Rebel with a Cause Page 6

  Below, the street was quiet but, come dark, her head would be so full of things to write about she would never be able to remember them all.

  She turned and slid onto the seat of the chair with a thump. How would she manage without paper and an ink pen?

  "Adversity holds the seeds of adventure," she recited to the room.

  Adversity she had by the bucketful. She couldn't write without supplies. She couldn't obtain the supplies while clad in her underwear and Maybelle surely would not unlock the door until she was decently clothed.

  "What I need..." Missy leaped from the chair. The idea was so bold it stole her breath. She pressed her palm to her chest to still her heart. Suzie would be thrilled, neither of them had ever had this thing. None of her acquaintances had ever had it.

  "What I need...is a job!"

  Chapter Five

  Missy leaned out of the dormer window, certain that she could not be seen from the lantern-lit street three stories down. A cold breeze prickled her skin but she didn't dare pop back inside to get Zane's coat. Something interesting might happen which she would not want to miss.

  So far, a man had urinated in the alley across the street and a drunk had stumbled into a pole. Things couldn't help but turn livelier.

  In the very instant that a woman let out a lusty laugh from an unseen saloon, there was a tap at Missy's door. She slid the window closed then plopped down into the chair.

  While the key turned in the lock, she caught a messy curl in her finger, twirled it in a bored fashion and sighed like a proper captive.

  "Sorry about the locked door. Maybelle is one for caution." Emily stepped inside with a swirl of purple petticoats. She toted Muff in one arm, freshly groomed and smelling of roses. "Moe will be along with a bath in a bit."

  Emily set Muff on the floor then laid a sparkling crimson dress across the bed.

  "Jolene left this behind last year when she went respectable. Maybelle thought it would be a fit for you." Emily looked her over with narrow eyes. "It might be a little tight in the chest. Not that that ever hurt anything."

  Missy leaped up and nearly dashed to the bed. The fabric of the dress winked at her. She touched a ruffle of red feathers trimming the low-cut neckline. The tickle under her fingertips was a call to adventure. If she wore this gown in Boston she would be banned from polite society for years.

  Muff hopped onto the chair then jumped to the dormer. He looked out the window, barking and waving his tail madly.

  "That dog is as sweet as he can be now that he's cleaned up." Emily wrinkled her nose. "Those pretty drawers of yours are a mess. Here...let me have them. We'll give them to Moe when he comes up. He can wash as good as a woman."

  Emily gave no indication that she had said anything shocking. Evidently, in Luminary, ladies stripped and handed their clothes to washermen every day. Since she'd been a toddler, the only one to see her in the all-together had been Suzie.

  "Honey, you look positively scandalized. I purely forgot you were a lady for a minute, with you in your underwear." Emily settled on the bed. Muff hopped down from the window and found a soft place on her lap. "I guess when you start whoring, modesty is the first thing you forget."

  Surely Emily had misread her expression. Missy

  Lenore Devlin had never been one to be scandalized! Why, ask anyone back home, she was the one creating a scandal.

  She stepped out of her petticoat and let it fall in a heap about her feet. Undressing in front of a stranger was about as adventurous as one could get. Pray that she wasn't blushing herself to embarrassment.

  When the last of her garments hit the floor, she kicked them into a corner and sat in the chair with her legs crossed at the ankles and her hands folded on her knees. So what if she was naked in front of a semi-clad stranger? She lifted her gaze, determined to meet this challenge with a confident grin.

  Emily was not looking in her direction. Instead, she fluffed Muff's fur and spoke softly to him. She glanced up and smiled.

  "What a sweet little fellow."

  "Yes...sweet. He's been nothing but that for the entire trip. Why, back home that's what everyone calls him, sweet little Muff." Missy knew she was babbling, but what did one say in such a circumstance? My, isn't it a lovely evening to be sitting in a whorehouse naked?

  "I used to be like you." Emily said.

  "I suppose it's all a part of your job."

  "What?" Confusion lifted Emily's painted-on eyebrows.

  "Bare as a jay?"

