“What if I am?” Billy retorted.
“No one gets shot without my say-so,” Black Jack reminded him. “We have a good thing going here. Anyone who spoils it answers to me.”
Billy had a sharp reply on the tip of his tongue but he bit it off. “I’m just tired of hangin’ around this dump.”
“You can always go help ride herd on the cattle,” Black Jack suggested.
“Cow shit ain’t my idea of a bouquet, thank you very much.”
Another member of their outlaw fraternity, Zech Frame, grinned and winked at the others. “Why would the kid want to watch over four-legged heifers when he’s got a two-legged heifer right across the street?”
Frame would never know how close he came to having whiskey flung in his face and being gunned in his chair. But Billy didn’t dare. Not with Black Jack right there. Not to mention Ike Longley. Billy was confident he could beat Black Jack but he didn’t stand a prayer against the Texas hellion. “When I want your opinion of my personal life, I’ll ask for it.”
Zech Frame glared and started to slide his chair out.
“Enough,” Black Jack snarled. “I swear. If I wanted to put up with bickerin’ brats, I’d take me a wife and do it right. Zech, you simmer down. And Billy, you’re off the prod, as of now. Go stick your head in a water trough and cool off.”
Billy only made it halfway across the room when he was intercepted by Shasta, whose expression was like that of a puppy who had been kicked.
“Why did you run off like that?”
“Did you expect me to write a thank you note?” Billy tried to go around her but she clung to his arm. “Let go.”
“What’s gotten into you? You’re treating me worse and worse all the time. What did I do?”
“You haven’t done nothin’.” Billy tried to pry her fingers off but she could be persistent when she wanted.
“It’s her, isn’t it? Something about her is eating at you and you’re taking it out on me.” Shasta’s fingers tightened. “Forget about the blonde. I’m the only woman you’ll ever need. Take me away and I’ll prove it.”
“Listen to yourself,” Billy said in disgust. “As if I’d tie myself down with the likes of you.” He shoved her and barreled outside and was on the boardwalk sucking in the cool night air when he realized he still had the glass of whiskey. Upending it, he threw the glass against the wall and it shattered into shards. He was madder than ever and wanted to kill something. But he couldn’t. And that only galled him even more.
The lights were on in the general store. George Palmer stayed open late most nights now to accommodate the influx. Word had been spreading. Nowhere was now a smaller version of Beaver City. It wouldn’t stay small for long, though. In the past three months it had acquired close to twenty new residents and two new businesses, and there was talk of a hotel springing up.
Billy hitched at his gun belt and crossed the street. George was behind the counter, waiting on an old man. Helen was busy with the old geezer’s wife. Both smiled at him, and all he could think about was how much he yearned to pistol-whip them to bloody pulps.
“Howdy, William,” George Palmer said. “She’s in the back, if you want to go on in.”
“I surely do,” Billy said politely. His nightly visits had given him the run of the place. He found their trust amusing.
Helen came over and put a hand on his shoulder. She did that a lot. “I should warn you. Sally isn’t in the best of moods. She’s been irritable all day.”
“I’m on the peckish side myself,” Billy admitted.
“Be gentle with her,” Helen advised. “Women have their moods, you know. Half the time we can’t control them.”
“You’re a peach, Mrs. Palmer,” Billy said, and pecked her on the cheek. She liked when he did that. He could tell.
“Go on back,” Helen coaxed. “The last I saw her, she was in the parlor, reading.”
“She does too much of that,” was Billy’s assessment.
But Sally wasn’t in her favorite chair, she was at the window. She didn’t turn when he entered, merely saying, “Good evening.”
“Is that any way to greet the love of your life?” Billy came up behind her and put his hands on her waist. “Give your man a kiss, hon.”
Sally complied, but her fingers on his shoulders were stiff, and Billy sensed a certain aloofness. “What’s wrong? Your ma says you’ve been mopin’ around.”
“My mother talks too much,” Sally said. Disentangling herself, she moved to her chair. “Have a seat.” She pointed at the sofa.
