A Congregation of Jackals (17 page)

“Is the groom around? He must be a handsome one to win a gorgeous woman like you,” Mrs. Alben said.

“Thank you,” Beatrice replied, blushing for the second time that day. “He is currently showing his guests the town of Trailspur.”

Two more people approached Beatrice and introduced themselves as Smith and Smiler—men who used to marshal with her father back in Arkansas. Both of them were over sixty and moved slowly—one walked with a cane—and they just stared at her smiling throughout their interaction, as if her existence was an answer to a long-posed question and the words that came from her mouth were negligible, albeit pretty, bird sounds.

“I didn’t understand half what you said, but it all sounds smart,” remarked the one with the gaping smile.

“I can’t believe somethin’ like you came outta T.W.,” the one with the cane said. “He’s a good man, but . . . but you’re like a queen or something.”

For the third time that day, Beatrice blushed. The old marshals vied for her right hand; Smith jabbed his cane into his companion’s thigh to win the privilege. He delicately clasped her fingers, raised them to his mouth and kissed her bare knuckles, the bristles of his mustache tickling her. The moment he released her hand, his peer snatched it up and pressed it to his lips so gently that she barely felt the contact.

“Tell T.W. that Smith and Smiler are here whenever you see him.”

“And ask him if he knows who your real father is.”

“Smiler! That ain’t at all appropriate to joke about,” Smith reprimanded . . . but then started to laugh himself.

Oswell, Godfrey and Dicky sat on the wide bench that furnished Lingham’s porch, watching the sun fall from the sky. The slatted door behind them opened and the tall carpenter emerged, holding the handles of three tin cups of coffee in his right hand (one needed long fingers to do that) and a fourth cup in his left hand. Lingham handed each man a coffee and was thanked with a nod. The coydogs strutted from the woods toward the porch.

“Jesus has returned,” Dicky remarked.

Lingham hooked a stool with his boot, slid it across the deck and sat down; he blew upon his coffee and sipped. The tall blond man scratched Jesus’s nose and then Joseph’s.

“This is good coffee,” Godfrey remarked.

“Thanks.”

The men sipped at and blew upon the steaming ebony held in their tin cups. Oswell tried not to think about Elinore and the kids.

He said to Lingham, “We should be watchful at that dance. You said anybody can come?”

“The whole town is invited. We can only get one hundred and twenty into the church, and some folks wanted to be involved with the marriage even if they couldn’t hear us say the vows. That hall can hold more than three hundred.” He sipped and then added, “Beatrice is popular in this town. So is her pa.”

“From what we saw walking around today, so are you,” Godfrey remarked.

“They like the James Lingham I showed ’em.”

Oswell said, “I know how things went back then. This James Lingham is you. Bad luck and other folks made you become that other one.”

“Lots of folks had troubles and didn’t do what I done,” Lingham said. He shook his head morosely. “It’s all gonna come out one way or the other, I suppose. Things will get settled for good.” He sipped his coffee and tapped his fingers upon the tin mug.

Oswell asked, “Is the sheriff going to approach us if we’re wearing guns at the dance?”

“He will. He monitors that stuff close. And you can’t do no shootin’ in a hall full of people anyway.”

The rancher responded, “Of course we won’t. Be we should be able to defend ourselves if we get called outside or get ambushed along the way.” To Dicky, Oswell said, “Put a couple of ten-shooters and a couple of fives in that valise and bring it.”

“I already packed them.”

“Good. And give us each a knife in case the wrong fellow asks us to dance.”

The quartet rode their horses from Lingham’s property; the sun knelt on the earth behind them, casting their shadows forward like jet-black pillars. Oswell and his brother wore blue suits, Dicky wore his brown three-piece outfit with a maroon tie and gloves and Lingham wore a dark green suit and matching shirt. Each man held a revolver in his free hand and watched the woodlands.

“Did Beatrice pick out that suit for you?” Dicky asked.

“She did.”

“Was the inspiration green beans?”

“Shut up Dicky.”

“I was only joking. You look very nice.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ve never seen a vegetable ride a horse before.”

“It’s a wonder we never shot you,” Oswell said. “Lay off of Lingham or I’m gonna get off my horse and go a round with you.”

“How about you go to hell with your threats, Oswell.”

