Read Tie My Bones to Her Back for Free Online Page B

asked.
    “To the livery stable. Then camp—about an hour west of town.”
    “Can’t we eat first? Or anyway, get something to drink? I’ve got coal smoke in my Kehl’.”
    “Plenty of coffee out at camp. Clean, cold water. And buffalo steaks. Over at the Cox House they’ll give you thin, lukewarm coffee, canned pork and beans, yesterday’s bread with pepper sauce to disguise it, and then charge you six bits for your supper. A man would have to skin out three buffalo to pay for a meal like that, though he’d still be wolf-hungry half an hour later.”
    He walked on glumly, his back stiff with suppressed anger. At what?
    “Another thing,” he said, “you’ve got to stop talking half Deutsch, half English. You sound like some Dutchy peasant fresh off the pickle boat.”
    “I’ll try,” Jenny said as humbly as she could. “But at least let’s stop for something cold and wet right now. Even if it’s nur ein Bier —sorry, just a beer. Bitte, Otto, please, it won’t take long.”
    “I hate this town,” Otto said gruffly. “All towns, for that matter.”
    But he was unstiffening a bit. She vowed to speak only English from now on, if it would make him happy.
    Ahead of them a man strode along, slow and full of himself. He was tall, pigeon-chested, with a wide black flat-brim hat, a tailored broadcloth suit of pinstriped gray, hand-tooled boots with high heels, and when he turned quickly to look at them they saw a ruffled white shirt with a black silk string tie. His flabby upper lip stuck out, sparsely mustached, under a long, sharp nose. His eyes, close-set, were rheumy but quick. The ivory grips of two Colt pistols stuck out of his waistband, sharp-curved against the dark figuring of his waistcoat.
    “Why, Otto, you old sausage stuffer!”
    “How’s you doing, Jim?”
    “Just fine, feller. How were things back East?”
    “Crowded. They’re all still talkin’ about you, though.”
    “Sure,” the man said in a scoffing tone. But he laughed in his long nose nonetheless, pleased, for all his self-deprecation.
    Then the tall man tipped his hat politely to Jenny, spun on his heel, and walked on, mournful and sudden as his earlier smile.
    “Who’s that?”
    “Duck Bill Hickok.”
    “Wild Bill?”
    “So they call him,” Otto said. “His real name’s Jim.”
    T HE BARMAN SLICED the head off two lagers with a single slash of his spatula, then topped the schooners. He slid them over, along with the free-lunch bowl. A drunken teamster was weeping at the end of the bar. Six cowboys played poker at a corner table, but quietly. The evening was young.
    “You got you a ladyfriend,” the barman said to Otto, smiling. “Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
    Otto took a long pull at his beer and wiped his mustache with the back of his hand.
    “This here’s my sister, Miss Jenny Dousmann,” he said. “Jenny, meet Fred Peacock.” They nodded across the bar, Peacock still smiling playfully. “Jenny’s going to hunt with me and Captain McKay this winter; she’ll rustle for the outfit, maybe skin some.”
    And shoot, too, Jenny added silently.
    “You look for a good season?”
    “Good as last year, anyway,” Otto said. “We sold Rath & Wright about three thousand hides all told, and McKay figures this year to be better.”
    “Not around here,” Peacock said. “They’re mighty thin on the ground up along the Arkansas, I hear. Say, I can remember when Bob Wright and me shot buff from his corral, to feed his pigs with. Down at the feedlot they had to hire guards to keep them durn shaggies away from the haystacks in the winter, right here in town, and that’s not long ago.”
    “We’ll probably hunt farther south this fall,” Otto said. “Plenty of buff down toward Indian Territory. McKay’s scouting the Cimarron country right now. He’ll sniff out them shaggies wherever they are.”
    “And you want to skin a few, do you, young missy?” Peacock asked. “We’ll, I hope you’ve got a