Badlands Page 7

  Rosemond gathered her money and put it in her purse. “You’re quitting?” the Negro asked. “Aren’t gonna give us a chance to win it back?”

  “I need it worse than you, Jethro.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” the man laughed.

  “If I stayed, I would clean you out, and you know it.”

  The man shook his head. “I do. You’re the luckiest woman I ever met.”

  “Skill, Jethro. Skill.”

  The men closed in the spot in the semicircle Rosemond vacated and forgot about us almost immediately. Jethro nodded, smiled, and touched his flat hat.

  “How much did you win?” I asked.

  “Ten dollars.”

  “You turned two bits into ten dollars?”

  “The better question is, where did you get money for that?” She looked at my loot.

  “I fixed a man’s broken nose.”

  Rosemond opened the handkerchief, picked off a corner of cake, and ate it. She closed her eyes and groaned. “That’s good.”

  “You told Isaac you had syphilis?”

  She shrugged. “It was either that or make a scene. I’m lucky he’s one of the few smart enough to care.” She took the milk and drank. She wiped the cream from her upper lip and said, “Milk? You aren’t going temperance on me, are you, Sissy?”

  “Don’t call me Sissy.”

  “Don’t call me Rosie.”

  “Deal.”

  Rosemond drank from the bottle again.

  “I couldn’t remember the last time I drank milk, and it looked delicious,” I said by way of explanation.

  Rosemond gave the bottle back to me and said, grudgingly, “It is.”

  “You’re flush. You buy the whisky.”

  “Do you think we have time?”

  I shrugged. “I heard we have thirty minutes.”

  She agilely hopped down and watched me stumble on the last step, but I found my balance before I fell.

  Rosemond laughed.

  “I have my hands full. You could’ve offered to help.”

  “And miss seeing that bit of gracefulness? Not on your life.” She put her arm through mine. “You don’t like being teased, do you?”

  “It depends on who’s doing the teasing.”

  “Hmm. Kindle was a great one for teasing.”

  I inhaled sharply.

  “Oh, stop bristling every time I mention him,” Rosemond said. “I fucked him, but he married you. You win.” She studied the handmade sign above the tent saloon door. “Atrocious lettering.” She released my arm and turned to face me. “When we meet up with Dunk at Cheyenne, I’ll cable a friend in Saint Louis and get news of Kindle for you. Put your mind at ease.” She ducked into the tent, and I followed.

  Lanterns hung on the two poles down the center of the tent, illuminating the fact that we were the only women among a group of about ten men sitting at five tables and standing at the makeshift bar. Salter sat alone at a table in the back, a bottle of whisky before him, watching everything through hooded eyes. Rosemond went directly for the one empty table and sat down, seemingly oblivious to our obtrusiveness. She lifted her hand to the bartender, who stared at us for a long moment before coming around the bar and over to our table.

  “Women ain’t allowed.”

  “Our money spends as well as theirs. A bottle, two glasses.” Rosemond put a dollar on the table and looked up at the man. His thick mustache twitched with indecision and irritation. A man trying to scrape a living in a dying town couldn’t be choosy about where his coin came from, but the man in him bristled at the idea of a female invading the sanctity of a man’s saloon. The man opened his mouth but Rosemond pulled out another dollar and said in a loud voice, “The next round’s on me.”

  The men murmured their assent and the bartender picked up the coins.

  I held my hand out to Rosemond. “Give me some of your winnings,” I said.

  “So you can make your escape? I don’t think so.”

  I leaned across the table. “Don’t you think I already considered that with my own money?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why didn’t you go?”

  “Three dollars won’t buy a horse and I’m not stupid enough to travel across the plains alone.” I motioned to her to give me the money.

  “Why?”

  “I spent a dollar and got this. You spent two dollars on whisky. You need me to make sure you don’t go broke before we get to Cheyenne.”

  “It won’t matter. Dunk will be there with our trunk and money.”

  “You weren’t so sure an hour ago.”

