Atkins glanced around the room.
“He in the bedroom or behind the cabin?”
“Behind.”
“Playing with those dolls of his, I reckon.”
Violet closed her eyes and sighed. “They’re not dolls, Milo. I told you. They’re his stickmen. He has wars and all kinds of things like that with them.”
“Fine. I’ll go visit the general and let you get back to it.”
Atkins kissed his wife on the forehead and started back toward the door.
“Milo?”
Atkins turned, looping a thumb into his gun belt.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Was there any special reason you stopped by like this, mid-day?”
“No, nothing special.”
“Those old men at the general aren’t getting under your collar, are they? Teasing and the like?”
“Oh, only the usual. Nothing too bad.”
“Still, I don’t see why Mr. Cooke makes you keep your office at the general. Seems like he’d have plenty of room for you in his house.”
Atkins shrugged.
“I don’t know if that’d be much better, Vi. You know how Cooke is. So particular and the like. You can’t sneeze without him scowling at you and grumbling beneath his breath.”
“I suppose. I don’t know him like you do.”
“No,” Atkins said, grabbing his hat as he headed out the door. “You sure don’t.”
As foretold, young William Atkins was playing behind the cabin, his back turned to the world. He was hunched over several piles of sticks, each bundled together with a strip of old burlap. Violet and Billy had made the stickmen together, right before Christmas, and ever since they’d been Billy’s inseparable companions, getting dragged along wherever the seven-year-old went, from the public outhouse to church on Sundays to his bed.
The sheriff leaned against his cabin, watching his son play. He counted seven stickmen, all of them a-smashing into each other while his son made crashing noises with his mouth. Either the game or the sun had brought out the blood in the boy’s soft, downy cheeks, giving him a flushed look that reminded Atkins of what his wife had said about him looking like an angel.
“Hey there, Billy.”
“Hi, Pa.”
His son continued playing without turning to look back. Atkins stepped forward and squatted beside him, pinching a blade of grass between his fingers and setting it in his mouth.
“What game you playing there?”
“One against all,” Billy said, glancing up. “It’s when one stickman fights everybody else.”
Atkins chewed the grass and squinted up into the hills.
“That doesn’t sound too fair. One against six.”
“No, it’s fair,” Billy said, solemnly nodding. “The one stickman is really strong, stronger than all the others. He’s winning.”
Atkins rose from his heels and straightened up.
“That sounds all right, then. You keep on playing that.”
“Yes, sir. I will.”
Atkins spat out the blade of grass. Billy looked up from his stickmen, frowning with a thought.
“Pa, it’s not dinnertime already?”
Atkins tousled the boy’s hair, which was dark and fine, like his mother’s.
“No, sonny. It’s not.”
Billy grinned, so wide and happy Atkins had to look away. The stickmen resumed their crashing and you could hear the old straw in them, so dry and cracking you expected a brushfire any moment, rising all around.
4
Ingrid Blomvik made the short walk from the church back to the Runoff Saloon alone, not waiting for Madam Petrov or the other girls. Two men, sitting out on the Copper Hotel’s front porch, whistled their appreciation as she passed by. Ingrid ignored them and crossed the empty street, slowing as she approached the Runoff Saloon’s porch. Five girls stood propped up on its banister, doing their best to look attractive while they sweated through their cheap dresses. Nobody was used to this kind of heat, not this high in the mountains, and when it did come to visit for a few days, usually in July or August, it felt hotter than the salt flats of Utah.
The porch girls murmured hello as Ingrid mounted the steps and swept past them. Madam Petrov made the regular girls display themselves like goods at a mercantile. She said it attracted more customers, which was doubtful, since nearly every man in town spent his days below the earth, breaking rocks and hauling the mess out (every man who could afford a whore, that was). She let the girls work the porch in shifts during the daytime, four hours on then four hours off, with everybody on the porch starting at five, no matter what. About one hour into a porch shift you ran out of talk, if you’d had any in the first place, and from there the conversation dragged along like a lame mule, nearly as bad as the time you spent with your legs parted beneath some sweaty, unwashed man.
Not that Ingrid dealt much with sweaty men these days—the sole use of her services were reserved by Revis Cooke, who paid a high sum for such special treatment, and Revis Cooke kept himself clean with a particular vehemence that bordered on insanity, his skin so buffed and soft it reminded her of a baby’s bum.
The saloon’s interior was dark and cool, a large, open space with plenty of tables and chairs and a fireplace to one side. A few customers sat at the island bar in the middle of the room, drinking without talking. Caleb sat on a stool behind the bar, whittling a block of wood. The young man looked up as she came inside and nodded.
“What’s it going to be this time, Caleb?”
“Beaver.”
Ingrid laughed and started up the saloon’s stairway, running her hand along the smooth banister.
“A beaver? With a fat tail and all?”
“Figured we could set it above the fireplace, right next to the cow skull.”
“That skull could use some company,” Ingrid said, stepping onto the second floor landing. “Being dead must get awful lonely.”
