Hour Glass Read online

  Joseph stared at me the way he did when reading the insides of person. I wondered if he’d ever taken it in his mind to be a fortune teller, for he was a good enough reader of folks to do the job without much effort. Weren’t much to the task as far as Pa told it to me. The future was easily seen by those poking around in a person’s face.

  “Missy said you was supposed to be gettin’ Jane to take you to see your pa this afternoon. I reckoned I was gonna have to do this load myself.”

  I looked up at him with a solemn gaze. Jane was my friend, and I owed her so much, but the failure of my mission to see Pa was heavy in my chest. Where was he now, I wondered. Was he still a sick patient in that bed in the pest tent, or was he being prepped for his own pine coffin somewhere unknown to me? Surely Jane would’ve have told me if he died, wouldn’t she?

  “Yeah, we got a bit sidetracked, as it were.”

  Joseph handed me a few bottles, and I set to stocking them in the cabinets beneath the bar’s counter the way Dora had shown me. The labels had to be facing out and the bottles staggered. That was important, or so she said, because the bartender needed to be able to see the brand they’re pouring right away. Nothing was worse for business than the hurried bartender pouring three fingers of the good stuff for a low-paying miner. Our diligence made the bartending easier, and with the bottles staggered the way she showed me, taking inventory was a quicker job.

  “You’re worried about your pa,” said Joseph.

  I tried really hard not to look as forlorn as I felt at that moment.

  “Yessir.”

  “I ’spect Jane told some big story of hers to distract you?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Was it the Custer story?”

  I halted my work and looked into his eyes. They seemed to know something I didn’t, and this wasn’t the first time someone had mentioned Jane’s Custer story to me. She hadn’t recited that one, but there must have been something significant about it to make such a mark.

  “No. It was the story about how she got her name.”

  Joseph laughed a little under his breath and handed me a few more bottles.

  “Oh, that one. That’s a good one. Probably not a lick of truth in it, but it’s a good one.”

  “None of that happened?”

  He shrugged and pulled out a few more bottles for me to stock. I took them and went back to work, but I kept eye contact with the man.

  “Maybe, maybe not. Jane’s told it so many times it probably is the truth to her at this point. I heard the real way she got her name was because she was so ornery. One cowpoke or another said to offend a woman like her was to court calamity. Hell, they could both be the truth for all I know of it.”

  “I’m just worried she told us that so she didn’t have to tell us our pa’s dead. He looked real bad when I saw him before.”

  “She ain’t told you the Custer story yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well then, don’t worry too much. Your Pa’s still alive.”

  “What’s the Custer story gotta do with any of this?”

  Joseph scratched his head.

  “It’s her best story and one she reserves only for something she can’t bear to say. Kind of like her ‘big guns’ if you will. When Jane has nothing to say to you but a story about General Custer, you know then that your daddy’s gone.”

  The two very conflicting feelings of relief and dread washed over me like a terrible tide, red in nature and color. My pa’s state of being was an unknown thing. He was alive, but how long? Would he come back to us? What would the world look like if he didn’t?

  Another thought seeped in as well. Why was Cage coming to me in my dreams, reminding me of old things? I never dreamed of her before. How was it that this began right when we moved to Deadwood, when Pa got sick?

  “You know anythin’ about ghosts, Joseph?”

  “I don’t reckon. Never seen one myself. Have you seen somethin’?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I been seein’ a dead person in my dreams,” I said quietly.

  “What’re they doin’? Bein’ mean?”

  “No. It’s Hour’s mama. She shows me stuff. Stuff that happened a long time ago about Pa and Hour. I can’t make out why.”

  He contemplated my words a while, and I let him have the silence to do so. Resting his elbows on the counter, Joseph stared past me and toward the staircase. It was a deep look befitting a smart man. I was pretty sure whatever he had to say after all that staring was something well thought about.

  “Well, I don’t know nothin’ about that sort of thing,” began Joseph. “But my Grammy was a superstitious old coot. She always said the dead came to us when we needed them. Sometimes they come to help their loved ones cross over. Sometimes they come to watch over their family in times when they really need it. My best guess is that yer family sure needs lookin’ after right about now.”

  I nodded, not having any other words to offer up. We went about the rest of our work with our heads down and our mouths shut as was more fitting of men to do. A sick unease was rising in the pit of my stomach though, and the only thing holding my lunch in place was the knowledge that, for the time being, my pa was still among the land of the living.

  Whatever that was worth I knew not, but hell, at least I knew it.

  11

  Everyone woke that morning to the sounds of screaming. It wasn’t the good kind of screaming either, where people whoop and holler with excitement. The sound in question was the kind of screaming most connected to something terrible. High pitched and frantic, it was. What scared me the most about it was the voice making all the ruckus was female and familiar. It was soon accompanied by another shout adding to the noise. One that was in the room with me.

  I sat straight up from my bedroll and immediately looked around the storeroom for my sister. My heart calmed by a measure or two when I spotted Hour sitting on the floor with Fred the Kitten and staring at our closed door. It skipped a beat again when I realized she was wailing and tense all over. She shook her head violently this way and that, as if telling whomever was out there that this sort of sound wasn’t allowed. Fred was batting at a dust ball nearby as though nothing at all were wrong.

