Chapter 14

Tina was doing her best to feed her morning herd and keep up with all that was going on in town at the same time. And considering her only view was out the back window of the diner, she was doing pretty well.

She’d been the one to send Janny off to deliver breakfast to Mrs. Yates. She’d seen Janny come running, empty-handed, from the boardinghouse and head straight for Dare’s. She’d sprinted past the window in Glynna’s kitchen, gone into the home where she now lived with her new pa, Dare, then come right back out and returned to the diner. Glynna’s little daughter reported that Melissa had asked for help and Jonas had volunteered.

Tina saw Jonas striding toward the house the Yates family had just moved into. She wondered if her brother was taking a shift watching Mrs. Yates, or was something else going on? Janny didn’t have any answers.

Tina was too busy to think about it during the breakfast rush, but she had a good view of the stretch between Dare’s house and Vince’s. She never saw Jonas return and she began to worry something had happened that required a parson’s care.

It wasn’t much later that Vince, Dare, and Luke came out of Dare’s place and moved away from Vince’s house. They seemed to be heading for the north side of town. Maybe they were coming over for coffee and cobbler. Tina glanced at the pan left over from breakfast and was glad she had it to offer. She was also glad she’d been at this cooking business for a few months so she didn’t have to pay much attention to it. She could spend her time instead puzzling over what was going on.

It was far more interesting than cooking.

Vince swung open the batwing doors of the saloon. Stepping in, he was hit by the stench. Old whiskey, heavy tobacco, no interest in scrubbing. Those were all reason enough not to visit this saloon, though it was his not being a drinker that always kept him away.

Duffy Schuster stood behind the bar, leaning on his elbows, talking with his brother. Those two were a big part of the smell. It wasn’t just the floors that didn’t get scrubbed in this place. In fact, there were still smudges of mud on Duffy’s neck left from Tina’s picketing mud fight. Duffy needed to be careful or something might grow in all that dirt.

Duffy straightened. Griss turned, leaning on one elbow as he watched Vince come in with Dare and Luke a step behind. None of them were customers, so Duffy knew there was another reason for the visit.

The familiar whap-whap of swinging doors told Vince his friends were now inside.

“Coffee on the stove, men. Pour yourself a cup if you’ve a mind. No charge.” Duffy was none too bright. Vince had always figured the man was doing good to keep his saloon in operation. But it took cunning to find an Indian tribe and then contract with them without getting into trouble. For many an Indian brave would fight to prevent the encroachment of firewater into his tribe. So maybe Vince had underestimated Duffy.

The man’s dull look and heavy Texas twang might be covering a sharp mind. Or maybe Duffy wasn’t selling liquor illegally, and someone had staged the trouble at Luke’s the other night to point at the native folks.

Vince glanced back at Luke, who carried the gunnysack of empty bottles. “We’d like to know if these came from your saloon.” Luke upended the bag, this time with a lot less care than he’d shown at Dare’s house, and a few of the bottles shattered when they fell to the floor. “And if this whiskey came from here, I want to know who bought it from you.”

Duffy looked from the mess on his floor to the anger in Luke’s eyes and got very quiet. He came around and bent down beside the bottles. Plenty of them were still unbroken, so the man could see they were the same brand of whiskey that stood in bottles behind the bar.

Shaking his head, Duffy said, “Hardly no one takes a full bottle out of here, let alone this many.” Duffy rose to face Luke head-on.

“Only someone did, Duffy,” Luke said, defiant. “I found these on my land, and I had a hail of bullets fired at my house the other day that barely missed me and my wife. I followed a trail to the bottles, all of ’em empty, and no one around here deals in this devil’s brew but you.”

Duffy’s eyes seemed to look past Luke, as if he were straining his brain to remember. “Looky here, Stone. I’m telling you, I don’t do that big a business in here. You can check with the mule skinner who brought in the last load of supplies. He’ll tell you he unloaded a case of bottles, nine in all. I’ve still got four of ’em under my bar. And that was going on two weeks ago, before New Year’s Eve night, and I served a heap of that case of whiskey then. One drink at a time.”

Luke scowled at Duffy, who took a nervous step back. Luke was whipcord lean, with the muscles of a Texas rancher who spent all day wrangling cattle that outweighed him by a thousand pounds. And he was as hard as the land he fought to wrest out a living. It spoke well of Duffy’s common sense that he was scared.

