The Methodist was forced to squint, for the saloon was poorly lit. Had he been able to make out his company’s features, he’d have seen what little interest the cripple had in the topic.
“Y’see what it is I’m getting at? The Paiute and the Shoshonee, they have long surrendered themselves up to the law. Sacred ground or no sacred ground: they have surrendered ‘n been escorted to the reservation lands.” Here, he shrugged and swiped away wet dribble clinging to his nostrils. “All except this rabble of untamed ruffians, see? This rabble that have chosen to resist our Union men. Declaring warlike aggression.”
The cripple stared forlornly into his empty shot glass. He was as thin and twisted as the walking cane which sat upon his lap; the man had the ailing look of one who hadn’t gotten through the effects of his last drunk. He disregarded the preaching preacher, who began to raise his voice.
“This one here, this…Sitting Bull. They say he is a holy man to his people. A medicine man, I believe they say. Some claim he receives powerful visions. Truths that are not yet written. And so, this Chief Sitting Bull is revered ‘n followed. If he was to tell his people he envisioned a raid on Washington City itself, with the flags of the republic up in flames, they would follow him with their bows and their tomahawks at the ready. No questions asked.”
The preacher, who did more preaching inside the walls of The Belle than ever he did at his pulpit, pointed north-northwest, over the piano pressed against the wall. He shook his head and drained the lees of his gin. When he signalled the barkeep to refill the glass, the cripple brightened. He took up his cane and used it to prop himself upright in his chair. The cripple licked his chops when the Methodist’s dram was poured, but this joyful expectancy was erased when the barkeep turned back to his station. The preacher continued his political homily.
“The way I heard it, this here chief’s been killing white folks since he was a boy. Killing women and children. Butchering is something that comes natural to him. I fear our good boys in uniform will be taken unawares one morning. In their sleep. These hostiles have no honour. No sense of military conduct. They will raid a camp of ours and scalp and mutilate the lot of them while they lay on their bedrolls. Scalp and mutilate. There ain’t one of them that’s safe. This very minute, Chief Sitting Bull and his braves could be marching on a troop. If only Custer’s men had taken the valley.”
The preacher tapped at the side of his glass. The temptation began to overtake the cripple; he stared hard at the other man’s beverage.
The Methodist’s thoughts went to an image of Custer, glorious in his buckskin and broad-rimmed hat. General Custer of the flowing locks. Bear killer. Gold finder. Leader of soldiers. The tragic end of America’s own great chief. What a grotesque turn of events had played out the previous year. There were mornings the preacher still did not believe it. The ignominy was too large for his mind to accept. Too unreal. In a fit of uncontrolled anger, he hammer-fisted the table.
“If only he had bivouacked! Waited for proper reinforcements.”
The glass wobbled but did not overturn. A portion of its contents seeped and ran off the unlevel table. The cripple, devoid of anything resembling reflexes, lunged downward with cupped hands, bumped his head on the table edge, and winced in pain. Lundy, proprietor of The Western Belle in his bowler and suit coat, approached the two regulars.
“A mite early for elucidatin’, ain’t it, preacher man? How many times do we need to hear you wallowin’ over yer fallen hero?”
The Methodist scratched behind his ear and sighed. Lundy bent to collect the cripple’s cane from the floor.
“Custer was a fool. A self-serving individual, and reckless. Anyone who took orders from him will tell it so. And look where it got ‘em.”
Lundy held a mug in his bony fingers. His boots clopped the floorboards as he strode around chairs. A striking figure, Lundy stroked his pointed beard, which he took care to shape each morning, employing a styling jelly he had purchased off a peddler in a former life. The few patrons who sat and sipped at the early hour fell into a hush, as though rhetoric from Lundy was an event—something not to be missed. The Belle was Lundy’s stomping ground, and every citizen of the fledgling town understood the fact.
“Your concern for our men in blue is admirable, preacher. As to the chief of the Lakotas, Sitting Bull is as elusive as they come. He sure as hell ain’t one to suffer no fools. The chief cannot afford to, in his position.” Lundy opened the door of the saloon and looked out into the drizzle. Few had ventured out on the street. The rain steeped the air with the odour of horse shit. It was the space beyond the harness shop which held Lundy’s attention. “The hills have been stolen from the Lakota people. The Laramie Treaty was done swiped out from beneath their feet. Sitting Bull’s people are relying on him to find ‘em a home, and there ain’t no home to be found. Leastways, not a home where they might pursue the buffalo. Not no longer. You would be gullible indeed if you were to think the chief don’t know it.”
