“He didn’t look like a drifter or that he got here by
accident. But I could be wrong.”
“But he could just be someone passing through?”
“Maybe. I just want you to be on the alert. I’ll
check him out.”
The children began to quarrel over one of the
tops—whose turn it was to spin. She told April to
share with the Swede boy whose lower lip stuck out
in a pout.
“I’ll come and take him off your hands tomor-
row,” Jake said as she walked him to the door.
She looked back at the boy, they both did.
“You know if I could I’d . . .”
“I know,” he said. “He’s not your responsibility.
Nobody would expect you to take him on. He’ll be
fine once he gets down there and settled in.”
She didn’t know what to say, neither of them did.
“I’ll come round later, after supper, and walk you
over to Doc’s to see your father,” he said.
She closed the door behind him but felt his pres-
ence still linger there in the room. He was not a man
given to small talk, nor to flights of fancy. Most seri-
ous, she thought, as she went in and began fixing sup-
per. The sort of man a woman could depend on if
such a woman existed who needed such a man. She
sure as hell didn’t. One man in her life was one too
many right now, she told herself.
She thought about that one man, her husband,
Monroe Fallon. Funny, but she had a hard time pic-
turing what he looked like even though it had only
been a few weeks since she’d left him. She wondered
if it was wrong of her not to feel sorry for him, not to
feel some sense of guilt for abandoning him? But it
was he who had abandoned her—had left her in favor
of whiskey and whores and before all that, in favor of
killing Indians. Monroe was simply a man who
couldn’t live in peaceful existence with himself or
anyone else.
The boy came into the kitchen and stood there
looking at her.
“What is it?” she said.
He seemed transfixed.
She bent so that she could be at eye level with him.
“Are you okay?”
He shook his head, then began to cry. He could not
say what it was he felt.
Damn it all to hell, she thought, as she hugged
him to her.
Jake went round to the Three Aces, the only saloon
currently operating in the town. The other, Skinny
Dick’s place, was still closed and boarded-up since the
murders. Someone would eventually come along and
buy it and open it up again. There never seemed to be
enough places for a man to drink, to buy himself a
woman, or get in a card game. But right now Ellis
Kansas’s place had the market cornered on the pleasure
business and if a stranger came into town and wanted
any bought pleasures, he’d find it at the Three Aces.
Ellis and his bartender Curly Beyers were tending
bar. They were having trouble keeping up the place
was so full.
Jake found a spot at the end of the bar and waited
until Ellis came over.
“How’s tricks, Marshal?” Ellis said, pouring a shot
glass of his better whiskey without having been asked
to. Jake thought about it a second before tossing it
back and setting the empty glass down again.
“You see a long-haired stranger drift in here ear-
lier?”
“He’s up the stairs with Baby Doe.”
“Which one is she?”
“One who looks like she ought to still be in school
doing her multiplication tables.”
“Should she?”
“No. I don’t hire ’em that young. She just looks
young—a rare trait in the whore business and one
that will earn her quite a bit of money for a time—
until she starts looking her true age.”
Ellis poured Jake another drink. Jake didn’t take it
up right away. Instead, he set a dollar on the bar.
“No, it’s on the house to the law,” Ellis said.
“Something I learned to appreciate back in Liberal
when I operated a house there.”
“I’d just as soon not be beholden to you,” Jake
said. “No offense.”
“None taken. How about a woman?”
“That on the house, too?”
“Why not?”
“And in turn you expect what?”
“Just uphold the law, is all, same as with anyone
else. Some places a man sets up an operation the law
ignores, figures any trouble comes his way, he de-
serves it. Other places, the law likes their cut. I don’t
mind the latter, it’s the former that troubles me. A sa-
loon ain’t much different than a hardware or mercan-
tile the way I figure it. Run honest, it’s just the
same.”
“You think I wouldn’t treat you like everyone else
unless I go on the take?”
