"You look after Ellie," he said sternly. "If she needs her groceries carried, you carry them."
"Okay, July," Roscoe said.
July got on his horse, adjusted his bedroll and sat looking at the river. They weren't carrying much bedding, but then the warm weather was coming.
"Take her a fish now and then, if you catch one," he said.
To Roscoe Brown it seemed a strange instruction. Elmira had made it plain that she didn't like fish.
"Okay, July," he said again, though he didn't mean to waste his time offering fish to a woman who didn't like them.
July could think of no more instructions. Roscoe knew the town as well as he did.
"Joe, be careful," Roscoe said. For some reason it affected him to see the boy going. It was a poor saddle he had, too. But the boy still grinned out from under the old hat.
"We'll catch him," Joe said proudly.
"Well, I'll try not to let nobody shoot no more dentists," Roscoe said.
July regarded the remark as irrelevant, for Roscoe knew well enough that the town had been without a dentist since Benny's death. "Just watch old man Darton," he said. "We don't want him to fall off the ferry."
The old man lived in a shack on the north bank and merely came over for liquor. Once in a while he eluded Roscoe, and twice already he had fallen into the river. The ferrymen didn't like him anyway, and if it happened again they might well let him drown.
"I'll handle the old scamp," Roscoe said confidently. Old man Darton was one responsibility he felt he could handle any day.
"Well, I guess we'll see you when we see you, Roscoe," July said. Then he turned his horse away from the river and the glowing sky, and he and little Joe were soon out of town.
29
SIX DAYS LATER responsibility descended upon Roscoe Brown with a weight far beyond anything he had ever felt. As usual, it fell out of a clear blue sky — as fine a day as one could want, with the Arkansas River sparkling down at the end of the street. Roscoe, having no pressing duties, was sitting in front of the jail whittling, when he noticed Peach Johnson coming up the street with little Charlie Barnes at her side. Charlie was a banker, and the only man in town to wear a necktie every day. He was also the main deacon in the church, and, by common consent the man most likely to marry Peach if she ever remarried. Charlie was a widower, and richer by far than Benny had ever been. Nobody liked him, not even Peach, but she was too practical a woman to let that stop her if she took a notion to marry.
When Roscoe saw them coming he snapped shut his whittling knife and put the stick he had been whittling in his shirt pocket. There was no law against whittling, but he didn't want to get a reputation as an idler, particularly not with a man who was as apt as not to end up the next mayor of Fort Smith.
"Morning, folks," he said, when the two walked up.
"Roscoe, I thought July gave you instructions to look after Elmira," Peach said.
"Well, he said take her a fish if I caught one, but I ain't caught any lately," Roscoe said. He felt a little guilty without even knowing what was wrong, for Elmira had not once crossed his mind since July left.
"If I know July — and I do know July — I bet he said more than that," Peach said.
"Well, he said to carry her some groceries if she asked, but she ain't asked," he said.
"When have you seen her?" Charlie Barnes asked. He was looking stern, though it was hard for a man so short and fat to really muster much sternness.
The question stumped Roscoe. Probably he had seen Elmira recently, but when he thought about it he couldn't think when. The woman was not much for traipsing around town. Right after the marriage she had been seen in the stores some, spending July's money, but he couldn't recollect having seen her in a store in recent days.
"You know Elmira," he said. "She don't come out much. Mainly she just stays in the cabin."
"Well, she ain't in it now," Peach said.
"We think she's gone," Charlie Barnes said.
"Why, where would she go?" Roscoe said.
Peach and Charlie didn't answer, and a silence fell.
"Maybe she just took a walk," Roscoe said, although he knew that sounded weak.
"That's what I thought yesterday," Peach said. "She wasn't there yesterday and she ain't there today. I doubt she'd take no overnight walk."
Roscoe had to admit it was unlikely. The nearest town, Catfish Grove, was fourteen miles away, and not much of a destination at that.
