Beginner's Luck (27 page)

He felt like a child before Vanessa, for she had lived through that epoch as a young woman, while he'd been a mere child in the monastery. He realized once more than she was much older than he, not merely the twelve paltry years, but in experience as well. I'll ask her to marry me, Duane thought, and if she says no, I'll go back to the monastery, unless somebody else kills me first.

Vanessa sang the song of the brave young cavalry officer once every evening, and it never failed to please her audiences of ex-soldiers. She'd written the words and music herself, and it was about Beauregard, her long-dead fiancé. As far as she was concerned, there was a bit of Beauregard in every man standing before her, and she loved them all in a special way.

Whether they were cowboys, carpenters, gamblers, or drunkards, most of them had placed their necks on the block for Bobby Lee and dear old Dixie. She understood them, and they loved her back. Their faces seemed to glow, as she reminded them and herself of more noble and gracious days, in the beautiful hallucination of lost paradise known as The South. No matter how dark the world had become, at least they could come together and draw on that special magic.

She looked every man in the eye at least once, so that she could communicate her affection directly, considering every veteran a hero worthy of her deepest veneration. And then, when she least expected it, her eyes fell on
him,
the Pecos Kid himself, standing near the door. She was surprised to see him there, but kept her voice modulated, and no one noticed the slightest change in her demeanor.

She knew that he'd return to her, for he was trapped in her web, as she was trapped in his. It appeared that the young man standing near the door in black clothes and his fast cowboy hat was her destiny in a strange and incomprehensible way, as though he were the reincarnation of Beauregard, and they were one and the same.

She sang of Beauregard's nobility in the face of implacable odds, and knew that Duane possessed the identical fire. Tonight he'll be mine, she thought confidently, as she belted out the tune.

Meanwhile, at the bar, Edgar Petigru saw the subtle interaction between Vanessa and Duane, and knew with sinking heart that he'd lost the game. But Edgar wasn't intrinsically evil, and his misery was directed not at Duane, but at himself.

A man must recognize his limitations, he realized with a crooked, semiphilosophical smile. I was a muddling cretin with a high opinion of myself, and looked down my down at people fleecing me alive. I actually thought I could buy a woman's love.

In the shadows at his feet he saw the world's most ridiculous fool. They laughed at me behind my back and even to my face, and I didn't see it. I was blinded by false pride, because I graduated from Columbia College, lived on Fifth Avenue, and belonged to the Union Club.

He realized that he was basically a prisoner of the people whom he'd held in contempt. They'll keep me here until they've sucked me dry, like an old cow, he predicted, and I hope they leave enough for transportation to the nearest telegraph office, where I can contact Mother. I've invested in properties that I knew nothing about, and violated the first rule of business. I should've put my money in Brooklyn, he chided himself.

If I ever get out of this mess, he thought hopefully, I'll have fabulous stories to tell the gang at the Union
Club, but they probably won't believe me. I might even become the talk of the town for a few weeks, before sliding back to the commonplace obscurity where a man of my talents belongs.

Farther down the bar, Saul Klevins also observed the silent but obvious interaction between Vanessa Fontaine and Duane Braddock. Unlike the New Yorker, Klevins didn't have a philosophical bone in his body. He tended to believe that a well-aimed slug of lead could solve most problems, and wondered how to plant one in Duane's vitals.

Klevins still smarted from Vanessa's rejection. She'd made him feel like a bug when she'd told him to leave her dressing room. Klevins wasn't accustomed to being rebuffed by women, because the women he generally associated with were prostitutes who flattered men as part of their sales promotion. He was extremely sensitive in a contorted, malignant way, and had the urge to shoot her, but shoot a woman in a small Texas town, you'll hang, he reminded himself.

Now he realized why she'd rebuffed him. Like every other scatterbrain in Titusville, she's gone loco over that damned kid. I really ought to kill him, to show the bitch who's the better man.

The medley ended, and Vanessa bowed beneath a hail of coins, as Annabelle rustled about the stage, gathering wealth assiduously. The air filled with cheers, hoots, the pounding of hands, and the chant: “More! More! More!”

