Authors: Outlaw in Paradise
"Sure," Jesse said agreeably. "Shoot."
"Heh heh." Will always laughed before he made a little
joke, to be sure you got it. "I sure wish you'd rephrase that, Mr. Gault.
It makes me nervous when you say 'Shoot.'"
Jesse said, "Heh heh," back, to humor him. Will had been
asking him questions on and off all afternoon, in between photographs. These
weren't quite as easy to answer as the last time. Jesse figured somebody had
told Will Shorter, Jr., to toughen up, quit being a sucker. Most likely Will
Shorter, Sr.
The newspaperman whipped out his notebook, flipped pages. Uncapped
his fountain pen, cleared his throat. Sent Nestor a meaningful look.
Nestor ignored it and lowered his backside to the curb, all ears.
"Ahem," Will said again, frowning, but Nestor stayed
clueless. Finally he just shrugged and plunged in. "Mr. Gault, some people
are interested in knowing how it is that you seem to be all healed up from your
devastating wound. Uh, how it is that just three months ago, according to the Oakland
Courier,
you were shot so badly in the right hand that you said you were
going to give up gunfighting. Hang up your Colts and retire."
Will had been doing his homework.
"Who's
interested in
knowing it?" Jesse demanded, bluffing indignity. "You saying somebody
thinks I'm lying?"
"No. No. No, no, no, no, no."
"Because I'd like to know who they are. I'd like to hear 'em
say that to my face."
"No, no, no." Violent throat clearing. "Not at
all." He unwrapped a folded-up piece of newspaper he found in the back of
his notebook. "It's just that here in the
Courier
you say..."
He ran his thumb down a column. " 'My hand's shot to...'—uh, they put
'h_.' Heh heh. Guess you said heck." Jesse didn't laugh back. "Uh,
'My hand's shot to hell. I'll never draw a six-gun again. Now some might call
that lucky, but I don't. I never knew when or where, but I always knew how I'd
die—by fire, taken out by the hand of some faster triggerman than me. Now I got
to recalculate.' "
"Yeah, well, I had a lot more to recalculate than I thought.
See this hand?" He flexed his fingers, turned his palm up and down.
"Three months ago it was paralyzed. But the papers got it wrong—the bullet
hit me in the arm, right here, between these two tendons." He pointed to a
spot under his sleeve. "But it was
temporary
paralysis. After the
wound healed, I started to practice and exercise. Did nothing but draw and
target shoot for eight weeks. And you know what? I'm faster now than I was
before. Anybody who doubts that is welcome to come and try me." He said
that with a snarl, but Will missed it. He was too busy scribbling.
"What happened to the man who shot you?" he asked next.
"I'd give a lot to know the answer to that."
"He seems to have disappeared. Did you ever know his name?
What do you think became of him?"
"I think he ran scared. Because he didn't beat me to the
draw—I beat him. The only reason he plugged me is because my gun jammed."
He whipped out his right-hand Colt, causing Will and Nestor to jump, and fanned
the cylinder a few times. "She let me down," he said sadly. "Not
her fault, o' course. I'm suing the Winchester Company—did I tell you that? No?
There's a scoop for your paper. I buy my .45 cartridges straight from the
factory in New Haven, Connecticut, and what happens?" He shook his head in
disgust.
"Let's see your arm," Nestor said. "Scar must be
pretty bad."
Will looked up at that.
"It's not pretty. I don't care to show it. A man's scars are
private."
Will and Nestor continued to stare at him.
" 'Specially a man in my position. And I'm not just talking
about my reputation." He looked down at his hand and made a slow and
somehow dignified, even a tragic, fist. "This scar, it's not the only one
I've got. But I don't show the others, either. I don't know how else to explain
it. I'm a man. I've got... pride."
Nestor nodded solemnly, pressing his lips together hard to show
that he was touched, but in a manly way.
Will finished scribbling and looked up. Behind his glasses, his
magnified blue eyes were positively fawnlike. He'd swallowed every word, and it
was all hogwash. Jesse didn't even know what he was talking about.
"Hi, Mr. Gault!"
Good timing, he thought, watching little Ham, Levi's kid, barrel
toward him on the boardwalk. He stood up when he saw who was strolling along
behind him.
"I heard you was takin' pictures," Ham exclaimed,
breathless, barely screeching to a stop before slamming into Jesse's hip.
"Can I get a picture with you? Can I?"
Jesse rested one hand on Ham's head and whipped his hat off with
the other. "Afternoon, Miss McGill." He flashed his winningest grin.
