Fair Is the Rose (33 page)

Memory came back again, this time of war. Unwanted pictures assaulted him. Armies of skeleton boys on crutches—all of them with faces like his brother—defeated yet not dead, with war in their eyes.
Because as obscene as they looked, what they had witnessed was even more obscene.

Their ghostly memory trudged by, hundreds of them moving in an imaginary line through his room, all young boys betrayed by the notion that manhood and war walked hand in hand. He whispered in the dark some lines penned by a Confederate patriot,

And in our dream we wove the thread

Of principles for which had bled,

And suffered long our own immortal dead,

In the land where we were dreaming.

He said the last line twice, feeling his gut twist in longing and remembrance. And then he knew the lure that had brought him here. The girl had something he'd rarely seen in a woman. And because he'd looked once, now he found he couldn't look away.

She had war in her eyes too.

"Ivy, you're just talkin' that way because Jericho's in town tonight. My, my, don't you get uppity when he comes sniffin' around Tuesday evenings? Well, Ah don't care. Give me some fine-looking young cowboys and you can have all your Jerichos and then some." Dixiana fell onto the bed, clad only in her knickers, chemise, and corset. She studied her fingernails, each filed to a sharp point.

"You just leave me and Jericho alone." Ivy sat on a wooden bench staring at her face in a tarnished vermeil hand mirror. Christal stood behind her, weaving her thick, dark hair into a chignon.

Though at times Christal was very conscious of all their differences in background and upbringing, for the most part it didn't seem to matter. Each of them had taken a very different road to Noble, but they were all lone women in a cruel, violent land. By all rights, it should have been difficult for her to understand them. Yet somehow it was not.

"Why are you two always fighting?" she asked, pulling Ivy's hair tight at her temples. "Dixiana, sometimes I think you're jealous of Jericho and Ivy."

"Jealous?"
Dixiana raised herself from the bed, revealing a breathless amount of bosom. "How could Ah be jealous? Why Jericho's a—" She abruptly stopped, then started laughing. "Oh, go on! What are you tryin' to do? Fool me?"

Christal pinned some more of Ivy's curls. "You might not want Jericho. But you sure are jealous of his attention. Come on, Dixi, admit it. You want a man to court you, just as much as that old Miss Blum wants Jan Peterson to come calling on her with a posy of violets."

Christal watched Dixiana roll onto her back and stare at the unvarnished boards of the ceiling. Their bedrooms weren't as luxurious as the saloon downstairs, which had canvas tacked to the walls in an attempt to look like plaster. Upstairs was plain and raw. Strangely appropriate.

"Ah'm not like that old maid Sarah Blum." Dixi sighed. Her pretty, heart-shaped face held a faraway, melancholy expression. "Besides, Ah had a man court me once. Ah met him in Laramie." Her voice lowered as if she were saying a prayer. "Oh, he was somethin' fine.
With thighs as hard as iron and a face like an angel."
She stretched her hand out to the ceiling, as if reaching for him.

"What happened, Dixi?"

Dixiana shrugged. If she were any other kind of woman, she might have had tears in her eyes. "He said he was going to marry me. Ah followed
him
up to Noble 'cause he thought there was still minin' goin' on here, and he wanted to strike it rich. But the minin' didn't work out and the day before we got to the preacher, he just up and left. Oh—Ah don't mind that he didn't want to marry me." Dixiana's face turned rock hard. "Ah know Ah'm not the type to have a passel of brats hangin' on to mah apron. But why didn't he take me with him back to Laramie? Why did he just leave me here, with nowhere to go and no money? Ah even understand his leaving. There are so many girls in Laramie . . . and—their faces are so smooth." Dixiana touched her face as if she could feel every damning line on it. She'd told them once that she was twenty-eight, but everyone figured she was hiding ten years.

"Dixi," Ivy whispered, turning around on the bench. "I'm sorry I told you you couldn't borrow my snood. Jericho's seen enough of it. You go on and wear it. It'll look prettier with your lavender gown than with my yellow one."

"Maybe he'll come back, Dixi. Maybe it was all a mistake," Christal added, wanting to help, maybe just because Dixi hid the pain so well.

"He's not coming back. He's a good-for-nothin' cowboy. They never return." Dixiana gave a little hollow laugh. "The only thing good about 'em besides their looks is that there're so blessed many of 'em! And
them
baby cowboys, they can be so sweet—when they're fawnin' on you, they're so in love, why—you're just their mama, their sister, and their sweetheart all rolled into one!"

Ivy smiled and threw her the snood. Even Christal smiled. There were more and more young men coming west every day. Dixi liked to set up court with the pretty ones in her special corner they'd all dubbed "the bullpen." Even a hardworking saloon girl couldn't run through them all. Maybe for Dixiana, that would be enough.

"Come on. Ah got to git dressed." Dixi rose from the bed.

"But wait! We haven't heard about the sheriff." Ivy looked at Christal. Christal dropped to the edge of the bed in an attempt to pretend she didn't know what Ivy was talking about.

