Anyhow, it was while he was away on one of them trips of his that Wild Bill Smith, the Texas Tornado, showed up. Bill was a snake doctor. He had a truck, with his picture painted on it, and two or three boxes of old rattlesnakes with their teeth pulled out, and he sold snake oil that would cure what ailed you, and a Indian herb medicine that would do the same. He was a fake, but he was big and brown and had white teeth, and I guess he really wasn’t no bad guy. The first I seen of him was when he drove up in his truck, and told me to gas him up and look at his tires. He had a bum differential that made a funny rattle, but he said never mind and went over to the lunchroom.
He was there a long time, and I thought I better let him know his car was ready. When I went over there, he was setting on a stool with a sheepish look on his face, rubbing his hand. He had a snake ring on one finger, with two red eyes, and on the back of his hand was red streaks. I knew what that meant. He had started something and Lura had fixed him. She had a pretty arm, but a grip like iron, that she said come from milking cows when she was a kid. What she done when a guy got fresh was take hold of his hand and squeeze it so the bones cracked, and he generally changed his mind.
She handed him his check without a word, and I told him what he owed on the car, and he paid up and left.
“So you settled his hash, hey?” I says to her.
“If there’s one thing gets on my nerves,” she says, “it’s a man that starts something the minute he gets in the door.”
“Why didn’t you yell for me?”
“Oh, I didn’t need no help.”
But the next day he was back, and after I filled up his car I went over to see how he was behaving. He was setting at one of the tables this time, and Lura was standing beside him. I saw her jerk her hand away quick, and he give me the bright grin a man has when he’s got something he wants to cover up. He was all teeth. “Nice day,” he says. “Great weather you have in this country,”
“So I hear,” I says. “Your car’s ready.”
“What I owe you?” he says.
“Dollar twenty.”
He counted it out and left.
“Listen,” says Lura, “we weren’t doing anything when you come in. He was just reading my hand. He’s a snake doctor, and knows about the zodiac.”
“Oh, wasn’t we?” I says. “Well, wasn’t we nice!”
“What’s it to you?” she says.
“Nothing,” I snapped at her. I was pretty sore.
“He says I was born under the sign of Yin,” she says. You would of thought it was a piece of news fit to put in the paper.
“And who is Yin?” I says.
“It’s Chinese for tiger,” she says.
“Then bite yourself off a piece of raw meat,” I says, and slammed out of there. We didn’t have no nice time running the joint that day.
Next morning he was back. I kept away from the lunchroom, but I took a stroll and seen them back there with the tigers. We had hauled a tree in there by that time for Rajah to sharpen his claws on, and she was setting on that. The tiger had his head in her lap, and Wild Bill was looking through the wire. He couldn’t even draw his breath. I didn’t go near enough to hear what they was saying. I went back to the car and begin blowing the horn.
He was back quite a few times after that, in between while Duke was away. Then one night I heard a truck drive up. I knowed that truck by its rattle. And it was daylight before I heard it go away.
Couple weeks after that, Duke come running over to me at the filling station. “Shake hands with me,” he says, “I’m going to be a father.”
“Gee,” I says, “that’s great!”
But I took good care he wasn’t around when I mentioned it to Lura.
“Congratulations,” I says. “Letting Romeos into the place seems to be about the best thing you do.”
“What do you mean?” she says.
“Nothing,” I says. “Only I heard him drive up that night. Look like to me the moon was under the sign of Cupid. Well, it’s nice if you can get away with it.”
“Oh,” she says.
“Yeah,” I says. “A fine double cross you thought up. I didn’t know they tried that any more.”
She set and looked at me, and then her mouth begin to twitch and her eyes filled with tears. She tried to snuffle them up but it didn’t work. “It’s not any double cross,” she says. “That night I never went out there. And I never let anybody in. I was supposed to go away with him that night, but—”
She broke off and begin to cry. I took her in my arms. “But then you found this out?” I says. “Is that it?” She nodded her head. It’s awful to have a pretty woman in your arms that’s crying over somebody else.
From then on, it was terrible. Lura would go along two or three days pretty well, trying to like Duke again on account of the baby coming, but then would come a day when she looked like some kind of a hex, with her eyes all sunk in so you could hardly see them at all, and not a word out of her.
Them bad days, anyhow when Duke wasn’t around, she would spend with the tiger. She would set and watch him sleep, or maybe play with him, and he seemed to like it as much as she did. He was young when we got him, and mangy and thin, so you could see his slats. But now he was about six years old, and had been fed good, so he had got his growth, and his coat was nice, and I think he was the biggest tiger I ever seen. A tiger, when he is really big, is a lot bigger than a lion, and sometimes when Rajah would be rubbing around Lura, he looked more like a mule than a cat.
His shoulders come up above her waist, and his head was so big it would cover both legs when he put it in her lap. When his tail would go sliding past her it looked like some kind of a constrictor snake. His teeth were something to make you lie awake nights. A tiger has the biggest teeth of any cat, and Rajah’s must have been four inches long, curved like a cavalry sword, and ivory white. They were the most murderous-looking fangs I ever set eyes on.
When Lura went to the hospital it was a hurry call, and she didn’t even have time to get her clothes together. Next day Duke had to pack her bag, and he was strutting around, because it was a boy, and Lura had named him Ron. But when he come out with the bag he didn’t have much of a strut. “Look what I found,” he says to me, and fishes something out of his pocket. It was the snake ring.
“Well?” I says. “They sell them in any ten-cent store.”
“H’m,” he says, and kind of weighed the ring in his hand. That afternoon, when he come back, he says: “Ten-cent store, hey? I took it to a jeweler today, and he offered me two hundred dollars for it.”
“You ought to sold it,” I says. “Maybe save you bad luck.”
Duke went away again right after Lura come back, and for a little while things was all right. She was crazy about the little boy, and I thought he was pretty cute myself, and we got along fine. But then Duke come back and at lunch one day he made a crack about the ring. Lura didn’t say nothing, but he kept at it, and pretty soon she wheeled on him.
“All right,” she says. “There was another man around here, and I loved him. He give me that ring, and it meant that he and I belonged to each other. But I didn’t go with him, and you know why I didn’t. For Ron’s sake, I’ve tried to love you again, and maybe I can yet, God knows. A woman can do some funny things if she tries. But that’s where we’re at now. That’s right where we’re at. And if you don’t like it, you better say what you’re going to do.”
“When was this?” says Duke.
“It was quite a while ago. I told you I give him up, and I give him up for keeps.”
“It was just before you knowed about Ron, wasn’t it?” he says.
“Hey,” I cut in. “That’s no way to talk.”