Blood Duel

Chapter 9

“Letters have always been chicken scratches to me,” Jeeter Frost said as he stared hard at the McGuffey’s Reader. “You say this one is an e?”

“That it is, Mr. Frost,” Ernestine Prescott said. Her students had long since been dismissed for the day. Outside the schoolhouse, the gray shroud of descending twilight blanketed the prairie. “It is the fifth letter of the alphabet, after d, which you have already learned, and before f.”

“Sort of looks like a tadpole, don’t it?” Jeeter asked with a grin.

“Doesn’t it,” Ernestine corrected, and allowed herself a grin of her own. “Yes, it does, somewhat.”

Jeeter looked up from his desk. He was small enough that he fit, but it was a tight squeeze. “I can’t thank you enough, ma’am, for helping me.”

“Nonsense, Mr. Frost,” Ernestine said. She had on the prettiest of the three dresses she owned, and had washed her hair. “I am an educator. It is my duty to enlighten the ignorant.”

“That’s sure enough me, ma’am,” Jeeter said, nodding. “Ignorant as sin. I don’t know much about anything except Colts. That’s all I am. An ignorant man, good with a Colt.”

“You are too hard on yourself,” Ernestine said. She stood beside her desk, a ramrod, her hands primly folded. “In the first place, we are all of us ignorant to some degree. In the second place, I can’t believe the only skill you have is killing.”

“It’s more of a talent, ma’am,” Jeeter said. “Like the talent you have for teaching. You are awful good at it.”

“Why, thank you,” Ernestine said, unfolding her hands and then folding them again. “You deserve some of the credit. You are an excellent student.”

“Me, ma’am?” Jeeter said, and laughed.

“You also have excellent manners,” Ernestine remarked, “which I must admit I did not expect.”

Jeeter self-consciously ran a hand over his oily hair. His hat was on a peg by the door and he cast a yearning glance in its direction before saying, “My folks take the credit there. I can be almost a gentleman when I put my mind to it.”

“You have impressed me,” Ernestine said. Suddenly coughing, she said, “Suppose we get back to your studies. Practice writing the e, oh, twenty times.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Jeeter picked up his pencil. He hesitated, the tip of his tongue sticking from the corner of his mouth, then painstakingly imitated the e in the McGuffey’s Reader. When he was done, he held the paper so she could see. “Look! I done it!”

“You did it,” Ernestine corrected. “Now write it nineteen more times.” As he bent to the task she turned and walked to the window. It would take him a while. He did his best, but he was as slow as a turtle. The sprinkling of lights in Dodge reminded her night had fallen. She should tell him to leave. She had her reputation to think of. A schoolmarm must be above reproach, and here she was, alone with a man. She walked back to her desk and sat in her chair. She did not tell him to leave.

“I really am doing good, ma’am?”

His question surprised her. Not that he asked it, but his sincerity. Ernestine had never met anyone who yearned to learn as keenly as he did. “It has only been three days and already you are up to e. Yes, I would say you are doing quite well, Mr. Frost.”

Jeeter bent to the sheet of paper again. “You can call me Jeeter if you want, ma’am. It’s just the two of us here.”

Ernestine glanced up sharply. But there had been no hint of impropriety in his tone. “And you may call me Ernestine if you so desire.”

“You are sure I won’t get you into trouble, coming here as I do?”

“That is the fifth time you have asked, and no, you will not,” Ernestine assured him. “Who I teach on my own time is none of anyone’s affair.” She laughed lightly. “Besides, Dodge has another matter to keep tongues wagging. From what I hear, there has been a steady stream of otherwise sensible citizens traveling to Coffin Varnish to admire your handiwork.”

Jeeter looked up, the tip of his tongue sticking out. “How’s that again, ma’am?”

“Haven’t you heard? The four men you killed are on display. They are quite the attraction. At a dollar a head, someone is making a lot of money.”

