Chapter Thirty-One
Alexandra’s view was limited to Aidan’s back, so she couldn’t see Kevin Black’s face as he demanded to know where his money was, but she could certainly hear him. For all of her righteous anger at the man, she shuddered at his strange, oily manner of speaking.
“Where is my money?”
The crowd was silent, so silent that Alexandra could’ve heard a pin drop. Everyone’s gaze oscillated between Aidan and Black; she could see that much. They all stared with shocked or fearful eyes. The air itself felt charged, like a single spark could set off the whole powder keg.
Alexandra searched for the children. Bella and Gary slept peacefully through the whole ordeal, but Danny stood with Lisa and Antony. Lisa had her hands on Danny’s shoulders. He looked exactly as angry as Alexandra felt. His face was twisted up, his teeth showing. Relief flooded Alexandra.
Antony, for his part, had a carefully blank expression.
His movements were smooth and subtle, partially hidden behind Lisa’s skirt.
Alexandra squinted, not sure what was happening, until she saw a glimpse of a rifle barrel.
Antony balanced it on its butt, holding it with one hand while keeping his other hand in plain view.
Alexandra let out a breath. At least we aren’t caught completely with our bellies exposed, she thought.
“I’ve got your money,” Aidan said, his voice low and even. Cool as he sounded, she could both see and feel his back tensing.
Alexandra shifted her hand from Aidan’s waist to his back, letting him know that she was still there.
“Well, isn’t that just a hog-killing time?” Black said. “Let’s see your money, then.”
Everything was still for a moment, and finally Lisa withdrew to the house. She returned holding a small cashbox. Her face was stony, imperious even as she approached Black. He leered at her as he rifled through the coins and bills.
“Mighty fine effort you’ve made,” Black said, smiling with wolf’s teeth at Aidan. He weighed the cashbox in one hand, unhurried, like a man who had all evening and every intention of spending it. “What’ve we got here? Two hundred and forty-odd?”
“Two hundred and forty-six dollars and sixty cents,” Lisa said, in the voice she had once used on people who tried to shortchange the shop.
“Two hundred and forty-six dollars and sixty cents.” Black turned the words over like he was tasting them. Then he lifted his head and raised his voice, pitching it out across the yard, and Alexandra understood all at once that this was the part he had ridden out here for.
“Only trouble is, folks, the debt standing against the name of Rawlins this evening is seven hundred and forty-two dollars.”
The sound the crowd made wasn’t quite a gasp. It was lower than that, and worse: a sort of collective settling, the sound of a hundred people deciding all at once and all together that this was no affair of theirs.
Aidan’s shoulders tensed again. His arms were loose, his hands curling into fists. She hadn’t seen a lot of physical altercations in her time, but she knew when a punch was about to let fly. If Aidan threw a fist at Black, he would very likely be shot.
Before he could do anything rash, Alexandra shouldered her way out from behind Aidan again. She put her hands on her hips, staring at Black.
“And just how would you know that?” she demanded. “You haven’t even counted it!”
“Well, it’s like this, my little spitfire,” Black said, his reptilian eyes landing on her. “I’ve started counting interest, and this surely isn’t enough to cover that. You do know what interest is, don’t you?”
“Of course I know,” Alexandra snapped. She opened her mouth to say more when Lisa wrapped a hand around her wrist. Alexandra glanced sideways at her aunt, who still had her eyes riveted to Black, and shook her head.
Black’s eyes moved over her then, slow and appraising, in a way that made Alexandra want to put something solid between the two of them.
“Course,” he said, “there’s another way of settling it.
” And he said it not to her but out to the yard, to all of them, the way a man tells a joke he’s confident of.
“I put the notion to your husband a week back, out at his own corral. Told him I’d take you in trade and call the whole business square. ”
He spread his hands, the picture of reasonableness.
“He never mentioned it? Well. Ain’t that a shame.”
Alexandra did not look at Aidan. She had no need to. She felt the exact moment his back went rigid under her hand, and that was answer enough for anybody.
He did not deny it. Alexandra thought afterward that a denial would have been easier to stand and watch. He simply held still while a hundred people worked out for themselves what he had been carrying alone for a week, and let them look at him while they did it.
