Stone examined his freshly washed face in the mirror. Lines had deepened around his mouth and eyes, and he was amazed at the beating he’d taken over the years. A cynical man looked back at him, not the happy-go-lucky kid of days gone by.
He wiped water from his face, noticed the door ajar to Rooney’s office. The wall behind the desk was covered with books, and Stone hadn’t browsed through a library for years. He entered the empty office and looked at the bookcases. An old beat-up leather-bound antique caught his eye, ratty and out of place beside distinguished tomes on law, agriculture, and modern business practices.
He reached up and took it down. It felt familiar in his hands. The signature Ashley Tredegar was written inside the front cover. Now he remembered. It had been Ashley’s copy of The Iliad. Many times during the war Stone had browsed through it while Ashley was busy elsewhere. His favorite passage was in the Twenty-first Book. He flipped through the pages. It took moments to find the passage:
What a man I am, how huge, how splendid. Yet even I have also my death and my strong destiny. There shall be a dawn or an afternoon or a noontime when some warrior in the fighting will take the life from me also.
Spoken by Achilles before he slew Lyacon on the field of battle, it summarized the truth of war to Stone. Sooner or later a soldier is killed. You have to accept it, and get on with your job.
One night in San Antone he’d wandered drunk into a fortune-teller’s parlor, and she’d predicted he’d die young. At first he thought she was just another charlatan, but she also said Calvin Blakemore would die young too, and Blakemore had been gunned down by rustlers a few weeks later.
Stone had been extra cautious after Blakemore’s funeral, but nothing happened and he gradually thought less about the Gypsy’s curse. It was coincidence, superstition, bullshit, but troubled him anyway.
Rooney entered the office. “Had to run out for a few minutes,” he explained, pug nose red from exertion. “What you got there? Oh. I was the one assigned to collect Ashley’s personal belongings, and I kept it to remember him by. Didn’t think anyone would care.” Rooney darted his fingers into his back pockets and looked out the window. “I’ve had it all these years, and you were a closer friend of his than I. Maybe you should take it for a while.”
“I’d lose it.”
Cassandra walked into the room. “The funeral is in fifteen minutes, and you’re not even dressed!”
She looked like the avenging angel, and Stone fled beneath her merciless glare. Cassandra turned to Rooney, and he was already halfway out the back door. She hitched up her gunbelt in the manner of Duke Truscott and walked to the kitchen for another cup of thick black coffee, just the way Truscott liked it.
~*~
Tod Buckalew approached the Mount Zion Church of God. He climbed down from his horse, threw the reins over the rail behind the rectory, knocked on the rear door, waited for Little Emma to open up. She didn’t come. He reached toward the knob, the door opened. He looked inside the darkened kitchen. A shotgun was pointed at Buckalew’s shirt.
Buckalew stopped cold in his tracks. Sheriff Wheatlock chewed the butt of a cigar. “What you doing here?” Buckalew asked.
“Thought I might ask you the same thing,” the sheriff replied.
“I’m here to see the reverend.”
“He’s wanted for murder.”
It often happened to Buckalew, the world became unreal, impossible, fantastical. “What you talkin’ about?”
“Knifed the schoolmarm. Found her in his cellar. Where you been, boy? How come you don’t know what’s been goin’ on?”
“Took me a little ride. Why’d he do it?”
“Din’t hang around long enough to tell us. We’re offerin’ one thousand dollars reward for him, dead or alive. You wouldn’t know where he is, would you, Buckalew?” Sheriff Wheatlock looked at him skeptically, one eye cocked.
“I thought you was on his payroll too, Wheatlock.”
“Now just a minute—”
“They say you’re the best sheriff money can buy.”
“Reverend Real Estate’s wanted for murder, that’s all I know.”
“Point that shotgun some other way.”
“Point it where I want.”
They faced each other across the kitchen floor. Sheriff Wheatlock had the drop on him, but there’d be other days. Buckalew backed toward the door, made his friendly smile. “Nice seein’ you again, Sheriff. Look forward to next time.”
~*~
Marcus Strickland entered Mayor McGillicuddy’s office. “Like to speak with you.”
The mayor of Sundust looked up from the letter he was writing to the governor. “Good thing you dropped by, Marcus. Intended to put out a warrant for your arrest. You’re in up to your neck with Reverend Real Estate, isn’t that so?”
