Fair Is the Rose (27 page)

"He's a tall one, all right," Faulty said, nervously wiping his hands on his apron.

"You can't see his face for the hat," Ivy whispered in a voice tinged with fear.

Christal strained her eyes to get a better look, but the snow worked against her. The man went by, his face obscured by falling snowflakes and a large black Stetson. He stopped down the road and hitched his mount in front of Jan Peterson's general store. He disappeared into the building, but even after he was gone it took her an eternity to catch her breath. For some reason, he scared the hell out of her.

"Well ... I guess I'd better get on over there and welcome the new sheriff to town. No sense in him gettin' the idea we're not friendly-like." Grimly, Faulty removed his apron and went to get his sheepskin overcoat.

"If he's even a little handsome, Faulty, you tell him it's on the house. Otherwise, it's half price, all right, Faulty?" Dixiana said in a little-girl's voice.

"Ohhhh, I hope he don't close us down," Faulty groaned as he slammed out the door and into the bitter cold.

The girls watched him trudge over the frozen waves of mud in the road, some as high as his knees. When he disappeared into the mercantile, the saloon was like a graveyard.

"Do you think he'll give Faulty a hard time?" Dixiana whispered.

Ivy sighed. She looked in the other direction. "I don't know but right now they're coming in early.
Must be the weather."

Six men stopped their horses in front of the saloon. As if on cue, Ivy walked to the bar to get out the glasses, Dixiana primped on the piano stool, and Christal got out the dealer's box.

The whiskey was poured; Christal dealt the men their game of faro. Three of the men were up from Nevada and full of gold coins they were just aching to lose. She dealt game after game until her fingers grew stiff from throwing out cards. One of the men, a blond, handsome man with a beard, gave her a sideways look every now and then, obviously hoping to catch her gaze and be dealt something a little more than faro. But, well practiced in the art of avoidance, she just kept her eyes on the cards, with each flip counting the seconds until Faulty would be back with some news of the sheriff.

The clock ticked, the cold made her fingers stiff, the wind kicked up and blasted against the outside walls. The men quit their faro and bellied up to the bar for more whiskey. If Joe were around to play the piano, Christal was sure the blond man would have bought a dance.
And something more . . . if it were for sale.

It was dark before Faulty came back to the saloon. He burst through the door, covered in snow from head to foot. His beard had icicled just during the short walk from the general store to the saloon.

Dixiana, Ivy, and Christal all stopped what they were doing to look at him. Was he angry?
Afraid?
As if to prepare themselves, they wanted to see it on his face before he told them.

"Christal, I got to talk to you, girl," he said, shaking his beard dry over the potbelly stove.

Christal felt her stomach drop to her knees.
"
Wh-
what about?" She couldn't imagine what the sheriff could have said that'd make Faulty single her out. Suddenly her heart hammered in her chest. Had she been discovered? Was the sheriff somehow sent by her uncle?

"C'mon over here, girl.
We got to talk." Faulty took her arm and led her up the rough wooden stairs that stood at the back of the saloon. He pulled her into her room and didn't even bother with a lamp. They stood in half-darkness, the only light coming from the hall.

"My God, what is it?" she blurted out.

He put both of his hands out in supplication. "Christal, darlin', you just gotta listen to me. I talked to that there new sheriff and by the look in his
eyes,
he sure ain't one I want to cross."

"But what did he say?" Her voice was calm, partly because it was choked by fear.

"I—I wanted to get some sort of understandin' from him. I told him that I had the prettiest girls in town and that dances were on the house." Faulty paused, as if he knew she wasn't going to like what he had to say next. "He told me he'd be real happy to do business with me, but he said he was partial to blondes, Christal,
only blondes."

She felt the easing in her chest. Her heartbeat slowed. The drumming ceased in her ears. "Is that what you're talking about? You gave him a free dance with me?"

Faulty shook his head.
"No, girl.
That ain't it."

"Then what?"

"We weren't talking about dances.
Not at all."

Suddenly she understood. It didn't surprise her that the new sheriff was already putting his hand in the till. After all, what upstanding man would want to be sheriff of Noble? Ominously she said, "You mean you tried to sell me to him?"

He grabbed her arm. "Girl, you got to see the eyes of that man! I had to promise him! He's gonna shut me down if he gets a look at you and you refuse him!"

"There are blondes over at Mrs. Delaney's. Send him there."

"Aw, Christal.
You gotta help me! He'll leave us alone if we make him happy. If we don't—anything could happen. I might even lose the saloon!"

