Hart steadied his right hand with his left, fingers clasped about the wrist to resist the tug of the wind. He waited for another jerk of fire, a movement. Nothing: then what might have been the sound of a man moving away: might have been nothing.
Hart knelt on the boardwalk and waited as the rain ran down his face like needles and his vision misted and blurred.
After a couple of minutes in which nothing else seemed to happen, Hart stood up. He fished a key from his pocket and let himself into the marshal’s office.
Less than five minutes later he was stepping outside again and heading back into the rain, back down and then across the street. He didn’t think that whoever had been taking pot shots at him would try again – at least, not so soon – but he moved carefully, taking no chances.
Weinstein lived above one of his stores and when Hart walked past the window he glimpsed the counterman playing checkers with a couple of folk keeping out of the rain. The sign on the door read Open but they weren’t going to be doing any business today.
Hart went round to the side and climbed the stairs; at the top he tried the door handle and it went with his touch. He stepped inside quickly, slicker open and his right hand close to the butt of his pistol. At first all there was was silence, but gradually the sound of voices drifted from one of the rooms. Voices mingled with sounds Hart had little difficulty in recognizing.
He went in the opposite direction to the noise, letting himself into what proved to be an empty parlor. Brown leather armchairs and a sofa, two tables one small and one large, the larger one with a glass vase of flowers at its center. An orange and white cat lay curled in front of a fire that was unlit. It was a cozy, but barren, little scene.
Hart retraced his steps and went beyond them.
He drew his gun and opened the door with his left hand, fast.
‘Hey! Who the...?’
The man trapped between Lily Weinstein’s legs was slim-hipped, his buttocks firm and round, the slope of his back smooth. The face that stared up at Hart was young and flushed, a flop of fair hair came down past frightened blue eyes. His clothes hung over the brass rail at the foot of the bed. Hart grabbed at the gun belt that had been buckled around the end rail and looped it over his left arm.
‘Mister, who the hell are you?’
Lily giggled and Hart caught a glimpse of her white teeth.
‘I mean, what you doin’ bustin’ in here like that?’
Hart grinned and rested his thumb on the hammer of the Colt.
‘Maybe,’ suggested Lily, ‘he’s come to show a boy how to do a man’s job.’
‘You shut up, you bitch!’
‘Sweetheart!’ Lily smiled at the young man’s anger with her knowing eyes and dipped her head on to his chest, nibbling at his fair skin.
‘On your way,’ said Hart.
The man pushed Lily away and swiveled the upper half of his body; Lily Weinstein’s legs were still wound about his thighs. ‘You can’t…’
Hart shook his head. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. I can an’ am.’
‘You ain’t her husband.’
‘Neither are you, son. An’ from where I’m standin’, I’d say I was in the position to say who’ll do what.’ He thumbed back the hammer and the triple click decided the youngster’s mind.
He pushed Lily’s legs from his body and rolled away from her, sitting on the’ edge of the bed, then standing, both hands over his privates.
‘Give me them clothes.’
‘You get ‘em.’ Hart moved around the bed and watched at the fumbling haste of the man’s fingers. When he glanced at Lily she was lying much as she had been before, save that she had pulled the sheet up to cover the lower half of her body. Her breasts were still bare and Hart could see that the nipples, small and pinkish brown, were taut. He knew that she was smiling at him with what was close to a look of triumph.
‘Now get.’
‘How ‘bout my gun?’
Hart holstered his own weapon and pulled the man’s pistol from its holster. He unloaded it swiftly, letting the cartridges fall on to the bed. Then he threw belt and gun towards the door where the youngster caught them to his chest.
‘I see you in the next few hours,’ said Hart, pointing at him, ‘you’re going to regret it.’
The young man scowled at Lily, grabbed at the door handle, missed and struck his knuckles, swore, tried again and succeeded in letting himself out of the room.