  “Every station we come to and he’s not there increases the chances he’s in Cheyenne. We were always getting off at Cheyenne. Taking the train south to Boulder from there. He’ll be there, lost as a lamb, most like.”

  “Why Boulder?”

  “I have a friend there.”

  “A man?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Why ‘Eliza’?”

  She studied me for a moment before replying. “It’s part of my full name.”

  “Rosemond Elizabeth Barclay?”

  “Close enough.”

  The bartender pulled a bottle from the shelves behind the bar and brought it with two glasses to our table. “Women buying men drinks,” a man at the bar said. “Don’t that beat all? Guess that’s a change for a couple a’ whores like you.”

  The murmuring crowd went quiet and Sean Isaac turned to face us. Even in the low light I could see the bruises around his eyes. Dried blood rimmed his nostrils.

  “Better keep a civil tongue, mister,” Salter said, “or the little lady will break your nose again.”

  The bartender put the whisky and glasses on the table and addressed Rosemond. “You broke his nose?”

  “No,” she said, perplexed.

  I arranged the cheese and cake on the table between us and asked the bartender, “Can I get a larger glass? For my milk. And a knife for the cheese?”

  He grasped the extra shot glass, dragged it along the table as if it were a great effort to pick it up, and returned to the bar.

  “You broke his nose?” Rosemond said. “Why?”

  “He propositioned me.”

  She leaned forward. “I can’t protect you if you insist on making a spectacle of yourself every time we get off the train.”

  “I didn’t make a spectacle.”

  A man called from across the bar, “How’s your hand, Blondie? Looks a mite swollen.”

  “My hand is fine, thank you.”

  Rosemond raised her eyebrows and twisted her mouth into an expression easy enough to decipher: Didn’t make a spectacle, did you?

  “There’s two kinds of women in the West: whores and wives,” Isaac said.

  “There’s also whores who want to be wives.”

  “And mail-order brides.”

  “And spinsters looking to be wives.”

  Rosemond and I stared at each other across the table. Her expression was fixed with good humor, but I could see the irritation and anger beneath. I almost pitied her as I saw her realize that what would hold her back wasn’t that she was a whore, but that she was a woman.

  The bartender stabbed my cheese with the knife, shocking Rosemond and me back into our chairs. We looked up at the man. His displeasure with serving us was clear. Rosemond poured a shot of whisky and drank it, her eyes never leaving the bartender’s dirty face. “Thank you,” I said, pouring milk into my glass. I cut a chunk from the cheese and served Rosemond. The bartender moved away.

  Rosemond drank three more shots in quick succession.

  “You sure drink like a whore,” Isaac said to Rosemond. “Does that make her your wife?” Isaac said, motioning to me. The men laughed.

  I leaned forward and placed my hand over Rosemond’s to stop her from taking another shot. “You’re right. I made a mistake. Let’s go.”

  “No.” She removed her hand and drank again.

  I leaned back and shook my head. “I thought you were sma
rter than this.”

  She set the shot glass down with a click. “Than what?”

  “As I said earlier, you cannot have it both ways. If you want respectability, you’ve got to give up the freedoms of a whore.”

  “Freedoms?” She laughed.

  “Playing dice in the back of a train. Drinking in a saloon.” Whisky sloshed onto the table as she poured another drink. “Stumbling drunk out of the saloon.” She threw the whisky back and poured again.

  I couldn’t drag her out of the saloon, and I couldn’t leave her alone. Resigned to seeing through whatever point Rosemond was trying to make, I peeled the waxy red rind from the bright yellow cheese, carved a chunk from the block, and ate it slowly, savoring the tanginess on my tongue. I drank my milk and ate half of my cake in silence as Rosemond brooded and drank her bottle. I portioned out more of the cheese and half of her cake and placed it in front of her, folding the remainder in the handkerchief for the rest of the journey. I pulled her bottle to me and corked it. I sat back in my chair and watched Rosemond twist her empty shot glass around on the whisky-dampened table. It was somewhat comforting to see Rosemond brought low. I could let her drink herself into a stupor, steal her money, and head back to Kindle. If her eyes were any indication, she wasn’t used to drinking whisky. Surprising, considering her profession.

