Devil's Dare
“Papa, there wasn’t any harm done,” she said hastily. “I got her out of there by the back entrance as soon as I saw the women parading past.”
But the Reverend Mr. Fairweather was warming to his subject, and paid her no heed. “My child, in the words of Scripture, ‘a whore is a deep ditch, and a strange woman is a narrow pit. She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men,’ while a virtuous woman, on the other hand, is ‘worth more than rubies.’ Charity, do you understand what a whore is?”
“No, Papa,” came the soft answer, the voice still choked with tears.
Mercy quickly lowered her eyes to her lap, afraid their father would somehow discern that she did know what the harsh word meant, and would feel the need to go on with his tirade. She’d known ever since she’d overheard the word during their wagon-train trip to Kansas, when some of the bachelors were talking about what they’d do when they next came to a town. She’d gone to her mother, instinctively knowing this wasn’t a word she could ask Papa about. Mama had answered her question matter-of-factly, but had gently confirmed her feeling that this wasn’t something ladies were supposed to know about. Their mother was dead now, though, the victim of pneumonia during their first winter, when they had lived in a soddy, and she couldn’t refer Charity to her to have her questions answered.
“Very well, then we will not say more about them, except to say that they are evil women and evil men, and you are to have nothing to do with them,” the reverend said. “If you are so unfortunate as to encounter them on unavoidable trips to town, you are to look the other way. If one of either group should be so bold as to speak to you, you are to ignore them. Is that clear, Charity Elizabeth Fairweather?” Mercy realized with sudden clarity that their father didn’t understand her younger sister at all. There was no surer way to fix Charity’s interest in a subject than to forbid her to have any interest in that subject. Nothing had really been explained to Charity about why the women were bad, and what they did with the cowboys that made them bad, so she would be all the more determined to find out. She sighed. She’d given her sister an elementary explanation about the birds and the bees a couple of years ago, but now she’d have to go into more detail. She would have to explain the whole matter at night, when they’d gone to bed in the room they shared. Mama, give me the right words.
“Dessert, Papa? I made peach pie,” she said, relaxing somewhat now that the storm had passed over and neither she nor her sister were too wet.
“In a moment, Mercy. I have not finished,” their father said in that precise way of his that told her not to look for any rainbows just yet. “Of course, there must be consequences to every action. Yours, Charity, is that you are to go to your room now and memorize Proverbs chapter thirty-one, verses ten through thirty-one, so that you can recite it at the prayer meeting tonight and so that you will know the qualities of the virtuous woman.”
Charity’s eyes, a deeper blue than their father’s, widened. “But Papa, that’s…let’s see, twenty-one verses! And the meeting starts in an hour!”
“Then you had better get busy, had you not?” her father responded serenely.
“Yessir,” Charity said, her lower lip jutting out, a sure sign, Mercy knew, of incipient rebellion in her sister. But Charity left the table quietly enough and headed down the hall to their bedroom.
Mercy sighed. Charity’s punishment was punishment for her, too, for it meant she had the sole responsibility for cleaning up after dinner, washing and drying the dishes. Drat it! She had intended to see that Charity did most of it, since she’d been so little help during the preparation. Mercy had rather wanted to take time to change her dress and comb her hair in case Ned Webster chanced to come.
Ned, the son of the local blacksmith, became all red-faced and tongue-tied whenever he was around her, but she thought he liked her just a little. And though she despaired of Ned’s ever framing a whole sentence to her, let alone asking if he could come calling, he was the only boy in town who came to Sunday services on a regular basis-which made him the only boy in Abilene Mercy would be allowed to keep company with. And unless another youth could be persuaded to start attending, God only knew who would be allowed to court Charity.
At about the same time that Charity Fairweather was reciting “the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her” to a properly hushed dozen members of the Abilene First Baptist Church, meeting in the Fairweather parlor, Samuel Houston Devlin was leaving his room in the Drover’s Cottage, the hotel set up for the cowboys in off the trail. He had had a bath, a haircut, and a shave, and he felt like a new man. He’d gone to Moon’s Frontier Store and bought himself some new clothes, a new pair of denims and a shirt, eschewing the shirts with the fancy celluloid collars and cuffs and derby hats that some of the boys were buying, for such garb would feel foolish. He didn’t want to look like some sort of Eastern tinhorn. His only concession to vanity had been a brand-new pair of boots, complete with the lone star and crescent stitched in at the top of each. Yessir, he was ready to find the calico queens of Abilene, as the working girls were sometimes called, or to let them find him.
