by Треваньян
"What? Ah… well… pretty near. Just the dishes to wash up."
"All right, you do the dishes, then come over to the Livery. I don't pay you for standing around here gawking. You come with me, Frenchy. " When Frenchy didn't move, B. J. took her by the arm and drew her out into the street and across to the Livery.
MATTHEW WAS IN THE kitchen, washing the last of the dishes, humming in tuneless misery.
"Hey, how's things going, boy?" Lieder asked from the doorway.
Matthew tugged the old tablecloth he used as an apron out from under his belt and dried his hands on it. "I got chores to do over to the Livery."
Lieder sighed and abandoned the breezy tone with which he had hoped to transcend what had just happened. He sat on the step. "I heard that schoolteacher call you Matthew. Well listen… Matthew. I want you to understand what I'm doing here, because you and me, we're the same thing. We're both damaged boys." Lieder's sincerity was so intense that there seemed to be tears just beneath his words. "And we love this country, you and me! We love every twig and pebble and mud hole, because damaged boys don't have anything to love but their country. They don't have family and friends and all that, you see what I mean? And it's only because I love this country of ours so much that I sometimes have to do things that may seem cruel. But what's really cruel is the way this government is turning our land into a pesthole of stinking foreigners. You see that, don't you, Matthew?"
"And you figure that gives you a right to torment people and kill them?"
"Whoa there! I didn't kill that pimp! It was that nigger gal!"
"No, sir. No, it was like B. J. said. She didn't kill him, she just put him out of your reach."
"Goddamn it, boy, you could do a whole lot better than going around quoting some gutless, penny-'n'-nickel teacher!" He glared at Matthew… then he lowered his eyes, suddenly diminished. "No, you're right, boy. You're absolutely right. I let things get out of hand. But you've got to humiliate your Example Nigger; that's the only way you can control people. But I got carried away, I admit it. I shouldn't have let Bobby-My-Boy hit him like that. I don't care what the others think about me, but you and me, we're the same sort. Both damaged boys. So I'm asking for your understanding. And your forgiveness."
Matthew felt miserable and embarrassed. "I guess you'll be leaving town, now that you know there ain't no silver… just ore."
"This town ain't going to get rid of me as easy as that. Maybe I'll just take that trainload of ore down to Destiny and make them refine it for me. Hell, boy, I am a Force of Nature! There's nothing I can't do! I can make people do whatever I tell them! They say I can talk the birds down from the trees! Matthew, I want to hear you say you forgive me for not preventing what happened to Delanny."
"The forgiveness ain't mine to give. It wasn't me you hurt."
"So you're refusing to forgive me?"
"I… really got to get going."
Injury and recrimination filled Lieder's eyes. "All right. Go, then. But remember this. I asked for your forgiveness, and you refused it. You just remember that."
"Yes, sir, I'll remember." Matthew hung his apron on its nail and eased himself past Lieder, who sat on the step, staring down at the floor.
As Matthew was crossing the barroom, the bat-winged doors opened, and Queeny entered wearing his Hudson Bay blanket around her shoulders, like a squaw. Her face was pasty, her hair matted, and her eyes bleary, but she stood in the middle of the room and looked around with a dazed hauteur, dazed because of the quantity of rotgut she had downed the night before, and haughty because she had wakened with no memory of the humiliation she had suffered the night before, but with fragmentary recollections of having performed her Dance of the Seven Veils to the applause of an admiring audience. The selective memory that had become essential to the survival of her selfesteem did not provide her with any clues as to how she had ended up in a strange bed, naked beneath the blankets, but she assumed that one-maybe several-of her audience had been carried away with passion by her provocative dance.
She had sat up in Matthew's bed… then slumped back, beaten down by jagged pain behind her eyes that throbbed with each beat of her pulse. Lord-God-a-mighty, she was thirsty! She sat up again, this time more cautiously, and walked to the window, dragging one of the blankets behind her. There was the Traveller's Welcome diagonally across the street. Where was she, then? She looked around the sparsely furnished room: a couple of chairs, a rickety table with a row of dime westerns. Where the hell…? Her eyes fell on Matthew's genuine bone comb-and-brush set, and she made a couple of slack, patting passes with the brush over her matted hair before gathering the Hudson Bay blanket around her and stepping out into the street-Lord-God-a-mighty, that daylight cuts your eyes like ground glass! She crossed to the hotel, her dogged dignity only slightly diminished by the absence of shoes.
