Gaffney, Patricia (16 page)

Ham, who was sitting on his father's shoulders for a better view,
pursed his lips and tried to whistle.

"Course, that be on a real racetrack, with a little puny
fella ridin' 'im. 'Bout as big as you is all he was, dressed up in shiny yellow
pants made outa silk."

" 'Cause he a jockey, right?"

"Right."

"A jockey," Ham breathed. Levi winked at Cady, thinking
the same thing she was: Ham had a new career goal. No more cowboy, no more sea
captain. They wouldn't hear the end of this for months.

The minutes crawled by. Now she
was
hot, and there wasn't a
speck of shade up here. Plus she had to listen to Glen and Willagail go on
about Jesse Gault's chest. It put her in a bad mood. You'd think they'd never
seen a man without his shirt before. "How come you call him Jesse?"
Ham interrupted her cranky thoughts to ask, and Willagail and Glen shut up to
hear the answer. Even Levi turned to look at her.

What could she say? "That's his name. His first name."

"He
told
you?" Glen said, amazed.

"Jesse," Willagail repeated, trying it out. "Jesse
Gault. Jesssee." She smiled a slow smile. "Yeah."

"They comin', they comin'!"

Levi made a grab for Ham's calves before he could lean too far
over his head. Everybody crowded over to the left edge of the balcony, craning,
straining. "Who's ahead? They neck and neck! No, Joe got a nose on 'im—no,
Mr. Gault's horse—I can't tell!"

"Jesse's winning!" Cady shrieked it, but her voice was
barely audible over all the yelling and screaming down below. She was pounding
her fists on the wooden railing, crying, "Go, go, go, go, go!" at the
top of her lungs—when she saw the blood.

She clutched at her temples, horrified, dumbstruck. His stallion
flew by in a cloud of dust and grit, a full length ahead of the roan, but she
didn't wait to see the end. Spinning for the doorway, she sprinted down the
dark hall, the stairs, through the empty saloon and down the long, echoing
boardwalk, out of breath and racing for the finish line.

A cheering crowd surrounded him. She saw money changing hands,
heard men yelling, "Hot damn!" More people had bet on Jesse than
she'd thought. She caught a glimpse of him from the back before he slid off his
horse—hands everywhere, helping him down—but then he disappeared. "Let me
through. Please. Let me by." Her urgency finally cleared a path, and she
ran to him. "Jess, Jess, are you hurt?"

"Hell, no. Ran under a limb, didn't duck far enough. I'm
fine." Nestor was shaking his hand up and down like a pump handle and
smacking him on the shoulder, the back. Jesse threw his arm around his sweating
horse's neck. Out of affection, Cady thought, until she saw his knees buckle.
She yelped, reaching out, but she couldn't stop his slow slide to the dirt.
Looking surprised, he landed hard on his rear end. His horse took two polite
steps sideways, and Jesse keeled over the rest of the way, flat on his back.

Doc Mobius appeared out of nowhere. "Stand back," he
commanded, "give him some air." Everybody obeyed except Cady, who
dropped to her knees and hovered over Jesse with fluttering hands. "It's a
scalp wound, that's all," Doc rumbled, feeling around in his hair.
"Scalp wounds bleed like the dickens." He used his handkerchief to
wipe blood off Jesse's forehead, and she saw with huge, knee-weakening relief
that the wound wasn't anywhere near his eye. Her worst fear—she could
acknowledge it now—was that he'd reinjured his right eye. That he would be
blind in one eye again.

He came to while they were carrying him into the Rogue. He weighed
more than he looked; it took three men, one of them Joe, to get him down the
street and into the saloon. They were headed for the stairs, fixing to carry
him up to his room, when he started to protest that he was fine, perfectly all
right, they should set him down right here by the bar, for convenience, because
he meant to drink half of it up tonight, and everybody else was welcome to the
other half, on him.

Doc Mobius finally agreed, after about two dozen men begged him
to, and in no time Jesse was ensconced in the corner table by Chico's piano,
hoisting a beer to himself and then one to Joe. Doc Mobius said, "I've got
to stitch up that crease in your head, though," and Jesse said,
"Fine, do it here." Somebody ran and got the doc's medicine bag, and
with about forty men looking on and offering free advice, he sewed up Jesse's
head. Willagail made a good nurse. Cady wanted to do it—assist the doc, hold
Jesse's hand—but at the first prick of the needle she had to leave the room.

