Travelin' Money Read online

  Joe scraped his boots on the iron scraper fastened to the planks of the porch and walked hesitantly into the house.

  It was unexpectedly, comfortably, cool inside the small house although a fire was burning in the iron stove of the kitchen. A sturdy, amiable-looking woman with graying hair and only a comfortable padding of weight on her tall frame stood in one corner, arms folded over her aproned figure.

  ‘Wipe your boots, Mose?’ she asked Joe’s escort.

  ‘Yes’m,’ Mose answered like a dutiful boy. ‘This here belly-crawler wishes for something to eat. He says he has money to pay for it.’ Seen in the light, Mose’s appearance was even more imposing. His face looked as if it had been pushed in and somehow managed to unfold itself again. Bashed, flat nose and sagging, rugged jaw. When he smiled, Joe saw half a dozen yellow stumps of what had once been teeth.

  Across the room at a rough plank table sat another man. He was lanky, with a sparse black beard he had not given to a razor in a while. His eyes were morose, his face sullen, jaw set with some sort of dark expectation. He, too, had a long gun – a Winchester rifle – placed on the table before him.

  Joe was beginning to feel more ill at ease as the younger man’s hand began working its way along the weapon’s stock as if he wanted to reach the action.

  The woman, Addie, waved a cautioning hand at the younger man and warned him: ‘You just sit still, Solomon! There’s time enough for killing this here belly-crawler after he’s eaten.’

  THREE

  Moses and Solomon had trooped away into the interior of the house, muttering something in undertones about needing a drink. Addie chuckled cheerfully as she approached Joe, her arms still folded across her breast.

  ‘Don’t tell me that you took me seriously about killing you, stranger! That’s just my way of joking. Moses and Solomon seem always ready to go off half-cocked when they see a man they haven’t met before. It comes from living out here on the fringe of the world for so long. I have to remind them to watch their manners.’

  ‘I see,’ Joe answered, sagging on to a bench behind the kitchen table. No, he did not see the humor in it. His eyes constantly flitted to the doorway where Moses and Solomon had gone to get liquored-up – and then?

  ‘Mose says you might have a nickel or two to pay for some food,’ Addie said in a businesslike way.

  ‘Whatever you can offer,’ Joe said.

  ‘It’s more a matter of what you can offer,’ Addie said.

  Joe dug into his sun-faded jeans and brought out what was nearly a dollar in silver – a quarter-dollar, a few dimes, a couple of nickels. ‘Will that do for a meal?’ Joe asked.

  ‘A few slices of bread,’ Addie replied, wasting no time in swiping the change from the table, ‘and some huevos con huevos.’

  ‘What’s that? I don’t get you,’ Joe told her.

  ‘This close to the Mexican border and you don’t even speak any kitchen Spanish?’ Addie said, going to a cupboard to reach for a pot and a few dishes.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘I’ll bet you know a few words of love,’ Addie said, lowering her heavy eyelids coyly.

  ‘Not even those.’

  ‘Ah, I wonder, then, what sort of man you are!’ Addie exclaimed.

  ‘That’s long been a puzzle to a lot of people,’ Joe said with a narrow smile. Addie laughed.

  ‘Well, then, stranger. When I spoke, I meant that this is an egg ranch, if you haven’t noticed by the smell – we make a few dollars selling them in town. What I offered you is eggs and eggs – it’s about all we have.’

  ‘How about fried chicken?’ Joe suggested hopefully.

  ‘Only for Sunday dinner,’ Addie responded. ‘And then you’d have to fight Mose and Sol to come up with so much as a wing or the part that goes over the fence last.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d care to try that.’

  ‘No,’ Addie said, ‘you wouldn’t. But don’t let it be said that Adelaide Comfort can’t fry an egg. Take off your hat and unbelt your gun and I’ll fix you up, stranger.’

  ‘Joe,’ he told her. ‘My name is Joe Sample.’ He placed his worn hat aside. ‘If it’s not impertinent, I believe I’ll keep my Colt where it’s riding.’

  Addie glanced toward the door where the men had gone and told Joe, ‘They don’t mean nothing, not really, but they fool a lot of people into thinking they do.’

