Badlands

by Melissa Lenhardt

  When I looked at her closely, I was alarmed. Her vacant eyes wavered and I feared she would swoon, and soon. I knew she wouldn’t want to faint in front of these strangers. “We need to get you to the hotel,” I said. I gently took her elbow, but she pulled away.

  “You took a ticket from the prisoner, Sheriff?” she said.

  “What happened to your head?” Sheriff Hall asked.

  “It’s nothing. The ticket?”

  “Anything in the condemned man’s possession becomes public property.”

  Rosemond sidled up to the fat man and touched his shoulder. “It’s the claim ticket for my trunk, you see, which I left in Dunk’s safekeeping.”

  “Can’t trust a nigger with something like that,” the sheriff said.

  “I don’t think—” the Reverend started.

  “Obviously,” Rosemond said. She leaned against Hall’s desk. “Dunk gambled my money away last night. So, you see, all my sister and I have is what’s in my trunk. It’s worth nothing to you, but to us it’s invaluable.” Her soft and vulnerable voice worked its charms on the sheriff, but Portia grunted in disgust. I suspected Rosemond’s tone was due more to a concussion than an attempt at charm.

  “Well, you’ve got a point. Opened it up, o’ course. Didn’t rightly know what some of it was.”

  Rosemond smiled beautifully at Hall. “I’m a painter, Sheriff.”

  “Are you? Portraits and the like?”

  “Yes, though I will need to make my living painting signs. For the new businesses, you see.”

  “A beautiful woman like you doesn’t need to be standing on a ladder painting words on a building.”

  “I need to feed myself and my sister.”

  “I imagine there’s plenty of people hereabouts would like to have their picture painted.”

  “You think so?”

  Hall patted her hand. “You leave it to me.”

  “Do you know people in Boulder?” Portia Bright said to the sheriff. Hall and Rosemond turned to look at her. “Your sister said you were headed to Boulder.”

  Rosemond’s brown eyes cleared enough to critically study Portia Bright, any appreciation for Portia’s aid in her time of need apparently forgotten. “Yes, that was the original plan.” She turned her attention back to the sheriff. “But one new town is as good as another. Isn’t that right, Helen?”

  “They all seem shockingly similar to me,” I said.

  “There you have it.” Rosemond straightened. “Would you have the trunk sent to the Union Pacific Hotel?”

  “Of course. Right away.”

  “We need to make arrangements for Duncan’s funeral. Please take him down from the gallows so his body can be prepared.”

  “Oh, I think he needs to be up there a little longer. Remind people of the consequences of killing a man.”

  “Remind Negroes of their place, you mean,” Portia said.

  Sheriff Hall shrugged.

  I stepped forward, readying for an argument. Rosemond placed her hand on my arm and moved in front of me. “Thank you, Sheriff. Please send word when we can take Duncan’s body. Reverend, will you perform the ceremony?”

  “Of course.”

  Rosemond nodded her thanks and turned her attention back to Sheriff Hall. “I would like to paint your portrait, as a token of my thanks for returning my trunk, and your attention to releasing Duncan’s body as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, well,” the sheriff blustered. “Never sat for a portrait before.”

  “It will give us the chance to get to know each other better.”

  The sheriff’s face reddened further. “I’d like that.”

  “Then it’s settled.” Rosemond turned and, with a nod to the Reverend and another survey of Portia Bright, left the office.

  She waited for me outside the door. Despite the warm morning sun, a chill raced across my body. I hugged myself against it. She looked across me in the direction of the gallows, which was thankfully out of sight. Her expression hardened, but she wouldn’t look at me.

  “Let me see.” I reached out to inspect the bleeding wound on her temple.

  She held up her hand. “Don’t,” she said, and walked away.

  CHAPTER

  9

  An hour later, I returned to our closet-sized room, rubbing my wet hair with a thin towel. Rosemond lay curled in a ball on the bed, where I’d left her. I tiptoed into the room and closed the door quietly. The wardrobe door creaked when I opened it, the noise deafening in the quiet room. I placed my soiled dress in the bottom of the wardrobe until I could figure out how to wash it and hang it dry and closed the door quickly.

