CHAPTER

17

I can’t decide if that smells delicious or if it makes me want to vomit.”

Rosemond was a mess. Her dark, tangled hair stuck up in every direction, framing her wan face. Her normally rosy lips were pale and cracked, and dark circles underlined eyes squinting at the harsh morning light.

“I made biscuits and coffee.” Rosemond clutched her stomach. I motioned to the chair. “Sit.”

“Don’t yell at me.”

I twisted my mouth to keep from laughing. I poured a cup of coffee in my mug from the night before.

“What’s that?”

I placed the coffee in front of Rosemond, who was staring at the paper and pen on the other side of the table. “A letter to Mary.”

“The pious Sister Magdalena? Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Why not?”

“She probably blames you for Kindle’s death. And chances are the Pinkertons are watching her like a hawk, hoping you’ll do just that.” She motioned to the letter.

I knew she was correct but didn’t want to admit it. Instead, I grasped her chin and lifted her face to the light. “Your face is red from where Diamond hit you.”

She moved her head away. “It’s nothing I haven’t covered up before. How long have you been awake?”

“A while.” I continued to pay the price for the relief laudanum gave me for my menses. I was nervous and irritable and couldn’t sleep. I kept my cravings at bay by staying busy, keeping my mind occupied, and eventually I knew I would feel myself. Then the next monthly cycle would start. The time between the former and the latter was getting shorter and it was getting more and more difficult to resist the release of one tiny draught. Whisky helped, but I knew it was merely another vice that would be difficult to resist.

Rosemond clutched her stomach again. “I have to go clean your mess up today.”

“What mess?”

“Well, there’s the small problem of you threatening to shoot Diamond’s cock off with a stolen gun. You can’t threaten a man like that.”

“I won’t help you next time.”

“Brooding men are dangerous, and a thousand dollars is a lot of money. He knows you’re not my sister. Be careful of Diamond.”

“I will, but he won’t tell that story. He’ll look the fool at the hands of a woman.”

She seemed to consider. I placed a plate with a biscuit in front of her. She grimaced again. I served myself and sat across from her.

“We need sorghum,” I said.

“What?”

“Sorghum syrup. I have an affinity for it.”

“I’m sure Amalia has some at the store. They’re going to miss their gun, if they haven’t already, and Amalia’ll figure it was you soon enough. I need to take it back.”

Rosemond picked at her biscuit and tentatively took a bite. She swallowed with difficulty and pushed the plate away. “What brought on your bout of biscuit making? Are you done wallowing?”

“Yes.”

I’d had plenty of time to think during my sleepless night. I’d cried until tears wouldn’t come, then spent hours staring mindlessly at a large knot in the wooden ceiling, going over the events of my life since leaving New York—the peaks and valleys, the deaths, the terror, the moments of happiness and joy—until I saw myself as the eye on the ceiling did: an addict wallowing in grief and self-pity, hoping for a death that would not come, but not brave enough to make it happen. The eye judged me and found me lacking. There was nothing I hated more than weak, helpless women, and I had become one quicker than I ever imagined possible. Grieving wouldn’t kill me, but betraying who I was would. I rose determined to survive my loss despite myself.

“Good. Kindle would want you to move on.”

“I can’t promise to not burst into tears at inopportune times.”

“And I can’t promise to hold your hand every time you do.”

“Trust me, I know.” I sat back and studied Rosemond. “I can’t decide if you are as cold as you pretend to be, or if it’s a carefully crafted facade.”

Rosemond picked her biscuit to shreds. “Emotions have always betrayed me.”

“How?”

She lifted her eyes to meet mine. “By not being returned.”

With those four simple words, Rosemond’s character became clear. She wasn’t unfeeling in the least; she felt too much, and worked assiduously to mask it, lest she be hurt. Again.

“Cordelia?”

Her brows furrowed.

“Your sister.”

“I know who Cordelia is.”

“You told me about her last night.”

“I did?” She stood. “You’ll have to get me drunk again to get anything else out of me.”

“If your appearance is any indication, that might take months.”

“You might be right.”

We chuckled together, and I immediately felt shy. Sometime in the night, our relationship had changed from antagonistic to something like an uneasy truce. Rosemond must have sensed it, too, because she joked, “Are we becoming friends?”

“We aren’t enemies, at least.”

A heavy knock at the door broke up our conversation, a relief to us both, I thought.

“Should I get my gun?” I asked.

“It’s probably Amalia’s boy delivering the blank signs. You get it. I’m hardly presentable.”

I opened the door to Reverend Bright, who wore an open, happy expression, and his wife, Portia, who gripped her hands together so tightly her knuckles were white. “Good morning!” Reverend Bright said. He and Portia caught sight of Rosemond over my shoulder. When I followed their gaze and saw her through their eyes, I was embarrassed for Rosemond. She looked like a hard-used woman. Portia’s mouth bent further into a frown, but the Reverend merely looked chagrined. “Are we too early?”

“For what?” I said.

“To visit Calico Row. Have you forgotten?”

“Yes, actually.” I touched my forehead with my hand.

“Oh, well. Is it a bad time?” the Reverend asked.

Portia reached out with her hand. “Of course it is. You’ve been through a lot. We’ll come back another day.”

“No, it’s fine. I need to get out and about. Let me clean up breakfast, and I’ll be ready. Would you two like a biscuit? We have extra.”

