Gaffney, Patricia (10 page)

"You're joshing me, aren't you? That horse-faced hyena? She
had a
name?"

Shrimp looked at the ground, chuckling; the crafty look wavered.
Then he cocked his head to the side. "What town in Coos County they from?
The Weaver boys."

Jesse let go of his grin, let it fade slowly, slowly, like an
unhurried black cloud covering up the sun. When it was all gone he narrowed his
one eye on Shrimp Malone in a stare that could've frozen bathwater. "What
did you say to me?"

"What? Nothin'. I didn't say nothin'."

"I think you asked me a question."

"No, I didn't."

"I think the question had a
tone
to it."

"No, it didn't."

Every slow step Jesse took toward him, Shrimp took a hop backward.
"I think it had a tone of
disbelief."

"No, it—"

"Disbelief.
Which says to me you think
I'm lying."

"No, I don't! No, I don't!" He threw up his hands. His
crutches stood alone for a second before they toppled over. He looked down at
them blankly, realized they weren't holding him up anymore, and pitched face
first in the dirt.

"Oh, shit fire," Jesse swore, hurrying over and hauling
the old fool up by the belt and the collar. "You okay?"

"Ow! Shit! I think I broke it again."

"No, you didn't." He scooped up the crutches and stuck
them under Shrimp's armpits. "Quit that caterwauling, you're all
right."

"No, I ain't."

"Yes, you are. Now, what was I saying?"

Suddenly Shrimp was fine, not a thing wrong with him. "I
don't recollect. Nothin' important. Well, so long, Mr. Gault, nice talkin' to
you."

"Maybe I'll see you around sometime."

Shrimp said sure, definitely, you never know, the whole time he
was hobbling down the street as fast as his good leg could go.

Stinking, ungrateful old goat, thought Jesse. Seven hundred bucks
were limping out of sight, and he'd bet Shrimp Malone wouldn't even buy him a
drink if they met up again. Ingrate.

Will Shorter's camera was all set up. Jesse posed for pictures
standing up, sitting down, smoking a cigarette, pointing his guns. Before he
was finished he'd drawn a crowd, and a couple of people in it started making
suggestions. "Take off your hat," somebody advised; an old lady
called out, "Couldn't you try to smile just once?"

"That's it," Jesse decided, breaking a particularly
badass pose. Will came out from under his black leather covering looking
confused. "We're done here, Shorter. Where's my lunch?"

They went over to Jacques' restaurant and took a corner table.
Maybe it was all the ice-cold beer he slugged down to quench the thirst he'd
worked up standing in the hot sun. Or maybe Will Shorter, Jr., was a lot
smarter than he looked. Either way, when the reporter casually drew a notebook
out of his vest pocket and said, "So. How'd you get started in the
gunfighter business, Mr. Gault?" Jesse told him.

OUTLAW COMES TO PARADISE

Exclusive Interview—Secrets Revealed

How Bad Luck Started Wounded War

Vet Down Path of Violence

"Listen to this part," Glendoline told Ham and
Willagail. All three were lying on Cady's bed, while Cady sat at her dressing
table, trying to fix her hair. " 'A man doesn't set out to be a
gunfighter. But sometimes circumstances don't leave him a choice,' Gault
confided to this reporter. T fought for the Union, but after the war, sick and
disabled, I came home to find carpetbaggers on my family's land, living in my
father's house. It wasn't legal, but the law wasn't going to help us. Traitors
and scalawags found a way to force us out and leave us with nothing, so I found
a way to re-recip—' "

"Reciprocate," Cady supplied without thinking.

"Ha!" Glen pounced. "I thought you couldn't be
bothered reading about him. You said we were wasting our time."

"You are. I can't believe that blowhard's life story is on
the front page, and the news about Lyndon Cherney swindling thousands of
dollars from the Mercantile and escaping in the middle of the night isn't even
mentioned
until page three."

"Go on, Glen," Willagail urged, dismissing Cady with a
wave. "Get to the good part."

