Blood Duel (9 page)

Out they came, three of them, a blonde, a redhead, and a black-haired beauty, all three perfection, from their pale complexions to their china-smooth skin to their ample busts and pencil-thin waists. Their dresses were marvels of color and fit. Each wore a style of hat currently fashionable back East, with flared brims
and a lot of lace. They also had parasols, which they immediately opened to protect their face and neck.

“Oh my,” Winifred breathed.

“May I introduce Sugarplum, Sasha, and Leah?” Charles Nelek said, with dips of his chin. “Ladies, we have the honor of addressing the mayor, so be on your best behavior.”

Chester sensed that Nelek was poking fun at him, but he didn’t care. Doffing his hat, he went up to the ladies to shake their hands. “Pleased as can be to make your acquaintance, ladies. Anything you want during your visit, anything at all, you need only say the word.”

Win was a step behind him. “That’s right. We may not have as much to offer as Dodge, but whatever we have is yours.”

“Such gracious hospitality,” Nelek said. “What we would like most is to get in out of this sun and have something to drink.”

Win gestured at the batwings. “After you, then.”

Sugarplum twirled her red parasol, her golden hair shimmering under the lace. “Is it possible to get some ice cream anywhere?”

Chester and Win shared pained glances and Chester said, “I am afraid not, young lady. There is no ice to be had anywhere in Coffin Varnish.”

“How do people survive in this awful heat?” Sasha asked.

Nelek wrapped his arms around her and Sugarplum. “Ladies, we must remember we are roughing it. Dodge is an oasis of luxury compared to the rest of this godforsaken territory.”

Chester could not let the slur go unchallenged. “I wouldn’t know as I would go that far.”

“Oh, really?” Nelek said. “Tell us. Can Coffin Varnish boast of a water closet anywhere in its limits?”

“A what?” Win asked.

Nelek smiled smugly and gave the women on his arms a playful squeeze. “See what I mean, my dears? But don’t be disheartened. On the contrary. It will make the story of our adventure all the more entertaining.”

They repaired to the saloon and Win offered them his best whiskey. It earned a quirk of the lips from Charles Nelek. The ladies, Win noted, drained their glasses in a gulp.

“Now that we have wet our parched throats,” Nelek said, “we would very much like to view the display Undersheriff Glickman told me about.”

“Oh
yes
!” Sugarplum squealed. “The dead people!”

“You will be the first to see them,” Win mentioned.

Leah giggled and squirmed in her chair. “We will? Did you hear that, girls? We will be the envy of everyone.”

“I can’t wait to tell Claudia,” Sasha said. “Her and her two-headed snake she saw once.”

Chester had been so entranced by the three visions that he was slow to rouse and say, “I trust that Undersheriff Glickman also mentioned it is a dollar a person for the privilege?”

“Yes, he did,” Nekel replied. “A bit exorbitant, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not at all,” Chester said. “These aren’t ordinary dead people. They are the handiwork of a notorious
desperado. A killer who has his own penny dreadful. Jeeter Frost is halfway to famous.”

“Or will be after this,” Win said.

“Still, a whole dollar…,” Nelek quibbled.

Sugarplum showed her less than sugary side by snapping, “Damn it, just pay the man, Charley. We didn’t come all this way to listen to you haggle. And it’s not as if you haven’t hoarded every cent you ever earned.”

“That tart tongue of yours will get you in trouble one day,” Nelek warned.

“Oh, please. All I have to do is cross my legs and you will come begging for it,” Sugarplum said. “If you want to act all tough and important, be my guest. But don’t threaten me or I will be on the next stage for San Francisco. McCabe has been after me to come to his place.”

“Now, now,” Nelek quickly said. “Let’s not talk rashly, shall we? Did I say I wouldn’t pay this gentleman? Do you think I would bring you all this way and then not view the deceased?”

Chester accepted the money with the air of a man accepting the Holy Grail. He ushered them outside and down the street to the livery, the ladies chattering like chipmunks the whole while about the perfectly vile heat and the hideous dust everywhere and the awful smells, and wasn’t it all just grand fun?

Win accompanied them, and at a nod from Chester, helped open the double doors.

“Oh my!” Sugarplum exclaimed.

The four bodies had been propped upright in coffins built by Dolph Anderson. Each bore a crudely
scrawled sign with the name of the victim. The three Blights had their arms folded across their chests. But it was Edison Farnsworth who drew the ladies like buzzing flies.

