8
To Chisum’s relief, Tweedy, Tina, and the stable boy finally left in the two-seat phaeton with the surrey top up to block the sun. They headed south in a cloud of dust. With the big lunch basket and wine bottles safely packed in the rig, they would picnic somewhere downstream on the Pecos. Good enough. The banker would return with his noodle limp after an afternoon with Tina. Chisum smiled at the notion, then turned his thoughts to Austin Moore, probably still asleep upstairs. A shame he didn’t have the same weakness for young females—Chisum could sure find him one. The lawyer had to have some kind of flaw, but until this time, Chisum had not been able to learn it.
Chisum eased in the front door, closing the screen as quietly as possible.
“He’s gone on his way?” Juanita asked in a husky, dry voice. She stood at the lace-curtained windows, obviously having watched him send the man off.
“Yes.”
She shook her head and then made a thin smile. “He won’t be hard to get to agree to your proposal.” Then she turned to gaze out the window again.
“You have any ideas on Moore?” he asked, studying her long derriere under the divided, black riding skirt.
“No, but I’ll keep my eyes and ears open.”
“Yes, do that.”
“Is Dex back?” she asked.
For an instant he almost frowned. Was his foreman his competition for her? Then he settled down and dismissed his concern.
“He came by. He’s moving cattle toward Francisco Springs next.”
“Is that open again?”
“Supposed to be. Remind me I need to send to Texas for some more horses. Bailey brought it to my attention.”
“Yes, you gave those men horses yesterday.”
“That’s right, I did. How did you remember that?” The less she knew about the Coyote and his business with the man, the better he liked it.
She turned and smiled at him. “I am your best aide, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are.”
“Next time, you need to charge them for fresh horses and not be so generous.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, and gave her a passing swat on the butt.
“Here, here,” she said after him.
He headed for the outhouse. His concern over whether he could even piss was so ingrained in his concerns that he didn’t even bother to answer her. Maybe it was time to shove the tube up it. He cringed at the thought, recalling the pain and discomfort in the doctor’s office. If he couldn’t piss he would die, the doc had told him that. Filled with misgivings about his ability to let water, he hurriedly crossed the yard, scattering dusting hens, and entered the foul-smelling privy.
A drone of flies made the matter worse as he undid his pants and stood waiting for results with his prick in hand over the oval holes cut for seats. Seconds passed like minutes as he strained—nothing happened. Then from somewhere high up inside him a hot trickle began, and soon eased out the head and dribbled off into the deep darkness below. Like a small fire that grew, it began to flow better, to his relief. He waited until the last drop, and then in relief he drew in a deep breath of the stinking heavy air. He had pissed, maybe not all he wanted to, but the canal was still open.
Feeling relieved, he buttoned up his pants and went back to the house. Moore, with a cup of coffee, was chatting with Juanita.
“Busy running the ranch?” the lawyer asked.
“Yes, we’re having a dust-devil roundup this afternoon,” Chisum said, entering the room.
“How much do they sell for?”
“Not enough.”
“You know someday, John, they will be able to conjure up rain like a witch.”
“Going to be too late for New Mexico if it don’t come before then.”
“I agree. How is the ditch project coming?”
“Good, the dam is three-fourths complete. It will—”
“How much more is it going to require?”
“Quarter of a million.” There, he had said it. Didn’t sound so high if you said it fast.
“Whew.” Moore dropped his head and shook it as if he couldn’t fathom that much.
“Takes lots of money in a deal this big.”
“We need some Eastern money,” Moore said as if he had only thought of it in that instant. “Yes, some risk capital from the nation’s rich men.”
“We need help,” Chisum agreed, anxious to follow along with the man for a place to use Moore’s desires to his advantage.
Then the lawyer held out his cup for Juanita to refill it with coffee. He smiled at her and nodded in appreciation.
“We’d have to share the profits too, though, wouldn’t we?” Moore said.
“Yes, we would, and they’d want a big share of the profits.”
“Hell with those—excuse me, Juanita. Tweedy and I discussed this coming out here. This is for the three of us and we will make it work. By damn, we deserve to be rich off this project, don’t we?”
“Exactly,” Chisum said. So far so good. Moore was talking himself into upping the ante on the development project, and Chisum had been able to piss. Two good things had happened to him in one morning.
“Your niece?” Moore asked in a hushed voice as she disappeared into the kitchen. “She’s not engaged?”
“No,” Chisum said, wondering what the man’s real question was about.
“Lovely girl. Oh, I’m just surprised she doesn’t have suitors.”
“Juanita is too well educated to ever accept a mere cowboy or field hand’s offer.”