“A biscuit would be delicious!” The Reverend stepped through the door.

“Oliver, I fed you breakfast.”

“Yes,” he said with a chuckle, “but you and I both know your biscuits aren’t very good.”

Rosemond glared at the man and was readying to speak when Portia moved forward and reached out to Rosemond. “What’s wrong with your face?” She remembered herself and pulled back before touching her.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rosemond said, trying for dignity.

“It’s red. Did someone hit you?” Portia’s accusing gaze landed on me.

I laughed heartily. “You think I hit her?”

“It’s nothing. Excuse me while I get dressed for the day,” Rosemond said.

The Reverend had been looking in the studio. “Is that your work?” He stepped inside and went to the easel without asking leave to do so. We followed.

“Yes,” Rosemond replied. “It’s Helen, gazing out the train window.”

The Reverend’s expression was all appreciation. “How wonderful. Look, Portia.”

“Yes,” his wife said. “It’s very nice.”

“Maybe while Helen and I go see the girls, you and Portia can talk about your portrait. Won’t you do some sketches or something first?”

“Yes, I—”

“I’d rather go with you,” Portia said.

An uncomfortable silence followed. “How nice,” Rosemond finally said. She addressed the Reverend. “I have one order to finish and two others to start. We’ll have to start the portrait another day.”

“I didn’t mean …” Portia began.

“I know exactly what you meant. If you’ll excuse me.”

We filed out of the room and Portia turned toward Rosemond as if to apologize again, but Rosemond walked to her room and shut the door with a solid thump. Portia blushed but regained her composure quickly.

“This way,” I said.

I served the Reverend a biscuit. Portia demurred.

“How long have you been involved in your mission?”

“It’s how we met. Would you like to tell the story, Portia?”

“You’re a much better storyteller than I am, Oliver.”

He smiled fondly at Portia. “A good thing for a minister, don’t you think?”

“Indeed.” Portia returned her husband’s smile.

“I left Missouri back in sixty-seven to minister to the railroad workers. Let me tell you, everything you’ve read about the hell-on-wheels towns was true. When the final stake was driven, I kept going up and down. I liked the itinerant life, you see. But to be that kind of preacher you have to be inspiring and”—he chuckled self-deprecatingly—“I’ve never been called inspiring.”

“Oliver,” Portia chided.

“No, no. It’s okay. If I hadn’t taken a hard look at my life and my ineffectiveness, I would have never met you.” He took her hand and squeezed it. He kept his eyes on his wife as he continued. “We met at church, of course. I was visiting a friend, seeking his counsel, when his wife introduced us. It took no time at all for us to discover we suited very well.” He patted Portia’s hand and looked up at me expectantly.

“We bring people to the Lord by setting an example,” Portia said. “Our behavior is our witness. If someone asks, we will surely tell them about the Lord. But we do not preach to the sinners.”

“It’s a novel approach,” I said.

“Portia suggested it, and I have to say, it’s been more effective than I would have ever imagined. I’ve tried evangelizing and got run out of more than one Western town.”

“What precisely do you do?”

“Befriend them. Talk to them about cleanliness, nurse those who need care, help those who want to leave the life however we can,” Portia said.

“The biggest problem we see is their alcohol and opiate addiction,” the Reverend said. “They need money to support it, and the easiest way is to sell their body.”

I nodded in agreement. It was the same problem I’d seen in less reputable houses in New York City. Typically, the madam encouraged the addiction, all the better to keep her girls under her power. My face flamed as I realized that Rosemond’s giving me laudanum on the train, in Grand Island and after the Kindle telegram, fell into the same vein.

“Helen, are you feeling quite well?” the Reverend said.

“What?”

“You went pale all of a sudden,” Portia said.

I shook my head as if to clear it and smiled. “You’re a nurse, Portia?” I asked.

“No more than any other woman. My knowledge is basic.”

“She makes up for it in the care she gives,” the Reverend said, adoration clear in his expression and voice.

“Shall we go?” Portia said, rising from the table.

“Yes,” I said. “Should I get my gun?”

“You have a gun?” Reverend Bright said.

“Doesn’t everyone west of the Mississippi?” I said.

“I don’t,” he said, scandalized, but Portia didn’t seem surprised in the least.

“You’re a man. I’m sure you can defend yourself.”

“It’s not that, it’s that I couldn’t imagine taking another man’s life.”

I smiled wanly at him. “You’ve never been pushed to the point, Reverend.”

I wedged the gun in my belt as much to keep Rosemond from returning it to the Posts as to see the expression on the good Reverend’s face when I walked out with it. He didn’t disappoint. I think Portia smiled, slightly. As satisfying and surprising as their reactions were, I couldn’t deny the underlying truth of my small rebellion.

The soiled doves of Calico Row congregated in small groups outside their tents, slatternly and exhausted after a busy Friday night. Their jokes and conversations were loud and boisterous, as if they were trying to convince themselves their lives were normal and they weren’t doomed to die an early death from disease, addiction, or violence.

A large woman noticed us first and separated herself from the throng. “Well, well, who do we have here? A female gunslinger?” The women laughed, as they were required to do.

“Stella, this is Helen Graham,” Reverend Bright said. “She’s a nurse.”

