Hart had drunk enough to sleep late. He’d told himself after the first batch of whiskey that he was damned if he was going to spend another night in the whorehouse and then he’d damned himself by doing it. Though all he’d done when he was there was win thirty dollars at five card stud and drink the best part of a bottle of Jim Beam.
‘The inside,’ one of the card players had laughed, ‘that’s the best part of a bottle of Jim Beam. Never did care too much for the glass.’
Hart had pretended to laugh and waited for the man to shut up and deal. One of the penalties of playing poker in whorehouses instead of regular saloons was that there was more of a tendency to get men who thought they were the life and soul of any gathering, which included themselves. The other drawback was that your winnings – supposing you came out on top – were most likely never to get past the front door. Not with so many women around whose purpose in life was to turn a trick or three before the dawn shuffled in.
So: Wes Hart had won thirty dollars near enough but he’d stuck it in his pants pocket and sat on it, except to buy a few drinks for the brown-eyed girl he’d spent a pleasant hour with his first night in town. A couple of friendly drinks for old times’ sake; couple of hours or more spent in friendly company.
It wasn’t the plushest house Hart had passed time in, but whoever’s money was behind it obviously had his eye open for the main chance. Anticipation of the extra Texas cattlemen and cattle buyers from the Midwest and the East had set some interior improvements in motion. An extension was being timbered on at the rear and several upstairs rooms were being partitioned off - two beds, but not for the price of one. Fresh paint had already been applied to one of the walls and whenever the girls weren’t working – which seemed a high percentage of time this particular evening – they were tatting and stitching diligently. Feathering their own nests.
The madam was a round woman who looked as if she and her body had known better times. But she was friendly with the visitors, not too rough on the girls, and she didn’t seem too disappointed when Hart declined the best services of the house. Perhaps she thought having him there was some kind of protection against trouble.
That, remembered Hart, was what Kate had thought.
He chuckled at the memory. In her personal and private way, Kate had been one hell of a lady. One hell of a good-looking woman. And she had kept Hart at arm’s length, seeming to enjoy talking with him when business was slack, drinking wine with him and looking as if she should have been managing a New York fashion house at the very least, and not a frontier brothel.
A black dress that fitted her body close. Round, silver earrings that hung alongside her fine-boned face. A thin silver bracelet circled her left wrist: a small cameo ring on the second finger of her left hand. The heart-shaped silver locket that had hung between the rise of her breasts — that had been Kate.
Hart had let Crazy John Carter put a bullet through him and she had helped nurse him so that he was strong enough to ride off to Tago and do a job of work. Nothing had been said between them: there was nothing to be said. It wasn’t that kind of thing between a man and a woman where promises seem to need to be made so that they can be broken. He had assumed that if he rode back that way she would still be there.
He had and she wasn’t.
He’d hardly thought about her since. There were no ties. If they met again, Hart guessed that he’d feel glad and he kind of hoped that she would too.
But it was a big country.
And it was getting late. Hart had paid for the rest of the bottle and taken it back to the marshal’s narrow bed with him. The fact that he’d finished it off before finally dropping off to sleep meant that, rarely, he hadn’t woken with the dawn.
The voice reached him first, strident and high, and after that the swell of other voices which underpinned it, the movement of feet and wheels. Barcroft’s flat-bed wagon had been pressed into service once more. Service of a different kind, and the procession which followed it was different also. Freddy Logan and his mother were the only ones who had marched in both and this time it had been the adult who had insisted, the child who had gone reluctantly, dragging his heels. Not that young Freddy really understood what the occasion was all about and his ma certainly wasn’t about to explain to him. He would, she dreaded, find out soon enough. The speaker stood in the back of the wagon, which drove the length of the street as slow as the two mules in harness would go. Anything else might have shaken Miss Aronia Hawthorne from her perch and Aronia Hawthorne was not a woman who took kindly to being shaken. The Friends of Decency had paid the good woman’s expenses to come down from Kansas City – Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas City, Kansas – to address the townsfolk of Caldwell on the perils which threatened to befall them if the council had its way and the town was made into a stopping-off point for both the Texas trail herds and the railroad.
‘…you may have no doubt,’ the voice declaimed, ‘you must allow no last vestige of doubt to linger in your hearts, that if these uncouth and sorry men are encouraged to come to this fair township then they will bring the Lord’s wrath trailing in their wake!’
