by Jo Goodman
“I guess we know what happened to that. It’s with him wherever he’s got himself off to.” He turned to Willa. “Please accept my sincere apologies. Jesse Snow was not the person who should have been charged with delivering my answer, but perhaps you can forgive us for offering a young man the chance of redemption through hard work and a show of loyalty. I have only recently learned from my foreman that Jesse showed poor judgment in the past and may have had skirmishes with the law.”
“Then he should have fit right in at Big Bar,” Willa said, unmoved. “You’re here now, so let’s get to it. Eli, you want to get down off your high horse and join us in the front room. We’ll get some food together, and Lord knows, you see we have drink, and we will behave in a civil manner just as if being in the same room did not make our skin crawl.”
“Well put,” said Malcolm. “Eli, give Zach here your reins.”
Willa let go of Happy’s sleeve and hoped he would not overplay the inebriated fool, if indeed he was playing at all. He hung back, and Malcolm fell into step beside her, asking after Cutter. The question surprised her. She had been expecting a query about her husband. “Cutter’s on an errand.”
“And your sister?” asked Malcolm. “I fully expected to see her.”
“She wanted to go with Cutter.”
“Hmm. I don’t think I’ve seen her since I paid my respects when your mama died. What a sad little thing she was then.” When Willa said nothing, he went on. “You, too.”
Willa stood back and opened the kitchen door for him. “Go on,” she said when he hesitated. “No one’s there to bite you.”
“No one? Where is your husband?”
“With Cutter. This is what happens when we have no reply. We go about our business.”
“I suppose Eli and I are fortunate there is anyone around at all, though perhaps we could have depended on seeing Happy.”
Inside, Willa took his hat, coat, and gloves, and pointed out the direction of the front room while she waited for Eli to step inside. She put all of it, including her own outerwear, in Happy’s arms when he stumbled in after Eli. “Join us when you’ve hung it up.”
“Maybe I’ll just toss it on your bed,” he said. “Has to be easier.”
“Whatever you like.” She nodded to Eli to go ahead of her and managed not to steal a look back at her father. She suspected that he was counting on Israel being in one of the bedrooms and hoped he was right.
Eli passed up the sofa where his father was sitting in favor of the rocking chair. Willa, in an effort to honor her edict regarding civil behavior, did not yank him out of it. She chose the wide armchair instead and left Happy with the option of being the other bookend on the sofa or sitting on the piano bench.
“I’d rather hoped we could do this without guns. You see I am not carrying, but I understand if you want to keep yours.”
Malcolm’s smile was appreciative. “There’s no one in here I want to shoot. Yet. You can have mine. Eli can do what he likes.” He stood, removed his gun belt, and handed it to Willa. Eli remained seated.
Shrugging, as though indifferent to the choices they made, Willa placed Malcolm’s gun belt on a table out of anyone’s easy reach and then returned to her seat. She sat back and rested her forearms on the comfortably wide arms of the chair, her hands curled lightly over the curves. She had actually practiced sitting in just this fashion in anticipation of facing Malcolm and Eli. It was infinitely more difficult now.
“I don’t know what is taking Happy so long,” she said, “but as you noted earlier, Malcolm, this was my idea, not his. We may as well begin.” She spoke directly to Malcolm while carefully watching Eli out of the corner of her eye. “We had a visitor here from Big Bar not long ago. It put the thought in my mind that we should discuss the way things are between us. I prefer that we speak directly as opposed to you sending one of your hands to nose around, whether it’s up at Monarch Lake or here.” She saw Eli push himself back in the rocker, but it was Malcolm dropping his guard enough for her to glimpse his confusion that interested her more. “Did I misunderstand something?” she asked guilelessly. “My husband and I were not here on the evening your man came by, so perhaps I don’t have it quite right. His story was an odd one, full of misdirection and misinformation, but the one thing everyone agreed on was that he was riding a horse with the Big Bar brand.” She pointed to her left shoulder. “Right here. Right where you like to brand your working horses.”
