The Nick Adams Stories Part 13

"They're coming in now."

"You go out the back and come in the front again. I'll go and talk to them."

Suzy waited around the long frame building and climbed the front steps again. This time she noticed everything as she came in. She knew the Indians who had brought in the baskets and she knew the two Indian boys who were looking at the fis.h.i.+ng tackle in the first showcases on the left. She knew all the patent medicines in the next case and who usually bought them. She had clerked one summer in the store and she knew what the penciled code letters and numbers meant that were on the cardboard boxes that held shoes, winter overshoes, wool socks, mittens, caps and sweaters. She knew what the baskets were worth that the Indians had brought in and that it was too late in the season for them to bring a good price.

"Why did you bring them in so late, Mrs. Tabeshaw?" she asked.

"Too much fun Fourth of July," the Indian woman laughed.

"How's Billy?" Suzy asked.

"I don't know, Suzy. I no see him four weeks now."

"Why don't you take them down to the hotel and try and sell them to the resorters?" Suzy said.

"Maybe," Mrs. Tabeshaw said. "I took once."

"You ought to take them every day."

"Long walk," Mrs. Tabeshaw said.

While Suzy was talking to the people she knew and making a list of what she needed for the house the two wardens were in the back of the store with Mr. John Packard.

Mr. John had gray-blue eyes and dark hair and a dark mustache and he always looked as though he had wandered into a general store by accident. He had been away from northern Michigan once for eighteen years when he was a young man and he looked more like a peace officer or an honest gambler than a storekeeper. He had owned good saloons in his time and run them well. But when the country had been lumbered off he had stayed and bought farming land. Finally when the county had gone local option he had bought this store. He already owned the hotel. But he said he didn't like a hotel without a bar and so he almost never went near it. Mrs. Packard ran the hotel. She was more ambitious than Mr. John and Mr. John said he didn't want to waste time with people who had enough money to take a vacation anywhere in the country they wanted and then came to a hotel without a bar and spent their time sitting on the porch in rocking chairs. He called the resorters "change-of-lifers" and he made fun of them to Mrs. Packard but she loved him and never minded when he teased her.

"I don't mind if you call them change-of-lifers," she told him one night in bed. "I had the d.a.m.n thing but I'm still all the woman you can handle, aren't I?"

She liked the resorters because some of them brought culture and Mr. John said she loved culture like a lumberjack loved Peerless, the great chewing tobacco. He really respected her love of culture because she said she loved it just like he loved good bonded whiskey and she said, "Packard, you don't have to care about culture. I won't bother you with it. But it makes me feel wonderful."

Mr. John said she could have culture until h.e.l.l wouldn't hold it just so long as he never had to go to a Chautauqua or a Self-Betterment Course. He had been to camp meetings and a revival but he had never been to a Chautauqua. He said a camp meeting or a revival was bad enough but at least there was some s.e.xual intercourse afterward by those who got really aroused although he never knew anyone to pay their bills after a camp meeting or a revival. Mrs. Packard, he told Nick Adams, would get worried about the salvation of his immortal soul after she had been to a big revival by somebody like Gypsy Smith, that great evangelist, but finally it would turn out that he, Packard, looked like Gypsy Smith and everything would be fine finally. But a Chautauqua was something strange. Culture maybe was better than religion, Mr. John thought. But it was a cold proposition. Still they were crazy for it. He could see it was more than a fad, though.

"It's sure got a hold on them," he had told Nick Adams. "It must be sort of like the Holy Rollers only in the brain. You study it sometime and tell me what you think. You going to be a writer you ought to get in on it early. Don't let them get too far ahead of you."

Mr. John liked Nick Adams because he said he had original sin. Nick did not understand this but he was proud.

"You're going to have things to repent, boy," Mr. John had told Nick. "That's one of the best things there is. You can always decide whether to repent them or not. But the thing is to have them."

"I don't want to do anything bad," Nick had said.

"I don't want you to," Mr. John had said. "But you're alive and you're going to do things. Don't you lie and don't you steal. Everybody has to lie. But you pick out somebody you never lie to."

"I'll pick out you."

"That's right. Don't you ever lie to me no matter what and I won't lie to you."

"I'll try," Nick had said.

"That isn't it," Mr. John said. "It has to be absolute."

"All right," Nick said. "I'll never lie to you."

"What became of your girl?"

"Somebody said she was working up at the Soo."

"She was a beautiful girl and I always liked her," Mr. John had said.

"So did I," Nick said.

"Try and not feel too bad about it."

"I can't help it," Nick said. "None of it was her fault. She's just built that way. If I ran into her again I guess I'd get mixed up with her again."

"Maybe not."

"Maybe too. I'd try not to."

Mr. John was thinking about Nick when he went out to the back counter where the two men were waiting for him. He looked them over as he stood there and he didn't like either of them. He had always disliked the local man Evans and had no respect for him but he sensed that the down-state man was dangerous. He had not a.n.a.lyzed it yet but he saw the man had very flat eyes and a mouth that was tighter than a simple tobacco chewer's mouth needed to be. He had a real elk's tooth too on his watch chain, it was a really fine tusk from about a five-year-old bull. It was a beautiful tusk and Mr. John looked at it again and at the over-large bulge the man's shoulder holster made under his coat.

