Terovolas Page 4

  Captain Quentin Morris came to Texas fresh out of the War Between the States about the same time Alkali did, though they had served on opposing sides. It took awhile for both men to figure out that all they wanted from life was to raise livestock. Alkali had to shoot his way through both sides of the law before it dawned on him to breed horses, and by that time Captain Morris (who was always a sight quicker on the uptake) had already had his fill of fighting Comanches and had left the Army to begin staking out what eventually became the Q&M. And hereabouts, only the Judson - now the Skoll - spread is bigger.

  Captain Morris and Alkali were of the same mold, and Cole comes from the run-off of that mold. Even as a boy, he could punch beeves all day long. Every night, if he doesn’t sleep the sleep of the bone-tired and the saddle sore, I believe he doesn’t feel as though he’s had a productive day and will get up two hours earlier the next morning to make up for it. He runs the Q&M like an old hand. His boys say that if a twister were to carry off the ranch house and their boss was left only with a mule and a milk cow he’d still bring a herd to market come winter. Not that Cole would ever allow such a thing to happen.

  After Captain Morris died, Cole came to look more and more like his daddy. He’s not as handsome as Quincey, nor as soft. Not to say Quincey was soft; it is well known that he is not the sort to have his hair mussed, but that was only because Quincey was prettier and more refined. When you see him, Cole looks like a man made out of braided rawhide. The sun has cracked his skin and jerked his lean arms the way it does all working cattlemen. If you see him with his hat off, everything above his eyebrows is fish-belly white but for his thinning dark hair. He has got the same brassy blue eyes as all his kin, but he doesn’t wear them as proud as Quincey - you have got to look under the shadow of his hat, and look hard, to notice them. There is something more honest about Cole too. He speaks his mind when he speaks at all, and he doesn’t play the crowd the way Quincey always did. I suspect that’s why I always liked Quincey better.

  But then, everybody liked Quincey better.

  Quincey had been a shoe-in for the run of the Q&M, even though Cole put in more time and had more practical experience. You couldn’t help wanting Quincey to get it. He was just that likable. I think when he up and left for Titicaca after that South American woman, he broke the heart of everybody in Sorefoot, not just the local gals. I know for a fact he did break his daddy’s. After Quincey left the old Captain’s legacy sitting like an Indian treaty, the Captain just sort of lost interest and Cole took over so gradually that no one gave it much thought, until his father passed.

  Quincey never even came home for the funeral. I asked Cole about him once, and Cole admitted the last letter he’d got, Quincey was sparking some English gal overseas. There was a sore spot between the brothers, and I don’t think it was only the ranch and their daddy.

  So it was sure a shock to hear what the old Professor had to say, with his hat in his hand.

  “It is with intense sorrow that I inform you, Mr. Morris, of the passing of your dear brother Quincey.”

  Quincey P. Morris, dead!

  But it was Cole’s reaction to the news that struck me dumb. He just stood there for all the time it took a frog to fart and then turned his head and spat his chaw on the ground.

  “Well,” he said. “Y’all come on in the house, I guess we’ll put you up. Gettin’ late. Think I’ll see if Pepperbelly’s through carvin’ them taters.”

  When he went back to the house with that sorry looking dog trailing behind, Van Helsing turned to me, a look of grave concern on his face.

  “Mr. Crooker, has there been some mistake? Is this not Coleman Morris?”

  “It sure is, and there ain’t no mistake about it,” Alkali answered, low.

  “They weren’t exactly close the last couple of years, Professor,” I explained.

  “Ah? Then what will he say when I tell him that I have brought his brother’s remains here with me?” And he patted a wrapped up box he had been carrying with his baggage.

  I just shook my head.

  “I can’t even imagine.”

  CHAPTER 4

  From the Journal of Prof. Van Helsing

  21st August (Later)

  I do not understand the sort of man Coleman Morris is. He is not at all like Quincey.

  My new friend Alvin had not prepared me in the least for the coldness with which my news was received. I suppose had I shared with him the nature of my visit to begin with, I might have thus saved myself the embarrassment of being caught in the center of a delicate familial situation. But what could I do? Do I not owe Quincey Morris my very life?

