Boon by Ed Kurtz (top 100 books to read .txt) 📕

The barman said, “Oh, hell.”

I finished my whiskey while the barman fetched a dustpan. I didn’t like my chances as far as the outcome of the trial, but I got to thinking every term of court ought to serve liquor to lessen the severity of the ordeal.

“I reckon there’s a cow trail on either side of us,” said Laramie. “the Goodnight-Loving to the west of us, up to Cheyenne, and then there’s the Western trail over east from Bandera to Ogallala. Seems to me yonder cow came from one or the other.”

Judge Dejasu pondered this.

“All right,” he said. “Which direction did the damn beast come from?”

“West,” I said.

“East,” Boon said.

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the scene in memory. The cow had strayed in from the right, so I figured I’d been wrong and Boon was right.

“Your honor, I would like to revise my answer,” I said.

“Lying already,” the judge said. “Criminal type is what you are, Prussian Edward. Any phrenologist worth his salt could tell you that just by looking at your lumpy God damned head.”

Boon made a noise in her throat.

“The heifer came from the east, so if it was part of a drive it’d have to be the Western trail,” she explained. “We were traveling right up the middle between trails and never saw any other cattle or any drive, just the one cow. It got to following us on account of being dumber than Lawyer Laramie here and the cowboys what went after it made one too many presumptions about the setup and decided to speak with their iron instead of their tongues.”

Lawyer Laramie said, “Hey, now. I’m your only defense.”

“You’re also the prosecutor,” Boon reminded him.

“It does get muddled a little,” he admitted.

“I have two questions to be answered in the order I’m fixing to ask them,” the judge said then, ignoring Boon’s tête-à-tête with Laramie. “What cause have two foreigners to be moving up through the Great Land of Texas between two cattle trails other than to rustle beeves, and how come you to be acquainted with my kin?”

“I am no foreigner, Your Honor,” I protested.

“Arkansas is a foreign land to Texas,” said the judge.

“I got a paper tells you both answers,” Boon said, and to my horror she stuck a hand into her vest pocket for the bounty bill. The little cannonball was likely to hang us both and leave our corpses for the descendants of the turkey buzzards that ate Maynard Francisco Boulliette, and here she was about to tell the loco bastard we aimed to hunt down his own brother. They were going to have to rechristen the place Red Feet, provided Dejasu used the same solution when it came time to pickling our parts. This did not come across as a sound legal strategy in my manner of thinking.

“Paper? What paper?” Judge Dejasu was piqued, but attentive to the turn of events. “Lawyer Laramie, confiscate that foolscap and bring it here.”

The old sot did as he was commanded, and the judge unfolded the bill to spread it out on the table before him. The top left corner stuck between the first and second toes of Boulliette’s foot.

The judge studied the bill for several long minutes, his eyes moving slowly from top to bottom, then back to the top and down again, several times over. His round, whiskered face reddened the more he looked at it, and his breath came in short, noisy bursts through his nose.

“I don’t reckon I ever saw such hogwash and foolishness in all my days as an adjudicator for this great state,” he said. “I suspect this Marshal Willocks is a fiction contrived between the two of you and this horseshit truebill printed by some coward at gunpoint for your scheme to bring shame to my good name. Lawyer Laramie, enter this forgery into evidence against the accused.”

“A fiction?” Boon said, incredulous.

“I do not see him here,” the judge said, “nor have I ever seen him. Produce him if you can, but until then he belongs to stories and mad ravings and nothing more.”

“You ever met Ulysses S. Grant?” she cried. “How about Cole Younger? He ain’t here, either.”

The judge sat up straight, making himself as tall in his chair as he could, which was not saying much.

“You are just that hell-fired to murder my own flesh and blood, that it? I never saw such a cold woman in my life, God damn you.”

“And the devil take you, sir,” Boon said. “Straight to hell. And all your kin, too.”

She said it easy as you please, like her dander wasn’t even up. Like she was ordering a bowl of soup in that rooming house back in Darling. Like it wasn’t hardly anything at all.

The judge thought it was something, though. I don’t reckon I ever saw a white man turn that shade of crimson before or since. His round, oily head poured sweat as he worked himself up into a righteous lather, pounding his fists on the table and making Maynard’s foot bounce like a Mexican jumping bean.

“Guilty!” he hollered. “Guilty, by God! Guilty!”

“Judge Dejasu?” Lawyer Laramie stood, leaning on the table for support as he was so nervous he’d started to shake. “We ain’t finished this here trial yet.”

“Prussian Edward and his Oriental squaw are hereby sentenced to hang until they are dead and left out to rot or get et, whichever comes first. Guilty, I says! Damn, you Laramie.”

“But the jurymen,” Laramie said. He pointed at them, scattered around the Red Foot in various states of inebriation. Only two of them looked back at him. The rest paid no attention at all. In fact, one of them was asleep on the floor.

“No thanks to them and no thanks to you, Lawyer Laramie,” the judge ranted. “I done this conviction all by myself and I’ll thank you to recognize me for my talents in that regard. Other than that, shut your mouth or I’ll