By now my eyes were brimming with tears, and I put the hankie to my mouth to keep check on my sobs. I was a betrayed but plucky girl doing her level best not to make a public spectacle of her distress. The boy patted my shoulder gently and shook his head in disgust at Robert’s mistreatment of me. Listen, I was good at this.
I regained composure and pressed on with my story. This evening the hotel room had been just too lonely to bear, I said, and so, no matter how bad it might look for me to be in such a place, I’d come down to sit in here, where at least there were other people. I just didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t bear to go back upstairs to that empty old room by myself. Oh, I just knew Robert was right this minute with some other woman somewhere and … oh, I was so mad! At Robert and at myself, for being such a silly stupid danged fool!
Miss Jenny, the boy says, if there’s anything he can do to be of help, he’d be honored to do it. His voice all of a sudden had honey in it—and his hand quit being so brotherly and slid down to my waist. I remember thinking how all galoots were the same, all of them easy as pie. I sniffled a few more times into my hankie before saying, real soft and still a little choky, “Would you be so kind as to … please just … escort me to my door?”
There was hankering in the look he gave me, but something else too. A kind of devilment. I should’ve known he was nobody’s fool—but I was too wrapped up in my big act at the moment to think about much of anything else. Anyhow, he gave me a big smile and stood up and crooked his arm to receive mine. On our way up the stairs my hip bumped the gun tied down on his leg and the both of us giggled like schoolchildren.
It wasn’t supposed to get as far as it did, but that boy was no lollygagger. I started to ask him at the door if he’d mind coming in for a minute, but only got as far as “Would you like to—” and wham-bam, he had me in the room, shutting the door with one hand and working the buttons of my dress with the other. In half a minute he had us both bare as chickens on a spit. Then we were a-tumble on that big old bed and for the next few minutes neither of us said much of anything, we were that busy.
I didn’t usually get so caught up in my work. And I’ve never been one to talk about the particulars, but I have to say this about the boy: he surely did know the female geography. Take it from me, a lot of men couldn’t find their way around on a woman’s body even if you gave them a map, a compass, and a full set of directions. But him!—he roamed over me like I was some ranch he’d growed up on. Had me frisking like a filly in spring pasture. Me—who’d been whoring for three years already. I was so taken up with what we were doing I was damn near as surprised as he was when Eddie Joe came through the door.
He was holding a bunch of flowers and stood there with his mouth open and his eyes big as coffee saucers, looking shocked as a man can be. Me and the kid froze on our knees. We must of been a picture, joined like we were at that moment in what is commonly called the dog fashion.
Then Eddie Joe yells, “Son of a ” and flings a blast of flowers at us. He kicks the door shut and yanks out his little two-shot and says, “I’ll kill you!”bitch!
I wasn’t real sure he didn’t mean me, he looked so steamed. That Eddie Joe was a hell of a good actor. He probably ought to have taken it up as a trade back east where he came from, or in one of them traveling shows. He likely would have lived longer if he had.
Anyhow, I give a screech and pull away from the kid and grab up some sheet to cover myself. The kid’s still kneeling there with his hands half raised and his long handsome rascal drooping between his legs. His eyes weren’t nearly full of devilment now.
“No, Robert!” I let out. “Don’t do it, don’t!” And start bawling to beat the band. I guess I was overdoing it a little, because Eddie Joe gave the bed a kick and told me to shut up, and by the look in his eyes I knew he meant it. So I cut it down to some steady sniffling.
“Say now, mister—” the kid starts to say, but Eddie Joe tells him to shut up too. Just then it dawned on me that I’d messed up the Murphy by actually getting down to it with the kid. The way it was supposed to work—the way we’d done it up to now—was for Eddie Joe to find us together in the room and be outraged at the galoot for trying to compromise his sweetheart’s virtue. But it’s pretty hard to accuse a fella of taking advantage of your sweetie’s innocence if you find her totally bare-assed and going at it dog style. Eddie Joe had to make this one up as he went along.
“I knew I shouldn’t have married no damn whore!” he says, glaring back and forth between me and the kid. “Once a whore, always a whore. That’s what they say and they sure right about that!”
The kid started to ease off the bed and Eddie Joe jabbed the gun at him. “Where you think you’re going, snake?”
“Please, mister,” the boy says, “all I want is to get out of here. I didn’t know she was married, I swear.”
“You damn well know it now, snake.” He honest-to-God looked ready to shoot him.
“I’m real sorry, mister,” the boy says. “I truly am. Just let me out of here, please.”
“Oh, please,” Eddie Joe says, mimicking him. “Why in hell should I? I got every right to shoot you, snake—her too, if I want—and wouldn’t nobody say a thing about it except it served you both right.”
“Yessir, I guess that’s so,” the boy says. “But please, I didn’t mean no harm to nobody. And listen—I got money! I do! You can have every bit of it. There’s fifty dollars in my britches there.” He pointed to the rack where his clothes were hung with his gunbelt. “And I got two hundred more hid in my saddle at the livery.”
A woman laughed as she passed by our door and said, “Just hold your horses, cowboy!” Eddie Joe locked the door as their voices faded down the hall, then he sidled over to the clothes rack and slipped the kid’s gun out of the holster. “Nice piece,” he says.
“Just for scaring the coyotes off,” the boy says.
“Feels made for me.” Eddie Joe gave it a twirl.
“Sure now, you keep it,” the kid says.
“Damn generous of you,” Eddie Joe says, backing away from the clothes rack and motioning for the kid to get over to it. “Dig out the fifty and then we’ll go visit those saddle pockets.”
“Yes, sir,” the kid says, looking mighty relieved as he quick gets off the bed and heads for his pants, paying no mind whatever to his manly parts swinging all about. Eddie Joe saw me staring and gave a mean frown.
The kid dug into his pants pocket and came up with a handful of money—notes and specie both. But as he reached it around to Eddie Joe, most of it slipped out of his hand and went scattering on the floor. “Damn you, boy!” Eddie Joe says. But he was practically chuckling as he bent down to retrieve the money at his feet.
Just as his fingers closed on a gold piece against his boot, a gun blast rocked the room and Eddie Joe’s head snapped sideways and a bunch of it splattered on the wall behind him. He slumped to the floor just as dead as a sack of clothes.
My ears were ringing like they’d never stop. I couldn’t take my eyes off the blood unrolling from his head like red velvet. I couldn’t believe so much blood. Then through the ringing I heard, “Hey!” and looked over to see the kid getting into his clothes even faster than he got out of them. He already had on his pants and boots and gunbelt and was putting on his shirt. There was a stampede of stomping feet coming up the stairs.
With the gun in his hand he motioned for me to pick the money off the floor, and I quick got busy doing it. I didn’t have a doubt in the world he’d shoot me too if he got the notion. When he swung his vest on I caught a look at the holsters on the insides of the flaps. He slipped the gun back into the vest and grinned at me. I’d had no idea. Neither had Eddie Joe, obviously. He retrieved his pistol from Eddie Joe’s hand and stuck it back in his belt holster and kicked Eddie Joe’s two-shot under the bed.