Duane fastened his eyes on the long, lean blonde on the stage. What does she see in me? he wondered. Does she feel sorry for me, because I'm an orphan? He remembered the wrestling match in the carriage, and realized that it wasn't pity that she'd displayed, but raging feminine lust totally out of control.

Meanwhile, on the stage, Vanessa perceived unhappiness on Duane's face. To reassure him, the impulsive creature touched one long elegant finger to her lips, and graciously pointed to him, holding the pose for a full three seconds.

Every eye in the house followed that finger, and it pointed to the Pecos Kid standing in the shadows near the door, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans. When they realized who he was, they gave him more room, and a path opened between him and the stage. He took one step forward, and then she bowed low to him, spreading her skirt as if to say:
Whatever I am, I surrender to you.

The saloon was silent as a tomb, except for a drunk snoring beneath a table. Duane was frozen to the floor, with no idea what the occasion required. So he did nothing. The incident passed, she rose to her feet again, skipped lightly toward the wings, and was gone.

At the bar, Saul Klevins narrowed one eye. Her display of affection for Duane, immediately after rejecting Klevins, was too much for the gunfighter's lethal tendencies. He reached toward his holster, eased the gun out an inch, then let it slide back. He knew that a heavy gun settles into a holster, and it helps to work it loose if you're planning to brace somebody. At the far end of the bar, someone handed the Pecos Kid a
glass of whiskey, although Klevins had to pay for his. I think it's about time these people found out who's who and what's what, he vowed.

Klevins walked down the length of the bar, and afterward cowboys would say that he'd worn a certain murderous cast in his eyes. He approached Duane, and Duane noticed him closing the distance. To judge from the expression on Klevins's face, it appeared that the gunfighter's boots were too tight, or his last meal hadn't agreed with him. Klevins came to a halt a few feet from Duane, and cowboys gave him space at the bar.

“Can I help you, Mister Klevins?” the mutton-chopped bartender asked politely.

“Whiskey.”

The bartender poured the drink, as Klevins looked Duane in the eye. “I hear folks say that yer a real fast hand.”

He's looking for a fight, Duane thought, and panic began its ascent up his throat. “Not my fault, what people say.”

“You callin' me a liar?”

“I never said a bad word about you in my life.”

Klevins flung the glass of whiskey into Duane's face, and men dove to the floor, jumped over the bar, or plowed through the doors. The glass bounced off Duane's nose, and whiskey spattered his face and shirt.

Suddenly, without warning, his life was on the line once more. The very impossibility of the predicament weighed heavily on his mind, but he lacked time for abstract speculation on the meaning of existence. His main task, as he saw it, was somehow to extricate himself
from the presence of the extremely dangerous man standing before him.

Duane placed his drink on the bar, and headed for the door, confident that Klevins wouldn't shoot him in the back with so many witnesses. And Klevins didn't shoot him, not out of fear, remorse, or Christian Love, but he wanted to
defeat
Duane, not merely send him to Boot Hill. It had become a matter of honor to the experienced gunfighter.

Klevins's fury increased as Duane approached the front doors of the saloon. He's insulted me, Klevins thought. Actually turned his back on me. Klevins hitched up his gun belt, and followed Duane out of the saloon. “Somebody better git the deputy,” an old man uttered. “There's a-gonna be blood in the street—mark my words.”

Duane landed on the sidewalk, his heart racing with rabid terror. He walked away swiftly, heading toward Vanessa's home. I don't need a duel with the fastest gun in the county, he told himself. The street and sidewalk were full of men who'd just left the saloon, and they looked at him curiously. “Seems like the Kid's skeered of old Saul,” one of them said.

“You're damned right I am,” Duane replied out the corner of his mouth, and cowboys nearby laughed at his heedless remark. Duane didn't realize it, but he won the crowd to his side at that moment, thanks to his natural human response. Where's the goddamned deputy? he wondered.

He heard a voice behind him. “What're you run-nin' from, Kid?” asked Saul Klevins, standing in the light emanating from the Round-Up Saloon.

Public humiliation was the weakest link in
Duane's chain, and he stopped cold on the sidewalk. Swallowing hard, he turned around and faced the fastest gun in the county.

Klevins spat at the floorboards of the sidewalk. “If it's one thing I can't stand—it a coward! Are you a coward—Mister Pecos?”

