Telegraph Days: A Novel Page 3

  It was the old Courtright need for elegant goods surfacing just at the wrong time.

  “Ignore him, Mr. Wheless,” I said at once. “The plain revolver will do.”

  My brother’s face swole up like a toad, a thing that often happened when he was thwarted.

  “Jackson, don’t you burst out!” I warned him. “You’re far too young to require a fancy firearm.”

  Teddy Bunsen looked as if he might be about to have a stroke. Ted might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was attentive enough to notice that expenses seemed to be mounting.

  “Here now, Beau—one thing at a time,” he remarked. “We came here to buy a broom, a can of paint, and a new paintbrush. Deputy Courtright has never shot a pistol—the deacons would probably fire me if they hear I’ve bought a firearm for a deputy whose main job is to sweep the cells and paint the gallows.”

  Then he turned to me, the girl he hoped to marry.

  “Nellie,” he said, “would you mind picking us out a broom?”

  “Do I look like a janitor to you, Theodore?” I asked him. Using his formal first name was meant to signal that I was annoyed, though possibly he would have sensed that even if I hadn’t called him Theodore.

  “Do I look like I spend my time sweeping the porch?” I added, to make my point even more forcefully.

  But Jackson, who knows me better than Teddy, saw that I was working up a full head of steam and he climbed down off his high horse and grabbed the broom himself in hopes of saving the situation.

  “It’s all right, Nellie,” he said. “This broom’s as good as any.”

  Teddy Bunsen quivered a little, but wisely held his peace.

  Since Teddy was, for the moment, subdued, I turned my attention to Beau Wheless.

  “Do you really think somebody might shoot Jackson just because he’s taken a job as a deputy sheriff?” I asked.

  Beau Wheless had more polish than Teddy, and evidently, he wasn’t afraid of girls.

  “Well,” he said, “we are out here in No Man’s Land, where killers like to congregate, mainly because there’s little law to disturb them. The Yazee gang has been spotted not one hundred miles away, and of course the Yazee boys will shoot at anything that stirs.

  “Any of us are apt to be shot any hour of the day or of the year,” he added. “Lawmen are just a little more unpopular with killers than us common folk.”

  “You’re right. I’ll buy the plain pistol,” I said. “But I expect the town to pay for the holster, along with the broom and the paint and the paintbrushes.”

  Beau didn’t waste a minute. He got busy writing the invoice, which upset Teddy Bunsen, I could see. He began to turn red.

  “You’ll buy the pistol?” he said, glaring at me. “That pistol’s a revolver. It won’t be cheap. Here you are squandering money, and you don’t even have a proper roof over your head.”

  “If she needs a room Mrs. Karoo has one available,” Beau said, not bothering to slow his arithmetic. “I’ve just been working on a coffin for that Yankee lawyer who boarded with her. He finally drank himself to death last night.

  “That fellow had money,” he added. “He wanted his coffin velvet-lined.”

  “Mrs. Karoo’s will be my next stop, then,” I said. “Heft that pistol, Jackson. See if it fits your hand.”

  One of the reasons Father couldn’t claw his way back up to the beam was because he had forgotten to take off his heavy money belt—he wore that belt day and night, January to December. I doubted that he had been wholly serious about suiciding himself since he kept his money belt on: after all, he wouldn’t need money in heaven, or the other place either. He left Jackson and me in a bad situation, but he didn’t leave us destitute. That money belt was crammed with double eagles.

  “You oughtn’t to be squandering money, Nellie,” Teddy repeated, more weakly, when I handed a double eagle to Beau Wheless.

  But he didn’t offer to pay for the pistol himself, or even chip in half. Teddy had no reason to know it yet, but stinginess is one of the qualities I can’t tolerate in a fellow. A man who can’t be freehanded with you in a store is likely to backhand you, somewhere along the way.

  Teddy Bunsen wasn’t smart enough to know it, but he lost a step or two, in the romance department, that afternoon.

  7

  JACKSON DID AS I instructed: he hefted the pistol several times. It seemed to fit comfortably in his hand.