Godfrey and Lingham grew tense; Oswell looked at Dicky.

The New Yorker continued, “Not one of us knows which way tomorrow is going to go—all I am trying to do is have a little fun. You have been a gloomy bastard since I met you at the train depot, as if you were the only one who has suffered for what happened back then. You are not the only one, Oswell Danford: we all have. We all have the same weight upon us—you have just decided that your burden entitles you to be an ornery louse. Well it does not entitle you to such behavior. Godfrey is civil and so is Lingham and so am I.”

Dicky reined his horse close to Oswell’s and continued, “And furthermore, I have seen you clamber up and down that mare. I am fairly certain that I would be standing and you would be eating dirt in any dustup between the two of us. If you want to attack me in a valiant effort to defend Lingham’s dumb suit, go ahead.”

The four men rode on in silence. Oswell wondered why Dicky’s japes had pricked him so deeply, angered him so much more than they ever had before. He ruminated.

After his horse had taken a dozen strides, the rancher said, “I suppose I’m not very tolerant of any of us having fun, especially at the expense of someone else. I figure that’s how we all got into this mess in the
first place.” Oswell shook his head. “But I shouldn’t come at you as I have been. You showed up for this and some men might not have. Most men, probably. You’re here to own up to what happened the same as me and my brother and Lingham, and I shouldn’t be all over you the way I have been.”

Oswell and the rest of the crew were surprised when he extended his right hand to Dicky. The New Yorker clasped and shook it.

The four men tied their horses amid the forty-three others fastened to the posts outside of Big Abe’s Dancehall of Trailspur and walked toward the large double doors, from which emanated the sounds of a piano and a mirthful throng of people. Oswell held the valise within which all of their revolvers had been placed.

“I plan on having a good time,” Dicky announced. He looked at Godfrey. “I will get us some girls.”

“Be respectful,” Lingham admonished the New Yorker.

“That is part of the strategy.”

The doors grew large in front of them; the piano music sounded like restive children stomping out block chords with their feet.

Oswell looked at Lingham and said, “It’s been a long time since I saw you dance.”

“Can you still do that fancy backward stepping?” Godfrey asked.

“Better than before. We have lots of socials in Trailspur and I go to all I can. That’s where I met Beatrice.”

Dicky asked, “She was beguiled by your footwork?”

“She liked it.”

Godfrey grabbed the brass knob and pulled the door wide. Oswell winced as the volume of the celebration roared into his ears; he was not used to crowds. Faces
turned to look at the new arrivals. Several people shouted out the name James. The quartet entered the vast enclosure; hands went up to solicit the groom-to-be. He waved back amicably.

The warmth and humidity of the dance hall enveloped Oswell; his boots thudded upon the newly burnished wood, another instrument added to the convivial atmosphere of chatter, stomping, laughter and clapping. The Trailspur citizens’ fondness for bright colors was evidenced by the purple, green, red and yellow clothing they wore.

Oswell surveyed the individuals that comprised the crowd. Excepting the dozen folks Lingham had introduced him to earlier that day, the guests, who already amounted to nearly two hundred people, were all strangers to the rancher. Regardless, men who rode with Quinlan—men like the twins and the toddler and the sort of fellow he used to be himself—did not settle well in an environment such as this.

He did not notice anybody that caused him concern; when he looked at Godfrey and Dicky, the pair appeared similarly at ease with the throng.

“Seems okay,” Godfrey said.

A moment later, a very large bald man in a bright yellow suit and matching top hat stormed across the floor to Lingham, clasped the tall man’s right hand with both of his, and shook it as if he were trying to pump water from the ground.

“Big Abe,” Lingham said. “These are the fellas I used to cowboy with. This is Oswell, his brother Godfrey, and that’s Dicky from New York.”

The proprietor clapped his hands to each man, said “I’m Big Abe,” and tried to pump more water.

The piano player, a tiny old woman with big-knuckled hands, shifted the tempo and mode of her
playing, punishing the keys into giving her what she required. Oswell guessed that the woman had ninety years behind her, if not more.

“That’s Wilfreda. She’s a treasure in this town,” Big Abe informed Oswell.

“She can play very well.”

“You haven’t seen a thing—she’s toying with us right now, inveigling us.”

