“Consumption is a devil,” she said.
“Oh, it weren’t consumption that did her in. Poor thing didn’t even have the ailment. Turned out it were syphilis the whole time. Only had time for one inunction of mercurous chloride before the Lord came a callin’. What do you think of that?”
Rash picked a bit of clove husk from her teeth. “I think laying with a man is a losing proposition.”
“Reckon it’s the same way with women,” Dandy said. “But it’s an itch needs scratching.”
“Not for me. I ain’t never laid with no man and I ain’t got no itches to scratch because of it.”
“Never? But what about love?”
“I’ve got enough liabilities,” she said, brushing at the dust on her boot. “Why would I invite one more?”
Dandy led them through the dark, chill night until they had climbed free of the steppe and into rocky foothills of juniper and mountain mahogany. Eventually, they reached a wide and weathered pinyon pine at the head of a gentle draw and he would go no further.
“What’s wrong?” Rash asked.
“We’re here.”
She stared into the darkness at the bottom of the draw. “I don’t see nothing.”
“Believe me. It’s there.”
“Then take us home, old man.”
Dandy stiffened. “No how,” he said. “Could be anything down there waiting for us.”
“Like what?”
“The Sheriff.”
“That problem is solved, I’d reckon,” she said, slapping the hilt of her side knife.
“That man you killed was called Carney, a Sheriff in name only. Big and mean, surely, but slow of wit. The smarts of the outfit lie with his chief deputy, Fouch. He’s the one you ought be worried about.”
“I ain’t worried. I’m tired. And cold. You can hide up here all night if you want, but I aim to find this kid a bed.”
Not waiting for a response, she urged Jenny to the bottom of the draw, where the rough outline of a leaning cottage emerged.
“Hey, Fouch!” she shouted at it. “I killed your man Carney. You gonna stand for that?”
Other than a grumbled curse at the head of the draw from Dandy, her goading was met by silence.
“Ain’t nobody here, old man,” she called up to the pinyon.
Again, silence.
“He ran off,” Lila’s delicate voice mumbled in front of her. “He does that sometimes.”
Rash shook her head and led them through the brisk quietude, bypassing several dilapidated outbuildings before alighting at the cottage. After tying Jenny off on the porch rail and easing Lila from the saddle, she pushed her way through the front door.
The entry room, Rash discovered after Lila directed her to a kerosene lamp, shared its space with a kitchen along the rear wall. To the left and right were doors that led to a pair of bedrooms on one side and a three-season porch on the other.
Rash helped Lila into one of the bedrooms, then out of her fraying dress and into bed. When she returned to the kitchen, a figure stood in the open front doorway.
She snapped her Colt from its holster, ready to put down the intruder, when it screamed like a resident of Mrs. Tolliver’s upon a rodent sighting.
“Welcome back, Dandy,” she said, lowering her pistol, relieved she wouldn’t have to put her trigger finger to the test again.
“Want something to drink?” he asked, his face peeking out from the other side of the doorjamb.
Rash dropped into a chair at the oversized table. “Please.”
She watched as he ambled into the kitchen and opened the pantry door, slipping one of his stumps through a hide loop on its handle. He withdrew two shot glasses, one at a time, and transferred them to the table between the ends of his foreshortened arms. Then he returned to the pantry for a dusty bottle of spirits.
“You got aquavit in Mexico?” he asked, his tongue dodging out the corner of his mouth in concentration as he guided the carefully balanced bottle to the table. “This is a special kind. Line aquavit. Ever heard of it?”
Rash knew the stuff, of course, as any Norwegian would. Linje akevitt had a unique taste—one that could only be achieved through lengthy hardship at sea. Oak barrels of the stuff were sent out on ships to be tossed and weatherbeaten before finally becoming hardened to their circumstances and emerging a very different beast than what had left port. She could relate.
“You’ll have to pour,” Dandy said, sitting opposite her.
Rash poured herself a shot.
“SkÃ¥l,” she said, then downed it.
Licorice and caraway burned her throat, giving way to a lingering herbal essence.
“Don’t you mean ‘Salud’?” Dandy asked.
“Yeah,” she said, tossing another shot down her throat. “Salud.”
Dandy glanced at his empty glass. “What about me?”
“I don’t drink with cowards,” she said, pouring herself a third.
His face fell. “But it’s my liquor!”
“Call it a partial payment for saving your niece.” She slammed the third shot. Why waste the laudanum if the akevitt was free? “Now go put up my horse. You got a barn, right?”
“Yes, but…” he said, extending his stumps.
“You got toes, ain’t you?”
Dandy’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”
Rash stood up way too fast. “Fine,” she said, steadying her wobbling legs with a hand on the table edge. “But you’ll have to lead me.”
“No how,” he replied. “Fouch might be out there, lying in wait.”
“Ain’t nobody out there.”
“Easy for you to say,” he said. “You’re armed to the teeth.”
Rash unsheathed her knife and held it out to him. “Here you go.”
His face reddened. “You bitch!” he shouted. “You know I can’t do nothing with that.”
Rash just laughed, replacing her blade. “Least I know there’s a little fire left in your belly. You sure you won’t join me?”
“Ain’t no way I’m going outside until sunup,” he said.
She laughed again. “Sunup just makes it easier for them to get a bead on you. I would’ve figured a coward like you would prefer to slink about in the night.”
“I don’t have to take this in my own home!” he screeched. Then, calmer, “I’m going to bed.”
“And I’m supposed to put up my own horse and watch over you two while you’re sleeping for no pay but room and boring conversation?”
Dandy frowned. “Take the aquavit. Goes for five dollars a bottle. Plus you’ve already drank half of it.”
“It’s three dollars a bottle, but that’ll do for the night. I’ll be expecting a nice breakfast in the morning for my troubles, though.”
“You can eat trail dust on your way out of my sight come morning,” he said. “The gall on you, thinking you can talk to a man the way you do. Why, if I had hands on me, I’d beat you into the kitchen to make me a nice breakfast like a proper woman should.”
Rash’s face turned to stone. “You never asked me my name,” she said.
“I don’t give a—”
“Ever heard of Silje Rash?” she asked.
Dandy paled. “The Headhunter? Ain’t she dead?”
She snapped her gun from its holster and clapped it atop the table. “Not dead. Just old.”
Dandy raised his stumps in surrender, realizing his mistake. “I meant no offense, Miss Rash,” he said. “I offer my heartfelt apologies. I’m a bit sensitive to my condition is all.”
“Go to bed, Dandy.”
Dandy stood up and, without further protest, closed himself up in the vacant bedroom. Through the thin walls, Rash could hear him grumbling to himself, “I knew she weren’t no Mexican.”