  “Aim at something,” I told him. Unfortunately Mrs. Thomas, Beau’s old nurse from Tennessee, popped around a corner just in time to see Jackson aiming a Colt revolver at her. If it fazed her she didn’t show it, but Jackson was embarrassed.

  “My Lord, what if I’d shot her?” he asked.

  “Oh, you couldn’t have shot her, because your gun’s not loaded,” Beau pointed out. “However, I could offer you a few boxes of top-of-the-line ammunition. After all, you’ll need to practice, I’m sure.”

  Beau had seen the money belt—visions of double eagles dancing in his head.

  “Just hold your horses, Mr. Wheless,” I said, giving Teddy Bunsen one of my firm looks.

  “It seems to me I’ve spared the community enough expense. Supplying a deputy with ammunition is surely a civic responsibility. Don’t you see it that way, Sheriff?”

  Instead of answering Teddy Bunsen turned and walked right out the door. When he agreed to take Jackson on as his deputy he surely had no inkling that his own job was going to get so complicated so quickly. He thought, in his idleness, that he could make me his blushing bride, but Jackson and I had scarcely been in town half an hour and had already created problems that Ted was neither trained nor equipped to deal with.

  Jackson quickly handed me the pistol.

  “I think I better get over to the jail and get busy,” he said. “I don’t want the sheriff to fire me before I’ve even swept the cells.”

  He took the broom, the paint, and the paintbrushes and soon caught up with Teddy, who was walking stiffly.

  I turned my attention back to Beau Wheless and his invoice.

  “Most people who buy a pistol expect the holster to be thrown in,” I told him. “I hope that’s the case today.”

  Beau, as I said, had polish. He knew perfectly well that I had never bought a pistol and had no reason to expect a free holster. But he also knew we Courtrights weren’t broke. And we had just arrived in town with the intention of staying. Any day I might find myself in need of curtains, or rose water, or a thimble, or a frock. Why lose a passel of sales over one holster?

  “Of course the holster’s thrown in, Miss Courtright,” he said, meanwhile slyly setting two boxes of ammunition on the counter.

  “That ammunition is what my brother needs to protect the citizens of this town from murderous killers,” I proclaimed. “Why shouldn’t the town pay for it?”

  “I’ll give you no argument there,” Beau said. “Of course the town should pay for it, which doesn’t mean it will.”

  “Who’s the boss of this bunch of hovels?” I asked. “The sheriff mentioned some deacons. Who would they be?”

  “Well, there’s Joe Schwartz at the livery stable, he’s one deacon,” he said. “Aurel Stein’s a second, and I’m a third. Old George Murray, who has a spread about twenty miles out, is more or less a deacon—but George is out of sorts right now. In fact he’s Sheriff Bunsen’s number one problem.”

  “I know Mr. Murray, he was a good friend of my father’s,” I said. “Is he a killer too?”

  “Not by trade, but he’s cranky,” Beau said. “Cranky old men can kill you just as quick as the professionals.”

  “That’s not many deacons,” I remarked.

  “I forgot Leo Oliphant. He owns the three saloons,” he said, sliding the pistol into its nice free holster.

  The two boxes of ammunition were still sitting there, in plain sight. It seemed we had come to an impasse. Beau wasn’t willing to give them, and I wasn’t willing to buy them.

  “Do any of the deacons have c
redit with you?” I inquired.

  “All except Leo Oliphant—being a saloon keeper means he’s a bad credit risk,” Beau said. “Few saloon keepers live to enjoy old age.”

  “What about Sheriff Bunsen—how’s his credit?” I asked.

  Beau winced at the question.

  “I should not be talking ill about our gallant lawman,” he said, “but getting blood from a turnip would be a whole lot easier than extracting cash money from Ted Bunsen.”

  “I see. If I put those shells on the sheriff’s bill you’d be hard put to collect—is that right?”

  Beau nodded.

  “He’s known to be a slow payer,” he allowed.

  “Here’s my compromise,” I said. “My brother, Jackson, is a hard worker, and honest as the day is long. He’s a wage earner now—no reason he shouldn’t pay for his own ammunition, is there?”

