Blood Duel (12 page)

“Thirty-one, ma’am. I am no spring chicken.”

“I am thirty. We are almost the same age. I find that quite interesting. Don’t you find it interesting?”

“If you say it is, then it must be,” Jeeter said, uncertain how that was a factor in anything.

Ernestine brought the glass to him. “Here you go.”

Their fingers touched, and Jeeter’s heart skipped a couple of beats. He gratefully gulped the water and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Thank you, ma’am.”
He hoped they would go back to his lessons so he could feel comfortable again, but it was not to be.

Gazing past him out the window at the dark prairie, Ernestine said softly, “Do you know what they call a single woman my age? A spinster. A woman who will never marry. A woman with no prospects.”

“That’s not true, ma’am,” Jeeter said, coming to her defense. “You are as pretty as can be. There ain’t a man anywhere who wouldn’t be honored to come courting.”

“Isn’t a man anywhere,” Ernestine corrected. “You flatter me, but the truth is, I am too plain and prim. In my more honest moments, I can admit my flaws and foresee the consequences.”

“Flaws, ma’am?” Jeeter said. “I don’t see any.”

“Would you like to know the truth, Mr. Frost? I do not like being a spinster. I do not want to end my days alone.”

“Ma’am?” Jeeter was ready to bolt. They were treading on territory where he would rather not tread.

“Do you really find me pretty?”

Jeeter saw where she was leading and a thunderclap filled his ears and seared his body.

“You are shocked, aren’t you?” Ernestine said. “I have overstepped the boundaries. I have shamed myself and you think less of me as a woman. But you see, that is what I am, a woman. I have a woman’s feelings and a woman’s yearnings. Everyone else places me on a pedestal, but I tread the same earth they do.”

To shut her up Jeeter did the only thing he could think of, the thing he most wanted to do. His blood roaring in his veins, he enfolded the schoolmarm in his arms and kissed her.

Sheriff Hinkle had his feet propped on his desk and was reading the
National Police Gazette
when Seamus Glickman walked into the sheriff’s office and over to his own desk. Without looking up Hinkle asked, “What did you find out?”

“It has been two weeks now and there has not been a lick of trouble in Coffin Varnish,” Seamus reported. “The
Times
sent one of their reporters up there yesterday, and that piglet of a mayor, Chester Luce, was crying in his cups about how no curly wolves have come calling.”

“I told you not to worry,” Hinkle said. “I told you nothing would come of it.”

“I’m still not persuaded,” Seamus said. “It takes time for word to spread. We might still have a batch of murders on our hands.”

“You need to learn to relax. You are too tense and high-strung.” Hinkle placed the
Gazette
on his desk and leaned back with his fingers laced behind his head. “A few more weeks and everyone will have forgotten about it. Life will go on as usual.”

“Damn it, George,” Seamus said. “You don’t take things seriously enough.”

“Why get all bothered over things you can’t control?” Hinkle rubbed his chin and then his stomach. “What time is it?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“That’s all? I’m famished. I didn’t eat enough breakfast.”

Seamus plopped into his chair and picked up a copy of the publication he liked best, the
Illustrated Police News
. He preferred it over the
Gazette
because the
Police News
ran more stories dealing with crimes that had to do with the ravishing of women, and he was hugely fond of ravishing women. “I hope you don’t have much for me to do today. I’d like to stick around the office and take it easy.”

“What kind of attitude is that for the undersheriff to have?”

“It is the same attitude the sheriff has, and I never hear him complain.”

George Hinkle chortled. “And therein is the secret of a long and contented life. Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow. And never, ever get all worked up over trifles.”

“Coffin Varnish isn’t a trifle.”

The sheriff sighed and bent to his reading. “There is a task I would like you to do some night soon.”

“Oh?”

“We have had a report that a strange man has been seen hanging around the schoolhouse. A couple of parents saw him. I want you to go over there and keep a watch.”

“On the schoolmarm?” Seamus laughed. “Have you ever seen a more homely female in all your born days?”

“She isn’t a beauty, I will grant you that,” Hinkle said. “But she
is
our schoolmarm, and if some shenanigans are going on, we need to know about it before it becomes common knowledge.”

“Wonderful,” Seamus said. “When do you want me to spy on her?”

