Younger eyes met older eyes. Both sets were flint hard and knowing.
“I’d try you, Charlie.”
Charlie chuckled and said, “I killed my first man ’fore you was even a glint in your daddy’s eyes, Smoke. Way before. How old do you think I am, Smoke?”
“You ain’t no young rooster.”
Again, the gunfighter laughed. “You shore right about that. I’m fifty-eight years old. I killed my first man when I was fourteen, I think it was. That’s be, uh, back in ’36, I reckon.”
“I was fourteen when I killed an Indian. I think we were in Kansas.”
“You don’t say? I’m be damned. Some folks would say that an Injun don’t count, but I ain’t one of them folks. Injuns is just like us…but different.”
Smoke stopped chewing and thought about that. He had to smile. “You don’t look your age, Charlie.”
“Thank you. But on cold mornin’s I shore feel it. Seen me a bunch of boomers headin’ this way. They made it to No-Name yet?”
“No-Name is now Fontana. Oh, yeah, the boomers made it and are still coming in.”
“Fontana,” Charlie said softly. “Right pretty name.” His voice had changed, becoming low-pitched and deadly. “Fontana. Now what do you think about that.”
Smoke said nothing. Preacher had told him the story about Charlie’s girl, Rosa Fontana, and about Tilden Franklin killing the girl and dragging Charlie.
The men ate in silence for a time, silently enjoying each other’s company. While they ate, they eyeballed each other when one thought the other wasn’t looking.
Smoke took in Charlie’s lean frame. The man’s waist was so thin he looked like he’d have to eat a dozen bearsign just to hold his britches up. Like most cowboys, his main strength lay in his shoulders and arms. The man’s wrists were thick, the hands big and scarred and callused. His face was tanned and rugged-looking. Charlie Starr looked like a man who would be hard to handle in any kind of fight.
Then Smoke had an idea; an idea that, if Charlie was agreeable, would send Tilden Franklin right through the roof of his mansion in fits of rage.
“You always sit around a far grinnin’, boy?” Charlie asked.
“No.” Smoke had not realized he was grinning. “But I just had me an idea.”
“Must have been a good’un.”
“You lookin’ for work, Charlie?”
“Not so’s you’d notice, I ain’t.”
“My wife is one of the best cooks in the state.”
“Keep talkin’.” He picked up a doughnut and nibbled at it. Then he stuffed the whole thing in his mouth.
“Wouldn’t be a whole lot to do. I got one hand. Name’s Pearlie.”
“Rat good with a gun, is he?”
“He’ll do to ride the river with. Some of Tilden’s boys hung a rope on him last week and dragged him a piece.” Smoke kept his voice bland, not wanting Charlie to know that he knew about the bad blood between Starr and Franklin. Or why. “Then they shot him in the head. Pearlie managed to live and get lead in two of them. He’s back working a full day now.”
Charlie grunted. “Sounds like he’ll do, all rat. What is he, half ’gator?”
“He’s tough. I’ll pay you thirty and found.”
“Don’t need no job. But…”
Smoke waited.
“Your wife make these here bearsign now and then, does she?”
“Once a week.”
“I come and go as I please long as my work’s caught up?”
“Sure. But I have to warn you…they’ll probably be some shooting involved, and…well, with you getting along in years and all, I wouldn’t blame you if you turned it down.”
Charlie fixed him with a look that would have withered a cactus. Needles and all.
“Boy, are you out of your gawddamned mind or just born slow?”
“Well, no, Charlie…but they’re gonna be broncs to bust, and with your age and all, I was just…”
Charlie threw his battered hat on the ground. “Gawddamn, boy, I ain’t ready for no old folks’ home just yet!”
“Now, don’t get worked up, Charlie. You’re liable to have a heart attack, and I don’t know nothing about treating heart attacks.”
