King of Spades (16 page)

“Why her?”

“She's about the only one who'll know how to keep things running. For the other girls' good.”

“The house too?”

“All of it.” She turned in his arms. She sought his lips in his beard and kissed him. “I was practically given it free in the first place. So I decided I should give it free to somebody else in turn. So, I gave it to Hermie. I signed the papers today.”

“Good riddance, I say.”

“You're glad?”

“Where are we going to move to now?”

“You are glad. Good.” She sighed, relieved. “Well, I rented an upstairs floor on the north side of town. In a nice brick house. We can move our bedroom stuff over tomorrow.”

He shook his head. “Let's start fresh. With everything new. Bed and all.”

“Earl Ransom, why, I can't do that!”

“Why not? Let's wipe the slate clean all around.”

“Ransom.” She looked around at the four-poster bed and the love seat and the vanity and the rugs and the curtains and the movable closets. “Why, Ransom, dear, these came all the way from Chicago. Why, it took me years to find and order them. And I've come to love them.” She hardened a little. “What have you got against them?”

He pursed his lips under his gambler's mustache. “Nothing.”

“Darling, these things … why, they're me! They've come to mean home to me.” Her brown eye beseeched him to understand. “There's nothing wrong with them. Nobody's ever been … nobody's ever seen them except you and me. And Hermie.”

“Yeh.”

“They are fresh with us.”

“Nnn.”

“But they are. I just got them.”

A silverish gleam danced in his green eyes.

“You're jealous.”

“A little.”

At that she suddenly seemed pleased with him. She kissed him. “Did you really mean that about washing my feet?”

“Of course.”

“You darling.”

He got up with her still in his arms, placed her on the settee, went over and got a pan of warm water and a cake of white soap.

She laughed like a young girl. “You foolish boy you.” She drew up her skirt modestly around her knees and took off her stockings. Her toes wiggled in anticipation.

He took first one foot, then the other, and set them in the water. He soaped them thoroughly. He rubbed them. He ran his fingers in and out between her toes.

She laughed and giggled. She laughed involuntarily every time his thumb happened to stroke the sole of her foot. “Don't tickle so much.”

“What long toes you have, lady.”

“Don't you like them?”

“Now I see why you walk the way you do.” He stroked her big toe in particular. “Leverage. It gives you that extra little jump in your walk.”

“You're tickling again. Ha ha. Ho ho. He he.”

“You know, my lady, it's like it was meant to be by God
Himself that I came to Cheyenne. So that I could wash your feet for you. Like the draw of an ace to fill out a straight in an important game.”

She leaned down and kissed his nose. “We're perfectly matched. You've got a long nose and I've got a long big toe.”

He spotted a shadow under her bright manner. He wondered what sad memory of another time was crossing her mind. It probably had to do with that other fellow. He was instantly jealous of that memory. He gave her feet a rough massage.

“I like that,” she said in a low voice.

He loved her voice when she spoke low and husky.

He decided to swallow away any regret he had that he hadn't been the first with her. “It's like I say. Yessiree. Any time you want to put your shoes under my bed, why, go right ahead, I won't stop you.”

She had to laugh in spite of herself. “Ransom.” She leaned forward to kiss his brow. In so doing one of her feet slipped on the bottom of the white pan and water sloshed onto Ransom's buckskins over the thigh.

“Hold'er, neut,” Ransom cried.

“Now look at what I've done.”

“It's nothing.”

They laughed together, forgetting the shadow.

She kissed him. He returned the kiss. Lips became tender with lips. Soon a hammer beat on an anvil.

 

Life upstairs in the brick house was hardly different from life at The Stinging Lizard. The bedroom furnishings were exactly the same.

Ransom liked to take short rides on Prince out over the countryside.

Sometimes Katherine came along. She was a good horsebacker and rode Sam's mustang Colonel. They cantered east
and had a picnic in Pine Bluffs. They rode north to see the aftereffects of a cloudburst on Lodge Pole Creek. They galloped west to see the sights of Granite Canyon.

