Gaffney, Patricia (4 page)

"Well, it isn't that I
wanna
go and shoot people.
Anyway, I only shoot people who really need it."

"Who? Who you shoot?"

"Bad guys. People who'd shoot other people if I didn't shoot
'em first."

Abraham's mouth made an O. "So you one o' the
good
guys."

"That's it." Jesse smacked the table with his hand.
"I'm one o' the good guys. But listen." He leaned close; Abraham
blinked in alarm but didn't flinch. "Don't tell anybody, hear? Because I
don't want this getting out. Me being a good guy—this is a secret between us
and nobody else, okay?"

"Okay. Why?"

"Why." He was mulling over reasons when Glendoline came
back.

"Ham Washington, your daddy said get your skinny ass off that
chair and back to work right this minute or you're gonna be good and
sorry."

"Uh-oh." He scrambled up, grabbing for his pan and
broom, darting a worried look toward the bar. His father scowled back at him.
Jesse sighed, feeling dispirited when his new little pal scampered away and
Glendoline took his vacated chair.

"So, honey, you gonna show me your gun or not?"

He was wearing two guns—maybe she
was
driving at something
else. Luckily a new interruption came along before he had to answer.

He didn't even have to look up to know why the room quieted down
all of a sudden, or whose shoes were marching dutifully toward him from the
swinging doors. He had experience at these things. He'd lay twenty to one it
was the law.

Glendoline, who had sidled closer so she could press her knee
against his thigh, sat back guiltily. "Oh, hi, Tommy," she said in a
careless tone, patting the corkscrew curls at the back of her head. "Fancy
meeting you here."

You could tell it was the sheriff because he had a badge on his
starched white shirt, but otherwise you'd have guessed some other line of work.
Bank teller, maybe, or telegraph clerk. "Good evening," he said,
nervous but polite. "It's Mr. Gault, isn't it? I'm Sheriff Leaver."

Ordinarily Jesse, being a polite kind of fellow himself, would've
taken the slender, uncallused hand Sheriff Leaver held out to him. But Gault
wouldn't, and besides, half the customers in the saloon were eavesdropping on
this conversation, and the other half were trying to. So he ignored the hand
and gave the sheriff his dead-eye stare, until the poor guy blushed and Glendoline
giggled uneasily.

"Glen," said the sheriff, "would you excuse us,
please?"

"Why, what'd you do?" She laughed at her witless joke,
but nobody else did.

He coughed behind his hand. "I mean, would you mind leaving
me and Mr. Gault alone?"

"Oh, you can talk in front of me."

Sheriff Leaver had red hair and a skimpy goatee and the kind of
fair, delicate skin women wished they had. The kind of skin that's like a
thermostat under a clock in the middle of town where everybody can see it.
White, terrified; pink, scarified; red, mortified. Currently it was a sort of
rusty salmon shade, moving toward lobster.

Jesse couldn't stand it. "Take a walk," he suggested
pleasantly. "What the sheriff and me got to say might not be fit for a
lady's ears."

Glendoline, who had started to sulk, turned almost as red as the
sheriff when she heard the word "lady." Falling over herself getting
up, simpering and cooing, she couldn't move fast enough. " 'Scuse me,
then, I'm sure. I'll come back when you
gentlemen
finish talking your business."
She gave Jesse a smitten look, trailing her hand across his shoulder as she
sidled away.

The sheriff looked pained watching her go, like he'd banged his
thumb with a hammer and was trying not to cry. "Have a seat," Jesse
said to distract him. "Drink?"

"No, thank you." He wouldn't sit, either. He cleared his
throat, knowing as well as Jesse did that this conversation wasn't private, and
that anybody not hearing it direct would be getting it secondhand soon enough.
Clawing at his goatee, he stated his business. "Mr. Gault, would you mind
telling me what you're doing here in Paradise?"

Shiny badge and shiny shoes, pants hitched up to his ribs.
Squeaky-clean and smelling like cologne. White hat and no gun. Jesse sized the
sheriff up fast: heavy on earnestness, light on balls.