Hart scratched the back of his neck and yawned a few times and settled his left shoulder against the nearest pillar to stick up from the boardwalk. Aronia Hawthorne was certainly an imposing woman; she either wore a bustle or else nature had endowed her as well behind as it had in front, where the swell of her chest testified to where she got the strength and carrying-power of her voice.
‘... has been said that Texas cattle spread disease and contaminate the Kansas stock with which they intermingle. I must make it plain to you, distasteful as I know the subject will be to some of you listening to me now, that this is not the only kind of disease these Texas cattlemen will be responsible for introducing to and spreading through your community.’
Mrs. Logan clapped her hands over young Freddy’s ears.
‘I am told that you already have one house of infamy and shame within the boundaries of this town. Such an establishment is ground for all of you here to look within yourselves and see how far you are to blame for allowing this house to prosper. But however that may be, what I have to tell you is certain – if Texans are encouraged to trade in Caldwell then within less than a week of their coming there will not be one house but two, and then three and then four. And evil will predominate to such an extent that decent men and women will not be able to walk the length of the main street without casting their eyes to the ground in shame!’
The few men who were marching, embarrassed already, let their heads shift away. Women thronged closer and the wagon drew to a slow halt.
‘Which of you has not a daughter whose virtue will be besmirched if this happens; which of you has a son whose soul and body will not be tempted and damned?’ Aronia Hawthorne threw back her head, flung wide her arms, eyes momentarily closed, mouth open drawing in air. ‘Perdition! That is what it means — perdition! The same men who buy and sell diseased cattle will buy and sell the diseased flower of womanhood! Do not allow this to happen. Not here. Not in your community.’ Her head dropped, apparently helpless, the crowd hushed, watched; the head, magnificent, rose up and addressed them once more. ‘Lest you wish this town to be Sodom, lest you wish this town to be Gomorrah, you must act. Rise up as others have in the cause of decency. In the wake of the Lord’s teaching. Let your voices be heard so that those of the Devil may be drowned and drowned everlasting.’
She seemed to sway backwards on the final words, recover and send her arms high into the air. The crowd, massed about the wagon, forty, fifty people, raised their hands along with her and shouted and clamored. Those who had made banners and placards waved them aloft. The cheering went on and on.
Hart caught a glimpse of faces watching from across the street, half-hidden behind windows. Caleb Deignton, stern and angry; Lily Weinstein, amused beyond all else. He noticed the black-garbed preacher hovering at the edge of the crowd. Women milled around the wagon, trying to talk to Aronia Hawthorne; the hems of their long dresses trailed in the puddles left from the previous day’s storm, several inches of material was black with mud. Hart moved away and went to the hotel.
The clerk, eye shade dangling from his neck, was peering over the top of the door and scuttled away when Hart got close. Otherwise the place seemed to be empty — all of the excitement was out on the street.
Hart went into the dining room and was surprised to see the waitress there, sitting at one of the tables cleaning silver. The child lay in a cot close by, asleep.
‘Mornin’.’
She looked up at him and for a couple of seconds paused in what she was doing.
‘Any coffee?’
The woman finished shining one of the knives and then nodded grudgingly. She got up and disappeared into the kitchen. As if knowing, the child stirred in his sleep and for a moment whimpered.
Hart sat down and crossed one leg over another. The coffee was hot and tasted slightly burnt when it arrived, the waitress hardly allowing herself time to set the cup down before she was moving away.
‘Thanks,’ said Hart to her back.
A civil word occasionally, he thought, wouldn’t hurt none.
A few minutes later he heard voices beyond the dining room door and steps coming towards him and he thought he might even be about to see the mighty Aronia Hawthorne ushered into his presence, in search of refreshment after her morning’s work. But no: it was perhaps the last person he expected to see there in Caldwell, there in the Kansas Star Hotel.
‘Ma’am,’ Hart half got to his feet, awkward and surprised.
Emily Escort looked taller out of her husband’s shadow. Her reddish-brown hair, short and brushed to fit the curve of her skull like a cap, glowed more brightly. Her eyes had life in them.
Teresa stood behind her, hiding behind her skirts, peeping round and then the timid head withdrawing like a wild rabbit. The baby, Henry, was wrapped in a blanket and tied, Indian style, on to Emily’s back, so that the tip of his head showed above her shoulder.