“So that’s how it’s going to be, is it?” Aidan demanded. Black’s gaze slid from Alexandra to Aidan. His teeth showed more fully as he grinned. “You’re just going to bleed us dry, aren’t you? You damned leech,” he growled.
“Now, now,” Black tutted, “there’s no need to be hurtful. After all, you might offend one of my friends.” From the darkness came laughter and yelps, scattered and impossible to pinpoint. It was as if a pack of wild dogs had closed around the yard, taunting and slavering in the night.
We’re surrounded, Alexandra realized. Fear, icy and slick, poured down her spine.
Aidan’s anger radiated off him. She suspected there was a healthy amount of disgust in there, too, and not just at Kevin Black. He rounded on the crowd with upturned hands.
“Are you all just going to stand there while he does this?” Aidan demanded.
There was no answer.
Black chuckled. “What did you expect, Aidan? Now,” he said, his voice dropping and all pretense of politeness evaporating, “get me the rest of my money.”
Black withdrew as silently as he had appeared, still holding the cashbox. No one moved or said anything until the sound of hooves retreated into the dark.
Alexandra looked up at Aidan. He was still fuming, though he remained tightly controlled.
“This can’t go on,” Alexandra said quietly, breaking the silence.
“You’re right,” Aidan agreed, not looking at her. A muscle in his jaw tensed. To the crowd at large, he turned and spread his hands wide. “See, Sheriff?” he said. “How’s this fair or legal?”
The sheriff, a man sporting a belly that had drunk deeply from the punch and eaten at least three slices of pie that Alexandra saw, shifted uncomfortably at suddenly being the center of attention.
“The two ain’t the same thing, Rawlins,” the sheriff responded. “This is a private matter between the two of you. Kevin Black hasn’t done anything illegal just yet.”
“All my eye, he hasn’t,” Alexandra fired back. “Are you really going to tell me that gouging a man like this is perfectly above board?”
“No,” the sheriff said, shaking his head slowly.
He wouldn’t look at her, and Alexandra found she despised him for it more than for anything he said.
“I’m saying I’ve been sheriff of this county eleven years, and I know precisely what Kevin Black is.
I also know I’ve got two deputies, and he’s got a dozen men or better, and I couldn’t tell you where a single one of ‘em lays his head at night.”
He turned his hat over in his hands.
“You bring me proof of a crime, and you bring me the place they all bed down together, and I’ll ride out with every man I can swear in. Short of that, all I’d be doing is writing down a list of names for him to work through at his leisure.”
Aidan turned in a slow half-circle, taking in the crowd. “Well?” he demanded. “Is no one else going to come forward? Oh, come on,” he said. “Do you really mean to tell me that no one has had dealings with the man?”
“Even if we had,” said Gus Pettit, a man with the stooped posture of a miner, glancing around furtively, “none of us wants to put ourselves in the line of fire. There’s too many of them—they got eyes all around town.
There was that incident with Longshanks, you remember that?
He got uppity with Black, and then he was just a-gone. ”
A general murmur of agreement followed.
“If I were you,” the miner continued, one hand on his hip, “I’d pay the man by any means necessary. Just try to put it behind you.”
Alexandra stared at the miner, then at the rest of them.
She opened her mouth, ready to tell them all off—how dare they stand there, on their land, eating their food, and not lift a finger to help—but realized that it wouldn’t do any good.
She clamped her teeth together so hard she thought she might break them.
Cowards, she sneered inwardly.
Aidan spoke before she could. She could feel him take a deep breath. She winced preemptively, fully expecting him to bellow. He stared out at the assembled for a long moment, and then exhaled through his nose.
“Well. If that’s how it is, then,” he said finally. Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked away, past the house, out into the dark, summarily dismissing the lot of them.
He did not look at her as he went past. Not once, not even sideways. Alexandra found she had been waiting for it without knowing she was waiting, and that it wasn’t coming was somehow worse than everything Kevin Black had said.
Alexandra longed to call after him, to yell at the people standing before her, to do something, anything. Instead, she just stood there, watching as the community that she thought she’d had slipped away, silent.
There was nothing to say.