Professor Bones and Esmeralda

"Now gentlemen, it is very, very important to remember that I am not good at this, and that the cards hate me."

I finished with a flourish and began dealing rapidly until five cards were dealt to each man including myself.

"The cards pretend they like me at first." I tapped the first man's hand. "Deuces, King high." I flipped it over to expose the hand, causing a murmur of appreciation.

"Threes, Queen high."

"Fours, Jack high."

"Fives."

"Sixes."

Now they were staring in shock and a bit of horror as I turned over the cards.

"But as I said, the cards truly, deeply, hate me. It always goes wrong with my hand."

I flipped my hand over without looking at it.

"Aces and Eights. The Dead Man's hand. The card truly despise me." I gave a weak smile to a dead silent audience.

"Gentlemen. It is important to remember that I was being completely honest when I said I'm not very good at this. You should think of that before sitting down to a game with someone who might be." I made sure I caught the young man's eye for a second; best he learned this way than when he lost a fortune.

I paused to examine the cards for a second. I already knew from the feel of them what I would see.

"Besides, someone has already clipped and shaved this deck of cards to within an inch of its life."

Every eye at the table instantly fell on the man in the grey duster.

He was out of his chair instantly, grabbing my lapel and sweeping his duster back from his gun. "Did you just accuse me of cheating?"

"Not very well. If that deck of cards landed on a table in Tombstone, you'd be laughed out of town. Or shot. Possibly both. Though precisely in what order, I hesitate to think."

His hand twitched towards the butt of his revolver. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the Sheriff move slowly towards us, but he couldn't do much without triggering violence.

I looked at the would-be card sharp and sighed. "Must you be in such a hurry to depart this stage, to shuffle from this mortal coil?"

He looked distinctly put out. "Do you always take ten words to say two words?"

"All due apologies, my verbose nature is a persistent hazard of my chosen occupation. That was terribly misquoted Shakespeare. Allow me to clarify my words." I looked him dead in the eye. "If you try to draw that gun, I will kill you where you stand."

He blinked once as that sank in, but suddenly found himself holding very, very still. I had my derringer pressed tight up under his chin.

He looked quite surprised. I have no idea why anyone who'd seen me make coins and whiskey bottles disappear and reappear in rapid succession would be surprised that I could make a derringer appear so quickly, but they always are.

A frisson passed up my spine, like a rustle of feathers, as I felt my finger taking up the slack of the trigger against my will.

For that fraction of a second, I knew he was going to die. Then the heavy silver key on my watch fob gently tapped against me, freeing me.

I smiled at him. "Do be cautious. It would be so very disenchanting for the customers of this fine establishment, were this evening to take a tragic turn. And all I really wanted to do was purchase a bottle of whiskey."

Slowly, carefully, I lifted his Army Pattern revolver from his holster and extended it to the Sheriff, then stepped back and returned my derringer to its sleeve holster.

"I apologize, Sheriff, I really did not intend to make trouble over cards, though I think this is not really what either of us meant."

He nodded. "I will have some words with Mister Grace here. He works out at the Hamilton spread, and I think he'd be happier spending the next two weeks there than in my jail."

I looked at 'Mister Grace.' "I would recommend you to a different line of work than cards. I've seen 'good.' You will not live long enough to get there."

The Sheriff gave a wry half smile. "You've certainly made it clear you're a poor choice to call to a card table."

"My design was rather more to put your mind at ease than to make a scene."

He couldn't keep amusement from his face. He just shook his head and walked out with the unfortunate Mister Grace.

I glanced around, looking for the face I'd seen earlier. I was sure of him, I just wanted to know if he was alone.

I waited up quite late for Esmeralda.

She seemed very amused when she finally arrived. "Your little spinster was more than a little disappointed that you weren't available to give her some private treatment for her hysteria." She gave me a wry look.

"I'd rather not, I think. Any word?"

"The usual gossip, but there's at least one woman who arrived a year or so ago. Wife of the clerk at the dry goods store. None of the women have a bad thing to say about her. Even though she was a contract bride, if rumors are to be believed." She seemed a bit disconcerted for some reason.

"That's interesting."

"It is, isn't it? I'll be visiting the dry goods store tomorrow to see what I can find out. Do you suppose they would have Arbuckle's coffee there?"

