The Romantics

by Peter Brandvold

  Cameron frowned. “Friends?”

  Ma Jones ran her finger up the page and tipped back her head to read through her bifocals. “Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Clark. Right fancy couple. What they’re doin’ here, I have no idea.”

  She glanced up at Cameron from beneath her thin gray brows, a touch of curiosity flickering in her pious eyes. “I’m sure I don’t need to know, either.”

  Ignoring the implicit question, Cameron nodded thoughtfully, feeling a pang of dread at the prospect of having to parry with Clark and his wife again. They would no doubt still try to convince him to help them find the gold, which he had no intention of doing. He also did not want to see those inkyblack eyes of Marina’s again, either … that jet-black hair …

  He accepted the room key Ma held out to him.

  “Much obliged,” he grumbled, heading toward the stairs.

  “Good night,” Ma said behind him, closing the register book with a thud. “You give Ruth Agnes some thought. She’s a good girl, not a tart like some others.”

  “I’ll do that, Ma,” he said, climbing the stairs.

  He found his room, stripped off his dusty, smelly clothes, and rolled into bed with a groan.

  HE WOKE UP ten hours later, facedown on his pillow.

  He wasn’t sure what woke him, but he lifted his head from the pillow and turned to his left. The room was filled with orange light as the sun penetrated the shades over the windows.

  He looked at the door. Closed. He thought he must have heard something, but whatever it was, was gone. The building was silent, as was the street outside—strangely silent.

  Then he remembered it was Sunday.

  He reached for his tarnished silver watch on the stand beside the bed and flipped the lid. Ten-fifteen. Sure enough, no doubt everyone respectable was in church. Everyone unrespectable was probably still in bed, as he was. But they were sleeping off drunks and other sundry sins; he was sleeping off half a dozen days of trail and a skirmish with one of the deadliest Apaches Arizona had ever seen. There was the little matter of Dinah Maxwell, but that hadn’t been his fault.

  He deserved to sleep till ten-fifteen, conscience and the voice of his Iowa farmer father, who had never slept later than six A.M., be damned.

  He lay back on his pillow and heard the floor squeak outside his door. Someone knocked lightly and whispered, “Jack?”

  Cameron frowned and looked at the door with its fly specks and chipped white paint. “Ruth Agnes?”

  “You ready for a bath?”

  Cameron thought about it. “Yeah … I reckon.”

  “Open the door.”

  Cameron did not get up, but only reached over, unlocked the door, and twisted the knob. The girl’s smiling face appeared, her cherry-blonde hair swept back in a bun.

  She wore a light calico dress with lace along the low-cut neckline, and she was barefoot. Thrusting a cup of coffee at Cameron, she said, “Here. This’ll tide you until I get the tub brought up and filled with water. It won’t take long. I’ve had the boiler stoked all morning.”

  “Oh … you don’t have to wait on my lazy bones—”

  “Just never you mind—it ain’t no trouble at all, Jack. Why don’t you give me your clothes and I’ll send them over to Mrs. Donleavy for washin’.”

  Cameron waved a halfhearted arm at a Windsor chair buried beneath his dusty trail clothes.

  Ruth Agnes threw the door wide, strode in, picked up the clothes, and clutched them to her bosom. Striding toward the door, she said, “Be back in a minute.”

  She pulled the door closed behind her, and the hall’s floorboards squeaked under her retreating bare feet.

  Fifteen minutes later she’d carted the tin tub into his room and filled it with hot water. Leaving, she asked him if he needed anything else, with a peculiar expectancy etched on her lovely young face, and he told her no, a little perplexed. The girl had always been accommodating, but she seemed especially accommodating today, not to mention cheerful.

  Cameron wondered if it could be her birthday, or maybe she’d found a boyfriend and she was practicing for marriage. Then he remembered the conversation he’d had last night with Ruth Agnes’s mother, and his stomach took a leap.

  Oh, shit. She wasn’t thinking …?

  Cameron soaked in the cooling water, smoking a cigarette, sipping a second cup of coffee he’d planted on the Windsor chair beside the tub, and stared absently out the window at the sky turning brassy as the sun climbed toward its apex.

