Outlaw in Paradise

  Cady was useless, so Jesse took over. Shrimp knew a man who blasted rock at the Rainbow and had goggles. With wet towels wrapped around his nose and mouth and the goggles over his eyes, Jesse made three runs into the saloon, but all he managed to do was knock half the tires off the bar and onto the floor. Levi came back from his outing with Lia Chang about then, and insisted on taking a turn. He lasted two trips before he had to sit down.

  Others began to volunteer. Sheriff Leaver, Stony Dern, and Will Shorter, Jr., all donned the goggles and towels and ran into the saloon as often as they could stand it. Using shovels, rakes, and a wheelbarrow, with five of them working in quick shifts, they finally lugged every bit of the sticky, stinking rubber out into the street, and then the question was how to put it out.

  Throwing water on it didn't work; part of it always kept smoldering, and pretty soon the whole thing would flare up again. In the end they buried it. Once it was out and cold they'd move it, but for now it lay in the street in a heap, under a foot-deep cover of dirt from Arthur Dunne's vetch field, gravel from the cemetery, and horse manure from the livery stable.

  Rogue's Tavern was uninhabitable. Everything in the saloon and above it—all four bedrooms on the second floor—was either ruined or stank too bad to go near. Jesse could kiss his clothes, everything but what he had on his back, good-bye. Cady, luckily, was in better shape; smoke went up, not sideways, and three closed doors from the saloon, the hallway, and her office stood between the fire and her bedroom. She still claimed everything in her room stank, but Jesse said they were carrying the reek around in their nostrils, that a flower garden, a perfume factory, would smell like burning rubber to them indefinitely. "How long is indefinitely?"

  They were drinking coffee at Jacques', staring dolefully out the window at the saloon and the big mound of smelly dirt in front of it. "Till you get it cleaned up."

  "Cleaned up," Cady said wretchedly. "I wouldn't even know where to start." She hadn't cried—he wished she would—but she looked shattered. Like somebody had beaten her up.

  "I'd say you start with turpentine. And paint scrapers, like you were going to strip the varnish off a table or something. You get all the rubbery soot off, then you wash everything with strong soap and water."

  "But that'll take forever."

  "Days. So you hire people to help you. Plus I'll help, and Levi and Ham'll help. That's four of us right there, and then you pay some kids to pitch in."

  "Stony might help," she said thoughtfully. "And Gunther. Jim Tannenbaum. Maybe Stan Morrissey."

  "I'd forgotten you had all these men in love With you."

  "It's not that, they just want their drinking place back."

  "Cady, it's going to be all right. You'll have the place spic and span in no time."

  She tried a wan smile, but it didn't work. She put her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes tight. Finally he saw a tear, just one, squeeze past her lashes. "Bastard," she gritted out between her teeth. She made the window rattle by butting her head against it. "Damn that bastard."

  If they weren't in a restaurant, he'd have taken her on his lap. As it was, he scooted his chair closer and wrapped his arm around her. "Don't worry about him, honey. Don't even think about him."

  "Damn that bastard." She seemed to be stuck in a rut.

  "Shh. Shhh." He tried to soothe her, but she wouldn't soften, wouldn't unwind from the tight ball of fury and loathing. Until he said, "It's all right, Cady. I'll take care of him."

  Then she looked at him. She was red-faced but almost dry-eyed. "You will?"

  He nodded. "Yeah."

  She watched him for another minute, then laid her head on his shoulder, exhausted. "Okay," she sighed. "Okay, then."

  He took her home. He tried to make love to her, but she couldn't relax. So he massaged her feet instead—he was good at that. That did it. She fell asleep on her stomach with one leg in the air. He kept on rubbing that one skinny foot, softening his touch little by little, before laying it down on the mattress and gently covering her up.

  He stretched out beside her. For a long time he lay quiet, listening to her breathing, watching moon shadows crawl across the graceful hills and valleys of her pale, sheet-covered body. Trying to think of a way to "take care" of Wylie without getting himself killed. Finally fatigue swamped him. When he drifted off, he still hadn't come up with a plan.

