by Sarah Hegger
Bets and Delilah hadn’t had too many takers tonight and sat at one of the tables sharing a last drink before bed. A couple of the girls still had customers, but they wouldn’t be much longer, and once Caleb was finished down here, he’d start clearing the rooms.
This was a cathouse and not a boarding house like some seemed to believe.
Ellie piled glasses on a tray and took them over to the bar. None of her brothers were around for cleanup.
Before Theo left, this had been her favorite part of the night. She and Theo used to work with Silas and Caleb to shut the saloon down for the night. She and Theo would talk about their day, sometimes books they were reading.
Theo had taught her to read. Jake, Patrick and Paul had seen no reason to learn. They also saw no reason to clean up when they paid others to do it. But after a long night, the cleanup could be backbreaking work, and Ellie couldn’t sleep with the idea of Caleb and Silas still hard at it.
Caleb expelled old Dave Withers for the night and put the chairs atop the cleared tables.
While Silas wiped down the counters, Ellie tallied up the sales for the night and compared them to the bottles. Silas was honest to a fault, but Jake insisted on an audit every night.
“Sure was good to see Whisky tonight.” Silas replaced the bottles as she finished with them.
Ellie nodded. “Yes, it was. Did he say where he’s been?”
“You know Whisky.” Silas shrugged. “Alls he ever says is that he had business.”
“Right.” Ellie couldn’t help but scoff. “Business that involved a deck of cards, I’ll bet.”
“Surprised nobody’s shot him by now.” Silas shook his head. “Not a way to make a living, that.”
The idea of Cole being shot stabbed at her, and she shoved it away. “He’s been at this for long enough to take care of himself.” At least, she dearly hoped so.
“Ellie.” Patrick stood by the arch leading to the family area. “You need to come.”
“What for?” Patrick had gotten mighty fond of issuing instructions. Mostly because people in this town were scared of him and Paul. Patrick had a hair trigger temper that Paul was happy to back.
Patrick scowled. “Just come.”
“Tell me what for.”
He growled. “Family business meeting, that’s what for. Now come.”
“Can you finish here, Silas?” Only Jake would call a meeting at this time of night. Of course, he’d been holed up with Minnie since about midnight so his feet weren’t aching, and his back didn’t feel like it could snap at the waist. Getting her corset off had become Ellie’s priority.
Silas nodded and patted her hand. “You go ahead, Miss Ellie, and then take yourself straight to bed.”
“Thank you.” She went past Caleb. “I think Honey has someone with her, and I saw Dusty take that miner she likes so much up about an hour ago. They should be done by now.”
Caleb grinned. “Iffen they ain’t by now, they’re about to be.”
Ellie turned down the main lamps and left a couple for Silas and Caleb to work by. “Good night.”
They spoke together. “Good night, Miss Ellie.”
Ellie found her three brothers, and Minnie—of course—in the small parlor they used for themselves at the back of the house. Unlike the garishness of the rest of the saloon, Ellie had decorated this room in greens and creams and tried to keep it looking like a regular family’s parlor.
Perched on the arm of his chair, Minnie had her boobs near enough in Jake’s face. They certainly bought Minnie Jake’s undivided attention.
Patrick strolled over to the floral sofa and wedged himself in next to Paul. It was a tight fit for both of them, and Ellie suppressed a wince as Patrick slammed his booted feet on the delicate walnut table.
Ellie chose a small armchair near the window and as far away from Minnie’s cloying perfume as she could get. Jake had that stuff brought in from Paris especially for her. Ellie reckoned Paris must be full of an awful lot of cat pee that they were bottling it up, slapping something sweet in there and selling it as perfume.
Patrick lit a cigar and added smoke to the close air.
The window was open, but the night breeze provided no respite from the heat.
Looking up from Minnie’s cleavage, Jake scowled at her. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Then you could have come and helped me close up.”
Minnie put her black lace mitted hand on Jake’s arm to stop his response. “We’ve all been talking.”
