Here by the Bloods (13 page)

Weather shifts on a dime in the high desert. The seasons sneak up without warning. Just past sundown the cold moved in, not too long before the stares of the townspeople—who had viewed me kindly or at least with smug indifference until now—turned icy.

Storm takes it easy on me as we make our way behind the Dry Goods out toward the fire road that leads back to Sheriff's. But as the church clock strikes up midnight, the stallion finds the excuse to get ornery and makes sure I know that it is long past his bedtime. I tell him to quit his fussin', that it has been a long day for me too.

Save for those bodies clogging up the meetinghouse, and the two dozen or so more working through the whiskey down at Merle's place, the Bend has mostly emptied out. The exodus was quick, leaving streets littered and ravaged as people scattered like roaches back to their homes in the wake of the day's stunning revelations. The cleanup—a disheartening prospect—looms as tomorrow's problem.

I welcome the quiet and the return of the familiar sounds of night. The wilderness calls to me, pulling at my blood. I think about how things could be different. That first night in the Sangres, I could have just kept going, not tangling with the Snowman at all. The mountains have claimed better men than I. Or maybe I could have stayed up there, with a beard as thick as bramble, surviving on what the hard land provided and nothing more. But to steer that course would not have done right by the sheriff, not for all the good and care he and Missus bestowed upon me.

My mind reels. Maybe the blame for this sorry affair lies at my feet after all. Had my Injun nose not been so eager to key on a single whiff of quick match, the sheriff never would have gotten down to the bank in time to catch a round from the Snowman's barrel. The Bend would still have its lawman instead of being poisoned by Pinkertons. Boone's unchecked hubris and boundless greed—without Sheriff's calming presence to temper them—managed to sink the town in barely a week. If I had kept my mouth shut, as I had most of my life, this blackness would have never found purchase.

It was pure vengeance that drove me up into the hills and a thirst for glory that brought me back down again to march through the center of town with that cursed impostor trussed up behind me. It was attaining that glory that drew Maria's eye. And it was my vanity and lust for another woman that cost Maria her life.

Jed Barnes hated me for the color of my skin, but it was my refusal to carry myself as anything other than a godless, hooting savage that truly enraged him. Now I trudge home with a heavy, sickening understanding that what the rest of the town thinks about me is hardly any different than what Jed Barnes thought.

The morning will bring clearer heads, I know. The hysteria of blame will blow over and this melancholy that now grips me shall pass with no more disruption than a bout of indigestion. By the twelfth clang of the bell, I feel almost myself again.

As we pass the public stables behind the hotel, I hear a horse bray. The low, coaxing voice of a man trying to soothe it follows. The baritone utterance hardly coincides with that of the squeaky-voiced stable boy—Otis Chandler's eldest—who would normally be the one shoveling out manure at this hour. Either that or dozing on his bench. A quick scan of the perimeter shows no sign of the freckled lad. The weak glow of a lantern flickers far inside the rear door among the stalls.

My mind goes quickly to the prospect of horse thieves. I drop down off Storm and silently order him to stay put. The ground appears and vanishes beneath my toes as I glide toward the edge of the barn. Easing my thumb down onto the hammer of the Colt, I slip in through the wide-open door and train my eye on the darkness, waiting for the first hint of movement.

“Easy, girl.” His voice, pitched barely above a whisper, carries such soporific mellifluence that it could surely return even the most colicky baby to the depths of slumber.
The gentle horse rustler
. I close the distance between us, bring up the gun, and step into the lantern's paltry throw.

“Hold it there—,” I say. But the words have only just left my mouth when I recognize the familiar line of his sideburns and angular slope of his cheekbones and nose.

He turns, startled at the sight of the gun, but then slides seamlessly into a comfortable disposition of kinship. “Ah, Mister Two-Trees,” says the gambler.

“Mister Willis.”

“I see your reputation as a near-phantom is not ill-placed. You took me for a horse thief, I gather.”

“That I did,” I say, holstering the Colt.

“Well, you certainly had the drop on me. Well done, sir.”

“We're all good at something.”

“She's beautiful, is she not?”

“Come again?”

Avery Willis turns from me and runs his hand along the muscular, chestnut neck of the filly, his spoil from the poker game. “Her name's Athena. The goddess of beauty.”

“A fine horse.”

“One of the best I've seen.”

“I know you've seen many.”

Willis turns, serious now. “What do you mean by that?”

“The way you steeple-chased her out of here today after that Kansan—a horse you never rode? A man like that is no stranger to the saddle.”

