Blood Duel (19 page)

“Of course, stupid. The higher you rise, the better for both of us. For you, power and prestige. For me, power and a mansion and a carriage and servants to do the cooking and the mending.”

“Servants cost money,” Chester carped.

“A United States senator can afford them. A senator can afford anything.” Adolphina smiled wistfully. “We can dine out every night. We can travel. Senator Chester Luce. How does that sound?”

Chester was intoxicated by her brilliance. “Oh, Fina,” he said, using his pet name for her. She had warned him never to do it in public or she would slap him, but she didn’t slap him.

“I might be getting ahead of myself, but in time, who knows? You could go beyond senator.”

“What is there beyond?” Chester asked. The answer struck him with the force of a hammer blow. “Oh, you can’t mean
that
.”

“Why can’t I? If Grant can get voted in, why not you? You aren’t much shorter and fatter. Sure, he won the Civil War, and that made him famous, but what else had he done? Fame is the key. Fame is how you rise above the common herd to lord it over them.”

Chester’s head filled with visions of the White House, of him addressing a joint session of Congress, of him picking a bevy of pretty secretaries. “Adolphina, I am impressed. I never knew you were such a deep thinker.”

“One of us has to be.”

 ∗   ∗   ∗

Miles to the south another couple strolled arm in arm under the twinkling stars.

Ernestine Prescott was giddy with glee. She felt young again. The years had been stripped away and she was no longer a spinster teacher. She was a girl in love, ablaze with life and vitality. Then Jeeter Frost threw a bucket of water on her inner fire.

“I don’t feel right about this.”

“About us?” Inwardly Ernestine trembled, afraid he had changed his mind about loving her.

“About us going off together.”

Ernestine stopped. “Oh.”

Jeeter was trying hard to be sensitive to her feelings. He did not want to upset her again. Their misunderstanding in the schoolhouse had taught him that she was not always thinking what he thought she was thinking. “I don’t feel right about you giving up your job.”

“Oh!” Ernestine said again, brightening. “I can always find another. There are not enough teachers to fill the need.”

“I still feel guilty,” Jeeter said. Here he was, taking her away from everything she knew, from the security and comfort that came of being a highly respected member of the community.

“If I don’t, you shouldn’t.” Ernestine touched his cheek. His stubble tickled her fingertips. “I am doing this of my own free will. You must remember that.”

“It don’t help much.”

“Doesn’t,” Ernestine corrected, and smoothed her dress. “Now then. Our first order of business is the justice of the peace. I happen to know that Mr. Dundleman,
on Fifth Street, is a justice. His grandson attends my school. He is a widower and he lives alone, so we can slip in and out without disturbing anyone else. Then we will go to my boardinghouse and you can help me pack. By midnight we can be on our way.”

“That’s not right,” Jeeter said.

“What isn’t? Disturbing Mr. Dundleman so late?”

“No, riding off across the prairie in the middle of the night,” Jeeter said. “We should wait until morning.”

“Wait where? At the boardinghouse? I daresay my landlady would be scandalized. At a hotel? The marshal and the sheriff might want words with you, and it is best we avoid them.” Ernestine shook her head. “No, if we leave by midnight, we should reach Coffin Varnish about the middle of the night.”

“Coffin Varnish?”

“They don’t have a lawman. They know you there, and according to the newspaper, you did them a favor killing those Blights.”

“There is nothing in that fly speck but a saloon, a livery, and a store,” Jeeter recalled. “No place for us to stay.”

“Wrong,” Ernestine said. “Today’s newspaper mentioned that they cleaned out an empty building so people who came to view Paunch Stevens could spend the night if they wanted.”

“And you want us to spend the night there?”

“Why not?” Ernestine rejoined. “We will sleep in late, then head west. In a month we can be in California.”

“You have it all worked out,” Jeeter marveled. It unnerved him a little, her being so smart, and all.

“I like to work things out before I take the first step,” Ernestine mentioned. “I am a teacher, after all, and teachers, by their nature, are thinkers.”

“I have a puny thinker, myself,” Jeeter said. “It never has done me much good.”

“Education and discipline, my husband to be,” Ernestine said gaily. “They are the keys to a happy life.” Clamping his arm in hers, she wheeled and strode briskly toward the lights and noise of Dodge.