Billy patted the cushion next to him. “Come join me so we can snuggle.”
“I’d rather talk.”
“Uh-oh,” Billy said.
“Be serious.” Sally studied him with a newfound intensity. “We’ve been seeing each other for months now, and what has come of it? Other than you pawing me every night and trying to get up my dress?”
Billy had never heard her talk like this before. “Whoa there. What’s gotten into you? I’d expect talk like that from those saloon tarts but never a lady.”
“Speaking of which,” Sally said, “word has reached me that you’ve been seeing one of those tarts, as you call them, behind my back. Is that true?”
Billy was on his feet with his hand hovering over his Colt before he realized what he was doing. “Who told you such a bald-faced lie?” Sheer rage pulsed through him. “Give me their name and they’ll be dead within the hour.”
“It’s not true, then?”
“Of course not. I go to the saloon for a few drinks and cards, but that’s all. I promised you I’d be true and I have been.” Billy sat back down but his blood continued to boil. “Who told you?”
“That’s not important.” Sally made a teepee of her hands. “What is important is that when we first met, you went on and on about how different you are from Randy Quin. About how you’d never keep a girl like me dangling. That when you saw something you wanted, you went right out and took it.”
“So?” Billy was uncertain what she was getting at.
“So it’s been months and I’m still not engaged. I thought you loved me. I thought you wanted to live the rest of your life with me. Or so you keep saying.”
“And I mean every word. But we can’t rush things.”
“Randy Quin wasn’t much for rushing, either, and look at where it got him,” Sally mentioned. “I took a shine to you partly because you’re forthright. You make up your mind quickly about things.”
Billy dearly wanted to talk about something else. He hated it when women nagged. “Right now I’ve made up my mind to take you for a moonlit walk.”
“That’s all you ever think about,” Sally complained. “But I’m not going anywhere until we’ve hashed this out.”
Billy liked how her dress clung to her legs when she crossed them, particularly the swell of her thighs. “You want me to get down on bended knee?”
“Do you plan to one day? Really and truly?”
“How many times must I say the same thing?” Billy responded. “The only reason I haven’t proposed yet is that I wanted to surprise you by winnin’ enough at cards for us to buy our very own house. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“More than anything,” Sally said. “But one step at a time. First we get engaged, then we have the wedding. The house can wait until after. My parents will let us live with them a while.”
It would be hard for Billy to think of anything less appealing. “How about that walk now?”
Sally sighed, then rose and smoothed her dress. “I suppose if I don’t, you’ll pester me like you always do. But you’re to behave. You hear me?”
Eagerly bounding to her side, Billy impishly asked, “Don’t I always?”
“No. You don’t. And your hands are becoming friskier by the week.” Sally held out hers so he could take it, and when he pulled her close, she whispered, “I want you so. I really do. But I have my reputation to think of.”
“How would givin�
�� in to the man you’re going to marry be bad?”
“Do you have any idea what my parents would say if they found out my virtue was no longer intact?”
Billy had never heard it referred to that way before, and he broke out cackling. “Your mother’s virtue isn’t intact. Why should they care if yours is?”
Sally put a hand to her throat, then shared his mirth. “I swear! You come out with the most scandalous notions! My father would shoot you for saying a bawdy thing like that.”
“I’d like to see him try.”
“Temper, temper,” Sally teased.
The instant they were outside and Billy had shut the door, he kissed her, hard. His long-suppressed hunger bubbled and frothed inside of him like scalding water in a pot, and he came near to tearing off her clothes and having his way right there.
“Oh, Billy,” Sally breathed when they parted for breath. “You make my head swim when you do that.”
“I’d like to do a whole lot more.”
Sally giggled. “I bet you would.”
Billy wrapped an arm around her slim waist and she put her head on his shoulder and they moved off across the prairie where they could be alone. Darkness mantled them like a blanket. “You know, a man can only hold so much in,” he remarked.
