Sonnet
By
Edna
Here is a wound that never will heal, I know;
Being wrought not of a dearness and a death,
But of a love turned ashes and the breath
Gone out of beauty;
never again will grow
The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow
Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath
Its friendly weathers down, far underneath
Shall be such bitterness of an old woe.
That April should be shattered by a gust,
That August should be leveled by a rain,
I can endure, and that the lifted dust
Of man should settle to the earth again;
But that a dream can die, will be a thrust
Between my ribs forever of hot pain.
The Measure of Grace
By
Julie Jurkovich
July, 2001
As
Adam rode into
No one wanted to let him get close
to the books, and Adam soon found out why when he talked to some of the angry
workers. Adam had fired the foreman and
his henchmen, and had recruited the other workers to his side by helping them
shore up the weakened tunnels with timber that had been delivered from the
Ponderosa some time ago for that purpose, but had instead been sold, little by
little, by the foreman and his gang to a rival timber supplier to make an extra
profit on the side. Some of the tunnels
still weren’t safe, but Adam told the new foreman to keep his workers out of
them until more timber was delivered.
That meant, of course, another trip to the camp in the near future to be
certain that this time, things were done right.
Adam wiped a grimy hand across his
forehead. He knew his face must be as
dirty as his hands and clothes. He
watered his weary horse outside the Silver Dollar Saloon, and splashed some of
the water over his neck, face, and dark hair.
A drink to wash away the dust and a bite to eat sounded mighty fine
right now. Sport tossed his head and
neighed at him. Adam smiled, and stroked
his neck. “We’ll be home soon, my
friend,” he said. As he walked around
the hitching post onto the board sidewalk, his eyes fell on the alleyway next
to the saloon. His thoughts drifted back
to a day about a month earlier, when he and Joe had been in town to get
supplies.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After they had transferred some
funds at the bank, Adam had gone to the general store while Joe had driven the
wagon to the feed store. After making
his purchases, Adam had carried the box of groceries to the feed store and put
it in the back of the wagon. Joe had
just concluded his business, and Adam helped him carry the heavy bags of feed
outside and throw them into the wagon.
Suddenly, Joe had stopped working, nearly dropping a bag on Adam’s feet,
and had looked across the street behind his brother.
In the alley between the Silver
Dollar Saloon and the livery, a young lady in a light blue dress with long
sleeves and a high collar was stooped
beside a figure in rags lying on the ground covered with a thin blanket. The lady spoke to the person lying before
her, who stirred, clutched a bottle close, and finally spoke.
Adam and Little Joe recognized both
of them. The young lady was Jenny, who
lived adjacent to the Ponderosa with her parents on a small piece of
property. The person lying on the ground
was Roberta, a saloon girl from the Bucket of Blood, who was dying from the
pox. The madam at the saloon threw her
out as soon as she discovered the girl had the disease, and refused to let her
take refuge in the alley next to that establishment. Desperate, Roberta drummed up what business
she could next to the Silver Dollar with miners and lumberjacks who were either
too drunk to notice her condition, or too hopeless and penniless anymore to
care. Her services earned her a
moth-eaten, worn blanket, a few extra clothes, and a bottle to ease her pain. Though many of Virginia City’s decent
citizens complained about Roberta, and demanded that she at least move out of
view of the main street in town, the madam at the Silver Dollar refused to
force the girl to move, and even helped her occasionally by giving her another
bottle of whiskey, or another blanket, though she did make it clear that
Roberta was to stay out of the saloon and away from the patrons who frequented
her girls’ rooms, as well as telling her girls to stay away from her.
Roberta was not the first young
prostitute to fall prey to a social disease.
Such occurrences were more and more common in
Adam and Joe watched as Jenny left a
little food, a flask of water, and some money with Roberta. They weren’t the only ones watching. Most of the citizens of
Jenny stood, and with a last
compassionate word to the woman before her, went to the sidewalk before the
livery and gave her hand to her three year-old niece, whom she had told to stay
there and wait for her. As she returned
to her wagon loaded with supplies, women moved out of her way, sweeping their
skirts away from her. Daughters were
pulled aside. Men either gawked at her,
or touched their hats and ducked their heads.
Jenny took no notice, but lifted her niece onto the wagon seat, and
carefully climbed up beside her. Adam
smiled to himself when he recalled how heedlessly he had seen her ride her
horse alone, astride as often as not, with her hair flying in the wind. Now, her light brown hair was flawlessly
curled and pinned under her hat, and her dress was neat and free of dust,
despite the dry wind blowing the dust about the hot, dry town.
Two women approached Adam and Joe,
pulling their daughters after them along the sidewalk. “Imagine!” exclaimed one. “That hussy!
Who does she think she is? And
with that child of sin, pretending she’s her aunt! As though we don’t all know what they both
are!”
“It takes one to know one,” the
other woman agreed.
As they approached the Cartwright
brothers, the women smiled, and the daughters inclined their heads
ingratiatingly. Joe and Adam smiled and
touched their hats in return. Joe felt
that if he had to force his mouth up any more, he might crack his face.
Without speaking, they threw the
last of the feed bags into the wagon, and moved as one toward Jenny’s wagon in
front of the general store. Jenny was
trying to turn the wagon so she could go home.
“Jenny!” called Joe.
Jenny looked about her, but didn’t
see them in the busy street. Adam reached
the wagon and jumped up beside her, followed by Joe, who climbed up the other
side. Startled, Jenny stopped the horses
and stared at one, and then the other.
“What’s wrong?”
Adam and Joe just looked at her,
uncertain what to say or do, as Jenny returned their gazes with a puzzled
look. “What’s wrong?” she repeated.
“You shouldn’t – you should – be
more careful,” said Joe apologetically.
As Jenny stared at him, Adam took the reins and pulled the wagon back
along the sidewalk.
“What we mean,” he said gently, “is
that people misunderstand when you help someone like – like you just did. Not that you shouldn’t have helped her,” he
hastened to add, and Joe sputtered his agreement. “You have to realize that – well – people
think that –“
“I know what they think,” Jenny
replied evenly and quietly. “I’m
accustomed to it. Believe me, I’m used
to people’s ‘misunderstandings’. It
doesn’t really matter to me what they think.”
Joe
thought of what the women had just said about Jenny and her niece. “We don’t mean that,” he said earnestly. “If you talk to – help – a – a woman like
that, then, well…. Maybe you
should….” He let the sentence dangle
lamely, wondering how to tell her not to let people see her do something that
obviously needed to be done.
“She needs help, Joe,” Jenny almost
pleaded. “She needs a doctor. Men have been using her for years. That’s why she needs help. Who will help her now?” Joe and Adam looked down, unwilling to meet
her gaze.
“Uh, Ma’am -” A cough and a series of wheezing gasps drew
their attention to the street next to them.
A stooped, grizzled miner stood next to the wagon with his dirty,
misshapen hat in his hand. His greasy
hair fell lankly over his face, which was creased with wrinkles. His clothes were ill-fitting and dirty. When the coughing fit subsided, he said, “I
can tell the doctor about the lady, if it pleases you, Ma’am.”
Jenny eyed him suspiciously. His blue eyes were bleary and his nose
reddened from too much alcohol. She
could smell him even over the horse dung and other smells of the city street.
“The doctor can’t do anything for
that woman,” said Adam, sounding almost defensive. He recognized the man as one of the town
derelicts, who spent all his time gambling with others down on their luck and
drinking up his winnings.
“That’s right,” agreed Joe.
“How do you know?” asked Jenny.
“He could give her some laudanum,
Ma’am, if he would,” said the miner.
“That’s ‘bout the only thing that’s gonna help her now.” He paused as he stared at Jenny. It had been a long time since he had spoken
with a lady, and such a pretty one at that.
Usually, the ladies hurried to the other side of the street as he
approached. Even some of the loose women
of the town wouldn’t talk to or associate with him. He considered this woman before him to be one
of the finest ladies he had ever seen or known.
“My name’s Charlie, Ma’am. And
I’ve tried to help Miss Roberta here, but I believe that Doc Martin is the only
one who can help her now, if he will.”
“Why haven’t you spoken to the
doctor before this?” demanded Jenny.
The miner coughed again. “Well, Ma’am,” he spluttered, “most people
won’t listen to the likes of me. But I
-” Jenny waited patiently as he again hacked and gasped – “I took a liking to
Miss Roberta a long time ago – no offense to you, please, Ma’am – and I try to
help her however I can. Perhaps if you
speak to the doctor on her behalf…” He
gave a tremendous sneeze – “he’d listen to you better than me?” He wiped his nose on his dirty sleeve and fixed
her with a hopeful stare.
Jenny wondered if she was the object
of a practical joke. She looked at Adam
and Joe, but they gave her no indication that her suspicion was correct. If this miner was making fun of her, or
joking with her, Jenny was certain that they would speak up. But their faces showed only apprehension and
concern. Jenny had been escorted to a
dance by Adam, and had gone riding with him several times, and with Little Joe
a few times, and she knew that they would never allow this man to take
advantage of her.
“I’ll go speak to Doctor Martin,”
she said.
Adam took hold of her wrist. “No!” he exclaimed.
Jenny tried to pull away. “But he’ll listen to me!”
Adam held on to her firmly. “No,” he repeated.
“But Adam…”
“I’ll talk to him,” said Adam.
Jenny looked at him, then at Joe.
“I’ll go with him, and talk to him,
too,” said Joe hesitantly.
“You mean it?” asked Jenny. “You’re not just saying this to – to get me
to be quiet and go home?” She looked at
the miner, who hadn’t stopped staring at her.
“He’ll listen to the Cartwright
boys,” the miner said approvingly.
Jenny still wondered if this was a
set-up, but one more look at Adam’s and Joe’s faces convinced her that they
were sincere. “All right,” she said,
hoping their sincerity wouldn’t disappear as soon as her wagon was out of
sight. “I’ll trust you to go to the
doctor, and get her the help she needs.”
She took the reins from Adam, and waited for him and Joe to get down.
“I’ll ride with you to the edge of
town,” said Adam, and gently took the reins back from her. “Joe, why don’t you stay with our wagon until
I get back?” Joe climbed down from the
wagon, and Adam escorted Jenny through the noisy, disapproving throng in the
streets.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Adam
looked at the alley next to the Silver Dollar.
No one was there. There was no
trace of Roberta, her blanket, or her bottle.
As Adam walked into the saloon and greeted the regulars and the
bartender, he wondered if the doctor had given Roberta an overdose of laudanum
as a measure of mercy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The
eerie, haunting screech echoed throughout the sky and over the grasslands and
forests beneath as the eagle soared on the air currents high above the
earth. Again and again his lonely shriek
filled the air, until he began slowly descending in great spirals. His circling grew tighter and smaller; then, suddenly, he plummeted like a stone. A moment later, he was airborne again. His harsh screams of disappointment and
frustration reverberated as a terrified rabbit scuttled to cover after a close
brush with the talons of death.
The red-headed woman hidden behind a
tree at the top of the bank near the stream watched and listened. She had heard and seen the eagle, but the
rabbit was too far away for her to see.
She knew, however, that the eagle’s prey had just had a close call, and
wondered how much longer she and her friends could keep going before they, too,
were snared, throttled, slaughtered, and devoured. She peered around the tree, and looked about
cautiously. There appeared to be no one
in sight, but she couldn’t be too careful.
They had seen a fence a while ago, as they came out of the foothills
near the
A small girl with light brown braids
coming undone and dress flying about ran into her view. She gave a mighty yell accompanied by a
flying leap, and landed on a mounded hump of dirt covered with scrubby grass
and weeds. Dust flew up about her and
settled upon her hair, face, and clothes, turning her dress from blue to brown. A young lady with her hair pulled back and
fastened under her hat appeared shortly, holding her dress so she didn’t trip
over it, hurrying yet managing to appear ladylike as she scurried to catch up
with the child. Before she could reach
the hillock where the little girl perched, the child gave a shout, leaped up,
and ran toward the stream.
The red-headed woman threw herself
to the ground and crawled desperately back down the bank, heedless of the
additional dirt and grass stains on her dress.
She heard a tremendous shout – a man’s shout – and knew he was after
her. Her breath caught in her throat as
she scuttled under the overhanging bush by the stream with her companions. She
could only hope the mule was hidden well enough, and he wouldn’t see it, or
them. Terrified, she curled herself into
a ball and willed her gasping, wheezing breath to stop and her pounding heart
to still.
“Who said you could go down by the
stream?” The angry voice approached.
He was coming. What a fool she’d been, to think she could
escape him again. She’d run away before,
and he’d come after her, always tracking her down, finding her, - and forcing
her back.
“What do you think you’re doing,
running off down here, and no one with you?”
He was at the top of the bank.
“But Grandpa, Aunt Jenny was right
behind me” – a little girl’s voice began.
“No, she wasn’t! You ran off and left her! You could fall down the bank and hurt
yourself, or fall in the water! You
don’t go down near the stream without someone holding your hand!” The last statement was spoken with great
emphasis given to each word.
In her hiding place, the woman
opened her eyes. His voice didn’t sound
the way she remembered. She lifted her
head and twisted her neck around to carefully peer back up the bank. The same child and young lady she had seen
before stood at the top of the bank. A
man with dark, curly hair with more than a touch of gray stood next to them.
“I’m here now, Father,” said the
young woman, as she took the little girl’s hand. “Don’t yell at her. She’s just excited. I can take her down.”
“No!
She’s too wild right now, and apt to get into trouble. Stay up here!”
“We need to get back home,
anyway.” An older woman’s voice from
further away floated down the bank.
“We’ve visited, had our picnic, and run and played and talked. I need to finish some mending and get dinner
started, and the chores need to be done.”
The child’s face fell in
disappointment. “Never mind, Karen,
we’ll go down another time,” said her aunt.
“Let’s go look at my flowers while Grandma gathers the picnic
things.” Karen yielded to the gentle tug
on her hand, and allowed the young lady to lead her away. The man followed them.
A deep longing stirred within Elise
from her hiding place. That and
curiosity conquered her fear, and she emerged from the bushes and crawled
carefully back up the bank. A muffled
whimper of terror followed her. “Don’t
worry, Mai Ling,” she said quietly over her shoulder. “It wasn’t him. Stay with Marabelle. I’ll be right back.”
Just below the top of the bank, she
stopped, then carefully lifted her head and peered over. The young child and her aunt – Karen and
Jenny, Elise told herself – were walking up a slight hill, their backs to her,
toward a couple of lone trees standing in the midst of open grassland stunted
here and there with bushes. A wagon
approached, going slowly over the bumpy ground.
As it came closer, she saw it was driven by a boy of about eight or
nine. A woman sat next to him holding a
baby.
“What are you doing?” asked the
man. The woman in the wagon said
something about bringing the wagon to everyone instead of waiting for everyone
to come to the wagon. The man threw his
head back and laughed, a long, loud laugh from his heart. He took the baby from his wife’s arms and
held him closely and carefully to him, stroking his hair and kissing him before
giving him back. Then he turned and gave
a trilling whistle.
Elise followed his gaze. His granddaughter and her aunt were kneeling
by the trees, carefully admiring and touching something Elise couldn’t
see. They looked back at the sound of
the whistle, and Jenny waved to him to show she had heard. After a moment longer, they stood and walked
back to the wagon. The grandfather
picked up Karen and threw her in the back, to the sound of much giggling, and
helped Jenny in more slowly. The boy
then climbed in the back, and the grandfather stepped up next to his wife, took
the reins, turned the wagon, and drove out of Elise’s sight.
Elise wished they would come back,
so she could watch them some more, and listen to the grandfather laugh
again. She swallowed the lump in her
throat, and was surprised to find herself fighting off tears. She hadn’t cried since – when had she last
cried? Shortly after her parents had
died, and she’d had to go live with her uncle and aunt, she had learned not to
cry. She shuddered at the memory of her
uncle: Such a seemingly genteel man,
with a kind word for everyone, but who had stared at her all the time. Shortly after she arrived at his home, the night
time visits to her room had begun. At first, she was too horrified to resist.
When she finally protested, he immediately warned her that any resistance on
her part would make things worse for her.
He also informed her that if she ever told anyone about what they did,
he would kill her. But there was never
any chance of her telling anyone about the terrible nights she spent in his
house. She knew that no one would
believe her, and even if they had, they would look upon her with the same
disgust and hatred that her aunt always had in her eyes whenever they were
turned toward her.
When her uncle had tired of her, he
sold her to Clint. What Clint did to her
was far worse than anything her uncle had ever done. She never cried there. She also learned to instantly obey everything
he wanted her to do, and to pretend she liked it, no matter how distasteful it
was to her, and to never, ever show fear around him. Mai Ling was so terrified of Clint that she
shuddered visibly whenever he came around her.
Clint had fed off her fear as a leech fed on blood.
Elise emerged slowly from the trees,
looking about to be certain no one was watching her. Keeping low to the ground, she went to the
small stand of trees where she had seen Jenny and Karen. Though it wasn’t far from where she had been
hidden, it was further away than it seemed, and the gradual uphill slope winded
her easily in her weakened state. She
saw the fabulous blossoms as she approached.
Someone had planted beautiful red roses by the trees, and had
transplanted some wild prairie roses about them.
Heedless of the danger of being in
the open, Elise stood lost in thought.
Her mother had grown roses which Elise had helped tend. All of her mother’s flowers had been lovely,
just as she was. Elise remembered how
she had followed her mother, listening to her humming and singing to herself as
she wandered through the garden, pruning, pulling weeds, and carefully choosing
blooms to adorn their dining room table. Her father used to say that her mother helped
the sun rise in the sky with her singing, and as Elise saw the mornings grow
brighter around them, and her mother’s red hair shine in the sun, she believed
him.
Elise swallowed and pushed the
memory away. These flowers looked a bit
scraggly. They needed pruning. She pulled a knife that she carried at her
hip, and proceeded to cut them back. She
wondered how she could remember how to do this after all these years, but she
did the task as though she had just done it yesterday. She cut one blossom and trimmed the
thorns. Surely whoever planted these
couldn’t begrudge her one flower. The
soil about them was dry, as was everything about her, but she could water them
later. The stream was nearby.
She went back to her friends much
more lighthearted than she’d felt in years.
“I brought us a flower,” she announced, as she crawled under the
bushes. “Someone planted rosebushes out
here! Isn’t it beautiful?”
Mai Ling looked at the rose, then at
Elise. “Who were those people?”
“A family. They must live close by.”
“Did they see you?”
“No.” Elise paused.
“They seem nice. Maybe they’d
help us.” But she knew that no matter
how nice they seemed, they were respectable, and would want nothing to do with
the likes of them.
Mai Ling looked at Marabelle. “She’s getting worse.”
Elise looked at their friend. Open sores covered her face, and could also
be seen on her arms and legs through rips in her sleeve and her skirt. A rash of small blisters was starting to form
again, after having disappeared earlier while they rested in the wilderness.
“She’s so hot!” exclaimed Mai Ling.
Elise gingerly touched a part of
Marabelle’s face that didn’t have blisters or sores on it. Her skin felt hot and leathery. As she brushed her friend’s neck, she could
feel swollen glands. She moved her hand
down to the enlarged belly, and felt the muscles contract briefly. Marabelle groaned and drew her hands over her
belly, curling into a ball on her side, squeezing her swollen red eyes tightly
shut.
Elise whispered to Mai Ling, “It
can’t be her time yet!” Mai Ling just
looked at her with huge, frightened eyes.
“Let’s get her a drink and sponge
her off,” said Elise. “Maybe we can wash
our clothes out here.” A fish splashed
in a low-lying pool isolated from the stream during this dry spell by a fallen
tree and other debris piled against it.
“Let’s make a fire, too,” said Elise, grateful for the Indians they’d
encountered in the wilderness who had taught them how.
“Someone will see it,” whimpered Mai
Ling.
“We have to chance it,” Elise
countered. “We can’t eat raw fish, and
I’m sick of jerky. We’re running low on
food, anyway.” She nodded toward
Marabelle. “Give her a drink and wipe
her face, while I try to catch some fish.
She needs something good to eat.”
Elise fashioned a hook and line from
a twig and light-weight branches the way she had seen the Indians do a short
while ago, and persisted until she had three fish. Then she built a small fire in a hollowed-out
semi-circle under the bank, prayed that the fire wouldn’t smoke or that the
smoke would not be seen, let it burn low, and laid the fish on the hot coals.
Meanwhile, Mai Ling lifted
Marabelle’s head, brushed her dirty blonde hair out of the way, and gave her a
drink of tepid water. “If only it would
rain!” thought the Chinese girl. “We
could be a little cleaner just by standing in it!” She glanced at the sluggish, muddy water in
the stream. They might wash in that,
only to come out dirtier than when they came in. Perhaps they had to drink it, but they didn’t
have to wash in it. She wet the corner
of her shawl in the water, and wiped her sick friend’s face and hands.
As Elise brought a fish to
Marabelle, she wondered if she would be able to eat it. But the girl sat up, and despite the tremors
that racked her body, reached hungrily for the food. Elise looked at her stringy hair, the dirt
covering her from head to toe, along with the sores ravaging her body, and
wondered how much longer she could last.
They had to get to shelter; they
had to find someone with a kind heart who would help them, before the baby
came; before it was too late. But Elise knew, despite her young age of
not-quite-seventeen, that kind hearts would turn to stone against the three of
them. She also realized that no help
would be freely given. Everything had a
price, and no one would do anything for her unless something was in it for
them. And all she knew how to give would
be repulsed with disgust as long as anyone knew about Marabelle.
“What a pity,” Elise thought, as she
watched her hungry friend devour the fish.
Marabelle used to be so pretty.
Everyone wanted her. Men even
paid extra for her. But now…they never
knew her. No one wanted her. Nobody cared.
Marabelle ate two fish and some
jerky. Mai Ling ate the other fish. Elise just had jerky. Elise and Mai Ling washed as well as they
could in the muddy stream, and washed Marabelle as much as they dared. As the sun set, they huddled under their thin
blankets and went to sleep.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As
Adam took a seat at the bar, he flipped a coin on the counter. “Make it a cold one,” he joked.
Jake, the bartender, laughed. “Yeah, right, Adam! We’d all like that about now.” He dispensed some brew in a glass and put it
in front of his customer. “Where have
you been? Looks like you’ve been gone
for a while.”
Adam took an appreciative sip. “Off to check on some mining operations,” he
said, hoping Jake wouldn’t ask any more questions. He was sick of dealing with the problems
there, and definitely wasn’t anticipating telling his father about how they’d
been swindled. No telling how much money
they’d lost in that crooked scheme, not to mention the additional timber they’d
have to cut now to shore up the mine. He
took another long drink.
“You’ve been gone for a while. Your pa was in town about – oh, maybe a
couple days ago now, wondering if you’d been around.”
Adam maintained his composure. Of course his father had good reason to be
concerned, but he didn’t want Jake knowing that. “It just took me a little longer than usual,
that’s all.” Jake hurried away to answer
the call of another customer.
A few minutes later, Adam asked for
another beer. As Jake set it before him,
Adam asked, “What happened to that girl in the alley?”
“What girl in the alley?”
“You know,” said Adam. “Roberta.”
“Oh!
Her!” Jake shook his head and
waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.
“She’s gone, about three, four weeks now.”
Adam looked thoughtfully at his
friend. “What happened to her?”
Jake stared at him, and raised his
eyebrows. “What do you think happened to
her?”
“I mean, did she die, get driven
away, get taken away, what happened to her?”
“All I know is, she’s gone.” Jake leaned close to him. “Some say the doctor helped her,” he
whispered. “That she died right after he
saw her. I don’t know; I didn’t see it. But lots of them didn’t, either. They carted her away shortly after his visit
to her.” He wiped a few glasses. “What’s your interest in it?”
Adam put his empty glass down. “Just wondering. I asked the doc to see her. Wondered how she was.”
“Well, now you know. Doctor can’t do anything for someone like
that. Jake picked up his empty glass to
refill it, but Adam held up his hand to stop him.
“I’m heading home. Don’t bother.” He tossed another coin on the counter.
“You sure?” asked Jake. “We got lots of entertainment here later on,
if you want to spend the night in town.”
He winked.
Adam wondered how Jake could even
suggest such a thing after seeing what had happened to Roberta. He shook his head. “Nope.
I’ve had enough trail dust to choke my horse, and seen enough
‘entertainment.’ I’ll see you around.” He strode out the door, waved to some men
playing cards by the window, and left the saloon. Jake shrugged his shoulders as he watched him
leave.
Later
that night
Mai
Ling woke before dawn, certain she heard someone at the top of the bank. She strained her ears for the stealthy
footsteps through the grass she was sure she had heard, and the soft crunch of
booted feet in the dirt. She barely
muffled a scream as she heard some pebbles and small clods of dirt rustle
through the grass and bushes near her.
She held her breath, pressing her face in the dirt beneath her, hoping
that whoever it was wouldn’t notice them, and that their mule would be
silent. But the startled animal
scrambled to its feet and strained against its tether. A screeching bray echoed through the pre-dawn
air, and the terrified girl wrapped her arms about her head.
After what seemed to Mai Ling like
several minutes of noise and struggle that could wake the dead, the mule
settled back down with several loud snorts.
When the girl mustered the courage to uncover her head and look, she
could see the animal’s shadow in the late moonlight that still glimmered over
the very edge of the shallow ravine in which they were hiding. She looked carefully about, but saw nothing
and no one.
The coyote that had caused the
disturbance trotted nervously along the top of the ravine, searching for a
place where it could get water undisturbed.
He was roaming far from his usual hunting grounds, looking for water and
food after being driven away by roaming Indian tribes and increasing numbers of
settlers searching for the same during this drought. He had scented water and easy prey, but
humans were also near by, and seemingly all about him, and he was nervous as he
ran on.
The minutes passed like hours as Mai
Ling strained her ears to hear the slightest sound of anyone about them. She heard only the soft wind in the trees,
the call of a lonely owl, and the barely audible ripple of water in the
disappearing moonlight. Finally, she sat
up slowly and carefully, cringing at the crackle of dead leaves and the
snapping of twigs beneath her. The moon
set over the lip of the ravine, and she could barely see the darker shadow of
the mule as it slept again. She looked
next to her, but it was too dark under the dense bushes where they hid to see
her companions. She could hear their
breathing, but reached over and touched them blindly in the dark just to
reassure herself of their presence.
Marabelle, next to Mai Ling, jumped when she was touched. Elise, on the other side of Marabelle,
stirred, yawned, and turned over.
Driven by an impulse she did not
understand, Mai Ling left the shelter of her tangled bush and stood for a
moment in the dark beside it. She looked
in vain for a glimmer of light reflecting from the water she could barely hear,
then turned the other way. Blackness met
her eyes. She raised her head, and
finally saw light far above her. She
wandered blindly forward, and stumbled on her hands and knees up the bank,
until she reached the top.
