Hour Glass Page 17

  A slimy thing in my stomach turned over to expose its unpleasant underbelly. All the fear inside me turned from yellow to orange to red with the rage of the recently wronged. Weapon or no, I was going to go down there and beat on those men with my fists until they dropped our things. If they didn’t, I would die trying. It weren’t right, none of it was.

  Just before I made to charge down the rest of the distance to my shanty like an outraged Indian, two sets of arms grabbed me and dragged me down to the ground. Immediately, the smell of dirt and moss filled my nose as one of my attackers covered my mouth with their hands. I kicked at them frantically until I had the sense to look at their faces and identify the owner of said hands. My body instantly relaxed when I saw the faces of Charlie Utter and Calamity Jane. When she saw I was going to keep quiet, Jane released my mouth.

  “What are you doin’ here?”

  “Keepin’ you from doin’ somethin’ stupid,” replied Charlie Utter.

  “How did you know . . .”

  “Dora told us you were headed home to start fixin’ the place up. I figured somethin’ like this might happen. I grabbed Charlie, and we made tracks to find you.”

  “But . . . but how did you know where I lived?”

  “What part of the knowledge that I used to be a fuckin’ scout for the fuckin’ army didn’t you comprehend, kid? It weren’t like you was hard to track.”

  They allowed me to sit up as we surveyed the scene below. That old feeling of anger rose up again, making my eyes glow red hot from within. If humans could growl, I would have.

  “Yeh, I reckoned that might be happenin’,” said Jane.

  “They do work fast, don’t they? No goddamned respect for the dead. Not out here,” added Charlie Utter.

  “We gotta go get ’em,” I said with a tone that I hoped meant business.

  “Kid, that’d be suicide. There’s at least a dozen of ’em down there, all carryin’ weapons. I’m a good shot but not that good. And Charlie, he hates the sight of blood.”

  “Oh, blow it out your ass, Jane,” spat Charlie. “I’m fine with it, but do I think runnin’ down there half-cocked is a good idea? No, sir. That down there is the opposite of a good fuckin’ idea. Sorry, kid.”

  “But we can’t just let ’em . . .”

  “It’s just stuff, Jimmy. Your life ain’t worth a sack of stuff. Come on now, let’s get you home.”

  I wanted to protest. This was supposed to be home. Bowing my head, I allowed Jane to lead me away from my old home. I watched, helpless as my once friends and neighbors picked through the bulk of our things like meat off a bone. I followed Jane and Charlie back up the hill where three horses were waiting for us. They had led a pony there to bring me back on. I climbed onto the little black horse and followed Charlie’s lead back to Deadwood.

  My head hung low. Even though I reckoned Jane to be right, it still hurt. My life wasn’t worth a sack of things. Hour needed a brother now, not a sack of stuff, and I had to live for her, but I couldn’t help but think about how good that vengeance would have felt. I could even taste the ghost of it on my tongue. In my most realistic fantasies, I would have gotten quite a lacing in before they overwhelmed me, but it was in the fighting that I felt redeemed.

  Jane waited until Charlie’s horse was a decent bit of ground ahead of us before she tried to break me from my reverie.

  “I hope you have seen the light now. There ain’t no way you can go back to prospectin’ as a possible career choice, kid.”

  “Why not? The claim’s mine.”

  “The claim goes to whichever one of them cocksuckers found your Daddy’s deed first.”

  “It ain’t right, Jane.”

  “You, Jimmy Glass, have just spoken the biggest understatement of the fuckin’ century, I reckon. If I had me a ribbon, I’d write that on it and pin it to yer chest. That don’t make it untrue though. I’m sorry, kid. The claim, she is forfeit.”

  “But there has to be somethin’ we can do.”

  “We are livin’ in an illegal mining camp in a territory rightfully belonging to the Lakota tribe, so says the government. There ain’t much recourse here.”

  “We could go to the sheriff.”