"How're you today? A little warm this afternoon, though it looks like we
might get a shower later. Been shopping?"
Finally she had to stop, all the words he'd flung at her making it
impossible for her to keep walking without saying anything. Plus he was keeping
Ham stationary, and she couldn't very well go on without him. "Good
afternoon, Mr. Gault," she said coolly. "Yes, it's warm today."
She had a big hatbox by the handle in one hand, a hankie in the other; she took
the opportunity to dab at her temples and under her nose. She had on a blue
dress with a kind of apron thing in front, very demure, and a starched white
collar that had wilted in the heat. She looked about eighteen with her hair
like that, tied behind her neck in a big white ribbon bow. He wished he could
take her for a ride. Right now. Scoop her up on Pegasus and run along the river
with her, fast as the wind.
"I tol' you he look good," Ham said to Cady, and before
his eyes, for no reason Jesse could think of, she blushed. Bright pink, pretty
as a rose. "Can I git my picture took with Mr. Gault, Cady?" Ham
begged, big brown eyes wide and hopeful on her face.
She scowled at him, the blush fading. "I don't see how. Not
unless you've got five dollars. That's what you're charging, isn't it, Will?
You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I bet your father doesn't know about
this."
"What's wrong with it?" Will lifted his chin, offended.
"Nobody else is complaining. My father would say it's free enterprise.
Anyway, Mr. Gault's getting most of—"
"Ham's a special friend of mine," Jesse butt in hastily.
"No charge for him. Okay, Will?"
"Well, sure," he agreed, "I don't care," while
Ham jumped up and down, crowing with excitement.
"How about you, Miss Cady?" Jesse wheedled. "Want
to be in the picture with us?"
"No, thanks." But she was smiling.
"Sure? You can put on your new hat."
"Yeah!" Ham could hardly contain himself. "It got
yellow feathers an' a nest an' ribbons all over, and it the prettiest hat—put
it on, Cady, okay?"
"No."
"Please?"
"No."
"Please?"
"Ham, don't
start.
I'm not putting on this hat and I'm
not having my picture made." Now she wasn't just smiling, she was
laughing.
It tickled him so, Jesse threw back his head and laughed with her. When he
stopped, he realized they were all staring at him with their mouths open, as if
he'd just spouted out the Russian alphabet or all thirty-eight state capitals.
"Let's get this show on the road," he said with as surly
a snarl as he could muster, whipping his own hat off and pulling on his
eyepatch, slamming the hat back on his head. "You set up, Will? Ham, you
ready? I ain't got all day."
That's about how long it took to get the picture right, though.
"Right" according to Ham. First he wanted Jesse sitting down with
him, Ham, standing between his knees. Then—no—that was too "babyish";
he wanted to sit on the bench beside the gunfighter, mimicking his cross-legged
posture. No, on second thought, they both ought to stand up and face the
camera. Or—pretend to draw on each other! Yeah! Jesse could lend Ham one of his
guns and he could stick it in his belt and—
"Ham, that is not going to happen," Cady declared, in a
voice that for Jesse brought back memories of his mother, on those rare
occasions when she'd put her foot down. But Cady must be in a good mood today,
because she didn't leave—she stayed out in the hot sun smiling at Ham's antics
and Jesse's pretend-exasperation. Once she did go in the saloon, but it was
only to come back with an armful of vanilla pop bottles—five of them; she even remembered
Nestor. Jesse found himself trying to make her laugh again—making faces at the
camera, tickling Ham a second before Will snapped off a shot. When he lay on
the ground and told Ham to rest his foot on his chest and blow smoke from an imaginary
gun, she lost it.
"Quit wriggling," Will commanded, but Jesse couldn't
help it: the sight of Cady doubled up, giggling and snorting, hands on her
knees, made him start to guffaw along with her. Which made his chest shake and
Ham's knee bob up and down, which made everybody laugh harder, which made Ham
lose his balance and pitch over on top of Jesse. Then, naturally, they had to
have a wrestling match.
"Well, well, now ain't this cute."
Cady stopped laughing. Jesse let Ham out of a loose armlock and peered
past him to see Warren Turley's beady eyes and nasty smile looming over them.
Clyde, his shadow, stood half a step behind him.
Ham scrambled up and headed for Cady, who pulled him back against
her and wound her arms around his shoulders. Jesse got up much, much slower.
After he smacked his hat against his thigh for a while and slapped at his pants
to get the dust off, he finally glanced at Turley. "Something you wanted?
Like your gun back?" Cady drew a breath at that, and Turley's ugly face
darkened.