Uneasiness crept over Jeeter. Although the newspaper made the shootings in Coffin Varnish out to be self-defense, the law wanted to question him. The sheriff had been quoted as saying he did not approve of leather slappers riding into his county and shooting folks. “We have to watch out for tin stars.”

“Avoiding them should not be difficult. At this time of night they are on Front Street, visiting saloons and bawdy houses under the pretext of doing their job.”

Jeeter chuckled. “Pretext, huh? We might need to find me a dictionary if I am to savvy half of what you say.”

Ernestine grinned and replied, “As it happens I own several. You may use them whenever you want. Once we say our vows, what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine.”

“I don’t have a whole lot,” Jeeter told her. “My revolver, my horse, the clothes on my back, that is about it.”

“I do not own a great deal, either. My clothes, my books, a few pots and pans. I never bothered to buy
furniture since my room at the boardinghouse came furnished.”

“How many books and pots, exactly?” Jeeter envisioned the need for a pack animal.

“Oh, I should say no more than sixty volumes and half a dozen cooking utensils.”

“Sixty!” Jeeter exclaimed. “You have your own library.” Some might weigh a pound or more. It definitely called for a packhorse.

“Many are reference works I use when I teach,” Ernestine revealed. “Some are novels I am fond of. Mary Shelley, for instance. I just love
Frankenstein
. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
, is another of my favorites. Hawthorne, and his
The Scarlet Letter
and
The House of Seven Gables
. Goodness, how that man can write. And let us not forget Poe and Dickens and Charlotte Brontë and her
Jane Eyre
.”

“Jane who?” Jeeter had never heard of any of them. Suddenly the gulf between his world and hers filled him with dread. “All I know are pistols and horses,” he said glumly.

“About which I know next to nothing,” Ernestine said. “You will teach me about them and I will teach you about books.”

“I am getting the better of the deal.”

“Say that again after we have lived together a while.”

They were almost to a side street that would take them into Dodge when a rider came out of it and spurred his mount in their direction.

In the pale starlight the badge on his vest was plainly visible.

Seamus Glickman had forgotten all about the sheriff wanting him to pay a visit to the schoolmarm. The shenanigans in Coffin Varnish were to blame. He was reminded when Sheriff Hinkle came up to him in Tulley’s and said, “I just had another report of a strange gent hanging around the schoolhouse. What did you find out when you went out there?”

Seamus was tempted to lie but didn’t. “I never got around to it,” he admitted.

George Hinkle frowned. “I am not a stickler for orders and the like, but when I ask to have something done, I expect it done. Ride out there right now and talk to the schoolmarm.”

“This late?”

“I have seen the light on out there even later some nights. Miss Prescott is dedicated to her work.”

Seamus thought of the spindly, almost severe figure he had glimpsed on a few occasions. “Do you really think she keeps a man under those petticoats?”

“No, I do not. But some of the parents are talking and won’t stop wagging their tongues until they hear from us that the schoolmarm is not making a mockery of public morals.”

“And I thought having to shoot stray dogs wasn’t fit work for a lawman,” Seamus observed. “Now we are virtue inspectors.”

Sheriff Hinkle laughed. “That is what I like most about this job. One minute we are arresting a cowboy for disturbing the peace, and the next we are shooing pigs off the street.”

“You can have the pigs, and you can have our schoolmarm.”

“Be nice to her. Your visit is official.”

“You know me, George,” Seamus said. “I smile and am polite even when the person I am being polite to is a jackass. Or, in her case, a broomstick no man with any appreciation for womanhood would care to fondle.”

“I will be in the office,” Sheriff Hinkle said. “Report to me as soon as you get back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Now here Seamus was, riding out of Dodge City by a side street to go question the schoolmarm. He had half a mind not to do it and say he had. As far as he was concerned, the law had no business meddling in the private lives of people. What Ernestine Prescott did in the privacy of her bedroom was her affair and no one else’s. That a few busybodies had complained only showed that some folks were too damn willing to impose their notion of what was right on others.

His horse nickered, and Seamus looked up. A man and a woman were approaching on foot. Just as he set eyes on them, the woman pulled the man to her and turned so her back was to the road. They did not look around as he came up to them.

