Outlaw in Paradise

  "Old friends." His dark eyes devoured her; the intense look in them would've unsettled her if she hadn't known him so well. "Tell me what's been happening to you, Cady."

  "Oh, my life's dull as dishwater. Tell me about you. Tell me about school. Are you still making A's in all your subjects?"

  He nodded, looking down, pretending it was nothing, but she knew what his grades meant to him. He had to do well, because he was on a scholarship at Berkeley. Someday he'd be a lawyer, and his dream was to work for the cause of justice for poor people, Indians in particular. He only had a fraction of Rogue Indian blood himself, a sixteenth, he'd once admitted to her, but Joe was the most Indian Indian Cady had ever known.

  "So do you like your courses and your professors? Why do you have to go to school in the summer?"

  He started to talk, tell her everything, and while he spoke she watched the veneer of adulthood and student sophistication wear thinner and thinner. In no time at all, he was her old Joe, painfully earnest and endearing. In six months he'd gotten taller, more muscular. He had strong black eyebrows that grew together over his hawkish nose, giving him a fierce look. But his new haircut, short and parted in the middle, cut down on the ferocity; between it and his steel-rimmed spectacles, he looked pretty much like what he was: a serious young man with a purpose.

  "So tell me about this Gault," he demanded, surprising her with the sudden new topic.

  "Oh, Gault." She gave an evasive laugh. "He's the talk of the town, all right."

  "He's a murderer," Joe said flatly. "I hear he's been hanging around you night and day."

  "That's not true." She clucked her tongue. "Night and day. How ridiculous. Who told you that?" Murderer. It was what she'd been insisting to everyone, especially the lovestruck females of Paradise, that Jesse Gault was, so why did the word sound even worse on Joe's lips? Why did she want to talk him out of it?

  "Word gets around." His eyes veered toward the bar, though, and Levi, innocently drying glasses behind it. Joe's parents didn't much approve of his association with Levi, either. But he liked to call himself a "red man," and Levi was definitely a black man, and according to Joe that made a bond between them.

  She tsked again. "He's staying here, that's all. Sometimes I run into him."

  "Why do you let him stay here?"

  "Well, it's a free country."

  "If Tom Leaver had any guts, he'd run him out of town."

  "But, Joe, he hasn't done anything."

  "Who hired him? Wylie?"

  "No, absolutely not."

  "Who, then?"

  "Nobody. I don't think."

  "If this town had any guts, they'd run him out on a rail."

  "Oh, that's democratic."

  He scowled. "Meaning?"

  "Well—doesn't it make any difference that the man hasn't done anything?"

  "You're defending him?"

  "I'm—

  "You don't wait for a snake to bite you before you kill it." He had that stubborn set to his manly, serious jaw that meant there wasn't going to be any arguing with him. Once he decided he was right, you couldn't budge Joe from a principle with a stick of dynamite.

  "Who owns that roan quarterhorse outside?" A low, familiar voice.

  Cady jumped. Speak of the devil. Jesse stood in a splash of sunlight, arms hanging over the swinging doors, looking around the half-empty saloon.

  Joe said, "Is that him?" in a quiet, wondering tone. She could understand his confusion. Except for the eyepatch, Jesse didn't look very dangerous today. Good, but not dangerous. He wore his six-guns, and he had on black—he always wore black—but he'd pushed his Stetson to the back of his head, and somehow that changed everything. He'd taken off his silver spurs, too—she'd seen grown men shiver when he walked through the hushed saloon, stamp-jingle, stamp-jingle, a really eerie noise if you were half-terrified already. But today he looked... normal. Like a regular customer. A gambler, or maybe a ranch foreman. Smart, friendly, and fit. Definitely not like a cold-blooded killer. She started to smile at him and say hi, but caught herself in the nick of time. How could she forget? She wasn't having anything to do with him anymore.

  "The roan is mine." Joe pushed his chair back slowly and stood up. "What's it to you?"

  Jesse let go of the door and sauntered toward them, his smile fading the closer he got. "He's a beauty," he said softly, stopping beside Cady's chair. "Looks like a purebred." He glanced at her, at Joe, at the two glasses on the table between them. He arched one eyebrow and sneered.

