by Sarah Hegger
In another time, she might have been a Miss Rebecca. If she hadn’t had the papa she’d had, or the brothers she’d had. Or spent years trailing her father from strike to strike.
Perhaps she could never have been Miss Rebecca. But it did make her wonder if there would have been a Matthias out there somewhere for her. A young man who blushed when he said her name and thought she was perfect.
Cole didn’t think she was perfect, and now he knew more about her than anybody outside of her family. It rankled that he had barely waited for her to go to sleep before he must have gone back out hunting for company.
Some men had that thing. They could do what they liked with a whore, but a virgin was untouchable. Well, she’d like to know how they thought a girl went from virgin to whore.
“Pardon, Miz Pierce.” Matthias looked at her.
“What?”
“It sounded like you said something.”
“Er…no.” Ellie fanned herself with her hand. “Just hot, that’s all.”
The rough stretched his boots out in front of him, which meant Ellie had to tuck her feet under her bench or risk one of those enormous things landing on her foot.
Matthias tutted and shook his head. He leaned forward in the aisle. “Excuse me, mister.”
The rough breathed in and out.
“Mister!” Matthias nudged one of his boots. “I’m speaking to you.”
Ellie’s nape prickled a warning. Matthias had a look on his face that meant he was fixing to interfere.
“It’s fine.” Ellie gave him a big smile. “I’m perfectly comfortable and he has much longer legs than me.
The rough pushed back his hat and stared at her. “Sugar Ellie!”
Her heart hit her boots and she forced herself not to look at him but to keep staring out the window. Dressed like this, she might be able to get away with pretending she wasn’t Sugar Ellie.
“Hey!” He nudged her knee with his boot, leaving a mud smear behind. “I been trying to figure out where I know you from.” He chuckled and leered at her. “You’re Sugar Ellie.”
“Is he talking to you?” Matthias looked at her with concern. “Didn’t you say your name was Pierce, Mrs. Pierce?”
That would get her for not using another name.
“She’s a Pierce all right.” The rough rubbed his palms on his thighs and leered at her bosom. “But she ain’t no Missus. Not unless somebody done married her since I was last in the Four Kings.”
The matron eyed her like she might strike at any second. She tucked her little boy close to her knees. “Is that a saloon? Is the Four Kings a saloon?”
“Saloon and the best cathouse in these parts.” The tough’s voice carried through the carriage.
Heads swung their way, gazes alight with interest.
Heat crept over Ellie’s cheeks. Beneath her corset a trickle of sweat slid down her ribs. “I’m sorry.” She met the rough’s eyes and any hope of bluffing disappeared. She knew him and she knew him well enough not to be able to pretend. “Hi, Snake.”
Snake Cromer, and a regular visitor to the Kings. At least once a month and some months more. “What the hell are you doin’ on this train, Sugar?”
“Sugar Ellie?” Matthias shifted away from her. “Even I’ve heard of Sugar Ellie.”
The situation was rapidly sliding from bad to worse. “I don’t want any trouble.” She glanced at Matthias, then the matron and finally looked back at Snake. “I’m on my way to join Theo in San Francisco. He’s waiting for me.”
“I thought you said your husband’s name was Ephram?”
Snake scoffed. “You ain’t too quick, are you? Theo is her brother, and she don’t have no husband on account of she’s a whore.”
The word dropped like a filled boot in the silence.
The little boy tugged at his mother’s skirts. “Mama! What’s a whore?”
“A bad woman.” The matron’s lips narrowed into a vicious snarl and her eyes bored into Ellie. “A woman of the worst moral character. A godless woman.”
The boy started to cry and pressed closer to his mother. “I don’t want to be near the godless woman.”
“Now, ma’am.” Matthias twisted his hat in his hands. “I don’t know that I’d go that far. Our Lord thought mighty highly of a certain lady of loose morals.”
Ellie’s face burned with humiliation. All eyes were now on her. Most were hostile, but others were openly ogling.
