A couple days’ ride west from Merrick’s cabin, Boon led us into some growing town on the Texas-New Mexico line that seemed to exist just for the sodbusters kicking shit on the periphery. There had been other towns, but this was the only one that had the two things she was looking for: a livery stable and a railroad station. She sold our horses to the trader at the livery without anything anybody would call negotiation, which is to say she got buffaloed. She knew it and didn’t appear to much care, apart from her apparent grief over parting with Pim. Aside from me, I guessed Pim was just about her only other friend and I could see plain as day how it pained her. All we had left was our guns, my knife, and whatever we could carry in our saddle bags and pockets. With what she got for the horseflesh and saddles, she purchased two tickets. When the clerk asked where to, she told him, “Santa Fe for now.”
“I thought we was going farther than that,” I said.
“I don’t like to think too far ahead,” she said. “Muddies up the waters and makes it hard to concentrate on what’s right in front of you.”
“You sure think a fair piece behind you,” I said to that. We had been walking back into town on the main road, but she stopped of a sudden and gave me a cool look. She was wearing the same clothes she’d taken from the Red Foot Saloon and I was in the only duds I had to my name at that time. Neither of us had touched any soap for a while and we looked almost as bad as we smelled. People noticed, and I noticed them noticing, but Boon only seemed to notice me.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Come out with it.”
“Never you mind it.”
“I mind it,” she said.
A buckboard hitched to two mares came trundling up the street behind us. I put my hand on Boon’s arm to guide her out of the way so that we could continue our argument without getting flattened. She jerked her arm away from me and punched me with her other hand, right in the middle of my chest. She wasn’t the stoutest or strongest woman I’d ever met in my life—I’d seen a few rarities in carnival settings I wouldn’t have wanted to meet on a lonely street at night—but a good punch hurts no matter who throws it. Added to that was where I got hit, which knocked the wind right out of my lungs and sent me staggering back with my arms going ’round in circles.
The buckboard driver shouted a string of blue curses at me and I could hear a woman having a good laugh at my expense. After I managed to scamper back, away from the buckboard, I tripped over my own feet and dropped like a sack of potatoes right into the street. My .44-40, still in the scabbard I’d borrowed from Boon, flew from my hands and landed somewhere behind me. I watched as the buckboard continued on by and when it passed, I watched Boon storming away in the other direction, back toward the railroad station.
A drover whose odor was in fierce competition with my own moseyed over to where I sat in the mud, my legs splayed out in front of me, and looked down at me.
“Christ,” he drawled. “You ain’t got to get knocked down by no woman looks like a man in this town. There’s plenty of ’em in corsets and face paint right up the street at Cricket’s, don’t cost you but a dollar.”
I did not share the drover’s view that Boon looked like a man, even if she did dress like one. I guessed he hadn’t gotten that good a look at anything apart from her hat and pants, but my blood was up from the argument so I took a hold of one of the old boy’s ankles and yanked it hard. The drover dropped right down into the mud beside me. I still couldn’t see who the woman was that had laughed at me, but I could hear her laughing again then. The drover, on the other hand, wasn’t laughing at all.
“You sumbitch,” he said.
I felt sort of bad for him on account of he didn’t know what he was talking about, but then he launched himself at me like a mountain lion and I didn’t feel bad anymore. Mostly I just felt muddy and pained where his fists rained down on my face and shoulders and neck.
The drover knocked one of my front teeth out before I gathered my wits enough to pull the knife from my boot and stick him in the thigh. I was aiming for his ribs but everything was such a tangle of limbs in the mud that I just sank the blade into whatever flesh I could find. The drover screeched like a crow and rolled away from me, clutching at the hilt.
“You kilt me,” he cried. “God damn you, you kilt me.”
“Crippled you, maybe,” I said. “Be wanting that blade back.”
He planted one hand on his leg and wrapped the other one around the hilt, and when he pulled it out there was a dark gout of blood that jetted up and splashed down into the mire between us. For a second I thought he was actually going to hand the knife over. Instead, he turned it ’round and came at me with it.
“Hold it, Les,” said someone behind and kind of above us.
The drover froze and glanced up. I followed his lead. Standing there was a fellow in a long, brown duster and a flat-brimmed hat, his hand resting on the bone handle of the iron in his rig. Pinned to his chest was a sheriff’s star.
“Sumbitch stabbed me, Earl,” the drover whined.
“Let’s have that toothpick,” Earl said.
The drover, Les, gave him my knife.
“That’s my personal property,” I said.
“You can have it back when we’ve sorted this all out,” the sheriff said. “I want both of you to come back to the jail with me until I’ve had a chance to speak to a few witnesses.”
“There a reason you can’t do that right now?” I asked.
“I was about to have lunch,” he said.
“I’m the one got stuck with that knife,” Les said.
“Don’t push me, Les.”
“God damn it, Earl.”
“Don’t push me.”
“God damn it.”
Once I was back on my feet, I had to help Les up. The sheriff wasn’t about to compromise himself by occupying his hands with it. With Earl behind us, Les and I struggled through the mud up to the boardwalk, where he mostly bounced on his one good leg with one heavy arm draped around my shoulders.
“I’m bleedin’ like hell,” Les said.
“I’ll get the doc,” Earl said. “Bring him to your cell.”
“Cell?” Les said. “Hell, Earl. You gonna lock me up?”
“I am,” Earl said.
Les grunted. He was getting blood all over my boots, or at least all over the mud that was caking my boots. I strained to look back in the direction of the train station to see if maybe Boon had seen any of that and, if she had, would she do anything about it. I couldn’t really manage it and didn’t really think she’d stuck around that long. Seemed to me she’d be on the next train to Santa Fe before old Earl ever let me out of his jailhouse.
I didn’t even know the name of the town I was in.