“You hate Papa very much now, don’t you?”
“Stop calling him Papa. He was no more your papa than the other one. Both have betrayed us. Call him Leo if you must mention him at all.”
“You hate Leo more now than you did before.”
“And if I do, I have my reasons. Please keep your nose out of my thoughts, or I shall become angry with you.”
“You already are,” grumbled Omie. “You’re angry with everyone about everything. You’re all black and swirly inside.”
“Then don’t look, do you hear me?”
“Yes.” Omie pouted, and went away to throw twigs at squirrels, her most recent pastime. The squirrels would become most agitated when the twigs hit them without visible means of movement, and Omie took a grumpy delight in watching them scramble frantically about in the cottonwood tree, trying to see what it was that threw twigs at them with such malicious accuracy.
Zoe called every other day at the post office to see if any further mail from her informant had arrived. It had been twelve days since she sent her ultimatum to Leo, but he had not responded so far. Zoe often pictured two envelopes waiting for her in the general delivery pigeonhole behind the postmaster’s counter—one from Leo and one from her informant—but came away each time with nothing more than a cheery greeting from the man who had set her quest in motion by taking the trouble to hand-deliver a letter.
As the days passed, frustrating Zoe with their mild weather and uneventful hours, she began losing interest in the matter, surprising herself by the lack of concern she now felt. She became convinced her gradual dismissal of the indefinable outrage committed against her by Leo was of no real consequence; again, she told herself that discovering the man was a cheat was in itself not such a great surprise, and if he had stolen from her a fortune of some kind, what did it matter: she had more than enough for herself and Omie; demanding more from him might be tantamount to lowering herself into the same moral quagmire he obviously inhabited. Revenge was not a notion that Zoe, a gentle woman by inclination, could goad herself with indefinitely. Perhaps it was just as well, she told herself, that no letters arrived to stir up her feelings all over again. It was time to think instead of a permanent home somewhere, a place in which to begin anew with the one person in all the world Zoe knew she could trust.
Her trip to the post office had become routine, a pleasant walk of a half hour or so from the house on the edge of town to the main street, either by way of a narrow foot trail alongside a creek, or by the more direct route of a road leading across a small bridge to another, wider road that aimed itself at Durango’s heart. Zoe found she enjoyed the leisurely, secluded stroll along the creek more and more, and decided that whatever shape her new life took, it would include the simple enjoyment of long walks. She had learned to ignore the occasional glances at her missing arm, but Omie, during the earliest walks into town with her mother, had learned to hate the stares directed at her birthmark. She refused to accompany Zoe now, and was not ordered to. Zoe would help her become strong later on, when their current life in limbo was ended, their new life together begun.
Entering the post office, she smiled at the postmaster.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Beasely.”
“Oh, Mrs. Dugan. I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.”
“The day is too fine to waste indoors.”
“Yes, ma’am, and I’d be out there myself if I could. Got a letter for you, Mrs. Dugan.”
“You have?”
“Only thing is, it isn’t here anymore.”
“Not here? I don’t understand.”
“Well, the lady took it with her. Said she was looking for you, so I gave her the address and letter both, to save you the walk tomorrow, you see.”
“What lady, Mr. Beasely?”
“Well, now, she said she was a friend of yours as had been sending you letters, only you never wrote back, some story like that. Nice lady, seems like. You didn’t see her on the road?”
“I came into town by the foot path. She didn’t give you her name?”
“No, ma’am, and I couldn’t exactly ask her for it, not and be polite too.”
“No, of course not. Thank you, Mr. Beasely.”
Zoe turned toward the door.
“Like as not she’ll be out there waiting when you get back, Mrs. Dugan.”
“Yes, I’m sure. Good day.”