  “Sheriff Bullock is an honorable man, but his power don’t pass town lines. He can’t do nothin’ about claim jumpers, even though he might want to.”

  We rode in silence for a few minutes pondering the unfairness of life and what sort of work there was left to me if my pa’s claim was no longer mine.

  “Well, I could stay with Dora. I reckon she’d put me and Hour up if’n we continue to earn our keep. I don’t mind saloon work, and Hour loves the girls.”

  “Yep, you could do that . . . fer a spell.”

  “The people at Dora’s, they was the real friends at Pa’s funeral. Like you and Charlie and Dora and Missy. Ya’ll are the good people. If we stay with you, we’d be okay.”

  “Folks have made a life with less.”

  Jane was agreeing with me but with a tone that didn’t sound as though she was. The more I added, the more she confirmed what I said as a truth, but never did she say it was a good idea. It was a game, this bantering, and it was beginning to be maddening talking this way with her. I wished she’d just out with the thing she thought I ought to do rather than pandering to my words.

  “Truth is, Hour does real well in the kitchen . . .”

  “And when she grows up, what’ll happen to her?” asked Jane.

  At last, the tip of her meaning was poking out from her mouth, and the rest would soon follow. Whether I liked it was another issue entirely.

  “She’ll help out Dora, and maybe replace Nancy May when she gets too old?”

  “No she won’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at yer sister. She ain’t the type to survive this place. It takes wiles and grit and a helluva lotta luck. Maybe you’re right, kid. Maybe you two can live with Dora forever and ever, you tendin’ bar and Hour cookin’ in the back, but there are a lot of things that hafta fuckin’ line up like girls in a calico line fer that to work out.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “In the not-even-three weeks you’ve been at Dora’s, you’ve been close to death how many times? It ain’t you, it’s the nature of a place like this. Some of us are built fer it, and others ain’t. What if somethin’ were to happen to you? How long do you think that sister of yers, in her different sorta condition, could survive?”

  “Not long, I reckon.”

  “I reckon so too. Not to mention, I weren’t lying when I said she was purdy and would grow into an hourglass beauty someday. She will, mark my words. Half breeds always tend to. Thing is, a beauty like that won’t be content to work the small pay of a kitchen gal, not with the sorta attention she’ll be gettin’.”

  “No, she wouldn’t do that. I’ll be there to protect her, and you will. We can keep her from it.”

  “And what if we ain’t? What if we gunned down?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “How long do you think Hour will last when she’s old enough to be looked upon as pretty by men with the way she is?”

  I stared down at the mud clumps my pony kicked up underfoot, not wanting to face the reality Jane was painting for me to see. It was ugly, so ugly, and I wouldn’t see it for what it was.

  “She ain’t safe here, kid. Even if the best scenario possible happens, and she has a class act like Madame Dora DuFran in her corner, she ain’t safe here. Not with those different parts of her out there for everyone to see. Anything can happen out here, and most brothel folks ain’t like Dora fuckin’ DuFran.”

  Shivers rippled all over my body thinking of my sister like that. I knew the realities of whoring, and it didn’t bother me much that Missy did it to earn her money, but when I applied the same thoughts to my sister, the
equation changed. Sick rose up in my throat, and I swallowed hard to get it back down again. Those figures and what they added up to were enough to raise all the bile in my belly.

  “What’re we supposed to do then?” I asked Jane, defeated.

  “The two of you need to get outta here lickety split. Hightail it, and soon. You need to go to a place that can teach you proper things and teach Hour how to cope with her ailment. Readin’ and writin’ and the like. Someone who can help her adapt her ailment to the real world and live on her own. She will always be in danger as long as she’s always needin’ you to protect her. That girl ain’t got a chance as long as she depends on you to act as her guardian. Someday, you ain’t gonna be ’round, and then she’s no better than a baby bird outta its nest.”

  “You sayin’ we need to go to a school?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m sayin’.”

