The Chili Queen: A Novel

by Dallas, Sandra

  Ned had been thinking about the Jasper bank for several weeks and had brought it up because talking about a thing helped him think about it clearly. Usually he sounded out Addie, but they hadn’t had much time alone since she’d returned from Kansas City. He was shocked when, after she heard him out, Emma said it was a job for two, and nobody would ever suspect a man and woman. “I suppose I shall go to hell for robbing my brother. The devil will be just as happy to see me if I have committed two offenses,” she explained. “I’m of a mind to join with you temporarily in your life of crime.”

  Ned didn’t think much about heaven and hell, but he did think about jail, and he was not comfortably safe with the idea of a woman as a partner. He told her straight off, no. Why, he’d never even heard of a woman robbing a bank. But after he thought about it, that was precisely why he found it an interesting idea and began to reconsider. “What happens if somebody shoots at you?” he asked.

  “Then I shall shoot back. I can handle a gun, you know. I’m not helpless. No, I am not.” Emma had laughed then and said, “I crave adventure. If that were not so, I would not have left Palestine, Kansas, to come to New Mexico in the first place. I think I have a level head and that I will not let you down.”

  He hadn’t brought up the bank the first time they’d gone out riding together. In fact, the drive that day had started out so poorly that Ned expected he’d never exchange a civil word with Emma again. She sat on the buggy seat as far away from Ned as possible. Ned slumped forward, to make it clear he did not want to talk. He drove the horses too fast, giving them their heads and letting the buggy jerk and snap on the poor road. He hoped Emma would be too scared to ride with him after that. Then he’d tell Addie he’d done his part; she couldn’t blame him if Emma refused to go out with him. But Emma hadn’t seemed to notice how fast they were going—until the buggy lurched, catching Ned off guard, and he dropped the reins. Feeling their freedom, the horses began to run. Ned reached for the reins, but Emma grabbed them first, and standing up in the buggy, bracing herself against the seat, her skirt swept back against her legs, she pulled until the animals were under control. Emma doubtless felt exhilarated with the exertion, her body taut, her bright eyes flashing. When the horses stopped, she handed the reins to Ned, who looked at her in awe. He’d never seen a woman react so coolly to danger.

  “I have lived my life on a farm and know as much about horses as any man,” she said. “If you are trying to frighten me, you will have to find a better way to do it.”

  Ned lowered his head and looked sheepish.

  Emma laughed. “I know you are showing me about not out of the goodness of your heart, but because Addie has ordered you to do so. Of course, I don’t blame her. I am not unmindful that I am an impediment to her business.” Despite the pretty speech, Emma did not seem in the least contrite. “I am not a twit. I am used to keeping my own company and often prefer it to tolerating fools. So I am happy to sit here on the prairie the day long, whilst you entertain yourself elsewhere.”

  “What’s that about fools? Do you think I’m a fool?” Ned asked.

  “Not at all. It is an expression only. I hoped to make the point that I do not mind being alone. You are neither of you fools—you and Addie. I do not underestimate you.”

  While Ned thought that over, Emma stepped down from the buggy. She opened the little watch pinned to her jacket. “Go about your business, and come back for me at five o’clock. I shall entertain myself until then, and no one will be the wiser. Tomorrow, I will bring along my sewing. I propose that neither of us tell Addie about the arrangement.”

  She started for a tree some distance from the road.

  Ned hadn’t wanted to spend his time with Emma, but now that she made it clear she didn’t care to be with him, he was hurt. Women generally didn’t avoid his company. “Hey,” he called. “Come on back. There’s snakes out there.”

  “There are snakes in Kansas.”

  “Rattlers. They’re fierce.”

  “Then I shall look for a stout stick.”

  “It might rain. You’ll get wet.”

  “Welcome says it hasn’t rained in weeks.”

  “It’s dangerous out here,” Ned yelled, but Emma walked on. “There’s outlaws. You wouldn’t want to meet up with one.”

  “I already have.”

  “Hey,” he called again.

  Emma stopped but didn’t turn around. She waited.

  “I’ve got cookies.”

  Emma was still a moment longer, then turned around. “Now, I believe you have hit upon something.”