  I jolted up and over to Hour who was now struggling not to scream and hit her legs. Her focus was on the floor as she gritted her teeth but kept crying all the same. She tried to hit at me when I knelt beside her, but I grabbed her hands.

  “What’s happenin’?” I asked her.

  “Something bad. Missy’s crying,” she replied with a pained voice.

  “Okay, okay. Take it easy. You’re fine.”

  I looked around the storeroom for anything that might satiate her mind. Anything to get her to stop focusing on the trouble on the other side of the door. Off in the corner sat her swear jug, so I made to collect my sister and deposit her next to it. Her little body was stiff as it curled into a ball in my arms, making the act of carrying her a hard one.

  When I sat her down, she nearly rolled over onto her side. I supported her weight with my side as I grabbed the jug and spilled the pennies on the floor in front of her. Her focus honed in on the money splayed out like pebbles along the riverbank.

  “See the pennies, Hour? They need ta be sorted,” I said gently.

  “Sorted?”

  “Dirty ones from clean ones. Think you can manage?”

  She stared down at the assortment, reaching out with shaky fingers.

  “Yessir. I can,” she said.

  I moved around Hour carefully and collected Fred. She chewed playfully on my thumb as I sat her in Hour’s lap for safekeeping. No need leaving the room only to have the damn kitten follow and cause Hour to become frantic all over again.

  “I’m gonna check it out, the ruckus outside. You stay here in case there’s trouble. If you hear someone you don’t know coming th
is way, take Fred and hide in the cupboard yonder, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I didn’t want to leave her, but what choice did I have? Something awful was happening, and what kind of man would sit back on his haunches and not help out? These folks had become my friends, they had taken me and Hour in, and I wasn’t about to turn a yellow streak now.

  Upon entering the main part of Dora’s, I could see that most of the clamor was coming from the kitchen. I raced back through the dining hall and into the kitchen where Nancy May was cradling a bloody and weeping Missy. Her lips were busted clean open and tears mixed with drying blood around a swollen cheek. It was swollen up to the size of an egg already and turning several different shades of blue. My hands immediately balled into fists when her watery eyes looked up at me. An entire world of hurt shone in those eyes of hers.

  She buried her face into Nancy’s chest once more and continued her crying jag while several girls flitted around her like birds trying to tend to her wounds. Anger forced hot blood to rush in my ears to the point I could barely hear a thing. It must have been so because I didn’t hear Madame Dora DuFran come up behind me until she spoke.

  “You’re with me, Jimmy Glass.”

  I turned to look at her. Her normally jovial face was angry and stern. That mouth of hers, which normally smiled all the time, was tight in a straight line across her face. The Madame wore no makeup and looked meaner than hell.

  The thing she said to me, it wasn’t a question or a command per se. It was a fact, like one person seeing the same bits of themselves in another. I was with her. She knew this. I was her man, no questions asked.

  “You’re damn straight I am, Miss Dora.”

  The Madame of Diddlin’ Dora’s held two rifles next to me, and upon my word, she handed one to me. I had fired a rifle a few times with Pa in the past. It was usually to hunt squirrels. This rifle was a might bit heavier than the one Pa had at the shanty, but I held it like I knew what I was doing. At least my anger would allow me to act like it long enough to figure it out.

  One of the girls, a scrawny brunette named Ruthy, stopped when Dora grabbed her hand.

  “Get all the girls out of their rooms, you hear me? Run all customers, if there be any left, out the back door quiet-like. Get them girls to come down here and stay put. Here, take this.”

  With that familiar flick of her hand, Dora produced her tiny derringer and handed it to Ruthy.

  “If he gets here before I do for any reason, aim at his trunk, you got it? Don’t get fancy. Lead poisoning to the gut will take any man down, no matter how big.”

  “Yes, Miss Dora.”

  Dora turned on her heel and left the kitchen. I followed behind her, trying to match her determined stride. I didn’t know who was responsible, but I was anxious to see him pay. When we passed through the saloon and outside onto the walkway, I became confused. My mind had figured we would go upstairs toward the girls’ rooms to take the man down right away.

  “Ain’t we gonna get the man who hurt Missy?”

  “Yep.”

  “He out here?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then what’re we doin’ out here?”

  “We’re gettin’ Jane.”

  Jane was where we expected to find her, curled up in the open by the outhouse in the alleyway. There were two emptied bottles near her boots, and she stank of Indian whiskey. Dora didn’t have time for cordial manners or kind concerns. She kicked Jane’s mule-eared boots without delay. A scent flurried up to our nostrils of mud and urine.

  “Jane, wake up.”

  There was a great show of groaning and mumbling. Dora kicked her again. This time, Jane woke with a start, producing her revolver pointed directly at Dora DuFran’s heart. For an awful minute, I reckoned Jane was going to pull the trigger, but after a few hard blinks, she recognized her friend and lowered her gun.

  “What in the hell do you want, Dora? If you are ’bout to go after me with yer mop bucket again, you can just . . .”

  “I need your help.”

