Hour Glass Read online

  “Sure thing, kid. What’re you gonna do?”

  “Break this up.”

  “Good luck with that one.”

  I watched them begin a slow journey back toward the storeroom. Missy was trying very hard to coax Hour without touching her too much. The gentle cooing words she whispered to her made me fall even more in love with her.

  By the time I stepped out into the fray in the dining hall, Jane was pointing her gun all around as though emphasizing her points. When I stepped in between the two warring women, she instinctively pointed the revolver at me. I put my hands up in surrender, and she immediately dropped the thing back in its holster.

  “This don’t concern you, kid.”

  “But it does . . . sort of.”

  Both women stared at me as I lowered my hands and plastered the correct amount of chagrin on my face. Mock guilt can still read as guilt all the same, and I had me a deep well of it to draw from.

  “I asked Madame Dora to wake you. It’s my fault.”

  Jane squinted at me, and Dora drew her hands up across her chest without saying a word to confirm or deny my claim. I couldn’t see it, but I reckoned she was pulling quite a face in my direction.

  “You told them to splash me with water?”

  “No, ma’am. I just asked if they might wake you so we could go down to the pest tent to see my pa. Hour’s been askin’ after him. I’m awful sorry to cause such a fight.”

  If I owned a hat, I would’ve been holding it over my heart at that point to better sell my contrition. Dora smiled a bit and nodded when I ventured a look her way. I reckoned she saw my lie for what it was—a peacemaker. Jane’s hackles visibly lowered, and that rough face of hers softened.

  “All right, kid. We’ll go. Just let me clean up and get a biscuit, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “Meet you out front.”

  “Yes’m.”

  Jane disappeared into the kitchen, and Dora winked at me.

  “Quick thinking, kid.”

  We shared a look and a nod. I made a quick stop to check that Hour was all right and saw Lil’ Missy playing with her and Fred in a happy fashion. Satisfied with leaving my sister alone there, I went out to wait for Jane on the front porch of Diddlin’ Dora’s, facing the thoroughfare. Deadwood was laid out before me, at least the main bit of business in Deadwood was. Saloons, brothels, and gambling casinos as far down the street in each direction as I could chuck a rock. It was noontime to be sure, but the sun wasn’t out to illuminate the place. An overcast sky full of sad-eyed clouds choked what little light the sky afforded us that day.

  Still, Deadwood was booming with activity. For a place that sort of sprung up overnight, the main thoroughfare of Deadwood hummed like an ant bed that had been kicked over morning after morning. Everyone, whether waking up from a hangover or going off to work, was bustling hither and yonder. In the quiet of the creek, I forgot what it looked like to have so many folks moving about each other. The sight was comforting in a way, like life was still moving even though ours had been put on hold. Hour and I were not alone in this world, no matter how much our isolation made us feel on occasion.

  Jane joined me, noticeably drier and calmer. She was tying a stained apron around her waist as she walked up to me, and she threw a handkerchief at my chest. I caught it with a question in my eyes. Without hesitating, Jane tied hers over her mouth and nose.

  “The pest tent ain’t no walk in the fuckin’ park, Jimmy Glass. Put this on and do what I say, or I ain’t gonna bother with you.”

  I tied the handkerchief as instructed and followed her across the thoroughfare. The pest tent was aptly named, as it was merely a series of makeshift tents held together by wooden poles and canvas outside the doc’s place of business. The structure was rickety at best and stained with the odors and fluids of the infirmed. I shuddered a bit at the thought of Pa being in such a place, and, briefly, I wondered why Jane spent so much time there.

  Jane held back the flap so I could walk inside with her. I wasn’t tall for my age, so I didn’t have to stoop, but Jane and the doc did. The tent’s ceiling didn’t go high enough to accommodate a reasonably tall person’s head. We passed the doc as Jane weaved me through the labyrinth of cots. I recognized him from a few months back when he treated Hour’s summer cold. He eyed us from behind fogged spectacles and his handkerchief. His apron was stained with blood as the man he tended to coughed more sick and blood into his rag.

