Six Ways from Sunday, page 11
“Come in, Mr. Pickens.”
That got me riled up again. I don’t much like him knowing my name.
Chapter Fifteen
They sure knew more about me than I knew about myself. I didn’t never tell anyone my last name, ’cause it’s nobody’s business. But someone sure knew about me and I was ready to hang a noose around whoever tattled on me.
Just then, in comes Amanda, and she’s wearing something gauzy, several layers of white stuff I never knowed the name of, except it sort of doesn’t hide as much as it pretends to. She wanders in there to that rear parlor, and her hair’s undone and fallin’ around her shoulders, and the lamplight, it sort of wanders through all that gauze and I’m staring at whatever is shiftin’ around in there, namely Amanda herself, just as sweet and curvy as in that painting over her bed in her boudoir, and the steam heat in that rear parlor raises upward about a hundred degrees.
“Why, if it isn’t Cotton,” she said.
“I don’t want no truck with you,” I said.
“Amanda, Mr. Pickens is the gentleman who recently caused the little uproar,” Scruples said. “Mr. Glan caught him and brought him up here for our attention.”
Glan smiled. “He still had one of these,” he said, waving the remaining bomb.
“Ah, Mr. Glan, perhaps it’s not a good idea to have that device inside here.”
Glan looked wolfishly at Scruples and Amanda, as if he were deciding whether to obey, and finally smiled slightly.
“Here,” he said, handing Scruples one of them stubby revolvers. “I’ll dispose of this.”
“A hundred yards from here at least, Mr. Glan.”
The sniper vanished through the rear door, and I heard him clanging down the metal steps. I wondered where he’d put that little gift from Aggie Cork. They didn’t have no bunker around, near as I could tell.
Scruples wielded the little popgun. “I do believe this is the property of The Apocalypse,” he said. “He’s been lamenting its loss.”
“I took it from the Pock when he was actin’ like he owned me,” I said.
“He wouldn’t want you calling him Pock, you know.”
“Well I don’t want you callin’ me Cotton Pickens neither, so I guess we’re evened up.”
“No, not evened up. You deserted us. You had a contract.”
“I sure did have an agreement. I was fixin’ to spend a few nights with Amanda, like you agreed, but it didn’t happen, not even after them miners in the Hermit was cleaned out. So who’s busting the agreement? She is!”
Amanda was smiling. “Cotton, dear boy, you come with me. We’ll make everything right.”
“No, you already done cheated me once, and it ain’t gonna happen again!” I said, half afraid I’d back down. About all she had to do was untie that lacy gown, and I’d a been a cooked goose.
Scruples, he was laughing.
Well, she upped and did it. She sort of loosened that robe a little, and pretty quick I was seein’ more and more of her, and my pulse was climbin’ through the roof.
“He’s not going anywhere. Enjoy yourself, Babydoll,” Scruples said. “Glan’s outside.”
She just smiled at me, and beckoned with her little finger, and all I could do was follow her down that narrow little corridor past them rooms like she had a string tied to me. She pushed open the door, and then we was in that little bedroom of hers, the one with the painting of her lying there in the buff, and I’m thinking at last, at last.
She’s just smiling, and filling up a bowl with hot water.
“Honey, you’ll want to wash up. I’ll be waiting for you.”
She handed me that bowl and a towel and steered me toward a little water closet alcove I didn’t know was there. So I set to work, scrubbing up. If she wanted me scrubbed up, I’d scrub until my flesh was pink.
I’d sure waited a lifetime for this, and now it was happening. It would sure beat anything I’d ever seen in a parlor house. I could hardly believe my luck, and I hadn’t got it all figured out, but that didn’t matter. There she was, around the corner. I could see her bare legs lyin’ there on the bed, so I scrubbed away, and then I toweled myself dry, and stepped into the room.
She sure was pretty, lying there like that without a stitch on, just smiling and waiting for old Cotton.
I can’t hardly explain what happened next, but in my head I seen old Aggie dead, and I seen that miner’s wife and boy shot dead, and I just wilted away.
