Ralph Compton Blood Duel

“Oh.” Jeeter still felt an urge to ride to Coffin Varnish and give them a piece of his mind. “Then I reckon we might as well keep on with my lessons. If you want to, that is.”

“Mr. Frost, if I were not teaching you I would be grading papers, and I consider teaching you the more pleasant of the two.” Ernestine felt herself blush. That had not come out precisely as she intended, although, God help her, it was the truth.

Jeeter was so flabbergasted that for a few seconds he could not get his vocal cords to work. Finally he said, “That’s awful nice of you. I’ll try to make you proud of me.”

“Let us take a look at f,” Ernestine said.

Chester Luce rapped his hammer on the blanket on the counter and announced, “This meeting of the Coffin Varnish Town Council is hereby called to order.”

Present in the general store were Chester and his wife, Win, Placido and Arturo, Dolph Anderson, and Minimi Giorgio.

“Two in one week,” Winifred Curry said from a chair near the pickle barrel. “The world is liable to come to an end.”

“You will treat these proceedings with the dignity they deserve,” Chester said, and tried to square his round shoulders. “Now then, the purpose of this meeting is to discuss those corpses.”

“There’s dignity for you.”

Adolphina came around the counter and loomed over Win. “That will be enough out of you. This is serious business.”

“We buried them an hour ago, thank God,” Win said. “What is there left to talk about?”

Chester answered, “The money we made.” He pulled a leather poke from an inner pocket and opened it. “All told, it comes to three hundred and forty-seven dollars.”

Silence fell, until Dolph Anderson recovered enough to ask in barely understandable English, “How much that be again, Mr. Luce?”

“Three hundred and forty-seven dollars. It is not as much as I hoped, but it is nothing to sneeze at.”

“You wanted more?” Win marveled.

“A lot more,” Chester said. “Last I heard, Dodge has grown to about seven hundred people. Not even half paid us a visit, since some of the three hundred and forty-seven came from folks who came here twice.”

“Even so,” Win said, and whistled.

Chester began counting money out on the counter, making piles. “Let’s see. As we agreed, here is fifty dollars for you, Win, and fifty for the missus and me, and fifty for Dolph, and fifty more for Minimi, and fifty for Placido and Arturo—”

“Fifty each,” Winifred said.

“I don’t recall agreeing to that.”

Win smacked the pickle barrel. “Damn it, Chester. They kept those bodies in their livery longer than they should have, just to please you. Now their stable stinks to high heaven.”

“If I give each of them fifty, that will only leave forty-seven for the town treasury,” Chester protested.

“Which is forty-seven more than it’s had in a month of Sundays,” Winifred argued. “Fair is fair. Placido and Arturo both earned equal shares.”

“My wife doesn’t get an equal share and it was her idea,” Chester reminded him.

“Give it to them,” Adolphina said.

“Pardon me?”

“You heard me. Win is right. If anyone earned full shares, they did. Fifty to each and it is a shame we can’t give them more.”

“If you truly want me to,” Chester said.

“Do it.”

Reluctantly, Chester counted out another pile. The rest went into a tin on a shelf behind the counter.

Minimi hugged his share to him, saying, “Grazie, signore. Grazie. Lei e molto gentile.”

“Speak English, you silly Italian,” Chester said. “You are in America now.”

“I thank you, sir,” Minimi said, correcting his oversight. “You are very kind. I wish it was more.”

“Don’t we all,” Chester said.

Placido and Arturo came forward to accept their shares. “I, too, would like to thank you, Mayor Luce,” the former remarked. “It will take us a month to air out the stable, but it was worth it.”

“If not for the smell, we could have had those four on display until they rotted away,” Chester said.

“Smell and rot sort of go hand in hand,” Winifred commented.

Jokingly, Chester declared, “It is too bad we don’t know where Jeeter Frost got to or we could invite him back to kill someone else.”

Adolphina was thoughtfully fingering the tin. At her husband’s comment, she swiveled around and said, “That is an idea worth pursuing.”

“I was kidding, dearest.”

“I wasn’t.”

Winifred and the rest all looked at Chester, who shrugged and shook his head.

“The first time was a fluke. We can’t have people shot down on a regular basis,” he said.

“Why not?” Adolphina demanded. “Think of how much money we could make. People would come from all over the territory, not just Dodge. We could make five hundred dollars a month. Maybe a thousand.”

“Have you been drinking?” Win asked.

“This be joke, ja?” Dolph said.

Adolphina ignored them. “I have given it a lot of thought. The possibilities are appealing.”

Placido had removed his sombrero when he entered the store. Now he wagged it at her, saying, “What do you propose, senorita?”