He settled the hat back on his head. A tear gleamed in his eye; a soft, sad smile lay gentle on his mouth. "Did the bitch suffer before she died?"
Anger rose in Gus's throat so hot and fast he nearly choked. "What are you doing here?"
"Well, now, Gustavus, that is a fine story in and of itself. An example of the ways in which the Lord doth provide. I was riding the circuit in Missouri—and a tightfisted lot of infidels they are in that part of the country—when I was visited with a calling to preach the Word in Deadwood. The Lord appeared to me in a dream. He spoke of a city of sin, a city of souls ripe for conversion, a city—"
"Full of saloons," a mocking voice drawled, "where they play poker with gold dust for ante."
Gus looked at his brother. Zach leaned back on the hitching rail, with his arms straight, his palms braced against the rough wood. He had a devil-damn-you light in his eyes and a crafty, hold-on-to-your-pocketbook grin, just like their old man.
The reverend didn't acknowledge his younger son by so much as a glance, but Gus saw a tic begin to pulse below the black eye patch. "As I was saying, I was in Deadwood when one day the calling guided me into a sin parlor—strictly on the Lord's business, you understand—where I fell into conversation with a Mexican boy who allowed as how he had worked spring roundup for a Montana rancher by the name of Gus McQueen. I logically presumed there couldn't be two of you, so I ambled on over for a little visit," he finished, as if it were nothing more than a jaunt to the next county and not a matter of hundreds of miles.
He shifted some on the mule's back and looked then at his other boy. His hedge of shaggy black brows drew together over his hawk nose. "I must say I didn't expect to find you here as well, Zacharias."
"Life is just plumb full of sweet surprises."
The reverend pursed his lips. "A man can raise up a son, but only the Lord can lift up a man to the glory of his righteous image. God gave you the hearing ear and the understanding heart. But when you turned away from me, you turned away from the path of righteousness."
"Amen, Revver. But then, we can't all be saved. Otherwise there wouldn't be any need for a hell."
Jack McQueen thrust a clenched fist into the air and shook it at the sky. "'God is not mocked!'" he thundered, and Gus felt Clementine jump beside him. "When you smite his tidings, you are smiting the holy hand that sends it."
He dropped his fist, and his gaze went to Hannah, who looked back up at him with both wonder and laughter on her face. His eye sparkled with manly appreciation, and she smiled. His gaze moved to Clementine.
"That greaser boy, he said you had married, Gustavus. Yea, a merciful Providence has carried me through many a danger so that I may greet your fair wife, my daughter in grace."
He slid off the mule, a tall man with long, lanky bones and an air about him that inspired fascination. Gus watched his wife carefully, to see if she was fascinated. His father's smile was full of flashing teeth and dazzling charm. He lifted her hand and brought it to his lips. "'Who can find a virtuous woman?'" he said in the deep raspy voice that had separated so many women from their virtue. "'For her price is far above rubies.'"
Clementine regarded him with that wide, intent gaze that could lay a man open to the bone. Slowly she pulled her hand from his grasp and turned to Gus, a look of utter disbelief on her face. "Is this man truly your father, Mr. McQueen?"
"Lord, we are all poor worms in the dust, struggling for life and happiness."
"We are, we are! Praise God, we are!"
"Help us poor sinners. Help us, O Lord, to take the religion of Jesus into our hearts."
"Blessed Jesus! Blessed Jesus!"
The jamboree had been uplifted—or had deteriorated, depending on your point of view—into a revival meeting. Shiloh's fiddle had been silenced, and voices were now being raised in praise of the Lord. The Reverend Jack McQueen stood atop a wagon box and preached in a bull-throated voice fit to rouse amens from the angels. Gus paced at the back of the crowd, not wanting to be where he was, not daring to be anywhere else.
His father's only competition came from the barrel of whiskey-fortified cider that Gus wasn't supposed to know about. It was doing a roadhouse business with those few who were ir- redeemable, like Pogey and Nash and Gus's hard-drinking, hell-bound little brother.
"The Lord shall deliver us from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear."
"Praise Him! Praise the Lord!"