The gambler casts his eyes downward, almost embarrassed, and lets his grimace fade into a smile. “Guilty as charged. Tennessee is horse country. My people start riding almost before we learn to walk.”

“No shame in handling a horse.”

“No, none at all. But I have found myself to fare better at the poker table affecting the manner of the citified gentry. Seems to inspire the gulls to push in their chips when they think they'll take down a tony fop who's never laid ass in a saddle. That blasted Kansan made me show my cards, if you'll pardon the pun.”

I nod and let the matter drift. Willis produces a few slices of apple and offers them, one at a time, to the filly, who plucks them hungrily from the gambler's flattened palm. When he is finished, Willis wipes his hands on his dungarees and stuffs them into the pockets of a plain brown jacket. Without his fanciful suits, the gambler looks more like a ranch hand than a prominent riverboat gambler. His cheeks have filled in with a shadowy stubble and I think how laborious his grooming must be when preparing to step out in the company of Miss Bichard. Such would be the effort required to keep pace with her elegance. He appears tonight, by any account, like a man who slipped out alone for a private errand and did not envision encountering
anyone
.

He picks up our conversation again, of his own accord. “I could've run him down, you know. The Kansan.”

“I have no doubt.”

“The scoundrel lit straight for the mountains, you see, but this filly here, she had not been properly cared for by that turnip who lost her to me and she started to cramp from lack of water. I eased up on her and decided to let the Sangres take care of the scoundrel. I feel certain the Bloods kept their end of the bargain.”

“So you come down to check on her?”

“Indeed. I have grown fond of her. And with last night's marathon game and today's—I don't yet know what we're calling today—I could not sleep. Something about a stable has always given me peace.”

“What happened to the stable boy? Little redheaded fella?”

“I sent him for fresh hay. I would not stuff a coffin mattress with the moldy chaff they serve in here.” Willis cranks up the wick on the lantern, stretching the pale glow a little deeper into the recesses of the barn. In the brightening light, the chocolate leather of his jacket bears the ashen desert dust of a man entirely unconcerned with form or fashion. The transformation is wholly remarkable.

“Say, hold the bridle, will you? I want to put a blanket on her,” he says, leading the filly a step down the stall, in my direction. I take the bridle in my hand. Willis picks up a fresh blanket from a stack in the corner. He unfolds it as he walks, sidestepping a faded gray satchel on the floor. “Cold is moving in,” he says.

“Winter be here 'fore you know it.” I reach out with my other hand and pet the filly's neck. The steam from her sweat rises into the night.

The sharp odor of autumn coaxes me from a dead, dreamless sleep. My limbs feel like lead. Every stiff, sore muscle groans for more rest. From far out in the barn I hear Storm announce his objection to some irritation or another. I blink my eyes to the graying dawn, but cannot keep them open in the stinging, acrid air. My lungs fill with morning and cough it out again.

Smoke.

Smoke!

The thought rams its way to the front of my brain. I roll out of bed onto the floor, pawing blindly for my trousers. I stuff my legs into them and stumble for my boots. Fiery motes of snowflaked ash dance in the thickening haze above my head. I crawl for the door and barrel through the choked air out onto the porch, where I buckle, hacking a hoarse, dry cough from the pit of my guts. Heaving on all fours, my hand falls upon a patch of tacky wetness. I bring my fingers up to my face and try to make sense of it through the burning water that wrecks my vision. It is paint. White paint. Drops of it spread across the floor of the porch back toward the door. I do not know many words by sight, but this one, scrawled across the front siding in bold, hastily slapped brushstrokes, is all too familiar:

 

HALFBREED

 

The letters barely have time to register when I force my mind back to the fire. The torches—branches of cured oak wrapped in oily rags—stick out from the crawl space at each corner of the house. I kick them free, one by one, and fling them out into the open, barren yard, but the flames have taken hold in places. I pivot and sprint for the pump behind the barn. I manage three paces before Storm's frightened wail cracks the air, freezing me in my tracks.

The barn is completely ablaze. Its clapboard roof pulsates from the heat in the waning seconds before the imminent collapse. I find my legs and churn them toward the sweeping flames that scratch their way between the slats in the barred swing-door. As I close the distance, the heifer's insistent lowing reverberates beneath the panicked, fluttering cries from the henhouse. I hear nothing from the goats or mules, and that is bad, but Storm's voice sounds strong and full of fight.

