She had an inspiration. "Johnny dear, I still love you, honest I do! I'd do anything for you!" She pulled his face forward, close to hers, and kissed him on the forehead, on the cheeks. She kissed him on the mouth, moaning passionately, forcing her tongue between his teeth. "Sweetie, there is something I can do for you." With one hand she reached between his legs and began to unbutton his fly. "Are you equal to it, Johnny?"
He groaned. His eyes were closed. Confidence returned, she thrust her hand inside his trousers, through the slit of his underwear, searching for his member. "Where's my gun? Will it still shoot, you old stallion? Wouldn't you like one-last lay? Oh, dearie, I would!"
He fell back in his chair. "Go ahead, Ser—see what you find."
"Find? What?"
"The cancer!" he rasped. "That's where it is! If that's what you want, you whore, I'm full of it!"
"Ohhh!" Revolted, she snatched her hand away, she pushed herself from him, sprawling against the bed, sickened. She got to her feet and backed from him, her face a painted mask of loathing.
"You bastard," she spat.
In impotence, in utter despair, he covered his face with his hands. "My God," he said. "That's all you came for. And once I loved you. God help me."
"You killer."
"Good-by, Ser."
"May you rot to death," she hissed.
"In the closet, my wallet," he said hopelessly, his voice almost inaudible. "Take your three dollars. And good-by."
Marshal Thibido let him out of his cell in the city jail at exactly ten o'clock on Tuesday night. He could have been freed that afternoon, for it was the final day of his sentence for assault, but Thibido was adamant: the wet-ear son of a bitch would serve a full thirty days to the minute.
In the office, he gave him back his two Colt's revolvers and double holster and Cobb belted them on, tying each holster down midway of the thigh with a leather thong.
"Thanks for nothin', Marshal."
"You're not welcome. And they're not loaded. If you want to buy ammunition, you'll have to go work for your dad again. Your credit's no good and nobody else in his right mind would hire you." Thibido paused. "If you want my advice, don't buy any. Head for that wagon instead of a saloon. If you don't, if you go on the way you have been, I will hang you one of these days or somebody by God will."
"Thanks for nothin', Marshal."
Jay Cobb drew the revolvers and extended them, handles forward, as though to surrender them to Thibido. Suddenly, by means of index fingers through the triggerguards, he twirled the weapons, reversing them so that the muzzles pointed at the marshal's waistline.
He grinned. "That there's the Curly Bill Spin, Marshal. Ain't many can do it."
Thibido had recoiled at the trick. He caught relish on the faces of the two deputies who lounged against the wall, enjoying the show. To control himself, he took a deep breath.
"Cobb," he said, "you're no Brocius. He was a good criminal, the real cheese. You're a pimple-faced, short-pudded, yellow-assed kid, and you'll never grow up to be a good criminal because you don't have the brains to."
"These was loaded," Cobb blustered, "you wouldn't mouth me like that."
Thibido nailed hands to hips. "You're contaminating my premises. Take those popguns and your ugly self out of here or I'll telephone J. B. Books and sic him on you."
Jay Cobb did not know how to respond. His mouth opened and closed. He was twenty and ugly. His face had been scarred by acne, and there were swellings on each side of his neck, pustules, some of them open and inflamed. To compensate, he had taken early to guns. He practiced handling and marksmanship regularly down by the river, fanning his Colt's and cutting sunflower stalks in two. Gillom Rogers had spied out his pastime, and in return for secrecy Cobb had let him fire the weapons. Sunflowers grew wild and high in a large patch there—the very patch in which George Scarborough had killed Martin Morose while Morose was on his way from Juárez to confront John Wesley Hardin, who was living with Morose's wife in El Paso. Cobb knew that. He liked learning to use his guns with death nearby for a teacher.
"Old Books," he sneered. "He's dyin'. You call 'im and tell 'im to come see me. I'll hurry his dyin' along."
"So you broke some dude drummer's jaw," said one of the deputies. "You faced anybody killed anybody?"
Cobb's mouth opened and closed.
"Go home before I puke," Thibido said.
Cobb's mouth opened and closed. He looked as though he wanted to kill someone or cry.
"Go home and wash your face," said a deputy.
Jay Cobb did go home, but not to the house beside the creamery. Entering the creamery by a back door and skulking between the separators and churns and stacked milk cans to the sales counter in front, he first reloaded his guns from a Bull Durham bag of ammunition he kept hidden in a drawer. He then opened the tin box in which his father stored the cash receipts before banking them on Fridays. Since quitting school, Jay had driven the delivery wagon and would be expected by his parents, who were meek, scriptural people, to take the route again now that he had been released from jail. Emptying the box of its contents, less than a hundred dollars, he left the building and the odors of milk and cream and butter, as far as he was concerned, forever.
He went directly to Tillie Howard's parlor house on Utah Street, by consensus the most lavish sexorium in town, its girls the most beautiful and expensive. The house was new, made of yellow brick with dormer windows and balconies before the windows on the second story, a circular drive, and a carriage house. He was admitted to the living room, a grand salon of crimson velvet draperies, silk and satin upholstery, oil paintings in gilt frames, cut flowers, and Aubusson rugs. There were few patrons this Tuesday night. Young Cobb whiled away a pleasant hour in the salon, pigging good whiskey and being edified by the staff until he made his selection. Choosing a blond enchantress in her late twenties named Vickie, and a full bottle, he escorted her upstairs to her room and locked the door. He was quite drunk by this time. And he had never kissed a member of the opposite sex other than his mother, much less known one carnally.
After both had disrobed, he took Vickie and bottle to bed, but such was his state of inebriation that he was unable to consummate his desire. Blaming her for his impotence, Cobb flew off the handle. In a demented fury, taking out on the unfortunate girl a marginal intelligence, a repellent exterior, an adolescence spent upon the seat of a creamery wagon, thirty days in jail, and his treatment by the marshal and deputies, he pried open her legs and attempted to rape her with the barrel of one of his Colt's. He tore her labia with the sight. She bled. She screamed. He beat her savagely with his fists.
Summoned by her appeals, the girls flew up the stairs in the wake of Jim, the general factotum of the house, a giant Negro who wore full dress in the evenings. He was nicknamed "Gentleman Jim" after James Corbett, the heavyweight boxing champion only recently deposed by "Fighting Bob" Fitzsimmons. Jim battered down the door of the room and, obtaining Jay Cobb by the neck, dragged him downstairs and hurled him out the door.
He lay naked on the graveled drive while Vickie was ministered to by her colleagues. Presently they gathered in a bevy on a balcony and threw down to him, at him, in addition to expletives of a gender more masculine than feminine, his belongings—underwear, boots, shirt, hat, and eventually his guns. One of these hit him. He came to. Groveling for a revolver, he commenced firing at the balcony. Jay Cobb failed to kill any of the girls, who took refuge behind the balusters, or even to wound one, but he would have if he could have.
"You seem in fine fettle today," she said.
It was the first time she had seen him on the bed during the day.