  Despite my antipathy for Rosemond, I couldn’t forget she’d saved me on the Mississippi, and killed Cora to protect me. I couldn’t help but admire her drive to start over, nor could I deny the part of me that felt a camaraderie with any woman who pushed against society’s expectations.

  “Do you know how I started my practice in New York?” I asked.

  “Treating whores,” she said. When I jerked my head back in surprise, she said, “Your story’s been pretty well canvassed across the papers. I wasn’t sure that tidbit was true, but apparently so.”

  I nodded. “I’d graduated from Syracuse Medical College, at the top of my class, and was scraping the bottom of my savings account at the end. I moved back to the city to start my practice but couldn’t find a patient. Every doctor in town shunned me, told lies about me so no one trusted me to take their temperature, let alone deliver their children or remove a tumor.”

  “Even the other women docs? There aren’t many, but you aren’t the only one.”

  I tensed and felt my face flush with chagrin. Rosemond had stopped twirling her glass. I pulled it toward me, uncorked the bottle, poured a shot, hated that my hand shook. “I wanted to prove myself equal to the men. I wasn’t interested in help from the Blackwells, though they offered. Once. I burned that bridge well and good.”

  “I’ll be frank, La—Helen. It’s a wonder you got as far as you have, what with your arrogance.”

  “Thank you for telling me what I already know. I suffered for my hubris at the time.” I paused. And later. Would I have fled New York City if I’d had female allies in the medical profession? Would the support of the Blackwells and others have helped me at all? I would never know the answer to those questions. I cleared my throat and continued my story. “I treated families in the slums, but they couldn’t pay. Oh, they tried, God love them. Their meager payments fed Maureen—she was my maid—and me more than once. But it wasn’t enough. And I wanted more, you see. I hadn’t endured the ridicule and resentment of medical school, of the medical establishment in the city, to become a poor man’s doctor. I would only prove my point if I was the doctor of choice for the upper class.” I poured another shot.

  “Problem was, we were starving. Me and Maureen.” I chuckled, stared at the amber-colored liquid, and threw it back. “I’d delivered a baby for an Italian woman and was walking home with a half a loaf of bread and a small bottle of olive oil for my trouble. That night, we wouldn’t starve. But it was the end of October and we didn’t have the money for coal.”

  “Why didn’t you sell your mother’s necklace?” Rosemond interrupted.

  I smiled and nodded. “Excellent question. Selling my mother’s jewelry would have meant I’d failed, that I couldn’t do it on my own. Luckily, a man tumbled down the front steps of Joe Fisher’s boardinghouse at the right moment.” I poured more whisky for me and Rosemond and drank my shot. “We didn’t freeze or starve that winter. The following spring, I got my toehold in Washington Square and my practice flourished.”

  Rosemond clapped slowly. “Bravo, and look at you now.”

  “I’m right back where I started, taking care of a whore to survive.” I leaned forward. “What’s your story, Eliza? How did you end up as a high-priced whore on the Mississippi?”

  A low rumble vibrated the ground and in the distance a train whistle sounded. The men finished off their whisky, tossed coins on the table, and rose to leave.

  “The express,” I said.

  Rosemond slapped the table with her hand. “Thank God I won’t have to listen to you blabber on anymore.”

  “You’re a mean drunk, aren’t you?”

  Rosemond rose shakily to her feet. “I’m worse when I’m sober.”

  I gathered our meager provisions and stood as well. I placed the leftover food in the carpetbag, pulled out a notebook, and held it out to Rosemond.

  She narrowed her eyes. “What’s this?”

  “A sketchbook. It’s on the small side, but the shebang’s selection was limited. There’s a pencil inside.” Rosemond stared at it as if it were a snake, and a bright blush rushed up her neck and across her face. I shook it at her. “It’s more for me than you, so you’ll stop clicking that damn coin purse open and closed.”

