“He was a tough old coot,” Dodge said. “But he never missed an opportunity, I’ll say that for him.”
“From what I see, he wasn’t very popular.”
“Very few successful men are,” Dodge said.
“Nobody can argue with that,” Cleo said.
“As badly as his family was treated when they worked the land for someone else,” Professor Johnson said, “you might think he would have had more compassion for his own workers.”
“Yeah, well, you’d be wrong,” Dodge said. “You can’t be weak and get ahead. It’s a dog-eat-dog world.”
“Then the twister of 1915 came through,” the professor said. “His tenant farmers started clearing out, without looking back. Hell, your own grandmother Mabel said it made no sense to stay, but he did. He should have listened to Mabel.”
“It was just one bad break after another,” Dodge said.
“No doubt,” Professor Johnson agreed. “But by 1950, the last families moved out. There wasn’t anything for your father to do–nobody wanted to buy the land. He couldn’t sell it and he couldn’t hang onto it. The bank took it over. Your father got a job on the Rolling Fork, always dreaming of buying this land back. By the time you were a grown man, you had no choice but to get a job running the store over at the Rolling Fork. Quite a step down for the Durhams.”
“But I would have bought the land back,” Dodge said. He turned to Cleo. “I almost had enough money saved, when your damned father came in and bought the place! And it just sat there! Every day, every month, every year, I’ve had to watch this place go further and further into decay, because that rich bastard wouldn’t sell.”
“You asked Cutthroat to sell it to you?” Cleo asked.
“More times than I can count,” Dodge said. “Of course, I never got to talk to him directly, but his—what do you call them out there in California—his people said he had no interest in selling at any reasonable price. They gave me a dollar amount, but there was no way I could ever get that much money together.”
Pappy coughed, but all eyes remained on Dodge.
“It must have hurt when you saw us all moving in,” Powderkeg said. “Is that why you set us up?”
“I don’t have time for games,” Dodge said. “No. I set you up because I needed to break you.”
“Why?” Old Bertha asked. “We were only staying for six months.”
“When you came to me with your little fairy tale about wanting to celebrate Fat Chance, it was all I could do not to laugh in your faces. But then I realized, with your help, I’d have enough money to buy the town after all.”
“Oh my God,” Old Bertha said, putting her head in her hands. “I’ve ruined us.”
Dymphna saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye. She turned to see Titan setting Fancy on the corner of the boardwalk. From the troubled look on his face, he had clearly heard everything. He caught Dymphna’s eye, but instead of joining the others, he disappeared.
Cleo stalked over to Dodge. “Don’t be naïve. I can buy and sell you. I’ll pay off all these debts—and you’ll be back to square one.”
Dodge laughed in her face. “Oh, really?” he said, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket and casually scrolling through it. “Do you want the world to know that Cutthroat Clarence’s daughter fell for a scheme like this—and dressed as a dance-hall girl, no less? You know as well as I do you’ll let this go.”
Dodge quickly held the cell phone up. “Say cheese,” he said, snapping a picture of Cleo.
Before Powderkeg could grab Dodge’s phone, Dodge gunned his ATV. He raced down Main Street. A sound like the wail of a siren seemed to come from nowhere as the twins, with Polly and Wally on the backs of the ATVs, came barreling down the hill. Titan wasn’t far behind, leaping and whooping, waving his feathered hat. Titan must have filled in the outlaws. Dymphna hoped he had passed along the comment about the bowling league to the twins.
Talk about retribution.
CHAPTER 44
Dodge was heading right toward the charging outlaws as they came rushing, full throttle, down the hill. He spun around and headed back the way he’d come, scattering the professor, Pappy, and Powderkeg. Old Bertha and Cleo stood right in his path, ready to take him down, but Dodge steered out of their way with seconds to spare. The men on foot didn’t stand a chance of catching him, but the outlaws were right on his tail as Dodge raced into the hills.