“Oh, I can see that. Lovely girl. You are very lucky to have her. She makes a very good hostess for you.”
“Yes, I am blessed,” Chisum agreed. “Are you hungry? I am sure Hattie can fix you breakfast.”
“I am on my way.”
“Have any plans for today?” Chisum asked him.
“No. Too hot. I am going to lie in a hammock in the shade on the porch and read a book.” Moore shook his head as if the notion of doing anything else would be too much.
“Yes, I can see where getting away from your practice is very rewarding.”
“Very,” Moore said, and pushed the kitchen door in.
Chisum could hear Hattie’s laughter and her teasing the lawyer behind the door.
Juanita reappeared, and looked guardedly back toward the kitchen. “He agreed?”
“Like he knew it would take that much. Scary, isn’t it?”
She looked at the ceiling for help. “Who knows?”
Chisum agreed, feeling the relief flow through his veins. Who knew about those two? One was a whore hound, the other wanted to nap and read all day. This evening when the lights were out and everyone was in bed, he intended to cross the hall and join her in bed again, and they could celebrate.
The south wind rose, and soon sent waist-high waves of reddish dust to sweep across the yard. Hattie shut the windows on the west and south, and came into the office where Chisum worked on the ranch books.
“That lawyer man, he’s sleeping good and out of the sand on the front porch,” she said to him.
“Good. Thanks for seeing about him, Hattie.”
“Them women upstairs. They always sleep so much?”
“Guess they ain’t got a damn thing else to do.”
“Sure ain’t working none, are they?”
“I guess not.”
“I heard you do that for beauty rest. My, my, they ain’t got no benefits yet.” Hattie laughed at her own words, then left him to his figures.
The woman was right. Neither women had received any benefit from beauty rest. The curtains twisted and then fell back. More hot winds to wither up this land. Was there no end to this drought?
The large clock on the mantel struck eleven, and the two matrons finally came downstairs. A scent of perfume brought Chisum from his books and into the living room. He smiled at the two, and Hattie soon brought them coffee.
“Where is Juanita?” Barbara asked.
“Working with some yearling colts,” he said matter-of-factly.
“You let her break horses?” Nelda looked white-faced, as if horrified.
“My dear ladies, you don’t tell Juanita James what she can and can’t do.”
“But it is not very ladylike—”
“I fear my niece is not into social things. That’s why she’s out here and not in Chicago.”
“Does she bust them?”
“Juanita can outride most men. I think she is one of those people who is gifted when it comes to horses and training them.”
“But she is only a girl.”
Chisum turned to Barbara and nodded. “Twenty-four is old enough.”
“Does she ride them astride?” Nelda asked, holding her hand over her mouth as if to hold the words in.
“Yes.”
The woman’s eyes rolled to the ceiling, and she looked faint. “Why, she might break her maidenhead,” she whispered in disbelief. “Then what shall she do?”
“I don’t think it would be a concern of hers,” Chisum said softly. The woman’s mention of her virginity made him recall the first time they had sought each other. Who had seduced whom that day? Him trembling like a boy doing it for his first time? Her caught up in passion’s fire and uncertain what to do to extinguish it?
Nelda’s face looked white as a ghost under her translucent skin, and she took something from her dress pocket and sniffed what he suspected were smelling salts for her composure.
“You ladies like some food?” Hattie called out from the doorway.
“Yes,” Barbara said, as if relieved to have an excuse to escape the subject. Her dress in hand, she hurried to join the black woman.
“Mind you, she will regret her condition,” Nelda warned him with a long, threatening finger close to his face. “That girl will rue the day she’s done such a foolish thing.”
Then, in a rustle of petticoats, she scooted her slippers over the floor in short duck steps toward the kitchen after the other two. Chisum watched her strutting away, and almost laughed aloud. No doubt Nelda had protected her virtue until the honeymoon night. Perhaps she still did, from the way her horny husband took his pleasure out on Latin women.
The women safely in Hattie’s tow, he went back to the office. For a long moment he stood at the window and watched Juanita in the far-off corral. He could see her flat-crown black hat and the dancing flick of the whip as she drove the green horse around the pen. In the evening when she finished, her face would be powdered with dust, but even the reddish sand could not obscure her beauty. Then later, fresh from a bath, she would be restored to her vibrant self again, bubbling about the new horses and her day.
Chisum went back to his bookkeeping. He dipped the pen quill in the inkwell and pursed his thin lips together before he wrote down the next expense in the ledger. He needed a gold strike, some kind of bonanza on the ground. Maybe the project would be that for him. Maybe he would never live to see it too. Men died of prostrate problems.