“Good night,” Aislinn whispered, after fetching the blanket from her bed.
Liza Sue’s eyes glittered in the gloom. She nodded and slipped back into the darkness.
Chapter 3
THE MARSHAL CAME TO BREAKFAST the next morning, looking all scrubbed and spit-shined, and put in an rder for ham and eggs. That wouldn’t have been strange, but for the fact that he’d already been in, an hour before, and consumed a double portion of corned beef hash.
Aislinn, preoccupied with the logistics of getting Liza Sue from the storeroom to the back door, where she could ask for work without arousing too much suspicion, put it down to a hearty appetite. After all those months of seedy living, Marshal McQuillan was surely in sore need of nourishment. Out of loyalty to Eugenie, who thought highly of the man, she even managed a hasty, fretful smile.
“You are a lovely creature,” the marshal drawled, rising to leave. He flashed that infamous grin, but to Aislinn’s surprise and relief, it didn’t affect her as it had before. “Maybe I’ll see you tonight, at the dance?”
Aislinn bit her lower lip. The hotel manager put on a social, with music and fruit punch, the first Saturday of every month, but the maids and kitchen and dining room employees were not allowed to attend, lest there be an implication of impropriety. “I’m afraid that’s against the rules,” she said.
“That,” he replied smoothly, taking up his hat, “is a pity. In fact, I’d say there ought to be a law.”
Nearby, a red-eyed cowboy with bad teeth slammed down his china mug. “I need more coffee,” he barked. “Right now.”
The marshal took the large blue enamel coffeepot from Aislinn’s hand with easy grace and refilled the cowboy’s cup, bending low to speak to him. “What you need,” he said mildly, “is a lesson in manners. Talk to the lady that way again, and you’ll get one that’ll stick with you till your dying day.”
The other man backed down, but he didn’t look happy about it.
“Thank you,” Aislinn said uncertainly, taking back the coffeepot.
“Anytime,” said the marshal, and left the dining hall. A glance around the room showed that every woman in the place, whether serving or being served, watched him go. Including Eugenie, though her expression was markedly different from those of the others.
“What do you suppose has gotten into him?” she inquired, under her breath, when Aislinn passed her on the way back to the kitchen for another pot of coffee.
“I don’t know,” Aislinn answered honestly, “but I think I like him a little better than I did yesterday.” For the first time since she’d come to Prominence to work, she found herself lamenting that she couldn’t go to the hotel dance. Now that the marshal had apparently lost that irritating ability to slay her with a single, lopsided smile, she wasn’t so eager to avoid him.
Sometime during the busy clean-up process between breakfast and dinner, Liza Sue must have seen her chance and slipped downstairs, for when Aislinn went into the kitchen for a rest and a cup of tea, the other woman was there, seated primly across the trestle table from Eugenie, lying like a snake-oil salesman. She’d been in Prominence awhile, she said, staying with relations, but she’d worn out her welcome and they couldn’t keep her anymore. The bruises? Yes, well, she was some marked up, wasn’t she? She’d caught her toe in the hem of her dress while going after a jar of apricot preserves and fallen right down the cellar stairs. It was a lucky thing she hadn’t broken her neck.
Eugenie listened inscrutably, and pondered for a while. Aislinn knew then that she didn’t believe the story; Eugenie had made her own way in the world for a great many years, and by her own admission, she’d “come up hard,” with no folks to speak of. She glanced Aislinn’s way once, making it known that she was nobody’s fool, and then cleared her throat.
“Well, girl,” she said to Liza Sue, “if you don’t mind making up beds and emptying slop jars of a morning, there’s a place for you here. You’ll have your room and board and four dollars a month. We’ll provide you with proper work clothes.”
Liza Sue’s poor, swollen and discolored face was suffused with color, and her eyes shone with startled excitement. “Oh, thank you, ma’am,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Humph,” Eugenie replied. “We’ll see how happy you are after a day of hard work. Cook here will give you some breakfast, and Aislinn can show you where you sleep.” She hauled her bulky body up off the bench at the trestle table. “Oh, and one more thing. We abide by stern rules around here. You’re free to socialize if you have the inclination, but we expect you in by eight o’clock at night. You got courting to do, you get it done afore then. You’ll go to church on Sunday mornings whether you’ve a mind to or not, and write to your people once a week if you have any. There’s no smoking, no swearing and no drinking permitted, and if I ever catch a man above the second-floor landing, day or night, there’ll be hell to pay. I reckon I’ve made myself clear.”
