CHAPTER 37

Miss Howard and I gave each other quick looks of what you might call horrified recognition, as the rest of the men hustled to their friend.

“What the hell’ve you done to him?” one of the men shouted: a question I’d heard before, and under similar circumstances.

I could only get out the words “Believe me, it wasn’t us-” before the men picked up their friend and began to hustle him away in terror.

“You get the hell out of here!” one of them called. “And you stay the hell out!” With that they disappeared back in the direction of the tavern.

Miss Howard kept hold of her revolver, as we both spun to look all around. “Where is he?” Miss Howard asked in a whisper.

“In this darkness?” I said, also whispering. “He could be anywhere.”We didn’t move for another minute, but kept listening and waiting, expecting some move out of our small enemy-if in fact he was our enemy, which I was beginning to doubt. But there was no trace of any activity on the road or in the shadowy trees and shrubs what lined it, and that was good enough for me. “Come on,” I said to Miss Howard, taking her arm.

She didn’t need much persuasion, by that point, and in another half minute we were aboard our rig and heading north again, the little Morgan stallion moving at a nice trot. As we passed by the tavern, I could see a few pairs of angry eyes following us, and the body of the man who’d been struck by the aborigine’s arrow was laid out on the bar: how long he’d be unconscious, or if in fact he was dead, I didn’t know, and I certainly couldn’t have said why Señor Linares’s servant had once again come to our assistance. The first time, during our bout with the Dusters, might’ve been laid off to his arrow finding the wrong mark; but this second incident made it clear that the strange little man who’d seemed to threaten me with death on Saturday night was trying to keep us alive.

“Maybe he just wants to kill us himself,” I said, once we’d gotten half a mile or so out of Stillwater.

“He’s had more than enough opportunities to do that,” Miss Howard answered, shaking her head. “None of it makes any sense…” She finally shoved her revolver back into its hiding place, then took a deep breath. “You don’t have a cigarette, do you, Stevie?”

I shook my head with a small laugh, feeling relieved that we’d made good our escape. “You’d think people would get tired of asking me that question,” I said, going for my pants pocket with one hand as I let the reins slack a bit with the other. Pulling out the packet of smokes, I handed them to her. “Light me one, too, if you would, miss.” She put a match to two cigarettes, then handed one over. After taking a few deep drags off her own, she put her head between her hands and began to rub her temples. “You got pretty hot back there,” I said.

She managed a chuckle. “I’m sorry, Stevie. I hope you know I wouldn’t put you in danger deliberately. But that kind of insufferable idiocy-”

“World’s full of men like that, Miss Howard. Can’t go telling them all where they get off, and not expect a few to get riled.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “But there are certain times… Still, I do hope you know that we were never in any real danger.”

“Sure,” I answered; then I took a few seconds to study my companion. “You really would’ve shot him, wouldn’t you?”

“If he’d touched either one of us?” she said. “Absolutely. Nothing like a bullet in the leg to make men mind their manners.”

I chuckled again, although I knew that she was perfectly serious. There probably wasn’t another woman in the world who was as comfortable with guns-or, for that matter, with shooting people-as Miss Howard. She had some very personal reasons for being that way, and it isn’t my place to recite those reasons here; she’ll take care of that job one day herself, if she’s so inclined. All that mattered to me that particular night was that when she said she would’ve shot a man to protect me, she meant it; and that knowledge allowed my nervous system to grow ever more calm, and my mind ever more inquisitive, as we traveled along the moonlit river road.

“How can she do it, Miss Howard?” I eventually asked, after smoking the better portion of my stick.

Miss Howard answered with a long, deep sigh. “I don’t know, Stevie. It’s the nature of people who are racked by feelings of powerlessness, I suppose, to try to exert power over whoever or whatever’s weaker than they are-and God help those weaker beings if they don’t play along. Drunken, frustrated men beat and kill women, women desperate to prove they can control something beat and kill children, and those children, in turn, torment animals… Remember, too, babies may look charming to those of us who haven’t got any, but there are plenty of mothers who lose patience with all the noise, the sleeplessness, and the plain and simple work of nurturing.”

I was shaking my head. “No, that’s not what I meant. The actual killing, that part of it I’ve begun to understand. I think. But the way she makes other people act. How does she pull that off? I mean, look at what we’ve heard-and seen, too. Some people who worked with her in New York thought she was a saint; other people, in the same joint, thought she was a murderer. That poor fool husband of hers treats her like she’s his sole salvation-but then she goes around the corner and gets the likes of Goo Goo Knox more lathered up than any moll or streetwalker what’s ever been through the Dusters’ front door. Then we come up here and find out that in Ballston Spa people first thought she was a hussy, then a good woman-and then she got ranked as a hussy again. Now, we go to this damned place-Stillwater-and find out that the whole town’s scared to death of her! How the hell does one person pull it all off?”

“Well,” Miss Howard answered, with a slight smile, “I’m afraid that question’s a little more complicated.” She held her cigarette up and puzzled with a thought. “Try to think about all the things you’ve just mentioned, Stevie-what’s the one quality that they have in common?”

“Miss Howard,” I said, “if I knew that-”

“All right, all right. Consider this, then: none of those personalities, those different ways that people see her, are complete. None of them is a description of an actual person-they’re all simplifications, exaggerations. Symbols, really. The ministering angel-the fiendish killer. The devoted wife and mother-the wanton harlot and brazen hussy. They all sound like characters out of a story or a play.”

“Like the-whatever-the ‘myths’ you talked about? That day outside the museum?”

“Exactly. And like those myths, what’s amazing isn’t that someone can come up with such characters-anyone crazy or just imaginative enough could do that. It’s that so many people-not just the citizens of towns like Stillwater but whole societies-actually accept and believe in them. And I’m afraid all that gets back to something that may be a little difficult for you to understand.” Miss Howard must’ve read something like injured pride in my face, because she put a quick hand to my arm. “Oh, I don’t mean because you’re not educated enough or smart enough, Stevie. You’re one of the smartest males I’ve ever known. But you are male.”

“Yeah?” I said. “And what’s that got to do with the discussion?”

“Everything, I’m afraid,” Miss Howard answered with a shrug. “It isn’t really possible for men to understand how much the world doesn’t want women to be complete people. The most important thing a woman can be, in our society-more important, even, than honest or decent-is identifiable. Even when Libby’s evil-perhaps most of all when she’s evil-she’s easy to categorize, to stick to a board with a pin like some scientific specimen. Those men in Stillwater are terrified of her because being terrified lets them know who she is-it keeps them safe. Imagine how much harder it would be to say, yes, she’s a woman capable of terrible anger and violence, but she’s also someone who’s tried desperately to be a nurturer, to be a good and constructive human being. If you accept all that, if you allow that inside she’s not just one or the other, but both, what does that say about all the other women in town? How will you ever be able to tell what’s actually going on in their hearts-and heads? Life in the simple village would suddenly become immensely complicated. And so, to keep that from happening, they separate things. The normal, ordinary woman is defined as nurturing and loving, docile and compliant. Any female who defies that categorization must be so completely evil that she’s got to be feared, feared even more than the average criminal-she’s got to be invested with the powers of the Devil himself. A witch, they probably would have called her in the old days. Because she’s not just breaking the law, she’s defying the order of things.”