Blood Duel (8 page)

So when by pure chance Ernestine saw in the newspaper that Dodge City was in need of a schoolmarm, she wrote them that very evening. She listed her credentials and cited her experience and threw in a comment about how much she would love to teach there, and much to her amazement, without requiring that she prove her mettle, she was accepted. Later she learned she was the first teacher to reply, and they were in such dire need, they accepted her right away. Still later she learned she was the
only
teacher who wrote them.

Now here Ernestine was, teaching school on the frontier. She had to admit Dodge was rougher than she expected it would be. She always thought the stories about frontier life were exaggerated. It could not possibly be as bad as everyone claimed or no one would live there. But Dodge was everything ever written about it, and more. A bustling hotbed of greed, lust, and violence. Oh, there were plenty of churchgoing folk, plenty of fine people who would not harm the proverbial fly, but there were also plenty who would. Plenty who liked the wild side and all its trimmings.

Ernestine stopped grading papers and put down her pencil. She was stiff from so much sitting. Rising, she moved to the small mirror above the basin where the children were required to wash their hands after playtime. Ernestine was a stickler for clean hands. Clean hands meant clean books and clean papers turned in.

Staring at her reflection, Ernestine was reminded of a remark her brother once made.
“You are a broomstick in a dress, sis.”
He had not meant to be cruel. They were talking about how different they were. Her brother, Dearborn, could stand to lose a hundred pounds and that still would not be enough. She, on the other hand, truly was a broomstick. A broomstick with fine brown hair she always wore in a bun. A broomstick with a pointed chin and a beak of a nose and high cheekbones. She had a high forehead, too. Her eyes, she thought, were her best feature. A light shade of brown, almost tawny, but they alone could not redeem her. She was plain, hideously plain. No wonder she never had a beau. No wonder she would spend her days as a spinster.

Ernestine’s thin lips compressed. She must stop thinking like that, she scolded herself, and attend to her responsibilities. That was the secret to happiness. Forget personal woes and focus on the job. Just the job.

Ernestine turned to go back to her desk and drew up short, dumfounded to behold a man standing in the schoolhouse doorway. She had left it open to admit the evening breeze. “My word!” she blurted. “You gave me a start!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to.”

Ernestine regained her composure. Clasping her hands, she walked down the row of desks. “May I help you?”

He was standing sideways to her. With his small stature, his features made Ernestine think of a mouse. His dusty buckskins smelled of sweat and were in need
of washing. “I am hoping you can, yes, ma’am,” he said quietly, wringing his hat. “I wouldn’t want to bother you, though.”

“What is it that you want, exactly?” Ernestine politely asked. “Do you have a child you would like to enroll?”

The man turned red, bright, embarrassed red. “Good Lord, ma’am, no,” he bleated. “I ain’t even married.”

“Am not,” Ernestine said.

“Ma’am?”

“You should not use ain’t. You should say, ‘I am not married.’ We must set an example for the children.”

“But there’s just you and me here, ma’am.”

“Even so, we must be vigilant against bad habits, Mr.—?” Ernestine stopped and waited.

“Jeeter, ma’am. You can call me Jeeter.” He held out his hand and in doing so turned to face her and the sunlight flashed on the pearl handles of a revolver at his hip.

“I trust you were not aware I do not permit guns anywhere near my school,” Ernestine said sternly.

“No, ma’am, I wasn’t.”

“Guns are the devil’s playthings. Remove it and go put it in your saddlebags and we can continue our conversation, Mr. Jeeter,” Ernestine directed. “That is your horse, I take it, by the pump?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is, and no, ma’am, I can’t. And Jeeter is my first name, not my last, so you don’t need the Mr.”

Ernestine did not know quite what to make of him.
He was polite, and had friendly eyes, but he seemed scared of her, and his English was atrocious. “I do not understand. Why can’t you take off your pistol?”

The mousy man sighed and said almost sadly, “My last name is Frost, ma’am. I am Jeeter Frost.”

Ernestine had the impression he thought the name should mean something to her. “Mr. Frost, then. I ask again, why can’t you take off your pistol?”

“I like being alive and I have me a heap of enemies who would like me feeding worms.”

