Роберт Паркер - Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack

“You two,” she said. “Leave.”

The two cowhands looked at each other, wondering what they did wrong.

“Now,” she said, and clapped her hands. “Before I come over there and drag you out by your ears.”

They got up and walked out like they actually did do something wrong.

“Why don’t you tell us what you know,” Virgil said.

She looked back to Timothy and tipped her head to the door.

“You, too,” she said.

“Oh, you bet, Mike,” Timothy said.

Timothy moved from behind the bar and hurried out the front door. Then she took the bottle from the bar and moved to a close-by table.

“Please,” she said.

We sat with her at the table.

She looked back and forth between Virgil and me for a moment, never looking at Skinny Jack. He scooted away from the table a bit and slumped in his chair, doing his best to act like he wasn’t there.

“You may wonder what a woman of my stature is doing in a place like this,” she said.

Virgil solemnly gazed at her with his hands resting on the table.

“I am no whore,” she said.

“Didn’t say you were,” Virgil said.

“No, but you were thinking it.”

“Just tell us what you know.”

“You do not think he showed up here in beautiful Benson City by choice, do you?”

“You know him?” Virgil said.

She nodded. Virgil looked to me, then back to her.

“How?” Virgil said.

“He knew my husband...” she said. “And he... knew me, too, I suppose you can say.”

She looked at Virgil for a long moment, then nodded toward the front window.

“Out there, just over that rise beyond that noisy windmill,” she said. “There is a grave. And in the grave there is a man that at one point in time was my husband. Two winters ago, we came this way from Santa Fe, heading for Yaqui, where we were planning to catch the train that was meant to take us all the way to Philadelphia, where my husband, George, was hired as an engineer for a new steam company. He was determined to work hard and change his ways and I believed him, but he was shot and killed.”

She pointed to a spot on the floor.

“Shot and killed right here in this very saloon. He died right over there. That is what is left of him, his dried blood there. I keep thinking that one day, after enough traffic from sodbusters, drifters, cowboys, drunks, and weary travelers moves across that stain, that it will eventually disappear and I will forget about him. But of course forgetting is hard and, well, memory can sometimes be tricky business.”

“Was it Black?” Virgil said. “Black shoot him?”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said.

“Who?”

“It does not matter,” she said.

“No?” I said.

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “Not anymore. It does not.”

“And you stayed here?” I said.

She nodded.

“The stage that brought me here left that day without me.”

“I buried my husband and have been in this place ever since. I don’t completely remember just why I stayed really, I just had no place to go. Two years now. I bought this saloon with the last money we had, and currently I just watch all the travelers come and go with their dreams. I think of this place as somewhere between Heaven and Hell, a halfway stop of sorts. A reckoning happens here, it’s a way station of Revelation.”

She smiled a wistful, reflective smile.

“I’m a midwife, you could say. Truths are conveyed here and I know whose dreams will come true and whose won’t. I know what truths travelers carry with them... One day, when the blood is gone, I will move on.”

“It wasn’t Black who killed your husband?” Virgil said.

“I told you he did not.”

“You telling the truth?” Virgil said.

She looked at Virgil without blinking...

“No.”

“So he did?” Virgil said.

“My husband had it coming,” she said. “He pulled on him.”

“You also told us memory can be tricky business,” Virgil said. “So what is the real story?”

“Bill Black’s horse went lame. He shot his horse and he got on the same stage I was on with George. They became quick friends, and to my disliking, they gambled together on the trip. My husband liked to gamble. For the most part he was good at it, unless he was gambling against Bill. He found that out rather fast.”

“And the two of you?” I said. “Bill and you?”

“What about us?”

She looked at me for a steady moment, then smiled some and nodded.

“Yes... as I mentioned, I knew him, too, you see. I got to know him, too... and I liked him, very much...”

She paused, looked away, then said, “He is a dangerous sort.”

Virgil looked at me.

“Since he has been near here, over in Appaloosa, he has been here to see me on occasion. More than once... always thrilling, we have a special friendship.”

She took a drink of whiskey, set the glass back on the table, and glided her finger around the rim.

“I sleep with who or whom I want to sleep with, when I want to sleep with them,” she said.

She looked up and smiled at Virgil.

“But of course him coming here this time was very different,” she said.

“Different how?” Virgil said.

“Well, that is obvious, is it not, Marshal?” she said. “He showed up here with other men, some no-good men, and with you after him, hunting him down to kill him.”

“Not hunting him down to kill him,” I said.

“He know we are after him?” Virgil said.

“Suspected,” she said with a nod.

Skinny Jack looked up at me a little, then lowered his eyes.

“And I personally abide by that impression as to why he was here for such a short while,” she said with a smile. “I would hate to think I was the reason for him moving on in haste... I would say it concerns me that he is on the run, but frankly nothing truly concerns me anymore. I will also say, since he was in Appaloosa, so near, I was hopeful that he might come back over here someday and perhaps stay awhile. Or take me away, save me, and help me to forget. But that is, or was, wishful thinking, and now there is every reason to believe he will die. Just like my husband. He will be killed.”

“When the time comes he will have a choice,” Virgil said.

“Providing he makes the right choice?” she said.

“Where is he?” Virgil said.

She looked down to her hands resting on the table. She smiled a little and then looked back up at Virgil’s eyes.

“I’ve told you,” she said. “Gone, just gone.”

“And the other two,” I said. “What about them?”

She shook her head.

“I do not know about them. Gone, too, I assume,” she said. “I saw them for a brief time. Bill told them to leave here and he would collect them when he was ready to leave. They went over to the girls across the way and thankfully stayed there... I assume.”

“When did Bill leave?” I said.

“Early this morning. I awoke and he was gone.”

Virgil nodded and flatly stared at her for a long moment, then shifted in his chair and placed his elbow on the table and leveled his eyes at her.

“He didn’t mention the Denver woman’s name to you?”

“No.”

“What else can you tell us?” Virgil said.

She shook her head.

“Nothing,” she said.

“I don’t suppose you’d be too inclined to share where he might be headed?”

“Inclination aside,” she said, “I have no idea, Marshal.”

Virgil looked at her, steady.

She looked back at him, a little steadier.

“What, and why did he mention anything to you about a woman in Denver at all?” he said.

She shrugged.

“I don’t know.”