“All of you?” Ellie looked at Patrick and then Paul shoulders hunched as they sat jammed together on the sofa.
Patrick dropped his gaze and Paul picked at his boot.
This wasn’t looking good. She turned to Jake. “What about?”
“The girls.” Minnie hooked a stockinged leg over Jake’s thigh. “We think some changes are in order.”
The we was really starting to nip at her drawers. “What sort of changes?”
“We think the girls are taking advantage of you.” Minnie glanced at Jake and then the twins. “You’re so sweet, Ellie, everybody says so, and the girls ride right over you.”
“I don’t think—”
“They don’t respect you,” Jake said and sipped his whisky. “They do what they want, and you let them.”
Ellie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “That’s not true, Jake. I run the girls, and I do it as I see fit. Theo said so.”
“Theo isn’t here.” Jake’s face grew hard. “And I don’t think he’s coming back neither.”
“Don’t say that.” Ellie couldn’t bring herself to admit the possibility of never seeing Theo again. “People don’t always find a way to contact their folks when they’re out in California.”
Minnie clicked her fingers, her gold bangles jingling. “I suggest we get back to the important part of tonight.”
“Right.” Jake kissed her hand. “We’ve decided”—he tilted his head toward the twins—“that someone else should handle the girls. Someone with a firmer hand on them. Someone older and more experienced.”
The floor disappeared under Ellie’s heeled boots. She didn’t even have to guess who they were thinking of replacing her with.
Then Jake said it anyway. “Minnie will take over the girls. Once we’re married, that will give her my authority as well her own.”
“And what do I do?” Ellie looked at her brothers, but not one of the cowards would meet her eye. “Cook? Clean?”
“Ellie, honey.” Minnie smiled like a cougar with its prey in sight. “You’re far too special for something like that. You ask around, and everybody from Denver to Cheyenne has heard of Sugar Ellie.”
She and Theo had done that on purpose, as a means of protection. They let the myth of Sugar Ellie cover up the truth of Ellie Pierce, a dirt-poor miner’s daughter who had never so much as kissed a man.
Minnie spread her fingers through Jake’s hair. “It really is a blessing that you’re so darned pretty.” Minnie twinkled at her. “We know you’re going to have your pick of the customers out there. First prize, Sugar Ellie, and with a price to match.”
A strange buzzing set up in her ears as Minnie continued to speak. The stink of Patrick’s cigar turned Ellie’s stomach. Minnie’s mouth moved. The words made sense as collections of sounds, but Ellie’s brain lagged in putting meaning on them. “You want me to do what?”
“It’s not a question of want.” Jake stood and loomed over her. “We’ve all busted our asses to get this place where it is today. Now it’s time you do your part.”
She wished her brain would start working because her future depended on it. “But I have been doing my part. I run the girls.”
“And God knows how much money that stupidity has cost us.” Jake folded his arms. “Now you can make it all up to us, and Minnie has the right idea. Everybody knows Sugar Ellie, and everybody knows she don’t take no man to her bed.”
Ellie had never fainted, but she rather suspected she might n
ow. She shifted closer to the window and tried to breathe. Her corset pinched at her lungs and dug into her waist. Her brain was slow in catching up with her ears. They’d planned this, the four of them, an auction to sell her virginity to the highest bidder.
“You’ll fetch the best price of any whore in the Territory of Colorado.” Jake rubbed his hands together. “And I don’t want you to worry, Ellie. The boys and I won’t sell you to anybody. There ain’t that many who can afford you.”
Minnie gave her a smile so sweet it gave Ellie a bellyache. “Just tonight Whisky Mansfield offered twenty thousand for you.”
“That’s a joke.” High and strained, Ellie’s voice didn’t sound like her own. “He wouldn’t actually pay that.”
Patrick and Paul huddled together and wouldn’t look at her.
“You agree with this?” Ellie wanted them to look her in the eye as they betrayed her. Her brothers, her blood, her kin had agreed to this plan.
