Authors: Joan Johnston
Frank grasped the naked flanks of the woman beneath him and thrust himself deeper inside her. He withdrew and thrust again. His air-starved lungs, his sweat-streaked body, his pounding heart gave mute testimony to his labor. There was pleasure to be had from the exquisite friction of flesh against slick flesh as he drove himself toward satisfaction. His fingers tightened as he felt the woman struggle for freedom beneath him.
“Don’t move,” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t move.”
She stilled, and he continued his plunder of her body. He kept his eyes closed, squeezed tight, and used his imagination to remake her features into the ones beloved to him. He imagined her with dark eyes alight with desire, her lips full from being bitten in passion, her nostrils flared to catch the scents of lovemaking thick in the air between them. He heard his name whispered by her voice, heard her begging him to fill her full with himself.
He sat up and pulled the woman’s legs over his thighs. He slipped his hands under her buttocks
and levered her body closer to his. And thrust again. Harder. Deeper. Faster. Wet sounds. Slapping flesh. Harsh breathing. His body drove him to find surcease from the endless craving for one particular woman. He felt as though he would die of wanting. Die of needing. Finally, his body demanded release from its torment. As he spilled his seed, he cried, “Merielle!”
His body slumped forward, drained of its essence. Exhausted. Finished.
Frank wished he could be swallowed up in a void so he wouldn’t have to face what happened next. He heard the woman take a breath to speak and tightened his fingers to keep her silent. After so many years, she knew what he wanted. Sometimes she gave him the peace he needed. Sometimes she forced reality back too soon.
“Frank? I’ve got another customer waiting downstairs.”
Frank’s breath shuddered out of him. He opened his eyes. The room was dark. But not completely. Harsh yellow light seeped in under the door and up through cracks in the floor along with the noise of the piano from the saloon downstairs. “All right, Jewell. Give me a minute to get my pants on.”
Frank liked the dark. It helped the illusion last longer. He didn’t want to see Jewell’s kohl-blackened eyes and rouged cheeks, her plump, middle-aged body. He didn’t want to see the starkness of the room where she did business. He rid himself of the condom Jewell made all her customers
wear and left it in the brass spittoon beside the bed.
Jewell had risen and crossed to a dry sink, where she kept water in a pitcher for washing. He heard her wet a washcloth and wring it out in the bowl. He knew she was wiping away all traces of him, of his saliva and sweat and semen, before her next customer came. It was one of the things he appreciated about Jewell. She was clean.
“How is Merielle?”
It was a question Jewell always asked. She knew, as well as anyone, that Frank had always loved the other woman. She knew, better than anyone, just how much.
“I tried talking to her about what happened all those years ago,” Frank said.
Jewell sank down onto a bench beside the dry sink. “My, my. What happened?”
“Nothing. Except maybe I scared her.”
“How’d you do that?”
“By kissing her,” Frank admitted in a taut voice.
“She didn’t like it?”
“I think she did, at first. Then she pushed me away.”
“So what she’s feeling toward you now maybe is at odds with what she remembers happening to her a long time ago?”
Frank frowned. “I never thought of it like that.”
“Are you going to kiss her again?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because she didn’t like it.”
Jewell shook her head. “I think maybe you ought to kiss her some more and see what happens. What have you got to lose?”
“She might not want me around anymore.”
Jewell laughed. “That girl adores you. You’d have to do something pretty terrible for her to send you packing.” Her eyes crinkled as she smiled. “And I’m telling you, Frank, there isn’t a woman alive who wouldn’t enjoy your kisses.”
Frank felt embarrassed by the sexual compliment. He turned his back on Jewell and pulled on his long underwear.
“I haven’t seen Ethan in a while,” Jewell remarked.
Frank pulled on his jeans over his long johns. “He’s been busy.”
Jewell laughed, a husky, throaty sound. “Busy with a long-legged blonde, the way I hear it.”
“Miz Kendrick is a lady, Jewell.”
“A lady’s got all the same equipment as a woman, last I heard,” Jewell replied.
Frank took some money from his pocket and laid it on the table beside the bed. He reclaimed his shirt from the standing mirror he had thrown it over. He had caught sight of himself in bed with Jewell once, and ever since had made sure the mirror was covered. He slipped on his shirt and began buttoning it. “I think she means to marry Ethan.”