Oh, he was so good, Gus thought. He had always been so good. His description of hell could make a brave sinner feel faint. His rendering of the glory of the Word could redeem Satan himself.
Gus's gaze searched out his wife and found her. She had distanced herself from it all and was standing on the porch of their new house to watch the preaching. No doubt comparing the Reverend Jack to her own illustrious Boston Brahmin father, who delivered decorous sermons from a white-painted pulpit in a granite church.
A hand fell on his shoulder, turning him around. It startled him so that he stumbled and his brother had to steady him. "Kinda takes you back, don't it?" Zach said, the whiskey burning wild in his eyes. "The old man up there, playing the revver better than Jesus Christ himself could do it, whipping and softening them up for salvation. I keep thinking I should be fanning pockets, looking for something to steal."
The tension gusted out of Gus in a sigh. "What is he doing here?"
His brother cocked an ear toward the wagon box. "Sounds like he's giving us the latest authentic news from hell."
"He is the latest authentic news from hell. You know what will happen, don't you? He'll try to seduce the wife of every man in the valley. He'll get caught cheating at cards in the Best in the West, and Hannah will shoot at him with that boob gun of hers." He emitted a ragged laugh, then added a little maliciously, "Unless he's screwing her to the mattress by then, of course. And if there's a widow somewhere living on a pension, he'll find her and chisel the money out of her—"
"But he'll show her one hell of a good time while he's at it," Zach said, with a grin that was so much like their old man's that Gus almost shuddered.
"We got to get him back on that mule and pointed south or west or any direction so long as it's away from here." The stove-pipe hat was being passed around now. Even from where they stood in the back, they could hear the clink and rattle of coins. "Those are our friends and neighbors," Gus said. "He's taking money from our friends."
Zach lifted his shoulders in a lazy shrug as he fired up a cigarette. "Short of bushwhacking him, I don't know what we can do about it. Besides, soon as he gets wind you want him gone, he'll stick around just to rile you." He squinted at Gus through a haze of smoke. "He's probably got some swampland to sell us, or a silver mine just ripe for investing. He'll tell us how, since we're his kin, he's going to offer us the deal of a lifetime. But once he realizes the old dog's pups are wise to his tricks, he'll move on to easier pickings."
"Please God," Gus said.
The preaching had reached a fiery conclusion. Shiloh's deep voice began to sing, the sweet notes lingering in the hot afternoon air: "Amazing Grace, how sweet it is..." Gus patted the pocket of his white buckskin vest, looking for his watch. "We should start the bronco-busting now," he said, "before he passes the damn hat again." He searched his hip pockets. He was sure he had—
Zach pulled a nickel hunting-case watch from his own vest and flipped open the cover. "Three o'clock," he said.
Gus looked at the watch dangling from his brother's quick and clever fingers. He knew he should laugh, or at least smile, but all he could feel was sick. "He's going to sour things for us here. I can see it happening already."
His brother's mouth curved into a smile meant to be easy. He tucked the watch back into Gus's pocket where it belonged. "I only wanted to see if I could still do it."
"What are you wanted for?"
Rafferty looked his father in the eye and lied. "Why, nothing, Revver. I'm as straight as a Puritan's backbone."
"Of course you are, dear boy.
And I still have cherry balls." He squinted up at Rafferty, his mouth twisted with a foxy smile. "Is there a man with a grudge looking for you, perhaps? If not, whyever are you hiding out in this pathetic backwater under a handle I've never heard of?"
"Maybe I just don't want anybody confusing me with you."
"You should be so lucky, my dear, dear boy."
Amusement tugged at Rafferty's mouth as he leaned over the fence rail. A white-socked chestnut danced around the corral, dodging the rope of the cowboy who was trying to hobble it. Gus had finally gotten the bronc-busting going, once the praying had run out of steam. They had caught the wild mustangs out on the range last week—the ones they would use for the fall roundup. A few had been broken already, but they all needed the pitch taken out of them and some of the men were making a contest out of it.