“That gun says different,” Stella said.

“Yeah, I ain’t never seen no nurse carry a gun,” another woman said. “You ain’t that female bandit everyone’s talkin’ about, are you?”

Bright laughed too loudly. “Don’t be silly, Clara.”

“You think you need protection from us?” Stella said, moving closer to me. She was a few inches taller than me but easily a hundred pounds heavier. Her skin was pale and soft, her waist cinched tight to highlight her expansive bosom. Stella’s face might have once been pretty, but it was marred with the broken blood vessels and red eyes of a woman who liked her drink.

“From your customers,” I said.

“Afraid they might mistake you for a Calico queen, are you?”

“It’s not outside the realm of possibility. Drunk men do stupid things.”

“Oh, listen to the fancy talk,” Stella said. She looked me up and down. “So, what are you doing here, Slim?”

My breath caught, as a pang of grief shot through me hearing Kindle’s endearment in the mouth of this whore. I lifted my chin. Tears would signal weakness to this woman, and I was determined to fight them. “I’m here to offer my services.”

The whore Bright called Clara sidled up to me. Her eyes were watery and red. She sniffed and tried to give me a seductive smile. “We don’t get many of your kind here,” she said, caressing my arm. “It’s my specialty.”

“My nursing services.”

Clara’s eyes lingered on my bosom. “Too bad.” She leaned forward and whispered, “I’ve been longing for the soft touch of a woman. Come see me if you change your mind.” Clara moved away and winked at the Reverend and Portia.

“Clara, show some respect,” the Reverend snapped. He shot a nervous glance at his wife, who remained stoic, with nary a blush touching her cheeks. She was obviously inured to the prostitute’s teasing. A good and necessary defense with this crowd.

“We’ve already got medical services, courtesy of the good Dr. Hankins,” Stella said.

“We thought you might like to be treated by someone who wouldn’t expect carnal payment,” the Reverend said.

The woman laughed again. “Hell, Reverend, polishing that old cooter’s knob don’t cost us a dime,” Stella said.

I was suddenly exhausted, tired of pushing my way into where I wasn’t wanted, and for what? A few dollars from hardened women who wouldn’t listen to me? These whores were a different breed from the laundresses of Fort Richardson and Camille King’s women on Twenty-Seventh Street. An aura of helplessness and hopelessness hung around their bravado that I was afraid I would never be able to crack. For the first time in my practice, I didn’t want to try. Whores might be the most numerous women in Cheyenne, but they weren’t the only ones.

“I apologize. I was told you weren’t being cared for. If any of you would like to use my services, the Reverend knows where to find me.”

I turned and walked off. Portia caught up with me and stopped me with a hand on my arm. “That was uncharitable.”

“Yes, they were. But they have a doctor.”

“I meant you.”

“I’m uncharitable because I don’t want to poach another physician’s patients?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Enough of this. Why don’t you like me?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’ll grant you there are plenty of people in the world who loathe me, but at least I’ve given them a valid reason for their antipathy. What is your reason?”

Portia’s face reddened from what I assumed was embarrassment at being confronted. “I do not loathe you.”

“But you do not like me.”

“I don’t know you.”

“Precisely. To be frank, whether you like me is the least of my worries right now, and you’ve done nothing to endear yourself to me. I will at least endeavor to hold judgment on you until I get to know you better. I would appreciate it if you would do the same for me.” I held out my hand. “Agreed?”

She shook it with a surprisingly firm grip. “Agreed.”

“Thank you.” I continued walking. “As to the soiled doves, they don’t want my services, so I left.”

“You don’t understand their ways. Their hard exterior is their armor.”

“I understand whores better than you think.” I stopped and appraised Portia. Now that her expression had relaxed out of a constant state of puckered disapproval at the sight of me, I saw a different woman. She wasn’t beautiful by conventional standards due to the freckles dotting her face and the halo of frizzy hair that always seemed to escape her best attempts to tame her curls. But her mesmerizing eyes and the general pleasantness of her features made her a truly striking woman. “How do you know so much about them?”

“I’ve worked with soiled doves for years.”

“Trying to make them see the error in their ways?”

“At first.”

“Until you discovered their profession was rarely a choice they made freely, but something they came to for survival?”

“Yes.” Portia studied me with genuine curiosity for the first time. “You sound like you’ve had a similar revelation.”

From her innocent expression, I knew her husband hadn’t told her of my past, and I was relieved. I didn’t need to worry that another person was befriending me to further their own good fortune.

“I worked with similar women in New York. With my father.”

Not precisely a lie. My heart sank a bit. Would I ever again be able to share the unvarnished truth of my past without worry?

I continued. “These women have little control over their life. They pretend they do, but we know the truth. If rejecting my services gives them a feeling of power and confidence, who am I to push them to do otherwise? They know I’m here, and willing to help. They’ll come to me eventually.”

Portia nodded. “When Stella called you Slim …”

“It was my husband’s nickname for me,” I said quickly, hoping to stave off tears.

“My condolences.”

A purple caravan pulled by two stout brown horses jingled its way down the street, interrupting us. A portly man drove the wagon, resplendent in lavender pants and purple coat that perfectly matched the wagon. He lifted his black derby from his head as he passed and said, “Ladies.” The painting of a nearly naked woman feeding a snake graced the side of the caravan, advertising Mugwump Specific, “For the Cure and Prevention of All Diseases of the Flesh.”

