by Len Levinson
Business seemed unspeakably vulgar to the former belle, and far beneath the high standards she had established for her mind. She recalled how her father had spent long hours at his desk, trying to keep the plantation afloat, but then Sherman's army happened along. Now, almost seven years later, she was traveling through Texas with an escort of Sherman's soldiers, and felt like a traitor to the Cause.
“Too bad we never had the opportunity to hear you sing while we were in town,” said Mrs. Dolly Bumstead, wife of Lieutenant Ambrose Bumstead. “Weren't you afraid of the drunkards?”
Vanessa pulled up the side of her dress and yanked the derringer out of its garter holster. “Don't you ladies carry these?”
“Heavens no,” replied Mrs. Bessie Crawford, wife of Captain Dexter Crawford. “I'd probably shoot my toe off.”
“What would you do if Comanches attacked this detachment, wiped out the men, and then came for you?”
“I doubt that such a thing could ever happen,” Mrs. Bumstead said nervously.
“My departed husband,” explained Vanessa, “advised me to save the last round for myself.”
“I could never do such a thing in all my days.”
The officers’ wives were eager to steer the conversation back toward more congenial territory, and Vanessa didn't object. Instead she leaned back on her seat, lowered her eyes to half-mast, and peered out the window at cavalry soldiers riding alongside the carriage. It appeared that a puff of smoke was arising from atop a mountain in the distance, but it might be a hazy cloud. Only three more days to Fort Clark, and Duane Braddock may be there, for all I know, thought Vanessa. Oh Lord, wherever you are, please bring him back to me.
Duane polished off his last tortilla; the saloon had become jam-packed during the course of his meal, and everybody was still looking at him. He wanted to get away, but paradoxically, the attention was pleasing him.
His head expanded with mescal, victory, and the adulation of the crowd. He wondered if he should run for the Texas State Senate, although he was wanted by the authorities in the Lone Star State, or become the bishop of Ceballos Rios, despite the embarrassing fact that he'd just nearly killed a man.
The cantina blurred, and he was drunk at the center of a hallucinatory carousel flashing bright colors, with Comancheros riding gaily colored wooden horses around him. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry, for the beating he'd administered to Johnny Pinto had been exceedingly brutal, in retrospect. One wrong move and I would've killed him, Duane admitted.
A figure emerged from globules of color pulsating around Duane, and it was Lopez, the Comanchero leader, smiling as usual, sitting at the table. He leaned toward Duane, and Duane couldn't help wondering what heinous deeds the Comanchero leader had committed to become boss of Ceballos Rios.
“How are you doing, my friend?” asked Lopez, a diamond flashing on one of his incisors. Is it time yet for a fine young señorita?”
Duane felt a rise of lust attached to Catholic guilt, shame, and remorse. “Feel awful tired,” replied Duane. “Got shot up by Apaches a few weeks back, and still ain't right yet.”
Duane laughed at himself talking like a tough gun-fighter. He was having fun, better to be a winner than a loser, and the primordial passion of blood victory brought a flush to his cheeks.
Lopez twirled his mustache as he sat at the far side of the table. “Too bad, because I have a true virgin for you. Only sixteen years old, as pure as new cotton, for you, my friend, because you are one helluva hombre.” Lopez unbuttoned his shirt and showed a thick gnarled scar running diagonally across his chest. “I have seen a lot of fights in my day, and been in a few myself as you can see, but you are fast as a mountain lion.”
Duane was struck by what Lopez said, because he'd been named Lion by an Apache medicine man during his sojourn among the People. It seemed an odd coincidence while Lopez continued to praise him. “You are a great fighter, and now I comprendo why you are famous in your country. But victory is meaningless without a woman, no? I know you are tired, but surely not too tired for a sixteen-year-old virgin. She will wake you up right quick, my friend. You take one good look at this girl, you will be amaze.”
He's lying, thought Duane. Sixteen-year-old virgins don't become prostitutes, do they?
