Behaving Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  She warmed to her example. "Suppose Mr. Harwood, not wanting to dishonor me with a public accusation, meets me after church to say that if I will only return it, he will neither file charges nor sully my name. Upset to be so discovered, I cry out. Do you think Reverend Collins or Mr. Trigg would behave any differently?"

  “Without knowing that?”

  “Without knowing that.”

  Claudine shook her head. “You're a schoolteacher, and he's nothing but a gambler.”

  Audra quickly looked down at the book in her lap. “Well ... nobody should ever be described as nothing, Claudine.” especially someone as fine as Jack Harwood, gambler or not. “Part of it is pure luck. I have a good family, while Mr. Harwood—” Is a minister's son. But he'd admitted that with bitterness. “His family may have been troubled,” she supposed. "But part is choice. I do try to live respectably. He has chosen to gamble, openly, and so is at risk of poor public opinion. It's even worse for ladies, you know. What seems initial y harmless can rob a girl of her family, livelihood, community, even self-respect."

  Claudine scowled at the fall of hair on her lap. “You're talking about me and Jerome.”

  Jerome and me. Audra swallowed back the automatic correction—she'd been given a precious chance to teach far more than grammar here, not just to Claudine, but to her own stubborn heart.

  “No, Claudine, I am not. You are not the only girl to forget herself with a handsome boy.” Or man.

  "But you were lucky to be caught. I've seen what can happen to girls who haven't family or neighbors to guard them, or who haven't been raised with proper guidance. I would not wish that on anybody, certainly not on you."

  The scowl on Claudine's face softened, and when she raised her dark eyes to Audra, she looked more vulnerable than Audra had ever expected. “You wouldn't?”

  It made Audra smile. “Of course I wouldn't.”

  Claudine went back to work on her hairpiece, and soon was smiling as wel .

  Audra went back to staring at her book and thinking about Jack's anger. He'd ignored her request to be left alone. And he'd disappointed her, too, embracing a lifestyle that could never mesh with the fantasies she longed to weave around him even now. But she ached to think she'd been lessened in his eyes by what he'd seen in her own. Even if she deserved to be. But.. . did she?

  “Miss Garrison?” asked Claudine. “Is it always a mistake?”

  “Is what always a mistake?”

  “To risk one's reputation with a boy. What if you're truly in love? What if he only means to kiss you, and the rest just... happens? What if he promises to marry you? Is it still a mistake?”

  Audra knew what she should say. She should say that girls who behaved so were light-skirted floozies who deserved their dire consequences. But...

  She remembered kissing Jack by the cedar break, the unnameable joy his lovemaking had ignited in her. Would she forever think of Jack when she thought of kissing? Probably so.

  He was so dangerously good at it.

  In any case, she understood now, as she had not before she met him, how easily such mistakes might occur. And to say they always ended in tragedy would be to lie—toward good ends, perhaps, but it was a falsehood just the same. Babies did not, her mother once explained with distressing candor, always result from what men and women did together. And even if a girl found herself with a baby under the apron, most communities would forgive such indiscretion—after time—as long as she immediately married, whether she married the child's father or not.

  “I believe,” she said slowly, working it out as she spoke, "that two people who truly love each other would endeavor to protect each other, even from themselves. He might be injured or killed before he could do right by her. Or marriage without solid prospects could force them into poverty. Just because it could work out does not mean they did not take a dreadful... gamble."

  “Oh,” said Claudine. Then, unexpectedly, “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome,” said Audra. It didn't make the memory of this morning go away. But she thought she understood her dilemma a little more. Jack gambled—and she did not.

  Not even for him.

  If she could not find comfort, understanding would have to do.

  Jack unpacked and repacked his saddlebags twice, certain that he'd forgotten something. Not likely. He felt calmer than he had in weeks, and not because of Ham's whiskey. After that first sip, he'd found himself oddly uninterested in a second, no matter how smooth the liquor.

  Perhaps the warmth of the whiskey only reminded him of the warmth he'd lost?

