Chapter Twenty
Hargrove’s Saloon, Bozeman; The Wagon Road Home; The Collins Kitchen
The lamps along the bar at Hargrove’s were burning low at the bowls and warm at the gold light at twenty past one in the morning on the night before a wedding.
George had been at the center of the long pine room for the better part of an hour.
His shirt sleeves were rolled. His cup of dark ale had been refilled twice.
The second verse of The Sons of Liberty came up out of his open throat.
Wade kept his back to the wall at the corner table.
He had nursed his first ale for the first hour and pushed his second to Ben at half past eleven. A third sat in front of him now at twenty past one.
Ben drew on his pipe at the table.
“He has the lower register tonight, Wade,” he observed, warmth in his voice. “I had small idea he carried it.”
“My father taught him,” Wade answered, his eyes on the rim of his cup.
“My father taught me the trumpet.” Ben tapped the bowl of the pipe against his thumb. “He was a poor teacher of instruments. He was a worse teacher of knowing the hour to stop.”
The corner of Wade’s mouth pulled.
A small dark-haired woman came up at his elbow at twenty-five past one. Her hand landed light against the back of his chair. The smile she set down at him was the even professional one of the floor at Hargrove’s.
“Mr. Collins,” she said in a practiced voice. “May I bring you another?”
“My thanks, miss,” Wade answered, his eyes staying on the rim of his mug. “Three is the count for the night.”
“A seat at the table, then?” she pressed, her hand still light against the chair-back.
“Spoken for, miss.” Wade set his hand briefly against the brim of his hat on the table. “I am spoken for.”
She held a beat. Then she gave him the even nod she had been giving that answer in a hundred forms across a winter at Hargrove’s, and she went back to the bar.
Ben turned the pipe in his fingers.
“Spoken for,” he repeated, low. “There is a phrase, Wade.”
“It is,” Wade returned, the dry edge gone uneven for the first time at the evening.
“Have you said it out loud anywhere past this table?”
“Not yet.”
“And the day?”
Wade lifted his eyes off the rim of the cup at last.
“Is on hold by mutual agreement until such time as all other outstanding matters are resolved,” he answered, the words coming up flat. “The valley has been waiting on the matter for some little while. I have been waiting on it longer.”
Ben drew a slow breath through the pipe stem.
“It will keep,” he answered, the corner of his mouth pulling once. “She has wait this long. She will wait the rest of it.”
At the next table, a chair scraped on the boards.
Jameson had been at Hargrove’s since seven o’clock.
First, at the back room with two cattle buyers from Helena.
Then, at the long table with three men off the rail freight.
He was alone now at the bar with a glass that had been filled four times, and he came over with the glass in one hand and his hat in the other.
His pale grey eyes had gone loose at the edges.
He stopped at Wade’s table.
“Sheriff. Collins,” he said, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth without any warmth to back it.
“Mr. Dawson,” Ben returned, the pipe back at his lip.
Jameson set himself in the empty chair across from Wade. The glass came down at the wood at a slant.
“A fine night for a man to give up his bachelorhood,” he said. “Your brother has a register I had no idea he carried.”
“My father taught him,” Wade answered, his hands flat on the table on either side of his glass.
“Your father.” Jameson lifted his glass to his mouth and lowered it without drinking. “Your father, Collins, is a man I have been meaning to set some words down with you about for some little while.”
Ben’s pipe stopped at his lip.
“Set them down, then,” Wade answered, the words coming up low.
“My father sold him a quarter section in fifty-eight,” Jameson said. “I was nine that summer. I sat on the porch of my father’s house the morning the papers were signed. He came back from the Gallatin office with the coin in a leather wallet.”
The fiddle skirled on at the center of the room.
The drumming of George’s boot on the boards went on.
Ben set the pipe down very slowly.
“My father bought a parcel at a fair price from yours, Mr. Dawson, on terms yours had set,” Wade answered, the words level and very flat. “The sale was clean. The papers are at the Gallatin office. The matter is closed.”
“Oh, the sale was clean,” Jameson agreed, lifting his glass at the dim lamp at the rafter. “I grant the sale. I grant the papers. The matter is that mine had little intention of selling that morning until the wallet was presented.”
Heat came up at the back of Wade’s neck above his collar.
He drew a slow breath in through his nose and set the heat down at the back of his throat to wait.
“You have set the matter down, Dawson,” he answered, the words level. “I have heard the setting. The matter stays closed on the night before my brother’s wedding.”
A long beat.
Jameson held his eyes a count. Then, he lifted his glass at the dim lamp.
“To your brother’s wedding, Collins.”
“To my brother,” Wade returned, dry.
They drank.
Jameson set the glass down, rose, gave Ben a small, loose bow of the head, and went back across the boards to the bar. His pale grey eyes lingered on Wade for the count of two before he turned away.
Ben drew on his pipe.
“He will remember none of that come morning, Wade.”
“I will remember every word,” Wade answered, his eyes still on the bar where Jameson had gone.