  As we went, we helped. Men and a few women reached for us and pleaded for various things. Mostly, they wanted water or blankets. Feverish people begged for blankets the most, even though I couldn’t reckon why. They were already so hot to the touch, I could feel them through the sheets. We obliged them all the same.

  Jane instructed me to fetch this or retrieve that as we moved along. She was so patient in her demeanor with the sick people all around her. The woman who had, less than an hour ago, been railing against the world with gun in hand, was now carefully moving from man to man, dabbing sweat and blood from their foreheads and offering cool water to their lips. I wondered where my pa was in all this but didn’t dare rush her. These people needed her desperately. It was a plain thing for most anyone to see.

  When we finally made the rounds and found Pa at the end of the second tent, I barely recognized him. In two days’ time, he had become a different man entirely. His face, a face I knew better than my own, now belonged to a stranger. He and I shared the burnt blond hair of his family, but now his beard was stained dark with blood and sweat. The bumps that had begun to spring up on his face and hands were greater in number and bigger than before. Some looked painful and hard, like marbles under his skin. Others had burst and bled. Jane carefully dabbed his face with a wet rag, and he shivered beneath her touch.

  “Pa?”

  I whispered to him and placed my hand on his shoulder. I could feel the heat of his skin through his tattered shirt like the feverish people we helped before, so I pulled the blanket he had up to his neck. Pa’s eyes were shut tight, and he didn’t react to my calling his name.

  “Pa? It’s Jimmy. Can you hear me?”

  He moaned a little and turned his head to me. With a labored effort, he opened his eyes to look at me. They were sticky with thick tears. The whites of them were gray and cloudy. He didn’t seem to be able to focus. I wondered if he could see me. Blinking his eyelids seemed to hurt.

  “Mr. Glass. Yer boy is here,” said Jane.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yeah, Pa. It’s me.”

  “Jimmy?”

  He tried again to seek me out but shut his eyes instead. Fidgeting this way and that, he moaned in pain. His head lolled to one side, and he was again unconscious.

  “Pa?”

  “It’s all right, kid. He’s just in a bad part of the sickness. He needs to sleep is all. Come on now, I’ll walk you out.”

  I didn’t want to leave him, but there was nothing for it. He was gone to the world now, and only a terrible person would try to keep a sick man from sleeping. Jane walked me back out of the pest tent with her hand on my shoulder. When we made it outside, she turned to go back in.

  “You stayin’?”

  “Got to, kid. Doc can’t do it all himself.”

  “I can stay and help.”

  “No, kid. That’s kind but no. You got a sister to look after. I ain’t no doc, and I don’t know nothin’ about her particular ailment, but I’m bettin’ she don’t do well on her own fer long.”

  I looked down at my boots, sobered greatly by what I’d seen. All the bluster, all the laughing, all the joking around Jane did with the others—and all the while she was working in that pest tent with those horrifying faces. While folks frolicked and laughed and ate mere feet away, she was here tending to the needy. Among the piss and blood and sweat, there were rows after rows of terrified people. The look
of death was in each one of them. It was even in . . .

  “Jane, is my pa gonna die?”

  She looked at me solid. I could tell the idea to lie to me was bouncing around in her mind. Most adults thought about lying as a first choice when dealing with kids, but I was just enough beyond a child’s age for her to reconsider it. Jane pulled the handkerchief down around her neck so her words could better be heard.

  “Did I ever tell you about my time I was with a pioneerin’ group headed for Virginia City?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, I was with my family and a few others. I was a young thing, not much older than you, and considered quite the shot and rider. The route they chose weren’t the safest. We were constantly plagued with the fear of Injuns or rustlers or the like, but the most exciting times were with the streams. Those streams were hell to cross as a group if you didn’t know what was ahead, so me and the men had to go scout them suckers before the wagons got there. Fording streams, that was exciting times, ‘cause there was boggy places and quicksand that could swallow up a rider whole, pony and all.”