  Somehow, corking the bottle had eased him in a way drinking it might not have. Lying back on his pallet to think things through, he fell asleep, catching up on the rest he'd missed the night before.

  The nap cost him a lot of daylight, but the weather looked clear; with a full moon he could ride past sunset. More important, the rest restored his good sense.

  He saw how badly he'd overstayed his welcome in Candon, for one thing.

  But that realization did not help him figure out what he needed so desperately to remember. It wasn't something he could pack. Gamblers traveled light. But he wouldn't get far without trusting his instincts. So when whatever it was kept chewing at him, just beyond recognition, he hesitated to leave before he could ferret it out. Had he not done something? Ferris knew he was leaving, and Audra .. . well, despite his efforts to apologize for his previous inebriation, he now saw that was for him more than her. Better for her if he did leave on a sour note. The next man who came courting would thus have to prove himself the opposite of Jack before she would look twice at him. She couldn't do much better than that.

  So ... what? What was it he couldn't figure out? He paced the store, the storage room, the back room where he'd slept. He climbed to Ferris's room, but saw nothing amiss there except that the man hadn't emptied his wash water after cleaning up for tonight, wherever he was going. Jack tossed it out the window for him, noticing from the scent that Ham had used their best soap. Jack put that together with the polished boots, and it seemed obvious Ferris had his own trysts to see to. But it wasn't Jack's business how Ham saw fit to ruin his life.

  Jack gave up. Likely he'd remember whatever it was halfway to Fort Worth and make the rest of the trip cursing himself. But if he didn't leave now he might stay the night, maybe even search out a local game.

  And at that, pieces fell into place like cards in a perfect hand—for someone else. Jack hadn't been invited specifically to a game tonight. He'd been invited to come have what Whitey called “fun.”

  Varnes had called it “real good fun”—after lamenting those dangerous coloreds in Mosier Valley—

  and looking to buy a new six-shooter.

  Ferris had lost his temper and defended the Mosier Val ey folks. When he'd asked, "Why not just leave them be?“ Varnes had said something about that being a ”fine question."

  The road to Mosier Valley went past the cemetery. Jack remembered Varnes mentioning it, telling Ferris to look at his family's graves “next time you ride by the cemetery.” As if Ferris went by the cemetery all the time. But Ferris had gone out this evening. To meet a woman.

  And in all the time Jack had worked here, he'd seen Ferris show interest in only one woman, speak about more than just merchandise to only one woman, cheer up or sullen down based on the presence or absence of only one woman. But Jack had been so busy conducting his own romance with Audra that he hadn't seen an even more forbidden romance under his nose.

  “Tarnation,” he muttered, and bolted for the door, then across the street to the livery, leaving saddlebags, keys, and everything else behind.

  Ferris Hamilton was seeing Lucy—their colored laundress.

  And Ernest Varnes, Whitey Gilmer, and God only knew how many others likely planned to do something about it tonight.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Teachers will begin classes promptly at eight o 'clock in the morning.

  —Rules for Teachers


  Candon itself sat relatively high on a gentle roll of landscape, its dirt roads nestled amid a fair amount of brushy timber. The road toward Mosier Valley—and, en route, the Calloway cemetery—

  sloped downward into a more open prairie of mesquite and tall grass that Jack had heard

  described as malarial. He could smell the dampness in the evening chill as he rode Queen toward the stone markers that dotted the acre or more of cleared, moonlit burial ground.

  No sign of his friend, though he did note the name Ferris on more than one large tombstone.

  Neither did he see evidence of Lucy, or of a mob out to intercept the pair.

  Breathing in through gritted teeth, Jack turned in his saddle, looking for any hint that his hunch would play out. It was then that he saw the trace that branched southward, beyond the last of the gravestones, toward a distant tree line and the Trinity River. For Jack's money, the privacy of timber and the romance of a moonlit river would beat a cemetery for courting hands down. With a click of tongue to teeth, he urged Queen of Hearts onto the narrower path.

  Then he heard the gunshot, dug in his heels, and let her take her chances with shadows.