"Yeah," said Ham. "Get to the part 'bout how Mr.
Gault have to kill somebody to get his house back."

"Fat lot of good it did him," Cady couldn't help throwing
in. "He had to leave Kentucky to evade the law, and he
still
doesn't
have a home."

Glendoline shushed her and went back to the story in the
Reverberator.
The paper was a weekly—it came out on Fridays—but this story was deemed so
newsworthy, it merited a Wednesday Special Edition.

" 'I won't lie to you,' Mr. Gault said. 'For the sake of
justice, I took the law into my own hands. I righted a wrong with the only
weapon they left me: my gun. What I didn't count on was the government I'd
fought and nearly died for siding with the very thieves who'd stolen everything
from my family.' "

"It ain't right," declared Ham.

"What else could he do?" Willagail sighed, lying back,
punching Cady's pillow, making herself more comfortable. "I don't blame
him for doing what he had to do. I think it's admirable."

Cady snorted. "He shot a man and ran away. That's
admirable?"

"But it was a fair fight—it says so right here—and they
didn't leave him any choice. I think it was brave. And sad, because now he can
never go home."

"And he loved his home," Glendoline said sadly.
"The Kentucky bluegrass. Doesn't it sound beautiful? I love that
word—bluegrass. And all those horses his daddy raised. What a life."

"All lost," Willagail murmured with her eyes closed.
Cady thought she might cry.

"Well, I for one think Will Shorter's lost his mind." Cady
pulled all the pins out of her pompadour and let it fall past her shoulders.
She was tired of that style. Maybe a French roll? "Notice how he doesn't
ask any tough questions. He just lets Gault go on and on, and it ends up
sounding like the life of Robin Hood—some
hero
instead of a hired
killer."

"I don't b'lieve he's a hired killer," Ham said sulkily,
picking the stuffing out of a hole in her quilt. "What make you think he's
a hired killer?"

"Because he kills people. He does admit
that,
at
least."

"Yeah, but only the bad guys."

"And they always drew first. Look, it's right here
somewhere..." Glen ran her finger down a column of newsprint, searching
for the place where Gault said he was innocent.

"Oh, so because he says it, that means it's true? You three,
I'll swan." They all smiled; "I'll swan" was one of Levi's
sayings.

"Say the part about how he gets wounded in the eye," Ham
said. "An' how he be okay now."

Even Cady quit fooling with her hair and turned around for that.
This was the part in the article she'd read and reread numerous times,
fascinated, wanting to believe it but finding it all but incredible.

"It was during the battle of Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia, that
Mr. Gault suffered the devastating head wound that left him partially blind and
deaf. T was just a kid. I lied about my age to enlist in the First Kentucky
Volunteers, and they put me in the mortar and gun crew. Confederate shells hit
the artillery wagon I was unloading, and a box of case shot blew up in my face.
But I was lucky—our commander, General McCook, died that day in the battle. The
war ended during the year I spent recuperating in a Union hospital. I went home
scarred and crippled, only to find out I'd lost everything.' "

Glen paused to fish her handkerchief out of her pocket and dab at
her eyes. "Keep going," Ham said impatiently, and Cady sympathized:
they were just getting to the good part.

"It was at this point in the interview when Mr. Gault
confided a secret to this reporter, a secret never before revealed in any
recent press accounts, or even hinted at in the numerous rumors that constantly
circulate around him. 'About a year ago, I started seeing something out of my
right eye. At first it was just a gray smudge, like smoke, but lately it's been
getting clearer and clearer. I went to a special eye doctor in San Francisco,
and he told me I ought to start exercising it by taking the patch off a few
hours every day. I'm up to about half a day now. I don't see perfectly, and I
don't expect I ever will, but I can see something, and that's a miracle to me.
I attribute it to God and clean living."

That was the line that always got her. She'd be reading along,
thinking,
Isn't that wonderful,
get to the "clean living"
part, and burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" said Willagail. "It is a
miracle."

