Rose

by Jill Marie Landis

  The only sign of movement on the deserted street outside was a whirling dust devil. Kase watched it pass. Gazing out of the window, he was content to allow another hour of the day to slide by. A crooked smile crossed his face as he sat musing over his present circumstances. He’d heard Tombstone, Arizona, referred to as the town too tough to die and thought that if Busted Heel, Wyoming, were to have its own motto, it would surely be “Busted Heel, the town too dead to care.”

  The only danger he had faced in his six months as marshal of Busted Heel was breaking his neck as he hung over the roof of the local whorehouse trying to rescue a kitten that belonged to one of the girls. When the wooden rain gutter collapsed beneath his weight it gave Kase a heart-stopping scare while the four working girls and the local madam, all bedecked in sequins, satin, and feathers, squealed in fear from the muddy backyard below.

  No, he thought, I’ll be lucky if I run into any more danger than that.

  Sometimes Kase wondered what he was doing wasting his days amid the clutter of the unkempt office or, when the spirit moved him, walking along the wood-plank sidewalk that fronted the few stores and shops that comprised the whistle-stop town of Busted Heel.

  But then he would think back six months to the disclosure that had knocked him over with the swift, sure power of a mule’s kick, and Kase Storm knew that it would be a while longer before he could go home again.

  Three hollow knocks sounded on the door and without moving a muscle, Kase called out, “It’s open! No use standing on the other side.”

  The door swung wide and Flossie Gibbs, the owner and madam of Busted Heel’s Hospitality Parlor and Retreat, swept in on a gust of plains wind and cheap perfume, her flounced, chartreuse satin skirt rustling as she crossed the floor. The door banged shut behind her, and Kase knew without turning who had entered.

  “Hey, Floss.”

  “Hey, Kase,” she boomed in salutation. “How come you always know who it is without turnin’ around?”

  “I don’t have to see folks to know who they are; I can smell ‘em.” He didn’t tell her it was the overpowering scent of her perfume that gave her away.

  Kase dropped his hands and spun the chair, then stood and stretched out to his full six-foot-three-inch height.

  “All I have to do is peer into them crystal-ball blue eyes of yours and I forget you’re part Indian at all,” Flossie said.

  “Well, as much as I’d like to forget it right now, I am.” Because it was Flossie and she was his friend, he knew she meant no insult. Still, the reference hurt. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

  She reached up and straightened the collar of his brown cambric shirt and smoothed the seam along the shoulder. The fringed and beaded reticule that dangled from her wrist slapped gently against his chest with every move.

  “Well, I jes’ came over to invite you to supper with us, Marshal. It’s been some time since we had us a dinner party, so I thought to cheer up the girls I’d order us a mess o’ fried chicken over from Mrs. Matheson’s boardin’house. That’s about the only dish she can make without poisonin’ us.”

  He nodded in agreement. “Sure, I’ll be glad to come for dinner. What time?”

  “Thought we’d start early. ‘Bout five.”

  “Fine.” He hooked his thumbs into his hip pockets and rocked back on the heels of his boots. “Things a little slow this time of year, Flossie?”

  “No slower than any other time of the year in this four-whore town.” She chuckled bawdily again, throwing back her head with a motion that set her ponderous bosom shaking. The lace that edged the low neckline of the shocking shade of green bobbed and fluttered as she laughed. “You noticed I don’t count myself anymore, didn’t ya, boy?”

  Flossie peered at him out of the corner of her eye, and Kase could almost imagine her as she might have appeared forty years earlier. But now, at sixty, powder and rouge caked her skin, creating deeper creases in the lines around her eyes and mouth. He knew that beneath the brassy henna tint, her hair was no doubt frosted with silver. She told him once that she had begun whoring at sixteen. He guessed that she was probably quite a looker then.

  “You’ve still got what it takes, Flossie, no doubt about that.”

  “Don’t lie to a liar, boy. You know firsthand that I don’t hold a candle to any of my girls.”

