“Aslow—” I stare at her. “Suppose that’s what you wanted me to bereadyto see? Christ.” I glance toward the door to see if we’re still alone before I drop into the chair catty-corner from her, hanging my hat on the back of it and pulling an unsteady hand through my hair. “You want to help me out and tell me what I’ve gotten into here?”
“Nothing you can’t handle. If you’re wanting to,” she replies easily. “Isn’t that right, gunslinger?”
I go still, and she clicks her tongue at me. “I told you, nothing happens around here without me knowin’.”
“I don’t…” I start to say, her calling me that bothering me more for some reason than when I’d heard it a little while ago. Perhaps because I think I want this old woman to actually like me. “I don’t do that anymore.”
She purses her lips at me. “But you’d judge Cypress for killing?”
“I’m notjudgin’him for anything,” I try to explain. “I just can’t be a part of it.”
She nods, picks up her spoon. “He asked you to be?”
“No, but we’re partners, aren’t we?”
Her eyebrows rise again. “Are you? Just because you’re riding the same direction doesn’t mean you’re doing it together.”
“We have an understanding,” I say with a frown, and since that description doesn’t feel quite true, I quickly amend, “An agreement.”
“An agreement,” she repeats, pausing the spoonful on the way to her mouth to laugh at me. “So you’ve said. How romantic.”
I snort, but my skin heats beneath my collar. “We aren’t—it’snot like that.”
“Course not.” She nods in the direction of my soup, directing me to eat before she takes another spoonful for herself, and I figure it’s in my best interest to oblige her. “So, this agreement you keep hiding behind...”
“I’m not hiding,” I argue, realizing how hungry I am once the first near-to-scalding bite hits my tongue. It’s good. Real good. I eat another before I go on. “The two of us decided to be of use to each other until this thing with Maddock blows over—ifit blows over. We split whatever money Cypress makes fiddling with his cards, and I keep him from finding an early grave. That’s it. Pretty simple.”
“Ah, but should the situation call for killing to keep him from that grave?” she suggests with a tilt of her head. “If someone had tried to kill him tonight, you’d have done what? Glowered at them?”
The furrow between my brow deepens, something that only seems to tickle her more. “I would’ve handled it.”
Her smile shifts from amused to knowing, making me feel cornered even before she says, “I have no doubt.”
“I’m not killin’ someone just because he feels like being rash,” I say, my irritation snapping a bit as I search the front of the house again and think about where Cypress could be right now. Heoughtto be back. God knows what he’s gotten into. All he was supposed to do was bury the body and then head home.
“What happened in Soldana is one thing,” I continue. “And I’ll admit, I wasn’t completely… I had my own reasons for intervening. But what happened tonight was different. He can’t just go around killin’ folk cause it pleases him.”
When I look back toward Dolly, she’s studying me, food seemingly abandoned as she reclines in her chair with her hands folded on the table, and I have the distinct impression I’m about to be scolded. “Is that what you think he’s doing? Killin’ cause itpleases him?”
No, I think, remembering again the way he’d looked. The way he hadn’t smiled once the entire time we’d been in that room.
“Did itpleaseyou in your old life?” Dolly asks, as if sensing the direction my thoughts have taken. “The killin’?”
“No, it didn’t,” I tell her, and she seems to know that’s the only response I’m capable of giving, too lost in some of my own memories before she starts giving me some of hers.
“You know, while I haven’t aged a day, the first time I met Cypress, he was quite a bit younger than he is now. God, must be getting on about ten years.” She smiles again, this time fondly. “He came through town with a group of train robbers that I knew at first glance were the type I wouldn’t care to have stick around, but Cypress…he was different.”
“Certainly is that.” I smile. “Can be hard to ignore.”
“He is. Was then, too. Bright. Kind. But also very…there was a watchfulness to him. He was always thinkin’, always keepin’ an eye on what the others were doing, even as he was talking away. Could tell he never missed a thing. Never missed a trick, nor a harsh word or action from the rest of ‘em. He continually apologized on their behalf. Slipping us extra money when they weren’t looking. And all the while, I wondered why he was with them, even if I was grateful that he was, too.”
She pauses, stares pointedly at my still-full bowl, and I don’t need to be told twice.
“He had a talent for defusing things,” she explains as soon as I start eating again. “Whenever the rest of his group got too rowdy, he’d manage to step in the way in time, get everyone sorted in the end.”
“He can be good at that,” I agree with a slight shake of my head, thinking of him doing the same the night Maddock tried to draw a gun on me. “Maybe too good. Until he isn’t. He doesn’t know when to quit.”
Her frown deepens. “I’m not sure he thinks he can.”