  Joe said, "How long you figure to stay in Paradise, Gault?" At the same moment Cady said, "Joe, I'd like you to meet J—Mr. Gault," so that she and Joe said the word "Gault" in unison.

  Both men ignored her. She didn't like the way they were sizing each other up, like a couple of dogs sniffing around for an opening to go for the throat. "Mr. Gault," she plowed on, "this is my friend, Joseph Redleaf. Joe's a student at the University of California. He's studying—"

  "What's it to you?" Jesse said, as if she weren't even there, as if she were still in her room going over the books. She stood up, to show him she existed.

  "He's studying—" she repeated, but this time Joe cut her off.

  "We don't like your kind around here."

  "Yeah? Who's 'we'?"

  "Whoa," she exclaimed with a nervous laugh, reaching across to touch Joe's arm. "Hey, let's—"

  But he shrugged away from her and planted his feet. The saloon had started to go quiet at the moment he stood up. He said, "Decent people," into a tense, total silence.

  Jesse's smile was pure evil. He said, "Is that right," and his whispery voice brought goose bumps to Cady's arms. "You able to back that up with anything but spit, youngster?"

  "Wait, wait," she sputtered, trying to get between them.

  "If you mean do I own a gun, the answer is yes."

  "Joe, for God's sake. Jess—just," she corrected hastily, "just stop this, both of you. Come on, let's sit down. Levi, bring—"

  "I don't get in gunfights with children," Jesse whispered.

  Joe reddened, clenching his hands into fists. "Maybe you're just a coward," he accused, and Cady wanted to cover his mouth with her hands to shut him up.

  Jesse only smiled, which made her hair stand on end. "Think so?"

  "No, he doesn't think so, he just said that, it just came out, he's—"

  "Could be another way to settle this," Jesse said right over her—she'd disappeared again.

  A fistfight. She groaned, but she felt weak with relief. "Okay, but take it outside, will you? I can't afford—"

  "You big enough to ride that roan, youngster?"

  Joe finally stopped flexing his fingers. "Yeah, on a good day, when my daddy helps me up. What'd you have in mind?"

  "A race."

  "How far?"

  "A mile? Quarter mile? You decide, college boy. But you might want to take a look at my horse before you say yes."

  Joe laughed in his face. "I don't think so." Excitement made his dark eyes glitter. "What's the stake?"

  "Loser keeps on riding. Rides on out of town, leaving all these decent people alone."

  "Oh, now," Cady started to say, not sure what came next. Joe raced horses for fun—nobody ever beat him. If he won and Jesse kept his word... "That's a silly bet," she protested, trying to sound jovial. "I know—why don't we all have a beer and start over. Drinks on the house. Let's—"

  "When do you want to race?"

  "What's wrong with now?"

  "Not a damn thing."

  "Let's go."

  She blinked rapidly, hand outstretched, mouth open. Neither man so much as glanced at her as they moved away, heading for the door. There was a brief scuffle while they tried to walk out of it simultaneously. Jesse got through first, but Joe was right on his boot heels.

  ****

  The news spread like a prairie fire. Within ten minutes, close to every man in Paradise was standing on one side or the other of Main Street, along with most of the children and a
good portion of the women. Nothing this exciting had happened since the revival meeting last fall. Somehow Nestor Yeakes became Jesse's second, so to speak, coaching him about the pitfalls of the course they were going to run—three miles, beginning and ending at the corner of Main and Noble Fir—and offering anybody who would take it five-to-one odds on Jesse's horse, a gorgeous black stallion called Pegasus. Nestor knew horseflesh; his faith in the black gave people serious pause. But they'd seen Joe Redleaf race his roan gelding a dozen times, and they'd never seen anybody beat him. Anyway, how could they bet on a stranger and against one of their own?

  They did, though, some of them; Cady saw at least four men, including Stony Dern and Gunther Dew-hurt, slip money to Nestor muttering under their breath and giving quick, surreptitious head jerks toward Pegasus.

  "Bareback?" Jesse looked astounded, watching Joe lead his saddleless horse to the starting place, an imaginary line across the street between the Mercantile and Digby's General Store.

  "It is a man's way," Joe declared, falling into the formal, disdainful tone he used when that sixteenth of Rogue blood in him took over. Not only had he taken off his horse's saddle, he'd taken off his own shirt and shoes, and tied a red bandana around his high, intelligent forehead. Cady guessed the idea was to look more like an Indian, but since he'd left on his silver-rimmed spectacles, the effect wasn't all it could've been.