  ****

  It took three days to get the saloon clean enough for customers, and three more before you could go upstairs without holding your nose. More people pitched in than Jesse could believe or Cady could imagine, some for pay but most for nothing, and yet it still took forever to wipe down the walls and the ceiling, the floor, every stick of furniture, every glass, every ash can, every spittoon. The naked lady over the bar was ruined, destroyed, fit for nothing but the garbage heap. Or so Jesse thought, until a veritable tidal wave of opposition to trashing her rose up from the regulars—Stony and Sam, Leonard, Jersey Stan, Gunther Dewhurt—and a committee formed spontaneously to try to save her. Research was done; theories were tested; experiment performed. Years ago, Leonard Berg, it turned out, had refurbished houses for a living; he knew something about oil paints. He made a concoction. With a crowd of naked lady fans looking on and offering suggestions, he applied it to her soot- and goop-blackened charms. Presto! Like magic she was re-formed, restored to voluptuous splendor before their admiring eyes.

  After that everybody seemed to take heart, even Cady, and the work went faster. Leonard had a brainstorm and tried applying his miracle formula to the bar, and enough gunk came away that it could be sanded down and refinished. This was a major discovery. A new bar would've cost at least a thousand dollars, a good one, anyway, and Cady was already racking her brain and going over her accounts, looking for a way to pay for it. Now she wouldn't have to. Things were starting to look up.

  In a way. Jesse had a problem, however. The further along repairs and cleanup proceeded at the Rogue, the more time Cady had to dwell on the man responsible for making them necessary. "Did you talk to him? Did you do anything yet?" she took to asking once or twice a day. "All in good time," Jesse would say, with a hint of sinister mystery in his manner, hoping to imply he had some fiendish plot afoot. But he didn't. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out what to do.

  He went to the sheriff's office and acted like an irate citizen, but that backfired. "Of course I know it was Wylie," Tommy Leaver admitted readily, "but what can I do about it? There's no proof. Nobody saw anything, or else they're not saying. Cady left her back door open and somebody, probably Turley and Clyde, snuck in and set those tires on fire. You know it and I know it, but what can I do? Wylie will deny it, and then what? If I tried to arrest him or any of his boys, they'd shoot me down before I could get my mouth open."

  "You could deputize some men, get up a whole crowd. With that many—"

  "I tried that. Nobody'll do it. People are scared, nobody wants to risk getting killed. Who can blame them?" He straightened his neat string tie, slicked back his perfectly combed hair—he was the neatest sheriff Jesse had ever seen—and fixed him with a speculative eye. "You could take him, though," he said earnestly.

  "Me?" Jesse laughed with fake heartiness. "That'll be the day." Too late, he saw the trap he'd walked into.

  "They're scared of you. I could make you a deputy, Mr. Gault, and you could—or we could, I'd go with you—we could take Wylie into custody."

  "Yeah? Then what? You just said he'd deny it, so what happens next?"

  "Then—then we try to get some of his men to go against him. If they see him locked up in jail for questioning, they might get scared. All we need is one. We could—"

  "Hold it, hold it. Sorry to disappoint you, Sheriff, but you got me mixed up with somebody who gives a damn."

  "But I thought—you and Cady, I just thought—"

  "Yeah, well, what's between me and Cady has nothing to do with the law. The law is something I don't mess with, ever. Got me? Jesse Gault does n
ot work for sheriffs, see? Jesse Gault never has and never will be a deputy." And he stalked out, all snotty and pissed off, definitely on his high horse, before the sheriff could say another word.

  That was a close one. Not to mention stupid. And now he was back where he started. What the hell had he gone to Leaver for anyway? How un-Gault-like could you get? Desperation was driving him these days; he couldn't see straight. He'd started avoiding Cady, for Pete's sake, just so she couldn't ask him if he'd taken care of Wylie yet. He missed her like crazy. He had no idea what he was going to do.

  No—he did have one idea, one middling bright notion, and as soon as he thought of it he got itchy to do it and get it over with. It had nothing to do with Wylie, not directly, and it would have to stay a deep, dark secret from everybody, even—no, especially—Cady. But that was okay. He'd know he'd done it, and afterward he wouldn't feel so damn helpless.