It was Eli who spoke up. “Did he say he worked for us?”
“On the contrary, he said he was doing a favor for a friend. He wanted us to believe he had just come from your place after making the same inquiries of you and Mal that he put to my father, Zach, and Cutter.”
“Well, then, the man’s a liar,” said Malcolm. “The only visitor we’ve had to Big Bar was your foreman Zach, and Buster headed him off before he reached the house.”
Willa’s attention was all for Eli now. “So what accounts for the horse he was riding?”
“Stolen,” said Eli. “It’d have to be.”
“Buster would know,” said Malcolm. “It’s troubling that he hasn’t said a word about it.”
“Perhaps because he doesn’t know. Zach asked him when he delivered our invitation. He said there’d been no trouble with rustlers. All your horses are accounted for. Odd, don’t you agree?”
“For God’s sake, Wilhelmina, the man must have given you a name. Who the hell did he say he was?”
“Samuel Easterbrook.” She watched Malcolm frown deeply and Eli only a little less so. It was difficult to gauge the sincerity of the expressions, as in her opinion, neither man owned an honest emotion. “Are you going to insist you don’t know the name?”
Malcolm said, “I heard the name for the first time when I received your letter. I had it from Buster, who had it from Zach. It’s clear now that what Zach presented was only a story, and I’m clear, too, on why he presented it, but being familiar with the name doesn’t mean I’m familiar with the man. I would not know him if he presented himself here right now.”
With impeccable timing and perfect obliviousness, Happy walked in carrying a tray with four cut glass tumblers surrounding a decanter of whiskey. “Everyone stop starin’ like you expect me to drop this. I got more respect for good liquor than that. Plus, this was my mother’s prized set of glasses from back East.” He set the tray on the table beside Malcolm and began to pour. His hands only shook a little. While he passed out the glasses, each filled with two fingers of whiskey, Willa summarized what he had missed.
Happy squeezed himself into the corner of the couch opposite Malcolm. “So we’ve come to the place where somebody’s lyin’. Imagine that. Didn’t figure it for happenin’ quite this fast. Good thing I decided to bring libation instead of sandwiches or you’d be knee deep in deception by now.”
Malcolm grunted softly and raised his glass. He didn’t drink immediately, studying Eli over the rim instead. “Tell them, Eli. Tell them what you told me when I asked you.”
“I never heard the name ‘Samuel Easterbrook’ before my father asked me about him. No one by that name works for us. I believe Buster told Zach the same thing.”
Willa sighed. “I think we’ve all figured out by now that he doesn’t work for you by that name. Let’s see if you can’t think of another he might go by.”
Malcolm’s fingertips whitened on his glass. “This isn’t what I came for, Wilhelmina, and I don’t have the patience for you to get around to where I think you’re going. I’m here to discuss water rights. You said you were willing to revisit the terms you laid out for my father a couple of years before he died. That’s why I came.”
Willa’s eyes never wavered from his. She refused to blink. Her mouth curved into the mere suggestion of a knowing smile. “I know exactly why you’re here, Malcolm, and it isn’t because you want my water.”
Happy cleare
d his throat. It sounded as if he were moving gravel. He moved the conversation back to the point. “What Willa’s tryin’ to say is that we need to play an open hand here. Put our cards on the table and see what’s what. Can’t be anything up a sleeve, now can there? Eli? You square with that?”
“Of course.” Eli raised one sandy-colored eyebrow a fraction and kept his green eyes narrowly fixed on Happy’s rheumy ones. “I am all for a fair and honest game.”
“You sure don’t take after your father there.”
Malcolm growled at the back of his throat. “Dammit, Shadrach, you won that game. How long are you going to keep holding it over me and acting like you didn’t?”
“You call me Shadrach again, and I reckon you won’t live long enough to find out.”
Willa spared a look for Eli, only to discover he was already looking at her. For the briefest of moments she truly believed they shared secretive, knowing smiles at the foibles of their fathers, and that both of them were transported back to the time when they had first pledged their futures to each other at the barbed wire fence line.
