Two stories up, the false front of his saloon shielded Joseph from the street, but not from the frigid wind from Baldy Mountain, which raced straight down the barren slopes toward E-town. Unimpeded by any edifice in the mining town, it sliced easily through the seams in Joseph’s waistcoat. He reconsidered his decision to leave his winter coat in the storeroom. But not donning it made the whole thing more deniable. Gone from his usual post for only a few moments, no winter coat, and as far as anyone knew, he was just upstairs. It felt safer to carry out his mission that way, at any rate. Maybe, even with his planning, it would all hinge on happenstance and end up simply and truly being an accident. If the hand of an avenging angel were to sweep the brick from the roof instead of him, who was he to argue?
Joseph looked over the wall, out across the street. The wind burned his eyes and he turned aside, sighting back down the rooflines of the street. “Verdammt” came from beneath his mustache.
Despite some numbness, his winter-cracked fingers instinctively sought out and found his tobacco pouch and papers, then flicked the accustomed amount down into the paper. His hands shifted low, out of the wind and, like a thousand times previous, he rolled the paper through habit alone, his mind and eyes elsewhere. When he brought it to his tongue for a lick and a twist, the mountain wind blew flecks of tobacco into his eye, but he didn’t notice enough to flinch. Match flared against fired brick. Joseph blew out his first cloud of smoke and condensation since he reached the roof.
From the corner of his eye, he checked the street again. Still no Greeley. Hardly anyone out, in fact. The drunks who could were sleeping it off and the rest had already gone up the slopes. The Mystic Copper Mine had pretty much played out, or was treated as such as soon as gold was discovered. These days, anyone not too drunk to move was off at the sluices or working the ditch. Good. They can take care of their business and let businessmen like him take care of their business.
Straight ahead and a block down, several stone throws from any saloon, he saw movement around the front of the church. Driven by habit and not conscious thought, Joseph’s right arm made the sign of the cross, incensing the world with the smoke trailing from his cigarette. A nun and seven girls stepped gingerly across the gap in the sidewalk connecting the convent to the church. Not a cobblestone sidewalk like one would find in a big city like New York or New Orleans, but a corduroy wooden boardwalk for the wilderness. Regardless, it kept Elizabethtown’s rivers of mud and horse shit at a modest distance.
Sister Dolores and her brood streamed away down the street, processing from the tiny convent school to the almost as tiny church. Via dolorosa. Joseph was intrigued. His upbringing taught him that the way one carries themselves tells a lot about a person’s soul. He was always watching and assessing folks, in saloon or out. In the saloon, it was easier. The alcohol soaked away at least a few of the layers of lies that people wrapped themselves in. Women, for example. He had no doubts about those few sporting ladies he found in his saloon, nor could he imagine anyone did. Out in society, it took more skill to read them. City women disguised themselves a thousand different ways. In the territory the lines and roles were easier to fathom, there being far fewer frills to work their distractions. In time, the wilderness drew out everyone’s true nature, man and woman alike. If you were a woman, as his father said, you were either a saint or a whore. There were no other jobs, no other roles or lives. For men, it was less clear. Depending on what you did and who you did it to, you could be both hero and villain simultaneously, with each in varying degrees.
He pondered. Sister Dolores? Probably a saint. Well, possibly a saint. She was a Sister of Loretto, come over from the academy in Santa Fe. Now, Augustinian nuns, he knew and trusted. Firm, strict, and always correct, they were abundant in the Vorarlberg of his youth, though he heard they’d been replaced by Dominican Sisters. He knew nothing of Loretto, and what he didn’t know, he didn’t trust. As for the girls, all clad in black dresses and white smocks, fingers interwoven in front of them transporting their rosaries and their prayers to church, clasped tightly in their hands? They acted pure, but looks, Joseph knew, were easily deceiving.
At the end of the string was Veronica, age nine, who had the unblemished countenance of a saint. He had no doubt that she lived up to her appearance. The others, all at least eleven years of age – Sarah, Angelica, Maud, Suzanne, Luz and Claire, he couldn’t vouch for. Maybe at one time, but no more. Closest perhaps was Claire – doubtless named after the inspirational Saint Clare of Assisi. With such a namesake, she ought to be pure, but again, Joseph couldn’t truly vouch for that. A name doesn’t mean everything, he had found over the years.