  Jane shifted her weight underneath the gravity of the story. I didn’t even wonder for a second if this was a true story or not. At the time, I didn’t know her well enough to wonder.

  “I had many a narrow escape fer me and my pony, seein’ as most of the fellers lacked the courage of a young Calamity Jane. There was this one particular stream that roared up some ragin’ waters because of the rains that had come down the day before. The others left to go tell the group that we’d have to double back, but I wasn’t satisfied with that. Among the calls and hollers against it, I rode my pony out into that stream, damned fool that I was, to find us a workable route.”

  “What happened? Did you find it?”

  Jane spat a bit in the dirt and laughed.

  “Hell no. That current swept my pony’s feet quicker than anythin’ could’ve. She took me and herself underwater and down the stream we went. She thrashed and I cussed so much, the dear Lord ain’t forgiven me yet to this day. But you see, I figured I was goin’ to die that minute.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I’m standin’ here before you to show that I didn’t wash away with the flood that day. No, I was plenty scared and sure that I would, but then I thought of my Mama and my pa. The water rushed over us, and I thought about how it would be fer them to lose their eldest to such a damn fool thing. Then, I thought of all my brothers and sisters. I thought of them cryin’ over my would-be broken body, and I decided that day weren’t gonna be my final day. I grabbed my rope and flung it over a passing tree limb that had broken in the storm. With a little help from my pony and those pioneerin’ boys I was with, I was saved and lived on to tell the tale. My pony too.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “Go back to yer sister, Jimmy Glass.”

  “But what about my pa?”

  “Things can look bad, kid. They can look real bad. All you need is one broke down limb to give you a fightin’ fuckin’ chance. Go back to Dora’s and do yer part. You take care of Hour.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Me? I’m gonna be here danglin’ some branches.”

  7

  The next afternoon brought Jane back to us in a state. Word came through the telegraph office that the Overland Mail stagecoach was headed from Cheyenne that very day with a new doctor to help out at the pest tent, along with a gang of actors bound for Deadwood to take over the new theater. Messengers said the doc was an ex-army sawbones, but he had heard of the town’s need and decided to come help. All of this sounded like good news to me, but Jane’s unease became clear when the stage was late to the show.

  I watched Jane pace to and fro along the boards of the brothel’s front porch. Indians had been spotted near Whitewood Creek, and they weren’t the friendly type. Stagecoaches were robbed on occasion, and passengers were sometimes murdered due to the backlash of the government’s backing out of the Laramie Treaty. With every bit of yellow mined from the hills, the illegal settlement of Deadwood became more and more a part of the United States. The Lakota were not a people to be trifled with, and the prospect of losing the doctor when we needed him most was a worry. The last thing the sick people needed was for him to end up yet another dead trophy.

  “I’m goin’. Dora, I need me a horse.”

  Dora followed behind Jane, trying to calm her pacing.

  “Jane, you don’t even know if anything’s the matter. What’s the point runnin’ out there after a stagecoach that’s probably just fine?”

  “I got a hunch they ain’t fine. I learned long ago to trust my hunches. Give me a goddamned horse, Dora DuFran.”

  The two women stared one another down for a few minutes, neither willing to blink first. I watched them from the doorway and figured the argument from the day before may have ended, but those two were still holding grudges for the war.

  “I ain’t lettin’ you go alone, Jane.”

  “Who’s goin’ with me? You, in all your finery, or Joseph?”

  “Joseph has business in town. Can’t spare him. How about Charlie Utter?”

  Jane shook her head.

  “Na, not Charlie. I ’spect he’s halfway to Sturgis by now with the mail.”

  Both women grew silent and thought together. Watching them, I wondered what sort of mountains could be moved if those two ever stopped quarrelling and worked together. What sort of things might get sorted in Deadwood if one sobered and the other lowered her guard? I hadn’t known many women other than Hour’s mother, and I certainly hadn’t ever met a woman like Dora DuFran. That was about the time both of those eyes turned on me. Something lightened her face all over, and she smiled at me the way she did in the saloon when she was flirting up a customer.