‘Poor boy,’ said Lily with exaggerated emphasis over the fading sound of his footsteps. ‘That was cruel.’ She almost simpered. ‘He was very sweet. And willing.’
She patted the space on the bed beside her.
‘How about you, Mr. Shootist, are you willing?’
Hart stared back at her, saying nothing, trying to keep his attention on her face, on what he had gone there for, trying not to think about, not to notice her body.
‘I do like a man who’s big enough…’ She fluttered her eyelashes. ‘…who’s big enough to admit he’s changed his mind.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘But you are here in my bedroom.’
‘An’ I’m looking for your husband.’
Lily laughed lightly. ‘But this is the last place you’ll find him.’
Hart didn’t laugh with her. He said, ‘Get dressed.’
‘Make me,’ she pouted. ‘Wouldn’t you like to make me?’
He turned away and went back to the end of the bed. ‘Maybe ten minutes ago, someone took a shot at me in the street.’
‘So?’ Wide-eyed.
‘So where was your husband ten minutes ago?’
‘Well,’ she smiled, ‘I assure you he wasn’t here.’
‘Okay. But where?’
Lily leaned forward and her breasts bounced tenderly against her ribs. ‘You surely don’t imagine Jules would have the balls to go after you with a gun, Mr. Shootist?’
‘At Miller’s funeral he stuck one in my back and told me to keep clear of you or else he’d use it.’
Lily’s eyes widened. ‘You do surprise me.’
‘Of course,’ said Hart, ‘there could have been another reason.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He could have been using you as an excuse.’
‘For what?’
‘For getting me out of the way.’
‘But he’s only just hired you.’
‘The town council hired me. He would have had to go along. And I’m pretty certain that after that shootin’ on the first night, he was arguin’ to get me on my horse and paid off straight away.’
‘But why would Jules want to do that?’ asked Lily with a shake of her blonde hair.
‘What if he don’t want the railroad comin’ to Caldwell?’
‘That’s nonsense. When that spur line gets here all Jules’ stores and such are set to treble their profits the first six months. Of course he wants the tracks to come through.’ Lily reached for a patchwork shawl and slipped it over her shoulders; it didn’t succeed in making her look any more like an old lady. ‘You’ll have to think of something else, Mister Shootist. And something tells me thinking isn’t your best department. Seems to me, your strengths lie elsewhere.’
Hart’s mouth narrowed to a tight line and he backed off to the door.
‘You see him, tell him I was here lookin’ for him.’ He pointed an accusing finger towards the bed. ‘Don’t go tellin’ him nothin’ else.’
‘Why, Mr. Shootist,’ Lily protested, ‘what do you mean?’
Hart shut the door with more force than was necessary. He let himself out on to the stairs and walked down. He was thinking about what Lily had said, about what could be her husband’s motive. If it had been him at all.
He was thinking about it when he went past the front of the store and he didn’t turn his head; he didn’t notice, then, that Jules Weinstein was back in his store, standing back of the counter, past the checkers players, watching Hart walk by.
Chapter Nine
Hart had drunk enough to sleep late. He’d told himself after the first batch of whiskey that he was damned if he was going to spend another night in the whorehouse and then he’d damned himself by doing it. Though all he’d done when he was there was win thirty dollars at five card stud and drink the best part of a bottle of Jim Beam.
‘The inside,’ one of the card players had laughed, ‘that’s the best part of a bottle of Jim Beam. Never did care too much for the glass.’
Hart had pretended to laugh and waited for the man to shut up and deal. One of the penalties of playing poker in whorehouses instead of regular saloons was that there was more of a tendency to get men who thought they were the life and soul of any gathering, which included themselves. The other drawback was that your winnings – supposing you came out on top – were most likely never to get past the front door. Not with so many women around whose purpose in life was to turn a trick or three before the dawn shuffled in.
So: Wes Hart had won thirty dollars near enough but he’d stuck it in his pants pocket and sat on it, except to buy a few drinks for the brown-eyed girl he’d spent a pleasant hour with his first night in town. A couple of friendly drinks for old times’ sake; couple of hours or more spent in friendly company.