  Five white men—including Jefferson, Gilmer, and Varnes— had come looking for trouble. Two sat on mules; one had a shotgun raised. The other three had dismounted to better confront the

  “perversion” they'd obviously interrupted. Their mounts clustered along the path, spooky and restless from the recent gunshot. Ham's gelding stood tied to a tree across the clearing.

  A crumpled quilt and a crutch lay on the sandy, moonlit ground, but Hamilton and his dark-skinned lady friend had backed off of it. Ham stood shirtless on the riverbank, dangerously close to a steep drop over dark water. Behind him, clutching her dress together, stood Lucy.

  Jack couldn't remember her last name. Just Lucy.

  Of course, since he hadn't bothered to sneak his way up the path, he now reined Queen to a halt with a fine view not only of the players in this melodrama, but of the business ends of a shotgun and Ernest Varnes's new revolver. Another shotgun was trained on the lovers. Pistol smoke hung heavy in the humid air.

  Well, hell. He just had to be right, now, didn't he? When in doubt...

  Jack smiled. “And here I feared I might've missed the party!”

  They might be rubes, but they weren't idiots. Varnes grinned back and did Jack the courtesy of pointing his revolver toward Ferris again. But one of the fellows on muleback—named Mason, if Jack had it right—kept a shotgun on him, and Ernest was likely aware of that, too.

  “Light a spell, Harwood,” he said. “You got here just in time for the fun, didn't he, boys?”

  Jack glanced toward Ham, who stared back, expressionless. Ferris never had been one for showy emotions. Lucy trembled visibly, and justifiably so. This was no lynch mob. Ferris Hamilton could ride away from the whole ugly encounter with nothing more painful than a little shame and some bad memories.

  As long as he abandoned her when he went.

  It wasn't respectable to lust after a black woman, of course; for some men it ranked just marginal y higher than relieving one's needs on the livestock. But liquor up some fellows with basic enough needs, and even the livestock ought to worry. A pretty girl like Lucy ...

  And she was, Jack realized as he dismounted with a creak of saddle leather, very pretty. Despite his recent obsession with a particularly fine lady schoolmarm, he felt a mite ashamed for never noticing before now.

  Then again, facing down firearms tended to bring out the regrets in him.

  “Well , y'all know me,” he noted now, casual y, and looped Queen's reins over a nearby bush. “I'm always up for a little fun.”

  “How do we know we can trust him?” demanded the fellow named Mason. "Him and Hamilton's been workin' together; could be Harwood's here to help him."

  “He don't look to be armed,” observed Whitey Gilmer, also on muleback.

  Tossing a grin in the blacksmith's direction, Jack even opened his coat to better show that he wore no gun belt. “Now isn't that what we're all here for?” he asked, downright amiable. “To help my friend Ferris here see the error of his ways?”

  He even got close enough to Ferris to pat his shoulder condescendingly.

  Ferris shrugged away from his touch as if Jack were diseased. But his eyes ...

  Damn it, Jack couldn't tell if the storekeeper understood or not. Ham had too good a poker face.

  Poor Lucy, though, obviously bought his act so thoroughly that it pained him to see her wide-eyed fear. Well, he was a gambler, wasn't he? Why wouldn't she think a fellow with that track record could be a rapist? Candon's little mob certainly accepted him as their own.

  He wondered if Audra might believe similarly. The likelihood downright sickened him.

  In the meantime, the others were nodding and agreeing among themselves. Nothing a fellow with a prickly conscience liked more than a rationale that made him the good guy.

  “Like I done told you,” said Varnes to Ferris. “We just want to share some of what you got. Seems only fair, what with her kind comin' after our women.”

  “You'll have to go through me,” warned Ferris.

  Behind him Lucy whimpered. “No, honey. No ...”

  “Now, you know we'll be happy to do just that,” Varnes warned him. “Ain't nobody'd make too big a fuss on your account, neither, you sick son of a bitch.” It was one thing to entertain oneself with a colored woman on the sly, another to debase oneself so far as to care for her. As Varnes probably saw it, he was giving Ferris an out: fun ... or violence.

  Ferris stayed in. “So be it.”