“Come on, Cotton,” she said, and for a moment I thought I’d just faint.
But I turned back and got into my duds, while she was lyin’ there frowning.
“I’m leaving. Go ahead and shoot if you’re gonna do it,” I said.
“You’re not very bright, Cotton,” was all she said.
That made me mad, too. Not bright, was I? Not bright for pullin’ out?
She was pouting now, but I didn’t care. I opened her bedroom door, headed down the corridor to the rear parlor, and opened that rear door, stepped out to the steel platform, and down the metal steps. I untied Critter from the hitching post and was about to board him when Glan, he showed up.
Glan, he was grinning in the dark. “Amanda, she prefers men who wash up now and then,” he said.
That made me so mad I almost decked him, but I figured I’d done enough damage for the night, and I steered Critter down the slope. No one stopped me. But now they had every gun I was carryin’, including the Baby Dragoon, and them popguns. I felt sort of naked.
That Amanda, she sure made me mad. I thought she liked me, but she was just usin’ me, and was spending her nights with Glan.
I rode down that long slope and headed for Swamp Creek, still trying to sort things out. But the farther I got from the Pullman Palace Car, the better I felt. Amanda had me scrubbing my body, but it wasn’t my body needed cleaning. If I’d gone back in with them, I’d of felt dirty down inside of me. That Amanda, she was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen in my life, and she had me wrapped around her little finger. I was about to let my pants rule me, but my head took over, and I got away. But it sure was some lesson. If I hadn’t got away when I did, they’d have me in their crew again, jumping claims and shooting anyone in the way.
It was clean mountain air I was riding through, not the perfume air in that bedroom, but clean with pines and sagebrush on it. I’d come closer to jumping into the manure than I ever had, and it was that part of me south of the waist that done it. Even then, as I smelled that pine scent on the night breeze, I was remembering how Amanda looked, waitin’ for me on that bed, and I knew I’d never get entirely past this one. But I’d got out. That’s all I could say. I’d got out.
I was in a fix. I steered Critter into Swamp Creek, not knowin’ what to do, but when I arrived at the Mint Saloon, I thought that was as good a bet as any, so I tied up Critter and Aggie Cork’s mule and went in.
It was late, and it turned out that Billy Blew was just shutting down.
“I’ll pour a fast one,” he said.
“Truth is, Billy, I can’t afford it. You need a swamper? I’d trade some swamping for some of them pickled eggs in that there jar. And I’d do some serious cleanin’ for a night on the billiard table.”
“Bad, is it? Well, you ain’t the first. Sure, Cotton. You set to work and I’m going to hit the hay. Them eggs is overdue to get et.” He looked me over. “And there’s a sack of oats and a feedbag in the back. You put in some time around here and you put the feedbag to those animals.”
“I’ll do her!”
“What brings you to town so late?”
“My south half almost whipped my north half.”
Billy stared at me, and then cackled a little. “Ain’t that the truth about all of us. Reckon you was heading for Big Sally’s House.”
I just grinned, not wantin’ to say what really tempted me.
“Lock that front door,” he said as he left.
So there I was. I found a broom and began sweeping up that stinkin’ sawdust. Boy, it smelled. No one had lifted that sawdust for weeks, and I swear, about half them customers had leaked into it. Billy had him an old scoop shovel, and I swept the sawdust into there and dumped it in the alley, which already stank of piss, so I wasn’t doing it no more harm. It took a while, but I got her swept out, and mopped down, and I found a bin of fresh sweet sawdust and sprinkled a load over them planks, and pretty soon the old Mint smelled less like miners and more like a mountain breeze.
I found the old feedbag and the oats and I put in a bait for Critter, and hooked it over his snout.
“I guess you’ll like that,” I told him, and he sawed his head up and down and tried to kick me.
“You’re next,” I said to Aggie’s mule, but he just stared at me.
