Mittman, Stephanie (30 page)

Joe
came over with a dirty bib and a clean, hot towel. He never wasted money, time,
or effort on what didn't count. If the smock was going to get dirty anyway, why
bother with a clean one?

"A
trim or a shave?"

Sloan
didn't hesitate. "Take the whole thing off. Leave the mustache,
though."

"And
the hair?"

Sloan
described the style he wanted. It was the way he always wore it. Before.

Joe
nodded and put the hot towel over Sloan's face to soften his beard. Sloan could
feel his face relaxing, all the little lines and crevices opening up and
spitting forth a year of filthy living and death and fear.

"You
don't look like a miner," Joe said, sharpening his razor blade against the
leather strap. Slap, slap. Slap, slap.

"Not."
Sloan's voice was muffled by the towel.

"Cowboy?
I didn't know they were running cattle already."

"Hunter,"
Sloan said, the edge of the towel dropping with his motion.

"Bear?
Bobcat? Cougar? We got a lot of good game
in these parts." Joe removed the
towel and began to lather his customer's face.

"Leave
the mustache, Joe," Sloan reminded him, staying the barber's hand.

"Yes,
sir," he agreed, looking more closely at the man in his chair. "Well,
I'll be damned!" A smile broke out on the barber's round face, and he
leaned back to take in the whole man. "It is you, Mr. Westin, ain't
it?"

Sloan
nodded. "It is."

"But
I heard you was left to feed the buzzards by Harlin Tate hisself."

"You
heard right."

"You
know, I was thinking about you just this morning. Man came in here and put me
in a mind to you, I swear it."

He
had stopped shaving Sloan and was staring at him, his head cocked slightly,
trying to remember what it was that made him think of him earlier.

"I
know what it was! Had a rifle like you used to carry. You know, with that
silver hunting dog in the lock plate." He went back to shaving, pleased
that he had remembered.

The
steel razor pulled at Sloan's jaw. He'd always been mighty fond of that rifle
and was damn sorry when Mary Grace told him it was gone again, this time with
his six-shooters and Climber. So Jackson was in Jerome. Wasn't it a small
world?

He
stared at the image in the mirror when Joe was done. From the chest up, he was
nearly the same old Sloan. Leaner, a few more creases near the eyes, but on the
whole, he looked like he used to after a night or two of carousing.

"Sure
did think you was dead." Joe shook his head as he brushed off stray
clippings from Sloan's neck. "Someone came looking for you, after. Your
pa, I think
it was. He sure musta been glad to find out you was alive, all right."

Sloan
put his hat on over the freshly cut hair. He ought to wire his family, let them
know.

***

Ben
Westin, with the reluctant help of Sunny and a few extra hands, loaded up the
second wagon bound for St. Louis. It was ridiculous to cart things so easily
replaced to a city the size of St. Louis, but the more things he permitted Anna
to bring, the longer the packing would take, and Ben was willing to take every
extra minute he could wangle.

Twice
he claimed that he could hear the dishes rattling, and since Anna would be
upset were they to get broken, they had to be repacked. He refused to bring
dirty linens and insisted several cloths be washed again before they could be
set into trunks for the journey. Having always been fussy about his food, it
was easy for him to insist that the cook make meals for the trip.

Anna
stood on the porch, watching the loading, apparently unamused by Ben's tactics.
"Enough already, Ben," she finally protested. "You've pushed me
as far as I'll go."

"I've
sent more wires," he said, still attending to the crates and not daring to
look at his wife. "When I get my answers, we'll go, and not before."

Sunny
fumbled with the rope and then stopped.

"What
the hell are you doing, man?" Ben asked. When he looked at Sunny, the
foreman nodded toward the porch.

Ben's
eyes followed his. His wife was leaning against one of the wooden columns that
supported the roof. In her hands, with great difficultly, she held his old
hunting rifle. It weighed more than she did, especially since she'd taken to
skipping meals with Sloan away, and she had to rest the end on her shoulder,
rather than against
it. Nonetheless, she was holding it, and it was trained on him as he kneeled in
the wagon. "Now, Anna," he began.

She
cocked her head slightly to look down the sight.

"For
God's sake, Anna," he said, pulling off his gloves as he got up off his
knees and moved toward the back of the wagon. When was the last time he had
used that rifle, anyway? When he'd taken Sloan hunting as a boy? And Sloan had
been so impressed by the big gun, too heavy for him to even carry, let alone
aim. Now Ben knew why he'd been saving it all these years. Someday he'd
expected to take his grandson... Well, what difference did it make what he
expected?

"Careful
there, Miss Anna," Sunny warned, backing slowly out of the wagon himself.
"Somebody might get hurt with that thing."

"It
ain't loaded," Ben said, jumping down from the wagon. Just as he turned, a
shot rang out above his head. "Jeez!" he shouted as he hit the
ground.

The
rebound had thrown his wife back against the outer wall of their house, and she
slithered down the wooden siding slowly, the rifle slipping from her hands and
hitting the porch with a thud.

By
the time he got to her, Anna had dissolved in tears, and his anger had mellowed
to pity.

"I
can't stay here," she told him as he tried to help her up, a little bit of
a woman who seemed to be getting smaller by the day. "Everywhere I look,
he's missing from. His room, his chair, that rail by the corral. He's missing
from all of them. Please, Ben. Please."

She
hadn't said that word to him since Sloan had disappeared. She'd ordered him,
bossed him, cold-shouldered him. She'd made him eat alone, sleep alone, and
worry alone. Of course, he hadn't exactly been a saint. He'd flaunted his trips
to the whorehouses, making
more of them than they'd ever meant, taken his
meals in town, and praised the cooking over hers. He was embarrassed to admit
that more than once he'd come to her drunk, and in his hunger for her left her,
with bruises he couldn't remember inflicting.

