by Denise Dietz
“Thank you, sir.” Cat led Fools Gold toward the shade of a huge willow tree. He ached to kiss her, but he’d wait for her to make the first move.
“Where are you staying, Cat?”
“At the downtown Plaza Hotel, not far from the Antlers. Do you have your own room, Fools Gold?”
“Yes.”
Good. If she continued to refuse his picnic offer, maybe he could spend a few hours in her bed. Maybe they’d make love beneath the stars and beneath the sheets.
“Stand under the tree,” he said. “It’s hot. But it’ll cool by evening. Couldn’t you get away from your friend and ride with me? I know a place in the mountains where we’d be alone.”
“I’d like to, Cat, but I can’t leave Jack. His feelings would be hurt.”
This time Cat hid his scowl within a cough. What kind of game was she playing? They couldn’t stretch the contest since she’d be leaving tomorrow. Gottlieb seemed a decent enough chap, and easy to give the slip. Perhaps she wanted to negotiate a fee. If that was the case, she could go to the devil. Cat hadn’t paid for a woman since his Cripple Creek days.
“Would a new dress change your mind?”
She smiled. “You always did like to tease, Cat.”
“A new hat, too,” he said, surprising himself. Why didn’t he quit and let the little whore go about her business? Because he wanted her. She was the first woman he’d wanted in years.
“Spit!” she said with an impish smile. “Jack bought this hat for me. I don’t like it, either. I wish the bird would come to life and fly away.”
Little bird. Bridgida. Fly away. “Let’s find your friend, Fools Gold,” he said brusquely. “I must get back to work.”
“Did you hear about Madam Robin and Dee?”
“Yes.”
“Cat, don’t walk so fast. Do you still have Dorado?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve kept Dumas. I have a new snake and . . . Cat, please, I can’t keep up. Cat!”
* * * * *
Flo leaned back on her pillow. “We only met a few times when I lived at Little Heaven, but Cat wouldn’t even talk about it. Then he walked away. Did I do something wrong, Jack?”
“Chinook was afraid he’d be dismissed if he didn’t get back to work. Don’t fret, honey. I’m only sorry you couldn’t meet Romaine Fielding.”
“Don’t apologize. I had a grand time watching the actors and the cameramen, even if they didn’t film anything. Romaine’s motorbike was missing, so he’s probably at Glen Eyrie.”
“Do you want to try again tomorrow?”
“No, thank you. I’ve had fun, but we should get back. I need to feed my pets . . . and when are you going to tell me what’s in your telegram?”
“You were so upset I didn’t want—”
“Bad news? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. The wire’s from Sandy Alexander. He’s arriving in Colorado Springs this afternoon to meet up with Edward Lytton. Sandy says Lytton wants to talk about buying more ‘Jaygee’ paintings, and he wants the artist to be there.”
“But that’s wonderful.”
“I’m sure he’s going to press for a canvas of you. That’s why he wants ‘Jaygee’ there.”
“Please, Jack, sell him the Jaygee painting of me atop Dumas, or the one with me and Stinky. Charge him a fortune.”
“If he buys one, he’ll want more.”
“Good. Snore his wealth, Jack.”
“Schnorven. You need to practice your Yiddish.”
“Take advantage of his wealth. It can’t hurt me, and you’ll be able to paint your circles and squares. Am I to go along?”
“No. If I decide to sell, I’ll tell Lytton my model’s not a real person.”
“I don’t mind staying here.” She gestured toward the bureau. “I have a new movie magazine and I found a copy of Les Miserables in the hotel library.”
“We’ll still have our grand dinner. Mutton with caper sauce and steamed citron pudding. I’d better get downstairs now, honey. I don’t want Sandy knocking on your door. Lytton might be with him.”
After Jack left the room, Flo opened her new magazine but couldn’t concentrate. I must have done something wrong, said something stupid.
Cat looked the same, except older. Well, of course. He was five years older. But his leaf-green eyes looked older than that. He had been friendly at first, then cold, then angry.
She looked down at a magazine illustration of Lillian Gish. “I know what I did wrong. I never thanked Cat for saving me from Mr. Peiffer. No wonder his feelings were hurt.”