“Is he selling a chastity belt?” I asked. “Otherwise, that’s a tall order.”

Portia smiled wryly. “If he sold those he wouldn’t have any business, would he?”

The man put the brake on his wagon and disembarked. He clutched at his backside and grimaced before grinning hugely at the gathered crowd. “Ladies, did you miss me?”

“Well, if it isn’t Dr. Drummond,” Stella sneered. “There’s no takers here for your snake oil. It don’t cure nothing, unless giving my girls the shits counts. No one wants to poke a girl who’s got the trots.”

“That can happen if you take too much of it. Lucky for you, the formula has been changed such that it not only decreases that unfortunate side effect, but has been proven to cure the pox within days.”

“It’s a waste of our money,” Stella said.

“You’d be better off buying sheaths,” I said, stepping forward. “Stopping the infection before it starts, as well as stopping the spread to your johns.”

The snake-oil salesman’s expression changed so subtly I doubted anyone but me noticed it. Beneath his bonhomie exterior lived a calculating, manipulative man. He took me in from head to toe, his gaze lingering on the gun in my belt.

His smile widened and he stepped forward. “I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure.”

“That’s our very own gunslinger,” Stella said. “If your new stuff don’t work, we’ll send her after you.”

“I’m a nurse,” I said.

He held out his hand. “Theodore Drummond.”

“Helen Graham.” His grip was strong, and I winced.

“I’m sorry,” Drummond said, not sorry at all. “Did I hurt you?”

I gripped and released my hand a few times. Since leaving the Mississippi and falling under sway of the opiate, I’d fallen out of the habit of massaging my hand, and it was stiff as a result. My mouth watered at the thought of laudanum. I felt my skin go clammy, and I swallowed. “No. It’s an old injury. I’m fine.”

“Pain? Stiffness? I have something for that,” he said, motioning to his caravan.

“I’m sure you do, Doctor Drummond,” I said, looking at the side of his caravan.

He leaned forward and whispered, “Only in the very loosest sense of the word.”

Drummond noticed Portia. “Mrs. Bright, how lovely to see you. I see you aren’t using the hair tonic I gave you.”

“The ineffective tonic and draught you sold me at an exorbitant price, you mean?” Portia said.

“The very one. Some hair is too much for even the best treatment. I can mix a stronger potion, if you like.”

“I wouldn’t buy anything from you even if it promised to be from the fountain of youth.”

Drummond raised his eyebrows, and I knew she had given him an idea for another ineffective, but profitable, potion.

“I’ll be in town for a couple of days. Come see me if you change your mind.” He lifted his hat from his head and ducked into Stella’s tent.

“I can’t believe I fell for it,” Portia said in a harsh voice.

“Sometimes we believe what we want to believe, all evidence to the contrary.” I forced myself to not look at Portia’s hair, furrows of waves pulled tightly against her scalp. Her eyes met mine, and I was struck again by their singular beauty and uniqueness. Now that they had lost their animosity toward me, I was enchanted by the depth of intelligence I saw there.

“Miss?”

Startled, I turned from Portia toward the voice. A plump, dark-complexioned Negress stood a few feet away, hands held in front of her, eyes downcast.

“Yes?”

“I heard you talkin’ to Stella before, and wondered if your offer extended to us.”

“You were there? I didn’t see you.”

Her eyes met mine. “No, ma’am. I expect not.”

“Of course the offer is for any woman who wants my help. Do you need my help?”

“No, ma’am. But my friend does.”

“Lead the way.”

The woman turned, but I put a hand out to stop her. “What is your name?”

“Monique.”

“Monique. A lovely name.” She nodded and walked away. “Portia, are you coming?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s your husband?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “He’ll be along shortly, I’m sure.”

Monique led us back toward Calico Row, but instead of walking in front of Stella and her girls’ tents, she turned right and walked behind the tents opposite for a hundred yards, and moved back to the main row. We walked down a small incline and across wooden planks laid across the bottom of a dry wash in readiness of the rare occasions of high-desert rain. The tents and buildings on the other side were identical to Calico Row, except the women and men standing in groups and walking to and from were Negroes.

“That there’s our shebang,” Monique said, pointing to a small wooden building with a corral attached. Inside the corral three pigs attacked the slop a large man threw over the side.

“Morning, Monique.”

“Jesper.”

The man nodded to us and went inside his store. Monique stopped in front of a tent on the opposite side of the street. “The doctor don’t come see us,” Monique said. “I guess he don’t want our payment, though we willing to pay money instead.”

“Your money is good with me.”

She held open the tent flap and Portia and I walked inside.

It was large, and neat as a pin. At the back of the tent, three cribs were cordoned off by sheets. A quick glance inside one showed pallets on the floor instead of cots, but the bedding seemed clean from my vantage point. The front of the tent was used as a waiting room, with a small table and four chairs, a deck of cards on one side, a sheet down the middle, and an identical setup on the other side, along with a small stove where a pot of coffee warmed.

“Would you like a cup?” Monique offered.

“Oh, no,” Portia said.

“Yes, thank you,” I replied. When Monique went to make me a cup I motioned to Portia to accept.

“On second thought, I’d love a cup.”

