Hour Glass Page 5

  He tried to scramble loose and run too, but the poor kid slipped in the slick of it all and fell back down again right where he was before.

  “Don’t worry none. I’ll help you.”

  It took a bit of doing, but I managed to lift the child out of the mud by grabbing him under his armpits and dragging him back to the grass. His body was stone stiff, and we would have been done a lot sooner had he tried to help matters. I wiped as much of the muck off of his legs and rear as I could with my hand, but he would surely need a bath. There didn’t seem to be any bruises when I checked him over. When I got around to looking over his face, two eyes the size of plates stared at me in terror. I turned behind me to see if there was something horrible coming our way, but there was only my old mule, Betty, in the background.

  “You okay, kid?”

  He didn’t respond, just stood like a statue staring at me with those wide eyes. He couldn’t be afraid of me, could he?

  It was then that I noticed how quiet the camp was. When I took a second to look around, all the Lakota people, even the party with my pa, were watching me. The boys I’d scared off were hiding by the tree line now. The women with the carcass stood in a frightening stance holding knives covered in animal blood. A quiet awe settled over everyone, rattling my bones. The most disconcerting part of it all was the Lakota woman from the meeting with the knife; she was standing not five feet from me and looking down at the two of us. Her face was painted with an appraising look, but at least her knife was still sheathed.

  “He afraid of you,” she said.

  “I didn’t do nothin’, ma’am. Them boys pushed him.”

  “I saw.”

  She turned to the kid and said something in Sioux. His eyes softened a bit, and he relaxed by a degree. She said something else, and he held out his tiny hands to me as if he was expecting to get something. They were trembling a little, but he didn’t seem as afraid.

  “I told him you had gift for him,” she said to me.

  “Gift?”

  “A gift from white boy has white man’s power. If he has it, the boys let him play.”

  I thought about everything on my person that might make a proper gift. Taking inventory, I realized I had a knife that I didn’t want to part with, one belt—the only belt I owned—a few arrowheads I’d been collecting, and a dozen extra bullets for Pa’s pistol. I reckoned a Lakota boy wouldn’t care too much about a few arrowheads I found, so I reached into my pocket and produced one of the bullets. The boy’s eyes sparkled as soon as he sighted it. Very slowly, I laid the bullet in his tiny hands, and he closed his fists around it. With a flash, he ran away from us, a trail of mud and grass behind him.

  “Was that a good gift?”

  “Yes. He liked it. He can play game now.”

  When I gazed back up at her, I noticed she was pretty. I hadn’t ever thought of Indians as pretty or not before, but I hadn’t thought of much of anyone as pretty or not before. When trapping in the wild, pretty weren’t a thing that gets discussed. What made her seem pretty then was that the scowl was gone from her face, and her arms were relaxed by her side. That tense nature of hers was calm while she looked at me, and that made her pretty.

  “I’m Jimmy Glass,” I said, holding my hand out to her as my pa had taught me.

  She looked at my hand curiously but took it in her own with a small shake.

  “You are watcher, Jimmy Glass. You watch people.”

  “I reckon. What’s yer name?”

  “It’s a hard name for white words. ‘Without’ is one, but the last is not word I know.”

  “Do you know any words like it?”

  The woman thought a moment, seemingly searching her memory for a way to communicate it with me. She made a square symbol with her hands.

  “Like box, but slave. Slave goes inside box. Kept in box.”

  I loved word games. Pa had bought me a book of riddles at a trading post we had come across, but this one was difficult since my own vocabulary weren’t impressive just yet either. For a minute, I thought about asking Pa or Joseph over to help, but I wanted this game all to myself. Besides, they had gone back to discussing adult things with the men.

  A little light flashed in my eyes with an idea.

  “Maybe a jail?”

  “No. I don’t know that word.”

  “Or a cage?”

  “Cage. Yes, that is word. ‘Without Cage’ is my name.”

