Once A Marshal: A Ben Stillman Western by Peter Brandvold

Author:Peter Brandvold [Brandvold, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-64119-494-5
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing

Chapter Eighteen

Under a golden canopy, Stillman and Fay sat beside a spring creek, on a wool blanket, in a high-walled ravine deep in the Two Bear Mountains. It was cool and bright. Nearby, freeze-dried chokecherries clung to branches with only a few remaining leaves, crimson now with the early mountain fall.

They'd managed to meet secretly three times since she'd first come to him a week ago. Stillman was recuperating from his wounds, which Crystal Johnson had doctored after consulting her Home Medical Advisor. Fay was reading aloud to him from a leather-bound book as worn as old saddle leather.

"The immortals will send you to the Elysian plain, at the ends of the earth," she read slowly, carefully enunciating every word, "where fair-haired Rhadamanthys is. There life is supremely easy for men. No snow is there, nor ever heavy winter storm, nor rain, and Ocean is ever sending gusts of the clear-blowing west wind to bring coolness to men."

"Not bad," Stillman said. "Who wrote it?"

"Homer."

"I'd forgot you liked poetry. Does your husband know you come here and read Homer?"

She laughed. "He'd think it very suspicious. He's a businessman. He looks at the world in terms of pluses and minuses."

" 'Many evil men are rich, and good men poor, but we shall not exchange with them our excellence for riches.' "

She frowned. "Who's that?"

"Don't recall."

She closed the leather-bound volume and held it in her lap. "You're an educated man, Mr. Stillman."

"Montana winters get long even for lawmen."

"Yes, I remember. You liked Mr. Emerson."

"Still do."

She had brought them lunch in a picnic basket. Fried chicken, potato salad, sourdough biscuits, and rhubarb pie.

"Open this?" she said, handing him a corkscrew and a bottle of wine.

"Whoo-eee." He chortled, reading the label. "Chato dee bla—"

"God, forget what I said about the education." She laughed.

"Raiding the master's cellar again, Mrs. Hobbs?"

"You know how much that cost?"

"More than I made in a year protecting the public, no doubt."

"Considerably."

He filled their glasses, counting on her presence to keep him from bingeing. Besides, he'd never been a wine drunk. "Cheers," he said, nudging her glass with his.

They sat together under the balm of Gileads and drank the wine and ate the chicken and potato salad and bread and followed it with rhubarb pie.

The breeze was cool and rife with the mossy smell of the creek and the cinnamon smell of turning leaves. Stillman felt at ease for the first time in days.

Fay laughed as they talked, threw her hair out from her neck, and leaned back on her elbows, closing her eyes and lifting her chin to the speck of sun filtering through the leaves. He rolled a cigarette.

"Roll me one?"

"Why, Mrs. Hobbs ... "

"Stop calling me that."

He gave her a cigarette and she took it delicately between thumb and index finger and drew on it. Exhaling smoke, she studied the burning ember.

"Not bad, huh?" he said.

"Not bad. I wouldn't make a habit of it, but not bad."

"It doesn't burn your lungs?"

"I'm not a sissy," she said, drawing on the cigarette again.

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