"Mr. Wylie wants to talk to you, Gault," he said
belligerently. "He's up at the saloon right now, waiting for you.
Wylie's
saloon," he clarified, throwing a sneering look at Cady.
"You don't say." Jesse turned his back on him and
moseyed over to the bench. Slouching down, back against the wall, he stuck his
feet up on the railing. "Tell him I'm busy."
Nestor snickered. Will Shorter started putting his camera
equipment away, pretending he wasn't listening. Cady kept her arms around Ham
and didn't move.
"He's waiting for you," Turley repeated, starting to
turn purple. "It's important."
It was so easy to get his goat, it wasn't even any fun anymore.
"Listen, Warren, here's what you do. You go back and tell your boss what I
told you— I've got too much going on right now to go see him." To rub it
in, he lit a cigarette and blew a slow, lazy smoke ring at the sky. "If he
wants to talk, he can bring his important ass down here. I'll be here for as
long as it takes to finish this." He took another drag, flicked ash on the
wood floor. "Probably take five, six minutes. Maybe you better hurry
along."
Poor Warren, he looked like his head was going to explode. Before
he stomped off, he shot back a look of loathing scary enough to give Jesse a
chill. But he caught sight of Cady's face—excited and pleased and downright
admiring—and it warmed him clear through to his bones.
Wylie hadn't shown up by the time Jesse took a last puff and
flipped his cigarette butt over the railing. He stood up, stretching. Cady had
taken Ham inside; Will was long gone; Nestor scratched under his armpit, said,
"Guess he ain't comin'," tipped his hat, and strolled off toward the
livery.
Jesse's stomach growled. The sun was sliding down behind the
second-story roof of the Frenchman's restaurant. He decided to go have dinner.
He sat at a table by the window while he ate "trout
almondine," which turned out to be not half-bad, although the trout was
haddock and the almonds were only chopped-up peanuts. Jacques claimed vinegar
pie was a Parisian specialty, which didn't seem likely. It was good, though;
Jesse got it whenever he ate at Jacques'—once or twice a day. Merle Wylie
passed by the restaurant while he was sipping his coffee. He assumed it was
Wylie—he was with Turley and Clyde, and he walked between them and half a step
ahead. While Turley and Clyde went inside the Rogue and Wylie leaned against
the hitching post waiting for them, Jesse studied him.
He looked like a strong, well-fed bay horse, maybe a little too
well fed, with a thick, gleaming mane of mahogany-colored hair. His expensive
broadcloth coat fit tight across bullish shoulders and a barrel chest. He was
around average height, Jesse's height, but he outweighed him by forty pounds,
easy. His features were murky in the dusk, but from what Jesse could make out,
they matched the man—fleshy, prominent, and powerful. He pulled a long-chained
watch out of his vest pocket, glanced at it, shoved it back in with small,
jerky movements. He was furious, but he was trying to hide it.
Clyde came out, said something to him. Wylie turned his back on
him and paced away, five fast, wide strides before he whipped around and paced
back. Clyde hunched his shoulders, trying to disappear.
Jesse stood up. In the darkening window, he checked his
reflection. Moderately bad, but something was missing... oh. The patch. He
found it in his pocket and dragged it on, adjusting it over his right eye.
There, that was better.
Turley came through the swinging doors of the Rogue just then. He
talked; Wylie listened, but never looked at him. He was the emperor of his
little kingdom of thugs and crooks and arsonists. Maybe he even used the royal
"we." Throwing a dollar on the table, Jesse went out to make his
acquaintance.
Clyde saw him first. He whispered it, but in the twilight hush
Jesse distinctly heard him say, "He's over there. He's coming." Wylie
turned around slowly, pivoting his bulk on surprisingly small feet. Jesse took
as long as he could getting to him. A laughably long time; he hoped he wouldn't
laugh in Wylie's face when they finally got together. But they were acting like
a couple of elk, or was it moose— which ones locked horns and fought to the
death?— and that tickled him. He sobered, though, at the thought that he was
probably the only one here doing any acting. Merle Wylie looked like the real
thing.
Jesse halted about three feet shy of him. He could imagine a long,
yawning, childish silence stretching out while each waited for the other to
speak, so he broke it before it could get started. He whispered, "Wylie."
"Mr. Gault." He jutted his chin—a kind of greeting.
Turley and Clyde flanked him like bookends.
"You want to talk to me," Jesse said, "you'll have
to lose Billy the Kid and his lovable sidekick."
