Virgil looked around the room for a moment, then nodded slightly.
“Grand,” she said, then looked to the bartender. “Set them up, Timothy.”
“You bet,” he said. “Whiskey?”
Virgil nodded and moved toward the bar.
Skinny Jack followed him and I did the same.
Timothy got a bottle and four glasses and poured. The woman moved to the bar between Virgil and me. She turned around, facing away from the bar, and leaned back a little on the counter; the move made her seem even taller than she was.
Virgil handed one of the whiskeys to the woman.
“What’s your name?” Virgil said.
“Mike,” she said. “The proprietress.”
Virgil glanced to me, then looked at her, but said nothing.
“You own the place?” I said.
“As a matter of fact I do,” she said. “Lovely, don’t you think, Revelation Hotel?”
She held out her whiskey to toast. We toasted and she took a small sip.
“What can you tell us, Mike?” he said.
“I am not certain he killed her,” she said.
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.”
14
“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.