  The entire room was full of loud obstacles: the uneven floorboards; the lid to Rosemond’s trunk that had been delivered, as the sheriff promised, by a hulking man moments after we arrived in our room; the bed when I sat down.

  “I’m not asleep,” Rosemond said, her voice muffled.

  “I was trying to be quiet.”

  She didn’t reply.

  My medical bag sat on the single chair in the room. When I opened Rosemond’s trunk I hadn’t been sure the soft leather case would be within. I removed a small bottle of carbolic and sprinkled a few drops into the water basin before dropping my instruments and thread in to sterilize them. I wet a cloth in the basin and squeezed out the excess. I maneuvered myself between the trunk and the end of the bed and around to Rosemond’s side. I knelt down. “Will you let me see your wound now?”

  Rosemond turned onto her back. Blood was smeared on the pillow where her head had rested. Soft scabs had formed over the one-inch gash in the center of a tender purple bruise on her left temple. I touched the wet cloth lightly against it, and Rosemond winced. “That stings.”

  “It’s supposed to. I need to stitch it up.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “I can go downstairs and buy a fifth of whisky—”

  “No. We don’t have the money.” Rosemond sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She gripped the mattress.

  “Dizzy?”

  She nodded and swallowed. “Hand me my purse.”

  I retrieved the small purse from the dresser and handed it across the bed. Rosemond removed the bottle of laudanum and drank. I watched her, my mouth watering and longing for the pleasant numbing that she would soon know. She grimaced. “God, this is horrid.”

  I picked up the basin and walked around the bed. “It grows on you.”

  I placed the basin and a folded towel on the bed. I removed the instruments and laid them on the towel to dry while I finished cleaning the wound with the carbolic-soaked cloth. Rosemond watched me thread a needle with a slightly trembling hand.

  “Should I be worried?”

  I met her dark eyes. Now wasn’t the time to tell her I hadn’t sutured a wound since before my hand had been ruined by the Comanche. “I can manage a few stitches.”

  “Will it leave a scar?”

  “A small one.”

  “What’s one more, I suppose.”

  I tied off the thread. “Ready?”

  Rosemond inhaled and nodded. I hesitated, hoping the months of needlepoint and massage had worked. I pushed the needle through her skin, taut from the bruise. She flinched and cursed, and I paused, watching the color leach from her already pallid face. Her jaw pulsed. I placed a hand on her shoulder. “It will be over soon.”

  She nodded very slightly, and I continued. “Tell me about Duncan,” I said.

  “Why?” Her voice was harsh. I met her steely gaze briefly before returning to my task.

  “When Maureen died in Texas, I didn’t have anyone to reminisce with.”

  “What about Kindle?”

  “He was unconscious for most of our early acquaintance. It was incredibly lonely, not having anyone to share my memories with.” Rosemond didn’t respond, and I tried a different tack. “We are pretending to be sisters, after all, and I might be asked about Duncan. I think it’s best I know something of his story. He was your slave?”
r />   She exhaled as if resigned. “Yes. The son of my mother’s maid. We were roughly the same age, and grew up together.”

  “You were close?”

  Rosemond chuckled. “Of course not. He was a slave. My mother was sure that line was never crossed. But he was a house slave, so we were around each other quite a lot, and he had to do whatever I asked.” She stared into the middle distance. “When I was fourteen I had great dreams of becoming an artist. I’d mastered still lifes and landscapes, and I decided it was time I mastered the human form and not the fully clothed forms of the slaves, family, and visitors who indulgently sat for me. I stood for hours in front of my mirror, drawing nudes of myself in a separate notebook I hid beneath my mattress. There was only one thing left for me to learn.”

  Her eyes met mine. “Duncan didn’t want to. He knew the consequences if we were ever found out. As did I. But I can be persuasive.”

