care what the others think about me, but you and me, we're the same sort. Both damaged boys. So I'm asking for your understanding. And your forgiveness.'
Matthew felt miserable and embarrassed. 'I guess you'll be leaving town, now that you know there ain't no silver… just ore.'
'This town ain't going to get rid of me as easy as that. Maybe I'll just take that trainload of ore down to Destiny and make them refine it for me. Hell, boy, I am a Force of Nature! There's nothing I can't do! I can make people do whatever I tell them! They say I can talk the birds down from the trees! Matthew, I want to hear you say you forgive me for not preventing what happened to Delanny.'
'The forgiveness ain't mine to give. It wasn't me you hurt.'
'So you're refusing to forgive me?'
'I… really got to get going.'
Injury and recrimination filled Lieder's eyes. 'All right. Go, then. But remember this. I asked for your forgiveness, and you refused it. You just remember that.'
'Yes, sir, I'll remember.' Matthew hung his apron on its nail and eased himself past Lieder, who sat on the step, staring down at the floor.
As Matthew was crossing the barroom, the bat-winged doors opened, and Queeny entered wearing his Hudson Bay blanket around her shoulders, like a squaw. Her face was pasty, her hair matted, and her eyes bleary, but she stood in the middle of the room and looked around with a dazed hauteur, dazed because of the quantity of rotgut she had downed the night before, and haughty because she had wakened with no memory of the humiliation she had suffered the night before, but with fragmentary recollections of having performed her Dance of the Seven Veils to the applause of an admiring audience. The selective memory that had become essential to the survival of her selfesteem did not provide her with any clues as to how she had ended up in a strange bed, naked beneath the blankets, but she assumed that one-maybe several-of her audience had been carried away with passion by her provocative dance.
She had sat up in Matthew's bed… then slumped back, beaten down by jagged pain behind her eyes that throbbed with each beat of her pulse. Lord-God-a-mighty, she was thirsty! She sat up again, this time more cautiously, and walked to the window, dragging one of the blankets behind her. There was the Traveller's Welcome diagonally across the street. Where was she, then? She looked around the sparsely furnished room: a couple of chairs, a rickety table with a row of dime westerns. Where the hell…? Her eyes fell on Matthew's genuine bone comb-and-brush set, and she made a couple of slack, patting passes with the brush over her matted hair before gathering the Hudson Bay blanket around her and stepping out into the street-Lord-God-a-mighty, that daylight cuts your eyes like ground glass! She crossed to the hotel, her dogged dignity only slightly diminished by the absence of shoes.
It was not until she got out in the street and looked around that she realized she had slept in the marshal's office, where that kid camped. Well, she'd be damned! The little devil! And him acting like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, and always talking about his ma! But then, kids of that age are hot-blooded and easily carried away. The little scamp! Well… that's show business for you.
And now she wagged her finger at Matthew and gave him a knowing leer. 'Fetch old Queeny a cup of coffee, will you, honeybun? You owe her that much. And make it strong. My tongue feels like the whole Apache nation walked over it… barefoot.'
'I'm sorry, Queeny, there ain't no coffee left. And I'm late for my chores over at the-'
'Well, well, well! Look what the cat dragged in!' Lieder said from the kitchen doorway.
Tiny and Bobby-My-Boy came pushing in behind Queeny, having seen her crossing the street as they were returning from dumping Delanny over the cliff. They looked at Lieder eagerly, anticipating his fury, because he had warned her that she'd better never let him see her fat ass again.
Lieder shook his head slowly. 'I'll be damned. I will be God-good'n-damned! I don't know if you got lots of grit or just lots of stupid. Whichever it is, you sure like walking close to the edge, old lady.'
'You said you'd use a broken bottle on her,' Tiny reminded him. 'You going to let her just thumb her nose at you like that?'
'Aw, the poor old bitch was too drunk to remember what she did. She doesn't have the slightest idea of the danger she's running, sashaying in here like this.'
