He smiled slyly. “I call it Dusty.”
“Dusty? What’s a ‘dusty’?”
“Yeah,” said Rafe, who Jason had completely forgotten was there. “What is a ‘dusty’?”
Jason stared at him for a moment, and then relaxed back into a smile. The man had just saved his sister’s life, after all! He said, “A ‘dusty’ is the name of something small and white and fluffy and incredibly sweet—just like you, Jenny—that was born just a few nights ago.”
Jenny squealed, and Jason noticed that when she did, Rafe made a pained face. That was good. Jenny wasn’t paying any attention, though. She cried, “The Milchers! You got one of those new kitties for me, didn’t you, Jason?” He nodded, and she added, “Oh, I could just hug you!”
“Best wait until you deliver those papers to Miss Morton!” he joked.
Jenny laughed, as gaily as if she hadn’t just been nearly killed. There was a kitten in the picture now, and everything was right with the world. Jason had guessed as much.
“Well, congratulations, Miss Jenny!” exclaimed Rafe. He looked as happy for her as she did for herself.
“Hadn’t you best run those papers up to Miss Morton?” Jason asked.
“Oh! Oh, gosh, I almost forgot!” She blinked rapidly, turned to Rafe and said, “Thank you so much! Come to dinner tonight!” Then she fairly ran up the street. Well, as close as a lady could come to running. When she stopped outside the schoolroom door, she paused, turned, and tossed a kiss to Jason, who made a show of catching it and then pressing it to his heart.
He and Rafe stood there a minute, until Jason thought to get out of the street. Davis could be anywhere. He said, “Let’s get outta the line of fire.”
“Your office or mine?” Rafe asked, and that half-crooked smile was back on his face again.
“Yours, I think,” Jason said with no humor. This was no time for jokes.
He saw the runaway team being led back around the corner at the end of town, and shouted, “Everything all right, Jed?”
Jed Dawson hollered back, “Yeah. Your sister okay?”
“Yup. Doing fine!”
Jed crossed himself, then called, “Praise the Lord!”
“Whatever,” muttered Jason as they stepped up on the boardwalk and he followed Rafe inside the saloon.
It was a lot more lively than it had been the first time Jason had been in that day, and he tagged after Rafe, who led him to an empty table.
“This’n all right?”
Jason allowed that it was, and the men sat down.
After the libations arrived and both men were comfortable, Jason asked the question.
“Why is Sampson Davis after you?”
Rafe looked him square in the eye and said, “Because I shot his no-account brother-in-law. I only shot him in the shoulder. Wasn’t my fault it went septic and he died. And I shot him because he murdered my daddy over some gold shares Daddy had, just outright murdered him in cold blood. At least I had the gumption to call him out into the street to answer for it in a fair fight! So now I got Sampson Davis doggin’ me everywhere I go. The whole damn family should’a stayed back East.”
Rafe took a long drink of his beer, as if the telling out of his story had exhausted him. Jason, surprised but finally educated, followed suit.
Frankly, it wasn’t what Jason would call a murder. He wondered if it was one of the ones listed on Rafe’s poster, and he asked him.
“Yeah,” came the answer. “California’s real nit-picky about that stuff. You want another beer?”
Jason looked down at his glass, which he had emptied, much to his surprise. “Yeah,” he said.
Rafe looked over at the bar, somehow caught Sam’s attention, and held up two fingers. Sam nodded, and before they knew it, a blond girl in a fancy green silk dress was sliding the drinks onto the table.
Jason started to dig into his pocket, but Rafe stopped him. “It’s on me. My office, after all.” He smiled, full faced this time. “By the by, in case you’re wonderin’, my name’s spelt R-a-l-p-h. My mamma was from England and Daddy was from Ireland, and Rafe is how they pronounce it over there. Don’t ask me why,” he added with a wave of his hand. “I got no idea.”
Jason thought back to what he knew about England, and said, “Yeah, those English got their ways about ’em. They call B-e-l-v-o-i-r ‘Beaver’—that’s a castle I read about once—and Grosvenor ‘Gruvner. ’” Bemused, he shook his head and took another drink of beer.
“And Cholmondeley, they call ‘Chumly.’” Rafe laughed, and then Jason, after swallowing his gulp of beer, joined in.
He had a feeling that everything was going to be all right. For the moment, anyhow.
6
That afternoon, after a scanty lunch consisting of bread and water, Reverend Milcher sat upstairs at his desk (which, by some miracle, had managed to escape the flames several years back), lost in thought.
He had to figure out what to do to bring the people in, to bring them to God! Didn’t they know that their mortal souls depended on it? Hadn’t he preached enough fire and brimstone on the journey from Kansas City out to their