"Did you kill that bull with that cannon you're carrying around under your arm?" Mr. John asked the down-state man.

The down-state man looked at Mr. John unappreciatively.

"No," he said. "I killed that bull out in the thoroughfare country in Wyoming with a Winchester 45-70."

"You're a big-gun man. eh?" Mr. John said. He looked under the counter. "Have big feet, too. Do you need that big a cannon when you go out hunting kids?"

"What do you mean, kids," the down-state man said. He was one ahead.

"I mean the kid you're looking for."

"You said, kids," the down-state man said.

Mr. John moved in. It was necessary. "What's Evans carry when he goes after a boy who's licked his own boy twice? You must be heavily armed, Evans. That boy could lick you, too."

"Why don't you produce him and we could try it," Evans said.

"You said, kids, Mr. Jackson," the down-state man said. "What made you say that?"

"Looking at you, you c.o.c.k-sucker," Mr. John said. "You splayfooted b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Why don't you come out from behind that counter if you want to talk like that?" the down-state man said.

"You're talking to the United States Postmaster," Mr. John said. "You're talking without witnesses except for t.u.r.d-Face Evans. I suppose you know why they call him t.u.r.d-Face. You can figure it out. You're a detective."

He was happy now. He had drawn the attack and he felt now as he used to feel in the old days before he made a living from feeding and bedding resorters who rocked in rustic chairs on the front porch of his hotel while they looked out over the lake.

"Listen, Splayfoot, I remember you very well now. Don't you remember me, Splayzey?"

The down-state man looked at him. But he did not remember him.

"I remember you in Cheyenne the day Tom Horn was hanged," Mr. John told him. "You were one of the ones that framed him with promises from the a.s.sociation. Do you remember now? Who owned the saloon in Medicine Bow when you worked for the people that gave it to Tom? Is that why you ended up doing what you're doing? Haven't you got any memory?"

"When did you come back here?"

"Two years after they dropped Tom."

"I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned."

"Do you remember when I gave you that bull tusk when we were packing out from Greybull?"

"Sure. Listen, Jim, I got to get this kid."

"My name's John," Mr. John said. "John Packard. Come on in back and have a drink. You want to get to know this other character. His name is Crut-Face Evans. We used to call him t.u.r.d-Face. I just changed it now out of kindness."

"Mr. John," said Mr. Evans. "Why don't you be friendly and cooperative."

"I just changed your name, didn't I?" said Mr. John. "What kind of cooperation do you boys want?"

In the back of the store Mr. John took a bottle off a low shelf in the corner and handed it to the down-state man.

"Drink up, Splayzey," he said. "You look like you need it."

They each took a drink and then Mr. John asked, "What are you after this kid for?"

"Violation of the game laws," the down-state man said.

"What particular violation?"

"He killed a buck deer the twelfth of last month."

"Two men with guns out after a boy because he killed a deer the twelfth of last month," Mr. John said.

"There've been other violations."

"But this is the one you've got proof of."

"That's about it."

"What were the other violations?"

"Plenty."

"But you haven't got proof."

"I didn't say that," Evans said. "But we've got proof on this."

"And the date was the twelfth?"

"That's right," said Evans.

"Why don't you ask some questions instead of answering them?" the down-state man said to his partner. Mr. John laughed. "Let him alone, Splayzey," he said. "I like to see that great brain work."

"How well do you know the boy?" the down-state man asked.

"Pretty well."

"Ever do any business with him?"

"He buys a little stuff here once in a while. Pays cash."

"Do you have any idea where he'd head for?"

"He's got folks in Oklahoma."

"When did you see him last?" Evans asked.

"Come on, Evans," the down-state man said. "You're wasting our time. Thanks for the drink, Jim."

"John" Mr. John said. "What's your name, Splayzey?"

"Porter. Henry J. Porter."

"Splayzey, you're not going to do any shooting at that boy."

"I'm going to bring him in."

"You always were a murderous b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Come on, Evans," the down-state man said. "We're wasting time in here."

"You remember what I said about the shooting," Mr. John said very quietly.

"I heard you," the down-state man said.

The two men went out through the store and unhitched their light wagon and drove off. Mr. John watched them go up the road. Evans was driving and the down-state man was talking to him.

"Henry J. Porter," Mr. John thought. "The only name I can remember for him is Splayzey. He had such big feet he had to have made-to-order boots. Splayfoot they called him. Then Splayzey. It was his tracks by the spring where that Nester's boy was shot that they hung Tom for. Splayzey. Splayzey what? Maybe I never did know. Splayfoot Splayzey. Splayfoot Porter? No it wasn't Porter."

"I'm sorry about those baskets, Mrs. Tabeshaw," he said. "It's too late in the season now and they don't carry over. But if you'd be patient with them down at the hotel you'd get rid of them."

"You buy them, sell at the hotel," Mrs. Tabeshaw suggested.

"No. They'd buy them better from you," Mr. John told her. "You're a fine-looking woman."

"Long time ago," Mrs. Tabeshaw said.