—
“TWENTY DOLLARS A day!” Chimney said. “What the hell was you thinking?” They had just had their first decent meal in several weeks—beans and cornbread and fried pork and stewed apples and coffee—and were now lying on their blankets in the barn loft. There was a large hinged door at one end, and they had propped it open to let in a light breeze that was making the leaves whisper on the two oak trees in the front yard. Cob was already snoring down below them in the back of the farmer’s wagon. The horses were in a fenced-in lot behind the barn with the mule and a milk cow, and their guns were stashed under some boards behind a rusty plow that looked like it hadn’t been moved since the start of the century. At the other end of the loft, the saddlebag with the money was buried deep in some straw. The jugs of wine that Ellsworth had hid up there lay undetected just a few feet from their heads.
“I would have paid twice that,” Cane said. He could barely keep his eyes open. The last time he had felt this peaceful, their mother was still alive.
A nightingale let loose several soft, melodious notes, then stopped suddenly. Chimney sat up and looked over toward the house, a worried expression on his face. He was chewing the inside of his mouth, something he always did when he was on edge. After a few seconds, the bird started up again. “Do you really trust them?”
“Jesus, what do you think they’re gonna do? Climb up here and cut our throats? Tie us up and go runnin’ for the sheriff?”
“Well, what about Cob? He has a hard enough time remembering where he shit last. How you figure he’s going to keep that story straight?”
“Don’t worry about him,” Cane said. “What about you?”
Chimney spat out the door, then lay back down. “Hollis Stubbs, your dashing cousin.” He lazily scanned the constellations in the dark sky, but, unlike most men, he had never found much meaning in the stars. They were too remote, too silent. “Headed for Canada in search of my fortune.”
40
THAT EVENING, A man in a thin coat named Everett Nunley stumbled out the front door of the Blind Owl and began walking south toward the Whore Barn. Frank Pollard watched him from the window and chuckled to himself. It was the man’s first night in Meade, and just by coincidence, he had turned out to be from over around McArthur, where the bartender had grown up. For the last three hours, Nunley had drunkenly recited every goddamn fact and rumor he knew about the place, along with all the births and deaths recorded over the past twenty years, to the point where, if it hadn’t been for Pollard’s rule of never maiming or killing anyone whom the law might be able to connect him to in even the smallest way, he would have gladly torn the bastard’s arms off and thrown him in Paint Creek to drown. So it was easy to imagine his glee when, desperate to get shed of him, he mentioned to Nunley that the pimp gave out free pussy on Thursday nights, and the dumb sonofabitch actually fell for it. After he disappeared over the bridge, Pollard ate a can of sausages with a fork—he was a great believer in preserved food, and had recently been toying with the idea of trying to can a human—then turned out the lights and settled down in the back room on his cot. From time to time he picked up the jar of teeth he’d collected and shook them. The sound always soothed him, reminded him of the rattle his mother had made him out of a gourd when he was just a little chap.
—
WHEN NUNLEY FINALLY arrived at the Whore Barn, he walked up to Blackie and Henry sitting by the fire and cheerily announced he was there for his free piece. “What the hell you talkin’ about?” the pimp said.
“The barkeep said ye give it out every Thursday.”
“Barkeep? Which one?”
“Man named Pollard. Over at the Blind Owl.”
“Ah, he’s just fuckin’ with ye,” Henry said.
“You mean he lied to me?”
“He did if he told ye it was free.”
“I’ll be goddamned,” the man swore. “And I used to run traps with his daddy.”
“Hell,” Henry said, “you should’ve knowed better. You could search the world over and you’ll never find such a thing as free pussy.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” the man said, his face now clouded with disappointment. “Oh, well, he always was a prick, even when he was a kid.”
“How much money ye got?” Blackie said.
The man weaved on his feet and reached into his pants pocket. He pulled out a little change and struggled to count it in the campfire light. “Seventy-five cents,” he finally said.
“Have ye anything else you could trade? I hate to see a man go away horny, but goddamn, hoss, I got bills to pay.”