Buckskin Read online

  “We are here to uphold the law,” I said. “We are doing what we can to find out what has happened to the missing men. But above all, we uphold the law. And with the exception of the two of you, that is what every one of us in the room is paid and assigned to do. So don’t ever question our conscience. Not ever.”

  “I have had enough of this bullshit,” Hodge said as he walked out.

  James stood there trying to think of something else to say but then he, too, walked out.

  “Damn,” Lloyd said. “That was a good fucking scalding, Everett. If I live long enough and ever get the chance to use that speech, I will do my best to dole it out with that same sea-parting, Moses-like authority like you just done.”

  17

  Bells from the Catholic church on Main Street were ringing, echoing through the streets of Appaloosa. Churchgoers dressed in their Sunday best were hurrying to get into their seats. I thought about the church people as I walked. I often wondered what life would be like to be one of them, to be one of the followers. The believers.

  When I entered the Hotel Windsor I saw Martha Kathryn right away, sitting on the patio and facing the lobby. As I walked toward her she smiled, seeing me, and immediately got up and moved toward me. She reached out, took both of my arms, and kissed me on the cheek.

  “You got my note?” she said.

  “I did.”

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Well, here I am.”

  She held me at arm’s length, studying me.

  “Yes, you are,” she said with a warm smile. “Yes, you are.”

  She took my hand, turned, and led me to her table.

  “I’m just having a late breakfast. Please, sit.”

  I took a seat next to her and she sat.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No. I’m good.”

  “Well, how about a beverage?”

  She held up her glass.

  “This is a lovely wine,” she said.

  “Kind of early, isn’t it?”

  “Never, especially on my day off. Won’t you please join me. I insist.”

  “If you insist.”

  She held up her glass to the waiter.

  “Please, would you be so kind, another for me and one for my handsome friend.”

  Then she turned to me and squeezed my hand.

  “It’s so nice to see you,” she said.

  “Likewise.”

  “I so needed to see you.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Well, my God. I have never in my life experienced anything like what happened the other night.”

  The waiter brought us two glasses of wine.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She held up her glass to me. And I held up mine.

  “To my knight in shining armor.”

  She clinked my glass, smiled, and took a healthy pull of the wine.

  “So what on earth was that all about, Marshal Hitch?”

  “Everett.”

  “I was just being formal for dramatic sake. Everett. What was that all about, Everett?”

  “Just doing my job.”

  “But can’t you expound?”

  “I can, but I don’t know it will make much difference or sense.”

  “Indulge me, please.”

  “Maybe indulge me first?”

  “Certainly, by all means.”

  “How do you know Baptiste?”

  “Henri?” she said with a French accent, making his name sound like “On-ree.”

  “Yes, Henri,” I said.

  “Well, I met him not long after I arrived here.”

  “The early bird.”

  “That’s presumptuous of you.”

  “My apologies.”

  “No need . . . Are you jealous, Mr. Hitch?”

  “You’re being dramatic again.”

  “Everett.”

  “No. I’m not jealous.”

  “Well, good. You should not be. He’s one of the people responsible for the theater opening.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “The mayor of Appaloosa introduced us.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “At the time of the introduction, nothing.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, he’s charming enough, it seems, well spoken, educated. I appreciate educated men. He has good taste in wine and knows a great deal about the theater. He does, however, have a Napoleonic complex. Something that I personally have no issue with, but I suppose I understand it. Not every man is capable of carrying their bride over the threshold.”

  “He proposed to you?”

  She smiled.

  “Now I’m not being dramatic, just being . . . funny, isn’t that somewhat funny?”

  I smiled.

  “I’m sure he’s discussed the nature of his business and so forth?” I said.

  “Yes, I know he is a wealthy man. I know about the gold . . . Now, how about you tell me? After all I was present, and perhaps in danger even, when you so gallantly arrested those two men.”

  “Well, he’s part of—or, better put, is the owner of—one half of an outfit that is in opposition with another outfit, and they don’t see eye to eye. So, as a result, they have it out for each other.”

  “That is the long and short of it?” she said. “No pun intended.”

  “Is.”

  “This has to do with gold, I take it?”

  “Does.”

  She smiled.

  “Gold makes people do things they otherwise might not do,” I said.

  “Are you sure you are not jealous?”

  I shook my head.

  “Not even a little?”

  “Nope.”

  “Not sure I believe you.”

  “Did that one time,” I said.

  “Once?”

  “Once. Didn’t end good. Won’t happen again.”

  She smiled and held up her glass to the waiter.

  “Two more, please,” she said.

  Then she turned to me and smiled seductively.

