And whether he failed or succeeded today
would be his responsibility.
Once he reached Decker Prairie proper, Jeff’s
foreboding was overshadowed by a sense of amazement. He’d only been
gone for a couple of weeks, but the town looked different somehow.
A new sign hung over the café, except it didn’t really look new.
Judging by the way it had weathered, it must have seen at least one
winter. Why hadn’t he noticed it till now? And the bakery—hadn’t it
been white before? Today the storefront was pale green with
cream-colored trim.
He was so busy taking in the changes around
him as Kansas pulled him farther into town, it was several moments
before he realized that the people on the street were watching him.
He heard his name as heads bent discuss him. Jeff did his best to
ignore the curious stares—hell, he knew they’d talked about him all
along, there was no reason it should bother him now. It had just
never seemed so obvious to him.
As he neared the Liberal Saloon, he let
Kansas slow down again, and the reins grew slack in his hands.
Don’t look at it, don’t listen to the sound
of it.
Don’t even smell it.
But it was all there, as unmistakable to him
as a stock tank would be to a thirsty horse. From those open doors
he smelled stale cigar smoke, and the rich, yeasty scent of warm
beer. The piano clanked out the heart-rending “Rose Connelly.” All
of it familiar, inviting. It wasn’t the camaraderie that drew him.
Jeff was not a sociable drinker; he liked to sit alone in a corner
or on a back porch somewhere.
No, what pulled at him now was the simple
promise of forgetfulness. One drink, maybe. What could just one
drink hurt? His heart thudded in his chest. If he didn’t buy the
whole bottle he wouldn’t be able to take it back to the farm with
him—
“
Thinking about going
inside?”
Snapped out of his reverie, Jeff looked
around and saw Will Mason on the sidewalk on the opposite side of
the street, sitting in front of the barbershop.
“
No, I’m not,” he snapped impatiently.
Yes, that was exactly what he’d been thinking.
Will pushed himself out of his chair and
walked over to meet him in the street. “Well, you’re dead stopped
in front of the saloon, Jeff.”
“
I’m just here to buy seed and a couple
of other things for the farm.”
“
That’s good.” Will pushed his hat off
his brow and considered him for a moment. “You know, you’re
beginning to look like the man I used to know. Life out there must
agree with you.”
“
It isn’t like you gave me much
choice.” Jeff resented what he saw as Will’s high-and-mighty
attitude. He felt like a kid having to answer to a
schoolmaster.
Will scanned him up and down. “It doesn’t
seem to have hurt you.”
Jeff chuckled but not with humor. “Well,
don’t get your hopes up. No matter what happens, I’m never going to
be the man you used to know. Never again. That man is dead.”
Will shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Someday
down the line, you might even be glad I sent you to the Ford
farm.”
The tension of being in town and sparring
with Will burned Jeff’s fuse down to the last inch. “Look, Will,
you got your way. Don’t expect to be thanked, too.”
The sheriff pushed his hat down again. “I
didn’t do it for you. I was helping out Miss Althea.
“
Uh-huh.”
“
Just remember, Jeff. For you, one
drink is too many, and a hundred wouldn’t be enough.”
Jeff slapped the reins on the mule’s back and
the wagon lurched forward. Then he turned down the side street that
ran between the Liberal Saloon and the feed store. He set the wagon
brake and jumped down, raising a cloud of dust when his boots hit
the dirt.
Sheriff or not, friend or not, Will Mason
wasn’t his keeper. Jeff had seen too much and lived too many years
to let anyone, including Althea Ford, treat him like a naughty boy.
They could tell him to jump, but he’d be damned if he’d ask how
high. Reaching into his back pocket for the ten dollars she’d given
him, he closed his fist around the coin and set off to prove
that.
~~*~*~*~~
“
By God—by God, ain’t that Hicks over
there?” Cooper Matthews pushed himself away from the doorframe and
pointed a dirty finger at a man jumping down from a wagon. From his
vantage point near the back door of Kincade’s Livery, Cooper could
see the town’s main street and most of the side street next to the
Liberal, including all who came and went there.
