The stallion sensed Hayward’s presence, and recognized his scent. He had been watching the melee, too. He recognized the smoke as from a smothered fire, and stood calmly as wisps entered the stable and disappeared into the blanketing darkness.
It was calmer now, business owners were tidying up, and the sound of tinkling glass could be heard in concert with the swishing of broom bristles against sidewalk boards. Here and there, men staggered together down the street toward one of the bars, arms across shoulders or hands locked like children struggling to reach home in a storm.
The dentist-sheriff, mysteriously absent during the riot, appeared with his hat slightly askew and his shirttail, untucked, hung over a large gun belt slung much lower than usual, as if he’d dressed in a hurry. His gait as he patrolled the sidewalk had a slight hitch and weave to the side that he struggled to straighten. It would be two hours before he was discovered in his office, near death with a knife wound in his back, the victim of an angry husband or dental patient, it was never determined which.
It would not have surprised Hayward that Dulcinea’s skirt brushed his leg as she walked past on Graver’s arm, oblivious of her sleeping son or the fray that had swept through town, or of the figure who watched them from the dark alley as they crossed the street and made their way to the hotel.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
They hurried up the stairs, without noticing the sleeping desk clerk, down the second-floor hall to the large room at the end that was always saved for a Bennett, a courtesy passed from one year to the next, one generation to another. If Dulcinea felt any hesitation as she turned the filigreed brass knob, if she noted the floral design under her palm, it was impossible to tell, there was such confidence, such certainty in her movements. Standing to one side, Graver removed her dead husband’s hat and scuffed the toe of her dead husband’s boot across the cabbage rose carpet, as if smudging away a recent stain or clot of mud.
Inside the room, he shut the door as she assessed the chaos of clothing she’d abandoned in her haste. The mauve satin bedcover she ordered all those years ago was faded and bore dark holes from cigarette ash and stains from careless eating and drinking in bed. She remembered only the exhilaration of the first night she’d slept here with her husband, newlyweds even after three months. Then she felt Graver’s hands on her hips as he lifted and placed her on his lap. She buried her face in the matted hair of his chest, her fingers finding the new ridge of scar over the bullet hole in his shoulder. She thought she smelled the green sunlight of the hills as she held her breath, then felt the brush of his lips at her ear. “J.B.,” she whispered.
She didn’t realize she’d closed her eyes until she felt the empty cooling space and heard the door click shut behind him. When she reopened her eyes, she saw the shabbiness of the room, the glow of J.B. had dissolved, and Graver was gone. Maybe it wasn’t possible to recover the past, she thought, or to find a true present. She could only live in this shadow version of both, without love and purpose.
With her cheek against the cover, Dulcinea imagined her breath was like a breeze caressing silk drapes at an open window, creating a strange music like someone running their fingers across satin. When she held it, she swore she could still hear it, and began to breathe in tandem with the sound, unsure whether she created it or it created itself. Whether she imagined J.B. or Graver with her that night, she could not say, for it seemed they were one. She felt the terrific weight of her husband alive outside this small vial of present time, and she also felt Graver breaking into her world, shattering every window and flinging the door off its hinges each time he was near, until the more drawn she was to him, the more alive J.B. became.
Everything was silent and black when she rose sometime during the night and knelt at the window. She looked down at the two figures in the shadows, struggling, cursing, and saw the taller one stab the shorter, thicker man. He wrenched the knife upward and lost his grip when the victim staggered and fell. The attacker looked down the alley each way, drew his pistol, nudged the body on the ground, seemed to decide against the noise it would make, and put it away. He searched the victim’s pockets, withdrew a packet of papers and money before sliding into darkness. When she awoke in the morning, she was convinced it was a nightmare.
When Drum Bennett was found, barely alive, the next morning, the sun was well up, and the day promised to be the hottest of fall, the air filled with the pounding of nails into boards to replace broken windows and voices calling up and down Main Street reporting damage. Drum lay in a narrow alley between the hotel and the boot maker. He was discovered by a gang of boys searching the debris of the night’s revelries for anything they could find, which thus far had produced only a pocket knife with a broken blade, a couple of whiskey bottles with a drop or two in the bottom, and a silver dollar they fought over.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
It was Dun Riggins, owner of the livery stable, who woke Hayward with the news of his grandfather’s injuries and the demise of Percival Chance from a collision with a runaway wagon. Hayward sat, blinking in the dusty light, unclear where he was. Then the fight flooded back, followed by other confusing images, and he stood, confirmed the Bennett horses were still in their stalls, and lurched toward the almost unbearable light beyond the big double stable doors.
He was horribly thirsty and unsteady on his feet, and some part of him knew his presence was required at Drum’s bedside. When thoughts of his mother came, he found it easy to push them behind the pain that sat like a skullcap behind his eyes, crushing his head as it moved to the back of his neck. He was halfway to Doc’s when he thought he heard someone call his name. He didn’t slow. Then he heard it again, along with a thumping, irregular boot step. He stopped and turned to face Stubs, Drum’s ranch hand.
The man tilted his head for them to continue without speaking, and they were almost there before Stubs paused and turned toward the street, watching as the riders from the Box LR, led by Larson Dye looking worse for the wear, walked past. Across the street, Stillhart the banker spoke with Harney Rivers, both staring and nodding toward Doc’s place.
“Gonna be a lot of that,” Stubs said. “Smart man sticks to his relations, keeps his mouth shut till he know the lay of the land.”
Hayward felt an old anger rise in chest. “Like Cullen did?”
Stubs shook his head and rubbed the knee that always ached. “Not saying do what he did. Sometimes he knew enough to sit quiet and wait to see how the game played out.” He glanced at Hayward, took in the bruises, cuts, and blood, and nodded with satisfaction. “You’re carrying the name now. It’s up to you.”