Gaffney, Patricia (20 page)

Jesse was a mild-tempered man; he rarely got angry. But when he
did, he had a habit of yelling and throwing things—not Gault's style at all.
With a superhuman effort of will, he controlled his fury and managed to say in
a whisper, Gault-like, "Come outside with me, Merle. Say that to me again.
Out in the street at twenty paces. Come on. Bring that gun in your boot."

They stared at each other for a year or two. Every second, Jesse
was sure Wylie would do it—call his bluff and agree to a shoot-out.

But he didn't. After eternity and then some, his bullish shoulders
slumped; a fake careless look replaced the tension in his face. "I won't
fight you. Not that way. Get out of my place and don't come back."

"I'll come back whenever I feel like it. And you won't do a
damn thing about it."
Stop now. Go.
But he ignored the voice
shouting good advice; he was too riled up to play it safe. "Now
apologize."

"What did you say?"

"Say you're sorry for calling Miss McGill a bad name."

Somebody changed a laugh into a cough. Wylie's face turned a ruddy
plum color.

"Say it." He went closer, even though it was like
walking up to a tiger's cage and putting his head through the bars. "Say
it. Say 'I'm sorry.' "

Wylie couldn't make his mouth work. "You bastard," he
croaked.

"No, that's not it. I'm sorry. Say it."

"I'm... sorry."

"Good. What are you sorry for?"

Jesse could hear the coarse grind of Wylie's back teeth, see the
muscles in his jaws strain and flex. "Calling her a whore," he
finally gritted out. It sounded like bones scraping.

Jesse stared into his eyes for a long, long time. Then he smiled
his maniac smile. "Very good," he whispered.

It took guts to turn his back and walk away. Slowly. He imagined a
target between his shoulder blades, bull's-eye in the middle. What would a
bullet feel like? Hot and burning, or just a heavy, numbing thud? He reached
the double doors and pushed them open casually, not dodging or ducking or
making a break. They banged shut behind him, and he controlled a violent jolt.
He kept walking, cool and slow,
jingle-stomp, jingle-stomp.
Luckily it
was a hot day. Otherwise somebody might think panic was the cause of the sweat
running down his cheeks.

"Why didn't Ham come with us?" Jesse asked, expertly
reining the horse around a jagged rut in the road. "Not that I'm
complaining."

Cady smiled guiltily. She loved Ham, but she didn't miss him right
now, either. "Levi needed him. Levi's got a special day planned, and Ham's
vital to it."

Jesse glanced over at her. "How's that?"

She leaned closer on the buggy seat and said in a mock-secretive voice,
"Today's the day Levi asks Lia Chang if she'll go for a walk with him. He
thinks she'll be more apt to say yes if Ham tags along."

"Ah, very devious. Poor girl doesn't stand a chance."

"I hope not." She had watched Levi's slow, gentle
courtship for months, and she was ready for some action. Not being a Buddhist,
she was probably even more impatient for it than Levi.

"Know why I'm glad Ham didn't come with us?"

"Why?"

"Because then I couldn't do this." He switched the reins
to his other hand, put his arm around her, and gave her a sweet, smacking kiss
on the mouth. Cady laughed, delighted, and he kissed her again, softer. She had
to reach up to keep her hat on. "Mm, deelicious," he said against her
lips, taking a little taste with his tongue. Just then the buggy hit a hole the
size of Crater Lake, and Cady's teeth clacked together. "Ow," said
Jesse, rubbing the back of his neck. "Guess I better watch the road."
He winked at her.

"Yeah, because I'd hate it if you bit your tongue off."
She wriggled her eyebrows. "I mean I'd
really
hate it." She
cackled at his expression when he got the meaning of that, and slipped her hand
under his arm, leaning against him, tickled at herself. What fun it was to say
things like that, wicked jokes and naughty double entendres, to the man you
were... having an intimate relationship with. That's how she was trying to
think of Jesse. The man she was having an intimate relationship with.
Glendoline would say he was the man she was having sex with, and maybe that was
even better. Blunter; coarser. And it left the emotions out completely, which
was certainly safer.

"See that stone post under the oak trees?" she said,
pointing. "That's the entrance."

He slowed the horse and made the tight turn. The weedy drive
flanked a long, rolling hill, buttercup-covered, that hid the house until the
last second. "What is this place?" he asked, glancing around
curiously.

A place I like to go to sometimes,
she'd
told him before they set out, deliberately vague. She'd never told a soul she
came here, much less brought anyone with her. It was private; hers alone. If
she built it up, prepared Jesse for something special, and he was
disappointed—well, it would hurt. That's all, it would hurt.

