“Well see to Frank. Bury him this evening, I suppose. You won’t stay for the funeral?”
Belle shook her head. “No, Robert. It wouldn’t look right.”
West nodded slowly. “I guess you’re’right, Belle, but I don’t feel that way and neither will Sarah and the rest of the family. When will you be putting Sam away?”
Belle looked around the clearing. The sun was slanting below the treetops, and shadows were creeping over the dance floor, where a few people stood talking. She said, “We won’t get back in time to bury him tonight. Tomorrow I suppose.”
“I’ll bring the family out. Early or late?”
“I haven’t thought about it, Robert.”
“Sarah and Henry and John will want to be there,” West said. “We’ll bring our own tucker. Look for us sometime right about noon. You’ll put us up for the night, I guess? It’d be too late for us to come back home after Sam’s buried.”
“You come ahead,” Belle said. “I suppose Sam would have wanted it that way.”
West nodded and walked back across the street, and Belle asked Longarm, “Can’t we get started right away, Windy? I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to.”
Longarm nodded. “Go on the porch while I get Sam’s horse up here. It won’t take long,” he told her. “Unless you want me to come along and we’ll bring back the mules too, and save stopping again.”
“No. You go ahead. I’ll wait.”
Longarm walked to the glade and led Starr’s horse back to where Sam’s body lay. A small group had gathered around the dead man. Longarm started to lift the corpse, and two of the men stepped forward and helped him. Sam’s revolver lay in the center of the bloodstains, his hat a foot away. Longarm went over and used the hat to pick up the blood-covered revolver, and tucked both in the saddlebags on Starr’s horse. Across the dance floor, men were carrying Frank West’s body into the house. Longarm watched for a moment, then went on with the job Belle had asked him to do.
With the sun slanting on their backs, Longarm and Belle rode back to Younger’s Bend. It was a silent trip. Belle led Sam’s horse, with the blanket-wrapped body lashed across the saddle, and Longarm led the mules, strung out behind in single file.
Belle spoke only once, when the trail widened and Longarm pulled up beside her to ask if she was all right. “Yes. Sam’s not the first husband I’ve had to bury, Windy. But I don’t guess you ever get used to it.”
“No, I guess a body don’t.”
“I should have stayed long enough to send a note to Pearl. And to Ed. They liked Sam.”
“Your kinfolks will be out tomorrow; you can send whatever mail you’ve got back with them.”
“Sam’s kinfolks!” Belle flared. For a moment she was once more the Bandit Queen, short-tempered and snappish. “I wish I’d just told them to stay away from Younger’s Bend! I don’t want to have them around tomorrow, Windy. They’ll blame me for what happened!”
“That was between Sam and his cousin, Belle. Hell, it wasn’t your fault.”
“They’ll go back beyond the shooting. You don’t know how the Cherokees think, Windy. Sure, it was Frank’s fault for turning Sam and me in to the law. But they’ll go farther back than that. They’ll think that if Sam hadn’t married me, he wouldn’t have been doing anything the law would be after him for. They won’t admit that Sam was outside the law before I ever met him. Hell, if Sam hadn’t been pulling stagecoach and bank jobs with Jim Reed before I ever married Jim, I never would’ve met Sam.” Longarm finally got the sequence sorted out. He asked, “You’re saying these kinfolks of Sam’s feel like you set him outside the law?”
“They always have. And they’ll be resentful because I’ll inherit Sam’s allotment land, instead of it going back to the family.” Belle shook her head. “Cherokees carry grudges backward a long way. Robert didn’t want to bring the family out tomorrow because of me. He just couldn’t stand to see Sam’s kinfolks disgraced because they aren’t there when he’s buried.”
Longarm didn’t bother to point out that Cherokees weren’t alone in holding grudges. He remembered some of the feuding that went on during his own boyhood in the hardscrabble hills of West Virginia. He didn’t think Belle would be much inclined to listen to anything he said, though. She was thinking her own thoughts. Ahead, the trail narrowed. Longarm reined in to let her ride ahead, and dropped back to the position he’d held most of the time since they’d left Eufaula, behind the horse bearing Sam Starr’s body. Before they’d gone much farther, the rain began, a slow, irritating drizzle.
Belle took charge as soon as she dismounted at Younger’s Bend. She answered the questions that flowed from those who’d stayed behind, but cut her explanations as short as possible. When Floyd and Steed and Bobby tried to offer condolences, she brushed their efforts aside. Dry-eyed and determined, her thin lips pinched even thinner as she concentrated on what had to be done, she overrode the reluctance of the men to do household work, and kept them busy far into the night getting things in readiness for the arrival of Sam’s kinfolk.
Laying out Sam’s corpse was the first job. Belle did most of that herself. She had to have help in stripping away the bloodstained, bullet-torn clothes Sam had been wearing when he died, but she shooed the others away while she washed the body with vinegar water and dressed it in the best clothes Sam had owned. She brushed the dead man’s hair and smoothed away the contorted smile that had frozen on his face during the moments of death. The only time she called on the others for help was when she was unable to force Sam’s stiff Sunday boots on. It occurred to Longarm while he and Floyd worked at sliding the boots onto Sam’s limp legs that he still hadn’t seen Belle shed a tear over her husband’s death, and her eyes showed no signs that she’d done any private weeping.
While Belle devoted her attention to the corpse, she put the men to work moving the horses and mules from the barn up to the corral. There was more room in the barn for mourners, and the rain-freshened air that circulated through the slat-rail walls made it a cooler place to keep the corpse than the small house. They raked the floor clean and smoothed it where necessary, then spread a thick layer of fresh straw. In the center they placed a pair of sawhorses with planks across them, and covered the boards with the blankets in which Sam would be wrapped for burial.
Only after these jobs had been finished did Belle allow them to stop for supper. Darkness had already come when they ate their pickup meal, standing around the kitchen table, munching whatever scraps and bits
