Ev’ret, drooling candy juice, wiped his chin. “Like now, boss?”
Jules studied Ev’ret long moments before switching his view back to Sary. “Soon. There’s an exquisite sense of timing.”
“Like when he ain’t around?” Ev’ret nodded to a dazed-looking Seb just leaving the saloon.
Jules lashed out at Ev’ret’s Adam’s apple. Ev’ret choked on the candy and looked after Jules, hurt and confused.
****
Julian eyed the silent show from his upstairs bedroom as Seb dragged Sary, clutching provisions, from a shop window where she leaned nose to the glass to better scrutinize a cheap sprigged pink gown. ”Oh, sweet girl, you’ll have more than cheap dresses.”
Julian brushed an unexpected hardening in his nether region, welcome in its rare delights. Till she’s all mine—or as long as it takes. He chuckled with embarrassing candor. She’ll have all my attentions, warming my bed. He rubbed his hands and wiped his mouth.
I’ll be gentle, not like with Handi. His hands cupped air—he could almost sense the silkiness of her thighs under that misbegotten skirt she wore, and the soft weight of her breasts.
He tore his gaze away, puzzled as he noted with frowning interest that, almost as they reached their sad prospect of a horse, Sary broke away, running to Handi’s. For a second he supposed she ran to the saloon —and to him—while Seb looked stunned, gaping after her.
Julian’s chuckle was like scuffed gravel as Seb’s boot tangled in the stirrup as he tried to dismount. Soon he’d think of something suitable for his rapacious new brother-in-law—like mucking stables.
****
Inside Handi’s place, Sary looked around wildly, peering in the empty parlor, pressing the office door—locked. Handi, where are you? Outside, Seb smacked the poor horse. She looked up a staircase. Perhaps I can hide…no, too late. Seb had spied her. She studied the little Derringer, then, shoved it back into her petticoat.
Grabbing paper and inkpot, Sary scrawled a note. ‘Money for gun—S.’
She wadded the coin in the paper, shoving them both under the ledger. Later she pondered if that was the beginning of all the rest. Racing out, she glanced up.
Behind a window in the saloon, Handi raised heavy green brocade skirts and performed a slow, rude grind. Sary joined Seb, who had turned oddly sweet and amenable.
For some reason her mind flashed back to when Seb had helped her up on that chair…
“Sister. Dear. Come right on up here…” Seb dismounted, crouched, and cupped his hands for her foot, which had never received such help before. “Best we make haste for home…”
“Se-eb?” Sary stared at him queerly.
“Sorry if I was a little rough on you back there, Sister.” Seb glanced up for Julian, but he was gone.
Sary studied her brother from the corner of her eye. Perhaps things will go better. Seb seems so…chastened. Still, it is odd… She had a queer unease, as if she were coming down with something—or maybe he was. Her heart thumped at the notion he might be ill or…even die. And… No. What a wicked, self-serving thought. Grief flooded her with remorse. What did the preacher say? We all have thoughts that would shame Hell.
****
Biskits wielded a straightedge razor over Julian’s grizzled jowls where whiskers studded crevices like trees in raddled ravines. His boss gazed inscrutably at his own reflection, swiped the last foam away, and nodded him out.
Julian sucked in a concave belly, raising his chest, before he selected a set of engraved brushes to sweep silvery wings of hair, his one righteous vanity. Then, with a jar of pumice and a pig-bristle brush, he vigorously scrubbed long yellowed tusks, grinning experimentally.
Pleased.
He had no rotted teeth—good, for his age, or they didn’t show. He sucked a loose one, and spat blood. Flashing a horse-grimace, Julian checked his breath, mouth-swished Bay Rum, and rubbed it over his face. After a swipe of it under his arms, he carefully slipped into crisp tailored gabardine, fresh from the Chinese tailor, so smooth it was like silk. He tugged on an ivory brocade waistcoat, shot his cuffs, and inspected moonstone links and a handsome cravat pin, then the hefty turnip watch and chain.
Stiffening his slightly hunched back, Julian gazed regally into the mirror and nodded curtly to himself. He’s still a fine figure of a man—any woman would feel lucky to be chosen.
