A Dead Man's Tale (17 page)

No Way to Treat a Lady

Once inside, Daisy Perika paused to lean on her walking stick.
It’s awfully dark in here.
The old woman blinked.
And quiet, too.
But not for long.

BANG!

When the door slammed behind her, Daisy almost swallowed her tongue. When her heart started beating again, she assured herself that…
it was probably just a draft.
Whereupon she heard a raspy clickity-clatch. What was that? The door latch.

Uh-oh.

Then, a whispery ripping sound.

A shadowy form was pulling a window shade down.

Big uh-oh.

Chico Perez switched on a spindly brass floor lamp.

Daisy found herself standing face-to-face with a scowling savage garbed in a towel.

The man of the house was brandishing a butcher knife. He took hold of her with his free hand. “What’s your game, you sleazy old pickpocket—you come to steal the few dollars I’ve got left?”

The old woman was unable to utter a single syllable. It is difficult to speak when a muscle-bound brute of a man has your neck gripped tightly in his hand.

“I ID’d the girl who drives you around in her red pickup.” He curled his lip. “But I haven’t gotten around to learning your name.” He gave the tribal elder a shake that rattled her teeth. “So spit it out—who’n hell are you!” He gave her another, harder shake. Daisy’s purse slipped off her shoulder, thudding onto the floor.

All his victim could get past her lips was a raspy “Aaarrrk.”

Perez laughed, then spat in her face. And had a second thought.
Maybe she didn’t come to swipe anything.
As a terrible alternative occurred to him, the young man eased his grip on her neck. “You figured you’d catch me sound asleep and…” He fought back the sudden chill of fear.
And put some kind of awful spell on me.
The possibilities were horrifying.
She might make a nest of tapeworms grow in my belly…or cause my eyes to dry up like prunes and fall out!

Daisy was attempting to find her voice.

“Save your lies, old witch—I’ll do all the talking. Here’s what’s going to happen next.” Perez thumped her left earlobe with the butcher knife’s cold steel blade. “First, I’ll slice off your ears and nose and make you eat ’em.” A pleased smile split his broad face. “And then you know what I’m gonna do?” Feeding on the fear in Daisy’s eyes, the sadist delighted in telling her. “I’ll cut out your tongue and stuff
that
down your gullet.”

Daisy gulped.

He gave her a moment to digest this horror. “After you’ve flopped around on the floor for a while, I’ll slit your throat.”

The aged woman knew he wasn’t bluffing.

“But while you’re still breathing, I want you to know what’ll happen
after
you’re dead.” He pricked her nose with the tip of the butcher knife. “Your friend Sarah takes an evening class over at the university. Some dark night when she’s heading for her pickup truck, I’ll be waiting for her in the parking lot. I bet she’ll be glad to see
me
!” As he anticipated this encounter, Perez’s face twisted into a hideous grin. “So what do you want sliced off first, granny—your pointy little rat ears or your shriveled-up pig snout?” He cocked his head. “Can’t make up your mind? Then I’ll decide for you.”

Daisy Perika closed her eyes.
God help me and Sarah!

She had never uttered a more heartfelt prayer. What she wanted was for Charlie Moon to step through the door and shoot her assailant stone cold dead.

Not a chance.

What she got was a near-death vision.

From some unfathomable depth in Daisy’s memory, a recollection bubbled up of her favorite movie star. But not a jittery old black-and-white flick on a TV; we’re talking sure-enough Technicolor filling a mile-wide silver screen. And Mr. Newman (bless his sweet, blue-eyed soul) was performing one of her favorite scenes. (The one where Paul is confronted by a muscle-bound oaf about twice his size who is about to beat him to a pulp and then some.) The Newman solution had been a fine remedy for a limber-limbed movie star working from a carefully crafted script, but the aged Miss Daisy suffered from a serious handicap:
I couldn’t get my foot that high if my life depended on it.

And it did.

But if the tribal elder could not manage a vicious kick, she did carry a big walking stick—and knew what to do with it.

And she did.

As is so often the case, the element of surprise was of paramount importance. That and the fact that Daisy’s oak staff caught Mr. Perez squarely in the spot where he was most vulnerable.