"Maybe she just don't want to answer the door," he said. "She takes a lot of naps."
"Nope, I went in and looked," Peach said. "There ain't a soul in that cabin, and there wasn't yesterday, neither."
"We think she's gone," Charlie Barnes said again. He was not a talkative man.
Roscoe got up from his comfortable seat. If Elmira was indeed gone, that constituted a serious problem. Peach and Charlie stood there as if they expected him to do something, or tell them right off where she had gone.
"I wonder if something got her?" he asked, thinking out loud. There were still plenty of bears in the woods, and some said there were panthers, though he himself had never seen one.
"If she wandered off, anything could have got her," Peach said. "Could have been an animal or it could have been a man."
"Why, Peach, I don't know why a man would want her," Roscoe said, only to realize that the remark probably sounded funny. After all, Peach was related to her.
"I don't either, but I ain't a man," Peach said, giving Charlie Barnes a hard look. Roscoe thought it unlikely that Charlie wanted Elmira. It might be that he didn't even want Peach.
He walked to the edge of the porch and looked up the street, hoping to see Elmira standing in it. In all his years as a deputy he had never heard of a woman just getting lost, and it seemed unfair that it should happen to July's wife. There was nobody in the street but a fanner with a mule team.
"Why, I'll go have a look," he said. "Maybe she just went visiting."
"Who Would she visit?" Peach asked. "She ain't been out of that cabin more than twice since July married her. She don't know the names of five people in this town. I was just going to take her some dumplings, since July is gone off. If I hadn't done it I doubt she would have even been missed."
From her tone Roscoe got the clear implication that he had been remiss in his duty. In fact, he had meant to look in on Elmira at some point, but the time had passed so quickly he had forgotten to.
"Well, I'll go right up there," he said, trying to sound cheerful. "I expect she'll turn up."
"We think she's gone," Charlie Barnes said, for the third time.
Roscoe decided to go at once to keep from having to hear Charlie Barnes repeat himself all morning. He tipped his hat to Peach and started for the cabin, but to his dismay Peach and Charlie stayed right at his heels. It disturbed him to have company, but there was nothing he could do about it. It seemed to him curious that Peach would take Elmira dumplings, for the two women were known not to get along; it crossed his mind that Elmira had seen Peach coming and gone into hiding.
Sure enough, the cabin was empty. There was no sign that anybody had been in it for a day or two. A slab of corn bread sat on the cookstove, already pretty well nibbled by the mice.
"She mostly sat in the loft," Roscoe said, mainly to hear himself talk. Hearing himself was better than hearing Peach.
"There ain't nothing up there but a pallet," Peach said.
That proved to be the truth. It was not much of a pallet, either — just a couple of quilts. July, being the youngest of the Johnson family, had never had any money and had not accumulated much in the way of goods.
Roscoe racked his brain to try and think if there was anything missing, but he had never been in the loft before and could not think of a possession that might have been missing — just Elmira.
"Didn't she have shoes on, when they got hitched?" he asked.
Peach looked disgusted. "Of course she had shoes on," she said. "She wasn't that crazy."
/>
"Well, I don't see no shoes in this cabin, men's or women's," Roscoe said. "If she's gone, I guess she wore 'em."
They went out and walked around the cabin. Roscoe was hoping to find a trail, but there were weeds all around the cabin, wet with dew, and all he did was get his pants legs wet. He was growing more and more uneasy — if Elmira was just in hiding from Peach he wished she'd give up and come out. If July came back and found his new wife missing, there was no telling how upset he'd be.
It seemed to him the most likely explanation was bears, though he knew it wasn't a foolproof explanation. If a bear had just walked in and got her, there would have been some blood on the floor. On the other hand, no bear had ever walked into Fort Smith and got a woman, though one had entered a cabin near Catfish Grove and carried off a baby.
"I guess a bear got her unless she's hiding," he said, unhappily. Being a deputy sheriff had suddenly gotten a lot harder.