“He is blown all apart!” Leah squealed in delight. “Oh, it is hideous! You can see his organs and bones and everything!”

“Wait until we get back and tell everyone!” Sasha gushed.

Charles Nelek did not realize it, but he made Chester and Win extremely happy when he remarked, “Gentlemen, I do believe you have a gold mine on your hands.”

“Letters have always been chicken scratches to me,” Jeeter Frost said as he stared hard at the
McGuffey’s Reader
. “You say this one is an
e
?”

“That it is, Mr. Frost,” Ernestine Prescott said. Her students had long since been dismissed for the day. Outside the schoolhouse, the gray shroud of descending twilight blanketed the prairie. “It is the fifth letter of the alphabet, after
d
, which you have already learned, and before
f
.”

“Sort of looks like a tadpole, don’t it?” Jeeter asked with a grin.

“Doesn’t it,” Ernestine corrected, and allowed herself a grin of her own. “Yes, it does, somewhat.”

Jeeter looked up from his desk. He was small enough that he fit, but it was a tight squeeze. “I can’t thank you enough, ma’am, for helping me.”

“Nonsense, Mr. Frost,” Ernestine said. She had on the prettiest of the three dresses she owned, and had washed her hair. “I am an educator. It is my duty to enlighten the ignorant.”

“That’s sure enough me, ma’am,” Jeeter said, nodding. “Ignorant as sin. I don’t know much about anything
except Colts. That’s all I am. An ignorant man, good with a Colt.”

“You are too hard on yourself,” Ernestine said. She stood beside her desk, a ramrod, her hands primly folded. “In the first place, we are all of us ignorant to some degree. In the second place, I can’t believe the only skill you have is killing.”

“It’s more of a talent, ma’am,” Jeeter said. “Like the talent you have for teaching. You are awful good at it.”

“Why, thank you,” Ernestine said, unfolding her hands and then folding them again. “You deserve some of the credit. You are an excellent student.”

“Me, ma’am?” Jeeter said, and laughed.

“You also have excellent manners,” Ernestine remarked, “which I must admit I did not expect.”

Jeeter self-consciously ran a hand over his oily hair. His hat was on a peg by the door and he cast a yearning glance in its direction before saying, “My folks take the credit there. I can be almost a gentleman when I put my mind to it.”

“You have impressed me,” Ernestine said. Suddenly coughing, she said, “Suppose we get back to your studies. Practice writing the
e
, oh, twenty times.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Jeeter picked up his pencil. He hesitated, the tip of his tongue sticking from the corner of his mouth, then painstakingly imitated the
e
in the
McGuffey’s Reader
. When he was done, he held the paper so she could see. “Look! I done it!”

“You did it,” Ernestine corrected. “Now write it nineteen more times.” As he bent to the task she turned and walked to the window. It would take him a while. He did his best, but he was as slow as a turtle. The sprinkling of lights in Dodge reminded her night
had fallen. She should tell him to leave. She had her reputation to think of. A schoolmarm must be above reproach, and here she was, alone with a man. She walked back to her desk and sat in her chair. She did not tell him to leave.

“I really am doing good, ma’am?”

His question surprised her. Not that he asked it, but his sincerity. Ernestine had never met anyone who yearned to learn as keenly as he did. “It has only been three days and already you are up to
e
. Yes, I would say you are doing quite well, Mr. Frost.”

Jeeter bent to the sheet of paper again. “You can call me Jeeter if you want, ma’am. It’s just the two of us here.”

Ernestine glanced up sharply. But there had been no hint of impropriety in his tone. “And you may call me Ernestine if you so desire.”

“You are sure I won’t get you into trouble, coming here as I do?”

“That is the fifth time you have asked, and no, you will not,” Ernestine assured him. “Who I teach on my own time is none of anyone’s affair.” She laughed lightly. “Besides, Dodge has another matter to keep tongues wagging. From what I hear, there has been a steady stream of otherwise sensible citizens traveling to Coffin Varnish to admire your handiwork.”

Jeeter looked up, the tip of his tongue sticking out. “How’s that again, ma’am?”

“Haven’t you heard? The four men you killed are on display. They are quite the attraction. At a dollar a head, someone is making a lot of money.”

