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“Where you off to in such a lather?” the dude says. “Get yourself niced up a bit. I bet you haven’t had soap on you in a bear’s age.”
The dude feels right fatherly. Takes her down to the crick to wash the underground off of her. Just can’t bring himself to shoot her while she’s filthy and starving. There’s time. Offers her a cake of
French-milled soap he brought all the way out from Chicago. Smells like gardenias if you know your flowers, and the dude does. Snow White knows something’s skewed but she grabs it, strips off like it’s nothing and climbs in the water. She don’t shiver even though that stream has to be as cold as a wagon tire. The miner’s crud comes off her in black ribbons. The dude watches another girl come out of the blind mole-skin she was walking around in. This one has muscles like a mountain cat and a kind of pretty he doesn’t know what to do with. For fairness he’d take her stepmother six days and twice on Sunday. The beauty Snow White’s got has nothing to do with him. She’s scarred up and suspicious and shameless. Her pretty’s not for him. It’s like saying the moon’s got a fine figure on her. Maybe true, but what good is that to a man?
Snow White puts her men-clothes back on and makes to get on her spotted horse.
“Where you off to in such a lather?” the dude says. He’s got a smile that’d knock down the Queen of England when he wants it. “Set a bit and eat, I bet you had nothing but brown beans and pig’s assholes down there.”
Right there on the grass the dude lays out a nice spread like she can’t refuse. She can’t. Like most things, it looks like a choice but it’s not. He is being magnanimous and it feels good. In Blue Coffin he bought them a lunch fit for a boss: soft rolls, pemmican, applejack, some real tomatoes and mushrooms and a couple of red and white apples just as firm as fists. A bottle of spruce-beer with the bubbles still hard. Snow White knows something’s warped but it’s real food, the kind that’s seen sunlight. She eats and watching her eat feels good. The way she shakes when she does it. The way she takes such a big bite of that apple it almost sticks in her throat. The way she chugs down that jack like a man.
“Why’d you run off from your mama?” the dude says real gentle. Snow White looks at him over the core of her apple. She knows the score and the score is not in her favor.
“Ain’t your business,” she says back.
“Let’s pretend it is.”
“We can pretend that crick is the fountain of youth, won’t make it any more your nevermind what goes between me and my mama.”
And Snow White gets up to go. Puts her hand on her cannon and backs off from the dude like it’s a choice she can make. But it’s too late for that. He’s chased her over hell and gone and she’s et his food and he’s going to do his job. Dog on High knows his soul and his soul is the job and the job will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
“Where you off to in such a lather?” the dude says again. He’s got a voice to charm tigers when he wants to use it. “I got a deal for you if you stow that smokewagon and act civilized. I can shoot you faster than you can draw so don’t you twitch.”
“Says you.”
The dude just laughs. The day a dandy’s daughter can outshoot a Pinkerton is the day the Good Dog lays down his bone.
“Pull in your horns and sit down, kid,” he snaps, and Snow White does it, instantly, unquestioningly. Her bones obey before her brain can buck. It’s a voice the dude likes to use on runaways. Daddy’s voice and daddy is not happy. Do what you’re told. Don’t argue with your betters. Somebody learned that girl good.
“Now,” the dude says, “I’m gonna shoot you either way. I been contracted for it, I signed for the job, what’s gonna happen was always gonna happen and that’s above my bend. I am sorry on it, but we all got a bag of nails to carry.”
“Then if it’s all the same I’d rather not talk it to death. If you work for Mrs. H I’ll allow you some pity; but you signed up for what you’ll get. She’ll thank you with a knife in the eye. We’re both walking dead.”
The dude hesitates. “She beat you, I suppose?”
Snow White just laughs. The dude feels that laugh in his spine. It saws there on the hard, old bone.
He takes out a deck of cards. The sun prickles the backs. “Well, you and me, girl, we’re gonna draw cuts. Aces high. If I pull the high card I’ll shoot you where you sit and carve out your heart to bring back to your mama. I will not enjoy that part of this business but it is firmly stated in the terms of my commission. No accounting for rich folks’ morals—but I thank you for the warning on the matter of your mother and I will hew to it. If you draw the high card, we’ll walk off paces like gentlemen and you’ll have a mean chance at walking off clean.”
“How do I know you have not got a cold deck?” Snow White asks.
“If you want the shuffle of it, you may have it.”
Snow White looks over the cards real careful. The dude does not cheat. He does not have to. He knows he will get his whether he draws a two of diamonds or the King of Diamonds. It looks like a choice but it isn’t. Snow White shuffles; the cards spill from one hand to another like a red waterfall. For a minute she looks like a statue of Temperance or Justice, pouring red water between two cups.
Snow White cuts first. Takes her card and holds it. Passes the dude the deck to cut himself, nice and fair. He takes his and without agreeing upon it they turn over at the same time.
The dude lays down the King of Clubs. He smiles.
Snow White holds the Ace of Hearts.
Snow White
and Porcupine Contend for
a Buffalo
Snow White and the dude pace it off. The sky is bright and hot as the beginning of something.
