Blackjack

13

“He may have,” she said. “I know he is capable.”

“Who are you talking about?” Virgil said.

“I thought it important to impart this to you before you unscrupulously hunt him down,” she said. “And unceremoniously kill him. But then again, he may have done it, he might deserve the medicine, I don’t know.”

“Who?” I said.

She looked back to me, then to Virgil.

“Bill, of course,” she said. “Boston Bill Black. The man you are looking for.”

“Who did he or didn’t he kill?” Virgil said.

“The woman in Denver,” she said.

Virgil looked to me, then back to her.

“What woman in Denver?” Virgil said.

“I didn’t get her name,” she said.

“No?” I said.

“No.”

She looked me in the eye, then looked to the two cowboys that were gawking up at her like kids mesmerized watching a puppet show.

“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.”