Dark Trail (6 page)

“Sixteen years.”

Rittenauer whistled. “Long time.”

“You're planning on killing him, aren't you?”

“I have to admit I've thought about it,” he said.

“He's fast.”

“He's fast, but he's not that fast.”

“You sure?”

“I'm willing to find out.”

He put his head down and stirred his spoon around some more. “You're worried I'll kill him, aren't you?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“Maybe I'd be doing you a favor.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe if he was dead, you'd be free. Maybe you could go someplace else and find a new man and start a new life. You're an attractive woman.”

“I don't want him to die,” she said.

“It's kind of funny when you think about it,” he said.

“What is?”

“You and me. Sitting here.”

“I guess it is, yes.”

He looked at her. “I'm sorry he left you.”

“And I'm sorry for you. You look pretty unhappy.”

He shrugged. “I've never been a very happy man, anyway. Beth leaving just kind of fit right in with everything else.”

“There's always the chance you're not as fast as you think you are.”

“I suppose.”

“There's always the chance that Frank might get lucky and kill you.”

“Yes, I suppose there is that chance.”

“Would she be worth dying for?”

He smiled sadly. “Apparently Frank thinks so.”

She lowered her head. It was several long moments before he realized she was crying.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I shouldn't have made that smart remark. I was just feeling mean.”

She shook her head. “It wasn't that. It's that I just finally realized you really are going to fight him.”

“Probably.”

“And there's nothing I can say or do to stop you.”

“I want her back. I shouldn't, but I do.”

“Maybe we should just both go away and leave them alone. Then there wouldn't be any need for a fight.”

“He shouldn't have stolen her from me.”

“Women aren't property. He didn't steal her. She went because she wanted to go.”

He reached across the table and touched her hand. “You're a nice woman, you know that?”

She was sniffling again. “Thank you.”

“Maybe things'll work out. Maybe there won't be a fight.”

“Do you really think so?” Her head came up so fast and she sounded so young and earnest that Rittenauer felt sad for her.

“It's possible,” he said. “It's possible.” Then, “Now, c'mon, and I'll walk you back to your hotel.”

She smiled at him then, her first good true smile tonight; and he saw the beauty she'd once been and the beauty she still had in a certain worn and wan way.

“C'mon,” he said, taking her hand and helping her from the booth.

Hollister, who had been born on a Kansas farm, had started what he called his “professional life” at the age of eighteen. He'd worked first as a gambler for a variety of saloons in a variety of backwater towns, and then as a saloon-keeper for a man dying of a heart ailment. The old man had given Hollister a cut of everything, including whiskey, cards, and girls. Soon enough Hollister was able to start buying the fancy clothes he had seen on his trips to Chicago and Kansas City. He was now twenty-three years old.

The following year he met Tom Adair, a man ten years older, and smarter and infinitely meaner. Hollister had once seen two bouncers work over a cardsharp in a back alley. He'd never forgotten the sounds the men's fists had made, or the way the cardsharp had mewled and bawled for mercy. Finally, when the cardsharp had begun puking up blood, Hollister had had to go back inside, unable to watch any more. Adair was different. Adair exulted in violence of all kinds. He even treated business as a form of violence, becoming rich and powerful by exploiting the cattle market in mining boom towns.

In 1871 Adair had seen more than three hundred thousand head of stock move into the Plains States. He'd also seen how eagerly the beeves were snatched up by hungry customers. From then on, he was relentless about driving his cattle across the Plains to western markets. Mostly this was done by means of long trail drives rather than trains because he'd felt—before he'd become a railroad owner himself, that is—that trains cut into efficiency and dependability where shipping cattle was concerned. Plus, he considered railroad men to be the most ruthless and dishonest of all Yankee businessmen, especially since there was evidence that the railroads themselves were secretly working with stockyards and meat­packing plants to fix the price of beef. Gradually, however, as 1890 came and more than ten million head were moved out of the southwest alone, Adair came to see how valuable railroads could be in driving up consumer prices and keeping them there, thereby making rich cattlemen even richer. Cattlemen like himself.

Hollister had gone to work for Adair eight years ago. Within the first three months, he'd met two cabinet officers from the Harrison administration, several cattle ranchers rich enough to afford their own private railroad cars, and whores who had good teeth, well-bathed bodies, and genteel tongues, not the sort of whores he'd known previously.

He did not mind being a fetch-and-step man for Adair; Adair paid him well and treated him with a certain grudging respect. Where Adair was often loud and arrogant, putting people off with his demands, Hollister was more reasonable and generally got his way with people.

Hollister thought of all this as he shaved this morning, the sunlight golden and dusty in the hotel shaving mirror. Being just six o'clock, the town was not much alive yet, and would not be for another hour or so. Hollister, who didn't drink, was always up early. He believed that this helped account for his successful life. He was busy working when other men were still whining for their wives to give them morning sex.

Hollister did not much like women. Once a month he went to a whore house and chose a very young whore. Once upstairs and with virtually no conversation—the gold piece he put on the bureau as soon as he entered the room said quite enough—he fell to it. Sex for him was quick and impersonal. He did not like the way women smelled, or the way they felt after they reached a certain age, or the way they asked question after question.

