Tabor Evans (28 page)

"You reckon we're supposed to go in and eat with them?" Steed asked as he and the others fell in at the end of the straggling line. They carefully kept a bit of space between themselves and the relatives.

Yazoo answered him. "Yep. Belle told me to tell you to come on in and fill up after the burying. Them kinfolks of Sam's has brought enough vittles to feed a whole damn army."

"What-what kind of food, Yazoo?" Bobby asked hesitantly.

"Hell, I don't know." Yazoo was just drunk enough to be cheerful. "There's roasting ears and venison steaks and whole pots of stews and garden truck. I just got a look at it while they was unloading the wagons."

"Did any of it look like dog-meat?" Bobby asked the old man.

"Dog? I couldn't say about that, Bobby. You put meat in a stew, it all looks pretty Much alike." Bobby said, "I guess I'll pass up the stews, then. But that roasted venison sounds pretty good to me."

There was hardly room to move in the house. Belle was nowhere in sight, and the door to the bedroom was closed, so Longarm imagined that she'd gone in there. The food was plentiful, and he helped himself to venison roast, two ears of corn, and the only other meat he recognized, some pieces of fried squirrel. He took his plate outside and looked for a place to eat. Floyd, Steed, Bobby, and Yazoo had disappeared, probably to the cabins, Longarm thought. He wondered if they'd had the same feeling that had dogged him all the time he was in the house; Sam Starr's relatives seemed to be avoiding looking at him or getting close to him.

Wandering outside, Longarm walked over to the well and sat down on its curb. The thigh-high coping of planks made it a comfortable height for a seat, and the wide horizontal top board gave him a place to rest his plate. Longarm ate slowly, his eyes busy.

From the well, he could look into the barn. The men were gathered in there, and he saw the glint of the whiskey jugs being passed from hand to hand and tilted. He contemplated going to his cabin for a sip of rye, but the exertion of grave-digging had diminished his ambition to do much besides sit still. He finished eating and lighted a cheroot. A woman carrying a bucket came out of the house and walked toward the well. Longarm started to rise and leave when he recognized her as the unusually pretty one he'd noticed earlier. He changed his mind about leaving in favor of getting a closer look at her. As she drew near, he saw that she was a bit older than he'd thought. Her amazingly perfect cast of features masked her age effectively.

Longarm stood up when she reached the well. She said, "You don't have to move. I can draw from the other side."

"I've finished eating, ma'am. It won't bother me a bit to give you room. Here." Longarm dropped the wooden bucket that stood on the coping into the well and waited for it to fill. He drew it up, the pulley creaking from lack of oil.

She said, "I never did really thank you for taking your drunk friend away while I was unloading the wagon."

"I didn't expect thanks. All I was doing was trying to keep any trouble from starting."

"Yes. If the men had looked out and seen your friend, they'd have jumped to the wrong conclusion and probably would have rushed him."

Longarm studied the woman covertly while he drew up the heavy water bucket. Her face was a perfect oval, and her large brown eyes, fringed with long lashes, added to its symmetry. The line of her nose gave her face a squareness that kept it from looking too plump. Her lips were perhaps a bit overblown, her mouth a trifle wide, but this did not detract from the regularity of her features. She wore her hair long, in loose, thick braids that dropped down her back.

He swung the bucket over to the coping and lifted it to fill hers. She asked, "Are you one of Sam's friends? Or one of Belle's?"

"Neither one, I'd say. I never saw Sam or Belle until I pulled in here about a week ago."

"Then, are you-" She stopped short. "No, I mustn't ask you any questions. Cousin Robert said that was something we should be careful not to do."

"You can ask." Longarm smiled. "There ain't any law says I got to answer you."

"Of course. But it's better if I do what Robert says."

Longarm noticed that her eyes kept returning to his freshly lighted cheroot. He asked, "My smoke bother you, ma'am?"