  Ned held up a small basket. “I’m going to eat in the shade, and since there’s only one tree out here, you’ll have to sit with me, unless you want to be in the sun.”

  At that, Emma laughed. “You have the advantage of me,” she told him.

  Ned led the horses to the tree, unhitched and hobbled them, then he sat on the ground while Emma found a rock to perch on, and they took turns sipping from the bottle of water he’d brought along, too. Ned took out a handful of cookies and handed one to Emma.

  “If we are to go out again tomorrow, I would like to ride on a horse instead of in a buggy. Do you think Addie would be shocked?” she asked, then broke off a piece of the cookie and ate it.

  “Addie’s a whore.”

  “You are unkind. She is your sister, or so she says—and a friend to me.”

  “No, ma’am, I am stating facts. Addie is what she is, just like I am. We don’t make excuses.”

  Emma nodded. “I suppose I must get used to this new world I have chosen.” She ate the rest of her cookie, then brushed crumbs from her skirt. “She would not mind, then, if I rode a horse?”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Astride.”

  Ned glanced at her. “Well, maybe not astride.”

  “A sidesaddle is cumbersome. I always rode astride at home. I prefer it.”

  Ned shook his head. “Addie might not like it. She’s funny about some things.” He finished the cookies he’d taken out, then reached into the basket for more. They were a different kind, with raisins in them. Ned picked out the dried fruit. “I don’t like raisins. Never did.”

  “I’ll remember,” Emma said. “If we leave before Addie’s awake, she’ll never know about the saddle.”

  “I like nuts better,” Ned said.

  They didn’t talk about the saddle again, but the next day, Ned put a man’s saddle on Addie’s horse and led it out of the barn for Emma, who was wearing some kind of skirt that was split in the middle like pants. Emma was right. She was as good on a horse as any man. In fact, when they returned to The Chili Queen after their ride, he was more tuckered out than she was.

  That day, Ned showed Emma the ranch country around Nalgitas. The following day, he took her to What Cheer, a deserted mining town on the rail line between Nalgitas and Jasper. The tracks had looped north to What Cheer because of the area’s once-promising gold discoveries. The deposits proved to be shallow, however. The precious metal played out, and the miners moved on. But the railroad still jogged north through the old town, then turned abruptly southwest to Jasper.

  Now, not so many years after the town was founded, What Cheer was rotting into the earth. A depot, a store, and a saloon built of milled lumber sagged; their windowpanes were broken out. The only other buildings were a few log cabins that squatted along the single street, weeds growing on their dirt roofs. They had been thrown up hastily, without windows. Their doors were open, as if the occupants had been too anxious to leave to close them. Only one of them had a front porch, and Ned and Emma stopped beside it, tying their horses to the porch post. Emma found a chair with three legs and sat down on it, carefully leaning her head against the wall and rubbing her hands over her face. Then she leaned foward, balancing herself on the chair, and looked down the street. She seemed to find What Cheer an interesting scene. “I always liked a mining town,” she said.

  Ned, seated on the porch at her feet, asked, “Whe
n did you see one before now?”

  Emma’s chair wobbled as she looked down at him. “Oh, I haven’t. I’ve just seen pictures is all. Mining towns always appear so…so haphazard, you know, as if people didn’t care what they looked like, as if the life itself was more important than the place they lived in.” She gave up on the chair and stood up. “I have lived with too much order.”

  “I never liked farming myself.”

  Emma took off her hat, and unpinned her hair, shaking it out. She separated it into strands with her fingers and began making a single fat braid. “You were a farmer?” she asked.

  “Like I told you, I ran off when I was kid. It was during the war, and I tried to join up as a drummer with the Union. But my father found out about it, and he whipped me. So I just lit out west instead, all the way from Ft. Madison, Iowa.”

  “And procured a new name. ‘Ned Partner’ is much too grand to be real.”

  Ned grinned. Even Addie hadn’t figured that out. “I kind of liked the sound of ‘Ned Partner.’ It’s better than ‘Billy Keeler,’ at any rate.” Ned had never told anybody his real name, but after all those years, what did it matter? Besides, there was nobody Emma could tell.

  “Do they know where you are?” Emma extracted a piece of string from a pocket and tied it around the end of her braid.

