William Diehl: Eureka

“How about you, Brodie? What are you gonna do?”

Brodie picked up a handful of sand and watched it stream from his fist. “Haven’t thought much about it,” was all he said.

Tallman was mentor to the two boys, had taught them how to stand in the stirrups at a full gallop to take the load off the horse’s back; how to draw a gun in a single, fluid move, skimming the hammer back with the flat of the hand, pointing the piece-like you would point a finger-before making a fist and squeezing the trigger, all the while without changing expression. No hint of a move in the eyes or jaw muscles. No giveaways. And stay loose, don’t tighten up, concentrate on the eyes and face of your foe.

“Their eyes’ll tell you when to squeeze off,” he had told them. “It’s a look you never forget.”

“Like what?” Brodie asked.

“Plenty a things. Fear, hesitation, a little twitch of the eye, anxiousness. It’s a giveaway look for damn sure. You’ll know it, if ever you see it.”

The talk didn’t mean much to Ben, who loved a shotgun and the hunt, while Brodie loved pistol shooting.

“So who’s the best shot you ever knew?” asked Brodie.

“Phoebe Moses is the best shot alive,” he said without hesitation.

“A girl!” Ben said incredulously.

“C’mon,” Brodie said.

“Phoebe Anne Oakley Moses. You boys know her better as Annie Oakley. I met her a few years ago when Bill Cody’s Wild West Show was in Chicago. She shoots over her shoulder with a rifle better than me, Wyatt, Pat Garrett, or her husband, Frank Butler-who was damn good himself-can shoot with a pistol. You could toss a playin’ card in the air and she’d put a dozen shots in it ’fore it hit the ground. Her and Frank are still with the show, far as I know.”

“How about that abalone shell down there,” Brodie said suddenly.

“What shell?” Tallman asked, casually looking down the beach.

Brodie looked down the beach. A red abalone shell was lying at the edge of the surf about fifty feet away. He had to squint to see it clearly. “The red one. Down the beach there.”

Tallman didn’t need to ask what Brodie wanted him to do. He simply stood up, stood straight with his hands hanging loosely at his sides. His eyes were narrowed slightly. Nothing in his face

changed before his right arm moved fluidly up, his hand drawing the. 44 as it passed his hip, his left hand fanning back the hammer as his hand stretched out, and BOOM!

Both boys jumped as the gun roared.

The red shell exploded. Pieces flying left and right, the main piece jumping straight up. As it fell, Tallman fanned off a second shot and it disintegrated.

And just as quickly, the gun was back in its holster and Tallman reached up and tenderly stroked the curves in his mustache.

“You mean that one?” he said.

He took out the pistol, flipped the retainer on the cylinder open and emptied the spent casings into his hand and dropped them in his pocket, then inserted fresh bullets into the slots and flipped the retainer shut. He handed the gun butt-first to Brodie.

“Give it a try,” he said.

The Irish kid took the pistol, stuck the gun between his pants and shirt so the hammer would not catch on his belt. It was on his left side, the butt facing to the right so he could cross-draw. He looked for a target. Twenty feet away a bottle rolled on the beach at the edge of the surf.

He shook his hands and shoulders loose.

His right arm moved swiftly across his body, hauled the big Frontiersman from its resting place. His left hand snapped the hammer back as he raised the gun at arm’s length and squeezed his hand. The gun roared, kicked his arm almost straight up. Sand kicked up an inch from the bottle.

“Well, damn,” he muttered.

“That was a good shot,” Tallman said, nodding assurance. “Just a hair to the right.”

Brodie smiled, dropped the empty casing into his hand and gave the casing and the gun back to the sheriff.

“How about you, Ben?” Tallman asked.

“Nah,” Ben answered. “You know I never got the hang of it.”

Tallman looked over his shoulder. The sun was turning red, sinking toward the horizon. He slapped them both on the shoulder.

“You boys better get on up the Hill. Be dinnertime soon.”

They rode the length of the beach to the cliff trail, a wide walkway huddled against the face of the cliff, which rose six hundred feet up the sea side of the Hill and ended at the edge of Grand View, the O’Dell estate. The grand, white-columned mansion sat back from the main road at the end of a drive lined on both sides by small bushes. Behind it and six hundred feet down, the Pacific Ocean stretched to the horizon.

It and the Gorman estate were the two grandest houses on the Hill.

A one-horse surrey was coming up the road from the strip of stores that serviced the families on the Hill. The driver was a powerfully built black man in his twenties, who spoke with an almost musical lilt. His name was Noah. Rumor had it that Shamus O’Dell had bought Noah’s mother at a slave market on one of the Caribbean islands. He had bought her as a housekeeper, not knowing she was pregnant. Her son had been raised by O’Dell and educated by his wife, Kate. Noah was fiercely loyal to the family, sometimes acting as a bodyguard for Shamus; sometimes watching over Delilah, who was O’Dell’s daughter and one of the three girls in the carriage; sometimes driving the family automobile, a German Daimler, which looked like a formal horse carriage powered by a gas engine and was the only automobile in the valley.

O’Dell never took the car down the hill, fearing the brakes might not hold or it would get mired in mud. So he showed off in it sticking to the broad, forested, five-mile-wide northern mesa, the Hill, where the families of fourteen tycoons lived, five appearing only on weekends. Noah proudly squired O’Dell along the horse trails that served as roads, taking him to the club where the rich men and their male out-of-town guests drank at the bar or played cards. On occasion, Noah drove Delilah to the two-story schoolhouse, where tutors taught the dozen or so children of the barons who lived there year-round.

Two of the girls in the surrey were facing Ben and Brodie as they reached the top of the cliff. The third girl was sitting opposite the other two, with her back to the boys.

When Noah saw the boys, he reined in his horse.

Delilah O’Dell, seventeen and the oldest of the three, already flaunted a sensuous and independent nature that would define her through the years. She was well developed for her age. Blazing red hair cascaded down over her shoulders and curled over her breasts. She ignored Ben, fixing her green eyes on Brodie.

“Looks like you’ve been rolling those horses in the mud,” she said haughtily.

Ann Harte, the girl sitting next to her, had just turned fifteen and was extremely shy. She giggled nervously, looked down, toyed with her purse, and murmured, “Hello.”

Brodie was staring at the girl with her back to the two riders. “Oh, Del,” she chastised, “that’s rude.” Then she turned and stared back at Brodie.

Isabel Hoffman was as fragile as Delilah was lusty. She would turn seventeen in two weeks. Jet-black braided hair hung down her back. Deep brown eyes stared softly from a face that had the quality of fine china. Sharp features accented high cheekbones. She was dressed in a white pinafore. She was always dressed in white or pastel, unlike Delilah, who favored bright, sometimes garish colors. Sometimes black, when she was feeling moody.

Today, Delilah was dressed in black.

The valley was owned by the JMC and Pacific, which O’Dell and Gorman had inherited when Jesse Crane had been gunned down. Shrewdly, Gorman had opted for a smaller share of the property-but his share completely encircled O’Dell’s. The Irishman could not develop his property without entry and exit rights through Gorman’s property and Gorman, knowing O’Dell’s plans for the future, refused to give them up.