Mr. Mitchell Corley.'

Mitch waited, looking at him silently. He could smell something here, something besides the faint aroma of talcum and the osmotic emanations of faulty kidneys.

'Something has come up, Mr. Corley. Something that, uh, must be explained, but which I see no satisfactory explanation for. I was going to take it up with the Colonel, and of course I will have to. There is no alternative, I'm afraid. But hearing that you were visiting Samuel today-a very fine young man, Mr. Corley. One of our best young men-'

'I know that,' Mitch said. 'What I don't know, Major, is what you're leading up to, and when or if you're going to get to it.

The statement seemed to stun the adjutant. It was meant to. Mitch had always believed that attack was the best defense. He leaned back negligently, as the major puffily collected himself.

'It, uh, came on today's mail, Mr. Corley. Addressed to the Colonel, naturally, but since I am temporarily in charge, I-I find it difficult to understand. Impossible to understand…'

'Go on,' Mitch said coldly. But he knew what the trouble was now. 'I'm a busy man. Aren't you?'

The major underwent another moment of shock. Then, a faint gleam of malice in his enbunkered eyes, he took an envelope from a locked drawer and pitched it across the desk. Mitch opened it.

There was a picture inside, a blown-up copy of one. A rogue's gallery front-and-profile photograph of a woman; it listed her police record on the reverse side. Sixteen arrests, sixteen convictions, all for the same crime.

There were no aliases. The woman had always used her legal name.

Mrs. Mitchell Corley.

9

Fort Worth…

Cowtown. Where the West Begins.

Take it easy here, and people will do you the same kind of favor. Dress as you like. You won't be judged by your dress. That kind of crummy looking fella in Levi's and boots is worth forty million dollars. Do as you like. Do anything you're big enough to do. But be danged sure that you are big enough.

Neighboring Dallas started an evil rumor about its rival. Forth Worth was so rustic, the libel ran, that panthers prowled the streets at high noon. Fort Worth promptly dubbed itself the Panther City, and declared the lie was gospel truth.

Certainly, there were panthers in the streets. Kiddies had to have somethin' to play with, didn't they? Aside from that, the cats performed a highly necessary service. Every morning they were herded down to the east-flowing Trinity River, there to drain their bladders into the stream which provided Dallas' water supply.

That was probably why them people over in Dallas had so many nutty ideas. They'd take a few swigs of that panther piss, and pretty soon they were thinking that they were just as good as other people… Mitch and his wife Teddy arrived in Forth Worth approximately a month before their son was born. And Mitch- as Teddy