“H’lo, boys,” the sheriff greeted them. “Glad to see you made it through the night. Have a seat.”
Ben stepped aside to hang his hat on a wall hook. With his usual economy of movement, he fitted his loose, large frame into a chair, slung one ankle over the other knee, and waited. His clean-shaven face displayed little effect of the stress he must surely be feeling, nor did he fidget or fuss.
Not so young Reese. Oh, neither did he fidget or fuss; he had had too many years of looking over his shoulder down the road behind him, watchful for an enemy. He, too, hung up his hat and sat, bareheaded, while light, easy conversation flowed on around him. But a few new threads of silver could be seen in the rough brownish-blonde curls, and the scar showed barely at all against the pallor of his skin.
“D’joo get everything done that you wanted to this mornin’, Ben?” Gabe, coat removed for comfort and full white sleeves rolled up, rested one hairy forearm on the arm of his chair.
“Putineer. Spent a few hours at the store. Checked out sales and inventory with Jimmy. We had a couple families of settlers passin’ through, and they bought up a wagon load of stuff.”
“Oh, yeah? I did see some strangers a few days ago; that must’ve been them. Any idea where they were headed?”
Ben grinned. “Jimmy tried to talk ’em into gettin’ some land around here, addin’ ont
o the city limits, but I guess they were movin’ on further. Maybe south and east t’ords Dallas. You gotta give Jim credit—he’s always promotin’ his birthplace.”
“And what’s new with the town council?”
“Well, now, not so much. Reckon that’s a good thing; means they’re happy with the way affairs are goin’ and not makin’ any complaints.”
“I can complain, for one,” said the doctor. “Wait’ll you taste Paul’s coffee.”
“Oh, shut up,” Paul good-naturedly ordered him. “I’m tired of hearin’ you jaw about my coffee. So, nobody said nothin’ about wantin’ to get a couple new horse troughs for Main Street?”
“Nary a word. B’cause that issue has been floatin’ around for some months now, and it ain’t been resolved yet. Which you’d know, Paul, if you attended our meetin’s a little more regular.”
“I figured the council would prefer havin’ their little metropolis kept safe than seein’ me at the back of the room while they argue back and forth,” Paul protested mildly.
Ben sent him a snarky grin. “Thought that’s why you have deputies, Sheriff, so’s you could send them out in harm’s way whilst you go politickin’. No, Turnabout’s events are pretty quiet right now, and I’d like to keep ’em that way.”
Shifting in his chair, Gabe tried another sip of the godawful stuff Paul had brewed, and grimaced feelingly. “You get wheels set in motion for the annual Thanksgivin’ dinner?”
“Startin’ to. Rev. Beecham volunteered the hall over to Church of Placid Waters, since it’s the biggest room available—”
“Other than the Firewater Saloon’s dance floor,” was Gabe’s facetious contribution.
“—and we can fit quite a crowd of folks in there, tables and all,” Ben, ignoring the interruption, continued blandly. “With the overflow out on the lawn, if needs be. Somea the ladies are workin’ on arrangements, as we speak. Thanksgivin’ dinner is always excuse for a big foofarah round here,” he explained to his silent brother.
“As a holiday, it’s startin’ to catch on,” said Reese, in the first words he had spoken since entering the sheriff’s office. “President Lincoln did a good thing, settin’ that day aside.”
“And how has your day been passin’ by?” Paul turned toward the younger Forrester with interest.
He looked tired. And a little frazzled. With a slow half-grin not surprisingly very like his brother’s, he shrugged. “Slow. Ben and I had a pretty good dinner at the Sittin’ Eat.”
“Didn’t eat much, though,” Ben confided. “Belly all tied up in knots, I suspect.”
“Well, then, enough chewin’ the fat. Let’s get down to it.” Pencil in hand, Paul leaned forward to concentrate on his visitor and the problems with which he was contending. “How about you tell me what’s goin’ on, son? Tell me what you did to get your name and face on a wanted poster.”
“They say I killed three men.”
“Ahuh. Who is ‘they’?”
“The law—what there was of it—in San Francisco.”
The sheriff had pulled forward a small blank sheet of lined paper to begin making notes. “Reckon you’d better give me the particulars, Reese.”
Heartsick and soul-sick, wounded and scarred, he’d left behind a whole huge scope of battlefields and bloodshed, up and down the east coast, and traveled away about as far from the Civil War as he could, without falling into the ocean. He wanted some place cool and quiet to recover his sanity and nerves, to earn a living, possibly to settle in permanently. Somehow, he had ended up in the “Paris of the West.”
“Huh,” said Reese, recalling the past with a frown and wrinkled brow. “Shows how wet I was b’hind the ears. Thanks to the gold rush, San Francisco was about the wildest and woolliest place on earth. Certainly the biggest city on the west coast.”