Her left hand simmering with a sinister bass line, Wilfreda raised her right hand over her head and slammed it violently to the keys. Formerly inert feet began to tap the floor, seduced by the vibrations.

Wilfreda turned to look over her left shoulder, pure white hair beneath her flat, crescent-shaped hat. Beneath colorless eyebrows that looked like caterpillars, her narrow eyes assessed the crowd with a gaze that to Oswell appeared malefic. She grinned while her left hand percolated an ever-changing rhythm that the dancers tried to conform to. Wilfreda turned back to her piano keys and plunged headlong into a robust waltz, peppering it with odd accents that elicited yelps from less coordinated dancers and people with sensitive eardrums.

Big Abe said, “She says that her playing is what keeps death away from her. Scares him off.”

“She’s something,” Oswell replied.

“I recommend the rum punch,” Big Abe said. “I made it myself.”

Lingham inquired, “Beatrice don’t mind you putting out rum punch?”

“Both options are available. The fruit punch is in a bucket under the table if somebody wants some. The rum punch is on the table in that huge glass bowl with all the fruit in it.”

“Okay.”

Big Abe departed to the table upon which the punchbowl, ladles, cups, candied apples, sweet corn cakes, seed cakes and funnel cakes lay.

Wilfreda picked up the pace of her playing, her head slowly turning away from the keys to survey the movement of the crowd.

“She looks like a witch,” Godfrey said to Oswell.

“I wouldn’t cross her,” he responded.

More people entered the dance hall; the floor thudded in time with Wilfreda’s passionate machinations. The hall grew warmer.

The crowd parted to reveal Beatrice, her arm around the elbow of an older man in a brown and orange plaid suit; he had receded silver hair, a big mustache, sharp eyes and a belly jutting from his otherwise solid frame. He walked with a limp and wore a gun on his right hip.

“Is that the sheriff?” Oswell asked Lingham quietly.

“That’s him.”

Beatrice, her curly blonde hair pulled into a lime ribbon, wore a dress as green as Lingham’s suit and a smile that barely fit upon her luminous face. She was a pretty woman and in her happiness, stunning, Oswell thought. The sheriff motioned for her to run to her fiancé, which she did instantly; she threw her arms around Lingham’s neck and kissed him on the mouth with such love that Oswell felt a bittersweet empathy twist his guts.

Lingham scooped her up into his arms and asked, “Did you have any of the rum punch?”

“No! I promise. I had the one with fruit in it.”

“That’s the rum punch,” Lingham said, laughing.

Oswell saw his brother turn away; Godfrey and Katherine had been like that before she left him.

The sheriff stopped in front of Oswell, Godfrey and Dicky and openly appraised them.

Lingham strode beside the lawman and said, “T.W., this is Oswell, his brother Godfrey and Dicky from New York.”

T.W. extended his right hand, shook Oswell’s and said, “It’s a pleasure to finally meet some of James’s friends. What’s your last name?”

Oswell had not at all expected to be asked this question, and he sensed Godfrey and Dicky grow tense beside him; he said, “Danford,” figuring that there was a very good chance Beatrice already knew his last name from the wedding list. Regardless, it was clear that T.W. was a perspicacious man who could ferret out a lie.

“Thank you for traveling across the country to join in the celebration, Oswell Danford. James’s past remains a bit of mystery to me.”

“Lingham is a good man. And from what I’ve seen, he’s matched or bested in every way by your very fine daughter. I like the sight of them together.”

“Thank you,” T.W. said with a smile that covered over something unfriendly and made Oswell uncomfortable. The sheriff turned to Godfrey and clasped his hand. “You are Godfrey Danford then? His brother?”

“I am. Though since I’ve got two years on him, I like to consider him my possession, not the other way around.” Again, T.W. smiled in a manner that hid more than it showed.

The sheriff turned to Dicky and said, “What kind of name is Dicky for an adult?”

“The humorous kind.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Richard Sterling.” Oswell was relieved that Dicky did not lie.

T.W. shook the New Yorker’s hand and said, “Thank you for coming out to join our celebration, Richard Sterling. How does Trailspur compare to New York?”

“There is no comparison.”

“I agree on that score,” T.W. said, subtly winning the exchange.