"If they do, ask for Folgers' Golden Gate; that should give you a good start to talk."

Her dark eyes were staring into a distance I couldn't see. She seemed distracted. "There are a couple of other possibilities to look into as well, but I think that one sounds the best." She shook her head slightly as if to clear it. "It's odd, Barnabas, if a woman has a flaw in her character, other women will always find it, always talk about it. But they all seem to love her. Something feels off about this one."

"Some people are good at hiding what they are, Esme. You know that."

She seemed a little disheartened, a little more uncertain than my Esmeralda ever seemed. "We'll see."

I shrugged. "I did see something interesting in the crowd at the saloon. The middle Starling brother, Custis, was there. I'd imagine the other two and some of their bunch are here as well."

"What are they worth?"

"I think Damon and Custis are worth three hundred apiece, Lucius was five hundred dollars last time we picked up paper on him. They usually have three or four men with them, according to the papers. Some of their men have bounties on them as well. But we'll only look at them if we are unable to locate Miss Lodge, as they are likely quite well armed."

She looked puzzled. "Do you suppose they're eyeing the stagecoach?"

"That'd be new for them; they usually do hired gun work."

"Our fugitive is worth quite a lot of money; do you think they may be trailing her?"

I shook my head. "I can't see how they'd know; it was near on blind luck that got us here, and I can't see how anyone else could do it. But I suppose they just might. We'll want to take her quietly if we can."

She grimaced. "We could head the Starling brothers off if we warned the Sheriff about them."

"That'd mean explaining why we know that to the Sheriff, and that might tip our hand. I'd rather he stayed under the impression we just sell Patent Medicines as long as possible."

"Sometimes..." She stopped, then suddenly smiled, her face softer than usual. "I have a new formulation for dyspepsia, Barnabas."

A few minutes later, we were perched on the corner of the bed, arms linked for our usual ritual.

"A bit of pure grain alcohol, ginger, lemon peel, a bit of wintergreen, and some honey? This might actually work." Instead of downing it, as usual, I sipped it and she followed suit.

Instead of her usual explosive heat, she simply melted forward against me, laying her face against my shoulder.

"I will be your Doom, Barnabas, but most definitely not tonight."

###

It was well after mid-day before we did anything of consequence, Esmeralda's engagement at the dance hall would run very late, and she'd wanted to be rested. Still, there was much to do.

While I attended to more formulations and to sales, Esmeralda made the short walk to the dry goods store. That establishment was just a few blocks away, around the corner from the stagecoach stop across from the Sheriff's office. Normally, I'd have already dropped by the office to see if there were any new warrants out that might be worth pursuing, but I was afraid to tip my hand with a bounty the size of the one on Victoria Lodge at stake.

While waiting for Esmeralda, I actually made up several bottles of her new dyspepsia elixir, adding a bit of yellow coloring to make it more appealing. I thought I'd label it as a secret Gypsy formula, and, since I suspected it would actually work, I didn't feel bad about raising the price an extra dime.

As I was putting the new bottles out on display, Esme came up with a smug, cat-like smile on her face.

"The clerk at the dry goods store thinks very highly of you. You saved him a great deal of money with your little show last night. He was at the table where you found the marked cards. He's a young guy with brown hair, Jedidiah Slade."

"I think he was the one that called me over to the table in the first place."

"His wife, 'Kitty,' was over attending to the birth of a baby of a friend of theirs, but he said they would love to have us visit their home this evening for dinner as a gesture of appreciation."

"You do have an engagement tonight, so we will have to keep an eye on the time."

She gave me a very meaningful smile, full of promise. "I remember. And you know how that affects me."

I returned her smile with equal promise. "I certainly do."

There was a little extra sashay in her walk when she left to check on the arrangements at the dance hall.

###

Late that afternoon, I found myself standing alongside Esme at the door to a small, clean clapboard house on the edge of town with chickens scratching at the dirt all around it. The young man from the saloon opened the door and beckoned us in.

"Come on in, Sir. Ma'am."

His wife was standing right behind him, touching his elbow with obvious affection. Red hair, green eyes; she definitely fit the description. "This is my wife, Katherine; she answers to 'Kitty' most times."