He headed for the Alamo Saloon. Perhaps he’d have a round or two of poker with that cardsharp first, while he looked over the girls and selected the best one. Now that he was here, he did not feel inclined to automatically accept the first sporting woman who approached him. No, he’d do the picking, and he’d be selective.
In addition, he felt quite sure that Earp thought he could take him for all his money, but blacklegs had thought to swindle the Devil before. The cardsharp hadn’t been born that could outbluff Devil Devlin, he thought, breaking into a grin as he sauntered down dusty Cedar Street and into the Alamo Saloon.
Chapter Three
Three hours later Sam Devlin, who was still sitting at Earp’s table in the Alamo Saloon, was feeling heartily glad he’d had the forethought to leave most of the money in the safe at the Drover’s Cottage. It had been a disastrous mistake to think he could play poker with the likes of this cardsharp and pick a woman with whom to spend a few agreeable hours later. Wyatt Earp was a better card player than Sam had ever played with in his life, and had quickly taken possession of the stack of twenty-dollar gold pieces Sam had brought with him.
Several of his crew had joined them at the table, a fact that had pleased him until they’d begun to lose their money. They’d been bragging on their trail boss to Earp, asking the cardsharp how he liked playing cards with “the Devil and his boys.” Well, apparently matching wits with the Devil hadn’t bothered Earp at all. The Devil’s Boys had not only lost the best part of their own money but had seen their trail boss lose his stake, too.
It wasn’t that he hated their teasing, or feared that their seeing him lose would mean the loss of his authority—he just purely disliked to have anyone see him get fleeced. Well, vanity never did anyone any good, Sam reasoned, but if he didn’t learn which cardsharps to avoid, he’d still be herding cattle up the trail when he was fifty.
The way he had figured it before tonight, there would have to be at least one more drive to get the Devlins financially back on their feet and rebuild the stud. He’d known that this drive would only serve to wipe out their present debt, but if he didn’t win back the ten thousand dollars he’d lost it wouldn’t even fully accomplish that. He couldn’t stand the thought of going back to Texas with much less than what he’d been paid just this afternoon. He was going to have to figure out a way to regain his money.
But not tonight. He knew when he was on a losing streak. “I’m out,” he announced, his chair scraping against the plank floor as he rose.
“Hey, what’s your hurry, Devil?” the cardsharp asked him lazily, then called for another round.
“I’ve got no more money to play,” Sam said with a shrug, grinning back as if that fact meant less than nothing. “Perhaps tomorrow night.” Perhaps tomorrow night, yes, but certainly not with you, he thought, without malice. If Earp was cheating, he hadn’t been able to catch him at it. Perhaps he was just good.
“You ain’t goin’ t’ bed, are ya, boss? You ain’t got the other thing ya came for!” Cookie Yates protested. “What about that?”
“Yeah, the night’s young, don’t go yet,” Earp agreed, handing him another half-full glass of whiskey. “The music plays all night here at the Alamo, and so do the girls! Thought you said you were interested in a little, ah, female companionship,” the cardsharp added with a wink.
“Yeah, could be,” Sam admitted, eyes searching the smoky, noisy saloon. At the bar at the south side of the Alamo, a couple of gaudily dressed girls winked at him. He knew the merest nod would have brought either the blonde or the black-haired girl to his side, cooing and eager to please.
“There’s a likely-looking pair—Florabelle and Sukey Jane,” the cardsharp drawled, following his gaze. “It’d be my pleasure to stake you an eagle—you could probably get both of them for that, if you were so inclined.”
“Thanks just the same,” Sam said, shaking his head, “but I’ve got the money. I did have sense enough to keep a few dollars off the table. One girl will be enough, though, I reckon. Two just might kill me, on top of all the tanglefoot I’ve been drinking.”
“Well?” Earp nodded again at the girls lounging at the ornate, brass-trimmed bar, clearly just waiting for his signal.
“I’d take the blonde, boss,” Jase Lowry advised him. “Wouldn’t you like to see if she’s blond all over?”
