In the Rogue Blood Read online

  She stayed the door and eyed him closely and her expression softened somewhat. “All right, sonny,” she said. “Ask.”

  “I just want to know if my brother’s here or been here, is all.” He explained that they had got separated in New Orleans but were agreed to meet here and he wondered if John had already showed up in search of him. He described him in detail but the woman shook her head and said no, he hadn’t been there, she would have remembered if he had, she had an excellent memory for faces. “But now listen, honey,” she said, “you get yourself washed up and burn them awful clothes and dress up clean and come on back, you here?”

  He went across the street and ducked his head in a water trough and scratched his festering scalp through his sopping hair and ducked his head again and scrubbed his face with his hands and shook the water off them and put his hat back on. He sat on the edge of the trough and regarded the pink house. If John had been there he would have asked after him and Miss Flora would have remembered. Maybe the stable boy in Dixie City didn’t give him the message. Maybe the boy or somebody else stole his possibles and the note secreted among them. Why else wouldn’t he be here? Maybe he had some kind of trouble back in New Orleans. Or maybe he ran into trouble after leaving town. There was no way to know. But if he wasn’t in trouble and even if he hadn’t gotten the message, wouldn’t he come looking for him in Nacogdoches? John had been standing right there beside him when Mrs. Clark told about this place.

  There was nothing to do but to stay put till John showed up or he didn’t.

  And if he don’t show?

  He’ll show.

  Sure he will. But what if he don’t?

  Then he guessed he’s have to go back and try to find him.

  Back was a long way in the other direction.

  He envisioned DeQuince lying in his own guts in the sickly yellow light of the streetlamp.

  He’d find a rope round his neck back there is what he’d find.

  And now he thought that Johnny might likely have found himself a generous girl back in Dixie City or somewhere along the way and was getting topped three times a day and twice that much at night and who could blame him if he wasnt in a hurry to leave off the pleasure? Hell, he likely hadnt had a full sober minute since they last saw each other. There Johhny was, having himself a time and here he was, looking like rotten possum on a stick and with no gun nor horse to call his own. He was a damn fool to be worrying about John when he had plenty enough to do just tending to himself.

  But there was no denying that not even at any time in the past weeks of wandering alone in the woodlands had he felt as alone as he did at the moment.

  After a while he went walking the streets and peered over fences and kept a sharp eye for unlighted open windows but this was not a town to be careless about invitations to theft. He wandered about and studied the houses and slowed his pace as he went by a prosperous-looking whitewashed home with huge brick chimneys at either end and fronted by a deep verandah. A pair of mastiffs on long leather leashes fastened to the step railing showed their teeth in the twilight and growled lowly as he passed.

  He took a turn by the old stone fort where a man in manacles was being led inside by two men in uniform. Other heavily armed men stood smoking on the lower gallery and ceased their conversation to watch him go by. He felt their eyes on him until he was to the corner of the street and around it.

  At the second livery where he made inquiry he struck a bargain and spent the next two hours shoveling out the stalls and forking fresh hay, freshening water troughs, straightening tack on the walls. He was paid a silver half-dollar for his labor and then made his way to a brightly lighted tavern at the end of the street where the stablebuck had told him he could get a good meal for two bits and a fairsized glass of whiskey could be had for the same price.

  A half-dozen horses stood at the hitching rails in front of the tavern and as he approached the doors he glanced at the animals and stopped short. Then stepped down off the sidewalk to more closely examine the sorrel mare and saw in the cast of light from within the room that it was the Janey horse all right, though she now carried a good saddle furnished with bedroll and wallets and hung with a canteen and lariat. She twitched her ears and he patted her and said, “Hey girl.”

  He quickly scanned the other mounts at the rails but none was a black stallion. He eased up to the doors and peeked over them and saw in the well-lighted interior a pair of men conversing with the barkeep at the counter and another man drinking by himself at the far end of the bar. Five men played cards at a table toward the rear of the room. Just inside the door sat a solitary drinker with his head on the table and a glass and half-full bottle in front of him. He did not see the giant blackbeard anywhere in the room.