  He was thinking of Marina and wishing she’d change her mind about heading south when he heard the floorboards in the hall squeak again and the tap on the door.

  He knew who it was.

  “I ain’t decent,” he called with the cigarette in his lips.

  “That’s all right—I won’t look at nothin’ important,” Ruth Agnes said, flinging open the door and striding into the room with a kettle of steaming water. She poured the water into the tub. “Just thought you might be wanting a warmup.”

  Cameron brought his legs up and cupped his hands over his privates, temples pounding with embarrassment. “Good Lord, girl,” he said, “people are gonna start talkin’, they see this …!”

  “There’s no one here—they’ve all gone out,” Ruth Agnes said, setting the kettle on the floor. “Momma’s at church. She’ll be there all day. It’s just you and me, Jack. Hand me your sponge—I’ll wash your back.”

  Well, she was here now, and he did need his back washed, so Cameron found the sponge and gave it to the girl, who soaped it up, told him to lean forward, and went to work on his back. The girl’s hand was deft, and having his back sponged with hot, soapy water felt so good that Cameron forgot his embarrassment and fairly groaned with pleasure.

  Ruth Agnes dipped the sponge in the water and brought it up to the back of Cameron’s sunburned neck.

  “Momma said you might have a question for me today, Jack,” she said demurely.

  His frown deepened the already deep-cut chevrons in the saddle-brown skin of his forehead. “Question?” He hoped the girl didn’t mean what he thought she meant.

  “You know—she thought maybe you might have something important to ask me.”

  The girl stopped scrubbing. Slowly she dipped the sponge in the water and wrung it out, sliding her now bashful eyes between the sponge and Cameron’s face.

  He’d turned to look at her.

  “You did have a question for me, didn’t you, Jack?” Ruth Agnes said, a note of disappointment entering her voice.

  Cameron sighed. What was it with the women around here, wanting to marry him? He supposed that any halfway civilized man with a decent job was a prime target in these parts.

  He squinted his eyes sympathetically. “I don’t know what Ma told you, Ruth, but if she gave you the idea I was going to ask … that I was going to propose to you today, she shouldn’t have.”

  A cloud passed over the girl’s eyes. “You … you weren’t going to … ?”

  “Ruth Agnes, I’m thirty-five years old. I live out in the middle of nowhere with a kid who thinks he’s the next William Bonney. I drink too much and, whenever I get the chance, I carouse. You don’t want to be married to a man like that.”

  Ruth Agnes’s shoulders slumped as though the sky had fallen on her, and the cheerful light left her eyes without a trace. She stared at him and blinked. “I … thought you liked me. You gave me that dress last time you were in town, and that bracelet last year …”

  “That was because I do like you and wanted to let you know I appreciate how you always clean up after me around here and heat my baths and wash my clothes. I know Ma can’t pay you much, and I just wanted to give you something that said I was obliged, which I was … am …”

  She seemed to be only half listening. Her brows were furrowed. Inclining her head, she stared at him as if trying to discern some foreign script. “Don’t you think I’m pretty?”

  “You’re beautiful, Ruth Agnes.”

  “Then—why … ?” />
  Yes, why? he wondered. She was beautiful and would no doubt get even more lovely with age. Any man in his right mind would marry her, given the chance.

  The problem was, as with Dinah Maxwell, he didn’t love her. He was a lonely, aging desert rat trying to scrape a living off cattle whenever the Apaches gave him a chance. That was no life for a woman. Ruth Agnes was young and pretty. If she followed him out to his ranch in the middle of nowhere, she’d hate him for it later.

  Thinking that, he wondered for the first time if Ivy Kitchen would have hated him for the same reason by now. Maybe the perfect love, he pondered, was the one that wasn’t consummated, the one that was never allowed to grow to its fruition.

  Maybe he and Ivy had had the perfect relationship.

  He looked at Ruth Agnes. Hell, she didn’t want to get married and settle down any more than he did. Not yet, anyway. She was young and had her wild oats to sow, though sowing them probably took some imagination with a mother like Ma Jones skulking around with her shotgun. No, Cameron was certain Ruth Agnes was more curious about lovemaking than about marriage, about living out a girlish fantasy than settling down to the grim business of keeping a ranch house for a man old enough to be her father.