Veronica, he had faith in. Anytime he happened to catch sight of her, she behaved the same. She kept her head down and her eyes off the world. She peeked up only now and then, her fear of the sinful world shimmering wetly in her eyes. The others seemed too at ease in this hell of a town, and amidst the devils that filled its streets, scurrying in and out of dance halls, saloons, and sporting houses. He wished to be fair, to give them the benefit of the doubt, but his heart told him that they were already lost. Before their sixteenth birthdays, they would be on their backs in some cheap room, giving themselves to a man and to Satan. He blamed Sister Dolores. He didn’t know how, but it seemed inevitable that she would let her young charges down. By word or deed, in what she had done or what she had failed to do, she would doom them. Shepherdess for seven girls in the midst of a heathen wilderness was a great responsibility for a lone nun, but the right nun could do the job. Steeped in centuries of penitence and discipline, a good Austrian Augustinian nun could keep the coyotes at bay.
But who would stop her, would call her to account for her deficiencies? Who else – who besides himself - saw her for her sins and shortcomings, and not just her façade? In the territory, killing a man was one thing. There were a thousand misdeeds that earned a knife or a bullet or a noose. Given the fact that, in practice, almost anything was a capital offense, no man was presumed to be fully innocent. The penalty, or lack thereof, was often based merely on the inconvenience of the death, or lack thereof. On the other hand, killing a woman, even if she were a killer herself, was … more difficult.
Movement in the foreground.
It was the thieving bastard George Greeley, who only last night had trumped his fest with a gala of his own, stealing away a hundred paying customers or more. Greeley was always undercutting his business and Joseph was done with it. He reluctantly took his eyes from the good sister, but not without a final penetrating stare, burning her countenance into his mind, where in time, it would scab and scar.
From the sidewalk on the far side of the street, Greeley burst across, trying to keep from sinking too deeply into the muddy ruts. He cut a diagonal from the hardware store directly toward Joseph’s saloon, skirting the edges of a puddle that stretched down the street, long enough to swallow a coach and four horses.
Hand on the brick, Joseph pressed his chest against the façade, needing little cover. There was nobody out this morning, save that filthy nun a long way off. Little matter. His course was set. Greeley would be dealt with now, and if need be, he could deal with her as well in time. It wouldn’t be the first time dealt directly with the meddling of nuns. They always turned out to be the easiest to silence.
Greeley’s first footfall on the sidewalk was only ten feet from Joseph’s position. Ten feet to Joseph, forty more feet to his own saloon’s front door. For all it was going to matter to either of them, it might as well have been forty miles.
Three steps rang hollowly across the sidewalk and Greeley pivoted toward his own saloon. Even without looking down, Joseph knew precisely where Greeley was. He wanted to call out, to see the look on Greeley’s face just before the brick shattered it. That might have called others’ attention to the little play, though. It was bad enough the five pounds of death would come from atop Herburger’s Saloon, far too bad if someone saw it come from Herberger’s own hand. His little band of vigilantes wouldn’t be enough protection from an angry mob. The bastard Greeley had too many people on his side, which was all the more reason to have him dealt with promptly – but quietly.
He tensed, then with a grace that belied the force of the thrust, casually flicked the brick from its perch atop the wall.
A wet thud followed, and then was itself followed immediately by the echoing sound of body and brick coming to rest on the corduroy boards. He peered down; saw Greeley splayed against the boards, his crushed hat rolled to the side, connected to his head by bridges of glistening red, fingers of blood nearly the color of the brick that laid in their midst, running down the grooves of the planking, light ripples with each dying pulse from Greeley’s body. With the rivulets pooling around it, the brick was an island of retribution, fired in its own purifying hell.
Joseph straightened, then brushed his waistcoat and trousers. He then glanced toward the church, and down at his pocket watch. Nearly eight o’clock in the morning.
Enough lollygagging. Time to get about the workday.
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