Which was surely no sin, and not even a half-bad thing in the
average run of men. Just maybe not what you'd want in the man keeping order in
your town. Jesse had no stomach for embarrassing him, but they were like two
dogs sniffing at each other's butt. The sooner one dog rolled over and gave up,
the sooner they could both get on about their business.

"Yeah, I'd mind," he said with a wiseguy snarl, leaning
back in his chair, sticking his boot heels up on the table, and crossing his arms
over his chest. Had he missed anything? Were there any more ways he could look
insolent? He could spit on the floor. But then Ham would have to clean it up.
"You ask everybody that when they come to your town? Not very neighborly,
Sheriff. In fact, I'd call that downright unfriendly."

Leaver swallowed audibly.
"I
was just wondering how
long you're fixing to stay."

"Haven't decided. Nice little town, nice folks. Maybe I'll
settle down. Retire, get me a place with one of them white fences all around.
Raise posies."

Somebody snickered; across the way, somebody actually guffawed.
Sheriff Leaver turned a nice mulberry color. "Could I"—he coughed
behind his hand again—"could I ask why you're here?"

"Business."

"What, ah, kind of business?"

Time to demonstrate a short fuse. He picked up one boot and let it
hit the floor with a
stomp,
and everybody jumped, nobody higher than the
sheriff. "Private business," he said menacingly. "You got a
problem with that, friend, we can take this conversation outside." He
cracked his knuckles one by one, to make sure everybody knew what he was
talking about.

It took the sheriff two tries before he could say, "I don't
have a problem with that."

"Good. Then you can sit down and have a drink with me.
Bartender."

"No, thank you." The sheriff flared his nostrils a
little, offended. His squared shoulders got squarer and he poked his chest out
beneath his incorruptible white shirt. "I only wanted to say, I hope there
won't be any trouble, Mr. Gault."

Jesse guessed that was as assertive as he was going to get.
"I don't plan on starting any," he said in the creepy whisper.
"But when it comes my way, I always finish it."

They stared at each other for about an hour and a half, until the
sheriff's Adam's apple started bobbing up and down behind his string tie and
his eyes started to water. He touched the brim of his hat with an upright
forefinger. "I'll say good evening to you." Jesse kept quiet. Sheriff
Leaver turned around and walked out of Rogue's Tavern with as much dignity, under
the circumstances, as a man could hope for.

As first meetings with the law went, Jesse figured that one had
gone all right.

Gradually people started to mutter and then to talk, and pretty
soon the noise level in the saloon was back to normal. Jesse took a deck of cards
out of his pocket and laid out a four-card game of solitaire he'd invented,
wishing Ham would come back and talk to him. He pretended he'd known Glendoline
was there all along, but really he didn't notice her until she ran her fingers
inside the back of his collar. "Hey, honey," she breathed boozily in
his ear.

He grunted, debating whether to ask her to sit down. In truth, he
was a little disappointed in Glendoline. The sheriff appeared to have a case on
her, but she wasn't giving him the time of day. Jesse wouldn't be surprised if
she laughed at the upright lawman behind his back—men like Leaver invited that
reaction from some women. Well, it was none of his business. He swung his boots
off the table and muttered, "You might as well—"

"Glen, would it be too much to ask you to take care of those
men at the back table? The ones with their tongues hanging out because nobody's
brought them a drink in the last forty minutes?"

Glendoline blinked dimly across the way. "Those guys? Oh,
sure, Cady. Be right back," she told Jesse with a flirtatious wave and
strolled away, swinging her skinny behind.

Cady rolled her eyes slightly, subtly; you wouldn't have noticed
it if you weren't staring at her closely. Which was how Jesse was staring at
her. He'd seen better-looking women before, but not too many. Anyway, it wasn't
only how she looked right now that made it hard to take his eyes off her. It
was this dolled-up Cady
in combination
with the one he'd met this
afternoon, the freckle-faced girl in a faded blouse and an old felt hat. How
did women do that? Some women, not all; Glen, for instance, in bib overalls and
a kerchief wouldn't have gotten a rise out of him. Ah, but McGill, she was
another story. He wanted to see her in other getups, other styles. What did she
look like in church, for instance, or the general store? First thing in the
morning?

