Territory (23 page)

At that moment she found Wyatt Earp at her shoulder. Mildred remembered a parlor full of Earp wives sewing tents, and wondered if he’d heard what Miss Marcus had said about the play.

Mildred watched Miss Marcus gaze into Earp’s eyes, then drop hers. It made her appear flustered, but Mildred imagined it would take more than a man’s eyes to fluster Sadie Marcus.

On the other hand, if she felt what Mildred had on meeting Earp’s eyes … Ridiculous. The man wasn’t a mesmerist.

Behan introduced Fox, but instead of shaking his hand, Earp said, “We met. You were playing cards with John Ringo.”

Was that the same game? If so, Mildred wished she could have been a fly on the wall, to know what made Earp sound so frosty.

“And I lately trained a horse for your brother,” Fox said, as if he hadn’t noticed the cold.

“I hope he got his money’s worth.”

McLaury and Behan went rigid on either side of her, and Mildred didn’t blame them. If Earp wanted to pick a quarrel with Jesse Fox, that was his business, but to do it in the foyer of the Opera House called for more provocation than she could imagine.

Fox only smiled. “You’ll have to ask him. A good horse, though.”

“That bay of his?” Earp asked, interested, it seemed, in spite of himself.

Fox nodded.

Earp made a little noise in his throat, like suppressed laughter. “Well, I hope the buggy can be fixed.”

“Your brother would know best about that, too.”

Fox was clearly not to be drawn. Earp turned to Behan and asked about some piece of county tax business.

Tom stepped aside to join in the discussion, and Fox moved closer to Mildred. “I still have something to ask you, and again these aren’t the best circumstances for it.”

“You can’t think I appreciate being reminded of the previous ones.”

He dropped his gaze. “No. Sorry. But are you working tomorrow? Might I come by the newspaper office?”

“You can come, but you might not find me there.”

“Then you’re not working?”

“I’ll be covering a story.” How pretentious it sounded!

Fox looked up, his face alert and pleased. “You’re a reporter now? Congratulations!”

“My goodness, no sly comments about lady journalists?”

“Do you get many of those? I’d rather not offend the press.”

“Still angling for the social column?”

“No, I’ve decided I’d rather stay out of the news altogether.”

“And you don’t think you can manage without a friend at the paper.”

“At least I don’t mean to throw away the advantage.”

Curse the man—he had a way of making her forget that she didn’t want to talk to him. By being good to talk to, in fact. He seemed to hone her faculties just by being there; she felt she could grapple with any subject, like a fencer meeting his opponent at the peak of his training.

Of course, wariness and the hint of danger always did hone one’s faculties.

Then she saw a man working his way through the crowd from the front doors. His uncovered hair was short and black, and that was all she could tell about him. He kept his chin tucked, and ducked his head apologetically whenever he had to press past anyone. The men he passed frowned after him, and the ladies drew closer to their escorts. It wasn’t until he arrived at Fox’s left shoulder that the man looked up. He was Chinese.

Mildred hoped her gasp of surprise wasn’t audible. What was a Chinaman doing in the foyer of the Opera House?

The man’s eyes passed swiftly over her before they dropped to the floor. He said, “So solly. Missa Fox?”

Fox’s eyes widened. He turned sharply and stared at the Chinaman.

“Missa Fox, is big message for you. Gotta go, chop-chop. Velly solly.” And the Chinaman folded his hands over his stomach and bowed.

Jesse Fox still stared. Not angry, not alarmed, just staring. And biting his lip. The Chinaman rose from his bow, looked into Fox’s face … and winked. Mildred was sure of it.

Fox turned to her. “Mrs. Benjamin, I’m very sorry”—that, for some reason, seemed to give him trouble; he bit his lip again before he went on—“but it seems I’m needed elsewhere. Perhaps I’ll catch you at the newspaper office tomorrow.”

All the questions she wanted to ask would have to wait. “Perhaps you will. Good night, Mr. Fox.”

She watched him follow the Chinaman out of the Opera House. She’d been happy to think that he
wouldn’t
be able to catch her at the office. But he’d roused her curiosity, and she found herself wondering how she could be sure to be there if he stopped by.
You have plenty to ask questions about,
she scolded herself,
without adding Jesse Fox to the list.

Mildred found that the rest of her party had also watched Fox leave. “I just don’t like them,” Miss Marcus declared with an exaggerated shiver. “You hear such stories.”

Behan smiled at her. “The Celestials? They’re all right. Even their vices are quiet. In fact, if some of the county’s yahoos would go on the dope instead of drinking, you wouldn’t hear me complain.”

“Quiet can cover a lot of troublemaking.” Earp’s eyes were still on the door.

Tom touched her elbow. In the lights of the foyer his high-boned face looked like some lovely statue’s. His blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled at her. There was no question—Tom McLaury was a very good-looking man. “May I take you home, Mrs. Benjamin?”

“Yes, thank you.” She took his arm, and they stepped out into the night.

Mildred tugged her shawl closer around her throat and looked up at the sky. The West could make an astronomer out of anyone. The brilliant company of the stars was laid out overhead for her to see and marvel at, undimmed by streetlights.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Tom murmured beside her.

She looked at him, startled. In spite of his arm under her fingers, she’d almost forgotten he was with her.

When she was younger, when David was courting her—well, to be fair, when she was sneaking out to see him—stars had existed in the context of him. Why admire a clear night sky, if there was no one beside her to declare it beautiful, and to agree with? Rapture wasn’t a private emotion; beauty required consensus.