Seamus drew rein. A dove and a cowboy, he assumed,
and said gruffly, “Enough of that. You know better. In a saloon, yes. In a hotel, yes. But not out here where everyone can see.”

“Sorry,” the woman said, still embracing the man. “We were carried away.”

“Get carried away in private,” Seamus said, and clucked to his mount. Light glowed in the schoolhouse window, so Hinkle had been right about the schoolmarm. Dismounting, he walked up to the door and knocked. When there was no response, he knocked louder, and when that failed to bring her to the door, he worked the latch and poked his head inside.

“Miss Prescott? Sorry to disturb you.”

Seamus sighed. She wasn’t there. The schoolhouse was empty. That she had gone off and left the lamp on suggested she would return. He was about to go in and wait for her when his sorrel whinnied and was answered by another horse from somewhere behind the schoolhouse.

Puzzled, Seamus took a few steps back. “Miss Prescott?” he called out. His reply was another whinny.

Suddenly Seamus thought he understood. The schoolmarm’s gentleman caller was there, out back with the schoolmarm. For once the gossip had been true. Grinning, he hastened around the corner. The man might ride off, and Seamus wanted to see who it was. He hoped the man was married. Wouldn’t that be something? He chuckled to himself. The scandal would be sensational.

But all Seamus found was a horse. A gruella, its reins dangling. He scanned the prairie, then cupped a hand to his mouth. “Miss Prescott? Are you here?” Apparently not, since there was no answer. Seamus
started to head for the front of school, then stopped and stared at the mouse dun.

A gruella. A vague sense that the horse was somehow important came over him. Something pricked at his mind, a memory, words someone had said, something that had stuck with him.

“A gruella,” Seamus said aloud. He tried and tried but could not remember. Shrugging, he was almost to the side of the schoolhouse when it came to him in a rush of vivid memory. Coffin Varnish. The shootings of the Blights and Edison Farnsworth. Seamus had asked everyone what they saw and heard, and the saloon owner, Win Curry, offhandedly mentioned that he had been in front of the saloon when Jeeter Frost rode up on—

“A gruella!” Seamus exclaimed. He closed his fingers around the ivory handles of his Merwin and Hulbert revolver and again scanned the plain. “It can’t be,” he said. “It just can’t be.”

The schoolmarm and Jeeter Frost?
The notion was so ridiculous that Seamus laughed. But the laugh died in his throat. He recalled that Sheriff Hinkle had brought up the rumors about the schoolmarm about the same time as those first killings in Coffin Varnish. Everyone had assumed Jeeter Frost was just passing through and happened to run into the Blights. But what if everyone was wrong? Seamus reflected. What if Frost had a reason for visiting? What if that reason, incredible as it seemed, was the schoolmarm?

Seamus abruptly remembered the man and woman he had passed on the way there. He remembered how neither had looked at him, remembered, now that he thought about it, that the woman had been thin and
wore a dress no self-respecting dove would be caught dead in. The man had been short, and Jeeter Frost was supposed to be short, and might have been wearing buckskins.

“Son of a bitch!” Seamus cursed his stupidity, and ran. He practically vaulted into the saddle and applied his spurs. His sorrel, unaccustomed to such rough treatment, shot toward Dodge as if fired from a cannon. But he only went a short way when he reined up.

“What am I doing?” Seamus leaned on the saddle horn to contemplate. So far as he knew, Jeeter Frost was not wanted by the law. Frost killed the Blights, but by all accounts he shot them in self-defense. Sheriff Hinkle would like to question Frost, but that was all. So why go barreling into town after the killer and the schoolmarm when Jeeter Frost might take exception and decide the county could do without an undersheriff?

Seamus was under no delusions about his ability with a six-gun. He was fair. Only fair. Whereas Frost had to be a wizard, given the number of hombres he had reportedly slain. Even allowing for exaggeration, Frost was still as deadly a customer as Seamus ever came across. Who in their right mind would make a man like that mad?

Not Seamus. He had survived as long as he had by sticking to what he jokingly liked to call his golden rules: Never poke a rattler, never get in the path of stampeding animals, and never, ever prod a man liable to exact payment for the affront in lead.