  One of the card players stood up and bid the table goodnight. Edward stepped down beside the mare and when the man came out and mounted a tall blaze he said, “Pardon me, mister, I wonder can you tell me whose horse this is?”

  The man settled into the saddle and looked down at him.

  “Like to make the owner a offer on her,” Edward said.

  The man wore a saddlecoat of good cut and a spotless white hat. His horse tossed its head and he settled it with a pat on the neck. “No offense, boy,” he said, “but you don’t look like you could make the price of a day-old glass of beer. I think you ought know that around here they will hang a horsethief quicker than you can say Sweet Jesus.”

  “I aint no damn horsethief.”

  “Course not. But now we’re on the subject, there’s nobody I’d rather see get his horse stolen than Marcus Loom. If I had an hour to spare I could begin to tell you my low opinion of the son of a bitch.”

  “Is Marcus Loom whose horse this is? Is he inside there?”

  “He is. The rascal with the red necktie and the long mustaches on his liar’s face. Luck to ye, lad.” He reined the blaze around and hupped it down the street.

  Edward took another look into the room and picked out Marcus Loom easily. He wore a thin red necktie and a dark suit and a widebrimmed gambler’s hat. He sat with his back to the rear wall and laughed as he dealt out a hand.

  Edward looked about and spied a crate leaned against the corner of the building. He stove it with his foot and wrenched free a pine scantling three feet long and over two inches square. He propped it against the wall just outside the entrance and lay his blanket roll beside it and then pushed through the doors. The men at the bar watched him advance directly on the back table and then stand there looking at Marcus Loom while the gambler considered his cards. The other three players looked up at Edward and appeared more curious than disturbed by his looming presence. Only one of them wore a pistol on his hip that he could see.

  Marcus Loom tossed out a discard and said, “Dealer takes one,” and dealt himself a card. He picked it up and looked at it and carefully fit it into his hand. Then he gently lay the cards face down on the felt and leaned back with one hand under the table and looked up at Edward.

  “Sorry to bother you at your game,” Edward said, “but I been told it’s you been ridin my horse.”

  Marcus Loom stared at him for a moment as though he’d been addressed in a foreign tongue. Then smiled and said, “Beg pardon, sonny?” He looked at the others and winked. One of them chuckled.

  “That sorrel mare out there’s mine. She was stole off me back at the Sabine ferry. I been huntin her all over and now I found her and just want you to know I’m takin her back. I reckon the saddle’s yours so I’ll leave it on the porch.”

  He turned and headed for the doors and was halfway to them when Marcus Loom said, “Lay hand to that horse, boy, and I’ll have you for breakfast.” As he went past the drunk asleep at the table he snatched up the whiskey bottle and slipped it into his coat pocket.

  He stepped outside and glanced back and saw Marcus Loom coming for the doors with his face clenched tight and a pepperbox pistol in his hand. He picked up the scantling and gripped it tightly in both hands and set himself
beside the doors. They flew open and Marcus Loom stepped out with the pistol before him and his eyes on the mare and Edward swung and hit him in the face and the thonk! likely carried to the next street. The gambler fell against the door jamb as the pepperbox discharged with a flaring yellow blast and the horses shied against their reins looped on the hitch rail. Marcus Loom sat down hard with his hat askew and his nose pouring blood and Edward brought the scantling down on the crown of his head like he was malleting a stake and the gambler folded over on his side and lay still.

  Edward scooped up the heavy-barreled pepperbox and his rolled blanket and took up the mare’s reins and quickly stood up into the saddle as the others came spilling through the doors. One of them knelt to see about Marcus Loom and the rest stood looking at Edward sitting the mare with the reins in one hand and the pistol in the other. None brandished a weapon but the barkeep who was holding a short musket and Edward pointed the pepperbox at him and told him to let it fall and he did.