Sam hesitated, though for the life of him he couldn’t understand why. Both of the girls were pretty, in a bold, hard sort of way, and their tight dresses and low-cut bodices all but shouted that their bodies would be rewarding to explore. Hellfire, what in blue blazes was he waiting for? In five minutes he could be upstairs wrestling on the sheets with either one of them. But he just couldn’t bring himself to move his head or raise his finger to them.
“Then you go ahead and take her, Jase,” he murmured, looking back at Earp. “Any others here?”
“Ah-ha! A man of discriminating tastes,” the other responded with a grin. “Just look about you, my good man. There’s Conchita at the faro table, if you appreciate a little south-of-the-border spice, Kate standing by the roulette wheel if you like ‘em freckled, and Jerusha if you prefer a little cream with your coffee,” he said, pointing at last to a pretty, doe-eyed mulatto girl. “But say, I just got an idea, if you’re interested in a gamble, that is. You could please yourself and get double your money back.”
“Oh?” Sam slid back onto his chair.
“Devil, I’ve seen that you’re a very selective man,” Earp responded, leaning forward. “You came to gamble with the best, didn’t you?” He grinned a smug grin.
“For all the good it did me,” Sam retorted goodnaturedly.
Earp went on. “And you don’t tumble for the first likely-looking pair of bobbers. You want a little something extra for your dollars, even in a whore. You like redheads?”
Sam shrugged, wondering where this was leading. Sure, he liked redheads, but no more than any other color of hair on a soiled dove. It didn’t matter once she blew out the lamp. Most of it came from a bottle, anyway.
“You like a little challenge, too, I’ve seen. I doubled the stakes on you and you didn’t turn a hair—even when I held the winning hand.”
Again Sam nodded.
“All right, here it is—the queen of the Alamo Saloon is one Mercedes LaFleche, a real beauty, with dark red hair and a figure that’ll make you pant just to look at it, my friend.”
“Mercedes LaFleche, hmm?” He looked around, but he saw no such woman.
“It’s a French name,” Earp said with a wink.
Sam knew there was about as much chance that this Mercedes was truly French as there was of snow on Galveston Island, but perhaps she was a Cajun from New Orleans. A lot of sporting women in cattle towns came from there.
“The thing is, she’s so popular in Abilene, she could charge fifty dollars and still pick and choose who she wants to lie down with, and she’d still make a fortune.”
Cookie Yates whistled. “Fifty dollars a night?”
“Nope—that’s just for an hour with her,” Earp said.
“No señorita ees worth fifty dollars for an hour!” Manuel Lopez, the wrangler who’d been in charge of Sam’s remuda, insisted, but Earp ignored him and went on.
“Far as I know, she hasn’t ever given a cowboy a whole night before. Or a cardsharp,” he lamented. “No one has yet gotten the pleasure of waking up next to Miss LaFleche in the morning. I’m willing to bet you can’t talk her into it for that same fifty dollars, either.” Earp lit a cheroot and inhaled deeply.
“Go ‘head, Devil, you kin do it!” urged Clancy McDonnell, another of the boys. “The Devil here could charm a snake outa his skin,” he boasted to Earp.
Sam considered the challenge, rubbing his unaccustomedly clean-shaven chin. “You’ve been with her?”
“That I have, on a couple of memorable evenings,” Earp admitted. “Believe me, friend, she’s worth every red cent of the cash you’ll place on her nightstand. She’s got tricks that will turn you inside out and leave you begging for more.”
“But how do I know you’re not in league with the, ah, lady? You two could have set this up ahead of time,” Sam noted.
“But I didn’t. On that you have my word, Devlin. You gonna take the dare? I’ll even give you the fifty—say, as an advance on your winnings.”
Sam didn’t know why, but he believed the other man. He might be a clever cheat at cards, but he sensed Earp was dealing straight now. “I think I’ll go you one better, Earp.”
“How’s that?” Earp inquired with lazy interest, but his gaze was intent.
“I’ll take the same stakes—twenty thousand, twice what you won from me—but I’ll have the lady between the sheets within three nights without parting with any of your fifty.
She’ll be with me all night—and she’ll do it for free.”
Earp’s jaw fell open. “You’re loco.”
The Devil’s Boys hooted and clapped. “That’s the spirit, boss!”
