The Dog Star Saloon was the roughest dive in town, not the kind of place decent young women visited. Just now that made it quite appealing to Julia Canton. She headed there with a determined stride, and when she entered the place, there was a noticeable lull in the level of noise as every person in the place looked at her, stunned to see such perfect beauty in a place of such base ugliness.
As she sat down in a corner so as to have a good view of anyone who approached her, she wondered how Mrs. Bewley would react if she knew her dress shop assistant was camping herself out in a low-class saloon as if she were some common cyprian. It didn’t much matter: The dress shop job was merely a time-passer, and a means of keeping a few extra coins in her pocket so she could leave her main resources safely untouched in the Hangtree Bank. If she lost the job, so be it.
In the Dog Star, most patrons placed their orders at the bar or merely hollered them across the room at the proprietor and barkeep, Squint McCray. In Julia Canton’s case, Squint himself saved her the trouble, walking to her table with a twisted grin on his homely face. “Good evening, miss.”
“Good evening to you, sir.”
“What can I bring you?”
Julia Canton knew fully well that at a watering trough like this one would have limited offerings . . . mostly cheap whiskey, with gin and house-brewed beer to supplement—but she couldn’t forget the image she needed to maintain before the watching public. She smiled up at Squint like an angel and spoke in her sweetest voice. “Might you have any sherry wine, sir?”
Had anyone else asked that question at any other time, Squint would have damned him for a fool and uppity swell. No such treatment for such a lovely as this one, though. And as luck would have it, he actually did have a small supply of quite good blackberry wine given to him by a male cousin who had passed through town a month before. The cousin’s wife, recently deceased, had loved the stuff and her husband couldn’t stand it, so when she passed on he dumped the remaining wine on good old Cousin Squint, who went on to secretly develop a taste for the wine and often sipped a small glass of it before retiring to bed.
Squint told Julia that while he had no sherry, he could offer her an “excellent blackberry wine” from his own stores. He beamed down at her in anticipation of a grateful thank-you and broad smile, but Julia was disappointed and unable to hide it for a couple of moments. Her plan had been to put on a pretense of “settling” for whiskey in the absence of wine, but Squint’s brother-in-law and his cast-off blackberry wine ruined that game for her. Forcing out a smile, she accepted Squint’s offered wine with seeming gratitude. Squint strode back to his little office behind the bar to fetch her drink, thinking himself both clever and lucky.
Julia sipped the wine, which was better than she anticipated, and looked at the room around her, mostly using peripheral vision to avoid looking directly back at the many men in the place blatantly staring at her. Sending signals of returned interest could in this kind of setting be not only socially awkward, but downright dangerous. There was already one man creeping around in the shadows at her heels; certainly she did not want an entire parade of such.
Squint had recently persuaded one of the local soiled doves, Petunia Scranton, that she had missed her calling, and should have been what he called a “French dancer.” By this he was referring to the three-decades-old dance style known as “can-can.” The girl, who hated the life of giving herself to foul and unwashed men who treated her merely as a receptacle, had taken Squint’s assessment to heart. When she begged him for the chance to perform the can-can in his saloon to entertain customers, he’d felt obliged to give her the chance. He built a tiny stage in one of the front corners, just big enough to accommodate one person, and hung it about with dark curtains borrowed from the local undertaker’s funeral parlor. On her tiny stage, and wearing a flouncing skirt, petticoats, ruffled drawers, and a literally painted-on smile, she’d begun performing her high-kicking dance in her corner and drawing hearty applause, especially in her first days, when her poorly secured and oversized shoes had tended to kick off her feet and hit members of her audience in the face.
The music for her dance was provided by Charlotte Pugh, another local whore who had at some time in girlhood been taught to play three songs on the piano. One of these was a slow waltz, totally lacking the speed and rhythm required by can-can. The other two were old camp meeting hymns, mournful and dirge-like in their original form, but danceable enough when sped up to three times their normal pace. Thus, evening after evening, Petunia Scranton found herself doing the can-can (sometimes, when Squint wasn’t watching closely and she could get away with it, without her drawers) to a fast-paced piano rendition of “I Will Arise and Go to Jesus.” It made the tiny, lingering bit of “decent girl” left in her feel horribly irreligious, but she figured it was at least better than selling herself to drunks in back alleys.
The music began and the high kicking followed, drawing men to the front where they could get a good look at Squint’s “French dancer.” Julia thus found herself in the pleasant circumstance of being in a public setting and yet not being stared at by anyone, at least as best she could tell. She took a sip of Squint’s blackberry wine and had a moment of authentic, pure enjoyment of her life.
When one was accustomed to the constant sting of probing stares, one longed for privacy with a passion approaching lust. Julia had learned that lesson even before she came of age.
She noticed the photograph of the dead Toleen brother standing on an easel in the corner opposite the little dancing stage, and a chill struck.
“Miz Canton, I believe,” said a man’s voice from somewhere to the side of her. Startled, she turned her head and saw Sam Heller only a couple of yards away. He’d managed to approach her in utter silence and without any stray movements to pull her eye his way. She knew who he was because he had been pointed out to her one day as he came out of the Hangtree Bank while she was dodging the heat of the sun on a shaded porch nearby. She’d watched his impressive form closely that day, and at this moment, was equally drawn to his handsome and weathered face.