Patrick puffed a cloud of smoke and glanced at her through it. “You don’t understand, Ellie. There’s things you don’t know.”
“What things?” Dear God, if they were fixing to sell her body for those things, didn’t she have the right to know what they were?
“That’s not important,” Jake said. “But the boys are in agreement with Minnie and me, and that’s all you need to know.”
The absurdity of the situation almost made her laugh, except nobody in the room thought it was a joke. After she’d been deflowered, she would take her place with the other girls. Was this her punishment for running girls all these years?
That had to be it. She was being punished for her wickedness. It didn’t matter she had never wanted to do it. What mattered was that she had sold women for money, and now her family had decided to toss her on the fire with all the rest.
“What makes you think I’ll go along with this?” Ellie looked from one to the other of them.
Jake’s gaze grew harder than steel. “What makes you think whoever buys you will care if you agree or not?”
Ellie’s stomach lurched, and for a horrible moment, she thought she might lose her dinner. There were always men who thought a whore didn’t have the right to refuse them. Ellie’d had Caleb throw their fair share of that kind out.
“Now, wait a minute.” Paul sat up straighter. “You didn’t say nothing about Ellie being forced.” He looked at Patrick, who nodded. “Nobody said nothing about rape.”
Ellie stared at the twins. Sure, they weren’t the sharpest, but how the hell else did they think it was going to happen?
“Now, boys.” Minnie fluttered her lashes. “There won’t be no forcing about it. Ellie’s old enough to need a man’s touch.” She winked at Ellie. “You have wants, same as anyone, don’t you, Sugar? I saw the way you was eyeing Whisky tonight.”
Her thoughts dragged themselves into a comprehensible order at last. Her brothers were planning to sell her. Tomorrow night. There was some kind of weird auction already happening.
“Make no mistake, Ellie, this is happening. It’s too late to stop it, even were I so inclined.” Jake leaned over her. “Whether it goes good or bad is up to you.”
Minnie stood and approached her.
If she came much closer, Ellie would rip her throat out.
She must have read the murder in Ellie’s eye because Minnie stopped. “It’s just your virginity, Ellie. One quick poke and it’s gone.” She forced a laugh. “You won’t even miss it, and you are twenty-five. Most women have had babies and more than one man by your age.”
Not a virginal woman who had been running a whorehouse for all these years. A woman like that didn’t know where to go to change that situation without it becoming a huge joke. A woman like that didn’t meet the sort of man who could help her out with her little problem discreetly.
Except for one.
Cole’s face popped into her mind and kept the panic at bay. Cole didn’t even like Jake. He would help her.
Getting to Cole proved more difficult than Ellie had thought. Jake knew her well enough not to trust her to stay put.
Patrick and Paul took her to her room.
“You can’t let this happen.” Maybe she could get through to them, make them see reason.
The twins looked at each other for a long moment.
Even with Minnie’s scheming and prodding, Jake wouldn’t stand against all three of them. If she could just get through to them.
“It’s just sex, Ellie,” Patrick said. “We all done it except you. This time tomorrow, it’ll be all over.”
“We don’t aim to let Jake turn you into one of the girls,” Paul said as he nudged her into her room. “Just go along tomorrow night and then we’ll find something else for you to do.”
“It’s rape,” Ellie pleaded. “You are going to take money for someone to rape me. You know you don’t want that.”
Paul glanced at Patrick and frowned.
“No.” Patrick shook his head. “Minnie’s right. Besides, it’s only rape if you fight. Just go along with it, Ellie. It’ll be over in ten minutes and we’ll all be richer for it.”
“We aim to share the takings with you.” Paul closed the door.
The key scraped in the lock, and Ellie was alone.
Later, she would sit down and rage about her brothers and what they’d done. Sure, Minnie had given them the idea and talked them into it, but Minnie was not her kin. One day she was going to rip every hair from that bitch’s head.
But first, she needed to escape.
