Blood Duel (18 page)

“That it would,” Abe agreed. “Why, our ma would horsewhip us if we dishonored our kin that way.”

Sam gave thanks he had been born in Ohio. “What started this feud of yours?”

“A Larn shot a Haslett over a pig,” Abe said.

Stern shook his head. “No, it was a Haslett shot a Larn, and it was over a chicken.”

“It was a pig.”

“It was a chicken.”

“Pig.”

“Chicken, damn you.”

The Larns glared at the Hasletts and the Hasletts glowered at the Larns. Verve started to sidle his hand toward his hip.

“None of that!” Sam bellowed. “You are here to
talk, remember? If you want to wipe each other out, fine and dandy, but you will not do it in my saloon.”

“A truce, remember?” Abe Haslett said.

“A truce, brothers,” Stern stressed for the benefit of his siblings.

Several on both sides echoed, “A truce.”

Sam refilled his glass. He had built his saloon on Crooked Creek instead of in Dodge because he did not like towns and cities with their hustle and bustle. He liked a slow pace of life—the slower the better. He was not all that fond of people, either, Southerners in particular. He had lost an uncle and several cousins in the War between the States, and he had never forgiven the South for fighting a war over something as stupid as states’ rights and slavery, but that was neither here nor there. “Get this talk over with. You are commencing to aggravate me.”

“I don’t like your tone,” Stern Larn said.

“Me neither,” Abe Haslett said.

Sam picked up his revolver. “I don’t give a good damn what you do and do not like. This is my place and I can say and do as I please.”

“Yankees,” Abe spat.

“They are the same everywhere we go,” Stern mentioned.

“Get your talk over with,” Sam repeated. He wished other customers were there. The hicks were less apt to act up if there were other customers.

“Always lookin’ down their noses at us,” Jefferson Haslett said.

“I don’t look down my nose at anyone,” Sam lied. “Haven’t I treated you decent, the times you have
been in here?” He was always agreeable, even when he did not want to be. It was good business.

“That you have,” Stern Larn allowed.

“You never insulted the South,” Abe Haslett said.

“There you have it,” Crooked Creek Sam said. “So we’ll have no more talk of Yankees and noses and such. You can’t blame me for wanting you to control your tempers while you are under my roof.”

“I reckon not,” Cordial Larn said. Where the rest of the Larn brothers had hair as black as a raven’s wings, Cordial’s was the same tawny hue as the pelt of a mountain lion. His eyes were different from theirs, too, blue where theirs were brown.

“Good. Now that that’s settled, let me ask you. When do you propose to hold your lead-fest?”

“Our what?” Quince Haslett asked. He had the dubious distinction of having not only a big Adam’s apple, but a big nose as well, so big that his face was more nose than anything else.

“Your lead chucking,” Sam said. “Or are you aiming to fight it out in Coffin Varnish with knives?”

“Knives are too messy,” Abe said. “You get blood all over the place. Plus, you can’t always be sure. You stick a man in the gizzard and expect him to fall, but he keeps on fightin’.”

“I never have put my trust in knives,” Stern Larn said.

“Pistols will suit us.” From Jefferson Haslett. He sported a bushy mane of hair and a jaw like an anvil.

“When?” Crooked Creek Sam said.

“We haven’t gotten around to that yet,” Cordial Larn said. “We have to work out the details.”

Happy Larn laughed. “Our kin back home will be powerful upset they missed the frolic.”

“Are there many in your family?” Sam asked.

“About one hundred and eighty, give or take a few,” Stern Larn said.

“Two hundred and forty on our side,” Abe Haslett revealed, and grinned. “We are better at breedin’ than they are.”

“There have always been more of you Hasletts,” Stern Larn said.

“We are rabbits and you are gophers,” Josephus Haslett boasted. He was the shortest of the brood, which was not saying much since it was only by a few inches.

Happy Larn lost some of his happiness. “I do not like being called a gopher. You will take that back.”

“I will not,” Josephus said.

“You will take that back or else,” Happy said.

Crooked Creek Sam swore. “Here we go again. If you can’t flap your gums without arguing, maybe none of you should talk except for Abe and Stern.”

“I will talk when I please,” Happy informed him.

“Me too,” Josephus said.

