by Gilman
“I think it’s the way you look at us. As though…” Anna ran out of words. “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “You’re just different. It’s interesting.”
Back home, different had gotten her pitying looks and cold shoulders. Here, she was ‘interesting.’ That alone was worth having to wash dishes and fold laundry.
At least she didn’t have to sweep.
“I’m not⏤”
A shout from the main room made them both freeze. It was loud, male, and angry. Grace had not heard a voice raised anger since she came here; even the overly-affectionate would-be gambler who’d been fool enough to touch Bets hadn’t gotten more than a firm suggestion from the boss that he remove himself immediately. The boss didn’t need to raise his voice to get results, and folk knew better than to raise theirs when he was around.
But the boss wasn’t there tonight. He’d gone off somewhere that morning, without explanation, and the business of the saloon had continued without him, the players who’d come to test themselves against him patiently accepting the news that they’d have to wait.
Another shout, and a woman’s voice⏤Judit, speaking sternly but not loudly. Then came the sound of something heavy being shoved across the planked floor, and Grace was at the kitchen door before she realized it, cotton dish towel tossed over one shoulder, an old apron tied around her waist.
Foolish, a voice whispered, a familiar scold. Go back where it’s safe, go back where you will not be noticed.
But something drew her, her mind clearing of the earlier mist, sharp and bright as icicles dripping from a roof.
She became aware of Anna at her back, a warm, frightened weight she did not have time for, and elbowed her away as gently as she could before returning her attention to the scene in front of her.
Two chairs had been overturned, the game table shoved back⏤that had been the noise they’d heard. Judit stood between two men, her hand on one chest, the other hand up as though to warn someone away.
The other man did not look inclined to be warned, least of all by a woman more than a head shorter than he.
“What’s this, then?” Grace asked, taking a further step into the room, feeling that sharpness crackle in her head like winter ice, an almost-forgotten pleasure.
“Grace, no.” Judit’s voice was barely a whisper, for all its intensity, and she ignored it.
She was only a scant hand taller than the other woman, but she was broader in the shoulder, and she used that to put herself into the picture. “What’s this then,” she asked again, ignoring Judit and the man behind her, directing her attention to the other man. She could hear that flat tone in her voice her mother had despaired of, the one that made people blink and look away from her, but this man met her gaze without hesitation, staring down not as though to ask how dare a woman challenge him, but with the look of someone ready to start a fight no matter what.
She stared back, and waited.
“That … demon-lover cheated me.”
“I did no such thing.” The man behind Judit was indignant, but his voice quivered in fear. Of the man threatening him? Of the accusation? The insult? She had no way to tell, and truthfully did not care.
“I saw no sign of cheating,” Judit said, voice certain, and in a normal day, that would have been enough to restore calm. You did not challenge Judit any more than you challenged the Devil; in this place and instance, they were effectively the same: she spoke with his authority. But the look in the man’s eyes, the set of his shoulders, told Grace that he would not back down. It was entirely possible he could not, but more than that, he did not wish to.
She knew that look. He wanted to hurt something. The claim of cheating was only giving him excuse.
Back across the River, back in civilization, placing herself in front of him might have been enough to shame him. Might: there were men there who took pleasure in damaging things weaker than they, though mostly they did it out of sight. But the Territory, she had learned already, was different.
She approved. Not that men could be brutes in public, but that there was no pretense that they were not brutes.
“You wanted an excuse,” she told him, her voice pitched low to carry only between the two of them. “The itch under your skin got too bright, the worm in your brain too hungry. Did you come here looking for it, I wonder, or did it burst out when your cards turned wrong?”
He snarled, but his attention was on her now, not the man behind her. Better.
“Would you dared to have entered the saloon if you knew the Devil were at home, or did you lurk outside until you saw him ride out, aware he’d have torn you to shreds if you came in here like that?”
She knew no such thing, but suspected it: the boss kept an easy hand on the reins but no-one doubted for an instant that they were his hands, at all times. For all that he demurred mastery, Flood was his, and all things that occurred within it were his as well.
But the devil was not here, and she was.
His face hardened, the only warning, and she ducked under the arm that swung at her, tucking her skirt against her knees so there was nothing to trip her, feeling the push of the winds against her legs, though there was no breeze that could find its way past walls and doors.
She did not know how to fight, had never learned to punch or grab, but she knew how to slap, and how sharply she could kick. Men braced for a blow to the body, the stomach or the face. They never protected against the shin, or the back of their knee.
He hit the floor, but she did not think he would stay there, not for long. She danced back, finger curling into her palm with the need to strike, to take him down so that he would stay down, but her breathing stayed steady, her eyes clear and her ears catching the scrape and scuffle of Iktan coming over the bar, a length of rope in his hands.
“Well done,” he said, even as he looped the rope over the man’s wrists, stringing the rope up between his shoulders and looping it around the man’s neck, making a self-fulfilling noose, if he tried to struggle or get free. She nodded, letting her fingers ease, forcing the hot fury, the need to break something, back down.