"It's called River Farm," she said offhandedly.
"It's just an old place. Abandoned. I think the house is pretty. It's
coming up—" She pointed again. "There."

She cringed. Had something happened to it? A storm, vandals—? No.
No, nothing had changed. It was only that she was seeing it through Jesse's
eyes, the clear, unsentimental eyes of a stranger.

What a wreck. The shutters that hadn't blown off hung at crazy
angles, half their wooden slats missing. The rotting front porch looked
dangerous. Only the attic windows still had unbroken glass; the rest were
either cracked, shattered, or gone. One of the chimneys had subsided into a
rubble of loose bricks, and the shingled roof must leak everywhere. Once-white
clapboard sides had almost finished peeling down to naked gray wood.

"Dilapidated" was too kind a word for a house that had
once been called
Le Coeur au Coquin.

Jesse stopped the horse at the top of the circular carriageway,
beside the crumbling, overgrown slate walk. Cady avoided his eyes. "What a
dump, huh?" She patted her knees nervously. "Want to stop here? We
could walk around. The orchard's pretty. I was thinking we could eat there, if
you want. Or not, we can—"

"Sure, let's get down. I love old houses. Boy, this place
must've really been something." Her heart did a mad little flip. She
couldn't account for it. What difference did it make what Jesse, the man with
whom she was having an intimate relationship, thought about the old Russell
place? None at all. None at all.
Get that straight, Cady,
she advised,
taking his hand as she jumped down from the buggy.

He did like old houses. He peeked in all the windows, tried all
the doors—although with no more success than she'd ever had; Sam Blankenship,
who was selling the house for his real estate company, had padlocked every one.
Jesse knew what a parapet was, and a pilaster. He admired the sloping dormers,
even though they'd lost most of their shingles, and the graceful, three-sided
bay window, and the whimsical oculus window at the top of the two-story
Victorian tower. He kept saying, "What a
place
this must've
been," and Cady kept biting her tongue so she wouldn't say, "It could
be a place
again."
But she must not have been hiding her excitement
as cleverly as she thought, because when they finished exploring, Jesse put his
arm around her waist and said, "You love it, don't you?"

"It's okay." She shrugged, made a face. "Yeah, I
like it. You know. It's just nice. Old."

Why couldn't she tell him?
This is my dream house.
Why
couldn't she say that? Well, because once she started, who knew what she might
say next? She might turn coy, say something like, "Don't
you
have a
dream house?" And he might laugh at her, and she'd hate that. But she'd
deserve it.

He unhitched the horse, the same good-tempered gray mare she
always rented from Nestor, and let her graze where she would. Back in town,
Jesse had said he wished he could ride Pegasus and rent Cady another horse or
try her on Bellefleur, and to hell with the buggy. But yesterday's three-mile
race had taken a lot out of the stallion; he needed a rest. Cady didn't care.
She rode, but not well; the buggy was fine with her. She didn't think she'd
ever met a man who loved horses as much as Jesse did.

"The river's over there, behind those trees. Can you hear
it?"

He lifted his head, listening. "I thought it was the
wind."

"No, the river. Want to go look?"

A path of sorts led from the driveway into a thicket of shaggy,
moss-hung live oaks, gnarled and lowcanopied, hiding the sun. It used to be a
road, she told him; the Russells had cleared it so they could drive to the
cliff edge of the river. But now it was only a track, rocky in places,
completely blocked by fallen trees in others. He held her hand, helping her
past obstacles she'd climbed over unassisted a dozen times before. Being with
him, seeing his face, touching him whenever she liked—it was pure pleasure. Too
sweet. A lot had happened since the night she told him she wouldn't go riding
with him because she didn't care for his profession.

The trees gave out. All at once the river's wild roar hit them,
and it was like a blow to the chest, a genuine assault. "Sometimes you can
see prospectors down there," Cady almost had to yell to be heard, pointing
down the sheer rock face of the cliff. "There's not much left to pan,
though. It's all been placered out."

Jesse nodded. His light eyes looked colorless in the blinding
glare of water and sky. "It's beautiful," he mouthed. The river's
power had all but silenced him, she saw. He would love it, of course—its raw,
raging energy would appeal to him. She loved it, too, but sometimes the Rogue was
too
strong, sometimes it battered at her senses and she had to get away,
retreat into the sober quiet of the woods.

For a long time they watched the mad race of the blue-green water,
the explosions of white where it collided with invisible rock. You could lose
yourself in the raucous sight and the thundering, deafening sound. Cady had to
pull on Jesse's hand to get him to move, and she had to shout, "Aren't you
hungry?" to get him interested in leaving.