Cat said he lived downtown at the Plaza Hotel, not far from the Antlers. So she’d leave Jack a note, ask the lobby clerk for directions to the Plaza, visit Cat and thank him properly.
“I hope he’s there,” she said to Lillian Gish. “I hope I’m not too early.”
* * * * *
Cat was late, and Ruthie Adams wanted to cry some more, but she had no tears left. Where the hell was he?
A wire had arrived this morning from California. The alcoholic actor in Hartford Hoxie’s film had gone somewhere to dry out, and the studio wanted John Chinook to play the role. The director already had Chinook’s test and would film the rest upon his return.
Cat had promised to come home for lunch since he had a meeting tonight. Romaine Fielding liked to hold his meetings at night.
Ruthie had bathed, styled her hair in the ringlet curls Cat loved, clothed her body in a sheer black negligee, and the mirror said she was a knockout.
With a practiced twist of her wrist, she downed her tequila and sucked on a piece of lime.
Cat could be cruel sometimes. He said she was gorbellied, which wasn’t true. She looked almost the same as she had when Cat stole her away from Tom Mix. When she told people about giving Tom Mix sugar, they laughed. She coulda had Hartford Hoxie, too. All those long nights during the rodeo and she hadn’t even tried. Who’d figure Hoxie for a movie star?
She refilled her glass, drank, and sucked another wedge of lime.
Cat said he wouldn’t let her near the movie set until she stopped drinking so much, but that two-bit actress Peggy Bliss was the real reason. Romaine Fielding didn’t hold meetings at night. Peggy did. Cat had once joked about naming Bridgida’s baby Peggy, after a horse that kicked. Bridgida had been Ruthie’s best friend in the whole world. Then she went and died, sticking herself through the middle with Tom Callahan’s sword.
“Poor Bridgida. Poor me.” Ruthie scooped up a pair of silk drawers from the floor and dabbed at her wet eyes.
Damn, it was hot. Her negligee stuck to her skin. The woman in the store had given her the wrong size. Maybe she’d gained a few pounds, but she wasn’t half as big as that new actor, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. She’d met him at a party, and he seemed real interested, even waggled his sausage fingers down the front of her dress. She couldn’t remember what happened next because she drank too much bubbly. She might have vomited all over Fatty. She might have been tossed, naked, into a pool. She might have—
A knock sounded.
Had Cat forgotten his key again?
She staggered across the room and opened the door.
“Is this Cat McDonald’s room?” asked a dark-haired, blue-eyed girl.
“John Chinook and Ruthie Adams live here, Miss . . .”
“Smith. Fools Gold Smith. I’m from Cripple Creek and—”
“Cripple Creek? I’ve heard that name before. I know. Cat’s mother said it. She said Cat visited houses there.” Ruthie giggled. “Come inside. I was about to pour myself a drink. Won’t you join me, Miss Smith?”
“No, thank you.”
“Aw, c’mon. I’m an actress and I’ve met lots of stars, if you get my drift, and you prob’ly do, you bein’ from Cripple Creek an’ all.” She winked. “I’ve met Fatty Arbuckle an’ Tom Mix an’ Hartford Hoxie. Won’t you come inside? Please?”
“All right. I’ll stay a few minutes. Then I really must—”
“Set an’ rest your feet. I used to have pretty shoes like yours, but a bull shat on ’em between Arizona an’ California. I hate it when that happens, don’t you?”
“Have you known Cat long, Miss Adams?”
“Years an’ years. We’re gonna be married, Cat an’ me, an’ I’ve been to his ranch. His mother gave me a big party. Fools Gold is a funny name. Is it really yours? I made mine up, the Adams part. My father named me Ruth from the Bible, but I like Ruthie better. Do you live in a whorehouse, Miss Smith?”
“No. I live with a dear friend, an artist.”
“I once lived with Tom Mix. Can you believe that?”
“Yes.”
Ruthie scowled. Fools Gold, funny name, said yes like she didn’t really mean it. She was very pretty. Cat would be home any minute and he’d take to this peachy girl like a bee to honey, like Douglas Fairbanks to Mary Pickford.
