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“You can have anything in this place that you want, young man,” said a third woman. Maybe she was the madam, Alex thought. She was of medium height, buxom and a bit stout. Her hair was hennaed, and she had the weary look that came from too many years of scraping along in life.
Ignoring the offer, the golden-eyed man said, “Ladies, listen to me. You’ve got to stay close for the time being. Lock your doors at night, put up a sign saying you’re closed to the public, and don’t go letting any strangers in.”
His words were greeted by silence.
His older friend cleared his throat and nudged him, grinning.
“This is a … funhouse, Cody.”
The brunette was the first to speak. She cleared her throat. “Honey, I don’t know how to put this delicately, but … if we don’t invite people in, this place ain’t going to be in business long.”
“I see,” Cody said gravely. “Well, you’re still going to have to be very careful. When you’re not … entertaining, you need to lock your doors. And don’t fall prey to anyone seeking entrance when they shouldn’t be.”
“And when would that be, sugar?” the buxom woman asked. “And by the way, I’m Dolly. I keep things running around here.”
“Dolly,” Cody said, “you have to keep an eye out for things that don’t seem … quite normal, for men like that bunch that were in here just now. You have to fight them. All the men—and women—in this town need to learn to fight them.” He paused, looking at the bright-eyed female faces staring at him as if he were a god who had come to earth. He shook his head, as if realizing that he wasn’t being understood. “I’m Cody Fox, and this is my friend Brendan Vincent. We’ll be sticking around for a while. We’re going to try to find out what’s going on here.”
The sound of furniture being shoved across the floor startled everyone, and all eyes in the room were suddenly focused on the piano. It was just Jigs, who had risen from his hiding place at last.
Alex noted that Cody Fox already had a hand on his gun belt.
“You two some kind of lawmen?” Jigs asked. He epitomized the popular image of the perfect piano player with his fine suit, bow tie and misty-gray top hat that nicely complemented his ebony flesh. Tall and lean, he lent just the right touch of class to a place frequented by cardsharps, fast women, ranchers, cowboys and transients.
“Lawmen? No. Just concerned citizens,” Cody replied.
Brendan Vincent said, “I had kin who lived out in Brigsby. There’s not hide nor hair of them to be seen.”
“Well,” Dolly said dryly, making no mention of the state of things in Brigsby, “you’re mighty welcome here. As you might have noticed, we’ve yet to see the sheriff or his deputy.”
Cody was an extremely attractive man, Alex thought. He had a handsome face, if somewhat gaunt. His eyes were a golden hazel, and when he dusted his hat on his knee, she saw that he had rich wheat-colored hair. Tall and rugged, like many another cowboy, still he had something that was entirely unique. Alex found herself curious about him, and it was no wonder the working women in the saloon seemed about to have the vapors.
“Ma’am, to be quite honest, I think we’re looking for a rooming house of some kind, a place where we can have a bit of peace and quiet, a place to think some of this out,” Cody said politely.
“Then you want to be staying at Alex’s place,” Jigs said.
Alex hadn’t realized that Jigs had even seen her, but now he stared at her, grinning. “Welcome home, missy,” he said softly.
Everyone in the place was staring at her now, and she didn’t like the sudden attention. She felt her cheeks grow warm and flushed, though she didn’t know why. It must be the stranger, she told herself. Cody Fox.
He looked at her for a long moment. A very long moment. Then a hint of a smile touched his features and he tilted his hat in greeting. “How do you do, miss?”
She had the feeling she looked like a worn-out school marm. Most of the women in the saloon were showing a great deal of flesh and wearing vivid colors.
She was basically wearing travel dust.
“Fine, thank you—considering the circumstances. How do you do?” she replied courteously, feeling inexplicably awkward.
“You own a boardinghouse?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, unable to make further conversation, but then again, it had been a yes-or-no question.
“And might you have a couple of vacancies?” he asked politely.
She started to turn to Jewell to check, then remembered with sudden clarity and horror that Bert was lying unconscious—or worse—back at the boardinghouse. “Oh!” she gasped, and without replying, she raced out the door and across the street to the house. She rushed in, dropping to her knees by Bert’s prone body.