Charlie turned blue around the mouth and his eyes bugged out. Then he began to relax and chuckle. He wiped his eyes and said, “Shore tell Preacher had a hand in your up-bringin’, Smoke.” He stuck a hard, rough hand across the hat-sized fire. “You got you a man that’ll ride the river with you, Smoke Jensen.”
Smoke took the hand and a new friendship was born.
16
On the slow ride back to the ranch, Smoke discovered that Charlie and Preacher shared one common bond. They both liked to bitch.
And like Preacher’s had been, Charlie’s complaints were numerous…and mostly made up.
“I stayed in a hospital a week one time,” Charlie informed him. “Them doctors found more wrong with me than a human body ought to have to suffer. I swear, if I’d stayed in there another week, I’d have probably died. They told me that no human bein’ could be shot twenty-two times and still live. I told them I wasn’t shot no twenty-two times, it was twenty-five times, but three of them holes was in a place they wasn’t about to look at.
“Boy, was I wrong!”
Smoke was laughing so hard he had to wipe his eyes with a bandana.
“Nurse come in that first day. That was the homeliest-lookin’ female I ever did see. Looked like a buffalo. Told me to hike up that gown they had me in. I told her that her and no two others like her was big enough to make me do that.
“I was wrong agin.
“I want to warn you now, Smoke. Don’t never get around me with no rubber tubin’. Don’t do it. I’m liable to go plumb bee-serk. Them hospitals, boy, they got a thing about flushin’ out a man’s system. Stay away from hospitals, boy, they’ll kill you!”
Pearlie was clearly in awe. Not only was he working for Smoke Jensen, but now Smoke had done gone and hired Charlie Starr.
“Shut your mouth, boy,” Charlie told him. “Afore you swaller a bug.”
Pearlie closed his mouth.
Charlie was clearly taken aback when Sally came out of the cabin to meet him…dressed in men’s jeans. With a pistol belted around her tiny waist.
Wimmin just didn’t have no business a-runnin’ around in men’s pants. They’d be smokin’ cigarettes ’fore long.
But he forgot all about that when she said, “Fresh apple pie for dessert, Mister Starr.”
“Charlie, ma’am. Just Charlie.”
The sun was just settling over the Sugarloaf when Sally called them in for dinner. Steaks, beans, potatoes, fresh-baked bread, and apple pie.
Smoke and Sally both noted that, for such a spare fellow, Charlie could certainly eat.
After Charlie had sampled his plate and pleased his palate, he said, “Bring me up to date, Smoke.”
Smoke told him what he knew, and then what he guessed. Including Tilden’s desires for Sally.
“That’s his way, all right,” Charlie said. Then he leveled with them, speaking slowly, telling them about Rosa. “Way I hear it, Tilden fancied that she was comin’ up on him. But that was her job, hostess at a saloon. Rosa had part of the action, owned about twenty-five percent of it. When I come to in the hospital, after Tilden’s boys drug me, Louis told me what really happened.”
Smoke glanced at the man. “Louis!”
Charlie grinned grimly. “Louis Longmont. It was one of his places. And you know Louis don’t tolerate no pleasure ladies workin’ for him. That’s more Big Mamma O’Neil’s style. Louis was considerable younger then, and so was I. Louis said one of his bouncers saw it all…well, most of it. Tilden was so drunk he got it all wrong. And when Rosa tried to break a-loose from him, he started slappin’ her around. Bad. The bouncers come runnin’, but Tilden’s hands held them at bay whilst he took Rosa in the back room and…” He paused, looking at Sally. “…had his way with her. Then he killed her. Broke her neck with his bare hands. You see, one of them doctors in that damnable hospital told me, once I got to trust the feller, that Tilden ain’t quite right in the head. He’s got the ability to twist things all around, and make the bad look good and so forth. He shapes things the way he wants them to be in his mind. I disremember the exact word the doc used. That buffler-faced nurse come by ’bout that time with some rubber tubin’ in her hands and things kinda went hazy on me.”