by Ralph Cotton
“Oh no, ma’am, Miss Lori,” Jane said, “we wouldn’t dare impose ourselves. I need to catch up with Ed as soon as possible. He doesn’t travel well without a shotgun rider beside him.”
“I insist,” said Lori Edelman. “It will soon be nightfall. I won’t have you traipsing out across the desert after dark.” She looked back and forth between the two of them. “I have plenty of room. You must spend the night and get started first thing in the morning.” She said to Shaw, “Mr. Lawrence, will you be riding back with Jane, or staying for a while in Banton?”
After finding the other two gold coins in the dirt where he’d cold-cocked Jesse Burkett, Shaw had made up his mind. He intended to spend some time in Banton, see what he could find out that might be helpful once he met up with Dawson and Caldwell.
“I expect I’ll stay a while, ma’am,” he said, “if there’s some work I might do here to support myself.” He had no interest in work of any sort, other than to finish sweating out the remaining whiskey lingering in his system. He could use some money, but it wasn’t the most important thing to him, he thought.
“There’s not much work in Banton, I’m afraid,” said the widow. “But I have a long list of work that needs to be done around here to keep this place from going to seed. I can’t pay much, but there’s a room and board in it. Interested?”
“Yes, ma’am, interested and obliged,” he said, without hesitation, glancing around the place. This situation could suit his purposes. He would be close enough to Banton that he could ride into town any day and look things over.
“You better be on your best behavior while you’re here with my friend, Mr. Lawrence,” Jane said, wagging a warning finger.
“I will be,” Shaw said. He sensed something at work here that he didn’t quite understand. Some secretive purpose had passed between the two women. Now that he’d seen it, he realized that everything he’d heard the two women say since Jane walked around and joined them had sounded loosely rehearsed. They had a reason why they both wanted him here, he decided.
He was certain it had something to do with Bowden Hewes pressuring the widow to become his wife. But he’d have to wait and see. It wouldn’t take long, he thought. Jane Crowly was too outspoken to keep the matter to herself.
After a night of fitful sleep in a small outbuilding behind the house, Shaw joined the two women at a long makeshift table in the front yard. Sunlight had crept up above the eastern horizon when Shaw sat down to a plate of skillet-fried eggs, jowl bacon, chimenea-baked biscuits and bubbling-hot gravy. “After the day you had yesterday, we decided to let you sleep late,” Jane said as the three seated themselves.
“Obliged,” Shaw said in a gravelly morning voice. He picked up a cloth napkin lying beside a cup of steaming black coffee. An oil lamp sat burning in the middle of the wooden plank table, offering a circle of light in the lingering morning darkness. Shaw looked at Lori Edelman and nodded good morning.
Lori returned his nod with a short but pleasant smile, and said, “Miss Janie, will you say grace for us?”
Jane quickly swallowed a bit of bacon she’d already taken and bowed her head only an inch. “Mucho gracias for all the grub, Lord,” she said, not in a disrespectful manner.
“Amen,” said Lori and Shaw in unison.
Jane raised her eyes and looked at Shaw. “Juanita the cook is gone off across the border, delivering herself another grandbaby,” Jane said. “So Miss Lori was gracious enough to prepare this big fine breakfast all by herself.” She grinned glowingly. “Ain’t that just wonderful?”
Shaw looked at her, still emerging from a sound sleep and said, “Yes, wonderful.” He sipped his coffee and watched and listened. Jane offered no more on the matter, as if realizing he was not an early-morning talker.
Shaw ate slowly and with no great enthusiasm, the way a man eats when his appetite has not fully recovered from a long, hard drinking spree. As he ate he felt Lori Edelman’s eyes on him, and he knew that she understood what she was looking at. He knew he still awoke with red-rimmed yellow eyes. His hands were not steady upon first rising. Neither his taste nor his stomach was yet what they should be.
Did it show? Of course it showed, he told himself. He consciously eyed his hand holding the coffee cup up to his face. There was a faint tremor there that a person like Lori Edelman would no doubt see. Even Jane Crowly saw it, he reminded himself. Hell, everybody saw it. . . . He sipped the coffee and set down the cup.