Lundy spat on the planks of his narrow boardwalk and slurped his coffee. Through the rain, he could see that the thief was still there, his back leaning against the pole and his feet pulled tight into his crotch. Lundy could not see the rope which held the prisoner, but he could tell that the man’s head was bowed. The woebegone culprit sat motionless in the mud as puddles collected all around him.
“The guv’ment has got the Lakota on the run. The butchery at Little Bighorn must be avenged. I don’t claim any powers of second sight m’self, but I can reason that the beloved chief has got himself but two choices.” Lundy kept his back to the people to whom he spoke. “Lead his people on north into the queen’s territory or…turn and face his pursuers head on.”
The preacher swiveled to see the man’s profile. Lundy was known to have considerable connections, from Oregon State on down to California. Like many before him, he’d come west from the Cumberland and still received correspondence from acquaintances as far off as Kentucky and Tennessee. Lundy’s estimations of the world often proved correct—this, the preacher was forced to admit. The inhabitants of the area found that his voice had in it the weight of authority. The Methodist listened keenly.
“I wonder, however. Have you considered the possibility that our military men ain’t the only ones in imminent danger?” Lundy looked to the Methodist then. “What of you and I, livin’ in a sleepy town, unfortified and ill prepared for battle? Take you yerself for example, preacher. Could be that you yerself awakes one o’ these cold mornin’s to find a knife to yer scalp and a half-naked injun kneelin’ on yer chest. Have you ever thought o’ that?”
A dopey-eyed patron and his friend chuckled briefly at the comment. The preacher, tongue-tied, pinched his shot glass and tipped the potent liquid into his mouth. The cripple, looking on, slunk lower in his seat.
The hotel owner cleared his throat and tilted his head, so that he faced the man of God. There was no jest in his next words.
“Could be me.”
A stretch of quiet followed. Hardly a man moved until a middle-aged woman descended the staircase, clutching her bustle skirt and looking to Lundy, her boss.
“He still out there?”
“That he is.”
“Well, here’s hopin’ the rain leaves him good ‘n sick with the damp.”
Miss Clara was a woman ample in bosom and hardened in features. With prominent cheekbones and a near complete set of teeth, it was conceivable that she had drawn the attention of lustful men in her younger years. Even a city dandy—a railroad executive, say, or a bank manager—might have taken note of a younger version of Miss Clara, had she an appropriate wardrobe for New York or Philadelphia, and the sense to keep her mouth shut.
Sadly, time and circumstances had robbed the woman of any delicacy it once had. In place of delicacy, there was a callousness to the woman’s aspect, a sense of determination to survive whatever the frontier had to throw at her. A note of warning greeted patrons when they looked on Miss Clara.
At the base of the stairs, she hiked her garters high and shook her head at the sorry sight of the penniless cripple. By habit, she began an inspection of the floor surrounding the bar. Low conversations resumed at the tables of the room.
“Christ a’mighty, where is that girl?” Miss Clara bellowed. “Didn’t anyone touch a broom last night? This here looks like a lump o’ dog turd. I swear, I will castrate that no account fucker if he sneaks that mutt in here another damn night.”
The no account fucker of mention was Rollins, part-time player of ragtime tunes and full-time drunk. Three years ago, Rollins had followed a relation as far as the Black Hills, on assurance of being hired to work a fortunate gentleman’s claim. Rollins, however, had sorely underestimated the physical demands of breaking rock. He soon abandoned his cousin and joined up with a wagon train heading west. The pianist spied what had appeared to be a partly constructed watering hole at some point and removed himself from the pilgrimage. By coincidence, this was the very day that the proprietor of the watering hole, a Mr. Aldous Lundy, was installing a much-abused upright piano. After begging a cocktail from a stranger, Rollins made his way over to the piano stool and let his fingers dance over the keys. He was hired on the spot.
Aggressively, Miss Clara swept dry biscuit crumbs and pork gristle and dirt. With the dustpan, she scooped up the turd.
“How can you abide that hairy crossbreed shittin’ ‘n pissin’ on yer floor?”
Lundy resisted the temptation to ask: Are you referring to Rollins or the dog? Clara, who had pulled on her wig but hadn’t yet gotten to painting her face, continued muttering her disapproval.
“And another thing: has he made good on any o’ his debts? You know that sneaky bugger is takin’ advantage o’ Emmett’s distractedness. That fucker guzzles more beer and plays shorter tunes as the nights wear thin. I swear. How many months’ rent do he owe you?”
Lundy offered no response. Clara scratched her behind and flung the broomstick to the floor. In a huff, she mounted the staircase, on a mission to deliver the lump of feces to the pianist, who was fast asleep in room number five.
