A Congregation of Jackals Read online

  The longways dance had evolved into a wide circle of people clapping in time with Wilfreda’s up-tempo polka music. In the middle of the clearing were three dozen couples, including Lingham and Beatrice, who danced with each other like birds buffeted by a gale, circling, swatting and clasping each other, trying to make sense of the tempest. A few of the woman’s blonde curls came loose from the bun at the back of her head and her neckline dampened with sweat; she kicked out an inexorable riot upon the floor barely matched by her husband-to-be’s backward footwork. Oswell recalled the first time he had seen Lingham dance in Alabama and grinned at the memory.

  The ancient piano player raised the tempo and wove a few sinister notes into the melody. Oswell looked at Wilfreda and saw that her head was tilted back on her neck; her eyelids fluttered; her mouth moved as if she were speaking to somebody who hovered in the air directly above her. It seemed to him as if she were saying the word “murderers” over and over again.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Sheriff Ruminates (and Dances)

  T.W. watched his daughter and James exercise (and possibly exorcize) themselves in the center of the platform, sweaty illustrations of Wilfreda’s playing. He supposed that the devout couple used dancing as a surrogate for the physical passion they had thus far abstained from sharing.

  When Beatrice was little, her belief in a heavenly reunion with her deceased mother had helped her cope with the absence more than anything else. Consequently, no matter where they lived, T.W. took his little girl to church at least twice a week. The tales and parables had been deeply impressed upon his receptive daughter at an early age and made her a far more devout Christian than he ever was himself. T.W. could not help but make extrapolations regarding what all of this suppressed desire would result in once she was married . . .

  He did not like to think of his daughter that way, but her rapture on the dance platform told him more than he wanted to know.

  Meredith touched his bad hip and asked, “How does it feel now?” The widow’s fingertips went to the very perimeter of what was appropriate to caress on his plaid pants.

  “Better. I just need to be careful. When it starts to complain, I need to listen, even when a beautiful woman wants me to quadrille.”

  Meredith grinned at the compliment, pointed to James and asked, “Where did he learn to move like that?”

  “He was a pugilist. Footwork is important in that sport,” T.W. said, now uncertain as to how much he believed about what he knew of James’s past.

  “He certainly is enthusiastic.”

  T.W. nodded and looked back at the man who would be his son tomorrow. James tapped his feet in a quick shuffle, grabbed Beatrice’s hands and pulled her around; their laughter was near maniacal. Behind them, Richard Sterling lit a blush on Roland Taylor’s daughter’s face, though the New Yorker seemed at all times respectful. Godfrey Danford stood at the perimeter of the circle, beside Annie, each of them drinking punch.

  “Your girl can dance real good,” an old familiar voice said to T.W. He turned around and looked into the grinning face of Smiler and then over at Smith beside him.

  The sheriff clasped and heartily shook each man’s right hand.

  “I’m glad you fellas got out here,” T.W. said.

  “We promised we would. And tell us, where did you steal that angel from?” Smith said, pointing to Beatrice with his cane.

  “I raised her.”

  “Is she marrying the giant?” Smiler asked.

  “She is.”

  “What’s he do? Snatch birds out of trees? Swat clouds away?”

  “He’s a carpenter. A pretty good one too. You fellas keeping Arkansas safe?”

  Smiler said through his grin, “She behaves herself. The Indians over there’re all friendly now, so mostly we just ride around breaking up churlishness.”

  “Smiler’s got a squaw.”

  “You are a liar, Randall Smith. I just brung her some blankets and some cough syrup. Don’t mean I got no squaw.”

  “She gave you that necklace.”

  “That don’t mean anything. It’s just beads.”

  “Not to her. It means something, I told you.”

  “It don’t.”

  T.W. put his arm around Meredith and said, “Mrs. Evertson, this is Randall Smith and this is Randall Smiler. We used to marshal together in Arkansas a long time ago.”

  Smith clasped, lifted and kissed Meredith’s hand; Smiler elbowed him out of the way, took the same hand, wiped off the previous kiss and then deposited his own on the very same spot.