Shaw listened but contributed very little to the polite breakfast banter. Lori Edelman herself spoke very little, the grief of the past year being brought back to the surface after seeing her husband’s decomposed body. Jane Crowly tried to keep up a light conversation. But with little help from Shaw and the widow, breakfast finally ended in cordial silence.
“Well, morning is wasting,” Jane said, standing and wiping her mouth on a cloth napkin. Shaw and Lori Edelman stood up beside her. When the two had thanked the widow appropriately, they walked to where the horses had spent the night in a small barn. “I’ll bring this barb back here to you on the return trip to Banton,” she said, swinging the blanket, then the saddle over the little bay’s back and cinching it deftly.
“I might not be here by then,” Shaw said, watching her eyes for a reaction. “I might be staying in Banton myself by then.”
“Oh?” She looked up from her task.
Shaw gestured his hand around the place and said, “I can’t see much needing to be done around here, can you?”
“A job is what you make of it,” Jane said, a bit knowingly, he thought.
He made no reply. Instead he watched as she lifted the reins to the barb after having slipped the bridle bit into its mouth. “Anybody asks about this horse, is there anything I should know?” she asked, wanting make sure for herself that the horse was not stolen.
“I’m not a horse thief, Miss Janie,” Shaw said.
“Aw, hell, I know you ain’t,” she said, sounding ashamed for questioning the matter. “But you have to admit, you don’t look like a man who’d own two horses and a mule. It’s good to know how a horse got where it is. Can keep a fellow from stretching hemp.”
“I understand, Miss Janie,” Shaw said. He gave a slight grin.
“And you don’t have to call me Miss Janie anymore,” she said, her voice softening. “Far as I’m concerned, you can just call me Janie.”
“Not JC?” Shaw asked.
She returned his slight grin. “Not yet, but we’ll see how it goes,” she said. “I am still impressed as hell at how you smacked Jesse Burkett in his choppers. I loved every minute of it.”
“My pleasure, ma’am,” Shaw said, touching the brim of his battered top hat. He nodded at the barb horse. “Both of these horses came out from under a couple of wanted outlaws. That one belonged to a Mexican, Paco Zuetta.” He gestured toward the speckled barb standing nearby. “That one was Claw Shanks’ horse.”
“Mercy,” said Jane, recognizing both names. “You didn’t come upon their horses easily, I’m speculating.”
Shaw had to let her know, he thought, in order for her to watch out for herself. She would be traveling in country full of outlaws who knew one another, who recognized horses, saddles, boots, anything that linked their kind together or identified outsiders. “I killed them,” he said flatly.
“You killed them?” Jane stood staring at him, ques tionably at first. She looked him up and down again, as if she might have missed even more than she’d thought the last time she’d done so. “Are you—? Are you a bounty hunter, Mr. Lawrence?” she asked with hesitation. Shaw could see she was beginning to have second thoughts about him staying here with Lori Edelman.
“No,” Shaw said. “There was a time when I was what you might call a hired gun.” He gave a light shrug. “But that time is long past for me. You needn’t worry about Miss Edelman being here alone with me. I am not a man who mistreats women.”
“I think I already sensed that much from you, Mr. Lawrence,” she said i
n a gentler and more sincere tone, the likes of which he had not yet heard from her.
Shaw nodded. “You can drop the Mister and just call me Lawrence.”
“I’m obliged, Lawrence,” she said. Then her gentle tone changed. “But I have to warn you if anything happened to her—”
“I understand,” Shaw said, stopping her threat.
They turned and walked the bay out of the barn into the first rays of sunlight. When she had stepped up into her saddle, she looked off as if considering something. Then she looked down at Shaw and said, “So, what do you think of Miss Lori?”
“She seems a fine woman,” Shaw replied quietly.