The grocer, who went by the name of Enoch, could be seen shuffling about through the window of his building. Lundy watched the man stock dry goods and lift burlap sacks, and he wondered if Enoch had received a shipment of apricots yet. Lundy was fond of apricots. He would stop by the store later to see. A pregnant lady opened her door and squeezed a pram through it. Struggling to master the intricacies of her umbrella, the woman promptly retreated indoors. Lundy did not see her again. By degrees, signs of life came to the shops and houses of the town. Lundy splashed the dregs of his coffee onto a puddle and lit a fat cigar.
Near the cooper’s outfit, two aged men with handlebar moustaches sat beneath an awning with hands folded on their laps, saying nothing. The winter had been severe; there was wondrous freedom in being able to be out of doors. There came the sound of a hammer on a nail. Lundy turned in the direction of the action and was reminded that the Chinaman was in the process of erecting a roof. Lundy couldn’t spy the taciturn fellow who sold tinctures and extracts out of a canvas tent, but he could hear the hammering continue. The Chinaman would be protected from the rain by day’s end.
Soon, Mendelson, the tanner, strode by craning to observe the thief at the end of town. The ruffian made a pitiful sight, shivering alone and exposed to the elements, but the tanner’s expression was cold. It had been Mendelson who’d come upon the thief four days prior, attempting to saddle a colt that belonged to an acquaintance of Mendelson’s—a Mr. Phineas Cosgrove. Mendelson hollered an alarm. He flailed his arms like an orangutan. The thief, surprised in the act, abandoned the saddle and tried to flee town bareback. The colt, seldom ridden and skittish of strangers, was uncooperative. When Mendelson approached to apprehend the would-be horse thief, he was knocked to the ground (and now sported a nasty bump on his skull for his troubles). The thief was promptly surrounded by a concerned citizenry. The abandoned saddlebag was heavy with booty liberated from the livery stable: farrier tongs, sharpeners, a harness head piece. The thief’s greed had got him into the mess he was in now, bound to a thirty-foot pole, chilled and forlorn, and Mendelson was contented to know that justice existed in this new West.
As Mendelson passed by Mr. Lundy, he tipped his hat to the lanky guesthouse owner. Lundy watched the man plug a key into the door of his building and enter.
It was Lundy’s habit in the morning to present himself at the threshold of The Belle. He liked to be informed of the town’s goings-on, and he was even more fond of being seen. In a charcoal vest and matching Callaghan blazer, Lundy cut an impressive figure. He puffed his cigar and stroked his handsome beard.
The Belle had not been in business ten years. Construction of the hotel portion was not fully completed. Rooms at the rear of the second floor let in a constant draft. Windows hadn’t been installed and the open frames were boarded with thin sheets of wood. These anterior rooms lacked the washbasins and linen cabinets the finished rooms contained. Lundy signed guests in to these subpar chambers only as needed.
Batwing doors were another touch as yet undone. Lundy had always admired the panache that wide batwing doors leant an establishment. He’d seen them back in Virginia and hadn’t forgotten. Frosted glass, as well. Gilded signage was another thing. THE WESTERN BELLE would look grand in brass, he thought. Brass gave a joint the impression of quality. It attracted a certain clientele. Lundy stood looking at the commonplace sign that currently hung from the overhang. He regarded the drab house doors. The rain was dampening the shoulders of his coat. He retreated a step just as a lad of eight or ten rounded the corner of the boardwalk, toting a headless hen. Lundy watched the boy scamper down the street, flinging mud behind him. He shook his head at the sight.
The familiar sounds of discord came from within. The saloon owner drew from his cigar then inspected the glowing tip. What auguries he expected to find there, he did not say. Pulled away from his leisure, he took a final glance at the hapless thief before returning indoors.
“How was I to know? When have we ever lit the lamps at this hour of the day?”
“When it pisses rain in the mornin’ and there ain’t no sunshine, but you wouldn’t know that seein’ as you ain’t accustomed to bein’ outta bed afore luncheon. Now, will you shut yer filthy hole? There is nothin’ so gratin’ on my ears, Mary-Lou, as yer cat screech voice.”
The long-limbed maiden whom Clara commanded wore lace stockings, a white bustier, and a tattered robe. She was attempting to balance herself on a wooden chair. Though the young woman was in a state of undress, she wore a pair of evening shoes. The shoes caused her to wobble, and the challenge of lifting the glass shade of the lamp while lighting the burner was considerable.
“You can’t find the orphan and I end up doin’ her chores. Is there any sense in that? You ain’t got no notion where she’s at, do you?”