  “Nope. I’ve got a sister, Alice. I write to her every now and then, but she doesn’t know how to reach me.”

  “Maybe she’s dead.”

  Ned thought that over. He reached for a stem of dried grass and stripped it. “I wouldn’t like to think so.”

  “Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps it is the writing alone that matters. Have you thought about seeing your family again?”

  Ned shook his head. “I’m not much for going back. Now take Addie, she’s different. She’s all the time talking about going back to San Antonio. She loves San Antonio.”

  “But not Iowa?”

  “Now why’d she want to go to Iowa? Far as I know, she’s never been there.”

  Ned thought about what he’d said and looked at Emma to see if she’d caught it. She gave him a wry smile, and he wondered how long she had known he and Addie were not brother and sister, maybe from the beginning. He threw away the stem and reached for another, pulling it out by the roots. “I never wanted to farm, leastways not along the Mississippi. You could drown in your own sweat back there. But ranching, now there’s something different.”

  Emma didn’t seem to hear him. She shaded her eyes as she looked out over the town. Then she stepped off into the dirt and began to walk slowly down the street, peering into the houses. Ned followed, and in a minute, they reached the depot and stopped. There was no platform, and the train station itself was just a board shack with a sign above it that read WHAT CHEER. The sign was as warped and faded as the town.

  “There’s no stationmaster. Does the train stop here anymore?” Emma asked.

  “I suppose, if somebody wanted it to, that is. But why would anyone want to stop at What Cheer?”

  Emma shrugged. “Maybe a cowboy.” She peered into the dark building. “Does anyone still live here?”

  “Not that I know of. Every now and then an old prospector says he’s coming out here to find the mother lode. He never stays long.”

  Emma stepped into the depot, Ned behind her. The room had been stripped except for a bunk built into one wall, and a broken table that was overturned. Weeds grew between the broken floorboards. A piece of ragged muslin hung from a string stretched across the single window. There was a rustling in the far corner, and Emma shivered. “It’s just a rat,” Ned told her. “A pack rat.”

  “I hate them,” Emma said, taking a step backward and bumping into Ned and losing her balance. Ned caught her and held her. Emma’s arms were lean and corded, not like Addie’s mashed-potato flesh. Except for helping her onto a horse or into a wagon, Ned had never touched Emma. And he felt a shiver go through him.

  “It’s cold in here,” he said, but he didn’t move. Emma stood where she was for a full minute then she turned, and without looking at him she stepped out into the sunlight. Ned followed, fighting off the urge to touch her again. He didn’t want to grab her. He didn’t even care to hold her, but he wanted to touch her arm again.

  As they walked back through the town, Emma stopped to pluck a dead flower from a thorny bush. “It’s a rose, a climber. A woman lived here. She planted a rosebush.” Emma let the brown petals fall from her hand as she returned to the horses. But she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. She took the canteen from Ned’s horse and sipped, then handed it to Ned, who drank.

  “What’s so different about ranching that you like it better than farming? It all seems the same to me,” she said.

  “What?” Ned asked.

  “You said you wouldn’t mind ranching.”

  Ned was surprised. He’d thought Emma hadn’t been listening. “Well, for one thing, ranchers don’t have to raise pigs. I hate pigs.”

  Emma laughed, and Ned liked her laugh. It was a medium laugh, not high and shrill like most women’s. But neither was it whiskey-deep and throaty like Addie’s.

  “And you don’t have to plow. I promised myself when I left home, I’d never plow another row.”

  “I guess you wouldn’t be much of a farmer then.”

  Ned returned the canteen to his saddle, then went through his saddlebags until he found some hard candy and gave a piece to Emma. She dusted it off on her shirt and put it into her mouth, then sat down on the porch step, sweeping her split skirt to one side.

  “There’s a ranch I could buy,” he said suddenly. “I never told anybody about it before. It’s in Colorado, up around Telluride. I figure I could sell beef to the mining camps.”

  Emma bit down on the candy, then tilted her head as she asked, “Why don’t you—buy it, that is?”

  Ned leaned on the porch post and looked down at her. “Well, for one thing, it costs twelve thousand dollars, less if I paid cash, but I haven’t got it.”

