“Oh, and keep an ear listening to what they have
to say,” Ellis said. “Why they’re in town and maybe
where they got them scratches and such and let me
know if you hear why.”
Curly nodded and set about doing his boss’s bidding.
Clara came outside again and said, “He’s sleeping.
Says the laudanum makes him sleepy most of the
time.”
“It will do that.”
“He wants to buy the house.”
“What house?”
“This one.”
“I’ll go and ask the attorney handling Doc’s trust
tomorrow,” Jake said.
Clara said, “It’s a really big house.”
She said it in a way that caused Jake to smile.
“It is,” he said. “Can I walk you back home?”
“Yes,” she said.
They walked in silence.
Then Clara said, “You seem like a very sophisti-
cated man, Marshal.
“Meaning?”
“Your manner, the way you talk and think. Not at
all like the sort of man to enforce things with a gun.”
“Hardly,” he said.
“Can we agree to something?” she said.
“Sure.”
“Let’s not lie to each other.”
“Play it straight,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Okay.”
“So what did you do before you became the mar-
shal of Sweet Sorrow?”
He was tempted to tell her the entire story of how
he’d been a physician with a good practice and a
good solid life and a great future until he met and fell
in love with a married woman who set him up to take
a murder charge for her husband’s death. He wanted
to tell someone who might believe him. But instead he
said, “I was in the banking business.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
“Well, that didn’t last very long, did it?”
He stopped and she did, too.
“Truth is,” he said. “I can’t tell you what the truth
is. I’m a little like your father in that respect. The
more you know about me, the more danger it might
bring you. Any trouble coming my way I wouldn’t
want innocents caught in the middle of it.”
“You’re a bad man, then?” she said.
“Not as bad as some would say that I am.”
“Then you’re an enigma.”
“Yeah, somewhat, I suppose so.”
They reached her house.
“Whatever the truth is,” she said, “I don’t care.
All I know about you is what you’ve shown me and
my father and that little boy. No bad man in you that
I can see.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“I’m afraid we’ve all got our skeletons in the
closet, Mr. Horn, you’re certainly not alone in that
regard.”
“What are yours?”
She smiled softly, wearily.
“Maybe some day we’ll have us a real honest con-
versation and bring out those old bones and let them
dance,” she said.
“Maybe so.”
Standing off in the shadows Fallon saw her, for the
first time since she’d left. There she was,
But who was that son of a bitch standing there talk-
ing to her just the two of them this evening? His anger
raged inside him. Not gone but a few weeks and al-
ready she was letting other men court her. Well, I’ll
make sure you won’t be courting him long, he
thought. Then when she turned and entered the house
and the man turned, he saw the glint of metal pinned
to his coat.
Fucken lawman.
Well, they shot as easy as anyone else, lawmen did,
now didn’t they?
Big Belly squatted on his heels off in the darkness
watching the lights of the town. They twinkled like
stars fallen from the sky and he was tempted to take
his chances of going in because the weather had
turned damn cold and he wasn’t used to the cold, be-
ing from down in Texas, though some parts of Texas,
like up in the canyon country, could get awful cold,
too. Good thing those stolen horses had bedrolls tied
on behind the saddles or his bones would be shaking.
He’d found some beef jerky in the saddle pockets
of one of the horses and was chewing on one of the
strips as he watched the lights of the town. They’d
have whiskey in that town he could warm his insides
with. But they sure as hell wouldn’t serve no Co-
manche white-man-killing son of a bitch such as him-
self whiskey.
There had been some places down along the big
river in Texas where an Indian could get himself pretty
liquored up and fuck those big brown Mexican whores
