'You're setting me up to go to jail. All because of that little fart Lucas Smothers,' he said.
'Good night,' I said.
But he stepped in front of me again. He pushed me in the breastbone with his fingers, then he did it again, grinding his teeth slightly, thumping hard against the bone.
'Don't do this, Darl,' I said.
The skin around his mouth was taut and gray, his nose tilted slightly upward, the fear and loathing in his eyes like a candle flame that didn't know which way to blow. I dropped my eyes, and a smile exposed his teeth.
He slapped the carton of milk from my hand. It exploded in a white star on the pavement.
I stepped backward, then walked in a wide circle toward my car.
I heard his feet running behind me. By the time I could turn he was almost upon me. I brought up my elbow and drove it into his nose.
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He doubled over, his cupped hands smeared with blood as soon as they touched his face. Then Bunny Vogel was next to him, his arm around Darl's shoulders, holding a wadded T-shirt against Darl's nose.
'I'll get some ice, then we'll go home. It ain't broken. The blood's darker when it's broken,' Bunny said.
'You tell his dad what happened, Bunny,' I said.
'It ain't my job to tell on people.'
'You're sure loyal to a kid who cost you a career in the pros. I wonder why that is,' I said.
He led Darl back toward the parked cars of the East Enders. Then he glanced back at me, his eyes like those of a man who just realized his future will be no different from his past.
* * *
chapter twelve
The next morning I ate breakfast on the kitchen table and read from Great-grandpa Sam's journal.
July 7, 1891
Today I cane-fished in the river for perch and shovel-mouth with Jennie, which is the Christian name of the Rose of Cimarron. The hills was covered with Indian paintbrush and sunflowers and we cooked our fish in a brush arbor with a spring that stays wet through the summer months.
It is country that begs for a church house, but it is infested with a collection of halfwits and white trash that calls themselves the Dalton-Doolin gang. They live in mud caves along the river and consider it the high life. A Chinaman brings them opium and squaws give them the clap. They rob trains because the smell on them is such they would get run out of a town before they could ever make it to the bank.
A little twerp named Blackface Charley Bryant threw a temper tantrum and commenced firing a rifle into the sky and using profane language in Jennie's and my presence. He come by his nickname when his own revolver blew up in his hand and turned half his face into an eggplant. I informed him I did not want to forget my ordination and cause him injury, but I would probably do so should I put a third eye in the middle of his forehead.
I am tempted to wrap Jennie in fence wire and carry her out of here across my pommel. But Judge Isaac Parker has had over fifty federal lawmen shot to death in these parts, and I think he would as lief hang a woman outlaw as a man, since people tell me he has already hung a highwayman's horse.
Romancing that woman is like chasing cows in dry lightning. It's a whole lot easier getting into the saddle than out of it. Such is the nature of pagan ways.
When I walked out to my car Lucas Smothers pulled into the driveway in his skinned-up truck.
'My father says I got to tell you something. Even though it's just stuff I heard,' he said.
'Go ahead.'
He got out of the truck and leaned against the fender. The shadow of a poplar tree seemed to cut his face in half. He bit a hangnail.
'About the firemen finding Jimmy Cole's body at the old Hart Ranch? Like, maybe Garland Moon killed him and tried to burn him up with some old tires? I mean, that's what the sheriff's thinking, ain't it?' he said.
'It's Moon's style.'