  His luck at gambling had been up and down, nothing consistent, so his net worth had stayed about the same for a couple of weeks: roughly five thousand dollars. He didn't know how much money the Sullivan widow needed to keep her sheep ranch, and he didn't know how much Luther Digby needed to keep Wylie from foreclosing on the general store. If he asked, it would rouse suspicion. So he would split it in half, he decided, twenty-five hundred to the widow, twenty-five to the Digbys. Now the only question was how to get it to them without anybody knowing.

  Except for the dog, Mrs. Sullivan was easy. Under the guise of finding new trails to run Pegasus on, he found out from Nestor where she lived: two miles outside of town on the road to Jacksonville. Then it was just a matter of waiting for midnight, stuffing money in an envelope, scribbling "From a friend" on it, and sliding the envelope under her front door. He forgot she lived on a sheep farm, though, which meant she had a sheep dog, which meant he wasn't going to get anywhere near her front door. But she had a box for deliveries, at the bottom of the quarter-mile-long driveway to her house. Was that a safe place to stash twenty-five hundred bucks? He decided to take a chance, and by ten o'clock the next morning the news was all over town that a miracle had struck the Sullivan family in the night.

  One down. The Digbys should've been even easier, but they weren't. He waited until the next night, and he almost got caught. What the hell was the wife— Sara, her name was—doing up at one in the morning, floating around downstairs in her nightgown, holding a candle? Taking inventory? Making herself a cup of hot milk? Whatever, she spotted him, just as he was straightening up from slipping the envelope under the door. Their eyes locked. He wheeled and sprinted for the blackness of the alley, positive she'd recognized him. A few sober moments of reflection reassured him, though. She had a candle under her chin; naturally he could see her perfectly, down to her blond eyelashes. He'd been in the pitch-dark, through wavy glass, hat pulled low, shirt collar high. She'd seen a man, that's all. He was safe.

  Speculation ran wild. Who was the mysterious "friend" whose generosity had saved two Paradise families from ruin? Who could it be? The Reverberator had a field day wondering, guessing, interviewing, opining. The minister, Reverend Cross, was high on the list of suspects, although nobody could figure out where he'd have gotten all that money. An old spinster lady named Miss Sleet reputedly had thousands stashed away in her mattress, but she was so mean and stingy, nobody could feature her as the anonymous benefactor. There were other possibilities—Otis Kerns, the bank president; old Mr. Deaver, who owned the saw and lumber mill. They were cited most frequently, because they were the richest.

  Nobody ever mentioned Gault, and Jesse figured he was the second-to-last man anybody would figure for a Good Samaritan. The last being Wylie.

  What Wylie made of these secret, last-minute bailouts, Jesse could only imagine. The son of a bitch must be going crazy. Which wasn't much of a punishment for what he'd done to Cady, but it was something. Jesse began to feel a little better. Broke, but better. It helped that in all the excitement about the money, she forgot to ask him what he was going to do with Wylie. It looked like the whole mess might just blow over after all.

  He should've known better.

  His room was habitable again, but he'd taken to spending the night in Cady's, and it was a hard habit to break. One night, though, after the saloon closed, she went upstairs with him while he got a clean shirt for the next day. They started fooling around, one thing led to another, and they ended up falling asleep in his bed instead of hers.

  In the morning, he was glad. He had a high, east-facing window, and the sun beaming in on Cady's skin, mellow gold against the white of the sheets, was as pretty a sight as he'd ever seen. He kissed her half-awake, loving her drowsy-eyed smile and the starting-to-get-interested sounds she made in the back of her throat. These were the times he liked best, when it was just them, nobody else, and they weren't talking. The trouble with talking was that it usually meant lying, and he was getting sick of that. Kissing Cady was much better.

  They were doing more than kissing when the first shriek came.

  The window was open or they might not have heard it—it came from the back of the building. And since it was Ham's voice, Jesse didn't think much of it, not at first; He's playing, he assumed. But Cady knew right away. Critical moment or not, she called everything off by rolling out from under him and scrambling out of bed. She'd have run out of the room bare-ass naked if he hadn't thrown her shift at her while he grabbed for his pants.