  "Respectable." She shrugged her shoulders, twirling her fingers in Muff's fur and looking at something in her mind. "Once I had dreams. There was a day when I'd have turned as red as you are now. "

  Missy would have protested her blushing condition, but that was not what this conversation was about. To outward appearances, Emily looked like a goddess in satin and feathers, with her breasts peeking through her sheer underwear and her bare calves showing. Somehow, though, she didn't look a bit like the soiled doves of the novels, laughing and flirting and dancing the night away with glasses of something wicked and intoxicating gripped in their gay fingers.

  Emily looked beaten-down. Her smile seemed distant...hopeless even.

  "Still, if it hadn't been for Zane, I'd probably be dead." With that, her spirits appeared to rally.

  "Me, too." Missy pulled the pins from her dirty hair. She fluffed it about her shoulders then frowned at her fingers where grit had lodged under her fingernails. "He also saved a little girl in the flood."

  "A lot of folks are indebted to Zane." When Emily looked at her, Missy was sure that she did not see nakedness. "Then too, a lot of folks don't wish him well."

  "Why would you be dead?"

  "My folks passed when I was sixteen," she said.

  "My father died in a buggy accident." How interesting, Missy thought, that the pampered eastern darling and the scorned fallen woman had so much in common.

  "Mine died of scarlet fever. We were homesteaders just outside of town. Some others died, too."

  "That's a pure tragedy. Did you have someone to go to?" As much as Missy sought freedom from her restrictive family, she knew from some experience that they could be counted on in a crisis.

  "Zane was the only one. We were close back then.

  Really, he's all I had. I tried to support myself by doing laundry, but my hands bled with the lye. My eyes aren't good enough for sewing. There's only one way a woman can support herself around here when her folks are gone."

  "Dancing," Missy said with a sigh.

  "Sure...dancing. I was so hungry and lonely, it was easy to tell myself, 'Okay, Emily, you can do it for a little while, till you get back on your feet.' The thing is, this business keeps you mostly off your feet. It's hard to get back up."

  "How did Zane save you?"

  "I meant to go to Pete's Palace, but Zane wouldn't have it. He said if I meant to take up the...dancing...life it would have to be at Maybelle's."

  "He might have taken you to another town. Maybe a better life."

  "Oh, he tried. Years back I was so young and proud. I was set on making my own way in the world. Maybelle's was the best he could do for me. Besides, he grew up here, Maybelle was like an auntie to him, it didn't seem so bad back then."

  "What about now? You're a grown woman. You could leave the sporting life, surely?"

  Emily studied her fingertips making whirls in Muff's fur. "There is one way." She shook her head, staring hard at Missy. "I don't know that I'd feel right about it, though."

  A heavy knock beat on the door. The knob turned. Missy dove for Zane's coat and wrapped herself up a second after Moe stepped into the room with two buckets of steaming water.

  He didn't seem to take note of her flash of skin, but by heavens, there were some adventures that she did not need to have.

  * * *

  Missy stared at Herman Meyer of Herman Meyer's Mercantile over a display of canned goods on the counter. He seemed perplexed. Speechless, he stared at the red hat that had bee
n a gift from Emily. His eyes scanned downward over the feathers that tickled her cleavage.

  "I said," Missy pronounced loudly in case the man's problem was that he was hard of hearing, "I'm here about your help-wanted sign in the window."

  Herman Meyer blinked hard, shook his balding head and opened his eyes wide. "Just what kind of skills might you be offering, miss?"

  "I can do most anything." She gave Mr. Meyer her most winning smile. "I can do mathematical calculations."

  "Do that myself, can't be any cheating that way."

  "I can serve tea." His frown was not encouraging. "I could embroider little flowers on your window curtains to make the place more inviting."

  "I understand that Pete is looking for a new girl." His narrow-lipped smile seemed genuine. "You'd make that place more inviting, sure."

  "I can also play the piano. Everyone at home says I have a gift for it."

  "Lookie, miss, I don't have a piano for you to play. You go along to Pete, he got a new one just last month. I ordered it for him myself."

