Bulls.h.i.t. You just want to see her.

She told me to come back.

What was that you said today to Wally, the day clerk? No fool like an old fool?

Grigsby rubbed the toe of his right boot against the back of his left trouser leg, then the toe of his left boot against the back of his right trouser leg. He took off his hat and knocked on the door.

O FF TO THE WEST, immense even at this distance, the big bold pyramid of Pike's Peak shouldered aside the lesser mountains as it bullied itself toward the sky. Beyond the dusky pines that fringed the folds of foothills, it lurched up against the milky blue of early morning, the bright snowfield along its flank glazed golden by the light of the rising sun.

Shifting in the saddle against the slow rhythm of his horse, Grigsby winced. He'd come a mile since leaving Colorado Springs and already his hip was aching.

The road was empty. The only sound was the dull steady clop of the horse's hooves against the dirt. To the right, a pine forest still held, between tall straight trunks, below stacked green parasols of needled branch, the dark cool shadows of night. To the left, a hundred yards away, thin sunlight angled along the railroad tracks that ribboned over the rolling green prairie, heading west to Manitou Springs, and then up into the mountains, and over them, to Leadville.

The air was clear and clean, strung with the scents of pine and gra.s.s and reawakening earth. To Grigsby it was nearly as sweet, and nearly as intoxicating, as bourbon whiskey. He hadn't been out of Denver for weeks, hadn't been into the mountains for months; and, despite the pain gnawing at his hip, he was glad he had decided to hire a horse for this part of the trip.

If only his hip wasn't bothering him.

But the horse and the saddle weren't responsible for all the aches and pains. A large part of them had been caused by his time last night with Mathilde de la Mole.

She had answered the door wearing another long silk robe, this one pink and belted at the waist. (Altogether, these people were carting around enough duds to dress up a good-sized town.) She smiled when she saw him. "Marshal Greegsby. What a lovely surprise. Do come in." Peeking from below the robe, at its front, was a slim black blade of delicate lace gown.

"Howdy, ma'am," said Grigsby. "You sure I'm not intrudin'?"

"Not at all. Please come in."

Grigsby shuffled into the room. She shut the door, turned to him, and, still smiling, she c.o.c.ked her head and held out her hand. "May I take the famous hat?"

Grigsby surrendered the Stetson. Tonight her hair was piled up, blond and shiny, on the top of her head. A few loose strands arched down along her elegant neck.

"Please," she said, and waved an arm toward the chair. "Sit."

He crossed the room and sat in the same chair he had used that afternoon, and immediately he discovered, once again, that his hands were big lumpy things at the ends of arms a couple of yards too long. Once again, he crossed the arms over his chest. His right hand, the one he'd used to punch out Greaves, was still throbbing.

"Would you care for a drink?" she asked him. "I have a Calvados which is rather nice, I think."

Grigsby didn't know what a Calvados was, but if it was alcoholic, he was ready for it. A full day of drinking, a nip here, a nip there, another nip here, and yet now that he was alone in the room with this woman he felt, all at once, stone cold sober. "Yes ma'am. Thank you."

She smiled again. "Good." She turned and went to the dresser, her robe whispering softly. Along the curve of her hip, the swell of her b.u.t.tocks, the lamplight rippled like sunshine on creekwater. Grigsby could see no indentations in the smooth flesh, no sign of confining corset or girdle.

Underneath that thin silk robe, that wispy black gown, she was barea.s.s naked.

It was at her a.s.s that Grigsby realized he was staring, like a stooped old man sitting outside a saloon, gaping at the pa.s.sing ankles. And, trapped in this patch of sobriety that had some how sprouted in the middle of his familiar, friendly, whiskey fog, he suddenly felt like an old man. Old and spent and drained. Washed up, like Greaves had said.

He didn't belong here.

She laid the Stetson down on the dresser, opened the top drawer, took out a leather box that was maybe a foot high and a foot wide, and placed it beside the hat. She opened the box. Inside it was a flat green bottle and, set back in red velvet compartments on either side of it, four balloon-shaped gla.s.ses. She removed two of these, put them on the dresser, removed the bottle, uncorked it, and poured a pale brown liquid into each gla.s.s. She stood the bottle on the dresser, carried the gla.s.ses over to the chairs, and handed one to Grigsby, who took it between fingers that were swollen and stiff. She sat down. She smiled again and raised her gla.s.s. "Cheers," she said.

"Right," Grigsby said. He was trying to decide what to do with his left hand, which at the moment was lying on his thigh like a large dead squirrel.

Coming here had been a mistake. Like going to Hanrahan's had probably been a mistake. Like hitting Greaves had probably been a mistake.

He was making a lot of mistakes lately.

He took a sip of the drink. It went down almost like water, but when it hit his stomach it expanded with a comforting, familiar, potent glow. The taste, too, was familiar, but it was one that Grigsby had never before a.s.sociated with liquor.

