It was the only logical explanation. No stage had passed through in the last week. A troop of soldiers had come through, going west, but soldiers wouldn't have taken Elmira. The boat had been filled with whiskey traders, headed up for Bents' Fort. Roscoe had seen a couple of the boatmen staggering on the street, and when the boat had left with no fights reported, he had felt relieved. Whiskey traders were rough men-certainly not the sort married women ought to be traveling with.
'You better go see what you can find out, Roscoe,' Peach said. 'If she's run off, July's gonna want to know about it.'
That was certainly true. July doted on Elmira.
It took no more than a walk to the river to confirm what Peach had suspected. Old Sabin, the ferryman, had seen a woman get on the whiskey boat the morning it left.
'My God, why didn't you tell me?' Roscoe asked.
Old Sabin just shrugged. It was none of his business who got on boats other than his own.
'I figert it was a whore,' he said.
Roscoe walked slowly back to the jail, feeling extremely confused. He wanted badly for it all to be a mistake. On the way up the street he looked in every store, hoping he would find Elmira in one of them spending money like a normal woman. But she wasn't there. At the saloon he asked Renfro, the barkeep, if he knew of a whore who had left town lately, but there were only two whores in town, and Renfro said they were both upstairs asleep.
It was just the worst luck. He had worried considerably about the various bad things that might happen while July was gone, but the loss of Elmira had not been among his worries. Men's wives didn't usually leave on a whiskey barge. He had heard of cases in which they didn't like wedded life and went back to their families, but Elmira hadn't even had a family, and there was no reason for her not to like wedded life, since July had riot worked her hard at all.
Once it was plain that she was gone, Roscoe felt in the worst quandary of his life. July was gone too, off in the general direction of San Antonio. It might be a month before he got back, at which point someone would have to tell him the bad news. Roscoe didn't want to be the someone, but then he was the person whose job it was to sit around the jail, so he would probably have to do it.
Even worse, he would have to sit there for a month or two worrying about July's reaction when he finally got back. Or it could be three months or six months-July had been known to be slow. Roscoe knew he couldn't take six months of anxiety. Of course it just proved that July had been foolish to marry, but that didn't make the situation any easier to live with.
In less than half an hour it seemed that every single person in Fort Smith found out that July Johnson's wife had run off on a whiskey barge. It seemed the Johnson family provided almost all the excitement in the town, the last excitement having been Benny's death. Such a stream of people came up to question Roscoe about the disappearance that he was forced to give up all thought of whittling, just at a time when having a stick to whittle on might have settled his nerves.
People who had seldom laid eyes on Elmira suddenly showed up at the jail and began to question him about her habits, as if he was an authority on them-though all he had ever seen the woman do was cook a catfish or two.
One of the worst was old lady Harkness, who had once taught school somewhere or other in Mississippi and had treated grownups like schoolchildren ever since. She helped out a little in her son's general store, where evidently there wasn't work enough to keep her busy. She marched across the street as if she had been appointed by God to investigate the whole thing. Roscoe had already discussed it with the blacksmith and the postmaster and a couple of cotton farmers, and was hoping for a little time off in which to think it through. Old lady Harkness didn't let that stop her.
'Roscoe, if you was my deputy, I'd arrest you,' she said. 'What do you mean lettin' somebody run off with July's wife?'
'Nobody run off with her,' Roscoe said. 'She just run off with herself, I guess.'
'What do you know about it?' Old lady Harkness said. 'I don't guess she'd just have got on a boatful of men if she wasn't partial to one of them. When are you going after her?'
'I ain't,' Roscoe said, startled. It had never occurred to him to go after Elmira.
'Well, you will unless you're good for nothing, I guess,' the old lady said. 'This ain't much of a town if things like that can happen and the deputy just sit there.'
'It never was much of a town,' Roscoe reminded her, but the point, which was obvious, merely seemed to anger her.
'If you ain't up to getting the woman, then you better go get July,' she said. 'He might want his wife back before she gets up there somewhere and gets scalped.'
She then marched off, much to Roscoe's relief. He went in and took a drink or two from a bottle of whiskey he kept under his couch and usually only used as a remedy for toothache. He was careful not to drink too much, since the last thing he needed was for the people in Fort Smith to get the notion he was a drunk. But then, the next thing he knew, despite his care, the whiskey bottle was empty, and he seemed to have drunk it, although it did not feel to him like he was drunk. In the still heat he got drowsy and went to sleep on the couch, only to awake in a sweat to find Peach and Charlie Barnes staring down at him.
It was very upsetting, for it seemed to him the day had started out with Peach and Charlie staring down at him. In his confusion it occurred to him that he might have dreamed the whole business about Elmira running off. Only there were Peach and Charlie again; the dream might be starting over. He wanted to wake up before it got to the part about the whiskey barge, but it turned out he was awake, after all.
'Is she still gone?' he asked, hoping by some miracle that Elmira had showed up while he was sleeping.
'Of course she's still gone,' Peach said. 'And you're drunk on the job. Get up from there and go get July.'
'But July went to Texas,' Roscoe said. 'The only place I've ever been to is Little Rock, and it's in the other direction.'
'Roscoe, if you can't find Texas you're a disgrace to your profession,' Peach said.
Peach had a habit of misunderstanding people, even when the point was most obvious.
'I can find Texas,' he said. 'The point is, kin I find July?'
'He's riding with a boy, and he's going to San Antonio,' Peach said. 'I guess if you ask around, someone will have seen them.'
'Yeah, but what if I miss 'em?' Roscoe asked.
'Then I guess you'll end up in California,' she said.
Roscoe found that he had a headache, and listening to Peach made it worse.
'His wife's gone,' Charlie Barnes said.
'Dern it, Charlie, shut up!' Peach said. 'He knows that. 'I don't think he's forgot
Roscoe had not forgotten it. Overnight it had become the dominant fact of his life. Elmira was gone and he was expected to do something about it. Moreover, his choices were limited. Either he went upriver and tried to find Elmira or he had to go to Texas and look for July. He himself was far from sure that either action was wise.
Trying to recover his wits, with a headache and Peach and Charlie Barnes staring at him for the second time that day, was not easy. Mainly Roscoe felt aggrieved that July had put him in such a position. July had been doing well enough without a wife, it seemed to Roscoe; but if he
'I ain't much of a traveler,' Roscoe said, for actually his one trip, to Little Rock, had been one of the nightmares of his life, since he had ridden the whole way in a cold rain and had run a fever for a month as a result.
Nonetheless, the next morning he found himself saddling up the big white gelding he had ridden for the last ten years, a horse named Memphis, the town of his origin. Several of the townspeople were there at the jail, watching him pack his bedroll and tie on his rifle scabbard, and none of them seemed worried that he was about to ride off and leave them unprotected. Although Roscoe said little, he felt very pettish toward the citizens of Fort Smith, and toward Peach Johnson and Charlie Barnes in particular. If Peach had just minded her own business, nobody would even have discovered that Elmira was missing until July returned, and then July would have been able to take care of the problem, which rightly was his problem anyway.
