City of Widows
Page 19
“She went on ahead. You’re really leaving?” She closed the door behind me and led the way into the Victorian/Porfiristan parlor. We remained standing, facing each other across the earthen floor.
I nodded. “I’m taking the short route by way of El Paso and catching the train from there. General Crook has Geronimo cornered in Arizona, so it should be safe.”
“What about the Princess?”
“I’m selling out my third for what I paid. If you’re interested, you can wire the money to Judge Blackthorne at the federal courthouse in Helena. It was his money to begin with. If you like you can advertise that for a little while you were partners with the Iron Jurist.”
“I think I won’t. It would only frighten away business. As it happens, however, I am interested. Eille MacNutt has asked to buy in. I was planning to discuss it with you, but I guess now I won’t have to.”
“So that’s what you talked about during those long buggy rides,” I said. “I wondered.”
“He has a sound head for business, whatever else you may think of him. With the sheriff dead and county politics in a tangle, Wallace is considering a declaration of martial law. It will be an excellent time to acquire property, as the values are sure to be depressed. When the order is lifted and the immigrants start streaming in, the scramble will be on for every available acre. Eille has the capital. I am the draw. Are you sure you don’t want to stay? There will be more than money enough for three.”
“I’d just waste it on food and shelter.” I reached inside my hat. “Eille now, is it?”
“You have a filthy mind, Page. Perhaps law work is best for you after all.”
I gave her the slip of paper I’d removed from the sweatband. “That’s the address of Junior Harper’s mother in Chicago. I found it in his wallet. You can send his share of the profits to her.”
“Does she know?”
“Yes. I wired her from Socorro City and made arrangements to ship his body north. I’m sure if you offer to buy out his interest she’ll go along. She is no saloonkeeper.”
She folded the paper and tucked it inside her sleeve. “I’m sorry about Junior, Page.”
“Are you?”
“Of course. I liked Junior. If it were not for him—”
“If it weren’t for him you’d still be married to Frank Baronet and required by law to share your property with him. As his widow you’re free and clear, with the added advantage of a little gentlemanly sympathy on the part of the men who challenge your board. That’s why you’re dressed in black. You wore the ring Baronet gave you to keep them at arm’s length. Now you wear mourning to keep them off guard. And you owe it all to Junior.”
“I told you he was drunk! He asked me to marry him, and when he found out Frank was my husband he went crazy. I tried to stop him.”
“Did you tell him Frank beat you?”
“He wanted to know why I left. I told him the truth.”
“You told him what you told me, that you shot Frank out of fear and pain and ran away because you thought you’d killed him. Junior was a romantic. The story made him angry and filled his head with notions of chivalry. He was drunk, but he sobered up on the trail. He’d have turned back then if you hadn’t mentioned that beating.
“But he was only part of it,” I went on. “You knew Junior was no match for the sheriff and Jubilo both. You sent him to his death, knowing I’d go after his killers. The beating story worked as well with me as it had with Junior, putting just the right edge on it. Hell, you had an army on your side. It was one hand you couldn’t lose.”
“You saw the scar.”
“You got it in a fight with a jealous whore.”
Her skin went transparent. I could see the network of bones and muscles in her face. “Did Frank tell you that?” Her voice was metallic.
“Jubilo did. Frank told me why you shot him.”
She said nothing.
“They were his very last words,” I said. “‘I don’t go partners with anyone.’ Quite an epitaph.”
“It doesn’t prove anything.”
“There’s nothing to prove. The only crime you committed was shooting a sheriff in the back, and he’s dead by my hand. The only crime anyone can arrest you for in this life, that is. If I were you, I’d look out for Marshal Ortiz in the next. He thinks he’s damned too, and all he did was put a bullet in his wife’s brain when she begged him to.”
“I was his draw.”
I barely heard her. I asked her to repeat it.
She did. Her voice rose. “I drew his customers to the Orient. There are eleven saloons in Socorro City, and a faro table in each one. Why did they come there if not to play cards with a pretty woman? I herded them in, I fleeced them, and I sent them back out grinning to earn more wages so they could come back. I thought when I married Frank he would deal me in for half. That was my mistake; I should have made certain. He laughed when I asked him about it. Laughed in my face and showed me his back.”
“Never a wise choice where you’re concerned.”
She tried to claw my face. I caught her wrists and forced them down to her sides. She struggled fiercely—there was pure sinew under the slender sheathing of her arms and legs, and she was filled with hate—then stopped. I watched her drawing composure from deep inside, like a glacier generating a fresh layer of ice to heal a scar. It would be the same way she handled a bad turn of cards. After a minute I let go. She smiled as she did when a player approached her table and turned toward the door.
“I wish you’d reconsider your decision to leave.” She lifted a small black felt hat from the ledge of the coatrack, an elaborate piece in carved mahogany complete with a built-in umbrella stand and a mirror framed in giltwood, standing next to the plain plank door. If Señora Castillo’s theories on decorating ever caught on back East, there would be no stopping them. “How many years can a man have to wear the badge, and what does he have when he is through? You are already an old man in your work.”
“I still prefer the odds.”
She fixed the hat to her hair with a pin long enough to picket a horse and gathered up her reticule. The pocket pistol inside made it hang crooked when she slid the loop over her wrist. “It’s a pity. I like you, Page. We could have enjoyed each other.”
“You liked Junior.”
She glared briefly at my reflection in the mirror. Then she lowered her veil over an expression of trackless purity and went out to join the other widows.
By Loren D. Estleman from Tom Doherty Associates
City of Widows
The High Rocks
Billy Gashade
Stamping Ground
Journey of the Dead
Aces & Eights
Jitterbug
The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association
Thunder City
Praise for the Page Murdock novels of Loren D. Estleman
“This is the perfect novel for a dude ranch vacation or a little quiet time by the campfire this summer.… White Desert is a psychological novel as well as a mystery and a Western. That’s a tall drink of water in any book.”
—The Rocky Mountain News
“Given Estleman’s skill in evoking a sense of place, I would advise the reader to wrap up in a blanket and settle down close to the fireplace before opening a book that makes the weather real.… I don’t often drink hot chocolate during a heat wave, but it might be a useful potion against frostbite induced by reading White Desert.… All of Estleman’s characters are so well-drawn, no character is minor.”
—Amarillo Globe-News
“Enough action in this Western novel to satisfy any reader.”
—The Dallas Morning News on White Desert
“Murdock is a classic hero, tough as nails and twice as rusty. He may be the only Western hero who dislikes horses.… Estleman writes with a straightforward savagery … [and] will keep you turning pages compulsively.”
—The Post Courier on White Desert
“[Estleman] has a ge
nius for re-creating a past era with a clear and unsentimental eye.”
—The Poisoned Pen on White Desert
“This is a Western novel that also is a work of literature.… Eloquent.… Evocative.… Estleman also evokes the pace, speech and violence of those days.… Right on target.”
—San Antonio Express-News on Journey of the Dead
“Prose as picturesque as the Painted Desert. When Page Murdock shuffles the words, deal me in.”
—The New York Times Book Review on City of Widows
“Estleman’s prose and ability to set a mood are always first-rate.”
—The Chicago Sun-Times on City of Widows
“Estleman could rewrite the Ann Arbor phone book and I’d pay to take a peek.”
—Chicago Sunday Tribune
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
CITY OF WIDOWS
Copyright © 1994 by Loren D. Estleman
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN: 0-812-53538-3
First edition: April 1994
First mass market edition: March 1995
eISBN 9781466851832
First eBook edition: July 2013