I went back in there and headed for the pickled eggs. They was rank, all right, but I was hungry enough so it didn’t matter. They had a nice rubbery vinegar feel to them, and I put away three or four before getting vinegared out. Then I fed a bait to Aggie’s mule, and eyed the billiard table. It wasn’t any cleaner than the floor, so I gave Billy a bonus and swept the table out, too before dropping my bedroll on it. By the time I got all that done, the mule had et up the bait, so I took both animals over to the creek to water, and then tied them up at the rail again.
My last stop was the alley for a leak, but when I started in I kept staring at some dark lump just down a piece, so after I buttoned up I went over there, and that lump was sure enough a body. It was just lyin’ there. I couldn’t see who it was, so I went to fetch the lamp in the Mint, and headed out there.
I sure wasn’t feelin’ good about it, but someone had to do it, and I was elected. I got the lantern off the wagon wheel chandelier in the Mint, and edged over to that lump of darkness lyin’ in the muck, and the first thing I noticed was that it had been an execution. That fellow’s hands had been tied behind his back.
I eased him over, so I could see his face, or what was left of it. A bullet had entered between his eyes. He was dark and slim and had a goatee and was dressed real fine, in a black suit and a string tie and high white collar. This here was murder, not some gunfight. Next door to the Mint was the Miners Exchange, which is where most of them wage miners go after shift. That crowd doesn’t visit the Mint, and them wage miners don’t even like the independent miners.
Something kept ticklin’ my memory, and I finally realized I knew the dead man a little, not from having met but just because most ever’body in town knew who this one was.
He was Armand Argo, a New Orleans gambler who won hisself the Fat Tuesday mine at cards two years earlier. The mine had some other name, but Argo changed it to the Fat Tuesday Mine, in honor of the partyin’ they do in New Orleans ever’ year. And there he was, just as dead as anyone gets. Argo, he had mostly gave up playing poker, and was runnin’ his gold mine, and doing well, too, from what I’d heard. He ran two shifts of eight or ten men, and was makin’ good money from the mine. Argo was always quiet and gentlemanly, with a cigarillo danglin’ from his lips half the time, and a way of lookin’ at you like you were some beef he was gonna buy. But mostly he was just studying on you. He had the gift of knowin’ more about you than you knew about yourself. It goes with playin’ cards, I guess.
Well, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just leave him there. And there wasn’t enough law in Swamp Creek to call on for help. I realized the body lay behind the Miners Exchange, so I decided I’d better take it in there and let them look after it. The next shift wouldn’t be out of the mines until two in the morning, so there wouldn’t hardly be no one in there. I hardly set foot in there, because I didn’t like to down boilermakers with them clodhoppers.
I worked my arms under Argo, and finally got to lifting him and headed for the alley door. It stank there. Like the Mint, it had no privy and if you wanted to piss, you just stepped into the alley and cut loose.
So I worked my way in there, and there was two barkeeps and two patrons, and just one lamp lit. Them two drinkers turned around and stared at me. I set Argo down on a billiard table. One barkeep reached under the bar and came up with a sawed-off Greener aimed my direction.
“Found him in the alley behind your place here,” I said. “It looks to be Argo.”
“He was just in here an hour ago,” the keep said.
“Guess I better pinch you for murder, Cotton,” Johnny Brashear said as he came over from the bar.
Chapter Sixteen
Muggsy Pitt, the barkeep at the Miners Exchange, didn’t like that at all.
“Hold it right there, Brashear,” he said.
Since Muggsy was the one with the sawed-off scattergun, Brashear got real polite real fast.
“Cotton, tell us,” Pitt said.
“I was next door, come out to piss, and there he was, behind here. I brung him in,” I said.
“How come next door?”
“I was bedding on the billiard table.”
“Argo’s hands behind his back like that?”
“Lying facedown in the muck, hands tied like that. That’s all I know.”
“Likely story,” said Brashear.
Muggsy waved the scattergun at him. “You lay off. Maybe you done it yourself. You’re the only one went out there last hour or so.”
The district mining secretary who carried a deputy badge didn’t like that none.
“Brashear, maybe I’ll just ride up to Butte and tell the sheriff about this,” I said.
The mining district clerk looked real itchy. “No, that’s my job. I’ll do it,” he said.