Ruthie opened the door. “Cat and me got plans, Miss Smith, so you can leave now. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
“That’s not necessary, Miss Adams. Cat probably wouldn’t remember me. He and I met a long time ago.”
* * * * *
“Remember how we figured Romaine Fielding had left for Glen Eyrie because his bike was missing?”
“Yes,” Jack said. “Why?”
Flo waited until the train had chugged its way through a dark tunnel. Then she looked down at the newspaper. “It says here that John Chinook was hurled from Romaine Fielding’s bike while going forty-five miles an hour. He must have borrowed the bike after we talked.”
“Is he all right?”
“Of course he’s all right. Doesn’t a cat have nine lives?”
* * * * *
Jack waved his arms, and paint pelted the ground. “Stop moving, Flo!”
“What’s the difference? Your circles and squares don’t look like me.”
“Getting your anatomy right is much more difficult to achieve with circles and squares. I should have studied up on the new Cubism before attempting it myself.”
“I’m sorry, Jack. Wasn’t I the one who begged you to sell me to Edward Lytton?”
“I didn’t sell you. I sold my paintings of you. But you’re right. I don’t think I’m cut out to paint prisms. It’s giving me a headache and Sandy’s mad as hell. I’ll prime this canvas and we’ll start all over again, so you might as well read me that movie magazine piece.”
“It’s another story about John Chinook. It’s hardly a year since we saw him, and he’s made five movies and could have starred in more. Colonel Selig requested him for the lead in The Count of Monte Cristo, which was filmed in Colorado. Cat said no. Now he’s signed a new contract. It says here that he demanded his own dressing wagon to be pulled around the set by prop boys. And he insisted on Dan Clark, Tom Mix’s favorite cameraman.”
“Chinook’s getting mighty big for his britches.”
“After his first movie with Hartford Hoxie, when all those letters came asking about the actor who swooned on Hoxie’s doorstep, one magazine said John Chinook could write his own ticket.”
Jack sat down next to Flo. He stared at the magazine’s black-and-white photograph. Handsome devil, he thought. But the kid’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. Maybe that was Chinook’s appeal.
“I can’t understand why Chinook’s so popular, Flo. From what you’ve read, all his pictures are the same.”
“True. He rides into a town. A schoolmarm or saloon girl or rancher’s daughter begs him to stop trouble. After he cleans up the town, in the very last reel, he kisses the girl and rides away. It’s a shame movies don’t talk. Cat plays the guitar and sings. At least that’s what he told me.”
“Talking pictures?” Jack laughed. “They’ll have talking pictures when your hair turns yellow.”
“I read where some ladies in Cincinnati fainted when John Chinook appeared on the screen. They had to stop the reel until the ladies recovered.”
“I can’t reckon why.”
“One story said that Chinook’s horse, Dorado, and his dog, Pistol, get as much fan mail as he does. I’d like to star in a movie with Dumas. I’ll bet Dumas would get more fan letters than Dorado and Pistol put together.”
“Do you really want to act, Flo? I could have Sandy put in a word with some of those film fellows who bought my paintings. Maybe even Charles Chap—”
“No! Please don’t! I’d be scared to death, Jack. And what if I had to kiss the hero? I couldn’t let a man kiss me, even if it was only pretend.”
“Calm down, honey. I didn’t mean to get you all riled. You’re trembling like a leaf.”
“The morning we saw Cat on Romaine Fielding’s set, I thought he was going to kiss me. I would have fainted, Jack, like those ladies in Cincinnati, but not for the same reason. I would have fainted from—”
“Please, Flo, I’m sorry. I forgot. You don’t have to kiss anybody.”
“It would serve Cat right to have a woman faint from fear, not love.”
Damn Cat McDonald, thought Jack.
Why was he blaming Cat McDonald? It was Samuel Peiffer who had caused Flo’s fear. And yet she had changed since last May’s confrontation with “John Chinook.” Maybe they should pack up and leave Cripple Creek.
After buying “Jaygee’s” paintings, Edward Lytton had talked about his granddaughters, Kate and Dorothy, both close to Flo’s age. Except for school, Flo had never mixed with girls her own age. She had acquired all the social graces, but she never got a chance to use them.
And moving somewhere else might get Cat McDonald out of her head.