  I carried my bags into the house, feeling as welcome as the cholera. Mr. Coleman Morris did not even greet me properly, but loudly instructed his Spaniard to show us to our ‘bunks’ and took his place in the kitchen.

  Alkali deferred at this point, and said he would continue on to his residence, which was only a few miles down the road, despite the gathering dusk. He was wise to have done so. I gripped his hand (his left hand—the other is nothing but a wooden cap with a barbed gaff affixed to it), and bid him farewell. He is a most interesting man, and I hope the opportunity will present itself during my stay to hear something of his past adventures, for like a well-worn book with binding creased and jacket torn, I think his story must be quite enthralling.

  The Spanish manservant, Pepperbelly, had apparently learned all his manners from our stoic host. He led us up the carved wooden stair to the upper rooms without a word, the potato knife still in his brown hand as if he meant to murder us. I think that he must not speak English, as Alvin began speaking frankly to me as though Pepperbelly were not even present.

  “You old fool,” said he, “you should’ve told me about Quincey. I’d’ve saved you the buggy ride.”

  “From whence comes this ill feeling between them?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you, if you tell me how Quincey got dealt out. If I can borrow a horse from Cole, maybe I can still reset the obituary page before morning. This is real news, old man!”

  But I deferred, saying that it was surely not appropriate to relate the manner of Quincey’s passing to him in preference to Quincey’s own brother.

  “In case you ain’t noticed, the two of them got along about as well as Custer and Sitting Bull.”

  “But why? What can drive a wedge between two brothers like so?”

  But like a disappointed child, Alvin would say no more. Only;

  “Get it from the horse’s mouth, Professor.”

  I sensed that my friend was only playing at his bitterness. His deepest passion is journalism, but I sense that it is of the sensationalist variety. By his intervention in the matter with the would-be robbers in town I know him to be a true soul, else I would not bother with him. And anyway, he is quite correct. It is only right that anything I learn about Quincey’s past should come from his brother and not the secondhand suppositions of strangers.

  Pepperbelly showed us to our separate rooms, and I wasted little time unpacking my things and changing out of my travel attire. My ablutions, though I thought them to be negligible and in haste, were apparently still too time consuming for Texas.

  When I came down to dinner, Alvin was standing in the foyer looking annoyed. Seeing me in my dinner jacket, he wore a face of amusement. When I enquired as to the wellspring of his expression, he only shook his head and led me into the dining room.

  The dining room was a spectacular example of rural American ingenuity. Being short of wood, the imported long table was surrounded by chairs constructed entirely from cattle bone, horn, and tanned hide. The décor was gauche, yet did not strike me as inappropriate given the setting. Lord Godalming might have cocked an eyebrow, but I, who have dined with Zulus in their iqhugwane in Natal, found it charming. An officer’s saber hung on a prominent place on the back stone wall, beneath a painted portrait of an elder gentleman who bore a striking resemblance to Coleman himself. The gentleman in the picture was gallant
in a blue uniform of the American Army with two strapping youths standing upright on either side.

  I admit that I suffered from a bit of cultural disenfranchisement at the sight of my host. After all, the last dinner I shared with savages was in my younger days and I have since been gentrified by European life. Mister Coleman was already seated at the head of the table, and was halfway finished with his meal, being in the midst of sopping at the drippings of his steak with a torn hunk of bread. Beside him was Pepperbelly, supping loudly from a bowl of red beans. They were both of them in the same dusty denim clothes they had been wearing when I saw them. I was quite overdressed.

  Coleman looked up from his ironware at me. His blue eyes (so much like Quincey’s) regarded me dispassionately, as did the Spaniard’s, who did not give pause in his eating, but stared in open admiration of (or was it disbelief at) my formal attire over the rim of his bowl. Even the mangy, miserable looking hound feebly cracking a soup bone in his jowls stared at me from the corner with his one eye.

  “Take a plate, and get it while it’s hot,” Coleman said through his food.

