“I didn’t — ” Morrow started to reply, then stopped, as Chess tapped one temple:
Of course, right. In
there
.
“That’d be mainly Yiska, I’d think,” Yancey observed. “Not Songbird, even now.”
Chess shook his head, almost smiling. “You’re right enough on that one.” His lip twisted further, flattening into something more grim. “Don’t matter much either way, though — I ain’t ’bout to lock myself up in some flying castle and run myself ragged strivin’ for the betterment of hex-kind, just ’cause them and me share some sort of kinship; never been sentimental that way, or any. Hell, if blood meant anything at all t’me, I’d be far more like to run off New York way and find that gal Oona said killed my Pa, if only to stand her a drink and shake her damn hand.”
“But you ain’t gonna do that either, I take it,” Morrow concluded. “So — ”
“What
are
you going to do, exactly?” Yancey inquired, with a touch of that old coolly practical hotelier’s savvy Morrow remembered from their first encounter with her, back in the Horde.
“Build y’all a house, I thought, for starters, and carve out a patch of good land ’round here too, for you ’n’ Ed to play your games on. As a small token of my appreciation.”
“Again, much obliged. Then what?”
“Christ on a three-dollar cross! You’re damn hard to please, missy; anyone ever tell you that?”
“Oh, one or two. Though far less than the choir who’ve told
you
the same, I’d reckon.”
They locked glares a long moment, anger-lit green to mock-mild grey, before both snorted and looked away once more, caught on the mutual ragged edge of laughter. And in the aftermath of his conjuring, stew re-heated, Chess told Morrow: “Can’t put it off any longer, Ed; my ride’s almost here. Come morning, you won’t see me for some long time — but then again,” he nodded at Yancey, “
this
one can probably fill you in on all my bad deeds now and then, what with those dreams of hers. And I don’t doubt we’ll meet again, eventually.”
Again, Morrow felt that hollow clutch in his stomach-pit, impossible to deny or explain. “Seems likely, yeah,” he replied.
“So . . .”
“. . . so.”
They stood there a moment, both glancing elsewhere, studying the rocks and dirt (and fresh grass, sod, bare beginnings of a garden, that tree Yancey’d placed for shade over by the well) as though either thought they might be likely to offer advice on how best to continue. Yancey herself hung back by the fire, leaving them room enough for whatever demonstrations they felt were appropriate in her presence, though Morrow had the odd feeling that even if she absented herself entirely she’d probably be able to “hear” them anyhow, no matter what distance she might take herself off to.
Once upon a time — and not so long past, either — Chess might’ve tried to kiss him goodbye; once upon a time, Morrow would’ve let him, or even kissed him first like he had at Grandma’s camp, back by Old Woman Butte. But for reasons he wasn’t quite sure of, that seemed impossible, now . . . and it seemed as if each knew it.
“Was thinking I might make myself useful, believe it or not,” Chess told him, left hand habit-braced on that same side’s empty holster. “Put myself to work extirpating the Weed where it runs rampant and ain’t being fed, since it was grown for my benefit, or hunting down whatever weird objects might’ve been left behind — orphaned out of Mictlan-Xibalba, y’know, when I finally got the Crack closed for good. Then again, I’ll bet there’s a parcel of hexes new-made out there, once the dust died down; might track them down too, while I’m at it. Stop ’em from harassing simple folks or eating each other, then tell ’em how they got a place to go if they want to, where they won’t have to do either.”
Here he trailed away, as though slightly embarrassed to listen to his own pretensions to redemption, the laughable idea that Chess damn Pargeter should ever want to do a lick of good here and there, in between the usual range of shooting, riding and fucking. That at the grand old age of twenty-six or so, after watching his first and only love fall into Hell’s maw and staving off at least one apocalypse thereby, he might’ve actually
changed
a bit — gotten older, if not substantially wiser. Grown up, if only a bit.
“That sounds good, Chess,” was all Morrow could think to say, while the sorrow of Chess’s losses pricked at his heart. “Both things, I mean. All of it.”
“Yeah? Well, good. Sounds plumb crazy when
I
say it, to be frank, so if you don’t think it is, then maybe . . .”
Chess let himself trail away, then, and smiled. Not a grin, whether gleeful or fierce or bitter; not a snarl disguised, either. Just
there
, a simple play of muscles, innocent enough to wound. The smile of a far less complicated man, one who hadn’t died twice, or been twice reborn. One who’d never been any sort of a god.