The moonlight still shone over the
grassy meadow about her. Bushes and
trees stood out starkly against the flowing silver grass drenched in lustrous
white. She peered out at this strange
world, feeling like a small, lost child. She hadn’t looked upon such a sight
since her childhood in
She remembered the night before they
arrived at the ship. It was a beautiful,
cloudless, moonlit night like this, with the shimmering grass flowing up the
hillsides and the trees standing like sentinels. She and her brother had slept one last night
in the open, and he had told her, once again, that she would meet her cousin in
She wished she could erase her
memories from then on. Her cousin had
not taken her to his home, but had sold her to men of her own country who
trained her for a life she never wanted to live. Unable to escape from them, and with no place
to go in a foreign country often hostile to her people even if she had managed
to flee, she learned to please the men who came to her in order to
survive. She often wished to kill
herself to end her misery, but lacked the courage to do so. She was locked in the brothel, unable to
leave. Clint had bought her during one
of his trips to
Clint. Was it he she had heard earlier? Surely not.
He would have found them, with all the noise their mule had made. Then again, perhaps he was waiting. Waiting for daylight.
The moonlight seemed suddenly
revealing instead of beautiful, and Mai Ling shivered. She moved away from the edge of the trees and
slipped back down by the stream. As she
crawled about, vainly trying to locate her friends in the dark, she bumped into
the mule. She curled up next to him and
lay sleepless until dawn.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jenny sighed inwardly as she fixed
dinner. She’d had a very trying day,
trapped in the house with the children for most of the day. Jared and the children, she grimly corrected
herself. At age eight (going on nine,
Jared insisted, though he was closer to eight than nine), he did not consider
himself a child, and frequently reminded her of the fact. With the responsibility he accepted, she
usually admitted he was right. Today, however,
ever since the dry storm had begun at midmorning, he had done nothing except
deliberately irritate the younger children.
Karen was in tears and David, the baby, had been fussy the entire day.
Jenny looked out the window. The gusts of wind blew clouds of dust along
the ground with tumbleweeds, leaves, and branches. Spidery flickers of lightning briefly
illumined the blackening sky, occasionally accompanied by thunder, but no rain
fell. The dust was getting in the house,
despite the tightly shut windows and curtains.
She was sure it would be in their food.
She looked about carefully. A few hours ago, the cat, who had been
sleeping soundly, had suddenly sat up, listened intently, then rushed to the
window. He jumped behind the curtains
onto the windowsill, then exploded from there and hid under the bed in Jenny’s
room. Shortly after, Karen insisted she
saw someone by the barn. Jared had
scoffed, making fun of her imaginary friends, but Jenny kept checking outside
after that. No one had been to the barn
since early morning. There was no sign
of anyone outside now that she could see.
Jenny wondered why her father had to
leave now on business, and why her mother had accompanied him. She realized that her father’s job
representing a company that sold mining equipment, as well as his investigation
into the sale of equipment needed for the establishment of factories in some
parts of the West, kept him traveling, but there seemed to be an unusual number of trips to
She dropped the curtain and went
back to the stove. They could eat an
early supper, Jared could do the chores, and she’d put the younger children to
bed. She’d had Jared fill the bathtub
for their evening bathing that morning, when she saw the storm coming, and it
only needed some hot water added. She
knew after all the dust, they’d want to wash up thoroughly before bed.
As she set the table, the cat emerged
from hiding and watched her expectantly.
She looked at his sleek form and glossy black fur, and reminded herself
that he didn’t need any tidbits during their meal. She scraped the fat and meat scraps that she
had saved for him from their stew onto a plate, and put it on the floor. “Here you go, Comet,” she said. He ran over to the plate with his tail waving
in anticipation, sniffed at the offering, then moved in front of the stove and
looked longingly at the pot of simmering stew above him.
“Supper’s almost ready!” she
called. “Wash your hands.” Karen and Jared came in the kitchen. Karen pushed her stepstool to the sink,
bumping it into Jared’s foot as he pumped the water. Impatiently, he kicked it aside. She shoved it right back, and before the
incident could escalate into a major confrontation, Jenny spoke sharply. David fussed and called from his cradle near
one of the windows. As Jenny took him to
the bedroom to change him, she called over her shoulder, “Karen, finish setting
the table, please.”
She returned to the kitchen a few
minutes later to find her niece pumping water into the sink. As the flow reduced to a trickle, the cat put
his head under it and drank. When it
stopped, he meowed loudly, and waited for her to pump some more. She giggled and complied. Jenny opened her mouth to reprimand the girl
for wasting water during the drought and not finishing setting the table as she
was told, when Comet suddenly took fright, leaped out of the sink, and bolted
toward her. He ran into her legs, nearly
knocking her over, then almost tripping her.
As she caught her balance, she heard a horse whinny, and there were
several loud raps on the door. Karen
leaped from her stool and ran across the kitchen.
“Karen!” Jenny spoke sharply. “Let me get it!” She put David back in his cradle, and hurried
to the door, where she had to pull the girl out of the way. She pulled the door open, letting in the hot
wind and dirt.
A tall man stood there. The lower half of his face was covered with a
bandana. He was so plastered with dirt
and grime that she couldn’t tell what color his clothes were. She stepped back in alarm. He pulled the bandana below his chin and
hurriedly caught the door with his other hand as she tried to close it. “It’s me, Jenny.”
“Adam!” She recognized his voice, and let him
in. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize
you!” She gave him a glass of water, and
he gratefully washed the grit from his mouth while she rinsed out his dirty
canteen at the sink. “What are you doing
out in this storm?”
“I’m on my way home from business at
the mines,” he replied. “I saw the storm
coming after I left
“You can stay here tonight,” she
told him. “At least eat supper with
us.” She turned. “Jared, see to Adam’s horse.”
“No need for that,” assured Adam
firmly. He preferred to care for Sport
himself. “I’ll take care of him.”
Jenny looked at Jared. “Go do the chores, anyway. We’ll eat after you both get back.”
Jared and Adam worked in the barn
with minimal conversation. Adam was
weary from his journey and frustrated with the problems from the mining camp,
and Jared was rather in awe of this tall, handsome man who seemed larger than
life to him. Adam made some small talk
with the boy, and discovered his grandparents were not at home. He frowned.
Jenny staying alone with the children disturbed him, even after Jared
assured him that Adam’s pa had agreed to look in on them a few times. Adam determined then to spend the night in
the barn. Staying in the house would not
be proper in these circumstances.
After he cared for Sport, Adam
helped Jared finish the chores. Jared
knew he shouldn’t let him, as Adam was a guest, but Adam insisted. When they finished, and Jared was following
Adam out of the barn, Jared heard a thump and a rustle, and what sounded like a
gasp, followed by a suddenly stifled moan.
He turned quickly and looked behind him, but Adam had the lantern, and
he could see nothing.
Adam returned to his side. “Something wrong?”
“I thought I heard something –
or somebody.”
They both listened intently and
heard only the wind, some far-off thunder, and the animals contentedly munching
in their stalls. “Maybe we should go
take a look,” suggested Adam.
“It was probably just the wind, the
rats or mice, and maybe some of the barn cats,” said Jared. “There’s some new kittens that are probably
getting big up in the loft.”
“There are?” Adam smiled. “I hope I didn’t throw any of them down with
the hay!”
Jared laughed. “If you had, you would have heard them. I did it myself, once.” Laughing together, they locked the barn door
and went back to the house.
The table was set, and Jenny was
reading a story to the children when the man and boy returned from the
barn. She looked up as they
entered. “Jared, there’s warm water in
the pitcher.” She pointed to the wash
stand near the door. “Adam, there’s a
bath waiting for you, and I’ve heated water to put in it.” She rose and went to the stove, and started
to lift the pan of water that was steaming on it.
Adam stopped her. “Jenny.
I don’t need a bath right now. If
I stay here, and it looks as though I have to, I’ll sleep in the barn, and take
a bath when I get home tomorrow.”
“Nonsense!” Jenny exclaimed. “There’s no need for you to sleep in the
barn, especially in this storm! And,”
she added with a twinkle in her eye, “if you’re eating with us, you need to
bathe first.”
Adam couldn’t help laughing. He was tired, filthy, and knew he must stink. A bath certainly did sound delightful right
now. He decided to bathe now and argue
later. As he lifted the heavy pan of hot
water from the stove, he said, “Just don’t hold dinner for me.”
Jenny smiled politely and led him to
the bathroom. As he added the hot water
to the tub, she asked, “Do you have some clean clothes, or do you need me to
wash some?”
“I have some that are clean enough,”
he replied. When he’d realized his
supposedly brief trip to the mines was going to be a long one, he had washed
his own clothes in a nearby stream, and he had some that would do for
tonight. “They’re in my saddlebags, by
the door,” he added. Jenny brought the
bags to him.
After sweeping out the dirt tracked
in by the door, she brought down from the shelves above the stove an apple pie
that had been baked earlier in the week.
Her chief thought while preparing dinner had been to get one step closer
to getting the children into bed and out of her hair, not feeding company. Thank goodness she had made stew. That would feed all of them, though it was a
good thing, she thought, that it was Adam and not Hoss, Adam’s bigger “little” brother, who had happened by.
Adam hurried through his bath, and
entered the kitchen as he finished buttoning his cream-colored shirt. “I would wear a tie for the occasion,” he
said, “but I’m afraid I lost it while I was in the mines.”
Jenny and Jared laughed. “What were you doing at the mines?” asked
Jenny. “Your father was by early this
morning, and mentioned that you’ve been gone for two weeks. He seemed worried about you.”
Adam sighed. “It’s a long story. It was supposed to be a short trip, but it
turned into a nightmare, which I will discuss with my father when I get home.” Jenny took the hint, served the stew, and steered
the conversation in a different direction.
Everyone was hungry, and for the
first several minutes, there was no talk except requests for more biscuits or
stew. Jenny had pushed back her plate
with a sigh of satisfaction, and noticed happily that Adam seemed to be
enjoying his meal (though he was probably so hungry that a two-by-four and a
can of nails would have been appetizing).
Suddenly, she heard a familiar and aggravating sound: Comet sharpening his claws on the doorjamb by
the hall near the bedrooms. She turned
toward him. “Comet!” she exclaimed.
He looked at her with huge
green-rimmed eyes filled almost completely with black pupils, twitched his
tail, and climbed the doorjamb to the ceiling.
“Get down!” she shouted. The cat
climbed part way down, leaped to the floor, and in two bounds was on the
table. He snatched a piece of stew meat
from Karen’s plate and jumped from the table like a jackrabbit, knocking over
Karen’s milk in the process. As she
hurriedly mopped up the milk, Jenny saw him running to her bedroom with his
tail held high and his trophy in his mouth.
Jenny was angry for a moment, but
soon joined everyone else in their laughter.
Adam laughed so hard that he nearly choked. Even David smiled and laughed until he
hiccuped with the effort. “Let’s hope
he’s happy with just one piece.” Jenny
threw the three napkins she had used to wipe up Karen’s milk toward the sink,
and got another glass of milk from the pail brought in earlier.
“Maybe you should feed him, Aunt
Jenny,” said Karen.
“I did – before dinner. He has fat scraps and some meat, with a
little gravy. He wouldn’t eat it. It’s still by the stove.”
“He doesn’t like his water, either,”
said Karen. “That’s why I have to run
water in the sink for him. That’s how he
likes to drink it.” Adam nearly choked
again.
Jenny removed the dishes and served
the apple pie. Adam pronounced it the
best he had ever eaten, but swore everyone at the table to secrecy, as Hop
Sing, the Cartwright’s cook and housekeeper, would be very upset if he knew
that Adam like anyone’s cooking better than his own. Jenny, pleased and proud, smiled and thanked
him.
Jared looked timidly at Adam,
swallowed a bite of pie, and said, “It’s a good thing you weren’t here the last
time Aunt Jenny fixed dinner, Adam.” He
glanced slyly at his aunt, who frowned at him.
“Why is that?” asked Adam.
“Jenny made supper while Grandma and
Grandpa were packing to go away,” said Jared a little more boldly. “The broccoli…”
“I suggest you hold your tongue,
young man, unless you don’t want to go fishing and camping with your friends
and their fathers in a couple of weekends,” said Jenny firmly. She needed no tales of the worm-covered
broccoli she had put on the table. Her
mother had laughed, thrown it away, and told her to soak it in salted water the
next time. But Jenny wasn’t about to let
Jared get away with regaling Adam with this tale at her expense.
“You can’t stop me from going on
that trip!” Jared hotly shouted. “That’s
up to Grandpa, not you!”
“You think I can’t talk him out of
it?” Jenny raised her eyebrows. “Try me!”
“Uh, Jared,” Adam intervened. He leaned close to the boy. “Tell me later,” he whispered loudly enough
for everyone to hear. “We might be able
to use it as blackmail sometime.” He winked
at the boy. Almost triumphant but still
half scared, Jared glanced at his aunt.
To his surprise, she was laughing.
Jenny made some tea as she washed
the dishes. “Adam, you can sleep in
Mother and Father’s room. I don’t expect
them back for at least a week, and there’s no reason for you to go out to the
barn tonight. It’s too nasty outside,
and you’ve been on the trail long enough.”
“Would your father consider that
proper?” asked Adam.
Jenny was silent for a moment. “He definitely would not consider it
acceptable for you, a good friend of the family who has escorted me to dances
and other events, whose father is a friend and neighbor, to sleep in the barn
in a storm like this, especially after you’ve been on the road. Please, if you won’t sleep in my parents’
room, sleep out here, on the couch. It
may not be long enough for you, though.”
She paused for a moment as she rinsed a glass. “It’s not as though I’m alone. Jared is here, and the younger children. Besides, who is going to find out about
it? No one will see you as you leave in
the morning , and we’re not doing anything improper, anyway.” She looked at him as she finished the dishes. “Please stay in the house. I can’t let a guest who is a friend stay in
the barn, especially on a night like tonight.”
She didn’t add that she was
desperate for adult company, or that she often was nervous when her parents
were away. Though she liked living in
the wide open spaces, far enough from town to be alone, yet close enough to be
within riding distance of help if necessary, taking care of three children, the
house, and outdoor tasks by herself, with no help within calling distance, made
her feel too responsible and frightened.
She would welcome his presence in the house, even for just one night.
Adam gave in. “All right,” he smiled. “I’ll sleep out here, by the door, on the
couch.” He looked sternly at Karen. “But everyone had better be good, behave, and
go to bed on time.” Karen nodded
solemnly, but Jared smiled. Jenny dried
her hands and poured Adam a cup of tea, then began putting the Karen and David
to bed.
About an hour later, Jenny joined
Adam in the sitting room, an area next to the kitchen in their small
house. She refilled Adam’s cup of tea,
and got one for herself. Jared crept into
a chair across from Adam, while Comet leaped on Jenny’s lap, curled up, and
murred and meowed, demanding to be petted.
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” Jenny confessed as she attempted to
stifle a yawn. “I woke up suddenly in
the middle of the night, sure I had heard something. It sounded for all the world like a donkey
braying. A crazy dream for sure!”
“Grandma heard it, too!” exclaimed
Jared. “I heard her telling Grandpa
about it before they left this morning.
Grandpa was wondering where a donkey would have come from, and Grandma
just said don’t worry about it, it was
either a stray donkey from a ranch or farm nearby, or a silly dream. But she and Grandpa both wondered why she’d
be dreaming about a donkey!”
“Well, at any rate, it took me a long
time to get back to sleep,” continued Jenny.
“And Karen was certain that she saw someone by the barn today….though
she does ‘see’ lots of things, and has plenty of imaginary ‘friends’….and the
cat was acting strangely around the time that she insisted she saw someone,
too.”
“‘Cat behaving strangely’ seems to
me, in this case, to be a contradictory description,” said Adam as his dimples
showed. “I’d say strange behavior from
him is perfectly normal.” He took a sip
of tea without taking his eyes from Jenny.
“If he ever began acting ‘normally’, I’d say you’d best assume he was
sick.” He put his cup on the table
before him. “The best ‘cure’ for that
cat is for him to go live in the barn and fend for himself. Catch a few mice, or rats. Fight the other cats. Teach him a few lessons, and be good for him,
too.”
Jenny laughed as she rubbed her
tired eyes, then petted Comet. “Not a
chance,” she scoffed. “He’s the
household baby.” Comet prrowed in approval.
Adam raised his eyebrows. “I thought David was the baby?”
“Noooo,” hedged Jenny. “Well, he’s around a year old, so he’s not
really a baby so much anymore.…” She
didn’t mention their worry that he wasn’t moving about or developing as he
should.
Adam watched her, smiling. “Why don’t you just put the diapers and baby
clothes on Comet?”
Jared spoke up. “Karen already tried. He won’t wear them.”
They all laughed. “I need to go to bed,” said Jenny, “and so do
you, Jared. I’ll bring some sheets out
for you, Adam.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next morning, the storm was
over. Jenny woke up early to a clear
pre-dawn sky, with a few stars still
glimmering in the west. She moved
about the kitchen more quietly than usual so as not to wake Adam, who was still
asleep on the couch by the door. As she
put wood in the stove, drew the water for washing, made the coffee, and put
some biscuits in the oven, Adam stirred, stretched, and sat up. As he put his boots on, and exchanged sleepy
morning pleasantries with Jenny, Jared peered around the corner, not yet fully
dressed.
“Is Adam still here?” he asked. Jenny pointed to the couch.
Jared
looked at him with barely concealed admiration.
“I was thinking you might have left already.”
“Without breakfast? The way your aunt cooks? Never!” said Adam. He stood up.
“Why don’t you finish dressing, and we’ll go do the chores?”
Jenny bit her tongue and refrained
from asking if he was referring to the stew from the previous night or the tale
he had heard about the wormy broccoli.
She knew a guest should not be doing their chores, but also knew the
uselessness of attempting to talk Adam out of it. Besides, he seemed to be a calming influence
on Jared. He hadn’t once pestered the
younger children since Adam had arrived the night before, and even his table
manners had improved. So she kept quiet
and continued to fix breakfast, and tended to Karen and David when they
awakened.
At Adam’s request, Jared instructed
him on the chores with the horses and milk cow.
Jared went up in the loft and began pitching hay down, after they had
both mucked out stalls. Suddenly, Adam
called, “Hey, Jared! I didn’t know you
had a mule!”
“We don’t,” Jared called down.
“There’s one here, by the back door,
around the corner, behind the wall with the tools,” returned Adam. “He’s not in a stall. He just has some hay thrown around him. And…” he paused as he examined the floor. “It seems he’s been given some oats, from the
looks of things.”
Jared dropped the pitchfork and
walked across the loft to the back wall of the barn, above where Adam was. “We don’t have a mule,” he insisted. “How did you find him?”
“He was just here, across from all
the tack and supplies, and behind the wall with the tools,” repeated Adam. He looked him over with a critical eye,
noting the matted fur, worn shoes, protruding ribs, and the head drooping from
exhaustion. “He’s been worked pretty
hard, from the looks of him.” He picked
up the animal’s right foreleg. “Has a
shoe missing, too.”
Jared moved to the edge of the loft
and looked down at Adam. “He’s not
ours. Where’d he come from?”
“No telling,” replied Adam. “At least, not yet.”
Jared turned to go back toward the
center of the barn so he could descend the ladder and see this mule. He noticed that some of the hay was scattered
about toward the edge of the loft, in an area where he hadn’t been throwing it
down below, and kicked and threw it away from the edge as he walked. He heard a gasp and a rustle, and saw some
movement in the mound of hay. He thought he saw a flash of color: blue, perhaps? He couldn’t be sure. Narrowing his eyes, he walked slowly toward
the piled up hay. He began pulling down
the stack where he thought he had seen and heard something. What should have been a high and solid wall,
fairly tightly packed, easily collapsed before him. Behind a thin wall of hay, Jared saw, in the
dusky light of the loft, three emaciated, dirty women, peering at him through
their stringy hair with terrified, desperate eyes. One of them held a knife, poised for
action; another looked too frightened to
move, while the third lay between them, breathing heavily. A groan escaped from the last one while Jared
stared at them. The frightened one made
a whimpering noise, while the one with the knife simply stared at him, daring him
with her eyes to come closer.
Jared couldn’t move or speak for a
long minute. Finally, he backed up until
he almost fell from the loft.
“Adam? Adam! I think you’d better come up here! Quick!”
Adam bounded up the ladder in a few
seconds, and was at Jared’s side. He had
his hand on his gun, and started to draw when he saw the crouching figures back
in the loft. But when he saw they were
women, he hesitated, even when he saw the knife in Elise’s hand. He stared in amazement at them. Elise’s stone-cold blue eyes met his
unflinchingly, while Mai Ling’s huge brown eyes were filled with terror. Marabelle’s knowing glance spoke volumes, of
pain expected and misery anticipated.
After looking at him with a piercing gaze, she closed her eyes, curled
up, and groaned as another wave of pain consumed her.
Adam took his hand from his
gun. “Go get your aunt,” he told Jared
tersely, when he finally found his tongue.
Jared shuffled backwards, then sideways, until he found the ladder.
Adam hadn’t taken his eyes from the
women. “Who are you?” he asked.
Elise gripped her knife and raised
it higher. “Stay away, Mister,” she
hissed. “We’re doing you no harm.”
Adam raised his hands palm
outward. “I just want to know who you
are,” he said. “Why are you here?” His eyes drifted toward the woman lying on
her side, groaning in pain. He moved
closer to look at her.
Elise scooted in front of Marabelle
and stood up, the knife before her.
“Stay away from her!” she snarled, doing her best to conceal her
fear. He was a big man. He could easily overpower her, even with the
knife, and Mai Ling was too terrified to fight, and too small to help her,
anyway. Marabelle couldn’t help her, nor could she deal with any man’s
attentions right now, should this man take it into his head to avail himself of
her services, or to beat her due to her condition.
She decided to change tactics. “Look, Mister,” she said coaxingly, “just be
patient. Give me some water, and I’ll
get cleaned up a bit. Then, you can have
me, if you want.” When Adam didn’t
respond except by staring at her, she added, “It won’t cost you anything, of
course. Just leave them alone -” she
jerked her head toward the other two – “and you can have your pleasure with
me.” When she saw his incredulous face,
she added, “I’ve been on the road for a long time. Let me get cleaned up, and I think you’ll be
right pleased.” Her voice was almost
sultry. Adam could practically see her in a satin gown trimmed with lace, and
with ribbons in her hair, in a fancy parlor, or in a saloon. Her voice sounded
exactly like the voices of such women.
Even the desperation evident behind her proposition didn’t sound out of
place. He continued staring speechlessly
at them, wondering almost frantically where Jenny was.
He heard footsteps on the ladder
behind him and felt the floor of the loft vibrate as Jared and Jenny hurried to
his side. Elise shifted her gaze from
Adam to Jenny. She frowned, and her eyes
narrowed. Jenny looked at the desperate,
emaciated girl with the knife, the trembling Chinese girl crouching behind her,
and an obviously ill girl huddled on the floor, clutching her distended belly
and groaning in pain. Jenny attempted to
approach them, intending to speak with and comfort the sick one, but Adam put out
his arm to stop her even as Elise raised her knife and glared at her with
murder in her eyes.
“Don’t,” said Adam quietly.
Jenny stopped, but looked in wonder
and concern at the ragged figures before her.
“Who are you?”
Stony silence met her question. Elise glared at her, recognizing the lady
from near the stream a couple of days before.
She wasn’t going to talk to her. Nice as she and her family had seemed the
other day, she knew the type. This was a
woman who would cross to the other side of the street if she saw Elise
coming. Should they be near one another,
she would turn away and refuse to speak to her.
The only reason this little miss wasn’t scorning her now was because she
didn’t know what she was. Well, this
gent with her would inform her, if she was so naïve. Then she could show her true colors.
Without looking away from them,
Jenny said to Adam and Jared, “Go back to the house, please, both of you. There’s some stew in the kettle on the back
of the stove. Get some in a big bowl and
bring it here, along with three bowls and forks. The biscuits are in the drawer in the counter
near the stove. And you might as well
bring a pitcher of milk and some glasses, too.”
“I’ll stay here,” replied Adam. “You go in and help get that together.”
“No, Adam.” Jenny shook her head. “You’re scaring them. Let me talk to them.”
“I can help,” volunteered a small
voice behind her.
Jenny turned about and saw Karen
behind her. Fury seethed through
her. “What are you doing here?” she
demanded. “You were to stay in the
house! The baby may be crying, and no
one is with him!” Karen looked at Jenny,
then at the three figures in the loft with a sober and troubled expression that
made her appear far older than her three years.
When Jenny saw the look on her niece’s face, she stopped scolding. Karen moved beside Jenny and continued to
look solemnly at the sight before her.
Jenny laid her hand on the girl’s
head. “Go in the house and help Adam and
Jared,” she said softly. “Make sure you
show them where all the dishes are. Then
stay in the house with David.” She wiped
away a tear that fell from Karen’s eye, hugged her close, and sent her and
Jared back to the house. At Jenny’s
insistence, Adam reluctantly followed the children, but had a whispered
consultation with Jared at the bottom of the ladder, after which the youngsters
went to the house while Adam stayed at the foot of the ladder, his ears attuned
for any trouble that might arise.
Elise frowned. This was no good at all. The man should have stayed. She could handle a man. The only one she never could fully control
was Clint. Now, some men were mean. They were harder to handle, but she could
still manage them. She had studied this
man while he was talking with this girl.
This lady. He
didn’t look mean, but he didn’t seem very controllable, either. He knew his own mind, and wasn’t going to run
off after a momentary diversion – unless she could convince him of it. If that was the only way he would leave
Marabelle alone, or promise not to tell about them, well, she’d simply have to
persuade him. But it sure would be
a lot easier to do if she was cleaned
up!
“Who are you? What are you running from?”
The soft voice interrupted Elise’s
thoughts. She glared at Jenny. This “good” girl was being nice now, but just
give her time: Time to realize what the
three of them were, time to realize that she couldn’t have anything to do with
them. That’s all she needed: time.
She would turn on them. Her kind
always did. They acted so high and
mighty, so hoity-toity, that they usually made fools of themselves. If Elise hadn’t been so desperate, she would
have enjoyed watching it happen, and might even goad her along a bit.
“My
name is Jenny.”
“I
know.” Elise finally spoke to her. “And the little girl’s name is Karen. I saw you and your family near the stream
the other day.” She continued to watch
Jenny suspiciously.
“Why
didn’t you come to the house?”
Elise laughed. “And have your father throw us out, and your
mother threaten us with the sheriff? No,
thank you! We take what we can get how
we can get it, which usually means sneaking around. Guess you wouldn’t know much about that.”
Jenny privately thought that this
woman didn’t know anything about her past, or any of the painful events in it,
but knew it was best to leave that be for now.
She had to admit that this stranger was right in assuming that she
herself never had known the kind of suffering this woman was apparently
acquainted with.
Jenny glanced at the other women behind
the one speaking with her. “What are
your names?”
“I tell my friends my name.”
Jenny wondered at the rebuff. She was obviously desperate. Why would she be so hostile to her? “I might be able to help you if you’ll tell
me where you’re going and why you’re running.”
“Where are we going? Anyplace where there’s no men. You know someplace like that, besides a
convent?” She laughed bitterly. “They wouldn’t take too kindly to us! The ‘why’ is our business.”
“If you’re on my father’s property,
it becomes our business,” Jenny replied gently.
“But I’m not asking you to tell me anything you haven’t a mind to.” She heard Jared coming across the barn. “We’ve brought some food for you.” She took the tray of bowls and glasses, then
the tray of food. As she ladled the stew
into bowls, she realized there were no utensils.
“Where are the forks?” asked
Jenny. Jared ran back in the house to
get them.