  “I thought you had five thousand dollars. Addie said you got that when you robbed a bank.”

  “Addie talks too much. Besides, that’s less than half of what I’d need.” He was silent for a moment, looking out over the prairie. “Anyway, Addie, she’d never live on a ranch, and I’d get lonesome by myself.”

  “You might find a woman who was partial to ranching,” Emma said softly.

  “Yeah,” Ned said, thinking it over. “But it doesn’t matter since I don’t have the money.”

  “You could borrow it.”

  Ned laughed. “You think a bank would loan to me?”

  “You could rob another bank, then,” Emma said.

  “It’s not that easy,” Ned replied. He stood and untied the reins of Emma’s horse. “I expect we better get to home.”

  Emma stood up and mounted her horse. Ned untied his reins, then looked down at the dirt at a red flower that poked out from under the porch floor. He broke it off, and without a word, he handed it to Emma. She looked startled, then reached for it. But instead of giving her the flower, Ned put his hand over hers and held it for a minute. Then he let go, and grinning, he fixed the flower to her horse’s bridle. He felt a little foolish then, and mounted quickly, spurring his horse into a gallop and leaving Emma behind. She followed at a slower pace, and after a mile, Ned stopped to let her catch up.

  “There is a bank not so far from here, at Jasper. It would cost only the taking,” Ned told her, as they walked their horses. “Addie’s after me to try it, but the farmers at Jasper are dirt poor. I don’t guess it’s got more than two dollars in it.”

  Emma thought it over. “Who’s to say how much a bank has? It’s a bank, isn’t it? Banks have cash. Besides, there must be merchants and ranchers who deposit their money there.”

  Ned nodded, and he began to tell her what he knew about the bank. He’d been in Jasper a time or two, although not lately, but he guessed the town itself was doing well enough. After all, the
railroad went through it. When he finished, Emma was silent for a time, then she said that nobody would suspect a man and woman of robbing a bank. Ned reined in his horse and stared at her. “A woman’d get scared,” he said.

  And Emma replied, “I didn’t get scared with a runaway team, did I? If you are of a mind, I am determined to join you.”

  “I wouldn’t take a woman as a partner,” Ned said.

  “And would you take a man you know less well than me?”

  Ned thought that over and repeated, “I wouldn’t take a woman.”

  “I thought you wanted to buy a ranch, and I believe I may be the means for you to do so. Or am I mistaken?”

  She was not, Ned decided. He mulled over her suggestion for a long time before he told her grudgingly that it might work. And by the time they reached The Chili Queen, they had put together a plan. It had almost fallen apart, however, when they disagreed on what percentage of the take Emma should get. Ned thought he was generous to offer a third, but she demanded half. Finally, they settled on forty percent, and Ned had added, “We’ll split fifty-fifty if we ever pull a second job together.” It was a joke, but Emma had nodded seriously.

  Ned wasn’t sure that in the end, he would go through with it, or Emma either. And maybe they would have called it off, but then they saw how much Addie opposed it. That made Ned more determined, and Emma seemed to be more resolved, too. Ned didn’t understand women much. He’d have thought Addie and Emma would have been of one mind. Instead, they seemed to pull him in different directions.

  “I’ll hold you to account if anything happens,” Addie had warned. Ned was about to say he wouldn’t let anything happen to his partner. Then he realized that Addie was not speaking to him, but to Emma.

  Once the sun rose in the sky, the day turned hot. Emma removed the blanket, then her cape and, in a few minutes, the jacket. After a while, she unbuttoned the top button of her blouse and rolled up her sleeves. Finally, she put on a droopy sunbonnet. “Do I look like a homesteader?” she asked. The night before, she had inquired of Addie if she could borrow a dress that would be suitable for a farm wife, but Addie had scoffed and said the women at The Chili Queen didn’t have such. Ned said what she wore wouldn’t matter because farm women in New Mexico put on their best clothes to go to town. Besides, he’d never seen Emma wear a dress that anyone would notice, although he didn’t say as much. The sunbonnet gave the right touch, however. Only a farm wife would wear it with a silk dress. Besides, it hid Emma’s face, not that anyone would notice that, either.