  T.W. noticed a couple of drops of blood on Smith’s boots and a spatter on Smiler’s left pant cuff. He was about to ask the marshals the source of the stains, when the door to the dancehall opened. T.W. looked over: Deputy Goodstead walked in, wearing far more red than a man should, and a lace tie.

  “Pardon me for a measure—I’ve got to talk to the deputy,” T.W. said.

  “Are you going to send him home to change into something less abrasive?” Meredith asked.

  “I should. I’ll be back soon.”

  T.W. circumnavigated the dance platform and strode toward the deputy, his left hip tight and aching.

  “Deputy.”

  The blank-faced Texan knew what uttering his title meant and said, “You got business.”

  “James’s friends.” T.W. pointed out and named Richard Sterling and Godfrey Danford, both at the edge of the dance platform. He surveyed the thick assemblage by the refreshments, made nearly opaque by cigar smoke, descried and marked Oswell Danford. The strong man stood in a dark corner eating a seed cake without looking at it; his sharp eyes surveyed the crowd and glanced through the front window, his mouth mechanically chewing.

  “They’ve been watchful since they got here—Oswell Danford especially. And they hesitated giving me their full names.”

  “You think they’ve done some darkness?”

  “They’ve done some darkness.”

  “Should I shoot them?”

  “Big Abe doesn’t like blood on his floor.”

  “I suppose I better not then. Want me to lock ’em up for eating too many candy apples? I bet I could scare up a witness who saw the fat one eat one hundred and nine.”

  “This isn’t the time to go leanin’ on strangers for things they might’ve done outside of Trailspur. We aren’t detectives.”

  “I never told you how I became one? It’s a great story.”

  “Just watch them—they seem to be expecting trouble. But don’t hassle them. They’re guests of James’s, even if I have my suspicions. You understand?”

  “Shoot them outside,” Goodstead said, but T.W. knew that he did not need to clarify himself, that the deputy understood the boundaries. Wilfreda’s right hand wove a brisk melody into the air, atop her left hand’s vitriolic tattoo.

  The sheriff looked over at Richard Sterling and Godfrey Danford; he looked over at Oswell Danford and saw that the man was staring directly back at him. The strong hard man, chewing his second seed cake, waved at T.W. The sheriff responded with an upraised hand.

  Goodstead remarked, “Get back to your widow before she finds another man to compliment that dress she’s barely got on. I’ll watch these miscreants.”

  T.W. said, “Thank you,” turned from the deputy and walked toward Meredith, who was conversing with Smith and Smiler about what subject he could not even begin to guess.

  Big Abe ascended his step ladder and called out, “I’ve just been informed that Mayor Warren John and his wife, Mrs. Heather John, have arrived, accompanied by their son, Deputy Kenneth John.” Wilfreda played a comical melody on her ivory that elicited laughs from many of the revelers.

  T.W. and the crowd turned to face the front of the dance hall. The double doors swung wide, admitting a cool dry breeze into the warm humid enclosure. Standing in the portal was Mayor Warren John, wearing a striped blue and gray suit over his square frame; his silver hair was neat and looked as if it had just been cut and washed; the
electric lights sparkled in his bulbous spectacles like captured stars. His wife, wearing a white and gray bell dress, firmly clasped his left arm—she had been sick for a long time and needed either a cane or her husband to get around Trailspur. She looked far older than her husband, even though she was a year his junior. Deputy Kenneth John, a pudgy twenty-seven-year-old wearing a blue checkered shirt with a black cravat and matching vest, closed the door behind his parents.

  The mayor and his wife plunged headlong into a sea of outstretched hands, which the politico deftly clasped and shook with vigor while his attached wife smiled and nodded pleasantly. Deputy Kenneth John walked over to T.W. and shook his right hand.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. How is your mother doing?”

  Kenneth John looked over at the frail woman clutching the mayor and said, “Better than last month.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  The deputy pulled a flask of whiskey from his slacks, twisted off the top and sucked a mouthful from it.

