There were still a few sparks smouldering in the grey ash of her sadness. Ada Tarr sat up straight in her chair, grabbed the slate resting in her lap, and ferociously wiped it clean.
SIXTEEN
DUNNE BEGINS HIS
search for Gobbler Johnson based on a simple proposition. He puts himself in the prospector’s boots. If some undeserving son of a bitch had yanked pay dirt out of his hands, he wouldn’t stray far from either the thief or what had been stolen from him. He’d keep a close eye on both. This is how he would operate, and he can’t imagine anyone doing different. He is certain Gobbler is nearby Helena.
So he goes where the prospectors gather, loiters about in the saloons, where he finds sympathizers with Gobbler Johnson’s plight, places where the name Harding is spat out like a curse. Patiently, he starts casual conversations that eventually meander their way to the topic of the disputed gold claim. The prospectors are all of the same opinion. Johnson has been cheated out of what is rightfully his. The problem is that nobody drops any hint where he may be. It has always been Dunne’s experience that just as summer follows spring, somebody always talks, but in this instance, nobody does. They all hold that Johnson has pulled up stakes for parts unknown.
Dunne does what he always does when he runs into a dead end: he detours, shifts to new ground. No one has laid eyes on Gobbler since he took a shot at Tarr. The old man has been careful to cover his tracks, to make sure Harding gets no whiff of where he might be and settle matters with him once and for all. Gobbler Johnson’s success at doing just that suggests he must have someone helping him.
So Dunne begins to haunt the town’s mercantiles. He plops himself down beside the stores’ stoves where the men gather to talk politics and business, joke and spin tales. He shoots a little breeze himself. In particular, Dunne cultivates the shop assistants who, whenever they have a spare minute or two, drift over to where talk is flying thick and fast. Whenever he asks one of them to fetch him some hard candy, or a bottle of ginger beer, or to cut him a piece of cheese, he never forgets to press a small tip into their hands, wink, and say, “A young fellow requires a little walking-around money.” He chats about their jobs, which gives them the opportunity to puff themselves up. All that paperwork, the bills of lading, the invoices, the accounts, the correspondence with suppliers, you can’t imagine what a trial to the patience that is. They love to piss and moan about the biggest aggravation of all, the blamed customers, about having to listen to their complaints about high prices and shoddy quality, and, wouldn’t you know it, the ones who bitch the most are the ones with bills long overdue.
It’s the customers, their whims, fancies, and habits, that Dunne finds most interesting. The shop assistants are only too happy to enlarge on that subject. He will ask, Is it true that most men are creatures of habit when it comes to their stomachs? That when a regular crosses the threshold, you can pretty much fill his order from memory? And the clerks allow this is true. Why if the day comes that Amos Henderson don’t ask for sardines, that’ll be a sure sign the end times is just around the corner. And Kugler loves peppermints so much that if he lacks for cash, he’ll short himself on flour to buy them.
Yes, Dunne will say, a favourite food is like an old friend, and old friends are the best, the ones you can trust and rely on. But surely there are some who like to kick over the traces and surprise you with some out of the wild blue yonder purchase? But no, the young fellows in the aprons can hardly think of such an instance. Maybe somebody might splurge on a more expensive brand of tobacco, or buy a better quality of canned beans now and then, but in a general way of speaking, a man knows what he likes and sticks to it. Humankind mostly resemble locomotives: they run on a track.
And then one day Dunne hears of an exception, a dumb Swede by name of Holstrom.
“Oh,” says Dunne, “but foreigners is unpredictable.”
The pimply clerk gives a hoot and says, “Well, he wasn’t no ways unpredictable in the past. He’s given us his custom for two years now and there was a time I wished he’d take it elsewhere. He’d come in every Saturday – and mind you now, he only knows about ten words of English – and he’d point to the shelves and a fellow never knew exactly what he wanted, or how much of it, and you’d reach for a article and he’d shake his head, and point again like a monkey. All the pulling down and putting back, it was more effort than it was worth. Because what he bought, it was all, you know, cheap goods, the very cheapest. Then one day about six, seven months ago he comes in with a list written out in English, and there was items on it he’d never bought before, and his order was about double the quantity, and the quality was pricier. So now he just hands me his order, goes off to the saloon while I fill it. When he’s got a skin full of whiskey he collects his goods, pays cash on the barrelhead, and rides off. And all I got to say, whoever’s drawing up that grocery list for Holstrom is making my life a good deal easier.”
