Hour Glass Read online

  Dora appraised me once again and dubbed me honest. With a wave of her hand, she called for Nancy May to join us in the dining hall. The round woman did as instructed without hesitation.

  “Nancy, you got yourself a helper today. Little Hour is gonna help you in the kitchen.”

  “Fine by me. I sure do like this little one,” said Nancy beaming at Hour who was still spooning oatmeal in her mouth. “Got me a bunch of potatoes that need skinnin’ and washin’.”

  “Good. And Jimmy Glass, you’re with me. Got Irish Kate upstairs cleaning the girls’ rooms, but I sure could use a hand cleaning down here in the saloon. I lent Joseph out to the new doctor today since Jane is . . . well . . . indisposed at the moment. It’s good for him to keep busy too. Keeps him from gamblin’ over at The Gem. Eat some breakfast, and then, you’re with me.”

  Without needing to say so, I was pretty sure the word indisposed meant that Jane was passed out drunk by the necessary outside somewhere. I didn’t say as much. It wasn’t my place to say at all, especially after everything she had done yesterday. So, I tucked into my breakfast and met Dora in the saloon as instructed.

  The saloon in Diddlin’ Dora’s appeared as though a small, confined tornado had entered through the front door and proceeded to turn over chairs, tables, and various kinds of alcohol with no regard. I was ordered to mop the floors and right the wronged furniture as I went. There was a spot near the bar counter that I noticed when I fixed a tipped-over stool. The spot was wet and looked to be a decent amount of drying blood. A cold feeling wrapped itself around my spine, so I chose to leave that particular mess until last. Unfortunately, there was no hiding from it, and after the rest of the place had been mopped, I begrudgingly took a rag and mop bucket to clean the crusting blood. It was nearly black.

  Dora moved like she were powered by something unearthly. She moved constantly, either writing down something that needed to be ordered or giving orders to one of her workers. The Madame seemed exceptionally strict about the girls’ hygiene. She fussed at several of them in turn about washing their nethers every day. It was true not all the girls on Dora’s line were as pretty as Lil’ Missy, but she prided herself in keeping her girls and her house clean.

  By the time I had made it to the bloodstain, Dora had decided to take a break in the saloon with me and poured herself a glass of whiskey. She eyed me as I scrubbed the patch of dark blood. I tried to hide my grimace, but it were a hard thing.

  “Nothin’ serious, kid. One of the gents called the other a cheat, and threw a punch to the face before anyone could say boo. Knocked out a tooth, but that’s all. Let me know if’n you find it down there. Feller might want it for a souvenir.”

  I swallowed hard, but kept scrubbing. Dora laughed a little in the silent air.

  “You don’t know much about jokin’, huh, kid?”

  “You mean that story ain’t true?”

  “Jimmy Glass, most stories ain’t true. Now, there’s at least some truth to mine. Two fellas did duke it out there over a cheatin’ hand, but I don’t reckon anyone lost a tooth. Just takin’ your measure a bit.”

  I sat up and looked into the Madam’s eyes. They were warm even though they were laughing a little at my expense. If I could remember what my mother looked like, I would have pegged her for eyes like that.

  “How do you know?”

  “Know what, kid?”

  “How do you know when someone’s tellin’ you a lie? Seems that everyone ’round here likes to joke and tell tall tales. How do you know when someone’s fibbin’?”

  Dora took a deep breath and threw back the rest of her whiskey.

  “Well, that’s what the gamblers like to call a tell. Most folks got one, but ain’t nobody seem to get the same one.”

  “How do you go about figurin’ out a person’s tell? I ain’t used to things like that. Out in the creek, everybody’s sort of just gettin’ by. Not a lot of room for jokin’ and tells and stories.”

  “I could see that, but the longer you work around these sorts of folks, the more you get used to marking people with their tells. It takes watchin’ a person to see how they tick.”

  “What’s my tell?”

  “Oh honey, you’re a boy of twelve. Everything you think, the second you think it, is written all over your face.”