Jenny
handed the food to their visitors, and started to tell them that the forks were
coming. Her three guests, however,
pounced upon the stew as wolves upon prey.
She noticed that even the sick one lying down took on new strength as
she struggled mightily to sit up, and desperately consumed the food before her. Burned fingers scooped mouthfuls of meat, vegetables,
and gravy, which were hastily gulped down.
The biscuits were devoured, the bowls licked clean, and crumbs even
picked from the straw before Jared could return with the forks. Jenny and Adam looked at each other. Elise looked at them hopefully for
more. Adam shook his head firmly.
“No,”
he said. “You eat too much now, you’ll
get sick.”
“You
can have more later,” Jenny promised.
She walked hesitantly to them to retrieve their bowls, expecting to be
challenged with the knife again. Sated with
the food, however, the exhausted trio lay back against the hay, and their
eyelids drooped. As Jenny stooped to
take Marabelle’s bowl, she saw the all-too-familiar sores and rash on her face,
as well as on her legs and arms through the tears in her dress. She gasped sharply. “Just like that woman in the alley,” she thought.
“Just like Roberta.” She turned
to find Elise watching her curiously.
“Now
you know,” said Elise. She closed her
eyes wearily, then opened them a moment later.
“I suppose you want us to leave.”
“She
needs a doctor,” said Jenny. “I’ll send
someone into town for him.”
Elise
smiled bitterly. “A doctor can’t help
her. And he probably wouldn’t see her,
anyway.”
“Doc Martin will see her,” Jenny
assured her.
“He’s gone right now,” said
Adam. “I heard yesterday in town that he
won’t be back for a while. Visiting
family, I guess. His assistant, Doctor
Young, is there.”
Jenny hesitated. She didn’t like Doctor Young. She was afraid of the way he stared at her,
the ingratiating way he spoke to her, and how he tried to put his arm around
her or brush up against her. She hadn’t
told her father about that. She was too
embarrassed and didn’t want any trouble.
So she stayed away from him, and determined that if she needed a doctor,
they would only see Doc Martin. She had
a feeling that Doctor Young had heard the rumors about her and Karen, and
believed every one of them.
She turned to Adam. “I guess you’d better go to town and get
him.”
Adam shook his head. “No.
I’ll stay here. You go get him.”
Jenny swallowed and looked
down. Of course, Adam didn’t know about
Doc Young’s behavior toward her. She
thought of Jared, and immediately dismissed any idea of sending him to town. How could she instruct an eight year-old to
say, “Doc, there are three women at our place. They’re all half-starved and
filthy, and one has the pox and is with child.”
No, she would have to do this.
Adam was right. He should stay in
case there were problems. She turned
toward the ladder. “Jared can stay with
the little ones, then. I’ll go make sure
everything is settled with them before I leave.” She stopped as she saw Jared at the top of
the ladder.
“I brought the milk out,” he said,
and pointed to the tray on the barn floor.
“Hand it up here.” Jenny took the covered pitcher as he handed
it to her. She placed it near Adam, next
to the empty glasses. “Maybe they can
have a little of this when they wake up.”
With one glance back at the exhausted women, she left. “I’ll be back with help.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About an hour later, Elise opened
her eyes. Marabelle and Mai Ling were
still sleeping near her. She sat up and
looked about her, and noticed the tray with the glasses and pitcher on it. She tried to swallow the dust in her throat,
and walked unsteadily to it. A drink
sure sounded good right now. As she
stooped next to it and tried to uncover the pitcher, a low male voice said, “I
wouldn’t just yet.”
Elise jumped and turned about,
feeling vainly at her hip for her knife.
Damn! Where was it? She’d just had it, when Jenny had tried to
get too close. She’d gone to sleep with
it in her hand. It must be in the hay
back where she’d slept. She ran
desperately back toward her two friends, but tripped over her skirt. Her head swam as she tried to rise to her
feet. She couldn’t do it, not as weak as
she was. Harsh travel conditions and too
little food had sapped her strength. As
her head cleared, she saw booted feet before her. Her eyes looked up the black pants and
cream-colored shirt to the hazel eyes observing her with a mixture of wary
caution and concern.
“Are you looking for this?” He held up her knife.
She stared at him. He returned her gaze evenly. His expression was inscrutable. He made no move toward her, and the usual
leer or poorly concealed lust that she always saw in men’s faces was missing
from his. Well, of course it was! She was a mess! But that sure hadn’t stopped some men as
they’d fled from Clint and their old way of life. Elise glanced at Marabelle and Mai Ling. They were still sleeping.
“You dropped the knife while you
were asleep,” Adam explained. “I took it
before you rolled over on it. I’ll keep
it, for now. I don’t like having knives
pulled on me, especially when I haven’t done anything, and the people
threatening me are someplace where they don’t belong.”
Elise’s eyes never left his
face. He didn’t seem angry, and still he
made no move toward her. What did he
want of her? He wasn’t an easy one to
figure out. She could hear the madam of
Clint’s parlor house talking to her, shortly after Clint had tired of keeping
her to himself and she had begun entertaining customers, “They all want the
same thing, Elise, honey. It’s how they
want it that’s different. Study
them. Figure them out. Give them what they want, how they want
it. And don’t make ‘em mad: An angry man is dangerous.” Well, she could play the ingratiating,
apologetic part for threatening him with the knife, if that’s what this man
wanted. But she needed more time to figure
him out. Carefully schooling her face
to show no fear, she said, “I sure am thirsty, Mister. Think I could have a drink of whatever’s in
that pitcher over there?”
Without taking his eyes from her,
Adam slowly nodded. “I’ll get it for
you.”
“Oh, there’s no need,” Elise
protested in her best coaxing voice. “I
don’t want to trouble you, any more than I already have.”
“Stay there,” ordered Adam.
Elise shrank into the floor as he
passed her, silently cursing herself for acting afraid of him. When Adam gave her a scant half glass of
milk, she smiled as graciously as possible and let her hand linger against his
as she accepted it. “Thank you,” she
said demurely.
“Drink it slowly,” said Adam as he
pulled his hand away from hers. “You
don’t want to get sick by eating or drinking too much of anything too quickly.”
Elise nearly choked with anger. Why wasn’t he responding to her? But it had been a long time since she’d had
any milk, and she drank it quickly despite his warnings.
He
pulled the glass away from her. “Wait a
minute before you drink the rest of it.”
He looked at her as she watched him.
Her stringy red hair was tangled and greasy, with wisps of hay in
it. Her dress might have been a pretty
shade of sapphire once, but was now ripped and soiled beyond repair. Her blue eyes, however, were clear and
piercing, and Adam could see, despite her valiant efforts to hide it, that she
was afraid of him. Beneath the dirt
covering her and beyond the hardness of her face, he could read depths of pain
that it disturbed him to contemplate.
Elise
smiled timidly. “Mister, I’m sorry I
pulled that knife on you. Really, I
am. It’s just, well, with the three of
us on our own, we need to be careful, you know?
I’m real sorry.”
Adam
looked sharply at her, and Elise’s hopes withered. He knew her.
He knew what she was trying to do.
“You
need to get cleaned up,” Adam said, as he returned the glass to her. “I’ve told Jared, the boy, to heat some
water, and we’ve found an old tub in the barn that you can use. Jenny left some dresses for you to change
into after you wash. We’ve set it up
down below, in the barn. Of course, with
the drought, there’s not a whole lot of extra water, so you’ll have to be
sparing. But you’ll at least be cleaner
than you were.” He stood up. “I’ll finish getting it ready, and you can
bathe first.”
Elise
smiled knowingly. This was finally going
her way. “I think you’ll like me,
Mister, once I get cleaned up.” She
tossed her head confidently, and flashed him her best seductive smile. “I know I’m not much to look at now, but- ”
“My
name is Adam.” She was surprised at his
interruption. “Call me ‘Adam’. And I should make it clear to you that I’m
not in the habit of frequenting the company of ladies who sell their
services.” His voice was quiet and calm,
and she looked at him in trepidation again.
“It has happened on occasion,” he continued with a rueful smile, “but
I’m rather selective about the company I keep.
I don’t want that from you.”
Elise
was furious. Why didn’t he just say she
wasn’t good enough for him? There were
few men she had met whom she couldn’t bend to her will. Of course, she didn’t stop to think that most
men came to her for that express purpose.
“Mister – uh, Adam – please,” she begged, “don’t bother Marabelle. I’ll do anything you want, just don’t bother
her.”
“I’m
not going to bother any of you,” replied Adam gently yet firmly. “No one here wants anything from any of
you. We just want to help you. Now, I’ll call you when the water’s
ready.” As he went toward the ladder,
Elise didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended. She decided she simply hadn’t yet figured him
out, and hoped that he really wouldn’t bother Marabelle while he made her
bathe. She’d scratch his eyes out if he
did.
Adam
stopped before he came to the ladder. He
pointed to the sick woman. “She must be Marabelle,” he said to Elise. “What’s your name?”
There
was no point in not telling him. He was
obviously a man accustomed to having his own way. She bit her lip, and replied, “Elise.”
Adam
looked at the Chinese girl, then back at Elise.
“And hers?”
Elise
hesitated. “Mai Ling,” she whispered.
Adam
nodded. “Thank you. Good to know who I’m talking to.”
Elise
wanted to cry or scream, but didn’t dare.
What had he heard about them?
Clint was after them, she knew.
Did Adam know Clint? Had word of them
come to this area before they arrived?
Would Adam betray them? If he
didn’t want her, or either of the other two, he surely would sell them off somewhere. That couldn’t happen. They wouldn’t go back to their old life. They had made a pact that they would die
first. They had all sworn on Marabelle’s
rosary that if they couldn’t escape, they would kill themselves. If any of them lacked the courage to do that,
they would kill each other. Elise had
run away from Clint twice before, and each time, he had brought her back. She broke out in a cold sweat as she
remembered what he had done to her. But
worse than that was what he had done to the men who had aided her flight. She felt sick to her stomach as she tried to
block out those memories. Was Adam was
having her bathe, so he could sell her to someone? That must be it. Elise felt like crying, but had forgotten
how long ago.
Later
that day
Jenny
stopped her horse outside Doc Martin’s office.
She dragged her feet up the steps and reluctantly opened the door. The few people in the room looked at her
curiously. She smiled hesitantly and
waited with them, dreading to see Doc Young.
When a patient emerged from the back room, she rose, and under the
scrutiny of all the people waiting, went to the door of that room and
knocked. She hated to be in a room alone
with this man, but she could hardly present her request to him before a roomful
of people. Under the disapproving eye of
the others waiting their turn, she entered the room at the doctor’s query.
Doctor
Young watched Jenny appraisingly and greedily as she entered the room. His light brown hair fell over his forehead,
and his mouth tipped slightly upward in a calculating smile. Jenny left the door cracked, and walked
halfway across the room. “Good morning,
Doctor.”
The
young doctor barely tipped his head.
“Good morning, Miss Barnhart.”
“We’ve
had some unexpected visitors at my place this morning,” said Jenny, aware that
her heart was pounding and her face flushed.
“There are three women who are half-starved and ill, and they need to
see a doctor. One of them, I’m afraid,
has – well, an unmentionable disease, and appears to be – with child.” Jenny knew that most properly bred Eastern
ladies would never speak of such things, but this wasn’t the East, and besides,
with Doc Martin, she would not be judged.
But this wasn’t Doc Martin.
The
young mans eyes narrowed, and he smiled a most unpleasant smile. “Indeed,” he said soothingly. “And how did you happen to become –
acquainted – with such – ‘visitors’?”
His eyes ran over Jenny’s figure.
Jenny
wanted nothing more than to run from the room, but knew she couldn’t. “They were in our barn this morning,” she
explained, knowing this man heard almost nothing of what she said. “They’re sick, and need to be seen right
away.”
“And
your father and mother sent you to tell me?”
Jenny
didn’t want to tell him that her parents were gone, much less that Adam had
been there overnight. She simply nodded.
The
doctor smiled as though he could guess what she had left unsaid. “Perhaps we could arrange something,” he
said. “I believe that I heard from –
someone? – that your mother and father are gone right now. Is that correct?” When he received no reply, he continued,
“Perhaps, I could be persuaded to make the rest of my patients – some of whom
have been waiting for quite a while – to wait a bit longer. You and I could have lunch, perhaps? And then, I might be persuaded to go to your
home and see these women.” He approached
her with a hungry look on his face.
Jenny
backed away. “Never mind,” she
whispered. She turned and fled from the
room, wishing she had never come. She
had known it would be a mistake. Why had
she bothered? She’d had to try, but had
known that this vile man would press his advantage with her. She stopped by her horse and attempted to
compose herself. A couple of cowboys who
had spotted her as they left the saloon across the street approached her and
asked if she was all right. She assured
them that she was, mounted her horse, and rode carefully down a maze of several
side streets, unaware that Doc Young was following her.
She
stopped before a ramshackle building. As she tied her horse to the hitching
post before it, she looked about her apprehensively. Shabbily dressed men
recovering from hangovers and a night of celebration leered at her. Scantily clad women passed by, looking at her
suspiciously. The steps creaked and
snapped beneath her as she gingerly climbed them, and she noticed that some of
the wood was rotted about the door as she knocked on it. She wasn’t even sure that this was the right
place. She had heard many people talk
about the man who lived here, and several of them knew only that he lived “over
on the wrong side of town”. It was
finally Charlie, the miner who had approached her about Roberta about a month
before, who had privately told her (some time after she had helped the girl)
exactly where this man lived, and that he doctored the poor. Charlie had also told Jenny that this man had
done what he could for poor Roberta, but couldn’t be convinced to do what it
took to release her from her suffering.
Jenny
was about to flee in a panic when the door opened, and a man dressed in clean
working clothes stood before her. Jenny
stared at him for a moment. Was this the
man she was searching for? Doc Gabriel,
as he was known, was supposed to be half Negro and half Indian. Word was that Gabriel had fetched Doc Martin
during an outbreak of influenza in one of the poorer districts. Gabriel had shown such skill and compassion
in caring for the ill that Doc Martin offered to teach him medicine when he
learned that Gabriel’s parents had just died and he was all alone. Gabriel was
still a young man when the doctor had taken him under his wing, and Paul Martin
had taught the younger man much of his own medical knowledge. He had to be careful while doing it, of
course. Many of the proper citizens of
Virginia City and the people scattered around the countryside did not approve of him practicing medicine
with them. As a result, Doc Martin had
taken Gabriel on trips to Indian villages and to the poor sections of town, to
help people who either couldn’t afford most doctors or who were frowned upon
when soliciting a doctor’s care.
Jenny
had no idea if any of that was true. She
had heard of this man a number of times, but only knew that people called him
“Doc Gabriel”, not because he was a doctor, or because his name was Gabriel,
but because those in the poorer sections of town considered him to be an angel
of mercy who often cared for the poor at no or little charge. She held her breath as she looked at the man
before her. He could be Doc
Gabriel. She didn’t know.
“Are
you the man they call ‘Doc Gabriel’?”
“That’s
what they call me.” He looked at her
steadily.
Uncertain
as to how her request would be received, she told him the same story she had
just told Doc Young. “I told Doctor
Young, but I’m not sure that he’ll come.”
She shut her mouth firmly.
Doc
Gabriel nodded knowingly and sympathetically.
“Let me get my bag.” He opened
the door. “Come in while I get ready.”
Jenny
wondered if that was proper, but decided it was more risky to stay
outside. The doctor quickly gathered his
instruments, placed them in his bag, and left.
He carefully locked his door.
“Tell me more while we ride to your place,” he said.
As
Jenny spoke, she led them back through the streets to the main road out of
town, unaware that she was being watched.
As she rode past Doctor Martin’s place, she didn’t notice Doc Young on
the porch, smiling as he jingled several gold coins in his pocket.
She
also didn’t see the man in front of the saloon.
His hard brown eyes followed her and Doc Gabriel, and he pushed his gray
hat up to get a better view. His face
was hard, shrewd, and devoid of emotion as he studied them. He thought of what Doc Young had told him: three women, one with “an unmentionable
disease” and also with child, as this little lady put it. He would have laughed with glee if he’d known
how. Not wanting to draw attention to
himself – not yet – he went to the hitching rail and untied his horse. He wore a ghoulish grin that was as cold as
the grimace on the frozen face of a corpse. This sounded perfect to him: A young lady taking care of three young
children, her parents gone, and the women he was hunting taking refuge with
her. His caricature of a smile spread
across his face. This was easy pickings,
indeed. It was worth the gold he’d paid
to Doc Young for the information. He had
known these women would be forced to seek out medical care sooner or later, and
he’d given every doctor who would listen in every town near where they’d fled a
description of them and a few coins of gold , with promise of more to come if
they gave him any leads.
This
time, he’d make Elise pay for what she’d done.
She thought, and so did he, that she’d paid before, the other times
she’d run away. But this time, she’d
really pay. She would see what she had
done to those around her. She would
watch every single person, those who had come with her as well as those who had
aided her, pay. One by one. Person by person. Inch by inch.
Drop by drop. She’d pay. Elise would know who owned her. She was his.
He had bought her. He owned
her. He possessed her. And he vowed right now that she would know
that, realize that, and never, ever forget it again. He followed Jenny and Doc Gabriel as they
rode out of town, far enough behind them not to be noticed, but close enough to
see where they were going.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jenny
and Gabriel arrived at the house. Both
were hot, sweaty, and thirsty. “Water
your horse,” Jenny said, “while I check on the young ones.” She went in the stuffy house and found David
napping in his bed near the window. The
sun was starting to shine through the window onto him. She pulled the bed away from the sun, and
drew the drapes. Karen sat listlessly at
the table, doodling on the slate that was sometimes used for Jared’s school
lessons. “Where are Jared and
Adam?” Jenny asked.
“They
just drew water for one of the women to take a bath,” replied Karen.
Jenny
got a glass of water for Doc Gabriel.
“Aunt
Jenny,” continued Karen, “who are those women?”
“I’m
not sure.”
“Why
are they so dirty?”
“Because
– they don’t have anyplace to stay right now.”
“Can’t
they stay here?”
“Yes. We’ll help them. I’ve brought the doctor.”
Karen
looked up for the first time since Jenny had entered the house. “That’s not the doctor out there!”
“Doc
Martin isn’t in town, but he taught this man to take care of people. He’s the only doctor who would come.”
“Why?”
“Not
too many people want to take care of - women like this.”
Before
Karen could ask “why” again, Jenny heard voices. She hurried outside. Adam and Jared were exchanging greetings with
Doc Gabriel. Jenny handed Gabriel the
glass of water, and he drank it thirstily.
“Karen
said something about one of the women taking a bath?” Jenny asked.
“Elise
has finished,” replied Adam. “Mai Ling
is bathing now. I gave them the clothes
you left. You sure you can spare
them?”
Jenny
nodded. The clothes had belonged to her,
her mother, and her sister. For a
moment, she was overcome with sadness at the memory of her sister, whom she
hadn’t seen in a few years, but she pushed the thoughts aside. “Elise?” she asked. “Mai Ling?
How did you find out their names?”
She had witnessed their fear of Adam and Elise’s contempt of her.
“I
asked.” Adam smiled slightly.
“I
asked, too,” said Jenny. “They wouldn’t
tell me their names. Which one is the
sick one?”
“That’s
Marabelle,” replied Adam. “She’s still
in the loft.”
Jenny
led Doc Gabriel to the barn, while Adam and Jared went into the house. “They were in the loft this morning,” she
explained. “Jared found them hiding
there when he was in the barn doing the chores with Adam.” She explained how Adam had arrived during the
storm the previous night and had slept on the couch. She marveled at the naïveté of her words to
Adam that no one would know if he spent the night at her house while her
parents were away. She believed Doc
Gabriel would mention it to no one, but still had the uneasy feeling that by
the time this was over, the entire Nevada Territory would know. As they climbed the ladder to the loft, Jenny
could hear Marabelle panting. “This is
the one who is sick.”
Doc
Gabriel stooped beside the woman, put his bag down, and looked at her with a
critical eye. Jenny saw him close his
eyes and shake his head. Obviously the
pox, he thought, and possibly the clap as well.
He pulled her lower lid down to examine her swollen, inflamed eye, and
pushed her hair from her face, observing her open sores and the rash spread
over her face, arms, and legs. Hell,
this woman could have as many as three social diseases, and was with child as
well. He felt a surge of anger. Did she know what this would mean for her
unborn child? These diseases affected
the children in the womb, so if they weren’t stillborn, they died shortly after
birth, as the disease was usually far more progressed in the children than in
the mother. No, he concluded, she
probably didn’t know. He figured she
most likely didn’t care, either. She
probably didn’t even know who the father of her child was.
Gabriel had seen many women die of
the diseases associated with prostitution.
He had also known of men afflicted with them who infected their
wives. He had been ushered in the back
door of many fine houses, because people were too proud to go to Doc Martin or
Doc Young with a problem of this nature.
Many figured that since he worked with the poor people, Doc Gabriel
would know more about “this sort of thing.”
Where the hell did they get that idea?
If it wasn’t for the people who paid for the services of these women,
“this sort of thing,” as they so delicately put it, wouldn’t even exist. Many people didn’t even know they were
infected until they broke out in a rash, had some kind of discomfort they were
only willing to whisper in his ear about, or gave birth to a child severely
affected. Many “respectable” men wanted
to blame their wives, and that was one situation in which Doc Gabriel stood
firm. He had made it clear to many men
on countless occasions that they had themselves to blame for their own, their
wife’s, and their child’s condition. He
had made a number of enemies that way, but no matter. What were the men going to do, protest that
he shouldn’t have come to see them because he blamed them for an unmentionable
social disease that was in their household?
No, their lips were sealed.
Marabelle opened her eyes and looked
at Gabriel. She tried to say something,
but he couldn’t understand her. “Get me
some water,” he said tersely. Jenny ran
back to the house.
Gabriel tried to make Marabelle more
comfortable. She looked at him for a
long time, and finally whispered so he could understand, “Who are you?”
“You can call me Doc Gabriel. We’re getting you some water. Try to relax.” The woman was breathing hard. He elevated her head and gave her the water
that Jenny handed to him. She drank a
little. “Has she had anything to eat?”
he asked Jenny.
“Yes, she had some beef stew
earlier. Not much. I was afraid they’d make themselves sick if
they ate too much at once. She went to
sleep before we brought the milk out, though.”
Jenny looked at her. “She needs a
bath, but I don’t see how we can get her out of the loft.”
“That’s the least of her worries,”
Doc Gabriel assured her cryptically. He
turned to Marabelle. “Do you know when
your baby is due?”
Marabelle shook her head. “Not sure,” she said in a raspy voice. “Maybe a couple more months.”
“You’re having labor pains, and
you’re also bleeding,” Gabriel told her.
“That means you’re about to give birth.”
Marabelle tossed her head in
agitation. “Not time, yet. Not time!”
She looked at the doctor, then at Jenny, who thought, despite the
redness of Marabelle’s swollen eyes, that they must once have been a beautiful
shade of blue. “My baby! Don’t take this
one away from me!” She tried to rise
from her bed in the hay, but sank back down, clutching her abdomen and
groaning. Her face broke out in a sweat
and she panted shallowly. When the wave
of pain passed, she looked at Jenny. “I
need this baby! You can’t take him – her
– away!”
“No one is going to do anything to
hurt you,” Jenny assured her. “We only
want to help.” She glanced at Doc
Gabriel, who avoided her gaze. The
sooner Jenny learned that the best help for this woman lay in an overdose from
a bottle in his bag, the better. He had
seen this type of situation too many times before, and hated to see someone as
gentle as Jenny drawn into it.
Marabelle stared at Jenny. “I know you,” she whispered. “I’ve seen you before.”
Jenny shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Yes,” insisted Marabelle. “In Silver City. I’ve seen you there, several times.”
Jenny smiled. “I’ve never been to Silver City,” she told
her. “You must have seen someone else.”
“It was you,” Marabelle
insisted. “Sometimes you were with your
mother and father. I saw you talking to
them, and heard you call the woman ‘Mother.’
You looked happy.” She sounded
envious.
Jenny opened her mouth to deny it
again, and froze. Silver City. Her parents were in Silver City right now,
before heading on to Carson City, supposedly on her father’s business. She thought of her missing sister. Her parents had sent her away long ago, and
Jenny hadn’t known her whereabouts. Yet,
Jenny knew that her parents would never throw her out. All those trips to Silver City….could it
be…?
Jenny
heard a sound on the ladder behind her, and turned as her niece shuffled
through the hay to her side. “Mai Ling
is finished with her bath,” Karen said.
She put her thumb in her mouth and looked cautiously at Marabelle.
Marabelle
looked at Karen, then at Jenny. “Your
daughter?”
“No,
my niece.”
Marabelle
smiled sadly and knowingly. She gave
Jenny a piercing look. “She looks just
like you. And like the woman I saw in
Silver City.” She closed her eyes as she
rode another wave of pain.
Jenny
watched uncertainly, unsure of what to do.
When Marabelle opened her eyes again, Jenny asked cautiously, “You’re
from Silver City?”
Marabelle
nodded. “Yes, that’s the last place we
lived. I think we were going to move on
to California soon, though.” She
grimaced as another pain took her, then looked at Karen. “I bet it’s the little girl’s mother I saw in
Silver City, isn’t it?” Marabelle asked
Jenny
froze.
“She
looks a lot like you, that lady I saw.
Unless it was you, of course,”
Marabelle continued.
Jenny
knew she mustn’t mention her sister. She
should deny ever having one. That was what she had always been told to do: Never mention having a sister, and present
Karen as the daughter of her brother and his wife, both dead. But Karen’s mother was very much alive,
though her parentage must be hidden and always disguised as acceptable. As Jenny longed to see and remember her
sister, this was often very difficult for her to do.
She
stared at Marabelle, wondering at her perceptivity and discernment. “I don’t know who you saw,” she said
carefully, as she struggled with her
tears. “But the girl is my niece.”
Marabelle’s knowing look pierced her. She laughed mirthlessly. “I had a child five years ago, when I was
sixteen. My mother and father took it away
from me, and threw me out of the house.”
Jenny
swallowed, and looked at the shadow of a
woman before her with pity. “My mother
and father would never see any of us turned out, no matter what.”
“Lucky
you,” whispered Marabelle, “to have a father like that. My mother would have let me stay, but my
father wouldn’t hear of it. I had to
leave.” She closed her eyes as she
waited for another wave of pain. “I
tried to find a job, but no one would hire me.
The church wouldn’t help me. The
priest said I had to pay for my sin.
Clint was the only one who would help.
He took me in, and gave me a home; fed me and clothed me.” She tried to laugh. “I’ve been paying for my sin ever since. And my sins have grown. I keep paying, and owing, every day.” After a malevolent glance at Jenny, Marabelle
shut her eyes, and turned away. Jenny
sent Karen back to the house.
Doc Gabriel opened his bag and
pulled out a bottle. He administered
some laudanum, and the woman finally fell into a stupor. He didn’t tell Jenny that if he’d had enough
courage, he would have administered an overdose and put the woman, as well as
her unborn child, out of their misery.
Jenny looked on, relieved that Marabelle was temporarily out of pain,
but knowing that, but for the grace of God and the love of her parents, she
might have been looking at her sister.
