Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy)

by Shirl Henke

  Obedience gave a low, rich chuckle. “‘N yew cain't seem to help it neither, which is jist 'zactly whut nature intended.”

  “But he doesn't love me! He was forced to marry me and never intended to consummate the marriage,” Melanie blurted out. Once that shameful revelation was made, it was as if a dam burst inside her. She told Obedience everything, from their hateful agreement about the annulment that day in the orchard until their explosive confrontation the night of the ball.

  “So you see, after it happened again last night and he acted the same way afterward, I just couldn't go on living like a prisoner, a—a whore. All he has to do is touch me and I can't help myself.” She hung her head and big shiny tears spilled down her cheeks, splashing on her hands clenched in her lap.

  From what Deborah had told her, Obedience knew that Melanie's illegitimacy and neurotic mother had left her with painful scars that she obviously still felt. A proud, pedigree-oriented Tejano like Lee Velasquez would just naturally do and say all the wrong things, unwittingly playing on her insecurity. But for all that, Obedience was certain they belonged together. If only the young fools could open up to one another and admit their fears and mistakes.

  Before she could counsel any further, the sound of hoof beats and flying gravel outside the kitchen door interrupted her. “If ‘n I don't miss my bet, thet's yore husband. Notice how glad he is ta be quit o' yew,” she said with a wink as she ambled quickly toward the hall door, leaving Melanie to face Lee alone.

  After taking the porch steps two at a time, he was at the door in a couple of long strides. Melanie stood up and balled her fists in her riding skirts, defiantly facing him as he slammed into the room, filling it with his menacing presence.

  Furiously, he threw the note she'd written him onto the kitchen table. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? We're married, lady, and moving back under Obedience's wing won't undo it.”

  “I won't live with you and be subjected to your lust and your scorn afterward,” she replied, proud of her icy control.

  “My lust, you damned little hypocrite! As if you don't return it! I've got to commend my sweet little bride—she's been a real apt pupil. With a few more lessons, I'm sure you could—”

  “Could what?” she interrupted his hateful diatribe with a shriek. “Open my own bordello—or be placed on Rampart Street like my mother was?”

  He ignored her outburst and reached for her bag, sitting forgotten on a chair near the door. “Come on, wife. We're going home.”

  “No. You don't want me for a wife. The only reason you even came after me is because you're afraid of my father!” she said spitefully.

  He dropped the bag as if he were burned. Slowly, he crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her contemptuously. “Rafe Fleming be damned,” was all he said, in a low clear voice. Then, he turned and walked out the door.

  * * * *

  Melanie remained at the boardinghouse, occupying her old room once more. For the next week, she went to the newspaper each morning, saying nothing about her estrangement from her husband. If Clarence knew, he and Amos forbore mentioning the situation.

  After riding Sangre furiously back to Night Flower, Lee spent the week breaking mustangs, a hot, dangerous, and dirty pastime better left to the mestañeros he had hired. But he needed to do something to burn off the killing rage that suffused his body. Each night, aching and exhausted, he lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of the woman who no longer slept down the hall. She's no farther away in San Antonio than she was under my roof, that's for damn sure.

  She was right about one thing. He could not make love to her if they lived apart. Still, the maddening desire for her did not abate. Finally, after a sleepless week, he went to San Antonio, not to be a supplicant at the boardinghouse once more, but to visit a discreet brothel on the outskirts of town.

  Just as the first streaks of light were inching their hazy way across the dirty windowpane, Lee rubbed his eyes and looked around the room. Sunrise. It looked to be a cloudy day; but then if Clarice didn't clean her windows any better than she cleaned her room, it might be full sunshine outside.

  The place was a sty. Silk stockings and frilly underwear were tossed in artless abandon across the chairs and carpet. A dinner tray sat on a dust-coated walnut table alongside the horsehair sofa, its half-eaten meat and potatoes pooled in congealed gray grease with a steak bone protruding obscenely from beneath a linen napkin that had been hastily discarded. Ashtrays filled with cigars, cigarillos, and pipe ashes attested to the number and variety of customers Clarice had entertained in the past few days.

