Blood Duel

Chapter 19

It was a warm night. The breeze that had picked up from out of the northwest did little to alleviate the heat of the day. The sky was clear, the stars a sparkling host shining benignly down on Kansas.

“It is a night made for romance,” Adolphina Luce remarked.

Chester Luce was so shocked he nearly tripped over his own feet. They were taking a rare stroll down Coffin Varnish’s dusty street. He had been watching out for horse, pig, and chicken droppings, and glanced up in bewilderment. “Did I hear you right, my dear?” He could not remember the last time his wife had been in a romantic mood. There had been their wedding night, of course, and five or six times after that. It got so that he wearied of waiting for her to say yes, and stopped hinting.

“Romance,” Adolphina confirmed, her usual hard tones softened. “A girl thinks of romance when she is happy.”

The shocks kept coming. Chester never thought of her as a girl. Not as old and as big as she was. A woman, yes, a bear, often, but she had given up any pretense at girlish ways long before she met him. And to hear her say she was happy was enough to convince him he must be dreaming. But no, a pile of horse droppings made his nose want to curl in on itself, and no dream ever did that. “I am glad you are happy,” he said. “Was it Gemma’s meal?” They had been invited to supper at the Giorgios’, another first. Gemma had cooked traditional Italian fare, with lots of pasta and thick sauce and meat rolled into balls, and it had been delicious. Much more so than anything his wife ever cooked. Her food tended to be bland and unappetizing. Some nights, he had to force himself to have three helpings.

“No, it is not that. Who can stand all that garlic she uses? And those brats of her always underfoot. If I were her, I would take a board to their backsides. That would cure them.”

Chester had considered the boys well behaved. Although the oldest, Matteo, had made an unfortunate remark to the effect that Adolphina was the first woman he ever met with a mustache.

“Things are going nice for once. A girl is happy when things go nice. When they go the way she wants them to go.”

“We sure had a lot of people come to view Paunch Stevens,” Chester said. “We made more money off him than we did off that first bunch.”

“There will be more,” Adolphina said. “A lot more. I can feel it in my bones. I feel something else, too.” She squeezed his arm.

It had never occurred to Chester that money made women romantic. The revelation put his brain in a whirl.

“That newspaperman promised to give us copies of the next edition of the Times,” Adolphina mentioned. “The edition in which he is writing about us.”

“I just hope the article is favorable,” Chester said. In politics, press that praised was everything.

“He promised it would be. He said not to worry, that he is on our side, that he will write about us so people are on our side, too.”

“When did he say that?” Chester asked. “He did not say it to me.”

“To me,” Adolphina said. “When I had him up for coffee. You were busy showing the body and giving a speech at the livery.”

Chester was not so sure he liked the idea of his wife and the journalist alone in their parlor. Then he looked at her and his jealously evaporated. “It is obliging of him.”

“Oh, he is thinking of himself, make no mistake,” Adolphina said. “Newspapers all over have been picking up his reports on Coffin Varnish. He says we are the talk of the country. Can you imagine?”

“It is the killing, not us.”

“No. It is us, letting folks kill, that has everyone astir. We are doing something no one has ever done before. A few more shootings and we will be famous.”

“Sure we will,” Chester said, and laughed.

Adolphina stopped and turned him so he faced her. “You begin to worry me. Can it be you do not see the opportunity being handed to us? I would hate to think I married a dunce.”

Worried her romantic mood was waning, Chester said, “Have I ever let you down?”

“More times than I can count,” Adolphina said. “But that is neither here nor there. What matters now is that you seize the moment and use this new fame of ours to good advantage.”

“We will have more money than we have had in years,” Chester predicted, and was horrified when she gave him her look that could wilt a rock.

“Oh, Chester. How you do disappoint. I am not talking about the money, although, yes, the money is considerable. I am talking about long term. I am talking about you rising in the world. I am proud of you being mayor, but mayor is not all there is.”

“You are?” Chester was under the impression she had been distinctly underwhelmed by his being elected.

“You have served Coffin Varnish long and well, or as well as you are able,” Adolphina said. “But there are bigger political arenas. There is state government, there is the federal government.”

“You can’t mean—”

“Think, Chester, think. Fame is money in the bank to politicians. It is votes on election day. Why be a big fish in a little pond when you can be a big fish in a big pond? When you can parley the fame from these killings into state or national office?”

“You are serious, by God.”

“Never more so. If that newspaperman does as he promised, everyone in Kansas will hear about you. You could run for state senator. Later, you can run for U.S. senator.”

A keg of powder went off in Chester’s head. She was right, as usual. The possibilities were spectacularly grand. “Or I could run for Congress.”

“No, no, forget the House. They are a nest of chipmunks. They chatter a lot but never do much. The Senate is where the power is, the power and the money. Become a United States senator and your future, and our fortune, is assured.”

A rare warmth spread through Chester. “You care about my career?”

“Of course, stupid. The higher you rise, the better for both of us. For you, power and prestige. For me, power and a mansion and a carriage and servants to do the cooking and the mending.”

“Servants cost money,” Chester carped.

“A United States senator can afford them. A senator can afford anything.” Adolphina smiled wistfully. “We can dine out every night. We can travel. Senator Chester Luce. How does that sound?”

Chester was intoxicated by her brilliance. “Oh, Fina,” he said, using his pet name for her. She had warned him never to do it in public or she would slap him, but she didn’t slap him.

“I might be getting ahead of myself, but in time, who knows? You could go beyond senator.”