  “I like you,” she said.

  “Like you, too.”

  “I know.”

  “Figured.”

  “I saw you across the street from the theater,” she said.

  I did not say anything. I just stared at her as she stared at me.

  “Romantic,” she said. “Very romantic.”

  18

  It was dark and late when the kid finally got to the house. He tapped on the door. A thin, elderly Negro woman opened up and let him in. He followed her down the narrow hall to a back room, where a shriveled man lay in bed. His lips were purple and his skin was pale, almost pink, with blue veins visible under his thin skin. He had a bald head and a long white beard. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing. The kid turned to the woman and spoke softly.

  “That’s him?”

  She nodded.

  “Don’t look like him.”

  “It is.”

  “Damn.”

  “He bad.”

  “Always was.”

  She nodded.

  “Can he talk?”

  “He can. Not much.”

  “Ain’t the glory-be mountain man he was.”

  “He not.”

  “You been taking care of him?”

  “I have.”

  The kid watched the old man taking labored breaths, then shook his head.

  “Miserable.”

  She nodded.

  “He is.”

  “How long has he been like this?”

  “All summer.”

  The
kid turned to her.

  “You with him,” the kid said, looking her in the eye, “when he was upright, before he got sick?”

  She nodded shyly.

  He studied her, thinking about the two of them together, then looked to the old man.

  “He don’t need to be like this.”

  “Mayhaps he do.”

  The kid thought about what she said and nodded.

  “You might be right.”

  “For all the grief he done gave,” she said.

  “Telegram said he was sick. I didn’t know he was this bad.”

  “Worse ever day.”

  She moved to the bed and the kid followed.

  “The boy, he here.”

  The old man did not respond. She took him by the hand.

  “The boy, he here, he come to see you.”

  The old man’s eyes slowly fluttered open.

  “He here,” she said. “The boy.”

  He moved his eyes to the kid. The kid took a step closer.

  “You hear me?” the kid said.

  The old man nodded.

  “I come up, all this way. Telegram said you wanted to see me.”

  “You growed,” the old man said with a rasping whisper.

  “What’d you want to see me for?”

  “Fine how-do-you-do,” the old man said.

  “What’d you expect?”

  The old man did not reply.

  “Last time I saw you, you whipped me so hard I could hardly walk.”

  The kid gave a nod to the woman.

  “Scars on my ass to prove it.”

  The old man met the woman’s eyes and raised his withered finger toward the dresser.

  “Get it,” he said.

  She nodded, moved to the dresser, opened the top drawer, and pulled out an envelope. Then she came to the bed with it and handed it to the kid.

  “He said, in case he not here when you get here, to make sure that I give you this. And tell you the story.”

  “What story?”

  The kid stared at the envelope, then met the old man’s watery gaze.

  “Open it,” he said with a nod to the envelope.

  The kid opened it and peered inside.

  “Go on.”

  The kid took out a tintype photograph. It was a picture of a group of people standing in front of an old home place.

  “Let me see it.”

  The kid handed it to him.

  “Look here.”

  The kid moved to see what the old man was pointing at on the tintype.

  “This here is my wife, Gertrude.”

  “What?”

  The old man nodded.

  “I never knew you had a wife.”

  The old man stared at him, then looked to the tintype.

  “And that there is our oldest son, Elias. This here is his little brother, Ethan.”

  The kid got a sour look on his face.

  “What are you saying?”

  The old man nodded.

  “Ethan is the husband of that woman next to him holding the baby.”

  The kid studied the photograph closely.

  “That baby she is holding is you.”

  The kid stared at the old man. Then he studied the photograph long and hard.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “I’ve had it.”

  “All these years?”

  The old man nodded.

  “And you never showed it to me?”

  “No reason.”

  Tears welled up in the kid’s eyes.

  “What do you mean, ‘no reason’?”

  “No reason.”

  “Both my boys is dead. Fact they died not long after this here capture was taken. The boys died, your bitch mother left you with me and my wife, and Gertrude died of consumption not long after. All that was left was me . . . and you.”

  Tears were running down the kid’s cheek. He glanced to the woman and shook his head in disbelief.

  “And you thought it important that I not know?”

  The old man’s eyes drifted to meet the woman’s eyes. She looked away.

  The kid studied the tintype.

  “How did they die?”

  “They killed each other,” the old man said. “They shot each other dead.”

  “Why, how?”

  “Your daddy, Ethan, found out that he was not your father. He figured out that his older brother, Elias, was your daddy. So he got a pistol and went after Elias, but Elias was waiting for him, and they shot each other at the same time. Elias died straightaway and Ethan died a day later. That same day, your mother ran off. Then when Gertrude died I burnt the place to the ground and you and me went to the mountains.”

