Could there be just a few more hours each day? Ruby is wrung out, but there’s that bright spot, Virgil improving. If there were two of her, or three, that might be enough to keep up with the demands of running the hotel. Willa won’t come work for her fulltime, but how about Penny? Who still hasn’t come calling. Maybe Ruby will hire some of Judd’s upstairs girls to get them out of harm’s way. Like my poor momma … She puts her head on the table and nods off.
A loud banging on the back door awakens her. She rousts and straightens her skirt, checks her hair. When she opens the back screen, her heart lurches.
“Mr. Bugg.”
“Thought I’d never come back? Finish what I started? And there’s that little business about wasps.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ruby says. Her feet are cemented to the spot. “What is it that you want?”
“What’s rightfully mine.”
Roger growls.
Bugg pushes past Ruby into the kitchen, kicks at Roger, and drags a chair over the wood floor. “What do you think I want?”
“You come barging in here. You tell me.”
“Your hotel.”
“Bastard.” Ruby stands with her hands on the back of a kitchen chair. “You’ll have to kill me for it.”
“That can be arranged.” Bugg fingers his six-shooter. “But there’s another way.” He sits across from where Ruby is standing. “I’ve had a long year to think about it locked up at Yuma.”
“Gave me pleasure every day thinking about it.”
Bugg places his dirty hands on the table. His eyes bore through Ruby.
She shifts, uncomfortable under his gaze.
He clears his throat. “Marry me, Ruby. Then we both get what we want.”
Ruby’s eyes widen. “Marry you? How romantic.” She shakes her head and whistles. “You could have your pick of any woman. I clearly recall you saying you didn’t have the inclination.”
“That long in a lockup does funny things to you. It’s not like we’d be the first to share the sheets that didn’t get off on the right foot.”
“Mr. Bugg …”
“Jimmy.”
“I think not, Mr. Bugg.”
“What can I do to change your mind? I know a thing or two about making an operation succeed.” Bugg’s large hands are folded on the tabletop. They are no cleaner than when Ruby sat across from him in the mine office all those years ago.
“There’s nothing you can do to change my mind,” she says.
“I’d hate to kill you.”
Stop, Ruby, think.
“Wait.” Going into her bedroom, Ruby stands with her back against the closed door. Her hands shake. When her heart slows, she opens the top drawer of her bureau and rummages through her underthings. The thick envelope is wedged into the back of the drawer behind bloomers and chemises. She fingers the packet and takes it out of the drawer. She sits at her small desk and hastily writes an addendum, folds it, and tucks it into the envelope.
Ruby re-enters the kitchen and tosses the heavy packet on the table.
“And this is?”
“The deed. To The Miracle. You can have it after I pass. Of natural causes only.”
“Very tricky, Ruby. You think of everything.” Bugg leans across the table, opens the envelope, and unfolds the deed.
“Sign here,” Ruby says. She hands Bugg a pen.
Jimmy Bugg takes the pen and signs with a large hand. He blows on the ink as it dries.
“And here.” Ruby places the single sheet of paper in front of Bugg. “A guarantee that you’ll make an allowance for my boys.”
“I still don’t understand this sudden change of heart.”
Ruby pulls out her hanky and waves in front of Bugg. “I’m ill, Mr. Bugg. No one knows. Nor will they. I’ve got tuberculosis.”
“Tuberculosis?”
Ruby nods.
“Damn.”
“I’ve been known to use stronger language than that when the situation warrants, Mr. Bugg. As you might recall.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“How about goddamn.”
“Goddamn it, then. Goddamn it to Hell.”
“More like it.”
Ruby refolds the deed and places it in the envelope. She keeps the addendum. She will return it to her bureau drawer in an envelope clearly marked ‘Sheldon Sloane.’ If Jimmy Bugg bugs out on payment, Sheldon will know who to look for, and where, and why.
Bugg pockets the packet and stands. He places his large hands on the back of the kitchen chair and pushes it back in. “Well, I guess that’s it. Although you surprise me. Not the way I thought this would turn out.”
“Did you really think I would marry you?”
“No.”
“Or you’d have the guts to kill me?”
He stammers. “No.”
“Mr. Bugg?”
“Jimmy.”
“Do I have your word?”
“You do, Ruby. I can call you Ruby, can’t I?”
Ruby shrugs.
“Your boys will get their fair share. Although I could hold a grudge about the wasps. I’m allergic. Covered with hives, I was. For days.”
Ruby ignores Bugg’s last comment. “Ten percent of the hotel to each one of my four boys before you take ownership. You’ll pay upfront. When the time comes.” Ruby rises from the chair. She coughs into her hanky. It’s red again.
Bugg recoils at sight of the hanky.
“You’ve saved me some trouble, Mr. Bugg.”
“Jimmy.”
“Yes. Jimmy.”
“By how?”
“I didn’t know who I’d will the hotel to and I want it to keep going long after I’m gone. No business man like you in Jericho.” She tries to stuff her disingenuousness.
“You showing up tonight made it crystal clear. The Miracle will be yours, to do with it as you will, or must. After. But I have one request before you go. Don’t come anywhere near me or the hotel until you hear.”
“I can live with that.” Bugg opens the screen door and turns back to look at Ruby. “I’m heading up to Jerome. You remember Red Callahan? Buck Torres? We’ve got a business venture going there.” Bugg puts his hat on. “I’ll keep an ear out. I hope it’s not too soon.”
“You and me, both.”
“I meant it about marrying me.” He bangs the kitchen door shut behind him.
Ruby lowers herself into the kitchen chair and lays her head on the table again. She breathes freely for the first time since Bugg startled her at the back door. Marry him? Not a chance in Hell.
And now her sons—all of them—are guaranteed an allowance. Bugg signed for it, right in front of Ruby tonight. Bugg, on the other hand, won’t realize until the time comes that he now owes more than ten thousand to pay off Sheldon’s loan. If she doesn’t live to see that day, she can picture it, Bugg madder than he was about the wasps, and the sting much worse. A man doesn’t like to be parted from his horse or his billfold or his pride. His pride, mostly. And by a woman.
Ruby laughs for the first time in ages, so hard she gets into a coughing fit. She can almost feel her lungs filling with fluid. But she can’t help it. She got him good, that Jimmy Bugg, first, with the forged signature on Willie’s fake will and again tonight with the signed deed to her heavily leveraged hotel. Sheldon will get a laugh out of this.
No, Ruby reminds herself, I got that bastard three times, if you count the wasps.
And then, coughing be damned, Ruby gets to laughing again until tears stream down her face onto the red-tinged hanky. But she’s not sad. Not in the least. Just today, Doc Swendsen confirmed Ruby doesn’t have tuberculosis at all.
“Walking pneumonia, desert fever, but not what we thought, Ruby. You’ll probably outlive every last one of us.”