Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (2 page)

The kitchen only got warmer as the morning went on, and Izzy sighed with relief when Catie, Ree’s usual helper, came in to take over.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said to Ree. “Megrim this morning wouldn’t let go.” Then she saw Izzy. “Lord, child, don’t try to carry all that at once. Give that to me, here.” Catie was slender, red-cheeked, and blunt-spoken, and rumor had it she’d been born across the River, in
the States, though she never spoke of it, or anything before coming to Flood two years before.

“Sit, eat something,” Catie said. “You’re still a growing girl, and if I know Sundays by now, odds are you won’t have a chance to sit again until supper.”

Izzy willingly sat at the long worktable and tucked into the corn dodgers and cold pork Catie handed her, then wiped the grease carefully off her fingers before rinsing her plate and cup. She waited a moment, but the two of them seemed to be knowing exactly where to be and what to do, with no more need of her. Izzy returned her apron to its hook and left them to their work.

It was still early by the saloon’s usual hours, and the main room was quieter than she was used to. Izzy knew that she should take advantage of the time, get to her usual chores before the day got busy. The saloon officially opened midmorning, but sometimes someone wandered in earlier off the road, and Iktan never turned anyone away, serving up coffee and whiskey to the men—and some women—who came in.

Instead, she sat on the wide wooden stairs leading to the second level where the living quarters were, tucked her skirts up under her legs, and watched the others.

Iktan was nowhere to be seen, although his apron and rag lay across the gleaming wooden bar that filled much of the left-hand wall. Young Sarah was helping Feeny set up the tables, the girl as usual more trouble than help. Alice, at ten the youngest and newest saloon girl, was sweeping the floor, while her brother, Aaron, wound the mechanism of the striking clock. They’d come to Flood over the winter, half-starved and terrified, dropped off by a stern-faced man with a road marshal’s badge. Their parents had been outlaws, and nobody else would take them, certain the twins would be trouble, too.

The boss had promised to beat it out of them, if so.

The boss had beaten her once. She had been their age and spoken rudely to a customer who’d insulted her. The boss had taken her side
in public, but that morning, after the saloon closed, she had been summoned to his office. Marie had assigned her chores to keep her standing up the next day, for mercy.

The boss had a temper, yes, and a strong hand, but never undeserved. Every now and again, a gospel sharp would come to Flood. He’d set up outside the saloon—never coming in, despite the boss’s own invitation—and would preach for hours in his coat and collar, sunrise to sundown, about how the devil was evil, the devil was wrong, the devil was a risk to their immortal souls and ruining these lands, beside; that without him, the high plains would be fertile, the rivers lush even in summer, and no one would ever die of hunger or thirst or native attack.

Izzy had never been sick, never gone hungry, never been threatened by real danger—at most, a customer might tug at her braid or pat her backside until one of the women distracted him, took his attention back where it belonged. She was safe here.

She thought about that, and again about what she knew of the States, still in turmoil after their rebellion, and Spain’s holdings south and far west of them, where everyone bowed to the Church.

People didn’t bow in the Territory. Preachermen and gospel sharps here would call to you, cajole and harangue you, but nobody had to listen to them who didn’t have a mind to. You just went somewhere else until they were gone.

But no matter how much she thought on her options, of Nueva España or the States, or the wild lands far to the north, they slipped through her thoughts like trying to catch minnows, too slick to hold. She couldn’t imagine herself there . . . but she couldn’t imagine this, either, doing the same thing tomorrow she’d done every night before.

But she would be an adult, come sundown. She would be free.

Izzy had said the word “free” so many times in her head, she didn’t know what it meant anymore. Ree’s words came back to her: “First know what you want.” How could she know what she wanted when she’d never wanted for anything her whole life?

With the front doors open to the street, the sounds of the town filtered in: voices raised in greeting, the occasional clop of hooves or rattle of wagons, a horse’s neigh or dog’s bark. She heard the laundryman’s voice: fresh linens were being delivered. Inside the saloon, though, it was hushed, the occasional scrape of a chair or clink of a glass, Alice’s broom on the floor, and the sound of cards in the boss’s hands.

He’d come in while she was thinking, sitting down at his favorite table while everyone worked around him. His hair gleamed dark red now in the dusty light, slicked back and curled down to the turn of his collar, a neat goatee turning silver trimmed close against his bronzed jaw. Only his eyes never changed, golden brown and deep as the moon.

He knew she was watching him.

“What should I do?” she asked, not raising her voice a bit.

“Your cards, your call,” he said, slicing open a new deck and spreading it out underneath his hand. “All I can do is wait and see how they’re played.”

An entirely unsatisfactory answer. Izzy rested her chin on her hands, her elbows on her knees, and watched him deal out the cards to invisible players. Supple hands, strong wrists, his shirtsleeves pulled back to show the sinews moving under his skin. The working girls said he was a particular lover; only a few ever felt his touch, despite what the preachermen said. He liked women; he liked men. But he liked them willing. That was more than she could say about some of the men who’d come into the saloon. You knew them, the way they looked, the way they moved. You learned to tell, and evade, and not give them the chance to make trouble.

If they did, the boss gave them what they came for, twice over, and they never came back again.

“Tell me about my parents,” she said.