“You do not believe me?” asked Lopez. “Ask her yourself. I was saving her for a certain wealthy customer from your country, and I would charge one thousand dollars for little Maria Dolores, but I thought perhaps you have won her. Consider it a small token of my respect for an hombre with cojones, and if you want a more practical answer, it is smart to be on cordial terms with an pistolero like you, no?”
Duane was feeling perky, so he placed his elbows on the table, leaned toward Lopez, and asked, “Why is this sixteen-year-old virgin selling herself?”
Lopez appeared surprised by the question. “She needs the money—what else?”
“Why don't you give her the damned money?”
“I did not get where I am today by giving money to every poor unhappy Mexican girl who comes along. If you don't believe what I am telling you, I'll bring her to you, and you can ask her yourself. It is difficult to understand why you turn down such a juicy plum. Sometimes I have thought of paying her the money and having her myself, but my wife would keel me if she found out. You know how it is.”
Every man at the table nodded solemnly. They all knew how it was. Cochrane turned to Duane. “She sounds like a gem to me, and just the thing to take your mind off Juanita, who's engaged to me.”
Lopez continued to smile. “You should at least look at her, señor. She is a work of art all in herself. And a nice girl, too. She goes to Mass whenever the priest comes to town.”
Duane wrinkled his forehead in thought. Who's this poor desperate Catholic kid, and maybe I can help her. “What the hell—all right,” he said. “Where is she?”
The stagecoach parked by a stream for the night; tents had been pitched in the vicinity, and weary travelers were preparing for bed as fragrant fires of cottonwood and mesquite wafted across the campsite.
Vanessa and the other wives bathed in the stream together, guarded by soldiers ordered to look the other way, but occasionally, out of mad desperation, they broke the rules, catching distant glimpses of four women with skin like white marble bobbing up and down in the water, and the hot news spread gleefully throughout the enlisted ranks.
After bathing, the ladies returned to the campsite. Vanessa said good night to the others, then stood in front of her tent and looked at the cloudless night sky.
Great constellations spun above her; the heavens were ablaze with light, and an owl hooted in a juniper tree. She wondered if Duane Braddock was looking at the same moon at that moment, or whether he was lying cold and stiff in a grave.
She heard a footstep behind her and spun around. It was McCabe, her bodyguard, his jaw unshaven. “You'd better sleep with a gun under your pillow tonight, ma'am, if you don't mind me suggesting it. I was just talkin’ to the Indian scouts, and they said that Comanches've been follerin’ us all day.”
Vanessa recalled the smoke signal she'd seen earlier. “Surely we're in no danger, or are we?”
“Depends, and don't believe what they say about Injuns not attackin’ at night. An Injun will attack anytime it damn well suits him. So be on yer guard.”
He returned to his tent while Vanessa gazed at the vast mysterious desert. For all she knew, there were a hundred Comanches out there, heavily armed, creeping closer. She shivered, but not from the cool night air, as she crawled into her tent. Then she sat on the ground, took off her boots, held the derringer in her hand, and pulled the blanket over her.
She didn't like sleeping in her clothes, but didn't dare get naked with wild Comanches on the warpath. I'll definitely save the last bullet for myself, she thought. No Comanches will ever rape me to death.
She searched for a comfortable spot on the bare ground, and finally was forced to lie flat on her back, with her head cushioned by a pillo
w made from clothes stuffed inside a pillowcase. She felt exhausted by the constant strain of travel and trying to make conversation with officers’ wives.
Why can't I be a normal woman? she asked herself. Sometimes she wondered if she'd gone bonkers on the night they'd burned old Dixie down. Then, in the stillness of night, she heard a faint, low guttural female moan. A blush came to her features, because apparently an officer and his wife were going at it.
Vanessa felt desolate as she imagined others making love. It reminded her of burning nights with Duane Braddock not so long ago. She wished Duane were there, but she was alone on the open sage, with strange soldiers and Comanches on the warpath. “Please come back to me soon, Duane,” she whispered softly into the night. “Don't you know how much I need you?”