It was not until she got out in the street and looked around that she realized she had slept in the marshal's office, where that kid camped. Well, she'd be damned! The little devil! And him acting like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, and always talking about his ma! But then, kids of that age are hot-blooded and easily carried away. The little scamp! Well… that's show business for you.
And now she wagged her finger at Matthew and gave him a knowing leer. "Fetch old Queeny a cup of coffee, will you, honeybun? You owe her that much. And make it strong. My tongue feels like the whole Apache nation walked over it… barefoot."
"I'm sorry, Queeny, there ain't no coffee left. And I'm late for my chores over at the-"
"Well, well, well! Look what the cat dragged in!" Lieder said from the kitchen doorway.
Tiny and Bobby-My-Boy came pushing in behind Queeny, having seen her crossing the street as they were returning from dumping Delanny over the cliff. They looked at Lieder eagerly, anticipating his fury, because he had warned her that she'd better never let him see her fat ass again.
Lieder shook his head slowly. "I'll be damned. I will be God-good'n-damned! I don't know if you got lots of grit or just lots of stupid. Whichever it is, you sure like walking close to the edge, old lady."
"You said you'd use a broken bottle on her," Tiny reminded him. "You going to let her just thumb her nose at you like that?"
"Aw, the poor old bitch was too drunk to remember what she did. She doesn't have the slightest idea of the danger she's running, sashaying in here like this."
"Yeah, but… you ain't just going to let her get away with it, are you?" Disappointment compressed Tiny's voice to a whine.
"No, let her be. And anyway, I got sweeter fish to fry." He grinned and winked. "I'm going a-courtin'! Go on upstairs, old woman. Wash yourself up and get some clothes on. No one wants to think of you, bare-assed under that blanket. We just ate, for Christ's sake!"
With an imperious gesture Queeny flung the flap of her blanket over her shoulder and walked past him and up the stairs, where she found Chinky sitting on the edge of her bed, her face in her hands. "Hey, where's Delanny?" Queeny asked. Chinky shook her head: she didn't know. "Well, where's Frenchy then?" Chinky didn't know and didn't care. "What is wrong with everybody this morning?" Queeny wondered as she went to her room, where she took her red dress from the wardrobe to air it… just in case she was called on to dance again that night.
On his way out to go courting, Lieder stopped beside Matthew, who was standing on the porch, watching two angry little dust devils weave their drunken ways down the street, one chasing the other. They crossed the train tracks and approached the cliff edge, where they were suddenly sucked over into oblivion. "There's one hell of a storm brewin'," Lieder said, pulling his hat brim down tight. "It's going to rain like a cow pissing on a flat rock."
Matthew was silent.
"You're on your way over to the livery stable, huh?"
Matthew nodded.
"Well… that's good. That's good, Matthew, 'cause it's exactly what I want you to do. And keep your eyes peeled, hear? That schoolteacher might be foolish enough to try something, and that'
d be the biggest mistake he ever made." Lieder squinted up at the sickly yellow-green sky. "Yes-siree-bob, we're in for one hell of a storm. Hey, I hope you noticed how I let that Queeny be, even though I'd promised her a whole lot of hurt if she ever came back. A true leader is above spite and revenge. He's big enough to forgive people. I've learned that lesson, Matthew." He paused a moment before adding, "It's a pity you haven't."
MATTHEW ARRIVED AT THE Livery to find the shoeing yard empty, but the pair of donkeys Coots had led down were out in the meadow, nosing around the old cow the train had brought up from Destiny. He looked into the kitchen. Nobody.
"Up here, boy," Coots called huskily.
He climbed the stairs to find himself for the first time in the bedroom Coots and B. J. shared. Coots was sitting on the edge of their double bed, and B. J. was in a Lincoln rocker, his head against the back and his eyes closed, looking much the more worn of the two. The strain of facing up to Lieder and distracting his attention while Coots descended into town, then having to witness Mr. Delanny's humiliation and death, had sapped his energy and left his nerves frayed.
