Against the Day (125 page)

Which should have sent Dwayne into
some fit of offended dignity, but instead, as Frank expected, turned him oily
as the Pánuco River on a busy day.

“Now, boys,” he said, “let’s not sour
what could be a happy reunion—for it seems I’m so snowed under at the
moment that it’d be almost a mercy if you could take some of this business off
of my hands. Especially seein how well connected you boys seem to be around
Tampico—”

“Damn,” Ewball as if he’d just
figured it out, “that’s why we haven’t seen him around here
before—Dwayne! ol’ Dwayne, why, you just hit town today, didt’n you?”

“Let me prove my good faith here,”
Dwayne said, “how’s a nice big consignment of them KragJørgensens sound to
youall?”

   
“Blam!
Blam!” Ewball supposed. “Kachunk, blam!”

“Come on, now, everbody likes a Krag.
That handy trapdoor magazine? been a great favorite for years now with riflemen
of many nations, includin the one we currently find ourselves in here.”

   
“Who
do we get sold to this time?” Ewball inquired mildly.

When Dwayne had gone off to the next
segment of his important day, Frank said, “Well, things
are
kind of slow.”

“Up to you. I’m staying as far out of
that poisonous little bastard’s way as I can without swearing off alcohol.”

   
“He
says the folks to see are in Juárez. One day up and back.”

“Unless it’s another of Dwayne’s
special little surprises, o’ course. Go on ahead, I’ll mind the shop, but you
get bushwhacked on this don’t come cryin and I’ll try not to say I told you
so.”

   
“Jake
with me.”

   
“
Vaya
con Dios, pendejo.
”

ust what kind of a weapons jobber would pick a place like
this to meet in? It appeared to be another of these damned ladies’ gathering
spots,just off the lobby of a reputable hotel near the Union Depot, tables
surrounding a patio, clean as a whistle, plaster on the walls white as new, a
steppingoff place for gringos making their first trip south, friendly señoritas
in charming native outfits bringing afternoon tea in matching crockery and so
on. Not a patch on the old El Paso—meaning three or four years ago,
before the Law and Order League got into the act. What’d happened to all those
very small back rooms down in the Chamizal, cigar smoke, selfdestructive
behavior, windows you could always jump out of? Since the good citizens had
forced everything interesting out of town and across the river to Juárez, these
damned little tearooms were showing up on every block. He looked again at the business
card Dwayne’s contact in Juárez had given him—E. B. Soltera, Regeneration
Equipment.

Though
not entirely tuned to female emanations, Frank noticed now a sudden dip in the
chitchat level as tables full of respectable wives and mothers, bundled in unstained
white dresses, first turned and then inclined their heads one to another to
pass behind the brims of their pure white hats remarks on the apparition
gliding toward Frank across the room. All he could think of was to sort of fan
himself with the little card and keep pointing at it with his eyebrows up.

   
“Business
name. Hello, Frank.”

It
was Stray, all right. Days and nights must have gone by when he’d been too
claimed by trail business to imagine them ever meeting up again, but she did
manage to cross his mind, once a week, maybe, cross it and often as not smile
back over her shoulder. And now would you just look. Not exactly trail

beat, more rosy and plump in a city way, though some of that
could have been the turnout and the rouge and all
. . . .
“Sure didn’t expect. . .” On his feet, shaking his head
slowly. “Well, I wouldn’t’ve bet.”

“Oh, all you got to do here in
E.P.T.’s just sit still, sooner or later everbody you ever knew shows up, your
whole life, everthin hoppin like Mexican jumpin beans ’ese days.”

He was about to go through the
gentlemanly routine, but she took her own seat without fuss, so Frank sat down
again, still a little discombobulated. “Place to be, eh?”

“For some kinds of business. Guess
you finally got tired of that little old Smith,” sighting down her parasol at
one of the matronly starers, who quickly looked away. “These KragJørgensens’ll
be U.S. Army issue, which th’ Army as you know’s been replacing ’em with a
newer Mauser type of model, so there’s a lot of Krags out on the market right
now, if you know where to look. Not that I ever get my hands on too much of the
merchandise, of course.”

   
“Gobetween.”

“Yeahp, percentage on a percentage,
same old tale o’ woe. Business with the Army sure ain’t like it was, no more
them twothree day binges with your good compadre supply sergeants, now it’s all
timing, quick in, quick out, for gosh sakes they’re always on the telephone,
Frank, they’ve even got the
wireless telegraph.
So even if I shouldn’t
be sayin so—buyer beware.”

“I’ll make a note, but you’ll
probably get your price, other side the river they’re gettin crazier as the
days go by, and the money this side’s comin from some unexpected pockets.”

“Best not tell me, I hear too much as
it is.”

For a full minute then, they sat
facetoface, as if waiting for time to slow down. Then they both spoke at once.

   
“Bet
you’re thinkin about—” Frank blurted.

“This used to be—” she began.
He smiled sourly and nodded her to go on ahead. “It was your brother’s old
stomping grounds here, El Paso. One of ’em. He drifted around the sanatoriums
posing as a richkid lung case from back east, workin ’em dayrooms like ridin a
circuit. Though he never did get the accent right. When he could find a nurse
who’d keep still for it, he’d get her to check him in, maybe even split the
proceeds, which’d often as not turn out considerable. I used to come in,
pretend to be his sister, got some funny looks from some nurses. Take notice of
a few poker hands now and then, pass along the news, nothing nobody ever
thought through. Then off we went. Or maybe just me, I forget.”

