Until now.
At length the sun rested on the rim of the world, its radiance painting the sky vivid hues of red, orange, and yellow. Jeeter came to a hollow bisected by a dry wash and rimmed with brush. He drew rein and dismounted. Stripping the gruella and gathering wood and kindling a fire and putting a pot of coffee on to brew took the better part of half an hour.
At last Jeeter could settle back against his saddle and relax. He opened his saddlebags and slid out the item he had brought with him from Coffin Varnish. In the flickering glow of the crackling flames, he admired the stalwart hero with his arm around the slender waist of a beautiful young woman as painted warriors closed in from all sides. “Jeeter Frost, the Missouri Man-Killer,” he remembered the newspaperman saying. “His thrilling escapades. His narrow escapes.” He ran his finger across the cover and said quietly, “I’ll be damned.”
A slow smile spread across Jeeter’s countenance. He laughed, a genuinely heartfelt laugh such as he had not felt in a coon’s age. He flipped the pages, wishing he could read the words. So many words, and all of them about him. Or some version of him that others took to be the real him. It was silly, he mused. But it was also—and here he struggled for the right way to describe it.
The moment Jeeter had set eyes on that cover, something inside him had changed. He could not say what or how or why, but he felt it. This penny dreadful, this ridiculous fluff written by someone who had never met him and knew nothing about him but had written all about him, meant there was more to his life than he ever imagined. He was not the nobody he always believed he was. He was somebody. Not somebody important. Not somebody that mattered. But somebody people would remember.
“The Missouri Man-Killer,” Jeeter said again, and laughed. Hell, he hadn’t been to Missouri but three or four times in his whole life.
Jeeter was born in Illinois. He lived there until he was seventeen. He got too big for his britches and took to drinking and staying out to all hours. One night he was in a knife fight. Thinking he had killed the other drunk, he fled, only to learn months later that the man recovered. By then Jeeter was in Texas, where a cowboy by the name of Weeds Graff took him under his wing. Weeds taught him to rope and to shoot and Jeeter learned the shooting so well that when they signed on with the Bar T outfit, it was his six-gun and his newfound talent for killing that held the other side at bay. For a while, anyway, until they ambushed his employer and friend.
Everyone in Texas heard about what Jeeter did next. They heard about the five men he hunted down and killed. From that day on, Jeeter became marked. He could not go a week without seeing what Jeeter liked to call the look. Sometimes the look was one of disgust. Sometimes it was fear. Sometimes it was a glint that warned him he must never turn his back on the person with the glint. Not that he ever turned his back to anyone if he could help it.
For years that had been the pattern of his life. Riding from town to town and settlement to settlement, seeking a place to fit in but not fitting anywhere. He was a square peg and life was a round hole.
And now along came this penny dreadful.
Jeeter sat and stared at the cover until the coffee was hot; then he poured a cup and took jerky from his saddlebags. He sat and sipped and munched and stared at that cover. He could not stop looking at it.
Toward midnight a brainstorm hit him with the force of a thunderclap. He started to laugh and could not stop. He laughed so long, and so loud, that a skulking coyote, drawn by the scents of his camp, yipped and raced away into the night.
Since Chester Luce did not own a gavel, he used a hammer, and since he did not want to mark up the counter with dents, he placed a folded blanket on top of the counter before he struck it with the hammer. “All right, everyone,” he said to get their attention. “This meeting of the Coffin Varnish Town Council will officially come to order.”
Winifred Curry sat next to the stove, sucking on a gumdrop. He had a sweet tooth and gumdrops were his favorite.
Minimi Giorgio sat on a stool by the dry goods section. He was nervous about being there. He gripped the edge of the stool with both hands as if afraid he would fall off.
The huge Swede, Dolph Anderson, seldom sat. He stood with his brawny arms folded across his powerful chest, his cornstalk hair and beard neatly trimmed, as always. “What be so important that you call me from my work?” His English was thickly accented, so much so that everyone else had to listen closely to tell what he said, especially Minimi, whose English was not the best.
Chester came around the counter. He did not like to stand behind it because it made him seem short, even if he was short. “You have heard about the killings?”
“Ja,” the big Swede said.
“Then how can you ask a question like that? It isn’t something that happens every day, and it will have an impact on our community.”
“How will it impact?” Anderson asked.
Winifred stopped sucking on the gumdrop long enough to say, “Shouldn’t we wait for your wife, Chester?”
Chester was about to reply that if she was late it was her own fault when steps thumped on the stairs and down she came.
Adolphina was almost as big as the Swede, and when she came and stood behind the counter, she made the counter seem small. “About ready to start, are we?”
“Yes, dearest.”
“Everyone pay attention,” Adolphina said. “I have been doing some thinking and—” She stopped and looked around. “Where are Placido and Arturo?”
“The Mexicans?” Chester said. “What do we need them for? They aren’t on the council.”
“Neither is Mr. Giorgio but you invited him,” Adolphina noted. “Go get them. They should be in on this as well.”
Chester’s ears grew red at being ordered about in front of the other men. “Is it really necessary? What can they contribute? All they do is laze about their livery all day. They hardly ever mingle with the rest of us.”
“We hardly ever mingle with them,” Adolphina jousted. “No, this is business, and it will affect them, so fetch them and be quick about it. I don’t have all night for this. I have sewing to do.”
“Very well,” Chester said, resigned to a force of nature he could never refuse. “I will be right back.”
The tiny bell above the door tinkled as he went out. Winifred promptly opened the gumdrop jar and helped himself to several more, stuffing them in his shirt pocket.
“You will pay for those,” Adolphina said.
“Naturally,” Win responded. “Put them on my account, if you please.”
Adolphina leaned on the counter. “Mr. Anderson, how is that lovely wife of yours?”
“She be fine,” the Swede answered. “Filippa tell me that if I see you I am to give her regards.”
“She is a daisy, that one,” Adolphina said. “The only woman I ever met who works harder than I do.”
Winifred almost swallowed his gumdrop. It was well known that Chester’s wife spent most of her time above the store reading and eating and whatever else it was that occupied her hours. The mention of sewing had surprised him. Chester once told him that she hired her sewing out to Mrs. Giorgio.
“Filippa is a good woman, ja,” Anderson said proudly. “She be fine wife. I pick well.”
“She had something to do with it, too,” Adolphina said. “Feminine wiles being what they are, probably more than you did.”
“Feminine wiles?” Anderson repeated, saying each syllable slowly.
“It means women are smarter than men,” Adolphina explained. “Always have been and always will be. Most of the great ideas men come up with they get from their women. If it weren’t for us, nothing would ever get done.”