“That’s what I came here about.” Strickland’s eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. “He told me to close the bank yesterday, and I followed orders. He owns it, I’m only his employee. Don’t blame the mess on me.”
Mayor McGillicuddy leaned forward and looked into Strickland’s eyes. “In other words, the bank was never out of money?”
“Enough money in the vault to handle any transaction.”
“There’ll be a complete investigation, but in the meantime I suggest you open up the bank for business. Maybe, just maybe, we can save this town.”
~*~
The casket was a rectangular oak planked box, and it sat on a pile of dirt. Reverend Tipps stood behind the casket, Bible in hand.
“He was a loyal friend,” Reverend Tipps said. “Many a time he …”
His voice pealed across Boot Hill, merged with the hoot and moo of cattle loading onto boxcars on the other side of town. Cassandra raised her eyes and discreetly looked at her men, some of the vaqueros cried openly. They’d been in many a cantina with Manolo, shared hardships, now he was gone.
Her eyes fell on big John Stone, head bowed and hat in his hands. Taller than the others, broad-shouldered, the sun gleamed on his wavy hair.
She’d seen Manolo kill another vaquero once, yet he’d been the campfire comedian every night, always respectful toward La Señora. Manolo had family near Guadalajara, she’d send his pay to them. The bank was scheduled to open that morning, and she’d sell the herd to Rooney after the funeral. The drive was finally over, and she hoped the killing had ended. What more could possibly happen?
~*~
Blasingame sat at the table in his hideout shack, examining his weaponry in the dim light that peeked through cracks in the boarded-up windows. He had a Sharps buffalo gun, a Colt Police pistol with two boxes of .36-caliber cartridges, and a Hammond Bulldog Derringer with a box of .44 caliber loads. They’d never take him alive.
He heard a knock at the door. His heart thumped loudly in his chest.
“Daddy?”
Blasingame threw the bolt and opened the door. Buckalew slipped into the shack. Father and son stood in the middle of the floor.
“You were right, Dad,” Buckalew said. He turned to the side, tensed, and whipped out his gun. “See? It’s all the same body, just like you said. I’m fast as I ever was.”
Reverend Blasingame couldn’t believe his good fortune. He embraced the son he’d abandoned so long ago. “My boy, so good to see you again. I need your help desperately.”
“Went to the rectory,” Buckalew said, “and the sheriff was there. Told me you killed the schoolmarm.”
He looked like a punctured balloon. “Had to do it.”
They heard children’s voices, moved toward a crack, looked outside. Little boys chased each other with wooden guns.
“Dangerous here,” Blasingame said. “We’ve got to get away.”
“What happened to the crew?”
“They bushwhacked the Triangle Spur, got the stuffing knocked out of them. Trevino showed up gutshot in my kitchen, but he died before he could tell me anything. You’re the first person I’ve seen since then.”
“There’s lots more boys at the farms and ranches, Dad. We can pull ’em together, teach this town a lesson.”
Blasingame smiled for the first time since coming to the shack. He touched the palm of his hand to his son’s stubbled cheek. “My boy, it’s so good to see you again.”
~*~
Frank Quarternight rode the main street of Sundust, wearing a Mexican serape that concealed his hook. He was covered with dust, a thick black growth of stubble wreathed his chubby jowls. A crowd gathered in front of the bank, someone fired a gun. Another man stood in front of the bank, giving a speech.
Quarternight wasn’t interested in speeches. The only thing that mattered was the next fast draw. He rode his horse into the stable, climbed down. An elderly man stepped out of the shadows. “He’p you, sir?”
“Stable my horse.”
The stable master told him prices, and they struck a deal. Quarternight pulled down his blanket roll and saddlebags with one hand. “Triangle Spur in town?”
The stable master pointed. “Horses’re over there.”
Quarternight walked toward the horses from the Triangle Spur, and they pricked up their ears. They’d become nearly wild during the drive, and weren’t accustomed to stables, clean straw, plenty of oats. Quarternight looked at them, and wondered which was John Stone’s. You could tell a lot about a man from the way he maintained his mount.
Quarternight walked out of the stable, carrying his bedroll and saddlebags. He searched for a tall man who fit John Stone’s description, saw several. A cheer went up, crowds rushed toward the door of the bank. A man never knew what he’d see when he came to a new town.
