“I bet you could pick up a hog and throw it over a fence. Men rate physical strength in a woman a lot higher than we let on.”
She looked around at the other tables. “I think someone put you up to this.”
“If I make a mess, it’s usually of my own doing, Miss Ruby. Let me be honest with you. What you’re looking at is what you get. Unfortunately that means you won’t be getting too much.”
She put down her fork, blinking. “You behave like you’re not right in the head.”
“That’s a matter of perspective,” he said. “I never use profanity in front of a woman. I don’t smoke or chew tobacco in the house. What’s mine, I share with the woman who can abide a pitiful wretch such as myself. On occasion I attend services at the New Hebron Baptist Church. I was baptized by immersion in the Comal River on September 8, 1879, by a minister who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto. I was friends with Susanna Dickinson, the only adult white survivor of the Alamo. I read the encyclopedia for one hour every night.”
“Do you always wear a gun inside your coat?”
“No, I usually wear it on my hip, at least when I work. I’m not a full-time Ranger anymore. I’m city-marshaling right now. I suspect one day I’ll go back to full-time rangering.”
“Rangering? Have you killed anyone?”
“Nobody who didn’t deserve it.”
“I know a horny old bastard when I see one.”
“Number one, I’m not old, and number two, I’m not a bastard. I cain’t deny the other part. It’s how human beings get born,” he said. He stood up and removed several bills from his wallet and dropped them on the table. “Are you coming or not? You’re one of the most beautiful creatures I ever saw, Miss Ruby. That’s not a compliment. It’s a natural fact.”
“A ‘creature’?” she said.
THEY WALKED OUT on the beach. She was an erect and tall girl, wearing a full-length dress, sleeves to the wrist, and a short-brim, flat-topped straw hat with cloth flowers sewn on it. She didn’t have a coat but seemed to take no notice of the chill in the wind or the sand that stuck to her shoes and stockings. The sky was maroon and ink-stained, the waves crashing five feet high on the beach, f
illed with seaweed and tiny crabs and the bluish-pink sacs of Portuguese man-of-wars. In his boots, he could hardly keep up with her.
“I’d get you your own buggy and horse,” he said. “We can visit San Antonio. Or take a boat to Veracruz and see Mexico.”
“What would be my obligations?”
“He’p me run the ranch. Take care of the books. Shoo varmints out of the yard.”
“Anything else?”
“I’d like your company. It’s no fun living by myself.”
“Then why didn’t you keep one of your wives around?”
He seemed to study the question. “I think the problem is I’ve never had high regard for normalcy. I’ve always been drawn to women who probably left their bread in the oven too long. It’s a mystery I haven’t quite puzzled my way through.”
She seemed to ignore his attempt at humor, if that’s what it was. “Why do you want me and not somebody else?”
“Because you’re young. Because you represent the next century. Look at the hotel.”
It was massive, undoubtedly the biggest building in Texas, hundreds of electric lights blazing with a coppery radiance.
“The times I was born in are ending,” he said. “Thomas Edison is going to change the entire country. I don’t have illusions. My kind will be swept into a corner. I want somebody around who’s brighter and younger than I am. You have an extraordinary carriage. You have sand, too. I think you’re the one.”
“Don’t ever raise your hand to me.”
“I would never do a thing like that, not to you, not to any woman. A man who strikes a woman is a moral and physical coward.”
“Don’t ever talk down to me, either.”
“I won’t. I’ll get you your own gun. If you take a mind, you can shoot me.”
“When would we leave?”