Disgusted, she turned away from him. Her room faced the street and through the window, she could see men leaving Jan Peterson's. In the darkness and snow, she didn't know which one was the sheriff. Boys had already put his horse in the livery. "You don't run a whorehouse, Faulty, you run a saloon. If Ivy and Dixiana like making some extra coins, and give you a cut for providing their room and board, well, that still doesn't make this a whorehouse. You've just got to explain to the man that not every girl here is for sale."

"Help me, Christal," he pleaded.

She took a deep breath, her mind whirling with troubles. She still dreamed of that Overland money. For months she had longed to write and have it sent to her, all five hundred dollars. But she'd been too afraid of reporters, and of Cain tracking her down, asking questions she didn't want to answer. So she was back to doing what she had done before, working like a dog because she wanted to keep her honor, and saving what little money she could so that one day, a day far off in a misty, obscure future, she could return to New York, find a way to expose her uncle's crimes, and redeem herself. Sometimes she wondered if she was mad or just dreaming.

Her chin set and she turned to Faulty. "If you made foolish promises, then there's only one thing to do. The snow isn't as heavy as before. If we don't get a blizzard, I'll leave in the morning. Then you can tell him you don't have any blondes that work for you. Not anymore."

"Christal . . . just do it once and then he'll leave us alone and you can stay."

"No." Her answer was quiet yet implacable.

". . . Oh, Christal," Faulty sighed, as if the room were caving in on him.

"I'll finish out the night. Go on downstairs."

"But what if he shows up!
He'll see you and then damned Rosalie over at Mrs. Delaney's sure ain't gonna do for him. He'll never forgive me for lettin' you outta his hands."

"What kind of a sheriff is this?" she asked, suddenly angry. "He's here to protect us from gunfighting and bank robbers, not to take his fill in every saloon in town."

"I don't know what kind of sheriff he is, girl, but I'll tell you, one look into those cold eyes of his, and you can be damned sure, ain't nobody in this town gonna ask him."

He left and closed the door. She stayed behind in a dark room. A few flurries, all that was left of the storm, reflected the light from below. She looked out the window. There was a lamp burning in the building next to Peterson's—the liquor depot. Kegs were locked there, in a room that was barred and bolted from intruders. It was a good place for a makeshift jail. The light burned upstairs; probably the new sheriff's living quarters.

A figure stepped in front of the lantern and she could make out the silhouette now that the snow had fallen to a whisper. He hadn't removed his hat. It was the new sheriff. He stood looking out of the window, just as she did. Though she told herself she was standing in darkness and he couldn't see her, she'd swear he was looking right at her.

"Sheriff," she whispered like a curse, weary from running, from hiding.

The tinny sounds of the upright piano came drifting through the floorboards and she knew Joe had arrived. It was time to earn her keep. The blond man would be waiting. He had nowhere else to go in this weather.

She shook her head and wondered when it would all end. Her eyes turned back to the silhouette of the sheriff, his black felt Stetson sharp against the backlight.

Perhaps it already had.

Faulty's was more crowded than usual that night. The snow had been bad enough to end work early and bring in stragglers traveling on the range, but not so bad as to keep customers holed up at home. Joe, an old miner too crippled and too poor to move on, came in almost every night and played waltzes on the piano.

It was Christal's fifth dance with the blond man. He didn't say very much. He wore a fancy ruffled shirt and a dark green jacket and vest. His eyes were hazel, and not particularly kind, but that wasn't unusual. Not out west.

He flipped another nickel onto the table when the dance ended. She wanted to rest, but he pulled her to him without even asking. The bells tied to her ankles made a coy sound as they moved around the small floor. She didn't like the bells. She only wore them to please Faulty. Whores wore bells. In her mind, they got her into more trouble than they were worth. She could already see the blond man wasn't going to be too happy when she turned down his offer of a paid trip upstairs.

He spun her around, his hands cold and almost painful against her ribs. A frigid pocket of air blasted at her back as another customer entered the saloon. Joe seemed to stumble at the keys for a moment, adding to the difficulty of the waltz, but she hardly noticed; she was too involved with extracting her hair from her customer's stroking fingers. Faulty made all his girls wear their hair down. It gave them an air of innocence, he said, and men liked that. As she looked up at the blond man now she could see Faulty was right. The blond man did like it. He smiled. Though he was young, most of his bottom teeth were either crooked or gone.

The song stopped, and this time she really wanted to get away, but the man held her tight, his arm coiled around her waist like a snake. He bent to kiss her; she discreetly turned her head.