Wylie thought that over while Turley simmered; you could almost
see steam coming out of his ears. "All right," he decided. He gave
Turley a look, and immediately, like a whip-trained dog, Turley turned and
walked away. Clyde followed. They only went as far as the corner, though; at
Stark's Saddlery & Shoe Repair they turned around and glared, their thumbs
stuck in their gunbelts. Jesse thought of sulky children sent off to bed early.
Now what?
"Walk with me down to my saloon, Mr. Gault. I'll buy you a
drink." Wylie had a smooth, almost rich tenor voice at odds with his burly
physique. His dark eyes protruded slightly and his forehead bulged; his jaw
looked hard enough to split rock. Jesse supposed he was handsome if you were
drawn to big, bulky things. Boulders and grindstones, concrete slabs.
"The Rogue's closer." The Rogue was right behind them.
Strains of "My Darling Lies Yonder" on Chico's piano, soft and sweet,
were coming through the swinging doors.
"I prefer my place."
"I prefer Cady McGill's."
Standoff. They stared at each other, blank-faced, hard-eyed. It went
on until Jesse decided to add a little smile, gleeful and kind of nuts, to his
expression. That might have been what did it—Wylie snapped, "Fine,"
and strode, stiff-shouldered, toward the saloon—but he wasn't sure. Wylie
wasn't like the others, an instinct told him. He wasn't going to be half so
easy to scare.
Things were quiet at the Rogue tonight. A few diehard gamblers
played poker at a couple of tables, and a few cowboys were shooting pool in the
back, but the roulette and blackjack tables stood empty. Levi was reading a
book behind the bar; Chico was only noodling now, not even playing a song.
Jesse looked around for Cady, and spotted her at a back table talking to
Willagail. She stood up when she saw him—or maybe when she saw Wylie, it was
hard to tell. She'd changed out of the blue dress and white apron. Yes, indeed.
What she had on now was a shiny, slinky, sort of silvery-green deal that had
something in it, some wire miracle that pushed her bosom almost up to her
throat. It looked about as comfortable as chain mail, but it sure was an
eyeful.
"Evening, Cady," Wylie said in a monotone, barely moving
his lips.
She slitted her eyes and nodded once. "What do you
want?"
"Nothing I could get here. Comfort. Intelligent clientele.
Honest whiskey."
Cady suggested Wylie do something Jesse had always thought was
physically impossible. He shivered; the temperature between these two was below
zero and falling. The reason for it hit him all of a sudden, like a smack in
the face. They used to be lovers. Had to be. Hostility this strong, this
obvious—what else could account for it? He'd disliked Wylie before on
principle, and now he despised him. Now it was personal.
Cady spun on her heel and moved away. At the bar, she said
something to Levi while Jesse and Wylie took seats at an out-of-the-way table,
and not long after that the bartender loped over to ask what they wanted.
Wylie let out a short, derisive laugh. "Listen, buck, I
wouldn't drink the water in this place."
Levi's limpid, heavy-lidded eyes blinked at him slowly, patiently.
"All right, boss," he said in the oddest voice; it sounded almost
tender. Was this some Buddhist response to provocation? Jesse had never heard
him call a man "boss" before. Wylie made a nervous, impatient gesture
and gave him his shoulder.
"I'll have a double shot of that fine, fine bottled in bond
you served me last night, Levi," Jesse said, overcompensating. "And a
beer chaser," he threw in. What the hell.
They sat without speaking during the time it took Levi to bring
the drinks. Jesse slouched in his chair— his screw
you
posture,
guaranteed to annoy—while Wylie sat stiff and heavy, his strangely small hands
resting on his beefy thighs. Cady, Jesse noticed, stood with her back to them
at the bar, pretending to ignore them; but more than once he caught her
watching them in the mirror.
"So. Wylie," he said, taking a sip of his whiskey after
Levi set it in front of him and went away. "Why don't you tell me what's
on your mind."
He waited a whole minute before saying, "Who hired you?"
as if Jesse hadn't spoken first. His way of controlling the conversation.
Two could play that game. "Say, I read the other day where
your old friend Cherney skipped town. You miss him? Guy like that, must seem
like you lost a brother, Merle. A twin."
"What do you know about Cherney?" His bulging, bulbous
face was ruddy to begin with; when he got mad, it turned the color of saddle
leather.
"Me? Nothing. I told you. I just read the papers." He
said it like he was lying, though, just to make the bastard crazy.
He gripped the edge of the table. He had clean, short fingernails,
shiny and buffed. "What are you doing in Paradise, Gault? Who hired
you?"
Jesse took a sip of whiskey, set the glass down and picked up his
beer, took a slug and exhaled with deep, exaggerated satisfaction. He'd take
any odds on a bet right now that Wylie wished he'd ordered something, anything.
