I was downstairs drinking halfway decent coffee, remembering the marshal’s noxious brew, when Boon appeared all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to say, “Let’s go.”
“Good morning to you also, madam,” I replied. “Mind if I finish my coffee first?”
“They got coffee at the diner, don’t they? Let’s go. We’re wasting sunlight.”
Neither of us even knew what was what yet, and still we were wasting sunlight. I glanced at the clock behind the bar, and I was chagrined to note that the bar was not open at that early hour. It was a quarter to eight. Plenty of time to finish my coffee and still make it over to the meeting with Willocks. The day was already off to a poor start.
We got to see a bit more of Darling that morning, walking as we did from one end of Main Street to the other, then down Willoughby to the Widow Perkins’s diner. Somebody, probably that same boy I’d seen the day before, had been at the street-raking again. There was a saloon that captured my interest, but it was of course still locked up from the night before. If Darling had anything approaching a sporting section, it was not in evidence. Frankly, I was getting sick and tired of the town’s righteous cleanliness. It made me itch all over to get someplace else and quick.
Along the way, I expressed my mistrust of Marshal Willocks.
“Ought to be a foregone conclusion,” Boon said to that. “You oughtn’t trust anybody, especially when you just met them.”
“So, you don’t trust him either?” I asked, wanting to be sure.
Boon slowed to a stop and turned to look at me like I had three heads, all of them stupid.
“Edward,” she said, “I don’t even trust you.”
That stung some.
Willocks was seated by the window when we walked in, poking with a fork at a mess of bacon soaked in its own grease. Nearby, a dowdy woman in a blue-checked dress and an apron twiddled her thumbs and watched him fuss with the bacon, rapt. The Widow Perkins, I presumed. At least Boon wasn’t likely to find a man eating his breakfast so damned fascinating.
Boon said, “Marshal.”
“Have a seat,” said Willocks, his mouth full. “Both of you.”
She sat first, across the table from him. I sat beside her. Willocks grinned at Boon. The Widow Perkins looked offended by it. I wanted to be anywhere else but that diner.
“I’d recommend the flapjacks,” the marshal said, “but anything is good. She’s a right fine cook, that Missus Perkins.”
“Oh, Tom,” said Missus Perkins, turning pink in the face.
Any appetite I had was mostly gone. I ordered coffee.
“What do you propose, Marshal Willocks?” Boon said, ignoring Perkins and thereby forgoing breakfast.
“Straight to business,” Willocks said. “Measure of a smart woman. I like that.”
“I grew up around people I couldn’t talk to,” she said. “Small talk makes me nervous.”
“All right, then. Let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we?”
He forked another strip of bacon into his mouth and smiled while he chewed it, setting down his fork and patting his face with a red and white napkin. The Widow Perkins deposited a cup of coffee, black and steaming, on the table in front of me. It tasted so good, only a dram of whiskey could have improved it.
The marshal pulled open one side of his jacket and withdrew a folded piece of paper from an inside pocket. This he unfolded carefully and, shoving his plate to the side, spread out on the table for us all to see.
It was a truebill for one Bartholomew Dejasu.
REWARD
$200
IN GOLD COIN
to be paid by the U.S. Government
for the apprehension of
BARTHOLOMEW DEJASU
Wanted for Murder, Robbery, Arson
and other acts against the peace
and dignity of these United States
Thomas D. Willocks,
City Marshal
Darling TEX
Underneath this great wall of ink was a line drawing, probably based on a photograph, of the wanted man in question.
I said, “What’s the D stand for, Tom?”
Boon sighed and didn’t let the marshal answer. I doubted he would have, anyway.
“Get to the meat of it, Marshal,” she said.
“You’ll understand my position that no bounty can be double-paid, which is to say you can take the coin or the information, but not both. And only when you bring Dejasu in—alive.”
“And how much did you pay for this information you claim to have?” she said.
“It ain’t negotiable, Miss Angchuan.”
“He’ll just keep that two hundred for himself,” I said.
“Probably it will go to the marshal’s office, yes,” he said. “Nothing mercenary in that.”
I scowled at him and drank my coffee.
“How am I to know the information is any good?” Boon demanded. “Or worth a tinker’s damn? Or that you got anything I’d want at all in the first place? Seems like a terrible lot to take on blind trust, which isn’t how I do business, Marshal.”
I remembered what she’d said about trust on the way there. My heart ached at the thought of it.
“Ain’t how anybody does business,” he agreed. “Leastways nobody I ever heard of. No, ma’am, it’s an unusual situation all around.”
“One you’re in control of,” Boon added.
As usual, Willocks met that with a grin. “Seems that way, don’t it?”
My coffee finished, I rose from the table and reached for my hat.
“I guess I’ve heard just about enough,” I said. “You holdin’ all the cards and us with our trousers down? No, sir. I don’t think we’ll be doing business after all.”
He raised both eyebrows at me, then turned his surprised expression on Boon. I could see what he was doing, which was silently asking her if she agreed. Because she was the boss of the operation. Did I feel unmanned by that? Probably some.
Boon drew in a long breath through her nose and let it out slowly through her mouth.
“Here’s my offer,” she said after a moment. “I’ll bring you your man, and alive if in any way possible, and you’ll give me that information you say you got from Goliad. But if you don’t, or if I don’t judge it any good or useful to my purposes, you will pay me the two hundred in gold coin just the way it’s printed on that fancy bill of yours.”
“It could be the best thing possible to your purposes,” he said, “and you could still demand the reward.”
“Could be,” Boon said.
“You are a hard woman, Miss Angchuan.”
“Could be,” she said again.
The marshal squashed his mouth up to one side, meeting her gaze and giving it a think through.
“A damned hard woman,” he said.
He didn’t know the half of it.
We rode out half past nine, due northwest, with Marshal Willocks’ wanted poster and whatever provisions we could gather in a hurry from the sundries store on Main Street. To my dismay, the sundries store sold no spirits. For that alone, I was glad to get shut of Darling, Texas.