We rode south, past the few homesteaders and hopeful ranchers scattered about the land outside of town. Nobody said much for the first three or four hours. Willocks sighed a lot. I rolled cigarettes and smoked to pass the time. In the late afternoon, we stopped and picketed the horses and nooned with some victuals. It wasn’t much, because we didn’t have much. Just some pemmican and a little briny water from Boon’s canteen. Willocks acted as though he didn’t want any of it at first, but his belly overruled him. He chewed like he was mad about it.
“That all the riding we going to do?” I asked.
Boon thought it over.
“Depends,” she said after a while.
She was looking out over the prairie, back in the direction of Darling. Searching for sign of us being followed, I reckoned. We both knew it wouldn’t take too long.
While she watched the horizon, I dozed a little. It was still light when I snapped awake again, by which time Boon was stepping back up into her saddle.
“We’ll go a little farther,” she said.
I squinted at the horizon but I didn’t see anything. I figured she had, and her eyes were a damn sight better than mine.
“Abduction is one thing,” Willocks said. “Murder is another. Best you quit while you’re ahead.”
He wasn’t looking at either of us, so I supposed he was speaking to both of us. He stood beside his gelding and made no move to mount it.
“We ain’t square yet,” Boon said. “Get on your horse.”
“I done told you already,” the marshal snarled, “I don’t know a damn thing worth telling you.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
The sun turned orange and the horizon purple before we halted again, which was some two hours after our stop for victuals. Darling was some piece behind us and nothing was in sight ahead of us but grass and cedar elms bunched in sedges. Boon surveyed the environment and made clicking sounds in her throat. Then she put her heel to Pim’s ribs and we rode some more.
The land rose to a shaggy hummock and we went up and over it. On the other side, at the bottom of the rise, stood a small cabin with grease paper windows and a mud roof that sprouted grass and weeds and wildflowers. Texas was something else for wildflowers. A thin line of black smoke rose up from the crooked chimney on the cabin’s northside. Boon relaxed in the saddle and let the palomino just sort of meander down to the cabin all on its own like it knew where it was heading, which I gathered it did. Me and Willocks followed, me watching carefully and him grumbling under his breath.
We hitched up when we got there, tied off to a fence that penned in nothing at all. Boon dismounted and stretched out her back.
Willocks said, “The hell is this.”
She didn’t answer. I gave the marshal a shove to encourage him to dismount, too. Once he did, I got down after him.
Boon went slowly around the cabin, listening and looking, and made her way to the door.
“Franklin Merrick,” she called out. “Get your ass out here. It’s Boon Angchuan and I got two men with me.”
“Who the God damned hell is Franklin Merrick?” Willocks asked me.
I shrugged. It was all I could do on account of I had no idea who in the God damned hell Franklin Merrick was.
“Fuck off,” came a gravely voice from inside the cabin.
Willocks chuckled at that. I just watched and waited.
“You going deaf, Merrick?” Boon shouted. “I said it’s Boon here.”
“I heard you fine,” Merrick said. “You hear me? I say fuck off.”
“I hear you,” she said.
“Then what in hell is you waiting for?” Merrick said.
“For you to get over something happened too long ago to care about,” said Boon. “I happen to be in your neck of the woods and I happen to need your help. We’re old friends, Franklin, whatever went on before.”
I’d ridden with Boon some years by then and she hadn’t ever mentioned Franklin Merrick to me, so I was completely in the dark. That something had gone on between the two of them was plain enough, as was the fact that whatever it was, it was some kind of bad business. For a long while, nobody said anything at all. Boon leaned against the side of the cabin and crossed her arms. I rolled up a smoke and dragged on it, kicking at the dirt at my feet. Willocks started to look a little wily, but I made sure he knew I was watching him. Eventually, the sun vanished behind the horizon and the sky went dark. The only light by which to see was the faint, soft glow behind Merrick’s grease paper windows. I could hear him rustling around in there, going about his business as though we’d gone and lit out.
At least an hour passed like that before Merrick shouted through the door again.
“Them two men with you,” he said. “Who are they?”
“Edward Splettstoesser, friend of mine from Arkansas.”
“And the other?”
“A marshal,” she said. “Name of Tom Willocks.”
“A Prussian and a lawman,” Merrick said. “You figure on taking me in?”
“Nope,” Boon said.
“What you figure on, then?”
“Marshal ain’t with us willingly. Might know something I’d like to know, too, only he won’t talk.”
“You still looking for your kin?”
“I am.”
“That what he knows about?”