Chico was playing his version of "The Gypsy's Warning,"
which meant pounding it out three times faster than normal and racing through
the lyrics:

"Trust him not, O gentle lady,

Though his voice be low and sweet.

Heed him not, that dark-eyed stranger,

Softly pleading at your feet."

Sheer velocity had the oddest people on their feet. Nestor Yeakes,
who as far as Cady knew had never danced in his life, was two-stepping with
Willagail; and those two old coots, Floyd and Oscar Schmidt, were prancing
around the floor with each other. It was a sight to see.

"Dance with me, Cady," Jesse begged with a grin,
trailing his hand across her back as she passed behind him, on her way to a side
table with a tray of beer glasses. She laughed at him and tossed her head,
flirting like a girl. She kept going, but she was tempted. There was such
liveliness in the air tonight, some kind of innocent gaiety that was hard to
resist. Part of it was the size of the crowd—enormous, she even had Wylie's
customers; his saloon must be stone empty, she gloated—and part of it was
Jesse.

He had a way about him. And it wasn't only that he was standing
round after round of drinks for the house, either. It was
him.
He made
people feel good. Even Doc Mobius—she wouldn't have believed this if she hadn't
seen it—Doc Mobius, who never even smiled, had actually laughed at Jesse's
cracks about not cutting his head off by accident, his jokes about inept
doctors and idiot patients. Who'd have thought? Everybody else was as surprised
as she was—pleasantly surprised, though. Jesse Gault wasn't only an outlaw
gunfighter; it turned out he was also a comedian.

Finding out he had a first name, a regular one like everybody
else, not "Diablo" or "Serpent," broke down another
barrier. He just wasn't the same man tonight, that was all. Cady couldn't take
her eyes off him, and neither could anybody else. Was it the alcohol? No; he
made a lot of toasts, but he'd just take a sip afterward, not chug down the
whole glass like the others.

But the most amazing thing was the way he treated Joe. No—the
most
amazing thing was the way Joe treated
him.
This was something else
she'd have had trouble believing without seeing. They'd become mates, buddies.
Great good friends. Right now they were singing "Hell Among the
Yearlin's" with their arms around each other. Along with everybody else,
she'd heard the story of their horse race a dozen times already—how Jesse had
led all the way to the river when Joe's mount caught up with him, how they'd
both flown like birds over a huge fallen oak tree lying in the road, how
Jesse's stallion had slowly, slowly narrowed the gap between them, how a
low-lying maple limb had almost killed him but hadn't slowed him down, and
finally, how he'd overtaken Joe on the home straightaway, with blood blinding
him and dizziness threatening to unseat him. If he'd told it by himself she
wouldn't have believed it; he sounded too heroic. But Joe backed up every
valiant detail and even threw in new ones Jesse either forgot or was too modest
to mention. The terms of the wager had long ago flown out the window; nobody
even mentioned Joe leaving town.

"He don't even look the same anymore, do he?" said Levi
as he filled glass after glass from the beer keg and set them on her tray.
"Look like a whole different fella."

"Yeah. You ought to hear the stupid things Willagail and Glen
say about him these days."

"I
do
hear." He made a disgusted face, and they
both laughed. "He don't pay them no min', though. Not like he min'
you."

"Me." She snorted, started to say something smart. But
she caught Jesse's eye, and he smiled at her over the heads of twenty men,
through the cloudy cigar smoke and the strains of "In the Baggage Coach
Ahead." A little tickle in her chest made her forget what she was going to
say. Lordy, Lordy, he was a good-looking man. He'd put on his shirt but he
hadn't buttoned it, and he never had put his shoes on. All he had to do was
stand there, an unlit cigarette in the side of his mouth, laughing and swapping
yarns with his new pals, and she was a goner. What made her think she was any
better than Glen or Willagail? The only difference between them was that she
knew enough to keep her mouth shut.