Zoe found herself hurrying on the homeward walk. Could it be her mysterious letter-writer? But why would she say to Mr. Beasely that Zoe had not written back, when there had never been any return address? Perhaps that had been to allay his interest. Zoe had never thought the information might be from a woman; the handwriting was distinctly unfeminine, for one thing, and she could imagine no way in which a woman might gain access to Leo’s secrets, unless that woman was his mistress, and the letters certainly had not come from Imogen Starr. Zoe’s feet flew along the path by the creek. She wanted, with the anxious anticipation of a child nearing a Christmas tree, to see who her visitor was.
From a distance of several hundred yards she could make out the woman’s surrey by the yard gate, and the woman herself, wearing a brown dress, on the front porch with Omie. Approaching, she saw the name of a Durango livery stable on the surrey’s side; her guest had come by train, then hired a vehicle to reach her; that would be the expected thing if she had come from Glory Hole. Hurrying across the yard to the porch, Zoe realized something was very wrong with the picture she saw there. The woman, young and pretty, was pressed against the clapboard walls of the house, as if backing away from a ferocious dog, but the only figure facing her was Omie, and now that she was closer still, Zoe saw that her daughter’s face was a mask of intense concentration, the lips pressed into a line, her eyes narrowed to slits.
“Good afternoon,” Zoe said, breathless and a little confused. “I came back as fast as I could.… Omie, is something wrong?”
“Make her stop!” hissed the woman, speaking with apparent difficulty. The color in her cheeks was heightened, and her eyes bulged slightly as they glared in Omie’s direction. “Make her stop it!”
“Stop what? Omie, are you doing something you oughtn’t to?”
“Mama, it’s a man,” intoned Omie, her voice low, depleted by the effort required to keep their visitor pinned against the wall with her invisible arms.
“A man? What on earth do you mean? Stop it this instant.” To the woman she said, “I’m so sorry, Miss. Are you from Glory Hole? Omie, I said stop it!”
“It’s a man, Mama … and there’s a knife under her dress she keeps thinking about. He wants to kill us, Mama.”
“What nonsense … Miss? Are you who I believe you to be?”
“Make her stop!” the young woman said again, her voice deepened this time by the extra force Omie was exerting out of sheer frustration at Zoe’s unwillingness to believe what she was told.
“Mama, it’s a man with a knife under his dress, it really is. Look and see!”
“This is so silly, Omie.… Stop it this instant!”
Omie grew white in the face, and the young woman’s skirts flew up around her head, petticoats and all, and there, strapped to her lacy bloomers, was a long leather sheath with a slender haft protruding from it.
“Oh …,” said Zoe. The sight before her was too fantastic for immediate assimilation. This was not her informant after all, but someone bent on doing harm to herself and Omie.
“Who are you! Who sent you here! How dare you …!”
Omie let the skirts fall, but made a further point by skewing the wig on Tatum’s head sideways, giving him a faintly ridiculous look. Zoe was aghast at the deception. Only one person could want her silenced. “Did my husband send you? Did he?”
Tatum was frightened by the invisible force exerted against him by the girl. His waist was in the grip of what felt like enormous hands, and he was at a loss to extricate himself. He wanted only to peel his body from the wall and kill the woman he had been sent to kill. There ha
d been no instructions regarding the girl, but Tatum wanted to kill her also, because she had humiliated him and because he was afraid of whatever power she was employing against him. He had tried a half-dozen times since setting foot onto the porch to be free of the hands he could not see. There had not even been enough time to cajole the girl into allowing him inside to wait for her mother; barely had their eyes met than she slammed him against the wall, then kept him there for at least twenty minutes until the woman returned. He had no idea how to proceed; no one had warned him of Omie’s gifts, and he was vulnerable now to her whims.
“Keep him there,” Zoe ordered, and went inside. She reappeared moments later with a Smith & Wesson bought in Georgetown when she and Omie had disembarked from the Tiger Shark. The pistol was intended to protect them both from harm at the hands of people made afraid and vengeful by Omie’s unusual abilities, and the time for its first use had arrived. Omie was weakening; Zoe could tell by the sweat beginning to darken the armpits of her dress. “I have him now,” she said, aiming the pistol at Tatum’s chest. Omie sank onto the porch step and breathed heavily.
