by Amy Faye
“Send her in,” Baron said.
The guy opened the door and I stepped through it. The door closed behind me. Baron sat on his bed, his suspenders pulled down off his shoulders. He looked at the door sourly. The sourness didn’t deepen as he looked at me, but it didn’t go away, either.
His voice was neutral when he spoke, though. I tried to read some pleasantness into that.
“Missed you at supper.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d be there.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “You avoiding me?”
I blinked. The whole notion was so backwards that I struggled to even imagine it.
“No?”
“I haven’t seen too much of you. I know you must be upset.”
“You want to know why I wasn’t at supper?”
“You’re damned right I do,” he said. He stood up as he said it, and his height suddenly made him seem very scary. I tried not to think too hard about it.
“Franklin.”
“Franklin Durham?”
“He didn’t give me his full name, Baron. Called himself Franklin. Big guy.”
He looked at me hard, like I’d said something wrong. I couldn’t begin to guess what it might have been because I didn’t say anything that wasn’t completely, one-hundred-per-cent the God’s honest truth.
“You’re sure? Yellow hair? Looks like he probably shaved his head with a razor, he keeps it so short?”
I looked at him flatly. “That’s the one.”
He kept looking at me, like he wanted to do something about it. Like he was thinking that maybe he could solve all his problems by making me deny it. Then he jerked his head and settled back onto his mattress.
“You’re sure.”
“I told you I was sure. Are you going to call me a liar? He was making me uncomfortable.”
“How so? What did he say exactly?”
I let out a breath. “I don’t remember, exactly. I remember thinking that he was being suggestive.”
His jaw tightened. “And you’re sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” I said. I wasn’t. I hadn’t exactly wanted to get him to confirm his bad intentions. The men here weren’t the type to be buried in good intentions. Euler was just one of the boys here. And I’d known about his bad intentions from the first. “But I didn’t want to stick around and find out.”
Euler laid back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. I waited for him to explain. He didn’t.
“I’m sorry I upset you—”
“I can’t afford to hear this right now,” he said.
“So, what? I should have let him make suggestive remarks at me?”
He sat upright. His jaw was working itself tighter and tighter; he worked it loose again, shook his head like he was trying to get his head clear, and looked at my face.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “No.”
“Then what should I have done?”
“You should have stayed away.”
“And I did.”
“And you did,” he agreed. “I just…”
“You what? You’re going to let him walk all over you?”
“You don’t understand the first thing, do you?”
“Maybe I don’t. You didn’t seem to be worrying about that when you dragged me off into the desert, so I reckon you can explain it to me.”
He stood again, and I felt that tingle of fear again in my spine. Then he stepped close, clapped his arms on my shoulders, and pulled me in close. His lips pressed against mine. I was angry. Not in the mood for a kiss.
And then I relaxed into it anyways. Baron had an unspeakable effect on me. I hated it, and I loved it, all at the same time.
“Don’t fight me,” he growled, low. “I’ve got enough of that right now.”
“Are you going to stand up for me, or not?”
He touched his forehead to mine and looked into my eyes.
“The time for that will come,” he said. “But it’s not now.”
I stared at him. I think my jaw dropped. I couldn’t feel it at the time, but I remember having to close it again afterward.
“I’ll go up against him,” Baron told me. “But not before I’m sure that I’m going to come out on top of it. Better to hold my tongue now and make sure I don’t get killed waggling it. For now, just…” He let out a breath. “Stick close to me. He won’t do anything while I’m with you.”
I nodded; I wasn’t about to talk back to him. But the only thing running through my head was, for how long?
Fifteen
Baron told me to stick close by him; he did. It was a beautiful situation. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes and squeezed my hands into tight balls. The other women seemed to be handling life there better than I was.
Maybe they knew something that I didn’t know, or maybe they were made of tougher stuff than I was. I ought to have been embarrassed at the very notion. I wasn’t. I was ready to be a weak little thing, so long as I lived to see the end of it.
I swallowed and shut my eyes tight and tried to figure out what I was supposed to do here. How I was supposed to get out from under the danger that I’d suddenly, unceremoniously, found myself under.
One idea kept coming to me, over and over again. I pushed it away for what felt like the hundredth time. And it came back to me again, just like it had a hundred times before:
There was one easy way out. I just had to get on my horse and ride out of here.
Once I found another town, which shouldn’t be all that difficult, then I could get a telegram sent to my mother. She’d find a way to get me home. Then I could go back. I’d have to hide my shame at having debased myself with a man like Baron Euler.
But I would have gotten away, and I would have been alive. Which was an improvement over being a poker chip in a high-stakes game between a couple of arrogant, violent men. I shouldn’t have come with Euler in the first place, a voice told me. He’s probably never heard the word Christlike in his life.
It was the right decision, and deep down, some part of me knew that. But I wasn’t going to do it, and I knew it, deep in my gut. Because as much as I tried to convince myself that it was the right decision, as much as I told myself that it would solve all my problems, as much as the fear sat low and heavy in my belly, I couldn’t make myself want to leave.