Katherine was always radiant after the rides. The shrew's wrinkles at the corners of her lips vanished. There were times when she looked like a younger sister of Ransom's.

She did the giddy things of a just nubile girl. She fluttered about in their bedroom, trying on new skirts and blouses, trying out various hairdos, trying out different perfumes and sachets.

She also did tender things for him. She made him mush and milk for breakfast, which he loved. She trimmed his beard. She taught him how to knot his tie neat and square.

 

Ransom rode alone one day out to Lone Tree Creek south of town. The sky was high. There appeared to be no atmosphere at all. To breathe was to taste what seemed to be the fumes of fermenting barley.

He found a single cottonwood and got off and lay down in its shade. He kicked off his boots and drew his sombrero down over his nose.

Prince cropped curly buffalo grass nearby. A vulture hung in the dry air above.

Within his closed eyelids Ransom watched a floating mote become a wriggling maggot. It drifted down and down. He kept it from sinking out of sight with a toss of his eyes, up; then once again watched it sink until it was almost out of sight.

He napped. Soft sleep. Silence.

All too soon Prince nosed him with his rubbery nose, pushing his sombrero to one side.

“Nnn.”

Prince blew a masty breath over Ransom's face.

“What's the matter, chum?”

Prince blew his nostrils with a wet flutter.

“Oh, you want some water. Pretty soon, chum.” Ransom replaced his sombrero, again dozed off.

Prince went back to grazing.

When Ransom next awoke it was to dazzling crystals in his eyelashes. He had cried in his sleep.

Vaguely he recalled a piece of the dream he'd had. It was something about a grass lizard who refused to sting him and who wept tears over him in the ancient manner of the Yankton Sioux.

He savored a memory of the last time he'd made love to Katherine. She was always modest at first. But after a while, once begun, she became almost an animal in her ardor.

He loved that madness in her. In that respect he matched her exactly. Once in the saddle, he must ride, in excess, and if possible, forever. So that finally it was always Katherine who had to haul in on the reins. “Ransom! Dear, dear. Don't you think we ought to stay a little civilized? A little?”

He sat up, cocked his hat at a racy angle, squinted around at the sights.

Prince grazed nearby. The vulture still hung on nothing. Only the cottonwood's perfect single shadow had moved.

Ransom spotted a wild clover growing between his spread legs. He picked it. He smelled its purple ball. He played with it between his fingers. A syrupy drop of juice formed at its severed end. He touched a fingertip to it and tasted it. Sweet. Like good hay might taste to a horse.

He flicked a red ant off his shirt front. He pulled on his boots and got to his feet. He stretched, full length, and groaned in satisfaction.

He found Prince a waterhole in the nearly dry bed of Lone Tree Creek.

While Prince sipped at leisure, he had himself some target practice. He made several quick practice draws; then, tossing a silver dollar in the air, fired five times. Each shot caught the silver dollar and flipped it farther on, so that it
resembled the flight of a dipping silverfinch. The silver dollar came to rest a hundred paces away.

Ransom went over and picked it up. “Dead center, Dad. And bent double.” He dropped it into his pocket

He spotted a coneflower a dozen steps away. Its single dark heart hung to one side, giving him a perfect silhouette to shoot at. With his sixth and last bullet he exploded its head.

Almost on the shot, something clicked in his head, very loud, making him blink.

He'd lived this moment before. This he knew for certain. It wasn't quite the same as that other time in that other life, not quite so shimmering and wondrous. Also, the coneflower he'd just shot still had its rays; the other coneflower in that other time had already shed them. But otherwise it was almost the same.

Nausea smoked in his belly. Sudden sweat beaded out all over him.

“Will I ever find out who I am?”

Loneliness like the scent of flowers wavering in and out of smelling range made it hard for him to breathe. Sudden need for that warm home he had found in Katherine yeasted up in him like a craving for a drug.

He swung aboard Prince and headed for home. He spurred Prince until the mustang, shocked, broke into a rattling puffing gallop.