'Yeah, but… you ain't just going to let her get away with it, are you?' Disappointment compressed Tiny's voice to a whine.
'No, let her be. And anyway, I got sweeter fish to fry.' He grinned and winked. 'I'm going a-courtin'! Go on upstairs, old woman. Wash yourself up and get some clothes on. No one wants to think of you, bare-assed under that blanket. We just ate, for Christ's sake!'
With an imperious gesture Queeny flung the flap of her blanket over her shoulder and walked past him and up the stairs, where she found Chinky sitting on the edge of her bed, her face in her hands. 'Hey, where's Delanny?' Queeny asked. Chinky shook her head: she didn't know. 'Well, where's Frenchy then?' Chinky didn't know and didn't care. 'What is wrong with everybody this morning?' Queeny wondered as she went to her room, where she took her red dress from the wardrobe to air it… just in case she was called on to dance again that night.
On his way out to go courting, Lieder stopped beside Matthew, who was standing on the porch, watching two angry little dust devils weave their drunken ways down the street, one chasing the other. They crossed the train tracks and approached the cliff edge, where they were suddenly sucked over into oblivion. 'There's one hell of a storm brewin',' Lieder said, pulling his hat brim down tight. 'It's going to rain like a cow pissing on a flat rock.'
Matthew was silent.
'You're on your way over to the livery stable, huh?'
Matthew nodded.
'Well… that's good. That's good, Matthew, 'cause it's exactly what I want you to do. And keep your eyes peeled, hear? That schoolteacher might be foolish enough to try something, and that'd be the biggest mistake he ever made.' Lieder squinted up at the sickly yellow-green sky. 'Yes-siree-bob, we're in for one hell of a storm. Hey, I hope you noticed how I let that Queeny be, even though I'd promised her a whole lot of hurt if she ever came back. A true leader is above spite and revenge. He's big enough to forgive people. I've learned that lesson, Matthew.' He paused a moment before adding, 'It's a pity you haven't.'
MATTHEW ARRIVED AT THE Livery to find the shoeing yard empty, but the pair of donkeys Coots had led down were out in the meadow, nosing around the old cow the train had brought up from Destiny. He looked into the kitchen. Nobody.
'Up here, boy,' Coots called huskily.
He climbed the stairs to find himself for the first time in the bedroom Coots and B. J. shared. Coots was sitting on the edge of their double bed, and B. J. was in a Lincoln rocker, his head against the back and his eyes closed, looking much the more worn of the two. The strain of facing up to Lieder and distracting his attention while Coots descended into town, then having to witness Mr. Delanny's humiliation and death, had sapped his energy and left his nerves frayed.
'I didn't hear your steps until you were in the kitchen,' Coots said. 'Must be the wind.'
'Stand by the window and keep your eye on the street, Matthew,' B. J. said without opening his eyes. 'We can't let one of them sneak up on us.'
Matthew established himself at the window that gave a view across the burying ground to the far end of town. 'So Ruth Lillian found you on the trail?' he said to Coots.
'That's a narrow trail, son. She couldn't hardly miss me.' He had known that something was amiss when he found the Kane girl standing in the middle of the trail, shortly before he got the brace of worn-out donkeys down to Shinbone Cut. It had been a steep, unnerving descent, and the donkeys were skittish because they could smell the incoming thunderstorm that Coots had seen roiling angrily all along the northern horizon when he was up at the Lode, but that was not yet visible in the sky above Twenty-Mile. 'There's a real ripper coming in. And that may be to our advantage. They'll be stuck inside tonight, and they won't be able to hear anything, what with the rain and thunder and all.'
'What you planning to do?' Matthew asked, confused. 'I thought we were going to wait for the miners to come down tomorrow morning before dawn.'
Coots glanced at B. J., who nodded, his eyes still closed. 'Tell him.'
'Fact is,' Coots said, 'they won't be coming down, boy. Not before Saturday night as usual.'