Their gazes slipped away. Willa could not say how Eli would remember that moment, or even if he would, but for her, it was a bittersweet memory of youth and she promised to recall it in just that way. It would not, however, stop her from doing what needed to be done.
She set down her drink and raised both hands, pushing them toward the combatants. “Stop. The pair of you, just stop. Happy, if you cannot manage to keep from speaking out of the side your mouth, you might as well go make those sandwiches. And, Malcolm, if you cannot keep from snapping at the bait, maybe you should go to the kitchen and help him. Eli and I will conduct business on our own.”
“Over my dead body,” said Happy.
“Over my dead body,” said Malcolm.
Willa nodded, her smile perfectly sanguine. “Eli. You heard them. If this takes another turn, shoot them.” She ignored the rumblings from the couch and continued. “If we are agreed then that we are playing our cards openly, I want to revisit the identity of Samuel Easterbrook. Happy, why don’t you tell them what the man looked like? Maybe that will loosen a thread of memory.”
Happy told them what he recalled.
Malcolm shook his head. “That could be anybody.”
“No,” said Willa. “It couldn’t. It couldn’t be Buster, for instance. He’s too short, too square. Easterbrook is a little rangy, loose-limbed, like our Cutter. Don’t you still have a cowboy working for you named Hammond?”
“Sure,” said Eli. “But he’s a colored fellow.”
“That’s what I recall, too. See, it can’t be him either. You better keep thinking.”
Malcolm said, “Well, I guess it fits Jesse Snow better than anyone. He’d be the youngest hand working the ranch. Doesn’t make a lick of sense why he’d come to you with any kind of story. I never needed to ask anyone to poke around here when I could find whatever I wanted to know by just asking in town.”
“That’s you, Malcolm. I don’t know if Eli can say the same.” She picked up her drink again. “Can you, Eli?”
“This is a little bit ridiculous,” he said.
Everyone stared at him.
“Why would I—” He stopped, pushed back in his chair without rocking it, and began again. “Very well. It must have been Jesse. I don’t know anything about Samuel Easterbrook or why Jesse felt he had to use a name other than his own, but I sent him here because of you, Willa.”
“Me?”
“I heard you finally accepted some man’s proposal. I didn’t think I would be welcome, so I asked Jesse to come in my stead and relay my best wishes. That was it. He told me that’s what he did, although he did say that you and your husband were not here. I figured it for a missed opportunity and didn’t think any more of it.”
“Hmm. If that’s all it was, why not say so right off when I told you we had a visitor?”
Eli shrugged. “A man’s embarrassment can tie his tongue, can’t it?”
“I suppose. Are you sure that all he was supposed to do was pass on your congratulations?”
“I’m sure.”
Still curious, Willa rubbed the hollow behind her ear with the back of her fingers while she continued to frown. “Happy? What was the name of the man Easterbrook said he was looking for?”
“Give me a moment. It’ll come to me.” He sipped his drink as if it could supply inspiration. His eyebrows climbed his forehead and he smiled widely. “Buck McKay.”
Eli’s drink sloshed over the rim of his tumbler as his arm jerked.
Willa pounced. “You know that name, Eli?”
“What is she talking about, son?” asked Malcolm. “Who is Buck McKay? For God’s sake, don’t tell me he’s working for us, too.”
“He doesn’t,” said Willa. She stood and walked to the archway. Israel was waiting patiently in the hall, his shoulder braced against the wall, his arms crossed casually in front of him. Like Eli, he was wearing a gun belt. Unlike their guest, he was grinning. “You heard?”
Israel pulled his spectacles down from where they were resting on top of his head and settled them on his nose. “Everything.”
Willa stared at his extraordinarily colored blue-gray eyes through the lenses, shook her head, and said under her breath, “It’s indecent how handsome you look in those.” She could only shake her head again, helplessly this time, when surprise made him blink. “You better follow me now.”