“I am afraid I do not quite fathom what you are getting at, Mr. Frost,” Ernestine said.

“You have never heard of me, then?”

“Should I?”

“Folks talk about me some. I guess because they have nothing better to talk about. Or maybe it’s me being partway somebody. Not that I ever meant to be. Throw a little lead and suddenly you are.”

“Excuse me?” Ernestine was beginning to think he was one of those eccentric characters who hung about Dodge, like the man who wore a rabbit coat and carried a carrot everywhere.

“I’ve dabbled in gore, ma’am. Once you do, you are branded for life. I’ve never hired out my trigger finger, you understand. I haven’t gone that far. But I can’t seem to get away from it.”

“You are speaking in riddles, Mr. Frost,” Ernestine chided. “Speak plainly if you want me to understand.”

“I kill people, ma’am.”

“You?” Ernestine smiled. The notion of this timid mouse of a man harming anyone was preposterous.

“The man-killer from Missouri, they call me, even
though I’m not from Missouri. But that’s why you need to keep my visit to yourself. I killed the Blight brothers and folks are liable to make a fuss over it.”

Ernestine began to think he was serious. She had not read the newspaper the day before, but she seemed to recall hearing mention of a shooting. “What does a man like you want with me?” she asked. Images washed over her, of him pulling his gun and having his way with her, and she grew uncomfortably warm.

“I want for you to teach me to read.”

Chester and Winifred were in their rocking chairs under the overhang in front of the saloon. They rocked and drank and gazed at the dusty haze to the south. It was the middle of the afternoon. Seamus Glickman had left the afternoon before, anxious to get back to Dodge before dark.

“So much for your brainstorm,” Win said. “All that trouble you had Anderson go to building those coffins and Placido painting those signs on the livery, and for what?”

“It was Adolphina’s idea, not mine,” Chester responded after first glancing at the general store to ensure that she could not possibly hear him.

“They should have come by now, if they are coming at all. The story was bound to be in yesterday’s newspaper.”

“The shootings, yes,” Chester said. “But not the rest of it. Glickman promised to spread the word, but something like that takes time. Today’s paper will likely have it.”

“Those bodies will start to stink by tomorrow,” Win remarked.

“We can stand a few days of stink if we have to,”
Chester said. “Why do you think I had them put in the livery?”

“I wouldn’t let you keep them in the saloon.”

“Yes, well, the Mexicans agreed, so everything worked out as we wanted it to,” Chester said.

“As your wife wanted,” Win said. “And they have names, you know.”

“Who?”

“Placido and Arturo.”

“I know what their names are,” Chester said testily. “I just can’t ever seem to remember them.”

“Ah,” Win said.

Chester shifted in his chair. “Don’t take that tone with me, Winifred Curry. I resent what you are implying. I don’t think any less of them because they are Mexican than any other white man would.” He grunted. “Hell, the only reason you know their names is because they come in for a tequila every now and then.”

“I like them,” Win said. “They mind their own business and keep to themselves, yet they were ready to help you when you asked them.”

“Placido was. I’m not so sure the other one, Arturo, liked the idea.”

“To keep four bodies in their stable until the bodies are ready to rot?” Win said. “I can’t imagine why he had to be persuaded.”

“You are much too critical today, do you know that?” Chester shifted away from him and gloomily regarded the expanse of prairie that surrounded Coffin Varnish.

“If I am,” Win said, “it is only because I can’t ignore
the truth any longer. I have finally come to terms with it.”

“With what?”

“Coffin Varnish won’t last another year. You and I will be forced to close. Placido and Arturo, too. What good is a livery in the middle of nowhere? Without a store handy to meet their needs, the Giorgios will be forced to move, too. That will leave Anderson and his wife all alone. They might stay on a while, given they can live off the land. But they will be all that’s left. The buildings will slowly rot away. Five years from now Coffin Varnish will be a ghost town.”

“God, you are depressing.”

Win stood. “My glass is empty.” He started to turn but stopped, his keen eyes narrowing. “Can it be? Maybe that harebrained plan of your wife’s will bring in some business, after all.”

Chester shot out of his chair and moved from under the overhang. He squinted against the glare, but all he saw were heat waves. “What do you see? A rider?”