Duane struggled to keep his voice under control. “Mister Klevins, you're a famous gunfighter. What have I done to you, that you want to kill me?”

Klevins couldn't articulate that he was jealous of Duane, and wouldn't admit it anyway. “I don't like liars, I don't like backshooters, and I don't like men who talk about me behind my back, and then call me a liar. You skinny piece of shit, I'm a-gonna give you three seconds, and then I'm a-gonna kill you, so make yer play.”

Duane raised his hand nervously. “Now just a minute.”

“One!”

“But...”

“Two!”

Klevins dropped into his gunfighter's crouch, and Duane became paralyzed with fear. I'm going to die, he thought. His throat constricted so tightly that he could barely breathe.

Someone spoke, and Duane thought it the final clap of doom, but then realized the voice came from across the street. “He doesn't have a chance against you, Klevins. It's like shooting a chicken with his wings cut off.”

Klevins spun around. “Who said that?”

A tall, cosmopolitan figure in a frock coat and wide-brimmed hat sauntered into the moonlight, Clyde
Butterfield, puffing his cheroot. “Me,” he said laconically.

“Wa'al, if'n it ain't the old washed-out son of a bitch himself. You want some lead tonight, Butterfield?”

“I was just suggesting, sir, that you shouldn't draw on a boy with so much less skill than you, because it'd be murder, not a fair contest in the least.”

“This kid insulted me, and he's got to pay the price, but if you think you can stop me ...”

“Let him apologize, Mister Klevins. Like you said, he's just a kid.”

“He's old enough to know what he's sayin, and there's some ‘pologies you don't accept. But I'll tell you what—since he's such a sorry-ass little bastard— if'n he comes over here and kisses my boots, one after t'other, maybe I'll let him off the hook
this time.
”

Everyone looked at Duane, and he replied with one word: “Never.”

“Then I'm a-gonna kill you.”

Klevins dropped to his crouch again, and held his hand over the ivory stock of his gun. “One!”

“That's enough!” shouted Butterfield.

Len Farnsworth, intrepid reporter, wrote furiously on his notepad as he described the tall, spiffy, Clyde Butterfield strolling into the middle of the street. Klevins eyed Butterfield with undisguised contempt. “Wanna die?” he asked, an acidic tone in his voice.

“You'd kill a boy to show what a great man you are, but why don't you fight me?”

Klevins leaned back and laughed. “You're washed up, Butterfield. Be no contest at all.”

“I never shot a boy because I was jealous of his woman.”

Klevins paused, and his mouth settled into a grim line. “Yer a-gonna git a bellyful of lead.”

Klevins moved toward the middle of the street, and so did Daune, because he didn't want Butterfield to die for his sake. “I'll fight my own battles, Clyde. Step out of the way.”

Butterfield looked into his eyes. “If I've ever meant anything to you, get out of the street this instant.”

Duane stepped back to the shadows, overcome by the fervency of the plea. Butterfield turned toward Klevins. “You two-bit small-town third-rate assassin— say your fucking prayers!”

“I got nothin' to pray for.
You're
the one who'd better say the prayers, you tired old horse's ass. Fer chrissakes, yer just a joke around here.”

Duane would never forget the next few seconds for the rest of his life. Butterfield went for his gun, but before he took a grip, Klevins's barrel already was clearing its holster. The first shot hit Butterfield on his left shoulder, spinning him around, and the second caught him on the back. Butterfield dropped his gun, leaned backward at an impossible angle, and collapsed.

Duane ran into the middle of the street, knelt beside Butterfield, and a trickle of blood oozed from the comer of the former gunfighter's mouth. Both men looked at each other. Butterfield's face was ashen, his breath came in gasps, and it looked like he wasn't going to make it. Finally Duane was able to get the words out. “Don't make me guess for the rest of my life, Clyde! Why'd you do it?”

Butterfield coughed somewhere deep in his chest, and a gob of blood burbled out of his mouth. “You . . . know why. Yer old man ... in the old days ... we was ... pards ...”

Butterfield went into convulsions, as red foam appeared on his lips. Duane knew the party was over for the ex-staff officer. “Clyde, please tell me—was my father a good man?”