The waitress looked at the woman and her children with interest, a trace of anxiety in the soft and bitter dark of her eyes.
‘I didn’t expect…’
‘No, no, not after … after what my husband said. Only…’ Emily faltered and looked around the room. She gave the waitress a quick half-smile.
‘Why don’t you come over and sit down? Rest here a while.’
‘Of course.’
Hart turned to ask the woman to fetch more coffee, but she had already gone into the kitchen.
‘With you in town like this,’ Hart said, ‘I guess it must be somethin’ special’
‘Yes, it is. It is. Did you hear her?’
‘Her?’
‘Out there earlier. Aronia Hawthorne.5
‘Is that who she was? Hawthorne?’
‘Aronia Hawthorne.’ Emily’s eyes shone. ‘Isn’t she just a wonderful speaker?’
‘Powerful, ma’am. I’ll say that for her.’
‘Then you don’t agree with what she said?’ asked Emily, leaning forward, a note of surprise folding into her voice.
‘Well,’ Hart hesitated, ‘I’ll admit there was somethin’ there, but it seemed a little extreme…’
‘Extreme? But after listening to her and…’
She broke off as the waitress arrived with a pot of coffee and a fresh cup. Using a mixture of mime and mouthed, silent words, she asked Emily whether the children wanted milk to drink. For the first time Hart glimpsed the short stump of tongue at the back of her mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Emily, after a while, ‘I was forgetting that you were being paid to help bring these dreadful men to Caldwell, not keep them away.’
‘That’s just it,’ said Hart. ‘Texans ain’t dreadful. Not the whole bunch of ‘em, no more than Kansans.’
‘Mr. Hart, let me tell you, I have seen these men with my own eyes and I’ve heard the way they have spoken to my husband when he tried to prevent them from using our land. I have…’ She tied a knot in the ribbon at the front of her dress, blushing. ‘…heard the things they’ve said to me. Such men aren’t...’
‘Such men are one hell of a long way from home an’ they’ve been livin’ rough for week after week for precious little pay. They ain’t seen fireside nor woman since they can remember. Thrown together like that, they cut up rough, sure enough, But drivin’ herd’s a rough life.’
‘That may be, but I’m sure Frank would say you were just making excuses.’
‘Where is Frank, ma’am? He here in town?’
For some reason that she would not have been able to explain satisfactorily to herself, Emily’s blush deepened. With the color of her hair, it made her whole face close to beautiful. Hart’s stare told her so and she blushed all the more. Quickly, she picked up her cup and set it in front of her face.
Hart grinned a little and then smiled at Teresa, who managed a hasty smile in return then hid her face once more.
‘No,’ said Emily, ‘Frank he’s … he’s…’
She stared over her shoulder, as if afraid someone might have that moment entered. Her body shifted closer in the chair and she set the cup back down.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘I … the girl who served us,’ she asked with a low voice, ‘can’t she talk? Do you know? What happened to her?’
Hart glanced round. ‘Never heard her speak. Didn’t realize till just now it was on account of she can’t. Her tongue, it…’
Emily set a hand to her mouth and screwed up her eyes.
‘How dreadful. To imagine…’
‘That wasn’t what you was talkin’ about, ma’am. That woman back there.’
‘No, I…’ Still the words wouldn’t come.
‘You came lookin’ for me, that’s right, ain’t it? You didn’t wander in off the street and away from that meeting by chance. There was somethin’ you had to tell me.’
His faded blue eyes held her gaze and refused to release it.
‘Now best you say what you got to say.’
She stared back at him, dumbstruck.
On her back the baby wriggled and began to whimper. The little girl reached up one of her hands to quieten him.
‘You was tellin’ me about Frank.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘This is terrible. I shouldn’t be here.’ She made to go but Hart’s hand, firm but gentle on her arm, prevented her.
At the back of the dining room, the waitress’s own hands held a knife and she watched what was happening closely, shining the blade slowly.
‘He don’t know you’re in town, that it?’
‘No, of course not. I wouldn’t come to town without Frank’s permission. I wouldn’t dare.’
‘Then he knows you’re here.’
‘Yes. Aronia Hawthorne’s cause is our cause. We both feel strongly about it.’
‘But you ain’t both here.’
‘No. He…’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m worried, you see.’
‘I know.’