  He flushed at her words and was thankful that his earth-toned complexion hid his embarrassment. He had only befriended the youngest, Chicago Sue, but Flossie could not know that the young blonde who was only seventeen reminded him so much of his half sister, Annika, that he could not see himself making love to her. But it was true he’d sampled Felicity, Mira, and Satin. It would have been temptation enough for any man living in Busted Heel, but the fact that he rented a room in the Hospitality Parlor made his infrequent visits to them inevitable. Proximity was combined with the added incentive that the girls gave him free of charge what cost other cowboys cold hard cash.

  “You think you ought to keep on calling the marshal ‘boy’?” he teased.

  “I figure since I was close to forty when you were a twinkle in your pappy’s eye that I have the right to call you damn near anything I want.”

  A twinkle in your pappy’s eye. The thought hit Kase like a winter gale and froze his high spirits. His fist clenched involuntarily. He walked away from Flossie before she could wonder how her words might have affected him. Shuffling through the posters, letters, and newspapers on the desk, Kase spoke to her over his shoulder. “I’ll see you at five, then, Flossie.”

  As if she sensed his sudden need to be alone, Flossie Gibbs saw herself to the door. “See ya then, Kase,” she called out before the door closed behind her with a bang.

  He stood staring at the pile of papers on his desk for a moment as he tried to shake the dark thoughts that crowded in on him. A sigh was followed by a shudder that came from the toes of his boots and shook his entire frame. He had to get out. With a slight shake of his head, Kase made certain the gun rack was locked and then turned toward the bentwood hat rack on the wall near the door.

  Grabbing his black Stetson, he opened the door with one hand and anchored the hat on his head with the other before he closed the door behind him. With a practiced hand, he nestled the band of the hat more securely around his forehead to shade his eyes. They were far too blue, much too visible, on the sunny street. Although there was no need to expect trouble, he knew that pinning the star of a lawman on his chest and wearing a Colt strapped low on his hip and tied at the thigh, issued an open invitation to any drifter looking to stir up trouble.

  The street was nearly empty. Down the way, a farmer and his family loaded a wagon pulled up before Al-Ray’s general store. Kase’s boots rang hollow on the sidewalk that fronted the buildings on his side of the street. The main and only street in town boasted two distinct personalities. The west side housed the jail, the bath and barber shop, the Yee family’s Chinese laundry, and Al-Ray’s mercantile. A man could spend a night in the poke, have a bath and shave while his clothes were washed and pressed, then treat himself to a tin of tobacco before he crossed to the less reputable side of town.

  Kase glanced across at the east side of the street. Two large buildings there housed Paddie O’Hallohan’s Ruffled Garter Saloon and Flossie Gibbs’s Hospitality Parlor and Retreat, where Flossie and the girls entertained long after Paddie’s closed down for the night. The only other building on the east side was a tiny two-room store that had belonged to a wiry Italian immigrant until he was killed by a ricocheting bullet during a recent shoot-out between two drunken cowboys,

  As Kase walked along, taking in the familiar sights and sound of Busted Heel, he thought about the circumstances that had led him to the remote Wyoming town. It seemed just yesterday that his stepfather had firmly taken him aside and asked him into the library for a serious discussion.

  It had not taken long for word to reach Caleb Storm that his stepson, twenty-one and a junior lawyer with the prestigious firm of Rigby and An
derson, had attacked a client in the vestibule of the elegant offices overlooking the Charles River in Boston. That very afternoon, Caleb had ushered Kase into the library and impatiently motioned him toward one of the deep leather arm chairs near the fireplace.

  Kase had stubbornly shaken his head and said, “I’d prefer to stand.”

  Caleb’s tone had brooked no argument. “Sit! I’m not going to waste time beating around the bush, Kase. You have acted outrageously and I’d like to know why. This hasn’t happened since you went to law school. I thought these undisciplined outbursts had ended.”

