Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (42 page)

      
Finally, she had retired early, leaving the customers of the Gilded Cage to her co-workers. The distant sounds of splintering wood and shattering glass mixed with feral cries of female voices. Something was wrong. Tiredly she pulled on a blue satin wrapper and opened her door.

      
Several other of the girls at the Gilded Cage were already in the hall, in various stages of dishabille. Bare thighs encased in black lace hose rustled against open satin robes. Bounteous bosoms, replete with rouged nipples, spilled over high whalebone corsets. Interrupted while plying their trade, they were as confused as Clarice, who took the lead heading for the stairs.

      
“I bet it's that damn Wolcott bitch,” Lizzie snarled.

      
“She's crazy mean. I heard she busted up a big place in Austin a couple months back,” Gilda whispered fearfully.

      
“Shit, she wouldn't a got nowheres in Santone without that goddamn newspaper asshole writin' all that stuff. Hey, ain't she married to one o' yer regulars, Clarice?” Sandy Bateman asked.

      
“Do shut your mouth before one of those pesky horseflies hanging around the spittoon flits right in, Sandy,” Clarice replied with acid sweetness.

      
Even Sandy Bateman's smile faded when she looked down the stairs at the havoc being wreaked below. Men were yelling and ducking as glasses and whiskey bottles flew in all directions, scattering lethal shards across the floor. Chairs were smashed and tables overturned. The big mirror behind the bar, Luce's pride and joy, was cracked clear across and hung precariously, attached to the wall only on one side now.

      
One tall, thin woman brandishing a hatchet seemed to be in charge of the brigade of sedately dressed matrons—the cream of San Antonio society! If their clothes proclaimed them ladies, their behavior certainly did not. As Stella Wolcott bellowed orders, they followed them with startling zeal, shrieking as they shoved tables over and used broken chair legs to clear the long oak bar of all its bottles and glasses.

      
Melanie stood near the door, taking furtive notes, recording the mayhem going on around her. Clarence was going to flay her alive, but, hell, what a story! When Mrs. Wolcott had started her oration at the rally earlier that evening, Melanie knew the crusader had something special in mind. The crowd had been larger than usual, and many of the women responded with enthusiasm that bordered uncomfortably on fanaticism.

      
Stella had whipped the women into a frenzy with her speech on demon rum and its accompanying evil, gambling. Then, she began a masterful diatribe on fallen women and their enticement of the poor sodden fools who frequented saloons—how they took fathers and husbands away from their families, stealing their money and inflicting disgusting diseases on them.

      
Although Melanie had not wanted to participate in a bar-smashing spree, she did want to yank one frizzy head of tan hair until its dark roots stood out. She suggested they use the Gilded Cage as an example to the rest of the saloon owners. Luce Grearden, the owner, was known for crooked card games and expensive whores. If his star doxy lost her job while he lost his saloon, so much the better.

      
When Melanie caught sight of the half-dressed prostitutes trooping into the fracas, she immediately recognized Clarice Lawton. Melanie had to admit grudgingly that she was young and rather pretty, with pale taffy-colored hair and wide blue eyes. Her ample curves were obvious beneath a clinging robe that matched her eyes.

      
Those eyes now hardened in anger as they swept across the room and fixed on the tiny raven-haired girl standing beside the bar with a reporter's notebook clutched in her hand. “You jealous little bitch—throw a gorgeous man like Velasquez out of your bed and then come here and bust up the place where he found a real woman!” Clarice shrieked, ignoring the clawing hands and swinging clubs of the reformers as she dodged across the room to get to Melanie.

      
Dropping her notebook, Melanie strode forward to accept the challenge. “A real woman,” she mimicked, grabbing a hunk of tan hair, “doesn't have to dye her hair or paint her face to catch a man, you slut!” She yanked Clarice's hair viciously and the taller woman lurched forward. They both tumbled to the floor. Clarice had the advantage of height and several years of bordello brawling, but Melanie had fought her way through screaming anti- abolitionist mobs in Boston and raced bareback on half-wild mustangs with her brothers at Renacimiento. She was small but squirrel-tough and blindly furious at the harlot's humiliating reference to her unfaithful husband.