  "Nestor, take off Peg's saddle," Jesse directed, smiling as if this were all a joke. But it was an act; she could tell he was as excited as Joe. Men could be so childish. They weren't going to gun each other down in the street, though, so she didn't care.

  "Ham, come on over here. Hurry up, get out of their way."

  He came reluctantly. She set him in front of her, pressing him back against her skirts, and she could feel the excitement quivering through his skinny shoulders. "Who gonna win, Cady? Who you think?"

  "Who do you want to win?"

  He turned his head and whispered, "Mr. Gault."

  She made a surprised face. "I thought you liked Joe," she whispered back.

  "I do, I do like 'im! But Mr. Gault, he awful nice to me, an' now I know him better."

  "I see." He'd known Joe Redleaf all his life, Jesse Gault for a week and a half. Child's logic and a few quarters.

  "Who you want to win?"

  "Oh, I really don't care. Whoever has the faster—"

  "Oh, my God, oh, my God," sighed Willagail, who stood on Cady's right, and at the same moment Glendoline, on her left, said, "Whoowee," on a long, soft, breathy sigh.

  Following their eyes, Cady saw what had them enthralled—Jesse Gault taking his shirt off. "Oh, honestly," she clucked. Well, women could be just as foolish as men, only about different things. Jesse threw his black shirt on the sidewalk and started to take off his boots, heel-to-toe, holding on to the hitching post for balance. He was one tall drink of water, she caught herself thinking, a phrase she could vaguely recall her mother using years ago. His skin wasn't as sun-browned as Joe's, and he didn't have Joe's thick, bulging muscles in his arms and shoulders. His physique was leaner, longer. More graceful, if you could say that about a man's body. More... beautiful.

  Barefooted, he walked over to his shiny-coated stallion and stroked its long neck, telling it something in its twitching ear. She studied his handsome back, his shoulder blades, the bumps in his long spine. He'd taken off his gunbelt. His black trousers hung low; she followed the line of his backbone where it disappeared into his pants. Ham craned his neck and looked up at her, and she realized she was humming to herself. She'd just said "Mm mmm" right out loud.

  It was a perfect afternoon, not a cloud in the sky, the blue air sharp and clean and not too hot. People stood two and three deep on either side of Main all the way down to the east end, where it petered out in front of Lisabeth Wayman's boardinghouse. The race route was going to be the big oval wagon trail between Paradise and the Rogue River and back, a distance of about three miles. They would take the same route Cady often took on her Friday afternoons off, along the cliff edge, past River Farm, past her mine and Wylie's mine, down the flat valley floor and then home through the thick, wooded hills in the west. She worried that Jesse didn't know the land at all, and Joe knew it like the back of his hand. If Jesse lost, would he keep his promise? Keep on riding and never come back? Was she seeing him right now for the last time?

  "Jesse!"

  He turned.

  Everybody turned.

  She flushed with mortification. She'd said his first name out loud!

  He grinned at her, and her heart skipped two consecutive beats. He swept off his hat and made a silly, barefooted bow—and she had the craziest, the most ridiculous desire to weep. "Good luck," she called out tightly. "And Joe—good luck!" she remembered to add.

  Then Sam Blankenship yelled, "Mount up!" and the two racers got on their horses. "On your marks! Get set!" Ham started jumping up and down. He landed on her toe at the same moment Sam yelled, "Go!" so Cady missed the takeoff.

  She saw the galloping rear ends of the black and the roan disappear in a dust cloud at the end of Main Street, and then it was over. All the excitement, the noise, the shouting—everything stopped, and she wondered if anybody else felt as sheepish as she did. People milled around, aimless-looking. Then all of a sudden something really extraordinary happened: Glendoline had a good idea.

  "Let's go up and see if we can see 'em from the balcony."

  "Yeah!" Ham began leaping again, and Cady backed out of his way. "Can we, Cady? Can we?"

  "Sure, but I doubt if we'll..." Nobody was listening to her. Glen, Willagail, Ham, even Levi, they turned their backs on her and hurried back down the street toward the Rogue. "Be able to see much," she finished to herself, picked up her skirts, and ran after them.