She patted his cheeks and called his name, and after a moment he let out a groan and opened his eyes, staring up at her blankly.
“Bert?” she said anxiously.
He blinked, then started to speak, but his words froze in his throat, and he grabbed her arm in a surprisingly strong grasp. She turned to see that Cody Fox and Brendan Vincent had followed her.
“It’s all right. They stopped the outlaws,” Alex said soothingly.
“Stopped them?” Bert said, staring at the other men skeptically.
“They killed one of them and convinced the others to ride away,” Alex said.
“The sheriff?” Bert asked.
“Nowhere to be seen,” Alex admitted.
Cody hunkered down by Bert’s side. “Looks like you took a hell of a wallop,” he said, his eyes sympathetic. “Do you think you have any broken bones?”
Bert looked at him, still suspicious, but said, “I think I can get up.”
Cody offered him an arm. Bert got to his feet slowly, wincing. He continued to study Cody, but he nodded in thanks as he said, “I’m all right.”
“Still, you might want to sit for a spell,” Cody suggested.
“The library,” Alex suggested, leading them toward the comfortable overstuffed sofa in her father’s—no, her—library.
She got Bert settled, then backed straight into Beulah, who had come in like a whirlwind, followed closely by Jewell and Tess, and Brendan Vincent.
“Oh, Bert, look at you!” Beulah said, taking his hand, along with a seat next to him.
“I’ll get him a whiskey,” Jewell decided.
“Maybe tea would be better,” Tess suggested.
“Maybe we should put the whiskey in a cup of tea,” Jewell countered.
“I’m sure that will be fine,” Beulah said.
Jewell and Tess turned to leave the room, but not before sighing softly and looking with rapt eyes at Cody Fox. Alex looked at Bert, rolled her eyes and winked, then grew sober again. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Fine, just embarrassed that I couldn’t protect my own household,” Bert said. He looked past her to stare at Cody and Brendan. “How the hell did you get that man and his human refuse out of town?” he asked.
“Just threatened him the way he threatens everyone else. Milo wasn’t about to lose his own life, and he knew I would take it,” Cody said, then cleared his throat. “Brendan and I are looking for accommodations, if they’re available?”
“I just got back to town this afternoon, so to tell you the truth, I don’t know,” Alex said, and looked at Beulah, still at Bert’s side. “Do we have any vacancies?”
Beulah let out a very unladylike snort, staring at her as if she had gone daft. “Do we have any vacancies? Child—we have nothing but vacancies. No one is coming out this way to stay anymore. No bankers, no railroad men. No new whores desperate to try out the place.”
Alex smoothed her hand down her skirt. “Well then, gentlemen, you’re certainly welcome to stay.”
“It will be right nice to have you here,” Beulah added with considerably more enthusiasm. “Breakfast is from seven to eight, and supper is served precisely at seven. If you’re here, you eat. If you’re not here, we assume you’ve made other arrangements. I’ll just see to your rooms. If you’ll excuse me?” She rose and started for the door, then suddenly stopped, a look of horror on her face.
“Levy!” she said. “Oh, dear, where is Levy? I haven’t seen him since all this began.”
Alex closed her eyes and groaned, hating herself. She’d forgotten the stable hand, as well.
“I’ll check the basement,” Bert said, rising carefully.
“I’ll run upstairs,” Beulah said.
“I’ll take the stable,” Alex said.
As soon as Beulah and Bert were out of the room, Cody Fox caught Alex’s arm. Like Milo, he had a grip of steel, though he wasn’t using it to hurt her. Still, she stared at him in indignation at being stopped so summarily.
“We’re missing a member of the household. Please let go of me so I can go look for him.”
“What does he look like? We can help,” he told her.
“He’s our stable hand, medium height, curly brown hair, thin face, dark brown eyes,” Alex said, pulling her arm free.
“I’ll head out to the street, see if the outlaws shot anyone we haven’t discovered yet,” Brendan Vincent said.
“I’ll go out back to the stable with you,” Cody said. “I think they’re all long gone, but just in case …”
Alex ignored him and raced down the hall to the back door. The town had stables and a livery, but they had their own small stable out back, along with a smokehouse.
As she burst outside, the laying chickens began to squawk.