“Well, that’s a mercy,” says Dunne.
He resumes prowling the saloons, following a new angle. He’s after Gobbler Johnson’s origins. Dunne has assumed Johnson was an English name, but it could be something else, maybe one of those pickled-herring-eater names. So thoroughness being a point of pride with him, he goes right back at it.
One night he strikes up a conversation with a man called Tinker who knows Johnson well enough to be able to tell him something about his background. “Now,” says Tinker, ȌGobbler speaks American just as good as you or me, but his mother and father was some variety of Scandihoovian born in the old country, and he can talk that singsong lickety-split. I heard him do it once. Lord, how I laughed.”
Finally, Dunne understands why nobody has talked. It’s because Holstrom can’t share his secret with anyone, at least in any lingo that can be comprehended by anyone but a hammerhead Swede. And the rest makes sense too; it’s only natural that one Scandihoovian would stick to another like shit to a wool blanket. After that, all that is necessary to do is wait for Saturday to roll round, dawdle about the general store until Holstrom places his order, and then follow the man after he collects his supplies.
Where Holstrom leads him is to a small, secluded cabin back in the hills. From behind a screen of trees, Dunne watches Gobbler Johnson walk out of his cabin and greet his friend. The two men unpack the mule and carry the groceries into the cabin. He has to wait two hours to learn the last thing he needs to know. When Holstrom finally rides off, it is clear that the two men aren’t sharing the cabin. Back in Helena, Dunne congratulates himself with the best supper that money can buy.
A month after Harding’s pergola went up in flames, Gobbler has been found, but haste not only makes waste, it frequently makes a mess. So before he makes a move, Dunne spends a quiet Sabbath pondering every danger that may lurk ahead, every mishap that may be waiting to happen.
Now he stands in a clump of pines thirty yards from Johnson’s cabin. He hobbled his horse a mile back, judging a stealthy approach by foot would be safest. Smoke trickles from the chimney, a flag signalling a warm, cozy berth, and the sight of it is a torment to Dunne. His toes are stinging in his boots; his cheeks and nose are dead to the touch. Still, this is no time for recklessness. He has carefully surveyed the old fellow’s lair. Gobbler couldn’t have situated his hideout better. The cabin is backed into a steep knoll covered in brush and pine that sweep down the slope to surround it on three sides. Its log front blends into the backdrop of timber, rendering it nearly invisible to the passerby. Of more concern is the small window in the front of the cabin that faces him across a patch of upland meadow naked of any cover except for a stand of bulrushes at the edge of a big slough. This is not favourable ground. Even if he were lucky enough to reach the cabin without Gobbler catching sight of him, he would be left with only two choices. Announce himself or burst through the door. Both are risky. It is impossible to predict Gobbler’s state of mind, how edgy he might be. Dunne prefers to endure the bitter cold rather than a hot blast of shotgun pellets.
He bends over, blows his dripping nose, flicks snot from his fingers. When he glances up, there is Gobbler out on his doorstep, a skinny old man in a long, flapping coat, a bucket in one hand and an axe in the other. He’s bareheaded, which means he doesn’t intend to tarry outside for long. Dunne watches him start down a well-trodden path towards the slough. He doesn’t stir until his quarry is well on his way and has his back turned to him. Then he draws his Schofield, slogs through thigh-deep snowdrifts until he gains the packed footing of the track that Gobbler has gone down. He’s out on the slough, cutting a hole in the ice. Every blow of the axe rings sharply; it sounds as if he is striking metal, and this helps mask the clicking of Dunne’s hobnailed boots on the ice-slick surface of the trail. The old man stoops to dip hispail in the water, and when he straightens up, Dunne is aiming a pistol in his face. Gobbler’s shoulders jerk like a rabbit in the noose of a snare; his fingers go slack on the bail of the bucket. It drops with a clump. His goitre jiggles on his throat as he blinks furiously, the tip of his tongue running circles round his mouth.
“Easy now,” says Dunne. “Take hold of yourself. Don’t play up foolish.”
“What you want, mister?”
“What I want is for you to pick up that axe – by the head, not the handle – and walk it over to me. Do it slow.”
Gobbler does as he is told, shuffles towards Dunne, the axe handle wagging. Dunne eases the tool out of his hand. The sudden weight of it dangling in his grip drags an idea down out of his brain. It’s a moment before Gobbler’s whine bores through this thought.