“Yes, ma’am” Liza Sue agreed, with an eager nod. She might have been pretty, though it was hard to tell, her features were so distorted.
Eugenie gave Aislinn another long and thoughtful assessment. “See your friend gets settled in proper,” she said, and went on about her business without another word.
Aislinn led Liza Sue up the rear stairs and showed her the small dormitory, where there were two empty cots to choose from. The newcomer selected the one nearest the window and stood with her hand resting reverently on the plain iron bedstead, as though it were something grand. When she looked at Aislinn, there were tears shimmering in her eyes.
“I wouldn’t have believed it was possible,” she said, in a small, tremulous voice. “I thought she’d see right through me, and show me the door.”
She saw right through the both of us, Aislinn thought, still mystified. “Eugenie is like a mother hen—she’ll squawk and flap her wings now and then, but heaven help the rooster who tries to get to one of her chicks. And Liza Sue, she means what she says about following the rules—a few months ago a girl stayed out all night after a town picnic, and Eugenie bought her a stagecoach ticket home and sent her packing. No amount of crying and begging would change her mind about it.”
Liza Sue wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand. “I won’t do nothing to ruin my chance,” she vowed. “I mean to work like nobody she’s ever seen, save my money, and get a new start someplace far away from here.”
Aislinn had dreams of her own, and they centered around bringing her brothers out from Maine before winter came to the far West, and making a home out of a tumbledown cabin and a few acres of good land. If Thomas and Mark did odd jobs around town, and she kept her position with the hotel until spring, when they could put in a garden, they might just make it. She certainly understood Liza Sue’s determination and high hopes, and she respected her desire to make a decent life for herself. “You’d best go and find Eugenie,” she said. “She’ll have a list of things for you to do.”
“One of my girls is missin’,” Jake Kingston bellowed, breathing sour whiskey fumes in Shay’s face. “She was a good’un and I want her back!” The interior of the Yellow Garter was dim, the air flecked with dust particles and clouded with stale smoke. The sawdust on the floor was in sorry need of a rake, and a few women had wandered downstairs, half-dressed, hair askew, eyes full of brass and sadness. The poker game in the far corner had been going on since sometime yesterday afternoon and showed no signs of winding down.
Shay rubbed the back of his neck, wondering how he could have spent so much time in a place like this; it was like the colon of hell. Silently, he wished the missing woman Godspeed. “There’s no law against taking to your heels, Jake,” he said reasonably.
Jake set a bottle and a glass on the bar; Shay ignored them. He was watching the murky mirror behind the bartender’s broad back, remembering the night Big Dan was knifed between the shoulder blades. Dan had gotten careless. “You gotta find her,” Jake whispered the words, and he sounded desperate.
“You’
ve had girls light out before. What’s so special about this one?”
Jake wet his fat lips with an even fatter tongue. He was sweating, and his deer-colored hair was stuck to his square head like a threadbare cap. “She was Billy Kyle’s favorite, damn it. He comes back and finds out she’s gone, he’ll put a bullet ’tween my eyes!”
Shay sighed. Billy was the only son of the richest rancher within a hundred miles of Prominence, a mean-eyed, pimply little prick with a bowie knife, a penchant for cheap whiskey, and a poor outlook on life. He wouldn’t be a bit above shooting Jake Kingston, which only went to prove that everybody had at least one redeeming quality, if you just looked for it hard enough. “You let me know if you have any trouble with Billy,” he said, “and I’ll take a razor strop to him.”
Jake missed the irony. His Adam’s apple bulged like a hard-boiled egg when he swallowed. “How’m I supposed to do that, if he shoots me in the head? I’m tellin’ you, she was his favorite, and he won’t take nobody else!”
“Then I guess he’s in for a long dry spell,” Shay reasoned, “since he hasn’t got a hope in hell of getting any woman he doesn’t have to pay for.”
