True Grit - Charles Portis [24]
“Yes, and you are powerful free for a stranger,” said I.
“Her father bought the ponies from the colonel just before he was killed,” said Mrs. Floyd. “Little Mattie here stood him down and made him take them back at a good price.”
Right around 9 o’clock I went to the stock barn and exchanged my release for three hundred and twenty-five dollars in greenbacks. I had held longer amounts in my hand but this money, I fancied, would be pleasing out of proportion to its face value. But no, it was only three hundred and twenty-five dollars in paper and the moment fell short of my expectations. I noted the mild disappointment and made no more of it than that. Perhaps I was affected by Stonehill’s downcast state.
I said, “Well, you have kept your end of the agreement and I have kept mine.”
“That is so,” said he. “I have paid you for a horse I do not possess and I have bought back a string of useless ponies I cannot sell again.”
“You are forgetting the gray horse.”
“Crow bait.”
“You are looking at the thing in the wrong light.”
“I am looking at it in the light of God’s eternal truth.”
“I hope you do not think I have wronged you in any way.”
“No, not at all,” said he. “My fortunes have been remarkably consistent since I came to the ‘Bear State.’ This is but another episode, and a relatively happy one. I was told this city was to be the Chicago of the Southwest. Well, my little friend, it is not the Chicago of the Southwest. I cannot rightly say what it is. I would gladly take pen in hand and write a thick book on my misadventures here, but dare not for fear of being called a lying romancer.”
“The malaria is making you feel bad. You will soon find a buyer for the ponies.”
“I have a tentative offer of ten dollars per head from the Pfitzer Soap Works of Little Rock.”
“It would be a shame to destroy such spirited horseflesh and render it into soap.”
“So it would. I am confident the deal will fall through.”
“I will return later for my saddle.”
“Very good.”
I went to the Chinaman’s store and bought an apple and asked Lee if Rooster was in. He said he was still in bed. I had never seen anyone in bed at 10 o’clock in the morning who was not sick but that was where he was.
He stirred as I came through the curtain. His weight was such that the bunk was bowed in the middle almost to the floor. It looked like he was in a hammock. He was fully clothed under the covers. The brindle cat Sterling Price was curled up on the foot of the bed. Rooster coughed and spit on the floor and rolled a cigarette and lit it and coughed some more. He asked me to bring him some coffee and I got a cup and took the eureka pot from the stove and did this. As he drank, little brown drops of coffee clung to his mustache like dew. Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone. He seemed in no way surprised to see me so I took the same line and stood with my back to the stove and ate my apple.
I said, “You need some more slats in that bed.”
“I know,” said he. “That is the trouble, there is no slats in it at all. It is some kind of a damned Chinese rope bed. I would love to burn it up.”
“It is not good for your back sleeping like that.”
“You are right about that too. A man my age ought to have a good bed if he has nothing else. How does the weather stand out there?”
“The wind is right sharp,” said I. “It is clouding up some in the east.”
“We are in for snow or I miss my guess. Did you see the moon last night?”
“I do not look for snow today.”
“Where have you been, baby sister? I looked for you to come back, then give up on you. I figured you went on home.”
“No, I have been at the Monarch boardinghouse right along. I have been down with something very nearly like the croup.”
“Have you now? The General and me will thank you not to pass it on.”
“I have about got it whipped. I thought you might inquire about me or look in on me while I was laid up.”
“What made you think that?”
“I had no reason except I did not know anybody else in town.”
“Maybe you thought I was a preacher