"Mr. Gault, you're scaring off my customers."

He glanced behind her and saw it was true: half the saloon had
emptied out when the sheriff left. The scrawny, cadaverous fellow he'd seen
earlier was back at the bar, though. Jesse accidentally caught his eye. The man
stopped with a glass halfway to his mouth, set it down with a clatter, threw a
coin on the bar, and hightailed it out the swinging doors like dogs were
gnawing on his ass.

Interesting.

Jesse stood up and waved his hand at the other chair. "Have a
seat, Miss Cady?" She looked back and forth between the chair and him.
No,
thanks
was on the tip of her tongue, he could tell. "To prove to 'em I
don't bite," he threw in, jerking his chin at the handful of customers she
had left.

She thought about that, nodded, and sat.

"Drink?"

"No."

Reaching for the bottle to pour one for himself, he missed and
knocked it over with the backs of his knuckles. McGill caught and righted it before
too much bourbon spilled on the table.
Goddamn eyepatch,
he cursed for
the thousandth time; damn thing threw off his perspective. He felt like an ass,
but the blunder did have one side benefit: he got to see her tattoo again. Not
for long, just a flash of bluish bird against white skin, but it was worth it.

"Mr. Gault, I have to ask you a favor."

'Name it."

"Don't take this the wrong way," she cautioned, plucking
nervously at the links of a silver bracelet on her wrist. "Nothing
personal, but would you mind moving to another hotel?" He lifted an
eyebrow, and she started talking faster. "The Dobb House is right up the
street—you probably passed it on your way in. It's a lot quieter, plus it's got
a restaurant, you'd—"

"I like noise. A saloon makes me feel right at home."

She looked at him speculatively. "Then you'd probably like
Wylie's. In fact, you'd love Wylie's. It's bigger. Much noisier. Yeah, I think
Wylie's is definitely the saloon for you."

He grinned. "Then I could scare away
his
customers."

She gave him a half smile, not denying it. "You really don't
work for him?"

"Never met the man."

"Then who did hire you?"

Time to clam up, get evil. She was getting too bold, too free with
her questions, she wasn't nearly scared enough of him. But he just said,
"How do you know anybody hired me? Maybe you shouldn't jump to
conclusions."

She raised an eyebrow of her own and didn't answer.

He reached for one of his thin black cigarettes. He'd taken to
rolling them ahead of time, without witnesses, because he was still all thumbs
at it; it took him five minutes to do one, concentrating hard and using both
eyes. Sticking it in the corner of his mouth, he got a wooden match from
another pocket. This move he was good at: with great nonchalance, he flicked
his thumbnail across the head, and it fired up in one try. Staring into
McGill's direct, dark-eyed gaze, he held the match to the cigarette tip and
inhaled. Nothing. He inhaled some more. Still nothing. Turning his head a
fraction, so he could see with his working eye what the hell he was doing, he
realized he had the match a good inch down and to the left of the cigarette.

Ow.
"Shit."

He dropped the match and shook his stinging fingers. When he blew
on the still-flaming match, he spit the cigarette out on the table. He picked
the glowing match up—
ow
—and dropped it in the ashtray, brushing ash off
the table with the side of his hand. Retrieving his unlit cigarette, he thought
about throwing it across the room.

He finally got up the heart to look at Cady. She stared at him
without blinking, almost without expression. Almost. Was she smiling? No, but
she looked like she was trying hard not to.

He stuck the goddamn cigarette back in his pocket and pulled his
hat down over his eyes, his absolutely meanest look according to the mirror he
occasionally practiced in front of. He ought to say something vicious now, put
the fear of Gault back into her. Too bad he couldn't think of anything.