THE BAWD OF THE HOG RANCH SHOWS HER TRUE COLOURS
I DID ONLY GO WITH MY BROTHER 1 MORE TIME TO THE hog ranch before the night you want to hear of. We will come to that night Sir as I promised but only when I am ready to write of it.
After we took our September wages it was & our blood was hot that is the reason I went I think. A mob of Red Cloud’s Braves were after taking a clatter of beef cattle from the far grazing & well we did have a lively chase lasting near a whole day & a fair dust up at the end of it with none of ours hurt & none or maybe 1 of theirs hurt but most of the cattle got back & so on returning well out the livestock gate wicket we went under Pvt. Daly’s watch a dollar in his trousers for his troubles.
And though it does not make for pretty reading I will write of this for maybe it is on this night that some of the things to come was decided concerning the Madam of that rough house who was wife to the Sutler of course. For you could say that she was married to a rum & evil man but that she was as bad if not worse herself.
It is this I will try to show you though you will not want to read it for it is a terrible thing done by a terrible woman altogether. I tell you Sir since the War I am not oft shocked by things in this life but I was shocked by what I saw that night by the cruelty of it. Such shame I felt I tell you Sir that Ridgeway not only bared witness to it but it was he who had to stop it & maybe only he who could. It does shock my memory to recall it.
I say it was perhaps only that lovely Quaker boy who could bring peace to that house because he knew that whore kip better than we did in a fashion. For he did pass his time there by day making photographs of the whores & I do not know why but he did also make photographs of the Sutler’s wife but this does be neither here nor there.
You should not think the worse of Ridgeway for this Sir because I did see the pictures he made of them whores & they are full of beauty & well composed though you might not think it possible. He made them look like ladies every one of them & less like whores altogether. He put them in finery & dresses like ladies & not just in shifts & corsets like in picture cards you see of whores now & again. These dresses he put the whores in he bought from the Sutler’s store himself & gave them as gifts to the whores after so you can see why Kinney & his wife could tolerate him loafing about the place with his apparatus & keeping the girls awake by day for to make pictures of them. They did great business selling the dresses & such to Ridgeway.
And Ridgeway was a gentle soul who did not vex the girls for gratis pokes so that they let him make his pictures happily & did treat him like a fond relation when he came with us to the shebeen in the evenings. He paid them money to pose for him as well which is always a help in getting a whore to do your bidding but in Ridgeway there was no badness or no lustful intentions I may tell you truthfully. Perhaps he had a sweetheart back at home but if he did he did not speak of her.
He even made a picture of Tom’s sweetheart too & this I could not imagine until I saw it for she did cloak her face with a shawl or blanket whenever she could & you would not think she would show her terrible injuries to a photographer but she did & this picture she then gave to Tom for a gift. Well this nigh moved my brother to tears & I had to look away when she gave it to him for his love for her at that moment did be like the sun. You could not look directly at it for the harm it would do you.
But that night I did not know that Ridgeway had the lay of the land in the shebeen or that he was no stranger to its ways. It was much the same sort of night as any in such a place with drink & some songs though with the Madam of the house there tending instead of her husband things were maybe a mite more quiet in truth. But we were in fine spirits altogether laughing at one thing or another & jibbed up on the edge of wildness in the way that men who live in fear can be betimes.
All the bloody business of the Army was forgotten with the whiskey. Tom had his girl on his lap & I played Pontoon with Henrik the Swede but even I could see the sour gob on the woman of the house. She did scowl when asked for more drink & would leave it on the bar for a fellow or the whores to collect rather than bring it down & serve it up like a proper landlady might. But this meant nothing to me at all til the poor fat girleen who sat on Metzger’s lap rose up for to use the jakes out of doors. That girl had a jug of Trade Sap in her guts already & she was unsteady on her feet & I do not know how it came to be or why she did it but before the Devil could say Boo! that whore did have her skirts up & was soon pissing into the fire steam hissing up from the logs & souring the air. Well 1/2 way to finished with her piss she did tumble from her hunkers with it running down her legs & great farting winds came from her arse & being soldiers we set to laughing. Like yipping coyotes we did sound & she was laughing too her face squeezed tight with joy for there was something of the clowning harlequin about it all & even with a gallon or more inside her she could see it. In truth we thought her a harmless simple creature. Even the mostly silent muleskinner smiled from his stool in the corner & all of us were thinking Oh what a wild jape! But that wife of the Sutler well she was a demon if you did ever see one walking.
For when she saw this she came belting round the bar & took up one of the iron fire pokers herself the whole time roaring, “You filthy bitch who do think you are? Who do you think you are doing that? What kind of establishment do you think this is you filthy whore you filthy sloughing whore!”