  Kase recalled brooding over an answer. No matter how hard he tried, he knew he could not emulate Caleb’s even-temperedresponse to blatant insults to their mixed blood. Nor could Kase easily dismiss the whispers and sly glances that he had endured his entire life. His stepfather, Caleb Storm, was of mixed lineage; he, too, was half Sioux. But Caleb had always had the ability to maintain control of his emotions when confronted with outright bigotry. He was able to adapt to his surroundings, to work within the confines of white society. Kase, on the other hand, had learned to let his fists speak for him.

  As he thought back to their confrontation, Kase could still feel the hurt emanating from Caleb as he waited for an explanation. But Kase had refused to give any excuse for his latest outburst. He knew his actions were indefensible. Through his own hard work at law school and through Caleb’s influence in Washington, Kase had been granted a position with Rigby and Anderson, an old, well-established firm. Despite the stigma of his half-Sioux heritage, his reputation as an outstanding junior lawyer was growing. But in the library that day, Kase Storm had refused to defend himself. There was nothing he could say that might justify his physical attack on young Brandon Hamilton that morning. Nothing that Caleb would understand, for Caleb Storm would have handled the whole affair differently.

  Kase thought he had put Brandon Hamilton and his other preparatory school classmates out of his mind until that morning when he stepped out of his office and overheard the young man speaking to Franklin Rigby, senior partner of the firm.

  “I thought, Rigby, that a firm of your repute was beyond hiring anyone of mixed blood. I came seeking representation, not a sideshow medicine man. I won’t have Kase Storm defend this suit. What’s he prepared to do? A rain dance? Shake a few bones and feathers around the courtroom?”

  Kase had watched Brandon straighten and look down his nose at Rigby. From the open doorway, he studied the aristocratic features that declared Brandon’s Puritan heritage— a sharply defined nose, clear blue eyes, carefully combed wavy blond hair. He was a sterling example of Boston society’s youth—wealthy, well educated, and able to trace his lineage back to the Mayflower. Brandon Hamilton had not changed all that much since their days together at the Bradford Preparatory Academy outside Boston. Hamilton embodied all that Kase had learned to hate with a fury unnurtured by anything his parents ever taught him. Hamilton and his classmates had personally instructed him with their own brand of education.

  Kase had been eight when Caleb Storm moved his family back to the Dakotas after a year in Boston. The boy had loved the open land and life on the plains. Then, after seven years, they re-settled in Boston, where Caleb and Analisa sent Kase off to school. Analisa Van Meeteren Storm did so reluctantly, for she had always kept Kase close to her, but she agreed with Caleb that an education would one day offer Kase more protection than her constant nurturing. And so, as in all things, they had decided together to send Kase away to school. “Education,” Caleb had told him, “will make all the difference in your life. With it, doors will open that would otherwise remain closed. It will be your weapon and your strength.” So although Kase hated the new hard shoes and starched collars, the bleak brick buildings of the city, he gave up the freedom he had known out west, left behind his Indian pony and comfortable clothes, and went off to school to please his parents.

  At first, his new classmates had merely taunted him. But the teasing soon became anonymous letters of hate. When Kase had tried to follow Caleb’s example and ignore them, his classmates changed their tactics. The taunts turned to jabs. He was tripped as he walked through the halls. A bucket of flour rigged above his door had doused him with its fine powdered whiteness when he entered the room. An accompanying note on his bed had assured him it was the whitest he would ever be. Finally, when some of the students surrounded him in the winter-barren woods that bordered the school and shaved his head in a symbolic scalping, Kase went to the headmaster.

  When the culprits were let off with no more punishment than a verbal warning, the rage that had simmered inside him for so long reached the boiling point. From that very day, Kase Storm began to fight back, and did so thoroughly, employing all the fighting skills he had learned when he was just a youngster in the Dakotas.

  At first he tried to keep the abuse he had suffered to himself, well aware that his mother was having a hard time of her own adjusting to city life. They had known the isolation of the prairie, the ceaseless wind and vast sea of open land, but it had not been as harsh as this human isolation. He thought it unjust that his mother had to suffer such a stigma. She was Dutch. She was white. Her husband was wealthy, and Caleb’s family name still carried its own prestige in Boston. But even with all his advantages, Caleb was still half Sioux. Many doors were closed to him and, because of him, to Analisa. She had done the unspeakable by bearing a half-breed son, as well as Caleb’s daughter, Annika. In the eyes of many, she was no longer fit to mingle in polite society.