"We think she's gone," Charlie Barnes said, with irritating persistence. If a bear had got her, of course she would be gone.
"He means we think she's left," Peach said.
That made no sense at all, since the woman had just married July.
"Left to go where?" he said. "Left to do what?"
"Roscoe, you ain't got the sense God gave a turkey," Peach said, abandoning her good manners. "If she left, she just left — left. My guess is she got tired of living with July."
That was such a radical thought that merely trying to think it gave Roscoe the beginnings of a headache.
"My God, Peach," he said, feeling stunned.
"There's no need to swear, Roscoe," Peach said. "We all seen it coming. July's a fool or he wouldn't have married her."
"It could have been a bear, though," Roscoe said. All of a sudden, it seemed the lesser of two evils. If Elmira was dead July might eventually get over it — if she had run off, there was no telling what he might do.
"Well, where's the tracks, then?" Peach asked. "If a bear came around, all the dogs in this town would have barked, and half the horses would have run away. If you ask me, Elmira's the one that run away."
"My God," Roscoe said again. He knew he was going to get blamed, no matter what.
"I bet she took that whiskey boat," Peach said. In fact, a boat had headed upriver only a day or two after July left.
It was the only logical explanation. No stage had passed through in the last week. A troop of soldiers had come through, going west, but soldiers wouldn't have taken Elmira. The boat had been filled with whiskey traders, headed up for Bents' Fort. Roscoe had seen a couple of the boatmen staggering on the street, and when the boat had left with no fights reported, he had felt relieved. Whiskey traders were rough men — certainly not the sort married women ought to be traveling with.
"You better go see what you can find out, Roscoe," Peach said. "If she's run off, July's gonna want to know about it."
That was certainly true. July doted on Elmira.
It took no more than a walk to the river to confirm what Peach had suspected. Old Sabin, the ferryman, had seen a woman get on the whiskey boat the morning it left.
"My God, why didn't you tell me?" Roscoe asked.
Old Sabin just shrugged. It was none of his business who got on boats other than his own.
"I figert it was a whore," he said.
Roscoe walked slowly back to the jail, feeling extremely confused. He wanted badly for it all to be a mistake. On the way up the street he looked in every store, hoping he would find Elmira in one of them spending money like a normal woman. But she wasn't there. At the saloon he asked Renfro, the barkeep, if he knew of a whore who had left town lately, but there were only two whores in town, and Renfro said they were both upstairs asleep.
It was just the worst luck. He had worried considerably about the various bad things that might happen while July was gone, but the loss of Elmira had not been among his worries. Men's wives didn't usually leave on a whiskey barge. He had heard of cases in which they didn't like wedded life and went back to their families, but Elmira hadn't even had a family, and there was no reason for her not to like wedded life, since July had not worked her hard at all.
Once it was plain that she was gone, Roscoe felt in the worst quandary of his life. July was gone too, off in the general direction of San Antonio. It might be a month before he got back, at which point someone would have to tell him the bad news. Roscoe didn't want to be the someone, but then he was the person whose job it was to sit around the jail, so he would probably have to do it.
Even worse, he would have to sit there for a month or two worrying about July's reaction when he finally got back. Or it could be three months or six months — July had been known to be slow. Roscoe knew he couldn't take six months of anxiety. Of course it just proved that July had been foolish to marry, but that didn't make the situation any easier to live with.
In less than half an hour it seemed that every single person in Fort Smith found out that July Johnson's wife had run off on a whiskey barge. It seemed the Johnson family provided almost all the excitement in the town, the last excitement having been Benny's death. Such a stream of people came up to question Roscoe about the disappearance that he was forced to give up all thought of whittling, just at a time when having a stick to whittle on might have settled his nerves.
People who had seldom laid eyes on Elmira suddenly showed up at the jail and began to question him about her habits, as if he was an authority on them — though all he had ever seen the woman do was cook a catfish or two.