It took too long; she’d been careless, not vigilant enough. And now would the inevitable aftermath. For all the bartender’s brusque approval, now she would look up and see the others back away from her, eyes cautious, faces if nor disproving, then dubious, doubtful. Different would become dangerous, not interesting.
“Tie him the rail outside,” Judit said, her voice cool. “Let him simmer in the dust for a while, and consider his flaws while we wait for the boss to return.”
It was the sort of thing Grace might have suggested, if she’d thought of it. There was a reason she and Judit got along without too much scraping, she supposed.
“You can’t⏤” the man’s voice cut off in a choke: Iktan had tugged the rope harder than was perhaps needful, as he escorted him to the door.
“All right, everyone,” Judit said, her voice cool and controlled. “Grace, breathe. The rest of you, back to whatever you were doing before this minor contretemps, and don’t think I didn’t see where you laid your cards, Johnny!”
Johnny, a slight-built rancher who came in every seven-day to lose his paycheck on rotgut and poker, grinned without shame. He’d slight of hand that would astonish a professional cheat, but he never used them at the table for real stakes, only to amuse.
It took all kinds to fill the devil’s tables, she supposed.
Judit gave Grace a calculating look, and she braced herself for recriminations or scolding, but the woman merely shook her head, lifted her eyes to the ceiling, and went back to the table where she had been dealing cards, picking up the deck and calling for a reshuffle, the pot would stand.
And like that, it was over. As though violence had never existed within these walls, as though she had not, however briefly, shed the polite skin she draped over herself, as though…
“Grace?”
She shook herself, feeling the fragments of circles breaking off i
n shards, her mind softening again. “Yes.”
“That was foolish of you.” Zinnia could move like a fetch when she had a mind to, the only sound the soft whisper of her skirts. She wore slippers instead of sensible shoes, and her hair was bound under a darkly-patterned scarf that emphasized the broad planes of her cheekbones, skin so brown even lamplight seemed lost in it.
“I’m never foolish.” It wasn’t a brag, simply the honest truth. She had seen the situation, considered what could be done, and done it because she could.
And, she admitted, because she had wanted to. Because it had felt good.
“You’re a strange one, Grace. Strange even for this town. Weren’t you frightened?”
“No.”
She never had been, that she could recall. Uncertainty, yes, she knew that, and she had learned caution, but never fear. She supposed she lacked the imagination for it, or whatever it was that fed other people. It was only one of the things she’d been found lacking in, and not one that had ever seemed a terrible loss.
But it made her strange. It made others uncomfortable.
Zinnia eyed her, and she lifted her chin and stared back, daring the other woman to say something else.
“Well, if we can’t teach you to be cautious, we’ll need to teach you to use that knife.”
That … she had not been expecting.
Mornings were generally quiet in Flood. The younger girls woke early, as did the cook, and Grace would come to awareness, her face half turned into her pillow, and hear them rattling about below stairs, but it was a comforting noise, not one that roused her to wakefulness. Even with the window closed, the smell from the blacksmith’s forge crept in, mixing with the bitter coffee and yeasted bread smells rising from the kitchen, wound under and around the thread of spices and cigar leaf that lingered even in rooms the devil never entered. All is well, the combination told her. All is under control.
Still, a part of her was alert, always, pushing against that weight of silence. She should be doing something, being somewhere, anticipating the next thing that would be required of her, finding a way to mold herself into its demands.
But there was nothing she needed to do, just then. Her bowels were calm, and the mattress cool and comfortable enough that it was pleasurable to simply rest there, eyes closed, breathing soft, and wait. That faint movement below, and a distant clang and rattle from outside on the street, yes, but the upper floor of the saloon was heavy and still.
Not a wonder, that everyone yet slept; the last player had shuffled off, somewhat worse for drink, long after the chiming clock in the foyer had struck eleven. The younger girls had long gone to sleep, Iktan and Louis gone who-knew-where, but the rest of them had stayed up well past that, barefoot and hair loose, sharing out the last of a bottle of bitter gin while Judit showed off her dealing, the swish and thwack of cards fanning from out of her hands the sound that eventually, one by one, carried them off to sleep.
She should doze back to sleep, Grace knew. Eventually, however, restlessness drove her to throw back the coverlet and swing her legs over, shivering slightly when bare feet met cool wooden floor. Her toes scrunched, then straightened, and she reached for the napped cotton wrapper thrown over the back of the chair, tying it securely around her waist before moving to the washbasin, and pouring water from the pitcher to splash on her face.
It would be a long day ahead. The saloon itself did not open until midday, but after breakfast she would be expected to meet Zinnia and Maggie for her first lesson with a knife. She did not like the thought of it, uneasy with the weight of it, even imagined, in her hand, but hadn’t been able to explain to the other woman why she thought it a dangerous plan.
The sky outside her window, what little she could see of it, was thick with clouds. Bets would know if it was going to rain, she had a sense for such things. Appropriate, for a soon-to-be farmer’s wife.
“All I have is a sense for violence,” she told the faint reflection in the window. She hadn’t realized it bothered her. Or, rather, that it bothered her that it did not bother her. Not until the day before, not until she’d been invited to train that sense, rather than control it.
