The Marriage Knot. Mary McBride

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СКАЧАТЬ night, Delaney.” She said it almost stiffly as she forced herself to walk the final yards to the front steps, and then up to the door. With her hand on the knob, Hannah was tempted to turn and take one last look at the tall man in his black vest, black trousers, and boots. She feared, though, that if she did, she might turn to a pillar of salt.

      So she went inside and softly closed the door behind her.

      

      Delaney didn’t go back to his room at the National Hotel. Instead he pushed through the doors of the Longhorn Saloon and settled himself at a table in the back. In a matter of minutes, Ria Flowers had brought him a tall, wet glass of beer and had planted her bountiful self in the chair next to his.

      “I haven’t seen you for over a week, Delaney, darlin’. Don’t tell me you’re loving up some other girl.” She leaned forward, a seductive smile on her redglossed lips and a significant amount of cleavage shimmering above her crimson laced corset.

      Delaney found himself oddly and uncharacteristically immune. Ria was a beautiful young woman still on the spring side of twenty, blond and blue-eyed and finely constructed even without the unnatural allure of her tight-laced corset. Of all the women who made their livings in the saloons of Newton, she still had a softness about her, not the sulky demeanor of most whores.

      It had become Delaney’s habit over the last several years, as he went from one wild town to another in Kansas, to take his pleasures in each place with just one woman. So, there’d been Joy in Abilene, Josette in Wichita, Fanny McKay in Dodge, and now pretty young Ria Flowers in Newton. It was a sort of monogamy, he thought, unsanctified as it was, unholy perhaps, but ultimately a necessity Delaney could not deny or do without.

      Besides, since he never intended to get married again, it wouldn’t have done to get cozy with a proper single lady who had... well... expectations. Not that it was always easy walking away from a whore he’d had an affection for, but it was legal. Unlike Wyatt and Doc, he’d never lived as man and wife with such a woman.

      In Delaney’s view, his two friends might just as well have been married to their paramours for all the grief they cost one another. He’d seen Mattie crying more than once over Wyatt. And if Doc’s Kate never shed a tear, still he thought he could read chapter and verse of sadness in her eyes.

      “You tired of me?” Ria asked him now, her pink tongue glossing over her lips and her fingers smoothing up and down his arm.

      “Just tired, honey.” Delaney took a long draft of the warm beer in front of him, then set it down again. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”

      It had to do, he thought, with a red-haired widow whose face and form seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his mind these last few days. The smart thing to do now, he knew, would be to take Ria upstairs to bed, to lose himself if only for a night in her arms and her giving flesh. That was, after all, why he’d come to the Longhorn instead of returning to his room.

      But he didn’t feel particularly smart at the moment, and somehow being with Ria Flowers didn’t seem like such a good way to rid his mind of Hannah Dancer. It struck him as dishonest. Damned if he’d ever coupled honesty and lovemaking in the same breath. And damned if he’d ever turned his back on a warm and willing female.

      He drained his glass and set it on the table with a thump. “I think I’ll just turn in for the night,” he told her.

      “Well, if that’s what you want.” Ria’s lower lip slid out. Worry flickered in her eyes. “I could come with you to the hotel, Delaney. Harry wouldn’t mind.” She angled her head toward the bartender. “Here. There. It’s all the same to him as long as he gets his cut.”

      He stood up, reached in his pocket for a silver dollar, and pressed it into her hand. “Harry doesn’t need to take a chunk of this, honey. You keep it. I’ll see you later. Tomorrow maybe.”

      “You sure?”

      “I’m sure.” He bent to kiss her forehead, then caught a whiff of her orange-blossom talc and nearly changed his mind. Nearly. “Good night, Ria.”

      

      His room on the second floor of the National Hotel was similar to all the other hotel rooms where he’d resided during the past decade of lawing. This one had new wallpaper, though, unlike the fly-specked patterns of some of his former residences. The mattress was decent enough and there were fresh sheets every two weeks.

      He propped his shotgun against the wall between the nightstand and the bed, then took off his clothes without bothering to light the lamp. There was still plenty of moonlight coming through the window to keep him from cracking a shin on the rocker or tripping over the worn Oriental runner.

      Delaney dropped onto the bed. It was true, what he’d told Ria. He was tired. God, he was tired. Of his present circumstances. Of Newton. Of living in this hotel. Of a job that paid him just enough to keep on being poor.

      Out of habit, he flexed his right hand—the hand that had once been fast and deadly accurate. That hadn’t been the case since he’d been shot last summer in Dodge by a fool kid who wanted to earn a reputation by killing an Earp. But the boy had winged Delaney instead, then found himself pistol-whipped by Wyatt and Virgil both and promptly tried and sent to jail. If it hadn’t been for the kid’s bad aim, Delaney would probably be in Arizona now.

      He’d come to Newton last winter less by choice than by default. With his gun hand out of commission, he knew he couldn’t pull his weight with the Earps. It was all well and good that he was still pretty lethal with a shotgun, but then anybody was that. With enough buckshot, even a blind old granny was a threat to life and limb.

      Hell, he’d even quit wearing his gunbelt and holster when he’d come here because he’d felt like a damn fool when he knew they were pure decoration. So he’d locked the leather and iron in the bottom drawer of his new desk, then he’d spent the next couple weeks feeling like a gelding. Just half a man somehow. Not that he thought wearing a gun made somebody a man, but not wearing his had taken a definite chunk out of his pride.

      He doubled up the pillow behind his head, sighing at the notion that, bone tired as he was, sleep wasn’t within easy reach tonight.

      Up till now, he’d adjusted pretty well. The shotgun wasn’t the total embarrassment it used to be. He’d had the occasional comfort of Ria, and he’d even managed to save a little cash. Not enough yet to buy in with the Earps in all their financial schemes in Tombstone, but enough to at least keep that particular dream alive.

      Things hadn’t been perfect. Hell, far from it. But Delaney’s life had been on a fairly even keel these last few months. Now he felt off center again, detoured if not downright derailed.

      Hannah.

      He shouldn’t have walked her home tonight. He should have just stood there, out of sight, and watched to make sure she got to her door safe and sound. But something always drew him to her like a magnet, like a dizzy moth to a dancing flame. Whatever it was, Delaney didn’t care for it one bit.

      It was time to start thinking about leaving town. So what if he couldn’t grip a pistol anymore? Doc Holliday did well enough with his sawed-off shotgun and nobody thought any less of him. So what if Delaney couldn’t buy into a silver mine or a saloon right away? He could save money in Tombstone just as readily as here. Maybe more, for all he knew.

      It was June. There were six months left СКАЧАТЬ