DRYING DISHES IN the kitchen of her brothel three miles south of Fargo, Cora Ames looked out the window into the backyard, and shook her head. The two French girls were running around bare-breasted again, while several of Cora’s other girls hung the wash on the lines strung between the cottonwoods along the Wild Rice River.
All the girls were dressed skimpily, in wrappers and pantaloons and such, their hair uncombed or in curlers, but those two French girls just loved to waltz around naked as the day they were born.
Frowning, Cora opened the outside door and yelled, ‘Babette, Joelle! You’re going to catch your death of cold runnin’ around like that! I declare, have some sense!’
The girls ceased their nymph like frolic in the high, green grass, and turned to regard Cora beseechingly. ‘Oh, please, Cora!’ Joelle cried. ‘We have been bundled up all winter. It feels so good’—the auburn-haired waif with big brown eyes sensuously cupped her tiny breasts in her hands and rolled her head to one side—’to have the air against our skin!’
‘I’ll give you something against your skin if you catch colds and can’t work!’ Cora replied with several angry shakes of her small, plump fist. ‘Now put some clothes on and help the other girls hang the wash!’
‘Oh, Cora!’ Joelle complained.
‘Don’t ‘Oh Cora,’ me, girl. Just do as you’re told!’
‘Oui, Madame,’ Babette said, crestfallen, as she and Joelle reluctantly headed for the brightly colored wrappers they’d tossed on a tree stump.
Sighing with dismay—those two were going to be the death of her yet!—Cora returned to the kitchen. As she set the plate she’d been drying in the cupboard over the sink, a girl’s voice sounded from the parlor.
‘Miss Cora—riders!’
Cora checked the clock above the cupboard. It was only four o’clock—too early for the hands from the bonanza farm over west. Those boys would be planting their wheat and potatoes until sunset. The cowboys from the nearby ranch were tied up with calving.
Frowning, Cora set down her towel and walked into the parlor, where the rawboned but pretty German girl, Guida, was sitting on the red plush sofa, absently stroking the kitten in her lap while she read an illustrated newspaper, moving her lips to sound out the English which still befuddled her. Marci, an orphan from Illinois, stood before the window, barefoot and in a Chinese kimono—a gift from a railroad man. She had a dust rag in her hand and a sleeping cap on her head.
Turning to Cora curiously, she said, ‘A whole pack of men on horses . ..’
Cora sidled up to the girl and gazed out the window. Sure enough, a band of riders was pounding down the road from the west, heading this way. When the men had moved close enough for Cora to get a look at the two lead riders, her stomach tossed and sweat popped out on her lip.
‘Girls,’ she said without moving her eyes from the window, ‘fetch the others and go upstairs.’
‘Huh—what?’ Marci said, bewildered.
‘Do as I say,’ Cora said. ‘Stay there until I tell you it’s safe.’
Guida said from the sofa, ‘Miss Cora, what is wrong . .. ?’
‘Just do as I say!’ Cora snapped, a slight trill in her voice.
Both girls jumped and hurried from the room. When Cora heard the back door close, she moved stiffly to the foyer, her slippered feet heavy with fear, and stepped onto the porch, closing the door behind her. She walked to the porch steps and stopped beside the sign nailed to an awning beam, which read COWBOYS AND FARMERS—SCRAPE THE DUNG FROM YOUR BOOTS BEFORE ENTERING.
She adjusted her gray flannel wrapper over her giant bosom and folded her arms over her chest, trying to keep from shaking. Every vein in her body filled with dread as she watched the ragtag team of hard-featured horsemen canter into the yard, scattering chickens. They reined up before the porch, dust billowing, horses blowing and shaking their bridles and bits.
‘Hello, Miss Cora!’ Handsome Dave Duvall greeted the woman exuberantly, checking his mount down before the tie rail. ‘We’re back!’
Cora Ames set her jaw to hide her fear as she stared back at the handsome rake in his dusty black frock coat, string tie, and black hat. With his piercing gray-green eyes, dimpled chin, and brushy, upturned mustaches, he was indeed a handsome devil. But a devil he was nonetheless, and the worst Cora Ames had ever laid eyes on.
As her eyes skidded apprehensively between Duvall and Dayton Rowers, equally as bad, she wished she still had the big Indian, Leonard Two Horses, riding shotgun around the place.
Finding her tongue at last, she said, ‘Dave Duvall, you and your men are not wanted here.’
Duvall frowned. ‘Huh?’
‘In light of what happened during your last visit, I’ll have to ask you to leave.’
‘Leave?’
The puzzled frown still etched on his whiskered, handsome face, Duvall turned to his partner. Flowers sat beside Duvall on a skewbald horse lathered with sweat and peppered with dust and weeds.
Flowers was as ugly as Duvall was handsome, with his long, horsey face, red-rimmed hound-dog eyes, and long, greasy hair hanging straight down from his frayed bowler. His pallid, large-pored skin was pitted and scarred, and a brown, teardrop-shaped birthmark resided to the left of his hooked nose, a black hair curling out of it. The sight of the man made Cora weak with revulsion and horror, and it was a hell of a job to not show it.