“Are you joshing me, ma’am?” Jeeter was astounded. He had been avoiding human contact, except for coming to the schoolhouse for his lessons, and spent his nights camped out on the plain.

“Why, no, Mr. Frost, I am not,” Ernestine said. “You sound upset.”

“Wouldn’t you be, ma’am?” Jeeter came out of the desk, or tried to. He had to wriggle some to unfurl to his full height. “I reckon as how I better pay Coffin Varnish a visit.”

“Not right this minute, surely?” Ernestine said. “You have only been here half an hour and we agreed on an hour’s lesson each day.”

“Yes, ma’am, but—”

“But nothing, Mr. Frost.” Ernestine got up and came over and put her hand on his arm. “Kindly retake your seat.”

Jeeter could not remember the last time a woman touched him. A woman he had not paid to touch him, that is. He quickly sat and picked up the pencil. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

Ernestine returned to her desk. Her hand was hot where she had placed it on his arm, and she rubbed it against her hip. But it only became hotter. “Why would you want to go there, if you do not mind my asking?”

“I shot those men,” Jeeter said. “I should have a say in what’s done with them. And I say the decent thing to do is to bury them.”

Clasping her hands behind her, Ernestine composed herself. He was constantly saying things that surprised her, and this was one of them. “That is quite noble of you, Mr. Frost.”

“Shucks, ma’am, I wouldn’t know noble from buffalo chips,” Jeeter told her. “I just know I don’t want nobody I shot made a spectacle of.”

“Anyone you shot,” Ernestine said. “Or perhaps someone, depending on whether you intended the singular or the plural.”

Jeeter set down the pencil. “When you talk like that, Ernestine, my brain goes numb.”

Ernestine smiled. It was the first time he had called her by her first name. “What will you do if you go to Coffin Varnish?”

“Ask them, polite-like, to bury the bodies,” Jeeter said. “And if they refuse, I’ll ask again, only not so polite.”

“I imagine the whole issue will soon be moot,” Ernestine commented.

“What do cows have to do with it?” Jeeter asked.

“Cows?” Ernestine repeated, and giggled. She covered her mouth with her hand but could not stop.

“What is so all-fired hilarious?”

With an effort Ernestine smothered another giggle, and replied, “Moot is not the sound cows make. In the sense I used it, I simply indicated that going to Coffin Varnish would be pointless.” His confusion was so apparent that she added, “The deceased have become rather ripe. So much so, yesterday’s newspaper mentioned that the bodies were to be buried sometime today.”

“Oh.” Jeeter still felt an urge to ride to Coffin Varnish and give them a piece of his mind. “Then I reckon we might as well keep on with my lessons. If you want to, that is.”

“Mr. Frost, if I were not teaching you I would be grading papers, and I consider teaching you the more pleasant of the two.” Ernestine felt herself blush. That had not come out precisely as she intended, although, God help her, it was the truth.

Jeeter was so flabbergasted that for a few seconds he could not get his vocal cords to work. Finally he said, “That’s awful nice of you. I’ll try to make you proud of me.”

“Let us take a look at f,” Ernestine said.

Chester Luce rapped his hammer on the blanket on the counter and announced, “This meeting of the Coffin Varnish Town Council is hereby called to order.”

Present in the general store were Chester and his wife, Win, Placido and Arturo, Dolph Anderson, and Minimi Giorgio.

“Two in one week,” Winifred Curry said from a chair near the pickle barrel. “The world is liable to come to an end.”

“You will treat these proceedings with the dignity they deserve,” Chester said, and tried to square his round shoulders. “Now then, the purpose of this meeting is to discuss those corpses.”

“There’s dignity for you.”

Adolphina came around the counter and loomed over Win. “That will be enough out of you. This is serious business.”

“We buried them an hour ago, thank God,” Win said. “What is there left to talk about?”

Chester answered, “The money we made.” He pulled a leather poke from an inner pocket and opened it. “All told, it comes to three hundred and forty-seven dollars.”

Silence fell, until Dolph Anderson recovered enough to ask in barely understandable English, “How much that be again, Mr. Luce?”