Behind the house, a crumbling stone wall separated the backyard
from the orchard. Two leggy old apple trees shaded part of the wall from the
overhead sun, and they decided to have their picnic there. Jesse made such a
fuss over their lunch of salty ham biscuits, fried chicken, and tart cucumber
salad that Jacques had packed into a pasteboard box for her this morning, she
wished she'd had something to do with making it. Did she even know how to cook
anymore? She used to, but that was so long ago, she doubted if she could boil
water now. But she certainly wasn't going to say that to Jesse.

Why not?

"You know, I'm starting to like this sour mineral
water," he told her, replacing the cap on the bottle and passing it to
her.

She nodded. "I know, it takes a while. I hated it when I
first came here, but now city water tastes like dishwater to me. Too hot, and
it doesn't quench your thirst." He nodded back. She loved it when they
agreed with each other.

Between bites of a radish, she listened to the rising song of a
meadowlark somewhere in the orchard. Over their heads, a Douglas squirrel
scampered across a branch in the apple tree. A little green lizard sunned
itself twenty feet away on the wall. Bees buzzed in the clover, and the sound
of crickets was a low, raspy constant. Could Jesse hear it?

"Sometimes I forget you're deaf in one ear," she said
softly, idly. He was cutting a slice of vinegar pie and didn't look up.
"Jesse?"

"Hm?"

"I said," she said, laughing, "sometimes I forget
you're deaf." How funny that he hadn't heard that.

"Oh." He chuckled, getting the joke. "Well, I'm not
totally deaf. And I can almost always hear what
you
say."

"Really? Why?"

"I've gotten used to your tone."

"Oh." She'd been fishing for a compliment, something
flowery about her voice. "How old are you, again?"

He took a big bite of pie, and eyed her steadily across the laden,
blue-and-white-checked cloth while he chewed slowly, thoroughly. He swallowed.
"Thirty-eight."

She stared at him. "Wow. I mean—not that that's old or
anything." It was
ancient.
"You don't look it, that's all. You
could be... why, you could be
twenty
-eight."

"Thank you." He smiled, complimented. "It runs in
my family. Both sides. We all look young." Before she could pursue that,
he said, "Look what Joe gave me."

"What?"

He took something, a little stick, out of his shirt pocket.
"It's a toothpick."

"Oh."

"It's made out of deer bone."

"Nice."

"He made it himself, and he gave it to me." He looked so
pleased, as if getting a gift from a friend was something he wasn't used to.
Well, how could it be? Who would give a present to a gunfighter? How could he
even
have
friends? You might give him money so he wouldn't kill you, but
not a present.

"Jesse..."

"Yeah?"

"Oh... nothing."

"What?"

"No, nothing. Never mind." She wasn't going to spoil
this day with questions she knew he didn't want to answer. "Can I have a
piece of pie? Or were you going to eat it all by yourself?"

After lunch, she took him on a walk through the old orchard.
"Altogether it's three hundred acres, but only about half of that is fruit
trees. The rest is mostly pastureland. And fir forest on the hillsides. It's
right smack in the middle of the valley. La Vallée aux Coquins."

Out of the blue, Jesse said, "I'd have horses if I lived
here."

She leaned against the smooth trunk of a pear tree and turned down
the brim of her hat, shielding her eyes from the sun. "What kind?"
she asked carelessly.

"I don't know, but purebreds. Arabians and racers, Tennessee
walkers, Cleveland bays. Ponies." He looked down, grinning
self-consciously. "Guess I'd have to narrow it down."

"You like them all."

"Yeah."

"Like your cousin Marion."

He frowned. "Marion? Oh—right. Yeah, Marion's crazy for
horses. We're both like that." He took her hand and they started to walk
again. "What's down there?"

"A meadow. Want to see?"

"Sure."

They matched their steps to each other, and swung their arms
between them the way sweethearts did. Cady's heart felt high in her chest, too
full or something, some thrumming kind of excitement. "What a
beautiful
day," she cried, turning her face to the sky and inhaling a lungful of
the clean, sunny air.

"Glad to be out of the saloon?"

"God, yes!"

"But you like it, don't you? Owning the Rogue?"

"Oh, sure. Yes, I really do. But this is so nice. Away from
the smoke and the spittoons and the— oh, you know, all that. And the men,"
she added, laughing. "Sometimes the men are just a bit too... manly."
She decided to tell him something else. "It's nice to get away from the
women, too."

"The women?"

"In town. The respectable ones who turn their shoulders to me
in the street. Or pull their children away if I say 'Hi' or smile at them. It's
good to be away from that for a day. I love the country."