“Levy!” she cried, sprinting past the flustered birds.
Cody Fox ran by her toward the stables.
The outer doors were open and he headed inside without pausing. Alex followed quickly, still calling for the stable hand.
The stalls were to the left; Beau was in the first—kicking at the wall, which was uncharacteristic for the normally phlegmatic draft horse mix that pulled the work wagon. Cheyenne, Alex’s palomino, neighed excitedly, pacing the small confines of his stall, and even Harvey, Bert’s usually placid gelding, was putting up a ruckus.
“Levy?” Alex cried again.
She felt hay particles falling on her head and looked up to the loft.
And there was Levy. She could just see his face as he peeked down at them.
“Oh, thank God,” she breathed, and started for the ladder. Once again Cody Fox grabbed her arm. “Wait.”
“Wait? Why?” she demanded, but he was already heading swiftly up to the loft.
Alex followed. “Levy, are you all right?”
When she reached the loft, Cody Fox was already standing over Levy, offering him a hand to help him to his feet.
“Were you attacked?” Cody demanded. “Did those men hurt you … in any way?” he persisted intently.
“No, no, no,” Levy said, rising and shaking his head emphatically. He looked at Alex with shame. “I knew they were here. I should have … I should have come out, but I came up here, up in the hay, and I just hid. The horses were going crazy. I … well, we’ve all heard about what happened over to Brigsby.” He took Alex’s hand. “Miss Alex, I am so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You were behaving sensibly and nothing more,” she said firmly. “There was nothing you could have done except maybe get yourself killed. I’m just grateful that you’re alive and well.”
Despite her words, Levy hung his head. She reached out, lifting his chin. Levy was a real asset. He was strong, despite his slim physique, and intelligent; he loved books. The horses responded to his gentle ways, and when he was done with his work, he was a charming conversationalist. As a child, he’d come from Eastern Europe with his parents, who had been running from persecution, and now he was an integral part of the mix of ethnicities that made up Victory.
“I was a coward,” he said softly.
“No,” Cody said firmly, “you behaved rationally. You would have been able to go for help if Milo and his men had gone on a killing spree. One more body wouldn’t have done anyone any good.”
Alex found herself grateful for his support, and Levy looked a little less as if he wanted to jump out of the loft.
“Be that as it may, Alexandra, I won’t be letting you down again,” Levy said grimly.
“Well, thank God we’re all fine and the danger is gone,” Alex said, smiling.
Neither man offered a smile in return.
“Shall we get down from the hayloft?” she suggested brightly, determined not to dwell on what might have been.
Beulah was waiting outside the back door when they headed up to the house.
She swatted Levy with a dishrag. “You had us scared half to death, Levy!” she said, but then she hugged him. Finally she drew away and looked into his eyes. Something in her expression told Alexandra that the cook was satisfied with what she saw there. “All’s well tonight,” Beulah said softly.
They had barely entered the house when Brendan Vincent burst through the front door. “You better come, Cody,” he said.
“What’s happened?” Alex asked.
“Bit of a problem down the road, that’s all,” Brendan said.
He looked like such a civilized man, she thought, with gentle eyes, yet he was riding with Cody Fox, and Fox handled weapons like a man accustomed to battle. Not that he seemed particularly violent. He just moved with lightning speed and had a strength that was like steel.
“What problem?” she asked.
“There’s a fellow … well, the outlaws got him,” Brendan said.
“We’ve got to see who it is,” Alex said. “Doc Williamson must be around somewhere,” she added, and started for the door.
Brendan looked at Cody and blocked her way.
“There’s no reason for you to be seeing this, miss,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I might be able to help. I’ve seen my share of war injuries. I’m not in the least delicate.”
Behind her, Cody Fox cleared his throat. “I’m a medical doctor with a Harvard degree. If he needs help, I’ll be there to do what I can.”
Alex wasn’t about to be stopped. “I’m going with you,” she said stubbornly.
She saw Brendan look at Cody, waiting for his approval before moving. She wondered what was so powerful about the younger man that Brendan deferred so readily to his authority.
“Whatever you wish,” Cody said impatiently. “The situation is undoubtedly dire, so we need to hurry.”