Mary-Lou’s words had been muttered beneath her breath. Still, Clara heard. She glared at her charge.
“Never you mind about no one else’s affairs. When you are done and finished lightin’ them lamps, you can get started pitchin’ these slop buckets.”
Mary-Lou’s skin became blotchy in her rage. She gesticulated wildly. “Me? Not a chance! I saw Burnt Banes chuck his insides into one o’ them buckets last night. He was sicker’n the plague, he was. You know that ain’t never bin my job, Clara. Lundy, are you hearin’ this? T’ain’t my fault the orphan’s gone and disappeared, is it?”
The Methodist and the cripple became occupied by the unfolding drama betwixt the staff. Miss Clara appeared undaunted by the whore’s appeal above her station. She crossed her arms beneath her ample breasts and stared Mary-Lou down. The preacher studied Lundy to see how he would handle the conflict.
Clearing his throat quietly, Lundy flicked droplets of rain off his shoulders and coat sleeves. He seemed relieved that a hiatus had come to the bickering. Puffing again at his tobacco, he kept his eyes on the saloon floor.
“It is rumoured that the Lakota, combined, number in the thousands. Imagine that. Thousands of Indians moving in secret across the frontier. Undetected. In quiet. Working together, for the betterment of the tribe. Sharing every scrap of food and bone that they acquire.”
Miss Clara, winking at the bad-tempered Mary-Lou, began to grin in the self-assertive manner of one accustomed to having her way. She listened to the clop of Lundy’s boots going toward his office.
“I’ve got beef hanging for tonight, Miss Clara,” he concluded. “If this trickle becomes a downpour, we can expect a visit from that camp of miners. You best remind Emmett that we take payment in coin here at The Belle, not in flakes of pyrite. Any questions?”
“No, sir.”
Clara waited for Lundy to go, then she took a rag from the bar, lifted the nearest slop pail, and set it at Mary-Lou’s feet. The whore, holding a flaming candle, regarded the foul contents of the pail and wished a silent curse on her imperious madam.
* * *
“You is fit to be Chicagoed, you ugly cur!”
The brawny dude in the oilskin raincoat slapped the agitator squarely on the mouth. Clutching the man’s collar, he shook the drunken numskull before throwing him to the floor. A peculiar reaction, the numskull giggled as his head cracked against the leg of a chair.
Across the room, where the fire blazed behind a grate, a red-headed miner with chin whiskers and a demented aspect had lost his companion—one of Clara’s doves, reputed to be willing to give oral services for the right price. The miner had stepped out into the damp to use the latrine and returned to find the girl in question, Maisie, on the lap of a corpulent hog breeder. Maisie was the youngest of Clara’s harem, with a long chin and creamy, bronze skin which the men seemed to favour.
“The lady’s occupied,” said the pig farmer. The miner’s eyes protruded with a possessive ire. He grabbed Maisie’s slender wrist and yanked her to her feet.
Maisie, limbs flailing, made her appeal. “But this one done paid fer the hour. I can’t wait at yer side all evenin’ without no deposit!” Ineffectually, she tugged to get free of the horny miner.
“Hell if you can’t.”
The pig farmer strained to detach himself from his seat. Like a member of his flock, his movements were sluggish and heavy. The miner took advantage of opportunity and took up a bottle. Before the farmer could get to his feet, he was struck by the object. The scene became dreamy when the farmer stood unresponsive. He stared blankly at the threatening miner as a thick stream of blood ran down his temple.
Miss Clara pushed her way through the crowd.
“Hands off the girl,” she said flatly, standing eye to eye with the redhead. “You pay for her time and march up the staircase right now or you put yer pecker away fer the night. And you can drop that there bottle cause I’d as soon knife ya as look at ya, gold digger. You’ll be bleedin’ out on the floor before ya know it’s done.”
Out of nowhere, Clara had produced a four-inch blade. The miner, incensed, lost interest in the portly farmer. Giving over his attention to Clara, he began to breathe again. The hand that held aloft the bottle began to lower, and Maisie (seemingly unaffected by the hullabaloo) was released. She shuffled to the pig farmer’s side and led him away.
From across the room, Lundy watched the tension unfold. The staring contest between Madam Clara and the luckless miner wound to a close. The miner mumbled how shabby a watering hole was The Belle and what a disappointing class of whores it held. He returned to his table. Lundy lifted his fingertips from the handle of his pistol. It was a rare night that he needed to intervene and fire a ball into the ceiling—what with Miss Clara running things. He scanned the crowd for new hostilities. The cigar he was holding had burned to a stub.
The evening wore on.
