that invitation. No sir. I liked her. Besides, I was curious.
That same evening, after I’d locked up the store, we went for our little stroll. Butterfield ain’t that big and there ain’t that much to see–most of it was re-built after the war anyway–so we decided to just walk to the courthouse and back. It was a nice evening, starting to cool after what had been another hot day, and she hooked her arm in mine for all the world as if we’d been married ten year or were courting or some such nonsense. “I only just noticed your wedding ring, Charles. I had you pegged for a life-long bachelor.”
“Nah,” I said. Truth be told I was feeling a mite bashful. It had been a very long time since I went out promenading with a woman. Maybe too long. “I was married once upon a time.”
“What happened?”
“She died of Cholera back in ‘51”
Hester squeezed my arm. “It’s a terrible thing, ain’t it? To lose a loved one?”
“It sure is. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing hanging round Grundy’s.”
“Oh that.” She laughed, a low sweet laugh. “That was on account of something you said.”
“What?”
“Don’t you remember? You said the injuns round here were peaceable enough but that it might be different where I was heading. So I reckoned I needed to get me some fellers used to toting a gun.”
“Well you'll certainly find fellers like that down at Grundy’s. What you won’t find is a decent farmhand. You got your priorities all mixed up, Hester.”
She stopped me then so we were face-to-face, searching my features with those big grey eyes of hers. “You reckon?”
“Yeah. What you think the volunteers are for? They’ll take care of any injun trouble you’re likely to have–”
Those grey eyes flashed and those red lips twisted scornfully. “The volunteers? Them boys ain’t worth a damn–leastways, that’s what I heard.” But she only said the last bit as an afterthought.
Curioser and curioser.
“Well, well! The storekeeper and the whore gettin' all lovey-dovey! Ain’t that a sight for sore eyes!”
I was just dropping Hester off at Abigail’s and she’d given me a quick peck on the cheek, nothing more. I’d forgotten all about Sheriff Gregg, who was sitting out on his porch as usual, puffing away at his cigarillo and watching us from the shadows like a toad eying up a couple of gnats from under some rock.
“Sheriff Gregg,” Hester said with a smile. “I’m gonna pray for you tonight–‘cos if ever a man was in need of the Good Lord’s intervention, that man is you!”
I could barely make out Sheriff Gregg’s face in the gloom but I could still see him scowl. “I don’t need no whore praying for me!” he snapped.
Only he was too late. Hester had already vanished back inside without saying another word.
Like I said, I’m not the sort of feller who picks fights. So how come I stopped in front of that porch? Search me. I just remember saying–“I really don’t appreciate you calling Miss Jones a whore, Sheriff.”
He was still scowling away. He looked like an oriental statue I’d seen one time, in a Chicago store window. “That girl’s trouble, Charles,’ was all he said. “You mark my words.”
I’d barely made myself some coffee when there was a knock on the front door. I won’t lie to you. Fool that I was, I was kind of hoping it might be Hester. Only when I answered it, Abigail bustled in past me. “What you know about this girl–Hester Jones?”
“Precious little,” I admitted.
“You sent her to me, didn’t you?”
“I’d only just met her Abigail. She seemed straight enough. She sure knew how to rile Sheriff Gregg! Why? What’s she gone and done?”
She pay you for all that stuff she ordered yet?”
“Nope. Told me she was leaving Monday at the earliest and she’d settle up with me then.”
“You plannin’ on letting her take some of the stuff before that?”
“Sure. She wanted to move five or six crates over to the station and I didn’t see the harm. They was only cluttering up the shop anyhow.”
Abigail studied me with her sharp little eyes. “What if I told you that she’s planning on leavin' Saturday morning?”
“I’d ask how you could know such a thing.” But I felt as if an icy fist had just grabbed my heart and was squeezing it real tight.
“I knows ‘cos she’s gone and hired Curly Peterson and his crowd of no-hopers and Curly hisself told me only this evening.”
Curly was a classic example of a man who comes in mighty useful when there’s a war on and is a first-class nuisance in peacetime. He wasn’t a bad sort, but boy, that feller loved to scrap!
“How come he’s going with her if she can’t pay him?”