The butcher knife slipped from Perez’s hand. The brutal bully went down with a groan, hitting the filthy oak floor like an ox felled by a nine-pound sledgehammer.

Knowing that felled oxen are apt to get up and gore a person, Daisy got a good two-handed grip on her walking stick.
I’ll give him such a whack…

Then…fade to black.

Daisy blinked.
Oh no—I’ve gone blind!

Not so.

Chico Perez had yanked the lamp cord from the wall socket.

On Daisy’s second blink, the young man made a grab for her leg. As Perez’s fingers touched her ankle, the startled tribal elder shrieked like a banshee prodded with a hot poker—and began to flail wildly with her oak staff. There was a yelp from Perez as the club struck a glancing blow to his skull. The stunned man began to mumble incoherently.

The sensible part of Daisy’s mind screamed,
Run!

The other 99 percent was inclined to disagree.
Don’t leave till you’ve finished the bastard off.

Sensible never had a chance.

Her eyes now partially adjusted to the twilight in Perez’s parlor, the crusty old woman raised her wooden club and laid into the task with gusto.

Wap! (Another one on the noggin.)

Being old-fashioned, Daisy Perika was not one to leave a job half done.

Wap! (Across the back of his neck.)

Wap! (Noggin again.)

This exercise went on for quite some time, but the seemingly excessive violence was not unwarranted. Daisy knew that if the young man ever got onto his feet again while she was within his reach, she would be done for. Which is not to suggest that the club wielder did not enjoy her work. When she eventually ceased wapping her victim (because she was out of breath), Daisy leaned on her stick to rest from her exertions. While getting her wind back, the tribal elder evaluated the results of her work.
There’s no need to hit him another lick.

She bent over with a painful grunt to pick up her purse, and was about to loop it over her shoulder when a potential difficulty occurred to her.
Maybe I ought to leave his wallet here.
A lady never knew when a nosy cop might show up and tap her on the shoulder and…
I don’t want to get caught with a dead man’s property.
On the other hand…
My fingerprints are all over his wallet and I don’t have time to clean them off.
After weighing these pros and cons for about two seconds, she decided to take the late Chico Perez’s property with her. And would have left straightaway, except for the fact that she was no longer afraid. Moreover, as her fear had gradually subsided, a white-hot fury had filled the vacated space. As she considered the dead man’s dreadful threat against Sarah Frank, Daisy fairly burned with righteous anger. The scared old woman had been transformed into something truly frightful—a bloodthirsty victim bent on vengeance.
I almost wish he wasn’t quite dead yet, so I could kill him all over again—this time with his own butcher knife!

Which deadly instrument was on the floor by her feet.

Which circumstance gave her a fine notion.

In addition to his wallet, the furious old soul decided to take some additional items. And so she did.

In the interest of delicacy, the personal property purloined from Mr. Perez shall be designated as keepsakes. Or, if you prefer—mementos.

A Ute warrior would call them battle trophies.

Daisy Perika departed in the comfortable certainty that Chico Perez was dead, and with the cheerful expectation that his rotting corpse would not be discovered before swarms of rats had gnawed all the flesh from his bones.

Tough old lady.

Hard Work Makes Hearty Appetites

When Miss Muntz eventually found her way back to the spot where she had left Daisy Perika, the sleet-spitting storm clouds had drifted away. The tribal elder was waiting beside the road, her hunched form bathed in silvery moonlight. As soon as the flustered white woman pulled her Buick to a stop, the Indian opened the door and grunted her way into the passenger seat.

“I’m terribly sorry to be so long in getting back, Daisy—I realize you must’ve wondered what happened to me. Well, you would not
believe
the adventure I’ve had.” Miss M. proceeded to give an account of her unnerving journey along unmarked and sinister rural roads and how she had ended up at a “horrid cemetery all grown over with weeds” where she had heard “a whole pack of feral dogs howling for blood—or perhaps it was wolves—they all sound much the same to me!” On and on, her story went by mile and by minute until every detail was duly recited for her silent passenger. Eventually, the talkative lady remembered the original purpose of the night’s mission. “Oh, I’m so sorry—I almost forgot to ask—did you manage to take care of your little task?”

Daisy nodded.