She couldn’t help but wonder why the grace of God was greater and more
merciful for some people than for others.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ben Cartwright emerged from the bank. He had come into town to transfer some funds,
as well as pick up a few supplies. Both
could have waited for a while, but he was worried about Adam. His eldest son shouldn’t have been gone for
more than a week at most, and he should at least have heard from him by
now. He had sent Joe to the saloon to
ask around about him. If someone had
seen him, Joe should be able to find out.
Hoss was riding fence along the northern line of the Ponderosa, in case
Adam tried to return from that direction instead of going through Virginia
City. Ben knew that if anyone could
detect signs of Adam, Hoss could.
As
Ben untied Buck from the rail before the bank, Joe ran toward him. “Pa!”
He hurried across the street to his father. “I just talked to Jake, in the saloon, and he
said Adam was in the saloon yesterday.
Looked like he had just come into town, he said. He tried to get Adam to stay, but he said he
was heading home. Jake said that was
shortly before the storm hit. You don’t
suppose Adam got caught in it?”
“Adam
has enough sense to stay out of a storm like that,” mused Ben.
“Unless
he was in such a hurry to get home that he decided to ride through it,”
countered Joe.
Ben
shook his head. “He would have stopped
someplace safe, someplace where he could have stayed out of the way of the
lightning strikes. And he would have
been home by now,” he added emphatically.
“We
should ride toward home and check along the way,” said Joe, unwilling to spend
more time speculating rather than searching.
“The
Barnhart place is along the way.” said Ben.
“I told Thomas I’d keep an eye on the place, and on his daughter and the
young ones, while he’s gone. We might as
well stop there.”
“Yes,
and a few other places as well,” said Joe.
“But he knows the Barnharts the best.
I think he’d be more likely to stop there, but he may not have had much
choice about where to stop, once that storm was in full swing.”
“Well,
I’m waiting for a wire back from one of the bankers in San Francisco,” said
Ben. “Let’s go eat supper at the hotel,
and send word to Hoss with Pete.” Pete
was the hired hand who had accompanied them to town to get the supplies and
bring them back to the Ponderosa.
Once
they had eaten supper, Ben returned to the telegraph office. He read it with a grim face, and turned to
Joe and Pete with brows drawn low over his eyes. “This says that the bank has seen diminishing
returns on the mine that Adam just went to check on,” he reported. “Something must be wrong, and Adam probably
found out what it was. He either hasn’t
had a chance to send a wire about it, or is in trouble.”
“And
now, we can’t find him,” said Joe. “We
need to keep looking, Pa. He was here,
and was heading home.”
Ben
turned to Pete. “Go back to the
Ponderosa,” he said. “Unload the
supplies, and tell Hoss as soon as possible that something is wrong with the
mine that Adam went to investigate. Tell
him Adam was seen in town yesterday, and that Joe and I are looking for
him. We’ll stop at the places between
here and the Ponderosa, including the Barnhart place.”
“Sure
you don’t want me to come with you, Mr. Cartwright?” asked Pete.
“I’m
sure,” said Ben. “You get home, and talk
to Hoss tonight. Joe and I will keep
looking.” As Pete drove the wagon toward
the Ponderosa, Joe and Ben made a few more inquiries in town, and then slowly
rode into the late afternoon sun, looking for signs of their brother and son.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clint
watched from a distance, trying to get a feel for the place, and learn where
his quarry was before he sprang his trap.
He saw the “doctor” and woman disappear into the barn, and saw a little
girl – no more than three or four years old, he figured – follow them and then
return to the house a few minutes later.
He smiled delightedly. This was
better than he ever could have hoped for:
A young child, amenable for training, and a lovely young lady, young and
pretty enough to attract many new customers, and who would respond well if
given a choice between her life and health, or a beating and death to herself
and the child. He saw good potential
here, enough to compensate him for money and time lost for the three ungrateful
women who had deserted him, one of whom was worthless to him now.
Jenny
had left Marabelle and Doc Gabriel in the barn, and was returning to the house
when Clint rode boldly up to her. “Good
afternoon, Ma’am,” he drawled in his most polite voice.
Jenny
turned to look at him, and felt a chill creep up her legs and down her arms to
freeze her heart. This man had the
hardest eyes of anyone she had every seen.
The smile curving his lips didn’t reach his eyes. Jenny shivered as she saw his cruel eyes
travel over her, the house, and the yard.
He finally looked at her, and for a brief moment, she couldn’t breathe
under the calculating, cold gaze he passed over her. She took a deep breath, thinking that she had
appraised horses and cattle with more feeling.
She
suddenly realized, in an almost total panic, where she had seen him
before. No, no: She hadn’t seen him anywhere, but someone
just like him. They had been living in
Chicago, and she had just left a store with her family. As they gathered their belongings on the
sidewalk, a man standing near them had looked at her and through her,
appraising her as so much merchandise, just as this man was doing. It had taken her breath away and frightened
her so she couldn’t move. Her father had
come to her side, speaking her name, and leading her away. He had succeeded in staring the man down, so
that he turned away, realizing that she wasn’t easy pickings. This man was like that other one. This time,
however, her father wasn’t with her. She
was home alone, with three children to care for, and three vagabond women
relying on her for help. She stood
paralyzed, unable to move, staring at his unfeeling brown eyes. She wished for her father to come and chase
this man off, or for Adam to emerge from the house and defend her.
Clint’s
smile changed from cold to triumphant as he saw the effect he had on her. This would be easy – too easy. He rode closer so he could tower over her.
“How are you this fine afternoon? A mite
hot and dry now, isn’t it? A cold drink
of water sure would go down smooth right now.”
Clint’s gentility was as smooth as oil.
She stood her ground for a moment, then thought better of it and put the
hitching rail between them.
Jenny
didn’t want to refuse him hospitality, but she also didn’t want to turn her
back on him, or bring him in the house where the children were. She watched him carefully while she caught
her breath. “I’m afraid our water isn’t
cold,” she replied. “Is there a reason
for your visit, Mr. -” She hoped this
stranger couldn’t hear her pounding heart.
Clint
looked icily at Jenny, and she could tell he was angry at her evasiveness. His glance strayed to Doc Gabriel’s horse
tethered to the hitching rail. “You have
other guests,” he observed. “Did you
refuse them water, too? Are you always
so inhospitable to strangers?” His frown
was as sudden as a cloud obscuring the sun, and his hard eyes threatened
her. Jenny felt chills run down her
back. She was convinced that this was a
man she could not turn her back on.
“You
still haven’t told me your business, Mr-?”
Jenny watched him evenly, not flinching from his stare despite her
sweaty palms. Clint feared this wasn’t
as easy as it had first appeared. Well,
she had obviously been gently reared.
She wasn’t being very polite to him by refusing him a drink, and perhaps
he could still get the upper hand by changing his tactics.
He
dismounted from his horse. “You can call
me Clint. And I’m looking for somebody,
some people dear to me.” His eyes darted
about the yard as he tethered his horse to the rail.
Jenny
hoped that she would never be “dear” to such a ravenous wolf.
Clint
smiled as brightly as possible, changing his demeanor from that of the hungry
wolf to a circling vulture. “Could you
please, Miss - ? I don’t know your
name!” He paused, but Jenny didn’t
respond. His smile grew no less, but
much colder. “Please, may I have a drink
of water? And may I sit a spell? Then I can tell you my business.”
I’m
sorry.” Jenny tried unsuccessfully to
keep her voice from trembling. “My
parents are not home, and I can’t have a stranger in the house.” She was prepared to get him a drink while he
waited outside, but Clint’s eyes narrowed, and he stopped smiling.
“You
have other company here.”
“Friends,
yes,” replied Jenny.
“Anyone
else?” His eyes never left her face.
Jenny’s
eyes fell from his. Resolutely, she
looked back at him. “Why do you ask?”
“I
told you, I’m looking for someone.”
Clint’s voice was clipped, with a threatening undertone. “Some three, to be exact. And I know they’re here, so why don’t you
just let me have them, and save yourself – and that pretty little child I saw
with you – a lot of heartache?” He
watched the fear creep across her face with satisfaction. “You won’t like what I do to you, or
especially that little one, if you don’t show me where they are,” he said in a
low voice. “And I would like a drink of
water first. Please?”
Jenny
looked at him, fighting her fear. This
was a ruthless, cruel man, and it was no wonder that the women in the loft had
been so frightened of her and Adam, and reluctant to tell their names. If it was Clint they were running from….
The
door opened suddenly behind her. “It
sounds to me as though you’ve outstayed your welcome, Mister.” Jenny stepped aside and looked gratefully at
Adam. She knew she could never have
handled this man by herself. She glanced
back at the door, hoping that Karen would not come out, too, but would stay in
the house.
Jenny’s quick glance was not lost on Clint, but the child could wait
until he had dealt with this stranger.
His mouth pulled
into a straight line, and his narrowed eyes never left Adam’s face. His hand strayed toward his gun. He had dealt before with men who had
championed Elise’s cause. They had just
wanted her all to themselves. This one should be no different than the
others. The ends of his mouth twisted as
he thought of the man who had run away with her the last time, as well as the
Indians in the Sierra Nevada foothills who had obviously aided the three of
them recently. Anyone who helped Elise
escape from him either wasn’t around to talk about it, or didn’t dare come near
her again.
“Get on your horse and leave,”
ordered Adam.
Clint glared at him, and his smile
grew. “Who’s gonna make me,
Mister?” His drawl was so genteel that
it seemed impossible that his face was so hard.
“Get out!” repeated Adam. “You’ve insulted the lady, and threatened her
and her niece. Go, before I shoot you!”
Clint threw his head back and
laughed uproariously. “Why, Mister, I do
believe you’re mistaken! First of all, I
don’t see any ‘lady’ here! I see a woman
who is entertaining two men, one of them Negro”- he spat the last word – “while
her parents are gone! Isn’t that right,
Miss?”
“My friends are always welcome
here,” retorted Jenny, shivering at the hate implicit in his reference to Doc
Gabriel, and wondering how Clint knew he
was there.
“Jenny, get in the house,” said Adam
shortly.
At the same time, Clint laughed
again. “Of course they are! Some ‘lady’s’ friends’ are always welcome,
day and night! And – did you call the
little girl her ‘niece’, Sir? There’s a
few in town who say otherwise!” He
continued to laugh.
Adam didn’t answer, but moved around
the hitching rail and approached Clint menacingly. “Go!” he said quietly. “No one insults a lady while I’m around.” Both men’s hands drifted toward their
guns. They circled each other, one
looking like a wolf ready for the kill; the other like a lion defending his
cubs.
Jenny
watched with mounting horror. She had to
do something, or this ruthless man would kill Adam. She hurried to the hitching rail and started
to untie Clint’s horse, prepared to drive it off if necessary to distract the
man. But Adam was the one who was
distracted. His eyes moved toward her,
watching her, worried for her safety.
Clint saw his adversary’s distraction, turned, grabbed Jenny by the
hair, and pulled his gun in one fluid motion.
“Now it’s your turn to get lost, Mister,” he gloated. He held the gun to Jenny’s head. “Unless you want this ‘lady’ you’re so fond
of to die.”
Adam
had no doubt that he’d do it. He had
overheard most of the conversation between Jenny and Clint, and had no doubt
who he was, or rather what he was, and why he was there. He recognized the type of man, and thought he
might even recognize him from someplace a while back. Adam figured that Clint would rather not kill
anyone, as that would put the law on his trail.
He wanted Jenny – and Karen – alive, for his own purposes. But he would
kill her without hesitation if Adam didn’t cooperate with him. But this was hardly the time for
speculation. He had to act quickly, or
disaster could follow.
“Let
her go,” he said in a low voice. “If you
need a hostage, take me, and leave her alone.”
Clint
smiled, amused at the offer. “And what
would I do with you? I know just what to
do with her.” He pulled Jenny closer to
him, releasing her hair and grabbing her about the waist while still holding
the gun to her head. The hitching rail
still stood between them, digging painfully into Jenny’s side, but made no
difference to his hold on her. “If you
make me shoot her, there’s others around just as good. Especially her little ‘niece’ inside!”
Furious,
Adam stepped toward him, reaching for his gun.
Clint cocked his weapon and held it closer to Jenny’s head. “I wouldn’t,” he said softly.
A
haze descended about Jenny’s eyes. She
tried to breathe, but couldn’t. She knew
what this man intended, and knew death was better, but was too frightened of
dying. She gasped, and a whimper escaped
her lips. Clint’s hand moved to her
throat. “Quiet!” he hissed. Despite his order, Jenny’s breath rattled in
her throat.
From
the shadows of the bushes by the front door, Comet observed the scene. His eyes grew ever bigger, making him totally
black and therefore invisible in the shade beneath the shrubbery. Ever since this stranger had ridden into the
yard, he had smelled danger. Initially,
he had growled when he heard the man approach, and run and hid when he saw
him. But when Adam had left the house,
Comet had slinked unseen out the door with him.
This man who smelled rotten was talking with his favorite person, and
she was very afraid. Comet could smell
her fear. He didn’t like this man. This was someone he would never approach and
rub on. When Clint grabbed Jenny, Comet
stifled a growl, unwilling to reveal himself.
Instead, he waited. When he saw Clint put his hand on Jenny’s throat, he
ran under Clint’s horse, intending to claw and bite this man who would dare
threaten his person.
But
the horse, unused to the feel of a cat running about his legs, started,
whinnied, and reared. His foot kicked
Comet, who gave a loud yowl. He grabbed
hold of the offending leg with all four of his, clawed, bit, and dodged back
toward the bushes. The panicked horse
reared repeatedly, breaking his rope that Jenny had already loosened, and
galloped back the way he had come.
Clint
swore freely, and looked about for the black creature he had seen flash
past. His hand tightened on Jenny’s
throat, and she gave a strangled cry.
Furious, Comet leaped onto Clint’s arm, clawed, and climbed onto his
head. In a couple of seconds, he had
done his work, and Clint released Jenny, holding his hands to his slashed and
bleeding face and saying words that Jenny had never known existed. She tried to go toward the house, but
everything was fading into a black mist with tiny stars running throughout
it. She fell on the ground.
Adam
ran around the hitching rail, and kicked Clint backwards, away from his gun
which he had dropped on the ground. Adam
pulled his gun and pointed it at Clint.
Jared came outside cradling the rifle his grandfather kept above the
front door, poised to shoot at this stranger.
Jared couldn’t use the rifle. His
grandfather wouldn’t let him. He was too
small. But Clint, though he probably
knew that handling the rifle was beyond the boy, also knew that point-blank
range from two weapons was certain
death. Continuing his string of curses,
he rose and attempted to take Doc Gabriel’s horse.
“Leave
it alone!” shouted Adam. “Get away from
it!” He had seen the rifle next to the
saddle, and couldn’t allow Clint to get his hands on it.
Clint
wiped the blood out of his eyes and tried to stop the bleeding from his
scalp. He hurled constant venom at the
semi-conscious girl on the ground, and started toward her. Adam stepped between them. “Go,” he said softly. “It’s a long walk back to town, or wherever
you came from.”
“You
won’t get away with this,” Clint snarled.
“I’ll be back with the sheriff.
You attacked me, you have a vicious animal that attacked me and my
horse, and I know you’re harboring three criminals who belong to me!”
“You
bring the sheriff back,” Adam shot back.
“We have a few claims of our own to make against you. Attempted kidnapping and threatening to
murder someone is a crime around here, in case you didn’t know. So get the sheriff. Bring him back. I just hope you catch your horse soon, or you
have an awful long trip ahead of you, and I don’t like to be kept waiting.” He gestured the man away from Jenny and away
from the house. “Get out of here!”
Clint
complied, but not without a stream of invective. This was the first time in years that anyone
had gained the upper hand with him, and all because of that damned cat. At least, he thought it was a cat. It had flashed by so quickly he couldn’t be
sure. Stuffing his blood-soaked
handkerchief in his pocket, he searched in vain for another one to stop the
bleeding from the numerous gashes on his face, scalp, and arm. Finally, he stripped off his jacket and used
it. If he saw that cat, he’d shoot
it. Then he realized he didn’t have a
gun.
“I’ll
be back!” he promised. “I’ll be back,
and you’ll see what happens to anyone who does this to Clint. You’ll wish you were dead before I’m through
with you!” He glared at Jenny, still
lying motionless on the ground. “I’ll
see her in my establishment, and that fine little girl will come with me, too,
and there will be nothing you can do to stop me! No one crosses me without paying a
price!
“Right,
Elise?” He suddenly shouted as he turned
toward the barn, then the house. “I know
you’re here! I know that so-called
‘doctor’ is here with you. And Mai Ling
and Marabelle are here, too. See? I know where you are! You can’t get away from me. I’ll always find you! You owe me money, remember? I’ve spent a lot of gold on all of you, to
put clothes on your backs and feed you, and you need to get on your backs to
pay me! You’ll come with me! You just remember who you belong to! You’ll never run fast enough or far enough to
get away from me! There’s no place you
can hide! And don’t even think of
running back to the hills to those Indians you stayed with. There’s not too many of them left after I
tracked you all there! But they did have
some nice women there that I got to sample, all because of how you led me to
them! I’d like to thank you kindly for
-”
Adam
fired a shot that grazed his right arm, already gouged by the scratches. Clint whirled about, a horrible specter with
blood streaking his face. He raised his
fist toward Adam. “You won’t get away,
either, Mister-” Adam fired a shot
next to his head. Clint jumped back, and
with one final venomous glare, turned and staggered toward town, wiping blood
from his eyes as he went, and cursing himself for not simply shooting that
unexpected stranger while he had the chance.
Of course, that would have put the law on his trail, but if he was
careful, that could be hard to follow, especially with the lead he would have
had. He’d always been careful not to run
afoul of the law, but he figured if he ever did, he probably had enough money,
and attractive bait, to wriggle out of any charge. But murder?
He wasn’t sure about that. He
cursed anew as he realized he’d been defeated by a cat.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once
they were certain he was leaving, Adam and Jared turned their attention to
Jenny. Adam lifted her carefully and
carried her into the house. Jared drew
some water while Adam attempted to comfort Karen, who had hidden behind David’s
bed during the entire incident, and sobbed and trembled anew at the sight of
her aunt’s limp form and incoherent mumbling, as well as the bruises on her
throat.
While
Adam washed Jenny’s face and examined her neck where Clint had grabbed her,
Jared said, “The doctor’s in the barn.
We should take her out there.”
David stirred and cried as he spoke.
Adam nodded.
“We should all be in one place, anyway.
Bring the rifle,” he told Jared.
He looked at Karen. “Can you
carry the baby out to the barn?”
Karen
nodded. David was heavy, but she wasn’t
going to stay alone in the house. Adam
lifted David from the bed, and for safety’s sake tied him about Karen’s body
with his blankets. He grabbed a few
diapers stacked near the bed and stuffed them in his saddlebags that remained
by the door. “Fill my canteen, and grab
a few towels, too.” Jared hurried to
comply. Adam lifted Jenny in his arms,
and they hurried out the door and to the barn.
As
soon as they entered the barn, Gabriel
met them. “Thank God you’re all right!”
he exclaimed. “We heard the shots, but I
couldn’t see enough from the windows to tell what was going on. The women were absolutely terrified as soon
as they heard that man’s voice. It was
all I could do to keep them – except Marabelle, of course; I had to give her some laudanum earlier -
from running out the back door in a blind panic. I left my gun on my horse, at the hitching
rail by the house. A mistake I won’t
make again!” He looked at Jenny. “Has she been shot?”
“No,”
replied Adam. “He grabbed her, about the
waist and the throat, and she’s bruised.
He held a gun to her head, but she’s not shot.”
Gabriel
motioned them to an empty stall, and examined her after Adam laid her
down. “How did she get away from him?”
Adam
sighed. “It’s a long story. I’ll go get your horse.” He came back several minutes later with not
only the horse, but with a basket full of food and drink for everyone.
Jared
was attempting to comfort David, who was thrashing and fussing. Adam pulled out a cup from a basket loaded
with the food, and spooned some stew broth into his mouth. David stopped crying, swallowed, and opened
his mouth for more. “Where is Karen?”
Adam asked.
“I
don’t know,” replied Jared.
Doc
Gabriel was replacing his stethoscope in his bag. “She went up into the loft a few minutes
ago. I thought I heard her talking to something
- one of the barn cats, I suppose - before she went up the ladder.” He stood up.
“Jenny will be all right. She’s
talking a little, and responding to me.
She’s been through a big scare and an awful shock.”
Adam
turned over David’s feeding to Jared and knelt by Jenny. He touched her face in concern. “Jenny!
Can you hear me?”
Jenny
opened her eyes. “Adam – Is he gone?”
“Yes,”
Adam assured her. “He’s gone.”
“Where
are the children?”
“They’re
here, in the barn with us. I’m taking
care of them.”
Jenny
closed her eyes in relief.
Adam
climbed the ladder to the loft and looked around. All three of the women lay close together,
far back in the loft, sound asleep in their exhaustion, or, in Marabelle’s
case, from the effects of the drug Gabriel had given her. A short distance from them lay Karen, with
her thumb in her mouth, covered with her favorite quilt cross-stitched with a
picture of a house, a tree, a red cat, a blue dog, and a brown horse, which
Adam had used to tie David to her. Next
to her, curled up in contentment, lay Comet, sound asleep. Adam approached Karen and made certain that
she was comfortable. He wiped a stray
tear from her cheek.
As
he looked at Marabelle, he frowned. He
stepped over Karen, stooped down beside the drugged woman, and pulled something
from the hay next to her. The thorns on
the wilted rose pricked his fingers as he picked it up. He brushed the hay from the petals, wondering
how a rose came to be in the barn. He
looked at Elise and Mai Ling as they slept in fearful exhaustion, and saw a
rose partly buried near each of them. He
gathered them together, looked at them in wonder, and finally laid one rose
next to each woman. Glancing once more
at Karen, he went back down the ladder.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jenny
was sitting up and sipping water when they heard the hoofbeats approach. Adam grabbed Gabriel’s rifle and tossed it to
him. He drew his own gun as he went to
the window. Up in the loft, Comet
growled threateningly, and beat his tail against Karen. Elise suddenly sat up, looking in alarm toward
the window at the end of the loft. She
scrambled to it, but could see nothing.
She heard Adam’s voice beneath her in the barn.
“It’s all right. It’s my father and brother.”
Elise crawled to the edge of the
loft and peeked over in time to see Adam striding out the door. That doctor was still there. She hadn’t seen him until after he had
examined Marabelle. He told her what he
had done with her friend, and had wanted to examine her, but she wasn’t about to
let him touch her. No man would touch
her again, unless she had to let them, to preserve her freedom from Clint, or
to protect Marabelle.
Ben and Joe walked into the barn,
followed by Adam, who was explaining about the storm, and how quickly it had
come on. “So that’s why I stayed here
last night. I couldn’t leave this
morning, because there were other problems.”
He stopped by the stall where Jenny sat next to Doc Gabriel, who
assisted her as she drank. Ben and Joe
looked in horror at the dark bruises about her throat. Ben’s face became dark with anger. Jenny attempted to smile and whispered
“hello”. Doc Gabriel nodded and said,
“Hi, Ben, Little Joe,” before turning his attention back to his patient.
“What happened?” demanded Joe.
“We had some company this morning,”
Adam replied.
In the silence that followed, Ben
said, “Perhaps you’d care to explain?”
Adam pierced Jenny for a moment with
a brooding gaze, then gestured curtly to his father and brother. “Follow me.”
He led them up the ladder to the loft. Comet
leaped to his feet and gave a menacing growl.
Karen stirred for the first time since ascending the ladder. She pulled her thumb from her mouth, and
slowly sat up, looking sleepily about.
Not recognizing her surroundings, she cried out softly for her
aunt. As Adam’s head appeared at the top
of the ladder, she drew back and gasped softly.
Comet growled again, then twitched his tail and sniffed as he scented
Adam. He laid down and made no protest
as Adam approached Karen. When Ben,
followed by Joe, climbed into the loft, Comet sniffed at them cautiously, and
allowed them to pass unchallenged. As
they gathered about Karen, Comet went to the edge of the loft, turned about,
and quickly backed down the side of the ladder as though he was climbing down a
tree. He ran to Jenny and sat by
her.
Adam lifted Karen into his
arms. He pointed to the two women
sleeping behind her. “These women were
here in the barn this morning,” he said.
“Jared found them, as we were doing the chores. But there was one more.” As he looked about, he saw Elise, creeping
back from the far edge of the loft.
Elise was not pleased to see three
men. Three men and three women: It had to have been planned this way. Well, she and Mai Ling would just have to
keep them happy. The two of them had
bathed and changed, so that would help.
These dresses they had been given weren’t exactly designed to entice
men, but she could make the most of it.
So could Mai Ling, even though her ways were different from Elise’s
ways. She was sweeter, quieter, more
docile, and many men found that enticing.
Unfortunately, it often drew the most brutal of the men back over and
over, as they loved to dominate someone like her. Elise shuddered as she recalled the way Clint
loved to intimidate, then dominate and possess, Mai Ling. But they couldn’t let these men touch
Marabelle, so they’d have to get busy right away.
For a brief second, a flash of anger
flared up within Elise. It wasn’t
fair! She hadn’t asked for her parents to
die, to live with an abusive uncle, or to be sold to Clint. If she wanted to survive, what choice had she
but to do as she had done? She had run away with her friends not only to
get away from Clint and her old way of life, but also to prevent Marabelle from
being dispatched by Clint, as she had all too often seen him do with other pregnant, diseased
girls. She didn’t want to do this. She hated men; hated being used by them; hated what they wanted her to do; and above all, hated them for despising her
after they had used her. But that was
her life. She, Mai Ling, and Marabelle
had all been bred for it by cruel twists of fate. She long ago believed she had been born for
that purpose: to be used.
Thrusting these thoughts behind her,
she forced a smile on her face. “Hello,”
she said, tossing her long, glossy red hair over her shoulder. Despite the hardships and privations of her
flight, she still was beautiful, and knew how to use her charms to beguile a
man. She liked the feel of her clean
hair, and knew that it fanned out and glistened about her shoulders. She wished she’d been able to curl it, and
put on some paint, and was painfully conscious of her covered shoulders and
bosom, but she knew her business. She’d
been doing it for most of her short life.
She glanced at each of the three men in turn. Adam barely merited a glance. She already knew him, and he knew her. He wasn’t fooled by her for a moment. She looked from under sultry lashes at the
older man next to him. Handsome, he was! What a catch he might be! He looked angry, though. She’d have to soothe him, and assure him
things would be better, and she could make them better, or he might hurt her or
one of the others.
When
she saw the third one, she smiled triumphantly.
Here was a young man who looked like a lamb ready to be led to the
slaughter. She slowly approached him,
tossing her head and swaying her hips.
“Well! Hello, stranger!” She stopped just before him, looking from the
corner of her eye to see if Mai Ling was awake.
She was, and was watching her.
Why didn’t she get up and help her?
They needed to keep these men occupied, not only so Marabelle wouldn’t
be hurt, but so the men would protect
them from Clint, at least until they could get away and run a little
farther. Elise didn’t know how they
could do that with Marabelle’s condition, or how much longer they could keep on
running, but one thing, one day, at a time.