  “All these years I thought I was a goddamn stray, that I had no father, all these fucking years. I was feral and treated that way.”

  The old man stared at the kid. His eyes watered.

  “I was ashamed.”

  “What?”

  “I am your father, boy.”

  “What are you fucking saying?”

  “Ethan had figured out wrong, ya see. And I don’t think your momma had the gall or the gumption to have him figure things no different.”

  The kid stared at the old man.

  “What?”

  “That’s right. I had her,” he said and groaned. “I done her more than once, and you are mine.”

  The kid’s face twisted up as he tried to contain his rage.

  “After all this goddamn time,” the kid said quietly through his teeth. “Why are you telling me this now, old man?”

  The old man fixed his weary eyes on the woman. She nodded toward the boy for him to continue on with his story.

  “Right after I took sick, I’d been traveling and was doing some trading here and there, had a few things I needed to unload. Right after I was fixin’ to return here, there she was. I saw her.”

  “Who?”

  “Your mother.”

  “What?”

  The old man nodded.

  “I did.”

  The kid’s eyes darted around the room.

  “I’m sure it was her. She looked like a refined woman. Hell, I don’t know, maybe she was a refined whore for all I know. But she looked like she done well. The way she was dressed. The way she walked. The people she was with. She was kind of high-and-mighty-looking, not the dirty barefoot girl she once was. No. She was walking tall with some men on the street, and they was gentlemen. Dandies. They wore suits and derby hats.”

  The kid studied the woman’s face in the photograph.

  “How would you know a grown woman from this?”

  “When I saw her, she did not see me. She walked on past. And I called to her by her name.”

  The kid stared at the old man.

  “She stopped, turned, and looked right at me. Looked me in the eye. That is why I knew I was goddamn right, that it was your momma I was looking at. Older, of course, but pretty like she was as a youngen. Just older. It was her.”

  “What happened?”

  He shook his head.

  “She . . . she turned and walked off.”

  The kid felt numb. He stared at the photograph. He saw his whole miserable life flash by. He was no longer crying. He was now only solemn.

  “What is her name?”

  “Helen.”

  “Where was this? What town?”

  “Appaloosa,” the old man said.

  19

  Naked as the day she was born, Martha Kathryn was reciting something. It sounded like Old World King’s English. She stood balanced on one foot atop the bed in room twelve of the Hotel Windsor. Without wiggle or wobble, she stood with her hands pressed together in a praying positio
n. They were tight between her breasts as she was performing.

  I had no idea the origin of her monologue; she didn’t say before letting loose with her grandiloquence. It sounded fancy, though, likely something from Shakespeare. But I could have cared less. There was no need to define or understand the source of her speechifying. It was nothing but a pleasant experience to simply watch her.

  She was a sight, rising above me like that. Balanced on one leg, enunciating her words, using a unique combination of intense conviction and willful bluster. Her foot that was not planted on the bed was positioned firmly at the side of the knee of her standing leg, giving her the appearance of a tall heron or a flamingo.

  Besides the fact that she was without clothing, Martha Kathryn seemed as refined as any woman I had ever met. An observation I made a point of sharing with her earlier after the second bottle of wine. When she was properly attired. The compliment prompted her to bring into question my worldliness and judgment.

  Martha Kathryn was a thespian no doubt, through and through. Virgil had reminded me more than a few times. My last experience with a woman associated with a traveling troupe ended badly. But this was different. Martha Kathryn presented herself as a free bird. I had no expectations other than to enjoy her company while she was in town.

  We shared a look that first time staring at each other in the mirror at Allie’s shop. It was a look between us that defied unnecessary verbiage. But we did enjoy conversation with each other. The day was filled with a lot of subjects, from religion to politics to sex.

  That topic got us up to her room for an evening of activity that Martha Kathryn referred to as “a go of it.” We’d been doing just that, having a go of it, up until she decided to take a break and provide me with a spontaneous wine-induced soliloquy.

  She was balanced on one foot, eloquently using an affected higher-than-usual pitch to her husky voice. She was also trilling every other word. The technique gave her quavering oratory a refined penetrating effect. She could have been addressing Congress.

  “You’re a damn good wordsmith,” I said as I held up my glass. “I’m impressed.”

  She stood, willowy, with unblemished fair skin and a mane of unruly golden-colored hair that shimmered in the yellow glow of the lamplight.

  Gold makes people do things they otherwise might not do, I thought, as I lay there watching her.

  “An acrobat to boot.”

  “Shush,” she said.