Gaffney, Patricia (12 page)

She watched Jesse take off his hat and scratch his head with both
hands, hard. "Play something soft," she told Chico, touching his
shoulder as she passed behind him. Jesse saw her coming and sat up straight,
quit slouching. The way he looked at her... she became aware of the twisting of
her hips as she maneuvered through the mostly empty tables. "Hi, Stony.
Hey, Bailey, how're you doing," she greeted her few scattered customers,
but she never really stopped looking at Jesse. The closer she got, the sweeter
he smiled. The gladder she felt.

"Hey," she said, and for a few more seconds they just
beamed at each other. He had on black, as usual—black denim trousers and soft
leather boots, a faded black shirt of worn linen. He still had traces of dust
on his pants, from rolling in the street with Ham—a spectacle she wouldn't have
believed if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes. "What'd you say to
Merle?" she broke off grinning at him to ask. "He looked like he swallowed
a can of fishhooks."

"Told him to deal me out of his business proposition."
He leaned over and pulled the chair next to him out from under the table,
offering it to her.

"Which was?"

"Big bucks for a little fire."

"A little fire. Where?"

He surveyed the room with a lazy eye. "Up that wall, maybe.
Behind the bar, definitely. All that booze would make some real pretty
fireworks."

She ought not to be shocked, but she was. Wylie hated her enough
to do almost anything—she'd known that for months. She'd known it since the
day, in his saloon, when she'd pulled out her gun and told him to keep away
from her or she'd plug him. A stupid move, in retrospect, but it was his fault.
He'd provoked her.

"Well," she said, feeling a little weak. "I guess I
should thank you."

"Sit down, why don't you?" He gestured again at the
chair, and this time she came around it and sat. "Want a drink?"

"You've got on your eyepatch again," she observed.

He touched it with his fingertips, as if he'd forgotten it.
"I can take it off now." He did so, whipping off his hat first, then
the leather strap that tied in a knot in back. Immediately he covered up his
exposed right eye with his cupped palm. "Always smarts for a little while
at first." After a few seconds he took his hand away, blinking rapidly,
squinting. "I still don't see too well. But it's a whole lot better than
nothing."

It ought not to make such a difference—his right eye looked just
like his left eye; she wasn't seeing anything she hadn't seen before. But she
had the same reaction to him now as she'd had on the street this afternoon,
when she'd first seen him without the patch. He was gorgeous.

"I thought you'd have a scar," she said inanely. "I
do. Can't you see it?"

"I'm a little nearsighted." But even when she leaned
close, even when her head was no more than seven inches from his, she couldn't
see any scar. Just a beautiful, slightly slanted gray eye surrounded by long
black lashes, and a straight, sleek, very masculine eyebrow cocked over it.

"It's faded a lot over the years. But I can still make it
out. It's right here." He ran his finger along the bone of his eye socket.

She still couldn't see anything. "You're more sensitive to
it," she guessed, and he said that was probably right.

"Care for a drink?" he asked again, signaling to Levi,
who was shaking his head at something Doc Mobius was telling him at the bar.

"Anything wrong?" she asked him when he came over,
drying his hands on his apron.

"Yeah, real bad news, Cady. Doc jus' tol' me that Mr. Forrest
Sullivan done shot hisself to death."

"No. Oh, no."

"Maybe a accident, but maybe not—Doc ain't sayin'. Happen in
Mr. Sullivan's barn; oldes' chile found him there this afternoon."

"Oh, Levi. Oh, my God, all those children." And Mrs.
Sullivan, who nodded to Cady in church sometimes. Whatever would they do now?

"Want another drink, Mr. Gault?" Levi asked somberly.

"Yeah. Thanks. Cady, you want something?" The way he
said it, soft and gentle, felt like a light touch on her hand or her shoulder.

"No. Yes." Such indecision. "Levi," she said
boldly, "I'll have a beer."

"Make it two."

Levi grunted and turned away.