He entered the lobby of the Majestic Hotel, crossed to the desk. “Room for the night.”
He paid, got his key, did everything with his right hand, kept his hook hidden. “Anybody from the Triangle Spur in this hotel?”
“A few.”
“What room?”
“Two thirteen.”
Quarternight hoisted his blanket roll and saddlebags, carried them up the stairs. He entered his room, like a million other hotel rooms, initials carved into the walls, sagging mattress, plank floors.
He was exhausted, head hurt, stomach ached, butt chaffed from hours in the saddle. He should take a bath, but was too tired. All he wanted to do was sleep. He tossed his hat onto the dresser, sat on the bed, pulled off his boots. Then he lay back, his Smith & Wesson in his hand.
He fell asleep almost instantaneously, and the girl in the bloody dress arose at the foot of his bed. She resumed her dance, waving her arms, leaning backward and kicking her leg in the air, her laughter ringing through Frank Quarternight’s morbid dreams.
~*~
Lewton Rooney read the contract one last time. Cassandra and John Stone sat in front of him in his office, and the morning had become gray. Rooney finished reading the contract and passed it to Cassandra.
She examined it carefully. Twenty dollars a head, the going rate for mixed longhorns. Half the money paid after signing the contract, the rest when Rooney took possession of the herd. She picked up the pen and scratched her name at the bottom. The drive had finally come to an end.
~*~
Buckalew lay fast asleep. A narrow shaft of light illuminated his face, and Reverend Blasingame examined his son’s profile, looking for traces of himself.
How ironic that this boy had returned to deliver him from his enemies. He hadn’t cared about Buckalew when he’d been born, and less about his mother. There was no way of knowing for sure it was his own son. The mother slept with many men. It was her livelihood. Blasingame had been her fancy man for a brief time.
So the little bastard came back, and his gunhand was better than ever. Blasingame sat before the map he’d drawn of Sundust. His plan was to level the town and massacre every man.
The boys would strike in the first light of dawn, destroy everything. And then he’d build New Jerusalem out of the ashes, bigger and better than ever.
~*~
Inside the bank, tellers signed documents, counted money, pushed it forward. Cassandra withdrew an amount to cover expenses for several days, placed the coins in her saddlebags. Stone carried the heavy treasure outside, accompanied by Rooney. The other cowboys and vaqueros from the Triangle Spur had returned to the herd, to move it to the pens. Stone looked across the street at the Peacock Saloon. “Let’s have a drink.”
“Can’t,” Rooney replied. “Got to go to the stockyards and make arrangements for the herd. Catch up with you later in the day.”
He walked away, leaving Stone and Cassandra in front of a Chinese laundry.
“Please don’t get drunk,” she said.
“Just a couple,” Stone replied. “Why can’t you come with me? Let’s celebrate; you and me.”
“I want to buy some clothes, the kind a woman would wear. Promise me you won’t get drunk?”
“Sure.”
They touched lips, he handed her the saddlebags, she headed toward the nearest store. He turned to the Sagebrush Saloon. A sign caught his eye: JEWELRY.
He remembered Marie’s picture, saw flashing trinkets in the window. Mr. Peabody looked up from the watch he was fixing.
“Got my frame fixed?” Stone asked, scanning shelves covered with clocks ticking merrily.
Peabody reached behind him and produced it, frame straightened, shining dully in the dreary afternoon. “A woman came in and claimed to know your friend here.”
Stone’s heart stopped beating. His jaw dropped open. A great void opened before him. Slowly, with great deliberation, he said, “Where is the woman now?”
“Majestic Hotel, I imagine. She’s Major Salter’s wife.” Peabody searched through his notepaper and found the document he wanted. “Said the woman in your picture is at Fort Hays.”
Stone paid for the repairs, buttoned the picture into his shirt pocket, left the jewelry shop. He ran to the Majestic Hotel, advanced toward the front desk.
“What room is Major Salter in?”
The clerk told him, Stone vaulted up the stairs three at a time. He moved down the hall like a wildcat, found the door, knocked.
Footsteps came to him from the other side. He tensed, the door opened, and Major Salter stood there, hair mussed, wearing his robe, an enormous red mark on his neck where his wife had got carried away.
