The Kid: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

I’m happy in Arizona. I could stay here.
    And then he fell under the unfortunate influence of a Scottish former 6th Cavalry trumpeter named John Mackie, who rented the sleeping room next to him in the Hotel de Luna. Mackie was twenty-seven and had enlisted during the Civil War when he was just fourteen, but he’d never lost his Fife dialect and was still so hard to understand that some folks just shook their heads when he talked. The Kid, however, could decipher it, and John found him clever and amusing company on his sprees.
    The Kid had felt fatherless since his vague early memories of New York City, and he forever found himself generating fierce loyalties for confident older men who paid him the least bit of attention. And that, for now, was a Scotsman whose current stint was horse thievery.
    Strolling at eventide from the Hotel de Luna and heading down the lone street to the saloons, Mackie introduced the Kid to his nightly pursuits as if they were not only just but proper. “Sorry, laddie,” the Scotsman said, “but them loons what’s dinna tie up their mounts good, nae watch o’er em, are a- beggin for me to reive em. It’s the Code ay the West.”
    “Seems to me the Code of the West means you have the right to hold your ground. The right to defend yourself.”
    “Tis indeed! And also if ye hae a strong want for what belongs to wheelthy others, it’s in yer rights to make free with it.”
    “And they hang you.”
    “But I chore from soldjers ! Ye think they owns the animals? Naw. Airmy property. So ye and I would joost be takin from them who’s back east in Washington City. Why they ginna hang me, like? They woon’t even know .”
    Walking up between them was Windy Cahill, an Irish former Army private in Camp Grant and now the owner of the local farrier’s shop. Windy was a wide, muscular, gorbellied hooligan much heavier than the Kid, and he had a history of finding humor in rankling the teenager with shoves and slaps and throw-downs. And now just for fun he intentionally collided with him, knocking Henry into a stumble that Windy thought was a hoot. “Oops,” he said. “Blundered you akilter.”
    “What is it with blacksmiths?” the Kid grumbled as he found his pace again.
    Windy turned to Mackie. “Hello, John.”
    “Ahwrite,” Mackie said.
    The farrier leaned toward him and hushed his voice. “I need two saddles and blankets for Old Man Clanton’s ranch.”
    “What kine? Nae Mexican, I hope?”
    “Nah. The thirty-dollar kind.”
    Mackie nodded. “See ye eifter.”
    Windy told him he’d be in George Atkins’s cantina for just a nip and strode ahead so he wouldn’t be associated with them. Mackie and the Kid headed onward to the east side of Grant Creek and George McKittrick’s bagnio, called by Mackie a “big-no” and called by soldiers the Hog Ranch. The front was a saloon and dance hall filled with havoc and music, but upstairs and also behind in a long adobe bunkhouse were rooms for cavorting, each small as a sty.
    Mackie eased up to a buxom madam in a frilled, ankle-length white apron and softly spoke with her. She pointed upstairs, and he headed there, stopping after four steps to turn to the Kid. “Ye comin?” he asked, for the Scot earned a fee for whichever newcomer he lured into harlotry.
    The sixteen-year-old followed him up, his stomach queasy with his daring.
    The upstairs hallway was lined with parlor chairs on which shy cowhands and soldiers were sitting primly, like schoolboys soon to be punished.
    “Ye feel no weel?” Mackie asked the Kid. “White as a ghoost ye are.”
    “The blood’s all gone from my face to my nether region.”
    The madam huffed up the stairs to the hallway with a brass school bell, which she rang so close to the Kid that he ducked.
    Six Cyprians soon crowded into the hallway and smiled at the men and lifted their long draperies thigh-high to show their hosiery and wares. Selections were made and the couples went off. In his shyness, the