Friends (15 page)

"Are you certain the James brothers weren't at Doctor Samuels' house when the raid took place?" Professor Marsh ask.

"Am I sure? Why, I was the man
shadowing
Jesse! I had trailed him from his ma's place to Missouri City, and that's where I wired Mr. William Pinkerton from. We was supposed to wire him three times a day–concerning their whereabouts-but damned if I could stay on Jesse James' trail and do that. Even sent a copy to Billy care of the station master in Kearney, in case the train'd left by the time my first telegram got to the Northland Hotel where he was staying. Nosiree, Jesse wasn't even near. Fact is, Mr. Jesse James was havin' his ashes hauled in a cathouse in Missouri City while Billy Pinkerton was leading the noble raid that killed the James boys' kid brother and hurt their ma so that she had to have her arm cut off. And Frank was elsewheres too."

"I see," Marsh said. "Did you ever find out whether or not Mr. Pinkerton received your telegram before he conducted the raid?"

"Indeed he did," I told him. "That was the first thing I checked on afterward. Fact is, he got both of them. A telegraph man in Kansas City delivered the one, put it right in his hand, so he told me. And the other, Billy picked up himself in Kearney. Said so later."

We rode along silent a while after that.

"I been haulin' for ten years," the broadbacked skinner said, standing on the high bank and offering his hand, "an' I never seen nobody whup mules like that. "The boy understood why his father admired the stranger, for under his lash the team had pulled like they never had before. Still, he pitied the beasts as they stood quivering and bleeding and dripping river water on the high bank.

"Oh, you jest got to know where to tech em, and how, "the skinny man said, giving the man back his whip instead of shaking with him. A bashful smile slid over his narrow face. "I enjoy a good bout with mules now and again, jest to let em know how it is
."

"Will you stay and eat with us?" Ellie called from the wagon. "Seems the least we can do
."

"Why, surely, main. I'd be pleased to
."

We come to the steep place I'd saw on the map and we had to go single file, but after we got up on top and took a good look across the valley, the professor wanted to talk some more. "What I can't understand, Mr. Goodwin, was why you felt obligated to resign your position simply because William Pinkerton had done something you considered to be morally reprehensible."

Took me a minute to understand him, and even then I had to ask. "Do you mean to say that you don't agree with what I done or do you really not understand why I done it?"

"Why, the latter, of course! I do not mean to set myself up as a paragon of pragmatic expediency, but I would not have done what you did, under similar circumstances, and I simply wondered what your motives were."

By that, I took it to mean he was just wondering about why I quit, not wanting to tell me I was wrong for doing it, though I wasn't completely sure. Any one of the man's words could make you see double, and strung together like that they'd crack your skull wide open.

I just looked at him, not knowing what to say.

"Let me put it this way," he said. "At Yale, the dean refuses to fund my expeditions to the extent he should, even though my uncle underwrites the entire Scientific School-through which my funds come-as well as the money for the library and the Peabody Museum, named for my dear uncle, of course. Now, my question is this: do you feel I should resign my position, as well as my Chair in Natural History, simply because the dean acts improperly in witholding money that my uncle donates? Is science well served if I resign, letting the knowledge of prehistoric life lie buried in this clay?"

I took off my hat and rubbed my head good. I like a good soft chair myself, and his throwing one into the middle of this thing made it a lot stickier. "See if I got this straight," I told him. "Your uncle gives somebody money and furniture that should go to you, for scratchin' around out here, but the man he gives it to don't tum it all over, the part he should, right?"

"That is essentially correct," he said, nodding his head slow and smiling.

"Why, of
course
you should quit," I told him. "Just take your uncle's money yourself and dig for bones all you want. He trusts you with it, don't he, your uncle, I mean?"

He got a good laugh at that. "Of course."

"Take the money direct and tell that fellow back at Yale College to kiss your ass," I said.

Well, if I thought he'd laughed his hardest before, I was wrong.