“Question is whether Ethan means to marry her,” Jewell said. “Or whether he’ll get the chance. Saw a man come into the Silver Buckle tonight looked like trouble for Ethan.”
“Gunfighter?”
“Think so. Mean, hard-looking son of a bitch. Gonna find out just how hard in a few minutes,” she said with a grin.
“He your next customer?”
“Uh-huh. Do me a favor, will you? Ask him to come on up.”
Frank stomped his feet to make sure his heels were down in his boots. “Sure. And Jewell?”
“Yes, Frank?”
“Be careful.”
“You know me, Frank. I’m always careful.”
Once downstairs, Frank searched the bar for the stranger he knew he would find. The gunman was tall and lean. He looked tough as hobnails. His spurred boot was hooked over the footrail, but he wasn’t leaning on the bar. He kept his body free, ready to react. Frank met the man’s eyes and had the feeling he was seeing death—cold, icy gray orbs that bore no human emotion.
Frank crossed the room quickly, not wanting to give the stranger time to worry that he was looking for a fight. “Jewell says she’s ready for you.”
Frank felt a chill go down his spine when the stranger said, “I recognize you.”
Frank shifted uneasily. “Don’t remember us crossing paths before.”
“I was here in town a long time ago. Just a kid, really. Came through with my ma. She was looking for work. Didn’t find any, so we kept moving. But I remember you.”
Frank stood there, waiting to see if he had somehow,
in his misspent youth, offended this menacing stranger.
The gunfighter smiled. “You were walking with a black-haired girl in pigtails, and you were both eating off the same apple. She told you not to get near me, because I had sores on my feet and you’d probably catch some horrible disease from me and die.
“But you weren’t afraid. You said you’d talk to anybody you pleased.”
Frank searched for the incident in his memory. And found it. It was the contrast between the boy and the man that had caused his lapse. “Gloria Violet,” he murmured.
“So you remember my mother.”
Frank stared at the gunfighter. He remembered now what had drawn him to the barefoot boy. Pity. He had felt sorry for the tall, skinny kid whose mother couldn’t even get work as a whore at the Silver Buckle Saloon.
Frank made the mistake of letting the pity he had felt then back into his eyes.
The gunfighter’s face hardened like granite. “Name’s Calloway. I never forget a friend. Or forgive an enemy.” Then the man was gone.
Frank turned to the bartender and asked for a rye. He drank it down when it came and asked for another. The second one he nursed, because he wasn’t ready to go back to the Tumbling Tand play cards in the bunkhouse with the hands. It was getting harder and harder to pretend that he wouldn’t rather be in a home of his own with a wife and some kids playing at his feet.
Frank lost himself in the noise of the saloon, the clink of glass, the rise and fall of conversation, the piano tinkling out “Oh! Susannah!” over and over and Harvey missing the same note each time in the refrain. He was on his fourth rye when Calloway came back down the stairs.
The gunfighter headed straight for Frank. “Jewell told me you work for Jefferson Trahern.”
“I’m his foreman,” Frank said.
“I need directions to his place.”
Frank emptied his glass. “If you care to ride along, I’m going there now.”
Calloway nodded his agreement.
Frank had left his horse tied out front. He mounted and followed Calloway to the livery, where he waited while the gunfighter saddled his horse. Frank wasn’t in much of a mood to talk, which suited both men just fine.
The ride in the dark was peaceful. There wasn’t much to hear but the sound of the wind in the grass, the jingle of the bit and the creak of saddle leather, the clop of horses’ hooves, and once in a while, the yip of a coyote. The night was clear, and stars filled the sky as far as a man could see. There were so many they couldn’t be counted. Frank had fallen asleep once, trying. A man felt how small he was with so much space around him.
As they neared the ranch, Frank finally broke the silence between them. “Did Trahern say why he hired you?”
“Just that he needed my services,” Calloway replied.
“He wants you to kill a friend of mine.”
Calloway eyed Frank warily. “I’m real sorry about that.”
“I’m asking you to ride out of here, now. Forget you ever heard of this town.”
Calloway shook his head. “Can’t do it. Got a reputation to keep. I always earn my fee.”
