Power in the Blood (119 page)

Racked by his own weakness, still unable to decide, Clay sat on a fallen tree, its trunk turned to rock-hard grayness, and placed his long chin in his hands. Zoe was his sister, and had been wronged. Brannan was no friend of Clay’s, a multimillionaire whose wealth was based on Omie’s gift of second sight. He did not truly deserve what Zoe wished to take away from him, and it was not as though she wanted everything he owned, just one thing, the very symbol of his pride and his decadence. But Zoe’s way was against the book of law, and Brannan’s property was made sacrosanct within that same ponderous volume, not a single page of which Clay had actually studied. He sat in disconsolate thought, reaching for the courage to choose.

He became aware of Omie’s presence through a discreet tugging at the left side of his brain. She stood a short distance away, her blotched face partially hidden by shadows and foliage. Clay smiled at her. They had not talked, face-to-face, since she had knocked him down with her waves of invisible rage two days before.

“Come on over and keep me company,” he called, and she moved shyly closer, until they were separated by only a few yards. Clay felt she was still afraid of and confused by him, just as he had been of her.

“I will never hurt you,” he said. “Those times when we saw each other before, in the dreams, that was another kind of seeing, and we didn’t know then what we both know now. I’m your uncle, and I’m your friend. Drew’s your uncle and your friend too, but just between you and me, I think we’ve got something special, because we knew each other a long time ago, at least to look at. So that’s the way it is, and you don’t need to be afraid anymore, not of me, because I’m blood of your blood, and there isn’t a closer tie.”

“Mama said so,” agreed Omie.

“And she’s right, the way mamas should be.”

“You can’t make up your mind,” Omie said, “can you?”

“No, I can’t. Do you know what it is I can’t make up my mind about? Can you see it inside me?”

“Whether to rob a train for Mama or not.”

“That’s it. Any advice?”

“You don’t need to.”

“Don’t need to what?”

“Decide. I saw you there already.”

“Saw me where?”

“On the train, robbing it. Drew’s there too, and the hummingbird.”

“What hummingbird?”

“The one that’s there.”

Clay waited a moment to organize his question, then asked, “Have you seen the robbery that hasn’t happened yet?”

“I just told you,” said Omie, a hint of vexation creeping into her voice.

“Me and Drew and a hummingbird.”

“Yes.”

“No one else? You can’t rob a train with just two men.”

“That’s all I saw.”

“So I don’t need to make up my mind about being there, because you’ve already seen that I will be.”

Omie nodded. The dead pine needles around her boots were swirling slowly, like iron filings drawn by magnets into spiking arcs that crawled as if alive. Clay felt the hairs on his neck rise, and hid his consternation behind a crooked smile.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” said Omie, and he understood from her thoughts that she was referring to the parade of needles around her ankles. “It just happens.”

“Yes, it just happens. Sometimes I think everything just … happens, only sometimes it looks like it was meant to happen, and maybe it is. You say I’ll be there on the train, and I haven’t even decided to be there, so maybe it’ll happen because it was meant to, like everything else. Or maybe not. I don’t understand any of it, do you?”

“No.”

“But I’ll be there anyway.”

“Yes.”

Clay laughed softly. The horns of this dilemma had grown around and joined, forming a circle, trapping him inside. “Maybe we should go back to the others,” he said, and they did so, hand in hand, with a cold wind blowing around them.

Fay was left out. She knew the Dugans all were attempting to include her in their conversations, but what was there for her to contribute? Her own life had nothing to do with their lives; even her affection for Drew was the merest conjunction of lines on a page, crossing each other for an instant as they aimed themselves in different directions. This time, here at the cabin, was probably the centerpiece of those crossed lines, and even then she could not have him to herself, had barely spoken to or touched him since the first evening. Fay had once worked as a waitress at a fashionable restaurant in Saint Louis, and remembered the vague sense of dislocation encountered each time she approached a table of friends who were eagerly talking, one with another, her presence beside them barely noticed, an adjunct to the scene, not a part of it.