It was years since she’d felt that way. Even before David died, she’d discovered that where she saw planets and nebulae, David saw a poet’s sequined dome. He’d gazed across the plains and seen an ocean made of grass, while she’d seen prairie dog towns, pronghorn antelope tracks, and the earth-binding roots of bluestem and buffalo grass.

She’d loved David, and she’d loved the differences between them. But she had only begun to discover her adult self, who she was in the privacy of her own heart and mind when she wasn’t standing with her hand on someone’s arm.

They’d reached her front door. She looked up at Tom McLaury, so handsome, so earnest, so ready to smile and laugh. Was she done discovering—was it time to think of joining this new self to someone else?

Tom took off his hat and returned her gaze, and she saw the signs of some mental struggle in his face. Then, quick and shy as a boy stealing fruit, he touched his lips to hers.

It was a sweet shock, familiar and strange at once. It made it hard to think—but not impossible.

“Mr. McLaury, I don’t—”

“No, no, wait,” he begged. He looked alarmed; whether at his own daring or her response, she couldn’t tell. “I shouldn’t have done that. You don’t hardly know me. But you looked—” He took one of Mildred’s gloved hands in both of his. She wanted to warn him not to drop his hat, but that would suggest her mind wasn’t on the business at hand. And it was, wasn’t it?

“Mr. McLaury, I’m glad to be your friend. But I’m not sure I’m ready to be anything more.”

He kept his eyes on her knuckles. “Would it be all right if we stayed friends while you think about it?”

Her afternoon’s worth of mental arguments came back to her. They could be friends, couldn’t they, without an implied promise to be more? And would it be fair to either of them if she made it impossible to get to know him better? But what if she didn’t learn to love him? He seemed halfway to being in love with her.

“Nothing may come of it,” Mildred said.

He looked up, a grin barely turning his lips. “Something always comes of friendship.”

“Very philosophical, Mr. McLaury.” She found herself smiling. “All right. We’ll stay friends.”

He squeezed her hand, and his grin bloomed. “In that case, will you go riding with me tomorrow?”

“I thought you and your brother were leaving town tomorrow?”

“I’m sure there’s something needs doing before we go,” he said gravely, and winked.

“I work tomorrow for the
Nugget.”
She noticed she didn’t mention her story this time.

“Could you manage afternoon, maybe?”

Fox had said he’d look for her at the
Nugget
office. Well, she hadn’t promised to be there. “Afternoon it is.”

He let go of her hand to put his hat on. “I’ll come for you here.” He looked so happy that Mildred doubted the wisdom of her decision.

“Good night, Mr. McLaury.” She watched him head down the street into the darkness.

She went indoors and lit the parlor lamp. It lit up the same room, the same shabby comfort, it had shone on when she left. What did she expect? She’d gone to a play, and was going riding tomorrow. With a friend.

David had given her a volume of Tennyson in the early days of their romance. Her mother had asked where she’d gotten it. “From a friend,” she’d answered. As she’d said it, she’d felt her heart recoil from that betrayal.

Now—she was going riding with a friend. No, no turmoil in her breast. Her brain was in disarray, but her breast was fine. Was that because she didn’t love Tom McLaury, or only because she was no longer young and foolish?

Tonight David seemed nearer in her memory than he had been for months. It was only the associations of dressing up, of being in a gentleman’s company. But it was easy to remember his hollow-cheeked face, his large, dark eyes that always seemed to yearn for something, the sound of his uneven steps across the floor.

His gravity had appealed to her. He wasn’t like the blythe young men who had never been crossed, who courted rich and pretty girls with every expectation of winning them. David—older, lamed by war and sobered by circumstance—was a romantic figure. And she’d needed romance.

Whatever she needed now, it wasn’t that. But only for this moment, in this spot of lamplight, it was David she wished for.

She found she had to sit down and cry just a little bit.

 11 

Jesse contained himself until they were a block away. Then he said, “I can’t decide if you should be on the stage or the gallows. Heaven knows you nearly killed me back there.”

“The barbarian stage,” Lung declared, “is a child’s play with dolls compared to the great theaters of China. What imagined trouble were you dying of?”

“Apoplexy, from trying not to laugh.”

“Velly solly,” Lung said, singsong. He looked smug.

“Do you do that often?”

“When it is useful. They expect it, and what they expect is invisible to them.”

“ ‘They’ meaning ‘us.’ ”

Lung raised his eyebrows, surprised. “Are you one of them?”

Jesse shrugged. “I can pass.”

They crossed through the light of the lamps outside the O.K. Corral livery stable, and he noticed how Lung was dressed. His black padded jacket was silk, patterned with medallions visible only when the light fell on them. His loose trousers looked like silk, too, and he wore tooled leather slippers. At his throat and wrists a thin band of starched and blinding white showed from under the jacket. He even wore the silk button cap that Jesse had heard him make fun of, which he’d pulled out of his pocket as soon as they left the theater. Sober magnificence—and staggering conformity, for Lung. Except for the lack of a queue, he was just what a successful professional Chinese man ought to look like.

“Lung, where are we going?”

Lung looked over his shoulder. “I was beginning to think you would prefer to be surprised.”

“Good God, not by you.”

“Better you be prepared for this. Are you confident of your Chinese?”

Jesse stopped. “No,” he replied in Chinese.