“Hey,
handsome! I can show you a real good
time!” She ran her hand down Joe’s face,
throat, and down his chest, lingering at the top of his unbuttoned shirt. Joe swallowed hard, and wanted to step back
and protest, but felt mesmerized and paralyzed at this woman’s brazen approach. “Why don’t you come with me, and one of the
others can take Mai Ling ?” She nodded
toward Mai Ling, who schooled her face into a careful mask to conceal her
fear. “There’s lots of places where we
can have some privacy up here, you know?”
She smiled and laughed with the false happiness she was accustomed to
project. Most men bought it; were enslaved by it. She had no doubt this young man would come,
and the others should follow.
“After
we’re finished,” Elise continued, “I can take another one.” She thought of suggesting that they could
both come with her at the same time, but couldn’t do it. She had been forced to do that once, before
the Madam could stop it, and the memory was still a horror that she couldn’t
afford to dwell on. Not even for Marabelle
could she endure that again. She beamed
her best seductive smile, and
unobtrusively started to unbutton Joe’s shirt.
“You’ll be real pleased with me, I’m sure,” she whispered. “And I’ll do a good job with two of you,
twice over, if you want.” She glanced at
the men next to him, positive that her words would be lulling them into her
clutches, readying them for her spell.
She should be able to get any promises she wanted from them, at least
for the next half hour or so. Her smile
almost faded and her confidence faltered when she saw the glowering glares of
Adam and the older man with him.
What
was wrong with these men? She’d done
everything she knew to do. It should
have worked! It had worked, countless
times, on their road to “freedom”. Men had
seen them as they fled. Some had
recognized them from Silver City, and for a “price”, had not turned them in to
Clint, who had followed close behind them, or the authorities, who wouldn’t
take kindly to runaway prostitutes. A
couple of self-righteous ones had finally promised not to reveal who and what
they were in exchange for the girls’ favors.
They had to be convinced, but Elise was real good at that. If Mai Ling was too frightened or tired,
Elise took on more than one. They had
gained food, money, and freedom that way.
Other times, they had traded guns, knives, or other items they had
stolen from Clint or unsuspecting customers on the way for supplies. But Clint was always after them, asking about
them, and finally they had fled into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, in the
opposite direction they intended to flee, to get away from him. But Clint had tracked them there, too,
according to what he had just shouted as he left, and probably had killed most
of the Indians who had helped them, the same way he had killed or destroyed
anyone who ever tried to help her get away from him.
The
young, curly-headed man with the big, expressive eyes yanked away from her as
she took him by the hand to lead him away.
“Hey! Cut that out! I’m not going with you!”
Elise
schooled her face into her best hurt expression as he pulled away. “What’s wrong, little handsome man?” She pouted.
“Aren’t I pretty enough for you?”
She looked sidelong at him, then away, as though she was hurt.
“Uh
– no, it’s not that!” protested Joe.
“It’s just – I – I don’t -”
“What
my brother means,” Adam interjected, “is that he really isn’t any more
accustomed to frequenting the company of ‘ladies’ who sell their services than
I am. That’s not what we intend with you.”
He pierced Joe with a quick glance.
Joe dropped his eyes from his brother’s penetrating gaze, and looked apprehensively at his father.
“I
suggest you go back with your friends, and stay there,” said Ben. One look at his smoldering eyes and angry
face told Elise she’d best not argue with him.
As
she dejectedly returned to Mai Ling’s side, Ben said, “All right, Adam! Tell me what happened!”
Adam
briefly related to his father how Jared had discovered the three women in the
loft, and he had discovered the mule below. He told of feeding them, sending Jenny to town
for the doctor while he and Jared readied baths for the women, and the arrival
of Clint. Ben’s face hardened as soon as
he heard the name.
“This
man, Clint, threatened Jenny if she didn’t tell him where these three women
were,” Adam continued. “He told her that
he’d hurt Karen if she didn’t.” He
glanced down at the girl in his arms, who had buried her face in his shoulder
as he spoke. “Of course, he didn’t know
I was there at the time. When I came
out, he managed to get hold of Jenny, and pulled a gun. But -”
He hesitated, wondering if his father would believe what had really
happened. “Jenny got away,” he finished
lamely.
“Does
Clint have light brown hair, and was he chasing a horse?” asked Ben. “And did he have scratches and gashes all
over his face?”
Adam
nodded. “Did you see him?”
“Yes,
not far away from here. He was after a
horse that had stopped a little ways off the road.”
“Pa
asked him if he needed help,” added Joe, “but he cursed a blue streak, and told
us exactly where to go. His face was all
covered with blood, and he looked mad enough to be in league with the devil.”
“I
think he was the devil,” said a voice just below the loft. “But Adam and I ran him off.”
The
men looked at the ladder as Jared’s head emerged. He was slowly and carefully climbing, and
seemed out of breath. As he climbed into
the loft, they saw he was carrying David.
“Jared!” exclaimed Joe. “What are
you doing?” He ran to take the child
from the boy. “Why didn’t you ask for
help? You could have dropped him, or
fallen!”
“I
wouldn’t drop David!” Jared exclaimed indignantly. “And I don’t need help, thanks!” He walked to the rest of the men and looked
them over, then hesitantly looked at the female visitors. All were awake and watching him. His eyes dropped and his face turned red.
“Why
did you come up here?” asked Adam.
“I
got tired of staying down there with a baby,” said Jared. “Aunt Jenny can’t take care of him right now,
so I brought him up here.”
“I
heard you say that you and I ran Clint off,” said Adam. “Aren’t you forgetting someone? Or should I say, something?”
Jared
looked at him with a puzzled expression.
“Oh, you mean Comet,” he said.
“He doesn’t count, does he? I
mean, we had the guns.” His chest swelled
and his face glowed as he smugly claimed his prowess in protecting the
household.
“And
Comet had the claws and the element of surprise,” said Adam.
“What
are you talking about?” demanded Ben.
“Jenny’s
cat, Comet, startled Clint’s horse, and it ran off,” replied Adam. “He also attacked Clint when he grabbed
Jenny. Comet scratched his face up.”
“Comet?”
exclaimed Joe. “That cat never once
batted an eye around me! The only thing
he ever did to me was rub on me and trip me up!
He wouldn’t hurt anyone!”
“He
hurt Clint,” assured Adam.
“He
didn’t like that man,” said Karen. She
struggled in Adam’s arms, and he put her down.
She went to Little Joe and pulled at David’s blanket, indicating that
she wanted to see the baby. Joe stooped
down, and she stroked her hand over David’s brown curls and kissed him on the
cheek. “Where’s Aunt Jenny?”
“She’s
still down below, with the doctor,” replied Ben.
Suddenly,
Marabelle, who had been quietly watching them for a few moments, cried out and
thrashed about. Elise ran to her side,
and looked threateningly at Ben when he approached. Ben looked down in horror as he fully
realized the seriousness of the young prostitute’s condition. Gabriel rushed up the ladder to the loft, and
ordered them to leave. “Everybody down
the ladder, NOW!” Elise hovered, knowing
that her friend needed the doctor’s attention, but reluctant to leave her. Gabriel glared at her. “You, too!
Both of you!”
“I can help you, Doc,” offered
Elise, but Gabriel rebuffed her.
“If I need help, I’ll shout,” he
responded. “Now, go!” Elise and Mai Ling followed the others down
the ladder.
Karen huddled next to her aunt,
frightened by Marabelle’s lonely,
pain-filled cries. Jenny heard the girl,
and felt she should be in the loft, assisting the doctor if she could, but knew
she was too dizzy and exhausted to help him.
She asked if someone could take the children to the house, but Ben said
they had to stay together.
“This man, Clint,” Ben said, “looked
and sounded familiar to me, even with his injuries. If he is who I think he is, he owns a parlor
house in Silver City. He is also
involved in politics there, and is in the pockets of the mayor and all the
other governing officials. He’s a hard
and ruthless man, very cruel; and will
stop at nothing to get what he wants. If
he is after these three women, he’ll see to it that he gets them.”
“We can’t let him get them!”
exclaimed Jenny.
Ben looked at her, wishing he could
get her away from there. “No, we
can’t. But he finds ways to get what he
wants. He’ll be back – with others, you
can be sure.”
“With the condition he was in when
he left, it’ll be a while before he gets back here,” said Adam. “Do you know if he caught his horse?”
“Yeah, he caught it,” said Joe. “He was riding hell-bent-for-leather as we
left him behind.”
“Joe!” exclaimed Ben.
“Oh – er – sorry, Jenny,” said Joe,
his face turning red.
Jenny pretended she hadn’t
heard. “Has he run up against the law
before?”
“No,” said Ben, “not to my
knowledge. At least, he keeps his dirty
dealings a secret from the law. Or he
pays the law to turn the other way.”
“Isn’t it illegal for him to be
chasing these women?” Jenny asked.
“Not if they owe him money, like he
said,” Adam replied.
Jenny looked at Elise, who sat
outside the edge of the circle of people about her and Karen. “Is it true, that you owe him money?”
Elise raked her scornful gaze over
the girl. “Yeah, I imagine it is.” She gave a small laugh. “We all owe Clint money. That never ends.”
“What do you owe him?” Jenny asked.
Adam pressed her hand, indicating, she knew, that she should be quiet
and stay out of it, but she impatiently pulled her hand from his grasp.
Elise laughed. “Everything,” she replied. “Everything.
Money for food, fancy clothes, housing, sheets, towels, baths….” She laughed again. “You name it, we owe it. We never get out of debt.”
Joe looked at Ben. “Pa, does he have any legal claim on them?”
Ben nodded reluctantly. “If they owe him money, and he can document
it, yes, he has a claim on them.”
“But if they can’t pay him?” asked Joe.
“He can bring legal action against
them, I suppose,” Ben replied slowly.
“But most likely, he wants them, not legal action.”
Jenny looked at the two women. “How long have you been – been with Clint?”
Mai Ling looked down, frightened and
silent. Elise glared derisively at
Jenny. “What does it matter to you?” she
spat in disgust.
Jenny looked at the woman in
concern. “Marabelle told me that she had
a child when she was 16. Her parents
threw her out. Is that what happened to
you?”
Elise turned on her in
fury. “I told you before, lady, I don’t
tell anyone – not ANYONE – about myself!
No one knows! No one will ever know!”
“If you tell us, we might be able to
help you,” offered Ben.
Elise whirled on him. “Why would you help us? What do you want from us? Why would you care?” She pulled back and looked at him
suspiciously. “Look, Mister,” she
said. “Marabelle, up there -” she
gestured toward the loft – “she was real beautiful once. Men stood in line for her, fought over her,
said they loved her. Lots of them spent
all their gold and silver on her. But
where are they now? Do any of them
care? Are they here? No.
They just wanted her body, for one night, or one-half hour, whichever they
paid for. That’s all you care
about. And then you go and marry a
‘lady’, like her-” she pointed at Jenny – “and don’t care a whit about us. Oh, we’re used to it! That’s what we’re here for, for sure. But we never asked for it. I didn’t.
Marabelle didn’t. And Mai Ling
here, she didn’t ask for it, either. But
that’s what we’re stuck with. And we
know you! We know you men! You only want what you can get from a woman,
and then you leave her, settle down with a ‘lady’, and come back for a few treats
on the side.” She laughed
contemptuously. “And you have the nerve
to say we’re the bad ones! So don’t
offer me your ‘help’. We just stopped in
here to get out of the storm. We’ll be
moving on as soon as we can. You don’t
need to trouble yourselves about us.”
Joe watched her with troubled eyes
as he listened to her. How differently
she acted down here than she had in the loft!
He thought back to his conversations and dalliances with women of
questionable reputation. Not that there had been that many; after all, he didn’t want his father hearing
about anything of the sort. And he
really wasn’t too comfortable with women like that. He preferred to do the seeking after and
pursuing himself. How many of those
women who had flirted with him and tried to lure him upstairs secretly harbored
the hate and animosity he was now witnessing?
He had nearly gone with her up in the loft. If his father and brother hadn’t been there,
he would have had a hard time turning her down.
She certainly was alluring, and knew how to please a man. He wondered how she could act so enticing,
yet possess such venom and bitterness of spirit. What had happened to make her so desperate
that she would run through the wilderness, filthy and hungry, to get away from
a man who had apparently nearly enslaved her, yet then turn about and attempt
to entice him into a corner of the barn?
Adam watched her, too, with a
guarded expression. Jenny could see that
he was deeply troubled, but Elise, after one glance at him, dismissed him as a
hard man; in other words, one who could
not be easily persuaded. They were some
of the hardest men to please in her business.
If they came calling, it was hard to read what they wanted, and hard to
deliver how they expected. Men like that
were often the most dangerous type of customer.
The older man, the one the other two
called “Pa”, was glaring at her, but his expression was softening. He still
didn’t look much more pliable than Adam.
She might be able to work her way around him, but he wouldn’t be much
easier, if any easier, than Adam.
Adam broke into her thoughts. “Pa, you said this man, Clint, is from Silver
City. I thought he looked familiar. I think I’ve seen him, possibly, on one of my
trips there. But not from any place
of his ‘business’,” he added
hastily. “Just about town. It seems to me that he’s an important man in
that town. But I can’t believe he is the
same man whom I remember seeing there before.
He seemed -” Adam hesitated –
“much less dangerous.”
“He’s an important man, all
right,” replied Ben. “He’s involved in
the city’s politics, and is a prominent member of a church there. He knows how to project a good image, and
most folks who know him see him as a good, honorable man who wants to do the
best for the town. He’s a charismatic
man: very good at winning people to his
side; getting people to see things his
way. Most of the men and women in Silver
City would not believe that he is capable of what you have witnessed here, much
less that he could possibly be involved in the type of business that he’s in.
Many people who suspect his dealings on the side can’t prove anything against
him. Everyone is either too well-paid by
him to keep quiet, or they’re too afraid to speak up.”
Adam looked at Elise, then at Mai
Ling. “I think I can see why.”
Weak cries from the loft startled
them. They suddenly realized no one had
heard a sound from Marabelle for some time, and that these cries were those of
an infant. Everyone rose and looked
up.
Adam
held Jenny’s arm. “You should stay down
here.”
Jenny
tried to pull her arm free. “I need to
go up there!” She attempted to follow
Karen, who was scuttling the bottom
rungs of the ladder far ahead of Joe.
Adam
held her fast. “You shouldn’t be seeing
this! Your father and mother would not
approve of any of this!”
Jenny
looked at him, wondering what he meant.
“Adam, Mother and Father would not turn these women away! They would do their best to help them!”
“I
know that,” he softly replied. “But they
wouldn’t want you involved.”
“I
am involved!” she exclaimed. “Don’t try
to coddle me!”
Ben
gently took hold of her other arm. “Adam
is right. You need to rest, after what
you’ve been through. Joe and I will go
up with him. You stay down here.” When he saw Jenny about to protest, he added,
“Your father did ask me to stop by and keep an eye on you.” Realizing that further protest was useless,
Jenny sat down. Adam sat next to her.
Ben
was not even halfway up the ladder behind Joe before he heard Gabriel’s sharp
cry. “No!” Joe climbed into the loft just in time to see
the doctor stop Karen from touching a tiny bundle on a blanket near
Marabelle. Joe raced to them and grabbed
the girl. “Don’t touch it!” hissed
Gabriel. “Get her out of here!” he said
to Joe. Joe saw the baby, partially
wrapped in a blanket, covered with sores and blisters. He stared in horror for a moment, then turned
hastily away, and bumped into his father.
Ben
looked at the sight before him. His dark
eyes moved from the baby to Marabelle to Gabriel. Gabriel met his gaze, and his hard eyes and
set mouth told Ben the hopelessness of the situation.
“I
need some water,” said Gabriel. “And
some needle and thread.”
Ben
put his hand on Joe’s shoulder. “Son,
you and your brother get what Doc Gabriel needs. Leave Karen with her aunt.” As Joe hurried to comply, Ben turned back to
the doctor. “Are they alive?”
“The
baby died right after birth. Too small,
too early to survive. If she hadn’t died
from being too early, though, she’d have been dead in a short while, anyway.”
“How
about the girl?”
“She’s
still alive. For a while. Be best if she’d die soon.”
Marabelle
opened her eyes and whispered. Ben
approached her. “My baby, I want to see my baby.”
“Miss….” Ben didn’t know how to break the news to her.
“Your
baby is dead,” Doc Gabriel was gentle but forthright.
“I
know,” whispered the girl. “I want to
see it.”
Reluctantly,
Gabriel carefully picked up the tiny bundle, and moved it next to Marabelle’s
face. She turned her head, pulled the
blanket aside, and examined her daughter.
Ben realized she was counting the fingers and toes. “She would have been perfect, if not for me,”
she said. She carefully covered the
baby, and let her hand rest on her child.
“Mister,” she whispered, and looked at Ben. Ben stooped next to her. “Will you have a preacher say something over
her when she’s buried? Please!”
Ben
nodded. “I promise you, I’ll have a
preacher say a service over her.”
“Ben!”
Gabriel whispered. The doctor led him
several steps away. “Ben, we have to get
that child in the ground! You saw
her! She didn’t just die from being
early, she’s -”
“I
know,” Ben assured him. “But the
preacher can give a service even after the burial.” He turned and saw that Marabelle had
overheard the conversation.
She
closed her eyes wearily, then opened them, and struggled to speak. “I never had a chance to see my other
babies.” She spoke slowly, as though
every word was battle. “Father took my
other child from me before I could see it.
I don’t even know if it was a girl or a boy. He threw me out.” She gently moved the dead child onto her
breast. “When Clint took me in, I got
pregnant there, too. He made a doctor
get rid of the baby. I didn’t want to,
but he made me.” She hugged her daughter
close to her. “This is the first child
I’ve been able to keep. I want to name
her ‘Grace.’ Mister,” she looked back at
Ben. “I went to two churches, after my
father threw me out, and they wouldn’t help me.
Promise me you’ll get someone who is kind to say the words over
her. Someone like you, or your
family. If there is such a thing as a
kind preacher.” She closed her eyes.
“I
promise you, it will be done,” Ben assured her.
Gabriel
moved next to her. “I need to get her
cleaned up and the baby ready for burial,” he said.
Ben
turned to go, and saw Adam and Joe standing behind him, with a pan of water and
a sewing basket they had found in the house.
Ben hadn’t even heard them lug the items into the loft. Both men were frozen in place, looking in
sad realization at the sight before them.
Ben wondered how much they had overheard. He knew that none of them could ever look at
the women who sold their services in the same light again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jenny
rested in the musty hay after Adam left with Joe to fetch water for the
doctor. Specks of dust flew about in the
sunlight shining through the window. She
wished she could take the children back to the house, but Adam had insisted
that she stay out here. He was afraid
Clint would return, and that he would bring other men as cruel as himself. She had been relieved to see Ben and Joe
arrive, but worried that if Clint didn’t get these women, he would come back
even later and take her, or worse, Karen.
Jenny
realized that her mother and father
weren’t coming back for at least a week.
She might be able to send a telegram to one of her father’s business
contacts, the only one whose name she recalled, in Carson City, but wasn’t sure
when her father would be there. Then it
would take time for them to return home.
If anything was to be done, it would have to be done by her and the
Cartwrights.
Jared
had wanted to help Adam and Joe fetch the items the doctor needed, but when
they refused, he busied himself polishing a saddle and mending some of the
tack, as his grandfather had shown him how to do. Karen stirred restlessly next to Jenny,
kicking hay into her face and raising lots of dust. David fussed in the heat. Jenny picked him up, attempting to quiet him,
and gave him something to drink. She
patiently answered Karen’s questions about Marabelle’s baby as best as she
could, but since Joe hadn’t told her anything when he brought Karen to
her, she wasn’t sure what to say. From the child’s questions, she gathered that
the baby was sick, which didn’t surprise Jenny.
She hadn’t heard the baby cry in several minutes, and feared the worst.
Jenny
pulled at the cloth that Doc Gabriel had bound about her bruised neck. It was no longer either wet or cold, but dry,
scratchy, and hot, and it came off as she scratched under it. She propped David up near her, and gave him a
string of colored beads she found in her pocket to keep him occupied. She found a few cookies in the basket Adam
had brought from the house, and gave one to Karen. Seeing Elise and Mai Ling sitting silently at
the edge of the stall, she took two more to offer to them. They looked up at her in surprise. “Would you like a cookie?” she finally
asked. Mai Ling turned her face down and
whispered her thanks as she timidly took it.
Elise stared at her, measuring her up and grudgingly decided she might
be worthy of some respect. As she ate the cookie, she watched Jenny dig through
the basket and bring out some tin cups, which she filled with water from a
nearby canteen. Jenny set two cups near
the women, and gave the other one to Karen.
“What
happened to your neck?” asked Elise.
Jenny
self-consciously put her hand to her throat.
“Oh – that man – Clint – he grabbed me.”
Elise
looked her up and down. She had a nice
figure, long, glossy, and wavy brown hair that shone in the sunlight, and
pretty brown eyes with a touch of green.
“He’d want you,” she said. She
took a drink of water. “He’d want her,
too.” She indicated Karen.
Jenny
looked at him in horror. “What could he
possibly want with her?”
“What
do you think?” Elise watched her as she
took another bite. “Clint has a
hankering for little girls.”
She
was serious. Jenny didn’t believe anyone
could do what Elise was saying, but she remembered Clint’s cruel eyes and cold
smile, and shuddered at the thought of her niece in his hands.
“She’s
only three,” Jenny told her.
Elise
gave a humorless laugh. “He likes them
young. Real young.” She recalled her own time with Clint at age
nine, and knew he had taken much younger girls unfortunate enough to be sold to
him.
“Has
he been following you long?”
“Ever
since we left.”
“When was that?”
“About
three months ago.”
Jenny
glanced at Mai Ling, and found the shy Chinese girl was watching her. As soon as she saw Jenny look at her, she
dropped her eyes. “Are you all from
Silver City?”
“That
was our last place.”
Jenny
tried to imagine what their lives must have been like, running through the
country about here, trying to survive, with Clint always ready to tighten the
noose about their necks again. She
hesitated, then decided to ask again, “Have you been with Clint very long?”
“Long
enough,” Elise snapped. Her blue eyes
flashed fire, and Jenny wisely changed the subject.
“The
men who are here are my friends,” she told them. “They live on a big ranch next to us, and
they won’t let anything happen to you. I
won’t, either.”
Elise
smiled at the unworldly promise. “Why,
Miss, that’s very kind of you, but see, you don’t know Clint. Once he decides on something, it goes his
way. He wants us, and he’ll see to it
that he gets us. He’ll try to get you,
too, eventually, and your fine friends may die for helping us. I’m very sorry we stopped in to trouble you,
but the storm, and Marabelle’s condition, didn’t leave us much choice. I’m just sorry that you’re in Clint’s way
now. That’s a bad place to be.” She spoke in a straightforward and
matter-of-fact voice, as though discussing the weather.
“Things
didn’t exactly go his way this afternoon,” said Jenny.
Elise
looked at the bruises on her neck.
“Looks like they didn’t go your way, either.”
“If
it’s so hopeless, why did you run away?”
Elise
looked at the girl. She wasn’t about to
tell this lady about being locked in a room at age nine, a room to which two
people had the key: the madam who
brought her meals and switched the chamber pot, and the man who abused
her. Nor was she about to share the details
of what had happened to anyone who had attempted to help her before. She knew this gently reared girl would never
understand the abuse she endured from her uncle, either. A bitter smile crossed her face as she
thought of what Jenny’s reaction would be to their suicide pact. But that reminded her: She needed her knife back. Adam had it.
They had traded the guns they’d stolen from Clint and other people along
the way for food and supplies. That
knife was the only weapon they had left.
Marabelle couldn’t run anymore.
Elise was tired of running. She
knew Mai Ling was too frightened to keep running much longer. Clint had finally caught up to her once
again. The thought of a quiet release at
the sharp edge of a knife brought relief and contentment almost unknown to
her. It was the only peace she was ever
likely to find.
David
dropped his beads, reached for them, and slid slowly onto his side, giving a
cry of dismay. Jenny lifted his limp
form from the hay, sat him on her lap, and attempted to brush the hay off of
him, but it stuck to his sweaty skin.
She stood, pulled him over her shoulder, and started to leave the stall,
intending to go outside where they might be able to catch a breeze, however
slight.
“What’s
wrong with him?” Elise watched him with
a puzzled and startled expression. “Why did he fall over like that?”
“He
can’t move much on his own,” explained Jenny, as she shifted his floppy head on
her shoulder. “We have to do most things
for him, and put his toys within his reach.
He’s not strong at all.”
Mai
Ling watched the boy’s dangling arms and legs, and said softly, “In China,
children like that are left to die.” She
cowered in shame as soon as she had spoken.
Her words sounded judgmental, as though this child should not be permitted
to live. But what she meant to express
was admiration for this woman who would care for a child such as this. Unlike Elise, she liked this lady. Though she was still afraid of the men, she
liked Jenny, and wished that such a lady would consider being friends with her.
Jenny
looked at her in surprise, both at the girl speaking to her and at what she
said. She had heard that the Chinese did
not value life as other people did, but had no idea if that was true. “Well, someone left him here, in America,”
she said. “He was abandoned at an
orphanage. A family took him from there,
but when they found out he was weak like this, they didn’t want him, and left
him with us. So, some people here don’t
want children like this, either.”
Elise
looked incredulously at the weak child in Jenny’s arms. “If he’s not yours, why do you keep him?”
“Because we love him,” came the gentle
reply. Jenny wondered what this hardened
young girl knew of love, and what her life had been like before she was
unfortunate enough to meet the horrible man Jenny had encountered earlier.
Mai
Ling looked at her in gratitude for not taking her words amiss. She wished that they would not bring harm to
this lady, but she feared that they would.
The men here had not hurt or used them – not yet, anyway – and Mai Ling
knew that Jenny could have thrown them out after Clint’s visit, or even during
it. Neither she nor the men had done
so. She thought of Clint so close, and
shuddered, knowing that even without Marabelle, they could not outrun him
now. She trembled and paled at what she
knew would happen when Clint returned.
Adam
entered the stall with Joe. “Where are
you going?” he asked Jenny. He had heard
most of the conversation, but had waited around the corner, unwilling to
interrupt, as he knew that his presence would make the women uneasy.
“Outside
to try to cool him off.” Jenny indicated
the baby in her arms.
“You
need to stay close to the barn door,” Adam said brusquely. “We may have some unpleasant company sooner
or later.” He looked at Elise and Mai
Ling, wondering how or if to tell them about Marabelle’s baby.
“The
doctor said you may go up and see your friend.”
Ben spoke from behind Adam. As
the women silently ascended the ladder, Ben said, “You two may as well start
digging the grave.”
“Guess
we should just dig two and be done with it now,” said Joe glumly. Adam grabbed a couple of shovels by the
tools, and led his brother behind the barn.
Jenny
looked at Ben. Tears brightened her
eyes. “I knew this would happen,” she
said, “but it’s still no easier.”
Ben
put his hand on her shoulder. “Death
never is easy.”
“Mr.
Cartwright, why are some people’s lives so hard, and others have it so
easy? She didn’t ask for all of
this! And I don’t believe the other two
did, either.”
“I
don’t know,” Ben gently replied, looking at her with a furrowed brow and
troubled eyes. “All we can do is make it
easier for them.”
