Burkett knew that Miller was one of those people who worried about how to get there, while Lincoln Burkett merely worried about getting there, period. That was why Dude Miller would always be a storekeeper, and why Lincoln Burkett would eventually become one of the most powerful people in Texas—and maybe in the whole damned country.
Burkett stepped down from the boardwalk in front of the bank and started walking toward the saloon, where he was to meet his son, John.
Lincoln Burkett was a big man, still robust enough at sixty-three to give the town whores a ride or two. It was to his everlasting consternation that his twenty-two-year-old son seemed to be most interested in those same whores than in following in his father’s wake.
John Burkett was Lincoln Burkett’s only child, a child who came along late in life to Burkett and his wife. The birth had been very hard on the forty-year-old Virginia Burkett. She had survived it, but had never been the same after it, and eventually died when the boy was four. At that time the Burketts had a ranch in the Dakotas, and Lincoln had too much to do building his empire to spend much time with his son. The task of raising the boy had fallen to a governess, and too late Burkett realized his error. A boy raised solely by a woman would have a woman’s values. When the boy was fourteen Burkett dismissed the governess and took charge of the boy himself. Unfortunately, in his efforts to make up for his earlier error, he rode the boy too hard, and ended up with a defiant young man who resisted his father’s ideas of what constituted manhood.
The Burketts eventually were forced by circumstances to leave the Dakotas’through no fault of their own, of course—and had come to Texas. Here, Burkett hoped to build himself a more lasting empire. He also hoped that his son, in this new environment, would come around and realize where his future lay.
So far, all the boy was interested in was what lay between the thighs of the whores in the town cathouse.
Of late, though, Burkett had decided that he could reverse that by buying the cathouse, and that was the deal he had just completed in the bank.
Of course, the madame, Louise Simon, had resisted his offers to buy, but he had finally made her an offer she found impossible to resist: sell, or be burned out.
Burkett magnanimously allowed the woman to retain ten percent of the business, and was also allowing her to continue to run it, on the condition that she turn John Burkett away each time he tried to make use of the establishment.
To aide her in this he had hired two bouncers who ostensibly worked for Louise, keeping her girls safe.
Lincoln Burkett smiled. He wished he could be on hand the first time young John met those bouncers.
That night Dude Miller locked up early and walked to the home of his friend Ed Collins. There was a bite in the air and he pulled the collar of his topcoat close around his neck.
Miller and Collins were trying to find more people to oppose Lincoln Burkett and his attempt to own everything he could see. They had some supporters, but not enough to make a difference. Burkett seemed to have won over the people who counted in Vengeance Creek, including the mayor and the president of the bank. Three months ago a new sheriff had been appointed, and it wasthe opinion of both Miller and Collins that the man had been handpicked by Lincoln Burkett.
When Ed Collins admitted Dude Miller to his house he offered his friend a drink, and Miller accepted.
“Have you had dinner?” Collins asked.
“Serena is waiting dinner for me, I’m sure.”
“She’s a good girl, your daughter,” Collins said, handing Miller a glass of sherry. “I wish Ada and I had been able to have children.”
Miller and Collins were roughly the same age, early sixties, and had been widowed within the past ten years. Both men sorely missed their wives, but Miller had his daughter, Serena, to keep him company. At twenty-eight she was the spitting image of her mother, a true beauty. Collins envied Miller unabashedly, and Miller felt sorry for Collins. All he had was his gunsmith shop, and he spent as much time there as possible.
Sitting together on the sofa Collins asked, “So, how do we stand?”
“As we did yesterday, last week, and last month,” Miller said.
“Then Burkett will go on,” Collins said, “and absorb everything around him, until he owns everything…and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“I’ve done something about it, don’t forget.”
Collins made a face.
“Those damned telegrams. Do you really expect Sam McCall to ride in here to the rescue?”
“I expect Sam and his brothers to ride in here to find out what happened to their parents,” Miller said.
“Those boys have long ago forgotten they even had parents.” Collins’ distaste for such sons was plain in his voice.
“You’re wrong, Ed,” Miller said. “They’ll be here, all right.”
“It’s been months…”
“Two months,” Miller said, “but don’t forget, Sam would have to find both Evan and Jubal and then they’d all have to find their way back here. They’ll be here, don’t you worry.”
“Come on, Dude,” Collins said, “give it up. What makes you so sure they’ll come?”
“Serena.”
“What? What about Serena?”
“She says that no child could let the death of their parents go uninvestigated,” Miller said. “She says the bond between child and parent is too strong, too deep to ignore even if the child wanted to—in this case,
“That may be,” Collins said, “but the McCall boys are not children any longer, Dude—especially Sam.”
“Serena says they’ll be here,” Miller said, “and I believe her.”
“Well,” Ed Collins said, grudgingly, “both you and she would know more about this subject than I would, wouldn’t you?”
Dude Miller laid his empty glass aside and stood up. His friend was about to descend into a well of self pity, and he had no desire to stay and watch.
“I’ve got to get home to Serena, Ed,” Miller said. “We’ll talk again.”
“Sure,” Collins said, “when the McCall boys get here.”
“Goodnight, Ed.”
Dude Miller left the Collins house. Even though he knew Ed Collins was inside, he felt as if he were leaving an empty house behind.
He wondered how it must feel from the inside.
As Dude Miller entered the wood-frame, two-story house he shared with his daughter Serena his nostrils Texas Iron were assailed—no,
Actually, Miller wished that Serena would stop trying to replace her mother. At twenty-eight she was much too old to be living at home with her father. True, at that age she was considered something of an old maid in Vengeance Creek, but to Miller she was still a beautiful young woman who should be married and giving him grandchildren.
“Father?” Her voice came from the kitchen.
“It’s me,” Miller said, removing his top coat and hanging it on a wall rack that he had built.
Serena came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. A tall woman, she needed only to lift her chin slightly to kiss her father, who was six feet tall. Along with being tall she was slender, almost rangy. To his prejudiced father’s eye she was a beauty, with hair the color of corn, smooth, unblemished skin, naturally rosy lips and very white, even teeth. He was glad that he made enough money at the store that she didn’t have to work unless she wanted to, and then it was not work that would weather her skins or her hands, or give her a weary look. Her mother, God rest her, as beautiful as she was, had to work hard almost all her life, and paid for it. When she died she was tired looking, and slightly stooped; her hair had lost its natural luster and her flesh its resiliency. A finer woman had never lived, though, and Miller loved her with all his heart to the day she died—and more that day than ever before.
“What smells so wonderful?”