She gave a brilliant, broad smile. "Jed says we owe you a huge thanks."

I gave her my second-best smile. Even if, or perhaps especially if, she really was our quarry, Esmeralda would be a touch put out if I gave any redhead my best smile, and that could be a bit dangerous. "Just a fortunate turn of events. I'm sure your husband would have caught on quickly."

Jed shook his head with a bit of a self-deprecating smile. "Not before I lost more than we'd have been sorry to lose. Kitty's pretty tolerant, but she'd have been rightly put out."

Kitty wrinkled her nose. "I'd have forgiven him after a couple days. Just can't stay mad at the man."

"I don't know; you managed to stay mad at me for three or four months."

"That's because I didn't know you." She looked at Esme. "We had a kind of rough start."

We sat down to a dinner of steak and fried potatoes.

Esmeralda smiled at Kitty. "So what did you mean by a rough start?"

"When we first met, I was sitting on my nevermind in a puddle of water, and I wasn't exactly at my most cordial."

"What happened?"

"I was a contract bride. Third daughter of a milliner in Rhode Island, and I wasn't exactly the belle of the ball, so I answered a Matrimonial in the newspaper and had six months of correspondence with man in Saint Elmo. I packed up and traveled all the way out there, only to find out he died a month before I arrived. I didn't have anywhere to stay, I was getting low on money, so I tried to go home and ended up here."

"And the water?"

"It was pouring rain, I was trying to walk to the hotel, hoping they'd let me do laundry in exchange for a room. I was crying and wasn't looking where I was going..." She gave a tiny shrug. "Splosh."

Jed grinned. "So I was coming back from making a delivery and I saw her sitting there and I asked if she was okay. She said she was fine."

Kitty leaned forward, eyes gleaming. "So he walked off!"

"She said she was fine."

I raised my eyebrow. "I think, young man, you fell afoul of the classic riddle of the female of the species. They never say what they mean, until they do. Then they don't let you know they've done it until it is too late. They are the sphinx; no man has ever solved their riddles, and they are not so kind as to simply kill you for failing to answer the question they never even asked."

I watched a secretive smile pass between Esmeralda and Kitty, but pretended not to notice. "So what happened then?"

Kitty rolled her eyes. "I dragged my case down to the boarding house, but they were full and didn't need help. It hadn't stopped raining, so I went into the only place I could, the dry goods store."

"Where she met my mother, who gave her a job as a housekeeper just to give her a place to stay."

"Mother Slade was so nice to me, but I was a little surprised when I met him at dinner."

"No more than I was. Mother sat her down right across from me. Her face got as red as her hair."

I suspected Mother Slade had more or less intended the outcome she'd gotten with the two of them, and from the sidelong look I got from Esme, she'd come to the same conclusion.

Kitty and Jed were too busy smiling at each other to notice our little interchange. Kitty went on. "It was hardly love at first sight. I was still so mad at him for leaving me set there in the rain, and I had some trouble fittin' to life out here."

Jed started snickering. "About a month after she got here, I noticed that every morning I'd see her hiding 'round the corner of the barn, peekin' at the yard, then she'd suddenly dash over there. It took me another month to figure out what was going on."

Kitty laughed softly. "It was that awful goose. I had to go out and get the eggs from the chicken coop every morning, and that horrible thing snuck up on me and bit me right on the canary cage. I was black and blue for weeks, couldn't hardly set down at all. Geese bite hard."

"So she was hiding until she saw the goose go to the pond before she'd get the eggs from the chickens."

"And I had to learn to cook. That was terrible."

"Just about went through a full jar of burn ointment every week for a while."

"Wasn't just me that got burned. We got us a bottle of pepper sauce, that Tabasco juice. I was making beef and beans and didn't know how much to use, so I just put in the whole bottle." She smiled. "That's when I knew he was rusty for me. Everyone else was trying to drink water and eat bread, just to stop it from burnin' so, and him just sittin' there, turning redder and redder, eating those beans, pretending he liked them." She giggled, reaching out to touch his hand fondly.

When she reached forward, I felt a chill settle down my spine. The V-shaped scar just above her right wrist was visible as her cuff pulled back just a little. The same scar described in the paper on Victoria Lodge. Esmeralda saw it, too, but like me, she kept her smile on.