“They were young. And stupid.” He said it without condemnation; stupidity was a natural state. “In over their heads and looking for a way out.”

“But there wasn’t one.” She knew the story by heart but liked hearing him tell it, anyway.

“No. There wasn’t. They’d planted themselves in Oiwunta territory without asking permission, built themselves a house and had themselves a child, and never once thought there might be a price to pay.”

Everything had a price. Every resident of Flood knew that. Everyone who survived a year in the Territory knew that. “And then the Oiwunta came.”

“They came back from the summer hunting grounds and found a cabin in their lands, where the creek turned and watered the soil, and the deer had roamed freely.” He set aside the deck of cards and slit open another pack, fanning the pasteboards easily, frowning as he did so.

The backs of the boards were dark blue, pipped with silver. The last pack had been pipped in gold. They got a new shipment in from the East every month, and the old ones were burned so nobody could say the cards were worn or marked.

“That was offense given, thrice over. The Oiwunta would have been within their rights to kill everyone, burn the cabin down, and steal all that was within.” He paused, fingers splayed over the cards. “Although it’s easier to steal, then burn. They’re a tricky folk to predict, though.” He smiled, closed-mouthed, as though that pleased him.

The natives didn’t come to Flood, mostly; the boss said they had their own ways of getting into trouble, didn’t need him for it.

“But they didn’t,” she said, bringing the story back to her parents.

“They didn’t. They’d been watching, the Oiwunta had, watching what happened elsewhere when settler folk moved in, and they were smart—smarter than your parents, not that it took much doing. The strangers could stay, but they had to pay. Just once, but something that would tie them to the land, tie them to the welfare of the tribe. Their child.”

“Me.”

“You.” The boss shrugged, shuffled the cards, and laid down a new hand on the felt, all his attention on the pasteboard. “They could
have had other children; if they wanted to make a go of it out there, they’d have to have other children, take in orphans, or hire help from somewhere else. But they were stupid, like I said. They refused. And the Oiwunta burned ’em out. Stole everything they had but left ’em alive.”

“And then they came here,” Marie added as she passed by, unable to resist adding her piece. Marie had been here then. Marie, Izzy thought, had always been here, much like the devil himself. She had the smooth skin and straight back of a young woman, but she had always been here, for as long as Izzy could recall.

“To the saloon?” she asked.

“To Flood,” the boss said. “And, eventually, here.”

Everyone who came to Flood came to the saloon, eventually. To see, to deal, to press their luck, or to pay homage. The newspapers back East called everything this side of the Mudwater the Devil’s West, but Flood especially was the devil’s town. He came and he went, but you could always find him there if you came calling. And people did, even if they didn’t always know they was looking for him.

“Nothing but the clothes on their backs and a single horse—and you, little mite, all wide-eyed and closed mouth, barely walking. Didn’t say a word, even when your daddy handed you over.” The boss chuckled, looking up at her then. “Thought I was getting a quiet one. Proof even I can be wrong.”

She remembered that, maybe. Her father was a hard-handed blur in her memory, and her mother only a soft voice and tears, but she remembered being handed over, the boss’s face peering down into hers, and him promising that she’d never be sick, never be hungry, never be lonely, so long as she worked for him.

The boss kept his promises.

“What happened to them after that?”

“They took the money from your indenture and they left town.”

“Where did they go?” She had never asked that question before, either, in all the times he’d told the story.

“Back south across the Knife? Or headed north, maybe. No idea.”

They weren’t his; he didn’t worry about them.

Izzy thought about that for a minute, then got up from the steps and headed for the storeroom. If the laundryman had been here, there were linens to fold and put away. Her birthday didn’t mean there weren’t still chores to be done.

“You thinking of following them?” Sarah was nine and not a saloon girl; her mother was one of the faro dealers, so she helped out and generally got petted and spoiled by everyone. She perched on the edge of the worktable now, watching while Izzy worked.

“Of course not,” Izzy said, sorting the linens into piles, a familiar, mindless routine. “Why would I?”

“They’re your parents.” Sarah’s eyes went wide when Izzy shrugged. She liked hearing the stories, liked imagining the house she’d been born in, on the banks of a creek with fierce natives lined up outside on their painted ponies, strong and true. But the people who had birthed her had less relevance than the farmers and gamblers who came through Flood, and left even less of a mark on her life.

“You gonna stay?” Sarah’s voice was hopeful.

“I don’t know.”

Until now, it had been a story, like the story of how she came to Flood, only she could change this story, play out all the endings she could imagine. But at the end of the day, she would be sixteen for real. The term her parents had sold her into would end, and in the eyes of the law, she would be a legal adult. She could choose to sign an employment contract, name her own terms . . . or she could leave.

The possibilities taunted her, ticking down the hours until she had to give the boss an answer. Stay, and her future was decided. She would never be ill, or lonely, never be without food or shelter. It seemed foolish to consider any other choice, and yet, and yet. Izzy pressed her
hands into the pile of linen and closed her eyes. And yet, the thought of remaining as she was filled her with upset, like a bird trapped inside a too-small cage. She was ungrateful; she was a fool for wanting more.

Especially since she could not say what that more might be.

“Izzy?”

“Take these to the storeroom,” she said, pushing the folded linens into Sarah’s arms. “I’ve other things to do.”