  I did so, dishing out mashed potatoes, gravy, and forking a piece of blackened beef onto my dish. I helped Alvin do the same, and we took our seats across from Coleman and his man.

  “Why aren’t you eating too?” I asked Alvin under my breath.

  “I should be. You were taking so damn long I thought something was the matter with you,” he whispered back.

  “What happened to your arm, Alvin?” Coleman asked. “Get it caught in the press?”

  “Not quite,” replied Alvin. “This is a genuine battle wound.”

  “A battle wound?” Coleman repeated, just the hint of interest in his flat voice.

  “Harley Crenshaw...” Alvin began.

  “Thought the Crenshaws were both in Yuma,” Coleman interrupted.

  “Not anymore. Thanks to the Professor here, Harley is now cooling in the Sorefoot jailhouse. And his nose is for once being picked over by chickens instead of his own finger.”

  Pepperbelly looked up from his dinner.

  “His nose?”

  He spoke English after all.

  “That’s right, Pepperbelly,” Alvin said. “The Professor took it off with a bullet.”

  Coleman’s eyes flitted lightly on me for an instant, then back to Alvin.

  “What’s Two-Step going to say to that?”

  “Not much, I’d wager,” Alvin said, smiling as he fumbled one handed with his fork and tried to steady his knife with his wounded appendage.

  “Let me, please,” I said, moving to help him.

  But Alvin waved me off.

  “Get out. The day I let a Dutchman nursemaid me is the day I go back to the bottle.”

  Pepperbelly snickered into his bowl, brushing red juice from his black mustache.

  I took it upon myself to finish Alvin’s story, and related to them all the fateful encounter with the Crenshaw brothers, and the end that Mr. Two-Step had met at the hand of Alkali.

  It seemed to me that Coleman, at least, was impressed.

  “Well, now. That is something,” he admitted. “Funny too.”

  “How funny, sir, if you will excuse me?” I asked.

  “Funny ‘cause the last two bullets Two-Step ever took were both from Alkali’s gun.” He produced a blue and white checkered towel from his lap and swabbed it across his lips, leaving it in a crumpled heap on the table.

  “Old Alkali gave Two-Step his shuffle back before they lit out for Arizona. Some say he was the very reason they went.”

  Alvin concurred.

  “Yes indeed. He told them if he ever slapped eyes on them again it’d be on the last day of their lives. Prophetic.”

  I wanted very much to speak of Quincey, but felt it imprudent considering the presence of Alvin and the Spaniard. I was interested in Mr. Firebaugh.

  “Gentlemen, tell me about Mr. Firebaugh. Is he a desperado?”

  Alvin smirked.

  “Where’d you get that big word, Professor?”

  I felt abashed. Indeed, my usage of the word seemed alien even to my own ears. I suppose I was picking up the vernacular I’d read in a particularly lurid Beadle dime novel on the train from New York.

  “Old Alkali has been just about everything, I guess,” Coleman muttered, sipping at his coffee.

  “Yes sir,” Alvin said. “The further down the road you get, the tougher they are, and Alkali hangs his hat in the last house.”

  My eyes passed to the portrait on the back wall.

  “Who is the artist?”

  Coleman looked at me, knowing well what I meant without having to turn around.

  “My mother.”

  “She has captured your likeness perfectly. But who are the two boys? Your children?”

  Coleman smirked.

  “That’s my father.”

  “Oh?” I said innocently. “Then the boys are you and...?”

  Coleman’s eyes flashed. The subtlety with which I had trapped him was neither lost nor appreciated.

  Alvin cleared his throat.

  Coleman pushed back his chair and stood. Like a wary lion he had smelled my snare and backed away.

  “Guess I’ll be headin’ up. Pepperbelly’ll get your plates.”

  Pepperbelly grunted.

  “Cole,” Alvin said. “I wonder if you might lend me one of your horses. I’ll need to get to town early tomorrow if I’m to reset the print.”

  “You can ride with me. I’ve got to see the judge about Early.”