"I can't wait to see 'im without the patch." Ham jumped
off the bed and ran over to Cady. "Bet he look
good."
He threw
his arms over her lap and hung on her, swaying. "Las' night he gave me
another quarter, Cady. Say he found it on the flo', but I think he jus' like
givin' out money. I like him a lot, don't you? He talk to me like he a old
friend."

"An old friend, eh?" She rubbed his back, smiling.

" 'Don't miss Part Two of this exclusive story,"
Glendoline finished. " 'Coming Friday: A dramatic account of the
gunfighting career of a living Western legend. Read how Gault killed his first
man; read how he gunned down every challenger to his skill and deadly
quickness; read how a jammed six-gun almost ended his career—and his life!'
"

"No doubt about it," Cady marveled, swatting Ham on the
behind to make him move so she could finish dressing. "Will Shorter has
completely lost his mind."

****

"With or without?"

"With," Nestor Yeakes decided after a moment's thought.

Jesse put his eyepatch back on. Sticking his thumbs in his
gunbelt, he glared at the camera. Beside him, Nestor, dressed in his Sunday
clothes and a flower in his buttonhole, pressed his hat to his chest and
grinned.

"All right, now, hold it... hold it... hold it...
gotcha." Will came out from under the black camera hood, sweat running
down behind his eyeglasses and dripping off the fuzzy ends of that pitiful
little growth he called a mustache. "Okay, that's it for a while. I need
to get out of this sun."

"Fine with me." Jesse wiped his forehead with his sleeve
and walked over to a bench under the porch roof of Rogue's Tavern.

Nestor trailed after him "When you reckon the picture'll be
done?" he asked, still grinning.

"Ask Will, he's the photographer." But Jesse was getting
eighty percent—four dollars—on every five-dollar photo Will sold. Peanuts; not
even worth his time. But old habits die hard. It wasn't so long ago that he'd
had to scrounge for every dime, and some of the ways in which he'd made his
precarious "living" he'd just as soon forget. Back then, five bucks a
pop for standing next to some awestruck villager and having his picture made
would've felt like a miracle.

"I took Bell Flower out for a run this morning, Mr. Gault."

"Bellefleur," Jesse corrected; he'd checked the name on
Cherney's sale papers. "Yeah, I saw you ride out." From his rocking
chair on the balcony. "How was she?"

"Better'n I thought she'd be. Nervous, o' course. Fact,
she'll probably never get over being scared altogether. But she wants to do
what you tell her, and that's a real good sign. Reckon Cherney didn't break her
heart after all. Didn't have time."

Jesse grunted. Nestor didn't look like much, and when he talked he
didn't sound like much. But he knew horses, Jesse was finding out, and for that
alone he respected him more every day.

"Wanted to say... I like what you did, Mr. Gault."

"Yeah, all right." He started hunting in his pockets for
a match.

"Dunno how you did it, but I surely do admire you for doin'
it."

"Okay. Take Peg for a run this evening, hear? And comb him
good afterward. And give him a bath tomorrow. He likes a bath about once a
week. Like me.

Nestor cackled and spat tobacco juice. "Sure will. Sure will,
Mr. Gault." Like a lot of other folks, Nestor wasn't scared of him
anymore. Jesse knew he ought to care about that more, but he couldn't seem to
work up a good goddamn. He'd had a nice time today posing with the likes of Sam
Blankenship, the real estate and insurance man, and Floyd and Oscar Schmidt, a
couple of coots who sat outside the grange hall all day every day, minding
everybody else's business. Jersey Stan Morrissey, who owed Jesse some poker
money, came out of the dark, cool Rogue long enough to get his picture made,
then scuttled back inside like a mole, blinded by the light. Even Shrimp Malone
had limped over for a photograph. He'd moved back into his boardinghouse after
Jesse gave him his money back, and he looked a little cleaner, and a lot
healthier now that he was eating three squares again.

Will Shorter came over and flopped down beside Jesse on the bench.
"This a good time to continue our interview, Mr. Gault?" he asked
politely, mopping the back of his neck with a big handkerchief. "Folks say
they're really looking forward to tomorrow's edition."