“Everthing all right?” Ezekiel asked.
“Seen you comin up the street,” she whispered, trembling.
“You’re poorly,” Gloria said.
Bessie looked downslope toward town, her eyes stormy with the weight of some damning choice. “I believe he’s cut his wolf loose.”
“Who?” the preacher asked.
Tears were running over her lips now. “My Billy.” And Bessie’s bare hand emerged from the blankets, grasping the bar of gold, snow falling on it, melting, making the yellow metal glisten. “He give me this this mornin, all wrapped up, like some Christmas present. Wouldn’t tell me nothin of how he come to have it.”
“Where’s your husband right now?” Ezekiel asked.
“He left a few hours ago with Mr.Wallace.”
“Know where they went?”
“Rode off toward the mine.”
“You better come on with us.”
“Why?”
Ezekiel leaned in, whispered in her ear for the sake of the child. “Packer and his ladies been murdered up at Emerald House.”
The bar of gold dropped from her hand and sank into the snow.
“What you sayin, Mr.Curtice?”
“In a town of a hunerd twenty-three souls, they ain’t much breathin space for coincidence.”
“They killed ’em? Billy and Oatha—”
“Nobody knows exactly who done what yet. Now, was it just Billy and Mr.Wallace, or was there more men?”
“I think it’s just the two a them. You gonna hurt him?”
“I’m gonna bring him in. Whether or not he gets hurt or kilt, that’s his choice. He do that to you?”
Bessie brought her hand to the bruises, as if to hide them, eyes alight with shame.
“Daddy done it,” Harriet said.
Ezekiel brushed his gloved hand across the little girl’s cheek.
“I’m real sorry about that, sweetie. He ought not’ve.”
Ezekiel squatted down, lifted the gold bar out of the snow, stood mesmerized by it, trying to disavow the shot of adrenaline it pushed through his veins, thinking if there was anything left in him of that man he used to be, he’d ride up to the mine with an entirely different purpose, caught himself half-wishing he’d stumbled onto an opportunity like this back in the old days.
He handed the bar to the preacher. “You better keep this. Well, come on, ladies. No point in y’all standin out here, freezin in them rags.”
They walked up the street, then veered onto the path to the Curtices’ little steeple-notched cabin, a barrel for a chimney pot, a root cellar on the south wall, and a sod roof that in the summertime sprouted sunflowers. At the front door, Ezekiel stopped, said, “Gloria, bring my rifle and the revolver for Stephen. We’ll be needin a box a cartridges for each.”
As the women went inside, Stephen said, “I’ll not carry a gun, Zeke.”
“You kiddin me?”
The preacher shook his head. “But I will ride up with you.”
“The hell you gonna do if they start shootin?”
“I’m praying it won’t come to that.”
“You see the same thing I saw up on the roof a Emerald House? That look like the handiwork a men who talk things out? Hell, we’ll have to get Doc now.”
Gloria returned with the old Schofield in one hand, Ezekiel’s sawed-off Winchester in the other. Bessie was bawling inside, Harriet whispering, “It’s all right, Mama. It’s all right. Don’t cry.”
Ezekiel took the box of cartridges, his carbine by the barrel, said, “Man a God don’t want the revolver, but you hang on to it. Better pull in the latch-string and fort up. Don’t go out. Don’t open it for nobody. Billy or Oatha or some rough-lookin feller come by, you know what to do.” She nodded. “Better go on, load up that Schofield now. Remember how I showed you?”
Gloria threw her arms around his neck, felt the sandpaper of his face against hers, caught that smell of his that still melted her knees. “You come back to me,” she whispered.
He lifted his hat and pulled off Gloria’s sealskin cap so he could kiss her forehead and tug at those blond curls.
“Always have, Glori. Always will.”
TWENTY-NINE
The cabin of Russell and Emma Ilg stood a hundred yards north of the Curtice homestead and was unprotected by trees, so the snow had drifted to the roof on the windward side. Ezekiel followed the snow tunnel up to the front porch and pounded on the door.
When it opened, a man with disheveled sandy-blond hair and thick spectacles grinned at them. He wore a brown sack coat and matching trousers, and his enormous mustache was freshly combed and waxed. The scent of soap emanated from him, the sour spice of whiskey on his breath.
Over Russell’s shoulder, Ezekiel saw Mrs. Ilg carrying a pot from her cook-stove to a candlelit dinner table already sagging under its load of steaming graniteware.
A fire blazed in the hearth and balled-up pages of newspaper lay around the base of the spruce tree; their gifts—mostly homemade crafts—were lined up on the makeshift log mantel.
“Merry Christmas, Zeke. Stephen.”
“Tell me you ain’t fixin to eat, Doc.”
“Yeah, in about five minutes. Something wrong?”
“I really hate to do this to you—”
“What?”
“You ain’t roostered, are you?”
“Had a nip of whiskey in my coffee a bit ago.”
“A nip.”
“I ain’t drunk, Zeke. What’s the problem?”
Mrs. Ilg walked over, her silvering hair pinned up, purple evening gown flowing across the dirt floor in her wake.
“I’d rather say in private.”
“Merry Christmas, gentlemen,” Mrs.Ilg said.
Ezekiel and Stephen tipped their hats.
“Ma’am.”
“Ma’am.”
“Well, do we have time to eat first?” Russell asked.
“ ’Fraid not.”
“What’s going on here, Zeke?”
“We’re having to borrow your husband. I apologize for the poor timing. It can’t be—”
“I’ve been cooking all morning. Can’t it wait just an—”
“Honey, if they need me now, they need me now.”
“Doc, we’ll be waitin for you at the stables. Best bring your possibles and your rifle. Don’t dawdle. We gotta light a shuck on this.”
The livery had been erected a quarter mile north of town to save the residents from the per sis tent stench, but the wind, when it blew, tended to sweep in from the north, so it carried the odor of shit and trail-worn animals right up Main. In the boom years, the stink was eye-watering, even on the south end of town. But on Christmas Day in 1893, you couldn’t smell the stables until you saw them.