“
I won’t bother gettin’ up to look at
that son of a bitch, if you don’t mind,” Floyd Endicott groused,
and aimed a stream of tobacco juice at a sand bucket. He sat on an
old milking stool by a back stall, alternately gnawing on a piece
of jerky and a tobacco chaw. Between bites he used the blade of a
pocketknife to dig at the festering wound in his hand caused by a
splinter. The same hand was missing its index finger, lost when an
angry madam had slammed his hand in the door of her safe for
pilfering her cash. “I wouldn’t even waste a fart on the effort,”
he added primly, as if such conservation was noble.
“
What the hell is he doin’ in town?”
Cooper muttered. “I figured he was cozying up with those two crazy
Ford women.”
“
Who cares what he does?” Floyd asked,
screwing up his face when the point of the knife went too
deep.
“
I b’lieve we ought to keep an eye on
him, watch what he’s up to. I got old scores to settle with him.
Didn’t you say you wanted to get even with him, too? For that time
he put you in the pokey overnight?”
“
Watchin’ ain’t gettin’
even.”
Cooper, whose overalls made him look like a
bag of soup bones, folded his arms across his chest and continued
to watch Hicks with a ruminant expression and narrowed eyes. “No,
but he’s givin’ me an idea. And I got a plan comin’ up. A big
one.”
“
I got a big one comin’ up myself,”
Floyd said, scratching his crotch. His grin was mostly toothless
and excessively salivary. “Why don’t we wander over to New Era and
find them gals again? They ain’t beauties, but they don’t charge
much.”
“
Get your head out of your pants,
Floyd,” Cooper snapped. “This is more important.”
“
Aw, shit, what’s more important than
gettin’ a leg over a female?”
“
This is . . . yup, I’ll
start slow-like. And I’ll fix that Ford bitch in the bargain.
She’ll learn what it means to double-cross Cooper Matthews.” He
turned to look at Floyd. “I’ll bet you’d like to get even with her
too, especially after she wouldn’t pay you. Are you comin’ with
me?”
The other man tossed aside the remainder of
the jerky and folded his knife. “Hell, I guess so. If we ain’t
goin’ to New Era, I got nothin’ better to do.”
~~*~*~*~~
“
Just the shirt and the pants, then,
Jeff?” Eli Wickwire peered at Jeff over the top rims of his
spectacles, and gestured at the shirt and two pairs of dungarees on
his counter. He literally had the biggest mouth Jeff had ever seen.
He guessed that the shop owner could push a whole apple between his
jaws and still be able to close them. “There are lots of other
things to choose from here—you remember my motto: A Wealth of Goods
for Man and Beast.” He pointed at the sign hanging behind him that
said the same thing. It seemed to be true—Jeff had only to look
around to see all the merchandise Eli had for sale.
“
Yeah, I remember, but this stuff will
do, Eli. I have to be getting along.” Jeff shifted from one foot to
the other. He either had to get to the Liberal Saloon before his
conscience changed his mind, or he had to leave while he still had
the will to do so.
Eli, however, was in no hurry at all.
“
It’s good to see you out and about,
Jeff. You’re looking more like an upright, breathing human again.
How’s it going out there at the Ford farm?” He tore a length of
brown paper from the roll at the end of the counter and began
wrapping the clothes. “You going to get the planting done and fix
things up a little?”
Jeff tried not to sigh too loudly. “Something
like that.”
“
The place has sure gone downhill since
Amos died. But then his daughters wouldn’t be able to handle it,
just the two of them. Althea’s had her hands full since she was
just a girl. And I doubt that Olivia would be much help to her.
Pity about the younger sister—she has those fits, and Althea won’t
leave her.”
Jeff’s spinning impatience slowed to
accommodate his curiosity. “Fits? I thought maybe she was
addled.”
Eli shook his head. “Nope, she’s all right in
the head—well, I s’pose that might be stretching it. The whole
family was never quite right, you know.”
Jeff did know, or at least he’d heard it, but
he didn’t feel comfortable trading gossip with Eli as if they were
a pair of meddling old ladies. Anyway, except for a couple of
eccentricities, like the business about the barn door, Althea
seemed fine. Very fine. He reached into his pocket and took out the
money for the clothes, hoping that cash would distract the man.