  Dragging himself into a sitting position, he looked down at the woman sleeping next to him. The taffy color of her hair was betrayed by darker roots in the morning's merciless light; and her face, although youthful, was smeared with rouge and kohl. He had selected her last night because she did not yet have the hard, practiced airs of the older women. She seemed somehow vulnerable in such a gaudy pleasure palace.

  Now as he stared at her, visions of his radiant ebony-haired wife flashed unbidden into his mind, her clear golden skin innocent of paint. He could almost smell her sweet, musky scent after making love. But here I am sleeping with a pathetic doxy while she sleeps alone only a few blocks away.

  Angrily, he threw back the sheet and swung his long legs over the edge of the bed. Clarice muttered something unintelligible in her sleep and rolled over. Lee dressed hastily and tossed a generous payment on the bed where he had lain. He quit the room without a backward glance.

  The cool, cloudy day would be ideal for working stock. His men had just brought in a half-dozen really good mustangs culled from a large herd they'd captured to the west. He should ride quickly back to Night Flower and start breaking them. But something kept him in town. He walked slowly toward Simpson's Livery to reclaim Sangre, then changed his mind and strolled over to the secluded little park behind San Fernando Church.

  Larena had come to meet him here and tell him that she would not wait for him. Thinking it was a good thing she had been so sensible, he absently kicked a pebble with the toe of his boot. Obviously, he would never be able to get an annulment to marry her now! But was she right about him and Melanie? Already, he had betrayed his marriage vows with a brief and most unsatisfactory copulation in a whorehouse.

  But his wife had made it abundantly clear that no matter how much she might respond to his touch, she wanted no part of a real marriage. She did not want to be his wife and bear his children. She wanted to crusade for the Indians and slaves, for women's suffrage and temperance. That last thought caused him to wince in guilt and massage his aching temples. He had drunk entirely too much whiskey last night.

  But what do I want? he asked himself in confusion. Deep in thought, he did not see Father Gus come around the low-hanging cypress limbs along the path he was walking. The priest was on his way to the Indian school after saying an early morning mass in San Fernando's. They nearly collided before Father Gus reached out to steady him as he sidestepped from the path.

  “So early for you to be in town, Leandro,” he said levelly, taking in the other man's rumpled clothes, unshaven face, and bloodshot eyes. The smell of cheap perfume and musky sheets clung to him. Knowing that Melanie had moved into town last week, Father Gus intuited where Lee had spent the night, and it was not in his wife's arms. He'd bet his burro Francisco on that!

  Meeting the clear blue eyes of the priest, Lee sighed in resignation as a twisted grin spread unwillingly across his face. “Can't a man ever sin in private, Father?”

  “Ja. He can. But does he want to live with it in private after it is done? That is the real question.” The words were spoken with no recrimination.

  They walked aimlessly through the tree-shaded park and out onto a side street, nearly deserted at such an early hour. Father Gus knew that if Lee wanted to unburden himself, he would do so. If not, no amount of lecturing or cajoling would make the private, self-contained Tejano unbend. He strove for a neutral
topic they could discuss. “Our children conjugate Latin verbs from the grammar book you sent us. Also they read Chaucer and Cervantes. Even my poor English grows better each day as I study Mr. Keats and Father Newman. We all thank you for the wonderful books.”

  Lee shrugged dismissively. “They were gathering dust. I've already read them. Anyway, I have little time or need to conjugate Latin verbs or read poetry and essays these days. Melanie was amazed that I gave Uncle Alfonso's books to Indian children,” he said in a voice laced with scorn and regret.

  “How is your wife?” the priest asked gently. “I have not seen her in many days. Lame Deer asks for her.”

  Lee stopped walking and faced Father Gus squarely. “I haven't seen her since she moved out of my house last week. Tell Lame Deer to visit her at Oakley's if he's all that worried about her.”

  “He's worried about you, too, my son. You know, Leandro, you've become quite a hero to him since you saved him from Felipe and Fredo.”

  “He's a good enough kid,” Lee said gruffly.

  “For an Indian?” Father Gus said, watching Lee's face.