“Three hundred and forty-seven dollars. It is not as much as I hoped, but it is nothing to sneeze at.”

“You wanted more?” Win marveled.

“A lot more,” Chester said. “Last I heard, Dodge has grown to about seven hundred people. Not even half paid us a visit, since some of the three hundred and forty-seven came from folks who came here twice.”

“Even so,” Win said, and whistled.

Chester began counting money out on the counter, making piles. “Let’s see. As we agreed, here is fifty dollars for you, Win, and fifty for the missus and me, and fifty for Dolph, and fifty more for Minimi, and fifty for Placido and Arturo—”

“Fifty each,” Winifred said.

“I don’t recall agreeing to that.”

Win smacked the pickle barrel. “Damn it, Chester. They kept those bodies in their livery longer than they should have, just to please you. Now their stable stinks to high heaven.”

“If I give each of them fifty, that will only leave forty-seven for the town treasury,” Chester protested.

“Which is forty-seven more than it’s had in a month of Sundays,” Winifred argued. “Fair is fair. Placido and Arturo both earned equal shares.”

“My wife doesn’t get an equal share and it was her idea,” Chester reminded him.

“Give it to them,” Adolphina said.

“Pardon me?”

“You heard me. Win is right. If anyone earned full shares, they did. Fifty to each and it is a shame we can’t give them more.”

“If you truly want me to,” Chester said.

“Do it.”

Reluctantly, Chester counted out another pile. The rest went into a tin on a shelf behind the counter.

Minimi hugged his share to him, saying, “Grazie, signore. Grazie. Lei e molto gentile.”

“Speak English, you silly Italian,” Chester said. “You are in America now.”

“I thank you, sir,” Minimi said, correcting his oversight. “You are very kind. I wish it was more.”

“Don’t we all,” Chester said.

Placido and Arturo came forward to accept their shares. “I, too, would like to thank you, Mayor Luce,” the former remarked. “It will take us a month to air out the stable, but it was worth it.”

“If not for the smell, we could have had those four on display until they rotted away,” Chester said.

“Smell and rot sort of go hand in hand,” Winifred commented.

Jokingly, Chester declared, “It is too bad we don’t know where Jeeter Frost got to or we could invite him back to kill someone else.”

Adolphina was thoughtfully fingering the tin. At her husband’s comment, she swiveled around and said, “That is an idea worth pursuing.”

“I was kidding, dearest.”

“I wasn’t.”

Winifred and the rest all looked at Chester, who shrugged and shook his head.

“The first time was a fluke. We can’t have people shot down on a regular basis,” he said.

“Why not?” Adolphina demanded. “Think of how much money we could make. People would come from all over the territory, not just Dodge. We could make five hundred dollars a month. Maybe a thousand.”

“Have you been drinking?” Win asked.

“This be joke, ja?” Dolph said.

Adolphina ignored them. “I have given it a lot of thought. The possibilities are appealing.”

Placido had removed his sombrero when he entered the store. Now he wagged it at her, saying, “What do you propose, senorita?”

“That we place notices in as many newspapers as we can with the money we have left,” Adolphina said. “We will invite every badman, curly wolf, and gun shark who is so inclined to come to Coffin Varnish and settle their differences.”

“That is insane,” Win said. “We wouldn’t be able to step outside for all the lead flying around.”

Adolphina enlightened him. “Not if we arrange it so they only shoot each other at specific times of the day. We will charge for the privilege, then charge for people to view the losers. That way we make money at both ends. Lots and lots of money.”

“My God. You are serious!”

“Never more so,” Adolphina said. “It is high time Coffin Varnish lived up to its name. If, in the process, we make a lot of money, where is the harm?

“You can’t spend money if you are dead,” Winifred said. “No one has ever done anything as harebrained as this. Forget it, for all our sakes, or calamity will come calling.”

Adolphina smiled. “Let us place the notice in the newspaper and find out.”