Monique served us and motioned for us to sit down. We did and I sipped the coffee. “Oh my word, Monique. That is the best coffee I’ve had in months.” Portia concurred.

When Monique smiled, she kept her mouth closed, I suspected to hide a jumble of crooked teeth. “You’ll have to do some mighty fancy nursing to get the secret out of me.”

“Oh, a challenge.” I smiled at Monique and placed my mug on the table. “Are the separate rooms for whites and blacks?”

Monique nodded and glared at Portia when she stiffened. “You don’t like the idea of your men laying with us?”

“No, it’s that …” She trailed off.

“They been doin’ it since they brought us over. Least now they’re havin’ to pay for it. And pay they do. Though some try to get it for free.”

“How do you make them pay?” I asked. Duncan had proved that no black man in the country would be allowed to beat a white man for nonpayment and live, let alone do it repeatedly.

“I got a white boy who watches over us at night. We give him a portion of every white man’s payment, and he gets some snatch for free every night. He just have to beat a couple men and the rest learn. They pay pretty easy now, though there’s always some railroader who comes off for a quickie during the red light who don’t know what’s what.”

“And the Negro men don’t mind you servicing white men?” Portia asked.

“Nope. We charge our men less. They visit Stella’s, pay a premium for white snatch. ’Course, they have to poke them in the alley so the white men don’t know. The crackers don’t mind fucking a black woman, but God forbid sticking their pecker in a white woman who’s opened her legs for a nigger. ’Course, we have to do the Chinamen standing up out behind the tent, too. No one, white or black, wants to dip it where a Chinaman’s been. There ain’t many of them, so’s it don’t matter overmuch.”

Portia made a valiant attempt to take this information in with equanimity, but I could see the strain around her mouth and eyes. An interesting reaction for someone who said she’d worked with prostitutes for years. “Who is it you want me to see?” I asked Monique.

“Lavina. This way.”

Monique led the way to the crib on the far side of the tent, off the whites’ waiting room. “Do these women only see white men?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” she said, but I could tell she was lying. “Lavina, a nurse is here to see you.”

The woman lay on her side, facing away from the crib opening, a large soft lump beneath the blanket. She turned over and looked at us through opiate-hooded eyes. “What?”

“A nurse is here to see you.”

“What for?”

“What do you mean, what for? To take care of it.”

I moved inside and to the bottom of Lavina’s pallet and rolled up my sleeves. “She’s pregnant?”

“Yes.”

I knelt down. “Hello, Lavina. I’m Helen. Would you lie on your back for me?”

With a sigh, the woman rolled over, pulled her legs up, and opened them in the practiced manner of a woman who’d done it a thousand times and the resignation of a woman who knew she would do it a thousand more.

“I think I’ll wait outside,” Portia said in a faint voice, and left the crib.

I watched Portia leave, then turned back to Lavina. I closed the whore’s legs and pressed them gently down. “I want to feel your stomach first.”

I pulled her dress up and revealed a soft, expansive stomach, one that would easily hide a pregnancy for weeks. “When did you feel the quickening?” It was impossible to tell how far along she was by sight. When I pressed against her abdomen and measured the head I estimated thirty weeks.

“Couple of weeks ago.”

Monique couldn’t see the expression of disbelief I gave Lavina, who looked away. I pressed on her stomach this way and that, trying to get the baby to respond. I pulled her dress down to cover her nakedness.

“When was the last time the baby moved?”

“I don’t know. I try to forget it’s there.”

“What are you high on? Opium? Laudanum? Morphine?” She looked away.

“Can you get rid of it?” Monique asked.

“No. She’s thirty weeks along, at least. Maybe more. Why didn’t you try to get rid of it earlier?”

“We did,” Monique said.

“When?”

“A month, or little more. It didn’t take,” Monique said. “Got the herbs from that huckster, Drummond. It was Stella’s doin’, I know. She know Lavina my best girl. She’ll do anything she can to ruin our business, and she got Drummond by the cock. Little do she know that Drummond dipped hisself into Lavina, too. Part of his payment, he say.”

“I imagine there’s plenty of men to go around.”

“Yes, well, we get the rich men from across the tracks who wanna relive the old days with a little nigger snatch. Rubs Stella raw she’s stuck sucking off miners and railroad men and won’t ever be welcome in the saloons on Nineteenth Street.”

I stood. “You’re going to have to bring it to term.”

“I don’t want no white man’s baby.”

I thought of the girl at Mary’s orphanage, Sophia. No matter how intelligent she was, or how good at midwifing, or possibly surgery, she would be, she would always struggle because of her mixed parentage. A mulatto child born to a whore in the West would have an even more difficult time of it, especially if the baby was a girl.

I thought of another pregnant whore I’d tried to help a year earlier at Fort Richardson. She and her baby had both died. At the hands of Cotter Black, because of me.

I rubbed my forehead. So many lives lost in my name. But, I was still bound by my oath, believed in it. My goal—my purpose—as a physician would always be to save everyone I could. This child would be no different.

“Between the herbs you took and the opium you’re eating, the baby might be stillborn. If not, I know of an orphanage in Saint Louis that will take your baby.”

Lavina propped herself up on her elbows. “You do?”

“I do. You’ll have to pay for my train passage east, but I will take the baby there for you.”

“That’s mighty nice of you,” Monique said. “Why would you do that? You gonna sell it?”