“Some night soon.”

“I will get around to it,” Seamus said. “But what man would take up with her when there are so many prettier to be had? You couldn’t pay me to ask her out.”

“Now, now,” Sheriff Hinkle said. “She might be a peach of a girl for all you know.”

“Have you seen her? Have you talked to her? It wouldn’t surprise me if she wears a chastity belt.”

Hinkle laughed. “Yes, I have talked to her, and yes, she strikes me as the sort of woman who would rather be burned alive than let a man touch her. But stranger things have happened than her having a beau, and if she has found one I would like to know about it so I can smooth ruffled feathers. Again, it is not urgent. Get back to me if you learn anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Look at the bright side. At least I am not asking you to ride to Coffin Varnish again.”

“The next time you should go. Maybe you will have more influence with them than I did. But watch out for the mayor’s wife. She is the power behind the throne, and big enough to break you over her knee.”

“Why, Seamus. Did she intimidate you?”

“Intimidate, nothing. If she were a man I would not have let her talk to me the way she did. She is one of those women who wears the britches and flaunts it.”

“Well, soon you can forget about her and Coffin Varnish and their crazy scheme.”

“That suits me just fine.”

The sun was at its zenith when the card game got under way at the Long Branch. Aces Weaver took part, but then Aces was always at the Long Branch. His friends liked to joke that the tall drink of water lived there. Aces was a gambler but not a very good one, which was why he plied his trade in a cow town like Dodge and not on a riverboat plying the mighty Mississippi.

The second player was Joe Gentile. He worked as a clerk at Wright, Beverly and Company, the premier general store in all of Dodge. It was his day off and he had a few extra dollars, so he elected to sit in, in the hope of acquiring a few more.

On Gentile’s left sat Paunch Stevens. He dabbled in real estate. To look at him, with his big belly and bald pate, he would not be deemed of any account. But Paunch also had a temper, and a Smith & Wesson he was not shy about producing when his temper was aroused. When he sat down at the table, Aces and Joe Gentile glanced at one another but did not say anything.

The last player to take a chair was William Everett Caine. He owned a freighting company and possessed more money than sense. His nickname was Club. He had a clubfoot, and limped, and was sensitive about having it brought to his attention, which was why he wore a Webley revolver in a holster next to his belt buckle for a cross draw. The Webley was an English model with a bird’s-beak butt and walnut grips. It was
not as common as Colts and Remingtons and Smith & Wessons, and many thought it looked downright strange. But no one mentioned that to Club Caine. He was English, and sensitive about that, too.

The game had been under way about an hour when the trouble started. Paunch Stevens slapped his cards down on the table and growled, “You win again, you damn Brit.”

“I will thank you not to take that tone with me,” Club said.

“What does that make now?” Paunch grumbled. “Five hands in a row? Hell, if I had your luck, I would give up selling property and gamble for a living, like Aces, here.”

“In some games luck is better than others,” Club said.

Paunch made a sound reminiscent of the snort of an agitated bull, then declared, “Especially when a player improves his luck any way he can. Watch how you deal the next time it is your turn.”

The other players froze.

“Are you implying I cheat?” Club Caine asked in a deceptively mild manner.

Aces Weaver forced a laugh. “He’s not saying any such thing, Club. The cards won’t come his way, is all, and he’s fit to be tied. We’ve all had days like that.”

“Just so he is not implying I cheat,” Club replied. “I will not have my reputation tarnished by the likes of him or anyone else.”

“What do you mean by the likes of me?” Paunch Stevens asked. “I take that as a slur.”

“Take it however you like so long as you make it clear you were not suggesting I cheat.”

Paunch Stevens had been drinking since the game
began, drinking heavily. He tilted the glass to his thick lips to drain it, let out a sigh, and then said so politely and matter-of-factly that it was a full ten seconds before the import sank in, “I will do and say as I damn well please, you lime-sucking son of a bitch.”

Aces Weaver saw Club Caine redden and sought to avert a catastrophe by exclaiming, “Don’t take him serious, Club! He has been sucking a bottle down since he came in.”

Paunch did not help any by immediately saying, “I am nowhere near drunk, thank you very much.”

“You bloody bastard,” Club said.