  I marveled up at her with a smile. What a thing to be named. A woman without a cage. Thinking back on the story Pa had told me about her, I could see how she came by it.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Without Cage.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Jimmy Who Watches.”

  We both turned to look back at the gathering of men she had recently abandoned. One of the Lakota men motioned her to return to them, and she nodded.

  “That white man, he father to you?”

  “Yes’m. That’s my pa.”

  “He smiles too much.”

  I laughed without being able to help myself.

  “It ain’t a bad thing, I don’t reckon.”

  When she watched Pa, her brows furrowed as though she were trying to understand something foreign to her. Perhaps he seemed like a very odd duck, like the Lakota seemed to us. However, when she looked back down to me, those brows lifted and softened, and she was pretty once again.

  “You are kind. Your mother is where?”

  I looked down at my feet.

  “She’s passed, ma’am.”

  “Passed?”

  “She’s dead. Gone when I was born.”

  Her eyes softened more, and she nodded gently to me. Somehow, I knew that was her way of apology. Nothing needed explaining there. It was a thing to be sorry for in any language.

  “This one, he raise you alone?” she asked pointing at Pa.

  “Yes’m. He’s a nice fella if’n you can get past all the smilin’.”

  I grinned at her, and she didn’t smile back, but a part of her looked like she wanted to. She nodded to me again and went off to rejoin the trading party. For my part, I made my way back to our mule and watched from a distance. The tension that existed between a white man and a group of Indians seemed to lift by a few degrees. It might never lift completely, but it was enough to where Without Cage unsheathed her knife and laid it bare on the grass before her. Her scowl did not change into a smile, but her face softened enough to show my father how pretty she was.

  6

  When I woke, my memories of the past faded into the morning air, as dreams often do, and I found myself continuing with the everyday rigors of normal life.

  Two days flew by quicker than a crow could fly in summer time. Our little home in the sawdust storeroom was cozier than either of us had known for some time. The shanty back in the gulch was nothing if not drafty, and it was colder than snow spit all times of the year but summer. The sawdust home, as I began to refer to it, was of better construction and solid against the weather outside. Hour and I both slept longer than we were accustomed in the room with the soft blankets and bedding Joseph had rustled up for us. After that first day of hauling Pa up from the creek, my body ached in a way I couldn’t fully explain. The makeshift beds were a powerful comfort.

  Hour and Fred snuggled deep in a buffalo pelt on the floor next to me. Jane slept in her cot with us the first day. It was admittedly strange for me to sleep in a room with a strange woman. Though we had all become fast friends, Jane was still a near stranger to us. She was a kind stranger, but a stranger all the same. I wondered if sleeping with us was a strange thing to her too, since she drank quite a bit before finally settling into her cot. She also tossed and turned a great deal the first night and cussed up a storm in between.

  By the second night, Jane didn’t come sleep with us at all, and I worried that we had made things u
ncomfortable for her. Ever the dedicated nurse, Jane worked all during the day, and sometimes into the evening, at the pest tent for the quarantined sick. Surely, I thought, she must have been exhausted from all that. I waited up for her, hoping to ask after our pa and maybe to offer some rolls I had hidden away from dinner, but she never came to bed.

  The raucous crowd at Diddlin’ Dora’s went all night long, it seemed. However, there was a witching hour sometime around four in the morning, where the patronage was sparse at best. I decided to choose that hour to go check up on Jane. I weren’t happy thinking of us as a burden, and I aimed to find out if that was the case.

  I woke myself, as I was always able to, at just the correct time. Hour was sleeping hard with Fred curled in the crook of her legs, so I moved with all the stealth I could manage around our room. My coat was ready at hand, and I successfully snuck out of the sawdust home without Hour or anyone else being any the wiser. As I crept through the brothel, not a person crossed my path. All the girls had turned in for the night, and there were no patrons to speak of.