“Do you think women don’t have the same feelings men do?” Sally rejoined. “You think we don’t have the same wants, the same needs?”
“Then why hold back?”
“I want our wedding night to be the night. So it will be special. So I’ll remember it fondly the rest of my days. Is that too much to ask?”
Yes, it was, but Billy choked down his anger and led her farther from the store than they had ever gone. They walked until the buildings resembled small shacks and the tinny tinkling of the saloon’s piano faded to silence. Then he faced her and roughly pulled her close.
“We should go back,” Sally said.
“Not on your life. I have you all to myself and that’s how I like it.” Billy roughly glued his mouth to hers and let his hands roam, and when the kiss ended, she was breathing heavily and her hair was mussed.
“Enough. Please.”
“No.”
“Billy Braden, you take me home this instant.” Sally took a step back. “You’re becoming entirely too willful.”
“I thought you liked me that way.” Billy pulled her to him yet again and would not relent even when she pushed and squirmed.
“Stop that!”
“No.”
Sally mewed like a frightened kitten and broke loose and tried to run but Billy grabbed her and threw her to the ground on her back. Before she could think to rise, he straddled her legs and pinned her wrists.
“I’ll scream!” Sally warned.
“Go ahead. No one will hear. Even if they do, so what? I’ll shoot anyone who butts in. That includes your folks.”
“You wouldn’t!”
Billy slid his hands to where he wanted them, one high, one low. “I’m through waitin’. I’m through pretendin’.”
“Stop!” Sally swatted at his arms and sought to buck him off, fear gleaming in the whites of her eyes.
Rearing back, Billy cuffed her. Not hard enough to mark her but hard enough to jolt her, hard enough to get her attention. “You want it as much as I do. Nothin’ you can say or do will stop it. So you might as well enjoy yourself.” He tugged at his belt buckle.
Tears gushed, and Sally tried a final appeal. “I beg you! Don’t. Not like this. Wait until we’re married.”
Billy had had enough. “You dumb cow. I wouldn’t marry you for all the gold in the Rockies.” He hiked her dress higher. “This is all I’ve ever wanted. And now I mean to have it.”
Chapter Sixteen
Randy Quin was a monument to misery. He went about his daily work wearing the face of a man sentenced to swing on the gallows. He never smiled, never grinned, never spoke unless spoken to. It got so, Amos Finch commented to Lin Cooley, “If I hear him sigh one more time, I’ll shoot him.”
On a hot, dusty weekday, the Circle C foreman and his partner were scouring heavy brush in the southwest section of the ranch, searching for strays. It was tough, tiresome work. The thickets were thorny mazes that posed a constant threat to horse and rider alike. Both Lin and Randy wore chaps and had their ropes in their hands.
After rounding up nine steers before noon, Lin drew rein to rest their horses. “You know, if your chin were any lower it would scrape the ground.”
“Don’t start,” Randy said. “It’s bad enough I have to put up with grousin’ from everybody else. You’d think the sun rose and set on my say-so.”
“You’ve got to admit you haven’t exactly been a jackrabbit of late,” Lin said, and came right out with it. “Five months is a long time to mope.”
“You’ve been in love. You know how it feels.” Randy let out with one of those sighs that were driving Amos Finch to distraction. “I reckon I’m the laughingstock of the whole territory.”
“Not yet. Men who have been through what you did know it’s no laughin’ matter, and those that haven’t don’t think it’s funny because they don’t want it to happen to them.” Lin took out the makings and commenced to roll a cigarette. “But if you keep on sulkin’, you’re in danger of being branded daunsy.”
“I can’t help feelin’ like I was stabbed in the gut.”
“No man can,” Lin said. “But maybe it’s time to pull the knife out, sew up the wound, and get on with your life.”
“How do I perform this miracle?” Randy demanded. “Short of stickin’ a pistol in my mouth and squeezin’ the trigger?”
“Go see her.”
Randy hooked a leg over his saddle horn. “It’s finally happened. The strain of ramroddin’ has gotten to you. You’ve gone loco.”
