“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.
Chapter 20
Seamus Glickman had forgotten all about the sheriff wanting him to pay a visit to the schoolmarm. The shenanigans in Coffin Varnish were to blame. He was reminded when Sheriff Hinkle came up to him in Tulley’s and said, “I just had another report of a strange gent hanging around the schoolhouse. What did you find out when you went out there?”
Seamus was tempted to lie but didn’t. “I never got around to it,” he admitted.
George Hinkle frowned. “I am not a stickler for orders and the like, but when I ask to have something done, I expect it done. Ride out there right now and talk to the schoolmarm.”
“This late?”
“I have seen the light on out there even later some nights. Miss Prescott is dedicated to her work.”
Seamus thought of the spindly, almost severe figure he had glimpsed on a few occasions. “Do you really think she keeps a man under those petticoats?”
“No, I do not. But some of the parents are talking and won’t stop wagging their tongues until they hear from us that the schoolmarm is not making a mockery of public morals.”
“And I thought having to shoot stray dogs wasn’t fit work for a lawman,” Seamus observed. “Now we are virtue inspectors.”
Sheriff Hinkle laughed. “That is what I like most about this job. One minute we are arresting a cowboy for disturbing the peace, and the next we are shooing pigs off the street.”
“You can have the pigs, and you can have our schoolmarm.”
“Be nice to her. Your visit is official.”
“You know me, George,” Seamus said. “I smile and am polite even when the person I am being polite to is a jackass. Or, in her case, a broomstick no man with any appreciation for womanhood would care to fondle.”
“I will be in the office,” Sheriff Hinkle said. “Report to me as soon as you get back.”
“Yes, sir.”
Now here Seamus was, riding out of Dodge City by a side street to go question the schoolmarm. He had half a mind not to do it and say he had. As far as he was concerned, the law had no business meddling in the private lives of people. What Ernestine Prescott did in the privacy of her bedroom was her affair and no one else’s. That a few busybodies had complained only showed that some folks were too damn willing to impose their notion of what was right on others.
His horse nickered, and Seamus looked up. A man and a woman were approaching on foot. Just as he set eyes on them, the woman pulled the man to her and turned so her back was to the road. They did not look around as he came up to them.
Seamus drew rein. A dove and a cowboy, he assumed, and said gruffly, “Enough of that. You know better. In a saloon, yes. In a hotel, yes. But not out here where everyone can see.”
“Sorry,” the woman said, still embracing the man. “We were carried away.”
“Get carried away in private,” Seamus said, and clucked to his mount. Light glowed in the schoolhouse window, so Hinkle had been right about the schoolmarm. Dismounting, he walked up to the door and knocked. When there was no response, he knocked louder, and when that failed to bring her to the door, he worked the latch and poked his head inside.
“Miss Prescott? Sorry to disturb you.”
Seamus sighed. She wasn’t there. The schoolhouse was empty. That she had gone off and left the lamp on suggested she would return. He was about to go in and wait for her when his sorrel whinnied and was answered by another horse from somewhere behind the schoolhouse.
Puzzled, Seamus took a few steps back. “Miss Prescott?” he called out. His reply was another whinny.
Suddenly Seamus thought he understood. The schoolmarm’s gentleman caller was there, out back with the schoolmarm. For once the gossip had been true. Grinning, he hastened around the corner. The man might ride off, and Seamus wanted to see who it was. He hoped the man was married. Wouldn’t that be something? He chuckled to himself. The scandal would be sensational.