She listened now as she had listened then, and felt Drew taken from her by the voices of his kin. She supposed she loved him, but was worldly enough to know such feelings might change if he was forever at her side, whispering sugar talk into her ear. The further he was taken from her, the more she wanted his return, his eyes on her, his body beside her own again. But he was smitten by the past, by the springing to life of shadows left behind; he could not get enough of Clay and Zoe and his peculiar niece, spent every moment with one or another or all of them, and spared no part of himself for Fay. She began to mope, but he did not notice this either, and for a while Fay became angry, then she began sinking into a genuine sadness.

There had been a number of men who passed through her life and her bed without leaving much of an impression on either, but Drew was different. He was decent, without being the fool many decent men were, and he was not rough and uncaring when they held each other naked; in short, he met the minimum requirements for love. Fay had never allowed herself to love before, and now that she had found a man worth opening her heart for, he was swept away on tides of fantastic circumstance, of joyous reunion and the brighter light of rekindled family involvement. Fay had never shared anything of herself with her mother, and her father had been absent more often than not. She envied Drew his rediscovery, even as she became more jealous of the man and woman and girl who monopolized his days and nights with their remembrances and plans. She should not have felt that way, she knew, but could not stop herself.

For Omie, everything had changed. The sudden introduction into her life of two uncles, each very different from the other, was so disconcerting she did not know what to think, how to feel. It was clear Mama was made happy by what had happened, but Omie had grown used to being Zoe’s only protector, was proud of her role, and saw it whisked away almost from the moment Clay and Drew revealed themselves for who they were. It was their job now to make sure no harm came to Mama, and that left Omie with nothing inside her but a forlorn kind of gladness over the smile creasing her mother’s face with unaccustomed regularity. She felt abandoned, without fully comprehending why, and so she upset small things around the cabin to remind everyone she was still there, still a force in Zoe’s life to be reckoned with.

She had liked Drew very much before learning he was her uncle, back when he was still Doogle, the man she had taken away from jail, but his true identity had distanced them, and Omie turned her awesome attentions to the other uncle, the one she had always called the tall man. Where Drew was handsome, Clay was fascinatingly ugly, the ragged scars on his cheeks where the holes had healed over a thing she caught herself staring at often, and Clay often caught her staring, but never by a word or a look let her know he thought her rude for inspecting his ugliness. Looking inside him, she saw a man of great and constant sorrows, a darkly flickering flame of a man, not so dreadful to look upon as his fleshly self. The hidden Clay was more to Omie’s liking, and she decided he was her favorite after all, especially since the new lady who had come with Clay had eyes that followed Drew everywhere. Omie could have beaten her off if she chose, but was magnanimous in relinquishing Drew to Fay; she had the more interesting man after all.

Dogging his steps to the fallen tree had been a good idea. He talked to her and shared a little of his inner self, speaking of things inside him Omie already knew of. She had done her best to help him by sharing her own thoughts, the ones that came to her from time-yet-to-be, and he seemed to appreciate her comfort. She had, as she told him, seen Clay there on the train that would be robbed, and Drew also, and a hummingbird for which she had no explanation. What she did not tell Clay was that she had seen herself there too.

On the third day, Omie pointed to the east and said, “They’re coming.” An hour or so later, Lodi and Nate entered the clearing and rode across to the cabin. Confronted by strangers and the woman he thought responsible for his being chased away from the Cortez hideout, Lodi said nothing as he dismounted. He simply beckoned to Drew, who followed him to the corral. Nate unsaddled the horses while Lodi walked Drew further away.

“Where’s Levon?” Drew asked.

“Stayed in Carbondale to visit with his uncle a few days. Bones, I know you’ve got a reason for having all these people here, and I’m curious to hear it.”

“The lady with one arm and her girl are the ones who got me out of the Leadville jail.”

“I heard about that. Who’s the one with the face like death?”

“My brother.”

“Never knew you had one. Is he someone we can use?”

“Ask him that.”

“What’s that bitch doing here, Bones?”

“She’s not the one who sold you out. It was the land agent you bought that place from. You should’ve used a different alias.”

“Land agent? Says who?”

“A man called Jones, some big wheel in Denver. He told Fay when he hired her along with Clay—that’s my brother.”

“Hired them for what?”