Flowers returned Duvall’s look with a grin, and shrugged.
Duvall turned back to the madam holding her ground on the porch. ‘Cora, I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talkin’ about.’
‘Your boys tore up my house, Dave. They like to burned the place to the ground, and ... and then there ... there was what you did to Vivian....’
Flowers looked at Duvall, wrinkling his bushy brows. ‘Vivian? Who in the hell’s Vivian?’
It was Duvall’s turn to shrug.
‘She’s the one whose toe you bit off!’ Cora fairly yelled, angry now as she remembered the poor girl screaming and bleeding as she stumbled down the stairs. Vivian had long ago limped off with a horse buyer from Glendive, Montana, but the memory of that night would haunt Cora forever.
Chuckles rose from the motley group sweating behind Duvall and Flowers. Like a sheepish child, Dave shrugged and grinned and shook his head.
Finally, he said over his shoulder, ‘Boys, take your horses to the corral. Miss Ames here just needs her feathers smoothed a little is all. Her and me’ll confer privately, and I’m sure we’ll have this little misunderstandin’ straightened out in no time.’
As the others headed, snickering, for the dilapidated corral near the buggy shed, Duvall climbed out of his saddle and tossed his reins to Flowers. Then he turned to Cora, smiled, and removed his hat. Still grinning, he slapped the hat against his thigh, billowing dust, and shook his head as though at a joke that tickled him no end.
‘Yeah, that was some night,’ Duvall said through a chuckle. ‘But if memory serves, I apologized for that, Miss Cora.’
‘You can’t apologize for biting a girl’s toe off, Dave! Go away and take your crew with you. You’re not wanted here.’
Dave looked at the short, squat woman, her brown hair piled and fastened with barrettes atop her head. The smile faded from his lips. ‘If memory serves, I gave her twenty dollars and a watch. A gold watch with a picture of Mary Lincoln inside!’
‘The watch wasn’t no toe, Dave. And the twenty dollars ain’t the goin’ rate for toes, neither.’
‘You don’t have the right spirit, Cora. Forgive and forget—that’s the Christian spirit.’
‘What would you know about anything Christian, Dave?’
Duvall grinned again sheepishly. ‘You got me there, Cora.’ Slowly, he climbed the steps.
Cora shook her head. ‘No, Dave. This is my place. I order you off the premises.’
He kept coming. She took two shuffling steps backward, her chubby face mottled with anger.
‘Let’s go inside and talk about it, Cora.’
‘No! I—’
Duvall opened the door, grabbed Cora’s arm, and shoved her inside. She grabbed the coat tree, nearly upending it, to keep from falling.
Her voice was small and tight, and her lips trembled. ‘Dave ... please ... I can’t have you eatin’ limbs off my girls!’
Dave smiled again, as affable as a boy at a church picnic. Then, before Cora could comprehend what was happening, he balled his right fist and punched her in the stomach—hard.
Cora bent over with a deep ‘Uggh!’ as her breath exploded from her lungs. She dropped to her knees, wheezing as she fought for air.
‘Ah, Cora, now look what you made me do!’ Duvall exclaimed, dropping to a knee and lowering his head to peer into her face.
She rasped, grunted, and coughed.
Smoothing a lock of hair from her face, Duvall said with mock tenderness, ‘Now, I wouldn’t have had to do that, Cora, if you’d have shown me some proper respect. I mean, I don’t see no cause to speak to me in front of my men like you just did. No sir, not after all the money and gifts I’ve bestowed upon you and your girls.’
Duvall paused, gave his head a grieved shake. ‘Now, I’m sorry if I injured little Vivian, but like I said, I done apologized for that. Why, I even gave the girl a gold watch with a picture of Mary Lincoln on the lid!’
He caressed Cora’s face gently with the back of his hand. ‘Now, don’t you think I should be forgiven one teeny-weeny little indiscretion that happened when I was drunk on your booze pret’ near a year ago?’
Trembling and regaining her wind, Cora lifted her head and stared at him coldly.
‘Don’t you think so, Cora?’ Dave asked her again in an innocent little boy’s voice.
Cora swallowed and panted, holding her aching stomach. Sweat streaked her forehead and cheeks, and her face was as pale as death. She swallowed again, ran her tongue across her lower lip, and said something inaudible.
Turning his ear, Duvall said, ‘What’s that, Cora? I couldn’t hear you.’
Giving a shallow sigh, Cora said weakly, ‘I said... p-please ... don’t do nothin’ ... nothin’ crazy, D-Dave....’
‘Cora, Cora, Cora,’ Dave said, as if deeply chagrined. ‘I would never.’ He grinned and gently helped her to her feet. ‘And just to show you how good I can be, I’m gonna let you be the first one to escort me upstairs.’
He turned her around, slapped her ample rump, and shoved her down the foyer. ‘What do you say to that, Cora, old girl!’