Authors: Charles Portis
"Yes, I see they are keeping you busy."
"What you see is a honest man who has worked half the night on his fee sheets. It is the devil's own work and Potter is not here to help me. If you don't have no schooling you are up against it in this country, sis. That is the way of it. No sir, that man has no chance any more. No matter if he has got sand in his craw, others will push him aside, little thin fellows that have won spelling bees back home."
I said, "I read in the paper where they are going to hang the Wharton man."
"There was nothing else they could do," said he. "It is too bad they cannot hang him three or four times."
"When will they do the job?"
"It is set for January but Lawyer Goudy is going to Washington city to see if President Hayes will not commute the sentence. The boy's mother, Minnie Wharton, has got some property and Goudy will not let up till he has got it all."
"Will the President let him off, do you think?"
"It is hard to say. What does the President know about it? I will tell you. Nothing. Goudy will claim the boy was provoked and he will tell a bushel of lies about me. I should have put a ball in that boy's head instead of his collarbone. I was thinking about my fee. You will sometimes let money interfere with your notion of what is right."
I took the folded currency from my pocket and held it up, showing it to him.
Rooster said, "By God! Look at it! How much have you got there? If I had your hand I would throw mine in."
"You did not believe I would come back, did you?"
"Well, I didn't know. You are a hard one to figure."
"Are you still game?"
"Game? I was born game, sis, and hope to die in that condition."
"How long will it take you to get ready to go?"
"Ready to go where?"
"To the Territory. To the Indian Territory to get Tom Chaney, the man who shot my father, Frank Ross, in front of the Monarch boardinghouse."
"I forget just what our agreement was."
"I offered to pay you fifty dollars for the job."
"Yes, I remember that now. What did I say to that?"
"You said your price was a hundred dollars."
"That's right, I remember now. Well, that's what it still is. It will take a hundred dollars."
"All right."
"Count it out there on the table."
"First I will have an understanding. Can we leave for the Territory this afternoon?"
He sat up in the bed. "Wait," he said. "Hold up. You are not going."
"That is part of it," said I.
"It cannot be done."
"And why not? You have misjudged me if you think I am silly enough to give you a hundred dollars and watch you ride away. No, I will see the thing done myself."
"I am a bonded U.S. marshal."
"That weighs but little with me. R. B. Hayes is the U. S. President and they say he stole Tilden out."
"You never said anything about this. I cannot go up against Ned Pepper's band and try to look after a baby at one and the same time."
"I am not a baby. You will not have to worry about me."
"You will slow me down and get in my way. If you want this job done and done fast you will let me do it my own way. Credit me for knowing my business. What if you get sick again? I can do nothing for you. First you thought I was a preacher and now you think I am a doctor with a flat stick who will look at your tongue every few minutes."
"I will not slow you down. I am a good enough rider."
"I will not be stopping at boardinghouses with warm beds and plates of hot grub on the table. It will be traveling fast and eating light. What little sleeping is done will take place on the ground."
"I have slept out at night. Papa took me and Little Frank coon hunting last summer on the Petit Jean."
"Coon hunting?"
"We were out in the woods all night. We sat around a big fire and Yarnell told ghost stories. We had a good time."
"Blast coon hunting! This ain't no coon hunt, it don't come in forty miles of being a coon hunt!"
"It is the same idea as a coon hunt. You are just trying to make your work sound harder than it is."
"Forget coon hunting. I am telling you that where I am going is no place for a shirttail kid."
"That is what they said about coon hunting. Also Fort Smith. Yet here I am."
"The first night out you will be taking on and crying for your mama."
I said, "I have left off crying, and giggling as well. Now make up your mind. I don't care anything for all this talk. You told me what your price for the job was and I have come up with it. Here is the money. I aim to get Tom Chaney and if you are not game I will find somebody who
is
game. All I have heard out of you so far is talk. I know you can drink whiskey and I have seen you kill a gray rat. All the rest has been talk. They told me you had grit and that is why I came to you. I am not paying for talk. I can get all the talk I need and more at the Monarch boardinghouse."
"I ought to slap your face."
"How do you propose to do it from that hog wallow you are sunk in? I would be ashamed of myself living in this filth. If I smelled as bad as you I would not live in a city, I would go live on top of Magazine Mountain where I would offend no one but rabbits and salamanders."
He came up out of the bunk and spilt his coffee and sent the cat squalling. He reached for me but I moved quickly out of his grasp and got behind the stove. I picked up a handful of expense sheets from the table and jerked up a stove lid with a lifter. I held them over the flames. "You had best stand back if these papers have any value to you," said I.
He said, "Put them sheets back on the table."
I said, "Not until you stand back."
He moved back a step or two. "That is not far enough," said I. "Go back to the bed."
Lee looked in through the curtain. Rooster sat down on the edge of the bed. I put the lid back on the stove and returned the papers to the table.
"Get back to your store," said Rooster, turning his anger on Lee. "Everything is all right. Sis and me is making medicine."
I said, "All right, what have you to say? I am in a hurry."
He said, "I cannot leave town until them fee sheets is done. Done and accepted."