One of the worst was old lady Harkness, who had once taught school somewhere or other in Mississippi and had treated grownups like schoolchildren ever since. She helped out a little in her son's general store, where evidently there wasn't work enough to keep her busy. She marched across the street as if she had been appointed by God to investigate the whole thing. Roscoe had already discussed it with the blacksmith and the postmaster and a couple of cotton farmers, and was hoping for a little time off in which to think it through. Old lady Harkness didn't let that stop her.
"Roscoe, if you was my deputy, I'd arrest you," she said. "What do you mean lettin' somebody run off with July's wife?"
"Nobody run off with her," Roscoe said. "She just run off with herself, I guess."
"What do you know about it?" old lady Harkness said. "I don't guess she'd just have got on a boatful of men if she wasn't partial to one of them. When are you going after her?"
"I ain't," Roscoe said, startled. It had never occurred to him to go after Elmira.
"Well, you will unless you're good for nothing, I guess," the old lady said. "This ain't much of a town if things like that can happen and the deputy just sit there."
"It never was much of a town," Roscoe reminded her, but the point, which was obvious, merely seemed to anger her.
"If you ain't up to getting the woman, then you better go get July," she said. "He might want his wife back before she gets up there somewhere and gets scalped."
She then marched off, much to Roscoe's relief. He went in and took a drink or two from a bottle of whiskey he kept under his couch and usually only used as a remedy for toothache. He was careful not to drink too much, since the last thing he needed was for the people in Fort Smith to get the notion he was a drunk. But then, the next thing he knew, despite his care, the whiskey bottle was empty, and he seemed to have drunk it, although it did not feel to him like he was drunk. In the still heat he got drowsy and went to sleep on the couch, only to awake in a sweat to find Peach and Charlie Barnes staring down at him.
It was very upsetting, for it seemed to him the day had started out with Peach and Charlie staring down at him. In his confusion it occurred to him that he might have dreamed the whole business about Elmira running off. Only there were Peach and Charlie again; the dream might be starting over. He wanted to wake up before it got to the part about the whiskey barge, but it turned out he was awake, after all.
"Is she still gone?" he asked, hoping by some m
iracle that Elmira had showed up while he was steeping.
"Of course she's still gone," Peach said. "And you're drunk on the job. Get up from there and go get July."
"But July went to Texas," Roscoe said. "The only place I've ever been to is Little Rock, and it's in the other direction."
"Roscoe, if you can't find Texas you're a disgrace to your profession," Peach said.
Peach had a habit of misunderstanding people, even when the point was most obvious.
"I can find Texas," he said. "The point is, kin I find July?"
"He's riding with a boy, and he's going to San Antonio," Peach said. "I guess if you ask around, someone will have seen them."
"Yeah, but what if I miss 'em?" Roscoe asked.
"Then I guess you'll end up in California," she said.
Roscoe found that he had a headache, and listening to Peach made it worse.
"His wife's gone," Charlie Barnes said.
"Dern it, Charlie, shut up!" Peach said. "He knows that. I don't think he's forgot that."
Roscoe had not forgotten it. Overnight it had become the dominant fact of his life. Elmira was gone and he was expected to do something about it. Moreover, his choices were limited. Either he went upriver and tried to find Elmira or he had to go to Texas and look for July. He himself was far from sure that either action was wise..
Trying to recover his wits, with a headache and Peach and Charlie Barnes staring at him for the second time that day, was not easy. Mainly Roscoe felt aggrieved that July had put him in such a position. July had been doing well enough without a wife, it seemed to Roscoe; but if he had to marry, he could have been a little more careful and at least married someone who would have the courtesy to stay around Fort Smith — about the least that one ought to be able to ask of a wife. Instead, he had made the worst possible choice and left Roscoe to suffer the consequences.
"I ain't much of a traveler," Roscoe said, for actually his one trip, to Little Rock, had been one of the nightmares of his life, since he had ridden the whole way in a cold rain and had run a fever for a month as a result.