  My face must have reflected the horror I felt inside because Madame Dora DuFran laughed at me hard enough to bend over.

  “Oh kid, don’t worry. Men ain’t as good at hiding things as women. Us gals, well, we were sorta born to hide our feelings. It’s how you get by. You’ll learn to keep things close to yer chest, but you ain’t learnt it yet.”

  “What about Jane? What’s her tell?”

  “Jane? Jane is an odd duck if there ever was one. Heart of gold, that woman. She thinks she was supposed to be born a man, but I don’t think so. Most people see the gruff drunk that she is or the big boaster she shows and don’t know how much things hurt her. That girl feels more than she ought. No, with Jane, you know she’s lying when she tries to sidetrack you with one of her stories. She’s got a ton of them, and not even Jane know which parts are true and which ain’t anymore. Has she told you the one about Custer yet?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Good. If she tells you that one, she’s trying real hard to cover a big thing she doesn’t want to say to you.”

  “What about you . . .?”

  My question was cut quick in my throat because a large, burly man walked into the saloon from the street. It was too early for Dora’s saloon to be open to the public properly, but the man looked like he’d already tied a few on before he arrived at Dora’s. The scent of whiskey followed him inside like an uninvited date.

  The second the man walked in, Dora DuFran tensed. I watched her in her sudden discomfort with an urgent curiosity. Never had I seen this woman startled or even thrown off her game, but now, she looked almost afraid. Not even with a gun in her face did she show one ounce of fear, but now it was different. Of course, she hid it behind a brilliant smile.

  “Sorry there, darlin’. We ain’t ready for business yet. As you can see, there was quite a party. Please do come back in a few hours.”

  The man’s eyes bore down on her. Dora’s hand nervously rubbed her other forearm. When I looked closer, I could see a light scar running underneath her left arm. It looked as if it were caused by a blade or something sharp. An old wound perhaps?

  “What’s your name?”

  “Madame Dora DuFran. I am the owner here.”

  “I ’member you,” grunted the man. “Molly said you’d be here, and if that don’t beat all. You actually is here.”

  “Oh sugar, I think you are mistaken. We ain’t never met before.”

  “No, no. I know you, but you didn’t call yerself Dora DuFran then. You was Amy, I think it was. We had us some good times, didn’t we, Amy?”

  He was swaggering drunk and moving toward Dora in a menacing way. Her flawless smile faltered, but only a little, as she continued to rub the scar on her arm like it hurt suddenly. I immediately stood up and stepped in between them even though the drunkard had a good foot on me at least. All I had in defense was the mop I had grabbed from the floor, but I puffed out my chest all the same, ready to knock the fellow in the gut or in the groin.

  The gorilla laughed.

  “This yer protector, Amy? Come on, didn’t we have a good time?”

  With a flick of her hand, Dora flipped up the side of her skirt and produced her little derringer from its holster on her leg. In no time flat, the tiny weapon was pointed at the drunkard’s thick skull. He shrank back a little but didn’t lower his menacing smile.

  “I already told you. My name is Dora, and this saloon ain’t open yet. I think it’s clear I can protect my own damn self. Now get out before yer head becomes a birdhouse for my garden.”

  Her voice wa
s crystal clear, and the smile was still plastered on. At that moment, I was genuinely glad to be on her side and not his. For the first time, the man looked afraid. His smile vanished, and all the words he had been meaning to say got lost in his throat somewhere. To his credit, he stumbled out of the saloon as fast as he could.

  Dora and I both breathed a sigh of relief when he was gone. She walked back behind the bar, a little jittery in her step, and poured two glasses of bourbon. One she shot and the other she handed me. I wanted desperately to seem tough for her, so I threw back the stuff lickety-split. Regret flooded my body as soon as the alcohol burned its way down my throat, but I held my face together despite it all.

  I must not have held it well because Dora laughed at me.

  “Like I said, kid. Yer face is an open book, but you held that well. You’re a nice fella.”

  “Thanks. What did that man mean? Molly told him you’re here? Who’s Molly?”