It wasn’t the plushest house Hart had passed time in, but whoever’s money was behind it obviously had his eye open for the main chance. Anticipation of the extra Texas cattlemen and cattle buyers from the Midwest and the East had set some interior improvements in motion. An extension was being timbered on at the rear and several upstairs rooms were being partitioned off - two beds, but not for the price of one. Fresh paint had already been applied to one of the walls and whenever the girls weren’t working – which seemed a high percentage of time this particular evening – they were tatting and stitching diligently. Feathering their own nests.
The madam was a round woman who looked as if she and her body had known better times. But she was friendly with the visitors, not too rough on the girls, and she didn’t seem too disappointed when Hart declined the best services of the house. Perhaps she thought having him there was some kind of protection against trouble.
That, remembered Hart, was what Kate had thought.
He chuckled at the memory. In her personal and private way, Kate had been one hell of a lady. One hell of a good-looking woman. And she had kept Hart at arm’s length, seeming to enjoy talking with him when business was slack, drinking wine with him and looking as if she should have been managing a New York fashion house at the very least, and not a frontier brothel.
A black dress that fitted her body close. Round, silver earrings that hung alongside her fine-boned face. A thin silver bracelet circled her left wrist: a small cameo ring on the second finger of her left hand. The heart-shaped silver locket that had hung between the rise of her breasts — that had been Kate.
Hart had let Crazy John Carter put a bullet through him and she had helped nurse him so that he was strong enough to ride off to Tago and do a job of work. Nothing had been said between them: there was nothing to be said. It wasn’t that kind of thing between a man and a woman where promises seem to need to be made so that they can be broken. He had assumed that if he rode back that way she would still be there.
He had and she wasn’t.
He’d hardly thought about her since. There were no ties. If they met again, Hart guessed that he’d feel glad and he kind of hoped that she would too.
But it was a big country.
And it was getting late. Hart had paid for the rest of the bottle and taken it back to the marshal’s narrow bed with him. The fact that he’d finished it off before finally dropping off to sleep meant that, rarely, he hadn’t woken with the dawn.
The voice reached him first, strident and high, and after that the swell of other voices which underpinned it, the movement of feet and wheels. Barcroft’s flat-bed wagon had been pressed into service once more. Service of a different kind, and the procession which followed it was different also. Freddy Logan and his mother were the only ones who had marched in both and this time it had been the adult who had insisted, the child who had gone reluctantly, dragging his heels. Not that young Freddy really understood what the occasion was all about and his ma certainly wasn’t about to explain to him. He would, she dreaded, find out soon enough. The speaker stood in the back of the wagon, which drove the length of the street as slow as the two mules in harness would go. Anything else might have shaken Miss Aronia Hawthorne from her perch and Aronia Hawthorne was not a woman who took kindly to being shaken. The Friends of Decency had paid the good woman’s expenses to come down from Kansas City – Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas City, Kansas – to address the townsfolk of Caldwell on the perils which threatened to befall them if the council had its way and the town was made into a stopping-off point for both the Texas trail herds and the railroad.
‘…you may have no doubt,’ the voice declaimed, ‘you must allow no last vestige of doubt to linger in your hearts, that if these uncouth and sorry men are encouraged to come to this fair township then they will bring the Lord’s wrath trailing in their wake!’
Hart scratched the back of his neck and yawned a few times and settled his left shoulder against the nearest pillar to stick up from the boardwalk. Aronia Hawthorne was certainly an imposing woman; she either wore a bustle or else nature had endowed her as well behind as it had in front, where the swell of her chest testified to where she got the strength and carrying-power of her voice.
‘... has been said that Texas cattle spread disease and contaminate the Kansas stock with which they intermingle. I must make it plain to you, distasteful as I know the subject will be to some of you listening to me now, that this is not the only kind of disease these Texas cattlemen will be responsible for introducing to and spreading through your community.’