  “No reason unless he gets plugged by some killer first,” Hungry Billy remarked. He had wandered in and was standing around exercising his ability to waste time.

  “Son, go saw a plank,” his father said. “Now that the sheriff has taken a deputy, maybe the killers will spare us their attention for a while.”

  The upshot of the matter was that two boxes of high-grade ammunition got charged to Deputy Jackson Courtright.

  “What do you think about George Custer getting massacred?” I asked while Beau wrapped my purchases, which grew to include a pretty cotton frock and several hair ribbons I had succumbed to.

  “Oh, I try not to think of things like that,” Beau said. “Daily life is hard enough to survive, in these parts.”

  He got a sad look in his eye. I suppose the thought of all those dead boys near a creek in Montana put him in mind of his own pretty wife, Glenda, who passed away less than a year ago, from the bite of a copperhead snake. Most people can survive a copperhead bite, but Glenda Wheless had been in delicate health to begin with. The snake got her while she was picking snap peas from their garden—she sat down by a bush, and before anyone missed her she was gone for good.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” Beau said. “I liked the man, but I could never understand why he chose the frontier life. He didn’t seem to be the frontier type.”

  “He read too many brochures,” I explained, before I headed across the street to give my brother his gun and ammunition.

  8

  MY BROTHER, JACKSON, had already done admirable work with his broom. When I walked into the jail he was just sweeping a substantial pile of litter out the back door, where the wind would soon scatter it over thousands of miles of prairie. The debris consisted mainly of cigar butts, though I did notice a dead rat or two in the pile.

  “You’re a wage earner now,” I informed him at once. “The gun and the holster’s on me but the ammunition is charged to you. Where’s Teddy?”

  “He’s upstairs napping in the big cell,” Jackson said. “I don’t think he wants to be disturbed. He might have a toothache.”

  “I’m curious about something, Jackson,” I remarked, snooping around the jail and looking in drawers, as women will.

  “What?”

  “This fellow Mexican Joe, who is supposed to be a bad killer, I guess, came in the jail and took a broom. Why would a murderous killer take a broom?”

  “I don’t know and I hope you’re not thinking of waking Sheriff Bunsen up to ask him,” Jackson said. “I expect he needs his rest.”

  “His rest from me, is what you mean,” I told him. I could tell that my little brother was soon going to take against me and defend his fellow male. Jackson was plainly nervous about my snooping in drawers, but I didn’t let that stop me. Teddy Bunsen had proposed to me six times, and was probably working up to a seventh try. In my view that gave me every right to snoop—after all, he could have a locket with another woman’s picture in it. The fact that I had no intention of marrying him didn’t mean that I had no right to be curious about what other ladies he might have in his life.

  “I hope you don’t think I’m too hard on Teddy,” I said, with a grin.

  Jackson just sighed in a tired way, as if the whole subject of myself and Ted and Father’s death and the move to town had worn him to a frazzle, on the inside at least.

  “You’d better get on up to that rooming house,” he said. “What if somebody else rents that room—then where would you sleep?”

  He squatted down to prise the lid off the paint can and looked at me with one of those lonely looks that never failed to touch me. Father’s foolishness with the noose was forcing Jackson to have to grow up, and at a rapid pace. Father wasn’t coming back, and even when he was alive, he had been only occasionally helpful. Father looked to his own needs, and expected the whole family—a shrinking company—to look after him too. If anybody raised Jackson it was me—except for a dance or two back in Virginia, when I stayed out all night kicking up my heels, Jackson and I had never spent a night apart. But here we were in Rita Blanca, faced with the necessity of sleeping under different roofs for nearly the first time in our lives.

  “Jackson, are you sorry we moved into town?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said, “but I like this jail—it feels peaceful. I just wish you could stay here with me, Nellie.”

  “Out of the question,” I said. “But I won’t be far.”

  Jackson managed to get the top off the can of paint and was staring into the white paint as if he wished he could drown in it. Young men are just moody—there’s not a woman alive who wouldn’t testify to that.

  Then another thought crossed my mind.

  “Is it Virginia you’re hankering for?” I asked. “Is it that you’d rather just give up on the West?”

