Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown

Irv and she rode home in silence. Their footsteps echoed in the hollow silence of the house as they let themselves in. “You want me to put the kettle on, make you some tea?”

Laurel wanted to decline the offer, but Irv looked so distraught, she thought that perhaps he needed a task to alleviate his despair. “That sounds nice. Thank you.”

She removed her hat and sat down at the table. He brewed her tea. He took his secreted jar of whiskey from the cabinet. “A touch of this wouldn’t hurt you.”

“No thank you.”

He poured some of the moonshine into a glass for himself. “You hungry?”

She shook her head. He sat down across from her. They sipped their beverages. After a lengthy silence, he said, “I was tore up when Derby died. But nothing like this. This hurts something awful.”

Looking across at him, she watched his eyes fill.

“Derby died of his own choosing,” he said, gulping a breath. “That baby girl didn’t.”

Then a terrible sound issued from deep in his throat, and he began to cry. Laurel left her chair in a rush, knelt beside his chair, and placed her arms around his shoulders, drawing him to her. They clung to each other as he wept. She murmured to him all the banalities that would cause her to scream and run mad if anyone were saying them to her. Yet he seemed to derive comfort from them.

He cried himself out. As he wiped his wet face with the large handkerchief he always carried in his back pocket, he looked embarrassed. “I haven’t carried on like that since Derby’s mother passed. It helped a little to get it out. What can I do for you, Laurel?”

“Nothing, thank you. I’m going up to my room.”

“I understand. But you’ll let me know if you need anything?”

“I will.”

“The hurt will never leave you, but you learn to tuck it away,” he said, tapping his heart, “and get on.”

She gave him a wan smile. But as she climbed the stairs, she doubted that she would survive the night. She would surely die of grief.

* * *



At first, Thatcher had been too aggrieved over Mr. Hobson’s demise to give much thought to how it would affect his future. But soon he had to face the reality of his situation and figure out a way to make money. Even living frugally, he’d gone through his poker winnings from the men on the freight train and at the boardinghouse. He couldn’t live for long on a dollar fifty a day.

One afternoon, Thatcher approached Fred Barker. “I’m making progress with the stallion. But I’ve got to scare up more business for myself.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“You’ve got five empty stalls that aren’t earning you a cent. If I can get some horses to work with, how much will you charge me to stable them here and use your paddock?”

They struck a deal that Thatcher thought favored him. But it wouldn’t matter how good the terms were if he couldn’t fill the stalls.

He put in another few evenings of poker at the boardinghouse, won the largest pot each night, and invested his winnings in having handbills printed. He spent the next Saturday afternoon going around town nailing them to utility poles.

That’s when he spotted Laurel Plummer on the other side of Main Street. Her hair was in a long braid hanging down her back out from under a wide-brimmed straw hat. She was dressed in a dark skirt, a white blouse, and a pair of black gloves. She was trying to secure something on top of the trunk of her Model T with a leather strap. Looked to Thatcher like the strap wasn’t cooperating.

He hit the head of the nail he’d been hammering one final time, then, taking the sack of nails, hammer, and handbills with him, he crossed the street. “Need a hand?”

She let go of the strap and whipped around. As before, her features were taut, her expression guarded. They relaxed only slightly when she recognized him. “Oh. Mr. Hutton.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Seems you’re always wrestling with something.” He gestured toward the strap. He saw now that she’d been trying to get the ends to meet so she could buckle it.

She looked him up and down, taking in his cowboy hat, faded shirt, and dusty boots, then turned away and resumed pulling on the strap. “My father-in-law told me they had released you from jail.”

“They had no reason to hold me in the first place.”

“Mrs. Driscoll is still missing.”

She yanked hard on the strap as she glanced over her shoulder at him. If she had meant that as an implied accusation, he wasn’t going to honor it with a denial. “I heard you moved into town.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you like your new house?”

“It’s a far cry from new, but it’s better than where we were. How’s your hand?”

He held it up, palm out. “Healed. How’s your little girl?”

She gave the strap another yank. “She died.”

The ground seemed to give way underneath him. Her blunt statement had left him dumbfounded, and she must have sensed it. She stopped grappling with the strap and faced him.

“Please don’t feel like you have to say anything, Mr. Hutton. Actually, I would rather you didn’t.”

“All right.”

“It’s just that it’s difficult for me to talk about.”