With the taste of money in her mouth, Ruby barrels up the wide steps of Jericho First National Bank at five minutes to eleven on a scorching Friday morning. She’s wearing black today, top to toe, for appearance’s sake. Where is Sheldon? She cranes her neck.
Town teems with freighters, ore wagons, horses, mules. Jangles. Shouts. Hoots. Whistles, some so loud your ears could burst. And what the devil?
“Clayton! Fletcher!” Ruby sees her sons, dark-haired Clayton and strawberry blond Fletcher, running down Jefferson Street toward Tom Tillis’s livery. That livery is no place for boys, especially at their ages, ten and nine. And they’re supposed to be home with Virgil and Sam this morning. Ruby didn’t let them play hooky to waste it at a gambling den.
The boys disappear down the alley. The livery is the heartbeat of Jericho, if you don’t count saloons. Stable a horse. Rent a dray. Hire a hearse. Order a plow. Contract a blacksmith. Buy kerosene—or hooch. Fill up your pockets or lose it all on cockfights and dogfights, Sundays when the parson’s not looking. No place for boys.
Sheldon bounds up the bank steps two at a time. His dark trousers, shirt, and vest are spotless, as if he had a laundress, or a wife. His badge, shined just this morning, contrasts to his worn and scuffed boots. A laundress might not notice that. A wife would.
“Did you see Clayton? Fletcher?” Ruby asks.
Sheldon shakes his head. His sandy-grey hair is still damp under his hat.
“They’re going to be the death of me.” Death of me, she thinks. Could have been me. “Headed to Tillis’s, of all places.”
“Don’t worry your head over that, Ruby. Boys will be boys.”
“And you know this how, Mr. Sheriff?”
“Ruby.” Sheldon shakes his head.
Ruby glowers at him. “Sheldon.”
“God, you’re maddening.” Sheldon guides Ruby’s elbow as they enter the bank’s wide doors and cross the large foyer toward the bank manager’s office. “We don’t want to be late to this dance, darlin’.”
Jimmy Bugg stands and worries his hat as Ruby and Sheldon enter. No sign of the other partners. Sheldon closes the bank manager’s door and rests with his back against it.
Ruby sits and adjusts her mourning dress. Off come her black gloves, but not her hat. Facing the bank manager, Ruby turns on forced charm. It’s gotten her places her mouth or her sex alone doesn’t get her. “Sir,” she says, “I believe we’re here to complete a rather large transaction.” She throws a champion’s grin at the bank manager. “And, as I understand it, you will get one percent.”
“Mr. Bugg,” the bank manager says. “You are here of your own accord, I take it?”
Sheldon shoots Bugg a sly eye.
“I … am,” Bugg stammers.
The banker continues. “And you understand that you are acquiring Mrs. Fortune’s quarter share of Silver Tip Mine for ten thousand dollars.”
Bugg gulps. “That is correct.”
Ruby smiles at Bugg. “I’m glad we could come to an agreement on this, Mr. Bugg. I could have sold my share to anyone, a barkeep, a madam …”
Bugg blanches.
“So, as you can see, I am doing you a favor,” Ruby says. “Keeping it in the family, you might say.”
After a full hour, the documents signed, Ruby shakes the banker’s hand and nods to Bugg. Sheldon opens the door for Ruby, who steps out of the bank manager’s office, the deed to the local roadhouse in her name.
Outside, on the semi-circular bank steps, Ruby pulls on her gloves and adjusts her narrow-brimmed hat. She looks for her sons, but can’t see them in a sea of heads crowding Jericho at noontime. Ruby’ll have a word with Clayton and Fletcher about this. And Tom Tillis.
Sheldon looms over Ruby. He bends down toward her ear. “You’ve got yourself a roadhouse,” he says. “Like I told you. Nothing amiss, little missy.”
“‘Little …’” Ruby moves to the side of the steps as two rough-looking men approach the landing.
“A minute, Ruby.” Sheldon follows the strangers into the bank.
