Fair Is the Rose (35 page)

"No—Christal—don't—" Ivy stood, her entire body trembling in fear. "You know he was here for me."

"Yes, but I invited him in."

Faulty turned to her. "Christal, if you do this again, I'll beat you, girl. You understand that? I'll beat you senseless."

Christal didn't answer. She couldn't. She didn't understand any of this.

"Answer me, girl. You know what I'm talkin' about or do I have to take a hand to you now to show you the error of your ways?"

She still didn't speak. She wasn't going to say she understood why Jericho couldn't come in the bar and visit with Ivy when she didn't and never would.

Faulty raised his hand to her, but a voice at the kitchen door nearly made him leap to the ceiling.

"I wouldn't do that."

Macaulay stood at the kitchen door. In the fray, he had entered without anyone even seeing him. Now he lounged against the closed door, arms crossed casually over his chest, as if he were surveying a bunch of bickering children.

Faulty pointed to Jericho. "Sheriff, arrest this man for trespassing. There ain't
no
darkies allowed in this saloon."

"No!" Ivy cried out, running to Jericho's side.

"That's ridiculous!" Christal gasped. She turned to Macaulay. "I invited the man in. He isn't trespassing. You can't arrest him."

Faulty chimed in, "This here is my saloon and I'm not gonna let people think I'm servin' Negroes. Arrest him, Sheriff."

Macaulay looked around the room, his gaze coolly surveying the situation.

By now several customers were peeking through the kitchen door. Faulty had no choice but to make a show of protesting Jericho's presence and demand that the sheriff take the trespasser away. He began to rant, "Ain't
no
darkies allowed in this saloon. Take him away! Ain't
no
darkies allowed in this here saloon, no sir!"

Finally Cain turned to Faulty. "This man isn't in your saloon. He's in your kitchen. There's no law that says this man can't be in your kitchen if invited."

"Well, he weren't invited! No sirree!"

Christal stepped forward and glared at the men crowding the saloon door. "But he
was
invited.
I
invited him in."

Faulty let out a wince and began shaking his head, as if he were watching his saloon fall right down to the ground.

Cain looked at the customers crowding the doorway. "Go
on,
go back to your drinkin'.
Nothing's
gonna happen in here tonight."

The men slowly left the doorway.

Faulty slammed it closed again. "What do you mean, Sheriff, by not arresting this man? There ain't nobody gonna come to this saloon if they think I'm serving darkies."

"This man was in your kitchen, not out in the bar, and I'm not going to arrest a man for something he didn't do."

"But he's a Negro and Negroes ain't allowed in here!"

Macaulay nodded to Jericho. "I'm not going to take this man out of here like he just robbed a bank. He didn't. All he did was come here, thinkin' he had some friends."

"Well,
don't that
beat all." Faulty dropped his jaw.
"Never thought I'd see one of you Rebs stickin' up for a darkie."

Cain's mouth hardened. Christal's gaze riveted to his face. If there was ever a sore subject with Cain, Faulty had just gone and picked it. She knew how passionately Cain viewed his role in the war, how guildess he'd felt about it during the fighting, and how guilty the North had branded him afterward.

"It's the law. I go by the letter of the law. This man broke no law. I'm not going to arrest him."

"Then take him out of here!" Faulty snorted.
"I just uninvited him!"

Jericho looked as if he could have slammed his fist into Faulty's face. Instead, he looked at Cain.

Cain nodded. "C'mon. Let's go. If it's whiskey you want, I got a bottle warming at the jail. No reason to stay here any longer."

Christal almost admired Cain at that moment. He'd saved the day. Even Ivy was looking at him with something akin to hero worship. A weaker man wouldn't have stood his ground for a black man.

Jericho whispered a reassurance to Ivy. He then followed Cain out the front door—ironically, the first time he'd ever been allowed to walk through the saloon.

Joe began playing a lively tune and men began drinking and talking again. Dixi was heard laughing somewhere in the crowd, but in the kitchen, no one was laughing.

