The Chili Queen (13 page)

After a while, Emma reached into her bag and took out her piecing. It was an oddly homey thing, sitting next to her while she stitched. Ned remembered how his sisters went to quilting in the afternoon, after their chores were done. Sometimes, he sat with them, laughing and joking while he mended a harness or whittled a cog his father needed for a piece of machinery. Ned had always been good with his hands. On the farm, there’d been much work to do, and Ned hadn’t minded it. But then his father drove him too much, like a horse that was rode hard and not rubbed down.

Ned wondered when he’d become so lazy. Maybe it was Addie. She wouldn’t let him do anything around The Chili Queen, so he’d given up offering. Whenever he said he’d nail up a board that had come loose or rehang a door that didn’t fit, Addie told him not to bother himself. So after a time Ned didn’t. And sometimes he missed the pleasure of working with his hands, fixing a thing that was broken or shaping something new. He thought it might be nice to do things for a woman, to have one need him.

“My sisters sewed,” he said, glancing at the patchwork in Emma’s lap.

“Most women do,” Emma replied.

“I mean, they were good. In school, I couldn’t get the hang of geometry, so my sister Lizzie explained it to me with her quilting pieces. They’re all squares and triangles.”

“I never knew a man who noticed,” Emma said, looking up at him. The sun hit her square in the face, and she squinted. Despite the dark shadow the bonnet cast on Emma’s face, Ned could see the lines around her eyes. There were lines at the corners of her mouth, too. Ned wondered how old she was, whether she were too old to have children. Then he wondered why he’d thought about that.

“My folks always said that idle hands are the devil’s plaything,” he remarked, as Emma took a few tiny stitches on her needle.

“I believe the devil has played with me already,” she replied.

For their nooning, they found a place at the edge of a streambed, where it cut deep into the earth. Half a dozen giant cottonwoods lined one side of the bank, the only trees visible. The prairie was a mottled brown, and on the horizon a herd of antelope bounded along on slender legs. “They are so graceful, they seem to be sailing in the air,” Emma observed. Ned was thinking the same thing, and it gladdened him that Emma enjoyed the prairie. He unhitched the horses and let them drink from the trickle of water that flowed through the dirt, then hobbled them and set them to graze. Emma took a basket from the wagon and set out a loaf of dry bread, hard cheese, and some pickles on a napkin. “Welcome must have decided we should eat like poor farmers,” she said, nodding at the meager meal.

“Welcome ought to hush up with her complaining. She’s not the boss of us,” Ned replied. “If she weren’t such a worker, Addie would toss her out, she’s that ornery.” He took out his knife and cut the bread into chunks, then hacked off pieces of the cheese. “We’ll have us a good supper at the hotel tonight.”

“I don’t mind sleeping in the wagon. We wouldn’t want to draw attention to ourselves by spending money for a hotel,” Emma said.

“Oh, it’s not such a fancy one, although the dining room is nice enough. Besides, the hotel’s part of my plan. It’s got a back door that opens direct on the bank. The two buildings aren’t more than a dozen steps apart. That bank’s such easy pickings, I’m surprised nobody’s taken it before. We’ll just go down the stairs, out the door, into the bank, then back to the hotel when we’re done. Like I told Addie, it’s as easy as honey.”

“Nothing’s as easy as honey,” Emma told him. Her voice was so harsh that Ned glanced up at her. Emma broke off a crumb of bread and put it into her mouth. “Just when you think a thing’s that easy, a bee comes along—a whole swarm of bees—and you get stung.” She seemed to be talking more to herself than to Ned. She stood up. “I believe I’ll walk about until you are ready to commence. My limbs are knotted up.”

“Take your time. The horses have to rest, and I don’t mind a nap,” Ned told her. “You look at that watch of yours, and if I’m not awake in an hour, you shake me.” He put his hat over his face, and in a minute or two, he was asleep.

When she woke him, Emma already had packed away the lunch things and hitched the horses to the wagon.

Jasper was more respectable than Nalgitas. It had fewer saloons, and two church steeples rose above the cabins and clapboard houses. In the twilight, Jasper looked soft and homey—and more prosperous than Nalgitas, too. The depot was twice the size of the one at Nalgitas and so new that it hadn’t yet been painted. The
JASPER
sign leaned against the wall facing the tracks. Prosperity meant that there would be more people in the bank than Ned had figured on. And the bank might have installed a whale of a safe, too. But good times also meant money in the bank. That part of it pleased Ned, and he reached for Emma’s hand. Her skin wasn’t rough, as he’d imagined, but as soft as Addie’s. Addie didn’t work at card games anymore, but she still kept her hands supple.