  And I’m one of them, Joe thought, but did not say. He had already made up his mind he would eat what he was served and flee at the first opportunity. There was a town nearby – Pierce Point – and with the forty dollars in his boot he could probably find some sort of nag to carry him along on this odyssey, which was beginning to feel less like a debt of honor than a misguided quest.

  After all, what did he owe Pierce Malloy or his hanged brother, Amos? He had a brief blurry vision of a young widow crying for her husband, waiting for a few dollars to keep her from destitution, but Joe rubbed that away with the heels of his hands as Adelaide Comfort served his buttered toast and eggs.

  What did he owe Pierce Malloy? Nothing – but he had given his word, and when a man has given that, he has pledged his bond more strongly than any court or law can enforce, if he were to remain a man.

  Well, he had not yet even found the treasure he was supposed to deliver to Tess Malloy and probably never would.

  When he had finished eating; Joe asked ‘Any chance of getting shelter for the night?’

  ‘Got another twenty-five cents?’ the practical Adelaide asked.

  ‘I think I can manage that.’

  ‘Well, then,’ she said, glancing toward the door beyond which the men had begun making some sort of drunken racket, ‘we can put you up. Out in the tool shack where Dub stays.’

  ‘Dub?’

  ‘You’ll meet him. He’s harmless, if a little loose in the head. Let me see that silver,’ she demanded and pocketed it in her apron, apparently to keep it out of the sight of Moses and Solomon, knowing what they would spend it on.

  Joe cared less about Dub being a little loose in the head than he did about spending a night anywhere near Moses and Solomon. These both seemed unstable and quick to go to guns. The obvious poverty of the chicken farm made Joe sure that these two would have no problem rousting him for the forty gold dollars he had remaining.

  Adelaide Comfort did not escort Joe out into the dark of night; but only opened the back door and pointed at a ramshackle building near the chicken barn. Joe stepped out into the night and the door was closed sharply behind him. He paused, thinking he would be better off walking to the town of Pierce Point, not far distant by the lights he saw, but he was very tired, his feet blistered and swollen, and what sort of brigands and bullies would he wander into in Pierce Point? Spending a night with Dub could not be that bad – Joe still had his Colt if the man was more than a little loose in the head.

  Joe crossed the chicken-smelling yard in the darkness, and found the shack. Rapping on the flimsy door he entered without waiting for a response. A narrow young man was stretched out on a cot, starlight illuminating his eyes.

  ‘Dub?’ Joe inquired.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ a dubious voice answered.

  ‘My name’s Joe. Addie told me I can spend the night over here.’

  ‘What Addie says is the rule,’ Dub said, sitting up in bed. He wore a white long john shirt and faded blue jeans. He stretched once and yawned. ‘Addie’s the chicken boss; me, I’m just the wrangler.’ Dub smiled as if he had thought up that joke a long time ago and had been waiting for the time to come when he could spring it on someone. It was a weak affair, but Joe smiled in the darkness.

  ‘There’s a cot – you’ll have to open it. Came from an old army camp,’ Dub said.

  As Joe’s eyes adjusted to the poor light he saw that Dub had one folded ear like a mongrel dog, and a nose which wandered from one side of his face to the other. He was smiling broadly, but it seemed to Joe that this was not out of humor, but because his lips did not cover his gapped, buc
k-toothed ivory. His hair was probably reddish-brown, but it was difficult to make out color in that poor light.

  Dub was on his feet, helping Joe with the unfolding of the canvas cot’s wooden legs. He was inches taller than Joe, only half as thick through the torso. One suspender drooped down from his shoulder. When he spoke again, it was with concern.

  ‘You don’t have no money, do you?’

  ‘Me?’ Joe laughed. ‘Not to speak of.’

  ‘I only ask because Sol and Mose will surely come after it.’ Dub’s eyes flitted around the shack. ‘I wouldn’t want to be here if they come out drunk and ready to shoot.’

  ‘They scare you, do they?’

  ‘Yes, that’s so. And they’ve scared a few other men in their time.’

  ‘I can see how they might.’

  Dub said chillingly, ‘A few of them that they’ve scared are buried around here – still scared.’

  ‘But they don’t bother you?’ Joe asked, sitting on the bare cot. Dub tossed him a blanket – obviously army-issue as well.

