Gaffney, Patricia (15 page)

"Word gets around." His eyes veered toward the bar,
though, and Levi, innocently drying glasses behind it. Joe's parents didn't
much approve of his association with Levi, either. But he liked to call himself
a "red man," and Levi was definitely a black man, and according to
Joe that made a bond between them.

She tsked again. "He's staying here, that's all. Sometimes I
run into him."

"Why do you let him stay here?"

"Well, it's a free country."

"If Tom Leaver had any guts, he'd run him out of town."

"But, Joe, he hasn't done anything."

"Who hired him? Wylie?"

"No, absolutely not."

"Who, then?"

"Nobody. I don't think."

"If this
town
had any guts, they'd run him out on a
rail."

"Oh, that's democratic."

He scowled. "Meaning?"

"Well—doesn't it make any difference that the man hasn't
done
anything?"

"You're defending him?"

"I'm—

"You don't wait for a snake to bite you before you kill
it." He had that stubborn set to his manly, serious jaw that meant there
wasn't going to be any arguing with him. Once he decided he was right, you
couldn't budge Joe from a principle with a stick of dynamite.

"Who owns that roan quarterhorse outside?" A low,
familiar voice.

Cady jumped. Speak of the devil. Jesse stood in a splash of
sunlight, arms hanging over the swinging doors, looking around the half-empty
saloon.

Joe said, "Is that him?" in a quiet, wondering tone. She
could understand his confusion. Except for the eyepatch, Jesse didn't look very
dangerous today. Good, but not dangerous. He wore his six-guns, and he had on
black—he always wore black—but he'd pushed his Stetson to the back of his head,
and somehow that changed everything. He'd taken off his silver spurs, too—she'd
seen grown men shiver when he walked through the hushed saloon,
stamp-jingle,
stamp-jingle,
a really eerie noise if you were half-terrified already. But
today he looked... normal. Like a regular customer. A gambler, or maybe a ranch
foreman. Smart, friendly, and fit. Definitely not like a cold-blooded killer.
She started to smile at him and say hi, but caught herself in the nick of time.
How could she forget? She wasn't having anything to do with him anymore.

"The roan is mine." Joe pushed his chair back slowly and
stood up. "What's it to you?"

Jesse let go of the door and sauntered toward them, his smile
fading the closer he got. "He's a beauty," he said softly, stopping
beside Cady's chair. "Looks like a purebred." He glanced at her, at
Joe, at the two glasses on the table between them. He arched one eyebrow and
sneered.

Joe said, "How long you figure to stay in Paradise,
Gault?" At the same moment Cady said, "Joe, I'd like you to meet
J—Mr. Gault," so that she and Joe said the word "Gault" in
unison.

Both men ignored her. She didn't like the way they were sizing
each other up, like a couple of dogs sniffing around for an opening to go for
the throat. "Mr. Gault," she plowed on, "this is my friend,
Joseph Redleaf. Joe's a student at the University of California. He's
studying—"

"What's it to you?" Jesse said, as if she weren't even
there, as if she were still in her room going over the books. She stood up, to
show him she existed.

"He's studying—" she repeated, but this time Joe cut her
off.

"We don't like your kind around here."

"Yeah? Who's 'we'?"

"Whoa," she exclaimed with a nervous laugh, reaching
across to touch Joe's arm. "Hey, let's—"

But he shrugged away from her and planted his feet. The saloon had
started to go quiet at the moment he stood up. He said, "Decent
people," into a tense, total silence.

Jesse's smile was pure evil. He said, "Is that right,"
and his whispery voice brought goose bumps to Cady's arms. "You able to
back that up with anything but spit, youngster?"

"Wait, wait," she sputtered, trying to get between them.

"If you mean do I own a gun, the answer is yes."

"Joe, for God's sake. Jess—just," she corrected hastily,
"just stop this, both of you. Come on, let's sit down. Levi, bring—"

"I don't get in gunfights with children," Jesse
whispered.