  Caleb has been careful to shield his Anja, as he called her, from insult. He surrounded her with his love and friends who stood beside him, friends he had made while serving the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But even as a child, Kase had been aware of the closed circle of friends they shared and the places they had never been because they were unwelcome.

  He could still remember his life before Caleb Storm married his mother. They had lived in a one-room soddie outside Pella, Iowa, with his great-grandfather, the man he called Opa. As he grew older, the sly glances and whispers of the whites made him all too aware of the meaning of his mixed heritage. It became clear to him why his mother never went to town, why no children ever visited him when their own mothers placed sewing orders with Analisa. He came to realize that it was his mixed blood that set his mother apart from the Dutch community and forced her into the lonely existence she had known before Caleb came to them.

  What he never fully understood, what his parents never completely explained, was what had become of the man, the Indian, who had fathered him and then left Analisa to face such isolation alone. How had Analisa met her Indian lover? Where had the man gone? What was his name?

  Kase was certain he had inherited his fierce temper and intolerance from his true father. What else had he inherited from the mysterious man who had fathered him?

  Caleb and Analisa had sent him to Bradford to make something of himself, and he wanted to please them above all else. He had tried to keep his problems at school from them. He fought with his growing rage, tried to become more like Caleb and to measure up to his stepfather’s standards, but his dark looks and exotic features went against him. So, too, did his temper. Once he had decided to stand up for himself with his fists, once he had felt the satisfaction of using his size and growing prowess to keep his tormentors at bay, there was no turning back. He became proficient at fighting his own fights.

  Despite how much his parents suffered whenever the letters from the school arrived, he never told them what had initiated the fights. Whenever Caleb asked him if his classmates had taunted him, he remained silent. But Analisa, anxiety etched upon her serenely beautiful features, knew what had happened.

  “Kase,” she often said, “Laat het gaan. Let it go. It is of no consequence. You must be bigger than they, more tolerant and forgiving.”

  But to Kase it was of consequence in its very unfairness. Injustice was something that Kase Storm could not abide.

  Between his outbursts,
Kase became sullen and withdrawn. He attended to his studies and, with the help of one caring teacher who had seen the potential in him, was able to excel. He looked forward to holidays when Caleb would take him hunting. They would spend days in the woods where his stepfather taught him to live off the land. Hunting, riding, and target practice helped ease the burden of his days at school.

  When he signed on at Rigby and Anderson, he hoped he had put the past behind him. It had been three years since he had used his fists on any man, but his fury overwhelmed him the morning he overheard Brandon Hamilton’s insults. He could not even recall moving across the room until he had held the man by the throat and pinned him against the wall. At six feet three, Kase towered over most men, and so Hamilton, a head shorter and pounds lighter had been easily grasped and thrust backward until he was pressed against the wall, fighting for breath.

  Kase could still hear his own breath hissing between his teeth as he whispered close to the stunned face of the other man. “You want to see what an Indian can do, Hamilton? I’ll show you firsthand. I can slit your balls off before you have a chance to feel the knife. Then you’ll start choking on your own blood as I stuff them down your throat. But don’t worry, before you black out I’ll slit this reed-thin, lily-white throat of yours and put you out of your misery.”

  Hamilton sputtered as his complexion purpled, yet Kase did not loosen his grip until he felt Rigby pulling at his shoulder, shouting at him to let go.

  Kase shook Brandon Hamilton like a dog and then released him. Weak-kneed, the man slid down the wall as Kase, without a word to anyone, reentered his office, packed up his personal papers, and went home. The confrontation had been worth the cost. At least, he had thought so until his own belligerence had pushed Caleb Storm to reveal a secret to the past that had sent Kase running from all he held dear.