  “You seduced him?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I promised to teach him to read. It was illegal, you know. I convinced him the risk to both of us was equal. A blatant lie, that. But Duncan was conditioned to obey and it didn’t take much convincing.

  “We started with him removing his shirt. Innocent enough. That wasn’t enough for me. I was an artist!” She closed her eyes and laughed at herself. “We never touched each other, but what man can stand nude in front of a woman without a physical reaction? It was fascinating, watching it take shape. Duncan was mortified and tried to cover up, turn away. I wouldn’t let him.

  “You can imagine my mother’s scream when she walked in and saw us. Duncan was sold the following day to the next farm over. As a field hand. The overseer was known to be a brute, which is why my mother sold him there. Duncan was given ten lashes as his welcome. The field hands treated him almost as bad. They thought house slaves were uppity and took every chance they had at making Duncan pay.”

  “What was your punishment?”

  “Watching Duncan receive his, and being kept apprised of every subsequent beating at the hands of that horrid man. My father stepped in after a few months. Bought Duncan back and sold him to a Nashville hotel.”

  I tied off the last stitch and snipped the thread with scissors, elated at my hand’s performance. “Why would he do that?”

  “I have my suspicions,” she said, wryly. “I lost track of Duncan for years, until I saw him in Nashville during the war. When I moved to Saint Louis, I took him with me.”

  “He forgave you?”

  She nodded. “I promised to finish teaching him to read, and paid him more handsomely than he was being paid in Nashville. Money that he used to gamble.” I dropped my instruments back into the sterile solution. “You’re finished?”

  I smiled. “Talking always distracts my patients.”

  Rosemond rose and went to the mirror. She leaned forward to inspect my work.

  “Will you forgive me?” I asked.

  She straightened but didn’t turn; instead she held my gaze in the mirror. I’d seen the same expression on her face over dinner with Cora Bayle and I knew she was calculating her next move, trying to determine how she could manipulate me into getting what she wanted. What did Rosemond want? A new life was too simple an answer for a woman as complex as Rosemond Barclay. Was she Rosemond, high-priced madam, or was she Rosemond, artist? I doubted she knew the answer to that. Both sides of her personality would be warring with each other, fighting for supremacy. I understood the conflict in her expression all too well.

  “Why should I forgive you?” she asked.

  I picked up the basin and towel and met her at the dresser. “Because I have an idea about how to earn money.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Are you going to go around breaking men’s noses and fixing them?”

  “No. My hand couldn’t handle it. I’m going to find a game.”

  “A game? A poker game?” She laughed.

  “I was thinking faro,” I said, bristling at being laughed at.

  “Are you any good?”

  “Of course I am.” It was a slight stretch of the truth. While in England I’d only ever played other women, but I’d been told by a man with enough experience to know that, with a little practice, and instruction, I would be able to hold my own against tougher opponents.

  “You wouldn’t be playing against bored women, you know.”

  I turned my attention to cleaning my instruments, bewildered at Rosemond’s insight. I ignored the comment. “There’s more to the plan.”

  “Do tell.”

  “I find a game and you come later, indignant at my vice. It establishes you in town as a morally upstanding character.”

  “Yet it ruins your reputation.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t plan on staying any longer than it takes to help you put down roots, or Kindle to be freed.”

  Rosemond was quiet while I finished attending my instruments and returned them to my medical bag. “I’ll take your silence as acquiescence. How much do we need to get established?”

  “One thousand dollars.”

  “Don’t be absurd. You said Duncan lost two hundred fifty dollars.”

  “In cash. The lot was worth a thousand. Plus, the loss of your necklace. I should make you earn two thousand.”

  “The necklace was mine. I should take its worth out of whatever I earn.”

  “You forget two things. One, you getting off the train led to the loss of your necklace. Two, I could turn you in to the sheriff and get a thousand dollars.”

  “You know I can’t earn one thousand dollars in one night, starting with a five-dollar stake. I’ll have to earn it over time. How much do you need to bury Dunk and get a lot to put your house on?”

  She lifted her gaze to the ceiling as if calculating. “Two hundred.”