He
lifted her gently from the floor and carried her to their bed. He laid her down
on the fancy spread and kneeled beside her, stroking her graying hair and
wiping her tears with his clean hanky.

"I
know you think I can't miss him like you do," he said softly. "But I
do. And I miss you, too."

She
reached out and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. She was still the
softest woman he had ever known.

"I
know."

"Tomorrow,"
he said, taking her hand and laying a kiss in her palm. "We'll leave
tomorrow."

***

"Should
be home before supper tomorrow," Mason said to Harlin once he caught up
with him. Mary Grace stretched in his arms and tried to adjust herself to some
more comfortable position. There was none.

"Aren't
we going to stop for the night?" she asked sleepily as darkness fell over
the mountains.

He
looked surprised, but Mary Grace wasn't sure if he was surprised by her
suggestion or by her mere presence. He seemed to have forgotten she was there,
picking at his nose, farting, scratching itches as though she weren't sitting
in his lap or even in the same county.

"Didn't
think you'd wanna. With the kid's snake bite and all."

She
hadn't thought about that. The last time she had slept out of doors, Ben had
been bitten. And then they'd been set upon by those horrible men.

"You
don't ordinarily stop and, you know, make camp for the night?"

"Ordinarily?
You got a nice way of talkin', Miss O'Reilly," Mason said. He bit at the
skin around the thumbnail of his right hand. His left hand supported her back
and held the horse's reins.

Maybe
it would be just as well to ride straight through. The thought of sleeping in her
own room, with a door, on a bed, had great appeal.

"Gotta
water some cactus." Harlin guided his horse until it was shoulder to
shoulder with Mason's. He reeked from the baby's urine, baked by the sun until
the odor stung Mary Grace's eyes. The baby's rash would no doubt be back with a
vengeance by morning.

"Both
of those boys need a bath," she told Mason.

"Take
yer leak," Mason told Harlin. "We'll wait."

Harlin
rode a few yards away, slipped off his horse, and did his business. He was
within hearing distance, and had Mary Grace been facing the other direction, he
would have been within her sight, as well.

Ben,
who had apparently been asleep for some time, awakened at Harlin's sudden
movements and began to cry.

"Wilson,"
Mason shouted ahead. Wilson had been riding ahead almost out of earshot all
day, and Harlin had ridden for a while with one brother, and then with the
other. Wilson reined his horse in and waited for Mason and Mary Grace to catch
up. Mary Grace felt his eyes rake her body and she looked down to make sure she
was fully covered. She was, she just felt naked. "Head for the East Verde
River. We gotta baptize Harlin and the kid."

"What
about
her?"
Wilson asked, gesturing at Mary Grace. "You gonna
baptize her, too?"

Mary
Grace felt a nudge beneath her leg and knew that just the idea had excited
Mason.

"Ain't
none of your concern," he said.

"I
just wanna help ya," Wilson said with a laugh. "'Member that time
down near Tombstone? With that whore with the tattoo? You was knockin' on her
front door while I was coming in the rear?"

"That's
a good one, Wilson." Harlin laughed.
"Coming
in the
rear!"

Mary
Grace was not so naive that she didn't realize what the men meant. She tried to
sit up straighter, but her position was hopeless.

"Watch
your mouth," Mason warned. "Or I'll keep it in the river till it's
clean."

"She
just spent a week with Westin," Wilson said. "If she ever was pure as
the driven snow, she ain't no more."

Mason
bent his head forward and whispered near her face. His breath was foul enough to
turn her stomach. "Westin touch you, Mary Grace?"

So
now it was Mary Grace. She shook her head. "I don't think he could."
Hey, she was sorry, but it wouldn't have done her too much good, sitting on
Mason Tate's lap, to sing the praises of Sloan's prowess at lovemaking.

"Did
he touch you at all?" he asked. Beneath her, his manhood poked again.

"Well,"
she said, trying her best to appear naive, "he helped me up into the
saddle, when he let me ride. And he helped me down, too."

Mason
looked at her, his eyes narrowed, and she returned the stare with what she
hoped were wide, innocent eyes.

"He
didn't try to touch you nowhere private?"

She
surely didn't want to say anything that was going to get him any more excited
than he felt already.

"Once
he was going to, I think," she said, lowering her eyes. "But I threw
up."

With
some satisfaction, she felt the bulge beneath her subside.

Sloan
had no trouble spotting
Climber tied in front of one of the cribs on
Hull Street. The horse appeared to be as happy to see him as he was to see the
horse. After some rubbing of noses, Sloan slipped quietly between two small
buildings and peered through the glass.

A
man's bare ass was raised toward the ceiling, the fat jiggling with every
thrust as he drove himself home between a fine pair of legs, which still wore
black kid booties. The man's head was obscured by his overly large bottom, but
Sloan didn't need to see his face to rule out his being Daniel Jackson. He
didn't credit Jackson with that much ass or that much energy.

The
woman beneath the heavy man glanced his way, and he tipped his hat to her
before disappearing from the window and moving on. Jackson had to be around
there somewhere.

Grunts
and laughter came from an opening farther back from the street, and Sloan
followed the noise. It was quite a party going on in the back crib, and Sloan
pulled his new Smith and Wesson revolvers out from
their holsters
and stood with his back pressed against the side of the building, just inches
from the window. The curtain tickled his face, and he used it to hide behind as
he stole a look into the crowded room.

"You
come on back here now, honey," a man's voice called. "You know I
ain't got but one arm to hold onto you with."

The
tinkle of a woman's laughter floated out on the breeze. "Catch me, Kyle.
Catch me and you can have me!"