This new arrangement encouraged Tatum; the girl was obviously weakened by excessive use of the hypnotism or whatever it had been she used against him, and the mother did not have the look of someone prepared to pull a trigger. The impossible hands were gone from his waist. The first thing he did, giving himself time to think of a stratagem for escape, was slowly to lift his hands and adjust his wig and little flowered hat. “Is she all right?” he asked, moderating his voice to express sympathy.
“Who has sent you here? Answer me!”
“I have no idea what you mean, ma’am,” he purred, “nor any notion on what your little girl said about me.”
“Why do you carry a knife there?”
“For protection, ma’am, just as you carry a pistol. A woman can never be too careful, the world being as it is.”
“He’s a man, Mama,” moaned Omie. “Don’t believe him.…”
“I don’t,” said Zoe, and saw the face before her harden subtly. She was afraid of the androgynous creature with the wicked blade strapped against his thigh, afraid of the cold darkness behind his eyes. He had come to murder them both, as Omie said, and Zoe could not think what to do with him now that she had him at gunpoint. She could not simply shoot him, although that was probably the safest option.
“I had no idea Leo hated me so,” she told him.
“Leo?” said Tatum, lifting an eyebrow.
“My husband, Leo Brannan. I suppose you’ll deny he sent you. How can you do such work? What kind of ghoul are you?”
Tatum shrugged with casual nonchalance. The pistol had begun to weigh heavily in the woman’s grip, and she lacked another hand to support it; soon it would begin to waver, and he would be able to pounce, providing the girl had not recovered by then. She was still slumped against a porch pillar, breathing heavily, paying little attention to him. He had only to take the pistol from the woman, and his first target would be the girl, before she hypnotized him again; without her daughter, the woman would be easy meat. He would kill her slowly, painfully, as compensation for having bungled the job at first.
“Well? Did he send you? I won’t be intimidated by him. I won’t!”
Tatum let her talk; the more time passed, the heavier the pistol would become. He was intrigued to hear the name of Leo Brannan; he had been told nothing but to look around Durango for a one-armed woman called Zoe Dugan. Locating the target had been easier than anticipated; batting his eyes at the postmaster had charmed the fool into offering an address and a letter besides. He hadn’t bothered to open it yet, but he would, after he had taken care of the work he was paid to perform. The letter might even be worth an extra few hundred dollars to Price; Tatum could always threaten to take it to Mr. Jones instead, if Price demurred. Tatum sensed there was some kind of uneasy competition between the men, and that was why Price asked him to perform work on the side, extracting as a condition his promise never to breathe a word of his free-lance activities to Jones. Yes, Leo Brannan’s name could well be the perfect tool for blackmail, and the letter as well. Tatum knew he was regaining his sense of control, taken from him without warning by the girl. It was coming back now, calming him; he had always had the ability to think clearly when he knew he was in control of a situation. The gun barrel pointed at him was beginning to droop, but he kept his eyes from it, not wishing to draw the attention of Zoe Dugan to her faulty aim.
“Mama, there’s a letter.… He put it in his purse.”
Tatum was taken by surprise again. He hadn’t mentioned the letter to the girl. The postmaster must have mentioned it to the mother, but how could the girl have known, and be reminding her about it? He felt irritation over the inexplicable begin to agitate him again.
“In his purse, Mama. It’s important, he thinks.”
“I don’t have any letter.”
“You most certainly do,” said Zoe. “It belongs to me, so kindly hand it over.”
“Oh, yes, the letter they gave me at the post office. Yes, ma’am, I certainly do have that letter with me. I forgot about it, what with one thing and another.…” He gave a little laugh intended to disarm the woman as he began opening the purse. Tatum wished he had a derringer hidden inside, but he did not, so confident was he of his ability with the stiletto. “I have it here somewhere … ah, yes.”