“Mr. Sam Heller, I think?” she said, setting her wineglass on the table and pushing it aside a few inches. Heller possessed a drink as well, whiskey in a shot glass that looked absurdly tiny in his big hand. Julia flicked her eyes toward the empty chair on the other side of the little round table, and Heller moved there, scooted it back with his foot, and sat down. The chair creaked under his weight.
“So you don’t mind if I sit?”
“Not at all, Mr. Heller. I’m glad for the company.”
“How is it you know me?” he asked her.
“I saw you in town and asked someone who you were. And how do you know me, sir?”
“First off, don’t call me no sir or nothing. Nor mister. Just Sam.”
“Only if you’ll call me Julia.” She gave him a smile that would have thawed a man made of pure ice into a spreading puddle.
“To answer your question, I know you because, just now, I don’t think there’s a soul in Hangtree who don’t know who Julia Canton is. You turned the heads and caught the eyes of every man in this county the day you got here.”
“Every man in the county, you say? Well, I’m impressed with myself if that’s the case.”
“Don’t get too proud, ma’am. It’s a small county.”
She laughed and Heller broke into a grin. She thought it a beautiful style and him a handsome man.
“So where’s my old compadre Johnny Cross?” Heller asked.
She sipped her wine and shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, nor know why I should be expected to know.”
“You been seen with him a good deal these last days, walking beside him in the streets, eating meals with him at the Cattleman.”
“An appealing man asks to keep me company or buy me a good beefsteak, and I’m not one to turn that down.”
“Julia, I don’t know whether you find me appealing or not, but there’s something I’d like to ask of you, if J
ohnny ain’t beat me to it already.”
“Ask away.”
“There’s a dance coming up, and if you’re the dance-going type, I’d like to ask you to accompany me.”
She finished her little glass of wine and studied the dark droplets lingering in the bottom of it. She caught Squint’s eye and raised the glass to ask for a refill. He hustled to get the bottle.
“The truth is, no one has asked me already. And yes, Sam, I’d be pleased to go with you. Though I admit to dreading hearing the fiddle music. The man who plays it lives in the same boardinghouse and has been practicing a lot where I can hear it. He’ll not likely win any fiddling contests.”
“Claude does the best he can.”
“Why don’t I find that encouraging?”
Heller laughed. “I understand. I do. But I got to like Claude. He’s a good man.”
Squint showed up with the bottle of blackberry wine and refreshed Julia’s glass. He was forced to explain to Heller what the blue-black libation was, and how he’d come to have it. Heller turned down an invitation to try some for himself.
Squint returned to the bar and Heller and Julia fell into conversation, getting to know one another, sharing what parts of their backgrounds they felt comfortable with. Heller, who had possessed a strong interest in the southernmost states since knowing many southerners during the war, quizzed her closely about her Georgia childhood. Only when he noticed she seemed to be made uncomfortable by the questions and unable in some cases to answer readily, did he desist.
He tried not to think about it, but something just didn’t feel quite right in it all.
“Now, let me ask you some questions,” she said. “When I was a little girl, my Sunday school teacher told me that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Then I got to Hangtree, Texas, and heard from most around me that, no, it ain’t the Lord, it’s Sam Heller who owns those cattle. Is that right?”
“If you’re counting on cattle on hills, that’d amount to a small herd to own for either man or Lord,” Sam said. “Not many hills worthy of the name to be found around here.”
“I noticed.”
“But if you’re talking about longhorns in general, hill cattle or flatland cattle, well, I reckon I do own my share of them, and a few more shares besides.”
“Richest man in the region, I’m told.”
“Is ‘rich’ an important thing to you?”
She reached over and laid the flat of her forefinger on the nail of one of his. “Let’s say that it doesn’t lessen my interest, and in fact might just make it all the stronger.”
He smiled and grasped her hand, holding it in his there on the tabletop. She did not pull away, and it pleased him.
“Why do you carry such a strange weapon?” she asked. “I saw it on you one day when you came out of the bank. More of a rifle than a pistol.”
“I’ve found I naturally favor it,” he said. “I’m a better shot with it than with a standard pistol, though sometimes, like tonight, I’ll switch it out for a Colt if I’m going to be in town and don’t want such a showy weapon on me. But I prefer the mule-leg. Other folks have trouble with mule-leg guns, but me, it’s like a natural extension of my arm. I just think of what I want to hit, raise, and fire, and nine times out of ten I’ve hit what I wanted.”
“Sounds like you might be a very dangerous man,” Julia said.
Heller shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that. I’m no danger at all to those who give me no cause to be such to them. In fact, in the case of good, honest people, I’m a protector, not a danger.”
“Even if the people are good, honest rebs? I’ve been told you were a Yankee during the war, and that a lot of folks here call you a carpetbagger.”
“People ‘call’ a lot of things. Most ain’t worth listening to. Here’s the way I look at it: War’s over. Time to get on with the peace, and the coming back together. The dividing up just got a lot of folks killed.”
