PANSY KNEW THE BOSTON CAPTAIN WANTED HER. SHE HAD begun her life in the London streets at the age of eleven; she had now reached the age of sixteen and considered herself an expert on the desires of men. She read them as quickly as educated people read newspapers. The captain wanted her, but that was common—it was not the important fact.
The important fact was that he was taking his boat in the direction she wanted to go: south, to where it was warm.
All her years in London, Pansy had been cold. She had spent nearly six years shivering; some girls got used to it, but Pansy never had. She hated the chill. The best thing about the Wild West show had been the warm tents and the heaps of buffalo robes. For the first time in years she slept warm; it was worth marrying an old man for a while to sleep in a warm tent rather than a chill stone doorway.
On the voyage over, Pansy had heard several people talk about the western winters. Evidently they were long and severe. That news was enough to convince Pansy that her marriage to old Bartle had served its purpose: she was in America, and the southern parts of America were said to be quite warm. Old Bartle was not bad to her, but he was of no interest. The elegant Mr. Cody had been of considerable interest, but Mr. Cody was full of himself and scarcely looked at her. He did mention how warm the south was, though. He and Annie Oakley had done an exhibition in New Orleans, a city he claimed was always warm.
Knowing no more than that, Pansy decided New Orleans would be her destination. She would have been pleased to attract the interest of Mr. Cody but he was evidently not a man who sought women very strenuously. He even seemed to think she loved old Bartle, when she had merely chosen him as her road to warmth. It was a pity Mr. Cody had no more need for women than he seemed to, but Pansy felt she had neither the time nor the opportunity to change him.
The American summer, or the little that she had got to see of it, had been all she had hoped for. It was warm in New York, and even warmer in Chicago. But on the train west to Dubuque she had felt the breath of the prairie autumn. It was a sharp enough breath to convince her she ought to get on to New Orleans as soon as possible.
The fact that the captain wanted her was lucky—the one problem she had to consider was what to do with old Bartle. Again, the fact that they were on a boat and not a train was lucky. Jim Ragg had wanted to take the train west; Pansy had argued for a boat from the beginning, but if it had not been for the splendid luck of having old Jim killed, she might well not have prevailed. Bartle was far too willing to side with his friend. If the train had been chosen she would have had no option but to sneak off to Chicago and stay lost until they left; no doubt she would have had to work awhile, in order to get a passage to New Orleans.
But by good fortune, Jim had been killed; by even better fortune, the old Indian was gone, too. Pansy hated the old Indian—he had been far too watchful. He was always on deck, smoking; often she caught him watching her. It would have been hard to do much, either with the captain or Bartle, without old No Ears knowing what she was about. He even stayed on deck most of the night, playing with his ears. Calamity sometimes sat with him, but she was usually dead drunk, and consequently less of a problem.
The dilemma Pansy had to wrestle with, as the boat steamed down the Mississippi, was whether to kill Bartle or merely announce that matters were quits between them, and then leave with the captain.
Her older brother, Ben Clowes, who had brought her to the streets of London and put her to work, had been a firm believer in killing as the most certain means of really terminating involvements of all kinds.
“The dead won’t be turning up to make trouble for you,” Ben had put it—advice Pansy always remembered, though she had never acted on it.
Ben had been a robber who aspired to be a murderer. He planned to make a specialty of sneaking into the houses of very old people of some means and snuffing them out, if possible by strangulation. It seemed a good plan, but unfortunately Ben had come to ruin due to the unexpected tenacity of his first victim-to-be, a very old lady. He managed to enter her house; she had looked frail, but when Ben grabbed her by the neck she proved to be too strong for him. She broke free and slammed him twice with a poker; she yelled for her servants, who slammed him several more times and called the police. Because of the age of the intended victim, Ben was hanged.
Ben’s unfortunate failure at strangulation made Pansy cautious. It taught her that in killing the essential thing was to make sure of your victim; the question that now faced her was whether there was a means by which she could make absolutely sure of finishing old Bartle, if murder proved to be her choice. Bartle was often drunk but he was not really frail. He was set on teaching her to shoot—a project which held some hope. She could shoot him and pretend an accident. But it was chancy; she was new to shooting, and might miss the vital spot even from a close distance. Perhaps if he was drunk enough, she could whop him good with the gun some night and push him overboard; the difficulty there was that there was no guarantee he would drown. If an eighty-five-year-old lady wouldn’t be strangled, Bartle might well not drown. Worse still, he might manage to cry out and be heard.
Ben’s remark about the finality of killing someone who posed a problem was no doubt valid, but it seemed to Pansy it might require an expertise she simply did not have. Ben had been a cold planner, but he had failed. Bartle, accustomed to danger, might prove to be more than she could finish; still, she would have enjoyed finishing him; the old brute was smelly, careless with his tobacco, and far too amorous.
After a day’s reflection, Pansy told herself she had to be practical. She had always attempted to be practical; there was no sense taking chances in a new country.
Consequently she began to smile at the captain, who was not slow to notice that he was being smiled at. He soon began to beam in response. Pansy watched his movements and knew when he went off duty. On the second night after No Ear’s departure she made herself as prim as possible, even tying her hair with the white ribbon Bartle had given her for their wedding. Then she met the captain outside his cabin door.
“I will be nice, sir, if you like,” Pansy said. She felt quite confident—she had always considered that she enjoyed an advantage over men. After all, she had what they wanted—they could have it, but only if they helped.
“Eh, ma’am?” the captain said. He had observed the young woman watching him; indeed, he was not unaccustomed to such attentions from his female passengers. The authority he wielded as captain gave him a definite advantage with the female sex. Still, in the case of this particular female, he had not expected such a sudden move.
Pansy decided the man was tiresome; few of his sex weren’t. Even in the plainest and most obvious situations, they frequently required some leading.
“Nice, sir,” Pansy said, trying not to mock him. “I said I would be nice.”
“Bully, then!” the captain said.