BOOTHEELS THUMPED ON THE hollow wooden floor. The Western swing band had been flown up from New Mexico and they were superb. All the musicians were dressed in Flash Western, expensive custom clothing heavy with embroidery.
“Bet all their boots got chipmunks fucking butterflies on ’em,” said Booger Tom.
Du Pré laughed. The three hundred or so people on the dance floor were two-stepping fast. They were merry with drink and the bright music.
“Good band,” said Du Pré.
Booger Tom snorted.
Bart was standing in his uniform, fully belted, over near one of the huge double-drum wood-stoves. Corey Banning stood with him, in a leather jacket long enough to cover her gun.
Clark Martin, tall and dark blond, was teaching one of his little girls to dance. The child stood on the tops of his boots and she laughed and bounced as Clark shuffled.
There were huge trestle tables against one wall of the arena, piled with food. The far corner of the building had a new false-front saloon built in it; the raw wood oozed sap and gave off a thick scent of pine. Five barkeeps shoved drinks across the bar top.
“They put on a good party,” said Du Pré. He turned around and saw Booger Tom sliding around the milling couples, on his way to the bar again.
That old goat can drink some, Du Pré thought, especially when it’s free.
A few people, too old to dance or too drunk, were scattered in a mass of smaller tables to the side of the bandstand. The Martin family had their own. The elder Mrs. Martin sat at it, her son Taylor next to her. She wore a purple silk blouse and a beaded vest, and she had a choker of emeralds and diamonds at her throat. White-haired and pale-skinned, fingers glittering with rings, she sat slender and erect, smiling faintly when someone would stop and say something.
Her husband die about five years ago, Du Pré thought. She looks like the queen of a small country. Small, tasteful country, lots of traditions.
Taylor was laughing a lot. He got up and took glasses in his hands and he headed off toward the bar. His mother stared straight at the dancers on the floor. She tapped with the band’s rhythms, her red nails against a white saucer.
“The Queen Bee there,” said Corey Banning, at Du Pré’s side. Du Pré turned. “Where’s Madelaine?”
“She has a kid got an ear infection,” said Du Pré.
“She thinks rich folks are silly, more like,” said Corey. “So do I, but I got to snoop. I’d never seen the Queen Bee—I didn’t have a good enough reason to request an audience. If I got one, I’d get nothing, maybe a nice glass of sherry, some petit-fours, an offer to help me. Jesus, the old broad’s moral force about blows my dandruff off, here to there. You know her?”
Du Pré shook his head. Me, I am just the nice cattle-brand inspector comes to sign off on three million dollars’ worth of cows when they ship. You want to buy a thousand head of yearlings, ask if they got ’em, they nod and pause, then ask, you want them all one color? What color?
Taylor Martin returned to the table and he set down the drinks he was carrying and he looked over at Du Pré and Corey Banning and he waved generously at them to come over.
“The prince bids us come,” said Corey. “Now, don’t pick your nose and you can’t fart within a hundred yards of the Presence, there. Come along, Du Pré, remember to genuflect when I do.”
They made their way to the table. Mrs. Martin rose to greet them. When Du Pré shook her hand, it startled him. Her horsewoman’s strength gripped him hard.
“Are you finding enough to eat and drink?” said Mrs. Martin. She had soft southern notes in her voice, and deep education.
“A surfeit,” said Corey Banning. “What the hell do you do with this place between shindigs? Train cavalry troops?”
“Just horses,” said Mrs. Martin. “The long winters are hard to bear. At least with this place, one can work. Helps me to make it through.”
“Morgan and her horses are something of a family joke,” said Taylor. “If my father hadn’t employed cooks, her children would have starved to death.”
“I had the children,” said Mrs. Martin, “and that was, I think, something of a contribution. Diapers, bottles, and the daily feedings, I said, would be up to someone else. Anyone else.”
Corey laughed. Du Pré smiled.
