He was buttoning up his trousers when the plump Rose, a gaudy wreck of a woman who affected red wigs and enough makeup to cover a line of six high-kicking saloon dancers, came through the beaded curtain leading to the parlor where the customers sat. As usual she carried a meerschaum pipe in one hand and a fancy fan in the other. She smoked the clay pipe frequently. “What’s wrong with that brother of yours this morning?”
“What the hell business is it of yours?”
“It’s my business when he hits one of my girls.”
“They’re whores, what’s the difference?”
“He never hit none of them before, not even when he was drunk. I’m wonderin’ what’s botherin’ him.”
Sam knew damned well what was bothering Kenny. Kenny Raines, the blond and more handsome of the brothers, was worried about the same thing Sam was.
“You have one of your gals get me a whiskey and you never mind what’s troubling him.”
She looked at him with aged agate-colored eyes. But there was a youthful impishness in her gaze now. She was enjoying this. “Never thought I’d see the Raines brothers worried about anything.”
“You get out of my sight, Rose.”
She fluttered her fan in front of her wrinkled doll-like face, parted the beaded curtain and went into the other area of the house.
He got up and walked to the window that looked out on the butt end of the town. To his mind, one long latrine. People still living in tents and shanties. On the other side of the mud street were the saloons and the casinos, the owners of which lived in Cawthorne proper. No way would they live here among the people they hired for pennies a day. This was where respectable people and visitors came to be bad and as soon as they’d taken their pleasure they hightailed out of here.
The whorehouse was quiet, something Sam wasn’t used to. A Negro man with enormous pink arm garters usually played the piano. A girl or two in filmy dresses carried trays of drinks around. On nights when the wait was long you might find three or four customers playing a friendly hand of poker.
The beaded curtain parted. A middle-aged Mexican woman with large hands gave him his drink. “Your brother, he was bad with Deborah this morning.” She touched her eye. “The black eye as it is called.”
What the hell was this? First Rose and now this Mex. They acted like no girl ever got slugged before in a whorehouse. He’d been going to whorehouses since he was fourteen. Girls got slugged in them all the time.
The curtains rattled again and there was his brother. The Mex scowled at him. Kenny laughed. “She giving you shit about that little gal upstairs?”
“Says you gave her a black eye.”
“Yeah, well she probably gave me crabs. So we’re even up.” He raised his bandaged hand. “All I did was backhand the bitch with this.”
The Mex flashed a look that said he was despicable and left.
Kenny walked over and took Sam’s drink from him. Took a deep swallow and handed it back. “You been thinking about it?”
“I don’t know what we should do. This Fargo—”
“Right now he’s all I care about.”
Kenny purloined his brother’s drink again. Took another deep swallow and handed it back. Sam hadn’t taken a drink yet. “If you won’t help me, I’ll do it alone.”
“He’s thrown in with Cain.”
“To hell with Cain. People want rid of him anyway. It ain’t like the old days when he was such a big man.”
The beads clattered again. Rose. She said, “It’s one thing hittin’ a girl at night. At least I can understand that a little bit. But hittin’ a girl this early in the day, I should charge you boys double.”
“You’re lucky we didn’t hit you, Rose,” Kenny said.
Then he whipped the drink from his brother’s hand and finished it. He handed the empty glass to Rose.
“C’mon, Sam, let’s get the hell out of here.”
It was only as they were walking out that Sam Raines realized he hadn’t gotten as much as a sip of his own drink.
Fargo stood behind three people in line for stagecoach tickets. This gave him a chance to observe Ned Lenihan. The Pinks he’d worked with said that you could tell a lot about a man just by watching him deal with other people. If he was in any kind of trouble he might appear agitated in some way.
If Lenihan was agitated, he knew how to keep it hidden.
“The finest book I’ve ever read,” said a sensible-looking middle-aged woman in a man’s denim shirt and gray butternuts. She held the book up for Lenihan to see. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Have you ever read it, Ned?”
“No. But I’ve been meaning to. Amy has and she really enjoyed it.”
“I’m taking it along on my trip to Denver. That’s one of the few good things about the stagecoach—no offense, Ned—I get a lot of reading done. Unless the other people talk too loud. You get some real loud ones once in a while.”
Lenihan was a small man of about forty with fine, precise features. Instead of looking annoyed at the woman prattling on when there were other customers waiting, his smile seemed to say that he really enjoyed her company. All the while he was making out her ticket.
“Yep, I’ll read it through again and then I’ll give it to my granddaughter. She’s eight but she can read up a storm. She’ll love it as much as I do.”
The next two customers were just as talkative and Lenihan was just as patient. He stood there in his blue shirt with the black bolo tie, able to watch them as he scribbled out their fares.
Fargo knew you couldn’t judge a man by either appearance or demeanor. He’d once hunted a grandfatherly man who had set fire to his daughter and three grandchildren. Their offense was trying to stop him from playing his accordion late at night. The man had a face that would have worked as a magazine illustration of all that was right and good and wise of old age.
But if Lenihan had killed three men in cold blood he had a kind of cunning that Fargo had never encountered before. Cold-blooded killer in the night, friendly open man during the day.
Then it was Fargo’s turn to step up to the counter.
“Howdy. Can I help you?”
“Name’s Skye Fargo. I’m helping Tom Cain.” He wasn’t surprised to see Lenihan’s face tighten. He had to know he was under suspicion for the robbery.
“Yessir. What can I do for you?”
“Wanted to talk to you about that robbery last month.”
“Terrible. That Englishman was headed back home when it happened and the driver was a good friend of mine.”
“I was thinking more about the money that got stolen, I guess.” Fargo kept his gaze fixed on the man’s face. “I’m told you were one of the few people who knew about it.”
“I guess that makes me guilty, huh?” Anger, frustration.
“I didn’t say that. I’m not making any accusations. I’m just trying to find out what happened.”
“I heard you were helping Cain. In case you didn’t know, he spent a good bit of time trying to win my woman from me.”
“He told me that he’d given up.”
“So he says. And here’s something else you might think about. Tom Cain knew about that shipment, too.”
“You’re saying that he had something to do with it?”
“I’m saying that since the rest of us are under suspicion, he should be too. And personally, I don’t know why you’d want to get hooked up with a man like Cain.”
“I’m doing him a favor. He’s an old friend of mine.”
“Favor, huh? By my lights he’s a bully and a liar.” He smiled. “You know what this is about? He wants to marry the woman I plan to marry. It’d be one thing if she wanted to marry him. I’d step aside. I wouldn’t want to force her into anything. I’m not like that. But Cain’ll do anything. And I guess I should’ve figured he’d come up with something like this. Like saying I was in cahoots with those robbers or something. He gets me in trouble and then he has a clear field with Amy. Or that’s what he thinks anyway. But I know better. I’m sure if I was out of the picture Amy would find another man—she’s very pretty and very healthy—but it wouldn’t be Tom Cain. Not under any circumstances I can think of.”