Julian crossed to his son’s room, hesitating outside, almost passing. Entering, Julian sat by Jules’s bed, watching his beautiful son sleep for a few moments, then tenderly covered him as if he were a small child. She might be young for a mom, but she may have a settling influence on the boy.
Rationalizing this, Julian stood, decisive.
****
Seb shoved Sary to the creek, hurtling a brush and soap after her. She ducked.
“Seb! Are you gone all over queer?” Her brother seemed fevered, gathering her clothes from where they lay drying on rocks and wadding them into her trunk. Sary grabbed them. “What are you doing? You’re ripping—”
Seb halted, bright-eyed. “Got ’at right, sister dear.” He laughed with hysteria, darting looks at the camp. “Don’t know why I bother none. Soon won’t matter. We’ll both be wearin’ silky under drawers!” He cackled inanely. “But reckon you need somethin’ to cover your…altogether, for the time bein’.” He sniggered.
Seb giggling? Sary eyed her brother’s agitated state, edging away. Something sure wasn’t right. All the way back, he’d been smiling, breaking into a guffaw now and then. Seb still tracked her, judging her as if she were a prize plow horse—or cow.
“Now. Go scrub yourself. You know”—Seb gestured, blushing—“all over-like. Everywhere.”
“We’re—leaving?” Her brother ignored her.
“An dab on some o’ that cookin’ vanilla. Like I don’t know!” Seb smirked, scandalized. “I seen ya do it. Little dab ’hind your ear, makin’ ya all sweet and dainty.” He reached over to give Sary’s cheeks a hard pinch. “Need color.”
Sary slapped him off. “Seb!”
But then Seb, impatient, tweaked his own cheek just as hard. “Go on! I know all your filthy female tricks and womanly ways. Your mouth, too. Get some life in you! Nobody’d hanker after ya this way.”
Sary watched him intently and pinched her cheeks red, eyeing Seb in the spotted mirror he held up critically. Behind her, he motioned, impatient, biting his own lips in illustration. Sary bit her bottom lip, shoving the mirror off. “There. Now what? What the Sam Hill are you up to, Sebastian?”
Seb stepped back, scanning her top to toe. He leapt forward and brushed a strand of hair in place, tugged at a wrinkle in her skirt, stood back again. “Reckon ’at’ll hafta do,” he allowed, forlorn.
“What!”
“You’ll see.” Seb seemed uneasy, and Sary dropped the mirror, her hand suddenly as numb as her head. The glass broke, unheeded.
“What have you done?” Sary breathed and turned on him. “Sebastian!”
****
Julian admired the pearl eardrops by the light of the moon, spattering them in a spasm of coughing and sprayed blood. He wiped them off and then wrapped them in a handkerchief before tucking the small bundle back into his breast pocket.
Chapter 10
Seb paced, hands behind his back, staring up the knoll trying to penetrate the dark and listening for a hoof beat, while Sary—a bedraggled ribbon knotted in her hair, gripped a plate, frozen as a knot on the log she was seated on.
“You’d sell me.” She spoke in a flat, dead tone and dashed the plate to the ground.
Seb, still intent on the knoll, nibbled a hangnail. “Wanting you real bad, Sare,” he muttered over his shoulder. “Could do worse.” He whirled and gave a sharp nod, his fist curled. “A lot worse.”
“You could!” Sary shouted. “You’d be lording it over the poker table and holding up the bar! I can see it now!” She began pacing.
“More’n just a good poke, Sary,” Seb whined, backing from her. “He wants you pure-like. Ju
st for him.” He hadn’t thought his sister would take on so. “Just for—”
Sary hurled the tin plate, banging Seb in the back of the head.
Seb threw up his arms to ward off more blows as Sary stormed about, pelting rocks as she went.
“Said you’d be a queen, Sary! Those exact words!”
“And what would that make you?” she demanded. “A court jester?”
The ground whirled beneath her feet—a sick feeling swelled up her neck like a snake coiled in her stomach, and she was so enraged she could scarcely find breath to shriek. “You wouldn’t be—sleeping with him! He’s old, and yellow as lard! He stinks of death! Like something died and they forgot to bury it!”
A ghostly cough floats down from the knoll.
They both jerked, intent on the dark above.
“Old and yellow I may be, Sarabande Swinford.” The voice was dry, inflectionless, yet hard. “I’m waiting.”