Jack heard the echo of Flo’s voice: I think I loved him. Oh, that’s silly. I was a child.
Twenty-Five
Colorado Springs: 1914
“Marylander!” Flo listened for a cough, a sneeze, a telltale snap of twigs. “Marylander Scott, where are you?”
The child was probably outside the barn, near the corral. No matter how many times Flo scolded, Marylander always found her way to the stables.
Flo took off her straw hat and let sunshine caress her forehead. Despite a soft breeze, tortoiseshell combs held her thick chignon in place. She wore a pink blouse and loose knickerbockers that reached below her knees, discreetly covered by her magenta skirt.
It was a perfect afternoon for a stroll along the cobblestone-crusted path that circled Lorenzo Scott’s estate. Flo admired verdant grass, interrupted at intervals by flower beds. Song sparrows perched on a birdbath, in harmony with horned larks and red-winged blackbirds. Leafy shade trees looked like umbrellas for Lemuel Gulliver. Clipped hedges separated the lawn from a path that led to the stables.
“Marylander, if you don’t come out this very minute, I’ll tell your mother you’re missing and I’ll be dismissed and you’ll have a new teacher who’s not so lax as I.”
“Governess. That’s what a friend of Mummy’s called you.”
“No, I’m a teacher.” Flo tried to determine where the little girl’s voice came from. “There’s a difference.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A governess would send you to bed without supper. A teacher would have you copy a chapter from Anne of Green Gables.”
A sturdy figure stepped out from a cluster of spruce trees. “That’s not fair!”
“It’s more than fair. What are you holding behind your back?”
“A bouquet. I picked it for you.”
Flo burst out laughing. “A bouquet of carrots? Shame on you, Marylander, adding fibbing to your other sins. You picked your bouquet for Dumas, after I’ve told you over and over not to visit the horses without me.”
“Why?”
“Because your daddy calls your mummy’s horses equine ruffians.”
Marylander skipped across the path, holding her carrots over one shoulder like a droopy orange and green parasol. Her white pinafore had a smocked yoke with gaily colored stitching. Somehow, it had remained clean while her stockings were torn and her shoes scuffed.
“I don’t
know what equine ruffian means. I’m only ten years old.”
“Ten going on twenty-one!”
“That would make me the same age as you, so you can’t tell me to copy a book chapter.”
“Yes, I can. You’ll have no more rides on Dumas if you disobey.”
“You’re mean!”
“No. Your mother’s horses are mean. Your mother’s favorite pastime is breaking mean horses.”
“I’m sorry, Flo, honest. May I give my carrots to Dumas? Please?”
“Yes, if you promise to finish your studies. Since I’ve spent an hour searching for you, we don’t have much time left before the dinner bell.”
“Do I still have to copy a chapter from Anne of Green Gables?”
“Of course.”
“Then I can’t promise. It would be a fib ’cause it takes a long time to print a whole chapter, especially with my eyes.”
Why, you little devil, thought Flo. If only Marylander’s eyes were as sharp as her brain.
Amending the punishment to a page, Flo escorted her charge to the corral, whistled for Dumas, and held Marylander up to feed and pet the mare.
Later, seated comfortably inside the schoolroom, Flo watched her charge fill lined paper with big print. She was such a pretty little girl. Her silver-blonde braids were tied at their ends with red ribbons. Freckles interrupted the pale complexion; pale despite long hours spent in the sun. Hazel eyes were magnified behind the lenses of the glasses she needed to see even halfway across the room.
Following a nearly fatal case of scarlet fever, Marylander was slowly going blind.
Flo had become reacquainted with Marylander’s mother, Sally Marylander Scott, outside a bakery on Tejon Street. Just like their first meeting thirteen years earlier, Flo had been admiring a window display. This time, instead of fruit and flowers, the display was an opera scene made of taffy. This time, instead of galloping down Bennett astride her white stallion, Sally had been seated inside a chauffeured automobile.
Sally’s husband, Lorenzo, was the bakery’s owner and candy maker. In fact, he managed a successful confectionery business that stretched across Colorado, and he’d built his wife a ranch on Turkey Creek, seventeen miles south of Colorado Springs.