Composed again, Willa stepped back into the front room and then to the side to make space for Israel. Before she began proper introductions, Eli was on his feet. Willa could only imagine what was going through his mind, but at least he retained enough sense to keep his hand away from his gun.
“Sit down, Eli. Please.”
Eli took a step backward, retreating in the direction of the fireplace, not the rocking chair. He might have kept on going if Malcolm had not barked at him to sit. As if pierced, Eli deflated from the puffed-up balloon he had been and was fortunate to get the rocker under him before he completely collapsed.
Eli was no sooner down than Malcolm was on his feet. “Someone damn well better tell me what’s going on. Is this your husband, Wilhelmina?”
Israel did not wait for her to answer. Pretending that Malcolm coming to his feet was an introductory gesture and not a gauntlet being thrown, he walked over and held out his hand. He waited for Malcolm to take it before he spoke. “You must be Malcolm Barber,” he said. “You can imagine I’ve heard quite a lot about you and Big Bar. I am Israel McKenna.” Off to the side, he heard Eli emit a soft, somewhat despairing groan. He released Malcolm’s hand but did not step back yet. “As you might suspect, Mr. Barber, your son and I are already acquainted.”
Malcolm had a sharp glance for Eli. “Is he speaking the truth, Eli? Do you know him?”
Eli’s fingertips whitened where they gripped the arms of the rocker. “The last I saw him, he told me his name was Buck McKay. Jesse knew him by that name, too.”
Malcolm’s eyes darted between Eli and Israel. His frown folded his broad forehead into deep furrows. When he finally spoke, it was Willa that he addressed. “You told me your husband was with Cutter. Was that a lie?”
“It was,” she said unapologetically.
“And that’s your idea of putting your cards on the table? You begin with a lie?”
“It was my opening bid, yes. And Israel here is my final one. Eli can tell you everything you want to know, or you can have it from Israel, but you really do need to hear one of them out. Now.”
Israel returned to Willa’s side and waited for Malcolm to decide who the storyteller would be.
Happy ventured into the heavy silence by rising from the sofa on very steady feet and going to the tray that held the whiskey. With a hand that never trembled, he gave Malcolm a generous pour and splashed some in his own glass before h
e set the decanter down. He looked sideways at Willa and winked.
“You’re not drunk,” said Malcolm. His tone was less accusing than it was resigned.
Happy shrugged. “I might lay myself out later once we resolve this business. That’d be a reason to celebrate. But now, I’m itchin’ to hear what Eli’s got to say for himself.”
Willa admired her father’s intervention. Prompting Malcolm to take one direction was the surest way to push him in the other.
Malcolm thrust his chin at Israel. “I want to hear from you.” He did not return to the sofa but chose the armchair where Willa had previously been sitting. That vantage point gave him a good view of all parties.
Israel said, “I met Eli after the train I was taking from Chicago took on more cars and passengers in Saint Louis. There was a poker game going on in one of the cars, and I stopped to watch even though I only meant to pass through. Eli was doing well. He lost some hands now and again, as I recall, but he always came back. It was hard not to admire that skill, so I stayed around. There were some others that did, too. Some men left the game and others joined. Eli stayed. I observed until I figured out his game, and then I got in.”
“What do you mean, you figured out his game?” asked Malcolm.
Israel had no memory of doing any such thing on that train, but he knew his habits on the riverboats and doubted he had deviated from what worked so well in the past. He had also been keeping an eye on Eli’s expression as he spoke and while Eli’s fine features had finally settled into one of credible calm, he had very little color in his complexion and the faintest tic at the corner of his left eye. Israel was confident that he had not misspoken yet.
“Your son cheats,” said Israel. “And not badly. Not badly at all. I’m sure that’s the reason no one called him out.”
Eli sat forward in the rocker. “That’s a goddamn lie.”
“Well, I’m not surprised you’d say that, but I had hoped you could appreciate the compliment. You were good.”
“You know damn well that you were the one cheating. You’re the card sharp.”