  “Damn, Jeff, look there at your horse it’s been shot!”

  The horse at the mare’s right side stood with its head lowered and snuffled wetly and a lanky man who’d been at the card table cursed and glanced up at Edward and then glared down at the unconscious form of Marcus Loom.

  The man checking the gambler said, “He’ll live. Nose is broke and he’s got a knot the size of a apple on his head but he’ll live a while yet.” He stood and looked at Edward. “Boy, you give him a thumpin.”

  “He damn well had it comin,” Edward said. “You all know he meant to shoot me without another word on the matter.”

  “You say that there’s your horse?” someone said.

  “Sumbitch who stole her took my whole outfit, down to my bootknife. Big rascal with a beard. Rode a black. Had him a pair of Texas revolvers.”

  “That’s the fella Marcus bought the horse from, right enough,” one of the gamblers said. “Just last week over at Dean’s Livery. Seen him myself. Bearded and outsized, he was, and rode a black like the boy says.” Another man nodded in verification.

  “I was gonna leave him the saddle,” Edward said, “but since he come for me with a gun I reckon he owes me proper satisfaction. I figure the saddle and this here pistol about makes us even. Tell him if he wants to discuss it he can find me in New Orleans. Tell him ask around for Bill Turner.”

  He walked the mare backward so as not to turn his back to them and then reined the horse about and put heels to her flanks and lit out down the street and into the night.

  6

  Horsed and pistoled he felt reprieved. He struck the main road and let the Janey horse have her head till he could no longer see the lights of the town behind him. The waxing half-moon was near its meridian and high over his shoulder and they rode through its ghostly light hard on the heels of their own shadow. He thought then to get off the main road and turned the mare into the high grass and brush and shortly came onto a weedy wagon trace that ran north and south and he rode south for another two hours before at last halting at a cottonwood copse cut through by a swift shallow creek. He loosened the cinch on the mare and let her blow and patted her and whispered to her what a good horse she was. He checked the wallets and found some bundled strips of jerked beef, a rolled clean shirt and a pair of socks, a box of matches, a sheathed Green River knife which he slipped into his boottop. He took the lariat off the saddle and put the horse on a long tether to a tree and let her drink. He got down on his belly on the bank and ducked his head in the chill water and gasped with pleasure. He pulled off his malodorous boots and soaked his feet a while and then put the boots back on. He made no fire and sat leaning against a tree and ate some of the jerky and drank from the whiskey bottle and listened hard but heard only the soft cropping of the mare and a solitary frog croaking in the creek. He’d never tasted better jerky and the whiskey warmed him wonderfully. He laid out his bed under the tree and slept with the pistol in hand. Sometime in the night he was startled awake by the mare’s warm breath on his face and he stroked her muzzle and told her she had nothing to fret about.

  In the morning light he saw that the pepperbox was a six-barreled .36 caliber Darling and the only uncharged barrel was the one Marcus Loom had fired as he’d fallen. He wanted to shoot the piece for the feel of it but without powder and shot for reloading he decided not to waste a round. He refilled the canteen at the creek and tightened the saddle on the mare and tied down the bedroll behind the cantle and then mounted and hupped the horse southward.

  Near noon he came upon a small ranch where the foreman invited him to join him and the hands to dinner. He ate his fill of beefsteak and beans and offered to work the afternoon in exchange for the meal but the foreman wouldn’t hear of it. He informed Edward that San Antonio de Bexar lay three days south on the Camino Real. The ride was a little longer, the foreman added, if a man preferred to follow the side trails. But he did not ask why Edward had been traveling off the main road nor did he even ask his name.

  He rode the day without seeing another soul until the trees flamed in the evening sun and rang riotous with roosting birds and he spied a campfire in an oak grove just ahead. A chill wind rustled the trees. A pair of oxen grazed on a grassy rise and a covered wagon stood under a high wide oak. A woman worked at a smoking pot hung over the fire and a tall man in black came forward and raised a hand in greeting and Edward hallooed him. The man called out, “Come rest a spell, brother, and take some supper with us.”