The bartender narrowed his pig-bright eyes. “You know somethin’? I don’t think you’re showin’ much sympathy here.”
“Nobody quicker than you, Jake,” Shay answered. Then he tugged at the brim of his hat, scanned the room once, and headed for the swinging doors. Since his brother was out in the countryside somewhere, and he could turn a corner without fear of running into himself, he figured he’d make the rounds and let the good folks of Prominence see that they had a marshal after all.
He hadn’t even gained the sidewalk when one of the saloon girls caught hold of his arm. In the sunlight, her hair was an unlikely straw color and her face paint was on crooked, resembling an ill-fitting, tawdry mask. She couldn’t have been any older than twenty, but in her eyes he saw something ancient. She glanced back over one bare shoulder, well aware that Jake was watching her.
“If you see Liza Sue,” the prostitute whispered, “you tell her never to come in here, not for nothin’. Billy’ll kill her for sure if he sets eyes on her again. He damn near did last night—beat her half-senseless. If me and the piano player hadn’t drawed his notice away, he’d ’ave smashed her face in.”
“I guess I’d better look Billy up and explain that I don’t take kindly to that sort of behavior,” Shay said calmly. He glanced back at Jake, who was oozing along the back edge of the bar, like the spill of something noxious, evidently ready to grab the girl if she made a run for it. Jake was too stupid to realize what Shay could see plainly in the woman’s face; she’d long since run dry, where hope was concerned. She was just trying to stay alive, and that out of habit.
“She’s hidin’ out someplace,” the woman murmured, and her fingers dug into his arm like the talons of a sheowl. “Marshal, you’ve gotta find her before Billy does, and put her on the next stage out of here.”
Jake was within earshot by then, and Shay knew she wasn’t going to say another word if there was a risk that he’d overhear it.
“Belle, you just get yourself back in here,” the bartender called out. “I don’t pay you good money to stand in the doorway barrin’ my customers from comin’ in.”
“That’s right, Jake,” Belle snapped back, with uncommon spirit. “You don’t pay me good money.” She hung on to Shay for a moment longer, then turned and sashayed over the sawdust to stand behind a trail-weary cowboy, kneading his shoulders with her strong hands. Her gaze linked hard with Shay’s, then she drew back inside herself with a harsh laugh. “This here handsome drover wants to buy me a drink, Jake. Make it whiskey, and hold the water.”
Shay stepped outside, still turning the conversation over in his head, and nearly collided with Dorrie, out in front of the general store. When he’d told Tristan that his sisters hated him, he’d been stretching the truth a little. While Cornelia wouldn’t have spit on him if he was roasting on a stick, he and Dorrie got along just fine. She’d had a gift for stirring up scandal when she was younger, and Shay missed those entertaining days.
“Hello, beautiful,” he said.
She’d been scouring the display window with vinegar water and crumpled newspaper and, seeing Shay, she beamed, drew back one fist, and punched him square in the belly. Fortunately, by dint of long experience, he’d been ready. She laughed and squinted at him. “I do believe you’re sober, Shamus McQuillan,” she said. “Just wait till I tell Cornie. It will spoil her whole day.”
Shay rolled his eyes. Maybe he hadn’t been at his best these past eighteen months or so, but he hadn’t been lying around in the gutter, either. The way folks acted—his own sister, no less—he might have spent every day of that time facedown in the sawdust at the Yellow Garter. He got a prickly sensation at the back of his neck and glanced toward the saloon again. “You know anything about a girl running away from Jake Kingston’s fine establishment?” he asked.
“If I did,” Dorrie replied, “I wouldn’t tell you.” She frowned. “I thought I saw you riding out of town a little while ago, as a matter of fact. You were mounted on a black gelding with three white stockings.”
Shay grinned and touched the back of his hand to her forehead, as though testing for a fever. “You’re getting old. Seeing things.”
“Go to hell,” Dorrie said cheerfully. “I’ll outlive you and Cornie both.”
“Theodora.” The voice was shrill and female, and it came from inside the store. “I am depending on you to wash that window.”
Dorrie sighed. “God, I hate that woman,” she said, with no attempt at a moderate tone.
