“You ate rattlesnake?”
Ned leaned forward, his face very serious. “Hell, I’ve eaten snails.” When he’d given Cole time to absorb this, he said, “Kady mixes ’em with garlic and wild parsley, and they ain’t half bad.”
“Snails?” Cole whispered.
“It was either eat them or get shot by Juan,” Ned said in defense. “And, besides, we’ve all come to trust Kady. You should taste what she can do with a dove. She stuffs them with rice, then cooks ’em over charcoal—Garson made the charcoal. Anyway, them doves are crisp on the outside and the meat is so tender Toothless Dan can eat it.”
For a long moment, Cole sat at the table in silence, looking down at his hands clasped tightly in front of him. “What else?” he asked softly; then when Ned didn’t answer, he looked at him. “What else?” he asked louder.
“Well, everyone in town knows how you tricked Kady into marryin’ you. They feel real bad about turnin’ her away when she was hungry, so they . . . Well, they . . .”
“Out with it!”
“All the men have been offerin’ to marry her. You know that she’s the most beautiful gal to ever come to this town, and if she wanted to open a restaurant, people’d come from miles just to eat her cookin’, so she don’t need your money. So, anyway, all the men have asked her to marry ’em.”
“Including you?” Cole asked nastily.
“I was one of the first,” Ned said with his jaw set, preparing to be told he was fired from his job and to get out of town. But Cole didn’t say anything. Instead, he turned away and looked out the window.
“I don’t blame any of you,” Cole said after a while. “She is beautiful, and there’s something about her that makes a man feel good. You know, don’t you, that she has no idea what a prize she is—which is, of course, half of her charm.”
“Yeah, we all know,” Ned chuckled. “Kady thinks she’s fat.”
At that the two men looked at each other, their eyes alive with laughter. “Fat,” Cole said, then chuckled as he began to think of all Kady had done. Maybe he should take offense at her action of feeding the entire town at his expense, but he couldn’t suppress his humor. “Hog’s Breath?” he said, making Ned laugh harder.
“Thought he was gonna drop dead on the spot. And you should see Juan! Kady says he has the lightest hand with pastry she’s ever seen. She’s tryin’ to get him to open a French bakery and make somethin’ called cwoisannts. More butter than bread, but they sure are good.”
For a moment Cole stared into space. What did money matter to him? Ever since the murders when he was a kid, he’d been afraid to spend anything. It was as though his whole family had died trying to protect that money, so it was his duty to keep it safe. But Kady had used the money to help people who needed it and to give joy. He had no doubt that the entire town of Socorro could live for the next two years off what she had paid them over these few days.
“You ready to go back?” Cole asked Ned. “I seem to have worked up a powerful hunger.”
“Then Kady’s the one to fix that.”
“I think Kady just might be able to fix everything that’s wrong with me.”
“And maybe the whole town,” Ned said under his breath so Cole couldn’t hear him. Cole may have owned the town, but in the last days Kady had given her opinion of what she called Cole’s “obsessive monopoly.” She said she believed in “free enterprise.” And, as they had seen, Kady put into action what she believed in.
“I’m ready,” Ned said as he followed Cole out the door.
Chapter 14
WHAT COLE SAW WHEN HE RODE INTO HIS OWN RANCH WAS controlled chaos. At first he thought it was more chaos than control until he heard the shouts and a couple of shots fired into the air. It looked as though his ban on guns within the city limits had been forgotten.
“I told you to get back in line,” came a man’s voice; then Cole had the reins grabbed from his horse as he felt a man’s hand on his leg.
“You want to let go?” Cole said calmly, looking down at the man with his hand on Cole’s calf.
“Oh, sorry, Señor Cole,” the man said. “But Juan ordered—”
“I know what you’ve been told,” Cole answered as he dismounted and tossed the reins to a boy standing nearby.
Cole had to practically shove his way through the people there to get into his own house. As far as he could tell, Kady was feeding a certain number of people at a time, and the people who weren’t eating stood around outside and waited for the next serving time assigned them. To prevent them from fainting from hunger between meals, they were served trays full of something that seemed to be called whorederves.
For a moment Cole thought he was going to have to kill someone to be allowed in the front door, because Juan had decreed that no one was to enter. But after some words were exchanged, Manuel was called to verify Cole’s identity.
“What the hell have you done to my house?” Cole asked once inside, his back to the door and looking about.
In each of the downstairs rooms, all the furniture and rugs had been pushed to the side and covered with sheets so each could be turned into a makeshift kitchen. People and flour seemed to be everywhere.