Heart of the West

by Penelope Williamson

  Like a crib in the badlands of Deadwood with the name Rosie burned above the door.

  There had been a bed in one corner; in another, a stove and a bundle of kindling. A small dresser with a washbasin on top leaned against the log wall. The other wall was nothing more than a canvas partition separating her crib from the one next door. The room had been hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and it had stunk the year round of hair oil and cheap cologne water and sex.

  Most days she'd worn nothing but a gaudy kimono. Across the foot of the bed lay a ragged red blanket that she pulled over herself while she slept. When she entertained, she covered the blanket with a piece of oil-cloth to prevent its being dirtied by the boots of her gentlemen friends. They never took off their boots, never took off anything but their hats, those men who came to visit her, and they always called her ma'am. "Howdy-do, ma'am? Where you from, ma'am? I'd like it done this way, if you please, ma'am."

  In the early afternoon, before her gentlemen friends came calling, she would lie on the bed and stare at the log rafters, which were water-marked and laced with old webs. Hot, salty tears would form in her eyes and leak out the corners to roll into her ears. I won't cry, she'd say to herself over and over, until one day she hadn't cried. She'd just been tired, so tired, with barely enough strength to get herself up off the bed to clean up between men. If it hadn't been for that crazy old prospector dying and willing her his buckskin bags of gold dust, she would have found a way to die herself that last winter in Deadwood.

  Yet now, when she looked around the tonk—her tonk—she felt a wistful pride. The red lamps and china cuspidors, the piano grinning in black and white-toothed silence with no one savvy enough to play it, the peeling posters and deer antlers decorating the walls. It wasn't much, but she owned it all free and clear. And she owned herself free and clear. She was Hannah Yorke again, not Rosie, and she wasn't going to die a disease-riddled old whore in some piss-filled alley, even if it had been mostly dumb, blind luck that had saved her. What was done was done and best forgotten. But time wasn't like an hourglass that you could just turn over and watch the grains of sand run back through again. Those years in that Deadwood crib had left scars on her soul.

  "The whole town's been talking about how you've taken up with Zach Rafferty," Saphronie said. She was eyeing the bottle again. Hannah put it away.

  "The whole town oughta learn to mind its own business."

  Saphronie leaned into her and lowered her voice to a soft, eager whisper. "So, then? What's he like?"

  Hannah told herself not to look at him and did it anyway. A fast-emptying whiskey bottle sat at his elbow. He'd put his hat upside down in the middle of the table and was tossing a deck of cards one at a time into the crown of it. He was drinking and passing idle time until she was ready to go with him back to her room with its red silk-papered walls and big feather bed. He was beautiful and bad and dangerous, and he was going to break her heart. They always did.

  "He's no different from any other man," she said, her voice tart. "Ain't you got something you should be doing?"

  A dark flush crept up Saphronie's cheeks. She pushed the empty glass across the bar with such force it squeaked. "Thank you for the drink. I know how you feel about... I mean, you never let any of the other girls—"

  Hannah trapped the other woman's hand, gripping it hard between her own. "Don't do it anymore, Saphronie."

  She pried her fingers free. "I got to, Mrs. Yorke. For little Patsy."

  The door squealed open just then, letting in a shaft of sunshine and wind-stirred air. Spurs rasped across the floor. Saphronie turned, and Hannah looked up to the startling sight of Gus McQueen walking into her saloon.

  CHAPTER 7

  Well, Lord, Lord, will you look at this, Hannah Yorke thought with a laugh. Here comes Gus McQueen, comin' to take his brother home.

  Poor Gus. A righteous man like him probably found his wild, undisciplined brother a trial to him most days. He also had more guts and less sense than she'd given him credit for. With Rafferty's blood running about fifty proof, tangling with him was going to be like poking a stick at a rattler.

  Gus McQueen had always put her in mind of a big, tame golden bear. It was the size of him and the way he moved, easy, almost slumberous. He paused now to let his eyes adjust to the sudden dimness and to get his bearings. His eyes were the deep blue of a wind-tossed sky, and the look in them as his gaze raked the room was frigid enough to kill a field of cotton in the dead of summer.