That was when Sam made his mistake. It slipped out of his mouth as smoothly as a slick grape and had the same effect as waving a rattler under someone’s nose. “Stupid Southerners. How many times must I tell you before you will listen?”

Silence fell, except for the ticking of the clock on a shelf. No one moved except for Verve Larn, who never could stand still for more than two seconds.

“What did you call us?” Abe Haslett broke the quiet.

“Not a thing,” Sam said. He was aware he had blundered, but he was confident he could soothe any hard feelings.

“Like hell,” Stern Larn said. “I heard you, too, as clear as day. You called us stupid Southerners.”

“Not
you
,” Crooked Creek Sam said, smiling. “Not any of you.”

“Then who?” Cordial Larn asked.

Sam made his second mistake. He answered without thinking. “I meant Southerners in general.”

Another silence, but shorter than before.

“Anyone born south of the Mason-Dixon Line is naturally stupid, is that how it goes?” Jefferson Haslett asked.

“Don’t be putting words in my mouth,” Crooked Creek Sam said. He was beginning to lose his temper.

“It was your word,” Jefferson said. “Stupid.”

“Look,” Sam reasoned. “You take things much too serious. I could just as well have said stupid Northerners.”

“It was stupid Southerners,” Verve Larn said. “My ears hear just fine.”

Abe Haslett nodded. “Could be you are one of them who looks down their nose at us. Could be we don’t take kindly to that. We don’t take kindly at all.”

Crooked Creek Sam placed a hand on his Colt Dragoon. “Don’t threaten me. You have treed a cougar when you threaten me.”

“I ain’t seen one of those percussion Colts in a coon’s age,” Abe Haslett commented. “They were prone to misfire.”

“Not mine,” Sam said.

“Big and heavy, those old models,” Stern Larn said.
“Even us stupid Southerners know enough not to rely on one.”

“Takes a real gun shark to handle one halfway decent,” Jefferson Haslett said.

“And you don’t strike us as a gun shark,” Happy Larn threw in.

Crooked Creek Sam broke out in a cold sweat. He recognized the signs: the hard stares, the pinched mouths, the tense bodies. “Now, you just hold on! Every last one of you, hold on!”

“He sounds scared to me,” Stern Larn said.

“To me too,” Abe Haslett agreed. “Usually when someone is scared they have done something they shouldn’t.”

“He shouldn’t ought to call people stupid,” Cordial Larn said.

Sam had put up with all he was going to. “I want you out of my saloon! Every last one of you coon-eating sons of bitches!”

The next moment Abe and Stern and Cordial had their six-shooters out, and the others were unlimbering theirs.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Crooked Creek Sam screeched.

“What do you say?” Abe Haslett asked. It was hard to tell who he was asking since he was staring at the Dragoon.

“I say the North has insulted us enough,” Stern Larn said. “I say for once the Larns and the Hasletts have common cause.”

“Twice,” Abe said. “We wore the gray together.”

“It is a shame we are enemies,” Stern said. Then, to Sam, “Any last words, you stinkin’ Yankee?”

Crooked Creek Sam could not believe what was happening. “I will give you more than a word, you lousy Reb.” He started to level the Dragoon but could not make up his mind who to point it at. The moment’s indecision was costly. The last sound he heard was the crashing boom of revolvers. The last sight was a roiling cloud of gun smoke.

The shooting went on and on. It stopped only when every cylinder was empty.

“We done shot him to pieces,” Verve Larn said, grinning.

“It is too bad we have to do the same to us,” Abe Haslett said. “Coffin Varnish, here we come.”

It was a warm night. The breeze that had picked up from out of the northwest did little to alleviate the heat of the day. The sky was clear, the stars a sparkling host shining benignly down on Kansas.

“It is a night made for romance,” Adolphina Luce remarked.

Chester Luce was so shocked he nearly tripped over his own feet. They were taking a rare stroll down Coffin Varnish’s dusty street. He had been watching out for horse, pig, and chicken droppings, and glanced up in bewilderment. “Did I hear you right, my dear?” He could not remember the last time his wife had been in a romantic mood. There had been their wedding night, of course, and five or six times after that. It got so that he wearied of waiting for her to say yes, and stopped hinting.