Ellie Turnbull spread a tablecloth on the ground beneath a single cottonwood tree growing along the White River, and the scrawny man watched her walk back to the wagon. The second trip, she brought biscuits she had baked that morning beside their breakfast fire, cold sliced venison, and gooseberry jam all the way from Indiana. Walter stood talking of mules and weather and the way to Fort Laramie, but he had to carry most of the weight of the conversation on his own broad shoulders. Before very long, Tum-bull noticed that their guest was more interested in his wife's figure than his talk, and it made him fume. Still, the skinny man had helped them through a hard place, and if it got no worse, he would let it slide.

Ellie called the boy up from the river and they all sat down crosslegged to eat.

"And what would happen to a fine institution like Yale, to any civilized institution, for that matter, if the men who were a part of it put their individual principles above the good of the whole? If they all resigned whenever one of their superiors violated a moral precept?"

He gave me no time to answer.

"Another example: the Christian religion has committed heinous crimes in the course of its advancement. Take the Spanish Inquisition, for instance. Does the fact of that atrocity mean we must abandon the Church because it temporarily abrogated one or two of its tenets? Would Western culture be the better for it?"

I turned my horse. "I guess I
didn't
understand you square a while ago,"I told Professor Marsh. "You really did want to tell me that I done wrong by quittin' the Pinks, only I wasn't quick enough to see it. I don't know enough about religion to say nothing about what a lot of Spaniards done a long time since. But if Yale College can't get along with just the folks who think it's doing the right thing, then it should either lock its doors or find some new hands. Maybe your uncle could help sign some on, since he seems responsible for nearly everything else around the place. Probably be willing, too, if they'd name some more furniture after him." I spurred my mount and we went down the other side.

Marsh come up after a few yards. "You must excuse me, Mr. Goodwin," he said. "The scholiast and casuist in me want to win a debate at any cost, sometimes. But you can see my point, can't you?"

"Yes, I suppose I can. And I guess I must excuse you, if you say I must, for this is your territory, not mine. All I did was to quit the Pinks because they got things turned around to my way of thinking, important things. They valued a good name in the papers and their pride above folks' lives. And that just ain't right. I'm not saying somebody should step in and shut the Pinks down, that's for others to decide. But if
I'd
a killed a young boy, I'd a swung for it. All I'm saying is that I don't have to be a part of no outfit that acts like the Pinkerton boys do, future or no future, big payday or no payday. That's what a free country's all about, ain't it? Hell, they can get along just fine without me, and I sure as the devil get along better without them, 'specially when it comes to sleeping good at night."

I think maybe the professor was a little ashamed of himself for corning at me about quitting the Pinkertons like he did, for he nodded his head and just kept his mouth shut riding the rest of the way down that little clay mountain, but you could tell it pained him to do it.

Close to the bottom you could see across to where the young fellows was working, though it was still more than a mile off from us, over in some country that was broken up pretty bad. By the time we got to where they was, they'd put their shovels down and lined up for their noontime eats. They was pleased to see Marsh, you could tell by the way they spoke to him. Maybe if I'd a went to a school where I could've rode around in some wild country on a horse, slept in a tent, and camped with a dozen or so of my friends, I would of liked my schoolman pretty good too, a lot better than I did, at any rate.

The man doing the cooking got plates for Marsh and me and we ate too, the young fellows telling their teacher what skeletons they found that morning and what they hadn't-only the names they used for the animals was all strange to me. The stew we ate was good, and it had either buffalo or beef in it, I couldn't tell which. Wasn't as good as Mandy's, though. I got a second plate of it after I seen some others getting theirs.

"Anyone find any horse bones?" I asked, sitting back down. They all stopped pushing food into their faces and looked at me like I had just farted.

"That's what the students were talking about, Willie," the professor explained. "The scientific name for the kind of horse found here is
Mesohippus, very different from the
Equus
species that we ride." The boys snickered a little at him saying that.