“What is there beyond?” Chester asked. The answer struck him with the force of a hammer blow. “Oh, you can’t mean that.”

“Why can’t I? If Grant can get voted in, why not you? You aren’t much shorter and fatter. Sure, he won the Civil War, and that made him famous, but what else had he done? Fame is the key. Fame is how you rise above the common herd to lord it over them.”

Chester’s head filled with visions of the White House, of him addressing a joint session of Congress, of him picking a bevy of pretty secretaries. “Adolphina, I am impressed. I never knew you were such a deep thinker.”

“One of us has to be.”

∗ ∗ ∗

Miles to the south another couple strolled arm in arm under the twinkling stars.

Ernestine Prescott was giddy with glee. She felt young again. The years had been stripped away and she was no longer a spinster teacher. She was a girl in love, ablaze with life and vitality. Then Jeeter Frost threw a bucket of water on her inner fire.

“I don’t feel right about this.”

“About us?” Inwardly Ernestine trembled, afraid he had changed his mind about loving her.

“About us going off together.”

Ernestine stopped. “Oh.”

Jeeter was trying hard to be sensitive to her feelings. He did not want to upset her again. Their misunderstanding in the schoolhouse had taught him that she was not always thinking what he thought she was thinking. “I don’t feel right about you giving up your job.”

“Oh!” Ernestine said again, brightening. “I can always find another. There are not enough teachers to fill the need.”

“I still feel guilty,” Jeeter said. Here he was, taking her away from everything she knew, from the security and comfort that came of being a highly respected member of the community.

“If I don’t, you shouldn’t.” Ernestine touched his cheek. His stubble tickled her fingertips. “I am doing this of my own free will. You must remember that.”

“It don’t help much.”

“Doesn’t,” Ernestine corrected, and smoothed her dress. “Now then. Our first order of business is the justice of the peace. I happen to know that Mr. Dundleman, on Fifth Street, is a justice. His grandson attends my school. He is a widower and he lives alone, so we can slip in and out without disturbing anyone else. Then we will go to my boardinghouse and you can help me pack. By midnight we can be on our way.”

“That’s not right,” Jeeter said.

“What isn’t? Disturbing Mr. Dundleman so late?”

“No, riding off across the prairie in the middle of the night,” Jeeter said. “We should wait until morning.”

“Wait where? At the boardinghouse? I daresay my landlady would be scandalized. At a hotel? The marshal and the sheriff might want words with you, and it is best we avoid them.” Ernestine shook her head. “No, if we leave by midnight, we should reach Coffin Varnish about the middle of the night.”

“Coffin Varnish?”

“They don’t have a lawman. They know you there, and according to the newspaper, you did them a favor killing those Blights.”

“There is nothing in that fly speck but a saloon, a livery, and a store,” Jeeter recalled. “No place for us to stay.”

“Wrong,” Ernestine said. “Today’s newspaper mentioned that they cleaned out an empty building so people who came to view Paunch Stevens could spend the night if they wanted.”

“And you want us to spend the night there?”

“Why not?” Ernestine rejoined. “We will sleep in late, then head west. In a month we can be in California.”

“You have it all worked out,” Jeeter marveled. It unnerved him a little, her being so smart, and all.

“I like to work things out before I take the first step,” Ernestine mentioned. “I am a teacher, after all, and teachers, by their nature, are thinkers.”

“I have a puny thinker, myself,” Jeeter said. “It never has done me much good.”

“Education and discipline, my husband to be,” Ernestine said gaily. “They are the keys to a happy life.” Clamping his arm in hers, she wheeled and strode briskly toward the lights and noise of Dodge.

Uneasiness crept over Jeeter. Although the newspaper made the shootings in Coffin Varnish out to be self-defense, the law wanted to question him. The sheriff had been quoted as saying he did not approve of leather slappers riding into his county and shooting folks. “We have to watch out for tin stars.”

“Avoiding them should not be difficult. At this time of night they are on Front Street, visiting saloons and bawdy houses under the pretext of doing their job.”

Jeeter chuckled. “Pretext, huh? We might need to find me a dictionary if I am to savvy half of what you say.”

Ernestine grinned and replied, “As it happens I own several. You may use them whenever you want. Once we say our vows, what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine.”

“I don’t have a whole lot,” Jeeter told her. “My revolver, my horse, the clothes on my back, that is about it.”

“I do not own a great deal, either. My clothes, my books, a few pots and pans. I never bothered to buy furniture since my room at the boardinghouse came furnished.”

“How many books and pots, exactly?” Jeeter envisioned the need for a pack animal.

“Oh, I should say no more than sixty volumes and half a dozen cooking utensils.”

“Sixty!” Jeeter exclaimed. “You have your own library.” Some might weigh a pound or more. It definitely called for a packhorse.

“Many are reference works I use when I teach,” Ernestine revealed. “Some are novels I am fond of. Mary Shelley, for instance. I just love Frankenstein. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is another of my favorites. Hawthorne, and his The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables. Goodness, how that man can write. And let us not forget Poe and Dickens and Charlotte Brontë and her Jane Eyre.”

“Jane who?” Jeeter had never heard of any of them. Suddenly the gulf between his world and hers filled him with dread. “All I know are pistols and horses,” he said glumly.

“About which I know next to nothing,” Ernestine said. “You will teach me about them and I will teach you about books.”

“I am getting the better of the deal.”

“Say that again after we have lived together a while.”

They were almost to a side street that would take them into Dodge when a rider came out of it and spurred his mount in their direction.

In the pale starlight the badge on his vest was plainly visible.