Free There Shall Your Heart Be Also by Barbara Hambly Page B

up in the back room of a New Orleans
bucket-shop, January asked instead, “What happened here?” as he
took the bottle and gently began to clean the wounds with its
contents. “And how do you know the thief was trying to steal your
uncle’s Bible? What happened to the thief, by the way?”
    “Absquatulated, the pusilanimous fuckard.”
Williams perched back on the bed at his side, and took a thoughtful
swig of the Lemercier. “Lit out of here like I’d stuck a burnin’
fuse up his arse. I marked him good, though. And I know he was
tryin’ to steal my Bible ‘cause he come in here tried to buy it
yesterday afternoon.”
    “ Buy it?”
    “Yeah. I thought it was queer.” She took the
cigar from her mouth and blew a thoughtful cloud, lashless blue
eyes narrowing in their tangle of lines and crusted paint. January
would have guessed the saloonkeeper’s age at forty or so – his own
– had he not known how quickly the harsh life of the riverfront
dives aged a woman: she was probably a decade younger than she
looked, and unlikely to live a decade longer.
    “This po-faced jasper comes in here yesterday
afternoon, just as I got the doors open. Asks for rum an’ stands
here sippin’ at it -- who wants to taste it, fer
God’s sake?” She took another gulp of the Lemercier, and passed it
back to January to daub on the long knife-rake that slashed across
the girl Delly’s right pectoral and down the side of her breast.
Delly herself lay listening, jaw gritted hard, her eyeballs
drifting now and then from the opium. January guessed she wasn’t
used to it, from the way one swallow had dulled the pain.
    On the other hand, of course, Hannibal’s
favored brand was quadruple-strength Black Drop that would knock
out a horse.
    Now Delly whispered, “You said he was a
ringer, m’am.”
    “That I did, honey.” Williams squeezed the
girl’s hand again. “That I did. He was dressed rough, like most of
the hard-cases that come in here – plug hat, Conestoga boots – but
he wore it like he didn’t want to touch the insides of his clothes
with his body. His hands was clean, too. You could tell he hadn’t
never done hard work with ‘em, not like haulin’ on a line or
pole-walkin’ a boat up a bayou. His hair, too, clean an’ cut short,
an’ he had one of them sissy little beards, just around his mouth.
Well, he coulda been a gambler, an’ it wasn’t none of my laundry to
wash.” She shrugged.
    “But then he starts an argument with the next
man who comes in – Snag-Face Rawlin, that was – pushin’ on about
somethin’ in the Bible, like, who was the first King of Israel or
somethin’ like that. Next thing I know, he asks me, do I have a
Bible to settle the question? Snag-Face is sayin’, Oh, hell,
what’s it matter? But this stranger just won’t quit, an’ wants
to settle the question—”
    “Herod,” whispered Delly, through teeth
clenched against the pain as January quickly cleaned out the wound
on her chest with the hot herbal wash Hannibal brought in. “Was
Herod the first king of Israel?”
    “That was it. He pushed a bet onto Snag-Face
– fifty cents Herod was. And when I guess Herod wasn’t he said all
damn an’ blast, an’ would I sell him the Bible so’s he wouldn’t
make that kind of fool mistake again? I said no, it was my uncle’s
Bible. He offered me five dollars for it, and when I said no, he
offered me ten.”
    January’s eyebrows shot up. Cheaply-printed
Evangelical Bibles could be purchased for twenty-five cents,
new.
    Williams ground out her cigar under her heel.
“So I figured, when my door creaks open in the dead of night an’
some plug-ugly with a handkerchief tied over his face holds a gun
on me an’ says gimme the Bible, I’m guessin’ it was the same
po-faced bastard with the sissy beard.”
    January finished tying off his stitches, and
took from his satchel clean rags for a bandage. “I think I’d like a
look at this Bible.”
     
    *
     
    “There,” said