He says he’s going to leave. Just like Clayton.” Ruby rocks on Divina’s wide front porch. “Chasing them away, I am.”
“That’s nonsense, Pip. Boys—well, most of them anyway—need to get away from their mommas come this time. It’s only natural.”
“I suppose. All high and mighty, Fletcher is. Like I should award him for pissing in a tin can.” Ruby picks at her fingernail. “I should probably blame myself. And curse I didn’t have a girl.”
“Count your blessings there. Girls are nothing but trouble and heartache.”
“And you know this, how?”
“Damn it, Pip. You can be so … short-sighted. Think on it. I’ve been minding you since the day you came to Jericho, five days old and mad at the world.” Divina reaches over and pats Ruby’s shoulder. “And still mad at it, far as I can tell. Even though you’re not my flesh and blood, you might as well be. Which brings me to …”
“What?” Ruby’s voice is still clipped. Why should she take it out on Divina, when she’s mad at Fletcher? Stop it, Ruby, stop it.
“Hard not to see how happy you are after you see that fella of yours. Although it will bring you nothing more than heartache and trouble.”
Ruby relaxes her shoulders. “Sorry for being so touchy, Divina. Fletcher suspects, and now he’s told his cronies. I’m afraid for Perce.”
“Ah, that’s his name. Always tips his hat when he passes, like he knows me. Or was taught right by his momma. And I’ve seen the way you look at him, and the way he looks at you.”
“How? Where?”
“I came by the other night on my way home from … well, never mind where I was. Saw you two in the kitchen. Thought to come in, but then thought better of it. There’s only one thing you can do about it, Pip. And you know what it is.”
“Why can’t a body be happy?”
“That’s stuff for plays and novels. Don’t get that kind of happiness on the near side of Hell.” Divina shakes her head. “Here, have some tea.” She pours a tall glass of cool tea from a weepy pitcher on the table between them and hands it to Ruby.
“But …” Ruby takes a sip and places the glass on the small table between the rockers.
“It’s the truth, Pip. Name one person we know who’s lucky in love. Not a one of us.”
“Maybe because everyone loves someone who loves someone else.”
“Made Shakespeare rich, or so Wink says.”
“With that man I’m happier than I’ve ever been, Divina.”
“Let him go, Pip. Hell will freeze over before a white woman can take up with a colored.” Divina sips her tea and dabs her mouth. “Keep up your carrying on, and you’ll get sloppy. Someone else will see you. Next thing you’ll be weeping by the hanging tree and coming to me for condolences. Much as I hate to say it, Pip, it’s your heart or his head. One of you is going to pay. Now get on home before you’re tomorrow’s bad news.”
It’s dark as Ruby walks swiftly down Jefferson, her head swimming. Let him go? How? Two men steal down Brewer’s Alley, noses headed for an alehouse. Voices then, loud, outside of The Empire, and the next thing, a firearm discharges in the air. Ruby tenses. Dogs and vermin slither as Ruby hurries across the street away from the shots. Overhead, a comet streaks through the inky sky above Jericho. Ruby stops for a moment in the shadow of the bank to watch the ball of light race past stars.
As she passes Burton’s shop windows, someone wrenches her arm. Ruby tries to bat at her assailant, but the hulk of a man pushes her roughly up against the plate glass.
“Well, well, well. Mrs. Fortune.” Jimmy Bugg breathes in close to Ruby’s face. He’s laced with liquor. “Looks like Lady Luck is shining on me tonight.”
“Get your filthy hands off of me,” Ruby seethes.
“Don’t order me, Ruby Fortune.”
“You …”
“Shut it. Now. Any word from you and I might not be so nice.” He pulls Ruby around to the side of Burton’s store and elbows her up to the wooden siding under the large Cream of Wheat mural. He leans in and puts pressure on her chest.
“What you did, it’s criminal,” Bugg says. “Stealing right from under our noses.”
“I did nothing of the sort.”