  “How? And with what money? I barely had ’nuff for the undertaker. We got nothin’ but the pennies in Hour’s jug.”

  “Leave that part to me, Jimmy Glass. You just get it in yer head that yer goin’.”

  20

  I tried to do as Jane said, but the idea of going off to school was such a strange concept to me, it was hard to wrap my brain around it. Sure, I knew my letters and numbers. Pa was strict about that. I knew how to read and work figures in my head because he taught me with the world around us. He’d mark words in the dirt, and we’d have to read them. Pa would use rocks and sticks and move them around to show us adding and subtracting. Not many kids knew that much in our part of the land, so I counted myself rather educated.

  The idea of going to a proper school with proper teachers was a strange thought. I lived in the world and knew world things. I could skin a hare and fire a gun. There wasn’t a better fisherman in the whole Gulch as me. I could feed a family of three with nothing but a cane pole, some line, and a barbed hook. But proper school? The idea seemed like the kind of thing rich kids from a place like San Francisco might think about doing. Not me.

  I suppose that’s why I didn’t take the whole thing seriously at first when Jane said she’d find a way to send us to school. For the next week, life went as it had been going. Hour worked in the kitchen, and I worked in the saloon. Days came and went, and Jane flitted in and out of Dora’s as she most often did. If I were so inclined to find the woman, she could be found at any of her regular haunts: either at the pest tent, passed out drunk by the outhouse, or drinking at Dora’s saloon. Nothing about her actions would make anyone think she was working up a plan to send us away.

  The dickens of the whole thing was that the words she spoke to me on the sullen ride back to town haunted every thought I had. I was so happy at Dora’s. Cleaning and tending bar was a nice job, and people more often than not were excited and happy to see me. All the girls doted on me and paid attention to Hour like she were a little sister. Even Lil’ Missy began coming down to the saloon again in her work dresses. Her bruises were healing nicely, and the skittish nature she’d adopted was slowly melting back into that firecracker girl we all knew. The routine of it began feeling like home every time we woke, ate breakfast among all our friends, and separated to go off to work.

  Then, the thoughts came. Those awful seeds that Jane had planted in my mind. They’d take me by surprise when I was least expecting it. One evening, I was stocking the new bottles of whiskey when I stood up quickly, making myself visible to a grizzled miner sitting at the bar. There weren’t nothing behind the act. I was just springy as boys were prone to be. The sudden appearance of my face must have startled the fellow, because his first instinct was to draw his revolver and point it at my face. One second I was stocking bottles, and the next, I was staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. I raised my hands above my head, thinking he might be trying to rob me, but the shaking hands and battered union soldier hat on his head told a different story.

  Joseph was by my side in a flash with a shotgun pointed at the man’s face.

  “Easy now, Martin. Put ‘er down now. He ain’t no grayback. Lower that gun,” said Joseph calmly and evenly.

  Something twitched under Martin’s eye as though realization was fighting its way through the haze to reach him. Old eyes in a young face blinked hard.

  “Martin Castor, lower your gun now. This boy ain’t your enemy.”

  Jospeh’s voice was getting louder and stern. Several people had stopped their conversations to see what the hubbub was about. Even the piano player halted his jaunty tune.

  Martin Castor blinked a few more times and clarity lit up inside his eyes. He lowered his gun with a face like a man waking from a terrible dream. After returning his weapon to its holster, I lowered my hands back down, but my heart was a jackrabbit in my chest. Martin shook his head back and forth and met me with a contrite, embarrassed face.

  “I . . . I am sorry there, kid.”

  “It’s okay,” I lied.

  Martin slid from the bar and stumbled out of Dora’s. The ghost of shame was his only drinking companion, and it followed him out of the door and into the cool evening. Joseph leaned over to me after he replaced the shotgun in its holster under the bar’s lip.

  “He had a bad war, Jimmy. It ain’t you.”