  The Madame of Diddlin’ Dora’s let out a big sigh.

  “Molly is Molly Johnson. Some folks call her the Queen of the Blondes. She runs a cathouse down on the corner of Sherman and Lee. She ain’t a fan of mine.”

  “How come?”

  “Besides the fact we run competing businesses? Well, she and I came up the same sorta way, but Molly’s a tacky thing. I’ll give her she’s a fine piece of calico, but she’s a conniving one. I do my best to help my girls and to help others’ girls. No point of livin’ if’n we all at each others’ throats. What good does that do? Fighting over the scraps of men ain’t no way to run things. Plus, I got Lil’ Missy off of her. Oh, she hated that one. Molly’s got a things for blondes. Has her own little conniving army of blondes over there working for her.”

  “So you think she sent that fella over here on purpose to upset you?”

  Dora stared down into her empty glass, dubbed it wanting, and poured herself another.

  “My bet’s she got lucky. Some mean drunk that had a past with me came waltzin’ in her hall, and she knew just how to get him liquored up and pointed him in my direction. The big bad that went down ’tween him and me was news enough to make the rounds back in the day. It was so long ago, but that Molly got her a shit-sharp memory.”

  She downed the bourbon and scowled.

  “So you did know him?”

  “Yeh, I did. I know him.”

  Absently, Dora began rubbing that scar on her arm again.

  “I should’ve shot him,” she said.

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I think you scared him to death.”

  “Thanks, kid. You want another?”

  The kind woman in front of me held out the bottle and offered me another pour. I nodded and threw back the bourbon once again. To my surprise, the stuff didn’t burn as badly as it had the first time around. In fact, it warmed my bones a little. For a second, I wondered if that was what happened to all things that hurt. Was there ever a time, maybe after a lot of practice, you came to need them? Was pain that stuck around a while a thing that hurt more when it was no longer there because you knew it so well?

  “By the way, kid, what were you goin’ to ask me before that baboon walked in here and interrupted our conversation? You had a question on your tongue, didn’t you?”

  “Yes’m. I was going to ask you what your tell was.”

  Madame Dora DuFran snickered to herself, and smiled back up at me. She took her glass and clinked it against my empty one. Her glass was empty in the next second, and a bit of rose returned to the apples of her cheeks. With a deep bow of her head, with all its bound up brunette curls, she answered me. “Well, Jimmy Glass, it seems you got to see mine firsthand.”

  9

  Dreams continued to fill my nights with the memories I had left of our old life. They swept over me in the way dreams do when life is anything but peaceful. Of course, Without Cage came in the dreams. Walking in between them, she parted them on either side to hold out her hand to me. I went with her, having no other choice in the matter. Cage just led me and showed me the things she wanted to, the things I guess she never wanted me to forget.

  It was us, the family of Pa, Cage, Hour, and me. Hour was Flower the baby then, and home was a reinforced shanty in the woods. The adults were arguing, as they were wont to do, about going into the nearest trading post for supplies.

  “You ain’t takin’ Flower in that papoose carrier into town. I’m not havin’ it.”

  “Her name is Ojinjintka. Not ‘Flower.’ It means more than ‘Flower.’”

  Cage scowled at Pa as he paced around her, gathering various necessities as he went. Her English improved daily but his Sioux never seemed to. He made sure to avoid eye contact with her, which heated her iron even more. I tried to skirt the edge of the fray, playing with little Flower’s hair as she grabbed at my fingers from the cradleboard she was strapped to. Skins wrapped the board holding the baby there tight, and Cage had decorated it with eagle feathers and a painting of a big turtle on the flat side of it.

  “Cage, you know white words gotta make it simpler.”

  “And my name not Cage. Without Cage, that’s my name,” she huffed.

  She stomped her foot hard on the wooden floorboard, and Pa stopped what he was doing to look at her. There was no avoiding the fight now. It had come through the front door and made its presence known to the world. Nothing for it but to let the storm rage.