Dodge was trapped on both sides. The twins forced him back toward town. Wally and Rock changed places while still in motion. Wally was now driving and Rock was standing on the back, lasso in hand. As Dodge’s ATV reached Main Street, Rock whirled the lasso over his head. It hit its mark, landing around Dodge’s middle. Before Dodge could shake it off, Rock pulled the rope taut and yanked Dodge onto his ass in the middle of the street. Dodge’s ATV reared up, then stalled a few feet away.
The outlaws joined the rest of the inhabitants of Fat Chance. They all stood in a circle around Dodge, who sat with the lasso around him in the middle of the street.
“I don’t think he looks so dangerous,” Pappy said.
Cleo was silent. They might have won the battle, but she was pretty sure he’d won the war. Dodge sprung himself from the lasso. Rock grabbed the rope.
“I wonder if we might find some other use for that rope,” Pappy said. “Anybody here know how to tie a really strong knot?”
Dymphna was fairly sure Pappy didn’t mean to hang Dodge, but she was glad she wasn’t a betting woman.
“There’s nothing you can do to me,” Dodge said, getting up. “This isn’t the Old West.”
“Don’t push your luck,” Powderkeg growled.
“Just let him go,” Cleo said.
“But he’s a no-account liar,” Old Bertha said.
“But a no-account liar who happens to be telling the truth,” Cleo said. “There isn’t anything we can do to him. At least not right now.”
Dodge smirked and broke through the circle. He headed toward his ATV, but Powderkeg stepped in his way.
“There is one thing we can do,” Powderkeg said. “We can make him walk.”
Wally sat on Dodge’s ATV and crossed his arms. Everything about him said “Just try it.”
Dodge’s maddening grin broadened as he sauntered out of town. Thud suddenly let out a deafening yowl, broke away from Dymphna, and raced toward Dodge.
Dymphna tried to stop the dog, but he was gone in a flash. Dodge turned around to face the charging animal, looking scared. As he reached for his Colt and Professor Johnson yelled, Thud leapt past Dodge. He was close enough that Dodge hit the ground, his gun flying out of his hand. Everyone ran toward them, confused about what was happening. Dodge was back on his feet, but the people of Fat Chance had no interest in him.
What was Thud doing if he wasn’t chasing Dodge?
There was no mistaking the sounds that followed. A rattle, a hiss, a sickening whelp from Thud. As the group moved closer, they saw Thud shaking a huge snake in his powerful jaws. With a savage growl, he tossed Big John’s once powerful, now lifeless body, into the air. The snake landed at Dodge’s feet. Thud ran off, crying, zigzagging and stumbling through the hills. Professor Johnson ran after him.
Wally grabbed Professor Johnson’s arm, pulling him to a stop. “You’ll never catch him on foot.”
“We’ll take the ATVs,” Rodney said to Professor Johnson. “You can ride with me.”
Dymphna put her hand on Professor Johnson’s back. He was staring into the distance. There was no sound coming from the hills.
“Your dog saved my life,” Dodge said, a touch of wonder in his voice as he looked down at Big John. “Thank you.”
Dodge put out his hand for a handshake. Professor Johnson turned and stared at the man as if he’d never seen him before. He pushed Dodge so hard, Dodge was back on his butt for the third time that day. Professor Johnson knelt on the man’s chest.
“If my dog dies for saving your sorry ass,” Professor Johnson breathed inches f
rom Dodge’s face, “I’ll kill you myself.”
Wally, already on Dodge’s ATV, fired it up. He roared up to Titan, who climbed on the back. Rodney and Rock mounted their own, Professor Johnson on the back of one, Powderkeg on the other. Pappy grabbed Jerry Lee and hurried after them. Dymphna realized that everyone was still in costume. The modern day posse of cowboys and outlaws, now working together, on their ATVs instead of horses, headed off to find a beloved dog that had just been bitten in a heroic battle.
Dodge looked at Old Bertha.
“Should I go help?” he asked. “The dog saved my life.”
“Yes, we know,” Old Bertha said. “You said that. I don’t think anyone wants or needs your help.”
“Just go,” Cleo said.
“The dog saved . . . ,” he began.
“Just go!” Cleo barked.
The good guys and the bad guys, Dymphna thought as she watched Dodge slink off. A few things might have changed since the Old West, but not everything.
