The Last Good Day, стр. 48
“Where is she?” Rance asked.
“Stayin’ at the boarding house with that colored girl and the boy.”
“What boy?” Rance said.
“Not sure, best you go talk to her,” Riley said.
“I’ll do that,” he said, placed his foot in the stirrup and pulled himself up on Buck with his good hand by the saddle horn and rode away.
B.W. and Tommy watched Rance ride away
“Saw Fannie with a little boy, thought it was hers,” Tommy said. “Come to think of it, he was kinda white lookin.’”
“Boy’s white,” Riley said, “about three or four.”
“I’ll be,” B.W. said. “Guess we’ll know all about it when the major gets back.”
“Want some chicken? Got plenty. Miss Julie brought enough to feed twenty people,” Riley said.
Riley’s oldest boy stopped eating long enough to give a testimonial. “It’s really good,” Riley Junior said and went back to eating.
B.W. looked at Tommy, he smiled and licked his lips. “Thanks,” B W. said. “Don’t mind if we do. Been a while since we had a good meal. Was afraid we might have worn out our welcome last time.”
“Nope. You need a place to bed down you can stay here,” Riley said. “Might have to watch out for Travers and his bunch. They been pickin’ on Miss Julie, tryin’ to get her to leave town. She told me Travers’ main gun hand, Booker Church, killed Tommy’s mama. They don’t want her telling anybody else, don’t think they know she told me or they would be comin’ for me, too.”
“Where is this Church guy?” Tommy asked, opening up his saddle bags for the Navy Colt. “I’m goin’ to kill him.”
“Slow down, boy,” B.W. said. “We need to know more about this first. No need runnin’ off half-cocked.”
“Don’t care ‘bout nothing else,” Tommy said. “If he killed my mama, I’m goin’ to kill him. The sooner the better.”
“He might not want to be dead,” B.W. said. “You think of that? He sees a gun, you’re the one that will be dead. Calm down and let’s wait for the major to get back and go from there.”
“Better be soon,” Tommy said.
“Eat some chicken and wait,” B.W. said. “You can think better on a full stomach.”
28
Rance rode up to the hitching post at the boarding house and dismounted, tied Buck and walked up to the door and knocked.
The pretty lady he had talked to before opened the door, holding the white cat.
“You Rance Allison?” she said.
“Yes ma’am,” he said and took off his hat. “Is Julie Stryker staying here?”
“Yes, she spoke of you. Told her you had been here. That arm kind of makes you stand out. She’s on the back porch. Follow the hall until you come to the screen door, that’s the porch.” She stepped back for him to come in, closed the door and walked away with the cat.
Rance hung his hat on the rack beside the door and walked down the hall and opened the screen door. Julie was sitting on a swing, Mitchell on the floor holding a toy horse.
“Julie,” he said. “What…what are you doing here?”
She looked at Rance and stood up on wobbly legs. It took her a moment to find her voice. “Waitin’ for you,” she said.
”How did you know where I was?”
“A friend of Tommy’s mama told me.”
“Whose boy is that?” Rance asked, pointing at the child on the floor.
“He’s yours, Rance,” she said, her eyes getting moist. “His name’s Mitchell.”
“Mine!?…This is my son?” He stared at the little boy on the floor, his mouth open in disbelief.
“Should have told you a long time ago, was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Why should I now?”
“You think I would have come all this way if he wasn’t?”
“Don’t know,” Rance said. “We spent one night together greivin’ over Paige and my daughter and somehow wound up together. How could that happen?”
“It only takes once at the right time,” she said.
“Unbelievable.”
“Yeah that’s what I thought,” she said. “But there he is. You’re the only one. He’s yours.”
“You should have told me ‘fore I left Milberg.”
“I know that now,” she said. “A lot changed after you left. Colonel Hitch thought I was a bad influence on the locals and thought you were plannin’ on startin’ another war and I was in on it. He demanded I sell out and leave. Told him I would if he dropped the charges against you, he did and I left to find you.”
“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard,” Rance said.
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Riley told me ‘bout the money and what the men looked like.”
“Preston and Charlie, they wound up dead, and someone else got the money.”
“Where did you get it?”
“We stumbled on to it,” he said. “Left by bank robbers.”
“A lot?” she asked.
“Twenty-thousand dollars. I’m still in shock over the boy.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” she said.
“I believe you. I’m just trying to get a handle on everything. How long have you been here?”
“Since right after you took off after Preston. A prostitute from Whiskey Gulch came to see me. She worked with Tommy’s mama, that’s how I knew where to find you. She said she spent the night with a man named Booker Church that confessed when he was drunk to killing Tommy’s mama. He works for Travers. Church knows I know and has been stalkin’ me. I been expectin’ him to shoot us at any time.”
“This guy have two pearl-handled pistols and fancy boots?” Rance asked.
“He does,” she said.
“That’s the man Tommy saw the day his mama was murdered runnin’ from her room.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you ‘bout Mitchell,” she said and sat down in the swing, placed her head in her hands and began to cry. Mitchell jumped up and ran over to her, giving Rance the evil eye.
“Leave my mommy alone,” he said with a devilish look.
Rance didn’t know what to say and sat down beside her, Mitchell trying to