I sat down at the table and worked over the sheets for better than an hour. There was nothing hard about it, only I had to rub out most of what he had already done. The forms were ruled with places for the entries and figures but Rooster's handwriting was so large and misguided that it covered the lines and wandered up and down into places where it should not have gone. As a consequence the written entries did not always match up with the money figures.
What he called his "vouchers" were scribbled notes, mostly undated. They ran such as this: "Rations for Cecil $1.25," and "Important words with Red .65 cts."
"Red who?" I inquired. "They are not going to pay for this kind of thing."
"That is Society Red," said he. "He used to cut cross-ties for the Katy. Put it down anyway. They might pay a little something on it."
"When was it? What was it for? How could you pay sixty-five cents for important words?"
"It must have been back in the summer. He ain't been seen since August when he tipped us on Ned that time."
"Was that what you paid him for?"
"No, Schmidt paid him off on that. I reckon it was cartridges I give him. I give a lot of cartridges away. I cannot recollect every little transaction."
"I will date it August fifteenth."
"We can't do that. Make it the seventeenth of October. Everything on this bunch has to come after the first of October. They won't pay behind that. We will date all the old ones ahead a little bit."
"You said you haven't seen the man since August."
"Let us change the name to Pig Satterfield and make the date the seventeenth of October. Pig helps us on timber cases and them clerks is used to seeing his name."
"His Christian name is Pig?"
"I never heard him called anything else."
I pressed him for approximate dates and bits of fact that would lend substance to the claims. He was very happy with my work. When I was finished he admired the sheets and said, "Look how neat they are. Potter never done a job like this. They will go straight through or I miss my bet."
I wrote out a short agreement regarding the business between us and had him sign it. I gave him twenty-five dollars and told him I would give him another twenty-five when we made our departure. The fifty dollars balance would be paid on the successful completion of the job.
I said, "That advance money will cover the expenses for the both of us. I expect you to provide the food for us and the grain for our horses."
"You will have to bring your own bedding," said he.
"I have blankets and a good oilskin slicker. I will be ready to go this afternoon as soon as I have got me a horse."
"No," said he, "I will be tied up at the courthouse. There are things I must attend to. We can get off at first light tomorrow. We will cross the ferry for I must pay a call on an informer in the Cherokee Nation."
"I will see you later today and make final plans."
I took dinner at the Monarch. The man LaBoeuf did not appear and I hopefully assumed he had moved on for some distant point. After a brief nap I went to the stock barn and looked over the ponies in the corral. There did not seem to be a great deal of difference in them, apart from color, and at length I decided on a black one with white forelegs.
He was a pretty thing. Papa would not own a horse with more than one white leg. There is a foolish verse quoted by horsemen to the effect that such a mount is no good, and particularly one with four white legs. I forget just how the verse goes but you will see later that there is nothing in it.
I found Stonehill in his office. He was wrapped in a shawl and sitting very close to his stove and holding his hands up before it. No doubt he was suffering from a malarial chill. I pulled up a box and sat down beside him and warmed myself.
He said, "I just received word that a young girl fell head first into a fifty-foot well on the Towson Road. I thought perhaps it was you."
"No, it was not I."
"She was drowned, they say."
"I am not surprised."
"Drowned like the fair Ophelia. Of course with her it was doubly tragic. She was distracted from a broken heart and would do nothing to save herself. I am amazed that people can bear up and carry on under these repeated blows. There is no end to them."
"She must have been silly. What do you hear from the Little Rock soap man?"
"Nothing. The matter is still hanging fire. Why do you ask?"
"I will take one of those ponies off your hands. The black one with the white stockings in front. I will call him 'Little Blackie.' I want him shod this afternoon."
"What is your offer?"
"I will pay the market price. I believe you said the soap man offered ten dollars a head."
"That is a lot price. You will recall that I paid you twenty dollars a head only this morning."
"That was the market price at that time."
"I see. Tell me this, do you entertain plans of ever leaving this city?"
"I am off early tomorrow for the Choctaw Nation. Marshal Rooster Cogburn and I are going after the murderer Chaney."
"Cogburn?" said he. "How did you light on that greasy vagabond?"
"They say he has grit," said I. "I wanted a man with grit."
"Yes, I suppose he has that. He is a notorious thumper. He is not a man I should care to share a bed with."
"No more would I."
"Report has it that he rode by the light of the moon with Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson. I would not trust him too much. I have heard too that he was
particeps criminis
in some road-agent work before he came here and attached himself to the courthouse."
"He is to be paid when the job is done," said I. "I have given him a token payment for expenses and he is to receive the balance when we have taken our man. I am paying a good fee of one hundred dollars."
"Yes, a splendid inducement. Well, perhaps it will all work out to your satisfaction. I shall pray that you return safely, your efforts crowned with success. It may prove to be a hard journey."
"The good Christian does not flinch from difficulties."
"Neither does he rashly court them. The good Christian is not willful or presumptuous."
"You think I am wrong."
"I think you are wrongheaded."
"We will see."
"Yes, I am afraid so."
Stonehill sold me the pony for eighteen dollars. The Negro smith caught him and brought him inside on a halter and filed his hoofs and nailed shoes on him. I brushed the burrs away and rubbed him down. He was frisky and spirited but not hysterical and he submitted to the treatment without biting or kicking us.