With Brendan in the lead, they headed along the woodplank sidewalk that had been built beside the main street to let people avoid the mud and muck of the broad dirt road. When they reached the end of the walk, they headed out into the street and across to the building that housed the combination dentist and barber shop.
A crowd had gathered there, but no one had approached the man lying facedown on the ground.
“Coming through,” Brendan announced.
The crowd backed away, white-faced and tight-lipped.
“Why isn’t someone helping him?” Alex asked, looking around the crowd. She saw people she recognized, who quickly lowered their eyes.
Cody hunkered down by the man, turning him over. Alex felt a quickening in her heart, followed by relief when she realized she didn’t know the man. He was about forty, and he wasn’t going to need a doctor. He had a huge bloodstain on his shirt, and his eyes were open and unseeing.
“Is he from around here?” Cody asked, looking around.
“I don’t know him,” Alex said.
A man stepped forward. One she did know. Jim Green, the local mortician and photographer.
“He’s not one of ours,” Jim said. He was a kindly old fellow with silvery hair and matching old-fashioned muttonchops. “He must have come in with the outlaws.”
“Who shot him?” Cody asked.
Another man cleared his throat. Ace Henley, who ran the livery. “I was up in my loft, and I got in a few shots when they were whooping and hollering and blowing holes in the sky.”
Cody studied him and nodded. “That’s good. That’s what we’re going to need—a plan to get everyone into a position from which to fight, for next time they come in like they did.”
“What’ll we do with him?” Brendan asked, nodding toward the corpse.
Strange question, Alex thought. He was a dead man. Bury him. Even an outlaw had to be buried. What the hell else were they going to do with him?
“The usual,” Cody said, rising, dusting his hands on his jeans.
“It’s getting dark,” Brendan commented.
“So it is. I’ll get him over to the mortuary. Fellows, you got a place we can bury him?” Cody asked, looking from person to person in the crowd. “Might as well get him in the ground tonight.”
“There’s no preacher tonight,” Jim said. “Though I don’t rightly know if a preacher would say the words over … such a … one.”
The two men exchanged a meaningful look, as if acknowledging a shared but unspoken truth. Alex wondered uneasily what was going on and whether it had anything to do with the strange state of affairs she’d found at the boardinghouse when she arrived that afternoon. Garlands of garlic decorating the windows and wardrobes, and an abundance of crosses hung in every room. Just what was going on here?
“He was a man, a man who had a soul at some time,” Cody said. “We can say some words, and when a preacher comes, he can say those words all over again. Now, let’s get him out of the street before night comes on.”
“Right,” Jim said, and cleared his throat. “It’s all over town how you two saved the place, mister. We’re right grateful.” He doffed his broad-brimmed hat in Cody’s direction and nodded to Brendan. “I’m Jim Green, mortician and photographer, at your service. We’re mighty glad to have you.”
“Thank you,” Cody told him. “Anyone seen the sheriff yet?”
“Him and the deputy went off just about an hour or so ago—there was talk of some cattle rustling out at Calico Jack’s. That would be John Snow’s trading post,” Ace clarified.
John Snow-on-Leaf, now known simply as John Snow, was part white, part Mexican, part Apache and all entrepreneur, Alex thought. He and his current wife and twenty of his children—a brood whose color went from sable to snow—managed the trading post where the tribes and white folk alike came and went.
Cody nodded, glancing at Brendan Vincent. “All right, anybody sees the sheriff, tell him I’d like to meet him come the morning. Now, let’s deal with the dead.”
He reached down and grabbed the dead man under his armpits as Brendan went for the man’s ankles.
“Lead on, Mr. Green,” Brendan said.
“Right this way,” Jim said.
The crowd broke apart and began to disperse, everyone looking uneasily at the sky, as if they were desperate to be off the streets before dark.
Alex stood there, watching the townspeople and frowning.
Strange—no, bizarre—the way people were behaving.
As if he sensed she was still standing there, Cody paused and turned back. “Go home, Miss Gordon. Please.”
Then he started walking away again, the weight of the dead man suspended between him and Brendan Vincent. Either one of them might have thrown the body over a shoulder and carried it easily.
They didn’t seem to want to touch the blood.