It was smart. It was the right decision. I tried to tell myself that a hundred times, and a hundred more, I failed to feel like it was what I actually wanted.
I turned to Euler. We were riding out in the badlands surrounding Perdition. Keeping watch was a constant job, I had learned. Everyone took their turns. Today was Baron’s turn, though I thought that he took more turns than most. And I was sticking close by him.
“You should get out of here,” Baron said.
I looked at him a long time.
“You going to come with me?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve got things that need doing here.”
“Then I’m not going. Unless you were planning to try and make me?”
He turned imperceptibly towards me, but I could feel the weight of his gaze on me now. I squeezed the horse’s flanks tighter.
“You don’t need me around. I’m no good for you anyways. You know that.”
“You spoiled me for anyone else,” I said. It was true, even if it wasn’t exactly fair to place all the blame at his feet. I didn’t want to leave, and I wasn’t going to. Not on his terms, at least. He might only have been echoing my own thoughts, but I wasn’t going to let him know that. Because he wasn’t the only one who could be stubborn, and I wasn’t going to let him do something smart for me if I didn’t want it.
His lips pursed, and his jaw tightened. I decided to prod him a little harder and drive my point home.
“You took what you wanted. Now you have to finish what you started.”
He turned away from me and scanned the horizon with a long, sweeping gaze.
“I get worried about you being here,” he
said. It had the tone of a confession that he wasn’t happy to have to be making.
“Why’s that?”
“Things are going to go sideways. I don’t want you caught in the middle of it.”
“Then fix it,” I said. It might not have been fair, but I wasn’t thinking about fair. I was thinking that he’d been running scared for too long about this, and there was going to be a reckoning.
“It’s not that simple,” he said. Defensive. Almost weak. It was a strange sound to hear coming from Baron Euler’s mouth. Like he’d decided that he didn’t have to be strong. I pursed my lips.
“You’re going to let Frank talk dirt to me, then?”
“No,” he said harshly. “I’m not.”
“So you’re keeping me close, that right?”
“That’s exactly right.”
“Then what happens when he decides he’s ready to make his move?”
He stiffened in the saddle for a moment. The horses kept moving, but their ears flicked a little, nervously. My mare danced a little to the side. I tried to guide her straight. It felt more like trying to tell her with my mind that I wanted her straight. She seemed to get the message, same as she usually seemed to.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t have a plan.”
“You’re going to want to make sure that you figure it out, and soon.”
He straightened his shoulders, adjusted the hat on his head, and swept the horizon again, turned back to me.
“You’re going to be the death of me, woman.”
I smiled at him as sweetly as I could manage.
“As long as it’s a good death, isn’t that better than you could have hoped for? Some kinda chivalry thing, right?”
He rolled his eyes. “You better be pleased that I let you talk to me like this,” he said. “I’ve got half a mind to turn you over my knee when we get back into town.”
I straightened my neck and lifted my chin in a gesture that I hoped made me look stern and serene all at once. “You wouldn’t,” I said.
But I knew that he would. And I knew that it was a fair price to pay. That was the kind of man that Euler was, and that was the kind of relationship I wanted to have with him, after all.`
Sixteen
I had to wait for things to hit the boiling point. I knew that, instinctively. And I knew that things were only going to go badly when they did, because Baron, as much as it worried me, had decided to be reactive rather than proactive in dealing with the threats laid out in front of him.
I hated it. But there wasn’t anything that I could do but to hope that I was being overly cautious. Luckily for me, or perhaps unluckily, I didn’t have to wait long.
Baron walked me down the steps into the common room. There was something about walking with a man his size, looking the way he did, and being on his arm.
All of the men in Perdition were to type. Strong, burly men. The sort of men that, if they weren’t killers to a man, a lady might have trouble refusing for her own. Not that I had any room to criticize any of them. After all, the biggest killer of the group was the one I’d claimed for myself.
I noticed the tension in the room immediately. There was something going on, and there wasn’t going to be any more ignoring it. I knew in that moment that I wasn’t going to like being here. And I knew that there was going to be danger here.
If I knew it, then I knew that Baron had to know it. He had a sixth sense for danger, and it must have been going nuts. The girls were usually fairly sturdy, but today they seemed as nervous as anyone I’d ever seen.
Franklin stood up as we set foot on the common room floor. He didn’t look angry. Not violent, not threatening. He couldn’t have been more intimidating, to me, if he’d put his hand on the butt of his pistol and grit his teeth. He stood half-a-head taller than Baron and gave a hard grin.
“Boss! Good to see you tonight.”
“You’re feeling cheerful, aren’t you?”
I was intimately aware of the feeling of the pistol pressed against my hip, and the way that I stood in the way of it. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to stay close or move to give him room to maneuver.