Joe reddened, clenching his hands into fists. "Maybe you're
just a coward," he accused, and Cady wanted to cover his mouth with her
hands to shut him up.

Jesse only smiled, which made her hair stand on end. "Think
so?"

"No, he doesn't think so, he just said that, it just came
out, he's—"

"Could be another way to settle this," Jesse said right
over her—she'd disappeared again.

A fistfight. She groaned, but she felt weak with relief.
"Okay, but take it outside, will you? I can't afford—"

"You big enough to ride that roan, youngster?"

Joe finally stopped flexing his fingers. "Yeah, on a good
day, when my daddy helps me up. What'd you have in mind?"

"A race."

"How far?"

"A mile? Quarter mile? You decide, college boy. But you might
want to take a look at my horse before you say yes."

Joe laughed in his face. "I don't think so." Excitement
made his dark eyes glitter. "What's the stake?"

"Loser keeps on riding. Rides on out of town, leaving all
these decent people alone."

"Oh, now," Cady started to say, not sure what came next.
Joe raced horses for fun—nobody ever beat him. If he won and Jesse kept his
word... "That's a silly bet," she protested, trying to sound jovial.
"I know—why don't we all have a beer and start over. Drinks on the house.
Let's—"

"When do you want to race?"

"What's wrong with now?"

"Not a damn thing."

"Let's go."

She blinked rapidly, hand outstretched, mouth open. Neither man so
much as glanced at her as they moved away, heading for the door. There was a
brief scuffle while they tried to walk out of it simultaneously. Jesse got
through first, but Joe was right on his boot heels.

****

The news spread like a prairie fire. Within ten minutes, close to
every man in Paradise was standing on one side or the other of Main Street,
along with most of the children and a good portion of the women. Nothing this
exciting had happened since the revival meeting last fall. Somehow Nestor
Yeakes became Jesse's second, so to speak, coaching him about the pitfalls of
the course they were going to run—three miles, beginning and ending at the
corner of Main and Noble Fir—and offering anybody who would take it five-to-one
odds on Jesse's horse, a gorgeous black stallion called Pegasus. Nestor knew
horseflesh; his faith in the black gave people serious pause. But they'd seen
Joe Redleaf race his roan gelding a dozen times, and they'd never seen anybody
beat him. Anyway, how could they bet on a stranger and against one of their
own?

They did, though, some of them; Cady saw at least four men,
including Stony Dern and Gunther Dew-hurt, slip money to Nestor muttering under
their breath and giving quick, surreptitious head jerks toward Pegasus.

"Bareback?" Jesse looked astounded, watching Joe lead
his saddleless horse to the starting place, an imaginary line across the street
between the Mercantile and Digby's General Store.

"It is a man's way," Joe declared, falling into the
formal, disdainful tone he used when that sixteenth of Rogue blood in him took
over. Not only had he taken off his horse's saddle, he'd taken off his own
shirt and shoes, and tied a red bandana around his high, intelligent forehead.
Cady guessed the idea was to look more like an Indian, but since he'd left on
his silver-rimmed spectacles, the effect wasn't all it could've been.

"Nestor, take off Peg's saddle," Jesse directed, smiling
as if this were all a joke. But it was an act; she could tell he was as excited
as Joe. Men could be so childish. They weren't going to gun each other down in
the street, though, so she didn't care.

"Ham, come on over here. Hurry up, get out of their
way."

He came reluctantly. She set him in front of her, pressing him
back against her skirts, and she could feel the excitement quivering through
his skinny shoulders. "Who gonna win, Cady? Who you think?"

"Who do you want to win?"

He turned his head and whispered, "Mr. Gault."

She made a surprised face. "I thought you liked Joe,"
she whispered back.

"I do, I do like 'im! But Mr. Gault, he awful nice to me, an'
now I know him better."

"I see." He'd known Joe Redleaf all his life, Jesse
Gault for a week and a half. Child's logic and a few quarters.

"Who
you
want to win?"

