"I drag him in to dinner most every night," she went on. "Sometimes I think he would prefer to bolt down a sandwich and get back to his precious bookkeeping. What part of the country are you from, Mr. Tesno?"
The wine was mellow, fragrant with the scent of some fertile, faraway valley. "I was born in New Mexico Territory," he said. "Got into railroading when the Santa Fe was fighting the Denver & Rio Grande for Raton Pass."
Stella set a plate before him with half a roasted duck on it. He was hungry, but he ate without tasting, captivated by the charm of Persia Parker.
She pried him with questions about himself, touching him with eyes that were green or gray or hazel, smiling when he smiled, making him feel that every word he said was important to her. He was not a talkative man, but now he talked as he seldom had before.
He told about his parents being killed by Comanches when he was a few months old, about the whisky-running renegade who had bought him from the Indians and raised him. He told how he had hired out as a wrangler when he was twelve, how a rancher's wife had taught him lessons and lent him books to read. And Persia Parker laughed and frowned and touched him with her eyes, warily now, as if afraid of the tenderness he saw there, afraid he might misunderstand.
Sam Lester seemed content to be ignored. He finished his coffee quickly, muttered that he had paper work to do, and left them alone.
Persia lead Tesno into the parlor. She was taller than he had expected. She wore a simple, black, ankle-length dress, and he remembered that her husband had been dead less than three months. Yet black set off her pale hair, and he couldn't picture her in anything more becoming. She indicated a chair for him and sat down on a sofa two feet away.
"I expect you're a busy woman," he said. "I'd better get to the point."
"I'm not half as busy as you'd think, Mr. Tesno," she said. "The town pretty much runs itself. And my position is entirely unofficial, you know. My husband was mayor, and after his death, I took over some of the more ceremonial duties of the office—temporarily, I thought. But the town council likes the novelty, and I'm afraid, the notoriety, of having a 'lady mayor.' This is no ordinary community, and they seem to feel that anything that adds to its uniqueness is good for business. So they keep postponing the election of Duke's successor."
"You also own most of the business property in town," he said. "Isn't that true?"