Like Nalgitas, Jasper had been cut out of the prairie. The main street was half a dozen blocks long, lined with brick buildings and a sprinkling of stone structures. Awnings shaded the entrances to stores, and trees had been planted along the streets, which gave the town a finished look. Ned pointed out the Union Hotel, a two-story red brick building with a double door in front, as they drove past it, telling Emma they’d leave the horses and wagon at the livery, then walk to the hotel. The train had just arrived, and there was no reason to let the hotel clerk know they’d driven to Jasper in a wagon. Of course, if anyone asked—if the sheriff got suspicious and inquired, for instance—he’d find out easy enough. But it would take a few minutes, and sometimes that made all the difference between a successful robbery and getting caught. Emma agreed that made sense.

They parked the wagon beside the stable, and Ned made arrangements for the horses. Then he picked up their bags and carried them down the board sidewalk. Emma, walking beside him, was as drab as the farmers and shopkeepers they passed. Nobody made note of her. Ned himself, dressed in worn pants, his shirt soiled and stained with sweat from the day’s drive in the sun, blended in, too. Ned didn’t care much for disguises. A few days’ growth of beard, a little dirt on his face, his hair slicked down, and he was no longer a handsome young man, but just a saddle tramp. People had a hard time describing him. Even Addie barely recognized his face in a wanted poster.

“We need a room,” Ned told the desk clerk, looking down at the guest register. Ned’s eyes were one thing he couldn’t change, and he didn’t want the clerk to notice they were green.

“Two rooms, brother,” Emma spoke up.

“What?” Ned stammered. For an instant, he didn’t understand what Emma was talking about. The desk clerk smirked.

Then Emma hissed in a voice so low that only the two men heard her. “I have told you we are civilized people, and I will sleep in my own room. You are too cheap for your own good. If I have come all this way to keep house for you, I insist you obey the laws of propriety. Two rooms, sir. Do you have them?” Emma looked the clerk in the face. “Have I said something to amuse you?”

The smile faded from the clerk’s face, and he looked down at the register. “Oh, no, ma’am. We got aplenty of rooms. Yes we do. You want side by side?”

“I want mine upstairs, in the back, where I will not be bothered by the noise. The farthest back, please. My brother can speak for himself.”

“You can put me across from her,” Ned said. He was so tickled at Emma that he wanted to laugh, but instead, he rubbed his eyes and looked away from the clerk as if he were embarrassed.

“You want to sign,” the clerk said.

They had forgotten to talk about a name to use. Ned reached for the register and pronounced the name as he wrote it: “William Smith.”

He set down the pen, and the clerk turned to Emma. “What’s your name?”

“Miss Smith,” she replied in such a way that the clerk did not inquire about her given name.

The man gave Ned two keys, and Ned picked up the bags, leading the way upstairs. The rooms were at the end of a long hall, on either side of the back stairs. Ned unlocked both doors and let Emma choose her room. Then he set down her bag and grinned. “By zam, Emma! I couldn’t have done that better myself. You’re a plain natural actress.”

Emma blushed. “It just came to me.”

“For that, I’ll buy you the best supper in Jasper. You let me put my things in the other room, and let’s go.”

“I need to wash and put on a fresh dress. Call for me in an hour,” Emma told him.

An hour was a long time, and Ned was dry enough from the drive to spit cotton. So he went down to a saloon that was off the hotel lobby. Just one of the four tables was occupied, and a single man stood at one end of the bar. He looked like a lot of old bums who stood with their bellies to the bar, telling of the money they had spent the night before, but no go, and the bartender did not seem inclined to give him a free drink. Ned was in no mood for a conversation with a man who intended to go to work getting intoxicated and would accomplish it with Ned’s money, if he could, so Ned went to the other end of the bar and ordered rye. He hadn’t even tasted it when the desk clerk stepped up next to him, and nodded at the bartender for his own glass of whiskey.

“You expecting to settle at Jasper, Mr. Smith?” the clerk asked.

Ned shrugged. “Hereabouts.”

