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“Hmph! Strangulation is a slow way to die.”
She ignored his remark as they walked toward the others. The men and women were separating, the women spreading food on bleached and ironed tablecloths, the men walking together toward the river.
Chris set down a basket of food. “I believe you’ve met my fiancé, Mr. Tynan, haven’t you?” she said. “I’d introduce you by name but I’m afraid I’ve been in town so short a time that I haven’t met you all.”
Looking as if they’d just been introduced to a coiled rattlesnake, most of the women nodded tentatively in Tynan’s direction.
“Ty, dear, would you please put the other basket there? Thank you so much.” She gave him a little signal with her eyes, motioning him toward the men.
He removed his hat. “It’s very pleasant to meet you ladies again after all these years.” He picked up a roll from the table, winked at Chris and left.
“Miss Dallas!” the women started as soon as he was out of earshot. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You couldn’t know anything about him or you wouldn’t—”
“You should talk to Betty Mitchell, after what he did to her, and poor Mr. Dickerson—”
“Mitchell?” Chris said, unpacking one of the baskets. “Wasn’t she the girl who was in love with the boy who was killed?”
“Well, shehadbeen,” one woman said. “Thank heaven it was all over when he was killed.”
“Oh, yes,” Chris said. “By then she was visiting Tynan in the saloon and seeking him out wherever she could. Why did she and the Dickerson boy end their involvement?”
The women fell all over themselves answering.
“Betty didn’t exactly pursue Tynan…. Maybe she did go to the saloon but I’m sure he enticed her.”
“Billy started seeing a girl who was visiting from Seattle, but I’m sure it would have blown over if that Tynan hadn’t interfered.”
“Tynan killed Billy, we know that,” one woman insisted.
Chris put an apple pie in place. “Billy Dickerson started seeing another girl. Betty started pursuing Tynan, then Mr. Dickerson went after Betty’s father and—”
“No!” one of the women said, then stopped.
Another woman leaned forward. “Betty was in the family way and Billy wouldn’t marry her.”
“Ah,” Chris said. “So Tynan stepped in to help a young girl get the man who was refusing to marry her. And hekilledthis young man? Tynan must have loved Betty to do something like that for her.”
The women began shifting the food on the table.
“Betty only loved Billy and after his death she went back east somewhere.”
“But I thought she and Tynan were so in love that he killed a man for her,” Chris asked, wide-eyed.
The women didn’t say anything for a while.
“I do believe my son is pestering your young man,” a woman said, looking toward the river.
Four young boys were encircling Tynan, looking up at him with eager faces.
“He won’t…do anything, will he?” a woman asked hesitantly.
“No,” Chris said with confidence. “He is a very good man. Now, shall we call all our good men to the table?”
The men were more tolerant than the women and they didn’t seem to care one way or another that Tynan had been in and out of jail. They were more interested in corn on the cob and fried chicken.
Rory Sayers tried his best to make Tynan feel out of place.
“Better than prison food, isn’t it, old man?” Rory asked, sitting across from Ty. “But then, over the years you must’ve gotten used to it.”