“What? God, no. It’s a Catholic orphanage run by my husband’s sister.”

I’d promised Rosemond three months, and if Lavina brought her child to term, I would almost make it. She’d promised to pay for my train ticket, but there was no guarantee she would keep her word. In ten weeks the newspapers and gossips would have moved on from Catherine Bennett, and traveling with a baby would give me an invaluable disguise. I would give Mary the baby and cable my cousin, Charlotte, to book passage for England, finishing the trip Kindle and I had started.

“I’d like to visit my sister-in-law, and taking Lavina’s baby will give me the opportunity,” I explained.

“Where’s your husband?”

My throat thickened, but I managed to get one word out. “Dead.”

Monique looked down her nose and studied me, as if trying to figure out where the lie was and how much she could trust me.

I shrugged as if it meant nothing to me, and realized it didn’t. Going to Charlotte held no appeal, and neither did staying in Cheyenne. “The offer is there. Do you have a midwife who delivers your babies?”

Monique scoffed. “We delivered plenty of babies on the plantation. I expect this one won’t be no different.”

“You’re probably correct. If you run into trouble, send for me. I’m glad to help.”

“Even a nigger whore?”

“I’m taking her baby to Saint Louis, aren’t I?”

“What’s it gonna cost?”

“My passage. One way.”

“Don’t like Cheyenne?”

“It’s not home.”

“Where is home?”

“I wish I knew.”

Portia waited for me outside the tent. “Would you like to explain why you ran out of the tent? I thought you were a nurse,” I said, as we walked back the way we came.

Portia blushed again. “I didn’t imagine she wanted me watching the examination.”

I laughed at the obvious prevarication. “She’s beyond caring who sees her pudenda.”

“I didn’t want to see it.”

“It’s no different than a white woman’s, I assure you.”

Her face reddened further. “Why would you think—”

Drummond interrupted us. “Mrs. Graham?”

“Mr. Drummond.”

“I hoped I might have a word with you in private.”

“Of course.”

“You can find your way home, I assume,” Portia said, stiffly.

“Yes.”

She nodded and walked off, back straight and stiff. I supposed all the good feeling we had managed to cultivate in our morning together had been lost, though I wasn’t sure why. “What can I do for you, Mr. Drummond?”

“Theodore. I, um …” He cleared his throat. “I have a boil that needs to be lanced.”

I remembered his grimace when he got down from his wagon and had an inkling where his boil might be located. I knew as a physician I shouldn’t shirk my responsibilities to heal, but I was exhausted from my sleepless night, and my cravings for laudanum were returning. The thought of lancing a boil on Theodore Drummond’s backside held no appeal at that moment.

“Wouldn’t a doctor be better suited for such a procedure?”

“Yes, well, Dr. Hankins and I had what you might call a run-in on my last swing through town. I wouldn’t want him holding a knife over me in such a vulnerable situation.”

Though the sun was bright in the cloudless sky, chills rushed across my body. Though the worst had passed, the mere mention of laudanum was enough to awaken my craving. Soon I knew I would be a pale, shivering, and trembling mess. Drummond watched me with a discerning eye. “Are you ill?”

“Recovering.”

“We can help each other. Payment in kind. Whatever I have on my shelf.” He lowered his voice, though there was no one around to hear. “Or under the counter, if you wish.”

I swallowed and pushed away the urge to take him up on his offer. “Coin is fine.” I considered asking him to meet me at my house in an hour but decided I didn’t want this man to know where I lived.

“Do you suppose Stella would let us use a cot?”

Drummond raised his eyebrows, and I realized how the suggestion sounded. “Don’t insult me, Mr. Drummond, or you won’t want me to have a knife near your nether regions, either.”

He held up his hands in surrender, though his amusement didn’t abate. When we arrived at Stella’s tent, Drummond went inside as if he owned the place. “Stella, my dear. We need to use your facilities.” Stella’s response was muffled. Drummond stuck his head outside the tent. “Well, come on, then.”

The bright sun struggled to permeate the dirty canvas tent, throwing the inside into a perpetual gloom. The detritus of a busy night littered the floor at the edges of the room—whisky bottles, cigar butts, a leather belt with a broken buckle, a neck cloth stiff with dried blood, a used sheath. Stella sat at the table in the main area, drinking a beer with a thick head of foam, while a young whore picked up a deck of cards scattered on the floor. Drummond went to the keg in the corner of the room and drew himself a beer. “Want one, Mrs. Graham?”

“I would, as a matter of fact.”

“Help yourself,” Stella said sarcastically, waving her hand.

“I’ll give you a free bottle of Mugwhumps,” Drummond said.

“I don’t want no free bottle of that snake oil.”

Drummond handed me the beer. He removed a small pouch from his inside pocket and tossed it on the table in front of Stella. “Cannabis. You roll it like a cigarette.”

“I know what it is,” Stella said. “You’ve cut it with oregano, most like.”

Drummond clutched at his heart. “That cuts to my very core, Stella dear.”

The beer was lukewarm and tasted like piss. I forced it down and tried not to grimace or cough from disgust.

“You’re right,” Stella said. “Oregano would cost you money. Prairie grass is free.” Stella evaluated me. “Do what you need and get on, Slim. I wanna sleep.” Drummond bent down and spoke into Stella’s ear.