Miss M., who was an ever-so-careful driver, turned her face briefly to beam on her friend. “Now that you’ve done the right thing, don’t you feel much better?”

The woman with the trophies in her purse admitted that she did.

“Good for you! Even though I merely played a supportive role, I suggest that we celebrate our mutual accomplishment.” She pondered the possibilities. “Shall we stop someplace for an evening snack?”

Famished by her exertions, Daisy suggested that they take their business to Sunburst Pizza. “I’ll get me one with pork sausage and double cheese and green chili.”

“An excellent choice, my dear. I shall order a medium calzone with Italian sausage. No bell peppers, if you please.”

This reference to calzone was a private joke, and both women laughed. Just like old times.

Not Everyone is Having a Pleasant Evening

Chico Perez had never been a fan of Paul Newman and he had no taste whatever for Westerns. The brutal fellow’s favorite movie was the original
Terminator
—and like that remarkably resilient android, Perez was hard to kill. At the very moment when Daisy Perika and Millicent Muntz were about to chow down on greasy pizza and succulent calzone, the severely injured fellow uttered a low, painful groan.

Mr. Perez was flat on his back—staring dumbly at the cobwebbed ceiling.
What the hell happened to me—I feel like I was run over by a truck.
Even in his stupefied state, he realized that such an event was unlikely to have occurred inside his living room. He strained to come up with a better explanation.
Somebody must’ve beat me up.
But the man who’d never been bested in a fight also dismissed that explanation as improbable. Gradually, in bits and snatches, the events of the evening began to come back to him.
It was that mean old woman—the pickpocket witch
. Perez concluded that the thief had cast some kind of spell on him.
Maybe she called down lightning and I got struck.
Rubbing a hand over his face, he felt sticky blood on his forehead.

Groaning pitifully, the muscleman got to his knees. Grasping the brass floor lamp, Perez pulled himself erect. After staggering, tripping over the lamp cord, and tumbling over a coffee table, he got up again, stumbled into the bathroom—and switched on the light to see what damage had been done.

Several of Chico Perez’s neighbors—two of them almost a quarter mile away—heard the mutilated man’s horrified screams. Not one of them thought of calling the police.

It was that kind of neighborhood.

Miles away, in a corner booth at the Sunburst Pizza Restaurant, Miss Millicent Muntz tapped a paper napkin at her lips. “The calzone was very tasty.”

“My pizza’s awfully greasy.” Daisy belched. “But that’s the way I like it.” One small piece remained on her plate.
I’m full, but I’ll wash this last bite down with some coffee.

Pleased with her success in reforming the aged sinner, Miss M. waved at the waiter. “This meal is on me, Daisy.”

The words
Oh no, I’ll pay for what I ate
were almost out of Daisy’s mouth, and her fingers were already unsnapping her purse—when she remembered what was inside it. The Ute elder withdrew her hand and smiled sweetly at her
matukach
friend. “Why thank you, Millie—that’s very kind of you.”

Hard Times Blues

There was no pretty way to put it: the Columbine Ranch was going under.

Charlie Moon had seen this black day coming for weeks, but the steely-eyed man who’d faced down snarling mountain lions, gun-toting hardcases—and even his aunt Daisy—had managed to find all manner of semiplausible reasons and farfetched excuses to avoid doing what had to be done. His most recent hope had been Samuel Reed’s forecast of an increase in the price of beef. But even if the successful investor’s insider information about a hoof-and-mouth outbreak in Argentina was right on the mark—and Moon figured that was a hundred-yard shot at a gnat’s eye with a slingshot—there were bills and wages that had to be paid
today.
After he attended to that grim task, there would be about enough left in his account at the Cattleman’s Bank to buy groceries and gasoline for a few weeks. The compulsive gambler was feeling like the village idiot for having bet his county back pay on the wager Reed had proposed to Scott Parris, but ten-to-one odds had been too enticing to pass up. And it seemed highly unlikely that Professor Reed would be dead or all bunged up when the sun came up on June 5. Problem was, by the time the rancher collected his hoped-for winnings, the Columbine cattle operation would be history.