“She’s a sad woman right now,” said Jane, looking closely at him, “but a fine woman nonetheless. It would be a damned shame to see such a fine woman end up with the likes of Bowden Hewes, don’t you think?”
“I can’t say,” Shaw replied. “I’ve never met the man.”
“Oh, but I bet you will meet him,” Jane said, pulling on her gloves and adjusting the reins in her hands.
“I’ll reserve my opinion of him until that time,” Shaw said.
“You’re every one of yas a bunch of damned fools,” Jane said gruffly, seeming exasperated with him all of a sudden.
Shaw just looked at her.
“All of you men,” she said. “None of yas knows what’s good for yas.”
“Stop matchmaking, Janie,” Shaw said bluntly. “I told you I think she’s a fine woman. What more can I say?”
“Oh, she’s a fine woman,” said Jane. She leaned down slightly in her saddle and tugged her floppy hat down onto her forehead. “Tell me something, Lawrence, if she’s such a fine woman, why the hell are you already talking about leaving, staying in Banton?”
Shaw only stared in stubborn silence.
“Lord God,” Jane said, gazing off in exasperation. She shook her head and slapped a gloved hand roughly onto her crotch. “I wish I was a man, just so I could show all you wooden-headed sonsabitches how to act.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Shaw said. He stepped back and raised a gloved hand above the bays’ rump.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Jane asked in a half-angry, half-joking voice.
Shaw didn’t answer. He slapped the bay’s rump and sent it lopping away onto the rocky valley floor.
Shaw waited for a moment, staring out behind her, running things through his mind. When he turned and walked back toward the house, Lori Edelman had walked around from the side of the house and met him in the yard. “Well, Mr. Lawrence, shall we begin?” she asked.
He noted a difference in how she looked at him. It was as if she no longer regarded him as some drunkard and drifter. Why the change . . . ?
“Yes, ma’am,” Shaw said. He stood as if awaiting her first bidding of the day.
“First of all, I—I want you to help me give Jonathan a proper burial . . . here in the front yard, so I can see his grave from my bedroom window.” She turned toward the house and added, “Come with me. I’ll show you the view. You can help me decide.”
Chapter 9
At the bedroom window overlooking the front yard, Shaw stood beside Lori Edelman, his battered top hat in hand, and gazed out across the sandy, rock-filled valley floor. The only shade near the weathered house was that of a tall saguaro cactus and the bare bough and branches of a burled and twisted desert oak. It took Shaw a second to realize that his help was not needed in picking a spot for her husband’s grave. But hadn’t he known that to begin with? he asked himself.
Of course you did . . . , a voice inside his mind replied. He could recall no time in his life when a woman invited him to her bedroom that he did not clearly understand her intentions at the start. His recent bout with whiskey might still have him a little off his game some, he thought, but not that badly—never that badly.
He turned to look around at the widow and found her standing very near, so near that he started to step back in order to give her more space. But then he stood firm, knowing that had she wanted more space she would have taken it. “Ma’am . . . ?” he said, asking what she wanted from him.
He gazed steadily down into her eyes in silence until she said, “I heard you and Jane speaking in the barn.”
“Oh?” He held his gaze.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she added quickly, “simply walking past to gather some kindling for the chimenea.”
She glanced away, then back to him. “Anyway, I heard you say you killed two outlaws along the trail here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “They would have killed me if I hadn’t.”
“Yes, I understand how things are here,” she said. She remained close, only inches between them. Too close, for a woman in mourning, Shaw told himself—for a woman standing with a man in her bedroom, her husband’s mummified corpse lying in an outbuilding.
“I just wanted you to know that I heard,” she said quietly. “Jane told me last night how you handled Jesse Burkett. . . .” She let her words trail.
“Do you want me to leave?” Shaw asked, already knowing the answer.