Well we did laugh harder at this for what sort of establishment did the Madam herself think it was? But the laughing soon stopped short as Mrs. Kinney took the poker to the girl in wild reefing swings knocking bark from the roof beams every time she swung it while that poor whore was not able rise to her feet & only covered her head wailing & pleading in her Indian tongue. I do not think any of us knew rightly what to do for we were so shocked by the suddenness of it & only when blood begun to leap from the poker with each blow did we see that something needed doing or the girl would perish under that witch’s battering. But before this thought passed from one end of my drunken mind to the other Ridgeway was on his feet to catch the poker in his hand as the terrible slut brung it back for another swipe & our brave Quaker friend then snatched it from her. Ridgeway was soft & quick at the same time & before you knew it he had an arm round the Sutler’s wife leading her away from the poor girl who now the other whores tended to.
Well blood did pour down that girl’s face as blood from a head wound is want to & she did commence to weeping & wailing & cursing God & Mrs. Kinney in her language until the other whores took her back behind the curtain to tend her while Ridgeway sat up at the bar beside the Sutler’s wife.
He sat there beside her telling her what I do not know but she did not take agin him nor curse him nor cast him out as barred from her husband’s rough saloon. No I tell you in no time did she be pouring out glasses of good & proper whiskey for them both & soon after this that awful woman took to weeping herself maybe in shame or maybe in the pity the wicked oft feel for themselves but whichever it was Ridgeway was there for to give her consolation.
Well the 3 of us soldiers did not know what to do. I felt sick to my stomach the whiskey bitter in my mouth & Metzy was white as fresh linen with shame & fear & no doubt wondering would he get back the money he paid to poke the girl who was now in no fit state for it.
As for my brother well you can guess how Tom’s face was cut with rage agin that woman & when his girl came back to his knee she too was quiet & sullen & cursed the back of that Sutler’s wife with her eyes until the muleskinner said something in her Indian tongue & she looked away. Tom did then lay his gaze down upon the skinner but his sweetheart whispered something to him & after a time Tom broke his stare & looked back to her & she made to smile though in truth it looked to me like her heart was not in it.
Myself I did grow sad & ashamed. “How did I come to such a lowly place?” says I to myself. There are shebeens & whores the world over but of all of them I never did see a worse place than this one. Such a sink ditch for such low borne men as us. I felt ashamed to be there & yet perfectly made for such a place. I was an abject creature. I am one still now.
Finally Ridgeway stroked the arm of the Sutler’s wife & said his last piece to her & came back to our table. Just then did the Sutler Kinney himself return to his tavern bringing the cold of Autumn in with him smoke coughing from the fire with the open door. He took but one look about the place & knew that something was wrong & the muleskinner gave him a look so he went to his wife for a whisper & then disappeared behind the sheet into the whores’ quarters.
Tom’s girl raised her head from his shoulder & spoke to all of us. “You go now. You come back the morrow.”
Tom I could see did not want to leave but I think there was nothing he would of not done for her & he slowly stood & so we all did. But the whole time he kept his eyes on the muleskinner & Kinney’s wife. It was like he was warning them without words to mind how they treated his girl. Ridgeway saw this & thought the same thing & said to my brother, “It will be fine, Thomas. She will be fine.”
Tom turned to him his eyes dark with poison. “You would do well to keep your whisht Sir. This is not your affair.”
“Tom!” says I sharply. “He is only being a friend. Mind your tongue.”
Tom turned his eyes to me.
“You go now,” his girl said to him & stroked his arm.
Says Tom, “I am sorry Ridgeway. I did not mean it. You will forgive me?”
“Of course I will Tom,” says the Picture Maker gentle as always. And I will say to you now that to spite the night’s terrible beatings & the fierce trembling violence in Tom’s mind there was something about his apology to Ridgeway that was so regular & common & heartfelt that I saw in it the old Tom the one from before the War. Truly it came to me that the cutnose girl & Ridgeway both were a healing balm to my brother.
So we left the shebeen all of us & it was not the morrow but some weeks later when I went back to that pit again. Of course my brother went regular any night he could & even some days when he was not detailed though I hardly know how he did manage it. I think he took credit from Kinney God Only Knows how much. But I know his love for that girl grew stronger. It was blooming by the day & with it came Tom’s yearning to protect his sweetheart to keep her from harm & someday to have her always with him so that when everything that I will tell you came to pass it was almost like a thing destined. It was like cards that are dealt & must be played.
It is said that God gives us the will to choose the right or the wrong thing & His Son came down to forgive us for oft picking the wrong one but I wonder about this. I do think betimes there are no choices for the poor of the Earth at all & if there is any choice to be had it sits part way between 1 wrong thing & another. I oft wonder does a right thing even exist in such a place as this for such men as us to choose. In truth I do not think so.