It was dusk when he put up Prince at the livery barn. It was dark when he burst into their upstairs rooms.

Katherine was at the stove, back turned to him. She was safe.

He let out a great breath.

Katherine looked over her shoulder. “Ransom! Whatever have you been up to?”

“Nothing.”

“You look like you've just seen the devil himself.”

“Maybe I have.”

Katherine laid aside the ladle she'd been using to stir the soup with. “What happened?” She came over and put her arms around him, her one eye squared in concern.

“Nothing.” It was good to be holding her again. “Slept out in the sun a little too long.” He managed a smile. The little smile gave his large lips a twisted-rope look. “And I guess I all of a sudden got a little lonesome for you. Like one leg getting lonesome for the other.”

“Dear.”

“You know something? I think I better go find me a job. Something to do. I've got too much time on my hands.”

“I've thought of that.”

“And we should get married. If not before a minister, at least before a justice of the peace.”

“Do you want to?”

“I have to. Didn't I keep myself just for you until I found you?”

“We're probably married common law already, you know.”

“I want it legal. For keeps.”

“All right.”

“And I want children. A son. To start off a new line with. And by new I mean new. I don't know who I am or where I come from. So with me and my son we start fresh. With a clean slate. No sad pasts. Only happy futures ahead.”

A sudden grimace wrinkled her face, part sneering, part wincing.

“That's what it means to live out West. You know? That's what Sam used to say.”

The odd look passed on and slowly her face smoothed over.

“Don't you want babies with me?”

“Oh, Ransom. Oh God yes, how I'd love to have babies with you.”

He heaved a great sigh, then hugged her hard, for one moment pure in heart.

She coughed inside his tight hug. “You re sure you want to get married legal?”

“Of course. What else?”

“All right.”

“What's the matter? You sound like you're not sure you want to marry me.”

She was crying. “You're too noble for me.”

“Oh come now, Katherine, cut it out, you know that's ridiculous.”

“But you are.”

Then that sweet devil desire returned, and stooping quickly, he pushed his nose through the lacy white frill of her blouse, down between her breasts.

“Ransom, cut that out.”

“They're always so soft. Like fresh bread every day. What do you do to keep them like that, reheat and butter 'em every morning?”

“Ransom.”

“And why must you always go putting a fence around them? Like they might be a couple of stacks of slough hay somewheres to be kept safe from a herd of wild buffaloes?”

“Ransom.”

“Well, if you won't let me have my hay”—he abruptly let her go and with a sly smile picked up tie soup ladle—“let me at least have a couple of onions boiled in milk.”

“I'm not sure I like that, Mr. Earl Ransom.”

They laughed together.

She served him soup, meat, potatoes, onions, a dried-apple pie, a pot of tea.

He ate heartily. There was about him the air of a hungry wild animal.

He talked a blue streak. He talked about his days with Sam Slaymaker: near drownings, buffalo stampedes, gun-fights, prospecting for gold on Pike's Peak, blizzards on the Nebraska prairies, near massacres at the hands of the Sioux,
barroom brawls in Denver. He rattled on and on. He couldn't seem to stop.

She eyed him, wonderingly.

He helped her wipe dishes, still talking.

She listened, vaguely hearing a boy's voice behind the man's voice.

He helped her tidy up the kitchen, still talking.

Finally she reached up and tweaked him playfully by the ear. “Ransom, what makes you so talkative all of a sudden? Hey?”

“What?”

“Ha ha. You haven't got yourself another girl, have you? That I don't know about?”

“What?” he cried. His green eyes rolled a high white. “What?”

She let go of his ear. “I'm sorry. Skip it. I didn't say it.”

His brow and cheek blanched to the color of a turnip.

“Forgive me, dear. I was only teasing.”

“You,” he said, choking. “You.”

“Really. I'm sorry.”

“You better be.”

“Well, I said I was.”

He stared great green eyes at her.

“Ransom!”

Of a sudden he reached down and picked her up and stiff-legged carried her into the bedroom. He landed her on their four-poster and lay down beside her.