His father settled next to Rafferty at the fence. If Jack McQueen wanted to look his younger son in the eye now he had to tilt back his head to do it. When they had parted company, Rafferty was still a gangly boy, three inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter than the man who had raised him.
"Are there many tin badges in these parts?" the reverend said.
Rafferty considered the question from every angle while he watched the cowboy in the corral try to slap a saddle on a moving target. The horse neighed and kicked at anything it could see, including shadows. The warm breeze carried with it the smell of churned-up dust and sweating horsehide. Rafferty decided that his dear father, being such a doting parent, was probably trying to find out if there was any money to be made by turning him in to the law.
"I got caught passing boodle in New Orleans," he said. "It was a piddling-ass crime, so I don't reckon there's much of a price on my head, but you're welcome to try for it." The story in itself was true enough, and he enjoyed playing the game of lying to his father with the truth.
Jack McQueen rubbed a hand over his jaw. "No, I hardly think so. Even if I were to take you in—and I'm not saying I couldn't, mind you—I wouldn't want certain individuals getting too close a look at my own face, if you get my drift."
"Yeah? Maybe I ought to take you in."
The preacher's lips pulled back from his teeth. "You could try." He made a small huffing noise in the back of his throat, shaking his head. "Passing boodle—oh, really, Zacharias. Nobody gets caught passing boodle. Why, I imagine those bills were so amateur they wouldn't have passed for ass-wipe in a crap house."
Rafferty would never admit that he was only seventeen when it happened and that someone he thought of as a friend, someone he trusted, had used him to pass the counterfeit. He'd always been ashamed of that one lapse in judgment. Any boy with Jack McQueen for a father learned young not to let himself get used by anybody.
In the corral, the cowboy had finally gotten the saddle on the chestnut, and now the horse was buck-jumping around in a wheel in a vain effort to be rid of it. Rafferty noticed that Gus was standing on the other side of the corral with White Hawk and his braves, pretending to watch the horse, but watching their old man instead.
The reverend rested his elbows on the top rail of the fence and hooked a bootheel over the lower one. Rafferty cast a sideways glance at his father. The man was almost fifty now and looking it. Small broken veins webbed his nose, and the skin sagged off his prominent cheekbones. A fold of belly hung over his trousers. Rafferty had seen a man break a bone in his hand once, trying to hit that belly. Now you could bury your fist in there like in a pillow.
His father felt him looking. A faint flush colored his cheeks and he hitched his pants up over the bulge at his waist. "You boys have yourselves a nice little spread here," he said, the skin around his eye crinkling with his roguish smile. "And there appears to be plenty of sheep in this valley just ripe for salvation. Perhaps I'll hang out my shingle—metaphorically speaking, of course. Do some work in the Lord's name."
"Don't say that where Gus can hear you. You'll spoil his day."
The reverend's head fell back in a deep and genuine laugh. "I do like you, boy. I've always liked your style. It's a pity you didn't stick with me instead of leaving me high, dry, and lonesome as you did. It was I, after all, who taught you everything you know."
Yeah, Rafferty thought, like how to cheat and steal from others before they can cheat and steal from you.
"Why, by the time you were old enough to make a bone in your britches, you could pull a bunco, buzz a pocket, screw a woman till she was dizzy blind, and play the sharpest skin game I've ever had the pleasure to witness—and all without breaking into a sweat. I raised you up in my image, just as the Holy Book says. I made you, my dear Zacharias."
And those, Rafferty thought, were the truest words the man had probably spoken all year. Jack McQueen was in him, a part of him. It wasn't just a case of there but for the grace of God, but rather only a matter of time. One day he was going to look in a mirror and see his father staring back at him. The life he hoped to make for himself, the man he wanted to make of himself... it would all collapse like a rotten pumpkin.
His ma had known the truth. She had stood on the deck of the steamboat and watched him grow smaller as the muddy water rose up between them, and she had looked into his soul and seen nothing there worth taking with her and certainly nothing worth coming back for.
"What I don't understand," his father was saying in an aggrieved tone, "is why you took off, and in the manner you did— like a thief in the night, if you'll pardon the expression. Apparently I was laboring under the misapprehension that you and I were partners."