“Tell me you don’t want to,” Lin challenged him. “She’s all you think about. All you dream about. You can’t look at the sky without seein’ her face. If it weren’t for your pride, you would have gone in to see her long ago.”
“I’ve no hankerin’ to make a fool of myself.”
“You never know,” Lin said. “Maybe she’s changed her mind. Women are right fond of doing that.”
Randy shook his head. “It’s been pretty near half a year. She’s forgotten about me. Last I heard, she was seein’ that Braden character every damn night. I’m surprised they’re not hitched.”
Lin struck a match and took a few puffs. “That should tell you something. If it was serious, he’d have proposed by now.” He blew a smoke ring. “Something you should know. The word is that he’s stopped seein’ her. The boys say he spends all his time at the saloon nowadays. They never see him over to the general store.”
“Oh?”
“You need to do something,” Lin said. “The plain truth is, the boys are tired of your mopin’. Kip Langtree says you’re worse than his sister. And Charley Lone is ready to slip rat poison in your food.”
“It’s that bad?” Randy had no idea.
“You’re that bad,” Lin corrected him. “So go to her. Talk to her. Get it settled once and for all.”
“There’s nothin’ to settle,” Randy said.
But when the weekend came and Chick Storm gave his consent for as many punchers as wanted to go paint the town, Randy was first in line at the washbasin. Most of the punchers were bound for Beaver City to hear Lilly Nightingale, a singer fresh in from Denver. Since Lin had to stay and go over the latest tally with their employer, Randy figured he would have to ride in alone, until Kip Langtree and Moses Sikes mentioned that they were bound for Nowhere, too.
“Agnes Wilson is to blame,” Kip said.
“You’re in love with a married woman old enough to be your mother?” Randy remarked, with a wink at Moses. He had found his sense of humor and was honing its edge.
“Go sit on a rattler,” Kip said. “It’s those pies of hers. She makes them like my ma used to.”
Randy’s nerves were a wreck. The whole ride in, he
couldn’t stop thinking about Sally, about how much she once meant to him—and still did. He had tried to forget about her and get on with his life. But like a burr stuck to his clothes, he couldn’t be shed of her, no matter how hard he tried.
“Remember the speech Lin gave us,” Moses commented when Nowhere appeared in the distance.
“We’re to keep our revolvers holstered and be on our guard.”
“Unless my pie attacks me, I’m safe,” Kip Langtree said.
The buildings took shape, and with them the horses at the hitch rails and the people roving the street.
Now that the moment was almost upon him, Randy was having second thoughts. Sally had made her sentiments plain. She might laugh in his face, might denounce him right there in the store in front of others. His sense of shame was bad enough without adding to it. Another lance to the heart would about do him in. Right then and there he almost reined around. Only the presence of Kip and Moses stopped him.
Randy was so worried, he thought for sure people would point at him as he rode by and whisper and laugh. But no one paid him the least little attention. There were a lot of new faces, townsmen and cowhands alike.
Kip and Moses were hankering to visit the restaurant but Randy went on to the stable so he had an excuse to pass the general store. A glance showed the store was doing brisk business. He caught a glimpse of Sally’s father and mother but not Sally.
“Well, look at what the barn owl dragged in,” Old Man Taylor greeted him. He was whittling and rocking, as perennial as the dust. “You surprise me, boy.”
“I surprise myself.” Randy stayed in the saddle. “There’s been a lot of changes.”
“Too many,” Old Man Taylor said. “A crow my age gets set in his ways. He doesn’t like the nest rebuilt.”
“Any gossip worth sharin’?”
The stable owner crooked an eyebrow. “Particular or general?”
“General will do,” Randy said.
“Well, let’s see.” Taylor scratched his chin with the point of his knife. “Dub Wheeton is thinking of sending for a mail-order bride. Now that he’s a man of substance, he’s been bragging how he can afford one.”
Ralph Compton Nowhere, TX Page 12