“Romance,” Adolphina confirmed, her usual hard tones softened. “A girl thinks of romance when she is happy.”

The shocks kept coming. Chester never thought of her as a girl. Not as old and as big as she was. A woman, yes, a bear, often, but she had given up any pretense at girlish ways long before she met him. And
to hear her say she was happy was enough to convince him he must be dreaming. But no, a pile of horse droppings made his nose want to curl in on itself, and no dream ever did that. “I am glad you are happy,” he said. “Was it Gemma’s meal?” They had been invited to supper at the Giorgios’, another first. Gemma had cooked traditional Italian fare, with lots of pasta and thick sauce and meat rolled into balls, and it had been delicious. Much more so than anything his wife ever cooked. Her food tended to be bland and unappetizing. Some nights, he had to force himself to have three helpings.

“No, it is not that. Who can stand all that garlic she uses? And those brats of her always underfoot. If I were her, I would take a board to their backsides. That would cure them.”

Chester had considered the boys well behaved. Although the oldest, Matteo, had made an unfortunate remark to the effect that Adolphina was the first woman he ever met with a mustache.

“Things are going nice for once. A girl is happy when things go nice. When they go the way she wants them to go.”

“We sure had a lot of people come to view Paunch Stevens,” Chester said. “We made more money off him than we did off that first bunch.”

“There will be more,” Adolphina said. “A lot more. I can feel it in my bones. I feel something else, too.” She squeezed his arm.

It had never occurred to Chester that money made women romantic. The revelation put his brain in a whirl.

“That newspaperman promised to give us copies of
the next edition of the
Times
,” Adolphina mentioned. “The edition in which he is writing about us.”

“I just hope the article is favorable,” Chester said. In politics, press that praised was everything.

“He promised it would be. He said not to worry, that he is on our side, that he will write about us so people are on our side, too.”

“When did he say that?” Chester asked. “He did not say it to me.”

“To me,” Adolphina said. “When I had him up for coffee. You were busy showing the body and giving a speech at the livery.”

Chester was not so sure he liked the idea of his wife and the journalist alone in their parlor. Then he looked at her and his jealously evaporated. “It is obliging of him.”

“Oh, he is thinking of himself, make no mistake,” Adolphina said. “Newspapers all over have been picking up his reports on Coffin Varnish. He says we are the talk of the country. Can you imagine?”

“It is the killing, not us.”

“No. It is us, letting folks kill, that has everyone astir. We are doing something no one has ever done before. A few more shootings and we will be famous.”

“Sure we will,” Chester said, and laughed.

Adolphina stopped and turned him so he faced her. “You begin to worry me. Can it be you do not see the opportunity being handed to us? I would hate to think I married a dunce.”

Worried her romantic mood was waning, Chester said, “Have I ever let you down?”

“More times than I can count,” Adolphina said. “But that is neither here nor there. What matters now
is that you seize the moment and use this new fame of ours to good advantage.”

“We will have more money than we have had in years,” Chester predicted, and was horrified when she gave him her look that could wilt a rock.

“Oh, Chester. How you do disappoint. I am not talking about the money, although, yes, the money is considerable. I am talking about long term. I am talking about you rising in the world. I am proud of you being mayor, but mayor is not all there is.”

“You are?” Chester was under the impression she had been distinctly underwhelmed by his being elected.

“You have served Coffin Varnish long and well, or as well as you are able,” Adolphina said. “But there are bigger political arenas. There is state government, there is the federal government.”

“You can’t mean—”

“Think, Chester, think. Fame is money in the bank to politicians. It is votes on election day. Why be a big fish in a little pond when you can be a big fish in a big pond? When you can parley the fame from these killings into state or national office?”

“You are serious, by God.”

“Never more so. If that newspaperman does as he promised, everyone in Kansas will hear about you. You could run for state senator. Later, you can run for U.S. senator.”

A keg of powder went off in Chester’s head. She was right, as usual. The possibilities were spectacularly grand. “Or I could run for Congress.”

“No, no, forget the House. They are a nest of chipmunks. They chatter a lot but never do much. The Senate is where the power is, the power and the
money. Become a United States senator and your future, and our fortune, is assured.”

A rare warmth spread through Chester. “You care about my career?”