Butcher's Crossing (34 page)

Miller strode to the bar and slapped his hand heavily upon it, causing the empty glass to jump and teeter on its edge. “Hey!” Miller called, and called again: “Hey, bartender!” No one answered his call.

Miller shrugged, took the bottle of whisky by its neck, and poured the glass nearly full. “Here,” he said to Charley Hoge, and pushed the glass toward him. “It’s on the house.”

Charley Hoge, standing beside Andrews, looked for a moment without moving at the drink of whisky. His eyes turned to Miller, and back to the drink again. Then he seemed to fall forward toward the bar, his feet moving just quickly enough to keep the balance of his body. He took the drink unsteadily, sloshing it over his hand and wrist, and put it thirstily to his lips, leaning his head back and taking it in long noisy gulps.

“Take it slow,” Miller said, grasping his crippled arm and shaking it. “You ain’t had any in a long time.”

Charley Hoge shook his arm as if Miller’s hand were a fly upon bare skin. He set the glass down empty; his eyes were streaming and he gasped as if he had been running a long distance. Then his face tightened, and paled; he held his breath for an instant; almost nonchalantly, he leaned across the bar and retched upon the floor behind it.

“Too fast,” Miller said. “I told you.” He poured only an inch of whisky into the glass. “Try her again.”

Charley Hoge drank it in a single gulp. He waited for a moment, and then nodded to Miller. Miller filled the glass again. The bottle was almost empty. He waited until Charley Hoge had drunk some more of the whisky; then he emptied the bottle into his glass, and tossed the bottle behind the bar.

“Let’s see if there’s anybody in the other room,” he said.

Again one by one, with Miller in the lead, the three men went through the door that led into the large room next to the bar. The room was dim, lighted only by the flowing dusk that seeped through the narrow windows set high in the walls. Only two of the many tables were occupied; at one of them, across the room, sat two women, who glanced up as the three men walked through the door. Andrews took a step toward them, peering at them through the dimness; they returned his stare dully; he looked away. At the other table were two men, who glanced at them and then returned to a low-voiced conversation. One of the men wore a white shirt and an apron; he was very small and fat with large moustaches and a perfectly round face that glistened in the dimness. Miller clumped across the rough floor and stood beside the table.

“You the bartender?” he asked the small man.

“That’s right,” the man said.

“I’m looking for McDonald,” Miller said. “Where’s he staying?”

“Never heard of no McDonald,” the bartender said, and turned back to his companion.

“Used to be the hide buyer around here,” Miller said. “His place is just out of town, by the creek. Name of J. D. McDonald.”

The bartender had not turned again while he was speaking. Miller let his hand fall on the man’s shoulder. He squeezed and pulled the man around to face him.

“You pay attention when I’m talking to you,” Miller said quietly.

“Yes, sir,” the bartender said. He did not move beneath Miller’s grasp. Miller loosened his hand.

“Now, did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, sir,” the bartender said. He licked his lips, and put one hand to his shoulder and rubbed it. “I heard you. But I never heard of him. I only been here a month or maybe a little more. I don’t know anything about any McDonald or any hide buyer.”

“All right,” Miller said. He stepped back from the man. “You go in the bar and bring us back a bottle of whisky and some eats. My friend here—” he pointed to Charley Hoge—”threw up behind your counter. You’d better clean it up.”

“Yes, sir,” the bartender said. “All I’ll be able to get for you is some fried side meat and warmed-up beans. That be all right?”

Miller nodded and went to a table several feet away from that of the two men. Andrews and Charley Hoge followed behind him.

“That son-of-a-bitch McDonald,” Miller said. “He’s run out on us. Now we probably won’t be able to get any money for those hides we left until we can deliver them.”

Andrews said, “Mr. McDonald probably just got tired of the paper work, and took off for a while. There are too many hides back at his place for him just to leave them.”

“I don’t know,” Miller said. “I never trusted him.”

“Don’t worry,” Andrews said, and looked restlessly about him. One of the two women whispered something to her companion, and got up from the table; she fixed a smile on her face and walked loosely across the floor toward them. Her face was swarthy and thin, and her sparse black hair was fluffed in wisps about it.

“Honey,” she said in a thin voice, looking at all of them, her lips pulled back over her teeth, “can I get anything for you? Do you want anything?”

