“Now that he’s dead, I don’t see where it matters much,” Longarm replied. “Or which one of us was in the right. Looks to me like all that signifies is that I’m standing here and Mckee’s dead.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Belle said. “But just the same, I’d like to know.”
“It was private between him and me,” Longarm told her in a tone designed to let her see that he wasn’t going to say more.
Belle shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it.” She looked at Longarm narrowly, frowning. “I don’t think I’ve heard your name, but maybe I’ve seen you before, when I rode with Jesse James.”
“Not likely, ma’am. I haven’t had the honor of meeting Mr. James. Not that I wouldn’t like to reach out and take his hand,” Longarm said. That, he thought, was the truth. Nothing required him to say that if he took Jesse James’s hand, it would only be to hold it still while he snapped the cuffs on the outlaw.
Belle’s eyes narrowed as she thought aloud. “You’re not from the Nation or Texas. I’d have heard about you if you’d been busy in either place. Or Arkansas or Kansas or Missouri. You must come from further west?”
“You could say that without being too far wrong,” Longarm agreed.
Yazoo broke in long enough to say, “Save your questions, Belle. I tried ‘em all on old Windy, and he ain’t answering.” His words were slurred, his eyes obviously unfocused.
“You’re drunk, Yazoo,” Belle said. There was no accusation or anger in her voice; she was simply stating the fact.
“Sure. I try to be, Belle. Mostly I do it, too.” He fell forward across the table, his arms dangling down beside his chair.
Belle ignored Yazoo’s collapse. She turned to her husband. “How’s supper coming along, Sam? I’m getting hungry.”
“It’ll be a few minutes, Belle.” Sam Starr’s voice was apologetic. “I didn’t know exactly when you’d get back, or I’d have had it on the table.”
“It’s all right. I suppose you can leave the stove for a minute, long enough to carry Mckee out to the grove? You can bury him after we eat; there’ll be plenty of time before dark.”
Starr nodded. “Sure, Belle, plenty of time.”
“Get Bobby to give you a hand,” Belle went on. “And on the way back, the two of you can unsaddle the horses and put them in the barn.”
“All right.” Starr turned to the young man. “Come on, Bobby.” Longarm said, “I killed Mckee. Only right for me to help you put him away.”
“No,” Belle said sharply. “You stay right here, Windy. I want to talk to you.” She added, “You can holster your gun now. I never did like Mckee much, and that’s the truth of it. It’s no skin off my ass if you two settled a private fuss.”
“That’s right considerate of you ma’am,” Longarm said as he restored his Colt to its holster.
Sam and Bobby started off on their unpleasant errand. They picked Mckee’s body up—Sam grabbed the dead man’s wrists, Bobby taking hold of the ankles—and disappeared with the slain outlaw swinging between them.
“Sit down, Windy,” Belle told Longarm. “I won’t press for your name, real or otherwise. Yazoo’s word’s good enough for me.”
“I’m glad you feel that way, ma’am.” Longarm settled down in the chair he’d been occupying when Mckee came in.
“Call me Belle, for God’s sake!” Belle was taking off her hat. She hung it on a peg by the door, unbuckled her gunbelt and hung it on the peg next to the hat. “I told you a minute ago, and I’ll say it again for the last time. I don’t allow my guests to fight while they’re at Younger’s Bend. I’m excusing you because you didn’t know my rules. Mckee did. He broke them, and he’s paid. That’s over and settled. Just see you don’t break them again.”
“I’ll sure try, Belle.”
Belle came and sat down across the table from Longarm, and he got a close look at her for the first time. She looked like anything but the title she’d given herself, he decided. The self-appointed Bandit Queen was a tall woman, beginning to show the spreading hips of middle age. Her waist was still slender, but her hips and buttocks flared out visibly, even under the loose-fitting full skirt of her green velvet dress. Her breasts were small; they made scarcely a bulge under the embroidered bodice of her dress. The flesh of her chin and neck was beginning to sag loosely above the scarf that was tucked into the dress and wrapped high on Belle’s throat.
Her chin was small, almost receding, and her lips were a short, straight line. Her nose was an uptilted button between high cheekbones on which a layer of fat was beginning to form.
Belle’s eyes were the best thing about her, Longarm decided. Now they were soft and liquid, but he remembered how they’d darkened and snapped with anger during the moments just after Mckee’s death. Her hair was dark, almost black, and pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck. Thick bangs, brushed forward at an angle across her forehead, failed to hide the fact that her forehead was unusually high.
She wasn’t, Longarm decided, the kind of woman he’d fall all over himself trying to get acquainted with. Remembering Andrew Gower’s listing of Belle’s husbands and lovers, he wondered what so many men had seen in her.
While Longarm was evaluating Belle, she’d been studying him as closely as he was examining her. She said, “Well, Windy? Like what you’re looking at? Because I think I do.”
Longarm thought he’d better stretch a point. It was against his nature to lie outright, even to a woman he might be romancing. He didn’t have any ideas about romancing Belle Starr, but Longarm thought that, under the circumstances, a little bit of evasion wouldn’t do him any harm.
“You look real nice, Belle,” he said. “If you didn’t have a husband, I’d sure be interested in you.”
And that’s the straight-line truth, old son, he thought, even if she don’t take what I said exactly like I