  Hannah stepped out from behind the bar. She slipped her hand into her skirt pocket, her fist closing around the ivory stock of the little pistol she always carried. With the cost of shipping freight these days, she wasn't going to put up with any busted chairs and tables. And blood never did scrub easily out of unvarnished floors.

  Gus went to stand over his brother. "Here you are," he said.

  "Yup," Rafferty said, drawling the word out to its fullest potential. "Here is where I am."

  "There's work waiting back at the ranch."

  Rafferty sent a queen of clubs sailing toward his hat. "See me when I ain't busy."

  Gus snatched the card out of the air, crushing it in his big hand. "You're soused," he said, disgust in his voice.

  "Workin' on it." For a moment Rafferty's long fingers had closed into a fist. He uncurled them and wrapped them around the neck of the whiskey bottle instead. He poured the stuff straight into his mouth, not bothering with the glass.

  Gus stared down at his brother, longing and revulsion and a baffled anger battling it out on his face. In that moment Hannah almost pitied him. It was hard to love someone, to care, and have him not care back.

  "We should have started the branding roundup a week ago," Gus said.

  "You're the one stayed gone for nearly a year, and now all of a goddamn sudden the ranch is back to being the most important thing in your life. Excuse me if I can't keep up with your priorities."

  "She was your mother too. You could've come with me."

  "I never got sent an invitation to the party." There was a flush on Rafferty's high cheekbones that wasn't only from the booze. "Go away, Gus. You're rilin' me, and when I get riled I start to sweat, and sweating is a waste of good whiskey."

  For a moment neither man said a thing, and the tension between them stretched as tight as dried rawhide.

  Gus snatched off his hat, shoved his fingers through his hair, then slammed the hat back on his head. "Look, I know you're red-assed with me, and I'll allow as how you might have reason to be. But that's no excuse to go neglecting the ranch by helling it all over town like a green hand with full pockets and no sense."

  "In case it's escaped your notice, there ain't no 'all over' in Rainbow Springs." Rafferty made a wide, sweeping gesture with the whiskey bottle. "This is it." His eyes narrowed on his brother. "What's really aggravatin' you, Gus? Has marriage put a burr under your tail already? Why don't you go on home to your woman and leave me to mine?"

  "Your woman?" Gus's gaze sought out Hannah, and he looked her up and down, a fine sneer curling around his mustache. "I wouldn't be staking out bragging rights yet on Mrs. Yorke were I you, little brother. For three dollars she's any man's woman."

  Even Hannah was surprised at how fast Rafferty came out of the chair.

  Gus took a step back, then held his ground. He turned his head and jutted his jaw forward, presenting it to his brother as a gift. "You want to hit me, Zach? Go on, take a swing."

  Rafferty let out a long, slow breath. "I ain't fightin' with you."

  He emptied the cards into a pile on the table, tossed the bonnet strings inside his hat, and anchored it down on his head. He picked up the whiskey bottle and took another swig. Gus stood with his fists clenched at his sides, breathing heavily. In a way, Hannah couldn't blame him for wanting to hit something. This was probably the longest conversation he'd had with his brother in a year, and it had been like trying to talk a gopher into climbing a tree.

  Rafferty took a step toward th
e door. Gus grabbed his arm and swung him around. "You'll fight if I got to knock your teeth through the back of your head."

  Rafferty grinned and lifted the whiskey bottle to his mouth. Gus's fist got there first.

  The force of the blow turned Rafferty half around on his feet and sent him stumbling against the table. The table slid out from beneath his weight, and he hit the floor with a rattling jar that made the windows vibrate. Somehow he still had the bottle upright in his hand, although most of the whiskey had spilled out of it to douse his face and chest. Rafferty held the bottle up in the air and laughed.

  But Hannah hadn't waited to find out if he was going to come up swinging. She whipped the pistol out of her pocket and fired. The shot cracked like thunder on a hot afternoon. The bottle exploded in Rafferty's hand. Glass and whiskey rained down on him in glittering drops and splintered shards.

  He looked at the jagged neck of brown glass, which was all that was left of the bottle. "Shit," he said, and laughed again. a wild whoop that started Hannah to laughing as well.