“I don’t righty know about ungodly.” Snake sat back, smirking. “They say a night with Sugar Ellie will cost you twenty thousand dollars, and make you see Jesus.”
Gasps rang out across the carriage.
“Trollop.” The matron hissed at her. “Hussy.”
Snake eyed Ellie from toe to top. “You don’t look like there’s enough of you to be worth that much money.”
Even Matthias was looking uncertain. “Is that true? About the twenty thousand dollars?”
If she looked at the matron again, there was a good chance she’d be turned into a pillar of salt. “It’s more a joke. It’s not really a thing.”
Snake sat forward. “If that’s not real, then I got a powerful hankering to know how much you would be, Sugar?”
“God protect us.” The matron threw up her hands. “You.” She scowled at Snake and then Ellie. “And…her. My children shouldn’t be exposed to this.”
Ellie heartily agreed. Nobody should have been exposed to this. All she wanted was to get on a train and find Theo. She didn’t want any trouble or to bother anyone.
She glared at Snake.
Chuckling, he dug in his pocket and brought out two bits and some twine. “Will this do it, Sugar?”
“No!” The matron surged to her feet. “I should not have to witness such moral reprehensibility. He’s offering her money, for…” She gestured Ellie.
“Quite right!” A man with a tremendous bristly mustache stood from further down the carriage. “This is a respectable carriage filled with respectable people. It’s not for the likes of them.”
“I ain’t a whore.” Snake looked about him all innocence. “Can’t blame a man for taking advantage of what’s before him.”
“Ah!” The matron clutched her baby and looked about her. “We need to leave this train. At once.”
“Now, Madam. Calm yourself.” Mustache reddened and squared his shoulders. “It is not you who should leave the train, but her.”
And all at once, Snake was not the problem, but she was.
Assenting mutters and snippets of conversation rose from the carriage.
“The audacity of her…”
“Riding this train like she had a right to.”
“You’d think she had the decency to stick to her own kind.”
I am your kind, Ellie wanted to yell. And how did they think whores got out west in the first place? They didn’t crawl out of hell riding a demon. Next time she was buying a hat with a veil, and dressing as a widow. Nobody bothered a grieving widow. In fact, people gave widows a wide miss as if they feared she might spread death.
“I just want to get to San Francisco,” Ellie said. “I can sit somewhere else if it makes you feel better.” The last to the matron, but the woman wasn’t listening. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright with the fervor of her conviction.
“She is selling herself in front of my children.”
Louder condemnation came from the other passengers. Some were turning downright nasty.
“She must be removed.” Mustache should get into politics, with the way he postured and posed for the other passengers. He had his hands tucked into the placket of his coat and he sneered down his nose at her. “Woman! Get thee to a nunnery.”
“I dunno about no nunnery.” Matthias shook his head. “And it pains me to say it, Miz Pierce, but you might consider leaving this train at the next stop.”
From the building anger around them, Ellie was inclined to agree. She stood and grabbed her bag from beneath the seat.
The mat
ron shrank back as Ellie slid past. “Good riddance!” She spat and hit the hem of Ellie’s dress.
“Stop it!” Ellie had had about enough of the uppity bitch. She was Sugar Ellie, and she ran a cathouse of fifteen girls. She kept them and their customers in line on a daily basis. Pinning the woman with a deadly stare, she dropped her voice for the woman only, “I’m leaving the train at the next stop, but if you spit at me again, I’ll show you how I deal with unruly whores.”
Which was the last thing she said until she was standing underneath the lean to and shack that served as the train depot for Silver Creek. Despite the fancy name, Silver Creek consisted of one dusty street fronted by some ramshackle buildings interspersed with large, mining town tents. Ellie watched the train until it disappeared over the horizon. “Well, hell!”
Chapter Eleven
Ellie ducked the broom aimed at her head and staggered back. She missed the top step, stumbled, and almost fell into the dusty street.
The stout matron wielding the boom raised it again. “You get out of here. I’m not going to tell you again. I don’t want your type here.”