‘There was a meeting,’
‘Go on.’
‘Frank wasn’t going to go but some men came by a few days ago. They were … they had guns. They said Frank had to go, didn’t have any choice.’ Emily lowered her voice further, so that Hart had to lean forward to catch the words. There was a shout and a cheer from the street, as if the meeting was starting up again. ‘He left last night, said he’d be back some hour today. Said it was all right for me to come here with the children, listen and head straight back.’
‘These men,’ asked Hart, ‘were there three of them, wearing long coats, dusters?’
Emily shook her head. ‘Four of them. They didn’t seem to be wearing anything special.’
‘Tell me about them.’
Emily thought back but she didn’t have to think hard. ‘The one who did most of the talking, he was big – much bigger than Frank, bigger than you. He had…’ and she gestured around her face with her small hands ‘…a big beard, sticking out all over. Shouted and cursed.’
‘Like a Texan?’ asked Hart sarcastically.
Emily flinched a little. ‘He certainly wasn’t anyone I’d seen before. Frank neither.’
‘He have a couple with him look alike?’
‘That’s right. Do you … do you know them?’
‘Seen ‘em around.’
Emily picked up her coffee cup and found it was empty.
‘You want some more?’ asked Hart swiveling his head.
‘No,’ Emily stopped him. ‘No, thank you, really.’
‘Well, it sure isn’t as good as what you make at home.’
She began to blush again, look pretty again. Both of them knew it.
‘Where was this meeting?’
‘Shire’s ranch.’
‘Uh-huh. Figures. Those are Shire’s men.’
‘I don’t like it. I don’t like Frank riding with men like that. He isn’t a fighting man, he doesn’t like to use a gun. Not against other men.’
She moved her hand and for an instant her eyes looked at Hart appealingly and he thought she was going to rest the hand on his arm. Instead, it hung strangely in mid-air for some seconds before returning to her lap.
‘You think what they’re plannin’, it’s usin’ guns?’
‘I’m not sure, but … but, yes. I think so.’
‘An’ Frank’d go along with that?’
‘No. I don’t know. If they make him, put pressure on him.’ Her eyes were bright. ‘I know Frank. He’s stubborn. If he’s convinced that the only way to keep Texas cattle out of the state is to fight, he’ll fight.’
‘Against them as wants ‘em in? Other ranchers, them as rent out land for pasture. People like yourselves.’
Emily put both hands to her face. The waitress got up and carried a box of cutlery into the kitchen. The street seemed to have quietened down again. A man was whistling, off-key, in the bar.
‘Whatever he does, whatever you want,’ said Hart. ‘Nothin’s goin’ to stop the railroad comin’ to Caldwell. If not this year then next. Them rails are goin’ all over. Whole damned country’ll change and a lot of folk won’t think for the better.’
‘Then if…’
Hart shook his head. ‘There ain’t nothin’ we can do. There’s people back East with money they want to make into more money and out here’s where they’re planning to do it. Already there’s ranches bein’ bought out by big companies, some of ‘em not even American. French, English. Gods knows where. Way I see it, it’s gettin’ so’s the land won’t belong to them as works it.’
‘And you don’t care?’ Emily asked, eyes widening.
‘I care. I care but there ain’t a damn thing I can do about it. ‘Cept maybe try to keep myself to myself long as I can. Choose where I go an’ keep movin’.’
‘And Frank? What do you think will happen to Frank?’
Hart pushed back his chair and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Likely, he’ll keep out of things if they ride in anywhere usin’ guns. If not, I guess he’ll have to take his chances.’
‘There’s nothing you can do then?’
‘For your husband? What do you want, for me to go out and nurse-maid him back? You know how he’ll react to that. Like a wild cat trapped in the dark. But I will go talk with Shire. See if I can calm things down a little. See war don’t break out round here. I been in a range war once, down south from here. Lot of men got hurt an’ a lot of blood got spilt and it weren’t pretty.’
Hart stood up and Emily did the same; they faced one another across the small table.
‘You’d best be gettin’ back. You an’ the kids.’
‘I know. I … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you. I had no right…’
‘That’s okay. I’m just sorry there ain’t nothin’ I can do.’
Hart ruffled the little girl’s hair and walked quickly past, leaving Emily looking at the far wall and the waitress standing just inside the kitchen door, watching them both.