“A wagon.”

Chester strained his eyes until they hurt and still did not see it. “You must be part hawk. Instead of running a whiskey mill, you should scout for the army.”

“I’m allergic to arrows in my hide.”

Winifred went in and Chester sat back down to await the wagon. But he was so nervous he could not sit still. A lot was riding on his wife’s idea. They could hold out in Coffin Varnish longer if it worked. Or it could give them the money to buy freight wagons and move somewhere they could earn a living. So long as
it was not Dodge City. He would live anywhere on earth but there.

Chester yawned. The heat and the whiskey were making him drowsy. Summers in Kansas were too hot for his liking. It had to be one hundred there in the shade. It was almost enough to make him consider filling the washtub with water and soaking in it for a while to cool down, but he had had a bath a month ago, and filling the basin was a chore.

Chester stared out over the sea of dry grass. At last he could see it, a spindly spider lumbering toward Coffin Varnish, or so it appeared thanks to the shimmering haze and the distance. How in God’s name Winifred had seen it that far out, he would never know.

The spider grew and became a team pulling a carriage. A carriage, not a buckboard. Chester could not remember the last time he saw a carriage. The well-to-do owned them. City and town dwellers, as a rule. Farmers and ranchers made do with buckboards. You could haul crops and dirt and manure in a buckboard. All you could haul in a carriage was people.

Winifred emerged, his glass refilled. “They aren’t here yet?” He took a sip, then asked, “Have you seen what it is?”

“I’m not blind,” Chester snapped.

“Your wife says you need spectacles but you are too stubborn to get them,” Win commented. Adolphina had a list of complaints about Chester as long as Win’s arm. Why Chester stayed married to her, Win never could figure out.

“My eyes are fine, I tell you,” Chester said, galled that Adolphina had trampled on his trust.

“Maybe it is the mayor of Dodge, come to pay his respects,” Win teased.

“Go to hell.”

“What was it you called him the last time you and him locked horns?” Win snapped his fingers. “Now I remember. You accused him of stealing the railroad out from under you. Which was some feat, seeing as how the railroad never showed any interest in laying tracks here.”

Chester swore. He knew that. Knew damn well that the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad had been laying track in a beeline for Fort Dodge, and the post commander, the post quartermaster, and the post sutler pooled their finances and bought a plot of land directly in the track’s path. Two saloons and a general store were up and ready to cater to the work crews when the tracks got there. Dodge City was born, spelling Coffin Varnish’s eventual doom. “Do me a favor and quit bringing up old history.”

Win did not help Chester’s mood by chuckling.

Fortunately, the carriage arrived in a cloud of dust and the thud of hooves. The driver was a black man in expensive livery. He expertly brought the team to a halt and quickly climbed down to open the near door, announcing, “We have arrived, sir.”

From the carriage stepped a man of middle years dressed in a sartorial splendor that put Chester, and most everyone else in Kansas, to shame. His tailored jacket, vest, and pants were a light shade of gray, his bowler slightly darker. He carried a cane with the gold likeness of a hound for a knob, and his boots practically gleamed. He looked about him with an air of amusement and spotted Chester and Win.

“Might I impose on you gentlemen for information?”

“Only after you introduce yourself,” Chester said. “This may not be Dodge, but we have manners here.”

“My apologies, sir. I daresay that was remiss of me. I am Charles Nelek. Perhaps you have heard of me? I own several establishments in Dodge.”

Win’s interest perked up. “I have heard of you. You own the Kitten Club, among others.” He had long wanted to pay the establishment a visit, but it would cost more than he earned in a year. Hell, two years. “Your girls are supposed to be the loveliest in Dodge.”

“I thank you, sir. They thank you, too. Those I brought with me, at any rate.”

From within the carriage came giggles and titters.

Chester came out of his chair. He, too, had heard all about the Kitten Club. The women were exquisite, the food excellent. An experience to remember forever, as one friend put it. “Permit me to formally welcome you, sir. I am the mayor of Coffin Varnish, Chester Luce.”

“You don’t say?” Charles Nelek said while turning to the carriage. “You may come out now, ladies. Watch your step. And be advised the sun is a furnace.”