“Then why do you stay?” Shay was honestly puzzled. Shamus and Rebecca McQuillan had never been rich, but they’d left a thriving business behind, and the only painted house in town, a two-story mail-order structure with a picket fence around it. It wasn’t as though Dorrie didn’t have choices.
“Because I won’t give the old biddy the satisfaction of driving me off, that’s why. Go dunk your head in the rain barrel, Cornie. I’m talking to my baby brother.” Dorrie slowly descended to a stage whisper. “I mean to wait her out, Shamus. When she’s toes-up in the Presbyterian cemetery, we’ll sell this place, you and me, and split the takings.”
Shay kissed Dorrie’s earnest forehead. He hadn’t been interested in the family business before and he wasn’t now; store keeping wasn’t for him. “Don’t wait,” he counseled. “She’ll live another fifty years on sheer meanness alone.”
Cornelia appeared in the doorway, a stunning woman of nearly fifty, with wide green eyes, hair the color of darkened copper, and a soul the devil wouldn’t have taken in trade for a square acre of sulphur fumes. “What do you want?” she demanded, glaring at Shay. She had resented him as an intruder for as long as he could remember, and he’d long since gotten used to her rancor.
He touched his hat brim and treated her to the mocking grin he knew she had always despised. “Not a thing,” he said. “I’m a contented man.” It wasn’t true, of course, but the thought that he might actually be happy was clearly enough to gall Cornelia, and that made the lie worth telling.
“You could come back home any time you wanted, Shamus,” plain, fanciful Dorrie announced, putting a point on each word, for Cornelia’s benefit. She was just a year or two younger than Cornelia; they’d both been nearly grown when Shay was born. “Mama and Papa would want that.”
In truth, Shay often missed that spacious old house, with its shelves full of precious books, its clean white walls and cool, shining wooden floors. He’d had a small room, under the slant of the roof, with a window that opened to let in the stars on clear nights, and he had fond memories of lying in bed when the wet weather came, listening to the music the rain made on the shingles. He’d loved Shamus and shy, fretful Rebecca, never dreaming they were mortal until they were gone.
“Thank you, Dorrie,” he said, “but I’m fine over at the boardinghouse. I’ll be moving along now.
”
“None too soon,” snapped Cornelia.
Dorrie bent, hoisted the bucket of dirty water and flung it toward her sister. Cornelia leaped back with a gasp and a poisonous look, and just missed getting drenched. Some days, there just wasn’t any luck to be had, no matter how you might beat the bushes trying to scare it up.
Shay smiled at Dorrie and walked away. Behind him, his sisters flew at each other like two cats with their tails tied together.
He looked in on the banker next, then moved on to pay a call on Dutch Cooper, over at the livery stable. His presence aroused no little consternation, probably because Tristan had been there to collect the gelding not long before, and made a show of riding out of town. Shay enjoyed the bewildered looks and scratching of heads, though he knew the game couldn’t last. Prominence was too small for that.
It was shaping up to be a dull day, and Shay was beginning to wonder why he didn’t just hand in his badge and take to the trail when Billy Kyle came riding down the middle of the road, raising dust, flanked by four or five of his friends.
Shay walked out into the center of the street and waited.
Billy drew up at the last moment, his eyes as hard and cold as marbles. “Well,” he said, and Shay figured he’d earned some of the contempt he saw in that homely, pockmarked little face, “if it ain’t the marshal.”
Shay took hold of Billy’s horse’s bridle. “I believe I’ve mentioned that I don’t like you boys to run your horses through town, especially at this time of the day. Somebody might get hurt.”
Billy’s thoughts were as plain as if his head had been made of glass; he weighed the pleasure of spitting in Shay’s face against the likelihood of getting his ass kicked right there in front of God and everybody, and wisely elected not to indulge his baser instincts. “You ought to keep that in mind, Marshal. That somebody might get hurt, I mean.”
Shay entertained a brief, sweet reverie of his own, in which he dragged Billy down off that horse, took the little runt apart limb by limb and stuffed the pieces into the appropriate orifice, but he was a patient man. He could wait.
Two Brothers Page 5