Sundown came. The women had changed into their regular clothes and hauled in all the merchandise from the sidewalk. Dymphna returned her goats to her farm, fed the chickens, and returned to town as quickly as possible. There was no sign of the Wild West women they had been just a short time ago. Every hour or so, one of them would look out the window of the café, but they saw neither men nor dog. To keep their minds off the search—and the possibility of a tragic outcome—they discussed Dodge.
“He’s just hateful,” Old Bertha said.
“I can’t believe we all fell for his lies,” Polly said. “He just played us all!”
“Some of us more than others,” Cleo said, remembering his offer of a ride to Fat Chance. “I was kidding when I told Powderkeg about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer. But I guess Dodge really was the enemy.”
It appeared Dodge had kept a close eye on his enemies, as well.
“Can we fight him?” Old Bertha asked Cleo.
Dymphna knew this meant, “Will you, as the only one with any real money, fight him?”
Cleo looked out the window and was silent for a long time.
“When we first came here,” Cleo said with her back to the others, “if Dodge Durham had been honest with me, I might have made a deal with him. Not only did I not give a fig about Fat Chance, I absolutely hated it.”
She turned to face the women. “But now I love this town.”
“So . . . we’ll fight for it?” Dymphna asked, knowing this wasn’t exactly what Cleo had said.
Cleo shook her head and turned around and faced them. “I can’t. He’s right. If word got out that I let this happen, my reputation would be shot. Dodge proved that hard feelings can run deep—passed down from one generation to the next—and it’s no different in my world than it is in his. My father’s enemies would have a field day with this. We’ll all move out.” She bit her lip. “And I’ll sell Fat Chance to Dodge.”
Dymphna saw Old Bertha stifle a sob. Dymphna knew the old woman felt responsible, having pushed so hard for the festival. Dymphna herself felt guilty for having come up with the idea in the first place. Looking back, it was crazy.
She had to admit, she understood what Dodge was feeling. Fat Chance had a way of making you believe in yourself. It was a feeling you didn’t want to let go of—no matter what. Was Dodge any different?
Of course he is! He is a rat! Dymphna had to get a handle on her empathy. The man was trying to destroy them!
“Of course I’ll cover all of your losses,” Cleo said, realizing how upset the women were.
“No,” Old Bertha said. “Never took a handout in my life. Don’t intend to start now.”
“But we invested heavily in this,” Cleo said. “I don’t want Fat Chance to have been a waste of your time.”
“It wasn’t,” Polly said. “Fat Chance wasn’t ever our town, it was yours, Cleo. We always knew we were leaving. I mean, we obviously made a mess of your father’s idea, but as far as this being a waste of time, no way. This was the greatest six months of my life.”
“I think I hear the guys coming,” Dymphna said.
The women raced to the window. Cleo opened the door of the café and the men straggled in. When Thud didn’t bound in with them, they looked to see if Professor Johnson was carrying him. He wasn’t.
“We couldn’t find him,” Professor Johnson said, falling heavily into a chair.
Cleo ran to get the coffeepot. All the men, still in costume, greedily reached for mugs. They were soaked to the bone from hours of looking up and down the hills.. The twins, Titan, and Wally, still in their skimpy costumes, were shivering.
“I’ll be right back with some blankets,” Old Bertha said, obviously relieved to be able to lend a helping hand at last.
Dymphna sat next to Professor Johnson. “What do we do now?” she asked.
“Pappy says this is what dogs do,” Professor Johnson said.
“They get bit, they run off,” Pappy said.
“But Thud is from Los Feliz!” Polly objected.
“That doesn’t matter,” Powderkeg said. “If the dog has the instinct to go after a rattler, he’s sure as hell going to find a cave to—”
“To go and recover,” Cleo said, glaring at Powderkeg.
Old Bertha arrived with a pile of beautiful new blankets, which she’d purchased for the Fandango.
“Oh, I don’t want to use this,” Titan said. “My costume is soaked. I’ll ruin it.”
“Use it,” Old Bertha said. “It isn’t going to do anybody any good otherwise.”