He pulled out the crumpled envelope and offered it to her, hoping she was sufficiently dazed by events to dither over how best to accept it, since her only hand was occupied by a gun. One small hesitation, a look of indecision in the eyes, and Tatum would know the time had come to pounce.
“Drop it,” ordered Zoe.
“Ma’am?”
“I have only the one arm, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh, excuse me.”
Tatum allowed the envelope to fall between them onto the porch boards. If she stooped to pick it up, if she so much as looked down at it, he would have her.
“Move sideways.”
“Pardon me?” asked Tatum, disappointed by Zoe’s cleverness. He should have been warned of that, as well as the girl’s hypnotic ability. He would shoot the girl in both eyes, so as not to give her another chance at pinning him down with nothing more than her gaze.
“Move away from the letter, or I’ll have to shoot you.”
Tatum shuffled sideways, moving clumsily to convey the idea that he was somehow hampered by the unaccustomed dress; in fact he felt less encumbered in women’s clothing than in men’s, and often wore dresses when alone, just to hear and feel them swish through the air when he twirled and kicked and twirled again before the many mirrors in his bedroom.
“Turn around and face the wall.”
“Ma’am, I’ve tried to explain to you that I was given the letter to deliver, and that’s why I’m here.…”
“Stop lying! I am not a fool! Now turn around, you … you monster!”
Tatum sighed and turned himself awkwardly around. The woman was taking fewer chances than most would have taken; he would need to resort to stealth. He could hear the girl stand up again and come closer to her mother. That was bad; he wanted her at several arms’ lengths from him when the moment came to strike. She was picking up the letter now, although the woman hadn’t told her to, almost as if she could read thoughts.
“It’s addressed to you, Mama, by general delivery.”
“Put it in your pocket, then go and pack our bags. Are you well enough to do that by yourself?”
“Yes. What will we do with the man?”
“I don’t know. It may depend on him. Go on now, and don’t bother to fold things neatly, just fling them in the bags and bring everything outside.”
Tatum caught a glimpse of the girl as she went through the front door. That was good; he knew he could get the drop on the woman much more easily while they were alone. She was shifting position, moving a little further from him. Bad.
“Lift your dress and remove the
knife.”
“Ma’am, it’s my only protection.…”
“Stop this nonsense! You’re a man, a … a killer for hire! I despise you. Take it out very slowly, and drop it at your feet.”
Tatum lifted his dress and extracted the stiletto from its sheath. The weapon was his pride; he much preferred it to noisy guns. He had read of the Borgia assassins, Italy’s dagger men of stealth and cunning, and chosen to emulate their skills, rather than those of his own society’s dime-novel pistoleros.
“Drop your knife.”
Tatum sneered to himself. The woman didn’t know the difference between a knife and a stiletto. He wished he had his brace of throwing knives strapped along his ribs; he could have spun and sunk one into her throat before she had a chance to gun him down; but he had left them all behind, like a fool, thinking a woman less of a challenge than a man. He had learned a lesson on this assignment, and would never again underestimate any one of his targets. The stiletto clattered to the boards between his dainty button boots, and Zoe was startled to see that the blade, unlike that of an ordinary dagger, had three sides.
“Move away from it.”
Tatum did as he was told. He had just remembered another weapon, not one he had trained himself to use, but one that would serve him well in an emergency.
“What is your name?” Zoe asked him.
“Julia, ma’am.”
“Stop that! I wish to know your name, and how much my husband has paid you to do this!”
“No one has paid me to do anything, ma’am,” said Tatum. He had employed his female voice throughout, except when the girl had him held against the wall, when it had been difficult to talk at all. He didn’t know why he continued playing a role that clearly had been seen through; probably because to abandon it would have been an indication of defeat, he decided.
“Tell him that I will not be cowed. Tell him I will have what’s mine, regardless.”
Tatum was encouraged by these words. If he was expected to tell Leo Brannan something, it meant he was not about to be killed, and a woman who had no intention of killing the man she held at gunpoint was already halfway to reversing their positions. She was not so clever after all, he concluded.
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