  Jackson had found a stick and had begun to stir the paint, which was going to have to be thinned a good bit before it could be slapped onto those dry-as-a-bone gallows boards.

  I suppose I was asking myself the same question I had addressed to Jack, my brother.

  “Do I have to answer right now? I need to find paint thinner,” Jackson said. “I sure don’t want to be quitting Sheriff Bunsen until I at least get those gallows painted.”

  “I wonder if the criminals will feel any better about being hung once they notice that at least the gallows have been newly painted,” I said.

  Jackson was trying to be serious about his job—he didn’t particularly appreciate my small attempts at wit.

  But the Virginia question was a big question and we both needed some time to think it over. Should we just go home?

  “Tell Teddy I hope he enjoyed sweet dreams,” I said. “Right now I guess I’ll take your advice and head on up to the boardinghouse.”

  “It’s the one with the hedge around it,” Jackson said. “They say the woman who owns it used to be a slave.”

  “How’d you get to be so expert on boardinghouses in Rita Blanca?”

  “Hungry Billy told me, the know-it-all,” Jackson said.

  “You mean Mrs. Karoo is a darkie—and they let her run a boardinghouse out in this wild man’s country?” I asked. “From what I’ve seen of No Man’s Land so far a darkie would be lucky not to get dropped from those gallows you’re about to paint—maybe with an anvil tied to her ankle.”

  “That’s not all Hungry Billy said,” Jackson confided. “He says some people think Mrs. Karoo is a witch.”

  “Yes, and some of the people might even think I’m a witch—which I’m not,” I said.

  Then I left Jackson to get on with his new job.

  9

  JACKSON WAS RIGHT about one thing: Mrs. Karoo’s boardinghouse had a hedge all the way around it, with an opening in the front and another opening in the back. It wasn’t a tall hedge yet—it came about to my waist—but Mrs. Karoo was out watering it when I walked up. If she kept at it the hedge would be a fine windbreak in another few years. Just seeing it made me feel better, because it meant that at least one other person in Rita Blanca had forethought enough to plant a windbreak. Civilization had made a start in No
Man’s Land, with the help of a tiny darkie woman barely five feet in height. She was the color of coffee that had a splash or two of milk in it, and she was expecting me, not because of any witchery but because Beau Wheless had rushed up to tell her to hold the newly vacated room—a neighborly act but also one that meant Beau was hopeful of tempting me to make a few more sales. He had also taken the liberty of telling Mrs. Karoo that Father had suicided himself—this I didn’t appreciate.

  Mrs. Karoo had deep gentle eyes; a smile was usually lurking around the corners of her mouth.

  “Why don’t you settle down here and be the mayor?” she suggested, two minutes after we had met. “A smart mayor is just what Rita Blanca needs.”

  I hardly knew what to say because the same thought had occurred to me.

  “I doubt these ruffians would ever have me,” I told her. Mrs. Karoo just smiled.

  The room was a little bleak, but at least it was clean and airy. There was an overabundance of sunlight, but some good heavy curtains would solve that problem. Mrs. Karoo had had the forethought to put a few sprigs of sage in a little vase, to brighten things up. Out my window I could see over Aurel Imlah’s hide yard, and on across many thousand acres of prairie. The rent was fifteen dollars a month, the same as Jackson’s salary. Breakfast and three meals a day came with it.

  A shaggy old hunter was snoring loudly on the back porch.

  “That’s Josh,” Mrs. Karoo whispered. “He’s an early riser and likes his naps.”

  I knew Josh, a little. He was the mail runner for No Man’s Land. Once every two weeks he’d hitch up his wagon and go north to Rabbit Gulch, where he met the trail. Then he’d come by the Black Mesa Ranch, drop off the mail and magazines—I could not do without my magazines, and neither could Father. Sometimes Josh would consent to spend the night.

  “A hanged man doesn’t lie easy,” Mrs. Karoo remarked to me in passing. “You’re not through with your father yet.”

  “Do you know that because you’re a witch?” I asked her. I suppose it was an impolite question, but Mrs. Karoo didn’t appear to be offended—if anything my question amused her.