"No. Just the opposite. I'm wishing I could have one myself. That's the kind I smoke. I stopped at the store as we passed through Eufaula, to buy some, but Eleazar said he'd sold out." Her eyes widened and she added "Why, you must be the one who bought them! You're the man who was with Belle and Sam yesterday!"

Longarm nodded. He said, "Yes. Too bad about your cousin. I guess the other fellow was a cousin of yours too?"

"Yes." She shook her head. "It's a little bit unnerving, two funerals in two days, and the long ride out here. Even if I didn't know Frank except to nod to, and met Sam just once."

Longarm took a cheroot from his vest pocket and offered it to her. "Maybe this'll help settle your nerves, then."

"Are you sure you won't run short?"

"Take it, ma'am. I bought all the storekeeper had. If you want another one or two, I'll be glad to-"

"No," she broke in. "This will be fine. Thank you." She looked at Longarm questioningly. "I'm Jessibee Vann." She waited.

Longarm hesitated. It went against his grain to lie, and so far his deviousness with the gang at Belle's hadn't extended to outright lying. Rather, he'd just let them draw a lot of mistaken conclusions without correcting them. He didn't relish being called "Windy,' but the name had attached itself to him and he'd been contented to let it stand. Jessibee Vann deserved better, though, he thought.

"Around here I'm answering to a sort of nickname," he told Jessibee. "But my name's"--he hesitated for only a breath--"Custis."

"I'm very grateful to you, Custis," Jessibee said. "Both for drawing the water and for the cigar. Perhaps we'll talk again before I leave tomorrow."

"I'd like that, Jessibee," Longarm said gravely.

"I'd better hurry back now," she said. "They'll be wanting this water to wash up with."

Looking at Jessibee's retreating form, Longarm tried to figure out whether she was full Cherokee or just part. She walked with an Indian's upright posture and straight-pointed steps, but there was something about her that didn't jibe with the idea that she was a full Indian.

He tried to recall what he'd heard, in bits and scraps during his wanderings, of Cherokee history. It seemed to him they'd been early to intermarry with white settlers, in their ancestral home in Georgia. And there had been some kind of split in the tribe a long time back that had brought part of them to settle along the Arkansas, even before the Cherokee Nation was carved out of the raw Western land. But that was years before Longarm's time, and history had never been his long suit. It had always seemed silly to him to study the past, when the present had so many things to keep a fellow busy.

After spending a few minutes trying vainly to recall things he'd never really learned, Longarm gave up. The day was dropping down into evening, and he'd started early and worked harder than usual. He didn't have much taste for going into the barn; in fact, he had a feeling that he'd find himself an outsider at a family gathering. He wandered down to his cabin, slipped off his boots, and poured a tot of his own Maryland rye into the glass that sat waiting beside the bottle on the table.

Longarm had long ago learned the wisdom of the old Indian axiom, "Never stand up when you can sit down; never sit down when you can lie down." He stretched out on one of the narrow bunks and lighted yet another cheroot, realizing ruefully that he'd been smoking a hell of a lot of the things ever since Billy Vail had put him on the case. He figured it was probably due to the strain of maintaining his facade as the close-mouthed Windy. Vowing silently to quit as soon as he'd wrapped up this whole nasty affair, he turned his thoughts to the business at hand. Sam's kin would be gone tomorrow and he'd need to think up some pretty convincing reasons to persuade Belle to join with the gang when the raid on the bank was staged. As the sun dropped into the bare little cabin, he noticed, not for the first time, that the pleasurable combination of his favorite liquor and tobacco had taken a few of the sharp edges off the world. He decided that maybe he'd been a mite hasty in his resolution to quit smoking. He'd definitely cut down, though--just as soon as he got back to Denver. Having thus appeased his conscience, he stubbed out the cigar and lay back. Then, after a bit, he dozed.

Longarm woke with a start and rolled from the bunk to his feet. He'd taken off his gunbelt and put it on the floor beside him. His hand moved as if by instinct to scoop up the Colt as he left the bunk. He was facing the door when a soft voice from the darkness said, "I hope I didn't disturb you, Custis, but you said to ask you if I wanted another cigar."