Ruby checks her watch, pinned to her bodice. Noon, straight up. Across Jefferson Street, the schoolmistress heads into the post office, a tidy square brick structure with three marble steps up to its double door. The town bum, Wink, shuffles toward the livery. On the east side of the post office, Dog Webber locks the door of the Jericho Courier-Journal and pockets the key. The newshawk heads across Washington Street toward Judd’s Tavern, his hat jammed low. Just past the newspaper office, there’s a lineup at Doc Swendsen’s surgery at the noon hour, and it’s no secret most of them have the clap. Behind Judd’s, another line forms at the bottom of a narrow stairway, where many likely caught it.
Where is Sheldon? Ruby will wait a minute, no more. She taps her foot. Has it been a minute? She needs to check on Virgil and Sam.
Sheldon emerges from the bank, shaking his head.
“And?” Ruby asks.
“Not this time.”
Ruby starts down the stairs, her satchel close to her thigh.
Jimmy Bugg barrels out of the bank and down the stairs. He doesn’t acknowledge Ruby or Sheldon.
Ruby scowls. “Can’t trust that louse as far as I can spit him.”
Sheldon smiles, as rare as snow in July. “Bugg doesn’t have sense enough to spit downwind, Ruby. You got him. Got him good.”
“Didn’t I?”
“So what are you going to call that inn of yours?”
Ruby is quick to answer. “Hell’s Roadhouse, of course.”
Sheldon snorts.
“Honestly, Sheldon, what did you think I would call it? The Lily Flower?” Her face sours. “Not like I got it legally.”
“Not another word about it. You got what’s coming to you. Your money bought that mine, and don’t you forget that. Willie Fortune got what was coming to him, and you’ve got your investment back. Fair and square in my book. In this corner of Pinal County, I decide which side of the law the coin falls.”
Ruby squints in the midday sun. “How about Jericho Roadhouse?”
“Maybe too rough. Jericho Inn?”
“That’s it. Short and to the point.”
“Like you. Short. To the point.”
“Don’t mess with me, Sheldon.”
“I know better than to do that, ma’am.” He tips his Stetson. “You’re a better shot than me. So who’s going to help whip that place into shape? By my estimation, you’ll need ten men …”
“Forget men, Sheldon. A turn around the dance floor now and again, maybe. But I don’t need help. Not that kind. And, if you’re wondering, I’m not sharing sheets or changing my name again for anyone. Or any reason.”
“But …”
“Not even for you, Sheriff.”
“I might rethink that, if I were you, Ruby.”
Ruby tilts her head. “Are you threatening me now?”
He bites a smile.
“Damn you, Sheldon.” She hits his arm, hard.
“Why’re you so upset? I’d think you’d be ready to pop a cork.”
“Got a gnawing hole, here.” Ruby points to her stomach.
“Some people call that an ulcer.”
“Maybe so. I wake up nights in a sweat.”
Sheldon nods, his mouth set in a fine line. “I’ve killed a few men in my day, too, Ruby. You’d think it would get easier. It doesn’t.” He tips his hat again as he strides down the steps. “I have no doubt you’ll make that inn of yours the best damn place to lay your head in all of Arizona Territory. Even if you’re stubborn enough to do it all yourself.” He darts across the street, his long legs kicking up dust.
Is Virgil really alone with Sam? Ruby ducks up Lower Gulch, a hairpin curve where neighbors live atop each another. Can’t whisper, sneeze, or fart here without someone overhearing.
Cutting right on Brewer’s Alley, Ruby steps over a drunk sprawled in the gutter outside The Empire. He’s face up, crotch a shade darker than his britches. She snakes up Jefferson Street, past the bakery and the tailor and the barbershop and the schoolmarm’s house, one curve giving way to the next even-steeper curve, row after row of flat adobes and wooden shacks pieced together with no more than baling twine.