"That's ra-aht!" Dixi stared at Christal too.

Christal fiddled with her fingers.

"Come on, you Yank! Tell us! If you don't snare that man, Ah'm gonna snare him for ya!" Dixiana pinched her.

Christal shot up from the bed and retrieved Ivy's wire bustle from a chair. She handed it to Ivy, saying, "There's nothing to talk about. You can have him, Dixi. He's nothing but trouble. Faulty's getting mad, and I've got to find a way to get rid of him."

"But why don't you want him? He's a handsome one. Right takes mah breath away to look at him. Though he's a little cold around the eyes—kinda makes you pause— never did like the mean ones. ..." Dixi looked at Ivy, who was tying her bustle. Though still useful, Ivy's arm was slightly crooked and had been ever since she'd arrived in Noble a year ago. All she ever said was a man broke it who accused her of stealing from him. She told them all she never thieved in her life. Faulty had been nervous hiring her, but time had proven Ivy out. They never had any trouble. No customers ever complained of lost money at Faulty's saloon. Still, Ivy's arm was a sorry reminder of how badly men treated women of their profession.

Christal studied both Ivy and Dixiana. They were just like all the other prostitutes she'd known: children. They wanted to be nice and they desperately wanted to be treated nicely in return. But most were lambs to the slaughter, victims of their customers and their own passive natures. Christal looked around Ivy's room at the magazine cutouts of cupids and pink floral hearts tacked to the rough wood-plank wall. It was typical. These women had ideas of love that were amazing in their innocence and sweetness. Love was a fairy tale to them, something they dreamed of and wished for, a knight in shining armor to come and erase all the bad things men did to them day after day. But it was a fairy tale nonetheless. Christal knew that better than anyone. Her knight in shining armor had arrived and instead of saving her, he'd switched hats and turned into the villain.
A villain with a tin star.

Christal returned her gaze to Ivy. The girl was absent-mindedly rubbing her arm as if somehow it ached. They were all a little afraid of the new sheriff. Sheriffs got anything they wanted—a power easily abused. But as much as she herself had to fear of Macaulay, she knew enough of his character to know he'd never physically hurt them, and she felt compelled to ease the other girls' fears. "Ivy Rose, Dixi—you don't have to be afraid of him," she blurted out. "I can tell you, I know he'd never hurt you."

Ivy frowned. She stared at her. "How do you know that?"

Christal didn't want to answer, but she didn't want them to be unnecessarily fearful either. They had enough fear in their lives.

With more emotion than she wanted to reveal, she said, "Because I knew him before." The look on her face must have told them she didn't want any questions. They both stared at her in shock,
then
suddenly became absorbed in donning their clothes.

After a moment, as if to ease the tension, Dixi taunted, "So you think Sheriff Cain's the type to be standin' at the door with a bunch of posies after all, do ya?"

Christal could have laughed. Macaulay Cain was definitely
not
the kind of man to go sheepishly calling on a woman with a bunch of limp violets grasped in his sweaty palm.

Dixi continued. "Like Ah said before, he's a fine-lookin' man, even if he ain't pretty like my babies that come ridin' in here off the range. If you don't want him, Christal, you say the word. Ah think Ah could do pretty well in the saddle with a big buck like him. . . ."

It was on the tip of Christal's tongue to deny she had any hold over Cain, but a strange feeling came over her. It was a hot, sick feeling almost like jealousy, and it kept her silent.
Fool that she was.
All logic told her that if Dixiana could get his attention off her, she would be stupid not to let the woman try. But somehow she couldn't cough up the permission. Not when she pictured Macaulay kissing Dixi on the mouth, just as he had kissed her.

But then she turned inexplicably angry. She needed him off her back and she couldn't afford to be weak and jealous. Like ripping a bandage from a festering wound, she said quickly, "Just take him, Dixi. I don't want anything to do with him. I wish he'd go back where he came from. He's hurting business with his sitting there in that corner night after night, just staring with those cold gray eyes at—at—everybody—"

"At you, Christal," Ivy interjected. "He stares just at you."

"Ah think you must like him a bit," Dixi
said,
her face almost gleeful. "You cain't have that much passionate hatred for a man and not care at all. So what went on between you two before Noble? Ah'm dyin' to know."

Christal stared at both of them, shocked. She was about to deny everything when the piano started up downstairs. Joe was already playing for customers and neither Ivy nor Dixiana was dressed.

The women scrambled for their gowns and petticoats. Much to Christal's relief, there was no more talk of the sheriff.

With Faulty, however, she was not so fortunate. The evening was young and she was in the back making dinner for those who had the pennies to pay for it. Faulty slammed into the back of the saloon,
a paleness
to his ruddy features.

"You got to get rid of him tonight. He's killing business," he whispered to her. Slowly his eyes turned to the door. Through it she could see Cain step into the saloon. He took off his hat and settled into the corner where he sat every night.