'What sort of rumors?'
'The vilest you can imagine, boy. The only reason he stays here is because there are people in the lowlands who would shoot him and leave him to rot in the gutter if they ever came across him.'
'Lordy!'
'And as for the denizens of the Traveller's Welcome? Well, you've met Jeff Calder, the only obvious cripple among us. And Delanny, our theatrical whoremaster? Coughing up his lungs bit by bit, but still playing the role of the mysterious, tragic figure to the hilt. Any man with real dignity would put a quick end to a life that's no longer worth living. But he clings to every second, hoping the dry mountain air will prolong his life. But it doesn't! It only prolongs his dying! I'll give him this much, though: he isn't a pimp. He contents himself with the profit from the liquor, and he makes his girls salt away most of their wages of sin in the bank down in Destiny. And speaking of the girls, have you seen them?'
'No, sir, not yet. But I suppose I'll meet them tomorrow morning, when I help make breakfast.'
'Well, you've got a treat in store. There's a toothsome trio of hetairai for you! Frenchy, the black one, has a bumpy scar running from the corner of her eye to the corner of her mouth. It was done by a broken bottle, and it's a real heart-stopper, partly because black skin scars worse than white, and partly because of the surprise you get when she turns her head. From one side, she looks just fine, but then she turns her head and-look out! Grab ahold of something! Then there's Chinky, the little Chinese. Delanny bought her from a couple of Chinese prospectors who'd been sharing her but needed a grubstake. Delanny offered to let her go, but she's backward and timid and can't speak more than a dozen words of English, so where could she go? How could she keep herself? And Queeny? Well, poor old Queeny'll never see the sunny side of fifty again. Maybe not of sixty. Half of her sags and the rest jiggles. The red dye she pours into her hair never quite hides the white roots. And the whiskey she pours into her gut never quite hides the fact that she looks like someone's grandmother who got into the elderberry wine and went wild with her makeup box. So the girls stay on in Twenty-Mile because there's nowhere else they could find work. You have to feel sorry for them. And they're not the worst of our citizens! Not by a long chalk! The sorriest sack of garbage in this town is 'Reverend' Leroy Hibbard! Now there's a reason to wish Noah's boat had gone down with all hands! He's the most contemptible-'
'Well, then!' Coots said, standing up and dusting his palms against the seat of his trousers. 'I guess that'll do us for today! You must be feeling better, now that you got all that shit out of your system.' He turned to Matthew. 'These fits of cussedness come over him ever now and again. Christ only knows why I put up with him, and He ain't telling.'
Matthew sensed that the best way to play it was to imitate Coots's joshing tone. 'So everyone in Twenty-Mile is low and vile and contemptible, is that it, Mr. Stone?' He grinned and glanced at Coots for approval.
'That is exactly it.'
'What about you and Mr. Coots? Are you low and contemptible too?'
'Most people in town think we're the lowest of the low and the vilest of the vile. And in Coots's case, there's some foundation for that opinion. You've tasted his coffee? There's nothing lower and viler than that, and you can experto crede, as Virgil said.'
'And you, Mr. Stone?' Matthew said, grinning ever more broadly. 'Are you low and vile too?'
'Certainly not! I'm telling the tales, and the gossip always comes off cleaner and nobler than his victims. Well, I can't sit around all evening flaying my fellow creatures for your amusement. It's supper time, and I better get something burning in a pan or Coots'll get nasty and evil and vile and low and all the rest of it.' He started toward the kitchen, then stopped. 'You hungry, boy?'
'I'm just about always hungry, sir. But I'll be eating with the Kanes…. At least, I think I will.'
'Suit yourself.' And he left.
Coots had sat down again and was watching the far horizon, his mind seemingly adrift. 'Sorry about that,' he said, half to himself. 'Ever now and again he gets these fits of cussedness, and he starts bad-mouthing everybody and his uncle.'
'Oh, I know the people in Twenty-Mile aren't as bad as he made them out to be. He was just funnin' and exaggerating.'
Coots blinked away whatever it was he had been turning over in his mind and settled his eyes on Matthew with a slightly irritated frown. 'No, he wasn't funnin'.' He pushed himself up. 'And he wasn't exaggerating neither.'
THE SUN HAD SETTLED onto the westward hills, red and molten on the bottom; and evening was spreading in from the northeast, where long slabs of cloud turned pink, then briefly mauve, before dulling into gray.
Within the Mercantile, Mr. Kane looked up from his account ledger, set his pen down, and reached his two forefingers in under his glasses to rub the red dents on the sides of his nose. 'Is he still there?' he asked in a weary voice.
Ruth Lillian leaned back from the counter to look out the window, though she knew perfectly well he was still there, for she had glanced sideways from the pages of the Singer pattern book half a dozen times and seen, tangled in her eyelashes, the profile of Matthew sitting on the wooden steps, his pack beside him and the heavy old shotgun across his knees. He was looking out past the rim of Twenty-Mile's bowl toward the last sunset glow behind the foothills. In fact, he wasn't so much looking at the dimming foothills as letting his eyes rest on them while his mind wandered elsewhere. Sensing at the nape of his neck that someone was watching him, he smiled up at Ruth Lillian, then he settled back against his pack, patient and immovable.
Ruth Lillian turned back into the darkening store. 'He's still there, Pa. Just sitting and waiting. Why don't you light your lamp?'
He grunted negatively.
'You're going to hurt your eyes, doing those accounts in the dark.'
'I don't need to be told when I can see and when I can't!' But it wasn't her solicitude that irritated him. 'That boy's been sitting out there for an hour!'
'Nearer to two.'
'Well, he is not going to push me into anything, not if he sits there all night long.'
'I don't think he's trying to push you into anything, Pa. He said he was going to give us time to talk things over, and that's just what he's doing. Waiting for your decision.'
'My decision is we don't need him. I'm not going to waste half the day thinking up make-work chores for some drifter, then waste the rest of it keeping an eye on him to make sure he does things right-things that don't really need doing in the first place!'
'Then call him in and tell him. It's not right, just letting him sit out there in the dark.'
'Oh, so now it's my fault he hung around all day, instead of making his way back down to Destiny? I suppose you think I should feed him. And maybe put him up for the night as well?'
'Nobody said anything about feeding him or putting him up. But you might have the common decency not to leave him sitting there, hoping against hope that he might get some work from us.'
'Why doesn't he go over to the Bjorkvists'?'
'Because he doesn't have any money, Pa! And you know Mrs. Bjorkvist ain't going to put him up for free.'
'And all this is my fault, too, I suppose?'
'No one said it's your fault.'
'You're trying to make it sound like it's my fault.'
'I ain't trying to make it sound…! All right then! I'll tell him we don't need him.' She crossed to the door and snatched it open, setting the spring bell to jangling wildly. 'Matthew? Will you come in here for a minute?'
Leaving his pack and gun behind, the boy entered the store, his bearing at once humble and eager. 'Evening, Ruth Lillian,' he greeted, taking off his hat. 'Evening, Mr. Kane. I been watching the sun set. Lordy, it sure is beautiful up here! And to think you have this show every evening.'
'Oh, we get more'n our share of rain and storms, don't worry,' Ruth Lillian said. 'Sometimes the first snow comes as soon as October. And when blizzards choke up the railroad track, we're cut off for a couple of weeks at a time. And sometimes we get a rip-snorter. That's really something.'
'A rip-snorter?'
'That's what people around here call the storms that come raging down almost every fall and do their best to scrape us off this mountain.'