I throw open the door and am swallowed by a hungry, billowing wall of smoke. Pounding erupts from the stalls followed by the crunch of splintering wood—a caged animal kicking free of its confinement. I think about crawling through the hay and manure across the floor but figure my getting trampled would be the most likely outcome. So I crouch down, pull my undershirt over my nose and mouth, and scurry in, feeling my way from memory in the blinding blackness.

I trip over something and go down hard. My face smacks against a flank of meaty horsehide. It is Buster, the gelding, already felled by the smoke. I can do nothing for him. He runs with the Spirits now.

Wood splinters again to my right and I find my way to the nearest stall, not certain which one it is. I throw the crossbar and fling open the door. Strawberry, the mule, sits with her legs splayed out on the ground, wide-eyed with urgency. The two other mules lay dead behind her.

“Come on, girl!” I grab her brindled mane and yank her to her feet. She tries to resist but I tell her if she is smart enough to hide from the smoke, then she is smart enough to live. Grudgingly she rights herself and blows past me toward the square of daylight at the open door. I fumble my way down the stalls, throwing every gate I pass, knowing Storm is in the last one. The lowing from the heifer peters down to a faint, guttural buzz and then cuts out completely. I come upon the final stall as the stallion's mighty hoof thunders against the wood. The bolts of the hinges teeter precipitously from their screw-holes, drawn farther from their purchase with every blow.

“Easy boy, do not kick me!” The gate falls open at my touch. Storm is already off and running—I follow his darting tail through the smoke. Charred rafters crash to the ground about me. We leap out into the fresh air as the roof gives way entirely. Storm bucks and kicks across the dirt, smoke shooting from his nostrils like a dragon in a fairy tale. On my way to the ground, I catch a glimpse of the mule laying flat on her side. All her strength went into getting out, and now she will not get up. I roll over, away from the seething inferno, and land my eyes on Sheriff's house—my house—where along the walls and roofline, the flames have gone to work in earnest.

I ring the little bell at the front desk and it shatters the quiet of the lobby. Brunson Stone appears from the inner office, his mouth pursing disapprovingly as he lays eyes upon me. My hat, overcoat, and the pearl-handle Colts are all that I was able to salvage from the fire. I wear the coat over my undershirt and have not yet had the chance to wash the char and smoke from my clothes or skin.

“Can I help you?”

“A room, please.”

“Yes, we are at full occupancy at the present. Very sorry.”

“We both know you got rooms. Folks been leaving in droves since yesterday. I have money.”

“Perhaps you would have better luck at the brothel,” he says pointedly.

“Is there a problem here?” A firm voice barks from the stairs. I turn to see Willis, returned to his former glory—impeccable suit, pristine fingernails and trimmed beard—marching toward us. Having discovered him so at ease in his denim and leather the night before, it is the elegant finery that now strikes me as the costume. His face, upon seeing the blackened version of me, swells with grievous concern, but there is a hint of relief behind it, as if my walking around at all is reason to celebrate.

“No problem whatsoever, Mister Willis. Nothing to concern yourself with.”

The gambler silences Stone with a halting finger and puts his hand warmly on my shoulder. “Mister Two-Trees, thank God you're all right. I heard what happened. Damn barbaric. This will not stand. How fare you, man?”

“I am alive.”

“And what of your livestock?”

“Stallion made it out. Lost the rest.”

“Bleeding cowards. Of course you need a room. Stone here will attend to you.”

“Well, unfortunately, sir . . . as I was telling the gentleman, we are full-up at the moment.”

“Nonsense, Stone. Can't you see this man requires accommodation? Be quick about it.”

“Well, it's just that . . .” Stone's voice trails off, as if sharing a secret with his most distinguished customer. “Well, we have a certain reputation to uphold.”

Avery Willis places both hands gently on the desk in front of Stone. His brow furrows. “Are you saying that you will not rent to this man?” Willis cocks his ear slightly, negating any chance of mishearing.

“It would,” Stone begins, far less confident than he was a few seconds ago, “upset our other guests.”

“You mean the white guests,” Willis says, dusting a gloved finger across the lip of the inkwell.

“Why, of course, sir.”

“I see.” The gambler turns as if to leave, his face a sudden rictus of disgust. Then he rushes back to the desk, his left arm flying up and catching Stone's throat in a white-knuckled throttle. He yanks the hotelkeeper down, the side of his face slamming hard against the open ledger on the desk. A tornado of rage bursts forth from Willis, consuming him as he pounds an overhand right fist into the older man's nose—then a second time, and a third, the gambler's face reddening with every blow.