  “Ah yes, Early. I’d like to talk to you about that, in fact.”

  “In the morning,” Coleman said curtly. Without another word he left the room.

  I pushed back my chair and stood to follow.

  “You don’t know when it’s better to sit down and eat, do you, Professor?” said Alvin.

  I left him at the table with Pepperbelly and the dog cracking bones.

  I found Coleman ascending the stair, and called up to him. He paused on the steps, but did not turn.

  “I’ve a lot to do tomorrow, and little time to do it in, mister,” his voice was low. “So...”

  “I would like to know why you have not asked me how your brother died,” I replied, thinking straightforwardness my only venture in this instance. “I have traveled a very long way.”

  Coleman half turned on the stair and looked down at me. “Look here. I appreciate the trouble you took, and as a friend of my brother’s I won’t turn you out. But now’s just not the time. I’ve got a man in jail, I’ve got a killer wildcat takin’ its pick of my beef, I’ve got troubles with...”

  “When, then?” I asked promptly.

  Coleman stared, his face barely perceptible to my eyes in the gloom of the lamplight. He opened his mouth to speak.

  “When?” I said again, and not as a query. I suppose the travails of my journey combined with my aggravated state of mind and the violence of the afternoon had shaved my patience short. He looked on me for a moment, and in the space between us I could feel the slightest reduction in distance.

  “I’ll let you know,” he said.

  He turned and went up the stair. I heard his door shut.

  I did not return to dinner, nor did I bid Alvin goodnight. Instead I went to the room I had been assigned.

  I have not yet gotten used to the smell of the cattle outside, but I find the gentle lowing of their deep voices soothing in the dark stillness. It eases my mind of the disturbing thoughts I have had of late. As I write this, my lamp grows dim and I think now sleep may finally come.

  I had planned to remain only a few days in Texas, thinking I might continue on, possibly to visit a colleague of mine in San Francisco. But Mr. Coleman’s (I cannot yet bring myself to write of him as Mr. Morris, for did I not always refer to his brother as such?) words lead me to believe I may be here a bit longer. For Quincey’s sake I will remain as long as is required of me.

  I will tell Mr. Coleman the truth about Quincey’s passing,
and thus it is my hope, reinstate in him by the singing of his deeds some modicum of the love and respect for his brother which he has somehow lost.

  But again it occurs to me...how to tell it, when at last the time for telling comes? How to make a man believe that the brother he remembers with ill favor died in heroic combat with the darkest enemy of all of humanity?

  * * *

  From The Personal Papers Of A.N. Crooker

  Aug 22

  Early Searls and Sheriff Turlough are dead.

  I have seen a great deal of things in my years of reporting, but even now as I write these words I abhors to think on the way we found them, and worse, it makes me thirsty…and not for water. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  I didn’t wake up nearly as early as I had promised myself. I suppose my wound and the events of the day had me sleeping the sleep of stones a half second before my head hit the pillow.

  I had a nightmare in which the action in front of Gridley’s was repeated, but in this version, the Professor, instead of a revolver, pulled a lady’s shoe (of all things) from his bag. In this version Alkali did not appear and we were both gunned down by the Crenshaws.

  As though to capitalize on the strangeness of the dream, it was Professor Van Helsing that shook me awake this morning, looking as spry as a goat in the springtime. He had his bag in hand, and I heard him talking about breakfast and ‘Mr. Coleman’s’ saddling up, and the printing press.

  That got me up and out of my grave. I had forgot all about the damned daily edition, and how I had to reset the type for the Crenshaw story and Quincey’s obituary, and somehow pry open Cole’s jaw about the Skolls on the trip back to town.

  Well, that proved as easy as parting an Irishman with the last jug of his departed mother’s home brewed whiskey. Cole didn’t have much good to say about Sig Skoll and his Norgies, but he didn’t have near enough bad to say about them either. All he said on the matter was;

  “Them Norgies ain’t played me fair nor false yet.”

  “But how can you say that? Skoll’s lawyer called you a thief and a bushwhacker...well, he may as well have,” I said, as he shot me a glance.