  “Off duty,” he said, preemptively.

  “Enjoy yourself. Tonight’s a celebration,” T.W. replied, uninterested in lecturing him this evening. Three years ago Kenneth John was a solid deputy with as much promise as Goodstead had now, but then his brother got killed in Omaha by a jealous woman, and shortly after that, his mother became ill with something each doctor diagnosed differently. For the last couple of years, Kenneth drank, was moody and was tardy; he retained his title solely because his father was the mayor, but T.W. never included him in anything important. Before much more time passed, the sheriff intended to relieve him of his star.

  T.W. looked at his daughter and James, a storm of limbs upon the dance floor, and then over at Meredith (who still conversed with Smith and Smiler), and then at the Albens, who had journeyed all the way from Colorado, and then at the mayor, who helped his frail wife into a cushioned chair Big Abe stood behind, and then over at his cousin Robert, who was putting out more funnel cake, and then over at bright red Goodstead. A warmth suffused the sheriff and he let it. This was not a night to fret over strangers or ruminate upon Deputy Kenneth John’s ineptitude, this was the night before he turned his daughter over to James Lingham, and he should enjoy and celebrate it with her. Everything else, all of his troubles and suspicions, could wait until after the wedding.

  He walked across the hall, shook hands with Mayor Warren John (who poked a gift cigar into his pocket), kissed Mrs. Heather John on the cheek (she always smelled like roses), slapped Judge Higgins on the back and pulled Meredith onto the platform, where they danced right alongside Beatrice and James, the widow’s deftly-tailored dress threatening at all times to reveal things he very much wanted to see.

  T.W.’s left hip complained; he ignored it.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Spilling the Future

  Wilfreda paraded an ambulatory melody before the denizens of the dancehall. Dicky pulled Tara Taylor close to him; he allowed his breath to warm the side of her neck while they danced a simple three-step pattern.

  “My goodness,” the redheaded woman said, a scarlet blush illuminating her cheeks, nose and forehead.

  Dicky placed the palm of his hand upon the satin that covered her left hip.

  He asked, “May I?”

  “You are.”

  “I am,” Dicky said, nodding. He applied a little more pressure to the fleshy curve of her hip; she swallowed dryly. His sensitive fingertips were able to divine the stitching of the underwear beneath her dress. He did not look away from her.

  Whenever the handsome New Yorker engaged a timid woman (Tara Taylor was one, though she was not as mousy as Godfrey’s girl), he always behaved as he had this evening—making a small physical advance and afterward asking if what he had done was acceptable. It was harder for a shy woman like Tara to deny his hand upon her hip when she already felt the warmth and strength and suggestion of it there. Dicky (greatly) enjoyed convincing women to do things they ordinarily would not do, but he did not at all enjoy copulating with a remorseful woman. By the time he entered his companion, she should feel as if she were receiving a rare gift of great value.

  He leaned forward. Tara’s footing lagged momentarily behind the music.

  With warm, moist air that he summoned from the depths of his lungs, Dicky whispered into the woman’s small ear, “You are a lovely dancer.” He let his clean-shaven cheek glance across hers as he drew away. The fleeting contact thrilled her.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “James told me that the women of Trailspur were something to behold.” He looked at her in such a way that he did not need to complete his statement with words. A blush rose to her cheeks for the thirty-seventh time during the last two hours.

  Wilfreda augmented her chords; the air thickened with cigar smoke; Dicky drew closer to Tara. She looked away, cogitating. She wanted to say something to him, something she had almost said twice earlier. From the effort it took her to produce the words, Dicky knew that it was something he did not want to hear.

  “My cousin went with a man from the East. From Boston.”

  “Did she?”

  “She did. He was an Italian. He looked a little bit like you. Talked like you talk and was . . . he was confident like you are.”

  Clearly, she wanted him to ask how the affair had gone, but he did not make the prompted inquiry. He knew from the way she spoke of this Italian that things had not gone well.

  “He told her a lot of things, made her some promises and then just disappeared.”

  “I am not Italian. And I am from New York, not Boston.”