I didn't mind their having some fun at my expense, but it was hard for me to see how horses could a been much different than they are now, and I wanted to know more about it, even if it did make me the jackass of the herd. Sure, I'd seen horses of all sizes and colors, even heard of some with black and white stripes running wild over in England. But this had to be something more than that, I figured, or they'd of found live ones for their remuda. It'd be silly to have just a few old horse bones when you could have breathing ones that could carry you somewheres. "How was they different?" I ask.

"Let us have a short recitation for Mr. Goodwin's edification, shall we, gentlemen?" You could tell from the way they grumbled that wasn't the kind of fun they had in mind.

All through the meal, the scrawny man's eyes crawled over Ellie Turnbull's body, especially her full breasts. What disturbed Halter even more was that the stranger didn't even try to hide what he was staring at, which was only proper.

"I don't believe I heard your name, sir," Mrs. Turnbull said. Perhaps
if
she engaged the man in conversation, she reasoned, he would stop looking at her so hungrily. And maybe Walt wouldn't lose his temper this time.

"It's Smith, Mam
."

"Smith what?" Walter asked, chewing a mouthful of biscuit.

"Just Smith, "the thin man said flatly. 'This here's your boy, ain't it?" he asked Ellie.

"yes, he is," she said uncomfortably. "Walt's and mine. Do you have children, Mr. Smith?"

The scrawny man spit a piece of gristle into his hand, examined it, and then flung it toward the river. "Had one, once. A boy
."

Jimmy Turnbull knew something was wrong, but he didn't know what. "Did something happen to him?" he asked.

"Jimmy!" Ellie cried. "I declare!"

"I'm sorry, "the boy mumbled, though he wasn't sure what sin he had committed this time.

The scrawny man seemed to pay no attention to the boy and his mother. For several minutes he simply chewed his food and looked into the distance. "Sheriff east of here killed him. "He turned quickly to Walter, as though the broad-shouldered man
had
asked the question that forced him to return to something he did not want to remember. "Shot him down in the street like a goddamned dog
."

"We don't curse in front of the boy," Ellie Turnbull said, her cheeks reddening.

But the stranger appeared not to have heard her. He stood up quickly, though there was still food on his plate, Jimmy noticed. "I'm goin'now
."

Walter Turnbull stood too. "I thank you for your help, Smith," he said.

The thin man smiled and extended his hand. When the muleskinner took it, DuShane squeezed hard, drew the gun that was strapped to his left hip, and shot Walter Turnbull low in the belly.

The echo of the shot died along the river before the boy realized what
had
happened. He lunged at the thin man. "You shot my pal
You—"

DuShane smacked him above the ear with the barrel of his revolver and watched the boy slump to the grass like a sack of old shoes.

Ellie Turnbull sat frozen. A dollop of gooseberry jam still clung to her knife blade, and the biscuit-half she had been going to spread it on still lay in her loose hand.

Her eyes glazed over and her jaw dropped. The scrawny man looked at her pretty white teeth and the soft pink tongue that looked to him like a pink frog in a pink pond. And then he thought about how it would feel to shove his cock in there.

"Now, then, gentlemen," Professor Marsh said, clearing his throat. "A short recitation, please. Contrast
Mesohippus
with the contemporary species
Equus.
Would you begin, Mr. Sargeant? And remember, just contrasts. No comparisons, please."

"Shall I stand, sir?" a young fellow wearing a white cap ask.

"Please do," Marsh said. "And clear away your plates, gentlemen."

The young man in the white cap also wore a funny-looking pair of pants that flared out at the thighs and was laced tight to his shins, which I noticed after he got to his feet. "The most obvious difference is in the foot, of course.
Mesohippus
walked on three toes, while
Equus
walks on only one, the other two toes, those of his predecessor, remaining in vestigial form. If one accepts the monophyletic theory, that is."

He sat down, and all the boys laughed, though I didn't know why. "Mr. Sargeant and I have an intellectual dispute, Willie, and he took this opportunity to poke fun at what he considers to be a folly of mine. Any questions for Mr. Sargeant?"