“Never had no daddy, as you know,” he said, at last, “and nobody ever told me to call him by that name, either, ’less he had coin to spend. But I’m fine with that, for I did have friends, in the end; one false as Confederate dollars, and one true-damn-blue.”
Morrow swallowed. “I hope I know which was the camp I fell in.”
“Well, damn, Ed . . . by this time,
I’d
hope you did, too.”
And suddenly Yancey was there as well, having made her way across from the cook-pit without either of them noticing, as good a fake Injun as ever wore moccasins. Laying her hand on Chess’s arm, friendly and just a bit possessive, to say: “I’d hope I might’ve made for a third, Mister Pargeter, man or no.”
Chess hissed through his teeth. “Woman, please. You know
you do.”
A horse took him away before dawn — Morrow’d feared it might be one of those small(ish)-sized spiders, but apparently, Chess hadn’t been feeling all
that
adventurous. One way or the other, by the time Yancey woke he was long gone, and she and Morrow sat together to watch the sun come up over their new homestead: hexation’s bounty, payment perhaps for being the two people in all of Chess Pargeter’s life who’d only given, never taken. Or just two pals, Goddamnit.
Later, freed from the restraint they’d felt in Chess’s presence, they finally consummated their affections for what had to be — strange as it was to say it — the very first time, at least in the flesh. And held each other afterward, close and tight, until they slept.
But now, Thiel’s voice brought Morrow back to the matter at hand.
“Am I right in assuming Mister Pargeter
was
offered a place at Hexicas’ pyramid-head, but gave it up untried — preferring to stand alone, as ever?”
“Well, he sure ain’t there now, so I’d think that part’s pretty public knowledge.”
“Yet he’s still a power to be reckoned with, even stripped of his former godhood.”
“Nothin’ you could do to stop him, he turned against you. Nothin’
I
could do to stop him either, in point of fact, if that was your grand plan — like I said, I don’t know where he is, to begin with. And like Yancey already intimated . . .”
“. . . neither of you’d feel all too much obliged to pull his reins, even assuming you could,” Geyer filled in, with another glance at Thiel.
“That’s right.”
“Hmmm,” Thiel said, with no particular emphasis, and no hint of what he might mean by it, either.
Geyer glanced at him, then back at Morrow. “Remember what Pinkerton always feared, Ed?” He asked. “That if hexes could combine, they’d rule the world in a decade?”
“Sure, like everyone did. But the Hexicans don’t strike me like that’s their aim — not this generation, anyhow. And again, you sure couldn’t stand in their way, they decided otherwise.”
“But your friend Mister Pargeter might,” Thiel pointed out.
“Might. If you could find him, and he wanted to.”
“Can I count on your support, in that area?”
Morrow snorted. “Support — so I can steer him around, point him where you want him? How likely you think
that
is to work out, exactly? Doc Asbury’s gimmicks ain’t the be-all and end-all, sirs. If you go against Hexicas, you’ll find that out. Same thing if you go against Chess Pargeter, likewise.”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” Thiel replied, coolly. “But then again, if you continue to tame Mister Pargeter the way you have already, you and Missus Kloves — gently alter his nature with this highly laudable mixture of true affection and morally improving example — then perhaps we’ll never have to.”
God damn, this was a perceptive fellow; Morrow was almost afraid to tell him any more, knowing it’d be filed away somewhere for reference. Which Geyer seemed to figure out pretty quick, as his next words indicated.
“What George’s maybe trying to say is . . . you and Mister Pargeter — and Missus Kloves too, with all her woes — have mainly known the West thus far in its raw state,” he explained, “unrefined; a work in progress. But things will have to change, for that progress to continue. Things are
already
changing.”
“And this would be the part where you ask me which side of that change I want to end up on, right? Whether I want to go the way of the buffalo, or stake my claim to Manifest Destiny?” At Geyer’s look: “Yeah, that’s right, sir: I read a paper or two, now and then.”
“The question stands,” Thiel said.
“Then I s’pose my answer would be: good luck with all that. I’m well out of this tussle, considering I worked two years without pay to set it up, let alone to bring it to bed. You want to talk to Chess, chase him down; see if he’ll stand still for it.”