“Of course I am, Baron. You’re the light of my life, you know.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. It wasn’t hard to hear the sarcasm in Baron’s voice. He’d forced his own face into a grin, as well, tight-lipped in contrast to Franklin’s toothy expression.
“How’s the little lady? Getting used to life around here?”
Franklin’s eyes never moved over to look at me. Like he didn’t see me standing there. I didn’t like it, because there was another implication there that I didn’t totally understand, except that I was sure that there was danger in it.
“She’s already learning the important stuff,” Baron said. He squeezed my shoulder, but his eyes never shifted my way, either. “Like who the rascals are.”
“That right?”
“You know it is,” Baron said. “I hear that there’s been talk while I was gone.”
“Oh yeah? What kind of talk is that?”
I didn’t like that there was so much going unsaid. It gave me the distinct impression that eventually, someone was going to crack, but that it was impossible to tell with any certainty who it was going to be. Each word seemed to be chosen to dare the other to make a commitment.
Eventually, someone would have to commit, and then everyone would show their hands. I was fairly certain that it would turn violent in the space of an instant. And I wasn’t certain how the violence would turn out. It wasn’t a feeling that I liked. None of it was. The others in the room had grown more than quiet. Every eye on either Euler or Franklin.
Eventually, even soon, one of them would either draw a line that the other couldn’t resist crossing, or one of them would back down. In the sick moment of realization, I knew that Baron wasn’t going to be the one to back down. He might be the one to cross the line first, but he wasn’t going to surrender.
Neither was Franklin. And the way that folks’ weights shifted, and the women-folk suddenly cleared out of the common, I knew that it wasn’t going to go the way that he wanted it to.
“Come on, babe,” I said. I hoped that I could get him to listen to me. My gut told me that it was past that. But adrenaline had me in its grip. “Let’s get something to eat.”
“Yeah,” Franklin said. “You should listen to your woman.”
From where I stood I could see Baron’s grin drop into a scowl.
“I don’t answer to any woman,” he growled.
“No? She seems to think that you will listen.”
“You’re going to regret this, Franklin.”
“Regret what? I’m just looking out for your relationship. You never know; you lose your grip on your lady, and she’s pretty enough, I’m sure that she won’t have trouble finding another man who knows how to keep his women.”
Baron’s teeth grit together.
“Yeah? You think you’re in a position to challenge me, Franklin Durham?”
“Me?” Franklin’s grin seemed less forced as he started to speak. “Where ever did you get the idea that I was planning to make a move? I’m just talking about possibilities. I’m looking out for you, here, boss.”
“Make sure you remember that, then,” Euler growled. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder again, and guided me towards a seat. The tension in the room lapsed, even if it was only a little.
And I knew that somehow, in spite of the fact that Franklin had been perfectly deferential, he’d won this round. I just didn’t know how, or what Baron was planning to do about it.
I guess I wasn’t in a position to understand that world at the time, because I didn’t understand half how much Franklin had won the day.
Seventeen
I wasn’t used to the world that I found myself in. Worse still, I wasn’t prepared for the level of danger and violence that it tended to encourage. I wasn’t ready to understand the sort of risks that we faced every da
y.
Those risks were the first and the biggest problem that we ran into. So I understood that by backing down, Baron looked weak. And when he told me so, I wasn’t surprised. We talked about it, instead.
I don’t know what he expected. I know that I surprised myself with the way that I could think about the violence we were about to bring down on Franklin Durham’s head. He’d shown himself as the head of the snake; all we had to do was cut it off, and the body would die.
So we talked and planned. If he had all his men around him, then he was too many. There would be some that would break for Baron from the outset, but too few. There would be more to break for Franklin, if they’d gotten to the point of open revolt.
And if there were more to break for Franklin, and the split went as deep as we both feared, then there was no way that we were going to be able to cut things off quickly. Shooting down Franklin Durham in the street would just encourage someone to take up his banner and start pushing again.
This time, they would feel justified in taking shots at Baron. So the only answer was to do it without shooting—maybe without killing him in the first place. And we had to find Durham alone. Once that happened, we could hope, maybe, that the men who would have broken Franklin’s way would see that there was no real hope in backing a lost fighter.
That was the hope, anyways. It was a simple enough plan, and yet, at the same time, it relied on a lot of trouble. It worried me more than it worried Baron. If anything he seemed like he was completely unperturbed.
First, it relied on the assumption that a bunch of killers and thieves would suddenly recall honor all of a sudden because their friend was beaten to a pulp. But Baron seemed to think that they respected a tough leader. Someone who got whipped eight ways from Sunday would lose respect, and would lose support.
Second, it relied on the assumption that Franklin was the leader. Of course, it was hard to imagine that anyone would have a man picking fights for him, if the rest of the army supported strong, dominant leadership. It was the sort of thing that a snake might do, but if you get rid of the biggest dog, then he has to move to the second-best. And you beat that one, too. So it wasn’t the biggest leap in logic, because if we were wrong then there was a fairly easy and safe response: we were safe as long as we were fairly certain we were safe.