“No, I don’t,” she said. Her eyes came back up to his. He saw an invitation there. “I’m not judging you. This is a hard, unforgiving land, where men kill one another. I’ve learned to accept the fact.” She paused, then added, “As for Jesse Burkett, a good rap in the mouth sounds like just what the doctor ordered.” She gave a trace of a smile. “And I am the doctor.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Shaw nodded. Now he understood why her gaze had softened earlier, why she’d seemed to begin viewing him in a different light. Like many people, whether they would admit it or not, Lori Edelman took comfort in knowing there was a man like him nearby in a place as fierce and deadly as these high desert plains.
She reached out, took his hands and drew him against her, guiding his arms until they knew she wanted them around her. Raising her face to his, she closed her eyes. They kissed long and deep, revealing to each other that it had been far too long for either of them.
When the kiss ended, Shaw whispered against her burning cheek, “Your husband—”
“—is dead,” she finished for him. “He has been for a long time. I have grieved enough that my account is paid in full.”
Shaw noted a determined tone to her voice, as if she refused to suffer any more than she had already. “I understand,” he said, recalling how the death of his beloved wife, Rosa, still haunted him day and night.
“I hoped you would,” the widow said. She led him to her bed as she reached up and loosened the drawstring of her blouse.
Shaw watched her undress. Only when she stood naked before him did he reach up, pull off his ragged poncho and toss it and his hat sidelong onto a chair. The woman looked at the big Colt standing holstered low on his hip. In contrast to his worn and ragged clothes, the gun and its leatherwork glistened, clean, sleek and well maintained.
“I’m only passing through,” he said. He pulled out of his shirt and tossed it on the chair.
“I know,” she said.
Shaw heard the urgency in her voice. He caught a faint short gasp from her as she watched him loosen his gun belt and pull it from around his waist as if uncoiling a snake. He stepped forward, close to her, close enough to feel the heat of her against his bare chest. “So long as you know,” he said quietly. He draped the gun belt over the corner of the headboard. The bone-handled Colt stood like a deadly sentinel above the clean white pillows.
When he’d fallen asleep, he’d done so with Lori Edelman dozed against his chest. But when he’d felt her stir beside him, he’d awakened for a moment to see her standing beside the bed. “Rest,” she’d whispered, gathering a housecoat at her waist and shoving her hair back from her face. “I’ll be right back.”
He drifted back to sleep, and awoke again when she’d returned and held a water gourd to his lips. “Here, drink this,” she whispered.
In a moment he was back asleep. When he awakened again the sun had moved
over low onto the western horizon and he realized how long he had been lying there. As soon as the realization struck him, his eyes opened and his hand went to the gun hanging only inches above his head.
“Don’t worry, it’s still there,” she said, sitting at a vanity brushing her long auburn hair in a mirror.
“Have . . . I been asleep all day?” he asked hesitantly, still feeling only half-awake.
She smiled coyly. “Off and on,” she said almost in a whisper. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten everything?”
He thought about it. He remembered now, the two of them, there in the big bed. “No, I remember it now,” he said. “It just took a minute.” He didn’t try to get up, but rather scooted himself up onto a pillow for support. He lay naked beneath a thin blanket. “What did you give me to drink?”
“Just something to make you rest,” she said. “No alcohol or opiates, just some herbs I had on hand, mixed with some cool water.” She stood up, walked over and sat down beside him on the bed. “You looked like you needed it. How do you feel?”
“I haven’t felt this good in a long time,” he said, and he meant it. He looked at the chair where he had tossed his clothes. The clothes were still there, only they had been washed and sun-dried and lay neatly folded and stacked.
“Good,” she replied. She placed her hand on his chest above the blanket. “It’s plain to see that you’ve been through a rough time lately.” She tried to speak delicately about his condition.
But Shaw would have none of it. “I’ve been drunk, down drunk,” he said bluntly. “There’s no need in me trying to cover it up. Like you said, ‘it’s plain to see.’ ”
“I didn’t mean to upset you, Lawrence,” she said.
“You didn’t,” he said in a softer voice, managing even a slight smile in reflection on their lovemaking. “Believe me, I couldn’t be more pleased.” He pulled the blanket aside and swung himself up onto the edge of the bed beside her. “I have to say, this was not what I expected.”