“Sorry to bother you,” Stone said breathlessly, and he held up Marie’s picture. “Your wife told the jeweler she knows this woman. Is your wife here now?”
Stone’s face was flecked with consternation, his eyes darted about nervously. Major Salter placed his arm around Stone’s shoulders. “Come in, have a drink with me and the missus.”
Stone entered the room, and a slender, dark-tressed woman in a thin yellow silk robe stood beside the bed. He held the picture up to her. “You know this woman?”
“I’ve seen her face nearly every day for the past year.”
Stone stared at her. Major Salter handed him a glass of whiskey, and Stone drank it in one gulp. Major Salter maneuvered Stone to a chair. It was a dream, he’d wake near the campfire with the cowboys and vaqueros of the Triangle Spur.
They sat on the sofa opposite him. Dorothy Salter said, “What do you want to know about her?”
“How is she?” he blurted. “What’s she like? What does she do?”
“She’s the wife of Major Scanlon, the provost marshal. I didn’t like her, I’m sorry to say. Thought she was better than the rest of us, because her father used to own a plantation. It was disgraceful the way she treated that man she married!”
Major Scanlon placed his hand on his wife’s knee. “Don’t go overboard, dear. She wasn’t that bad.”
“Not to you, because she always played up to the men. I know a little flirt when I see one.”
Stone held out his glass, and Major Salter refilled it. “When was the last time you saw her?” Stone asked.
“ ’Bout a week ago, when we left Fort Hays,” Mrs. Salter replied. “What’s she to you?”
“We were engaged to be married.” Stone told them about returning home from the war, she’d disappeared. “I’ve been looking for her ever since. Did she ever mention ... me?”
Major Salter and his wife looked at each other. “No,” they said in unison.
Stone was confused. He’d promised to marry Cassandra Whiteside, and Marie was at Fort Hays?
“She’s turned that poor Major Scanlon into a drunkard,” Mrs. Salter continued. “You can hear her screaming at him all over the post. Nothing he ever does is right.”
Major Salter explained, “My wife and Mrs. Scanlon had a few donnybrooks, I want you to know. The nearest thing I can compare it to would be a knife fight, except they did it all with words.”
Stone walked across the lobby of the Majestic Hotel, head spinning. He needed to sit down, the Peacock was a few doors down. Just when he’d given up the search for Marie, and was going to settle down peacefully with Cassandra Whiteside, Marie had to pop up.
He entered the saloon, made a beeline for the bar. It was late afternoon, thunder could be heard in the distance. The bartender moved toward him.
“Whiskey.”
The glass was filled. Stone carried it to a table in the corner and blew out the candle. He sat in darkness and tried to think.
If he hadn’t come up the trail, if the picture hadn’t been trampled in a stompede, if they’d gone to Abilene instead of Sundust; everything would be all right.
Life is a roulette wheel. What’m I going to do? His head hurt. Thunder reverberated outside. A waitress walked past. “Miss!”
She turned in his direction, squinted. “I din’t see you in here. Who you hidin’ from, cowboy?”
He placed the empty glass on her tray. “Whiskey.”
He knew why Marie was cruel to her husband. She still loved him, John Stone, and would never be happy with another man. It was the same way with him. They needed each other.
What about Cassandra? She was a wonderful and beautiful woman. It was confusing. He had no idea of what to do. Maybe I should shoot myself and get it over with,
He was haunted by Marie, the war, men he’d killed, friends who’d fallen in battle, his father, his mother, the Gypsy’s curse, it went on and on. There was no escape from his mind, except through whiskey. The waitress placed another glass on the table. “Bring me a double, next time you pass this way.”
“Ain’t you lonely back here? I’ll send you somebody keep you company.”
“Want to be alone.”
“Got just the gal fer you.”
Stone sipped his whiskey. He spotted Rooney in the swirling clouds of tobacco smoke near the bar. Stone scratched a match on the table and lit the candle.
“Thought I’d find you in one of these pigsties,” Rooney said. “You all right?”
“Marie is at Fort Hays, married to the provost marshal.”
There was silence between them for a few moments. “What’re you going to do?” Rooney asked.
“Haven’t decided,” Stone replied. “Wish somebody’d shoot me and put me out of my misery.”