Spooked by the intensity of his insistence that she go home, but too stubborn to just run away without knowing what was going on, she decided to pretend to obey his directive. She walked away and stepped up on the sidewalk, then paused and looked around.
No one was left on the street. It was as if the town were deserted. When she saw Fox and Vincent follow Green into his place of business, she stepped back off the sidewalk and walked swiftly and as silently as she could in their wake.
The door to Jim Green’s photography studio and mortuary was closed by the time she got there, but the curtains were still open at the windows, and kerosene lamps were lit within.
The front room held the photography studio; the mortuary was in the rear. Someone had neglected to shut the door between the two, so she stood to one side of the big front window and peered in.
The men had carried the body through to the back and placed it on a long oak slab—a rudimentary embalming table. Green’s instruments were laid out on a small cart nearby. Since the war, she knew, the art of embalming was in demand.
There were a lot of dead boys making the long journey home.
She continued to stare through the window, carefully trying to shield herself from the men within.
They were examining the body and talking, but she could only catch snatches of the conversation.
“I don’t think so. I really don’t think so,” she heard Cody say.
“We have to think about safety,” Jim said.
“He’s right, Cody—better safe than sorry,” Vincent added.
Cody studied the corpse, turning it, touching the throat and studying it, as if he might find a pulse.
Doctor? Educated at Harvard? A farm boy could see there was a massive shotgun hole in the man’s chest.
“Better safe than sorry,” Cody agreed.
Jim Green handed him a long knife with an edge so sharp it glittered like diamonds in the lamplight.
Cody took the knife.
She nearly gasped aloud as she saw him position himself—then sever the corpse’s jugular.
She clamped a hand over her mouth and leaned against the wall, stunned. Then she turned back to the window again, thinking that her eyes must have deceived her.
Now only Jim Green was standing over the corpse. Or rather, the pieces of the corpse.
There wasn’t all that much blood, but then, the man had already bled out all over the street; a shotgun blast could do that to a fellow.
But now … Now the dead man’s head had been severed cleanly from his body. The face was turned toward her, the eyes staring out at her.
Caught in the glow of the lamplight, they seemed to be alive.
They seemed to be staring straight into her soul.
CHAPTER THREE
ALEX HURRIED BACK to the boardinghouse, deep in thought, the image of the dead man’s eyes burned into her brain. She opened the front door and stepped inside, thinking that the world had gone mad.
Of course, in a way the world had gone mad the day the first shot of the war had been fired. But this was something worse. Worse? What could be worse than a war that was exterminating half the young men of a divided country?
Losing all sanity and all souls.
The thought came to her unbidden, and she shook it off. But what was happening here was strange. People were behaving differently.
Cody and Jim had literally severed the dead man’s head.
“There you are, Alex!” Beulah chastised her as she came through from the kitchen, clasping a hand to her heart. “Don’t you go round worrying me so now, young lady, do you hear?”
Alex stared at her. “Beulah, I was right down the street.”
“Maybe so, but you need to be inside now. It’s dark, and the moon … well, the moon is out.”
Alex smiled, giving her a hug and wondering what the moon had to do with anything. “I’m fine. The bad guys got sent away with their tails between their legs. Tonight we’re all safe.”
Beulah drew back, shaking her head sadly. “Honey child, no time is safe anymore. But darkness? It’s not safe at all.”
Alex stared at the older woman.
“Beulah, what’s going on here?” she asked.
“Evil,” Beulah said sagely.
“Evil?”
“Bad things, very bad things. It’s like the devil himself is trying to take hold here. Oh, honey, I don’t know everything. But it’s like an evil disease. So we just stay inside. Oh, Lordy! Brigsby gone. And Hollow Tree, too, I hear tell … and now Victory. Maybe we thought we’d be spared. Maybe we felt we couldn’t do a thing about it ‘cept run, and for too many folks, this is all we have and there ain’t nowhere to run to.”
“Beulah, I don’t understand you,” Alex said impatiently.
“I don’t rightly understand it myself,” Beulah said, then smiled suddenly, her eyes lighting up. “But tonight … well, that was a miracle, it was, those two fellows turning up when they did. And now they’ll be staying here. What a fine thing that is.”
Beulah made the sign of the cross over her ample chest as she spoke.