Ride With the Devil (8 page)

“Oh. I’m sorry you did,” Flaire said.

Surprised by her response, he looked up. “You’re sorry? Wait a minute. I thought you didn’t like Culpepper. What is it you said about the Regulators? That they had replaced one outlaw gang with another?”

“Yes, that is what I said.”

“And, believing that, you still think I should have joined them?”

“Yes. Maybe if you had taken the job, you could have changed things.”

“I doubt it,” Hawke said. “The truth is, Culpepper isn’t going to let anyone have any say in running the Regulators.”

“I can believe that. Culpepper does strike me as that kind of person.”

As Flaire cleaned up her kitchen after her dinner with Hawke, she thought about the feelings she had for him. He had already made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t the kind of man who could, or would, settle down.

That was all right, she decided. She could accept that. She was just thankful that, apparently, she was able to feel something for Hawke. After her ordeal with the men who burned out the ranch and killed her family in front of her, she wasn’t sure she would ever have been able to feel anything for a man.

Flaire’s mother, father, and younger brother lay on the ground, their sleeping gowns covered with blood. No longer screaming, Flaire continued to stare in shock at her dead family. She was only barely cognizant of the fact that two of the riders had dismounted and were coming toward her.

“How old are you, girl?” one of them asked.

“Sixteen,” Flaire answered dully.

One of them bunched her sleeping gown up in his hands,
then pulled it off. She was aware of the heat of the flames from the burning barn against her naked skin, but was so numbed by what she had just seen that she was powerless to react.

“Damn, lookie here at the way she’s tittied up. Them ain’t the titties of no little girl. This here is a woman, full-growed.”

The two men who dismounted had their way with her, but compared to the shock of having just watched her family murdered, the rape barely registered with her. She lay on the ground, feeling the rocks digging into her back, listening to the snapping and popping of the burning barn, and smelling the fetid breath of first one and then his partner as they grunted on top of her.

AFTER HIS DINNER WITH FLAIRE, HAWKE RETURNED to the Golden Calf. The saloon was crowded, so he sat down at the piano and began playing, sticking to the standards that would provide background music but would not be so intrusive as to keep the patrons from drinking.

Doc Urban and Cyrus Green were engaged in their usual game of chess, Darci was working the tables, and at least one poker game was in progress. Doc Urban took out one of Cyrus’s rooks with a knight.

“Damn, I should’ve seen that,” Cyrus said. He made a move to protect his remaining rook. “Doc, let me ask you something. Do you pay taxes to the Regulators?”

“You’re damn right I do,” Urban replied as he studied the board. “The taxes are as much as I charge most people, which means I have to almost double my charges in order to have any money left over after taxes.”

“One hundred percent taxes,” Cyrus said. He moved his bishop to challenge one of Doc Urban’s knights.

“What do you mean, one hundred percent taxes?” Doc Urban asked as he took his knight out of danger.

“I mean we are paying one hundred percent taxes,” Cyrus said. “I’ve been doing a little research. From what I can de
termine, one out of every two dollars that change hands in this town wind up in Culpepper’s pocket.”

“Well, now,” Doc Urban said, looking up at his chess partner with renewed interest. “And here I thought you and Culpepper were joined at the hip. I’ve never seen one negative word about him in your newspaper.”

“That’s because I haven’t printed one negative word about him. I was convinced, for some time, that he was our savior.”

“And you no longer believe that?”

“Let’s just say that I am having second thoughts.”

“My, my. Mohammed has gone to the mountain. How, may I ask, did all this come about?”

“I’ve been getting a lot of letters-to-the-editor,” Cyrus said. “Almost every one of them contains complaints about our surrogate police force. The people feel that we are overtaxed by an overbearing and overzealous band of…well, one word that pops up a lot is thugs.”

“So now you, who once beat the drums for them, are turning against them,” Doc Urban said. “Who would have thought?”

“Let us just say that I no longer intend to wear blinders,” Cyrus replied. Then, with a broad smile, he said, “Check.”

“Hawke,” Doc Urban called as Hawke finished one of his songs. “Come here, this upstart newspaperman thinks he has me in check. Let me show you how I handle upstarts.”

Answering the summons, Hawke came over to join them at the table. Darci, who was already bringing him a beer at the end of his set, put the beer on the table.

“You may watch as well, my dear,” Doc Urban said to her.

Doc Urban took out Cyrus’s offending rook with a bishop.

“Damn!” Cyrus said. “I’m sure there is an object lesson somewhere in there, but I can’t see what it is.”

“Where did you learn to play chess so well, Doc?” Hawke asked.

“When you spend twenty years at sea, you have lots of time on your hands,” Doc said. “I played a lot of chess.”

“Did you like being a sailor?”