Everything so long familiar looks different to Ruby today. Seven thousand dollars later, she owns an inn, which leaves three thousand to spare. A new-fangled stove. Fresh-from-Sears & Roebuck linens. A sofa as big as Arizona Territory, make that two. Beds. Rugs. Curtains. Soap. And dishes! Cutlery! Glasses! And food, she thinks. Enough to fill the largest table in Arizona Territory …
The derelict roadhouse she just purchased—with Sheldon’s help, damn that a woman can’t get a loan on her own—was once a going concern when Ruby was a girl, but it’s been abandoned for years, a broken-down sign at the curb that reads faintly, Traveler’s Rest. Being an innkeeper is Ruby’s ticket in this town if she doesn’t want to find herself upstairs at Judd’s. There aren’t many other options for a woman alone in Arizona Territory. Her mother learned the hard way.
At the far end of Jefferson, Ruby stops to catch her breath at the graveyard, full up with fellas who couldn’t shoot straight or found themselves at the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time. Or died too young, or too old. Or, like her pop, with a heart that exploded into a million pieces and shattered her in the process.
Across from the cemetery—before barbed wire holds you back—Ruby’s and Divina’s houses sit side by side like old companions. Other than love, and lots of it, her sturdy house in Jericho is all Ruby got from her pop, George Burlingame Barstow, when he up and died. Divina Sunday, on the other hand, George Burlingame Barstow’s right-hand gal, got nothing in return. Town ends there, right after Divina’s, where the incline rises sharply like Divina’s chin does when she isn’t pleased.
Well, Ruby is none too pleased with Clayton and Fletcher right now, either. But there’s no sign of them. Just Virgil sitting on the steps watching Sam play in the dirt. At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be any harm done, but that doesn’t mean Clayton and Fletcher won’t get a talking to.
Ruby scoops up Sam and ruffles Virgil’s hair. “Got some news for you.”
Virgil squirms away. “Quit it, Ma.”
“Can’t ruffle your hair now?” Ruby grabs Virgil in a mama bear hug. “You too old for that now, too?”
Sam looks like he might laugh. If only he would.
Now Clayton and Fletcher round the last curve of the block and chase each other into the yard.
“I’ve got a mind to tan you boys,” Ruby says. “But we don’t have a minute to waste.”
“What’s going on, Ma?” Clayton says. He needles Fletcher in the back and Fletcher yelps.
“Knock it off, boys. And listen to me. You’re not going back to school today.”
Fletcher jumps in the air and pumps his fist.
“But you’re not playing hooky for no reason. Go on, root out some boxes. We’re moving down to town.”
WILLIE FORTUNE PUNCTURES RUBY’S dreams, his fists clenched above her. She screams, tensing her shoulders, her backside, her thighs. No, Willie, no! Bruises flower from her pale skin, the edges raw.
Then she’s in the kitchen, running from a belt. Don’t talk back to me, little missy. Ruby crouches in a corner, her hands shielding her face, her eye already oozing. Take that, thwack. And that. She cowers, the cold metal barrel of a gun now pointed at her temple. Stop, Willie! Stop!
She runs, falls, gets up again, clawing up an incline. Faster, Ruby, faster. Willie grabs her by the hair and drags her. Whore, just like your mother.
Once, on the ground, one hand crushed by Willie Fortune’s steel-toed boot, Ruby reaches for her pistol. One bullet, she thinks, just one bullet. Her fists tighten around the pearl handle. But then Willie kneels beside her, pounding his fists into the floor and saying sorry for the hundredth (or was it the thousandth?) time. You shouldn’t shoot a man while he’s apologizing, should you?
Tonight, nestled in tight quarters off the kitchen of the ramshackle roadhouse, Ruby wakes with a start—bang!—her nightdress soaked. Air hangs still, heavy. Has it really only been two weeks?
One breath at a time, Ruby forces her racing heart to slow as she wipes sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. He’s not here, Ruby. Willie is dead, and won’t be back, ever, except to scare you out of your wits and cheat you of sleep. Gone now are black eyes and broken bones and threats of a thousand welts flowering from purple to yellow to a sickening grey around the edges in places that are hardest to heal.
The welt on Ruby’s neck is all that’s left of Willie Fortune’s clamped fist now. But, no matter how hard she tries, Ruby can’t help thinking Willie Fortune isn’t done with her yet.