Sary searched the night, but then Julian entered the fitful light, all peaks and hollows, his ivory vest and yellow teeth gleaming like dead fish in the dark.
Sary could hear the swish of his silvery coat and the creak of his saddle as he picked his way down. She faltered back. She’d been uneasily aware of a heavy perfume clogging the leaf-musked night for some time now…so that was it. That crazy old man drenched with cologne. Suddenly aware she mustn’t hurt his feelings, she stuttered, “I’m honored, Mister D-Delacorte. Truly. A—a man of your…stature.” Her mind raced. “But Seb didn’t say—I’m under mourning,” she said, desperate.
Seb gripped her arm. He dragged her, protesting, to Julian. Sary looked up at the gaunt man high up on the horse. The face was inscrutable and old as the mountains.
“Mourning here lasts till bedtime.” The voice grated in the night, and Julian cantered down, leaned arthritically, crookedly, as if in pain, and reached for her, grasping her other arm, yanking her from Seb. “Take it up with kin," he barked harshly. "I bought you.”
“You can’t sell what you don’t own,” she couldn’t help snarling, glaring up at him more frightened than she’d ever been. Could her brother force such a thing? There was no real law here, beyond this man, Delacorte. Her clear green eyes were lost in the rheumy swamp of his. Long seconds passed. Sary felt the crackle of tension like lightning on a still night between the three of them.
Julian tightened something in his face. With effort, he dropped her arm and, without leaving her eyes, bawled at Seb, “Where’s—my—money!” The words echoed about the camp, bouncing off the mountains.
Seb looked stricken. Uncertain, casting guilty glances at his sister, he withdrew Julian’s wallet from his shirt.
Sary snatched it from him and heaved it at the horse’s hooves.
Julian gazed down, then at Sary, her face pink as a rose, green eyes glittering defiance—hair wild and curling. He backed his horse without removing his inscrutable gaze from her face, until the light no longer held him and he was gone.
Seb scrambled for the money, waving it, running after the man long after the hoof beats faded. “Don’t worry, Mr. Delacorte. I’ll knock sense in her,” he called. “I will!”
He stormed back to shake her, shouting, red-faced, “Now you done it! Now you done it! The Delacortes of the world won’t come crawlin’ back to the likes of us!”
Sary gave him a stony look. “What do they call men like you? There’s a name.”
Seb looked at her, spiteful. Finally, he spit, “Your jailer, sister-mine! I’ll work you like a spavined mule.”
Sary’s eyes became slits. And, you don’t now?
****
Sary was wakeful, as uneasy as before a brooding Indiana storm when air would turn green and still. She had moved her bedroll from the leanto and up close by the fire, fighting sleep. Her eyes drooped…just for a minute…
****
Seb was wakeful too, his mind churning for a way back. Somethin’ I shoulda, mighta said. Too quick. I didn’t ’splain the right and proper benefits of such a union. After all, how long can the consumptive old hen’s-fart last? Sary don’t understand the ways of the world. Just a female. That’s why they put Seb in charge, didn’t they? By Gawd, she’ll see the light! She won’t deny old Seb the chance, neither. I’ll yank her back to Big Bear in her bloomers and shift if need be…
Seb drifted off with visions, not of sugarplums but of himself as lord of the saloon. In time, with old Julian dead in the grave and that crazy son of his put in his proper place, Seb envisioned himself dealing, smirking at greenhorns, drinking Julian’s best whiskey, wearing fancy duds, and denying credit to those who…
He woke clearheaded and glum.
Between Delacorte’s vainglory and Sary’s pig-ignorance, the marriage union would never come to fulsome glory. He thrashed about, rummaging his poor belongings, accidentally brushing two odd, pear-shaped, green-glass bottles—thick and hefty as bombs. Seb chuckled, soothed by the cool, smooth glass, and drifted off. “Show’em,” he murmured, half-asleep. “Show’em all…”
****
“What!” Sary gasped awake, startled by Seb's face looming above her and blotting out the moon. A weak flame lit feverish eyes boring into hers, with flickering green glints, from something he held behind him. Seb thrust two corked, pear-shaped, green glass bottles at her face, bottles she’d never seen before. She scootched back instinctively.