"Forrest Sullivan," Jesse mused after a minute.
"Isn't he the one... didn't you tell me the bank foreclosed on his sheep
ranch?"

"Yes. Now Merle will get it. It's what he's been wanting.
Damn him." She could've said a lot worse. But she already had, and Jesse
had heard her. She felt a little embarrassed about that. Merle Wylie had a way
of bringing out the worst in her. "I liked Forrest," she said
quietly. "He didn't come here often— didn't drink much, and I don't ever
remember seeing him gamble. But he didn't care if other people did, you know?
Even though he didn't frequent saloons himself, he didn't call them dens of
iniquity. He didn't judge." Jesse nodded. "Mrs. Sullivan's like that,
too. I wish there was something I could do. But... I don't really know
her." Louise Sullivan sang in the church choir, taught Sunday school,
served on the Town Ladies Committee. She was respectable. She might nod to Cady
every once in a while, but that didn't mean she'd welcome her sympathies.
Definitely not in a visit. Maybe not even in a note.

She sighed. "If he did shoot himself on purpose, it's Wylie's
fault, just as if he'd pulled the trigger."

Jesse said nothing, but his silence seemed sympathetic to her.
When Levi brought their drinks, Jesse clinked his glass to hers, making her
smile at him. The strong, yeasty beer tasted good and went down easy.
Surprisingly easy, considering how long it had been since she'd drunk one. Not
since last summer, as she recalled.

"What do you know about Dr. Mobius?" Jesse asked.

"Doc? Not much, I guess. Why?"

"Just curious. He never talks."

"No. He came here about two years ago, I think. Anyway, right
after I came. Before that, there wasn't a doctor; if you got sick, you had to
go to Jacksonville." She glanced over at the bar, where the doctor stood
in his usual spot, hunched over his usual sarsaparilla. "It's true he
keeps to himself, but I think he's a nice man. Mr. Shlegel—that's the man who owned
this bar before me—he saw him a few times. But he was really sick, and Doc sent
him to a specialist in Eugene. I know Glen went to him once for...
something." Black eyes and a broken wrist. "She said he was kind to
her."

"You never went to him?"

"Me? Oh, no. I'm never sick." It was true, and she was
proud of it. She gave the wooden table a humorous rap with her knuckles,
though. Just in case.

He sipped his beer and she sipped hers, and they watched each
other in a companionable silence. A house deck lay on the table. Jesse picked
it up and began shuffling the cards. He had strong hands, not a gambler's
hands, but long-fingered and smart. She watched him set the cards down in four
identical piles, then scoop them up again, over and over.

"High-low?" he offered, smiling at her, and she
shrugged. Why not? Reaching, she turned over a ten; he beat her with a queen.
"You lose."

"What are we playing for?"

He pulled on the side of his mustache, thinking it over. They were
both smiling slight, secret smiles.
We're flirting,
Cady realized.
"Let's play," he suggested, "the winner gets to ask the loser a
question, and she has to answer it."

"Or he."

"Or he."

"I'm not sure I like this game," she said. "Does
the loser have to tell the truth?"

"Absolutely."

"Then I definitely don't like this game."

"Too bad—you already lost. Here's your question."
Glancing around first, he leaned toward her, snaring her with a steely,
narrow-eyed, intense stare. "What," he said very slowly, very
quietly, "is your favorite color?"

She was so surprised, she gave out a loud, unladylike bray of
laughter. When he grinned, two deep creases appeared on either side of his
mouth—manly dimples. She was growing very fond of them. "My favorite
color," she mulled. "It used to be blue, but now it's green."

"Is that right? Mine, too. Except mine's always been
green."

She batted her eyes at him. "We have something in
common."

He passed the deck over; she cut again, lost again. "How old
are you?"

"Now, that's rude, you can't ask a lady that question."

"No? Okay. How much do you weigh?"

She laughed again, giddy and lighthearted. Was it the beer?
Everything he said was funny. "I have no idea."