Lopez led Duane to a ramshackle two-story building not far from the cantina. Lights shone in windows, and the sound of a guitar could be heard from within. Steady streams of men ascended and descended the stairs, and nobody had to tell Duane that it a whorehouse. Smoke emanated from the chimney, and it looked like the devil's lair.
Lopez opened the front door, and they entered a gaudy parlor with red drapes, white walls, and illustrations of naked women in artistic poses on the walls. There was a bar to the left, a fair scattering of patrons, and the featured attractions, the girls themselves, painted like harlots, wandering around in corsets, bloomers, and other bizarre undergarments.
Duane was struck by how young they were, and a few were winking at him, touching their tongues to the tops of their lips, or taking seductive poses. A middle-aged Mexican woman made her way toward Lopez. She wore her gray hair in a bun behind her head, was fully dressed, and looked like a mother superior approaching the pope.
“Tell Maria Dolores that I have found her a gentleman,” Lopez said. “Señora, this is the Pecos Kid.”
An expression of astonishment came over her face. “Him?”
A glass of mescal materialized in Duane's hand, placed there by a prostitute in white frilly pantaloons. “Maria is a pretty leetle girl,” she said, “but I am a real woman, if you know what a real woman is.”
She was tall and lean as Vanessa Fontaine, but with long black hair and eyes slanted almost like an Oriental. I can have her, Duane thought. Just like that. Or any other woman in this place.
He let his eyes roll over their figures and caught a glimpse of heaven. Is this what it's like to be an Arab sheikh? he wondered. Billy-goat lust came over him; he'd been without a woman for a long time, he wanted them all, but Brother Paolo whispered in his left ear, They're all poor girls who've chosen this profession rather than starve to death.
Meanwhile, the ghost of Clyde Butterfield, his professor of the shootist arts, murmured into his other ear, He's right, they're all poor girls, and it's your sacred duty to patronize them so that they won't starve to death.
Lopez touched the back of his hand to Duane's shoulder. “By the way, I have been meaning to ask you something. Are you related to Joe Braddock, the outlaw from up by the Pecos River?”
Duane caught his breath. “He was my father. Did you know him?”
Lopez nodded. “We did business together a few times.”
“I don't know much about him, and I'd appreciate anything you could tell me.”
“We were not exactly compañeros, and I did not know him well. He was an honest man as far as I knew, although I had heard many bad things about him. You look something like him, except he had a mustachio.”
Duane gazed into the eyes that had once focused upon his father, and felt a strange spectral connection with his heritage. In the corner of the room, half-hidden by shadows, he saw a broad-shouldered cowboy with a thick black mustache, his wide-brimmed hat slanted low over his eyes, talking with a prostitute. Duane wondered if his father had slept with Mexican prostitutes, but was ashamed to ask such a question.
“Did you ever sit and talk about life with him, by any chance?” asked Duane.
“Life?” Lopez appeared shocked by the question. “What for? No, we just talked business. As I said, we were not friends. All I can tell you is he used to drink like a man, or maybe two men.”
The madam approached, a smile playing over her features. “Maria Dolores is waiting for you, señor. I have told her how famous you are, and she is very happy that you will see her. But she is a little shy, because she is so young, you know how it is. But she knows....”
The madam let her sentence trail off, but Duane got the picture. What an unbelievably squalid situation, thought the ex-acolyte. Or maybe it's all a put-up job, and she's been a prostitute for twenty years. “You can be sure that I'll be careful with her feelings. Where is she?”
“The room at the end of the hall on the right.”
Duane headed for the stairs, and all eyes were on the notorious Pecos Kid. They knew where he was going, every man envied him, and each prostitute tried to catch his eye. But he paid no attention, curiosity leading him up the stairs. He walked down the hallway to the door at the end, raised his knuckles, and paused a moment. What the hell am I doing here?
The door opened two inches, and he saw a big brown eye level with his chest. “Are you the one?” she asked.