“Will he?”
“He just might, you come at him on a good day. ’Cause, see —
he’s
changed, too.”
Geyer nodded. “That’s what I’d heard. Saw evidence of, too, outside Hex City.”
“That’s as well,” Thiel replied. “Because you’re right, of course, Mister Morrow: I don’t really expect our hexacious brethren will be rejoining the Union anytime soon. But I
can
foresee a time — sooner, rather than later — when Hexicas finds it useful to send emissaries our way, same as any other sovereign nation. Hell, even Vatican City receives petitioners. And I can even see a day when your young Mister Pargeter might consent to be their chief ambassador, once he’s been off on his own in the world a while — lived a few more years alone under the shadow of his own infamous name, ’til he’s had the rougher edges either knocked off him, or just smoothed over a tad. Daniel Boone himself ended up a state representative, after all.”
“’Til the speculators did for him?” Morrow shook his head, smiling. “You don’t know Chess all too well, Mister Thiel, that’s for sure.”
“Not yet. But I hope to.”
Next morning on, Yancey woke early, as was her wont — emerging headlong from a dream, a distinct vision of Chess in the future, small as ever though not quite so slim, his beard tamed and groomed into Satanic points, more silver than red. Saw him strutting down the aisle at some big to-do in a city as far from New Mexico as Boston had been from Hoffstedt’s Hoard, when her parents first set out on their emigrants’ journey. A voice announced him, flat-vowelled and hoity, clearly Eastern:
The Representative from Hex City, Sheriff Chess Pargeter, and his . . . companion.
And though who
that
was she couldn’t see, somehow she knew it wasn’t Ed, which (even in her sleep) made her quite uncharitably glad.
A moment later, however, she rolled over to realize the bed was empty — thought he might’ve gone to the jakes at first, ’til she caught him hoisting his already packed saddlebags by the back door. He froze when he saw her, ridiculously shamefaced for such a big man, ’specially one who’d already come intact through Hex War, fire, flood and rout, not to mention tussling with her
and
Chess, in his time.
“I’m not impressed,” she told him, hands on hips.
He sighed. Replying: “Wouldn’t expect you to be, overmuch.”
“Wanted to warn Chess ’bout those jackasses, is that it? ’Cause you could’ve got
me
to do it, easy enough; that’s the nice part about having a dead-speaker for your woman. Means you don’t have to do almost anything in person, not unless you want to.”
Morrow looked down, one hand ruffling the back of his neck uncomfortably, as though he had some sort of cud he’d been chewing over caught in his throat.
“Well,” he began, at last, “I guess I just thought . . . Sheriff Love bein’ dead — again, and all — that . . . you’d want to settle down, build yourself a life, do . . . womanly stuff.”
“You did,” she replied, flatly.
“Well, yeah. Don’t you?”
Chess’s voice in her head, then, like always — like he just couldn’t help himself, present or not. Observing:
Oh, all men really are fools, just like my Ma always used to say.
She felt the sudden sting of tears as she looked at this fool she’d roped herself to, studying him hard, wondering at the fact it’d taken them this long to find a place where they weren’t of a complete accord anymore. Just what happened when you stopped meeting in dreams and tried living side by side, she supposed, in the frail and fragile meat, with all its pleasures and complaints; when you moved from intention into reality, and found yourself abruptly saddled with all the mistakes and complications human beings were heir to, by simple flaw of design.
Yancey sniffed. Then managed, at last, schooling her thick voice hard in how best not to tremble, “No, Ed. That must’ve been some other female you were thinking of.”
Morrow gazed back with those fine hazel eyes of his, for all the world like he didn’t know what to make of her, and it made her want to weep even harder. She remembered what that Agent, Mister Thiel, had said, just before riding away:
Things have changed, Mister Morrow; you’d agree with that evaluation, surely.
To which Ed had frowned just like was doing now, and answered:
For now, all right.
Yes, absolutely. But far more likely . . . for ever.
Her face felt hot, tight; though she knew she was probably flushing all over, she couldn’t break their stare, even for an instant. It seemed vitally important, as though if she did, she’d lose him forever —
And I don’t want to, you idiot, can’t you see, without me having to tell you? I want
this
, not some Goddamned dead dream of
respectable
matronage I left behind in the Hoard, with Uther’s and my Pa’s corpses. I want
you
.