“I can’t do this,” Earp protested. “It’d be like takin’ candy from a baby!”
He stared at Sam, but Sam kept his gaze steady. All of a sudden he was bursting with confidence. A clever cardsharp might get the better of him with a marked deck, but with women he knew he had the advantage. He knew the secret—which was that all women, even those who made their livings on their backs, wanted to be treated like ladies.
“So…where is the divine Mercedes?” drawled Sam. Now that he’d figured out a sure bet, he was eager to begin the campaign to win his money back.
“I haven’t seen her downstairs for a while. She went upstairs with a cowboy about the time you began losing that last hand,” Earp said, then pulled out a pocket watch, which he flicked open with a well-manicured fingernail. “Hmm…by my calculations she oughta be down in about half an hour, unless the cowboy paid double. How about letting me buy you another drink?”
Sam shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll just sit around and keep my boys outta trouble.” The whiskey was singing a sweet song inside his head, but he knew better than to drink any more of it. Too much of it, and he’d be just another bleary-eyed, slurred-voice cowboy making importunities to the queen of the calico queens. “But if you’d like me to find another table so you can start a new game…”
Earp shook his head, gracious in victory. “No need for all of you to move. I’m just going to mosey over yonder where those boys’re beckoning for me to join them.” He indicated a table with a trio of cowboys Sam recognized as some of Lee Hill’s hands from San Antone. “But never fear, I’ll keep my eye out for Mamselle Mercedes so I can point her out to you.”
Earp left, and for a few minutes the Devil’s Boys went on drinking, with Sam just watching the stairs.
“Hey, would ya look at what Tom Culhane found, gents?” Jase Lowry said suddenly, pointing toward the entrance.
Six heads swiveled to look up at the swinging doors. Through them sauntered the bowlegged young cowboy who’d groused earlier about his wages, his arm around the waist of a slender, fine-boned blonde who was eyeing him with a mixture of admiration and nervousness.
Spying the table full of familiar faces, Culhane aimed the blonde in their direction, his stumbling gait proclaiming the fact that he’d already been downing a considerable amount of rotgut at another Abilene establishment. “Lookee what I found, boys! A beauty, ain’t she? An’ guesh what? She sh-said she seen me earlier today an’ thought I wuz a han’some fella an’ wanted to meet me! Ain’t that a wonderful turn of events, boys?”
Smacking the table and laughing, the Devils’ Boys all agreed it was. Jase Lowry rose and pulled out a chair.
“Why don’t ya offer the lady a chair, Tom? What’s wrong with yore manners?” He bowed with exaggerated care. “Jase Lowry, ma’am, at your service, if this here saddlebum fails t’ please ya.”
The blonde blinked at the towheaded cowboy she’d come in with, then, blushing, she accepted the chair Jase held for her. “Why, thank you, Mr. Lowry, you’re very kind.”
Cookie guffawed. “Kind? Jase? Ma’am, he’s just hopin’ t’ cut ya out before Tom here gets his brand on ya!”
Sam’s eyes narrowed as he studied the girl sitting by Culhane. She seemed awfully young to be one of Abilene’s soiled doves, though the sidelong glance she was currently bestowing on the goggle-eyed Culhane was full of coquetry and much fluttering of her sandy lashes. Her clothing, compared to the flashy, flounced satin dresses of the other whores, was almost demure. She wore an embroidered Mexican peasant blouse, an innocent enough garment—or at least it probably had been until she had pushed it down so that it revealed slender shoulders and the tops of her breasts swelling above her corset—and a somewhat faded black cotton skirt. Jet black earbobs dangled from her ears. Her face was innocent of paint, though.
“Tom, you haven’t introduced your lady friend,” Sam said, keeping his eyes on her. The blonde giggled at the sight of her companion’s crestfallen face.
“Oh, yeah! Sorry, boss!” Culhane said with a grin, as if the scene this afternoon had not taken place. “Gents, this here’s Miss Charity Fairweather. Miss Charity, these’re the Devil’s Boys—my boss, Sam Devlin, Cookie Yates, Manuel Lopez, Clancy McDonnell and Jase, who ya already met.”
Miss Charity Fairweather dimpled as she acknowledged everyone’s greetings. Then she seemed to start as she saw that Culhane was pouring her a drink of whiskey. As Sam watched, she hesitated, then raised the glass to her lips with a hand that trembled slightly. She sipped, sputtered, giggled, then drank some more.