  They were laughing still as he wiped slivers of glass off his wet chest. Gus wasn't laughing, he was glowering at Hannah, and she thought she would probably like the man a lot better if he didn't make her feel like he was seeing a Deadwood badlands gal every time he looked at her.

  She smiled sweetly at him. "If you gotta beat up on somebody, Mr. McQueen, do it outside of my tonk."

  Rafferty pulled himself to his feet with the help of the table. He pressed the back of his hand to his cut lip. He glanced at the smear of blood, then at Hannah as if she'd been the one to bust his mouth. "Christ, woman," he said, "one of these times you're gonna quit missing with that thing and kill someone."

  "When I decide to put a hole in something that can bleed, you'll be the first to know it." She waved the pistol. "Now y'all settle your disagreement outside."

  "All right, all right. I'm goin'. Hell." He sauntered toward the door. After one final, biting glare at Hannah, Gus followed.

  The door swung shut behind Rafferty's back. Gus slammed it back open with the heel of his hand and waltzed right into a sucker punch to his gut.

  Gus grunted and doubled over. He wheezed in a breath, then wheezed it out again. He tilted up his head and stared at his brother through watering eyes. "I thought... you didn't... want to fight."

  Rafferty stood with his boots splayed and the weight tilted forward on the balls of his feet, his hands hanging easy at his sides. His tawny eyes were full of laughter and violence. "I lied."

  Gus straightened and lunged with a bellow that brought Hannah running outside. She would have caught a flying fist square in the jaw if she hadn't ducked in time. She flattened herself against the saloon doors to watch the fight.

  Gus landed a blow to the side of Rafferty's head that sent his hat sailing and his feet pedaling backward. Rafferty answered with another punch to Gus's belly that thunked like an ax blade in wet wood. The brothers staggered backward off the boardwalk, bear-hugging each other. They wrestled and grunted, knocked into the horse trough and slammed against the hitching rail. The rotting pine shattered and splintered beneath them.

  They sat in the mud among the ruins of the hitching rail, grinning at each other, their breath sawing in their heaving chests. Then they came up fighting.

  Fists smacked against flesh, chests grunted, and blood splattered. It wasn't long before the fracas drew a crowd like a circuit preacher in a town of Baptists. The boys from Snake-Eye's livery ambled over to watch the show. Sam Woo banged out of the mercantile and came clattering down the boardwalk. Mrs. McQueen was fast on his heels, as close to running as Hannah had yet to see her.

  A lady, thought Hannah, would feel disgust and horror, maybe even faint. But she felt a flutter low in her belly that she knew was the heat of sexual arousal. He was all hard magnificent masculinity, her man Rafferty was. His lithe and deadly body, the savage power of his blows, the ferocity in his eyes, excited her. He fought the same way he made love. Ruthlessly and taking no prisoners.

  Gus clouted a fist into Rafferty's eye and drove another into his ribs. Rafferty careened into the side of the saloon, his body heavy and loose. He bounded upright and landed a punch flush in Gus's face. Gus's head snapped back hard on his neck, blood and saliva flying in strings out of his nose and mouth. He weaved on his feet, his eyelids fluttering like dying moths. He shook his head, spat out a tooth, and waded back into Rafferty's swinging fist.

  A slender black-lace-gloved hand clutched at Hannah's arm. "Make them stop," said Gus's wife.

  "Honey, nobody's gonna make them two boys stop till one or the other of them is laid out cold. They're riled enough to take a swing at Jesus Christ himself were he to suddenly appear preaching brotherly love and goodwill toward men."

  Clementine McQueen lifted the train of her skirt and picked her dainty way around the fighting men. They'd spent most of their steam by now and were huffing like locomotives on a steep grade, mostly swaying and grappling with each other and throwing short, weak punches. She headed for the horse trough, and Hannah thought maybe she'd taken it into her head to splash the men with water as if they were a pair of spitting cats. But instead she bent down, gripped one of the shattered hitching posts in her lace-gloved hands, and lifted it high.