She laughs at herself, Du Pré thought. This Mrs. Martin, there is a good deal here.
“You want to talk to me, dear,” said Mrs. Martin to Corey, “so let’s us just go do that. Taylor, could you have some brandy sent to the greenhouse?” She lifted a suede jacket from the bench and hung it over her shoulders. She took Corey’s elbow and steered her toward a door at the far end of the paddock.
“We are well out of what’s next,” said Taylor Martin. “Come on, I need to dispatch the brandy, and we can have a drink.”
They walked over to the bar, and Taylor spoke with one of the barkeeps. The man nodded and grabbed a bottle of brandy from below the bar and he set it on a tray and put two snifters on it and filled them halfway with boiling water.
“Corey, she is kind of frustrated,” said Du Pré. “It is kind of your mother to talk with her.”
“Very funny,” drawled Taylor Martin, “since the two of them will be sticking skewers in each other and never a hint of pain. Banning’s been following very faint tracks. They don’t stop here, mind you, but she naturally wonders just what goes on in our little kingdom here.”
Du Pré shrugged.
If it is you people, he thought, you will come out of here and do it again, anyway. All I can do is wait.
Taylor handed Du Pré a drink. Du Pré glanced down at the man’s hand. There was livid scar tissue on the back and the fingers were twisted. One of the fingers was missing, and the two joints of the little finger were gone.
“Mortar round,” said Martin, holding up his hand. “I’ll not forget that day. You in Nam, Du Pré?”
Du Pré shook his head. “Germany,” he said. “Drank a lot of beer.”
Martin nodded.
He glanced up and his jaw tightened and Du Pré turned and looked. There was a little knot of men at one corner of the dance floor starting to fight.
Martin set his drink down and moved toward them, gliding across the floor, the floating dance of a fighter closing in. Du Pré followed him. The men were yelling by now and a couple had squared off while the others backed away.
“Not here,” said Taylor Martin sharply.
Young cowboys, all set for their Saturday night sport. Du Pré didn’t know who they were. Maybe hands from a neighboring ranch.
The two ignored him and one balanced back to throw a punch.
Martin stepped between them and the cowboy swung. Martin reached out idly with his damaged hand and he grabbed the cowboy’s wrist and twisted and then half idly swung his right bootheel into the man’s kneecap. The cowboy yelped and went down.
“None of that here” said Taylor Martin, “and not outside, either. It’s too cold. Now, come on, let’s all go get a drink.” He reached down and grabbed the fallen cowboy’s shoulder and lifted him easily to his feet. The cowboy looked dumbly at Taylor.
“Damp it down or I’ll break your fucking neck,” said Martin.
“OK OK sorry,” said the cowboy, both hands on his knee. “We just forgot ourselves, you know how it is.”
Martin led the cowboys over to the bar. He told a funny story or two, saw to their drinks, and then he clapped a hand on Du Pré’s shoulder and steered him away.
“Youth is very young,” said Martin. “If one starts, they all do. The happy cowboy idiocy of fistfights for the fun of it.”
Du Pré nodded. He’d been in a lot of them himself.
The band took a break, the fiddle and steel guitar rippling behind the lead singer’s smooth and practiced voice. Talk erupted on the dance floor and knots of people headed for the bar.
“Taylor!” a voice yelled. It was Clark Martin, grinning and striding toward them.
“Saw you break the fight up,” said Clark. “One of those boys works for us, you know.”
Taylor nodded. “Well,” he said, “till he knocks my block off he still works for us. Can’t blame a man for wanting to fight a little on a Saturday night, especially with a winter as long and mean as this.”
“Where’s Morgan?” said Clark.
“Took that lady FBI agent to the greenhouse,” said Taylor.
“Investigate the orchids?” laughed Clark.
“Place is plumb full of exotic blooms,” said Taylor, “so let’s get us a drink.”
Du Pré couldn’t help but agree.