  The last place she was going was to Pete's! She had vowed to Maybelle on her honor as a lady that she would not go within a block of the place.

  That agreement was what had got her released from the locked room. That, and a promise to return by four o'clock in the afternoon and allow Maybelle to lock her in once again for the night. This, Maybelle had assured her, was to keep the gentlemen out more than Missy in. Since Maybelle was the one holding the keys, Missy could only agree to her conditions.

  She gave the dusty mercantile a glance all about. At home, she'd seen the housekeeper sweep and dust nearly every day. It didn't appear to be a difficult task. The maid had even hummed a tune while she did it.

  "I can sweep a room like nobody you ever saw." That might be the truth. "You don't even have to pay me in cash. All I ask is for a writing tablet, an ink pen and some ink."

  Mr. Meyer glanced around the store. He seemed to be surprised at the layer of dirt that had collected on his floor. "I suppose it could use a sweep. Mind, now, I'll only pay up if you do a good job."

  "Just point me to your broom," she said with confidence, but when he placed the object in her hand her courage stumbled. The stick with the straw on the end felt a very foreign object. Exactly how was it that the housekeeper managed the sway, push and swish motion?

  Within half an hour she had learned the rhythm. After an hour the smirk left Herman Meyer's lips. At the end of two, he smiled, gazed around his store with newfound pride and handed her the writing materials.

  Mother would turn pale if she saw what Missy had done, but stepping out into the sunlight, Missy felt proud. Even though the sparkle of her crimson dress had faded with the layer of dust embedded in it, she felt grand. She had gotten a job and earned her pay. Now, if she could do something to earn some actual cash, that would be a story for Suzie.

  Business establishments lined Ballico Street on both sides. If she followed the warped wood of the boardwalk she might come across a teahouse that needed a server, or a seamstress that needed embroidery done. Now that she had pen and paper, she might even write letters for those who could not spell. Really, she had more skills than she would have imagined.

  One block up, she went into a restaurant. Tea, she discovered, was scorned as a delicate brew. Only coffee as thick as mud would do, and that the proprietor served with her own calloused hands.

  By noon, the weather had warmed. Sweat dampened the feathers on her chest, but her hope remained fresh as morning. Surely the clothier would need her services.

  By two o'clock the only clothiers in town had looked her over with a skeptical eye and then informed her that they only sold ready-made items.

  That left writing letters.

  She spotted a group of cowboys, some sitting on a bench outside the Red Horse Saloon and others standing. She approached them with her writing materials in clear view. Surely, aside from the feathers tickling her low-cut neckline, she looked like a properly educated young lady.

  At first they seemed stunned to silence by her offer of letter-writing. A silent stare passed from one sun-worn face to the next. Finally, one of them made an offer that Zane would have shot him for.

  She hurried away, made a turn on a street that took her a distance from the cowboys. A block away she could still hear them laughing. She was shocked. Cowboys were honorable men when it came to women. She had read it many times in the dime novels.

  At least bounty hunters were true to their reputations. A woman could count on a bounty hunter. All at once Zane's face filled her mind. Her heart squeezed, it spun dizzily when her imagination gave him a smile.

  If only he had taken her with him, she would be miles closer to finding Wesley Wage than she was now. For each moment that she spent earning the money to follow him, the odds grew that he would lose her manuscript. Or worse, he would read it and claim it as his own!

  "Floors, then." Missy straightened her posture and her hat. "I'll get rich if I sweep up all the dirt in Luminary."

  She walked up a block then over two. She made a turn and walked down a quiet alley. Here in the shade the temperature took a merciful dip. She took off her hat and fanned her neck with it. Weather in the west was a fickle thing, freezing one day and sweltering the next.

  "You one of Maybelle's girls?" A woman's voice, hoarse and scratchy, spoke from somewhere that Missy could not see.

  She turned and saw a flash of movement from under a flight of stairs leading to a splintered back door.

  "Can you help me, please?"