  She aimed for her brother-in-law's head and hit his shoulder. It wasn't much of a blow, but it got his attention. He swung around on unsteady legs just as she let fly with another swing, like an amateur boxer throwing a roundhouse punch. Except that at the other end of her fists was a pine post and it smacked into Rafferty's groin with a solid whack. He fell to his knees, hugging his crotch and curling up tight, the breath bleating out of him like a penny whistle.

  Mrs. McQueen stood over her brother-in-law, the post in the air, and for a moment Hannah thought from the look on her face that she was going to crease his head with it. But then she dropped it and backed up. The color was high in her cheeks, and she was breathing hard through her open mouth.

  Gus was swaying like a cattail in the wind, using his bandanna to soak up the blood that was dribbling from his nose. He poked his tongue at his cheek, feeling for the hole left by his tooth. Rafferty had managed to rise as far as his hands and knees and was throwing up three days' worth of whiskey in the street. Mrs. McQueen looked at him as if he'd just crawled out from beneath the door of a privy.

  Gus took a step toward his brother. Hannah put a hand on his chest to stop him. His shirt hung in rags from the neck yoke. Sweat gleamed on his splendid muscles, sweat and so much blood he looked as if he'd been sticking pigs. His face was such a puffy mess she had to smile. "Honey," she cooed, "your lady wife just planted your brother's balls somewhere up next to his ribs, and when he gets his breath back and quits seeing stars, he's gonna want to kill somebody. Now, I reckon you ought to hustle her on home. Don't you?"

  Gus nodded, wiped his bleeding mouth and nose, and nodded again.

  Hannah's gaze met that of Gus's wife. She was looking mighty pleased with herself. "I hope he hurts," Clementine said. She wasn't talking about her husband.

  Rafferty still knelt in the mud, making gagging sounds.

  "Oh, he's a-hurtin' all right." Hannah grinned at her, and slowly the girl smiled back. A smile of shared power. It wasn't often that a woman was able to bring a man to his knees.

  "The party's over, folks," Hannah said, ushering the crowd toward the doors of her saloon, where she hoped they would belly up to the bar to relive the fight and lubricate the telling of it with bottles of her most expensive booze.

  She crouched beside her fallen hero, her poppy-red skirts trailing in the gumbo. He was done with retching up the whiskey and was now working on his guts. She patted his shuddering back. "Don't be such a baby, Rafferty. The only thing she hurt was your pride."

  He eased onto his backside and unfolded his lanky body until he was leaning against the horse trough. He cupped the hurting place between his legs and let out a slow, careful breath between clenched teeth. "Fuck."
>
  Hannah laughed. "Later, darlin'. When you're feeling more the thing."

  He looked at her with a bloodshot eye—the other was swelling shut. "What the hell're you laughin' at? I wouldn't've fought him in the first place if he hadn't called you a whore."

  "Lord, Rafferty, a whore is what I am. It doesn't matter that I don't sell it anymore—a gal can't escape her past. A rawhidin' cowboy like you ought to've learned that by now. Thank you, Shiloh," she said as the bartender brought out a fresh bottle of whiskey. Rafferty seized it, drinking so fast that the rotgut leaked out the corners of his mouth. The pungent smell of whiskey mixed with that of mud and blood and sweat and violence.

  She watched the muscles of his strong brown throat work as he swallowed. "I don't pay any mind to Gus," she said. "He always acts all stiffbacked around me, I expect because his back ain't the only thing that gets stiff. He don't like admitting to himself that he's got weaknesses just like any other man. You're a trial to him, Rafferty, and an aggravation, but only because he cares about you. The man has got his good points. You got to admit that."

  He scrubbed his face with his sleeve. "Hell, I know he's got his good points. But that don't mean he needs to be jabbin' me with them all the time like they were spurs." He shifted a hip and groaned. "I think I'll just sit here awhile."

  "In the mud?"

  "Yeah, the mud is nice. It's soft."

  Hannah sat beside him. Mud and blood were splattered in rusty patches over her skirt; she would never get the stains out. What the hell—she was rich and could afford a wagonload of dresses. This cowboy, though, was worth more than she'd first thought. She would keep him for a while.