"I didn't hear your steps until you were in the kitchen," Coots said. "Must be the wind."
"Stand by the window and keep your eye on the street, Matthew," B. J. said without opening his eyes. "We can't let one of them sneak up on us."
Matthew established himself at the window that gave a view across the burying ground to the far end of town. "So Ruth Lillian found you on the trail?" he said to Coots.
"That's a narrow trail, son. She couldn't hardly miss me." He had known that something was amiss when he found the Kane girl standing in the middle of the trail, shortly before he got the brace of worn-out donkeys down to Shinbone Cut. It had been a steep, unnerving descent, and the donkeys were skittish because they could smell the incoming thunderstorm that Coots had seen roiling angrily all along the northern horizon when he was up at the Lode, but that was not yet visible in the sky above Twenty-Mile. "There's a real ripper coming in. And that may be to our advantage. They'll be stuck inside tonight, and they won't be able to hear anything, what with the rain and thunder and all."
"What you planning to do?" Matthew asked, confused. "I thought we were going to wait for the miners to come down tomorrow morning before dawn."
Coots glanced at B. J., who nodded, his eyes still closed. "Tell him."
"Fact is," Coots said, "they won't be coming down, boy. Not before Saturday night as usual."
"But… why not? I mean… as soon as Ruth Lillian tells them how things are down here, they're sure to — "
"Ruth Lillian won't be telling them anything. I brought her back with me."
"What? But the whole point was to get her out of here!"
"She'd never of made it up to the Lode, son. When it rains, that trail's a death trap. All slimy and muddy, with patches falling away into the ravine. The wind would of snatched her right off one of those exposed bends. Oh, she was willing to give it a try. That girl's got more grit than sense. But I couldn't let her do it."
"Where is she now?"
"Up in the loft out of sight. With Frenchy."
Matthew raked his fingers through his hair and pulled on it. The only good thing in all this trouble had been the knowledge that Ruth Lillian was safe. But now… "She's in terrible danger. That Lieder's looking for a virgin girl to carry his seed."
"She'll be all right," Coots said. "I'm going to deal with 'em tonight. That's already been settled. " His quick glance toward B. J. said that it was Coots who had settled it over B. J.'s objections.
"What are we going to do?" Matthew asked. "What's your plan?"
"Plan? It's hardly a plan at all," Coots admitted. "Those men don't know about me or my gun. That gives us an edge. B. J. tells me that all the men in town will be in the hotel tonight, singing and drinking. And that's just fine. I'll lie low until the storm's at its fiercest, then I'll make my way down to the train track and come back up behind the hotel. Its kitchen door ain't locked, is it?"
"Can't be. There's no lock."
"Good. How will I recognize the boss?"
"He's strange-looking," B. J. said, and Matthew could see his eyes move behind their closed lids, as though he were examining Lieder's face in his memory. "Sharp features," B. J. continued. "Almost refined. But his eyes are opaque. Like porcelain. You can't see what's going on behind them."
"A big man?"
"Middling."
"How old?"
"Hard to say. Anything from thirty to fifty. His face is all covered with fine lines. He looks like a man riven through with hate and malice. A man who means to get even… with everybody."
"Do you know what happened to Mr. Delanny?" Matthew asked Coots.
"Yeah, B. J. told me. I'm glad that Frenchy's on our side."
"It was my fault… partly, anyway."
"How you figure?"
"It was me let Frenchy take the knife. I thought she was going to use it on Lieder."
"Maybe that's what she had in mind," B. J. said, opening his eyes. "But when she saw how Delanny was being treated…" He lifted his shoulders.
"And Ruth Lillian? Did you tell her that Mr. Delanny is dead?"
"No reason to worry the girl more than we have to. All I told her was to keep out of sight upstairs."
"What about you, Mr. Coots? Shouldn't you keep out of sight too?"