“I say, do you hear me? If you’re the law, I’ll come peaceable. You can take that pistol off me.”
“I ain’t the law.”
Gobbler offers a weak smile. “Well, if you got your mind set on collecting a bounty, there ain’t no bounty on me. Choteau County ain’t offered no reward for capturing Gobbler Johnson, no matter what you might have heared. No sir. Be fair warned, there ain’t no profit in it for you to haul me back to Benton.” He continues to jabber away, attempting to drive home his worthlessness. “Everybody knowed that shot I took at that bastard lawyer, it was fired high and wide. Plain as the nose on your face. I could have killed him dead if I wanted. But bloody assassination ain’t in my nature. Just wanted for him to squirt in his drawers. That’s all. That’s the onliest revenge old Gobbler was after, to squeeze a squirt out of Lawyer Tarr.” He kicks the snow with the toe of his boot, as if trying to scuff some response out of Dunne. Pleadingly, he asks, “That seem a crime merits bounty money, mister? Whoever said such a thing was wrong, mister, you been took.”
“You best lie down in the snow now.”
“What?”
“On your back.”
“Why I got to lie down? What you mean to do?”
“I mean for you to do as I tell you. Get on your back, right there.” Dunne shows him the axe. “Don’t make me chop you down.”
“I ain’t agoing to. Not unless you give me a reason for it.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Dunne says, holding the axe blade up to Gobbler’s face.
Slowly, the old man sinks down on his haunches, begins to sob.
“Fall back, Gobbler. Hush now, hush now,” says Dunne.
The old man’s shoulders sink in the snow. He holds up his hands as if to grasp at thoot,llen, purple clouds overhead, to pull them down to cover himself, to hide himself under them. Dunne’s boot comes down hard on his chest. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” Gobbler cries. “Why you treating me this way?”
“Won’t be but a moment,” says Dunne, pocketing the Schofield. “Quiet yourself, Gobbler. It ain’t doing you no good.” He rotates the axe in his hands until the blunt side is turned forward, marks a spot on Johnson’s skinny thigh just above the knee. The blade rises high above his head, slashes down.
A crack of breaking bone. A shrill scream. Birds fling out of the trees, turn into mad whirring specks. The old prospector grunts his agony as if someone is rhythmically pounding his chest with a fist.
Dunne picks up the bucket, crosses to the hole in the ice, fills the pail with water, and walks back to Gobbler, who has rolled himself over on his stomach and is dragging himself up the path with his elbows, the broken leg flopping crookedly behind him. When Dunne approaches, Gobbler makes a snatch at his trousers, and Dunne recoils, slopping water on his own boots. He douses him with what remains in the bucket, and the shock of it coils Gobbler up like a worm. Plodding back to the slough, Dunne refills the bucket. When he gets back, Gobbler has gone absolutely still. Dunne locates an artery in his neck. A pulse throbs there. He has only fainted.
He waters the unconscious man like a garden, soaking every spot he missed in the first drenching. Finished, he looks down glumly at his own soggy boots. In weather like this, wet feet are a danger. Dunne puts down the bucket, picks up the axe, and marches to the cabin, where he finds that a good fire has been laid. He adds a few more sticks, adjusts the damper, takes off his socks and boots, and sets them to dry in the oven.
He’s hungry. Padding around the cabin in his bare feet, he finds a skillet, a slab of bacon, and a can of Van Camp beans. He slices thick strips of meat into the pan and sets it on the stove. When the bacon is nearly done he adds the beans and gives them a few minutes to come to a bubbling simmer.
Dunne isn’t sure how long it takes for someone to expire from cold, but he estimates it can’t be any longer than it takes footwear to dry or a man to finish his breakfast. He eats without hurry; the room fills with the smell of hot wool and roasting leather. He finishes the last forkful of beans, pulls on his socks and boots; the warmth of them curls his toes with grateful pleasure.
Outside, he lops a bough from one of the pines near the cabin and strolls down to where the body lies, trailing the branch along behind him. Much to his surprise, he finds Gobbler has recovered consciousness, is stirring fitfully and mumbling like a man on a fever ward. The sparse hairs of his head are stiffened with ice. Gobbler bestirs himself, tries to creep away, but he’s so far gone, so weak he is only capable of twitching and shuddering. These tics make his frozen clothes crackle faintly as if he were a bed of dry leaves some small animal was walking over.