“Oh yes, I liked it.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Wait a minute,” Cyrus said, looking at Hawke. “Do you mean the good doctor has never told you why he left the sea?”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“Tell him, Doc.”

“Ahh, it’s too long a story and everyone has heard it,” Doc said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“No, not everyone has heard it. Mason Hawke hasn’t heard it,” Cyrus said. “And I, for one, wouldn’t mind hearing it again.” Cyrus turned back to Hawke. “It’s a hell of a story. I’m trying to talk him into writing a book about it, but he doesn’t seem interested.”

“Now you do have me curious,” Hawke said. “I’d like to hear it.”

Doc Urban drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll tell it.” He looked at Cyrus. “But don’t you even think about touching the board until I’m finished.”

“Don’t worry,” Cyrus replied. “I’ll be too caught up in the story.”

Doc nodded. “All right,” he said. “It all began with a storm. In twenty years at sea, I had never encountered such a storm.

“I was on board the
Lydia Holmes
as a ship’s surgeon, and we were forty-three days out of Coramantine with a load of hemp when the typhoon hit.

“The wind began blowing with gale force, and the ship was crashing violently through the waves. The crew managed to furl the topsail, but suddenly the great mainsail on the foremast ripped open from top to bottom.

“The captain sent men aloft to work on the torn sail, but
no sooner had they finished than the mizzen topsail tore loose and began flapping in the breeze, threatening to pull away and take with it the top part of the mizzenmast, which was now vibrating like a wand.

“Waves were battering the hull of the ship with the impact of cannon balls. The
Lydia Holmes
would be lifted by one swell, hang quivering over the trough between the waves, then slam back down into the sea, only to be caught up by another, even larger wave.

“Then, one monstrous wave stove in the side, and the captain gave orders to abandon ship. Well, you can imagine that if a ship like the
Lydia Holmes
couldn’t weather the storm, the idea of getting into small lifeboats wasn’t very appealing.

“But we had no choice, so we took to them, and even though we were lashed together, somehow the boats got separated during the night. The next morning I and six others found ourselves on the same boat in which most of the water and food had been stored.

“We searched for the other two boats but couldn’t find them.”

Doc stopped talking for a moment, and Hawke noticed that the others—Paddy and Mary, who were now listening, and Darci—remained silent, hanging on every word, even though they had all heard the story before.

“The real horror of the ordeal was my growing suspicion that one of the survivors, a man named Angus Pugh, may have set the other boats adrift during the night in order not to have to share the food and water.

“As our nightmare continued, we lost more people, and always in the middle of the night when we were sleeping. Everyone assumed that they were just unable to take it anymore and so slipped over the side. But I began to have the overpowering feeling—which I did not share with anyone—that Pugh might be killing them, to further reduce the demand on our rations. I
was convinced that he was sparing me only because he might have need of a surgeon. I am ashamed that I shared my suspicions with no one else, but I was fearful that Angus Pugh might decide that he wouldn’t need a doctor after all.

“At any rate, our numbers steadily decreased over the three weeks we were adrift, until we were picked up by a packet ship that was California-bound from Shanghai. By then only three of what had been fifteen original survivors were still alive.”

“That’s quite a story, Doc,” Hawke said when Urban was finished. “Was that before or after the war?”

“During.”

“During?”

“Yes. I served throughout the entire Civil War as a ship’s surgeon on a merchantman that plied the Pacific, so I didn’t fight for either side.”

“Which side would you have fought for?” Hawke asked.

“To tell the truth, I’m not sure,” Doc Urban said. “I think both sides had their points. I read about the war in all the newspapers, of course. But I never was quite able to figure out what it was all about.”

“I have news for you,” Hawke said. “Many of those of us who did fight in the war were never able to figure out what it was all about.”

“Amen to that, brother,” Paddy said quietly.

“Hey, Hawke,” Cyrus said. “I was telling Doc, here, about a song the soldiers used to sing. It was a real pretty song, sort of sad. Had some woman’s name.”

Hawke smiled. “Would you be talking about ‘Lorena’?”

“‘Lorena,’ yeah, that’s it,” Cyrus said. “I’d be mighty obliged to you if you’d play it.”

“All right.”

Hawke returned to the piano and slid easily into the song. The music was mesmerizing, the familiar and haunting melody underscored with an equally haunting but totally un
familiar countermelody. In addition to the melody and countermelody, trills and ruffles moved through the tapestry of the music like a golden thread.

Conversation in the saloon stopped during the playing of the song, and a couple of men surreptitiously wiped away a tear, memories and emotions from their own war experiences evoked by the melody.

“Damn,” Doc said when the song was finished. “You’re right, Cyrus. That’s about the prettiest thing I’ve ever heard.” Taking out a dollar, Cyrus walked over to the piano and dropped it in Hawke’s tip bowl. Doc did the same thing.