“I’m not—” But what was the point. News of who she was had gotten off the train with her. Silver Creek only had one boarding house and it was run by the same woman who owned the broom and was glaring at her, arms crossed over her gleaming white apron bib.
Ellie grabbed her stuff and tromped back down the pretty walkway edged with purple flowering bushes. The door slammed behind her.
The dry, dusty main street of Silver Creek shimmered in the noonday heat. Her dark blue traveling dress made it hotter than ever. She trudged down the street and back to the station. At least the heat was bearable beneath the depot. A handful of wooden sheds skirted the tracks, all of them worn but sturdy.
The saloon was doing a good trade for such a small town, and she sat on a crate and tried to come up with what next. No hotel, and the boarding house was out. She could see if the saloon would rent her a room, but it would likely come with a lusty cowpoke attached.
“Hey, Sugar!” Snake yelled from the saloon. He had a group of friends with him and they were all staring at her. “You changed your mind yet? Got a warm bed here for ya.”
His friends laughed uproariously and thumped him on the back.
There went her nice quiet rest at the depot, and she stood and walked in the opposite direction from the saloon.
After she’d been dropped from the train, Snake had jumped down after her. He’d gone straight to the saloon, and she’d tried to find somewhere to sleep for the night.
What she needed was a plan, and getting back on the train didn’t look possible. The conductor might remember her, and she’d be right back where she started. Silver Creek’s livery stable looked as ramshackle as the rest of the town and she didn’t fancy her chances on horseback, but she had spotted a sign for the stage.
“Aww, don’t be like that, Sugar.” Snake trotted after her, his boots making tiny puffs of orange dust. “I’m only trying to be friendly.”
“I don’t need a friend.” Ellie quickened her pace. She particularly didn’t need a friend like Snake. Snake liked to play rough with her girls, and Ellie didn’t tolerate that. She had almost banned him from the Four Kings several times.
Stopping, she crouched and pulled her knife from her boot. Theo had taught her how to use it. He wanted to be sure if none of her brothers were around Ellie could look after herself.
Snake drew level with her. “You keep this up, Sugar, and I might get to thinking you don’t like me.”
The rotgut on his breath could bring a cow to its knees. Ellie kept walking.
“Hey.” Snake caught her arm and tugged her back. “You’re getting me mad, Sugar and you don’t—”
“Get your hands off me.” Ellie pressed the knife into his throat, right over his pulse.
Snake stilled and dropped her arm.
“I’m gonna drop this knife, and you’re going to step back.” Ellie pressed the tip into his skin and drew a trickle of blood. “Because if you don’t, I’m gonna cut your pecker off. You get me here, Snake?”
Snake nodded but his eyes filled with impotent rage. She needed to make sure he never caught her without her knife.
“Hey!” Boots pounded the sidewalk. “What’s going on here?”
A middle-aged man, balding and wearing a deputy’s badge drew closer to them. “Is this man bothering you, ma’am?”
“She ain’t no ma’am.” Snake barely moved his mouth, his gaze transfixed on her knife at his throat. “She’s a whore.”
Men sure did like to toss that word around, acting like it was dirty when they were quick enough to find one of those dirty whores when they had an itch needed scratching. “He’s bothering me all right.”
The deputy hitched his gun belt. “Looks to me like she don’t wanna be your whore.”
“I don’t.” Ellie took her knife away and stepped back. “I don’t want any trouble. I just want to be on my way.”
“Get on then.” The deputy jerked his head at her. “Me and Snake will have a little chat about some friends of his.”
Ellie quick footed it out of there. As soon as she could, she ducked between the livery and the undertaker and got out of Snake’s line of sight. It said all she cared to know about Silver Creek that the undertaker was as big as the livery. At the general store, she peered around the corner at the main street.
The road was clear. Snake was either with the deputy or back to drinking with his buddies, and she didn’t plan on finding out which. The schedule for the stage was pinned to the outside of the general store. Right in Snake’s line of sight.