I set my medical bag down and set to work, and was immediately sidetracked by an empty water bucket. “There’s no water.”

“Pump’s across the street,” Stella said.

I looked to Drummond, expecting him to be a gentleman and offer to fetch it, but he and Stella continued with their low-voiced conversation. I picked up the bucket and went to find the pump.

With the whores sleeping off their busy night, Calico Row had gone quiet, the only evidence of life the stray dogs sniffing for food in the alleys, feral cats darting between the shadows, and a plume of black smoke floating behind the tents across the street. I walked between the tents, disturbing a pair of copulating cats and getting a terrifying hiss in return. The female didn’t move but stared into the distance, an expression of resignation on her little feline face. With my back to the wall of a tent, I inched past, hoping the tom wouldn’t launch himself at me.

The water pump was in the middle of a large U-shaped area bordered by outhouses on one side, a washhouse on the other, and a large fire pit at the top of the “U.” A Negro woman with turbaned hair and her sleeves rolled up past her elbows washed clothes in a large wooden tub. Next to the fire pit, Jesper leaned on a two-by-four scorched on one end, watching the flames. He nodded at me and poked at the fire with his board. The woman ignored me. I hooked the bucket over the nozzle and pumped water into the bucket. I removed the bucket with my right hand and dropped it, spilling the water all over my skirt.

I rubbed my right hand with my left, silently cursing myself. Even after almost a year, my instinct was to use my right hand, which would never be as strong as the other. It didn’t help when I used it to punch a man in the nose. A pain shot from my middle knuckle up through the finger. I grimaced and flexed my hand and was relieved that it trembled only slightly. I was lucky Drummond would be turned away, and unable to be discomforted by my shaking hand.

I filled the bucket halfway, hooked it on my left arm, and returned to the tent. Stella sat at the table as before, and Drummond stood across from her, near where my medical bag sat, top unbuckled. I met Drummond’s shrewd eyes with a pang of fear. Was there anything in my medical bag that would connect me to the Murderess and the Major?

I set the bucket on the worktable. “Did you find what you were looking for?” I asked.

“You don’t have any laudanum.”

“I suspect you have something in your caravan that will help with the pain. More cannabis, maybe?”

“That I do. Just odd for a nurse to have everything but an opiate. Not to mention a surgeon’s kit.”

“It was my father’s,” I said. I stepped close to Drummond, keeping my eyes on his, and hoped I was brazening his questioning out, though my insides had turned to jelly. I opened my bag and looked inside. It was a jumble, but nothing seemed to be missing.

“And you know how to use it?”

“Well enough to lance a boil on your ass, yes. Do you want my help or not?”

“Hush your yapping and get on with it,” Stella said. She motioned to the corner crib. “Use Clara’s crib. She’s off with that preacher, sweet-talking him into giving her something for nothing.” She rose unsteadily and disappeared behind a sheet. I heard a rustling, the creak of a straining cot, and a groan of exhaustion. Almost immediately, she began to snore.

“Bring the basin of water,” I ordered Drummond.

A gingham dress draped over the back of a chair. An empty beer stein sitting next to an oil lamp on a small table. An 1868 calendar with a drawing of a bird’s-eye view of Chicago nailed to the corner post. A cot, low to the ground and covered with a cloth, stained with the fluids of dozens of men and Clara’s blood. The sum total of this woman’s possessions. I covered my mouth as the true depth of hopelessness and despair of these women’s lives hit me.

Drummond tossed the stein into the corner and placed the basin on the table. I sprinkled carbolic in the water and dropped my instruments and a couple of squares of cloth in. When I turned around, Drummond stood before me, pants around his ankles, his penis hanging well past the tail of his shirt. I sighed, fully aware he was trying to intimidate me. Or frighten me. Or test me. I glared at him. “I’m a married woman. I’ve seen it before. Turn around and lie down.”

With a smirk, he did as told, but not before removing his coat and draping it over the chair. I pulled the chair near the bed, set the basin on it, and lifted the back of his shirt. A boil the size of a walnut jutted out from the top of the crack in his buttocks. I placed a carbolic-soaked cloth over it and put two more into the water. Drummond hissed.

“If that hurts I can’t imagine how you drove a wagon.”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“Tell me about your route.” I held the lamp near the boil and dabbed gently around it to sterilize it. It was red and tender around the base, and the bulb of the boil was filled with pus. It was a difficult location, with a high chance of infection once I lanced it. But there was no other remedy, to my knowledge.

“I stay near the railroad, from Grand Island on, and down to Denver.”

“Wouldn’t taking the train be safer?” I set the lamp down and picked up my scalpel.

“I started on the train. Lugging a box of medicine from town to town.”

“The caravan is a step up, then?”

“Indeed.”

I held a carbolic-soaked cloth next to the boil and hovered my scalpel above it. “Are you ready?”

Drummond inhaled, nodded, and buried his head in the pillow. I pressed the scalpel into the boil and just managed to dodge the stream of pus that shot out of it like a geyser. Drummond’s scream drowned out my yelp of disgust. I cut through the boil as Drummond sobbed quietly into his pillow. “It’s almost over,” I said, mopping up the seeping pus with one of the cloths, tossing it onto the floor, and grabbing another. By the time all of the fluid had drained, I’d used every piece of cloth that had cushioned my bottles of medicine, save one, which I wanted to use for a bandage.