  “That I can do.”

  “And if you lose everything?”

  I flexed my right hand. “I suppose I’ll have to start breaking noses.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” She reached into her trunk and removed a small porkpie hat festooned with a long pheasant feather sticking out of a thick navy band. She popped out a dent in the crown and set it on her head at a jaunty angle.

  “Where are you going? You really should stay and rest.”

  Rosemond secured her hat with a gold, pearl-tipped hat pin. “I promised to telegraph about Kindle.”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  I turned away, ashamed that Kindle and his fate had completely slipped my mind. The memory of Dunk alone in his cell, receiving counsel from an unknown minister, was replaced by the image of Kindle receiving last rites from his cousin, Father Patrick Ryan. Kindle’s sister, Mary Margaret Kindle, held his hand with bowed head, the plain gray headscarf of her order concealing her expression. Kindle stared into the middle distance, hatred and betrayal at my absence clear on his face.

  Once I made restitution for Dunk, I had to return. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t help Kindle, and my arrival might lead to my arrest and deliverance into the hands of my enemies in New York City. My place was with my husband, not in a frontier town helping a whore start a new life, no matter how admirable I thought her endeavor.

  “Are you coming?” Rosemond asked, her hand on the doorknob.

  “What?”

  “To the telegraph office?”

  I opened my mouth to tell Rosemond I had to leave but closed it before uttering a sound. I knew instinctively Rosemond wouldn’t let me go easily. She was single-minded in her goals, and now, without Dunk, she would be alone.

  She watched me, a picture of guileless patience, waiting on my answer.

  “I’ll speak to the clerk downstairs about a game.”

  “Excellent idea,” she replied, and walked out the door.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Rosemond looked up from the telegram she was writing, smiled, and handed it to me to read.

  Hannah Pryor, Bond St. St. Louis. Send word of Capt. WKs trial ASAP. RB

  “We don’t
have the money to be verbose,” Rosemond said.

  I handed it back with a nod. While Rosemond took the paper to the man behind the counter and paid, I scanned the bulletin board for my Wanted poster. Advertisements for goods and services, some handwritten, some professionally printed, ranging from blacksmithing to hotels to restaurants to tent sales to freight hauling to the Sweetwater gold mines.

  “Anything interesting?” Rosemond said.

  I yawned. “No painter.”

  “A good sign.”

  We stepped out of the telegraph office.

  A line of five wagons loaded with supplies and men drove slowly past us. A man sitting on top of one of the wagons raised his hat and called, “Good-bye, beautiful! Next time you see me, I’ll be a rich man!”

  “Not fookin’ likely with your claim,” an older man said, amid laughter from the others.

  Undaunted, the young man said, “Wait for me!”

  We watched as the supply train pulled out of town and onto the plains. “Which of us do you think he was talking to?” I said.

  “Whichever one of us would take him.”

  For as much as the towns in the West were a dirty mess and full of shysters and crooks, there was an underlying energy and optimism that appealed to me. The push west was based entirely on hope: for a new life, the opportunity to shake off the chains of the East, to take control of one’s own destiny without interference from the government. Everyone west of the Mississippi had bought into the idea that energy, hard work, and tenacity was the recipe for success, and a single-minded selfishness had grown up around it. When a Western settler looked at you, they didn’t see a customer, but another rung on the ladder to their own success. The successful men masked this selfishness with obsequiousness; the failures believed them.

  And Rosemond fit right in.

  Despite myself, I admired her desire to start a new life. I’d known enough whores to have long since lost my moral superiority on the subject; women had no rights and few options. I would never judge a woman who used the one advantage she owned outright, her body, to feed herself and her family. But whoring couldn’t last forever. There was a physical toll on the body that caught up with everyone eventually, and add to that the opiate addiction afflicting so many and the diseases they were inevitably riddled with, and there came a time in every prostitute’s life when her means of survival would be taken from her. Rosemond was smart enough to quit before her profession ravaged her. Knowing her even for a short time, I had no doubt she would be successful. With or without my help.