Ragtime Cowboys Read Free Page A

fooling about. You’ve been at it long enough to know how to walk a straight line under a load.” Earp pointed at his drink on the floor at his feet, with one sip gone. “This is as much guzzling as I’ve done since I landed in jail in ’71; I’m a danger when I’m drunk, as much to myself as to anybody, which is why I can’t ever go back to Arkansas. But I’ve seen you drink a party of teamsters under the table and order another round for the trail.”
    â€œI was younger then, and the liquor wouldn’t strip the hide off a buffalo. I don’t know the bootleggers in San Francisco. I’m sixty-five, Earp. I haven’t sat a horse in years. The last time I fired that Colt was at a biscuit tin. I missed.”
    â€œWho said anything about riding and shooting? All I’m asking you to do is take the train to Frisco and see what he’s got. I gave him everything he needed to start. While you’re there maybe you can drop in on that ranch and talk to the stable boy. I’ll go straightaway from here to Western Union and give ’em such a glowing report they’ll want to run him for governor.”
    â€œDon’t overdo it. They might think he’s too good for the job.”
    â€œRain’s letting up, Charlie. I can’t sit here all day. I got stock to feed, and I’m short-handed one man.”
    â€œI gave you my answer.”
    â€œI’m asking again.”
    Siringo squinted up through a hole in the roof. The clouds were sure enough breaking apart; the percussion section inside had slowed to a desultory tinkle, the sound a saloon maestro made killing time until the last drunk was swept out. “When did this horse go missing?”
    â€œBe two weeks tomorrow.”
    â€œThat’s cold tracking.”
    â€œI tried it when it was fresh, then lost it in the creek.”
    â€œI’m even less interested now than I was the first time.”
    â€œIf you were always this picky, it’s no wonder the Pinks threw you out.”
    â€œYour horse is gone, Earp. Sold for breeding stock up in Canada or pickup races down in Mexico.”
    â€œThere hasn’t been any money in Mexico since before the Alamo. You want to profit off that situation, you run her as a ringer under a fresh name back East somewhere and clean up from race to race in hick county fairs. It’s a sinful waste of the best three-year-old anyone’s seen this century. Next year she’ll be over the hill as far as all the big gates are concerned; but without papers it’s the only way.”
    â€œWell, I don’t figure to go from track to track like a tout, getting fresh with strange horses and getting bit doing it.”
    â€œYou got anything better to do, other than scratch your ass and wait for your house to fall down around your ears?”
    â€œI just started a book.”
    His guest had never been the type to pursue an argument, not to press a point or even for sport: It was his way or none. He produced a leather folder from the inside breast pocket of his damp suit coat, scribbled in it with a gravity pen, tore loose a sheet, and stuck it at Siringo.
    It was a bank draft drawn upon the Marcus family account—his wife’s people—in the amount of five hundred dollars.
    Siringo took it, waved the ink dry. His heart did a happy little two-step. There was a new roof there, Consolidated Edison made happy, and three months’ worth of grub besides. He folded the draft and put it in his shirt pocket behind the scrotum pouch.
    â€œI don’t figure it’ll hurt to take a look. I’ll go to the station in the morning. What’s this lunger call himself?”
    â€œHammett. Dashiell Hammett. It’s a nancy sort of a name, but growing up Wyatt didn’t hurt me any in the man department.”

 
    3
    After Earp left, the sun came out, bright as a double eagle. It was as if the man traveled under his own portable