“Afraid so.” Duane removed his black wide-brimmed cowboy hat.
She looked like a little girl in a ball gown, except she really wasn't a little girl. He followed her into the room, observed her narrow waist and round buttocks, and noticed that her posture was proud. She turned around suddenly, and he saw her innocent eyes, upturned nose, broad face, pretty mouth. She was a sixteen-year-old doll, poised between girlhood and womanhood, exquisite in every way. She pulled back a long lock of straight black hair that had fallen over the middle of her face, and made an unsteady smile. “I am Maria Dolores.”
“I'm Duane,” he replied, “but I'm not what you think, so calm down. You don't have to sleep with me or anybody else if you don't want to. I'll take care of you—don't worry.”
“But . . .”
“I know it sounds strange, but how much money do you need to get out of here?”
She appeared puzzled. “What are you talking about, señor?”
“I'm trying to save you, Maria Dolores. You don't have to stay here any longer. Lopez told me you needed money because you're in trouble. How much?”
She shrugged. “In American money—twenty thousand dollars.”
It was more than he'd imagined, and he'd never earned that much in his life. “How come you need twenty thousand dollars?”
“It is my father, but I do not want to talk about it.”
She appeared a well-bred Mexican girl, and her father probably had gambling debts or was an embezzler, and the bank would put him in jail if he didn't return the sum.
“Axe you all right, señor?” she asked.
Duane dropped into the chair, demoralized by the tragedy of her life. There was no way he could come up with twenty thousand dollars. “You don't have any relatives .. . ?”
“If I did, I would not be here. But why are we talking about these things? Don't you want to go to bed with me?”
She was absolutely adorable, a rare desert flower, sweet as mountain honey. “Not like this,” he said. “Listen, I'm here with some of my friends, and maybe we can bust you out of this place.”
“Lopez would track me down and kill me, and my father would land in the calaboose. I thought we were going to bed together and have some fun. I would rather you do it than some old ugly man. Are you a bandito?”
“Not really, although I ride with them.”
She rubbed her arms, appeared agitated, and peered into his eyes. “Do you think I am ugly?”
“Of course not,” replied Duane nervously. “But I've got to be in love.”
She looked as if she were going to cry, and Duane realized that he should never have gone there. He looked for an avenue of escape, but what would the irregulars say if he ran like a frightened child out of her bedroom?
“You don't like me,” she said sad
ly.
“It's not that at all, but we hardly know each other. It takes a long time for love to grow.”
“We do not have a long time, Duane. There is only tonight, and if it is not you, the next hombre might be a monster with a big belly and scars all over his face. I would rather have a famous man to remember for my first time.”
She thinks like a child, he acknowledged, but there's a certain logic to what she's saying. Yet, on the other hand, I don't want to be the rotten skunk who takes her virginity. “I don't know what to do,” he confessed.
“If you do not know what to do, and I do not know what to do, then what will we do?” she asked in a pleading voice.
They stared at each other in silence, then started laughing. The circumstance was so odd, it took on comical proportions in their teenage minds. She sat on the edge of the bed and buried her face in her hands while her tiny body quaked with mirth. He figured she wasn't more than five feet and one or two inches tall, and that unruly strand of hair kept falling down over the middle of her child's face as she looked up at him. “I have thought about this for a long time,” she said. “It is something all women learn sooner or later. With the prices Lopez is charging, I will be out of here in six months, and no one knows anything when I return to my town.”
Duane wondered what the real Jesus would say, the one who'd befriended the prostitute Mary Magdalene. This girl is in deep trouble, no two ways about it, just as I was earlier this evening. I carved up Johnny Pinto out of necessity, and she's going to sleep with men out of necessity. In a sense, we're brother and sister.
“I haven't felt well lately,” admitted Duane. “I've drunk a lot of mescal tonight, and I'd like to relax for a while. Look.” He unbuttoned his shirt and showed the scars. “Apaches.”