Blood and Gold

The lawman shrugged. “Just asking.”

“Oy vey,” Rosenberg said again, looking at his pinkie, his head shaking even more.

Since the little peddler tended to answer a question with one of his own, I tried to trap him. “Tell us what’s troubling you, Mr. Rosenberg.”

“What is there to tell? Who needs to know?”

I shrugged. “You keep looking at your hand. Maybe it pains you.”

Rosenberg nodded, his black eyes glittering in the firelight. “Ah yes, there is pain. But not in the finger.” He placed a hand on the chest. “The pain is here.”

I was right sensitive about pain in the chest after what had happened to Simon Prather, so I asked: “Is it in your pump?”

“Ah, is it in my pump? Boy, you hit the penny nail right on the head. It’s in the heart sure enough. Oy, my poor heart is broke.”

“How come?” I asked, then wished I hadn’t. But Rosenberg surprised me. He answered the question straight as a fire poker.

“I had a ring,” the peddler said. “I wore it right there on my little finger. It was a silver ring given to me by my wife.” Rosenberg sighed. “She’s no longer with me, took by the cholera this five years past.”

“You lose it?” Reeves asked. He was idly rolling a smoke and didn’t look up.

“Lose it? Why would I lose it? It was took from me.”

“Who took it?” I asked.

“Brigands. Black-hearted brigands.”

Now Reeves was all attention. His unlit cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, he asked:

“Was one of them a man with long yeller hair? Carries a big Sharps with a fancy brass scope on the top? Goes by the name of Wingo?”

The peddler shook his head. “That man wasn’t among them. There were six of them, and I heard the name of one of them spoken but it wasn’t that name.”

“Oh?” Reeves asked, his interest quickly fading as he lit his smoke.

Rosenberg nodded. “Their leader was a man named Yates and afterward I remembered that I’d seen him before.”

Reeves’ head snapped around. “Bully Yates? Big feller”—he traced a finger down his left cheek—“has a bowie knife scar right here.”

“How should I know what gave him the scar?” the peddler replied. “But scar he has. Like I already told you, later I remembered him. I saw him use a scat tergun to kill a man outside a saloon in Abilene three summers ago. Should I forget a thing like that?”

Reeves drew deep on his cigarette and shook his head. “Well, well, well, Bully Yates as ever was.”

“You know him, Bass?” I asked.

“I should think I do,” the lawman said. “I have a warrant for his arrest, signed by Judge Parker. Yates is wanted for bank robbery and murder and any number of other crimes, including the part scalping of a loose woman he took up with for a spell.” He looked across the fire at Rosenberg. “Did you recognize any of the others?”

The peddler shrugged. “The others I did not know. But they were all hard men and weighed down by guns.”

“Well, I have a stack of John Does for the others, so that doesn’t make no difference.” Reeves rose to his feet. “Can you recollect where was you robbed, peddler?”

“Why should I not recollect? Was it not me who was robbed?”

“Tell me straight now,” Reeves said, his face grim. “For I plan to start after those men at first light.”

Rosenberg nodded. “To the west of here, maybe twenty miles. Maybe more.”

“Over to the Salt Fork country?”

“Further west. By Sandy Creek.”

Reeves thought that through, then said: “That’s wild, empty country to the west of us. I’d guess Yates is holed up there, figuring to lay low until the heat over the Lawton bank robbery dies down.” The big lawman threw his cigarette butt into the fire. “Bully Yates was always a damn careful man.”

“He’s not laying so low,” Rosenberg pointed out, his face bleak. “He stole my ring and the seven dollars and eighty-three cents I had in my purse.” The little peddler shrugged. “He also took some bacon, salt and flour and most of my coffee.”

“I don’t know about the money,” Reeves told the peddler. “But when I get your ring back, I’ll give it to the clerk of Judge Parker’s court in Fort Smith. You can pick it up there.”

Before Rosenberg could reply, I said: “Bass, you can’t go after those men alone. Hell, man, there’s six of them.”

“And hard,” the peddler said, shaking his head. “All of them hard.”

“I don’t have time to go back to Fort Smith and round up more marshals,” Reeves said. “By the time we all got back here, Yates could have lit a shuck.”

Reeves reached down and placed a hand on my shoulder, an unusually friendly gesture for a man as reserved as he was. “Dusty, you have your own trail to follow. I won’t think any less of you if you don’t follow mine.”

Truth to tell, up until that moment I hadn’t even considered going after Yates and his gang. But now, when I looked up into Reeves’ eyes I saw a deal of shrewd speculation going on there. He was saying one thing, but thinking another, like he was determined to judge me as a friend and a man by what I said next.

I realized then that the cat that had my tongue was a wildcat and I sure had it by the tail.