David Gates: The Cottonwoods

It was windless and still, but the smell of death was unmistakable.

He came on the stand of cottonwoods in late afternoon. The day was still punishingly hot, and he and the claybank mare were alike grateful for the shade and water. Cottonwoods were known for liking their feet wet, so to speak, growing along streambeds. It was early June, and the seedpods had ripened and burst. The earth was feathered with them, soft as air, like snowflakes dusting the ground, too light to settle and melt, the windblown seedlings looking for an opportunity to root.

Moving under the trees, the claybank shied, catching the scent first, and Placido Geist dismounted, knowing the mare had her own queer horse reasons. It was windless and still, but the smell of death was unmistakable, ripe as the seedpods of the cottonwoods. He tied the reins off to a branch and walked down toward the creek bed, gun in hand, cautious of surprise. He was all too aware of what he was likely to find.

He was somewhat startled, just the same. He’d expected a victim, animal or human, a dead deer, a man shot accidentally or by design. Not this.

The hanged man had been there a good two days. His skin was discolored, dark as an eggplant, his flesh swollen, the rope sunk to the spine, his jawline yeasty and putrefied.

Placido Geist cut him down. The old bounty hunter had seen more than his share of dead men, had put more than his share in the ground, had in fact once left a man just like this, bait for ravens and wasps, a host to maggots. It was an uneasy memory.

He was something off his graze, this being East Texas, not West. The town he rode into at dusk was called Dime Box.

It was small and dusty, the main street unmetaled. There were a couple of automobiles parked by the livery, though, when he went to board his horse, and from the lines strung along poles overhead, there appeared to be a local telephone exchange.

He asked directions to the sheriff’s office.

The deputy on duty seemed to Placido Geist amiable but dull witted. Not a man to confide his misgivings in. After some desultory conversation, it was discovered the sheriff might himself be found at supper, across the street.

It was styled a delicatessen. An immigrant family, German Jewish, perhaps thought more at home in New York or Chicago, had put down their stake in this hinterland and were enjoying considerable success, from the evidence of a full dining area, a busy kitchen, and boisterous custom. Placido Geist had second thoughts about disturbing the sheriff in these comfortable surroundings, but the man waved him to a seat opposite. Placido Geist ordered sauerbraten and retailed his errand.

“Two, maybe three days dead, you say?” the sheriff asked.

“I’d calculate,” Placido Geist said.

“You buried him.” A statement, not a question.

“I wasn’t inclined to ride sidesaddle with a cadaver so far advanced,” Placido Geist said.

“Point taken,” the sheriff said. He was a man not much ahead of middle age, although twenty years younger than the old bounty hunter. He seemed comfortable in his position, not someone to get overinflamed. His name was Duquesne, which he pronounced carefully, doo-KANE. The lawman obviously attached some importance, and a history of irritation, to people not getting it right. “I’ve heard of you,” he went on. “Probably most people have, this neck of the woods. By all accounts, you’re not someone to be shaken off. What’s your sense of this, the man in the cottonwoods?”

“Horse thief, a rustler. I couldn’t speak to specifics.”

“No identification, I’m assuming.”

Placido Geist took a small oilskin packet out of his vest.

“His pockets were empty,” he said. “But if they meant him to go to his grave unremarked, they overlooked this.”

Duquesne looked at the packet as if it were a tarantula.

“Found it in his boot,” Placido Geist said. “It’s a letter he asks be sent to his mother, back in Montrose, Michigan, should he be found in circumstances similar to those I found him in. Name of Beauchamp, it’s spelled. BEECH-um, I’d imagine.”

The sheriff didn’t acknowledge this touch of ridicule. He regarded Placido Geist with hooded eyes. “I’d have to look into it,” he said.

“Can’t ask for better than that,” Placido Geist said, and applied himself to dinner. The sauerbraten was excellent, sweet and pungent, just sour enough, the meat fork-tender.

The sheriff excused himself, his meal not yet finished.

The hotel was somewhat mean, disheveled if not disreputable. The room was cramped, and the single window faced an alleyway, letting in little light. The bedstead was creaky and the mattress lumpy — the linens threadbare, although clean enough. He went down the hall to draw a bath, and found the hot water to be unreliable. He went without.

Resigned to spending the night dirty, he decided to turn in early. It wasn’t half past eight, but he was feeling his time in the saddle. The old bounty hunter was in his sixties. There were days now that seemed longer than others.

He struggled to get his boots off, folded his outergarments carefully, and hung them over the back of a chair.

There was a knock on his door. A little tentative.

Placido Geist called out some excuse while he pulled his pants on again. And took the time to snap open the loading gate of the.45 single action with the three-inch barrel and rotate the cylinder. He tucked the gun in his belt at the small of his back, the butt to the right, so-called Mexican carry.

He opened the door.

The girl looked not above nineteen. Nor was she in any way disheveled, but she was definitely disreputable. Her makeup was too liberally applied for daylight, and her manner of dress showed a good deal more skin than appropriate for a librarian or a maiden schoolmarm.

“No offense, ma’am,” he said to her, “but I’ve no use for a whore this evening.”

“Edgar Beauchamp,” she said. “Known generally as Tip.”

Aah, he thought, inviting her in. He didn’t think this was a badger game.

Her name was Willie, she told him, and Tip Beauchamp had been swaining her. Not that she imagined he’d take her out of the life, that was an abandoned hope, but he’d treated her with some respect, in itself unusual. She wasn’t allowed to pick and choose her custom. She took what came, much of it rough trade.

Placido Geist heard the lineaments of a narrative here, if you could read between the lines.

“Who else?” he asked her. “Or, who else in particular?”

A man named Hagerty, she told him. Derek Hagerty, younger son of Farragut Hagerty, the rancher, and the largest landholder in the area. She was surprised Placido Geist hadn’t heard of him. Placido Geist wasn’t surprised. Not that he’d not heard of Farragut Hagerty, but that it was such a common story, that a figure of local importance considered himself above the law.

“Murder doesn’t go unpunished,” Placido Geist said.

“There’s no evidence.”

“There’s what the girl says.”

“The word of a trollop.”

“I’d take the word of a trollop over that of many a state senator,” the bounty hunter told the sheriff. “Most whores give an honest accounting, in my experience.”

“I can’t go up against Ratgut Hagerty, not and keep my job. The people in this town vote his proxy.”

“You’d countenance a killing his son almost certainly had a part in? Let it come to trial, at least.”

“On the testimony of a whore.” The sheriff looked away.

“Everybody knows the story. You know the story. Farragut Hagerty’s boy wanted the girl to himself, and this young man Beauchamp got in the way. They had words over it. Words led to blows. Beauchamp got the best of Derek Hagerty in a fair fight and laid him out on a saloon floor. I’ve asked around, and I’m a stranger. You don’t even have to ask. You know full well that Beauchamp kid got strung up in the cottonwoods for crossing Farragut’s clan.”