Saddle Dust

Chapter 17

Casey walks numbly down the main street of Dodge to the bank where just three hours ago she had been climbing the stairs with Maxine and Hadley. Her toes clench together in her boots when she thinks his name. The streets are full of drovers and cattle hands drunkenly singing drunken songs and escorting a wide variety of both working girls and long lost valentines to wherever they plan to spend the night. Piano, fiddle, and other instruments jaunt along old familiar trail songs and pipe out new tunes from the bat doors and glowing windows of every saloon. Casey thinks she recognizes three or four of the men she passes on her way to the bank. At one point, she even thinks she sees Hadley searching the crowd for her, and she has to duck into an alley to calm down again.
The steps of the bank seem tired as she wearily climbs them and enters through the thin wooden door. A lone figure sits on the bench inside, dressed in pink and fashionably styled. Maxine's face turns from one of expectancy to mortified shock seconds after she sees Casey's ragged form step into the bank. Casey feels nothing towards Maxine. There's just a void where everything she cared about once held residence. Casey stops in front of Maxine. Maxine is frozen in her seat. Casey's hat rests in her lap and Maxine's hand curls tightly around the brim of it as if she expects it to protect her from a great grizzly or hungry mountain lion.
"You sold me out."
Maxine's reply to Casey's words is breathless.
"You murdered Philip in cold blood."
Casey's face is stony and her usually warm brown eyes now remind Maxine of dirt scattered over a fresh grave.
"Give me my hat."
"No. You were supposed to be dead."
"Maxine, give me my damned hat."
"No, Casey, I won't. Why are you here? Where's Mr. Waterton? Mr. Hadley?"
"Waterton is dead along with three other of his mercenaries. And as for the man you hired to put me through not only physical pain but also humiliation in its lowest form, he's running for the hills and I don't expect you'll be seeing him anytime soon. Oh, and your husband who was supposed to shoot me from the back like a coward, turned tail at the first sign of gunplay."
Maxine is speechless.
"Y—you killed—"
A small and dangerous smile plays at the corners of Casey's lips. Her words are mocking and have a nasty lilt to them.
"Oh yes, Maxine, I killed them because they killed my horse and men like them killed my father. Now give me my damned hat you white-gloved bitch."
Casey's harsh words jolt Maxine out of her daze and she begins to panic. The woman in front of her is a mass murderer, and she probably intends to kill me Maxine thinks. Casey loses patience and reaches her hand down to take her hat back from Maxine. As soon as Maxine catches Casey's movement towards her, she springs back from the hat like it's a plague-infested rabid rodent she had been snuggling with. Casey's hat lands on the floor right side up. Casey stoops and picks it up. She examines it and brushes dust that is invisible to Maxine off of its brim. Casey's eyes are now dull and lifeless and Maxine fancies that she is a starved and orphaned bison calf with no herd to follow.
"You let my hat sit right side up on the ground, Maxine. Now all the luck has poured out of it." Casey's eyes focus on Maxine's face and Maxine's life flashes before her eyes. She feels like an injured rabbit facing down a snarling wolf.
"Always set your hat on it's crown when you're not wearing it, and never—"
Casey flips the hat onto her head and gives another small smile which nearly causes Maxine to pass out from terror.
"Never ever touch another's hat without their permission."
With her final statement hanging in the air like the blade of a guillotine, Casey leaves the bank. Maxine hears her boots snap down the wooden steps and watches Casey's medium figure walk heavily down the street and disappear behind the bat doors of a saloon. Maxine's head hits the back of the bench and slides to the seat as she falls in a dead faint.