West looked from one to the other. Well, if Jessie hadn’t told her brother that her interest in Flynn was all for show, it wasn’t really his place to disabuse him. The Wilders knew the truth, but it seemed Jessie and West weren’t in each other’s business quite as much.
When they sat down at the table, Jessie looked decidedly nervous. Which was a funny thing to see, because generally speaking, she didn’t get rattled. Ever.
“You good?” he asked.
“Just great,” she said, smiling.
He lifted his glass and clinked it against hers. “To Jessie Jane. Who has announced a historic candidacy today. And who will no doubt wipe the floor with her competitor.”
“Amen to that,” said West.
“I’ll toast to that,” Cassidy said, and Dalton raised his glass too.
“Right on,” said Dalton.
“Well,” said West. “Now that we have toasted my sister, I’ll leave you to it. I’m meeting somebody.”
West stood, squared his shoulders, and began to walk to the back of the bar, where a pretty redhead saw him and smiled wide.
Cassidy turned her head and stared at him for a while, and Dalton looked at Cassidy.
Flynn turned his focus back to Jessie Jane. “You aren’t actually taking bets tonight, are you?”
“No,” she said. “I am doing the gambling myself.”
She took a drink of beer and then took a deep breath. She stood up, then walked over to the bar, where she got up onto a bar stool, and stepped onto the counter. “Hey now!” She stomped twice on the bar top.
Gus was howling with laughter from his position behind the bar, doing nothing to stop the spectacle. It was like the days of yore come into the present. Jessie Jane acting like this place was an outlaw bar, with no rules.
But then, maybe that was good. Maybe it fit. “I want everyone’s attention. Just this afternoon I declared my candidacy for mayor. You heard it here first. I’m going to be campaigning around this place, and I trust you lowlifes to do some canvassing for me.”
There was a lot of indistinct hollering. “I know we don’t normally bother ourselves with this kind of business, but I think it’s high time that we did. This town is ours. Just as much as it belongs to anyone else. For too long it’s been outlaws versus lawmen. Danielle LeFevre thinks she knows what sort of person ought to be here in Rustler Mountain, and hint: it’s not us.” That brought a round of jeers from the crowd. “But I like us. I like this town. So tonight I’m buying everybody a beer. All of you. You heard me, Gus. It’s going on my tab.”
Gus hollered, “If you say so, Jessie.”
“I say so,” she said. “And I want you to remember me whenever you take a drink of your favorite brew. And then I want you to make sure to fill out your ballot on election day. We have mail-in ballots, so you have no excuse. Even the laziest of you ought to be able to do something.”
“Not the felons,” said one of the men in the back.
“True enough,” Jessie said. “So those of you who can’t cast your own vote need to encourage other people to do it.”
“Are you going to make gambling legal?”
“Well, I don’t have the power to change laws. But I’ll have the power to oversee local ordinances.”
“And what good does that do most of us?”
“Maybe nothing,” Jessie said. “Maybe there won’t be a damned lick of good that I can do directly for some of you. But if there is, I’ll listen to you. And that’s more than you’re going to get from the likes of Danielle LeFevre. Also, I’m cooler than she is.” To punctuate the point, Gus handed her a glass of beer, and Jessie started to drink it down, to the cheers and encouragement of the people in the room. And in just a few seconds, she had drained it. She set it down hard on the bar top. “Vote for Jessie Jane Hancock!”
Then she hopped down off the bar, bypassing the stool completely, to a round of thunderous applause.
“She is a lot,” Cassidy said.
“Yeah. God damn.”
At that point, Jessie was swarmed by bar patrons who all had some story to tell her about Danielle, or a comment to make about what her platform should be. “What about you, Wilder?” One of the older men, Nate Schloot, looked down his long nose at Flynn.
“I don’t just endorse her,” Flynn said. “I’m dating her.”