      
Melanie shrieked every swear word she remembered her father's
vaqueros
using and added a few more the Boston longshoremen favored as she gouged and kicked at her nemesis. She was dressed in a heavy riding skirt and boots, significantly superior armor compared to Clarice's sheer robe, garter belt, and hose.

      
“When I'm through, I'll feed you those lacy stockings, garters and all,” she promised through gritted teeth.

      
Clarice grabbed for a half-empty whiskey bottle, still miraculously intact, and yelled, “You prissy-assed, frigid, man-hating misfit! Let me show you how to apply rouge—blood-red rouge! I'll use yours!”

      
Melanie smashed a half-broken bar stool against an overturned table and parried with it. “Don't get ahead of yourself, you poor benighted clod. I can see how a man like Luce could lead you around by your crooked nose. You're too stupid to know when someone's going to break your neck!” She swung her club and the bottle went flying.

      
When the town marshal and a detachment of rangers arrived to break up the melee, Melanie was still standing. Her vanquished foe was sobbing on the floor with one eye darkened and several ribs cracked. Melanie had used the broken bar-stool leg to wicked advantage. The victor was not without scars, however. Her jaw ached from the lucky punch Clarice had landed, her shins and knees were kicked bloody by the whore's high-heeled slippers, and scarcely an inch of her body had escaped unscathed from Clarice's long nails.

      
Still, when Jeremy restrained her, Melanie had to give Clarice credit. The prostitute scrambled up and lunged for her again with a startlingly imaginative burst of profanity.

      
The marshal insisted they both be taken to jail to calm down, along with Stella Wolcott and two of the more militant whores. After an hour of glaring at each other across an aisle separated by iron bars, Melanie and Clarice had their attention diverted by Clarence Vivian Pemberton. The editor looked decidedly cross and rumpled, but his sardonically lifted eyebrows were faultlessly in place.

      
“I told you this carrion eater”—he gestured contemptuously at Melanie's cellmate—“would be your undoing, young lady. You're only fortunate I didn't refuse the call and summon your husband.”

      
“You wouldn't—Clarence, you couldn't! Oh, damn! I have an unbelievable story,” she said, bruised knuckles wrapped beseechingly around the bars as her gold eyes stared at him, dazed and glassy.

      
“Unbelievable, I'd believe,” he said dryly. “As to what we can print, we shall see. Are you ready to face the formidable Mrs. Oakley? Your absent spouse will doubtless be along anon.”

      
“I doubt it,” both Melanie and Clarice responded simultaneously.

* * * *

      
“If ‘n yew don't want yore man sleepin' with whores, warm his bed yoreself, yew young fool!” Obedience lectured sternly as she applied a buttermilk-and-aloe mixture to Melanie's abraded face and hands.

      
“Ooh! that stings. Damn, is there any part of me that doesn't ache? I should've given that slut one parting shot to the kidneys,” she said with vehemence, ignoring Obedience's advice.

      
“It ain't thet hussy thet got yew riled ‘n yew know it. It's Lee. Yew stay here in town an’ write stories ‘bout th' places yew know he goes to—a damn foolish way ta git his attention, if 'n yew ask me—‘n don't go sayin' yew ain't asked me, ‘cause I'm tellin' yew anyways.”

      
“I don't want his attention! Not if he's going to consort with painted tarts. And in case you haven't noticed, it's well past dawn and he's not exactly breaking his neck to see if I'm all right! More likely he's still at the ranch sulking because I've disgraced the grand Velasquez name yet again,” she finished on a snort of derision. “He doesn't want me, Obedience. Now that he's got me out from under his roof—out of convenient arm's reach, he's well satisfied with the likes of Clarice Lawton. I bet if he comes to see if anyone's all right, it'll be her, not me.” She turned disconsolately, still holding the buttermilk-soaked rag, and headed off to bed.

Chapter Twenty One

      
For the next week Melanie nursed her wounds and brooded while Obedience fumed about the cussed stubbornness of young people. Melanie's article about the temperance ladies' “raid” on the Gilded Cage Saloon became the talk of San Antonio overnight. Clarence had Amos set her name at the top of the story, claiming that he wanted no harassment from the town's disgruntled men, nor did he wish to incur the disfavor of the local ladies of the evening. “One never knows when such a source might divulge some vital bit of information to me. I keep all channels of communication open.”