It seemed an invitation to disaster, but she did not know how to explain that to them. Not without laying open what she was, and that⏤she could not do that. Could not risk even this fragile place she’d found, where they looked at her and did not flinch from what they found.
If only she knew how to do the same.
Grace dried her face with the towel hung by the side of the basin, and shed her night rail for a simple dark brown dress, lacing the waist comfortably and tucking her feet into a pair of deerhide slippers before opening the door to the hallway. Putting her hands to work often made her thoughts still. Louis always had use for another pair of hands.
One other door in the hallway was ajar, the others tight-closed. The aroma of fresh bread was stronger than brimstone, here, and the clatter of metal and plates told her breakfast was likely ready for the earliest risers. But she was not hungry, and something more than coffee, or the desire to be distracted drove her down the stair, slippersoft footfalls on polished wooden steps, her fingers light on the rail.
The scent of brimstone and musk intensified.
The office door was open, as though he had been waiting for her. Of course he had, she thought, even as she once again took the chair opposite his desk, composing her skirt carefully and clasping her hands on her lap with a pose of studied attention.
He must have returned in the small hours of the morning, likely not gone to bed yet, assuming he even slept. Four days gone; wherever he’d been, it had worn on him. He looked tired, she thought, before the lines of his face smoothed, for an instant making him seem younger than she.
“Stop that,” she snapped, and he grinned, teeth showing in that disconcerting smile of his before composing himself into more civilized lines.
“I hear you’re to begin lessons today.”
She did not ask how he knew that. He simply knew things, if he chose to.
“I suppose I am.”
He hrmmmmed under his breath. “Did you enjoy yourself?”
She frowned at him. “No.” No need to ask what he was talking about. Only one thing of note had occurs while he was gone.
“No? It simply needed to be done and you did it?”
She lifted her chin, almost in surprise, and frowned back at him, her eyes narrowing. “It’s … not that simple.”
“Of course it is.”
“Of course it isn’t!”
She suspected that no-one else spoke to him like this, or she thought they didn’t, anyway. Judit might say whatever she wished, in private, but in public she deferred to him, and the others…. He was the boss. The wouldn’t think of defying him, even if they disagreed, and she’d yet to see any sign that they knew how to do that.
“Judit would have handled it,” he said, and tucked the cigar under one finger, then another, before rolling it in his palm the way another might pet a cat. The smell of fresh tobacco, green and earthy, made her nostrils tickle.
“Is she upset with me?”
“If she were, you would be in no doubt about it.”
That was true, and one of the reasons she remained in the saloon: Judit left no room for uncertainty in how she felt. Except, of course, where she gave no hint at all, but those were matters beyond Grace’s ken or caring.
She waited, watching those golden eyes watching her. They could do this all day; she felt no need to blink or look away.
“Why did you step between them, if not for enjoyment, and not because it needed to be done?”
She drew a breath deep through her nose, and exhaled through her mouth, a familiar, calming motion, although she was neither upset nor startled by the question. Perplexed, perhaps.
“They would have come to blows, despite Judit’s efforts. He wanted to come to blows.”
“And you….” His gaze flickered, something deep in his eyes rising for a mom
ent. “Ah.”
She waited, but he said nothing more. After a while, the thread-pull that had drawn her to his office dropped. She waited a moment, simply to say that she came and went of her own accord, then decided it was time for breakfast, after all.
She left the door open behind her, a defiant rudeness, and heard his soft chuckle follow her into the kitchen.
Bets had just slid the morning’s breads out of the oven, slipping them onto the battered wooden worktable to cool, when Grace entered the kitchen. The girl looked up in surprise, and then lifted her arm so that her elbow pointed to where a coffee pot sat on the hob. “You look like you’ve a need for it,” the girl said. “I heard you go into the office.”
No questions: Bets was clearly curious, and gossip was as common here as anywhere else, but for all that the girl was a chatterbox, she never demanded the same of others. It was why Grace could stand to be around the girl, that respect for silence.
Bets had been a gift, in the earlier days: you learned useful things when other people chattered, and even if they weren’t useful then, they might be later. But right then, Grace had a puzzle on her mind, and the girl might be useful in another way.
“He wanted to talk about the fight,” Grace said, pouring herself a cup and letting the aroma fill her nostrils, overriding the scent of tobacco and brimstone, although nothing could ever truly drive it out. “Why I did it.”
Bets shook her head, the pinned loop of her braid swinging almost violently. “Judit let him off too easy,” she said. “Leaving a man outside over night to face the shame of others in the morning only works if the man has some to begin with, and we all know now he has none.”
He’d been just as bullheaded in the morning, hung-over and ache-ridden, as he’d been the night before. She didn’t know why Bets thought a night tied to a post would sweeten anyone’s behavior. You were what you were. Then again, there were things that happened here that still confounded her understanding. Not the least of which was why no-one seemed to see her differently, after she’d shown what she could be. Were they all blind? Or did they … simply not care?