  Missy followed the voice and stooped to peer under the stairs. She had been mistaken about the person being a woman. She couldn't be out of her teens. Her rough voice had sounded old, but her face looked even older. Her cheeks hung close to her bones and eyes that should have been luminous appeared shrunken into her skull. They peered out of her face, gray with melancholy.

  "What are you doing under the stairs?" Missy grabbed the frail hand that reached for her. "My word, you look ill."

  "I needed a peaceful place for a bit, that's all."

  Shadows of decay ate the child's teeth, the teeth that were not missing, that is. "I'm so far past ill, it ain't even funny."

  "Here, now, hold on, I'll help you up and get you home to your folks."

  "I'm going home to my folks, sure enough." She coughed. "But not in this world."

  She did look that ill. A slight breeze would tip her over.

  "Where do you live?" Missy stashed her writing tools under the stairs then gathered the girl's weight in her arms and helped her to her feet. "Where should I take you?"

  "I belong to Pete, every last wheezing breath of me. Take me there, if you would."

  Pete! She had made a vow. She didn't dare set foot in Pete's Palace. Pete was the devil incarnate from all she'd heard!

  "Let's go to Maybelle's instead." The girl weighed nothing and Missy helped her along easily.

  "Ma'am, I'll go to Pete's or nowhere." She coughed again. Her narrow chest heaved and caved. When she quit her lips were stained with blood. She wiped them on her sleeve. "In any case, I can't walk so far as Maybelle's."

  "But why Pete's? What about a boarding house?"

  "Like I said, I belong to Pete, we've got a contract." She stumbled but Missy caught her. "I guess he owes me a place to die."

  * * *

  Silent weeping ached in Missy's throat. Harriet Cooper, sixteen years old, lay on a grimy cot facing her coming death with acceptance. What kind of life had led her to this place where she didn't even care to fight for her next breath?

  A career at Pete's could have done it to her. The establishment was an ugly, dirty place full of men who looked like images in a tawdry painting. No wonder Zane had delivered Emily to Maybelle's doorstep those many years ago. If only he were here now, he would help young Harriet.

  But he wasn't here and it was up to Missy to give what little care she was able to. She knew nothing about medicine or easing pain, but she did know that
clean hair felt better than dirty. Freshly scrubbed skin felt sweeter than pasty, sick flesh.

  Two hours ago, she had demanded clean water and sweetly scented soap. Pete, standing in the doorway of the shed-like room that Harriet called home, had frowned down at Missy.

  "Hell of a way to get out of an honest contract," he grumbled. "Those things will come out of her pay." He uttered an oath and closed the door with a quiet click.

  Fifteen minutes later the water and a new bar of perfumed soap was delivered by a scraggly-haired young woman who seemed afraid to look at Harriet lying on the cot.

  Missy had bathed her, washed her hair and covered her with a worn but nearly clean sheet.

  She brushed Harriet's hair until it dried, but even clean and fresh, it would not shine.

  No book that she had ever read had portrayed a soiled dove in this condition.

  "I saw Pete's new piano when we came in, Harriet. Would you like me to play for you?"

  Harriet smiled. A blush fought to the surface of her skin and left an echo of the happy youth she might have been. "My mother used to play."

  "I'll go play and you think of your mother." Missy touched Harriet's forehead then trailed her fingers along the hollow of her cheek. "Close your eyes and let your mind drift back to a better time."

  Missy opened the door of the room that Pete had called Harriet's crib. She glanced back and saw Harriet smile and close her eyes.

  The crib lay just off the main room of the Palace. A pair of cowboys wearing dusty boots and a man dressed in a suit with ink stains on his fingers sat at a table playing a card game. The bartender spat a glob of chewing tobacco at a spittoon then wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  Missy left the door open enough for the melodies to come through but closed enough to give Harriet a bit of privacy.

  Luckily, the piano was alongside the wall of Harriet's room so it would be easy for her to hear every note. Missy sat down and brushed her fingers over the keyboard, testing the sound. Her former employer, Herman Meyer, had been correct about the piano. It was a fine instrument.