  I nodded and went back to work. The thing of it was, Jane’s words had infected every second of that altercation. Her words were as good as theirs telling me how cheap life was and asking what would happen to Hour if that man hadn’t come to his senses? What if whatever rebel enemy he thought he saw in me in that second stayed? What if his sanity hadn’t come back, turning me into Dora’s bar boy again? If that man had shot me, what would become of Hour? Things here could change that quick. One bullet and my sister was helpless.

  Missy sauntered down the staircase right about that time. It might have been an hour later, but I was so lost in my own ideas that time flew past me. Either way, the blonde in the maroon dress made everyone perk up and take notice. She was so beautiful, even with her bruises still there, with her bouncy blonde hair all woven up in a pile on her head. Moving like some kind of cat, she pranced from one haggard-looking man to another.

  With a twisted ability that I never would have thought me capable of, my mind suddenly turned Missy, the belle of my dreams, into Hour. In this vision, Hour was Missy’s age, but she moved about the place as elegant and beautiful as a picture. Her black hair pulled up the way Missy’s was, her crystal-blue eyes staring straight ahead.

  When the men pawed at Missy, I saw Hour as the one they were touching. My beautiful sister would hate that. She would hate everything about the life of a whore. I pictured her trying to flirt as the others girls did, but in the end, she would cry as some grizzled miner covered in dirt hauled her upstairs to her room.

  I shook my head and swallowed down the toad in my throat. The woman was Missy again, just Missy. It wasn’t Hour, I told myself. She wouldn’t do that. Dora wouldn’t let her do that. Dora and Joseph and Jane were nice. They would protect her.

  A tiny voice in the back of my head whispered Jane’s words to me yet again.

  “What if we ain’t here?”

  As if called by her own words in my mind, Jane stepped through the saloon door, spotted me, and made her way over to the bar. She ordered a whiskey from Joseph and threw it back right then and there. Joseph poured her another without her having to ask. A routine of muscles, as it were.

  “You been thinkin’ ’bout what we discussed, kid?”

  “Yes’m.”

  Jane tossed the second whiskey down and looked at me with the crooked, appraising way she did. I got the feeling Jane sized up people on the regular. So much so it was habit.

  “You have the look of a man with a plagued mind,” she said.

  “Yes’m.”

  “Then you have been considerin’ what I said.”

  The memory of seeing Hour as Missy clouded my eyes, and as if Jane could se
e it for herself, she nodded to my understanding.

  “Yes’m. I still don’t know how you gonna pay fer it, but I think you might be right.”

  “Well, I know I’m right, and I know how to pay fer it.”

  “That’s nice, Jane,” interrupted Joseph. “Is the thing in question your considerable bar tab you owe us?”

  Jane scowled at Joseph.

  “I figured riddin’ you of fuckin’ vermin like the man who beat up Lil’ Missy were a good payment. Got yer goddamned horses back too.”

  Joseph smiled and poured her another shot of whiskey.

  “Just takin’ you down a notch there, Jane. When Dora ain’t ’round, it’s my job, you know.”

  Jane lifted her glass and toasted Joseph.

  “Here’s to you and your fuckin’ handler.”

  “Cheers.”

  As soon as Jane’s whiskey was gone, she slapped a page of newspaper on the bar. It was a proof of some kind. I read the writing, but the words didn’t enlighten me the way Jane thought they ought.

  Charity Benefit Held This Thursday!

  Come join the fun at the New Theater. Drinks, Dancing, and Entertainment! All for a good ’cause to raise the money needed to send Calamity Jane’s daughter away for a proper education. Jane has cured the ill and fought the savages for our great town. Come one, come all to help her daughter!

  Joseph and I read the paper and then read it again. We looked at one another and then back to Jane, as though any moment she might sprout another head. Hell, maybe that head would explain this all instead of just gaze at us with a smug smile on her face and whiskey on her breath.

  “The New Theater?” began Joseph.

  “It ain’t got a name yet, so I figured people would know it if’n I said it were the new one.”