  She was right. They couldn't see much, but the view was a lot nicer than the dusty street, and this way they'd be able to catch sight of the racers as soon as they broke out of the trees at the extreme western edge of town. "How long will it take?" Ham wanted to know, and Levi said, " 'Bout ten, twelve, fifteen minutes, I 'spec'."

  "Ten minutes!" Ham couldn't get over it. "To go three miles? I thought it took a—a hour, a—"

  "Nope. 'Bout twelve, fifteen minutes on that track, them horses. I seen a race once down in Santa Barbara, colt name Equal run a mile in two minutes flat."

  Ham, who was sitting on his father's shoulders for a better view, pursed his lips and tried to whistle.

  "Course, that be on a real racetrack, with a little puny fella ridin' 'im. 'Bout as big as you is all he was, dressed up in shiny yellow pants made outa silk."

  " 'Cause he a jockey, right?"

  "Right."

  "A jockey," Ham breathed. Levi winked at Cady, thinking the same thing she was: Ham had a new career goal. No more cowboy, no more sea captain. They wouldn't hear the end of this for months.

  The minutes crawled by. Now she was hot, and there wasn't a speck of shade up here. Plus she had to listen to Glen and Willagail go on about Jesse Gault's chest. It put her in a bad mood. You'd think they'd never seen a man without his shirt before. "How come you call him Jesse?" Ham interrupted her cranky thoughts to ask, and Willagail and Glen shut up to hear the answer. Even Levi turned to look at her.

  What could she say? "That's his name. His first name."

  "He told you?" Glen said, amazed.

  "Jesse," Willagail repeated, trying it out. "Jesse Gault. Jesssee." She smiled a slow smile. "Yeah."

  "They comin', they comin'!"

  Levi made a grab for Ham's calves before he could lean too far over his head. Everybody crowded over to the left edge of the balcony, craning, straining. "Who's ahead? They neck and neck! No, Joe got a nose on 'im—no, Mr. Gault's horse—I can't tell!"

  "Jesse's winning!" Cady shrieked it, but her voice was barely audible over all the yelling and screaming down below. She was pounding her fists on the wooden railing, crying, "Go, go, go, go, go!" at the top of her lungs—when she saw the blood. r />
  She clutched at her temples, horrified, dumbstruck. His stallion flew by in a cloud of dust and grit, a full length ahead of the roan, but she didn't wait to see the end. Spinning for the doorway, she sprinted down the dark hall, the stairs, through the empty saloon and down the long, echoing boardwalk, out of breath and racing for the finish line.

  A cheering crowd surrounded him. She saw money changing hands, heard men yelling, "Hot damn!" More people had bet on Jesse than she'd thought. She caught a glimpse of him from the back before he slid off his horse—hands everywhere, helping him down—but then he disappeared. "Let me through. Please. Let me by." Her urgency finally cleared a path, and she ran to him. "Jess, Jess, are you hurt?"

  "Hell, no. Ran under a limb, didn't duck far enough. I'm fine." Nestor was shaking his hand up and down like a pump handle and smacking him on the shoulder, the back. Jesse threw his arm around his sweating horse's neck. Out of affection, Cady thought, until she saw his knees buckle. She yelped, reaching out, but she couldn't stop his slow slide to the dirt. Looking surprised, he landed hard on his rear end. His horse took two polite steps sideways, and Jesse keeled over the rest of the way, flat on his back.

  Doc Mobius appeared out of nowhere. "Stand back," he commanded, "give him some air." Everybody obeyed except Cady, who dropped to her knees and hovered over Jesse with fluttering hands. "It's a scalp wound, that's all," Doc rumbled, feeling around in his hair. "Scalp wounds bleed like the dickens." He used his handkerchief to wipe blood off Jesse's forehead, and she saw with huge, knee-weakening relief that the wound wasn't anywhere near his eye. Her worst fear—she could acknowledge it now—was that he'd reinjured his right eye. That he would be blind in one eye again.

  He came to while they were carrying him into the Rogue. He weighed more than he looked; it took three men, one of them Joe, to get him down the street and into the saloon. They were headed for the stairs, fixing to carry him up to his room, when he started to protest that he was fine, perfectly all right, they should set him down right here by the bar, for convenience, because he meant to drink half of it up tonight, and everybody else was welcome to the other half, on him.