A few minutes after sharing breakfast with Daisy and Sarah, Moon retreated to his upstairs sanctum with a third cup of coffee. While standing at the window, he turned on the FM radio and listened to the Gawler Family “Shinglin’ the Roof.” The music from Maine was fine and dandy, the splendid view of snow-capped granite peaks also lifted his spirits, and the flood of golden sunshine streaming inside hinted that Good Times were right around the corner.
Maybe I should wait for another day or two before I break the bad news to my employees.
But after he’d heard the
Morning Farm and Ranch Report,
the troubled stockman realized he was all out of reasons and excuses. Cattle prices had taken still another hit and it didn’t take a razor-sharp wit to read the proverbial handwriting on the wall.

Whether a man is pulling an abscessed wisdom tooth with rusty wire pliers or castrating a wild-eyed bull calf with a Case pocketknife, he gets the job done
quickly
.

Moon downed his last gulp of honeyed black coffee, snatched up the telephone, and put in a call to his foreman. As soon as he heard Pete Bushman’s gruff “Hello,” Moon barked back, “I want every man on the Columbine in the bunkhouse at ten
A.M
. sharp. No exceptions except for the half-wit who’s in jail for throwing another drunk through a barroom window, the bronc rider who’s laid up in the hospital with a busted pelvis, and that pair of West Texas outlaws that’re five miles away riding fence.”

When the boss of the outfit used that flinty tone, his brash, backtalking second-in-command cleared his throat and rasped, “Yessir, I’ll see right to it.”
He’s gonna do it.
The foreman returned the telephone to its cradle and turned to his plump wife with a bad-news expression that hinted of deep, dark depression. “I told you this was comin’. He’s shuttin’ the ranch down.”

The woman sighed and closed her eyes. “Oh, Lord help us all.”

Dolly’s bushy-faced husband patted her on the shoulder. “Now don’t you worry, ol’ girl—you’n me’ll be all right. Why we’re safe as…as…”
As snowballs in hell.
Pete turned abruptly, jammed a faded felt cowboy hat down past his ears, and booted his way across the parlor. He was out the front door and stomping across the porch before Dolly could sense the cold fear that twisted his entrails.
If I have to, I’ll get me a job fryin’ hamburgers
. He blinked bleary eyes at the Too Late Creek bridge.
If anybody in his right might would hire an old geezer like me for work a boy can do.
“Damn!” The eighty-year-old man kicked one of Dolly’s dead potted plants off the porch.

This served to boost Pete Bushman’s morale by a notch or two, but did nothing to help his big toe, which was already sore from being deliberately tromped on yesterday by a mare with a mischievous sense of humor.

10:03 A.M.

The bunkhouse slept forty, but rarely all at once because the men worked in twelve-hour shifts and a few were generally out tending to sick cattle, hunting predators, or raising bloody hell in Granite Creek saloons and then spending a few days (without pay) in jail. A privileged few (Foreman Pete Bushman, top hand Wyoming Kyd, and the burly blacksmith) had private quarters.

Charlie Moon, who breathed higher-altitude air than the tallest of his employees, stood like a lone pine at the east end of the crowded shotgun-style building. The Ute waited patiently for the murmuring of some fifty-five toughs to die down. When it didn’t, the owner of the outfit raised his hand. The effect was instantaneous silence.

“I expect you fellas know what this is all about,” Moon said.

They did. More or less.

“Times are tough. I won’t waste my breath telling you how foreign beef is eating our lunch and operating costs keep on going up. You know all about that.”

Somewhere near the rear of the gathering, a Mexican cowboy spat into a galvanized bucket of sand provided by the management for that purpose.

A grizzled old hand from Montana spat a salty expletive.

Moon ignored these pithy comments. “Here’s the deal. I’ve got to sell twelve hundred head of prime stock—and at prices so low it’ll be like slitting my throat.” From the rancher’s grim perspective, Samuel Reed’s hopeful forecast had dropped all the way from
long shot
to
daydream
. “With most of the purebred stock trucked out, there won’t be much work to do around here. And even if there was, I couldn’t meet payroll.”

Fifty-five pairs of eyeballs burned holes in the boss.

“I don’t know of any fair way to decide who goes and who stays,” Moon said. “You’re all worth your pay and more.”