Dare strode over to the bar, and the sudden movement made Griss straighten. As Dare went around back, Vince noted that neither man wore a gun, though it was well known that Duffy kept a shotgun on a couple of hooks under the bar.

Reaching down, Dare pulled up four still-corked bottles, holding them by the necks, two in each hand. He set them on the bar with a loud clunk, then brought up a fifth bottle that was half full.

“And I’ve got the empties for the other four bottles on the lower shelf,” Duffy said. He acted like Dare was producing proof positive of his innocence by finding those bottles. “You see—all my order is accounted for.”

“The empties are down here, sure enough,” Dare said. “But just because these bottles are here doesn’t mean you didn’t buy more and sell ’em to someone. The word of a saloonkeeper isn’t worth much.”

“There’s no reason to go and talk that way about us,” Griss cut in. “We’ve always done an honest business here in Broken Wheel, and no one can say we don’t sell good liquor for a fair price.”

“How are we supposed to question a mule skinner who’s been gone for two weeks?” Vince asked, drawing Duffy’s attention away from Luke.

Duffy’s eyes were moving between Luke and Vince and Dare. He looked nervous enough to make a run for it.

No new orders came in, and as Tina did preparation for dinner and cleanup from breakfast, she wondered what the men were up to. Tina, who’d spent her life cooking for two while living with Aunt Iphigenia, was finding a talent for feeding a crowd.

With soft splashes she dropped the last of the peeled and cubed potatoes into the water. She’d started a huge rack of venison roasting for the noon meal before she’d cracked the first egg for breakfast. She lifted the heavy potato pot and set it on the hot stove. The potatoes would be tender and ready to mash shortly before the men came storming in for dinner. An apple brown Betty was ready to pop in the oven when the venison came out. Tina liked serving the dessert warm.

Glynna picked that moment to come into the kitchen, and Tina braced herself to do more cooking. It wasn’t unusual for a straggler to ask for a late breakfast, and Glynna always got a few coffee drinkers midmorning.

Instead of asking for more eggs and hashbrowns, Glynna blew at blond hair wisps hanging in her eyes. She toted a tray loaded with dirty plates and utensils and coffee cups. She looked worn out.

“This is the last of it. I locked the door.” Glynna smiled at Tina. “I’m not letting anyone in for morning coffee today. I’m hoping Ruthy will wake up and we all can get a chance to visit, though I won’t wake her. She must be exhausted. I’ve never seen her sit still, let alone nap.”

“Coffee and a visit sound wonderful, but would you mind terribly if I ran over to the boardinghouse first?” Tina rolled down the sleeves of her blue gingham dress.

“Do you need to see Vince for something?” There was a strange tone in Glynna’s voice that made Tina look at her sharply.

Glynna couldn’t know anything. Surely the fact that a man kissed a woman wasn’t apparent on that woman’s face.

“I saw Jonas go over quite a while back.” Tina buttoned her cuffs, focusing overly on the chore so she wouldn’t have to look Glynna in the eye. “I’m a bit worried after Missy asked Janny to go for help. I don’t know where the rest of the men are. I saw them leave your house with Luke. Since they all left Mrs. Yates alone with Missy, and Jonas went over and didn’t come back, I just want to make sure there’s no trouble.”

“You go check on your brother.” Glynna set the tray down beside the sink. “Give Missy a break if she needs one, too. We’ll finish the cleanup just fine on our own. We’re all going to have to work a bit harder until we figure out all that Mrs. Yates is going to need.”

Tina untied her apron and hung it on a nail by the back door, then pulled on her coat. “I’ll see if Missy can come here for coffee, otherwise maybe we could go there and include Mrs. Yates in our visit.”

Glynna’s face brightened. “That’s a good idea. Either one has to beat serving food to a horde of starving men.”

Smiling, Tina hurried over to Vince’s. She reached the front door and decided to just slip inside quietly. It seemed more like a boardinghouse than a private home, and anyway, what if Mrs. Yates was resting?

She heard muted voices coming from the back of the house. So she headed back there, walking down a hallway that sided the stairway, thinking to invite everyone to the diner. It was mostly a female gathering, but Jonas could come or he could go find his friends. Luke Stone had been upset about something this morning, though Tina hadn’t heard what. A door stood ajar near the back of the building, and she swung it wide to see . . .

Jonas jumping away from Missy as if she were a hot potato. But he was still too slow. Tina had seen exactly what was going on.

Vince moved closer, pinning Duffy to the spot with his cold eyes.