“Thanks.” Titan pulled the blanket around him. “I hope Maurice feels as kindly when I tell him we wrecked all his costumes.”
“We’ll start looking again in the morning,” Powderkeg said.
“Do you think we’ll find him?” Professor Johnson asked Pappy.
Pappy stared into his coffee cup. “No way to know, son. But we’ll do everything we can.”
“If he’s OK,” Professor Johnson asked, “when will he come out of hiding?”
“Seventy-two hours,” Rodney and Rock said together.
Titan beamed at them, but Rock cut him off.
“No, this isn’t knowledge passed down from years on a ranch,” Rock said.
“We Googled it,” Rodney added.
“Seventy-two hours sounds about right,” Pappy said, getting heavily to his feet. “I’ve got to see to Jerry Lee. That mule earned her grub today.”
“I better go, too,” Titan said. “I want to make sure Fancy got home OK.”
Dymphna started to say that she’d seen Fancy toddle into the forge earlier that evening, but thought Titan needed his rest anyway, so she kept quiet.
“Wish we could have thrown Dodge in the can for at least a night,” Rock said, as he and Rodney made their way to the jail.
“I’ll be ready first thing in the morning, Professor Johnson,” Wally said, draining his coffee and standing up. “We’ll find your dog.”
Dymphna was reminded once again of the side of Wally that no one really saw.
Powderkeg started clearing coffee cups, but Cleo stopped him. “I’ll take care of that, Marshall,” she said curtly. “Why don’t you escort the ladies back to the inn?”
Dymphna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Cleo seemed to have made a complete reversal from the cold Beverly Hills socialite she was when she first arrived.
Powderkeg saw it, too. “All right,” he said stonily. He turned to Polly and Old Bertha. “Ladies, shall we?”
Cleo grabbed several cups by their handles and headed to the kitchen, leaving Dymphna and Professor Johnson sitting at a table alone.
“Do you know why I decided to get a degree in science?” he suddenly asked.
Dymphna was taken aback by the question, but merely shook her head. Wherever this was going, she didn’t want to make even the tiniest of missteps.
“Because I wanted to believe in a world that made sense,” he said, looking around the room as if he’d
never seen it before. “Now I’m in Fat Chance, Texas, and a rattlesnake has probably killed my dog.”
“You don’t know that,” Dymphna said soothingly.
“I have a PhD in natural science from Harvard,” he said hotly. Dymphna could see tears welling up in his eyes. “I don’t shrink from facts. I live by facts. And the fact is that my dog is probably dead.”
Dymphna stood up and put her arms around him. He encircled her waist with his own arms and buried his head between her breasts. She kissed the top of his head and willed herself not to cry.
“I loved that dog,” he said. “I loved that damn dog.”
CHAPTER 45
Everyone looked for Thud over the next seventy-two hours, but they didn’t find him. With each passing hour, the little band of people who had pulled so hard together, returned to the separate, solitary people they had been when they first arrived. Rodney and Rock quit their bowling league again, in solidarity with the townspeople, but returned to living in the hills.
“It’s just too weird here,” Rock told Dymphna.
She couldn’t argue with him.
Pappy brought Big John’s body into town and hung him from a post in tribute to Thud’s bravery, but the city folks were disgusted and Pappy took it down.
Fat Chance, Texas, and its inhabitants were broken.
Cleo walked through the archway that connected the Boozehound with the café. Professor Johnson was sitting at the bar, unshaven, eyes closed. He’d been looking for his dog nonstop. The strain showed. He woke when he heard Cleo rummaging around beside him.
“Where’s the scotch?” she asked.
“It’s seven o’clock in the morning,” he said, looking blearily at his watch.
“Too bad. Where is it?”
“Powderkeg finished it off,” Professor Johnson said, stretching.
“It’s all over, you know,” Cleo said, pouring a shot of vodka.
“The seventy-two hours? Yes, I know.”
“Not just that,” Cleo said, trying not to be too sharp with her nephew, who was clearly suffering.
“If you mean between you and Powderkeg, yes, I know that, too,” Professor Johnson said. “Forgive me if I don’t join you in the celebration.”
Welcome to Fat Chance, Texas Page 24