Caleb made no reply, already forgetting her as he returned to his work, shaving off another layer of curls from the block. Ingrid turned right, passing three bedrooms until she came to her own, which overlooked the street below. The girls used their own bedrooms for business, seven upstairs and seven down, with the extra rooms for Madam Petrov’s bedroom, office, and the bartender’s room. Ingrid’s room was as small as any, just big enough for a bed and a chest of drawers. It wasn’t too glamorous, entertaining a distasteful man in the same room you slept in, but it beat the hell out of a being a girl of the line in some noisy city like Butte, set up in a row of hot wooden shacks like you was nothing but a pumping doll.
Ingrid opened the top drawer of the bureau, rifled through her collection of undergarments, and pulled out a small leather bound book. She sat down on the edge of her bed, kicked off her shoes, and opened the slim volume on her lap, enjoying the way its binding creaked as it spread. It was a book of poetry her deceased husband Erik had given her when they’d been courting back in Minnesota—“In Memoriam”, by Lord Alfred Tennyson. The poems were about his dead friend Arthur, about how sad and heartbroken he’d felt at Arthur’s sudden death. The book had seemed like a strange thing to give a girl you were courting, especially since they’d both been so young back then, only thirty-two years between them, but it made perfect sense now, with Erik buried in the Black Hills for six long years.
A photograph slid out of the book as Ingrid turned the pages. They’d had the picture taken right after they’d gotten married in Rapid City, spending money on it they couldn’t really afford, but she’d rather have it now than a hundred cash dollars. She’d worn a dress her mother had made, a blue and white checkered she’d outgrown since and given away to another girl, and Erik looked so handsome in his good suit, his eyes brimming over with life and jubilation. They’d both b
een children still, really, not knowing that nothing but cholera and heartbreak was waiting for them around the bend.
Somebody knocked on her door. Ingrid wiped the damp from her eyes, slipped the photograph back inside, and returned the book to its hiding spot at the back of her bureau drawer. “Come in,” she called out, sitting back. The door opened and a young woman stepped inside. She was on the short side, with curly dark hair and chestnut brown skin. She was a favorite with the men, all plump curves and wide, beautiful brown eyes.
“Howdy, Anita.”
“Hey, Ingrid. Sorry to bother, but Mr. Cooke is here.”
Ingrid sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. They’d lain together the night before and she’d hoped to have an evening’s reprieve.
“Send him up, Anita.”
“You sure?”
“I am.”
The young whore made to leave, then poked her head back inside. “Your eyes, Ingrid. They look red.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just send the bastard up and mind the slime.”
Revis Cooke knocked once on her door and opened it himself, not standing on manners. He was a tall man given to wearing costly suits fitted with small pockets. He always carried a gold fob watch and checked it every five minutes, like he had some place important to be. He claimed to be forty but Ingrid thought he looked older than that, like a grouchy old man in training. He had dark, unsmiling eyes, a hawkish nose, and a pinched mouth that looked prissy if you couldn’t sense the sharp teeth hiding behind it. He kept his hair slicked down with the old fashioned pomade fur trappers had used a hundred years before, the kind made with bear fat instead of petroleum.
“I regret to intrude on your leisure hours, Miss Ingrid, but matters would not permit me to visit you later this evening, nor the next day.”
Ingrid smiled and rose from the side of her bed. She did not like to sit while her visitor stood beside her bed—it brought her to eye-level with his crotch and the inevitable rising therein.
“I’m delighted to see you, Mr. Cooke. The Runoff Saloon always appreciates your patronage.”
“And do you, Miss Ingrid? Appreciate my patronage?”
Ingrid widened her eyes, willing their blue to sparkle.
“Why sure, Mr. Cooke. Aren’t I the one you show the most favor to? And wouldn’t it be most natural for me to return it?”
Mr. Cooke stepped forward and set his hands upon her waist, his eyes gleaming as he absorbed her cleavage. “That’s what I like most about you, Ingrid. You know a real man when you see one. Not like the rest of this goddamned town, populated as it is with dirt encrusted miners and the usual camp vultures.”
“You find it so bad, Mr. Cooke?”
“Bad? Red Earth isn’t enough for such a word. This town is a banality and a banality is a worse sin to me by far.”
Ingrid didn’t know what Mr. Cooke was talking about, but she rarely did. He’d gone to university back East, the only man in town who’d done as much, and liked to hear the wind of his own words. She knew it got him agitated, talking like this, using fine language and big words, and knew you just had to wait out the talking and try not to laugh. Men hated it when you laughed at something you weren’t supposed to laugh at.
“You look delectable, Miss Ingrid. You make me feel like the Big Bad Wolf, about to sup.”
Ingrid giggled stupidly as the accountant leaned in and nibbled on her neck. The room’s heat, combined with the smell of Cooke’s pomade, was making her feel faint. How could he stand his own smell? He worked inside a building, as she did. He was no cowboy riding along the open plains, no mountain man Jim Bridger.
Cooke’s hands cupped her breasts and began to fumble with her bodice, threatening to bust a few buttons or more—he talked fine, but acted the slop when it came to undressing a woman. Ingrid pushed his hands away and undid the corsage herself, not wanting it harmed, and let it fall to the floor. It took only a few seconds more before she stood naked in the hot room, a bead of sweat slipping between her breasts.