Sounding falsely belligerent, Duffy said, “I’m telling you that’s all the drink I’ve got, and no one ordered more. You’ve got my word, and that’s all the proof you’re going to get.”

“You got a bill of sale?” Luke shoved on Duffy’s shoulder to earn the man’s full attention.

Scowling, Duffy said, “I don’t hold with all that fuss. I can’t read anyhow, so what good is a pile of paper going to do me? The mule skinner brings me the same order every time, and he takes away the same amount of money to pay for it. A man’s word is his bond out here in Texas, and my word is good. You can’t find a single man in this town to say different.”

Luke cocked his head sideways and seemed to burn a hole right through Duffy. “I’ll tell you how I see it, Schuster. Someone’s buying a lot of drink in this town, and you’re the only man who has it to sell. It’s been long enough that freight wagon should be through Broken Wheel again any day, and you can believe I’ll be askin’ him some questions. And if I don’t get answers I like, I’ll be back.”

Luke pressed closer to Duffy and towered over him. “If my wife had been so much as scratched, you wouldn’t still be standing when I left this place. So if you’re lying, you’d better tell whoever’s buying from you that you’re out of the bottle-at-a-time business.”

Duffy cowered like a scared rodent, but he didn’t change his story. “I can’t stop doing what I ain’t doing to begin with, Stone.”

Vince wanted to try a little rough justice on Duffy, see if they could pound some answers out of him. But Vince was the law in Broken Wheel, and that wasn’t the way a lawman conducted himself. He’d learned that from reading his volumes of Blackstone’s Commentaries.

After Sheriff Porter’s disregard for the law, it didn’t sit right with Vince to follow the man in his corruption.

“We’ll talk to the freighter.” Vince came up beside Luke just in case his friend needed to be restrained. “And if we don’t like what we hear, we’ll be back.”

Vince waited until Luke quit trying to burn the truth out of Duffy with his blazing eyes and stormed out. Dare came out from behind the bar and followed Luke. Vince was right behind them. The three of them strode down the steps and into the deserted street.

“He’s lying.” Luke turned to go back to the tavern, ready to get answers with his fists.

Vince grabbed Luke’s arm and stopped him cold. “We don’t know that, Luke.”

Turning on Vince, Luke said, “I’m not leaving town without some answers.”

“You’re not going to find them in there. Duffy is either telling the truth or he’s covered his tracks. We have to wait for the supply wagon to come back.”

Luke looked frustrated enough to swing a fist at anyone who thwarted him. “Those bullets came too close to Ruthy. I won’t let anyone hurt her, for sure not a low-down polecat like Duffy Schuster.” Luke took a step forward until he was nose to nose with Vince. They were close in height, yet Luke probably outweighed Vince by twenty pounds, all of it iron-hard muscle.

Vince was tough, but he didn’t figure he could win a fight with the kid. “Luke, I’d let you pound on him, except I got a bad feeling in there.”

“What do you mean, ‘bad’?” Dare asked.

“Duffy was sure enough afraid, no doubt about it. But I listened to a lot of men tell stories both true and false while I was spying during the war and policing at Andersonville, and to me, Duffy sounded like he was telling the whole truth.”

Luke turned to face the saloon. “Then it’s Griss. Maybe he orders bottles on the side.”

“Griss sounded like he was telling it square, too.” Vince stood side by side with Luke. Dare was to the far side of the kid, and he faced the tavern, too. The three of them in a row, frustrated. Angry. Vince admitted he was also worried. Flying lead wasn’t a good fit for a lady with a baby on the way. Come to that, it wasn’t a good fit for anyone.

“Then if it isn’t them, who is it?” Luke asked. But they all knew there was no answer, not here and not now.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this, and we’ll do it fast. Let’s start by going back to where you found those bottles and look harder for tracks.” Vince added, “How sure are you that the Indians weren’t the ones who left those bottles?”

“It ain’t them. I know it in my gut. But I’ve got no proof.” Shaking his head as if to escape his bleak thoughts, Luke turned toward the diner. “I want to go see my wife. I can hardly bear to let her out of my sight.”

Dare said, “I’ve got a book for her to read about having a baby, Luke. Come on back to my place and I’ll get it for you, then we’ll go sit with the womenfolk for a while.”

“I’ll go get my mother and Missy and Jonas and bring them over, too,” Vince said. “Jonas and Missy are probably long past ready for some help.”