“We’re a little late for that,
aren’t we? After everyone else has
finished using them?” Tears flowed down
her cheeks. She heard a stifled sob
behind her, and turned to see Karen crying.
Jenny knelt down and put her free arm about the girl. “Let’s go outside,” she said. “It may be cooler in the shade.” They went out back, and sat in the shade of a
large tree not far from the barn. They
could see Joe and Adam digging two separate graves further away. Jared had followed them out and was
attempting to help, which Jenny gratefully saw was tolerated by the two
men. She turned aside Karen’s questions
with “I’ll tell you later”, and sat in somber thought with her two young
charges.
Joe angrily hurled aside one shovelful of dry,
drought-hardened dirt after another.
Adam worked more methodically, thinking about the shape of the grave and
the size of body each one would hold.
“Joe, it needs to be a little wider,” Adam said as he looked at the hole
Joe was digging. “Even for the baby,
it’s going to need to be bigger.”
Joe rammed his shovel into the hard,
dry earth, and shouted, “How can you think about something like that right
now?! There’s a baby dead up there,
through no fault of its own!”
“I know, but we still - ”
“Is that all you care about? How big the graves should be? Who they’re each for? Which one we’re digging? Don’t you care about anything else?”
“Of course I care!”
“Well, I don’t see any sign of
it! You just looked at those women and
walked away! You hate them, don’t
you? Why, Adam? Why?
Could it be you had something to do with them once?”
Adam looked at his youngest
brother in amazement. His green eyes
were flashing fire, and his face lit up with fury. He knew Joe wasn’t thinking or speaking
rationally, but that last accusation, phrased as a question, made Adam’s blood
boil. Whatever his brother may think of
him, whatever Joe may have considered to be his “exploits”, whether here at
home, on business, or while away at college many years back, he had never
treated women with anything less than consideration and respect. Yes, he had loved women, physically as well
as emotionally, but he would never thoughtlessly use any woman and then toss
her aside.
“You just said a mouthful, little brother,” said Adam. “Maybe even bit off more than you can chew.”
“Yeah?” challenged Joe. “I think I just hit the nail on the head!”
“Well, maybe you need someone to hit
you on the head to knock some sense into you!”
Joe picked up his shovel and started
for him. When he tried to swing it, Adam
grabbed it, wrested it away from him, and tossed it away. “What is the matter with you?” he demanded.
Joe leaped on him without warning,
and knocked Adam on his back. He tried
to pummel him, but Adam shoved him away, got to his feet, and dodged him as he
rushed back. “Joe, stop it!” Adam exclaimed.
Joe rose to his feet and watched his
older brother. Suddenly, he dived for
his legs, knocking him down again. He
hit him once in the stomach, then hesitated.
Adam clutched his abdomen, and tried to breathe, but couldn’t. Suddenly, Joe was lifted off of him, and Adam
heard Hoss say, “What the blazes do you
two think you’re doin’ out here?”
“Let me go!” Joe struggled furiously in Hoss’s grasp. Hoss lifted him off the ground and held him
at arm’s length, so his legs kicked and arms punched the air.
“Little Joe! Stop it!
Unless you want me to knock some sense into you and the air outta
ya!” When Joe responded with more kicks
and punches to the empty air about him, Hoss tossed him onto the pile of dirt
by the grave Adam had been digging.
Adam stepped quickly near Hoss,
bracing himself for Joe’s attack. But it
never came. Joe lay still, looking at
the brassy, cloudless sky above him, breathing hard. Hoss and Adam looked at each other. Finally, Hoss approached his little
brother. “You finished with all this
nonsense, Little Joe?”
Joe didn’t answer. He sat up, dangling his legs into the grave
before him, and bowed his head in his hands.
Adam moved to his side.
“Joe. Tell me what’s wrong!”
Joe moved his hands to his side, and
stared into the hole. After what seemed
like several minutes, he said, “Adam, how many women do you suppose there are
in Virginia City, in the saloons and girls’ boarding houses, like that?”
Adam was reluctant to answer. Finally, he said, “I don’t know, Little Joe.”
“She came to me!” Joe
exclaimed. “She wanted me! I would’ve had a hard time not going with
her, if you and Pa hadn’t been there!”
He looked at his brother, the torment evident in his eyes. “And then, she hated me! She hated both of us! She hated her life!”
Adam looked at him, wondering what
to say. He didn’t want to tell his
littlest brother that Elise had come to him because he appeared to be the most
gullible of the three of them.
“Do you - ” Joe was hesitant – “do you think that they
all – women like that - feel that way?”
Adam wondered. “I don’t know. Maybe.
It’s likely, at least.”
“How did they end up like
this?” Joe wiped a tear from his
eye.
“I don’t know,” replied Adam. “She – Marabelle - had a baby a few years ago - ”
“Yes, she had a baby!” exploded
Joe. “How many women, unmarried women,
have babies? Most of them get married
before the baby arrives! And even if
they don’t, do they end up like this?
Dying, with a dead child? Running
for their lives, and freedom? Hating
everyone about them?”
“I don’t know, Joe - ”
Joe stood, retrieved his shovel from
the ground where Adam had thrown it, and began digging a hole that Adam thought
might reach to China.
“You wanna tell me what’s goin’ on,
Adam?”
Adam looked at Hoss, and wondered
how to explain. He saw Jared, standing
back, watching and waiting for the fight to be over, and wondering if he should
now come back. Adam beckoned to
him. When the boy approached him, Adam
said, “Help Joe with the digging. I’m
going to talk to Hoss.” Adam put his arm
about his brother, led him aside, and explained as well as he could what had
happened.
Hoss’s brow furrowed. “When I rode up here, I went to the
house. No one was there, so I went to
the barn. I heard someone up in the
loft, but then I heard you ‘n Little Joe in a row, so I ran out back.” He glanced
back at his brother and Jared. He
could tell by the vicious jabs of the shovel that Joe was still angry. He
knew that what Joe and Adam had seen in the barn, and what had
transpired in the yard with Clint earlier, was enough to make any decent person
angry, but he wondered what was really bothering his brother. He suspected that it was more than his strong
sense of justice that was disturbed.
“Adam,” Hoss continued, “when do you
think this Clint fellow will come back?
You know he will come back – with lots of people or in secret.”
“Depends on how long it takes him to
get back to town, or wherever he’s going, and make his plans,” replied
Adam. “I wish I had more of an idea what
he was going to do.”
“At any rate, Jenny and the
young’uns had better get inside,” replied Hoss.
“And we all need to stay in one place.
Either the house, or the barn.”
Adam nodded. “The barn is the best for now.”
“I’m gonna go find Pa.” Hoss left Adam and took determined strides
toward the back door of the barn. Adam
went to tell Jenny to get in the barn with the children.
Hoss
saw his father climbing down the ladder, with a bundle of cloth in his
arms. “Pa!” he called.
Ben
turned. “Hoss!” he exclaimed. “Good to see you!”
“Pete
told me what was goin’ on after you sent him home,” said Hoss. “I came here as soon as I could.”
“We
found Adam,” Ben said. “He’s here.”
“I
know,” replied Hoss. “I just talked to
him and Little Joe, outside.” He looked
at the small stitched-up bundle in his father’s arms. “Is that the baby Adam was telling me about?
Ben
nodded solemnly. “Yes.”
A
noise above them made them all look upward.
Hoss quickly averted his gaze as he saw two women coming down the ladder
with their dresses flapping about as they descended. As they reached the floor of the barn, Hoss
glanced guardedly at them. He saw two
attractive women, conservatively dressed, who looked him over and huddled back,
as though afraid of him. Hoss removed
his hat and bowed his head courteously.
“Ma’am,” he said, nodding to each
of them. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to be – well, lookin’ at you as
you came down that ladder. I’m
sorry.” He watched them shyly.
Elise
and Mai Ling looked at this new man. Was
he ever big! They didn’t know that
they’d ever seen such a big man. He
certainly had good manners – at least outwardly. No telling how he’d act if they were alone,
which they might be, soon enough. Elise
watched him from a distance, while Mai Ling tried to hide behind her and ducked
her head. Hoss could tell that they were
afraid to go past him, and he said, “I don’t intend to hurt you none. My brother outside there, he’s just been
telling me about you all. We don’t
intend to let no one hurt you.”
The
women still hung back, unwilling to go near him. Ben cleared his throat and stepped between
them. “Hoss, why don’t you take this
baby outside - ” He was interrupted as
Jenny entered the barn, with David in her arms and Karen clinging to her
skirts. Adam followed closely behind them.
Mai
Ling felt dizzy, and sank down on the floor.
She had had little to eat all day, except for some stew and bread early
that morning, and a cookie that afternoon.
And now there was this big man in the barn; this huge man, who reminded
her of a gent who used to come to Clint’s parlor house to see her. She hated him. He hurt her, and she was afraid of him. She hadn’t dared tell Clint about it, as she
was afraid of him, too. But she had told
the Madam about him.
The
Madam had said, “Never mind, Mai Ling.
You know what he wants: Give it
to him. Act grateful. Act pleased. Act afraid.
Act however he wants you to act.
The men pay for you, and you give them what they want, no matter what. He always leaves you with a smile, so you
must be doing something right. Just
think about something else, honey, while he’s there. That may help. Just so long as he doesn’t know,” she quickly
added. “Someone like him could get
dangerous if he suspects you’re doing that.”
Seeing the terrified look on the celestial’s face, she said, “Don’t
worry. He’s likely to be movin’ on
soon. He’s a drifter. He likes you, and likes what you give him,
but he likely won’t be here long. Most
of these men aren’t.” Seeing she was
still reluctant, the Madam had added, “Remember, we’re here to serve these
men. We all have our problems, honey,
and our own sad stories about our past, and how we came to be here. Some of them are worse than yours. You’ve had a bad break. You make the best of it. If you don’t, I’ll send Clint up to help you
sort it out.”
With
that threat hanging over her head, Mai Ling had entertained her customer
countless times, attempting to down as much whiskey as possible and still
remain coherent before he came to see her.
Every time he left, she cried, then cleaned herself up, repaired her damaged
paint, and learned to greet the next customer with a smile. She became so good at it that the Madam of
the house made certain that she didn’t drink too much, and that there were no
knives or guns within her reach. She
knew her girls. After all, she had once
entertained such men herself.
Jenny
saw the women huddled near Ben, and noted the puzzled, strained expression on
Hoss’s face. She stepped forward. “Hoss, why don’t you take the ba –go
outside with Joe and Adam?” She took the
stitched up sack from Ben with her free hand, and attempted to give it to
Hoss. But Karen grabbed the bundle and
pulled on it, crying and moaning as she did so.
Jenny pulled it away from her, and gave it to Hoss. Karen grabbed hold of his legs, and refused
to let go.
Finally,
Adam stepped forward. He took the bundle
from Hoss, and quickly left for the yard.
Jenny futilely attempted to loosen her niece’s grip on Hoss’s legs. Hoss finally picked Karen up and held her
close. “It’s all right, honey, it’s ok,”
he assured her. “I’m sorry,
darling. It’s all right.” He stroked her hair as he continued calming
and assuring her, and when she finally stopped sobbing, carried the child to
the same stall she had been in earlier.
As
he set her down, she looked about.
“Where’s the baby?” she asked.
Before
Hoss could respond, Jenny replied, “The baby’s not here anymore.”
“But
where is she?” asked Karen.
Jenny
wondered how Karen knew that the baby was a girl. She must have heard some of the talk since
the child had been born. “She was very
sick, and died, Karen. That happens
sometimes.” She fumbled for comforting
words. “We’ll get to say goodbye at the
funeral, later.”
Karen
looked upset, but said no more. She put
her thumb in her mouth and sucked hard on it, trying to find comfort. Jenny lay David in the hay, and tried to pick
Karen up, but David screamed, and Karen wriggled away from her. Finally, Jenny left them both alone. Karen went to David and put a corner of her
favorite blanket over him. She held
another corner of the blanket in her hand, and sucked her thumb hard. David was suddenly quiet as he watched her,
and his eyes began to droop. He went to
sleep, and Karen sank into slumber shortly after.
Elise
and Mai Ling watched as Hoss comforted Karen.
After the children were asleep, they continued to stare at him. He looked at them, and they dropped their
eyes. When Elise dared to look back at
him, he was directly in front of her. “Ma’am,”
he said, “why don’t you both come here and rest near Miss Jenny and the
young’uns? You both most be tuckered out
from your long trip.”
Elise
couldn’t believe the gentleness of his touch as he took her by the arm and led
her into the stall. This was one man she
wouldn’t mind entertaining, if he was as gentle in other ways as he was right
now. But Hoss spread a blanket out for
her, helped her down upon it, and then went back to Mai Ling. She shrank in fear from him as he stooped
near her. “I won’t hurt you, Ma’am,” he
quietly assured her, as he lifted her and laid her next to Elise. “You all just go to sleep, y’hear? It’s been a rough day for you, from what I’ve
heard. No one here is gonna let anything
happen to you.” With one final look at them,
he went back to his father.
Elise
and Mai Ling looked at one another. They
watched and waited for a man, or men, to return, but no one did. Mai Ling heard soft, regular breathing next
to her, and saw her friend had fallen asleep.
She suddenly realized how exhausted she was, and thought perhaps, for
now, she could sleep without fear. Maybe
these people really wouldn’t allow anything else to happen to her. Perhaps they could get away from Clint after
all. She could at least sleep for a
little while….a few minutes…. Her eyes
closed, and she sank into an exhausted slumber.
Adam
approached his brother. Joe was helping
Jared finish the second, bigger grave now.
Adam desperately hoped that the second grave would not be necessary, but
after what he had witnessed in the loft, he knew it would be. Cradling his burden in one arm, he laid a
hand on Jared’s shoulder. “Go back into
the barn,” he told the boy. “There’s a pie in the basket I brought in. You might want to help yourself, and pass it
around.” Jared looked from Adam to the
bundle he carried, then to Little Joe.
He started to say something, but thought better of it. He leaned his shovel against a nearby tree
and went back to the barn.
Little
Joe had stopped working, and watched his brother lay the baby in the smaller
grave. “Pa promised he’d get a preacher
to say something over her.”
“It’ll
have to be later,” said Adam. “There’s
no preacher here right now, and we need to get her into the ground.”
“We
can at least say something ourselves.”
Adam
looked at his brother. “All right,
Joe. Do you want to, or shall I?”
Joe
glared at Adam. “I can do it, if you’re
afraid.”
Adam
ignored the insult, and bowed his head, waiting.
Joe
cleared his throat, and said in a small voice, “Dear Lord, accept this little
soul into heaven, and let her rest in peace with you forever. And Lord,” Joe’s voice broke at this point,
and his breath trembled as he drew a deep gulp into his lungs, “prepare her
mother to meet you. Let her find her
peace, at last.” Joe’s head remained
bowed as tears spilled down his cheeks.
He took a deep breath, turned his back to his brother, and impatiently
wiped his face.
Adam
began shoveling dirt into the grave, hoping his brother would have time to
compose himself. After a moment, Joe
helped him. Together they tamped the
hump of loose dirt down, and put their shovels against the tree. Adam pulled his brother down into the shade
next to him, and took a swig from a canteen resting on the ground near him
before offering it to his brother. “Time
we rested a while,” he said. After a
moment’s silence, he asked, “You want to tell me what else is bothering you?”
After
a long silence, Joe began to speak in such a quiet voice that Adam could hardly
hear him. “About a year ago, I met this
girl. I was on my way home, after
running some errands in town for Pa, and thought I’d stop off at the Silver
Dollar for a drink or two before I left town.”
He swallowed, looked at his brother, then continued. “There was this new girl there. Usually, the girls in those places are all
over you, but not her. She hung
back; seemed a little shy. I left the table where I was with my friends,
and went over to her. She was - ” Joe searched for the right word –
“sweet. I know that doesn’t seem right,
for a girl in a place like that, but she was.
I talked with her for a while, and found out, when I asked, that her
parents and brother had died. She didn’t
have anyplace to go, and had ended up there.”
Joe hung his head. “It didn’t
seem fair to me, that she didn’t have any more of a chance than that. I thought she deserved better, and I told her
so.” He paused for a long time.
“Well,
I went back several times, to see her.
And one time, she was real upset.
She tried to hide it from me, but I could tell. I asked her what was wrong, but she wouldn’t
tell me. Finally, I insisted she tell
me.” Joe looked at the dusty road beyond
the house, and the wilted leaves on the trees beyond it. “Suddenly, this guy appeared from out of
nowhere. He said he wouldn’t have men
like me hassling his girls. He grabbed
her by the arm and dragged her upstairs.
I tried to stop him, but several of the guys in the saloon pulled me
away, saying he owned the place and all the girls in it. There was no way to stop him, they told me.”
Joe
impatiently wiped another tear away. “I
finally had to give up and leave, but I went back. First, they wouldn’t let me in to see
her. I got thrown out that day. Then, later - ” He squeezed his eyes closed and sobbed. “Later,” he continued when he could speak,
“they said she had left. I finally
bribed one of the other girls with a lot of money. She told me this girl had been pregnant, and
that man had made her get rid of the baby, and had taken her away.” Another tear escaped. “She didn’t deserve that Adam; she didn’t deserve that! She was a sweet girl, who never had a
chance!”
Adam
glanced about him, glad to see that Jenny and the children were out of sight
and couldn’t hear the conversation. He
tightened his arm about Joe, attempting to comfort him. “What was her name?”
Joe lifted his head from his
hands. “Sylvia. Her name was Sylvia.”
“Did you ever find out what happened
to her?”
“No. No. I
never did. I was told she went to San
Francisco, and I looked there, when I went there with Pa, but I never found
her. That’s why I wanted to go on those
trips with Pa so bad a couple of times, because of her. I looked all over, and asked, too. No one had ever heard of her. I offered to pay people a lot of money if
they could tell me about her. But nobody
knew anything. I never found out any
more about her.” Joe hung his head and
cried, impatiently wiping his face, only to find more tears.
Adam put his hand firmly on his
brother’s shoulder, careful not to baby him, but enough to offer him
comfort. He stared at the mounded hump
of dirt before him, the mute testimony of a futile life, and wished he’d
realized what his brother had been going through those times he’d insisted he
accompany their pa on trips over the mountains.
He would have been more understanding of Joe’s desire to go, and might
have been able to help him, had he known.
Instead, he’d been resentful of being the one stuck on the ranch, the
responsible one who could help negotiate the timber contracts, the reliable one
who could check out the mining operations, or the oldest son who had to take
charge of the ranch simply because he was the oldest.
“Were you - ” Adam hesitated. “Were you the – the father?”
Joe looked up sharply. “No!” he exclaimed. “No!
Never! I couldn’t have done that
to her, Adam! Not after I found out
about what had happened to put her there!
But I still would have helped her!
I wanted to help her! But I
couldn’t find her, Adam, I couldn’t find her anywhere!”
Adam nodded. He understood. He understood all too well. He looked at the second gaping grave, and
wondered how long they had to wait before it was filled. He wished he could take his brother away from
what he knew had to come, but realized that they all had to stay together. “We’ve done all we can out here,” he finally
said. “We’d best go back in the
barn. You know that fellow, Clint, won’t
be long now in coming back.”
Joe nodded. He wiped his face, both men gathered their
shovels, and returned to the barn.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hoss scoured his plate clean of all
the crumbs. He loved Miss Jenny’s
blackberry pie, and her mother’s pies as well.
They were both such good cooks that he couldn’t tell one’s cooking from
another. He thrust down a pang of guilty
conscience as he thought of what Hop Sing might think. He wouldn’t dare say anything about how good
their cooking was at home. But he wasn’t
at the Ponderosa. He looked anxiously at
Jared, who had given him the piece of pie.
“Hey, Jared, is there any more of that pie there left? That’s one good piece of home cookin’ if I
ever tasted it.”
Jared shook his head.
“Nope. Sorry, Hoss. You got the last piece.”
“Dadburn
it! How can that be? You have a piece, so do I, and who else? Ain’t no one else here to have one!”
“Aw,
Hoss, c’mon!” exclaimed Jared. “I gave a
piece to Aunt Jenny, and saved some for these women who are here. I had to save pieces for Adam and Joe, or
they’d be sore. And your pa and the
doctor, too. So the pieces had to be
small.”
“Well,
some of them are asleep!” exclaimed Hoss.
“Or busy! They can eat something
else later, can’t they?” Hoss licked his
plate.
“No!”
exclaimed Jared. “They’ll all be
hungry. We need to save them something!”
“Save
us what?” came a voice from the doorway.
“A
piece of blackberry pie,” replied Jared, relieved to see someone who was
actually in time to retrieve some food before Hoss claimed it. “You told me to pass it around, and I’ve had
a dickens of a time saving a piece for everyone!”
“I
can’t imagine why,” replied Adam dryly.
After
witnessing the near battle that took place over distribution of the remaining
slivers of pie, Jenny announced she was going back to the house for more food.
“That’s
a good idea,” said Hoss enthusiastically.
“I’ll go with you, and help you carry it out.”
“Oh,
no you don’t!” protested Joe and Adam together.
“If you go with her, there won’t be anything left to carry out!” After more discussion, it was agreed that Joe
would go with Jenny. Hoss insisted that
neither of them eat anything while in the house. They returned with apples, cheese, some
loaves of bread, and fruit preserves, as well as some more water. Jenny shooed the men away, and distributed
the food.
Mai
Ling stirred, and Hoss hastened to her side.
He poured her a cup of water, and offered it to her as she sat up. Seeing the big man hovering over her, she
shrank away. “It’s all right, Ma’am,”
Hoss assured her. “Are you
thirsty?” With trembling hands she
accepted the cup. “We got some food
right here beside you, Ma’am,” Hoss continued, pulling back the napkin from the
plate next to her to show her. “Eat up,
when you feel like it.” Hesitantly, Mai
Ling lifted the plate onto her lap. She
hungrily ate the cheese, bread, and apple, and shyly refused the preserves when
Jenny and Hoss offered it to her for her bread.
Hoss
watched her as she ate. Jenny noticed
that the Chinese girl trembled under his gaze, and started to invent a reason
for Hoss to go outside. But before she
could speak, Hoss said, “Ma’am my name is Hoss.
Hoss Cartwright.” When he
received no response, he said, “Would you mind tellin’ me your name,
Ma’am?”
For
a moment, he thought she wouldn’t answer.
Looking down at the floor, she finished a bite of cheese. “Mai Ling,” she whispered.
“Mai
Ling,” mused Hoss. “That’s a right
pretty name.” He watched her for a
moment, noticing that she sat completely still, not eating any longer. “Aren’t you hungry any more, Ma’am? Uh, I mean, Mai Ling? There’s plenty more food – don’t be shy!” When she only looked at the floor and
shuddered, Hoss’s brow furrowed in concern.
“Mai Ling? Is something wrong?”
Jenny
had watched the interaction between the gentle giant and the tiny Chinese girl,
and took a deep breath. “Mai Ling,” she
said softly. “No one here will hurt
you.”
“No,
Ma’am!” Hoss agreed whole-heartedly. “We
won’t let anyone hurt you, will we, Adam?
Joe?”
“Hoss
won’t hurt you, either,” Jenny added.
“No one here will.”
Hoss
stared at Jenny in shock. He looked back
at Mai Ling, realizing for the first time that she was still afraid of
him. “Ma’am,” he said contritely, “I’m
sorry I’ve frightened you. I wouldn’t
hurt you. I’ll go and – and just leave
you be.” As he rose to go, Mai Ling’s
shoulders slumped forward, and tears rolled down her cheeks. Jenny went to her side and put her arm about
the young girl. Hoss looked back at her,
troubled and unable now to leave. He
slowly returned, and stooped down a few
feet from her side. “Ma’am – Miss Mai
Ling,” he said, “is there anyone we can contact for you? Any family, or friends, who could come and
help you? You sure do seem to need some
friends, and if there’s anyone else who we can get in touch with who would do
something for you, we’d be glad to do it.”
When
she didn’t answer, Jenny added, “We’d be glad to help you. We can wire someone, or write a letter, if
you need us to do so.”
Mai
Ling shook her head as the tears rolled down her cheeks. “There is no one, no one,” she said. “Only my two friends here. No one else.
They are my only friends.”
“Do
you have any family? Perhaps in San
Francisco?” asked Jenny, with a glance at Hoss.
She felt the girl tremble, but received no answer for a long time.
“No,
no family,” Mai Ling finally cried. “No
family, only two friends. No one
else.” She cried harder as she
remembered Clint’s visit to this place,
and knew he would be back. She wished
again for the courage to take her life, not only so she would not have to
endure his revenge, which she knew would be unspeakably brutal, but so she
would not be forced to watch what he would do to these kind people. She knew what he could do. He had related to her, with great relish,
what he had done to the men who had tried to assist Elise in eluding him
before.
“Is
your family dead?” asked Jenny. “Perhaps
we can help you.”
Mai
Ling continued to cry.
“Were
you sold into this life?” Jenny looked
up, surprised to hear Adam’s question.
All eyes turned to him, then back to Mai Ling.
Mai
Ling buried her head in her arms and refused to answer. The others exchanged glances.
“Where
are you from, Mai Ling?” Jenny asked.
“I
am from China,” the girl hiccuped between sobs.
“What
happened, to bring you to this life?” Adam persisted.
Mai
Ling stopped crying. She was drained,
and wished these people would leave her alone.
She could not reveal her shame, or bring shame on her father, by
revealing her people. But she was tired
of running, and weary of her life. What
did it matter, if these people knew? “My
father, he had my brother take me to a ship,” she finally said. “When my cousin meet me in San Francisco, he
supposed to take me to his home. But he
sell me instead, and I – I live this life I hate. I wish to die, but I cannot. Now, I run away, with friends, but Clint, he
owns me, and will come and take me back.
He is very bad man. I wish to
leave him, but have no place to go.” She
shut her eyes and willed herself to stop before mentioning their suicide
pact. These people would not understand
such things.
Hoss
slowly stood. His brow furrowed and his
mouth drew into a hard, straight line.
He turned around, and said, “Don’t you worry, Miss Mai Ling. We’ve got a Chinese cook at our place, and
he’s like a member of the family. He has
lots of relatives in San Francisco.
He’ll know who your cousin is, Ma’am, or he’ll be able to find out, and
we’ll get him! He’ll pay for what he’s
done to you!”
“No,
no!” cried the Chinese girl. “He is my
honorable father’s brother’s son! You
must not do this!”
They
stared at her in amazement. Ben came
around the corner, the expression on his face revealing that he had heard the
conversation . “Her family would
probably disown her, if they knew what happened,” he said. “If she needs help, and she certainly does,
it’s up to us to provide it.”
“That’s
not gonna stop me from dealin’ with this cousin of hers!” exclaimed Hoss. “I’ll get him, and Hop Sing can at least help
me, if it’s the last thing I do!”
“That
won’t help her now,” said Jenny.
At
the same time, Ben said, “Son, we need to think about right now. We can deal with her cousin later.”
A
horse neighed outside. Everyone turned
nervously toward the window. Adam
grabbed a rifle and looked carefully outside.
Hoss and Ben grabbed their guns, and went to the barn door. Joe drew his gun and stayed near Jenny, who
huddled near the children.
