Треваньян - Incident at Twenty-Mile

Knowing that Mrs. Bjorkvist never bought anything, Mr. Kane continued his Sunday morning routine of listing the supplies the train had brought up from Destiny, while his customer pecked along the counters, fingering the new stock and muttering over its price and quality. "Have you decided to celebrate our victory in Cuba with a little shopping spree, Mrs. Bjorkvist?" She compressed her lips and sniffed. "Caught a little cold, have we?" Mr. Kane asked in the flat, dental accent that would have revealed his ethnic roots to anyone less accent-deaf than Mrs. Bjorkvist. "Maybe you should try some of Mr. Delanny's Suppressant." Mrs. Bjorkvist's neck stiffened at the thought of taking anything into the tabernacle of her body that was used by that… panderer, that… that…! Something outside the store window snagged her attention. "Vat's dis den?" she demanded to know. Mr. Kane lifted his head to see Mr. Delanny standing in the middle of the road, talking to a young man who was carrying a heavy pack and had an ancient, oversized shotgun on an improvised rope sling over his shoulder. Except for the occasional prospector, the arrival of a stranger was a rare enough event in Twenty-Mile to justify Mrs. Bjorkvist's irritated "Vat's dis den?" And this young man's wide-brimmed farmer's hat and wide-toed farmer's boots said he was no prospector.

"Vere d'ee tink he come from, den?" Mrs. Bjorkvist asked, her eyes riveted on the stranger, as though to nail him in place until she had made up her mind about him.

"I have no idea, Mrs. Bjorkvist," Mr. Kane said in an indifferent tone he knew would irritate her.

They watched Mr. Delanny smile and shake his head in response to a question from the stranger, then turn away to his hotel with a flip of his long, thin fingers that clearly said, "Good luck to you, boy." This was followed by a shake of his head that added, "You'll need it."

The young man shifted the weight of his pack, tipped his hat back on his head with his thumb, and walked off. Mrs. Bjorkvist pressed her cheek against the window to peer diagonally down the street after him. It wasn't that she was nosy, but if she didn't have a perfect right to know what this stranger was up to, then who did? When he turned in at B. J. Stone's Livery, she nodded to herself. She might have guessed! What with the way that old man was always reading books and looking at people like they were funny, or stupid, or… something! Imagine him daring to call other people funny! Him, who's nothing but a foul, vile-But she wouldn't contaminate her mind by even thinking that word.

In a tone that said "Wouldn't you know it?" she informed Mr. Kane that the stranger had gone to the Livery.

"Gone to the Livery, has he?" the shop-owner responded dryly. "Vat's dis vorld coming to, den?"

Ruth Lillian Kane came down the stairs from the living quarters above, having washed the breakfast dishes while her father was opening the store. She greeted Mrs. Bjorkvist brightly (a little too brightly, because she didn't like her) and asked politely after her daughter. But the proprietress of the boarding house limited her response to a disapproving glance at the new gingham dress Ruth Lillian was wearing. Frills and vanity! He spoils her, that man. Trying to make up for the way her mother… well, enough said. Enough said. No good ever came from spoiling children. She ought to give him a piece of her mind, but she didn't have time to stand around talking nonsense. That stranger would be wanting to sleep and eat at her boarding house. Well, maybe she'd let him, and maybe not. It would depend on what sort he was. She'd just wait and see.

Without further socializing, she left the store and crossed to her establishment.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Bjorkvist," Mr. Kane called after her in a sing-song. "Always a pleasure to serve you."

B. J. STONE TIPPED HIS chair back against the slab wall of the shoeing shed, carefully folded the two-day-old Cheyenne newspaper he had been reading, and scrubbed his grey-stubbled cheek with his knuckles. "From Nebraska, eh? And walked all the way! Well, there's cold water in the barrel. Help yourself. Dipper's right there. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, son, but if you're looking for work, you've come to just about the worst place in the Republic. There's absolutely nothing happening in Twenty-Mile. And that's on busy days. This is a town without history. Its past is only eleven years long, and it has no future at all. I'd offer you a little tide-over work, but what I make handling donkeys for the Lode is barely enough to keep my soul from leaking out of my body. I wouldn't even be able to afford old Coots here, if he wasn't willing to work for just bed, vittles, and my eternal gratitude. Isn't that right, Coots?"

The wiry old Black-Cherokee didn't look up from scraping rot out of the hoof of the donkey whose foreleg was folded up onto the leather apron on his lap. "And piss-poor vittles they are," he muttered.

"Sorry I can't help you, son. But you're welcome to a cup of coffee."

"A cup of coffee'd do me nothing but good, sir." The boy grunted as he slipped off the straps that had dug into his shoulders during his all-night walk up the railroad track from Destiny.

"Fetch our guest a cup of joe, Coots," B. J. Stone said grandly.

"You want to take over scraping out this hoof?" Coots asked.

"No, no, you're doing just fine."

"Then you fetch the goddamned coffee. You ain't done nothing all morning but sit there with your nose in that paper, grumbling about imperialism and jingoism and Christ only knows whatotherism! While me, I been busier'n a one-legged man in a ass-kicking contest!"

B. J. Stone leaned toward Matthew and whispered, "I'm afraid poor old Coots is a miserable excuse for a host. And as for his coffee…!"

"If you don't like it, don't drink it!" Coots snapped.

"Touchy old bastard, too," B. J. confided behind his hand.

The young man smiled uncertainly; he'd never heard a black man sass a white man like that before. B. J. Stone stood up with a martyred sigh and disappeared into the kitchen, where a pot of coffee simmered on an iron stove, growing thicker and blacker since its grounds had been sunk with egg shells first thing that morning.

The young man set his shotgun beside his pack and gently pressed his sore shoulder with his fingertips as he watched Coots's skilful, pale-palmed hands work at the donkey's hoof. He was intrigued by Coots's face: the blend of Negro features and Cherokee eyes.

"Where'd you get that gun?" Coots asked without looking up from his task.

"My pa's."

"Hm! And he must've got it from his great-grandpa, who must've bought it off Methuselah! Where do you find ammunition for an old monster like that?"

"Pa used to make it himself." He untied the thongs of his backpack and rummaged in it for a canvas bag containing the shells he had taken with him when he hit the road. "Here's one. Ain't she a dandy? Pa, he'd cut open two ordinary double-ought shells and leave the primer and powder in place in one, then he'd make a longer jacket with stiff paper and add the powder from the other shell and the shot from both, then he'd tamp everything down tight-that was always the spooky part, the tamping- then he'd crimp the paper and dip it into wax to make it stiff and waterproof. They came out real good. But I'll admit the gun has a pretty fair kick."

Coots turned the waxy, double-size shell between his fingers and shook his head. "I'll bet! A man'd get tuckered out, having to pick himself up and walk back to the firing line each time he shot it!" Coots tossed the shell back. "Seems a waste of time, making shells for a gun that's no good for hunting. You hit an animal with that cannon and there'd be nothing left but a tuft of fur and a startled expression."

The boy laughed. "Pa only shot it once in a blue moon. He'd blow old barrels apart, making the staves fly ever which-a-way. Showing off. He liked having a bigger gun than anybody else." He returned the shell to his bag. "To tell the truth, Pa didn't have all that much he could brag on."