“Are you joshing me, ma’am?” Jeeter was astounded. He had been avoiding human contact, except
for coming to the schoolhouse for his lessons, and spent his nights camped out on the plain.

“Why, no, Mr. Frost, I am not,” Ernestine said. “You sound upset.”

“Wouldn’t you be, ma’am?” Jeeter came out of the desk, or tried to. He had to wriggle some to unfurl to his full height. “I reckon as how I better pay Coffin Varnish a visit.”

“Not right this minute, surely?” Ernestine said. “You have only been here half an hour and we agreed on an hour’s lesson each day.”

“Yes, ma’am, but—”

“But nothing, Mr. Frost.” Ernestine got up and came over and put her hand on his arm. “Kindly retake your seat.”

Jeeter could not remember the last time a woman touched him. A woman he had not paid to touch him, that is. He quickly sat and picked up the pencil. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

Ernestine returned to her desk. Her hand was hot where she had placed it on his arm, and she rubbed it against her hip. But it only became hotter. “Why would you want to go there, if you do not mind my asking?”

“I shot those men,” Jeeter said. “I should have a say in what’s done with them. And I say the decent thing to do is to bury them.”

Clasping her hands behind her, Ernestine composed herself. He was constantly saying things that surprised her, and this was one of them. “That is quite noble of you, Mr. Frost.”

“Shucks, ma’am, I wouldn’t know noble from buffalo chips,” Jeeter told her. “I just know I don’t want nobody I shot made a spectacle of.”

“Anyone you shot,” Ernestine said. “Or perhaps someone, depending on whether you intended the singular or the plural.”

Jeeter set down the pencil. “When you talk like that, Ernestine, my brain goes numb.”

Ernestine smiled. It was the first time he had called her by her first name. “What will you do if you go to Coffin Varnish?”

“Ask them, polite-like, to bury the bodies,” Jeeter said. “And if they refuse, I’ll ask again, only not so polite.”

“I imagine the whole issue will soon be moot,” Ernestine commented.

“What do cows have to do with it?” Jeeter asked.

“Cows?” Ernestine repeated, and giggled. She covered her mouth with her hand but could not stop.

“What is so all-fired hilarious?”

With an effort Ernestine smothered another giggle, and replied, “Moot is not the sound cows make. In the sense I used it, I simply indicated that going to Coffin Varnish would be pointless.” His confusion was so apparent that she added, “The deceased have become rather ripe. So much so, yesterday’s newspaper mentioned that the bodies were to be buried sometime today.”

“Oh.” Jeeter still felt an urge to ride to Coffin Varnish and give them a piece of his mind. “Then I reckon we might as well keep on with my lessons. If you want to, that is.”

“Mr. Frost, if I were not teaching you I would be grading papers, and I consider teaching you the more pleasant of the two.” Ernestine felt herself blush. That had not come out precisely as she intended, although, God help her, it was the truth.

Jeeter was so flabbergasted that for a few seconds he could not get his vocal cords to work. Finally he said, “That’s awful nice of you. I’ll try to make you proud of me.”

“Let us take a look at
f
,” Ernestine said.

Chester Luce rapped his hammer on the blanket on the counter and announced, “This meeting of the Coffin Varnish Town Council is hereby called to order.”

Present in the general store were Chester and his wife, Win, Placido and Arturo, Dolph Anderson, and Minimi Giorgio.

“Two in one week,” Winifred Curry said from a chair near the pickle barrel. “The world is liable to come to an end.”

“You will treat these proceedings with the dignity they deserve,” Chester said, and tried to square his round shoulders. “Now then, the purpose of this meeting is to discuss those corpses.”

“There’s dignity for you.”

Adolphina came around the counter and loomed over Win. “That will be enough out of you. This is serious business.”

“We buried them an hour ago, thank God,” Win said. “What is there left to talk about?”

Chester answered, “The money we made.” He pulled a leather poke from an inner pocket and opened it. “All told, it comes to three hundred and forty-seven dollars.”

Silence fell, until Dolph Anderson recovered enough to ask in barely understandable English, “How much that be again, Mr. Luce?”

“Three hundred and forty-seven dollars. It is not as much as I hoped, but it is nothing to sneeze at.”

“You wanted more?” Win marveled.

“A lot more,” Chester said. “Last I heard, Dodge has grown to about seven hundred people. Not even half paid us a visit, since some of the three hundred and forty-seven came from folks who came here twice.”