“He was … handsome … and … well … he seemed real nice. He traded Pa some pans for some of Pa’s stillings and a few skins Pa had left over from last winter.”
“That’s all he had, pots and pans?” Ty asked, thinking he knew where this story was going. He’d seen too many traveling salesmen over the years and had heard jokes about them.
“Well, no,” Mary Jane answered. She hesitated. “He had a couple of bolts of cloth, some ribbons, and a few dresses.”
“You buy anything?” Ty asked. Even in the twilight he could see Mary Jane blush.
“After he was through with Pa, he told Jeb, Sue Carol, and me that he had something on the wagon for us. Said he didn’t want us to feel left out. Told us to come out to the wagon and he’d get it.”
“You go to the wagon with him?” The drummer with Mary Jane was not something Ty wanted to think about.
“Yes sir.”
“What was it he had for you all?” Ty asked clenching his jaws.
“He had some hard candy. He gave Jeb and Sue Carol a piece and told them to run along.”
“He didn’t give you any candy?”
“No, sir. When Jeb and Sue Carol were gone, he showed me this blue silk dress. Mr. Holt … Ty … it was the prettiest dress I’d ever seen. Real expensive, with red and blue ribbons and a real silver Indian hair comb that went with the dress.”
Sonofabuck! “What did he want to trade for the dress and genuine Indian comb?”
“He said he was camping up the road in a place they call the Lost Maples. Do you know where that is?”
“I know, two, three miles upriver where there’s a stand of maple trees?”
“That’s the place. He told me that he’d trade me that dress, two ribbons, and the Indian comb for another jug of Pa’s shine.”
“What did you tell him?” Ty hoped she’d told him to go shinny up a stump.
“I told him heck yes. I told him to hang on a second and I’d go get it for him.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He told me to wait. Said it would embarrass Pa to have his daughter doing the trading, said it would make Pa look bad in front of his family.”
“He wanted you to get the jug and bring it to his camp later?”
“How did you know that’s what he said?” Mary Jane asked. She moved closer.
“A lucky guess. Did you?”
“I told him I couldn’t.”
Hallelujah! “What did he have to say to that?”
“He said he’d throw in a pair of lace-up, black leather shoes if I would. He told me he could sell the whiskey in San Angelo and double his money. I really wanted that dress and comb,” Mary Jane said. “And those shoes by themselves were worth more than the moonshine.”
“And?”
“He said it was okay, said he understood how I couldn’t come so far alone at night.”
“Did he leave?” Ty guessed the drummer wouldn’t go that easy, not with any hope left of tricking a girl this pretty and innocent into his clutches.
“Not right then,” Mary Jane said. “He told me to get a jug of shine and meet him down by the river about the time the moon came up.”
“Did you agree to meet him?”
“Of course,” Mary Jane answered. “That was over fifty dollars worth of clothes and shoes. I told you I wanted them, and I sure enough thought he wanted the whiskey. I thought he was crazy to make such a trade, but I figured that was his business. He seemed nice.”
“So you two made a trade?” Ty asked, hoping the answer would be no.
“We did,” Mary Jane answered.
Ty felt his stomach churn. “Then what?”
“Well, he made me promise not to tell Pa and gave me a ribbon to seal our bargain.”
“He gave you one of the blue and red ribbons to meet him later?”
“No, he gave me a smaller ribbon. He said he’d bring the rest of the stuff to the river.”
If that sonofabuck were here, I’d knock his block off, Ty thought. He guessed that same dress, ribbons, shoes, and comb had enticed more than one girl into the scoundrel’s bed. Maybe Shine had caught them and whipped the snot out of the drummer, and then the drummer came back and shot Shine.
“What happened then?”
“I promised not to tell Pa,” Mary Jane said.
“Did you meet him later?” Ty asked, experiencing an unexpected chaos of feelings for Mary Jane.
“Yes, Mr. Holt, I did.”
“And?”
“He was waiting for me when I got there. The moon was barely up, but I could see right off that he hadn’t brought any box of clothes. The scalawag told me he had the dress and things in a box over in the bushes.”
Ty’s sense of justice and fair play was afire with indignation. “What happened then?” Ty was now completely absorbed by what Mary Jane was telling him. As she spoke, a mingling of new passion and fury tugged his consciousness.
“I gave him the whiskey and told him to get the box.”
“Did he?” Ty’s hands had curled into fists.
“No, I told you he didn’t have the box. It was just a sham he used to lure me away from the house. I’ll bet he’s told a hundred other girls the same story. What do you think, Ty?”
“I think you’re probably right, Mary Jane.” And I think you’re the loveliest creature I have ever seen, he thought to himself.
“Well, he was in for a surprise with me. You know I’ve been to college in Missouri, don’t you, Ty?” She wasn’t bragging.
“I heard.”
“I’m no dance hall floozy. I took a rock-in-a-sock with me just in case.”
“A rock-in-a-sock?”
“It’s something my friend Jesse taught me in Clay County, before we moved to Texas. I took one of Pa’s old socks and put a round river rock in it, and when that drummer tried to kiss me, I whacked him a good one alongside his head. I had to hit him again when he tried to grab my foot.”
“You kill him?” Ty asked, and wondered what he would do if she had. He didn’t feel like arresting her for killing a scuzzler, and he sure didn’t want Dade to take her into Bandera to hang. She had begun to weave a web that Ty had fallen into, head over heels. He burned with feelings that he had not known before tonight.
“No, he moaned a mite, crawled around on his hands and knees, then took off running lickety-split upriver.”
Ty was relieved the drummer wasn’t dead. “That’s what you wanted to tell me?” he asked. He was thankful that Mary Jane’s virtue was apparently still intact.
“Oh no,” Mary Jane said. “It’s about the two skeletons I found.”
“Two skeletons? Where?”
Mary Jane turned away from the river and pointed toward a vertical limestone bluff. “There’s a cave behind those cedars,” she said.
The cedars were growing along the base of the bluff about seventy-five yards from the riverbank. “What have these skeletons got to do with you and that drummer?” Ty asked, half wondering if Mary Jane