Miller leaned back in his chair, and looked at her with no expression on his face. He blinked twice, slowly, and said: “Sit down. You can have a drink when the man brings the bottle.”

The woman sighed and seated herself between Andrews and Miller. Quickly, expertly, she looked them over with small black eyes that moved stiffly behind puffed eyelids. She let the smile loosen on her face.

“Looks like you boys ain’t been in town for a long time. Hunters?”

“Yeah,” Miller said. “What’s wrong around here? This town die?”

The bartender came in with a bottle of whisky and three glasses.

“Honey,” the woman said to him, “I left my glass on the other table, and these gentlemen have asked me to have a drink with them. Get it for me, will you?”

The bartender grunted, and got her glass from the other table.

“Do you want my friend to join us?” the woman said, jerking her thumb in the direction of the table where the other woman waited torpidly. “We could made up a little party.”

“No,” Miller said. “This is all right. Now, what’s happened to this town?”

“It’s been pretty dead the last few months,” the woman said. “No hunters at all. But you wait. Wait till fall. It’ll pick up again.”

Miller grunted. “Hunting go bad?”

She laughed. “Lord, don’t ask me. I don’t know anything about that.” She winked. “I don’t do much talking with the men; that ain’t my line.”

“You been here long?” Miller asked.

“Over a year,” she said, and nodded sadly. “This little town’s been good to me; I hate to see it slow down.”

Andrews cleared his throat. “Are—many of the same girls still here?”

When she did not smile, the skin hung in loose folds on her face. She nodded. “Some. Lots of them have pulled out, though. Not me. This town’s been good to me; I aim to stay around for awhile.” She drank deeply from the glass of whisky she had poured.

“If you’ve been around a year,” Miller said, “you must have heard of McDonald. The hide buyer. Is he still around?”

The woman coughed and nodded. “Last I heard, he still was.”

“Where’s he staying?” Miller asked.

“He was at the hotel for a while,” she said. “Last I heard, he was staying in the old bunkhouse, out back.”

Miller pushed his barely tasted glass of whisky in front of Charley Hoge. “Drink it,” he said, “and let’s get out of here.”

“Ah, come on,” the woman said. “I thought we was going to have a little party.”

“You take what’s left of this bottle,” Miller said, “and you and your friend can have a party. We got business.”

“Ah, come on, honey,” the woman said, and put her hand on Miller’s arm. Miller looked at her hand for a moment, and then casually, with a flick of his fingers, brushed it off, as if it were an insect that had dropped there.

“Well,” the woman said, and smiled fixedly, “thanks for the bottle.” She took its neck in her bony fingers and got up from the table.

“Wait,” Andrews said as she started to move away. “There was a girl here last year—her name was Francine. I was wondering if she was still around.”

“Francine? Sure. She’s still around. But not for long. She’s been packing the last few days. You want me to go up and get her?”

“No,” Andrews said. “No, thank you. I’ll see her later.” He leaned back in his chair, and did not look at Miller.

“For God’s sake,” Miller said. “Schneider was right. You have had that little whore on your mind. I’d almost forgot about her. Well, you can do what you want about her; but right now we got more important things.”

“Don’t you want to wait for our food?” Andrews said.

“You can eat later if you want,” Miller said. “Right now, we get this McDonald business settled.”

They roused Charley Hoge from his contemplation of the empty glass, and went out of the saloon into the dusk. No lights cut through the growing dark. The men stumbled over the board sidewalks as they went up the street. Beyond Jackson’s Saloon they turned to their right and made their way past the outdoor staircase that led to the upper floor of Jackson’s. As they walked, Andrews looked up at the dark landing and the darker rectangle of the door, and continued looking upward as they passed the building. At the back he saw through a window the faint glow of a lamp; but he could see no movement in the room from which the light came. He stumbled in the thick grass that grew in the open field over which they walked; thereafter he looked before him and guided Charley Hoge beside him.

Some two hundred yards from the rear of Jackson’s Saloon, across the field in a westerly angle, the low flat-roofed sleeping house rose vaguely in the dark.

“There’s somebody in there,” Miller said. “I can see a light.”

