There she was, just eyeing me and smiling, and I didn’t mind lookin’ back neither.
“Amanda,” I said, “I’ve got me a headache.”
She pouted some, and I thought maybe she was gonna ignore me.
“That Arnold, he whonked me twice tonight, and now I got me a king-size headache, and there’s nothing you or me can do.”
She sighed, mighty unhappy, but it was all her fault. She had Arnold whonk me and then she had Arnold carry me up to the Pullman Palace Car, so she could only blame herself.
“Some other time then,” she said. “You won’t escape for long.”
That was a puzzler, too. “How come you’re always after me?” I asked.
“It’s just a personal whim,” she said. “You don’t count in the larger scheme of things. Carter and I have the whole Swamp Creek District almost wrapped up, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.”
“Then why am I here?” I asked.
“Cotton, you could fit your brains in a thimble, but your south half makes up for it.”
Now that was the damndest thing any woman ever said to me in all my life, and it riled me some.
“Well, if that’s how you feel about me, I’ll be gettin’ out of here.”
“Your headache’ll go away, Cotton. Just spend the night.”
“You just added to my headache,” I said.
I got out of that feather bed, and hunted around for my britches, and had a hard time finding them. She just lay there smiling sweetly. I hunted high and low, and here and there, and I couldn’t find nothing of mine. This Transactions outfit had transacted my clothing from me, along with everything else. The only thing I wore was that bandage on my arm.
Well, that done it. “I’m gittin’ out,” I said.
It was plumb dark out, and two or three in the morning, and I knew where to get some spare duds. So I just quit her lamp-lit bedroom, while she lay there pouting, and made my way along that dark corridor in the car, and finally out the rear door, plumb nakkid, but I didn’t care. If this Transactions outfit wanted my old stuff, they could have it.
It was a chilly night, and so dark I couldn’t see where I was going, which was hard on my feet because I kept stepping on sticks and stubbing my toes, but then I stepped in some nice warm horse apples, and that made my feet feel just fine. Pretty soon I was down the slope, and walkin’ the valley road, and thinkin’ what to say to any preacher’s wife comin’ along, but there wasn’t none.
Swamp Creek sure was dark. Them second-shifters had all gone to their cabins, and the saloons was shut down. But Critter and the mule was tied to the hitching post. I scared Critter half to death; he never done see me butt-ass bare before, but he got used to the horrible sight. I untied my kit from behind the cantle and dug in there until I got my spares, and slid into my union suit, and my old worn Levi Strauss jeans, and an old flannel shirt with the elbows busted out, and finally the pair of moccasins I kept in there, and then I was fixed up good. I worked around behind the Mint and let myself in, and there were my blankets still lyin’ on the pool table, so I knew I’d get a couple hours of sleep anyhow, before I got wakened up by some joker or other.
But no sooner was I sawin’ wood than there’s a banging on the rear door. I got to wonderin’ whether the Mint was doing some sort of business I didn’t know about, and what old Billy Blew was peddling out the rear door. But I yawned and lowered my feet over the billiard table and got myself to the rear door, and opened her a crack.
“Cotton, it’s me, Muggsy,” said a voice.
That would be Muggsy Pitt, the barman from the Miners Exchange, and he had someone with him.
“Yeah, come in, and I’ve got a headache, so make it quick,” I said.
Truth was, my head still throbbed. That Arnold sure knew how to dent a skull, but someday I’d dent his soon as I figured out how.
I got a lamp lit, and there was Muggsy with a girl. She was raven-haired, curvy in the right places, poutylipped, and maybe was half growed up. She also was carrying a little lady’s revolver, and not bein’ careful where the business end of it was pointing.
“This here is Celia Argo,” Muggsy said. “She’s Argo’s widow lady.”
“You mean daughter,” I said.
“Married tight to Armand,” she said. “And I don’t do incest.”
“Just a minute. Argo had him a little wifey?” I asked.
“He was man enough for two wives, but I’m woman enough for three Armands,” she said.
“That’s what comes from owning a gold mine,” Muggsy said.
“I’m going to shoot the sonofabitch killed Armand,” she said.
“How old are you?” I asked. “They got a reform school going over in Twin Bridges, I think, just in case you shoot someone dead.”
“Sixteen and one half,” she said.
“And how old was Armand Argo?” I asked, just curious.
“Old enough to keep me happy,” she retorted.
“She was up there in Argo’s rooms,” Muggsy said. “She yelled a little when she heard about Armand.”
“I imagine you was plumb sad,” I said.
“I hardly knew him, so why should I be sad?”
“You hardly knew him?”
“We was so busy messing around, we hardly met.”
“You hardly met Armand Argo?”
“Oh, we were getting around to it. He got introduced to all of me except my mind. He never got that far. And I never got to know what was in his head.”
“And you’re the proper widow?”
“Far as I know.”
“The Fat Tuesday’s your mine now. Leastwise, until the claim-jumpers get it, and they already have. It’d help if you had some paper saying you and him got hitched before a preacher.”
