He wasn’t exactly the friendliest nag, and sometimes I thought to shoot him, bam, right between the eyes, and send him to the cat food canner. Critter and I, we were growing ornery side by side.
I didn’t much care for this place, but in a town the size of Doubtful, I didn’t have much choice. Turk, he treated horses worse than he treated people, and that always ticked me off. Only, he was careful no one ever saw him at it. But I could tell. I’d lead Critter toward Turk, and Critter would lay back his ears and start clacking his molars and I got the picture real good.
I found Critter gnawing pine off the planks of his pen.
“Wreck your teeth,” I told him.
He snorted. I stepped in and he bit me on the forearm. I always allow him one bite, but if he bites again, we get serious.
“You ain’t got teeth hard enough to draw blood, you old coot,” I told him.
He bit me again, this time gnawing on my shoulder.
“Cut it out!”
He snorted, so I raised a knee to his ribs, and he whoofed up some air, and tried to lay a hoof into me. I dodged just as he kicked with his right rear and whirled around to nip my ear.
“You sure are ornery this afternoon,” I said, but he paid me no heed and was calculatin’ how to kick me in the crotch. He’s a smart horse, all right.
“You been in here too long,” I said. “We’ll take some air.”
He lowered his ugly head and shoved it into my chest.
“Yeah, I like you too,” I said.
Critter could get sentimental at times. We’d been partnering for nine years, and he knew me better than I knew myself. He was a good horse, not fastest at all, but with bottom. That bottom, that no-quit running, saved my life a time or two. So I sort of got along with him, at least most of the time.
I put a bridle on him and watched him lip it, working it with his tongue. He always did that. He hated a bit with a big curb in it, and had a conniption if I got too bossy. But now he settled down, so I brushed him good and led him into the aisle, where I blanketed and saddled him, after kneeing the air out of him so I could pull the girth up tight.
Turk was nowhere in sight, which was good. I didn’t want to see anyone, not after getting hanged and shot that very morning. It sure seemed like a long time ago, between sitting in Belle’s crapper and saddling up Critter.
I let myself out of the livery barn, leading Critter, and then I got on board. He was stiff-legged while he was deciding whether or not to pitch, but finally he sighed and I knew him and me were going to get along on this day.
But it was already deep into the afternoon, and Crayfish Ruble’s spread was miles up the valley. Maybe I should go in the morning. But I decided against it. The last thing Crayfish would expect to see would be the sheriff of Puma County riding in seven, eight o’clock in the evening.
I steered Critter toward the jailhouse, which stood solid and tan, built of sandstone and intended to last a while. I wrapped Critter’s rein around the hitch rail, just in case, and wandered in there.
Rusty was playin’ euchre through the bars with King Bragg.
“I’m heading up the valley to talk to Crayfish. You’ll be on duty here,” I told him.
“You sure you want to go at this hour?” Rusty asked. “Can’t it wait?”
“No, it can’t. A man gets hanged in the morning, he wants answers by sundown.”
“Pay me overtime then,” Rusty said.
King Bragg stared at me. “Ask Crayfish why he shot his own men,” he said.
FIVE
It sure was a fine day. Critter thought so too, and farted his way up the valley, scaring lizards and offending horseflies. The two-rut road ran beside Chippy Creek, where the red-winged blackbirds were festooning the red willow brush and making a racket.
I was packing a slicker and a bedroll, just in case, because May is as fickle as a bored wife. I let Critter pick his own pace, which was a jog. I didn’t know when I’d get out to Crayfish’s big ranch, or whether anyone would be awake. But it didn’t matter. It was May, and the whole world was happy to be alive.
You have to wonder where Crayfish got that name. Or how I got to be stuck with Cotton. There’s no telling about parents. My pa, he told me up in New England, everyone gets named for a virtue. The women are Faith, or Charity, or Temperance. There’s men named Serene or Parsimony. One feller from Vermont named Diligence Brown showed up in Doubtful, and he was a bookkeeper. But down South, pa said, people scratch where they itch. Now someone named Crayfish simply has the itch for crayfish, and someone named Toad, that’s what he’s like. I’ve knowed a couple fellas named Toad, and it fits. Or sometimes a Southern boy gets named for something that scared his ma. I knew a Funeral Jones once, right out of Macon, Georgia. And my uncle was named Digger. That’s what he did. I had an auntie named Sweet and I once knew a Candy Cane too. I prefer the Southern method of namin’ babies. It’s more honest. I don’t care much for Cotton, but it’s better than Boll Weevil. So I already knew a piece about Crayfish just from his name. Tell me the name of a Southerner, and I’ve already got a handle on him. I knew two Turkeys and three Chickens and one Buzzard, two Possums, and a Packrat, and all of them born south of the Mason Dixon Line. One feller from Alabama was called Possum Pilgrim, and it was a puzzle. I knew a Pecker Smith once, but didn’t want nothing to do with him. I met a Carolina gal named Sassy once. The fellers called her Peach Fuzz, but that’s because her skin was fuzzy. Only girl I ever met with a mustache and a hairy chest.
Crayfish, he mostly had Southerners on his spread. And they had Southern names, too. Like those that got kilt by King Bragg, namely Foxy and Weasel Jonas, and Rocco. That’s what I was riding twenty miles each way on a May day to find out about. Foxy and Weasel were from South Texas, and there ain’t nothing worse, especially down around Waco. Seems like ever time I had trouble bite me, it was someone from Waco. I don’t have kindly thoughts about anyone from Waco or a hundred miles in any direction from Waco. I don’t think anyone in Waco ever growed up straight or true. I wish someone would build a fence around Waco and not let anyone out. There was a rumor that Crayfish came from outside Waco, but I wasn’t gonna hold it against him until it got proved. There’s always a bad rumor or two floating around Doubtful, Wyoming.
It was a long ride, but I didn’t mind. I quit a couple of times, and let Critter chomp on anything he could get his buck teeth around, while I looked for snapping turtles along the creek, without no luck. I’ve been meaning to catch a couple of snappers and give them to my deputies. I know Rusty, he’d like one, but them other two, DeGraff and Burtell, they might not know what to do with a snapper. Give ’em to a lady, of course. You never know. Maybe some gal in Doubtful is pinin’ away for a snapping turtle, seeing as how lots of women have the same nature as them turtles.
Critter got into a commotion while I was wetting a stump at the creek, and next I knew, he had a prairie rattler between his teeth and was shakin’ it every which way. That fat rattler was not taking it kindly, but it was pretty cold for rattlers to be out, so all it did was wiggle some until Critter bit it in two and left the two parts dancing in the grass.
“Critter, don’t you never do that to my arm,” I said. “I got all my fingers and I’m keepin’ ’em.”
Critter yawned.
Pretty soon I began seeing bunches of T-Bar cattle. They was all ornery little things; Crayfish wasn’t much on breeding. Admiral Bragg, he was buying good shorthorn bulls and crossing his range cattle on them, and getting more weight, but Crayfish didn’t give it a thought. Them cows was chopping that tender May grass right off, and there was sure a lot of them skinny beeves chewing down the range, but I didn’t much care. A man’s got a right to ruin his ranch if he chooses, and Crayfish was the sort who’d chomp her down to dirt and then move on.