  By the time they hit the stairs, Ham was screaming in short, panicky, repetitive bursts, horrible, earsplitting; Jesse's heart pounded in his chest as real fear got a grip on him. This wasn't a game: Ham was in some terrible trouble.

  They found him writhing on his back behind the blueblossom bushes, and Jesse's first thought was that he was ill, sick to his stomach—he was lying by the open door to the outhouse. Then he saw the snakes.

  Three of them—four—five—a sixth slithering out of sight under the floorboards. Rattlers, fat and muscular and brown-blotched, flat, triangular heads swerving, clubbed tails chattering. Cady screamed once. Jesse yelled for her to stop, but she kept moving, white arms flailing, and all except one of the snakes curled and coasted away in fright. The last one bared dripping fangs, reared up, and lunged at Ham's bare foot, striking him on the heel. Instead of screaming, he uttered an awful sound, strangled and despairing, a hopeless croak that made Jesse's blood run cold. He managed to grab Cady's flying hair and yank her back before the snake could coil and strike again. Ham curled onto his side in a tight ball of panic. Barefooted, desperate, Jesse ran at the snake, stomping and shouting curses and waving his arms. Instead of charging again, the reptile cringed away, forked tongue flicking, spitting; with a flash of dusty scales it changed direction and skittered, rattling, off into the long grass.

  Cady dropped over Ham, covered him like a blanket with her body, cradling him, crooning to him. Gently, then not so gently, Jesse pried her away. "Move, honey. Come on, Cady. That's it, that's a girl."

  Bad, it was bad. The snakes had bitten Ham in two places Jesse could see, his heel and his calf, and there might be other bites under his clothes. "Run for the doctor. Hear me? Go get Doc Mobius. Cady." Her swimming eyes focused on him. She shook her head, reluctance to leave Ham, even let go of him, obvious in every line of her face, her body. Jesse told her again to go, repeated it, ended up shaking her by the shoulders. With an angry sob, she finally scrambled up and ran out of the yard.

  Jesse scoured his brain for everything he knew about snakebite. Don't let the victim move—moving made the venom spread faster. Scooping Ham up as gently as he could, he carried him into Cady's room and laid him on her bed. He'd begun to shiver and whimper. Tears streaked the dirt on his face; his big dark eyes were glazed. "You're all right, you're going to be okay, hear me? Where else did they get you, can you tell me? Where'd those slimy bastards get you?" While he talked, he undid buttons and pulled the kid's skinny, shaking arms and legs out of his shirt and corduroy knee pants and drawers. Another purpling puncture wound was swe
lling on his bony kneecap. Jesse shook a pillow out of the case and tied it around Ham's thigh, just above the knee. Between the wound and the heart, he remembered; that's where you wanted to cut off circulation. He shook out the other pillow and tied that case—the one that said Life Is Duty—under the boy's other knee, above the calf wound and the bite in his heel. Then he wrapped him in the coverlet and tried to think what else to do.

  The room started filling up with people, neighbors and passersby who had heard all the yelling. Some of them he knew, some he didn't. Everybody had advice, and all of it was urgent, had to be done now. Jesse sat down next to Ham, who was crying silently, dazedly, and put his arms around him, not just to comfort him but to keep everybody away from him. Where was Levi? Where was the doctor?

  Cady found him in his tiny rented house next to the livery, up and dressed, thank God, and heating coffee on the wood stove in his kitchen. Almost all she said was "snake" before he ducked out of the room. Ten seconds later he was back, with his black bag in one hand and a glass bottle of something yellow and liquid in the other. "Put that on," he advised as they hurried out through the door, and she saw a worn gray frock coat hanging by a hook in the wall. For the first time she realized what she had on: her chemise and nothing else, unbuttoned to the navel but staying closed, sort of, out of habit. "Good God," she muttered; and then, "I don't care." But she grabbed Doc Mobius's coat and stuck her arms through it as she trotted after him down the street, and when they burst into her room at the Rogue she was as modest as she had time to get.