“Then go do it,” Muggsy said.
That’s when the whistle blew up at the Fat Tuesday mine. The second shift was done, and in a few minutes most of them miners would be sitting right here, ordering suds and a shot on the side. Maybe that would be a good thing.
Brashear, he looked sort of tentative at Muggsy, and then edged out the door and into the night.
“That outfit in the railroad car, they wanted Argo out,” Muggsy said. “And they own Brashear. You can bet that he’s taking the news up there.”
“Anything happens in the valley, someone’s running up to the railroad car to talk about it,” I said. “Johnny Brashear’s a regular errand boy, looks like.”
“I got a body in my saloon, and I want to get it out of here,” Muggsy said.
“Anybody know anything about Argo? Like who’s his relatives? And who’s partners with him in his mine?” I asked.
“Armand Argo, he come in here for almost the first time tonight. Like he was looking for someone, or gonna meet someone here.”
“I guess he met someone, all right,” I said.
“He came and went. He looked around here, didn’t see what he was looking for, and headed out the doors.”
“Rear door?”
“Naw, front door. And that was the end of it, until you carried him in here.”
“Them off-shift miners are comin’. Maybe we better see what they know,” I said.
“I don’t like it. I want the boys to have a good time in here.”
“Muggsy, there’ll be no good time for anyone tonight,” I said.
About then, the double doors swung open, and five or six of them Fat Tuesday second-shift men pushed in, laughing and ready for a beer and a shot. It was a hard thing to watch. They crowded in, noticed what was lying on the billiard table, and crowded around it, dead silent.
“It’s the boss,” one said.
“Argo, yes. In the alley. We brought him in,” Muggsy said, starting to fill some mugs from his tap.
That sure was a quiet crowd. Three more came in, caught the silence, and gathered at the table. Not a one of ’em said a thing.
“What?” asked a big one with a flowing beard.
“Found him in the alley behind here, just a few minutes ago,” I said.
“Executed. Hands tied!” the miner said.
“You know why?” I asked.
“Hell, yes, we all know why,” the bearded one said.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Card Penrose,” he said. “I’m the shift foreman.” He sighed, ran a big grimy hand through his locks. “We all knew it would come, sooner or later.”
“Scruples?”
The foreman nodded. “Can’t be no other. They told him to sell out or get out and gave him a deadline. I think it was yesterday. Sell out for a cheap price or face the music.”
“Threatened him?”
“Argo, he just laughed, and said they wouldn’t dare.”
“Looks like they dared,” I said.
“Argo, he always carried a piece,” Penrose said.
I nodded at him, and he reluctantly opened Argo’s coat and felt around the chest, and then shook his head.
“Not now,” he said.
“You know if he had partners? Or family? Or heirs? Who owns this mine?”
“He had a little office at the mine,” one of them said.
“Where’d he live?”
“He had him a place above the Moulin Rouge.”
That was a gamblin’ parlor and maybe a little more, down the block. Rumor had it that he owned the gamblin’ franchise there, but not the bar. Kept his hand in his business, which was cards and dice.
I sure didn’t know what to do. I just come to Swamp Creek to get me a meal and a flop. But no one around there was doin’ much.
“I guess we’d better see what we can see at the Fat Tuesday office and maybe in his rooms,” I said.
“I’ll see what’s in his rooms,” Muggsy Pitt said. “Anyone needs a refill, pour it yourself and put it in the till.”
“I’ll go with you, Muggsy,” one of them miners said. That was a good idea.
“Penrose, let’s you and me see what’s in that mine office,” I said. “I got a feeling we ought to get there and make sure things are proper.”
The rest, they didn’t want to know, seems like, and crowded the bar with their back to their late boss. But no one was sayin’ much.
We stepped into the chill night. Swamp Creek was plain black at this hour, but for a couple of saloons catering to the last shift. I remembered I didn’t have no gun. Them Transactions people had got ever’ gun I owned, and I was nakkid as a jaybird. Seein’ as how there wasn’t no law to speak of, a man in Swamp Creek without an iron is sure gonna invite every mugger around.
