Jut leaned forward grinning. “Belle just purely hates dancing with cowboys. She—” He broke off, glaring at the corner of the bar. “Bessie, what you doing down here? Ain’t your Ma and me told you to stay upstairs? You march yourself right back up, you hear?”
Miss Minnie turned. A small girl was standing at the corner of the bar, a grave-eyed child of about seven, her black hair skinned back in two pigtails, thin shoulders erect and sturdy in a too-small dress.
Her voice came in a grave treble. “I got lonesome. I heard the music—”
“Ne’ mind that! You git!”
The child turned and mounted the flight of stairs behind the bar which led, Miss Minnie knew, to some shabby rooms upstairs.
She turned her eyes to Jut. “Belle’s child?”
“Yeah.”
The jook was filling up rapidly, the screen door slamming as new couples came in. A solitary cowboy entered the bar. He resembled a dozen others: the slightly bowed shoulders, the faded dungarees tucked into high-heeled boots, the shambling gait. His face was hidden in the shadow of the wide-brimmed black slouch hat pulled low over his eyes.
He mounted a stool in the shadows at the end of the bar, tucking gloves into his belt. He beckoned Jut, muttered:
“Scotch and water.”
Jut nodded and poured him a drink from a dusty bottle. Miss Minnie glanced at the strong hands matted with black hair, the thick jaw half-turned from her. Black hair curled from under the hat in back.
Miss Minnie got up. Jut came forward.
“On the house, Miss Minnie.”
Miss Minnie said dryly, “Thanks, I’ll pay.” She put a nickel on the bar, gestured. “Who’s the new cowpoke?”
Jut shrugged. “Calls hisself Arcadia. Reckon he’s from down that way.”
The curtained doorway rippled, and Belle reappeared. She seemed to have regained her good humor. She was smiling a little and humming a song. Her black eyes fell on the cowboy, and she stopped abruptly.
“Well,” she said shrilly. “It’s high time you got here. Where you been? You know the joint gets crowded this late. Look, I got some more dough—”
The man muttered, “Shut up!” He rose, grasped her arm. “Come on,” and he shoved her up the stairs.
Miss Minnie went outside, pocketbook under her arm. Darkness had closed down on the scrub, and the night was filled with the smell of night-blooming jasmine and smoke. The moon rode low over the pines.
The neon sign on the jook lighted the parking lot. Miss Minnie passed slowly down the line of horses, patting the pinto. A new horse was tied to the rail, a sturdy bay, dusty and drooping. Miss Minnie put a gentle hand on his neck, edged him into the light. A Bar W brand was burned on his left flank. That was Jess Whidden’s outfit, twelve miles south. No wonder the horse looked tired.
Suddenly Miss Minnie grinned in the dark. “Bay,” she drawled, “you look mighty beat-down. You belong to have a little rest.”
She untied him and coaxed him back through the lot. A little path ran down into the woods behind the jook. Miss Minnie led the horse some distance along the path, then tied him to a tree. She patted him again and returned to her car.
She had to wait half an hour, but finally the swarthy cowboy appeared. He started for the hitching rail, halted abruptly. Miss Minnie could not see his face, but the curse came dearly. The man hesitated a moment, glancing about, appeared to think. Then he moved swiftly toward the horses, looked them over, and unhitched the pinto. A moment later drumming hoofs vanished in the dark.
Miss Minnie nodded and got out of the car. Jut looked up in surprise as she re-entered the bar.
“I forgot to make a phone call,” she explained, and went into the booth in the corner, carefully closing the door after her.
She made two of them. When she finally emerged, she stood for a moment rubbing her eyes, tiredness weighing her down. She did not even see one of her ADC children, a fifteen-year-old girl, hastily ducking into the shadows.
She got her car, drove straight home, and went to bed.
The next morning she was a little late for the office. She stopped to get a copy of the Tampa Morning News, and walking slowly, scanned the front page. One item especially interested her. She mounted the grimy staircase to the Welfare Office, reading it.
The senior stenographer met her at the door, her florid face worried.
“Minnie Boyd, what you been up to anyway? Mrs. Carlton has been sending out calls for you every two minutes, and the sheriff is in her office, just yelling.”
Miss Minnie tucked the paper under her arm. “I’ll go right in.”
She knocked on Mrs. Carlton’s door and pushed it open. Mrs. Carlton was sitting upright at her desk, her handsome brow furrowed, watching Sheriff Pete Cosey striding up and down the office slaving his arms.
“... like I said, all I know is I got this call from Minnie and she said a cowboy had stole Jimmie Bee’s pinto and was riding back to the Whidden ranch on him. She said to waylay him a couple miles south of the ranch before he could abandon the horse, and to watch out because he was dangerous. So that’s what me and Doxie done — and dang if she wasn’t right! The bugger done just like she said. When me and Doxie hailed him, he went for a gun. Doxie winged him, and then we closed in and searched him. You could have knocked me flatter’n a gopher when we found out who he was.”
Miss Minnie said, “The Tampa paper says he was Zed Adams, alias several names, wanted for murdering a bolita agent last month, but I didn’t get a chance to read—”
The sheriff spun. “By God, Minnie Boyd, if I hadn’t knowed you fifteen years, I’d swear you’d been holding out on me. How come you knowed that feller was a crook — that him and that wife of his, Belle, was wanted in Tampa?”
Miss Minnie sat down across from Mrs. Carlton who was regarding her with a quizzical gaze. “Well, I knew Belle was Spanish. Her hair was bleached, but you can’t hide that olive skin and those brown stains some Spanish folks have under their eyes. And of course she had a buscanovio.”
The sheriff said, “Bus — what?”
“Buscanovio. It’s a spit curl some Spanish girls wear on their temples. It’s called a looking-for-a-sweetheart curl.”
The sheriff drew a breath. Miss Minnie went on. “And of course I knew he wasn’t a real cowboy from Arcadia. For one thing, he was wearing real expensive leather gloves. Most cowboys don’t bother much with fripperies like that — especially expensive ones. Then — well, did you ever hear of a cracker cowboy ordering Scotch?”
Mrs. Carlton said wistfully, “In my heyday I dated a few cowboys. It was always beer, or rum, gin or corn washed down with cokes or pop.”
“So it was a safe bet they came from a city, probably Tampa. The girl mentioned Maas Brothers department store there. Then before I called you, sheriff, I phoned Jess Whidden. He said he’d hired Arcadia a month ago. It seemed more than a coincidence that Belle and a new cowboy showed up here around the time we were having some big-town type burglaries... I saw in the paper that Zed — or Arcadia — served time in Raiford for breaking and entering.”
The sheriff said, “That still wasn’t no proof he was a crook, all them guesses.”
“Well, I wondered why two city folks were burying themselves in the country, and it seemed a safe bet they were hiding out from something. Why not the law? So when I went outside, I hid his horse. If he had been a real cowboy with nothing to hide, he would have raised hell. Instead he simply swiped Jimmie’s pinto and took off without a word. So then I was sure.”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Carlton,” the senior stenographer stuck her head in the door, “Mrs. Annie Smith is outside to see Miss Boyd, and she’s looking so funny—”