  “Honey, I love who you are and who Flower is, but what I got in my head is a white tongue. Sure, I can learn the Lakota to better say yer words, but them folks at the trading post and beyond, they got white tongues too. In white tongue, you is Mrs. Cage Glass, and that little girl over yonder is Flower Glass. We’s gonna have enough trouble gettin’ all of us into town to trade as it is, but if you insist on takin’ that cradleboard as well, you’re askin’ fer trouble.”

  Cage turned on her heel and started yelling in Sioux as she began her own pacing around the shanty. It was all said so fast, even if she yelled a word I recognized, I wouldn’t have caught it out of the air. I couldn’t make out any of her ranting, but I knew the tone well enough to tell when a woman was cursing at you.

  “Cage, please,” pleaded Pa.

  “No please. No please!” “It’s just for this one trip to town. We need sugar and coffee and . . .”

  “You need. You need these things.”

  “We need cloth to make clothes for the children. Jimmy’s growin’ like a weed. And we need it for you, so you can have a dress.”

  Cage narrowed her eyes at Pa with both hands on her hips. It was the wrong thing to say.

  “A white dress. You want me in a white dress.”

  I saw Pa take a few deep breaths. He normally did that when he was measuring a response in his mind. When his shoulders relaxed a bit, he began again from a different direction.

  “It ain’t fer me. It’s fer town. People don’t like Lakota. I don’t want trouble.”

  “Then we stay and you go.”

  For her part, I could tell Cage was making an effort to match his calm. It were a difficult thing for her. I could see the fire raging on in her eyes and her balled fists were stones on her hips.

  “That ain’t happenin’.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there are other trappers here, there are white people, all sorts. If’n they come across you alone with Jimmy and the baby . . .”

  He trailed off, not needing to finish that thought. There was just a common knowledge of what could happen in the wild to a woman. Everyone knew it. Without a protector, evil men were at liberty to do evil things.

  In a sudden flash of motion, Pa took up Cage’s hands in his and kissed them. The tension in her shoulders melted a bit as he looked into her eyes. He had a way of calming her. Someone once said the real beauty of his charisma was the honesty behind it. Pa never swindled anyone ever.

  Even Cage with all h
er vigor calmed under his gaze then.

  “We all go together. Not with the board though. It’ll be safer.”

  “How do I carry her then?”

  “In your arms.”

  Cage threw her hands up in the air in frustration and walked away from him. She stomped over to where I sat crouching next to Flower and unlaced the bits of leather that held her in the contraption. Without hesitation, Cage handed Flower to me to hold and made her way back over to Pa with the cradleboard in hand and a good head of steam.

  “This, this here,” she said pointing at the painted turtle on Flower’s board. “This is Keya.”

  “It’s a turtle, Cage.”

  “More than turtle. It is Keya. Keya is spirit that guards life. Keya guards babies. She must be with her Keya or else she will be in danger.”

  Pa took in another deep breath and let it out. He was obviously searching for more patience than he had at hand.

  “Cage, I ain’t gonna play along with any o’ yer superstitions. You take that papoose board, people will stare.”

  The fire was pulling back up in Cage’s eyes again, and the air turned thick with the impending fight that was sure to escalate. It was like smelling the storm before being able to spot it in the sky. A huge cloud of thunder threatened to tear the shanty apart. I hugged Flower’s tiny body as if to shield her from it, but as far as babies went, she was a quiet one. Not even Cage and Pa’s eruptions seemed to phase her much at all.

  A thought occurred to me then, one that might end this all and make a decent enough peace. I laid the baby on my bed, making sure to stack a blanket up around the edges of her. She was getting to the point where rolling over was a possibility, but enough of a lip along her sides kept her put.

  I snuck past the quarrelling pair to the cradleboard, which had been discarded on the floor. My hand searched inside the folds of the skins that overlapped this way and that, looking for a very specific thing. A smile crept across my face when my fingers wrapped around what I was searching for, and I pinched it between my three longer fingers to pull it out.