He smiled at her, surprised and pleased. "Apples," he said.

She smiled back. "Apple brandy, yes. Do you like it?"

"Yes ma'am. Real nice. Real smooth."

She bobbed her head once. "Good. Now, please, you must tell me to what I owe this pleasure."

Grigsby crossed his long legs and pain flamed down his thigh. "Well, ma'am. I just came by to find out if maybe you remembered anything. About the trip and all. What we talked about before."

She frowned sadly. "Ah, but no, alas. I have racked my brain all through the day, and I can remember nothing that would help. I am so terribly sorry."

"Well, ma'am. No call for you to be sorry. I'm obliged to you for tryin'."

She c.o.c.ked her head. "Marshal Greegsby-" She smiled suddenly. "But I cannot call you this. Your given name is Bohb?"

"Bob. Yes ma'am. Short for Robert."

Another smile. "Ah. Robair. I once had a very good friend with this name. But you know, I think I prefer the other. Bohb. Yes. I like very much the sound of this. It suits you somehow, I think." She leaned forward and lightly touched his knee. "And you must call me Mathilde."

Grigsby knew that a week from now he would still be able to locate the exact spot on his knee where she had touched him.

Suddenly, from out in the hallway, Grigsby heard a loud urgent banging-slam slam-and then a m.u.f.fled clatter as someone went clomping down the stairwell.

Ned Winters, the desk clerk, warning him that one of the others had returned to the hotel. Wilde or Vail or O'Conner. Or Henry. (And just where was Henry staying, anyway?) Winters would get nervous if Grigsby didn't show up soon. Start seeing Grigsby cramped up in some closet or hunkered between the dust b.a.l.l.s underneath some bed.

Good. Maybe if Winters was sweating some, he wouldn't fall asleep on the job.

The woman was smiling. "This is not the most quiet of hotels," she said. "This morning, do you know, I actually heard a gunshot."

"Yes ma'am," said Grigsby, who had fired that particular shot. "It can be a pretty rowdy place sometimes."

"No, no, no," she said, waving a slender finger, playacting at being cross. "No more of this mayam. You make me feel one hundred years old. You must say it. Mathilde."

"Mahteeld," Grigsby said. d.a.m.n. He was blushing like some dumb farmboy with straw growing in his ears.

Annoyed with himself, he gulped down some apple brandy. What the h.e.l.l was he hanging around here for? Finish up the drink and go.

"Thank you," she said, c.o.c.king her head once more, serious again. "Now," she said, "Bohb. Have you learned anything thus far?"

"Well," Grigsby said, "looks like it's a pretty safe bet that whoever this fella is, he ain't your friend Mr. Wilde."

She c.o.c.ked her head and smiled. "But this is wonderful, no? You are making progress. And I am so very glad to hear of it. I have a great fondness for Oscair. However did you learn this?"

Grigsby shrugged. "Pokin' around," he said. Poking around in closets, looking at shoes. The irresistible juggernaut of Scientific police work.

"Tell me something, Bohb. Are you a married man?"

Grigsby nodded. "Me and my wife are separated."

"She is where?"

"San Francisco."

She raised an eyebrow. "That is quite a separation."

Grigsby nodded again. "Yeah."

"You have children?"

"Two of 'em. Boy and a girl. They're with her."

She sighed and smiled sadly. "Love, eh? It seems such a simple thing, and yet for all of us it creates such complications."

"Yeah." Grigsby didn't want to talk about this. He uncrossed his legs, recrossed them, and again the flame flared down his thigh.

She leaned slightly forward. "What is it, Bohb? You were in pain this afternoon as well."

Grigsby shook his head. "Just a touch of rheumatism."

"Would you like a ma.s.sage?"

She asked this with the same matter-of-fact politeness that she'd shown when she asked him whether he wanted a drink.

"You mean like a back rub?" Grigsby asked her, uncertain.

"Yes," she said, and smiled. "This."

Grigsby discovered, once again, that the skin of his face was hot and tight. G.o.ddammit, she was only a woman. How could she keep making him feel like some b.u.mpkin who'd just arrived in town inside a suit three sizes too small? "No, ma'am," he said. "No thank you. It's right kind of you, though."

"But no," she said. "I insist." She placed her drink on the table and stood. "I am very good with this. Come. You must remove your shirt."

Grigsby surprised himself-amazed himself-by grinning. Maybe he'd gone so far into embarra.s.sment that he'd come out the other side of it. Maybe he'd just given up. And then, before he could stop them, the words came tumbling from his mouth: "You gonna take off yours, too?"

And instead of smacking him across the face, or leaping to her feet, or simply fainting dead away, the Countess Mathilde de la Mole suddenly smiled widely, her brown eyes flashing as she showed all her bright white teeth, and she said, "But of course."