“We’re in trouble.” Adam’s grim report made chills run down
Jenny’s spine.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Here’s the sheriff, the Baptist
preacher, and many fine citizens of Virginia City, along with many of the
not-so-fine citizens, all headed up by our friend, Clint.” Adam rested the rifle in the window, and
loosened his gun in his holster. He
noted silently that someone had given Clint a gun since they had last seen him.
Ben started to swing the barn doors
shut.
“They lock from the outside,” Jenny
told him. “You can’t lock them out.”
Mai Ling huddled down into the hay,
curling herself up and hiding her face in her hands. Her weeping and gasps could be heard by all
of them, and Jenny was convinced that they could also be heard outside. Elise sat up straight, reaching instinctively
for the knife at her hip. It wasn’t
there.
She looked at Adam, standing near
the window above her. “Adam,” she said,
“I need my knife. The one you took from
me. We need to help you, with all these
folks here against you. That knife is
all I have left. Unless you want to give
us some guns?”
Adam looked at her with a distracted
yet penetrating gaze. “No guns to spare,
Ma’am. Sorry.”
“Then give me my knife!” she
insisted.
Adam didn’t respond. There was as yet no challenge from outside.
Suddenly, he caught Elise’s hands as she felt around his belt. “Sit down!” he commanded. “Stay out of the way, and keep away from the
windows and the door!” Elise looked at
his lowered brows, clenched jaw, and flashing eyes, and backed away from
him. As she slumped down next to Mai
Ling, Adam turned his attention back outside.
To his surprise, Clint was talking
quietly with the crowd. When someone
raised his voice in anger, and a murmur of agreement was heard rumbling
throughout the mob, Clint raised his hand and spoke softly, so quietly that
Adam couldn’t hear what was said, though he cocked his head and strained his
ears. He saw Sheriff Roy Coffey approach
Clint. Roy shook his head and looked
intently at Clint as he spoke to him.
Clint smiled, waved his hand in a deprecating gesture, and attempted to
subdue the lawman with a soft word. Roy
nodded reluctantly, or so it seemed to Adam, and looked apprehensively at the
barn. The crowd drifted back, and seemed
willing to wait.
Adam noticed several men go into the
house, and watched closely. They soon came
out, shaking their heads and said something to Clint, who spoke to them,
approached the barn door from a respectful distance, and waited. Adam saw the men and women behind Clint fan
out about the barn. Once they stopped
moving, Clint raised his hand above his head.
“Hellooo! Cartwrights!
Miss Barnhart! We’d like to talk
to you, if you don’t mind! Please come
out where we can see you. No one here
means you any harm! We just want to
talk!”
Adam didn’t take his eyes off
Clint. Jenny watched Adam, wondering
what to do.
“We know you’re harboring three
fugitives,” Clint continued. “They’ve
done a lot of people around here harm, stealing from them, corrupting their
menfolk, and spreading lies about these parts.
I’ve come here to undo the damage, make reparations for the harm they’ve
done, and to take them back into my care.
Surely you’re not going to try to stop me from making amends to these
fine folks who’ve come with me?”
Jenny listened in disbelief. How could this man sound so charitable and
solicitous? She put her hand on her
throat, wincing as she pressed on a bruise left by Clint’s ruthless grasp. She looked at Adam, but he didn’t turn his
eyes from the window where he stood guard above her.
“I only want to help,” said Clint solicitously. “These girls have strayed, but I’ll take them
back. It’s my duty, after all. Now, I know they’ve stolen from you and other
folk about here, as well as further away on their roaming about. You have a strange mule in your barn, don’t
you? They gave it some of your horses’
feed, didn’t they? They stole that mule,
and stole the feed from you. I’m willing
to take full responsibility for these young girls, and you won’t have a thing
to explain or account for. Just come
out, and we’ll talk about it.”
“That’s not going to work, Clint,”
Adam shouted out the window. “We know
too much – about you, and about these girls.
Don’t think you’ll get away with this so easily!”
Clint smiled forbearingly and spread
his hands. “My friend, I don’t blame you,”
he said expansively. “Doubtless, you’ve
heard tales about me, stories that malign my character. These young girls are rebellious, and need a
firm hand. When they ran away, they felt
they had to tell hard-luck stories to survive.
Unfortunately,” he continued reluctantly, “they did a lot more than
that. But I’m willing to take them back
and do my duty by them. That can’t be
done at the end of a gun, Adam Cartwright.
Please, put your guns away, and come outside. Let’s talk like civilized men.” He glanced at the crowd behind him, and
exulted inwardly. They were waiting,
hanging on his every word. This was
going just the way he wanted it to go.
Jenny rose from her place beside the
slumbering children, and walked toward the barn door.
“Where are you going?” demanded
Adam.
Jenny stopped behind Ben and Hoss,
who were peering out through a crack in the barn door. “I’m going out there,” she said. “This is my parents’ property.”
“You’re not going out there,” said
Ben. “Hoss and I will go out, and talk
to them. You stay in here.” He swung one of the wide doors open, and
walked slowly outside, followed by Hoss.
Ben
and Hoss stopped several paces outside the barn door. They noticed that several men near the edges
and back of the crowd drew their guns and aimed straight for them.
“What do you want, Clint?” demanded
Ben roughly.
“Why, Mr. Cartwright, I’ve told you
what I want,” Clint protested mildly. “I
want to help these girls, and take them
back home, but you keep me from doing so!”
“Don’t play games with me!” Ben’s
eyes flashed angrily. “These young
ladies have had more than a few things to say about you and about their life
with you, and I have no intention of turning them over to you. You and I, as well as more than a few
citizens gathered here, know that you are not what you’re pretending to be!”
Clint smiled patiently. “Mr. Cartwright,” he said, “let me explain
the situation to you. These young ladies
are – well, they’re free spirits; wild and independent. They don’t like anyone telling them what to
do. Now, many of these folks will attest
that I’m a member in good standing in the Congregational Church in Silver
City.” Several folks murmured, and Hoss
and Ben saw several heads nod. They
noted that the ones with the guns drawn did most of the nodding and affirming,
and that others followed their lead.
“These girls,” Clint continued
reluctantly, “are rebellious. They’re
disobedient, and ungrateful.” Several
angry exclamations came from the crowd.
“Now mind you,” Clint continued, raising his voice above the disruption,
“I won’t turn them away. They’re young,
and can mend their ways. But they’ve
committed many crimes, many of them of a grievous nature; crimes that may stain them for the rest of
their lives.” He sighed, and looked
gloomily at the ground as though burdened with the weight of the trespasses of
his young charges. “I’m willing to
reimburse Miss Jenny’s folks for the cost of the feed they stole for that mule,
as well as for any other expenses they’ve incurred or inconveniences they’ve
encountered with these young ladies, just as I’m willing to repay the cost of
the mule they stole from the folks near Carson City, and to recompense you, Mr.
Cartwright, for the time and effort you’ve spent on them.” He smiled graciously. “Now, I understand that some of their – sins
– cannot be atoned for with money. But
if you hand them over, I promise you that I will do my best to see that they
are reformed. They just need a firm
hand, that’s all.”
Even Adam felt a chill run down his
back as he watched from the side window of the barn. Mai Ling pulled away from Elise, who had
gathered her close and hugged her fiercely, and stumbled away. Joe glanced at her, but turned his attention
again to the mob outside. Adam kept his
eyes fixed on the men at the back of the crowd.
Jenny could tolerate no more. She suddenly rose and went out the door,
standing first behind Ben and Hoss, then moving beside them. “Don’t listen to this man,” she said. “He’s not what he wants you to think he
is. He was by here earlier, and he did
this.” She pulled down her collar and
revealed her neck. Many in the crowd
murmured and gasped at the sight of the dark bruises. “He grabbed me and threatened me, and my
niece, when I wouldn’t tell him where those young ladies were,” she
continued. “He claims to care about
them. That’s not what he said while he
was here! He’s angry, vengeful, and hateful,
and has anything but protective and fatherly instincts toward them. They’re scared to death of him!”
“The fact is,” said Hoss, “this fine
man, Clint, runs a parlor house in Silver City.
These young girls hiding here are trying to get away from him, and away
from that kind of life. And we aim to see to it that they do. My brother Adam, he saw this man threaten
Miss Jenny and her niece. We have no
intention of watching him walk away free, or giving him these girls.”
The crowd rumbled, and a few people
shouted their disbelief. “You’re lying,
Cartwright!” came a voice from the back of the crowd. “We’ve heard how these women have been going
from one place to another, tempting the men, and stealing from decent folk,
just to live like hussies!”
Clint stepped forward. He glared at Jenny with pure hatred, and
said, “It wasn’t me who gave her those bruises about her throat! I heard the girls were here, and came just in
time to see that so-called Negro doctor, Doc Gabriel, grab her around the
throat, and tell her what a slut she was for even trying to help my girls!”
“There, you see?” came an angry
shout from the edge of the mob. “He
tries to help them, and gets run off, because they’d rather believe those
hussies than decent folk! Look what they
did to him! He’s all scratched
up!” The crowd advanced. Jenny, Ben, and Hoss stood their ground.
“Is getting these girls, whom you
don’t even know, worth some of you getting killed?” shouted Ben. “Because that’s what’s going to happen if
this goes on.”
The crowd stopped and quieted, but
one man pushed his way to the front. A
silver star glinted from Roy Coffey’s vest as he approached. “Ben,”
he said. “I agreed to give Clint
here a chance to present his case to you before I started talking. I didn’t intend for any of this to come to
shooting. These folks all insisted on
coming along, and they’re all riled up.
Ben, there have been rumors of – of – disreputable women stealing from
folks, among other things, all around these parts.” Roy looked down and cleared his throat. “Now, rumors aren’t fact, I realize
that. And since no one has made any
complaint of theft, or of – well, of any kind - to me, I don’t have any call to
arrest anyone. Ben, this man has
documents claiming that the young women he says are hiding here are in debt to
him.” He started to pull some papers
from his pocket inside his vest, but Ben waved him aside.
“You don’t need to show me his
documents,” said Ben. “I’m sure they’re
all legal and binding. He’s too smart to do otherwise. If they’re good enough to convince you, I
don’t need be convinced. But I tell you, these girls have been in the business
of ‘entertaining’ so-called gentlemen,
and they want out. That’s why they ran
away, and I intend to see to it that he doesn’t get his hands on them, no
matter what ‘documents’ he may have putting them in his debt.”
Roy Coffey nodded knowingly. “I just wanted you to know exactly what
you’re getting into, Ben.”
Jenny mustered her courage and spoke
up. “Doc Gabriel did not give me these
bruises,” she repeated, touching her throat.
She pointed at Clint. “That man
did. He wants these girls, and for no
good purpose, either.”
Many
in the crowd shook their heads. “You’re
helping them because you’re like them!” someone shouted.
“I believe some of you gentlemen can
explain why your friend, Clint, wants these young ladies,” said a voice behind
her. Jenny turned to see Doc Gabriel in
the doorway to the barn. His hands were
bloodstained, as were his clothes; his
face and hair were drenched with sweat, and he clenched his fists as he emerged
outside. “I know many of you fine
men.” Gabriel looked about the
crowd. “Don’t I?” As his eyes swept across the crowd, faces
dropped, one by one, before his stare.
The men at the back turned their guns toward him, unsure of what to do.
“What?!” mocked Gabriel. “Isn’t anyone going to come forward, and say
what this fine gentleman wants? You’re all gentlemen yourselves, aren’t
you? There’s nothing to fear from
telling the truth, is there?”
The only response he received was a
slight movement toward the edges of the mass of people, as men moved outward
and back. Ben and Hoss instinctively
moved in front of Gabriel. Jenny felt a
hand on her arm, and turned to see Joe pulling her into the barn. “Stay inside,” he said. Once she was back near Adam, Joe moved to the
back door of the barn, listening closely.
“Why, gentlemen, I’m surprised at
you!” mocked Gabriel. “How many of you
have told me that you’re men, real men, not afraid to face anything, and that
any man would do as you have done? Do I
really have to say what you’ve done? Or
why I’ve needed to come to your houses, in secret, instead of Doc Martin, or
Doc Young? Do I have to repeat what I’ve
told you, and the unfortunate news I’ve had to give to – well, let’s say, other
members of your families? Of course, in
normal circumstances, that news is confidential, but these are not normal
circumstances!”
He looked about. No one would meet his eyes. “Let me tell you, gentlemen, these young
ladies are not being gently reared by this man!” He nodded toward Clint. “He may claim that they have strayed, but
just let me say that I find evidence of a long history of misuse of these
women! Now, I could go into details, but
I’m afraid I’d embarrass some of the fine folk here. And I know that some of you in particular would
not care to hear it for other reasons!
Am I right?”
People backed away, muttering to one
another.
“Tell me,” shouted Gabriel, “would a
man interested in the welfare of his young female charges allow them to be
abused in the way I have witnessed these women to be abused? Would he threaten them? Would he threaten someone who tried to give
them shelter, the way he threatened Miss Jenny?
And would he bring men to support him who know nothing about the
situation, but who know everything about his ‘business’?” Gabriel’s eyes traveled about the crowd
again. No one would meet his angry
glare. “Perhaps I should tell something
about this business,” said Gabriel slowly.
“Or, perhaps, one of you ‘gentlemen’
who is more familiar with it should tell it instead?”
Several men began walking hurriedly
away. One by one, others followed.
Clint shouted, “Don’t listen to
him! I saw him grab Miss Jenny about the
throat, and threaten her! That’s what
she gets, for going to someone like him for help! She talked to Doctor Young first, and he told
her to report these girls to the sheriff.
But she didn’t do it. She went
for this man. Now, he has attacked
her!” He turned to the crowd behind
him. “Are you going to stand for this
outrage?”
The angry murmur of the men who were
left rumbled about the barn. The men at
the edges of the crowd drew in, pushing the mob about them closer to the
Cartwrights. “Let’s get them!”
“Get that so-called ‘doctor’!”
“Those women are a menace to decent
folk everywhere!”
“We won’t stand to have this kind of
thing around here!”
“Stand back! If you won’t take care of this, we will!”
Ben was about to fire a shot over
the crowd and retreat into the barn when he saw an old man ride up on a
run-down, tired horse. He stopped next
to Ben and Hoss, sniffed loudly, and wiped his nose. “Howdy, folks,” the man shouted. “I think I might be able to help, if you’ll
be so good as to listen for a few minutes.”
He looked about, and the crowd
slowly quieted. “I know a lot of you,”
he continued, as he looked at them.
“I’ve seen you here in
“I heard Clint, here-” he bobbed his head politely toward Clint, who
was glowering at this unexpected interruption- “in town earlier, talkin’ about
these women that are here. He talked
about these ladies as though they’re dear to him. When he mentioned them by name, and described
them a little, I remembered who they were.
I think some of you may remember them, too,” he went on. “As a matter of fact, I know you do, because
I’ve seen you with them, in the past.
But you don’t know them because they’re friends, or your sisters, or
your friends’ daughters. You know them
for another reason. The same reason I
know them. You visited them at Clint’s
parlor house, for the same reason I visited there, a while back.”
Dead silence met this
revelation. Some of the men glanced
suspiciously at one another, but no one dared say a word.
“Now, I’m not saying I’m better than
any of you,” the man continued. “You all
know who I am. At least, most of you
do. I’m Charlie, the old washed-out
miner who everyone makes fun of now. I’m
the old drunk who can always be counted on to give everyone a laugh. Once in a while, though, I win a few poker
games against some of you gents – right? – and then, I know how to spend
it. Same as you do. See, I’m not really that much different from
the lot of you. I just don’t hide it so
well. And I knew these girls from Silver
City, just like some of you do. Problem is, I want to help them. You want to help yourselves.
“You
see, I can’t just sit by, get drunk like I usually do when things go wrong, and
let you do somethin’ bad to these girls.
And when I heard that you were comin’ out here, to Miss Jenny’s place,
well, I can’t see nothin’ happen against Miss Jenny. She’s a real lady. One of the finest I ever seen. She took an interest in Miss Roberta, when
she was sick, back a couple months, outside the Silver Dollar. And she talked to me, real nice-like. Some ladies, they won’t even look at the
likes of me. Most of ‘em cross to the
other side of the street. But Miss
Jenny, she talked to me, and was polite, and saw to it that Miss Roberta, who
was a friend of mine, got some help.
Some of you knew Miss Roberta, didn’t you?” He looked at the crowd. “Yep, lots of you did. So did I.
Ain’t no shame in that. Is
there?”
Charlie
turned aside and gave a loud series of coughs, holding his chest as he bent
over. “Many of you know these ladies,
just like you knew Roberta. You should
be glad that there’s someone around who will help them. Why don’t you step in, and lend a hand? After all, you’ve been quick enough to show
up at other times. Why not now, when
they need someone helpin’ them?”
Another man suddenly rode away. Someone else quickly followed. Several others left in quick succession,
first trotting from the crowd, then galloping toward town. Many who were left shook their heads in
bewilderment and stepped away from Clint.
“Well, Clint?” Ben met his adversary’s eyes
unflinchingly. “What now? We’re not giving you these young ladies, or
anyone else. And I have the feeling if
you show your face around here again anytime soon, you’ll be less than welcome,
to put it mildly.”
Clint’s
venomous glare nearly made Ben’s hair stand on end. “You’re forgetting something, Ben
Cartwright,” he hissed from behind clenched teeth. “Not only do I feel obliged to see to it that
these women mend their ways, they owe me money.
The sheriff has documents proving that.”
His menacing, sibilant voice and narrowed eyes reminded Ben of a
poisonous snake coiling and readying itself for a strike. “I have every right to take them with me, so
they can ‘work off’ their debt, and neither you nor anyone else can stop
me. Isn’t that right, Sheriff?”
“He’s within his rights, Ben,”
Sheriff Coffey reluctantly said. “I
can’t prove otherwise – not yet.” Clint
glanced sharply at the sheriff’s last remark, but smiled triumphantly.
“I’d just like to ask one thing,”
said Charlie. “Mr. Clint, I understand
that there was a question in Silver City a while ago about the dead body of a
little girl, no more than seven or eight years old -”
“Shut up, old man!” interrupted
Clint. “What do you know about that, or
anything in Silver City? You’re just an
old drunk, who nobody listens to anymore!”
“I used to live in Silver City,” an
undeterred Charlie explained. “And when
that little girl was found, why, a couple of witnesses swore they saw some of
your men throw her in that alley the night before. And -”
“Shut up!” Clint’s shout was accompanied by several
choice epithets that made Jenny wince and cover her sleeping niece’s ears. “None of that had anything to do with
me! Those men lied, just to malign my
character, and nothing was ever proven against me!”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Sheriff
Coffey, who remembered the incident.
“And the witnesses mysteriously disappeared. Their bodies were found cleverly hidden in an
abandoned silver mine a couple of months later.”
“So somebody performed justice for
me,” snarled Clint. “Did me a favor, and
I never had the chance to thank them, because I don’t know who they are. But they saved me from defending myself
against a murder I never committed!”
“Only problem is,” continued
Charlie, “I saw the little girl in your establishment the night she was
murdered. I wondered what she was doin’
there, child that she was, and so did several other men there. The Madam of the place at the time saw her
same time we did, and ran to her, and got her out of sight quick, but the
damage was done. We’d seen her, a little
girl, dressed like a fast woman, in a place like that. Apparently, she wasn’t supposed to be
anywhere in sight, was she? What
happened, Clint? Were you so angry with
her that you beat her to death? Or did
you quickly kill her and get rid of her, so no one could see her there again? Maybe you used her so hard that she
died. Whichever way it was, you took
care of the problem, didn’t you? Did you
kill the men who dumped her body, since they’d been seen, too? No one saw them after that night, either.”
Fear entered Clint’s eyes as he
stared at Charlie. The old drunk! Who could have thought that he’d ever know so
much? He would’ve shot him back in
Virginia City had he known he was such a threat. He couldn’t do that now. The sheriff was here, and too many other
people as well. They would see, and he’d
be charged with murder. He glanced out
the corner of his eye at his henchmen, whom he had told to stay at the fringes
of the crowd and keep their eye on everyone and their guns on the
Cartwrights. They were looking at each
other, realizing they were found out.
One of them backed away, and the others followed. They hadn’t counted on this. These people knew too much.
“I heard about that little girl,”
said Roy Coffey. “There were too many
strange circumstances surrounding her death, and too many people afraid to say
anything afterwards. It looks as though
your luck is changing, Clint. Perhaps
you’d like to come with me to my office in town, and answer a few questions?”
“Maybe the good people of Virginia
City would like to know about that little girl,” said Ben. “We should tell them, the first chance we
get.”
“I’d be happy to help you do that,
Mr. Cartwright,” said Charlie. “I’ll
tell them. I may be old Charlie the
drunk to some, but I do know what I and a few others of this town and Silver
City saw that night. It’s about time
that the truth came out.”
Clint backed away as his friends
left him. “Don’t think you’ll get away
with this,” he snarled. “I may have to
wait, but I’ll be back. I’ll get all of
you! I’ve never lost a battle yet! Just wait!
I have friends in high places, not only in Silver City, but everywhere
I’ve ever been or plan on going. Even if
you take me in, you won’t be able to make any charges stick to me! No one can prove a thing!”
Ben didn’t doubt it. “Then it’s a good thing that you and your
friends won’t ever be in Virginia City or Silver City again, isn’t it? That way, no one who has been here or there
will ever have to bring up any of your – questionable behavior.”
“Go, Clint!” Roy commanded, holding
his gun on him. “If you or any of your
friends show your faces around here again, you’ll be shot on sight.” Clint glanced at Ben, who met his gaze
evenly. He looked at Hoss, and then saw
Adam’s rifle pointed at him from the side window. This battle wasn’t for him. At least, not now. He turned and rode away, not without a few
choice words which made even the Cartwrights wince. He rode toward the road, as though to go back
to Virginia City. Once near the back of
the barn, he suddenly turned toward the building and drew a gun. Joe pressed against the wall and watched him
carefully. Clint saw him move, and fired
quickly. The bullet ricocheted off the
doorway close to Joe, who dodged, then immediately fired back. Shots rang out as the other men ran around
the barn. Clint’s horse reared. He fired wildly, yanked on the reins, and
galloped away. Ben, Hoss, and Roy
watched as he left the road and headed across the dusty ground and parched
grass toward the hills in the distance.
“Where do you suppose he’s goin’?”
asked Hoss.
“Someplace where nobody knows him,”
replied Ben grimly.
“He’ll get as far away as possible
until he feels it’s safe to come back,” said Roy. “And if I know him, he knows he won’t be safe
in these parts for a long, long time.”
“Pa!
Adam! Hoss!” Joe’s scream tore through the silence
following Clint’s departure. “Come here! Quick!”
Ben, Adam, Hoss, and Gabriel raced into the barn.
“Over here!” shouted Joe.
Ben charged toward his son’s voice,
and nearly ran into several people. He
shoved through them, and found Joe stooped by Mai Ling. He held her lower arm clasped tightly in his
hand. Despite his efforts, bright red
blood seeped from her arm, staining her dress, running onto her hand, onto
Joe’s hand and clothing, and the straw and floor beneath them. A scythe lay half buried in the straw next to
her.
“Doctor!!” shouted Ben. “Come quick!!”
Gabriel was right behind him. He combined his efforts with Joe’s to stem
the blood flow, and curtly directed Ben to his medical bag in the loft above
them, near Marabelle. Finally, he
managed to slow Mai Ling’s bleeding, and sew up her arm. He looked at her pale face, and knew that she
may not survive. Slowly and wearily he
rose, and slipping through the dark red puddle on the floor, went through the
barn to wash his hands at the pump outside.
“Excuse me.” A deep voice interrupted his thoughts as he
walked toward the door.
Gabriel looked up. A tall man in clerical garb stood next to
him. Beads of sweat stood out on his
face, his loosened collar was askew, and his clothes were dusty.
Gabriel
wiped some of the blood from his hands onto his pants. “What is it?” he asked skeptically. He had
seen too much this day to be very polite, or to grant this man much faith, whether
or not he was a man of the cloth .
The
minister wiped his brow with his hand, leaving a dirty smear across his
face. “My name is Alden. Though I have not yet had the pleasure of
making your acquaintance, I have seen you in town, and know you to be a man who
helps those in need.”
Gabriel
looked at him suspiciously. “What is it
you want?”
Alden
looked at him in awe, noting his bloodstained clothing, the weariness in his
face, and his stooped shoulders. “I’m a
circuit preacher, Doctor,” he replied. “I come here about every four to six weeks,
and I am acquainted with the Barnhart family.
When I heard this crowd was coming here, I had to come along, to try to
help the family however I could.” He
smiled apologetically. “I haven’t been
much help yet,” he admitted. “You and
the Cartwrights seem to have gotten rid of the troublemakers with no assistance
from me. But I would like to speak to
Miss Barnhart, and the young ladies who are taking refuge here, if they are
able to speak to me?” He looked with
concern at the men gathered about the other end of the barn, and at the
doctor’s bloody hands and clothes.
Gabriel
stared at him with narrowed eyes.
Reverend Alden shifted uncomfortably, wondering at his scrutiny. Finally, Gabriel pointed behind him. “Miss Jenny is back there. The girl in the loft, Marabelle, is
dying. You’d best see to her
quickly.” Raking the clergyman with a
final doubtful glare, he left the barn and washed up at the pump.
Adam
and the other men stepped aside, allowing the minister to draw near to Mai
Ling, but watching him closely. The man
stepped carefully over the bloody straw and slick floor. He stooped next to the girl without regard
for his clothes, and took her hand carefully in his. He rubbed her tiny hand between his two large
hands, and moved his lips in silent prayer.
As he rose and turned to Jenny, everyone around him saw the tears in his
eyes. “Miss Barnhart,” he said.
“Reverend Alden,” she replied. “Thank you for coming, but….” Her eyes strayed toward Mai Ling’s limp form
and pale face.
“I can only hope I’m not too late,”
he said in a strained voice. “In town, I
heard talk about a woman who was very ill having a baby. Of course, it wasn’t put in quite those words,
but-”
“She’s in the loft,” said Jenny quickly. “I don’t know if she’s – how she is. Her baby – well, she -” Jenny’s voice faltered.
“Her baby died,” said Adam. “We buried her out back, before everyone
showed up.” He led the Reverend to the
ladder. Jenny followed.
Suddenly,
Elise ran past, nearly knocking them over as she pushed past Reverend Alden and
Adam. “What are you doing?” she
demanded.
“We’re
going to see Marabelle,” explained Jenny.
“She
asked for a minister to say something over her baby,” said Adam quickly.
“I
only want to speak to her,” the minister assured Elise. “I intend no harm to her.”
Elise
stared at him hesitantly before she ascended the ladder ahead of them.
Adam
led the Reverend to Marabelle. As the
minister stooped next to her, the others stared in shock. Marabelle’s eyes were dull and sunken into
her waxen and pale face. Her breaths
were shallow, lifting slightly but swiftly the blanket which covered her.
Reverend Alden rested on his knees,
and grasped the young prostitute’s hand.
He touched her hot, fevered cheek, heedless of the sores on it. “Marabelle,” he said quietly, “can you hear
me?”
Marabelle’s eyes fluttered open, and
she looked at him steadily. “What do you
want?” she panted.