“You hidin’?” A man spoke from right behind her.
Startled, Ellie turned. A ragged older man with a huge beard and a mane of tangled hair stood behind her. He peered around the corner of the general store. “You hidin’ from Snake?”
“You know him?” Ellie slid away from the man. He didn’t seem harmful, but she was learning caution the hard way.
The man hawked and spat. “I know you had to draw that little pig sticker to get rid of him.” He hauled his threadbare pants up by the rough rope belt holding them. “You’d a been in a whole heap of trouble iffen Shorty didn’t come up then.” He sniffed. “Problem with them little pig stickers is when you gotta take them away from your man. See, you draw a pig sticker and you either gotta be prepared to stick the pig with it or run real fast.”
He had a point. He could also be the solution to her predicament. “Do you know anything about the stage?”
“I know it comes around noon every day,” he said. Blue eyes twinkled at her from between his shaggy hair and his beard. “That the kinda thing you looking for?”
“That’ll do.” Ellie slipped back behind the buildings. Now she needed to stay out of sight until noon tomorrow.
Ellie didn’t remember falling asleep, but she woke up in a nightmare. Her head hurt and her belly threatened to revolt any second. Everything was swaying, and she couldn’t make it stop.
She must have dropped off again because when she woke a second time her head hurt as much as ever, but her tummy had calmed some. She wouldn’t say she was ready for a banquet, but at least her boots were safe.
Where were her boots? Her parts didn’t seem to be where they ought.
Hair curtained her face and swished with the ongoing swaying sensation. All she could see was dry dirt beneath her, and it was moving.
No, that was her. She was moving. All except her hands which she couldn’t seem to get to obey her. They remained stubbornly behind her back. Something was digging into her wrists—
Her hands were tied behind her back.
And she was moving, because she was on the back of a mule judging by her proximity to the ground and the smell, and she was slung over the beast’s back.
She tried to sit up.
A hand pressed between her shoulder blades and kept her where she was. “You settle yourself down there, missy, a
nd everything will be fine.”
No, everything damn well wouldn’t be fine. Her brain clicked the pieces into place and spat out the conclusion that someone had tied her and flung her over the back of a mule.
Putting the missing pieces together took longer than it should have. It was hard to think with the thumping in her head and the churning in her gut. She’d risked the general store for a loaf of bread and some dried-up apples last nig—she didn’t know what time it was, or even what day. Not wanting to be seen again, she’d slipped into one of the storage sheds beside the rail tracks. She’d been tired and the shed warm and quiet. She must have fallen asleep, which is where her recollection ended.
Wriggling her ankles, she found them constricted like her hands were. She was hogtied to a mule with no idea how she’d gotten there.
Her stomach roiled, and her mouth flooded with bitter saliva. She was going to be sick. The constant jostling of her belly was making it so much worse.
She needed to stop or sit up before she vomited. “Please—”
“Now, I told you to bide,” the man said. “I don’t wanna wallop you again, but I will iffen you give me reason to.”
Ellie knew that voice but with her sick belly and her aching head she couldn’t think where she knew it from. “Did you wallop me before?” That would explain the nausea and the sore head.
He grunted.
“I’m going to be sick.” She forced the words through her gritted jaw. “I need to sit up.”
“Whoa!”
Her mule jolted to a halt and sidestepped.
A hand fisted in her hair and yanked her head up. Blue eyes peered out at her from beneath straggly, tangled gray hair. His entire chin was covered in a beard that went down to the middle of his chest. “Don’t be getting no ideas about that pig sticker of yorn. I done left it behind.”
At least it wasn’t Snake abducting her, but then again, maybe she would have been better off with Snake. Better the devil you knew. “Who are you?”
“Are you being smart with me?” He peered into her face. “Saying you’re feeling poorly and lying.”
Faced with more time slung over the mule, she almost yelled, “No. I really am going to be sick. I need to sit up.”