Sitting with his back braced against a ponderosa pine, his knees drawn up, Grigsby rolled himself a cigarette. His right hand still hurt, the fingers were still stiff and clumsy. Across the small brown sunswept pasture, just where the pine forest painted dark shadows at its edge, old man Jenner's small herd of goats nibbled at some stubbly weeds.

Pretty soon Jenner would have to fence them off. He'd need that barbed wire they were using down in Texas-nothing else would hold in goats-and he'd need a lot of it. Grigsby didn't envy him the job of stringing that p.r.i.c.kly, twitchy stuff around his land.

The old man had been living alone up here for at least twenty years, just him and his goats, and for all that time he'd let them roam wild. But more settlers were moving in, trying to sc.r.a.pe a living off rocky sc.r.a.ps of property that had been ignored till now. And no farmer wanted a pack of goats grazing near his crops. They could strip a field cleaner than a flock of locusts.

The country was changing. It was crowding up. The West was disappearing. Cowboys and Indians and wide open prairies-all of that was dying out. But maybe it had begun to die the moment it was born. As soon as you got some people standing around and admiring the wide open s.p.a.ces, the s.p.a.ces weren't so wide open any more.

Maybe none of it had never really existed after all, not as a real place. Maybe, all the time, it had only been an idea, something that people moved toward but never actually arrived at, like the line of the horizon.

Grigsby lit the cigarette, inhaled the smoke, blew it out. Too nice a day to worry on it.

The goats, ten of them, maybe sixty feet away, hadn't moved when he swung down from his horse and ambled over to the shade of the ponderosa. But they'd been watching him ever since, each of them chewing with one eye c.o.c.ked in Grigsby's direction. Now one of them-curious, maybe-began to wander toward him across the field.

The leader, Grigsby realized-he could hear the tinkle of its bell.

The goat came to within five feet and stood there staring at him with those weird yellow rectangular eyes that always seemed to Grigsby more knowing than any animal's eyes had a right to be.

"You know what, goat?" Grigsby said aloud. "You smell just like a goat."

The goat was a male and at his forehead were the two small b.u.mps that would one day be horns. It took another few steps toward him and lowered his head.

"They itch, huh?" Grigsby said. He reached out and scratched the goat's forehead, rubbing his fingertips against the bristly skin stretched taut above the bone. Twisting its neck, the animal leaned its head against his fingers, as insistent as a cat, and Grigsby laughed.

The goat, in its need, reminded him of himself last night, with Mathilde de la Mole.

d.a.m.n. She was some kind of a woman.

She knew tricks that Grigsby had never heard of, had never even imagined. She was like eighteen different women all at once, and she made Grigsby feel like eighteen different kinds of men, all of them as h.o.r.n.y as billy goats. She moaned and sighed and purred and chuckled deep inside her throat, and she whispered instructions and endearments and breathless little gasps of pleasure into his astounded, disbelieving ear. She offered her body and she took his, sometimes with abandon and sometimes with practiced, almost diabolical skill.

And then afterward, just like she promised, she had given him a back rub. And, just like she promised, she had been d.a.m.ned good at it.

While her strong shrewd hands kneaded the flesh and the muscle above his aching hip, Grigsby sighed happily. From time to time he remembered to close his mouth, so he wouldn't drool all over her sheets.

"It is good?" the Countess Mathilde de la Mole had asked him after a while. He could hear the smile in her voice.

"Good don't even come close," Grigsby said. He sighed again. "My G.o.d."

Her fingers were prodding at the pain, locating it, enclosing it somehow, capturing it and then pushing it deep down below awareness.

"But it don't hardly seem fair," Grigsby said. "Me just lyin' here like a lump on a log while you work at me."

"Quiet," she said. "You were not just lying there a while ago. As I recall, you were quite active."

Grigsby grinned against the pillow, ridiculously pleased with himself. Despite his eagerness (and he had been as eager as an sixteen-year-old buck), he had pleasured her three times before taking his final pleasure himself. And now, inside his head, a small excited thought capered like a circus dwarf: She's a G.o.dd.a.m.n countess, from G.o.dd.a.m.n France, and she's giving you a G.o.dd.a.m.n back-rub!

She kissed him gently on the spine, between his shoulders. "Better?"

"Better," he said. "I thank you."

She swung herself off his thighs and lay down beside him. With an effort-he was so limp that he felt he might melt into the mattress-Grigsby rolled over onto his side to look at her.

Her right elbow against the pillow, her head propped against her hand, she lay with her tousled blond hair loose along her smooth white shoulders. Her red lips, slightly more pouty now, were parted in a smile. Her skin was misted shiny with sweat, and she wore her naked body as proudly as most women wore a brand new dress.

He grinned. "I'll tell you one thing, Mathilde," he said. This time he didn't blush; nothing like a roll in the hay to smooth the edges off a fellow's embarra.s.sment. "You surely do take the cake."

She laughed. "Take the cake? This is good?"