“It was a justice of the peace in Louisiana.”
“Then the Fat Tuesday’s yours if you can keep it.”
“Well, that’s what I’m going to do. Do you know who killed Armand?”
“I got a good idea, but I can’t prove it.”
“Well, I’ll hire you to go kill them.”
“Whoa up, Celia. I didn’t say I know for sure. I just got me an idea, is all.”
“Who? I’ll kill them myself if you’re too chicken.”
“It ain’t a matter of chicken. It’s getting it right. You can’t go makin’ mistakes in the killing business.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind a mistake or two if I get to keep my gold mine. Armand bet me against the Fat Tuesday, and won the Fat Tuesday and I got to stay with Armand.”
“He bet you?”
She smiled. “And I’m worth it, too. But that other player, Godfrey Gore, he was just an old fart and it would take ten of him to keep me happy, so it all worked out. But if Godfrey won me and kept his mine, he’d a died of a heart seizure after a few nights.”
“Well, you ain’t got the mine,” I said. “Them claim-jumpers have got two men in the office, and they’re not letting anyone near the mine.”
“And they’re the ones that tied up Armand and shot him,” she said. She squinted at me, but I was squinting at her. She sure was cute and curvy. “I’ll hire you,” she said.
“You can have me for free,” I replied, “but I’ve got a headache now.”
Muggsy, he thought that was pretty good.
“I mean, I need someone who’s good with his gun,” she said.
“Sounds like me,” I said, “but they took my guns and ever’ time I lay hands on one, they get it, too.”
“Come with me,” she said.
So I followed her and Muggsy into the night, and she took me over to Armand’s rooms down the street, and when we got up there, she smiled at me like she meant it, and disappeared for a moment. When she returned, she had a black gunbelt in hand, with a shining black Peacemaker in its holster.
That sure was a nice outfit. She sort of smiled and wrapped that leather around my waist and buckled on the belt, and I felt the weight at my hip, and I would have felt a lot more, but she backed off.
“You’re hired,” she said.
“Just a minute, Celia, I ain’t seen an offer yet.”
“You get the Fat Tuesday back, and you get half of it.”
“I gotta eat meanwhile.”
“You can munch on me.”
I liked the way she was talking, but munching on her wasn’t going to keep me in groceries.
“A hundred a month,” I said, naming wages so high I knew she’d turn me down.
But she didn’t bat an eye.
“All right. Now go take over my mine and find out who shot Armand.”
“You sure don’t waste no time. What I’m gonna do is try to get some sleep. Then we’ll see.”
“No, you’ll get that mine back. You can sleep next week,” she said.
I knowed then that I was workin’ for a she-cat.
“What happened? What did Argo tell you?”
“Armand sure got talky in bed,” she said. “He couldn’t keep a secret from me if he tried, long as we were horizontal.”
“I need to know everything you know,” I said.
“That district secretary, Johnny Brashear, a week ago he came to Armand and said his claim was faulty. The Fat Tuesday wasn’t even inside the lines. And he was gonna auction it off, according to the district rules. Armand, he told Brashear to go to hell.”
That sounded familiar.
“Then Carter Scruples, he said he’d bought the Fat Tuesday at a public auction, so Armand had to vacate in twenty-four hours. Armand laughed at him. That went on three or four days, back and forth, and then Scruples told him there’d be trouble unless he got out. He told me he was staying armed. He’s been around. He thought he could handle those thugs, and he was staying alert for trouble.” She took a breath. “And now this.”
“Getting the Fat Tuesday back won’t be easy, Celia.”
“I thought you’d be man enough.”
That sure started me percolating, I’ll tell you. “I ain’t any more man than anyone else around here,” I said.
She looked kinda pouty, but I’d made my point. Them slicks Scruples hired was tougher and meaner than me, and I respected them.
“You tellin’ me you’re gonna fail?”
“Failin’s not what I have in mind. Getting himself kilt was not what Armand Argo had in mind neither. I’m saying you’ll get the best from me I got, and not just you neither. This Transactions outfit up in the railroad car, it’s overrun pretty near everyone here, and if no one stops it now, no one ever will. They scattered the smalltimers, drove off others, and now they have just one more to go, the Big Mother. Cletus Carboy runs that. It earns ten times what all the rest around here earn. That’s the prize. Get that, and they’ll be millionaires. They’re gonna sell the whole district and get out. I got that straight from them up in the Pullman car. So, it’s me against the whole lot, and the odds are good, but I’m crazy that way,” I said.
She wasn’t smiling when she absorbed all that.
“And there’s somethin’ else, Celia. If I’m getting into this, it ain’t just for you. It’s for all them people that got kilt or driven off. It’s for that mother and boy got kilt at the Hermit Mine. It’s for my friend Aggie Cork. It’s for all of you.”
“Maybe I’ll join you,” she said. “Where are you going next?”