He had been married once very briefly. By the end of the relationship he hadn't even been able to have sex with her any more. All she did was put on her pretty clothes and sit in front of the mirror and sob inconsolably. After she'd signed the necessary legal documents, he'd given her $3,000 in cash and told her to never contact him again.

He looked more closely at the face in the mirror now. He figured he was handsome, despite his extra weight, and he supposed that in his fancy suits he looked quite formidable. But his face had always amused him; it seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with the being it hid. Where the face was open and ordinary, the man it hid was neither.

Bending to the basin, he washed the shaving soap off, washed under his arms, and splashed water on hie chest and arms, drying off with a clean white nubby towel.

From there, he moved quickly, putting on a clean white percale shirt and a clean collar. The suit he selected was gray, the cravat a deep red, almost wine-colored. He put a rag to his angular, Edwardian shoes. He liked them deep black and shiny.

The last item he put on his person was a small .44 that fit snugly into the waist of his trousers. While he often took target practice with Adair, he'd never had to use his gun in any sort of altercation. He hoped that his luck would continue.

“You didn't sleep again?” Beth asked, rolling over in bed and looking at Frank sitting on the bay window seat. He was smoking a cigarette. The smoke was blue in the morning light.

“No,” he said, “I didn't.” He sounded irritable.

Up and down the hall, you could hear the hotel coming alive—people clumping in shoes and slippers to the bathroom and back again.

“You're worried about something, aren't you?” she said.

He looked over at her and shook his head. “You bought that blouse yesterday, didn't you?”

“I—” Her first impulse was to lie. They'd had such an argument about it. Finally, she'd promised that this once she wouldn't go behind his back and buy it. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I did.”

“Beth, you know I don't have much money.”

He sounded like a sulky little boy. She hated him when he sounded this way.

“It won't be long before we'll be touring again,” she said, “and then we'll have plenty of money.”

“Six months.”

“What?”

“Six months before we start touring again. That's a long ways away. In the meantime—”

“In the meantime we'll be fine.”

He swung his head around to look out the window again, sulky once more.

She took this opportunity to reach over and grab her robe off the chair next to the bed. She often, as last night, slept with no clothes on. The sight of her naked would make him passionate, and of late—with all his whining—she was less and less inclined to want sex with him. She wished they were back at the beginning of their time together. He'd been touring then and had plenty of money and absolutely no hesitation about spending it on her. She was not unsympathetic to Frank—indeed, knowing his money pressures, she felt quite sorry for him. But could you become passionate about a man you felt sorry for? Somehow she doubted it.

Getting out of bed and slipping quickly into her robe, she suddenly remembered the dream—nightmare, really—she'd had last night. About her neck. What had her mother told her? “Nothing tells more about a woman's age than her neck,” she'd said. Beth shuddered, recalling the dream images now, the way her neck had been wattled and whorled with flesh and deep, deep lines. In the dieam, she'd worn a succession of high, lacy collars so that nobody could see her neck. But then a very handsome and elegant man who had spent most of an evening at a fashionable party watching her across the room had suddenly become a brute. He'd stood in front of her and ripped away the lacy collar, seeing for himself what lay beneath. She'd screamed and slapped the man, but he had only laughed.

Now, as she walked over to Frank, she touched her neck, felt the soft flesh of it. Self-consciously she drew the collar of her robe up so that it covered as much of her throat as possible.

“Frank.”

“What?”

“Let's have a nice day today.”

He was still turned away from her, looking out the window.

“Why don't you give me some time to get dressed and then we can go downstairs and have some breakfast,” she said. “Wouldn't you enjoy that?”

He looked back at her. Even his eyes looked sulky now. “I suppose.”

She smiled. “Why don't you go for a walk? Maybe you'll be in a better mood.”

She could see that he wanted to protest, but he finally gave up, went over and got his shirt and tugged it on. He jerked on his boots and pulled his trousers down over them. “How long will you need?”

“Maybe a half hour.”

“All right.”

He wouldn't look at her. Not meet her eye, anyway. “I really don't want to argue today, Frank.”

“You think I do?”

And with that he left.

The main street was noisy with the chink of wagons, the laughter of children, and the general din of commerce. A water wagon went by, dousing the yellow dust that would otherwise be drifting up from the street; and ladies twirled parasols of a dozen different colors.

A woman noticed him. True, she was older and she was not what you'd call beautiful, but she
was
a woman and she
was
watching him. Already he felt better about himself and better about this day. The gaze of a woman could do that for him—make him feel special, powerful. Not even gold could quite equal the kick of a woman expressing interest in him.

When he reached the corner where the woman stood, he tipped his hat and smiled slyly, as if they shared some wonderful and special secret. He wished now he'd shaved and put on fresh clothes. The woman, obviously respectable and just as obviously married, smiled slyly right back.

He passed a tavern, and for a moment the smell of hops and malt appealed to him. But no, he did not want to be half-drunk today while Beth led him from one store to another or as they sat through their long lunch. He knew that they soon had to be kind to each other again or they would drift apart for sure.

It was money; always, it was money.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Frank Evans replied. It was ten minutes later and he was circling through the green city park. He had no idea who the man was who'd fallen into step with him.