“Snucked isn’t a word, you illiterate troll,” said Looks Away.
“You’re saying,” Grey said to the deputy, “that things would have been different if we’d made this a fair fight?”
“You’re damn right.”
“Like the fair fight that was in progress when we arrived? Six men against a woman and a parson who clearly didn’t offer any resistance. Which means that it was six men against this woman. That’s your idea of fair? Is that what you’re trying to sell here?”
Deputy Perkins turned as red as a fresh bruise and wouldn’t meet Grey’s eyes.
“They was breaking the law.”
“You call that a law?” demanded Miss Pearl. “There are children wasting away in this town. People are getting sick.”
“That’s not my concern,” insisted Perkins. “The law is the law.”
Grey used the barrel of the Colt to turn Perkins’s chin, forcing the man to look at him.
“When armed men enforce a law like that, then the law’s no law at all.”
“You need to take that up with the sheriff and the circuit judge. They say it is the law.”
“Fine. Tell me where they are and I’ll be happy to have that conversation.”
Perkins faltered. “Well… you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The, um, sheriff’s down south in the City of Lost Angels.”
“And the circuit judge?”
“Well… he won’t be back around until March.”
“That’s a long time,” said Grey. “What about Mr. Deray? Maybe I should go have a conversation with him.”
Brother Joe gasped audibly. Jenny Pearl took a step back, touching her hand to her throat. They both looked deeply afraid.
A slow and nasty smile crawled onto Perkins’s mouth. “Well, why don’t you?”
Behind Perkins, out of his line of sight, Looks Away pursed his lips and quietly blew out his cheeks.
Grey Torrance hoisted a smile onto his own face. It wasn’t the kind of smile he liked to show to people he thought well of. The smile on Perkins’s face leaked away.
“Take your men and get the hell out of my sight,” said Grey. “Do it quick and do it now.”
“And then what?” said the deputy. “Soon as we’re gone you’re going to steal some water. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Oh, you’re absolutely right. I intend to have a water party. Free water for everyone. Much as they want.”
The other deputies milled around, looking at each other, looking at the well. Looking everywhere but at Grey or Looks Away.
“C’mon, Jed,” mumbled one of the men. “This ain’t worth taking a bullet over.”
Jed Perkins slowly slapped dust from his clothes. He bent and picked up a brown hat with a band of silver conches and screwed it down on his head. The motions were deliberate and exaggerated, as if cleaning himself up after a beating was somehow able to shift him to a moral high ground or some position of tactical superiority. Grey was unimpressed. He’d seen this sort of thing before.
“Get gone,” he advised.
Perkins stepped up and for a moment stood nose to nose with Grey.
“You better watch your backtrail, mister,” he said coldly. “’Cause the next time I see you I’m going to—.”
And Grey hit him.
It was a left-handed blow. Very fast, and despite being short-range it rocked Perkins onto his heels, knocked the lights from his eyes, and then sat him down hard on his ass.
The other men cried out and started forward and Grey turned smoothly, raising his pistol, pointing it at the closest man. Looks Away stepped out from behind the well and held his gun in a rock-steady brown fist.
“Listen to me,” said Grey coldly. “Learn this for the future. If you’ve just taken a beating, that is not — I repeat not—the time to make a threat. Only a complete idiot does that. Like this sorry excuse for a human being.”
He punctuated his words with a short, sharp kick that drove the square toe of his boot under Jed Perkins’s chin. The man’s eyes rolled up white and he flopped back.
“Please!” begged the monk.
Grey patted the air toward him. “It’s okay, Padre. This is over. Deputy Perkins dealt the play. Everyone here saw that. Now you fellows pick this piece of cow dung up and cart him off before I get really mad. Be best for all concerned if no one said anything smart while you were about it. Go on, get ’er done.”
The other deputies did not say a single word as they hooked their hands under Perkins’s arms and knees, hoisted him up, and went creaking away in a puffing cluster.
Grey and Looks Away held their guns on them until the men flopped Perkins over a saddle and the six of them rode out of town.
The ugly bird suddenly cawed. It was so strange a sound. More like the plaintive cry of a lost child than any sound that could come from a bird’s throat. With a snap of its leathery wings it launched from the crossbar of the well, rose ponderously into the air and flew away to the northeast. Whether it was following the deputies or merely heading in a similar direction was unclear. The four of them watched it, and the fleeing men, until they were out of sight.
Then, with a sigh, Grey opened the cylinder, replaced the single spent cartridge, and reholstered his Colt. Looks Away did the same. They turned to face Brother Joe and Jenny Pearl.
Before Grey could say a word, the woman slapped him across the face with all of her considerable strength. It was a lightning-fast blow that rocked Grey’s head and spun him halfway around. Then the woman grabbed his shoulder, wheeled him back, grabbed his ears, pulled his head down, and planted a scalding hot kiss on his lips.
Then she shoved him back. Gasping, blinking, totally confused, Grey staggered and might have fallen if Looks Away hadn’t caught his arm.
“What,” he sputtered, “the hell was that for?”
Jenny Pearl crossed her arms under her breasts and cocked her head. Her blue eyes seemed to ignite the air around them. “The slap was because you didn’t kill that murdering son of a bitch, Jed Perkins.” She paused. “The kiss was because you damn sure beat a pound of stupid off his sorry ass.”
Brother Joe turned a suddenly scarlet face away and shook his head slowly. Grey heard Looks Away laughing softly.
He rubbed his face and stared down at the woman and had no idea what to do or say.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Looks Away made formal introductions and that broke the spell of the moment.
“Jenny Pearl,” he said, “I would like to formally introduce my new associate, Mr. Grey Torrance. Grey, this is Miss Jenny Pearl. She owns—.”
“Used to own,” corrected Jenny.
“—used to own a cattle ranch northeast of town.”
“You’re a rancher?” asked Grey, rubbing the red welt on his cheek.
“Why?” said Jenny with challenge in her tone. “Can’t a woman own a ranch?”
“Sure. But you don’t look old enough.”
A shadow passed behind the woman’s eyes. “It… it was my father’s place. I took it over when he…” She let the rest hang, then added, “I ran near three hundred head before that bastard Deray got here.”
“Miss Pearl, please…,” said the monk.
“Not talking about it isn’t the same as it not being the case,” said Jenny; but then she sighed and nodded, withdrawing her anger from the moment.
“And this,” said Looks Away, “is Brother Joe, late of the order of the Brothers of Outcasts.”
“I heard about you fellows,” said Grey, nodding.
Those monks were all, in one way or another, failed shepherds of their herds. Drunks and sinners, thieves of church offerings, men who had broken their vows of chastity, and others who had dishonored their vows. Where such disgrace would drive most clerics totally away from the church, a handful of them had come crawling back and begged for a chance to redeem themselves.