When the drink hadn’t gotten hold of Rollins, he played jaunty, toe-tapping numbers. Clara observed how the jigs and ragtime tunes coursed out of the player’s fingertips, apparently without effort. When he wasn’t playing, he was pinching shots from Emmett, in back of the bar. Normally, it was this loss of revenue which made Miss Clara keep close tabs on the piano man. Today, she had other concerns to express.
She bent close to his ear. “If I see that mangy mutt in here tonight, I’ll stick a pitchfork in ‘em without a thought about it.”
If the pat threat startled Rollins, he gave no indication in his playing. His hands skipped along the keys, never falling out of time with the tune. But Clara was an old hat at managing the help: she was certain she saw Rollins’s pedal foot go still before she turned in the direction of the bar to serve steins of ale and plates of bread.
“Will ya take a drop, stranger?” she asked a pug-nosed customer whose beard and chest hair meshed into one thick mass of fur.
The orphan girl had been found that afternoon behind a curtain in quarters belonging to the Chinaman. Miss Clara had sought her out there on a whim after coming up empty at the livery stables, the barber shop, and the grocer’s. Being forced out into the rain had not sweetened Clara’s spirits, and so she was in an unmannerly way when she saw the girl lying on a cot in the throes of laudanum.
The Chinaman worked and lived in a small tent barely noticeable at the rear of the creamery. He was a short, slight man of unknown age, with straight black hair and a way of avoiding direct eye contact with anyone he met. Clara had heard it said that the Chinaman fled a railroad camp after losing both his brothers to the dangerous work.
Clara hollered out as she approached, but what with the rain and the fact that the Chinaman was perched on a frame of lumber, pounding away with a mallet, he didn’t hear. Clara stepped over woodpiles and entered the tent through a flap.
The use of laudanum had become commonplace for the town’s abject and downtrodden. Legless and armless veterans took the solution as a pain killer and an escape from their grisly memories. Clara assigned no blame to these damaged men; she understood war to be a perdition cut straight from the pages of the Old Testament. Any man who could forget the atrocities of combat deserved that reprieve, in Clara’s view. Often, empty vials were discovered beneath the beds in rooms of The Belle, after renters had checked out. It was the orphan girl who did the cleaning and the washing of linens. Here, likely, were the origins of her habit.
“Nell. Wake yerself. Nelly. Do you hear?”
She tapped the girl’s jaw. Lightly at first, then with force. The child began to loll her head. Her eyelids lifted part way, as though stuck in glue. Clara glimpsed the cramped space. Pine crates were stocked with glass vessels containing powders and liquids. Most of the bottles were drained low. Some held clear solutions, others concoctions of brown, amber, algae green. Clara pulled the cork off one of these and sniffed. The odour was pungent with alcohol.
Rubber tubes and syringes sat upon a shelf. Spoons and glass stir sticks. The tent was lit by a lantern and a few candles. Clara’s disdain for the Chinaman grew with each bang of the carpenter’s mallet. Here’s a twelve-year-old girl, she looked down on the comatose figure. Too ignorant to steer clear o’ harm. Can’t hardly scribe her own name. Don’t have two nickels to rub together. Livin’ in a world comprised of fornicators, thieves and drunkards.
“Yer lucky if no one took liberties with ya,” she said without sympathy. The girl’s clothes appeared to be untouched. She showed no signs of injury. “Mindless child.”
She carried the girl back to The Belle.
Having issued her warning to Rollins, Miss Clara thought it time to check on the child, who’d awoken from her drug-induced slumber. She found her with a pail of dirty water and a horsehair brush.
“I done ‘n finished with the lye,” Nell said.
Clara went to the worn-out orphan. The din of men at the gaming table and men shouting their pursuits and men demanding refills drowned out the girl’s voice.
“You scrub good ‘n firm, like I told ya?”
The orphan nodded once. She looked ready to collapse on the floor.
“It still pissin’ out there?” Clara asked.
“Yes’m. Believe so.”
“Well, dump yer pail and get fresh water from the barrel. They’s a heap o’ linens waitin’ on the washtub. Work them over good and hang ‘em to dry. You know which room.”
The girl’s chin sunk. She was expecting to be assigned kitchen duties or, better yet, an early dismissal for the night. The feel of a warm bed was what she wanted most after Miss Clara had forced coffee down her gullet and worked her like a Mississippi slave the whole day through. She was being punished. There were no two ways about it. Miss Clara had lost time searching her out and there was penance to pay. The penance was to be in the form of her arms dunked into the washtub.
Nell watched Miss Clara swat a staggering man upside the head for bumping into her. On heavy feet, she went up the stairs toward her chore.