  The man introduced himself as the Reverend Leonard Richardson, founder of the Church of the Blood of Jesus. He bade Edward to set by the fire and take a cup of tea while his wife finished preparing the supper. Edward loosened the cinch on the mare and dropped the reins and let her graze where she stood. The reverend poured tea from a kettle. The woman was thin and angular. Her back was to them as she ladled from the pot into three bowls.

  “Smells mighty good,” Edward said.

  “Turtle stew,” the reverend said. “She makes it real fine.”

  Now the woman turned with a bowl in each hand and in the dim light of the fire Edward thought that she was wearing a mask. But when she came closer to hand him a bowl he saw that she wore a sort of bridle fashioned of thin metal straps tight around her head and fitted with an iron bit that pulled hard into her mouth between her teeth and held the tongue fast. The corners of her mouth had blackened against the chafing bit. The whole thing was fastened with a small lock behind her neck. Her eyes were red and wet in the firelight. After serving them she sat apart and fed herself by spooning broth carefully into her mouth and then tipping her head far back to let it run down her throat in the manner of a drinking bird.

  Edward turned to the preacher and saw the man smiling at him as he ate. “Never seen one a them before, eh?” the reverend said, nodding toward the woman. “Called a brank. Scold’s bridle. Come by it a few months ago in Galveston. From a German fella who’d got it from his daddy back in the old country. Fella’s wife had just recent died with the cholera and he was sworn not to marry again and so he didn’t have need of it no more. Said it to be a right common means in the old days for punishin a scold. Course now”—he paused to give the woman a hard look—”it’ll do just as well for ary woman don’t know to keep a proper tongue in her head.” He spooned up the last of his stew and whistled to attract the woman’s attention and beckoned her. She set down her supper bowl and hastened to replenish his. As she handed the refilled bowl to the preacher she looked at Edward with her pained wet eyes and he gestured that he wanted nothing more and she went back to the other side of the fire and resumed her awkward feeding.

  “They got the serpent’s tongue, boy,” Richardson said, nodding toward his wife. “I mean ever one of them. Had it since the Garden. ‘The serpent beguiled me and I did eat.’ That’s was Eve’s side of the matter. Tryin to pass the blame, sayin the devil made her to do it and she couldnt resist him noway. ‘The serpent beguiled me and I did eat.’ And what’s the first thing she done after? Why, turned right around an
d beguiled old Adam into eatin of the forbidden fruit too.

  “He aint nary fool, the Devil. He always known which is the weaker spirit and which the weaker flesh. Knowed the way to get at Adam was through the woman. Knowed he could seduce her and she’d do the deed for him and pull down Adam to perdition right along with her and that’s exactly what she done. Eve is the bitch mother of all of man’s misfortunes, and ever woman since is got the same treacherous bitch blood as her. She damned ever one a us to a life of toil and sweat and fruitless effort. Made us to do disloyal to the Lord and turned His loving face from us and they been doin evil with they tongue ever since. When they aint scoldin or complainin, they tellin lies or gossip or speakin some other kind of evil meanness.” He paused to spit off to the side and glare at the woman who did not look their way.

  “‘All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman,”’ the preacher declaimed. “Ecclesiasticus, twenty-five, nineteen. Mark me, boy, if ye pay heed to the words of a woman ye be lettin the serpent’s tongue lick in you ear. The Good Lord put His faith in us and we broke that faith because of a woman and we been breakin the faith with Him and with our brothermen ever since. Ours not to question His ways, but if He’d seen fit to put a brank on that bitch Eve just as quick as he was done shapin her from Old Adam’s rib we’d all be the better for it, you mark me. We’d right now be sippin the milk of Paradise at Old Adam’s elbow and laughin for no damn reason a-tall except we didn’t have a worry in the damn world.”