A weak glow came from the half-opened door. Miller went a few steps ahead of the others, and kicked it open. The three men crowded in; Andrews saw a single huge room, low-raftered and perfectly square. Twenty or thirty beds were scattered about the room; some were overturned, and others were placed at random angles to each other. None of these held mattresses, and none was occupied. At the far end of the room, in a corner, a dim lantern burned, throwing into shadow the shape of a man who sat on the edge of a bed, hunched over a low table. At the sound of the men entering, he lifted his head.

“McDonald!” Miller called.

The figure rose from the bed, and backed out of the light. “Who’s that?” he asked in a vague, querulous voice.

The three men advanced toward him, moving through the scattered bed frames. “It’s us, Mr. McDonald,” Andrews said.

“Who?” McDonald lowered his head and peered out of the light. “Who’s that talking?”

The men came into the dim mass of light cast by the lantern hung from a hook in one of the corner rafters. McDonald came close to them, and peered from one of their faces to another, blinking slowly as his protuberant blue eyes took them in.

“My God!” he said. “Miller. Will Andrews. My God! I’d given you up for dead.” He came to Andrews, and grasped both his arms with thin, tight hands. “Will Andrews.” His hands trembled on Andrews’s arms, and then his whole body began trembling.

“Here,” Andrews said. “Sit down, Mr. McDonald. I didn’t mean to give you a shock.”

“My God!” McDonald said again, and sank upon the edge of the bed; he stared at the three men and shook his head from side to side. “Give me a minute to get over it.” After a moment, he straightened. “Wasn’t there another one of you? Where’s your skinner?”

“Schneider,” Miller said. “Schneider’s dead.”

McDonald nodded. “What happened?”

“Drowned,” Miller said. “When we were crossing a river on our way back.”

McDonald nodded again, vacantly. “You found your buffalo, then.”

“We found them,” Miller said. “Just like I told you we would.”

“Big kill,” McDonald said.

“A big one,” Miller said.

“How many hides did you bring back?”

Miller breathed deeply, and sat on the edge of a bed facing McDonald. “None,” he said. “We lost them in the river, same time Schneider was killed.”

McDonald nodded. “The wagon, too, I guess.”

“Everything,” Miller said.

McDonald turned to Andrews. “Got cleaned out?”

Andrews said, “Yes. But it doesn’t matter.”

“No,” McDonald said. “I guess not.”

“Mr. McDonald,” Andrews said. “What’s the matter here? Why are you staying in this place? We stopped by your office on the way in. What’s happened?”

“What?” McDonald said. He looked at Andrews and blinked. Then he laughed dryly. “It takes a lot of telling. Yes, sir. A lot of telling.” He turned to Miller. “So you got nothing to show for your trip. You got snowed in the mountains, I guess. And you got nothing to show for a whole winter.”

“We got three thousand hides, winter prime, cached away up in the mountains. They’re just waiting. We got something to show.” Miller looked at him grimly.

McDonald laughed again. “They’ll be a comfort to you in your old age,” he said. “And that’s all they’ll be.”

“We got three thousand prime hides,” Miller said. “That’s better than ten thousand dollars, even after our expense of bringing them back down.”

McDonald laughed, and his laughter choked in a fit of coughing. “My God, man. Ain’t you got eyes? Ain’t you looked around you? Ain’t you talked to anyone in this town?”

“We had an agreement,” Miller said. “You and me. Four dollars apiece for prime hides. Ain’t that right?”

“That’s right,” McDonald said. “That’s dead right. Nobody would argue with that.”

“And I aim to hold you to it,” Miller said.

“You aim to hold me to it,” McDonald said. “By God, I wish you could.” He got up from the bed and looked down at the three men who sat opposite him. He turned completely around, and, facing them again, lifted his hands and ran his bony fingers through his thinning hair. Then he held his hands, palms up, out toward the three men. “You can’t hold me to nothing. Can’t you see that? Because I got nothing. Thirty, forty thousand hides down at the pits that I bought and paid for this last fall. All the money I had. You want them? You can have them for ten cents apiece. You might be able to make a little profit on them��next year, or the year after.”

Miller lowered his head and swung it before him, slowly, from side to side.

“You’re lying,” he said. “I can go to Ellsworth.”

“Go on,” McDonald shouted. “Go on to Ellsworth. They’ll laugh at you. Can’t you look at it straight? The bottom’s dropped out of the whole market; the hide business is finished. For good.” He lowered his head and thrust it close to Miller’s. “Just like you’re finished, Miller. And your kind.”