Several snorts greeted this exaggeration. There were three notorious malingerers on the Columbine, a couple of drunks who could barely roll out of their bunks, and then there was Six-Toes, a ratty-faced lowlife detested by one and all.

“So here’s the deal. This’ll be handled more or less like you fellas had yourselves a union. The employees with highest seniority stay on the payroll.”
For a couple of weeks.

This was greeted with several sneers and a few moans and groans. Everyone present knew that Six-Toes had been on the Columbine almost as long as Charlie Moon, and a few months longer than the Kyd.

The man who boasted an extra digit on each foot displayed a satisfied smirk.

Moon had to steel himself against an overwhelming temptation to punch the mean cowboy senseless. Which, considering the fact that Six would have had to enroll in a five-year correspondence course to work his way up to moron, seemed more than a little redundant. Realizing that his hands were rolled into fists and weren’t of a mind to unwind, the Ute concealed the pair of knucklear weapons behind him. “Excepting a few of you who have special skills, the forty men with the shortest time are laid off.” Moon passed a sealed envelope to his foreman. “Pete’ll read the names off and see that you get paid off in cash.” After clearing the lump from his throat, Moon managed a few more words. “You’re all welcome to stay on the Columbine until you find another job, or until things pick up here and we need more help, or…till hell freezes over.”
This is even harder than I thought it’d be.
“You can sleep in the bunkhouse and you’re welcome to all the coffee and biscuits and pinto beans you can choke down.”
Until that runs out too.
The longtime poker player couldn’t read their stares. Moon took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, men. If I was a better rancher, this wouldn’t be necessary. But I’m not, and it is.” He turned on his boot heel and left the bunkhouse.

This was very close to being the hardest thing Charlie Moon had ever done—which was wrapping his mother’s frail corpse in an old blanket and laying her to rest in
Cañón del Espíritu
.

Inside the Columbine headquarters, Moon collapsed onto a chair by the hearth.
I never expected to get rich selling beef on the hoof.
He watched the last amber embers die in the fireplace.
All I wanted was to be a cattle rancher.
Well, a little more than that. A
successful
cattle rancher. It never entered his mind to blame the five-year drought, the annual scourge of range worms and locusts, the Argentines and South Africans who were underselling American beef, or hard times in general. The buck stopped here and the bottom line was that Charlie Moon was responsible for what happened on the Columbine.

The on-the-wagon alcoholic who attended AA meetings almost every week got up, took nine long strides across the parlor, and stomped through the headquarters dining room and into the kitchen, where he poured himself a stiff drink that would’ve stopped a runaway freight train on a dime, or a charging buffalo on a nickel.

No. Not
that.

A man-sized mug of Aunt Daisy’s brackish black coffee.

Unsweetened and cold as a Yukon toad-frog’s toes.

After the last gulp, the heartsick rancher set the mug aside, made a grab for the kitchen telephone, and dialed the number of a cattle broker in Denver. Moon listened to the drawling voice mail message that invited him to “tell me what’s on your mind after the tone, podner—and I’ll get back t’you soon as I can.” When the signal beeped in his right ear, the stockman cleared his throat and heard himself say, “Hello, Roy—this is Charlie Moon. Except for a few head of prime breeding stock, I’d like to sell off my whole herd. I’ll be in and out of the headquarters, so if I don’t pick up on the Columbine landline call me on my mobile number.”
Well, that takes care of that.
He returned the telephone to its wall-mounted cradle.
By this time tomorrow, the Columbine’ll be out of business.
The rancher felt himself getting numb all over.

But not enough to anesthetize the big hurt.

Charlie Moon wanted to go away for a while.
To some quiet place where I won’t have to talk to anybody.
Or look a laid-off cowboy in the eye.
Maybe I ought to saddle up Paducah and go for a long ride in the mountains.
That sounded like just the right medicine.
I’ll find a stream where nobody’s fished for a hundred years or more.
The Ute sighed.
Sleeping on the ground for a few nights would do me a world of good.

Without a doubt. But he was not about to enjoy an interlude of peaceful solitude.

Dr. Fate had written an alternative prescription for this soul-weary man who sought a few hours of peace.

Call it a diversion.