The Book of Lost Friends(89)

“Gus McKlatchy,” I say. “Gus McKlatchy.”

Hard to see how a boy only twelve or thirteen years old can get us out from this place, but some days you take any hope you can find, even one as poor and skinny as that pie-eater white boy, Gus.

The day weighs a little less heavy on me while the squares of light trek over the floor. I think of Gus, someplace in this town. I think of Juneau Jane, who’s not even got a dime to her name. All our goods, except Juneau Jane’s lady clothes, stayed with me and now they’re gone with the sheriff. Our money. Our food and goods and the derringer pistol. The Book of Lost Friends. Everything.

Missy moans and holds her stomach, and goes to fussing long before the jail man comes with our bucket of pot likker soup and two big wood spoons. One time a day. One bucket. That’s all we get, sheriff said.

I hear the Irishman stirring from his bunk. He’ll go to hollering now that he’s woke up. Instead, as we eat our pot likker, he whispers, “Hey. Hey, you hearin’ me, neighbor? Hearin’ me now, are you?”

I unfold my legs and stand up stiff, then sidle forward a few steps by the wall, just far enough that I can see thick arms hanging out the bars, but he can’t see me. His skin’s red and baked from the sun. A fur of thick yellow hair covers over it, down to the knuckles. They’re the hands of a strong man, so I stay to the wall.

“I hear.”

“Who was it ye’d be conversin’ with outside this morn’?”

No reason to trust him, so I answer, “Don’t know.”

“McKlatchy, I heard him sayin’.” So, the man was listenin’ at us. “Good Scottish name, there. Friend to Irish folk, like myself. My dear mam, she was Scots-Irish, she was.”

“Can’t say about none of that.” What’s this man want? He plan to tell the sheriff on me?

“The two of ye help me away from here, lad, I’d be beholdin’. Be of help to ye both, I could.” The big hands turn a circle, hurried.

I stay to the wall, where I am.

“Some things I know,” the Irishman says. “The man ye seek after, Will’am Gossett. I met the man, indeed. Southward of here a distance, in the Hill Country near Llano town. Offered the man a fine horse trade when his own went lame under him. I could be takin’ ye to him, if ye’d help me gain my freedom. I fear your Mr. Gossett may run abreast of trouble, should soldiers down that way come upon him…as he was ridin’ one their horses when we parted. Warned him, I did, to trade the beast for another when he reached the nearest town. He wasn’t a man for listenin’. Neither was he a man for that Llano country. If ye’d help me get away from this place, I’d make it worth the while and aid in your searching. I could be of use to ye, friend.”

“Don’t reckon there’s much way we could help you,” I say, so’s he’ll know I don’t believe it.

“Relay to the employer of your friend that I’ve a fine hand with a team and am troubled none by the risk of freighting. If only he may lift me from my current difficulty without my neck in a rope.”

“They ain’t gonna turn no army horse thief out of jail.”

“There’s many a deputy can be bought.”

“I don’t know nothing about all that, either.” Can’t believe a thing coming from a Irishman, anyhow. Irishmen tell tales, and they hate my kind, and the feeling runs both ways.

“The three blue beads,” he tries next. “Heard you speaking of it, I did. Having tramped the Hill Country far and wide, I’ve seen such a thing. At a traveler’s hotel and restaurant down Austin way, just along Waller Creek. Three blue beads on a string. Tied round the neck of a little white girl.”

“A white gal?” I guess he ain’t figured out I’m colored and anybody with my grandmama’s blue beads would be, too.

“Red-haired, a bonnie little thing, but young. Eight, perhaps ten, I’d say. Serving water to tables outdoors in a courtyard under the oaks. I could take you to the place.”

I turn and go back to the bunk. “That wouldn’t be nobody I’d know.”

The Irishman calls out, but I don’t answer. He goes to swearing on his mama’s soul that he ain’t lying. I pay him no mind.

Before there’s even time for the soup to cool in the pot, the army’s come for him, anyhow. They drag him away, screaming so loud Missy covers her ears and crawls under the bunk in all the stink and mess.

The deputy shows up at our cell next, drags me out the cell door and there ain’t a thing I can do about it. “You’ll shut your yap, if you know what’s good for you,” he says.

The sheriff’s in the front room and I start to begging and telling him I hadn’t done anything. “You git,” he says, and shoves our poke into my hands. Feels like everything’s there, even the pistol and the book. “You’ve been hired for work that’s to take you out of my town. See that I don’t find your face here again, once J. B. French’s freight wagons leave.”

“But Mis—” I stop myself just short of saying Missy. “Him. I got him to see after, the big boy that come in with me. He don’t have nobody else. He’s harmless, he’s just addle-headed and simple, but I—”

“You shut yer yap! Sheriff James don’t need no word from you.” The deputy kicks me hard in the back, sending me facedown onto the floor. I land on our pack and my knees and one elbow, then scrabble around to get up again.