Ellie peeked out her window. If not for a guard on each side, it would have been easy enough to sneak out her ground floor window.
Jake wasn’t stupid. She needed a plan.
While she wracked her brain, Ellie changed into a traveling gown and cloak. She swapped her heeled boots for a pair of practical riding boots.
A chink of light still shone through the bottom of the door.
Ellie shoved things into a bag while she waited. When her opportunity came, and it would come only once, she wasn’t going to miss it.
Eventually the light under her door went out and deep silence settled around the house. She reckoned it must be close to three in the morning. She needed to be gone before the sun came up, but if she panicked now, she might lose her chance.
A key sounded in the lock, and Ellie’s heart jumped into her throat. The door creaked open, and Pearl whispered, “Miss Ellie, Caleb is outside and waiting for you. You get out of here, Miss Ellie, and don’t you come back.”
Chapter Four
Cole hadn’t said goodbye to Ellie, not properly anyway. Part of him couldn’t admit he wouldn’t see her again. He had been finding his way to Rattler’s Gulch for the best part of the last eight years, and she had always been part of that trip.
By the time he’d met Ellie, his reputation as a gambler who could back his cards with his Colt had already been made, and he was no longer that wet behind the ears, scared kid trying to stay alive long enough to make his way back home.
He opened the hotel window to get some relief from the hot night. The unrelenting dryness of the air was so different from where he’d been born and raised, and he’d gotten used to it.
Cool night breeze ruffled the dingy pinkish curtains stained with blowing red dust. The hotel had only been built two years ago when the railroad had found Rattler’s Gulch, but already it had the same weary air as the rest of the town.
Ugly, bare and sun bleached as it was, he’d miss the town. He’d miss Ellie too. Too late to figure out now that he could have come around more in the last year.
Damn, she had a brand of pretty that always took him by surprise. Unlike other girls at the Four Kings, Ellie retained a freshness that he’d never seen in a whore, let alone the madam of a whorehouse.
Tugging his shirt from his pants, he pulled it away from his sticky skin. Ripping it over his head he caught a hint of Ellie’s perfume from when she’d hugged him as he left.
Roses. A scent so incongruous with
a grim town on the edge of the mines. So many of these towns stayed around until the seam was played out and then crumbled back into the baked earth they’d sprung from.
He plunged his hands into his wash basin, and then his face. He came up, dripping cool water over his hot skin. Still wet, he walked to the window and let the breeze cool him further. Twelve years of his life he had carved out in this dusty, dry tough land of even harder men and women scratching out a living in towns like Rattlers Gulch.
With a pack of cards and a quick draw, he had rebuilt himself into a man of means. Somewhere along the way, Colorado had become part of him. In Denver it was easy to forget how far he’d come. In the bustle of that rapidly blooming city, he could almost convince himself these lost pockets of the west didn’t exist anymore. Five minutes in Rattler’s Gulch would set a man right on that score. Huge tracts of the west remained wild and untamed, and he would always carry a part of that savagery inside him.
Footsteps came up the stairs, scuffing on the uneven fifth step from the top.
Cole waited and listened.
Whoever was out there was light on their feet but didn’t know enough to avoid the creaky board in the center of the corridor. The steps stopped outside his door, and Cole palmed his Colt Double Action.
A soft knock on his door got him moving that way.
Pressing his back to the wall to the side of the door, Cole cocked his pistol. “Yeah?”
“Cole?”
That sounded like—
“Cole, it’s Ellie. Open the door, please.”
He put his Colt away and whipped open the door. “Ellie? What the hell?”
Roses! She pushed past him and into the room, motioning at the door. “Close it.”
Now Cole wasn’t a man to turn down a lady who wanted him to close his bedroom door. So he did.
Ellie rushed over and locked it.
And Cole got his first good look at her face. Ellie looked upset and like she may even have been crying, but he couldn’t be sure because the idea of Ellie crying didn’t sit right with him. “Sugar?” He closed the distance between them and took hold of her shoulders. “You doing okay?”