“I checked the signature on that so-called will of yours. Doesn’t match.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, you know very well what I’m talking about. You forged that signature. Stole the mine away from us.”
“I got what was my share fair and square.” Ruby wishes then she had her pistol. Finish the job.
“Don’t come near me again, Jimmy Bugg. First thing tomorrow, you’ll wish you were in Omaha or St. Louis. I’ll have your head for this. Or worse.”
“You don’t scare me, Mrs. Fortune. I could have my way with you. Or worse.”
“You bastard. You and Willie Fortune and the rest of you. That mine was a failing operation from the start. You had no idea how to make it profitable.”
Ruby notices Bugg’s boots. They used to belong to Willie Fortune. There is no mistaking them, turquoise with steel tips. How did he get ahold of those?
“Jesus. You have no blazing idea, do you? We had it made in spades, the largest glory hole in the whole of Arizona Territory. Big money came through that operation when Willie Fortune was still alive, and it weren’t all silver.”
Ruby wrenches her arm out of Bugg’s grasp.
He glares at her. “Damn it to hell. You cost us our future.” He starts at her again, but she dodges him. “With one bullet, and that no-good signature of yours, you wrecked it all. This is on you, Ruby. And I don’t mean for you to forget it.”
“Get the hell out of my sight,” she says.
He shrugs. “You haven’t seen the last of me.” He crosses Jefferson, his gait uneven, and ducks behind Judd’s. She follows him at a safe distance. He staggers through the tent city behind the tavern. Ruby sidles up to the side of Judd’s and watches him as he weaves between canvas tents. He stops in front of a large tent and kicks off Willie’s boots.
Ruby hurries home then, pours a shot of whiskey, and sits on the back stoop. The welt on her arm has risen like yeast. It’s then she remembers the wasps. They are silent tonight. She lights off the porch and goes out to the shed. Wink is sawing logs on his burlap mat, blanket off to the side. She covers Wink with his filthy coverlet and rummages quietly for a shovel and a sack. She tiptoes out of the shed and returns to the porch. With deft strokes, she purses the open sack around the nest, dislodges it, and carefully transfers it into the rough burlap. Setting it down gently, she cinches the top tight.
Ruby steals across Jefferson again. The burlap is now abuzz with angry wasps. She grips the bundle by the neck with gloved hands and keeps it away from her body. She can’t afford to be stung again.
Nearly fifty tents have blossomed overnight between Judd’s and Deadman’s Alley. A few men linger outside tents, smoking and talking low. One man takes a piss right outside his bivouac and ducks back in, boots still on. Ruby hears Old Judd shut the tavern door and bolt it. She creeps along the wall so he doesn’t see her and crouches under the stairs behind the tavern. Would those wasps shut up? Old Judd clods up the stairs above her, mumbling.
A loud clattering raises the hair on the back of Ruby’s neck. “Shit!” he yells. Legs, arms, torso, twist as Old Judd bangs down the stairs. Ruby freezes. He lands on the ground at the base of the stairs and rubs his head. If he were sober, he’d be looking right at her, and he’d have a piece to say. But Old Judd gets hammered when the miners come to town, each one of them buying the barkeep a drink in exchange for his hospitality. He gets up to mount the stairs again. It’s almost comical, watching him sway from one foot to the other and grabbing for the stair rail. Hell, if anyone’s sober between here and the Silver Tip Mine, pigs could fly with their tails forward. Even the barkeep is past his limit.
Ruby waits for an opening, and then takes her chance. She skulks between canvases until she is certain she has reached Bugg’s tent. Those are definitely his boots—Willie’s boots, steel toes and all—outside the tent flap. Other than loud snoring, there is no other movement from inside.
Ruby glances both ways. No one is paying her any attention. Even if she is seen, she wouldn’t be the first woman to sneak into a man’s tent on payday. In one swift motion, she loosens the tent flap and checks to make certain it’s Bugg inside. It is, in all his glory. She stifles a snort, loosens the drawstring, and tosses the burlap in, wasps and all.