“Ah, yes. Indeed.”
The accountant stepped back, fumbling with his own belt in his eagerness to be rid of it. A small pink bit of tongue slipped out between his teeth as he dropped his pants and drawers and kicked the mess of clothes away. His prick was hard and at the ready, wobbling as he came forward and pushed her onto the bed. Cooke had kept his suit coat on, as he always did, and its fine fabric felt over-slick as he climbed onto her and nudged her legs apart with his knees. Ingrid fought against the urge to close her thighs and scream, still there after all these years of whoring, and allowed her eyes to drift away as the accountant entered her and began his thrusting. She tried her best to remember her young husband, the feel of Erik Blomvik’s body as they once preformed this same act on a woolen blanket, hidden away in his father’s hayloft on a sunny afternoon much like this one. The strength in Erik’s shoulders and back as she clutched him to her, so happy as he kissed her neck, her cheeks, her lips. She drew on the memory as if it were a spell of protection, keeping her slightly distant from the slippery, pomaded man on top of her, no matter how deeply he tried to enter.
Some men fell asleep, afterwards, into a deep and untroubled slumber she allowed for a few minutes as she washed between her legs and dried off. Not Revis Cooke, however. Revis Cooke liked to talk.
“This whole town is nothing but a single operation, you know. If Mr. Dennison felt an urge, he could have the whole setup collapsed and put away in a week’s time, like taking down a circus.”
“Is that so?”
Ingrid wished Cooke would get dressed, or at least put his drawers back on. She didn’t need to look at his prick, now soft and gleaming with the juice of his seed, any more than she already had. She’d tell him as much, too, if he wasn’t already paying so dearly for their time.
“Yes, it is. But that won’t happen for several years more. Not until the mine runs dry and more profit can be found somewhere else. Until then, you ladies will have livelihood enough in these hills.”
Mr. Cooke ran his hand along her thigh and set it upon her knee. “Do you recall that matter I mentioned, when I first entered your room?”
“I sure do. You said it would keep you from calling tonight.”
Mr. Cooke smiled. No, not a smile, exactly—a hooking of the lip that made Ingrid shiver, though the room was as hot and baking as ever. Out of all the rough and strange men she’d known in five years of whoring, he had to be the most worrisome of all. Maybe it was the fine words and business man’s clothes, maybe it was something else.
“The coach is coming in this evening, Miss Ingrid.”
“The coach? But it’s not Wednesday.”
“The coach from San Francisco. The bank coach.”
Ingrid drew the sheet up to her waist, though she wasn’t cold. She could still see his hand beneath the sheet, lumped like a coiled snake in the grass. Hopefully he had nothing more on his mind for today.
“It comes only once a month, you know,” Mr. Cooke said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. “The coach travels with five guards in addition to the driver himself. Shotguns, they call them. In two years, they haven’t missed a delivery yet. They are men you can set your clock by.”
Ingrid smiled and set her head on Mr. Cooke’s shoulder, though that brought her closer to his slick scalp.
“Like you, Mr. Cooke. I could set a clock by you as well.”
“Perhaps you could,” he said, drawing his hand back and shifting onto his side, so he could face her. “Being a payroll accountant is a vital job, Miss Ingrid. Each month, I need to count the delivery and dole it out to the appropriate recipients. You’d marvel to see it, all that money laid out on my desk in high stacks. More money than you’ve ever seen in your life.”
Ingrid closed her eyes, imagining that money stac
ked on her own dresser. Enough money to buy a person free of this town, free of all these mountains and the winters that seemed to begin as soon as they’d ended. With a pile of money like that you could take the train back East. You could go back to Minnesota and show everybody how you’d become something after all.
“I know I’m no whiskey guzzling hard-rocker,” Cooke said, squeezing her left breast as if feeling a tomato for soft spots. “But if anybody tried me around here, they’d find enough trouble to last them.”
Ingrid nodded. They all talked big like that, afterward.
5
The four outlaws heard the heavy-laden coach descending. They left the winding mountain road, dismounting from their horses and leading them into a short ravine. The horses pawed at the ground as they entered a dense grove of pines, uncertain of the footing and why they were being led into a valley with no visible exit. The outlaws murmured reassuringly to the horses as they brought them round, so that the entire group, now hidden, faced the road. The gang was led by a slim, brown-eyed man named Elwood Hayes. They’d come up from Colorado the day before.
They listened as the coach rumbled closer, its noisy passage echoing off the surrounding hillside, knocking scree loose and moving faster than sanity would seem to allow on such a twisting path.
“Goddamn, they’re making a racket.”
“Hush, Roach.”
“What for? They won’t hear nothing above all that. Might as well be riding through a thunderstorm.”
Roach Clayton was right—they did not seem to care about how much noise they made or who heard it. That meant a heavy guard, Elwood decided. An escort of either cocky young roosters, too certain their guns made them safe, or grizzled veterans, too hardened by time and experience to care much what happened to them now. Either way, they’d put up one hell of a fight if fallen upon.
And the Hills Opened Up Page 3