~*~
Frank Quarternight opened his eyes, Smith & Wesson in hand. It was dark, breeze ruffled the curtains. He rolled out of bed and walked to the window. The hour between supper and hard drinking. John Stone would be in one of those saloons with the rest of the cowboys.
Quarternight had supper in the dining room of the Majestic Hotel, looking out the window at State Street. Doomed to loneliness, never had a friend, didn’t know how to get one. John Stone killed his brother, only family he had. Stupid goddamn cowboy wouldn’t know what hit him. There’d be no gentlemanly walk to the outskirts of town this time. Brace John Stone and shoot him down.
~*~
John Stone leaned across the table, the left corner of his mouth turned down. “If you were me,” he said to Rooney, “what would you do?”
Rooney was wilted, tie loosened and top button of his shirt undone. A half bottle of whiskey stood between them.
“I’d marry Cassandra without even thinking about it,” Rooney said. “I want a woman who can do something more than look pretty. That’s Cassandra.”
“Marie was just a kid when you met her,” Stone said. “Now she’s grown like Cassandra. Maybe she can handle anything too.”
Rooney placed his elbows on the table and looked Stone in the eye. “Marie was a spoiled brat.”
“She lost her patience at times, I admit it. When you’re that pretty, you spend most of your life fighting off men.”
“She got awfully mad at you too.”
“High-spirited, that’s all. Wouldn’t want one that didn’t have some fight.”
Marie had always been a difficult person, Stone admitted to himself. A man tries to explain these things, but it’s hot air. He took her picture out of his pocket. A few days away. If she didn’t want him, he’d move on. For all he knew, she prayed every night he’d show up. Now at last he’d get some answers.
“You’ve got to give up the past,” Rooney said, slurring the words. “Throw that picture away and forget Marie.”
“Got to see her.”
“She’s married to another man.”
“They don’t get along, and maybe I’m the reason.”
“She forgot you long ago.”
Stone didn’t think Marie could forget him any more than he could forget her.
“My God,” said Rooney, a note of awe in his voice.
Cassandra approached the table, and at first Stone didn’t recognize her. She wore a long flowing brown skirt with a white blouse that buttoned up to her neck, a civilized woman instead of a she-creature of the plains.
“You’re drunk,” she said to Stone.
“Only had a few.”
She sat next to him, a cross expression on her face. “I guess this is the last big toot you were telling me about.”
He was a grown man, and if he wanted to get drunk it was his business. Sullenly he reached for the glass. Cassandra knew he was defying her. One moment he was a wonderful man, the next a nasty child.
“You look marvelous,” Rooney said to her. “What a transformation. If you and Johnny weren’t going to tie the hitch, I’d be tempted to ask for your hand myself.”
Both were glassy-eyed, movements imprecise, tongues thick. Stone stared into his glass. His brain rattled in his head.
Cassandra said to Rooney, “I’ve promised to throw a big party for the men. Do you think I could rent one of these saloons?”
“The Majestic Hotel might let you use the dining room, it’s closed at night. You could hire guitar players and fiddlers. I’ll be the bartender.”
She looked at John Stone slouched in his chair. Sometimes she loved him, sometimes she didn’t. If Truscott had lived, no telling what might’ve happened. Truscott knew what he was about.
Her eyes met John Stone’s, he glanced away. Defiantly he refilled his glass.
“See you boys later,” she said.
She arose from the table. A few cowboys tried to talk with her. She ignored them, pushed open the batwing doors, and was gone.
~*~
Frank Quarternight stood on the veranda of the Majestic Hotel, looked down the street. It was saloon after saloon all the way to the prairie. He heard music, laughter, a hoot. John Stone was out there.
The only thing to do was work his way up one side of the street and down the other. Sooner or later he’d find him. He wore his serape over the hook, and moved toward the first saloon. An attractive blond woman in a brown skirt approached. Short men with potbellies never get women like that, he thought. His eyes undressed her as she drew closer. She didn’t even notice him. He walked past her and entered the Sagebrush Saloon. It was the middle of the evening, and a crowd spread before him. An old man with a white goatee plunked the piano. Quarternight made his way to the bar.
“Triangle Spur in here?” he asked the bartender.
“Can’t keep track of ’em all, mister. What’s yer pleasure?”
Frank Quarternight placed his hook on the bar. “I’m looking for a man name of John Stone. Ever hear of ’im?”