“See this here?” Seb giggled. “Color of money!” Sary stared at him as he faded back, wrapping himself around the bottles. Sary strained the dark, bewildered and exhausted after the odd day, long after she heard him snore…
Chapter 11
It was barely dawn. Sary raced breathless up a nameless trail, feet thudding earth, never minding rocks, and fallen branches, calling, “Seb! Sebastian!” until she was hoarse.
Seb spun, quavering with emotion, and thrust out one of the hateful green bottles. “On your head now, sister-mine! No way am I crawling back, nothing to show but bare-assed knees in my britches!”
“But Seb! You don’t know anything about—”
“Don’t know nothin’…” he mimicked. “You hankerin’ to do it?" Seb waved the bottles at her. "Pure gelig-nite! Gold-makin elixir to conjure me up a fortune! Gowan!” He jiggled them at her. “You wanna play the man?”
Sary eyed the shaken bottles, backpedaling. She’d heard about gelignite and its fearsome properties. It blew mountains to smithereens to make the railways. Lord knew what it did to puny humans. She gasped, hands on knees. “Blow yourself to Kingdom Come then. Go on! Do it! Kill yourself!” she cried. “I wish you would!” Sary raced back down the trail.
Seb will back down. Just trying to scare me into contrition—or forgiveness. Probably just go off in the hills and idle the day. Oh, what am I to do…?
If she’d raised her head, Sary would have seen the two men on horseback in the distance, picking their way around a shoulder of mountain, one massive in the saddle and the other slender, dark—and she would have, somehow, been forewarned…
Chapter 12
Jules sat his saddle in a leisurely manner, moseying his mount along as if secretly pleased with his private thoughts, gazing dreamily at hawks showing coppery wings against cobalt skies and cottontail clouds.
Silence bothered Ev’ret.
“Turned out ta be a nice day, huh, Boss. Boss? Hey! Where we goin’?”
Ev’ret contemplated, squinching up his eyes. “Goin’ hunting. Huntin’ maybe. I like huntin’. Don’t like squirrel. But I like rabbit! ’N’ bear paw. Bear paw’s—”
Ev’ret screwed his face in thought. “Chewy. Yeah, chewy. Gets stuck in yer teeth. Even horse, or mule, if I havta. Ever eat mule? Mule’s tangy, once you get past the—”
He pushed his lip out, narrowing his eyes at Jules. “Don’t tell me nothin’. Don’t never, never tell me—”
Jules glanced at him in irritation and waved a languid hand. “Those hills over there. A woman’s hip. A sweet bosom…”
Ev’ret scowled and sq
uinted where Jules waved. “Don’t see nothin’. Sposed to be pertectin’ you, Boss! How kin I pertect you, if ya don’t never tell me nothin’?”
Jules smiled his peculiar smile and rode on.
****
Seb stopped cold. He looked behind him. Wish Sary would have tagged along. Empty here. An avalanche of ocher tailings and weathered silvery scaffold heralded the mine, along with wood winches and frayed grayed ropes sailing the wind and playing a lonely tune—plus a sign with letters faded in the harsh elements spelling ELIJAH K. BALDWIN LUCKY STRIKE MINE and, in fresher paint, JULIAN J. DELACORTE, ENTERPRISES.
****
Windowpanes of ice sailed by Sary as she bashed shirts on a rock with hands raw and red, in cadence to her heated words and thoughts, as if bashing Seb.
“Damnation, Seb!” Bash! “Lunatic!” Wring—scrub. “Get yourself killed for certain-sure!” A tiny guilty thought crept behind the door of her mind, whispering, But then, you’ll be free.
Beside her, a mending basket lay pitched on a patch of snow, spilling out bright bits of ribbon and her silver scissors and a thimble.
****
Seb waded past rusty detritus, broken machinery nameless to him, a big, wheel-barrel-type thing, and grayed bits of rope, up to weathered, splintered supports and crossbeams sagging like the sky leaned heavy on them. Against the thin mountain air, the sign spanned the mine head.
Seb wiped his mouth, looking about as if seeking reassurance, or someone to stop him. He gingerly laid the gelignite aside and ripped up rotted planks inadequately covering a seemingly bottomless hole, peering tentatively down the musty shaft that dwindled to darkness. He ducked from the fusty air rushing out, rubbing his jaw as if still hoping someone might leap from the pines and tell him to hightail it on out.
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