  The tension in Jack's shoulders eased at his friend's decision. Violence it was.

  Harv Jefferson, also afoot, said, “Ferris, be reasonable. It's six to—”

  But by then Jack had as good a drop on Varnes as he'd get. A snap of his left arm released his sleeve holdout, set his hand a breath from Ernest's face as his derringer sprang into it.

  “Your 'rithmetic leaves something to be desired, Harv,” he called, his tone as amiable as ever. He'd likely looked down a black-eyed Susan a few times more than these farmers. “The count is five-to-two, not including the lady, of course. Cal off your boys, Ernest.”

  Someone exclaimed, “Lady?” But the others sat still , wrapping their liquor-soaked minds around this startling turn of events.

  Varnes didn't blink, but he did look a mite bit cross-eyed at the derringer's muzzle. “I can shoot you as easy as you can shoot me,” he pointed out, his voice pitched higher than before. This was why fools oughtn't play with firearms. A serious gunman would've already blasted Jack off of him, derringer and all .

  Thank God Ernest Varnes was a fool.

  “That would make this what's called a standoff,” Jack explained gently. 'The gamble here is, can you shoot me before I shoot you?" Behind him, he heard Hamilton urging Lucy over the edge of the riverbank—and her protesting. He would decide later if he found that endearing, damned

  annoying, or both, depending on how this played out.

  From muleback, Whitey's voice rasped out, "Go on, Ernest! You got a forty-five; all he's got is some sissy gun."

  “Forty-one caliber might do the job,” assured Jack.

  “But... but that thing can't hold but one shot,” Varnes stuttered, still cross-eyed. “I got six.” He'd already forgotten the warning shot that had brought Jack here in the first place, which made it five.

  And that was assuming he'd been dumb enough to carry it with a loaded chamber.

  Jack shrugged his shoulder. “At three inches it'll take more than one shot?”

  “But you got two shotguns pointed at you, too,” warned Mason.

  Those were indeed bothersome . . . but Jack didn't have to point out how little that would matter to Ernest. He just continued to smile, and Ernest went white as the moonlight.

  Lucy stopped protesting; instead Jack heard a scuffling noise. Good. That should put her out of the line of fire. If
she had brains she would hightail it out of here as well . . . but she sounded like a woman in love, and love weakened the thinking abilities of even the smartest gal.

  Which told Jack something fairly depressing about his clearheaded Audra.

  Just as well. If ever a woman like Audra did love him, he'd be a damned fool to be standing here, five-to-two, chancing his life on another man's cowardice.

  Over Varnes's shoulder, Mason started to raise his shotgun.

  Jack pressed his derringer to Varnes's eyebrow, and the man yelped. Then Jack slid it downward, giving the farmer a chance to close his eye before the muzzle nestled up against his eyebal . No sense risking a ricochet off his skull. “Cal off your boys, Ernest.”

  From the suddenly sharp, familiar smell of urine, Jack guessed Ernest took his threat seriously.

  Sadly, Ernest might not be popular enough to stop the others.

  “I ain't nobody's boy,” protested Harv Jefferson.

  Whitey Gilmer rasped out, “Harwood, it won't be safe for you to spit around here.”

  With a quick catch, Jack relieved Ernest of his slackly held revolver. He passed it back to Ham.

  “Maybe if you fellows go home and sleep it off, we can forget any of this ever happened.”

  “Not a chance,” Whitey warned. “It's still five-to-two.”

  Ernest, fully comprehending what a fine human shield he made, closed his other eye.

  “But each side's got two weapons,” Jack pointed out, not mentioning that he and Ferris held mere handguns, while the other side wielded buckshot. If they didn't notice, he wasn't about to educate them. “And you've got to admit, you're the ones that came after Ferris's woman.”

  “She ain't a woman. She's a colored,” said the fifth fellow, a stocky man whom Jack didn't know. He disliked having the second shotgun in an unknown's hands.

  “Even if she was a butter churn, that don't make her yours for the taking. No offense, ma'am,” he called toward the river. “You boys get along home, now, and nobody has to get hurt.”