  “Take Jimmy,” she said to Jane.

  “Yes’m. I’ll go,” I was eager to prove my metal. There weren’t no point hiding my excitement.

  “Hell no, you won’t,” said Jane.

  Dora strode over to me, her boots knocking hard on the wood floor with every step she took. Knock knock knock. With a flick of her hand, she flipped up the right hem of her skirt to expose a perfect derringer pistol tucked in a specially-made garter holster around her leg. Spit sort of stuck in my mouth as I tried hard to swallow it down. She removed the tiny gun and placed it in my hand. The thing was heavier than I expected.

  “See, perfect size for him. Don’t worry, kid. It’ll shoot straight as long as you don’t have to shoot too far or at anything that’s movin’.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I took the gun from her and turned it over in my hand, examining it.

  But Jane interrupted my fascination, reaching for the pistol. “You ain’t shootin’ nothin’, kid. And you ain’t goin’. Who’s gonna tend to Hour?”

  “Oh Jane, you worry ’bout that girl too much. Lil’ Missy just loves her. I’ll have her watch over Hour. Besides, it’ll be a cold day in Hell if’n you could get that child to look up from her kitten. She’ll be fine, and you need someone to watch your back.”

  Jane scowled at us both before she beckoned me to follow her out into the thoroughfare and to the livery. I nodded to Dora with a grateful bow. The great Madame shushed me along with a wave of her hands. I’d felt so helpless for so long, and now, she’d given me an honest to goodness adventure. It might not be curing Pa, but it was helping a man to town who might. That was about as good as I would get.

  “I ’spect to get my gun back now, and tell Jane I want them horses back in one piece too. Go on. Follow Jane.”

  I caught up with the annoyed woman a few feet from Dora’s. She was flustered and agitated. Ornery as a mule and puffing air out of her nostrils like one too. I tried to figure out why Jane seemed so out of sorts. It wasn’t until we made it to the livery that I understood. Jane was sober, and it wasn’t a state of mind she
preferred. There was an edginess to her that didn’t suit, and her normal state of humor was masked by a dark cloud of anxiety. It seemed there were bugs underneath her skin. The type only she could feel.

  We saddled two of Dora’s horses and rode out together in silence. The day was pleasant and mild, the sun warming our backs as we rode. A nice ride it might have been, had we not been on such urgent business. Whitewood Creek wasn’t far, and I was a little thankful for it. The normally talkative Jane was sullen and quiet. It was almost like keeping Hour as company.

  Even though her tongue was clamped, the rest of her was active and on alert. Her eyes were sharp to the trees, and her ears seemed to prick at every tiny noise. I supposed that was the scout in her, always hearing more than the regular folks. Mostly what I heard was nature noises. Birds in the trees, smaller creatures in the underbrush. I was about to say as much to her when a sudden sound made her tense all over. Jane put one finger over her lips to shush me before I could ask what it was.

  A scream echoed off the stone walls around us. It was a woman’s scream. I tensed, and my pony fidgeted beneath me. Jane’s horse was still, but the agitation made it chew on its bit and snort. Our horses stamped in place for a long minute before going further.

  We moved a few feet off the trail as the sound of thunderous hooves moving in a synchronized storm cloud approached us. There we saw the stagecoach before it rounded the bend. The driver was slumped forward, and the horses were wild and out of control—a stampede of black legs and frantic hooves tethered to a stagecoach bumping helplessly behind.

  That’s when we heard the whoops and hollers of Indians somewhere in the distance. A whole war party must have been following, or at least it sounded as if they were. Once, Hour’s mother told me the trick to the war cries was to sound them loud and frightening and never at once. Three riders could sound like twenty if they echoed their voices right through the gulch.

  My heart pounded, rushing blood to my head. I pulled Dora’s derringer out of my pocket, and I pointed it to the trees beyond, ready to fight. There weren’t nothing there, and my hand trembled in anticipation of what might spring forth any second. Jane put her hand over the gun, nearly slapping it out of my hand before I could aim at anything at all.