  No sign of Jane presented itself in the saloon, and the dining hall was silent as a tomb. My wanderings took me outside to a quiet thoroughfare. Blue-cast shadows fell over the sleepy town of Deadwood in the early hour. It was cold enough for me to see my breath a bit in the night’s air. Somewhere in the distance, a horse neighed against the silence of the morning. I crept along, still quiet as could be, until I finally found Jane slumped against the brothel’s outhouse in the alleyway. She was unconscious with a half-empty bottle of alcohol in her hand. My first thought was full of fear she might be dead.

  With a catch in my breath, I ran to her and shook her shoulders. Jane moved a bit under my grip, and I could see her breath coming out in foggy whiffs like mine. Each cloud blew out into the morning air and rose into a disappearing fog overhead. She wasn’t dead, but she still didn’t open her eyes or respond to me. The slight smell of urine wafted over me as I tried to move her again.

  “Jane? Jane, you okay?”

  I shook her some more, and one squinty eye opened enough to look my direction. It was quickly shut, and she grunted a little before moving her body away from me so that she might go back to sleep. Looking at her present position, I dubbed it entirely too uncomfortable for any mortal person to stand, no matter how drunk they were. Not to mention, she didn’t have a blanket or anything of the like to keep her warm.

  “Jane. Miss Jane. You ain’t s’posed to sleep out here. Miss Jane, wake up. I’ll help you inside.”

  She moaned a bit before opening both eyes and looking at me incredulously.

  “Who’s there waking my person at this hour?” she asked through slurred speech.

  I could smell the cheap whiskey on her breath as she spoke.

  “It’s me, Miss Jane.”

  “Who the fuck is ‘me’? It’s goddamned dark out here.”

  I sat still and quiet, worried about a pistol-whipping the likes of what she must have given poor Charlie Utter’s brother. Jane raised the brim of her hat to better look at me.

  “I know you. You’re Jimmy Glass.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Why are you rousing me, Jimmy Glass?”

  “Miss Jane . . .”

  “Stop yer callin’ me ‘Miss’ and the like.”

  “I’m sorry. I was just worried about you.”

  “What fer?”

  “You never came back to the sawdust room, and I thought you might be in trouble.”

  “I ain’t in trouble. Just sleepin’ is all. Now leave me be.”

  I hesitated for a second, not knowing what to say or do. How does a gentleman leave a woman unconscious by an outhouse? My feet itched with cold and indecision.

  “Say your piece, kid.”

  “Is it . . . is it us?”

  “Is what you? Speak up, kid. You want a mind reader, you can mosey on down to the Celestials down the way. I ain’t the type.”

  “Do you not wanna sleep in there next to us? Is we keepin’ you awake? We can leave, if that’s the case.”

  She laughed, but it came out in a snuffled sort of snort.

  “It ain’t you. I don’t sleep well anymore under a roof. Prefer the sky. Feels less—I don’t know—fuckin’ pinned in or something. It’s been this way a while really, and it’s been especially bad since Bill . . .”

  Jane trailed off, but I knew where that train was heading. Everyone knew about how close Calamity Jane and Wild Bill were. His murder had been quite the hubbub. The news had even made its way down to our claim by the creek. She lolled a bit and resettled herself against the wall of the outhouse. It seemed she had made up her mind, but still I worried.

  “Jane?”

  “What the hell, Jimmy Glass?”

  “You gonna be safe out here?”

  “I’m goin’ heeled kid, and I tell you what. I reckon I’m a better shot drunk than most of these cowpokes are sober. Go on now and leave me.”

  “Okay.”

  Walking away, I watched her curl up as a dog might in the unforgiving early morning air. She crossed her arms and settled back again. Her hat was tipped down over her face, and she was snoring before I managed to make it back to the main bit of the thoroughfare. I crept back to the sawdust home and fell asleep with a heavy conscience.