The bartender stared at the hook. “No, sir.”
Quarternight dropped a ten-dollar gold piece on the table. “I need somebody to find ’im for me.”
The bartender’s hand covered the coin. “I know just the man.”
“Whiskey,” Quarternight said.
The bartender poured the drink. Quarternight picked it up and turned around. His hook was clearly visible, and several men knew who he was. His name passed from lips to ears, and the word spread through the saloons. Frank Quarternight was in town, and somebody was going to die.
~*~
Blasingame and Buckalew sat in the darkness. Music from saloons in the distance came to their ears, and occasionally they heard a woman laugh. Blasingame was nervous, hiding like an animal in a town that once had been his. “Damn,” he said.
“What’s wrong, Dad?”
“Should’ve stood my ground. They wouldn’t dare lock up their old parson. I’ve married a good many of the people in this town, christened their babies. They had faith in me, but I lost faith in myself.”
“What about the schoolmarm?”
“Ah ... I’d ...” Blasingame’s voice trailed off. A murdered schoolmarm in the root cellar can never be explained away.
~*~
Slipchuck arrived in town to buy supplies for the chuck wagon, but the stores were closed. The only thing to do was head for the nearest saloon and cogitate over what to do next.
He stepped on the rail, raised his bony finger in the air. The bartender filled the glass. Whores wall to wall. Slipchuck looked them over with the eyes of a veteran connoisseur. Tomorrow at this time he’d have three months back pay, and the first thing he wanted was a fat whore.
Fattest he could find. His skin was wrinkling and bones getting brittle, but a fat woman would warm his thinning blood and make him feel young again, give him something to think about during cold dark nights on the prairie.
“Hey, mister?”
Slipchuck saw a man about his age with sorrowful eyes and sloping shoulders. He looked like a pile of rags hanging on a nail. “What’s on yer mind?” Slipchuck asked, hand near his gun.
“You know a galoot name of John Stone?”
Slipchuck stared at him. “Who wants to know?”
“My name’s Ledbetter. Old friend of his is a-lookin’ fer him.”
“Rooney?”
“Yeah, believe that was his name, Rooney.”
“I’m his pard,” Slipchuck said proudly, hitching up his belt, “and I’m a-lookin’ fer him too. We’ll find ’im together, after I finish this glass of whiskey.”
~*~
“You’d better let me look at that bandage,” Cassandra told Don Emilio.
He barked orders in Spanish to his vaqueros, and they left the parlor. She gathered the scissors and bandages, while he sat on die sofa, pulling apart Rooney’s robe, showing the bandage on his thigh.
She kneeled between his legs and stripped away the old bandage. The wound was an ugly bloody mouth on a hairy muscular leg. She dipped the washcloth into the basin, wrung it out, touched it to his skin.
Her hair was spun gold, once he’d seen her bathe naked in a Texas stream. He wanted to take her into his arms. “How is your gringo tonight?” he asked, sarcasm and jealousy in his voice. “Drunk yet?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“He knows it hurts you, but does he care? You see how much he loves you?”
She looked at his naked hairy leg, raised her face to see black mustache, white teeth, big brown eyes.
“Señora, you know what we should do right now?”
She felt a strange tingle at the base of her spine. Maintaining her composure, she adjusted the bandage carefully on the wound.
“Señora, we are alone. Think with your heart, instead of your mind.”
“Be still, or it’ll hurt.”
She tied the bandage, felt his animal heat, last night she slept with John Stone, what was happening to her? A woman couldn’t feel this way about two men. She tightened the knot, looked at him thoughtfully.
He wanted to place his arms around her, but couldn’t stand. “Señora, listen carefully. I have owned many ranches, and am skilled with cattle. John Stone, he knows little about cattle. You made him trail boss because he knows how to fight, and I admit he was good when the bullets were flying. I could never take that away from him. Tonight he saved my life, and I would do the same for him. But he does not know cattle, and he does not love you. John Stone is a lost little boy. You can see it on his face. He is not for you.” He placed a hand on his heart. “I will be your slave forever.”
“You want a Mexican señorita, not me. No man’ll ever tell me where I can’t go.”
