Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) by Karen Mercury

some disarray. My wife passed,” he told Ivy, “in the most incomprehensible manner. A rattlesnake shot her!”
    Ivy smiled. “A rattlesnake?”
    “Yah! Ace Moyer, who owns this groggery, was the one who figured it out. He was on his way to see me at the Cow Palace to discuss how many beeves he’d need for his menu. He came racing into my hacienda, shrieking that a snake had shot Minerva!”
    Ivy inquired, “So her body was right next to the snake, which was holding a shotgun?”
    “Yah! No! Yah!”
    Neil explained patiently, “Actually, Ivy, there was no body at first. I’m sure the rattlesnake thing was all a fantasy. Sure, we found a snake coiled around her rifle, pressed against the trigger. But we found the actual body —Rodney, you don’t want to discuss this!”
    Neil was right. Rodney’s face was already lower than his shoulders and on its way to becoming one with the tabletop.
    Ivy took a sip of the forty rod and choked. A few drops of the vile stuff came back up into her nostrils, her eyes watered, and she had to take her handkerchief from her reticule. Neil stood, came to her side of the table, and patted her ineffectively on the back.
    “Now, now,” he said, annoyingly. “I warned you about that stuff. It’s made of pure combustibles, not fit for man or beast.”
    Defiantly, Ivy raised the mug and forced another couple of swallows down. The liquid stayed down this time, burning a hole in her stomach. “Stop that!” she snapped. “I’m perfectly capable of holding my liquor.” She could barely see through her watery eyes, but it looked as if Shortridge was about to keel completely. “Rodney? About your—”
    Rodney pounded a fist on the tabletop. “These damned ape-men, I tell you! They’ll be the ruination of us all!”
    McCormack said mildly, “Shortridge has been going on about these skeletons discovered in France.”
    Rodney bawled, “Along with bones of extinct critters, tools, and skulls! Reindeer antlers, I tell you!”
    “Yes?” Ivy said politely. “And what does this have to do with—”
    “I found a skull once!” Rodney proclaimed. “A bison skull was sitting right outside my hacienda door not long after Minerva was found in that pile of manure! Bob! More forty rod!”
    Ivy lifted Neil’s hand from her shoulder and tossed it away in irritation. Swallowing more of the acerbic whiskey, she turned to McCormack as the most logical fellow in the room. “So the snake didn’t shoot her? She was smothered by shit?”
    McCormack chuckled, probably not accustomed to women saying “shit.” Or perhaps not accustomed to women at all. “Why, yes. It was decided she’d fallen into the manure pile, perhaps after being shot—by the snake or not, we don’t really know—and suffocated to death when a hand dumped a load of manure on top of her. Now, Rodney. Can you hand me your tobacco? I’ve got a yen for tobacco.”
    But Rodney was caught up in the drama of his blubbering. His mouth all askew, he clung to the tabletop as if it were a mountain of morality he had to climb. “A skull…with earrings attached! Oh, bury me now on the lone prairie… Those damned ape-men! Oh, the lack of humanity!”
    McCormack rose and went to shake Shortridge by the shoulders. Shortridge lashed out with both hands as though shooing away a swarm of bees. “I ain’t got no tobacco, McCormack! Why do you keep bugging me about that? I don’t even smoke tobacco.”
    “Because. You’ve got it sticking out of your pocket right here.” McCormack lifted a tobacco pouch from Shortridge’s waistcoat pocket. Satisfied, he sat down opposite his friend and removed a pipe from his own pocket. When he withdrew the tobacco plug from the pouch, that’s when Ivy saw it.
    The pouch. Missing its drawstring. And there was a picture of a bison on the label.
    A drawstring could easily have been used to strangle old Gentry.
    Neil must have noticed at the same time, for he stepped in front of Bob and whisked the jug