  He didn’t say any of this, however. “Why? Because I’m older than you by a long shot, and I’m even older than my years.”

  She turned angrily to the window and crossed her arms over her breasts. “There’s someone else, isn’t there?”

  Cameron laughed. “No, there sure as hell isn’t, Ruth Agnes.” He only vaguely noted the defensiveness in his tone.

  She looked at him. “Is it the Mexican woman? The one that came in here with the dandy with the Southern accent?”

  “Marina? She’s married.”

  “So? My pa ran off on my ma, an’ he was married.”

  “Well … I wouldn’t do that,” Cameron said. “Foolin’ with a married woman is a great way to get yourself back-shot … and deserving of it.” He frowned, the mention of Marina’s name making him feel something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

  Ruth Agnes turned back to him. “You think I’m just a kid.”

  “You are a kid.”

  “I’m fifteen.”

  Cameron laughed ruefully and shook his head.

  “Okay, so you won’t marry me,” she said huskily, kneeling back down by the tub and dropping her eyes to stare at the soapy water between his legs. “But I don’t see any reason why we can’t—” She gave a lusty smile that made her brown eyes flash with wickedness. “—you know.”

  Cameron was flabbergasted. “Good Lord, girl!”

  Her hands clutched the tub and her hair brushed her incredibly smooth face. “Come on, Jack. I ain’t never done it before, an’ I was savin’ myself for you.”

  “Ruth Agnes! If Ma heard you, she’d shoot us both!”

  The girl grinned coquettishly. “I’ll show you my titties.”

  He bit his cheek and turned his eyes to the ceiling. “I ain’t interested.”

  “They’ve gotten big in the past six months!”

  Cameron ignored her. “Why don’t you go see if my clothes are done?”

  “Not that I’m an expert in such matters, but it looks to me like you’re interested, Jack.”

  Cameron looked at her, then followed her gaze to his member lifting its brown head above the water.

  “Holy shit!” he yelled, splashing as he covered himself.

  Ruth Agnes slapped her hands to her mouth and squealed.

  “Now look what you did!” Cameron exclaimed.

  “I ain’t never seen one that size before!” Ruth Agnes laughed, eyes wide and downcast. “Todie Embers showed me his last summer, but it was just a little wisp of a thing.”

  “Out!” Cameron ordered, face red with embarrassment.

  “Come on, Jack—just one more peek?” Ruth whined.

  “Out! I ain’t a goddamn circus show!”

  Ruth Agnes scrambled to her feet, giggling, and ran out the door. Returning, she poked her head back into the room and asked, “Need more water?”

  “No thank you!”

  She turned and ran down the hall, squealing.

  “I don’t know what the hell’s so damn funny about it,” Cameron groused, taking a troubled gander between his legs. “Women.”

  CHAPTER 16

  WHEN CAMERON HAD recovered from his encounter with Ruth Agnes, he grabbed the towel off the bed and dried himself, then dressed in the clean denims and cotton shirt he’d packed in his saddlebags. As he did so, he considered Gaston Bachelard and how he was going to go about tracking the man down.

  The most obvious method occurred to him as he was sitting on the bed pulling on his boots. The idea was so compelling that Cameron froze with one boot only half on.

  He’d accompany Clark to Mexico, ostensibly in search of the treasure. Wasn’t Bachelard in search of that very same treasure? If their paths didn’t cross somewhere along the way, they’d probably intersect at whatever X was drawn on Clark’s so-called treasure map.

  Cameron got up and stomped his heel into his boot and walked to the window, looking out but only half seeing the half-deserted street below. He was going over the plan in his mind.

  It made sense. He would be on the surefire trail of the man who had butchered Pasqual Varas. He’d also verify either the presence or absence of the gold Clark was so certain he would find. The map was probably a fake, and the gold nothing more than a legend, but Cameron would never be sure unless he made the trek to Mexico himself.

  As much as he hated admitting it, a small but very real part of Cameron was intrigued by the story of the lost gold. A small but very real part of him had fantasized about what he’d do, how his life would change, if the Treasure of San Bernardo turned out to be real.