She likes me,
Jesse gloated.
She's crazy about me
tonight.
If he'd known a horse race was what would turn the trick, he'd
have challenged Joe or somebody else a long time ago.

"C'mon, Cady, have a seat," he invited the next time she
floated by with a tray.

"Can't, no time." She said it with a smile and a twinkle
in her eye, though, and he knew she would've if she could've. The boys were
running her ragged. She was just a waitress like the other girls tonight, with
no time to talk or flirt or deal blackjack. She hadn't even changed into one of
her slinky saloon dresses. Not that Jesse minded. He liked her in her daytime
clothes just as much. Maybe better. Right now she had on a black skirt and a
black-and-white-checked vest over a plain white blouse, and she looked pretty
as a picture. The blouse had a little black tie around the collar, but she'd
untied it because she was hot, and she'd unbuttoned the buttons down to her
bust. Not far enough so you could see her bird tattoo, but enough to remind you
in case you forgot, fat chance, that it was there. He liked the way her hair
was coming down in thick hanks from that neat daytime bun on top of her head.
Pretty soon, unless she did some fast repair work, it would all be down around
her shoulders, shiny and dark brown, sexy as hell. He couldn't wait to see
that. Trouble was, he didn't want anybody else to see it. Just him. When had
this happened?

"Paradise used to be called Coquin," Sheriff Leaver was
explaining to him. "Which means 'rogue' in French. That's what they named
the Indians around here—Rogues. They didn't have much use for 'em back in the
olden days."

Joe, who had been deep in conversation with Sam Blankenship, the
insurance and real estate man, turned around at that. Any talk of Indians
always got his attention. "No," he said, "the French didn't have
much use for them. So they stole their lands and trapped the animals that
sustained them, and then the English came and finished the job they'd
started."

The sheriff groaned and rubbed his face with both hands. Sam
Blankenship slid down in his chair. "Christ, Joe, could you let that go
for one night? Tom here's trying to tell Jesse the history of our town."

"Go ahead," Joe said with dignity. "But do not
forget to tell him of the massacre of my people at Gold Beach."

"Your people," scoffed Stony Dern. "Joe, you're
whiter'n I am."

"I am one thirty-second Tu Tu 'Tun, one thirty-second Nez
Perce, on the side of my great-greatgrandfather."

"Yeah, well, I'm a hun'ert percent Irish," piped up
Shrimp Malone, "but you don't see me goin' on about beer and potatoes and
singin' 'Katie Me Darlin'.' "

Everybody laughed. Even Joe.

"Anyway," said the sheriff, "as I was saying. They discovered
gold here in 'Coquin' back in 1852. I mean to tell you, this was one thriving
little town for about four years."

"What happened?"

"The gold dried up. That emptied the miners out, and a
smallpox epidemic drove off everybody else. Place turned into a ghost
town."

"Is that right? I didn't know that," Jesse said
politely. "I thought it was always here, always called Paradise."
Sheriff Leaver's pride in the town surprised him slightly. It was an all right
town, nothing wrong with it, but nothing really special as far as he could see.
And Leaver wasn't the only one; Stony and Sam, the two coots Floyd and Oscar,
Gunther Dewhurt, even dirty old Shrimp, they all seemed genuinely fond of the place,
and anxious to tell him about its semicolorful past. "What happened
then?" he asked obligingly.

"Well, in—"

"They done found gold again," Shrimp declared gleefully,
cutting Tom off. "North o' here no more'n a mile. You done raced by the
ol' Well Head Mine, you and Injun Joe—didn't you hear the stamp mill? Course,
it ain't the Well Head no more. Now that Wylie owns it, it's the Rainbow."
He leaned over and spat on the floor.

"Shrimp, what is that spittoon for?"

The prospector jumped guiltily. "Sorry. Forgot."

Cady kept going, didn't even break stride on her way to the bar
with another empty tray. But Jesse caught her eye as she passed, and she sent
him a private smile that blinded him. Made him go deaf, too; he missed the next
part of the history of Paradise.

"... big boom's about over now, though," he caught the
sheriff wrapping up. "People who came here for gold fifteen years ago and
fell in love with the land are finding other things to do now. Farming, cattle.
Logging. Sheepherding. Some folks say the railroad's coming to Grant's Pass one
of these days, and then you'll
really
see some growth."