Normally I'd have been thrilled to find my bounty so easily, but damned if they didn't just seem right for each other, happy together.

I felt distant for the rest of the afternoon, hollow. I smiled when I should, offered pleasantries when I could, but it was all very faded and colorless to me. I could hear the hidden Boston undertones to her adopted accent now, as clear as daylight.

Eventually, as our hour neared, I pulled out my watch to check the time. "I'm sorry to do this, but Esme has an engagement to attend to. We must be going."

As I started to put the watch back into my pocket, Kitty noticed the silver key dangling from the fob. "Is that the key to your heart, Professor? I'd think Esmeralda would carry that."

Before I could formulate an answer, Esme answered in a slightly drawn and hollow tone. "I have his heart, Kitty. I carry it with me always. No, that key is the key to Pandora's Box, wherein lies all the evils of this troubled world."

Her tone shook Kitty a bit; I could see it in her emerald eyes. I headed off any further questions. "I'd rather think that would be the liquor cabinet, wouldn't it."

Jed laughed, but I wasn't sure Kitty was convinced.

Just as we left, Katherine--or perhaps it was Victoria now—stopped Esme and asked for a private minute of her time, leaving me and Jed to talk on the front porch.

He looked down at the ground. "Kitty's asking your lady about child birthing, and if there's medicines to make it a little easier."

"Does she have another friend with child?" I was hoping for any answer than the one I knew was coming.

"No. She's with child right now, our first." He looked both proud to burst and terrified.

"She'll do fine."

"Mother says she will, says Kitty has good birthing hips."

"I hear that helps."

We talked on about mostly nothing until Esmeralda came out of the house.

Esme and I walked silently back to our lodgings, far more uncomfortable in our success than failure would have left us.

"You know, don't you?"

"Yes, Esme, but it doesn't change anything. If not us, it'll be somebody else. By now, her paper is all over the territories. Somebody will find her. We can at least take her in alive."

She shook her head. "It isn't right, it doesn't feel right.

"Being with child does not absolve her of her transgressions, Esme." Even as I said that, I wasn't sure I believed it.

"I know that." I could feel Esme's anger there. "You don't have to be the Reckoning you know."

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Somebody will be. If we can find her, so can others."

"She isn't a killer. I can tell." She paused. "Can we wait until tomorrow to take her?"

"It would be better timing. It would give us time to get away from her friends here, and I certainly wouldn't force you to miss your show, Esme."

She brightened, like a flame catching fresh air, at the mention of her show, and our attention drifted from the unfortunate situation of Victoria Lodge as we finished our walk to our room.

Her rather scant dancing outfit was already laid out, and she immediately set about tacking a set of diaphanous scarves to it. The veils would form a more complete outfit; during the dance, more and more of them would float their way into the audience until she had only the face veil left. She'd never get them back; most would find their way into the saddlebags of cowpunchers, some would end up as gifts to the dancing girls of the hall, and some would be carried back to sweethearts and wives, none of whom would likely question where such a thing could have come from.

Despite her focus on the dance, I could tell she was distracted. It bothered me; Esme was normally far more distracting than distracted.

Eventually, she rolled her costume up in her bag and headed over to the dancehall. I went down to pack up the wagon, packing all the bottles carefully, making sure everything was strapped down and checking that the shackles were oiled and locking properly. I couldn't attend Esme's performance; I'd shatter her illusion by being a reminder that she wasn't truly available.

The men that would attend the performance would believe that she danced for them; but she danced for no one but herself. She fed off their desire, off their fixation. She'd make a small fortune, even after the hall's cut was taken. She'd even leave a gift for the girls of the hall and still have plenty, but that wasn't really why she did it at all.

I was sitting at the writing desk in the room when Esme returned. I'd just finished the telegram that I intended to send to Mister Graham as soon as we reached the next town over. I'd certainly not risk turning her over to the Sheriff in a town full of her friends.

She came in and shut the door firmly behind her.

My sloe-eyed companion was wearing the long grey dust cloak she wore for traveling, but dropped it as soon as she shut the door, leaving her standing in a brilliant chrome-yellow corset, some transparent pantaloons and calf-high button boots. She was holding a small bottle and two whiskey tumblers.