She grew thoughtful and looked past him, up toward the front of the saloon. She stared at the ugly, gray image of the dead Toleen brother with his empty eye sockets.
“It’s hard to put the past behind, though,” she said. “Hard to forget what you’ve been through. Where you came from, and who you came from.”
“You’re a philosopher, good lady.”
She smiled. “And you, sir, are a fine specimen of a man.”
“Better specimen than Johnny Cross?”
“Better than anybody I can think of. Can you walk me back to my boardinghouse?”
“I can.”
She drained off the last of her blackberry wine and slipped her arm into the crook of his. As they walked out of the Dog Star, she paused and glanced at the Toleen image.
“Cal,” she said.
“Beg pardon?”
“Cal. That’s Cal Toleen there.”
“Is that right? As I was hearing things, nobody was sure which one of the twins this one was.”
“It’s Cal.”
“Begging pardon again, but how would you know?”
She was discomfited by the question, but shrugged past it and said merely, “You know what you know.”
Sam looked at the face of the man he had tied to the back of Otto Perkins’s wagon to drag into town. “Evening, Cal,” he said, and led the prettiest woman in Texas out the door of the Dog Star into the Hangtree dark.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Julia slept restlessly that night, not as the result of blackberry wine or feet sore from a long meandering walk around the dark town with Sam Heller. What kept stirring her back to wakefulness was a sense of not being truly alone, a feeling that someone was out there, in the dark beyond the boardinghouse walls. Maybe watching, maybe just pacing about. But out there because of her.
She dreamed during her sporadic periods of sleeping, the dreams being a combination of memories from childhood and imaginations about the person she was convinced was out there. She dreamed it was Sam Heller, and Johnny Cross. That it was that strange picture-taking fellow whose shop Johnny had led her into that day he was trying to find a man who had a knife for sale. She dreamed it was Timothy Holt out there, angry and heartbroken and suddenly no longer the gentle, boyish fellow who reminded her so much of her late brother. Then in the dream he changed all at once to Cal Toleen, the dead outlaw in the picture back at the saloon, and he was walking around out there with his skin gray and crumbling, and his eyes missing.
That mental vision woke her up and she sat up slowly in her bed, looking at the open second-floor window on the north wall of her room and listening to the night outside. “Papa?” she said, nonsensically, because she knew that if anyone was really out there at all, it was not and could not be her father. But the feeling was strong. “Papa? Is that you?”
There was a reply. No dream, it seemed. A real voice, one she did not know, rising up from below the window in a whisper just loud enough for her to hear. It chilled her as it said, “Della Rose? Della Rose, dear girl, it’s time to come home.”
She collapsed back into the bed and covered her face with her arms, hardly allowing herself even to breathe. She heard footsteps outside, or thought she did, though at some level of her mind she knew it was just a dream. No one would be out there, not really.
“Come on soon, Della Rose. Everyone is waiting for you at home. Come on.”
She did not know the voice. So why did she dream it? If her fancies were going to tell her that was her father out there, why did the man not have her father’s voice? And why did he call her Della Rose? That was not her. Not anymore. Della Rose belonged to a past best forgotten by all. Especially by Julia Canton.
She remembered then the man she’d seen in town, seemingly watching her from the other side of the street outside the dress shop. And she’d seen him other places as well. Maybe it was his voice she’d heard, if she’d actually heard one at all.
But he was a stranger. How did he know about Della Rose? And what did he know?
Closing her eyes tightly,
she closed out the room and the night and with a pillow tried also to close out any voice that rose from inside herself, or from outside her window.
She looked for footprints outside the boardinghouse the next morning, and found them, but they meant nothing and she knew it. People walked in the dirt alley behind the boardinghouse all the time. It was a favorite shortcut toward a busy farrier’s shop. Footprints were to be expected.
In the rising daylight, some of her fear of the prior night seemed rather silly. Clearly she’d slept badly and been disturbed by dreams, and in dreams people saw and heard all kinds of things that weren’t really happening. She knew it now and she’d known it in the night while she lay trembling under her covers, afraid to peep out at her window because she feared that framed in it she’d see the face of the stranger who had been watching her lately, or that of the disturbing photographer who had taken the photograph of Cal Toleen and who seemed familiar to her for reasons she could not explicate, or maybe the face of her father, looking for her to tell her to come home, using a voice not his own.
She swore softly and stamped her foot in the dirt. If it would have helped, she might have slapped her own face, trying to knock some sense and reality back into her head. She looked up at the sky, not to pray, but to see clouds and blue and birds flying overhead . . . real things, things that were material and solid and part of the world that had nothing to do with phantom voices and the footfalls of people outside who were not really there.
Drawing in a deep breath, she reminded herself that she was not in this ugly little town for no reason. There was a purpose, and at the moment she’d taken an important step in the direction of fulfilling it. She’d met Sam Heller and drawn him to her, using her charm and her beauty and the simple fact that she was cunning and smart and not one to let herself be thrown off her task by nervousness or boredom or ridiculous dreams.
Savage Texas: The Stampeders Page 9