   
“Good
old days.”

   
“Why,
hell no.”

Frank scrutinized his hatband. “Oh,
but,” slowly, “you never know with that Reefer, do you, one these days he’ll
just come breezin in—”

   
“No.”

   
“You
sound pretty sure.”

   
“Not
with me anymore.”

“Come on, Stray. Bet you an icecream
cone.” He told her about running into Wolfe Tone O’Rooney, and how Wolfe had
seen Reef in New Orleans. “So we know he got that far anyhow.”

   
“Sakes.
Three years, doesn’t mean he’s still alive, does it?”

   
“I
feel like that he is, don’t you?”

“Oh, ‘feel’—listen, last I knew
they were trying to kill him, hell I saw them, Frank. Come down off that
mountain like they’s chasin old Gerónimo or somethin. Too many to count.
Could’ve had it out, I suppose, found a little Derringer for the baby, showed
him real quick how to sight the bastards in, but they just rode on through, me
and Jesse wa’n’ worth
their
time, ’fore the dust settled they’re over
the next ridge and it might as well been the edge of the world, ’cause they
never showed again. But there we waited. Don’t know—every day Jesse woke
up thinkin he’d see his Pop, you could tell that plain enough, and then the
day, and the days, went on, and there was all these other things to do. We
still kept waitin, both of us. There’s ’ese women like to wait, you know,
love
to even, I’ve run into a few. They get it confused with good works or
somethin. More likely enjoyin the peace and quiet. It sure ain’t for me.”

   
“Well.
What’s ’at young Jesse
up
to
these days?”

“Walkin, talkin, fears no man
whatever his size, be drivin a rig next time I turn around. Willow and Holt,
they have this little place up in northern New Mexico, he’s pretty much in
there with them when I’m on the road.” Watching his eyes, as if for the shape
his disapproval would take.

But Frank was too busy beaming like
an uncle. “Be nice to see him before he gets too fast for me anyhow.”

“Too late for that. Already playin
with the dynamite, too.” Adding, before Frank could, “Yeahp, just like his
daddy.”

Later, outside
, back from a stroll by the dusty
green river, Frank saw, coming quickly behind them along the sidewalk, almost
like a mirage in the blaring of heat and light, two local reps out from some
metropolis of the bad, faces or at least gaits he might have run across before.
“If these are friends of yours . . .”

   
“Oh,
my. That’d be old Hatch, and his saddle pal of the day.” She didn’t

turn around to look, but had reached casually beneath her
duster and come out with a little overandunder. Twirling the parasol for, he
guessed, distraction.
“Well,” Frank
checking his own outfit, “I was hoping for more caliber there, but happy to see
you’re heeled, and say—let’s figure on one apiece, how’s that? They don’t
look
t
oo
professional.”

   
“Nice
to see you out in public again, Miss Estrella. This here your beau?”

   
“This
yours, Hatch?”

“Wasn’t looking for no round and
round,” advised the other one, “just being neighborly.”

“Six hundred long empty miles to
Austin,” Hatch added, “sometimes good neighbors is all you can count on.”
Nobody packing anything Frank could see, but this was town.

“Well, neighbors,” her voice
maintaining a smooth contralto, “you’re a long way from the old neighborhood,
hate to see you come all this distance for nothin.”

   
“Be
easy to fix that, I would guess.”

   
“Sure,
if it was anythin but simple damn thievery.”

“Oh? Somebody around here’s a
damn
thief
?”
inquired
Hatch in what he must have been told was a menacing voice. Frank, who’d been
watching the men’s feet, took a short offangle step so as to have speedier
access to his Police Special. Coat buttons meantime were being undone, hatbrims
realigned for the angle of the sun, amid a noticeable dropoff in pedestrian
traffic around the little group.

Though having been obliged not long
ago to gun Sloat Fresno into the Beyond, and not yet given up on the hope of
doing the same for his partner, Frank still harbored too many doubts about
triggerplay to be out looking to repeat it with just anybody—still, there
was no denying he’d lost a whole ensemble of hesitancies back down the trail,
and Hatch here, though enjoying perhaps even less acquaintance with the
homicidal, might have detected this edge, raising the interesting question of
how eager he might be to back up his sidekick.

For really it was the sidekick who
presented the problem. Restless type. Fair hair, hat back on his head so the
big brim sort of haloed his face, shiny eyes and lowset, pointed ears like an
elf’s. Frank understood this was to be his playfellow—Stray meantime
having slowly drifted into a pose that only the more heedless of their safety
would’ve read as demure. The daylight had somehow thickened, as before a
tempest on the prairie. Nobody was saying much, so Frank figured the verbal
part of this was done, and the practical matter nearly upon them. The elfin
sidekick was whistling softly through his teeth the popular favorite “Daisy,
Daisy,” which since Doc Holliday’s celebrated

rejoinder to Frank McLaury at the O.K. Corral had been sort
of telegraphic