Women: There was the bedrock of his mountain in life. Try as he might, Frank had never completely grasped the nature of his indestructible appeal to the fairer sex: What did they see when they looked at him? He didn't have a clue what it was, but he knew it wasn't him. Did it have something to do with his having killed a woman in front of a crowd—poor Molly; the best of him had died right along with her—and getting his name in the papers that made the rest of them swarm around like flies?
Most of the women who tried to visit him in prison couldn't hear enough about the who, how, and why of every human life he'd ended; some sort of sick electric thrill ran through them. He failed to find any sense in that and none in them: Like any man of principle, all he wanted to do was forget about the people he'd killed. Maybe their interest was another side effect of all those dime novels over the years with his stupid picture on the cover that in hindsight he hadn't done enough to discourage. Hell, he'd even tried writing a few himself; the guards had a pile of 'em back at the prison they used to hawk to the tourists. Buckskin Frank: Geronimo's Nightmare. I Rode with Wyatt: Tombstone's Invisible Man. Half a dozen others. Big sellers, every one.
He had to face facts; through some fault of his own, fame had destroyed his privacy and it made Frank's brain ache like a rotten tooth. Five years in prison had brought him a peace uninterrupted by a woman's ceaseless demands that he behave like some crazy idea she had in her head—obedient, mild-mannered, devoted to her every mood: in other words one hundred percent back-asswards from his actual personality. This tranquil stretch had led Frank to conclude that the main reason a woman wanted a man around in the first place was so she could bombard him with the arsenal of dumb questions ricocheting around in her head:
Did he like this dress? Didn't she look too fat in it? What about this new shade of rouge? Did he like his steak red or pink? Could he believe how much they wanted for a yard of calico at the dry goods store? Did he want to hold hands and sit swinging on a glider in the moonlight? Well, no. He liked a poke in the hay well enough, but beyond that he couldn't figure out why they expected so much from him. He didn't know any of the answers to their questions: As far as he was concerned, all these choices having to do with daily existence were equally weighted and to fuss and bother like it was life-or-death about what to eat for breakfast or wear to the square dance squeezed the juice right out of living. Molly was the only woman who'd ever figured that out about him, and look what happened to her.
Husbands were men who brought home the bacon, never drank before dark, and always woke up in the same bed they started the night in. Before they got down to doing the deed for the first time, he had always meant to stop and ask one of these hungry gals flat out: Did he honestly look like husband material to them? And if the. answer was yes, he would reach for his hat because that was a conclusion that could only be made by a lunatic. What Frank wanted, what he thought any man who'd lived life as he had wanted—more than fame, more than fortune—was to be left alone.
Frank felt pathetic: Here he stood scarcely twenty-four hours out of the calaboose and already feeling sentimental about it The trustees used to smuggle in a whore for him once a month or so—there'd been no shortage of soiled doves lining up for the assignment. To his astonishment, he had discovered that, with Molly gone, this turned out to be all the feminine companionship he required.
Wait, thought Frank, and the clouds parted: Who was to say he couldn't work out the same arrangement now that he was nearly free again? Was he doomed to keep hitching his fate to some sage hen's apron strings the minute she salted her tail for him? No. He felt joy bubble up inside him like springwater. That was it: He would blaze a new trail for himself. No more box canyons. No more cow bunnies putting their brand on him.
As he ground out his cigarette, the tubby stationmaster came running up with the schedule of trains that had left Phoenix that morning: two freights, two passenger, one local mail run. Why they had let any train out of the yard under these circumstances was beyond Frank, but he'd long ago given up any hope he'd be put in charge of running the world. A small crowd of anxious volunteers gathered around him waiting for his response.
"You wire ahead to the next stop on all of these trains?" asked Frank.
The stationmaster screwed his face into a ball; he'd read a couple of Buckskin Frank books and felt plainly intimidated. "You think we should?"
"Well. Yes."
"But, but we searched through all the trains before we let them go."
"So?"
The station master grinned like he had a painfully full bladder, took the schedule back from Frank, and headed back to the terminal.
I'll give him ten before he breaks into a trot, thought Frank, watching the man go. It took eight.
Frank sighed heavily and scanned the crowd; nearly a month had passed since his last conjugal visit at the hoosegow. He wondered idly how complicated it would be to get his wick dipped before the manhunt moved on. He rolled another cigarette and walked away from the gawkers like he was searching for clues and they left him alone again.
Thirty paces later he found a puddle of blood in the dirt. He dipped in his finger: dry. At least two hours old. A trail of gouts led away and ended at an empty set of tracks; the stationmaster would know which train had been sitting on these rails.
"Mr. McQuethy?"
He turned: a group of five women, the ones he'd seen watching him from the platform, standing ten yards away. He tipped his hat.
"Ladies."
The one who'd spoken stepped forward; a big-boned strawberry blonde. Best looking one in the bunch, which said less than he might have hoped for. "If you'll forgive the intrusion: We read about your release in the paper this morning."
"Uh-huh."
The woman blushed. "And we, well, I guess we're just about your biggest fans here in Phoenix; we've read all your books and followed your career with a great deal of interest."
"Uh-huh."
"I think you knew a cousin of mine down in Tombstone a few years back, Sally Ann Reynolds? She was a waitress there at the Silver Dollar Saloon?" The blonde blushed red as an apple when Frank didn't immediately respond. "Anyway ..."
"How is Sally Ann?" he said with a smile, and not the slightest idea who she was talking about.
"Fine; she's married now, living in Tucson, has a couple of kids."
"You must be sure and give her my regards."
"I can't tell you how excited she'll be to know we've spoken."
There was that look in her eye: the flash of light in a cheap diamond. Frank felt simultaneously cornered and stimulated. Story of his life.
"We know you have a terribly busy time ahead of you, but we were wondering if it would be possible to invite you to lunch sometime while you're here in town."
Frank smiled again and, as was perpetually the case, every memory of every unhappiness ever visited on him by a woman vanished like tax money.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Her name was Mary Williams: Dante Scruggs found that out from two old biddies at the boarding house. She'd told them that she came from a small town in rural Minnesota, where she'd been a schoolteacher, and that she was hoping to find the same work in Chicago. They took her at her word. Dante told them he was from the school board and wanted to check her references: Better if you don't tell Miss Williams I stopped by, he said with a smile. What a charmer, the old ladies thought.