  Something he did not fully admit to himself was his fascination with the intriguing Marina—and his desire, albeit suppressed, to be near her again …

  He dug in his pocket for a ten-dollar gold piece and dropped it on the washstand for Ruth Agnes. Then he grabbed his rifle, left his saddlebags on the bed, and walked out the door.

  On his way down the hall, Cameron stopped at the Clarks’ door and knocked quietly. He wasn’t surprised that no one answered. It was nearly twelve-thirty. They’d probably gone out to look for someone else to lead them to Mexico, or to get themselves outfitted for the journey.

  Cameron didn’t think they would have left town yet. Even if they had, he knew the route they would take to the border, and it would not be hard to catch up to them.

  Cameron continued down the stairs, found the stillsnickering Ruth Agnes on the porch glider reading an illustrated magazine, and told her he’d return for his clothes in an hour or so. Then he headed over to Crow’s Kitchen, where he sat down to a dinner of ham, eggs, fried potatoes, toast with cactus jelly, and tar-black coffee. The only other customer was a retired miner named Jeff Ames.

  Ames ran freight twice a week from Tucson, and Cameron enjoyed chatting with him and hearing the news. Cameron was by nature a taciturn man, but living as remotely as he did made him thoroughly appreciate short, intermittent encounters with others, if only to talk about the weather or where Indians had been on the rampage of late.

  At last he paid for his breakfast, drained his coffee cup, bid Jeff Ames a hearty farewell, and headed over to the Silver Dollar. There was a quiet game of cards involving five cowboys toward the back. Cigarette smoke lifted from their table and hung suspended in the brown air above them.

  A small man with the ravaged face of the all-day regular stood with an arm on the bar and a foot on the brass rail. One hand gripped the half-empty mug of beer before him; the other clutched a cigarette between thumb and index finger.

  Cameron tipped his hat to him. The man only nodded and turned shyly away.

  “Mornin’, Jack—or is it afternoon?” hailed the bartender with a grin. He was a stout man named Ives, roughly Cameron’s age, with carefully combed blond hair and a face spl
ashed with freckles. Cameron couldn’t remember his first name—Ralph or something. He recalled the man had a deft hand with a foam rake and he only worked on weekends.

  “You seen Bud?” Cameron asked the man.

  “Not this morning. If he was in last night, he’s probably upstairs. You want a beer?”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Cameron said with an eager sigh.

  Only during his trips to town did he ever indulge before dusk. There was nothing quite as enjoyable as the way the bright desert light looked when tempered by a mug of Blatz.

  He sipped the beer slowly and talked with the bartender. The cowboys played cards. Evidently they’d sowed most of their weekend oats and merely wanted to enjoy themselves peacefully before riding back to the ranch.

  The regular at the other end of the bar smoked and drank his beer, not contributing to Cameron and the barman’s conversation. He hacked up phlegm periodically and spat into the brass spittoon beside him.

  Outside, the street was nearly silent but for a short-lived dogfight that ended with an abrupt yip. Then the flies could again be heard droning against the dirty windows.

  Someone pushed through the batwing doors and Cameron turned to see Adrian Clark walking toward the bar. He smiled thinly.

  “Jack.” Clark greeted him coolly. “Yes, the pious woman from the hotel told us you’d made it to town. You were successful in running down the Indian, I take it?”

  Cameron shrugged. “More or less.”

  Clark looked at the barman. “I’d like five bottles of your best brandy. Wrap them in burlap, please. They’ll be traveling.”

  “You getting outfitted?” Cameron asked.

  “Yes, we’re doing quite well. We found a guide who—while not quite as qualified as you, of course—claims he knows the road quite well. He doesn’t think we’ll have any problem at all.”

  Clark’s tone was smugly confident, and he did not look at Cameron as he spoke. He was watching the bartender fill his order. “How much do I owe you, my good man?”

  “This stuff’s three-fifty a bottle,” Ives said with a disapproving wag of his head.

  “Yes, well, we’ll be roughing it enough in the next several weeks. I’ll at least need a good shot of good brandy now and then. Quells my cough. Picked up a touch of the pleurisy last winter and can’t seem to shake it.” Now Clark smiled personably at Cameron as he took a small roll of greenbacks from his pocket.