“To kidnap Omie—that’s my niece.”

“Your niece?”

“The one-armed lady’s my sister,” said Drew, unable to keep from smiling.

“Say what now? Your sister sprung you from jail, then your brother’s hired by someone to kidnap his own niece? Bones, you don’t expect me to swallow this down, do you?”

“It’s true, and you can quit calling me Bones. My name’s Dugan. My sister’s married name, by the way, is Mrs. Leo Brannan.”

“Keep talking, Bones.”

Drew told him everything, and had to repeat part of it when Nate joined them. At the end, Nate said, “You’re a fool if you think that whore wasn’t the one sold us out.”

“She wasn’t, and that’s the last time you call her that.”

“She’s a whore, and you’re a fool.”

“And you’re a man that won’t pick up a partner when his horse is down. The next time you do anything like that I’ll kill you, even if I have to back-shoot you to do it.”

Lodi watched Nate to see if Drew’s charge was true, and saw that it was.

“You two boys better kiss and make up quick. I don’t want enemies in my bunch, you hear?”

“Just remember what I said,” Drew told Nate, then walked away.

“Get rid of him,” Nate said, “and all the rest. What’s he mean, bringing so many strangers here?”

“You heard him; they’re family.”

Lodi started toward the cabin. Nate followed him, then stopped when he felt pressure of some kind forcing him back. It was like walking into invisible molasses. He became scared, thinking he was losing control of his body, then saw the girl with the half-blue face staring at him, and knew somehow that she was causing his paralysis. The one-armed woman saw it too, and said something to the girl, who turned away. Nate was able to move again, but did not do so for several seconds, trying to figure out what had happened. The girl had done it because she didn’t like him, but he could not understand how it was that he knew this.

Nate had had a bad feeling the moment he and Lodi rode into the clearing, and everything Bones, or Dugan, had told them made him feel worse. It was a crazy story and he didn’t believe half of it. The girl with the birthmark was against him, as Drew was, and Nate didn’t like the looks of the other Dugan, the one with the scarred cheeks. Nate didn’t like having the wife of the west’s richest man there either, and he still believed Fay Torrey had sold them out. He didn’t like females in general, and these two in particular. There was not one thing to make him feel good. Nate had not even felt enough like his usual self to call Drew out over his strong words in front of Lodi. Today was a bad day.

Fay asked Lodi where her mother was, and he told her Ellen had left the outfit and gone to Butte, Montana, under a new name. “We gave her a fair cut from the job up there,” he said, “so don’t worry about her.

The saga of the Dugans was related again, in more detail, and Lodi still hesitated to give it credence. He was intrigued by Zoe Brannan’s plan, but especially distrustful of the elder Dugan.

“I’ve heard your name before,” he said to Clay.

“Could be,” said Clay.

“I don’t recall which side of the trail I heard it on.”

Lodi wanted to know if Clay rode the lawful side, or the lawless. The man looked like an outlaw, but that meant nothing; Drew Dugan, when he smiled, looked like an overgrown choirboy.

Clay said, “I’ve been a marshal and a sheriff and a bounty hunter in my time.”

“That’s a truthful answer, but maybe not a wise one. Am I expected to believe you’ve turned bad, Dugan?”

“I haven’t turned anything. It’s all been explained to you. I’m here by accident, so to say.”

“You won’t leave the same way,” said Nate.

Clay looked at him. “I’ll leave when I choose to.”

“I’m not letting no bounty man walk away from here.”

“I believe you’ll do what your boss says.” To Lodi he said, “If I go, we all go, and we’ll do what we have to on our own. If you want a part of the job, say so now, but keep your dog on a shorter leash or I’ll kick his tail.”

Nate’s gun was in his hand, then spiraling across the room. He stared at his fingers, baffled; how could he have fumbled a draw so badly?

“Better teach him about guns too,” Clay said.

“Everyone just simmer down,” said Lodi. He took out his pipe and began stuffing the bowl. “I want to hear more about the train.”

Nate retrieved his Colt. The girl with the mark was watching him again, this time with a tiny smirk on her lips. Nate didn’t like the other females, but this one scared him.