“I don’t guess your sister’s too pleased about it.”

Ned looked down at his drink. “My sister’s not pleased about much of anything.”

“Sorry to hear it.” The clerk didn’t sound the least bit sorry.

“I’m not saying she isn’t a good woman. She is. Yes sir, she is, but she is hard-pressed to find something to her liking. She sees herself a higher authority on most things.” Ned let out a sigh. Playacting came naturally to him. Still, he was cautious, wondering why the clerk was so friendly.

“Here to buy supplies? You a farmer, are you?”

Ned nodded.

“Where’d you come from?”

Ned stiffened then. It wasn’t good manners in New Mexico or anywhere else he knew of to inquire too much about a stranger—wasn’t smart, either. “Someplace where they don’t ask so many questions.” He spoke in an even voice, but the clerk took his meaning.

There was a pause while the man cleared his throat, then said, “I expect it’ll be a long winter.”

“Might be.” Ned finished his drink and considered another but decided against it.

“If I was you, I’d find myself a little something to think about those winter nights.”

Ned relaxed. The clerk was a shill for a whorehouse. “What would that be?” he asked.

The clerk gave a nervous laugh. “Well, seeing as how you’re a husky young fellow, you might want to get your wick dipped. I guess you catch my meaning.” He glanced over at Ned.

Ned examined his empty glass and didn’t reply.

“No disrespect meant,” the clerk said, setting down his own glass and turning away.

“What was it you were suggesting?” Ned asked.

The clerk grinned and tried to catch Ned’s eye in the mirror in front of them, but Ned was looking away. “We have a real fine establishment called Elsie Mae’s. It’s on Maiden Lane, just down from the depot. You can’t miss it. ‘Elsie Mae’s’ is written on the front window in gold. Classy it is. Clean.” The clerk shook his head to emphasize what he’d said, then added, “First-class. You be sure to say Lemuel sent you.”

“You got only one hookhouse in this town, Lemuel?” Ned asked. He winked at the clerk in the mirror then. The bar was so dark that the man couldn’t see the color of Ned’s eyes, even if they’d been bright red.

“You got only one hookhouse where you come from?” Lemuel shot back.

Ned didn’t answer.

“There’s the French Brewery, only you’d best stay away from it. Girls there are rough as a cob. But maybe that’s your preference.”

“Either place, you get your cut, right?”

The clerk shrugged.

Ned didn’t want to give the man a reason to dislike him—or to remember him any more than necessary—so he said pleasantly, “If I was to go to one or the other, I’d say you sent me.”

The front door of the hotel opened, and a man with a star pinned to his vest walked through the lobby to the saloon, coming up on the other side of the clerk. “Lemuel,” he said by way of greeting, but he was looking at Ned. The two men got up from their table and left. The man at the other end of the bar looked at his drink, but Ned knew he was listening.

“Sheriff,” Lemuel replied.

“Sheriff Tate,” he said, introducing himself to Ned. The man was short and so fat he could hardly tote himself. He had a florid face and eyes as close together as an earthworm’s.

“Sheriff,” Ned said.

“This here’s Mr. Smith,” Lemuel said.

The sheriff squinted his wormy eyes at Ned, as if he were trying to place him. “Nice name, Smith,” he said. “You been to Jasper before?”

“He’s new,” Lemuel replied for Ned.

“You look familiar.”

“I look like everybody’s brother,” Ned told him.

The sheriff studied Ned. “Yeah, I guess that’s it. What’s your business in Jasper, Mr. Smith?” The bartender filled a glass and set it down in front of the sheriff.

The clerk answered again. “Oh, he’s a farmer. I’ve been telling him about our finer establishments.” The clerk raised an eyebrow at the sheriff, who didn’t respond. “He checked in with his sister. She walks like a chicken in high oats,” he said in a manner uncouth.

“Say!” Ned protested, although he was glad for the remark since it caused the sheriff to lose interest in him.

The lobby door opened again, and a man entered and walked to the desk, looking around. The clerk licked the edge of his glass and left.

Ned was ready to leave, too, but he didn’t want the sheriff to think he was anxious to get away. He motioned for the bartender to fill his glass and thought about buying a drink for the sheriff, but that might make the man suspicious. Farmers didn’t go around buying liquor for people. “Here’s to you,” Ned said.

“And right back at you,” the sheriff replied, although he didn’t raise his glass.