  The tone in Dora’s voice was stern and uncompromising. Jane appraised her, looked sideways at me for a second, and noted the rifle in my hands. I couldn’t tell for sure, but she appeared to still be drunk.

  “Jimmy get into some trouble?”

  “No. I need help with a customer who ain’t payin’.”

  Jane waved her hands in a dismissive way at the both of us before she slumped back to the earth. Her hat tipped down over her eyes.

  “That all? Get Joseph.”

  “I loaned Joseph to Charlie Utter to ride shotgun to Cheyenne.”

  “Well, get Sheriff Bullock then.”

  “The sheriff had him a nasty fight with some fella outside The Gem Saloon last night. They both all bloodied up. Come on, Jane. I need yer help.”

  “If it hadn’t escaped yer fuckin’ notice, Dora DuFran, I am—at the present moment—on the incapacitated side of my fuckin’ brain.”

  “Jane, it’s Missy. She got quite the lacing last night.”

  Jane’s demeanor changed as she sat up and looked right into Dora’s eyes. Suddenly, this wasn’t a thing to swipe at anymore like so many annoying flies.

  “Who beat on her?”

  “It’s my fault, Jane. Frank Bellingham came by here drunk a few days ago.”

  A deep hurt ran across Dora’s impenetrable face. One that came from a scare long ago. A weakness that ran from her arm, down through her heart, and up to her eyes. Dora rubbed the scar then to emphasize the memory of the hurt. Jane’s face got fierce like I hadn’t seen since we were shooting at Indians by Whitewood Creek.

  “Frank the Bear Bellingham came by, and you didn’t tell me?”

  “I thought I ran him off. He was drunk and confused. Molly sent him my way as a prank to get back at me for stealin’ Missy from her, but I never thought he’d come back. Last night, after I went to bed, he come by the saloon lookin’ for me. Missy thought he was just another customer.”

  A lot went unsaid after that. More than was said to begin with, I reckoned. We all knew the way of things in Deadwood. The mean and strong got their way, no matter how deranged, more often than not. In the silence sat all the indignities Missy must have endured the night before.

  “Where is he now?” asked Jane, angry and focused.

  “He’s up in Missy’s room. Sometime this mornin’, he kicked her out all bloodied and locked himself inside. Anyone goes by gets shot at. Please help me, Jane. I ain’t a good shot.”

  Without hesitation, Jane stood and grabbed the rifle in Dora’s hand. We marched back toward Diddlin’ Dora’s like an angry mob behind our leader Jane. Tempers were high and blood boiled in our veins. I had never felt so alive holding that gun and marching off to war. It may not have been a true war, but it was the only one I had known. The Indian scuffle with the Overland Stagecoach was a battle, sure it was. But I hadn’t prepared for it, and it terrified me to be a part of such a thing. This was different. This was vengeance. This was a debt of justice to be paid. I hadn’t had anything against the Indians at the time, but this man, who hurt our friends, was going to pay if I had anything to say about it.

  Upon entering the saloon, the first thing a patron might see would be the bar on the bottom level. The second thing would probably have been the wooden staircase to the right of the bar that led up to the second-floor hall of rooms. This was where the girls stayed. It was also where they entertained customers for the evening. From the landing, you could see a long hall with ten or so doors. Each girl painted her door a different color. When I’d asked about this, Joseph explained that Dora believed in letting the girls’ personalities shine through a bit. I was curious what exactly went on behind those doors but I wasn’t quite sure I was ready to find out.

  “Which door is Missy’s?” asked Jane when we reached the top of the stairs.

&nb
sp; “Two down on the right.” It was the pink one—the exact color I would have chosen for her myself.

  None of the girls were anywhere to be seen. Ruthy had done her job and spirited them all down to the kitchen. A few cats eyed us suspiciously as we walked by. They stuck to corners and hid in cupboards to better observe without being detected. The air vibrated. Something was amiss, and they could sense it better than anyone.

  A line of ruby carpeting ran down the length of the hallway, muffling the sounds of our footfalls. We fell silent. When we reached Missy’s door, Jane put her ear up to it. We had been careful not to make even the slightest of sounds for fear of being gunned down before we even made a stand. He’d already made bullet holes in the door which carved ricochet marks down the hallway walls.

  Jane asked us to step back from the door slowly with a hand gesture. She took two half-steps backwards, held her rifle tight, and kicked the door hard with the force of a mule. The wooden door flew open and splintered in the places where the lock and the hinges had tried in vain to keep it in place. Jane moved in with a quickness I didn’t think she’d be able to muster in her drunken state and pointed the rifle at a heap of an unconscious man laying half on and half off Missy’s bed. The man stirred only a little at the intrusion and didn’t seem willing to give his attackers the time of day.

  I had remembered the man being large, like a gorilla or a bear, but seeing him in the light of the morning brought the reality of his size down on me. I pointed my rifle at his hulky body as well, but my hands trembled a bit to do it. Dora stood just behind me, as stoic as a statue, at least in appearance. I could practically hear her heart thudding next to me. It was the drumbeat to our own personal war right then and there.

  “Frank Bellingham, get yer lousy ass up out of that bed this instant, or I will shoot you in the back like the yella shithead you are.”