  ‘Not me,’ Dub told him, sitting on his own cot facing Joe in the moody shadows of the night. ‘I ain’t got no money. But they bothered them soldiers – they did have some of their pay.’

  Joe liked nothing about the way this was tending. He reconsidered going into Pierce Point and shook off the notion. If the two had meant to assault him, they would have already done so. Besides, he still had his Colt and was not deeply afraid of two drunken chicken farmers.

  He asked Dub, ‘Do you know this area well?’

  ‘I can make my way around.’

  ‘Do you know Newberry?’

  ‘Sure – used to be called Newberry Springs. Up in the dry hills maybe twenty miles north.’

  ‘How about…’ Joe hesitated about doing it, but he was not likely to get anywhere on his own. He removed the folded envelope with its scrawled map from his shirt pocket and leaned forward, asking Dub, ‘Would you have an idea where this might be?’

  Dub leaned forward studying the map earnestly. Joe thumbed a match to life to provide some illumination, which agitated Dub.

  ‘Don’t light no fire – it disturbs the chickens and they can’t roost!’

  ‘I doubt this light …’ Joe snuffed out the match. There was no point in arguing with the kid when he needed his help.

  ‘Is this Mustang Ridge?’ Dub asked. In the darkness Joe could not see what Dub was indicating. ‘ ‘Cause if it is, this is Candlewick Creek and the old oak grove up there.’

  ‘How far is that?’ Joe asked.

  ‘On the way to Newberry – something like fifteen miles,’ Dub answered.

  That must be the place then. The trouble was, Joe had no horse, no supplies and did not know the area. Nor anyone he could trust to guide him. Dub looked up and his lopsided smile broadened. He looked toward the door of the shack and said in a lisp:

  ‘Here they come. Mose and Sol have decided to get after you, mister.’

  Why, Joe did not know. Perhaps they had seen some of the silver he had given to Adelaide and figured he might have more. Possibly they had simply decided that they did not like him. Maybe they were just drunk out of their skulls and in need of recreation. Why, did not matter at the moment. Their heavy boots could be heard rushing toward the shack. Dub gawked at the door, frozen into immobility.

  The men crossed the flimsy porch and the door was banged open. Mose was the first one through. He had his shotgun in his hands. At the sight of the red-faced man, Dub let out a little yelp and darted for the door. As he brushed past Mose, Mose spun and tried to deliver a booted kick to Dub’s rump.

  Joe took his chance. He had never been a skilled fighting man, but he had learned a few things from the rough sort down on the Double Seven. One of these was that although a kick is probably the most effective blow a man can deliver, it also leaves him vulnerable. A man on one foot has no natural balance, no way of bracing himself as he follows through with it.

  Joe made his rush. Before Moses had finished his kick, Joe plowed into him, spinning Mose around and knocking him through the door. The collision brought the two of them crashing to the swayed porch, Joe on top of Mose. The big man’s head cracked against the planks. His eyes rolled back, and half out of fear that he might rise with that shotgun, Joe took to his heels, rushing away blindly past Solomon who seemed to be almost blind drunk and could only raise a weak cry of warning before Joe was past him, circling toward the lath hen house.

  Solomon gathered his wits enough to fire a blast from his rifle which penetrated the insubstantial structure, setting off a flurry and flutter and squawk inside as the roosting hens were startled awake, and sent Joe diving toward the ground.

  Joe turned and fired off-handedly at Solomon just to keep him away. The shot could have hit nothing, but Solomon yowled out a protest. The back door of the house was flung open and an angry Adelaide Comfort appeared there.

  ‘Hey, you fools! Think those hens are going to lay after this ruckus?’ She added a few unladylike curses as Joe got to his feet and slipped away into the darkness.

  ‘Psst!’

  It was Dub, appearing astride a mangy-looking red horse with wild eyes. ‘Get aboard,’ he said excitedly. ‘I think we’re both done with this chicken farm!’

  It took half an hour to reach the small town of Pierce Point. They must have looked a sight. Two men on a weary old mare, unsaddled, since Dub had not had time to catch up any gear for the animal. The few looks they got from loungers along the street were more than a little curious.

  ‘Find a place where we can swing down,’ Joe panted into Dub’s ear. The old mare’s spine was already rubbing his tailbone raw.