"Jessibee?" Longarm asked.

"I hope you weren't expecting someone else. If you are, perhaps I'd better go."

"No, no!" he said hastily. "I wasn't looking for anybody at all. And if it's a cigar you've come for, I've got plenty. Wait, I'll light the lamp."

"Don't," she said. "The moon's just behind a cloud right now. We'll have all the light we need in a few minutes."

"If you say so. Wait, though. I'll guide you in and get you sat down. That is, if you've got time to visit a spell."

"I'm not in any hurry, Custis."

Longarm groped his way to the door, and extended a hand. He found her arm, warm and soft, and led her to the table, put her hand on one of the chairs beside it, and sat down himself in the other.

He said, "You sort of took me by surprise. But if you've come for a cigar-" He took two cheroots from his vest pocket and handed one of them to her. "Now shield your eyes so the match won't blind you so bad, and I'll light it for you."

Longarm took his own advice and closed his eyes until the first white flare of the match had subsided. He cupped the match in his hands and leaned toward her. Jessibee was just opening her eyes. They danced in the flickering of the flame as she puffed her cheroot into light. He lighted his own and blew out the match. The glow of the two cigars gave the little cabin a sort of radiance, a faint glow that was saved from being ghostly by its pinkish hue.

Jessibee said, "I couldn't sleep. I don't go to bed early when I'm at home, you see, like most of my relatives. They're ready to turn in when the sun goes down. Most of them farm, so they have to be up at daybreak."

"And you don't?"

"That's one of the good things about living alone; I don't have to follow anybody's schedule. If I want to read all night, I can. Or if I feel like getting up at three in the morning for breakfast, I can do that too, without disturbing anyone."

"A pretty lady like you are, I'd have figured you to have a husband by now."

"I had one," Jessibee said. "Until three years ago, when he died of pneumonia."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

"I'm over it by now, Custis. And to save you asking, I'm not looking for another husband. I get along quite well alone, just as you seem to. You don't have a wife waiting for you somewhere, do you?"

"No. Never found time to get married, or a woman I'd want to tie up with for the rest of my life."

"Good. Then we don't have to pretend to one another, do we? Ask a lot of questions with double meanings, or say a lot of things we don't really mean."

"That's a habit I never got into," Longarm told her.

"It took me a while to break mine. But I feel a lot better if I don't try to put a false face up to someone."

A bit more light began to seep into the cabin now, as the moon came from behind the cloud that had shrouded it. Longarm could see Jessibee as something more than an occasional oval of blurred features in the sudden glow when she puffed her cheroot. Her eyes were deep pools in the bluish, uncertain light that turned her lips to a crimson so dark they looked almost black, accentuating their sensuous fullness.

He said, "Since you've got a taste for cigars, I'd imagine you might enjoy a drink of whiskey. All I've got is Maryland rye, if that'll suit you."

"It'll suit me fine. The whiskey that old man makes is good enough, but I had all I cared for up at Sam's house."

"Belle's house now, I guess," Longarm said as he poured their drinks. "I feel sort of bad about Sam. I was just getting acquainted with him."

"I never really knew him. Or Belle either. I wouldn't be here now, except that I was visiting Cousin Robert and he insisted that I come along." Jessibee sipped the whiskey. "It's very good." She drained the glass. "Whiskey's like a stallion mounting a mare. Quick and harsh. Brandy's more like a man with a woman, slow and lingering, but still with force and authority."

Longarm smiled. "That's as neat a way of putting it as I ever heard. But you didn't need to give me a message, Jessibee, except to let me know you're ready."

"If you are," she said.

Longarm stood up. "Maybe not quite, but I will be fast enough, if you're the woman I take you to be."

Jessibee came up to stand before him. She turned up her face for his kiss. Her lips grasped his and drew his tongue into her mouth. He drew her to him in a hard embrace, and the warmth of her body began to bring him erect. Longarm ran his arms down Jessibee's sides. His fingers met only smoothness. She had on nothing except her thin calico dress.