Stone's nose erupts in an explosion of blood. Holding him by the neck, Willis plucks up the inkwell and dumps its oozing contents all over the innkeeper's face, into his sputtering mouth, down the flaming, swollen nostrils of his busted beak.

“Who's the white man now, cocksucker?!” Stone can only wail a shrieking, wordless cry by way of response. But the cyclone of rage from Willis is not yet complete. “You're gonna get this man whatever he needs or so help me God I will cut your scrawny head off. Do you understand?” Stone manages a quivering nod from down on the desk. “Now give him his goddamn key!”

His head still pressed against the ledger, Stone flails an arm back and comes up with the first key he can find. Willis lets go. The hotel man slinks straight to the floor in a whimpering, gruesome heap. The gambler turns to face me, almost embarrassed. He straightens his tie. “I apologize, Mister Two-Trees. I did not mean to imply that you cannot handle your own affairs. Please forgive the step-in. I meant no offense.”

“None taken.”

Avery Willis nods. His ability to surprise me seems to have no end. “You must join us for supper.” And with that he walks off, disappearing up the stairs, past a trembling Cookie, who can do nothing but watch his employer sully further his threadbare carpet. I grab the key off the desk and look down at Stone.

“Send over the tailor,” I say, turning for the stairs. “Need some clothes.”

 

 

I ease back in the tub and let the water work its way up my neck to the base of my skull. It feels good to close my eyes, giving the warmth a chance to venture deep down to my aching muscles. The gray, sooty water reminds me of my last proper bath.

I open my eyes again and stare up at the whitewashed ceiling, stained yellow from the cigar smoke of countless wayward travelers. It is hardly a different view than the one from the tub over at Madam Brandywine's, only there the boiling kettle got poured with a smile from Maria and not from Cookie, who complained the whole time how the handle was burning his fingers.

A knock comes weakly at the door. The tailor, I reckon. “Who is it?”

“It's Miss Bichard.”

“Just a minute,” I say, glancing down at the undeniable nakedness of my situation. I stand and reach for the towel, sloshing the water loudly.

Her voice tightens at the sound. “Oh, I am disturbing you ! You are indisposed, please pardon the intrusion.”

“Just stay there,” I say, scanning the room. My denims are beyond repair. I step damp-legged into my union suit and open the door with my overcoat draped over my bare chest. Genevieve startles back at the sight.

“Mister . . . Two-Trees. I should go, you are not decent.” She stays put. I step back from the door and motion her to enter.

“Please, come in.”

“I had heard you were here at the hotel. I am terribly sorry about the circumstances that have brought you here.” She has chosen, for her visit, a cornflower dress, one that matches her eyes, which, right now, look red from crying. “It's awful, everything that's happened. I could hardly sleep last night worrying about that poor child who rode all that way from Heavendale, bless his little heart. And then to awaken to the news of your misfortune. I tell you, Mister Two-Trees, it's enough to make me lose faith in humanity.”

I peek over at the sideboard where two dusty shot glasses cry out for a bottle. “Sorry I, I have nothing to offer you. I can holler down for something.”

“No, I don't want to be any trouble. I've come here out of concern. We are now neighbors, as it were.”

“So we are. For a day, anyway.”

“What? Why only a day?”

“Tomorrow I ride for Santa Fe. Close out my accounts. Find an agent to sell off Sheriff's place. Nothing for me here anymore.”

“That's hardly true.” She rubs her hands nervously. In my daily recollections of her, I have credited her a few inches of stature. She is, in fact, a tiny creature, now made smaller by her sense of intrusion into my space. The top clasp of her collar hangs unfastened, providing the slightest glance of lace camisole.

“Where is Willis?” I ask.

“Playing cards. Where else?”

I turn to the door, which yet stands agape.

“Please leave the door open,” she says.

I close the door. Her breath quickens. She angles her gaze toward the window. “The child is improving, thank heavens.”

“Is that what you came to tell me?” I move toward her, close, until her eyes have no choice but to look up at me in surrender.

“I thought . . . you would . . . like to know.”

I kiss her. Our lips melt in a dizzying, electrified embrace. Her hands slide under my coat and up my bare back as I pull her tight against me, every curve of her figure a searing discovery beneath my touch. The overpowering sweetness of her taste—I could devour her. We hold there, an entanglement of desire and raging blood—until the salty river of tears trickles from her delicate cheek to my tongue. She breaks from me.

“We cannot . . . not yet, not here.” She settles on the chair and assembles her gown where she has come undone. “Not while I am in the possession of one Avery Willis.”

“You are no man's property.”