  She took the notebook with a sly smile, more comfortable with impertinence than vulnerability.

  Salter stopped at our table. A short cigar had replaced the matchstick in the corner of his mouth. Rosemond appraised him from head to toe, but Salter kept his eyes on me. “You need to stay on the train till your destination.”

  “Why?”

  “Two women traveling alone. It’s safer to stay with the families.” He touched his hat, turned, and left.

  Rosemond’s gaze followed him out the door, and I palmed the knife off the table and slid it up the sleeve of my dress.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Eighteen hours and twenty-three stops later, we pulled into Cheyenne, Wyoming, an exhausted, short-tempered, putrid-smelling mass of humanity. A good portion of the passengers tumbled out of the train. The relief of those remaining was short-lived when they saw the platform teeming with a new group waiting to board, set on California. The tall station clock in the middle of the platform chimed six a.m.

  Rosemond stopped on the bottom train step, scanning the crowd for Dunk. I stood behind her and looked, but didn’t remember Dunk clearly enough to be a good spotter.

  “He’ll be sitting by the depot, our trunk at his feet, waiting. Mark my words.”

  Rosemond had said it so many times I got the feeling she was trying to convince herself of its truth rather than believing it herself. “There!” I said, pointing down the platform to a man in a bowler hat sitting on a bench.

  Someone pushed us from behind. “Come on, lady. Get a move on!”

  I nudged Rosemond and she stepped down. I took her hand. “This way.”

  When we got within sight of the man, he stood and went forward to meet someone else at the same moment we saw he was white. Rosemond dropped my hand and turned around, searching. She walked to the end of the platform and was lost in the crowd. I started to follow but stopped. I looked in the opposite direction. The crowd was thinning quickly. If I was going to slip away from Rosemond, this was my opportunity.

  I caught sight of Rosemond searching the platform and pushed aside all thoughts of escape. Her eyes were wide with a frantic worry, and I knew she expected the worst, which meant destitution for her, and God only knew what for Dunk.

  I waited at the edge of the platform. “Do you see him?” she asked.

  “No. There’s a hotel.” I pointed to a long two-story building built almost on top of the ra
ilroad tracks. “He’s probably waiting for us there.”

  Rosemond grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the hotel.

  The inside of the Union Pacific Hotel was caught between its rough-hewn origin and its quest to be first class. A polished mahogany front desk sat on a plank floor, a ceramic spittoon on the floor at one end, a dented tin one at the other end. Workers were replacing metal candle sconces with gaslights. Off to the side of the lobby, the dining room was half full of cowboys, miners, and businessmen eating breakfast. The smell of bacon, eggs, and biscuits made my stomach rumble. An emigrant family from the train had wandered into the hotel: the man loaded down with bags, the woman holding an exhausted child in her arms, and two other children who had been some of the more energetic at Grand Island but were now listless and vacant-eyed. The parents looked around the hotel with longing but spoke together briefly and went out the front door.

  As I took the scene in I realized Rosemond and I were the only women in the room.

  Rosemond moved to the front desk. The clerk looked at us and smiled. “May I help you?”

  “Yes, I’m looking for my employee. His name is Duncan. Large Negro.” Rosemond lifted her hand a foot above her head.

  The clerk’s pleasant expression darkened. “Yes, Duncan. He was here but he isn’t any longer.”

  “Can you tell me where he went?”

  “The jail down the street.”

  “Jail? What happened?”

  I watched Rosemond closely as the man answered. “He pulled a knife at a craps game last night. He took issue with losing his money.”

  Rosemond’s pockmarked face paled, but she kept her smile fixed. “Dunk never was good at throwing the bones.”

  “Was anyone hurt?” I asked.

  “I’d say so. Killed a white man.”

  Rosemond shifted and I put my arm around her waist to hold her up. “Was Duncan staying here?” I asked.

  “No. We don’t serve niggers.”

  Rosemond opened her mouth, but I squeezed her waist and spoke first. “My sister and I need a room for the night. Do you have one available?”