But she settled in beside, and I could sort of make her out in the dark. Everything I knew about her was gossip, because she’d never given me the time of day. The story was, she was another high-handed Bragg, like her old man, only worse.
I didn’t say nothing, and let her ride beside for a while. We were sort of taking the measure of each other. I knew what would come next. Another demand. Braggs never asked anyone for anything. She’d demand that I stop the hanging.
“I’m sorry my father did that to you,” she said.
I pretty near fell off Critter. I’d never heard a Bragg apologize for anything, not even a fart.
“I don’t ask you to forgive him, or me,” she said. “It’s his way, and it’s what got King into trouble, and why I don’t have friends.”
I just grunted something. I don’t come up with words very good.
“He shouldn’t have shot at you in the outhouse. That was reckless. And it wasn’t necessary.”
I could hardly believe my ears. Here I was, listening to a Bragg actin’ halfway civilized.
“It sure was reckless. What if I’d been standing up and getting my pants up? I’d be dead.”
“I know,” she said. “They laughed about it. They know you usually sit for twenty minutes reading the Montgomery Ward catalog.”
I sure didn’t have any handle about how this was going to play out. Critter, he kept eying the mare like he was going to bite it, which he probably would pretty soon. But I just reined his head away a little, and let the two nags pick their way through the black night.
“You sure you’re Queen Bragg?” I asked, not really believing.
“I’m Queen. And I’m apologizing.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
She laughed. “It doesn’t figure, does it?”
I shook my head, and then realized she couldn’t see it. “Always a first time,” I said.
“And I’m sorry he tried to scare you half to death with that noose and the whole hanging. And I’m sorry he’s pushing you the way he is. You must be angry.”
“All in a day’s work,” I said.
“I don’t think the way my father does. We all want to enlist your help, but he thinks you’ve got to be pushed.”
“I don’t get enlisted,” I said. “I do my job and try to do it right.”
“That’s what I told Admiral. But he just smiled, like I was some simpleton girl, and said, ‘Well, look at him now. He’s got the case wide open and talking to everyone that was caught in it. Scare a man enough to wet his pants, and he’ll do his best for you.’ I don’t agree.”
“Well, in fact he got me running, all right.”
“Yes, you’ve talked to the barman, Upward, and to King in jail, and to Crayfish Ruble this evening. Did you find out anything?”
“Enough to make me itchy is all.”
“You’ve got two weeks to be itchy, and then King dies,” she said.
“How come you’re here? Scaring me in the night?”
“To ask you to keep looking. To thank you for doing what you can do.”
That sure wasn’t the usual Bragg talk. Braggs never asked anything of anyone. And no living person ever heard a Bragg say thanks.
“And to tell you I apologize for all of us.”
I didn’t much like it. I’d like it if all the Braggs were the same type, and I could count on ’em to be ornery.
“All right, you run along now, and don’t point loaded Greeners at lawmen. It ain’t right, and you’re lucky I’m not hauling you in and tossing you in with your brother.”
“Why are you itchy?” she asked, gently ignoring me.
“Some things don’t match up with the trial. Like King saying he don’t remember none of it. Like Crayfish in an uproar at the trial about the death of three of his best men, and demanding fast justice—at the same time he let the county put them dead bodies in a potter’s field, and he never did try to find their next of kin. It’s all nothing, just Ruble being his usual self. But it makes me scratchy.”
We reached the turnoff to the Anchor Ranch, her place, which she recognized a lot better than me, and she drew up her mare there.
“I guess this is where we part,” she said.
I was sure uncomfortable, and itching to get back to Doubtful.
Then she leaned over, until she was half out of her saddle, and I grabbed for my six-gun not knowing what came next. But it was a quick kiss on the cheek. One quick peck on my stubble, and then she turned her nag into her lane, and I found myself rubbing my cheek, like I had been branded.
SEVEN