      
Melanie wanted to reply with a vulgar Anglo-Saxonism but was too pleased about the story credit to do so. She did not see Lee all week. If Clarice did, Melanie knew the harlot had one hell of a shiner to show him!

      
Lame Deer was now acting as an apprentice matchmaker, coming to report to Melanie about Lee, and doubtless vice versa. After Lee had given him the lovely little bay filly, which the boy named Prancer, Lee had become Lame Deer's hero. First the bold
Tejano
had rescued him from the Rojas boys; then he had given him the most impressive gift of his impoverished lifetime. Small wonder Lame Deer wanted his Melanie to return to her princely husband.

      
Despite his loquaciousness in discussing Lee, Lame Deer had nothing to say lately about Blaine, Walkman, or the Comanche renegades. Melanie decided to stroll over to Father Gus's school that afternoon and have a casual chat with the priest's star pupil. If the boy had told Lee about that last raid, maybe his arrogant hero now had become the recipient of all Lame Deer's news tips.

      
Purposefully, she set out from the
Star
across the plaza to the school. Just as she was about to step into the muddy street, she saw Seth Walkman dart into a back alley near the corner of Commerce and Winter streets.

      
How odd. He's alone and on foot, almost as if he doesn't want to be noticed
, she mused to herself with a prickle of foreboding. Usually the loud, menacing ranger captain made his presence known wherever he went. Responding to her intuition, Melanie followed him at a distance as he strode down the narrow back street. Keeping up and remaining unseen at the same time were very difficult. She tried not to think what he would be capable of if he caught her spying on him.
But where is he going?

      
As if in answer to her unspoken question, the man suddenly disappeared into the back entrance of a frame structure facing out onto Winter Street. It was one of a row of new buildings. She could not tell whose office Walkman had chosen. With utmost stealth she inched closer to the back door. Her teeth were chattering, but not from the cool fall weather. When she reached a window and inched up to listen, she was rewarded with silence. It was tightly closed. Cursing, she crept past the door and crossed to the other window. It was open! She could hear low, indistinct murmurs and strained to listen, even daring to raise her head for a few quick peeks over the sash.

      
Laban Greer admonished Seth Walkman, “I've told you I don't want you seen in this office, dammit.” He ground out his expensive cigar and leaned back, waiting for the hard-faced gunman to speak.

      
“You need me, Greer. Don't you forget it. I'm the one who put you ‘n Blaine together, ‘n I'm the one takin' all the chances dealin' with that drunk old squaw man,” Walkman said with contempt.

      
Laban Greer knew not to push too far with the dangerous, bitter ranger. “What do you have to tell me, Seth?” he asked.

      
“Just talked to Blaine. Seems him ‘n Gall got them a nice little passel of cash for Broughton's stock.”

      
Greer snorted. “You mean Blaine got the cash and Gall took his share out in whiskey and bullets.”

      
“That's what's puttin' a real burr 'neath Lucas's tail. He's whinin' somethin fierce ‘bout sellin' guns ‘n ammunition to them Comanch. Seems to think he'll get caught someday 'tween the rangers ‘n the Injuns—right smack in the middle o’ a real war. Might even get hisself shot.”

      
Greer's bulldog face reflected Walkman's venomous humor. “Wouldn't it be a pity? Convenient for us, however, to have a babbling drunk out of the way before he divulges our part in his illegal schemes. Just how many more massacres like Broughton's do you think it will take before the whole countryside goes up in flames?” Greer asked.

      
“Lots o’ folks herebouts talkin' right now ‘bout sendin' out a big party of militia on a long scout—like Hays ‘n his boys did back in the forties,” the ranger said. “Stay out there till every last Injun's dead er drove over the Red River.”

      
“To do a job that thorough, we'd need the cooperation of the army,” Greer responded thoughtfully. “Before federal troops can be requested by the governor, we'll have to have more civilian casualties. I'd just keep your rangers clear of Gall's renegades and let them do their job over the winter and into spring.”