He looked at her for a few moments, and her skin was gold as her hair in the light of the lantern. He swallowed hard and said, “My men will laugh at me, but you win. If you want to go to any disgusting place, even a stupid and filthy hootchy-kootchy dance, I will not stop you, but I will insist on my right to go with you, as your husband and protector.”
The robe was opened nearly to his waist. If she married a Mexican vaquero, she’d say good-bye forever to the world she’d grown up in. Her mother would turn over in her grave. But he was a rancher, and an intelligent man. Mexicans are descendants of Spaniards, a great culture. He certainly knows cattle. Even Truscott thought so.
~*~
Slipchuck walked into the Peacock Saloon, stood on his tiptoes, looked around. In a corner, with a bottle in the middle of the table, sat John Stone. “There he is right there,” Slipchuck said to the man who was looking for his pard.
“Which one?”
“The big gent with the Confederate cavalry hat. I’ll interduce you to him.”
Slipchuck threaded his way among tables crowded with cowboys, freighters, whores, gamblers, the lost, the found, men sleeping in their drool. He came to the table and placed his hand on John Stone’s shoulder. “Johnny, this feller here wants to palaver with you.”
John Stone turned around, saw vacant space.
“Where’d he go?” Slipchuck asked. “He was here just a few minutes ago.” He removed his hat and scratched the few remaining hairs on the top of his head.
“What’re you doing here?” Stone asked. “You’re supposed to be with the herd.”
“Ephraim sent me in fer supplies. Where’s Cassandra?” Slipchuck looked at the bottle of whiskey.
“Help yourself.”
There were no extra glasses on the table. Slipchuck walked to the bar and picked a glass from the rows sitting upside down on the wet towel. He heard somebody mention the name “Frank Quarternight” and it rang a bell in his mind, but lots of bells rang in those old caverns, and he couldn’t make sense of half of them.
~*~
Ledbetter was a drunkard, a bum, his rags stank, and he’d been kicked in the head by a horse. His boots were worn to the bare soles of his feet, which was why he walked gingerly into the saloon. The famous gunfighter stood at the bar, his hook shining in the light of lanterns suspended from the ceiling. “Mr. Quarternight,” he said softly. “I found yer man.” Quarternight’s eyes darted to him. “Are you sure?” The messenger of death nodded solemnly.
~*~
The floor shook beneath Stone’s chair, as if a giant were walking toward him. He turned and saw Koussivitsky, attired in his new cowboy clothes.
“I thought you’re supposed to be with the herd,” Stone told him.
“Boss lady let me stay in town, because I have business with the carnival. Tomorrow I work at the pens, but tonight...” He snapped his fingers. “Woman, bring me a glass.” Then he sat next to John Stone and twirled his long mustache. “You look sick, my friend. What is wrong?”
“Women,” said Slipchuck on the other side of the table. “They’ll do it every time.”
“Pah!” said Koussivitsky. “I am here in this strange land because of a woman!”
“I thought,” Stone said, “you were here because you massacred a village.”
“That is true, but a woman was behind it. We were supposed to be married, and then, two weeks before the wedding, she said nyet. She did not give reason, and left for Saint Petersburg next morning. I was so unhappy I wanted to die. Every day I think of shooting myself. She have such big breasts. I pointed the gun to my head many times. And then came the rebellion in Prozhny. I was ordered to put it down, and I was so mad, well … I destroyed entire village because of a woman.”
Quarternight entered the Peacock Saloon. In a comer, behind a table of gamblers, he saw the grinning skull face of the dead girl.
Everyone stared at Quarternight. Chairs scraped against the floor, jackpots were scooped up, men got out of the way. Ledbetter basked in the radiance of the great man. “There he is, the big galoot in the comer to the right, wearin’ the old Confederate Army hat.”
Quarternight dropped coins into his hand. Ledbetter fled like Judas to the dark shadows. Quarternight looked at Stone, and Stone’s back was to the door, the stupid bastard.
It grew silent in the saloon. Stone turned around, saw a man with sloping shoulders and a big belly walking toward him.
“John Stone?” Quarternight asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“Frank Quarternight.”
Stone knew the name from somewhere. “What can I do for you?”
There was silence for a few moments. “My brother was Dave Quarternight, and you killed him. On yer feet, you son of a bitch. Yer time has come.”