Joe Gentile thrust both hands out, blurting, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Let’s not forget this is a friendly game. No slinging insults, if you please.”

“Tell that to him,” Club said stiffly.

“I will insult who I want,” Paunch asserted.

Aces Weaver was sweating profusely. He had been in too many saloons when revolvers were resorted to, and he had witnessed too many bystanders take stray lead due to escalating wars of words. Again he tried to defuse the situation by turning to Paunch. “What’s gotten into you? You have never acted this way before.”

“Maybe I don’t like Brits. Did you ever think of that?”

“Tell him the truth,” Club Caine said.

“What truth?” From Joe Gentile.

“This isn’t about cards. This isn’t about where I am from,” Club said. “It is about Harriet Fly.”

“Oh Lord,” Aces said.

Joe Gentile pushed his bowler back on his thatch of curly brown hair. “Who?”

Aces answered him. “Harriet Fly. She works over to the Birdcage. The tall redhead with hair down to her knees.”

“The one who was on Bat Masterson’s arm for a while?” Joe Gentile said. “And took up with Six-Toed Pete after Masterson moved on to greener pastures?”

“That’s the one,” Aces said.

“What does she have to do with our card game?”

Club Caine placed his hand on the edge of the table close to the Webley revolver in the holster next to his belt buckle. “I can tell you. You see, the popsie in question gave Pete the brush-off. Paunch tried to move in, but Harriet did not want anything to do with him. He was most persistent. It got so bad, she told him to sod off or she would go to the marshal.”

“May you rot in hell,” Paunch Stevens growled.

“I still don’t get what she has to do with our card game,” Joe Gentile admitted.

Club Caine’s ruggedly handsome face split in a triumphant grin. “It is simple, young man. Harriet Fly has had me around to her apartment every night for the past week, and Paunch can’t stand the thought of her favoring me over him.”

“Is this true?” Joe asked Stevens.

Paunch Stevens’s jaw twitched and his hands opened and closed. “Harriet Fly would have been mine if this randy goat had not come along and begged her to be his.”

“I have never had to beg a woman in my life,” Club Caine said, and smiled. “I can’t help it if she thinks I have more to offer her than you do. In every respect,” he stressed.

Pushing his chair back, Paunch rose. “Enough. Let us settle this like men should.” He swept his jacket aside to reveal his Smith & Wesson. “That is, if you have the sand.”

“I have more sand than you do,” Club Caine said. “More sense, too. Whoever prevails is bound to wind up behind bars. The marshal has been making a point of late of cracking down on malefactors.”

“On who?” Aces Weaver asked.

“Lawbreakers,” Club said, enlightening him. “Especially those who break the ordinance about not wearing firearms in the city limits.”

“Which no one abides by,” Joe Gentile mentioned.

Paunch Stevens sneered at Caine. “Your excuse won’t wash. If you were half the man Harriet thinks you are, you would go for your gun, ordinance or no ordinance.”

“Not when there is a better way,” Club said. “A way to satisfy our honor and not be arrested afterward.”

“I am listening.”

“Coffin Varnish,” the Brit said.

“I saw the newspaper, the same as everyone else,” Paunch responded. “It’s a lot of bother to go to when we could walk out into the alley and get it over with here and now.”

“Coffin Varnish,” Caine repeated. “We might as well do it legally. Unless it is you who does not have a spine.”

“Oh, I have backbone,” Paunch spat. “More than you will ever have.” He motioned. “Let’s go. We can be there by dark if we hurry.”

“Tomorrow morning. Will ten do?”

“What is wrong with right this minute?” Paunch Stevens asked. “I will never be more ready.”

Club Caine stood and grinned. “I want to spend the night with Harriet.” He gathered up his chips. “You would do well to find someone you care for to keep you company, Yank, for tomorrow you breathe your last.”

“I care about me,” Paunch said.

Joe Gentile was a study in anxiety. “I wish you two would reconsider. An insult is not worth dying over. Nor is a woman.”

“What is, in your estimation?” Paunch demanded, and did not wait for an answer. “You are, what, twenty? That’s the problem with the young today. You are not willing to die for anything.” He turned and tromped off, saying over a shoulder, “See you in Coffin Varnish, Brit. I will be there promptly at ten. Don’t keep me waiting.”