“Oh she can pay him all right!” I could see this annoyed Abigail most of all. Her round little cheeks were quivering with indignation. “It’s you and me she don’t want to pay! Or can’t. Same difference if you ask me.”
“You talk to her about this?”
“Nope. I figured–seeing as she’s your friend–that I was best off leaving it to you.”
“I was thinking of getting me some firepower.” Hester was studying me with those steady grey eyes of hers. I hadn’t said anything to her about what Abigail had told me. I was still trying to figure her out, see. Once I had her figured, I’d know what to do.
“Yeah? Come this way.”
I bought her down to the end of the shop. I keep a big rack of Sharps rifles down there, various types and models. She cast an appraising eye over them then lifted down a ‘74. She dropped the block, checked the bore, then cocked the hammer and set the trigger. This girl knew her guns. She was smiling to herself as she peered down that barrel only it wasn’t a very nice smile, and for a second I might as well not have been there. Hester was a million miles away, some dark place inside her own head, and whatever she thought she was shooting at, I was pretty sure it weren’t no buffalo.
“You ain’t from St Louis, Hester.”
“Nope. Spent the last four years there mind. I’m a plainswoman born and bred.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke. She must have realized this moment would come sooner or later. She swung the rifle in a slow arc, squinting down the length of it the whole time, then pulled the trigger. “Handles well enough,” she said grudgingly before putting it back.
“And I’m guessing your aunt never owned no farm in the Smoky Hills.”
“You’d guess right. Me and my husband had a farm there. And two children, a boy and a girl. Until those Cheyenne sons of bitches burnt us out.”
“You the only survivor?”
“Yup.” Tears welled up briefly in her eyes as she met my gaze, then she scowled and looked away.
“Dog soldiers, more than likely.”
“That’s what I reckon. Will you come with me, Charles?” Suddenly she was staring at me real hard, almost as if she thought she could make me come along through will power alone.
“What in tarnation would you want with some old timer like me, Hester?”
“’Cos Curly and his gang are none too bright and you’re a good man as well as a smart one, Charles. The kind of feller a gal needs when she's caught between a rock and a hard place.”
I liked that woman. I really did. Nonetheless I shook my head. “Sorry Hester.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Why not?”
“Cos I’m guessing that if the volunteers couldn’t help you, your farm is deep in the heart of Cheyenne territory. You won’t just get yourself killed with this foolishness. You know that, don’t you? Curly and his gang will end up getting killed too. And what if one of them injuns gets it into his head to come down to Butterfield and visit some payback down on our heads? You ever think of that?”
She was furious with me. I could see it on her face. “And here was me thinking you was the sort of man who’d fight for a righteous cause!”
“Same as I might lie or steal for one?”
Her chee
ks flushed a deeper crimson. “You aiming to tell Sheriff Gregg?”
Until then I had no intention of doing any such thing, but it suddenly struck me as the only sane thing to do. I told Sheriff Gregg, he’d throw Curly and his gang in the town jail rather than let them leave on the train, if only to make sure no Cheyenne turned up in Butterfield. “I guess.”
“What if I was to get out of town right away? Would you keep your mouth shut then?”
“Maybe. If you pay Abigail Crabworth what you owe her.”
“Guess we got ourselves a deal, so.”
We shook hands. Then she said–“I like you, Charles. Maybe I wasn’t square with you, but that part wasn’t just play-actin’.”
“I know, Hester, I know. Same as I like you.”
I watched her walk back up to Abigail’s, then come briskly back down the street not ten minutes later, a suitcase in either hand. I was glad to see she’d got rid of that feather boa. It had never suited her anyway–she was way too short for such a thing. She nodded at me as she passed and I nodded back at her.
A second later she was swallowed up by the dusk; a little woman with a big hatred burning away inside her. There was a train due in little under an hour. She’d be on that train, already planning what lies to tell, next town she found herself in. I didn’t care, just as long as she didn't tell them here in Butterfield.
“All’s well that ends well.”
I couldn’t see Sheriff Gregg; just the orange tip of his cigar in the gloom.
“I guess.”
“I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what she was up to?”
“Nope.”
“That’s your
Sheriff Gregg & The Righteous Widow Page 2