Stone felt like a ton of iron, so drunk he could barely see. Rooney stepped forward, and Quarternight fast-drew on him. “Hold it right there. Everybody back. This is between John Stone and me.”
Stone dragged himself to his feet, pulled up his pants, tried to focus on the gunfighter in front of him. He always knew it’d happen someday, he’d be too drunk to defend himself.
Rooney raised his hand in a gesture of peace. “This man’s in no condition to fight. Sit down and have a drink on me, my friend. Let’s talk this out like reasonable men.”
“Step back,” Quarternight said, “or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
Stone tried to clear his mind. He didn’t want anybody to fight his battles. “I can take care of myself,” he muttered drunkenly. “Rooney—get the hell away from here.”
Rooney moved into the line of fire and went for his gun. Quarternight pulled his trigger, the saloon thundered with the shot. Rooney rocked on his heels, blood spreading over his white shirt. Quarternight turned his gun toward Stone, and Stone realized he was going to die. He recalled the Gypsy’s curse, grit his teeth for the impact of the bullet.
Another shot resounded through the saloon. Quarternight was hit before he could fire at John Stone. The bullet surprised Quarternight, his eyebrows furrowed, he turned toward his assailant, trying to hold his gun level.
An old gray-bearded man drew another bead on him. Slipchuck’s gun spoke again, and Quarternight was thrown against the tables, bleeding through two holes in his torso. It never occurred to him that the decrepit geezer would challenge from his blind side. He took two steps backward, fell to the seat of his pants. The dead girl knelt before him and kissed his lips. He sagged to the floor, darkness fell over him. Frank Quarternight had fought his last duel. It was silent in the saloon. Slipchuck holstered his gun. “Somebody call the doc.”
Stone gazed at Rooney lying on the floor in a widening pool of blood. Rooney’s eyes fluttered. At West Point it was drilled into their heads from the moment they arrived: you’d die for each other, and there was no question about it.
Guilt tore Stone’s heart apart. He got to his feet, stumbled toward the table, reached for the bottle of whiskey, snatched it up, pulled the cork, raised it to his mouth.
His hand shook. If he drank that whiskey, it’d be the end of him. The genie in the bottle sang her siren song. Stone screamed like a wounded animal and threw the bottle against the wall. It shattered, whiskey flew in all directions. He turned toward the back door of the saloon.
“That old fart shot Frank Quarternight!”
Stone opened the back door, nearly fell on his face. The cool night air hit him, and he thought of Rooney dying on the floor. He dropped to his knees. “What have I done!”
In a mad frenzy he pulled out his gun and pointed it at his head. His finger tightened around the trigger, but somehow, of all possible memories to assault his mind, he remembered the parade ground at West Point. He’d marched alongside Ashley Tredegar, Beauregard Talbott, Lewton Rooney, Judson Kilpatrick, John Pelham, Fanny Custer, George Watts, and all the rest of them. He couldn’t betray them. What would Marie think when she found out he blew his brains out behind a saloon?
He looked at the sky, saw Orion the warrior with his belt and sword of stars. A great merciful cloud of blackness swept over Stone. He fell on his face next to the privy, out cold.
~*~
The gold gleamed in the darkness. Blasingame ran his fingers through it, raised his hands in the air, let the coins fall back to the pile. Gold was a magic substance, a mineral alive. No lantern burned, but a light shone from the depths of the gold. It could buy an army of rampaging bastards who’d wipe Sundust off the face of the earth.
He heard three short knocks and three long ones, closed the saddlebags, threw them over his shoulder, opened the door a crack. Buckalew stood there, holding the reins of two horses, one of which was his, the other stolen only five minutes ago from the hitching rail in front of the Brazos Saloon.
Blasingame climbed onto the saddle of the stolen horse. He looked back over his shoulder at the ramshackle little cowtown on the edge of nowhere. Tomorrow night you won’t exist.
The ex-pastor of the Mount Zion Church of God followed his son out of town. Blasingame had arrived with nothing but his Bible and faith in his God-given mission, and was leaving with a bag of gold. He’d been unable to find ten good men in Sundust, and God would rain fire on it, sweep the town from the face of the earth.
Something told Reverend Blasingame not to turn around and look at Sundust, otherwise he’d turn into a pillar of salt. It was like a message from God, and frightened him. He didn’t look back once in his saddle for the remainder of the night.