"I'll be staying right here until it's time to go. " He set his coffee cup on the table, pulled the old thick-barrelled Walker-Whitney Colt from his belt and put it beside the cup, then he lay back with a sore-muscled grunt, and for the first time ever, B. J. didn't make a fuss about his goddamned boots! Coots blew a long sigh toward the ceiling. "We sure have got ourselves a shitload of trouble."
"Yes sir, that's true." Matthew stared at the floor before asking, "So what are you going to do?"
"What do you mean?"
"When you get into the hotel, what are you going to do? Call him out?"
"Do what?"
"Call him out?"
"Oh, my. You read too many of those Ringo Kid books. No, Matthew, I'm not going to call him out, or do anything else stupid. What I'll do is sneak up as close as I can, then shoot him. In the back, if I can. I'm going to put him down like you would a mad dog."
"Just… shoot him?"
"Just shoot him."
"But he's had lots of trouble and misery in his life. He's been… damaged. Oh, I know he's mean and dangerous! But still he's…" Matthew shrugged.
"But still he's what?" B. J. asked, exchanging a glance with Coots. "What are you trying to say, Matthew?"
"I don't know. It's just that… well, people aren't always to blame for things they do. Sometimes things just happen. People get damaged, and things happen without it being anyone's fault!"
B. J. recalled what he had read in the Nebraska Plainsman: that man and woman found in a farmhouse outside Bushnell. "Tell me what you think we should do, Matthew."
"Well, maybe we could… we could… I don't rightly know!"
"But you do understand that this man is insane, don't you? And you realize there's no reasoning with him?"
"Look, boy," Coots, said. "A rattlesnake kills. Not because it's evil, but just because it's a rattlesnake, and killing is what rattlesnakes do. So when you find one in your bedroll…"
B. J. could sense Matthew's misery of indecision, so he took the pressure off him by asking Coots, "If you get a clear shot at the boss, and if you hit him, then what will you-"
"If I get a clear shot, I'll hit him. Don't worry about that."
"All right. But what about the other two?"
Coots nodded. "Yeah, I been thinking about that. I been picturing just what I'll do and just what'll happen. That's what you got to do-picture it all beforehand, step-by-step, so there won't be no surprises. The minute I squeeze off the first shot, all hell's going to break loose, with the townsfolk and the girls scuttling for cover and crossing my line of fire, so dropping those other two could be messy. Some pe
ople might get hit by strays. The important thing is to drop the boss with the first shot. You snap off a snake's head, and the body might coil and twist for a while, but it ain't going nowhere."
Matthew nodded, savoring these matter-of-fact details, coming as they did from an experienced gun.
"If we had another gun, I could back you up," B. J. said.
Coots lifted the brim of his hat and regarded him with an alarmed frown. "Benjamin Joseph Stone, you're an educated man and you're a fair-to-middlin' partner-even if you can't cook for shit. But in a fight the only thing more dangerous than a gun-smart enemy is a gun-dumb friend. No, taken all in all, it's probably just as good we don't have another gun."
"But, I…" Matthew began.
"What is it, boy?"
"Well… you seem to have forgot my pa's gun. Maybe I could-"
"That antique shotgun?"
"Yes, sir."
Coots sniffed. "That ain't no weapon for close-in fighting. Especially at night."
"But maybe I could go over there in daylight-"
"Just sashay across the street carrying that cannon? Boy, you'd never even get close. They'd drop you before you could… no, forget it. I know what I'm doing. And it's best if I do it alone. At least I can't get into my own line of fire."
"Look, you better go down to the Mercantile, Matthew," B. J. said. "It's dinnertime, and you always eat there. We don't want to raise any suspicions that might bring those men snooping around. Tell Mr. Kane that his daughter's here, and she's safe. Explain about the storm. Try to reassure him. He's an old man and he's bound to worry."
Coots chuckled dryly. "He's no older'n you. Maybe even younger."
"And Matthew?" B. J. pursued, ignoring this.
"Sir?"
"Tell Mr. Kane that we'll keep his girl here out of sight until after dark. He's not going to like hearing that she didn't manage to get out of town, so you'll have to try to… you know… reassure him."
"Yes, sir. Shall I come back here after I talk to Mr. Kane?"
"No, don't draw their attention to this place any more than you have to. You just hang around the marshal's office."