"Well, I get to keep asking till you answer one." He
looked up at the ceiling, thinking. "What's the most embarrassing thing
you ever did?"

Disarmed again, she dissolved into giggles. She'd been sure he
would ask her real questions, hard ones requiring lies or distractions for
answers. Of course she was attracted to him, no sense denying that, but now he
was making her
like
him, too. For her own good, she hoped he never found
out that funny, silly Jesse was a hundred times more dangerous than humorless,
flinty-eyed Gault.

"Give me that deck," she said, "I think you're
cheating." She reshuffled the cards, and they cut again. "Ha. I knew
it—I win."

He shook his head, chuckling at her. "What's your
question?"

She had a million. "When and where were you born, and were
you happy growing up?"

"That's three."

She lifted her eyebrows in a dare.

He stroked his eyebrow thoughtfully. "Lexington, Kentucky,
1846. Yeah, I was happy. Usually. Till the war came."

She stared at him, chin in her hand. 'Forty-six? That made him
thirty-eight years old. He sure didn't look it, not at all. She thought he
looked about her age: twenty-five. Twenty-seven or -eight at the most. The gray
in his hair... she'd always thought it was premature, but maybe it wasn't. She
liked it anyway. Pewter-colored. It was beautiful in the lamplight, that
contrast of dark and light, black and silver.

They cut again, and this time he won. "How do you like the
saloon business? Does it suit you?"

What a nice question. Except for Levi, she didn't have anybody to
talk to about things like that. "Yes. And no." The interest in his
face encouraged her to explain. "The thing about owning a saloon is, you
have to think like a man. You might like flowers on the bar or curtains on the
windows, different pictures on the walls." She flicked a glance at the
naked lady oil painting over the bar. "But you can't act on any of those
changes because your customers wouldn't like them. They'd hate them. So instead
you have to think about spittoons and pool tables, whiskey brands and poker
chips. Ash cans."

"Think like a man."

"Yeah. I like the business side, though. The recordkeeping,
the carefulness you have to exercise. And especially," she confided with a
grin, "the way the profits edge up a little bit every month when you've
been smart and clever and done everything just right."

"I'll bet."

"It's just the saloon part I get tired of once in a while.
Not that I'm complaining. But it's a man's business, the day-to-day part, and
I'm always..." She didn't know how to say it. She felt as if she was constantly
having to push her femininity aside, bury it, to get the job done.

"You're always a woman."

"Well. Yes." For some dumb reason, she blushed.

"Want another beer?"

"Okay. But just one more," she warned, meaning it.

The Rogue had nearly emptied out. The handful of drinkers who were
left glanced over at her and Jesse from time to time, interested, speculating.
By tomorrow everybody in Paradise would know she'd spent the whole night
laughing and drinking beer with the gunfighter.

"Cut the cards," Jesse said. She turned over a five and
groaned, then clapped her hands when he drew a four.

"Tell me about your childhood."

He sent her a crooked smile. "How come you're so
interested?"

"I just am. Do you have any brothers and sisters?"

"No." He hesitated. Without looking at her he said,
"I had a cousin, though."

"Were you close?"

"Yeah." Suddenly he grinned, a little mysteriously, she
thought. "Real close."

"Tell me about him. Or her?"

"Him."

"What was his name?"

"Marion. Marion Gault."

"Younger or older?"

"Younger. Nine years younger."

"Are you like him?"

He smiled again. "Nope. Marion and I, we're pretty much
opposites. He's... never amounted to much, to tell you the truth. When we were
little he always looked up to me, tagged along after me. Thought the sun rose
on my head—you know how kids are. When we all went off to war—me and my father
and his father—he stayed home and tried to keep the farm going. A horse farm;
they raised thoroughbreds and racers. But he couldn't do it. His daddy died at
Vicksburg, and then his mama took sick and died the year after that. By the
time the war ended, one army or the other had taken all the horses, and there
wasn't any money to get more."