"What makes you think anybody hired me? Nice place, Paradise. I like it
here. I might just—"
"Cady, right? Admit it. I know it was her."
Jesse put a cigarette in his mouth and lit a match to it. Blew
smoke at the ceiling.
Wylie's grip on the table tightened. Whitened. Suddenly he relaxed
it and sat back in his chair, smiling falsely, crossing one heavy leg over the
other. The metal glint of a boot gun flashed before his pants leg covered it
up. He patted his dark red hair, which was thick as a beaver pelt, and a ruby
ring on his middle finger winked in the lantern light. "How much is she
paying you?" he asked in the silky tenor. "Well? Come, you might as
well tell me."
"Why? Assuming she's paying me anything. Why would I tell
you?"
"Because whatever it is, I can better it." He looked
around at Cady's clean, comfortable saloon, smiling a little derisive smile,
his black eyes contemptuous. "I can double it. Triple it." He leaned
forward, massive body stiff and intense. "Name your price, Mr. Gault. Just
tell me what you want."
Ah,
thought Jesse,
the magic words.
Now that they were out, he
felt disappointed. In the end, Wylie had been as easy as all the others.
He started to drop his cigarette on the floor, remembered Ham, and
flicked it into a nearby spittoon instead. "My price to do what?"
Wylie lowered his voice. "Burn her out."
Burn her out. A picture flared in Jesse's mind: the pretty,
red-painted Rogue in smoky, stinking ruins, and Cady in the street watching it
smolder, hugging herself in her paisley night robe, trying not to cry.
"Burn her out?"
he said in shocked, carrying
tones.
Wylie jerked back, as startled as if Jesse had thrown his drink in
his face. "Shut up!" He hissed it, glancing around, flushing.
"Shut up, God damn you. Are you insane?"
Maybe so. He would never burn down Cady's saloon—he would never
burn down anything—but he could've lied and said he would. He could've
blackmailed Wylie. Or stolen a fortune from him and never had a twinge of
conscience because the bastard was a thief and a bully and God knew what else.
But he wasn't going to do any of those things. And if that wasn't
insane, Jesse didn't know what was.
"Oh, that's right," he said in the creepy whisper—
reverting to Gault. "Arson's your specialty, isn't it? I heard about the
old livery stable. Who did that one for you? Turley? Tell me, how many horses
got barbecued in the process?" Wylie shoved his chair and started to
stand. "Sit down!"
He did, after putting on a careless sneer to show he didn't have
to if he didn't want to.
Really, you know, Jesse thought—far from the first time—the
majority of grown men were about a boulder's throw, maturity-wise, from scabby
little boys. "I got one thing to say to you, Merle. When I finish, you can
get up and leave."
Wylie made the same anatomically improbable suggestion Cady had
made to him. This thing was going around.
Ignoring it, Jesse said slowly and clearly, "If anything
happens to this saloon, if so much as a window gets cracked, I'm going to come
after you. You can try to hide behind those two hoodlums outside, but it won't
do you any good. In the end it'll boil down to you and me. And then it'll just
be me."
"No. No. That's not how it's going to be." White saliva
drooled in the corners of his lips. He looked mad enough to spit, and maybe
just plain mad, too. As in insane. One ace shy of a deck. "I'll hire a gun
of my own, somebody faster, smarter, a killer, you won't stand a chance. You better
keep looking over your shoulder, Gault, because you'll never know when it's
coming, you'll be—"
"You better keep looking straight ahead, because I don't
shoot men in the back. Know why? Because I like to see their eyes when they're
dying. I like to see the fear get cloudy and the desperation set in. And then I
like to see the emptiness. The coldness. Blank. Dead."
Wylie's chair scraping the floor sounded like fingernails on a
chalkboard. He was reduced to cursing, crude, vicious oaths in a hoarse voice,
as if he'd been shouting all day. Jesse laughed at him. But when Wylie finally
ran down, hurled a last curse and stalked away, he almost groaned with relief.
Because he'd just remembered the boot gun.
If Cady had any doubts left about whether or not Jesse worked for
Wylie, the names she and everybody else could plainly hear Merle calling him
finally set her mind at rest. And if they hadn't, the look on Merle's face
would have. She was in his path—he had to cross in front of her to get to the
door—and she had to make herself stand still, not shrink against the bar or
flinch from the anger in his black, bulging eyes. How could she ever have found
him good-looking? And charming, too—imagine that. It hadn't even been that long
ago. Either she'd been crazy and blind, or he'd changed. Or both. More likely
both.