“Here, Eli—”
But he simply kept talking as he wrote up the
sale. “ ’Course, the girls’ mother strung herself up when Althea
was, oh, seven-eight years old and her sister was still in diapers.
I guess that might make anyone a little odd.”
Stunned, Jeff snapped his gaze to Eli’s round
face. “God—she hanged herself?”
“
Yes—well, I guess that’s what
happened. Amos never said a peep about it. I guess he didn’t want
everyone in town to know, but it’s pretty hard to keep something
like that quiet. Word got out that the preacher wouldn’t say even
word one over Lucinda’s grave—suicide was an abomination in the
eyes of God, he said. So there wasn’t any funeral, but I remember
Amos bringing his wife to the undertaker’s with Althea on the wagon
seat next to him.” Eli looked up and gazed across the store,
obviously remembering the scene. “Olivia wasn’t more than a few
months old, I don’t think. I can still see Althea holding the baby
in her arms, her little face pale and blank. I’d never seen a kid
look like that before. She had old eyes, like she’d lived fifty
years instead of eight.” He shook his head and then chuckled, “It
made quite a fuss around here, I can tell you. It was a long time
before something else came along to cause a stir like that. I don’t
think it was until that Matthews boy—” Eli broke off then, his face
crimson and the great cavern of his mouth hanging open, obviously
realizing who he was talking to. Jeff’s own jaw clenched, but he
simply stared back at Eli and said nothing. “W-well, it was a
shame, of course, the Ford girls losing their mother and
all.”
The transaction came to a swift end after
that, and Jeff found himself back out on the sidewalk with the
paper-wrapped package under this arm. The afternoon sun was heading
down the sky and he knew he should get back to the farm. The
Liberal Saloon was just a few paces across the street, closer than
he wished now.
Somehow, learning about Althea’s mother put a
different face on things. Jesus—suicide. A chill rippled through
him. As desperate as he’d felt at times, he’d never thought of
putting a gun to his head. Or a rope around his neck. When he died,
he expected something else—or someone else—to do the deed. What a
hell of a thing to happen to a kid, to lose her mother that
way.
Jeff walked down the plank sidewalk toward
the side street, kicking up dust as he went, and the wagon and
Smithfield’s mule came into view. Kansas turned a baleful look on
him, but he barely noticed. He was looking at the wagon.
It was an old wagon, he realized. Old enough
to have served as Lucinda Ford’s hearse. Drawing closer, he looked
at the seed sacks on the rough-planked bed and could easily imagine
a woman lying there instead, wrapped in a quilt. And up there on
the sprung seat, a scared little girl had sat who now bore the
responsibility of a sister who would never really grow up. Suddenly
his heart ached for Allie—Jeff’s own life had taken a seriously
wrong turn in the last few years, but at least he’d had the chance
to be a kid. The chance to grow up and know love, and the soul-deep
satisfaction of physical closeness with another person, even if it
hadn’t lasted. Allie had known none of that, he was certain. Her
innocence and almost fearful modesty were so obvious.
The ache in his chest made Jeff realize that
more of his feelings were coming to life again. Damn it all, he
didn’t want that. All feelings ended up being the same one
eventually: pain. And God knew he’d had enough of that to last the
rest of his life. It had flowed over him like a swift-running river
rushed over rocks, wearing away, wearing away. He didn’t think he
could stand any more.
Only one thing had made him forget that pain.
Sighing, he reached into his pocket and fingered the change left
from the seed and his clothes. He looked at the side of the
building next to him. Painted in yard-high yellow-and-black
letters, The Liberal Saloon.
Just one drink—what could one drink hurt?
Just one and then he’d go back to the
farm.
His hand closed around the money in his
pocket. Just one—
“
Well, Floyd, look who we got here. I
do believe it’s our old sheriff.” Jeff didn’t need to see who was
behind him to recognize Cooper Matthews’ voice.
Jeff’s spine stiffened and every defensive
instinct came alive in him. He glared at both of them but kept
moving, hoping to walk away from them without another
confrontation. He knew neither man was very smart, but how far
would they push him right here on the street in broad daylight?