“I’m a minister, a man of God,” the
Reverend replied. “The doctor tells me
you’re dying.”
Marabelle tried to laugh. “Mister,” she said, “you may be dressed like
a minister, but you’re no more a man of God than that Negro is a doctor, or I’m
a lady.”
“What do you mean?” asked Alden.
“Any doctor who isn’t white, and who
tends publicly to the likes of me, is no real doctor,” panted Marabelle. “Just ask the people who’ve been around here
today. They’ll tell you. They’ll also inform you that I’m no
lady.” She shut her eyes and gasped for
breath. “And since you’re around here,
talking to me, you must not be any man of God.”
Reverend Alden’s brow knitted in
solicitous concern as he studied her, and he grasped her hand tightly. “Why do you say that?”
Marabelle tried to laugh again, but
coughed instead. She swallowed the blood
and bile that had risen into her mouth.
“I talked with men of God a long time ago, when I first needed them real
bad. They turned me away. They told me I deserved whatever I had coming
to me. Is that what you’ve come here to
tell me? If so, you might as well save
your breath. I’ve no interest in hearing
you tell me that my life is a monument to the wages of sin.”
“I came here because I was told a
woman was ill and dying, and because I’m a friend of the Barnharts.” The Reverend lifted her other hand. “I’ve also been told that your baby died.”
Marabelle turned her face away from
him, and cursed her softness as tears streamed from her eyes. “Yeah, well, it isn’t the first baby I’ve
had.” She yanked one hand free and impatiently
wiped her tears. “I’ve had three,
Mister, you hear? Three! I don’t know anything about the first
one. My father threw me out right after
it was born. I don’t even know if it was
a boy or a girl. The second one, Clint
made me get rid of. He brought a doctor
in, had me tied down, and the doctor took it, before it could ever be
born. I didn’t want that to happen, but
that didn’t matter much, now, did it? I
didn’t even know who the baby’s father was!
Might have been Clint; it might
have been someone else. I didn’t mean to
be with child, but Clint, he was furious.
I did everything he said to do, and the Madam too, but I still got
pregnant. And now, there’s this baby,
and she’s dead. I guess she’s the final
payment for my sins, huh?” She
laughed. “No – no. The final payment is yet to come. That’s what the priests and preachers told me
before. I’ve lived in sin, and now I’ll
die in sin. Right?”
Reverend Alden took her face in both
of his hands. “There is no sin that God
will not forgive,” he said.
Marabelle stared back at him. “Well,
why didn’t somebody tell me that before?” she hissed. “When I needed help, why didn’t they tell me
that, and help me, instead of telling me how bad I was, and how my life from
now on must be payment for past sins?”
Tears streamed down her face as she stared at the man of God. “Clint was the only person who would help
me!”
The minister abruptly let go of her
and buried his face in his hands. When
he lifted his eyes, they were wet with tears.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t
know why no one would help you. We’re
supposed to help one another, but people often fail each other.” He took hold of her right hand. “Someone
should have given you the help you needed years ago, instead of preaching on
the wages of sin.” He was interrupted by
a gasp and a wheeze, Marabelle’s attempt at a laugh.
“Mister,” said Marabelle, “Let me
make myself clear.” Her voice was raspy,
and she was breathing harder. “There’s
help, and there’s ‘help.’ Many people
have tried to ‘help’ me in the years since I had my first baby. Lots of them have been ‘good’ people.
Sometimes, they’re the first ones to show up when things get really awful. They think they’ll be bad with me, have
their fun, and then go back to being good again. Trust me, they only make things worse.”
Tears coursed down Reverend Alden’s
face. “Please forgive us,” he
whispered. “Forgive me, for not being
there when you needed me; for not
helping you when you needed me.”
Marabelle’s eyes squeezed shut, and
she gasped and coughed. “Reverend,
you’re only a man, and one man at that,” she whispered. “You can only do so much, right?”
The Reverend Alden took both of her
hands in his as he prayed, asking forgiveness for her sins and his, and the
sins of those about her. Marabelle
watched him, and slowly closed her eyes.
He spoke softly to her, and clasped her hands tightly. When the girl’s lips began moving slowly,
Adam gently escorted Jenny and Elise away from the scene.
When she finished praying, Marabelle
whispered to Reverend Alden, “You’ll say a service and prayer over Grace?”
“I promise you, I will,” he
staunchly replied. “She’ll receive a
Christian burial service. And so will
you.”
Marabelle weakly squeezed his hand
in gratitude. Her breathing was growing
more shallow. Jenny looked at her ashen
face, and called the doctor in alarm.
Gabriel hurried up the ladder, took one look at the girl, and reported
there was nothing more he could do.
Elise pulled away from Adam, and went
to her friend’s side. As she took
Marabelle’s hand, the Reverend Alden left the two alone. He gathered those left in the loft, and
ushered them down the ladder. As Adam
climbed down, he saw Elise, her face wet with tears, lay her head next to her
friend.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dark clouds gathered over the small
group of people as they huddled in the dusty barnyard. Adam, Hoss, Joe, Ben, and Jared stood close
together on one side of the graves. The
women and children were next to them.
Doc Gabriel, Charlie, and the few other men left from town faced them on
the other side. The men stood silently, hats in their hands, and their faces
solemn and unmoving. Jenny wiped her
eyes, while her niece clutched her skirt.
Mai Ling, pale and weak from loss of blood, sat, with her arm bandaged
and in a sling, in a chair brought from the house. Elise stood next to her
friend. Her eyes were red with weeping,
but she had carefully mastered herself, and stood straight and still.
Reverend Alden stood at the head of
the graves, and somberly looked at the faces of those gathered about him. “My friends,” he said softly, “we are
gathered here to mourn the loss of two young lives, Marabelle, and her baby,
Grace.” As he spoke, he realized he had
no idea what Marabelle’s last name was.
How could he pray with someone, watch them die, bury them, and not know
their last name? Swallowing hard, he
brought himself back to the duty at hand.
“These two lives, in the brief time they have been here, have not only
touched our lives, they have shaken us – hard.
Hopefully, we’ve been shaken hard enough to wake up.” He looked at the small hump of mounded dirt
on the baby’s grave, then at the body, sewn head to toe in the blanket which
served as a shroud, and shuddered as he recalled the effort it had taken to
prepare Marabelle’s filthy, diseased body for burial. He was glad that this day would be behind him
soon, and only hoped he could fulfill his duty.
Joe listened as the Reverend spoke
of their obligation to help those about them, and to give to others as they had
received. This duty went beyond helping
the poor, he emphasized. Anytime they
saw someone in distress, even if the trouble seemed to be of the person’s own
making, they needed to give their assistance.
“ ‘Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it
is sin, +’ ” Reverend Alden continued. Joe bowed his head to hide his tears as the
man of God emphasized how the woman dead before them had been trapped in a life
she did not want to live, and was never offered the forgiveness of either God
or those about her. Those she had turned
to for help had self-righteously sent her on her way, and the only man who
would offer her any help did so in order to use her and to profit from other’s
misuse of her. The social disease she
and her baby died from was the result, and those who thought to lightly use her
and then despise her, as well as those who refused to help her, were just as
guilty of her predicament as the man who had brought her to this life.
Joe wiped his eyes as he remembered
the gentle girl from the Silver Dollar.
“I’m sorry, Sylvia,” he thought.
“I tried to help you; I really
did. I would’ve found you if it could’ve
been done.”
Hoss thought of Mai Ling and the
cousin who had betrayed her, and his brow knotted in anger. He resolved to see that the gentle Chinese
girl received any help she needed to get a new start in life. As for that cousin….Hoss’s face darkened in
fury as he recalled the sight of Mai Ling on the floor of the barn, with the
life draining from her arm.
Reverend Alden reminded the men of
the biblical admonition to treat women “as mothers or sisters, in all purity,
++” even those who might seek them out for another
purpose. Yes, they may well be scorned
when doing so, by their friends, and even by the women whom they wish to treat
decently. But if they wouldn’t treat all
people, even those least deserving of it, with respect, who were they fooling
when they looked in the mirror, or sat in church on Sunday morning?
Adam glanced at Elise. She stared straight ahead, her lips in a
hard, straight line, with one hand resting on Mai Ling’s shoulder. Adam thought of her icy blue stare, bold smile,
and brazen propositions. He remembered
the fear that he had seen behind her eyes, and the poisonous hatred she had
flung at them later. As his brother had
done earlier, Adam wondered what had happened to give her such a cold,
impenetrable shell.
Reverend
Alden scooped up a handful of hard dirt, and ground it into powder in his other
hand. “We now commit this body to the
ground, and give them both, Marabelle and Grace, into your hands, O Lord. ‘The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away…. Earth to earth….ashes to ashes… dust to
dust….in sure and certain hope of resurrection unto eternal life….’ Amen.”
As he concluded the service, he sifted the dirt over the grave and the
body.
The men lowered Marabelle’s body
into the empty grave, and silently buried her.
The men from town tipped their hats to Jenny and the other women, and
after rinsing their hands and getting a drink outside, mounted their horses and
rode back to their homes. The rest of
them stumbled wearily into the house.
Adam picked up Karen, who was yawning and stumbling, and Hoss hurried to
Mai Ling’s side, and helped her to a chair indoors.
Hoss
got a drink of water for Mai Ling and himself.
As he handed the cup to the girl, he said, “Why’d you do it, Mai
Ling? Why’d you try to hurt yourself
like that?”
The Chinese girl looked at the
floor. “I not go back to that man,” she
softly replied. “Never again. I go with no one who make me live like
that. I die first.” She looked resolutely at Hoss, but after one
glance at his furrowed brow as he towered over her, she trembled and looked
back at the floor.
Hoss sat down next to her, and reached for her
shoulders. She flinched, and cowered
away. “Hey, Mai Ling!” Hoss gently turned her toward him. “I won’t hurt you!” He watched her for a moment, then brushed her
hair from her face. “Why are you still
afraid of me?” Still trembling, she
allowed him to draw her close, and leaned her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair. Mai Ling began to weep. All of the long, endless years of misuse,
betrayal, and despair rose within her, choking her with gulping sobs, and
blinding her with tears that would not stop.
Hoss held her tightly, kissing her forehead and stroking her hair,
murmuring comforting words to her. “It’s
all right, sweetheart. You can start
over now. We’ll help you get a fresh
start, and you can put this horrible time behind you.”
As Hoss comforted Mai Ling, the room
darkened. Adam lit a couple of lamps as
Jenny wearily prepared some food for the exhausted but hungry crowd. Suddenly, lightning flickered about,
illuminating the blue-black clouds about the house, and thunder resounded. As everyone silently ate some soup, bread,
and beans, a downpour beat against the windows and roof, replenishing the
parched ground. The darkness of the
storm was so complete that those inside the house could barely see one another
or their food while eating.
2
weeks later
“But I don’t understand why you even tried to help
us. Why didn’t you just throw us out, or
give us to Clint? That would have been
lots less risky for you.” Elise stood
next to Jenny in front of the roses, near the stream.
Jenny inwardly sighed. She was weary of this girl’s skepticism and
antagonism. The antagonism had gradually
faded since Clint had been run off, but she was still skeptical, and believed
Jenny, her family, and the Cartwrights wanted something from her. “Why would we give you to a man – a monster –
like Clint?” asked Jenny. “You heard
what he said to me, and about me and my niece, to me and the Cartwrights! And you saw what he did to me! You know what kind of a man he was. Why would I want to see anyone in his hands?”
Elise looked at her doubtfully.
Jenny turned her attention to the
roses before her. The ground about them was damp, even muddy, after the rains
that had finally come during the last couple of weeks. The grass had changed from a dry, brittle
brown to a lush green. The stream, which
had been low, muddy, and stagnant, could be heard running briskly behind them
and was densely shadowed by tall trees which had suddenly grown an abundance of
thick leaves.
“These
look a lot better than I thought they would.”
Jenny lovingly touched the roses, and thought longingly of her dead
brothers, in whose memory she had planted them.
“I haven’t been out here, not since you came. They were very dry then. I thought they’d be half dead from the
drought, or choked with weeds since the rain.”
“I’ve been taking care of them,”
said Elise.
Jenny looked at her in
amazement. “You have? When?”
“Most every day, since we came
here. I saw you by these flowers the day
before we met you. You were with your
family, and almost came down to the stream with your little niece, Karen. I pruned them and watered them after you
left. If you had come down the bank, you
probably would have seen us. We were
hiding near the stream until the dry storm hit.
Marabelle was real sick.” Elise’s
eyes grew misty, and she fought to keep tears from falling. She still couldn’t think of Marabelle without
almost crying, and speaking of her was nearly impossible. “I guess if you’d found us that day, your
father would have run us off, huh?”
Jenny glanced at her with a
perceptive eye. “No more so than he has
right now.”
Jenny had been amazed to see her
parents arrive home two days after the confrontation with Clint and the
townspeople. They had quickly concealed
their panic when they saw that she and the children were all right. Jenny later learned that one of her father’s
business associates and friends in Virginia City had telegraphed him as soon as
he heard Clint rousing a mob against them in town. Her father had immediately concluded or
postponed his business out of town, and had hurried home as speedily as
possible. He and her mother had been
surprised to see the young working girls at their home, but once they heard the
story from Jenny and the Cartwrights, were willing to let them stay and help
them get started in a new life.
“I don’t think my parents could ever throw out
anyone who needed help.” Jenny turned
her attention back to the flowers before her.
“You must have weeded and trimmed these.” She didn’t say that the girl had done it much
better than she ever could have done.
Elise looked proudly yet wistfully
at the roses and wild prairie roses before her.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something.
Someone went to a lot of trouble to plant these roses way out here, away
from everyone, near the stream. Who did
it?”
“I did,” Jenny whispered.
“Why?” asked Elise. “There’s nicer places close to the house,
that get a lot of sun. Why plant them
out here, where no one can see them?”
Jenny fought back tears. “I wanted a quiet, lonely place, to honor
- people who were dear to me who have
died. I don’t have a grave to sit
by. They’re buried back East.”
Elise looked at her with sympathy,
without a shred of doubt or scorn in her face.
Jenny changed the subject. “You must have taken care of flowers
before.” Flowers and gardening were not
Jenny’s areas of expertise. Unlike some
who could make blooms of paradise appear within a desert, she was did not have
that gift, and struggled even to take care of their vegetable garden.
Elise looked at the roses, then at
the green grass and ever-encroaching weeds surrounding them. “My mother had flowers.”
“Your mother?” When the girl didn’t answer, Jenny said,
“Tell me about your mother.”
Elise swallowed. “She loved flowers. She grew roses, and every kind of flower that
she could. She used to walk around the
garden in the early morning, singing as she tended it, and my father - ” she fought back tears – “my father said that
she made the sun rise with her singing.”
She stopped talking, and valiantly kept the tears from falling.
“What happened to them?” Jenny was fearful that she’d be stingingly
rebuked and verbally abused, but Elise shut her eyes and bowed her head.
After a long moment of silence,
Elise finally said, “They died, in an accident.
The horses pulling their wagon spooked at some gunshots, and they were
killed.”
“What happened to you then?” Jenny asked gently.
Elise kept her eyes closed. “I had to go live with my aunt and
uncle.” She deliberated whether or not
to continue, and finally concluded that what this girl already knew about her
could hardly be any worse than the truth of her earlier life. “My uncle…..”
She clenched her fists and kept her eyes tightly closed. Best to skip that part. “Once my uncle was – finished - with me - ”
She took a deep breath. “Once he
was finished, he – he – sold me – to Clint.”
She opened her eyes, and stared at the ground. “I don’t think I need to tell you any
more.” She looked at Jenny defiantly,
looking for accusation within her eyes, and waiting to hear recrimination from
her lips.
She found neither. Jenny was looking at her with compassion and
sympathy, a very different attitude than that to which Elise had become accustomed. When she saw tears stream down this properly
bred lady’s face, she could hardly believe that they were shed for her. Mockery, scorn, disgust, and hatred Elise was
accustomed to, especially from ladies, but pity? That was something new. She stiffened, and her eyes hardened. “I don’t want your pity!” she hissed.
“Pity?” asked Jenny in a trembling
voice. “You don’t have my pity. Or at least, not just my pity. Do you know how many ladies could have traded
places with you, and not even realized it was possible until it happened?” Jenny thought again of her sister, and
wondered once more where she was. “You
can start over now,” she said. “You can
begin a new life. We’ll help you.”
Elise stared at her. Did this girl really think it was so easy to
put her former life and all the abuse she’d endured behind her? Did she actually think she could just forget
it? She shook her head. “I’ve never done anything else. I’ve been a prostitute for so long, I don’t
know how to do anything else! No matter where I go, no matter what I try to
do, I’ll always go back to that. It’s
meant to be. It’s who and what I
am. I’ve been a whore since I was nine
years old!” The last statement was
hissed desperately, and she turned away.
“Better tell your parents not to waste any more time on me!”
Jenny looked at the hardened girl,
wondering what to say.
“You’re a smart young lady,” said a
voice behind her. “You’ll learn how to
do something else, and how to stick with it.
You know you don’t have to do stay in your old profession, or keep going
back to it. You can do something
different, if you decide you want to do it.”
Elise whirled about, and glared at
Adam. “Where’d you come from?” she
snarled.
“A few cattle decided to break through the
fence,” Adam replied, “so while some of the hands rounded them up, we had to
make repairs. I sent the men off on
another chore, so I could play hooky to visit Jenny and her folks.” He winked at Jenny. “I saw you two, and came over here.”
Elise stared at him
suspiciously. “I didn’t hear you.” She wondered how much he had heard. She saw both Adam and Jenny looking at her,
and wished she could disappear. “I don’t
know how to change!” She was angry when
she heard her voice catch and felt tears spilling down her cheeks. “I’ve never done anything else!”
Jenny put her arm about the girl’s
shoulders. Angrily, Elise shook it
off. “The reason I wanted to come out
here with you is, since I took care of these flowers for you, even back before
I met you, I figured that you wouldn’t care if I took some. After I watered and pruned them, I picked one
for each of us, before we hid in your barn.
Mind if I take some more now, to put on the graves?”
Jenny
shook her head. “Go ahead.” Elise pulled a knife, which Jenny recognized
as one from the kitchen, and proceeded to cut some flowers.
Once she had cut several blooms, Elise trimmed
the thorny stems, then walked toward the house.
When she reached the graves behind the barn, she knelt before them, and
carefully arranged the flowers into a circle between the graves, with the stems
interlacing. Adam and Jenny stood back
to give her privacy.
“I
miss you, Marabelle,” she said. “I know
you’re with your baby now, and no harm can touch you.” She wiped her face, and gave a soft
laugh. “When I was little, and I asked
Mama if I could help her with the roses, she always said,
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.+++
I wish I could
give you and your baby flowers that aren’t dying. I’ve not seen roses since I
was young, and living with Mama and Papa.
They’re so pretty. I wish they’d
still be alive tomorrow. I wish my mama
and papa had never died. I wish you were
still here, and none of this had ever happened to us. I wish we could both start over, and just
pretend everything, including us, was fresh and new.” Mai Ling came out of the house, and knelt
beside her friend. They held each other and wept.
Adam and Jenny
watched and waited from a respectful distance.
“What’s going to happen to them now?” Jenny asked softly. “Father said something about friends of your
pa’s in San Francisco, and that they would give them a respectable job.”
“That’s right,”
said Adam. “Pa telegraphed a couple of
his old friends, and one of them has a wife who runs a dress shop in San
Francisco. They’ve offered to take on
one of them, and teach her how to work there.
The other one runs a dry good store, and he and his wife said they’d
take one of them, too. They can learn to
live another life, and have a chance.”
Jenny looked at
the two grief-stricken girls before her, and wondered if they would ever fully
be able to put the horrors of their lives behind them. “Do you think they can do it?” she asked.
“It’s up to
them,” said Adam. “This is the
opportunity they say they’ve been looking for.”
“They’ll need a
lot of help,” Jenny managed to say.
Words seemed so inadequate to express the hurdles these young ladies
needed to overcome.
“They’ll have
it,” Adam assured her, but Jenny wondered if he really understood; if anyone could understand.
Once Mai Ling and
Elise went into the house, Jenny and Adam approached the graves, and looked at
the flowers. Elise certainly had a knack
for arranging them. In the short period
of time that the girls had been with them, Elise had helped with the garden,
and it was growing better than ever before.
Jenny hoped that this gift would not be neglected or ignored once she
left.
Boards stood at
the head of each grave, which would suffice for markers until headstones could
be made. Adam had burned the names
“Marabelle” and “Grace” into them with a hot poker. Not even Marabelle’s friends knew her last
name. When Adam realized that, he had
wondered how anyone could notify the girl’s family of her death. Then he remembered that her family would not
wish to know, and most likely would not care.
He recalled the first time he had seen her in the loft, and how stung he
had been by her obvious terror that he would beat or otherwise abuse her.
Jenny broke into
his thoughts. “Adam, this woman lived
with one horror after another, and anyone who might have helped her only gave
her judgment and scorn. I doubt that
many, if any at all, of the men who claimed to love her really did so. How did she get through it? How did any of them get through it?”
“She didn’t,” Adam starkly
replied.
“No, she didn’t,”
Jenny softly replied. “But she must have
had an awful lot of iron determination to last as long as she did, and to die
free, as nobody’s chattel, even though the odds were so against her.” She heard the door slam, and glanced at the
house. Mai Ling began gathering
vegetables from the garden, while Elise, obviously grumbling beneath her breath,
assisted Jenny’s mother with the washing.
“They all must be so strong, simply to have lived from one day to the
next.” She didn’t add that she probably
would have chosen Mai Ling’s way of escape long before, had she been in their
position.
“It’s that kind
of strength and iron will that will see them through to a new life in San
Francisco,” said Adam.
“People there –
men, especially – may recognize them,” worried Jenny.
“They may,” Adam
agreed. “But the families they’ll be
with will protect them, and stand up for them, if need be. The rest is up to them.”
Jenny knelt and
touched the roses. “Why did she have to
die to find peace?” She crumbled some
dirt from the baby’s grave in her fingers.
“And why did her baby have to die?
Why couldn’t she have found some grace from others, from God,
sooner?” A tear splashed on the ground.
Adam remembered
the near-angelic peace on Marabelle’s face as he helped sew the shroud about
her before burial. “She found grace,
finally,” replied Adam, looking intently at Jenny, and wiping the tear from her
cheek. “She found it, with some
help. What a shame no one helped her
sooner.” He looked at the other two
women. Mai Ling was now snapping beans,
while Elise was wringing and hanging clothes.
“It’s not too late for those two.
They can start a new life, and have a new beginning. With some help, they can come to terms with
their past, and find their own measure of grace.” He helped Jenny up, and they started toward
the house.
Suddenly, Jared’s
pony cantered past them. Jared reined
him in, and quickly dismounted. “I’m
hungry!” he announced. “Is dinner
ready?” He led his pony into the barn.
Adam pulled his
watch from his pocket and smiled. “It’s
not even 11:00, Jared,” he said.
“We’ll eat in an
hour,” promised Jenny.
“I’m hungry now!”
came the howl of protest from the barn.
Jenny rolled her
eyes. “He’s always hungry!”
Jared caught up
with them as they approached the house.
He slowed down long enough to snatch a few beans from Mai Ling’s bowl.
“Hey!”
They all turned
at the shout. Elise was standing, hands
on her hips, in front of a pair of trousers she had just hung on the
clothesline. “Get your grubby paws out
of the green beans!”
Adam tried not to
laugh. If he had harbored any doubts
that Elise would be all right in San Francisco, he had them no longer .
“I gotta wait an hour for dinner, ‘cause you women are all so
slow!” returned Jared hotly.
“Jared!” Jenny remonstrated. “Go take care of your pony. You couldn’t have groomed him already. Then, you can help weed the garden.”
“That’s women’s
work!”
“You can always
do the laundry,” suggested Adam.
Jared scowled and
dragged his feet all the way to the barn.
Adam and Jenny
looked at each other. Jenny said, “You
don’t suppose he could find a little grace somewhere in the corners of the
barn, do you, so we could have a bit of peace here?”
Adam started to
laugh, but the smile died on his face as he looked behind Jenny.
“Hey, Adam!”
Jenny turned to
see Joe near the barn hailing his brother.
He approached the house, dismounted, and tied his horse to the hitching
rail. “What are you doing here,
Adam? Pa had a job out at the north
pasture he wanted you to do, after you finished with that fence. He wasn’t too happy that you missed breakfast
this morning. He was going to tell you
about the job then.”
“I ate
breakfast,” said Adam quickly. “I just
ate it early, that’s all.”
“Must have been
plenty early,” said Joe, noticing his older brother’s discomfort and taking
pleasure in riling him. “Guess you had
some other mighty important business to attend to, huh?”
“I’ve been fixing
that fence all morning!” started Adam.
“Oh, all right,
all right! I’m just kidding! But really, Adam, Pa wants to discuss that
mining camp with you.”
Adam scratched
his ear nervously. “Mining camp?”
“Yeah, mining
camp! You know: the one you left at least a month ago to
check on? And were way late getting back
from? Pa was worried about you. He
figured something must have happened to you, and was looking for you. We all were, but no one has had a chance to
talk about it yet. He’s been waiting for
you to give him a report on it, Adam. There was an awful lot going on here the
past couple weeks, ever since you got back, so he knew it had to wait. But now, things are back to normal, and,
well, he thought you’d give him a report on it finally this morning.”
“I…Uh, I….” Adam wasn’t looking forward to telling his pa
about firing the foreman and some of the workers, the swindling, the illegal
sale of their timber, the unsafe mine, or of the additional timber he’d already
arranged to have sent out to that camp. He hadn’t talked with his father about
that trip at all, and the longer he waited to do so, the more ominously it
loomed over him. Adam glanced at Jenny,
then at Elise and Mai Ling, hoping for a way of escape. They all looked back at him. Joe and Elise particularly enjoyed his
discomfort.
Jenny took pity
on Adam, and took him by the arm.
“Actually, Joe, Adam was going to join us for dinner in a little
while. Why don’t you tell your father
he’ll be home later? I’m sure he’ll
discuss the mining camp with your father then.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s
right!” Adam hurried through the door
with Jenny, nearly getting them both stuck in the doorway. “Tell Pa I’ll be home later,” he called over
his shoulder.
“Later? When?”
Comet raced out
the door, nearly tripping Adam as he yelled, “Just later, Joe!” The door
banged shut, nearly cutting off his words. Joe stared dumbfoundedly at the closed
door. He heard peals of laughter behind
him, and turned to see both Elise and Mai Ling laughing heartily. He realized that he hadn’t yet heard Mai Ling
laugh, and that the only humor he had so far observed in Elise was biting
sarcasm. The change in the women was
astounding. They actually looked and sounded
happy! He wondered how long it had been
since they had laughed like that.
Joe mounted his
horse. “Well, ladies,” he said, “it
appears that I need to get ready for an interesting discussion this
evening. I’m sure it will be worth the
wait!” He tipped his hat to them, and
rode toward the Ponderosa, hearing their laughter follow him for a long time
before it finally faded into the heat of the Nevada summer and the sound of his
horse’s hooves.
THE END
+ James 4:17,
King James Version
++ I Timothy
5:2, King James Version
+++ by Robert Herrick, 1591-1674