“Why, thank you, boys,” Hawke said.

Several other patrons added their own contributions, making the tip bowl fuller than it had ever been since Hawke started playing at the Golden Calf.

One block down the street from the Golden Calf, Flaire sat on a sofa in her apartment with the window up, listening to the sounds of the night. Next door, Mrs. Underhill was berating her husband about something. Flaire could hear her high-pitched, carping voice, though, mercifully, she couldn’t make out what the woman was saying.

A little earlier a baby had been crying, but he stopped, either because he was at the breast or had fallen asleep. A dog’s yap had sent a screeching cat running.

Just down the street she could hear the sounds of the saloon…a woman’s squeal over the unintelligible rumble of conversation. But above all, she could hear the piano.

Flaire realized then that the saloon had grown strangely quiet.

Except for the music.

Without the background noise of laughter and conversation, the music could be clearly heard spilling out of the saloon and rolling down the single street of the little town. The
music was exceptionally beautiful, and for a moment she wondered what the piece was. Then, with a start, she realized it was
Lorena
, the beautiful but sad song that had become the love ballad of the Civil War.

And yet, even as she recognized it, she realized that she had never heard it played in such a way before. In its own way, she believed the song to be as beautiful as the music Hawke played during his early morning concerts.

Sometime during the evening, Deputies Vox and Bates came into the saloon. Bates took a table while Vox stepped up to the bar.

“Give me a bottle and two glasses,” he said.

Paddy reached for the bottle. “You know, don’t you, that I’m going to have to charge you for this,” he said. “My arrangement with Culpepper is one free beer every time you come in. Beer, not whiskey.”

“Yeah? Well now your arrangement is with me,” Vox said. “Culpepper won’t be back for at least another week. Maybe longer. Now give me the goddamn bottle,” he demanded.

Shrugging his shoulders and making a mental note to take it up with Culpepper when he got back, Paddy gave Vox the bottle and two glasses.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Vox said. Carrying the bottle and two glasses over to the table, he sat down. But before he could pour the whiskey, Darci stopped by his table and, smiling, took the bottle from him.

“What are you trying to do?” she asked. “Put me out of work? Pouring is my job.”

She poured into both glasses, and as she was doing so, Bates reached up under her skirt, a garment that came only to her knees, and grabbed her behind.

Darci’s smile turned into a frown. “Please don’t do that,” she said, pushing his hand away.

“What do you mean, don’t do that? Are you telling me you don’t like it?”

“I don’t like it.”

“You’re a whore. Men put their hands on you all the time,” Bates said.

“Men who arrange for my services do,” Darci said. “But even then, they must behave as gentlemen.”

“Ha! A whore wanting her customers to be gentlemen,” Vox said. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I’m a gentleman to any whore I’m with.”

“Then that works out well. Because it’ll be a cold day in hell before you are with this whore,” Darci replied with a deceptively sweet smile.

She walked away from Vox’s table and, seeing a frequent customer, painted the smile back on her face as she went over to talk to him.

“I don’t know why Culpepper didn’t make a deal so we could have women too,” Bates said.

“Yeah, well, once he goes to Congress and I take over, I intend to make that deal,” Vox said. “Damn, would you look at that?” he added.

“Look at what?” Bates asked, twisting around in his seat to see what Vox was staring at.

“That bowl on top of the piano over there. It’s full of money. What you think that’s there for?”

“That’s his tips,” Bates said.

“Tips?”

“Yes, tips.”

“What’s tips?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“If I knowed, would I ask you?” Vox asked.

Bates laughed. “I guess this shows what a cheap shit you are,” he said. “A tip is what you give somebody when they do a good job.”

As if on cue, Vox got up from the table, moved to the piano, and dropped some coins into the bowl on top.

“You played some real pretty songs tonight, Hawke,” he said.

Hawke nodded in response, but if he spoke, he was too quiet for Vox to hear.

“How much you think is in that bowl?” Vox asked his companion.

“I don’t know. I’d say around fifteen dollars, at least,” Bates said. “Anyway, what do you care how much money is there?”

“I care, because half of it belongs to us,” Vox said.

“How do you figure that?”

“Has he paid us any taxes that you know of?”

Bates smiled. “Nary a cent,” he said.

“It’s about time we collected, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Bates agreed.

Vox moved closer to Hawke and stood alongside him. “Hey, piano player, where at did you get all that money?” he asked.

Ignoring Vox, Hawke continued to play.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” He pointed to the money bowl. “Where at did you get all that money?”

“Leave him alone, Vox,” Baldwin said. Baldwin was the baker and one of the original discoverers of Hawke’s early morning concerts. “The rest of us are enjoying his piano playing.”