"I hope it don't come," Floyd said.

"Now, why would you want to say a fool thing like that?"
complained Oscar.

" 'Cause that's what Wylie's countin' on. When the Rainbow
dries up, and Clarence Carter's mine, and the Sarena, and the Eagle, and the
Pickaxe—which you know they are all gonna peter out sooner or later, just like
Shlegel's mine, Cady's now, done two years ago—I'm sayin' when they all go,
Wylie'll be the only one left standin', on account o' by then he'll own
everything in the whole goddamn district. And everybody."

Silence.

"Shit, Floyd. Talk about a wet blanket."

Halfhearted laughter. Jesse looked around at the suddenly dour
faces of his friends—he was starting to think of some of them as friends. Floyd
wasn't the wet blanket, Wylie was. Just the mention of his name brought people
down, he'd seen it happen a dozen times. He caught himself about to say,
"Why don't you do something about him?" That was a sore subject, he'd
heard, between the sheriff and the towns- folk. And besides, what if one of his
brand-new buddies snapped back, "Why don't
you?"

He changed the glum mood the only way he could think of.
"Hey, Levi! Another round!"

The gay evening wore on. The pendulum clock over the bar chimed
ten; some men got up and staggered out, and some men started drinking in
earnest. Jesse fell quiet, content to watch Cady at work, cool and efficient,
sharp-tongued sometimes, other times sweet as your little sister. But gradually
he began to notice things about her—the fatigue in her ready smile, the droop
in her shoulders, the hand she pressed to the small of her back while she
waited for Levi to fill another batch of glasses. She was flagging. Willagail
and Glendoline looked whipped, too, but he didn't care about them.

When she turned from the bar, he stood up, blocking her path to a
back table. She smiled, lifting one shoulder to rub against a damp cheek,
waiting for him to move. Her mouth fell open when he took the tray out of her
hands and stepped around her. "What are you doing?" She followed him
back to the bar, laughing. "Jesse? What are you—"

"Listen up!" he called out in a loud voice, and the
saloon instantly fell silent. "From now on, any man who wants a drink on
me has to get it himself."

"Jesse, that isn't—"

"Got that? Because this lady's through."

She started to protest. He cut her off by dipping suddenly and
plucking her up off her feet. She shrieked, and the whole room erupted in
laughter and good-natured applause. "You're drunk," she accused,
locking her hands behind his neck. Her breath smelled like lemons. Lemonade.

"Not a bit." It was true. He'd drunk enough to make his
head stop hurting, not enough to cloud it. In fact, he'd never felt better in
his life.

He carried her back to his table. She started to squirm, thinking
he was going to sit down with her on his lap. He surprised her by saying,
"Get up, Malone," and kicking the prospector's chair leg. Shrimp
scrambled up as nimbly as he could with a cast on his leg, and Jesse set Cady
gently down in his vacated chair. He pulled his own chair up close and sat. And
then he bent and hauled her feet up onto his lap.

"Hey! Now, what—"

"Shhh. Quiet." He tucked her black skirts and white
petticoats around her ankles, very modest, before he started pulling on the
laces of her high-heeled boots. She gaped at him. Joe, who was, as usual,
talking to no one in particular about the Rogue Indian wars, stopped in
mid-atrocity to stare. So did everybody else. Ignoring them, Jesse wriggled off
one boot and then the other, tossing them to the floor. "Mmm, feet,"
he said, leaning over, pretending to sniff her stockinged toes. She squealed,
trying to yank her feet away, but he held on. "Hold still." He cupped
all the toes on her right foot in his hand and began to bend them all the way
back, then all the way forward, back, forward, using a strong, firm pressure.
Cady let her head fall back and groaned in ecstasy.

The men looked away, or laughed, or shifted with embarrassed amusement.
Jesse knew what was in their minds. Same thing that was in his. Funny—he'd seen
men get dangerous in situations like this, but nothing like that was going on
here. He'd have sensed it if it was. Not a one of them didn't wish he was in
Jesse's place right now, but nobody meant him any harm. Or Cady.