“Could be.”
Merrick got to chuckling about that. Another few minutes passed in silence before the door opened and a tall colored man filled the opening. He looked at Boon, then to me and Willocks, then back to Boon again.
“Boonsri Angchuan,” he said with a grin.
“How do, Franklin,” she said.
He wrapped his big arms around her and she fell into his embrace.
Willocks said, “An Oriental and a nigger—what’s next, a red Indian?”
By way of reply, I put my elbow in his stomach. Willocks bent over with a long, windy moan.
“You bastard,” he spat.
“Keep talking,” I warned him, “and I will keep hurting you.”
He didn’t keep talking.
Franklin Merrick paid it no mind, and neither did Boon. They were in their own little world, a world with a lot of history. I wondered about it, but I knew I’d never ask. She’d either volunteer the story or she wouldn’t. That was how Boon was.
“Which one the lawman?” Franklin asked.
“The pretty one,” she told him.
“Shit,” I said. “I ain’t so bad.”
“Shut up, Edward,” she said.
“You want me to help you get him talking,” Franklin said.
“I was in your neck of the woods,” she said.
“Been a long time, Boon.”
“Lot of years,” she agreed.
“Never settled things.”
“Never did.”
Merrick leaned his great bulk against the door jamb and worked his jaw like he was gnawing on something. I guessed he was chewing on the prospect of helping Boon with something pretty ugly. He chewed on it for some time.
When he was done chewing on it, he said, “Just you and the marshal. The Prussian waits outside.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey nothing,” Merrick barked at me. “This here is my place and I don’t let nobody I don’t know into my place.”
“You don’t know him,” I said, jerking a thumb at Willocks.
“You want what he’s gonna get, you come right in,” Merrick said.
I decided I didn’t want that.
“All right,” I said. “You got anything close to liquor?”
He frowned. Boon touched his elbow and nodded at him. Merrick went back into the cabin and came back out with a bottle. It was about half-full of something brown. He tossed it to me and I caught it.
“Obliged,” I said, and I yanked the cork.
Willocks moaned some more.
“What’re they going to do?” he said.
I shrugged.
“You can’t stand by this,” he said. “You can’t. Matter of fact, I’ll see to it you walk away free if you let me go.”
“You try and go,” I said, “and I’ll cut you down.”
“Back-shooter,” he seethed.
I shrugged again.
Boon said, “No sense wasting time, then.”
She moved behind Willocks and drove him forward while Merrick seized him by the arm and pulled him into the cabin. Boon came in last and shut the door. I heard it latch. One of the horses nickered. I moved away apiece and sat down in the short grass and pulled long at the neck of the bottle. It was dreadful stuff. But it did the trick.
Inside the cabin, Marshal Tom Willocks screamed. It didn’t take long. I drank some more. It got better the more of it I drank. In my head I could see Boon sawing off the marshal’s head, and no matter how much I tried not to think about that, it was all I could think about. Of course, a headless man wasn’t going to tell her anything. But Boon was capable of just about anything. And the fact of the matter was that I wasn’t sure how I ought to feel about that anymore.
How could a man ride with someone for as long as I’d ridden with Boon and not hardly ever know what to expect from her? A good part of it was that I was accustomed to sorting things out about people based on what I already knew about people in general, and there wasn’t anybody else in the whole country like her. Maybe the whole world, though I’d never been to any other countries except maybe Mexico so I couldn’t speak to that. I had my suspicions, though. I did not honestly believe there lived the likes of her in any corner of the planet. That was a bit of what drew me to her. It was a bit of why she scared me more that I wanted to admit, too.
It wasn’t like I worried she’d ever do anything to harm me. I didn’t worry about that at all. It was the unknown—the unknown and the unknowable. Men fear what they can’t sort out for themselves. Always had, always would. That was how come so many men acted so big when inside they felt so small. In my experience, every man felt small. The bigger he acted, the smaller he really was. And I was small as a bug. Small and afraid. There was so much I couldn’t figure, and a lot of the time Boon was at the top of that particular list. Sometimes I acted big, too. God knew it didn’t fool her.
Nothing ever fooled her.
The screaming didn’t last long, though at the time it sure felt like it did. Probably it only went on for about five minutes, and after that things were relatively quiet. Quiet enough that I could hear the horses browsing the short grass from where I sat. I could also hear soft voices in the cabin. I made no mistake about it; Boon rarely raised her voice. She could put more fear of God into a man with a whisper than any man could with a shout. I reckoned there was more than enough fear to go around inside that cabin.