Mrs. Logan clapped her hands over young Freddy’s ears.
‘I am told that you already have one house of infamy and shame within the boundaries of this town. Such an establishment is ground for all of you here to look within yourselves and see how far you are to blame for allowing this house to prosper. But however that may be, what I have to tell you is certain – if Texans are encouraged to trade in Caldwell then within less than a week of their coming there will not be one house but two, and then three and then four. And evil will predominate to such an extent that decent men and women will not be able to walk the length of the main street without casting their eyes to the ground in shame!’
The few men who were marching, embarrassed already, let their heads shift away. Women thronged closer and the wagon drew to a slow halt.
‘Which of you has not a daughter whose virtue will be besmirched if this happens; which of you has a son whose soul and body will not be tempted and damned?’ Aronia Hawthorne threw back her head, flung wide her arms, eyes momentarily closed, mouth open drawing in air. ‘Perdition! That is what it means — perdition! The same men who buy and sell diseased cattle will buy and sell the diseased flower of womanhood! Do not allow this to happen. Not here. Not in your community.’ Her head dropped, apparently helpless, the crowd hushed, watched; the head, magnificent, rose up and addressed them once more. ‘Lest you wish this town to be Sodom, lest you wish this town to be Gomorrah, you must act. Rise up as others have in the cause of decency. In the wake of the Lord’s teaching. Let your voices be heard so that those of the Devil may be drowned and drowned everlasting.’
She seemed to sway backwards on the final words, recover and send her arms high into the air. The crowd, massed about the wagon, forty, fifty people, raised their hands along with her and shouted and clamored. Those who had made banners and placards waved them aloft. The cheering went on and on.
Hart caught a glimpse of faces watching from across the street, half-hidden behind windows. Caleb Deignton, stern and angry; Lily Weinstein, amused beyond all else. He noticed the black-garbed preacher hovering at the edge of the crowd. Women milled around the wagon, trying to talk to Aronia Hawthorne; th
e hems of their long dresses trailed in the puddles left from the previous day’s storm, several inches of material was black with mud. Hart moved away and went to the hotel.
The clerk, eye shade dangling from his neck, was peering over the top of the door and scuttled away when Hart got close. Otherwise the place seemed to be empty — all of the excitement was out on the street.
Hart went into the dining room and was surprised to see the waitress there, sitting at one of the tables cleaning silver. The child lay in a cot close by, asleep.
‘Mornin’.’
She looked up at him and for a couple of seconds paused in what she was doing.
‘Any coffee?’
The woman finished shining one of the knives and then nodded grudgingly. She got up and disappeared into the kitchen. As if knowing, the child stirred in his sleep and for a moment whimpered.
Hart sat down and crossed one leg over another. The coffee was hot and tasted slightly burnt when it arrived, the waitress hardly allowing herself time to set the cup down before she was moving away.
‘Thanks,’ said Hart to her back.
A civil word occasionally, he thought, wouldn’t hurt none.
A few minutes later he heard voices beyond the dining room door and steps coming towards him and he thought he might even be about to see the mighty Aronia Hawthorne ushered into his presence, in search of refreshment after her morning’s work. But no: it was perhaps the last person he expected to see there in Caldwell, there in the Kansas Star Hotel.
‘Ma’am,’ Hart half got to his feet, awkward and surprised.
Emily Escort looked taller out of her husband’s shadow. Her reddish-brown hair, short and brushed to fit the curve of her skull like a cap, glowed more brightly. Her eyes had life in them.
Teresa stood behind her, hiding behind her skirts, peeping round and then the timid head withdrawing like a wild rabbit. The baby, Henry, was wrapped in a blanket and tied, Indian style, on to Emily’s back, so that the tip of his head showed above her shoulder.
The waitress looked at the woman and her children with interest, a trace of anxiety in the soft and bitter dark of her eyes.
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