They fell silent and just ate for a while, overhearing the other diners trading local gossip in Spanish. Whenever she glanced up from her food she’d smirk as if she found her secret thoughts devilishly funny. Paulita finally asked what she’d been wanting to. “So, do you have a girlfriend?”
“I have lotsa friends.”
“And the girls—do you kiss?”
The Kid looked up and down the table, but no one else seemed to be listening.
She changed the subject. “Have you seen the actress Sarah Bernhardt?”
“Heard of her.”
“What about Fanny Davenport?”
“No.”
She passed a requested gravy boat to Sofia and said, “Some women ar
e so ravishingly beautiful.”
“I guess that’s true.”
She forked a cooked carrot but held it poised near her kissable lips. “Why, do you think? What is it about them?”
“Well, they have to have those gorgeous coffee brown eyes to begin with.”
She was figuring him out, and then giggled.
And her brother, Pete, called from the far end, “We’ve been leaving you out, Kid. You been to Lincoln of late?”
“No, sir. Texas Panhandle.”
“So you don’t know Tomcat Catron shut down and sold the House for a mere three thousand dollars. And Jimmy Dolan’s buying the Tunstall store instead.”
The names nettled him, but the Kid just said, “Nope, that escaped me.”
“And Susan McSween is there in Lincoln again. She booted Saturnino Baca and his passel of children out of that house they rented from her so she could selfishly have it.” Pete slumped back so Saval could pour more wine into his golden chalice. And then he said as if someone had inquired What’s she like? “Lewd, profane, vulgar woman. Wholly without principle.”
His mother chastised him with “Pedro!”
“Well, it’s a fact she’s from a house of ill fame in Kansas. And Sheriff Dad Peppin saw her in actual lascivious contact with John Chisum.”
Some of the women inhaled in shock.
“I find that hard to believe,” the Kid said.
“And frequent occurrences where she forced herself on a Mexican boy on the grassy banks of the Rio Bonito.”
Billy was fuming. “Where you getting all this?”
“Army scuttlebutt based on Nathan Dudley’s investigations,” Maxwell said, and he falsely smiled. “You won’t shoot the messenger, will you?”
Captain Alexander Chase said, “Such comments seem indelicate, Pete. Especially among ladies and on the birthday of Our Lord.”
Pete Maxwell held up both hands as if he’d desist, but then he turned the screw a jot more, asking, “You still horse-thieving, Kid? Or are you just gunning folks helter-skelter?”
Paulita yelled to him, “Have some more wine, Pedro!”
Pete flopped backward as if he’d been punched. “Oh my gosh, my dear little sister’s sweet on you, Kid!”