  ‘Where?’ Dub asked dully.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. A stable, I suppose. Maybe I can make a deal for a horse.’

  ‘You got money?’ Dub asked in surprise.

  ‘Very damned little,’ Joe said. His boot money. Forty dollars. Certainly not enough to lose his life over, if that was what Moses and Solomon had intended. ‘I need to look at that map I showed you again, have you tell me which direction I need to take.’

  ‘Sure,’ Dub said. ‘I’ll even ride along with you if you’ll have me.’ He smiled, but without humor. ‘I don’t think I’ll be going back to the egg ranch any time soon.’

  ‘No,’ Joe agreed, ‘I don’t suppose so – we’ll talk it over.’

  ‘But then maybe I should,’ Dub said forlornly. ‘It’s fly season and I should have sprayed around the coops. Miss Addie gets awful peeved if those flies get up. And there’s nothin’ flies like better than warm chicken….’

  Exasperated, Joe flared up. ‘Do what you like, Dub! Let me slip off the horse, and you ride on back there – do whatever you want to do.’

  ‘I expect Miss Addie will put Mose and Sol to work doing that,’ Dub said, his slow mind turning over again.

  ‘I expect – find a stable, Dub.’

  ‘I know where there’s one,’ Dub said brightly.

  ‘Then put us there,’ Joe said, his mood still stormy. He was wondering if the whole bunch of them at the chicken ranch – whatever their relationship was – didn’t share some mental deficiency.

  There was still enough light shining for Joe to make out a hand-painted sign decorating a tall building with open doors.

  ‘Here’s a stable,’ he said to Dub.

  ‘I don’t know. Mose, he don’t like the man in there.’

  Joe was far beyond caring what Moses thought about the man – whoever he was. ‘Draw up the mare or I’m kicking off,’ he said to Dub.

  ‘You’re still awful antsy,’ Dub complained, halting the red mare.

  ‘Why — just because there’s two armed men back there who tried to kill me earlier?’

  ‘Maybe they were just funnin’,’ Dub speculated. ‘They do that all the time.’

  ‘Not to me,’ Joe growled. ‘I’m going in here, are you coming?’

  ‘Mose, he always said that this. …’ Dub began, and Joe slipp
ed from the back of the bony red mare and walked into the stable, rubbing himself where it ached.

  ‘Anybody here!’ Joe called out into the horse-smelling darkness of the high-roofed stable. ‘I need a little help!’

  The fat man who came forward from the murkiness, hitching his pants up, was no more than five and a half feet high. His nose was bulbous and a pair of bulging eyes stared out around it.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ he said in a tone of complaint, scratching his enormous belly and squinting pop-eyed at Joe.

  ‘Business,’ Joe said, as he looked across his shoulder to see Dub entering timidly with the red mare in tow.

  ‘Beg your pardon, mister.’ the stable man said, ‘but you don’t look like you and me can do much business.’

  ‘I don’t mean to do much,’ Joe answered. ‘What I’m looking for is a good ten-dollar horse.’ The man laughed, ‘Is there such a thing!’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.’

  The stable man rubbed his florid cheeks. His eyes brightened momentarily. ‘You aren’t planning on going panning, are you? I got a donkey outside I purchased from a worn-down prospector….’

  ‘I don’t appreciate being made fun of,’ Joe said. ‘Look here, have you got a decent twenty-dollar horse?’

  Joe caught a glimpse of Dub’s face, lighted with astonishment, and he thought that maybe the poor-living man had never seen so much money together in his life.

  ‘I’ve got a dun, a 14-year-old gelding that can take a man from here to there. But I’d have to ask twenty-five for it.’

  There was no point in haggling. Joe said, ‘Let me have a look at him, then write me some paper – I don’t wish to be taken for a horse thief.’

  Again.

  The stableman who had easily won their brief duel agreed readily and as Joe performed the most perfunctory check of the old animal’s condition, and announced himself satisfied, the stable man scribbled out a bill of sale and signed it with a flourish.

  ‘Do I get tack with that?’ Joe asked as he slipped off his boot and handed over two gold pieces, which again caused Dub’s eyes to light up.

  ‘Generally a man has his own saddle,’ the stable boss said, fishing the silver change out of a shallow green metal cash box.