  Sometime around late morning the next day, we woke to a hollering so loud it caused all the hair to stand up on Fred’s raised hackles. The kitten was dancing about the room sideways, her fur spiked along the top, with all the clamor and noise leaking through the boards of the storeroom. Hour seemed not terribly upset by the yelling down the hall. For once, she seemed more preoccupied with the kitten than anything else. I left her to calm Fred as I ran out into the dining hall to see what the commotion was all about. Others joined me as I hurried out to find Dora and Joseph squaring off against a sopping wet and angry Jane. Joseph was holding an emptied mop bucket and looking frightened. Dora stood between the two, a stone wall between warring opponents.

  “Get back here, you bastard!”

  Jane was yelling and panting hard. She had a revolver pulled from its holster and was staring down Joseph like a crazed Indian. Dora raised one determined hand to stop her.

  “Calm down now, Jane. I told him to do it.”

  “Then my beef be with you, Dora. What the fuck is the idea splashin’ water on a sleeping person in the fuckin’ cold of the mornin’?”

  “‘Cause it ain’t the cold of the mornin’, Jane. Shucks, it’s almost noon, truth be told. It’s time for you to wake up and walk off that drunk of yers.”

  Jane spat on the floor, eyeing Dora as though she had the devil beside her.

  “And what particular business is it of yers as to the nature of my drunk, Diddlin’ Dora DuFran?”

  A flash of annoyance crossed Dora’s brow, and she fixed her hands on each of her formidable hips. The two women squared off at one another as everyone around spread to allow the quarrel ample room. It was as if all parties involved were readying for a gunfight.

  “They go at it like this once a month at least,” whispered a voice near my ear.

  When I turned, I saw the sweet face of Lil’ Missy. The girl was sidled up next to me and chewing on a lock of her hair. The powder on her face made her look like an angel. It took quite a bit of work not to stutter as most reason and sense left my brain.

  “It . . . it don’t rightly look like a fair fight. Jane’s got a gun. Madame Dora don’t,” I managed to say through slightly numb lips.

  “Ah see, that’s where you’re wrong. Madame Dora got her a derringer fashioned special for her garter holster there on her right leg.”

  I took a second to look at Dora’s right leg and noticed the split in her skirts on that side.

  “She ain’t much of a shot. I seen her try to hit a snake we found in the pantry once. Mostly, she j
ust flashes it at customers who are startin’ a bit of trouble.”

  “Surely they ain’t gonna fight. I mean, not real fight? Jane and Madame Dora’s friends, ain’t they?”

  Missy laughed just loud enough for the two of us to hear. That cinnamon smell was still on her, and the intimacy between us reverberated in the boards I stood on. I knew what she was, and I knew it was her job to make dumb men feel the way I was feeling right that minute, but I didn’t care. No girl had ever paid so much attention to me ever, and my knees quivered from it.

  “They’re the quarellin’ kind of friends, best I can figure,” she whispered to me.

  “Quarellin’ kind of friends?”

  “You know, the type that is around forever, always going ’round and ’round, but never really backin’ down or going away.”

  “I don’t reckon I had a friend like that.”

  “Humph. Just wait a piece. You will.”

  The women were shouting again, and the argument was getting loud. It was getting so loud that Hour had emerged from our room and was heading straight toward me with little Fred in her arms. Arguments and shouting often made Hour fall back into herself, and the moment I saw her, I worried what seeing this big fight would do.

  She was doing so well here. Hour was talking a little, even to strangers. She had a pet now to care for, and my normally picky sister was starting to eat real meals again. Mostly all I could get in her at home was soft tack and the occasional bit of broth. The last thing we needed with Pa in the pest tent was for Hour to slip backwards. As soon as she approached, I took her shoulders and turned her to face away from the fray.

  “It’s loud,” Hour said so small I barely heard her.

  “I know. I know. It’s okay. Just hold Fred. Missy, can you walk my sister back to the storeroom, please?”

  Missy looked at me thoughtfully as she gently laid her hand on Hour’s back. My sister flinched a little at the touch of a stranger and started shaking her head back and forth. Something made Hour catch herself, and she petted the kitten to calm them both down. Hour was getting upset, but Missy didn’t shy away. After a long pause, she allowed Missy to lead her into the hallway.