The boys cheered, and Culhane hugged her with one hand while he whispered in her ear with the other. Then she winked at something Culhane whispered in her ear and was rewarded by an enthusiastic kiss, which she returned with apparent relish.
Well, maybe she was new to the calling, Sam thought, and hadn’t been on the job long enough to dress and paint her face like the others. It sure wasn’t his job to watch out for the calico queens. Chances were this soiled dove was more than up to coping with the likes of Tom Culhane. Maybe she even left off the paint on purpose, so that her customers would be lulled into thinking her just a whore with the proverbial heart of gold. Meanwhile she’d be picking their pockets, or helping herself to the rest of their money while they dozed.
Yessir, if Tom kept guzzling the Alamo’s whiskey at that speed, that was exactly what would happen, and Tom would be grouchy as a gored steer in the morning. But Tom was a man grown, so Sam went back to watching the stairway for the reappearance of Mercedes LaFleche.
Mercy woke with a start in the darkened bedroom, awakened by a sudden sense that something was wrong. It was too quiet. Charity’s snoring was a normal nocturnal accompaniment to her dreams, but now all she could hear was the neighing of a horse in a corral down the street. She reached out a hand, and realized the space next to her on the bed was empty.
Had Charity gone to the outhouse? Usually if nature called in the middle of the night, the girls used a chamber pot that was kept underneath the bed, for both of them were afraid of meeting spiders and snakes in the darkness. But perhaps her sister’s stomach was upset from something she ate, so that she had felt it necessary to brave the terrors of the path to the outhouse.
Mercy went to the window and opened it, staring out into the moonlit darkness at the darkened shape of the little building between the barn and the house. No candlelight showed through the chinks between the boards. She watched, thinking perhaps the candle had blown out in the soft night breeze, and while she waited she heard the distant sounds of tinkling pianos coming from Texas and Cedar streets. The saloons must be doing a good business, as usual. As she listened, a shot rang out, and then another, followed by some drunken shouting, and all was quiet again.
The sound of gunfire at night from the streets where the saloons were was so usual that it didn’t even wake them anymore. She wondered if the darkly handsome cowboy she had seen today was one of the drunken revelers. She hoped not—or at least, if he was, that he wasn’t shot in some pointless brawl.
After five minutes she was forced to realize that Charity wasn’t in the outhouse. Where could she be? Quietly she found the lucifers in the darkness and lit the candle on the bedside stand. Then, tiptoeing so as not to wake their father, she went down the hall to the parlor.
But Charity wasn’t a victim of insomnia, sitting in the parlor, the kitchen, on the porch or even in the barn. She was just…gone!
But where? Mercy only had to think for another moment before she remembered the mulishly rebellious expression on her sister’s face while Papa had reprimanded her for being so interested in the Texans and the town whores. You had only to tell Charity to forget about a thing to guarantee that that was all she could think about, Mercy reminded herself. Dear Lord, could Charity possibly have been so foolish as to go over to the saloons, in search of her towheaded drover?
With a sinking heart Mercy realized that was just where her foolish sister must have gone.
Her heart pounding, she stole back through the darkened house and into their bedroom. A quick check of the nails on the wall revealed that Charity had taken her Sunday skirt and the Mexican blouse Papa had said was too sheer to wear except at home, as well as her high-buttoned Sunday boots.
Charity had no idea what she was getting into! Mercy had had no chance to have that talk she’d promised herself to have with her younger sister, for Charity had gone up to bed while Mercy was still saying good-night to her father’s congregation, and Mercy had found her with her face turned to the wall, apparently asleep. She was going to have to rescue the foolhardy girl from the consequences of her folly, Mercy realized, but to do so would mean braving the vice-ridden dens of depravity herself! And if their father discovered what they’d done, neither one of them would be able to sit down for a week, let alone leave the house. But she couldn’t just leave Charity to her fate, as much as the silly girl deserved it.
She stared at the remaining dresses hanging from the nails on the wall. Which of them would look enough like the garb worn by the whores that she wouldn’t be stopped at the swinging doors of the saloons, yet not encourage drunken cowboys to treat her as fair game while she searched for her sister?
Chapter Four