Partners... my God. "Hell, I couldn't get away from you fast enough."
"You are being hurtful, Zacharias." And the devil of it was, the old man looked and sounded hurt. But then, you could never tell with Jack McQueen what was genuine and what was merely guile. "My old man used to whale on me until I couldn't walk," he said. "But I never raised a hand to either of you boys. Indeed, I treated you as if you had brains and were tough enough to use them—although I admit I often had my doubts about Gustavus. I did the one thing a father can do for his sons: I taught you how the game is played."
"You taught us how to cheat at it."
"That is how the game is played. Don't say you've grown soft on me, boy."
The cowboy was riding the chestnut now, combing its sides with his spurs to make it pitch livelier, kicking up a whirlwind of dust. "Eehaw!" Gus yelled from the other side of the corral. "Stay with her!"
A stillness came over Rafferty. A feeling of suspended breath, of quiet waiting. He turned his head, knowing she would be there.
Clementine and Hannah were walking down from the new house to see the bronco-busting. Hannah was laughing, and there was a lilt to Clementine's step. The breeze blew her skirt against the swell of her belly, and sunlight glistened off her hair. He couldn't help watching her any more than he could help breathing.
His father's voice rasped in his ear. "Fancy Gustavus taking himself such a wife. I'll wager you he has to court her every time he wants to bed her. That redheaded filly, now, is more to my taste—long and snappy as a six-horse whip. She would give a man quite a ride."
"Hannah is mine."
His father's laugh was deep and easy. "Not only yours, she isn't. The good Lord, bless him, made women like her to be shared. And I lied when I said you have yourselves a nice spread here. Any fool can see it's barely making it. Any fool but Gustavus. He expects the dollars to start crawling into his jeans any day now, doesn't he? But you know you're only a cold winter or a dry summer away from being busted. Only you'll stick it because you're stubborn and you always did have to try to spare that pretty-pious brother of yours the pain of his illusions."
"That's right, Revver," Rafferty said, letting anger edge his voice. The old man had rarely given Gus any credit, never allowed him any pride. Gus was the heart and guts of the ranch. A bad year might break them, but the ranch wouldn't even exist if it weren't for his brother. "I'm sticking it."
"Of course you are, dear boy. Right up until the day
he walks in on you in bed with his wife."
Rafferty went very still. In the corral the chestnut crawfished backward and the cowboy rode air, then hit the dirt with a bone-rattling thud.
Rafferty had spent the summer he was eighteen breaking bangtails like that chestnut at five bucks a head. One hot afternoon he had been given a coal-black bronc with the biggest feet he'd ever seen on a horse. One of those old-timers who hang on corral fences all day had observed that a horse with feet that big couldn't be ridden, but Rafferty had only laughed.
He had thought his tailbone was going to get pounded out through the top of his rattled head, but he'd stuck to that damn cayuse until its nose was hanging down between its knees, and he'd laughed again at the old-timer. "I thought you said he couldn't be rode," he crowed, and no sooner was the last of it out of his mouth than the bronc arched its back and plunged sideways through the air. One minute Rafferty had been sitting relaxed and cocky in the saddle, and the next he was lying flat on his back in the dust and biting down on the unmanly urge to scream from the pain in his dislocated shoulder.
The old-timer had stood over him, grinning like he'd just won first prize at a kissing booth. "That'll larn you, kid, never t' underestimate a horse or a man."
He had forgotten how dangerous it was to underestimate his father. Even with only one good eye, Jack McQueen could still see in a glance what it took most men years' worth of studying.
He made his fists open. He wrapped his hands around the rail, gripping the wood so tight the veins and sinews of his wrists stood out. "You son of a bitch," he said.
"You are being hurtful again, and I am not the one at fault here. 'Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids.' If it were only you lusting after her, I would say the poor boy might be spared the humiliation of being cuckolded by his own brother. But I've seen the way she looks at you. She hasn't worked it all out in her mind just yet, but when she does, she's going to be lifting her skirts for you quicker than—"
Heart of the West Page 32