  “For anybody's kid. Hell, Father, you're beginning to sound like my wife,” he said impatiently, once more beginning to walk.

  The priest's much shorter legs had to churn to keep up with Velasquez's long stride. “Your wife, or your own conscience?” he asked, puffing.

  “Sometimes I think God invented wives to be our consciences,” Lee groused, half to himself.

  “Then maybe it is you who should go to Oakley's and reclaim yours, before you go farther astray,” the priest said with a twinkle.

  Lee only grunted noncommittally and walked faster.

  * * * *

  Stella Wolcott was a woman with a mission, and she looked the part. Tall and angularly thin, she had a determinedly set chin that was enhanced by a fierce under bite and penetrating gray eyes that could skewer a man to a chair at forty feet. Her thick graying hair was knotted inelegantly behind her neck, and she wore sensible shoes.

  Clarence Pemberton detested her on sight. She reminded him of his stern New England mother, as grim and humorless as the rocky Maine coastline. The first time he'd met Melanie Fleming she had looked like a younger version of the harridan who now sat in his office. But Melanie had wit and spirit, a sense of life's infinite ironies. When she had metamorphosed into a beauty and married that young Tejano rancher, he had been secretly relieved. Praise be, she won't end up like Manila Pemberton—or Stella Wolcott! Either of them was vicious enough to name an innocent son Vivian!

  “Are you quite certain, madam, that I cannot help you? Mrs. Velasquez seems to have been detained this morning,” he said to Stella, affixing her with his most forbidding glare over the top of his low-perched spectacles.

  She matched him glare for glare. “No, thank you, Mr. Pemberton. I'll wait for Mrs. Velasquez. I have some important—” She stopped short when Melanie swished into the office. “Ah, there you are, my dear child.”

  Something in her solicitous tone alerted Clarence. It didn't fit. She had been after Melanie to write an expose on the debauchery of the city's saloons and gambling halls. To date the girl had been too caught up with the Indian raids to work on it. Now, the old harridan seemed to have a new card up her sleeve. When the two women exchanged hushed pleasantries and then she and Melanie left the office for a private interview, his reporter's instincts told him something was wrong.

  Melanie was suspicious, too, when Stella began her preamble with unnatural motherly concern. “My dear,” she said, taking Melanie's small hand in her large one, “you know how much I admire you and the work you've accomplished here in this wicked city.”

  “I thank you, Mrs. Wolcott,” Melanie replied uneasily.

  “But you know how much more there is to do. We must nail shut the door of every saloon and house of ill repute. Only then shall demon rum be vanquished. The evils of the flesh tempt men to saloons. Then, when they're sodden with drink they perform heinous deeds—gambling their homes and fortunes away, betraying their noble wives with scarlet women.”

  Melanie felt the cold hand of dread squeeze her heart as she listened to Stella. She intuited where it was leading. “Are you trying to say that my husband was lured to one of these places?”

  “The Gilded Cage,” Stella spat with an air of righteous wrath. “He spent the night with a harlot named Clarice after drinking and gambling in the bar below! A lady such as you is fully vindicated in leaving such a debaucher. But, my child, you, of all women, are in a position to exact retribution. You wield a pen, and we all know the pen is mightier than the sword!”

  Numbly, Melanie let her rant about the Gilded Cage and other infamous places of similar ilk. All she could think of was Lee making love to a painted whore, waking up in a bordello bed with a slut named Clarice. As she vaguely fastened on what Stella said, she let the numbness dissipate, replacing it with a suffusing rage.

  Finally, she interrupted the temperance crusader. “What would you say to a tour of the local saloons, Mrs. Wolcott? When I'm finished taking notes, I should have enough for quite a series of articles; and you should be able to draw a sizable crowd to your next meeting—which should include just about every woman in San Antonio who can read, if I don't underestimate the power of my pen!”

  Melanie stood in the middle of the Star office, facing her scowling editor, while Amos retreated behind the press to watch the fireworks. “I tell you, Clarence, this story is fantastic!” she pronounced doggedly, hands on her hips, feet braced apart for a fight. “I know you don't like Stella Wolcott, but what I've written here is absolutely true. These places are sinkholes of corruption. I know of a small rancher who gambled away his whole herd of cattle on a turn of the cards last night and another whose family is living on rotten sweet potatoes while he drinks every night in a different saloon!”

