‘I fed him many times over after he dazzled me with his trick of lights and shadows. I should have known he would run out on our bargain.’
‘What was the bargain, exactly?’
‘It is a personal matter.’
I said, ‘You were to escort him to the River of Light, is that it?’
He tensed, and asked, ‘How did you know about that?’
‘We are friends of Warm,’ said Charlie.
‘Warm has no friends besides me.’
‘We have enjoyed a long and healthy friendship with him.’
‘I’m sorry, but I do not believe you.’
‘We are his friends,’ I said, ‘and we know he has others, also. He recently dined here with a Mr. Morris, for example.’
‘What, the dainty little fellow?’
‘They have gone to the river together, is what we have heard.’
‘Warm would never entrust his secrets to a fancy man like that.’ But he pondered this a moment and apparently came to believe it as fact. He sighed. ‘My spirits are low today. I would like to be alone to play this game. You gentlemen have a seat if you want to eat. If not, you will leave me in peace.’
‘Do you have any notion where he was planning on setting up his operation?’
The man did not answer. He and the woman began another round of play. When her fists became still he said, ‘Right hand.’
‘Left,’ said the woman.
He paid out another dollar. ‘Again,’ he said, and the woman’s hands resumed their dancing.
‘We have thought to visit him at his claim,’ I said.
The woman held up her fists and the proprietor exhaled sharply. ‘It is the left.’
‘Right,’ she said.
‘Will you tell us when it was you saw him last then?’ I said.
‘Did you not hear me say I wished for solitude?’ he asked.
Charlie pulled his coat back to reveal his pistols. ‘I want you to tell us everything you know, and right now.’
The proprietor was not surprised or alarmed by this. ‘Hermann spoke of the day you men would come. I did not believe him.’
‘When did you see him last?’ I asked.
‘He came in four or five days ago. He had a new hat to show me. He said he would fetch me the next morning to make for the river. I sat here, in this very room, like an ass, for several hours.’
‘But he never said which river, never gave a clue?’
‘He has always spoken of following his river upstream to the fountainhead.’
‘His river where he had a claim you mean?’
‘That’s what I mean.’
‘Why do you not go there?’
‘Follow after him? And then what? Force myself into their company? No, if he had wanted me to go, he would have come for me. He has made his decision to travel with the other man.’
Charlie found the proprietor’s attitude distasteful. ‘But what of your agreement?’ he asked. ‘What of the gold?’
‘I don’t care about money,’ the proprietor answered. ‘I don’t know why. I should pay more attention to it. No, I was looking forward to an adventure with a friend, is the long and short of it. I had thought Warm and I were close companions.’
These words brought an expression of disgust to my brother’s face. He buttoned his coat and retired to the bar for a drink. I stayed behind to watch the man lose another dollar to the woman, then another.
‘It is hard to find a friend,’ I said.
‘It is the hardest thing in this world,’ he agreed. ‘Again,’ he said to the woman. But he was tiring, it was clear. I left them to their game. My brother had drunk a brandy and was waiting in the road for me. We walked in the direction of Morris’s hotel, passing the livery where we had stabled Tub and Nimble. The hand spied me walking by and called out. ‘It is your horse,’ he said, beckoning for me to enter. Charlie said he would take in the sights and return in half an hour, and we parted ways.
Chapter 40
As I entered the stable I found the hand, a stooped and bowlegged old freckle-spotted bald man in coveralls, inspecting Tub’s eye. I stood next to him and he nodded a hello, saying, ‘He has an uncommonly agreeable personality, this one does.’
‘What about that eye?’
‘Here is what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s going to have to go.’ He pointed and said, ‘Two doors down and there’s an animal doc.’ I asked how much the procedure might cost and he told me, ‘Twenty-five dollars, is my guess. You’ll want to check with the man himself, but I know it’d be close to that.’
‘The entire horse is not worth twenty-five dollars. An eye shouldn’t cost me more than five, I wouldn’t think.’
‘I’ll take it out for five,’ he said.
‘You? Have you done it before?’
‘I have seen it done on a cow.’
‘Where would you do it?’
‘On the floor of the stable. I will drug him with laudanum; he will feel no pain.’
‘But how would you actually remove the eye?’
‘I will use a spoon.’
‘A spoon?’ I said.
‘A soup spoon,’ he nodded. ‘Sterilized, of course. Dig out the eye, snip away the tendons with scissors—that’s how it was with the cow. Then the doc filled the eyehole with rubbing alcohol. This woke the cow up! Doc said he didn’t give it enough laudanum. I’ll give your horse plenty.’
Stroking Tub’s face, I said, ‘There isn’t any medicine I might give him instead? He has had a tough time of it already without being half blind.’
‘A one-eyed horse isn’t worth much to a rider,’ the hand conceded. ‘Your wisest course might be to sell him for his meat. And I have horses for sale out back. Would you like to see them? I’d give you a fair deal.’
‘Let’s go ahead with the eye. We will not be riding very far, and perhaps he will still be of some use to me.’
The hand gathered the tools for the operation and placed these atop a quilt he had lain on the ground beside Tub. He brought out a ceramic bowl filled with water and laudanum; as Tub drank this the hand called me to his side. As if in secret, he whispered, ‘When his legs begin to buckle I want you to push with me. The idea is that he falls directly onto the blanket, understand?’ I said that I did, and we stood together, waiting for the drug to take hold. This did not take long at all and in fact happened so quickly it caught us off guard: Tub’s head dropped and swayed and he stumbled heavily toward the hand and myself, pinning us against the slatted sides of the stable. The hand became frantic under the weight; his face grew red as clay and his eyes bulged as he pushed and cursed. He was scared for his very life, and I found myself laughing at him, squirming around with not the slightest sense of dignity, something like a fly in honey. The hand was humiliated and then infuriated by my lightheartedness; his squirming became all the more frenzied and wild. Fearful the man might faint or otherwise harm himself, I reached up and slapped Tub’s backside as hard as I was able; he winced and stood away from us and the hand shouted, ‘Push, goddamnit, push!’ I choked off my laughter and put all my weight against Tub’s ribs and belly. Between my efforts and the hand’s, in addition to Tub’s woozy attempt to regain his footing, we pushed him clear to the other side of his stable, cracking and snapping the slats as he crashed against them. Now the hand grabbed my arm and yanked me back just as Tub, rebounding off the wall, fell to the ground, his head perfectly placed on the quilt, out cold. The hand was panting and sweat covered, and he regarded me with the most sincere contempt, his twisted fists pinned to his denim hips. ‘Can I ask you, sir, just what in the hell it is that you’re celebrating?’ He was so very upset, standing there before me, it took no small amount of self-control not to laugh again. I managed it, but barely. Speaking penitently, I told him, ‘I’m very sorry about that. There just seemed something funny about it.’