“Mr. Drummond, I need to bandage your wound, but I need long strips of cloth. There is nothing here that is clean enough, and I don’t have a bandage that long. Do you have a clean sheet in your caravan?”

He nodded. I patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

“Key’s in my jacket pocket,” he said.

The inside of Drummond’s caravan was neat as a pin, much to my relief. I stripped a sheet from the bed built into the inside front and searched through his drawers for scissors. I found them in the third drawer, next to a brass-and-glass syringe. Why would a snake-oil salesman need a syringe? I opened the upper cabinets and found all manner of ineffective patent medicines, mostly the purple bottles of Mugwhumps Specific. In the bottom cabinets I found what I suspected was his true line of goods: cannabis, opium, laudanum, and vials of morphine. No wonder the whores didn’t run him away from Calico Row for his medicines’ ineffectiveness.

Someone pounded on the caravan door, and I almost dropped the vial of morphine I held. I replaced it, closed the cabinet, and picked up the sheet and scissors. I opened the caravan door to see Reverend Bright, red-faced and lifting his arm to pound on the door again.

“Helen!” His brows furrowed in confusion, and he tried to look around me. “What are you doing in there?” His voice was harsh and accusatory.

I closed the door behind me and padlocked it. “Not what you think. I treated Drummond for a minor complaint, and I need a bandage. I might ask what are you doing, banging on his door?”

“I wanted to talk to him about the dope he’s selling these women.”

“Talk? You looked like you wanted to fight.”

“We have no chance to save these girls if he keeps returning to sell them opium.”

I stopped in the middle of the street. “How many women have you and Portia saved?”

He jerked his head back. “Why?”

“I’m curious. How many?”

“Two.”

“And where are they now?”

“Both married good Christian men.”

“Farmers?”

“Miners.”

“They went from spreading their legs for money to spreading them for free and having to do chores sunup to sundown?”

“It’s a more respectable life than prostitution.”

“Only a man would think so.”

“You can’t mean to say you think prostitution is a good life for a woman.”

“Of course not, but we object to different things. You object to what they do. I object to how they are forced to live. Have you seen inside Stella’s tent?”

“Yes.”

“It’s deplorable. Why are they forced to live that way? Because they have no other options, no other way to earn money. Society only values women’s bodies and what they can do for men. Take care of them, make their children, or give them pleasure.”

Flushed and angry, I walked off. The Reverend followed. “What would your husband think, you talking about marriage in this way?”

I stopped abruptly and stuck my finger in Reverend Bright’s chest. “Don’t you dare talk to me about my husband as if you know him. We had a marriage of equals in every way.”

“That is a blasphemy in the eyes of God.”

“It’s a good thing I don’t care much for what God thinks, then, isn’t it?”

By the expression on the Reverend’s face, his opinion of me hit rock bottom. In for a penny, in for a pound. “If you want to save whores, you should educate them so they can stand on their own two feet, not have to rely on a man.”

I entered Stella’s tent, leaving the Reverend red-faced and gaping at me. Wonderful. I’d managed to befriend and alienate Portia and her husband before lunchtime. I pulled back the curtain dividing Clara’s crib and found her on her knees in front of the cot, fellating Drummond. I dropped the curtain closed and turned away.

“Be done in a moment, Mrs. Graham,” Drummond said, slightly breathless but without a bit of shame. I would have left except my medical bag was in the crib and, though I found him absolutely reprehensible, I couldn’t leave Drummond’s wound untreated. I sat at the table, cut the sheet into strips, and was starting to tie four strips into one long bandage when I heard Drummond’s completion.

“Now will you give me it?” Clara said.

“That was hardly long enough for a full dose.”

Hardly long enough? “From this side of the curtain it was an eternity.”

Drummond opened the curtain, the bottom half of his body naked. “I feel a new man,” he said. “Would you like to finish me off?”

I stood. “You see this gun, Mr. Drummond? I know how to use it. If you ever speak to me that way again, or even speak to me with a passing hello, I will pull this gun and blow your brains out.” His grin slipped. “Clara?” The whore came around the divider. “Come here.”

She shuffled over to me, all of her coyness from earlier gone. In front of me was a young woman who might have been pretty at one time but was now a whore desperate for escape into an opium-induced stupor. Drummond watched us. I waved at him in dismissal. “Leave us be.”

Clara nibbled on the side of her thumb.

“What is he giving you?”

“I don’t know, something new. He said I’d like it better than the opium.”

I sighed. Morphine, most like. “Clara, do you want to die in this crib?”

She dropped her hand. “You sound like Ollie. I don’t need no preaching. I just want to relax a little before the johns come tonight. It’s Saturday, and we’ll be on our backs all night.”

“How many men do you service?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Thirty on a good night.”

I rubbed my temple. Thirty men a night, and Cheyenne was growing exponentially. With that kind of use, and the dope, she would be dead in a couple of years. “How old are you?”

“Don’t rightly know. Twenty, or thereabouts.”

Drummond came out of the crib, fully clothed, smug and sure of himself. I looked toward the outside at where I’d left the Reverend, and back to Clara in the middle, trapped.

I can’t save everyone. But shouldn’t I at least try?

Yes.