"Oh, I really don't care. Whoever has the faster—"

"Oh, my God, oh, my God," sighed Willagail, who stood on
Cady's right, and at the same moment Glendoline, on her left, said, "Whoo
wee
,"
on a long, soft, breathy sigh.

Following their eyes, Cady saw what had them enthralled—Jesse
Gault taking his shirt off. "Oh, honestly," she clucked. Well, women
could be just as foolish as men, only about different things. Jesse threw his
black shirt on the sidewalk and started to take off his boots, heel-to-toe,
holding on to the hitching post for balance. He was one tall drink of water,
she caught herself thinking, a phrase she could vaguely recall her mother using
years ago. His skin wasn't as sun-browned as Joe's, and he didn't have Joe's
thick, bulging muscles in his arms and shoulders. His physique was leaner,
longer. More graceful, if you could say that about a man's body. More...
beautiful.

Barefooted, he walked over to his shiny-coated stallion and
stroked its long neck, telling it something in its twitching ear. She studied
his handsome back, his shoulder blades, the bumps in his long spine. He'd taken
off his gunbelt. His black trousers hung low; she followed the line of his
backbone where it disappeared into his pants. Ham craned his neck and looked up
at her, and she realized she was humming to herself. She'd just said "Mm
mmm" right out loud.

It was a perfect afternoon, not a cloud in the sky, the blue air
sharp and clean and not too hot. People stood two and three deep on either side
of Main all the way down to the east end, where it petered out in front of
Lisabeth Wayman's boardinghouse. The race route was going to be the big oval
wagon trail between Paradise and the Rogue River and back, a distance of about
three miles. They would take the same route Cady often took on her Friday
afternoons off, along the cliff edge, past River Farm, past her mine and
Wylie's mine, down the flat valley floor and then home through the thick,
wooded hills in the west. She worried that Jesse didn't know the land at all,
and Joe knew it like the back of his hand. If Jesse lost, would he keep his
promise? Keep on riding and never come back? Was she seeing him right now for
the last time?

"Jesse!"

He turned.

Everybody turned.

She flushed with mortification. She'd said his first name out
loud!

He grinned at her, and her heart skipped two consecutive beats. He
swept off his hat and made a silly, barefooted bow—and she had the craziest,
the most ridiculous desire to weep. "Good luck," she called out
tightly. "And Joe—good luck!" she remembered to add.

Then Sam Blankenship yelled, "Mount up!" and the two
racers got on their horses. "On your marks! Get set!" Ham started
jumping up and down. He landed on her toe at the same moment Sam yelled,
"Go!" so Cady missed the takeoff.

She saw the galloping rear ends of the black and the roan
disappear in a dust cloud at the end of Main Street, and then it was over. All
the excitement, the noise, the shouting—everything stopped, and she wondered if
anybody else felt as sheepish as she did. People milled around,
aimless-looking. Then all of a sudden something really extraordinary happened:
Glendoline had a good idea.

"Let's go up and see if we can see 'em from the
balcony."

"Yeah!" Ham began leaping again, and Cady backed out of
his way. "Can we, Cady? Can we?"

"Sure, but I doubt if we'll..." Nobody was listening to
her. Glen, Willagail, Ham, even Levi, they turned their backs on her and
hurried back down the street toward the Rogue. "Be able to see much,"
she finished to herself, picked up her skirts, and ran after them.

She was right. They couldn't see much, but the view was a lot
nicer than the dusty street, and this way they'd be able to catch sight of the
racers as soon as they broke out of the trees at the extreme western edge of
town. "How long will it take?" Ham wanted to know, and Levi said,
" 'Bout ten, twelve, fifteen minutes, I 'spec'."

"Ten minutes!"
Ham couldn't get over it.
"To go
three miles?
I thought it took a—a
hour,
a—"

"Nope. 'Bout twelve, fifteen minutes on that track, them
horses. I seen a race once down in Santa Barbara, colt name Equal run a mile in
two minutes flat."