Boon Ed Kurtz (the little red hen read aloud txt) 📖

The aldermen all nodded.

Boon said, “Congratulations.”

I wanted to ask about the people they had raking the street, but it wasn’t the time. I was just going to have go on wondering about that particular anomaly.

“You find him?” the marshal said.

“We found him,” Boon said. “He’s right outside.”

“Alive?”

“No.”

“That’s a shame,” Willocks said. “See, that’s a God damn shame.”

“Marshal,” another alderman snapped, “there is a lady present.”

Willocks snorted.

“No,” he said. “There sure ain’t.”

Then I snorted. Boon shot me a look. I simmered down.

She said, “What are you driving at, Willocks?”

“Just this,” said the first alderman, probably the fattest. “We have dropped all charges against Mr. Dejasu. He is no longer a wanted man.”

“He ain’t no kind of man at all,” she said. “On account of he’s dead.”

“Then you killed a free citizen.”

“I did not,” Boon told him. “As a matter of true fact, Dejasu killed his own self.”

The fat man’s mouth dropped open. It was dead quiet in the marshal’s office again. Everybody seemed to be thinking that one over fair hard.

“I can’t hardly see how it matters one way or the other,” I put in. “We had us a paper on him and that paper said apprehend. Nothing about alive or not.”

“Paper’s no good,” said the fattest alderman.

“Was when we got it,” Boon said. “Marshal his self gave it to us and we had us an agreement.”

The alderman licked his lips and rocked a bit on his heels. The floorboards groaned beneath his weight.

“Seems like we’re not speaking the same language, Miss…?”

“Boonsri Angchuan,” she said.

The fat man had a good laugh at that.

“Well,” he said after he got through with his fun, “fact is the charges were dropped before you could ever have made it to Red Foot. I expect you wasn’t but ten miles out of Darling when we dropped them.”

“Then you ought to’ve sent word them ten miles,” Boon said.

“We were reticent about that,” said the third alderman. “Not knowing what sort of people you two are. Bounty hunters aren’t exactly law and order.”

“What he means,” said the first alderman, “is that we did not trust that you would not kill the messenger.”

The second alderman tugged at his coat buttons.

“We heard tell of your, ah, run-in with the fellow in the barber’s shop,” he said.

“I did not kill him, either,” Boon said.

“Only because I stopped you,” said Willocks, which was of course a God damned lie if anyone ever told one.

I said, “That’s a God damned lie if anyone ever told one.”

She hushed me.

“Why did y’all drop the charges against Dejasu?” she asked.

“We do not answer to this heathen woman,” said the second alderman.

The first alderman ignored that. “It is a matter of good politickin’,” he said. “Dejasu’s brother is a judge of some standing and sacrifices must sometimes be made to maintain peace and order.”

“Not that it will now,” said the third alderman.

“The judge won’t like this a’tall,” said the first, shaking his head.

“Forget the judge,” Boon said, and I thought up something halfway between a dire wish and a prayer that she would say no more. “He’s dead, too.”

Willocks pushed his chair back and the third alderman gasped.

“I suppose he killed himself, too?” the marshal said.

I said, “Boon.”

“Hell, no, he didn’t kill his self,” she said. “He figured on hanging us so I cut off his head with a saw.”

“Oh, Christ,” I said. Two of the other men said the exact same thing.

At the very least she didn’t mention that the judge had still been alive when she started cutting.

“That’s just about as clear a confession as I ever heard,” said Marshal Willocks. He stood up and straightened the star on his chest like it was some powerful talisman. “Guess I got to arrest the both of you for that.”

He wasn’t wearing his gun belt, which I reckoned was a right smart foolish thing for a lawman to do. The belt hung on a hook nailed into the wall behind him, his iron in the holster. He went for it. Boon had her Colt on him before he could turn fully around to get to the belt.

“My God,” said the third alderman.

“Now, you know that ain’t smart,” Willocks said. “Could be you beat the charge, depending on what happened up there. But there’s no beating killing a marshal. You’ll be hanged before Friday.”

“I got plans for Friday,” Boon said. “Won’t be able to make it.”

“Hand over that piece,” he said. “All you got to do is sit in the cell until the next term of court. There’s a circuit judge due in Darling before August. You’ll eat better in my jail than you would on the run, believe me.”

“Touch that leather and I’ll shoot you in the belly just for the hell of it,” she said.

“Jesus, you are a mean woman,” he said.

Boon grinned. “Mean as they come.”

She motioned for the door with her head, which I took to mean I should go and get my rifle. I didn’t let the door open too wide on account of I didn’t want anybody out on the street to see what was going on inside. It was a good thing, too, because the remains of Bartholomew Dejasu had drawn a small audience outside, not counting the flies. His pockets were turned out by someone looking for a little coin, which would have left them disappointed. I’d already looted them.

Fortunately, the would-be thief let my rifle alone. I pulled it from where I’d stashed it above the nag’s bony ass and jacked a cartridge into the breech with a crowd of a dozen Darling citizens watching me closely. One of them, a woman in an enormous blue hat, said, “Did you kill that man? Was he bad?”

“Every man is bad,” I told her. I went back inside, squeezing through the crack in the door and shutting it quickly.

“Listen to me,” Willocks said to me. “You can put a stop to this. That’ll get you amnesty.”

“Never did meet a lawman with an ounce of loyalty in him,” I said. “Don’t