“Avery has funny ideas about that. I have no intention of marrying him. He has asked me and I have avoided answering for as long as I can. Soon he will demand a response. My reputation will be ruined, if it's not already, but I don't care. I simply won't be with him. I can't. I would rather kill myself!” She breaks down, sobbing softly into her fist. I kneel next to her and brush the hair from her face.

“Why would you say something like that?”

“He is not always kind to me. Oh, Mister Two-Trees, he has a violent streak in him, a vicious temper.”

“I have seen it.”

“Then you know! I fear for my safety, for my very life.”

“Has he hurt you?”

“No, but it's only a matter of time. Once I am his wife he can do what he wants to me.”

“Then you have to end it.”

“I am afraid to. He might kill me on the spot. Or he might be slick about it—murder me on the way home and dump me somewhere out in the desert.”

“You say he might go that far, maybe he would. He has a temper—I will give you that. Not a day goes by, Willis don't show me a new color. Hotheadedness aside, though, a man does not get to where Willis is without knowing how to be reasonable. You tell him he does not have your heart, he will not like it, but he just might accept it. He might even leave you here.”

“I'm afraid you don't know him like I do, Mister Two-Trees.”

“Now on, you call me Harlan.”

“Harlan,” she says tenderly. A current of unguarded affection flutters across her face. “It is a nice name.”

“Belonged to my father. At least that's what he told Mamma.”

“It was his Christian name?”

“Only name he give her.” I lean back against the bed. Beyond the windows, the Sangres glow golden brown in the light of the waning day. The sound of chopping and splintering wood echoes from the street below, where a fresh batch of laborers lays siege to the gallows.

She picks up my hand and looks into my eyes. “There is another option.”

“What is that?”

“Take me with you.”

“What?”

“Take me with you to Santa Fe. We can be together! There is no need to formally break it off with Avery. We'll just light out, the both of us. We'll leave this place and never come back. Who's to stop us?”

“Folks not too happy with me right now. I would hate to mix you up in that. Might be best I move alone.”

“Is it that you do not want me?”

“I want you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.”

“I do not fear for my well-being in your protection. In fact, just the opposite.”

“I would keep you safe, and you would never starve. On those counts I can give my word. But short of that, I cannot promise you much in the way of high living, at least until I get things sorted.”

“You think I care about any of that?”

“Women don't much like going backwards.”

“Love is always backwards. That's half the fun.” She earns a smile out of me on that one and I give her hand a little squeeze. But then I break and cross to the window. I do not want to get used to her face, not until I know it will greet me with the dawn every morning until I die.

“You would give up your life, and your people, for a fella what cannot even read?”

Her eyes go serious. A stern finger rises to reprimand me. “Now listen here, Harlan. You may have the town fooled that you are some kind of simpleton, but not me. I see right through you. I look into your eyes and I see a man powerful intelligent. Why you or anyone else would ever believe anything to the contrary is beyond me.”

I stand before her, called on the carpet like a schoolboy, and I know that this is the way it will be between us, our deepest secrets laid bare.

“I mix my letters up, is all. And my numbers. Always have. Makes reading damn near impossible. Nothing wrong with my vision, though. I got the eyes of a hawk.”

“That you do. And lovely ones at that.” She turns away, unable to conceal a little smile.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Heavens, no. I only . . . well, your shyness about your affliction in endearing. I am confident, Harlan, that the only burden with which you are truly afflicted is the curse of being raised in this unenlightened, hayseed town. My own cousin suffered as a child from the very condition you have just described. His parents were at wit's end over what to do. Then word came about a doctor, in San Francisco, no less, who had some bold new treatment. My young cousin was carted off to see him. He returned home a year later, his nose buried in a book. And do you know what became of him?”

“What?”

“He is a professor of literature at Harvard University.”

“No foolin'?”

“Honest injun.” And with that, we both bust up laughing. She puts her arm around me, letting her head fall against my shoulder.

“You make me smile, girl.”

“Please forgive me for what I am about to say . . . but I feel it was . . . divine providence that brought us here together.”

“God did not burn my place down. Men did.”

“I do not believe in coincidence. If there is a silver lining to be found in your tragic loss it is that I have been given the chance to make my true feelings known. As have you, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then we are decided. Mister Willis has sent for the coach the morning after next. We have until that time to make our escape. First to Santa Fe to handle your business and then off to San Francisco.”

“Slow down now. We cannot just hop on the train together, you and me. Can you ride?”

“Well, I won't fall off, if that's what you mean.”