  “Alas, human frailty being what it is, these lamentable events have transpired since the dawn of civilization, Melanie. Neither you nor I, nor even your formidable Mrs. Wolcott, can close the saloons of San Antonio,” Clarence said with world-weary tolerance.

  “We can damn well try! At least look at it as a first step in awakening people's consciences to the worst abuses. If one man having an innocent drink sees his neighbor swilling down a whole bottle, maybe he'll take him home to his family before the sot drinks up a year's income,” she pleaded. She played her final ace. ‘It'll sell newspapers.”

  “Run the first article on the crooked dealer at Caradines' place and we'll see how it goes,” he replied speculatively. “And you're right—I don't like Mrs. Wolcott, so don't make this into a temperance crusade to drive the honest saloonkeepers out of the city. I'm one of their best customers,” he added with pettish defiance.

  * * * *

  Lame Deer gave Francisco another sharp kick in the ribs, but the fat old burro refused to move with any more dispatch. “What a slow, lazy fellow you are. Father Gus only keeps you out of Christian kindness,” he complained to the burro. “I will tie you well this time,” he promised grimly, thinking of that long trek back to town two weeks ago. The cuts and bruises on his feet still were not completely healed.

  Lee was busy at the main corral, working with a promising new filly, when he saw the boy ride up on Father Gus's burro.

  “You're a long way from town, pequeño. Playing hooky from school?” He grinned as he led the pretty pony from the corral.

  “Oh, no, Señor Lee. It is Saturday and we have no lessons. Father Gus let me borrow this ugly one.”

  “Want to browse through my library? I expect you've read about all the books I sent to Father Gus by now,” he said teasingly, noting how the boy's big dark eyes were transfixed on the little bay filly with the shiny coat and the white blaze on her face.

  “Thank you, Señor Lee, but I still have one or two books to read at school,” the boy said earnestly. “I only wondered how you were. You have not been in town during the day to visit our school for several weeks.”

  D
uring the day. But he'd been in town plenty of nights. He looked at the guileless chocolate eyes with a guilty start. “As you can see, Lame Deer, I'm perfectly fine.” Liar.

  “So is Melanie,” the boy replied airily, scooting over to rub the pony's nose gently.

  So that was the lay of the land. “Did Father Gus send you to report on Melanie and check on me?” Lee asked with one brow arched in tolerant displeasure.

  Unconcerned, the boy replied, “Not exactly. He wanted you to read the stories in the Star that she is writing, though.” He walked over to Francisco and fished several crumpled newspapers from the saddlebag and handed them to Lee. “Why doesn't Melanie live here anymore? Aren't you still married?”

  Lee decided he preferred the boy's Indian obliqueness to this newly acquired Anglo bluntness. “We're still married, but it's her choice to live in town,” he muttered, quickly scanning the pages with their bold headlines:

  CESSPOOL OF CORRUPTION IN LOCAL GAMING ESTABLISHMENTS.

  MAN SPENDS LIFE SAVINGS ON DRINK WHILE FAMILY STARVES.

  RANCHER ROBBED IN HOUSE OF ILL REPUTE.

  That last headline especially caught his eye, since the name of the Gilded Cage leaped from the body of print below it. Beneath the carefully orchestrated accounts of crooked faro dealers bilking customers, compulsive gamblers losing their life savings, and hapless bordello clients having their wallets lifted, a common theme pervaded: close down the saloons and legislate morality—especially sexual morality.

  Several of the younger women who worked at the Gilded Cage were even mentioned by name, including Clarice. It seemed, if the story were to be believed, they were poor unfortunates who were exploited by the saloon owners and forced into lives of fear and drudgery. His face darkened into a scowl, then a fierce grimace of disgust. Poor exploited Clarice! She'd run out on her husband and child in Houston two years ago because she was bored with being married to a shoe clerk! Obviously, she'd told him one story and a nosy, gullible reporter another. He had no doubt about which was the truth.