  “I just wanted to tell you about that. In case you wonder why my mother’s been lookin’ over here with the raven eye. Or why I might want things to go slow.”

  If Dicky had time—he estimated two weeks, possibly three—he knew that he could woo this woman. Her barriers—her naturally timid disposition, her inexperience with men (though he doubted she was a virgin) and her cousin’s bad experience with the Italian—could be winnowed away with words, direct gazes, admissions of his own shortcomings and gradually escalated physical contact . . . but Dicky did not have time for these things (and this cute, simple mouse was not worth all of that effort even if he did).

  When Wilfreda changed the key of her continuous playing, the New Yorker excused himself to go to the outbuilding. He glanced over at Godfrey (who tore off a piece of funnel cake and gave it to Annie), nodded at the man and retreated with apologies to Tara from the dance floor. He would not dance with her again.

  When he was three yards from the door, Oswell approached him and secretively slid a gun into his belt before a single word was said.

  The rancher leaned in close and whispered, “Be subtle. Some fellow the sheriff talked to is watchin’ us now. A deputy maybe.” Dicky straightened his maroon bow tie and then adjusted his brown suit jacket to cover over the revolver.

  “They gutted two of our horses,” Oswell said.

  Dicky processed the comment.

  “I got rid of the carcasses. I’ll watch after you through the window if you’re going to the backbuilding.”

  “I am leaving. I’ll see you back at the hotel—tonight or tomorrow morning.”

  Oswell looked at Dicky, his weathered face wrinkled with concern.

  “I’m not running off. There is something I need to do.”

  “We need you tomorrow.”

  “I will be there.”

  Dicky shook Oswell’s hand and walked toward the door; he glanced back at the dance platform and saw that Godfrey was holding Annie’s hand and grinning.

  The night wind threw a chill deep into Dicky’s bones that made him hunch forward. He entered the narrow outbuilding and relieved himself (he held his breath the entire time, as he always did in such fetid containers) and then walked up the avenue toward Judge Higgins’s Mighty Fine Saloon, or simply—The Gavel. The New Yorker strode in the middle of the dirt road, away from the shadows that congealed
on either side; he looked into each patch of darkness as if it might contain a gun with the bullet that would conclude his forty-four years of breathing.

  Dicky reached the saloon, ascended the steps, traversed the deck, raked the soles of his shoes on the boot scrape, pushed past the swinging half doors and walked into the carpeted enclosure. The clacking of bagatelle balls startled him more than he would have expected.

  He walked toward the somewhat masculine curly-haired brunette who tended the bar.

  She turned to him and said, “The shindy is at Big Abe’s Dancehall of Trailspur, just up the block. I’m closing down and going over soon.”

  “I just came from there.”

  “Are you hunting for something stronger than Abe’s rum punch? We’ve got good whiskey here and some bourbon from Kentucky.”

  “I wanted to inquire after the location of Queenie’s.”

  The barmaid did her best to conceal her distaste when she responded, “Go back up the avenue, make a right after Ed’s Barbershop and go along a bit until you see a building where the second story is painted purple. At night they put out a lantern and a placard that says ‘Queenie’s,’ so you can’t miss it.” She looked at him and added, “If you can read.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and put a coin on the table.

  Dicky ascended the narrow wooden stairs to Queenie’s, his eyes on the purple lantern that shone on the second-story landing. He surmounted the steps and raised his hand to knock upon the door, but the wood retreated before his knuckles made contact.

  A plump madam in a silk dress and an impressionistic amount of mascara stood in the portal and appraised Dicky for a moment.

  “Are you in Trailspur for the wedding?’

  “I am.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Dicky.”

  She grinned and nodded her head. “Of course you are. I’m Queenie. Please come in.” The madam walked him into a carpeted room with red muslins, pink lace curtains over the windows and two lavender divans. She said, “Ladies, we have a guest,” and motioned for Dicky to seat himself. Despite his myriad experiences with women, he had never once entered a brothel or paid for companionship; he found the situation somewhat awkward.