den de weeds will,” the old woman said. “Dis time of year be the worse fer pure mis’ry. Dat’s what dey ought to call this town. Spring Mis’ry. Best thing dat could happen would be if de river was to flood. I mean of Jesus in the wilderness proportions. Cover us underwater for thirty days and thirty nights.”
“Forty,” Rachel Renee corrected, and Fallon thought that Cheyenne’s Bible school had come in handy.
“Even better,” the waitress said. “Eat honey, ma’am,” she told Christina. “Only cure we got, ’cept fer drownin’.”
“You don’t seem to suffer,” Fallon observed.
“I eat honey. By de gallons. Ya might as well jus’ call me Queen Bee. Y’all new here?”
“Yes,” Fallon said. “Just moved.”
“Figured. What with her askin’ ’bout de wind, and now sufferin’ the mis’ry of March. What would y’all care to have fer dinner?”
“Honey,” Rachel Renee sang. “It’s sweet.”
They ordered the special, fried fish and onions, but the waitress brought out baked bread and two jars of local honey first. Rachel Renee filled up on so much bread and honey she barely touched her plate. Fallon figured his daughter was the smart, and lucky, one. The fish, at least his, was mostly bones anyway, and he could scarcely taste the onions because of all the grease. He had figured, this close to Missouri, he might have something resembling a home-cooked meal. But he had found some bad cafés in Cheyenne, too, and this was pretty much their first foray into Leavenworth. The city was big enough.
He paid his check, grabbed his hat, and escorted his wife and daughter to the front door, which swung open, and three men entered. They blocked the exit.
“Hello, Hank,” the weasel in the middle said.
Only my friends call me Hank.
The weasel was a runt, standing no taller than five-foot-five, and that included the cowboy boots he wore with their two-inch heels. He wore striped trousers, a plaid shirt, moth-eaten vest, stained bandana, and trail-worn slouch hat. The eyes were too far apart, his left earlobe was missing, his face was pitted with scars, and his nose had been broken countless times. He carried an old Colt tucked inside his waistband.
To the weasel’s right stood a stout man, the kind Fallon usually saw working in a blacksmith’s shop. The only thing missing was a smithy’s apron. He had huge arms that strained the sleeves of his cotton shirt, a thick beard of blond hair stained on one side by years of tobacco juice. Fallon saw no gun, not even a sheathed knife, but with arms that size, he figured, this leviathan wouldn’t need one.
The last man was tall, wiry, dressed better than his two pards, but nowhere near clean enough for a Kansas church. He wore a belt gun, a shiny, nickel-plated pistol holstered butt forward on his right hip. Probably a southpaw, Fallon figured, but the Smith & Wesson must not be his preferred weapon, for he held an iron rod and kept tapping one end against a calloused right palm.
The welcoming committee, Fallon thought.
“Do I know you?” Fallon asked the weasel.
The weasel’s grin revealed several missing teeth and more that a dentist would consider a lost cause.
“Name’s Jenkins,” the weasel said. “Buster Jenkins.”
Fallon’s mind searched, but came up empty.
“Sorry, Buster. I don’t recall the privilege of meeting you.”
“Choctaw Nation. You arrested me.” His left hand rose slowly, carefully, and the pointer finger traced a thin scar from the part in his hair to the center of his forehead.
He didn’t look that old, Fallon thought, but it was hard to figure out the age of a man as dirty as this one.
“I arrested a lot of men,” Fallon said. “But, congratulations. You’re out of jail. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Buster,” the waitress called out. “I don’t want y’all wreckin’ dis place. Y’all take yer business outside.”
The men did not move.
“What’s going on, Papa?” Rachel Renee asked.
“Christina,” Fallon said tightly, “go on home. I’ll see you in a bit.”
“You sure?” his wife said.
“Yeah.” He had sized up the men. He would not need Christina’s assistance with these three, and he didn’t want his baby girl to see her papa at this kind of work. Fallon nodded at the weasel. “If you’ll step aside, let my family go home. They have a lot of unpacking to do.”
“They might wanna pack up,” the burly man said, causing the thin one with the pipe to snigger.
But they did step aside, though the weasel warned Christina, “Don’t go after no law dog. Just go straight home.”
“I thought we were gonna see the town,” Rachel Renee said. Christina scooped up the girl.
“We are,” Fallon said. “After I finish my business with these . . . gentlemen. I’ll be home in a jiffy.”
“In a box,” the weasel whispered with a malevolent grin as they stepped aside to let Fallon’s wife and child leave the restaurant. The one with the pipe turned sideways to watch through the window as Christina and Renee moved down the sidewalk.
“Where they headin’?” the weasel asked.
“West,” the thin one said.
“Might find a law dog down,” the big brute said.
“This shouldn’t take long,” the weasel said.
“I’m gonna call de police,” the waitress bellowed, “if ya don’t take dis outside.”
Fallon realized that the restaurant was empty of paying customers. The cook stepped out of the kitchen. Fallon could see him through the reflection in one of the windows with the shades partially drawn to keep out the sun. His eyes turned briefly, but this side of the street wasn’t crowded. No one passed by, and Fallon realized how late they were getting out of the house. The dinner rush was long over. Not a peace officer to be found anywhere.
“Would you three like to take this matter outside?” Fallon asked, trying to sound respectful, or at least, courteous.
“Nah,” the weasel said. “A copper would likely interrupt our getting-reacquainted party.”
“I see.” Fallon’s mind began racing. “So . . . Buster Jenkins. Remind me of how we met.”
“Choctaw Nation. I was runnin’ whiskey.”
Fallon’s head bobbed. “A popular diversion.”
“Yeah. So was eighteen months in Detroit.”
“Well, you’ve been out for some time. I haven’t been a deputy marshal in Fort Smith for years and years.”
“We know,” the weasel said. “You was a big-time law dog in Wyoming. Now you’s gonna be runnin’ a prison. The big one here in town.”
Fallon nodded. It struck him that Buster Jenkins was not aware of what had happened to Fallon some time after Jenkins had been sent to the Detroit House of Corrections. That Fallon had spent ten years in Joliet. That Fallon had then worked as an operative in three other prisons. He figured Buster Jenkins did not even know about the gunfight Fallon had been in the middle of during the bank robbery a few weeks back.
“Been readin’ ’bout you,” Jenkins said.
“I didn’t know you could read,” Fallon said. “Did they teach you that in Detroit?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The expression on Buster Jenkins’s