Faulty muttered something about tending his customers. He warned both girls to get to work, but Ivy started crying and Christal could find no way to leave her. Faulty left them alone, bursting into the saloon with the chant, "Ain't
no
darkies allowed in here, no sirree!"

"Someday things will be different," Christal whispered to Ivy, who was weeping into her hands.

"He's so
angry,
I just know he's going to get himself arrested one day. He'll come back here and they'll throw him in jail until the judge comes to town in the spring. Then all his cattle will die and then he'll never have enough . . . enough . . ." She broke down weeping anew.

"Macaulay won't let that happen," Christal soothed.

Ivy looked at her, tears marring her smooth coffee-colored cheeks. "How do you know? Do you know him that well? Because I heard tell he was a Confederate. My mama was colored and she said the Confederates hated her."

"No . . . he's not like that ..." Christal whispered. Deep in her heart she knew he wasn't. Perhaps it was his acutely honed sense of justice, but she could not see him stripping Jericho of all he held dear just because of a stupid incident and the man's skin color.

"Are you sure, Christal? I love Jericho. I couldn't stand to watch the law go and ruin him."

She patted Ivy's hand, forcing herself to believe the words, if just for the moment. "You won't. The law . . . the law . . . well, it just isn't there to ruin lives."

I'll choose me then a lover brave

From all that gallant band;

The soldier lad I loved the best

Shall have my heart and hand.

"T
he
H
omespun
D
ress"

C
arrie
B
elle
S
inclair,

C
onfederate niece of
R
obert

F
ulton, inventor of the

steamboat,
1872

At half past three in the morning, Faulty kicked out the last drunken cowboy and latched the front door to the saloon. Two more customers lingered, but they were upstairs. The girls would let them out when they were through.

Exhausted, Christal walked to the kitchen with pieces of a broken glass, telling herself she'd sweep up the rest in the morning. There was nothing she longed for more than sleep, but when she walked through the darkened saloon to the stairs, she noticed the lights still burning at the jail.

She stifled the impulse to see him. Cain had handled the situation tonight with Jericho well; he'd been scrupulously fair. It tempted her. She wondered if he could also be fair with her.

Her eyes rested on Ivy's black cape, draped forgotten across a chair. Without quite pondering what she was going to do, she grabbed it.

The cold sucked away her breath even going the hundred feet to the jail. Flurries fell from a starless sky, coyly drifting down as if playing with the idea of a snowstorm. Even Ivy's heavy cloak was poor shelter from the frigid night. By the time Christal reached the jailhouse, she longed to be invited inside, if just to stand by the stove and thaw.

With anxiety pumping through her, she gave a knock. The door flew open. Macaulay stood there, a vague annoyance on his face. He looked at her small form huddled in the cloak. His annoyance quickly melted into a wicked pleasure.

"Why, if it isn't Widow Smith . . ." His gaze flickered down her black-clad body as if somehow he was remembering how she looked in her weeds. The only thing visible was her face, a pale oval against the heavy folds of the dark hood.

He stared at her long enough to let the snow dust her shoulders and lashes, long enough to allow the icy air to further sting her cheeks and redden her lips.

She grew uncomfortable. By his expression, he looked more than capable of warming her up.

"I—I just wanted to thank you. You handled the situation back at the saloon very well," she said softly, wishing he wouldn't look at her with that gaze which seemed to pierce through to her very soul. "I saw your lights burning. I couldn't come until I was finished for the night. I know it's late so—"

"Come in." He stepped aside and let her enter. To her surprise, the room wasn't empty. Jericho was sitting at a table strewn with playing cards and whiskey glasses. Cigar smoke hung on the ceiling as if the men had been playing an intense game of poker.

"I guess I'll be headin' out now, Cain." Jericho glanced at Christal. "Tell Ivy Rose I'll be back next Tuesday."

She frowned. "You know Faulty will be on the lookout for you. You'll just be caught."