Frank felt the hair-trigger tension in the gunfighter. One wrong move, and it would be all over. He didn’t intend to draw; he was no match for a fast gun. But Frank owed Ethan what help he could offer. He had to speak on the chance he could head off a showdown. “My friend has done his share of killing, too. You might be the one ends up dead.”
Calloway shrugged. “Just makes my job more interesting.”
Frank left Calloway in front of Trahern’s house and headed for the barn to stable his horse. He knew Ethan could take care of himself. He always had. But Calloway worried him. The man seemed more shrewd, more patient and savvy than the usual gunman Trahern hired.
Frank had spent some time talking to Ethan when he got out of prison, about the awkward situation he found himself in. It hadn’t been so bad when he worked for Trahern the first ten years, because Trahern’s obsession for vengeance against Ethan—who was nowhere to be found—had come to naught.
He had felt guilty working for Trahern the seven years Ethan was in prison, even though he couldn’t see how it hurt Ethan. But he hadn’t quit.
There was just no reason to keep on living if he could never sec Merielle again.
When Ethan had returned recently to Oakville, Frank had realized he couldn’t ignore the situation any longer. But after so many years of seeing Merielle day in and day out, he was more attached to her than ever. So he had broached the subject with Ethan.
“If you don’t want to be my friend anymore, I’ll understand. But I can’t give up Merielle. I can’t.”
“You don’t have to,” Ethan assured him. “All I ask is that you don’t do anything to help Trahern nail my hide to the wall.”
“You have my word,” Frank said.
And he had kept it.
This latest threat from Trahern, the bounty hunter named Calloway, looked more serious than the last one. Frank made up his mind to ride over to the Double Diamond in the morning and warn Ethan what he was up against.
Inside the barn, Frank heard soft, whimpering cries coming from the loft that sounded like some animal in pain. There were traps in the barn to catch rodents, and he figured he might as well put whatever cat or possum or coon that had fallen prey to one of those vicious traps out of its misery.
As soon as he had unsaddled his horse and forked some hay for him, he climbed the ladder, taking a lantern with him so he could see in the dark.
The noises seemed to be coming from the corner. The closer he got, the more his eyes widened in disbelief. “Merielle? Is that you?”
He hung the lantern on a hook on one of the eaves and knelt beside her in the scattered hay. She was curled into a ball in the corner, her head hidden in her hands. The woeful sounds he had heard were her muffled sobs. When he put a hand on her shoulder, she jerked upright. She took one look at his face in the light and threw herself into his arms.
“Frank! Frank, you came!”
“I’m here, Merielle,” he crooned. “I’m here.”
“Father wouldn’t let me come see you,” she said in a choked voice. She levered herself away from his chest with her palms and said in a fierce voice, “I won’t let him keep us apart, Frank. I love you. I’ll always love you!”
Then she kissed him, her body pressed fervently against his, and her lips like sweet, sweet honey.
Frank kissed her back. If this was a dream, he didn’t want to wake up. He thought maybe he had drunk too much, and his mind was making up the words she was speaking, the things she was doing. As much as he wanted to kiss her, he wanted even more to look at her face, to see if her eyes were lucid, to see if what was happening was
real
.
“Merielle,” he murmured against her lips. He took her face in his hands and held it steady in the light while he tried to find the girl he had loved in the eyes of the woman in his arms. But Frank had loved Merielle too well and too long. To him, they were one and the same. “I love you, too, Merielle,” he whispered.
Her eyes were clear, and she seemed actually to hear and understand what he was saying. The joy
she felt was there in her dark eyes for him to see. It was a moment from the past she was remembering, but she
was
remembering. How they had felt toward each other. What they had meant to each other.
Frank hoped like hell his perceptions weren’t blurred by the liquor he had drunk. Because this was the first sign he had seen in seventeen years that Merielle had any recollection of their relationship. He was afraid to ask for more, to press her for more. But he recalled Jewell saying “What have you got to lose?”
So he asked, “Merielle, where were we supposed to meet tonight, when your father wouldn’t let you leave the house?”
“At the cave.”
He pulled her into his arms and hugged her tight. “That’s right, at the cave.” Just as quickly he put her away from him again. “Do you remember why I wanted you to meet me?”