Soiled Dove (10 page)

She appraised her looks in the mirror and reached for a cloth next to the water pitcher. She dampened the cloth slightly and scrubbed most of the make-up from her face, leaving only a light dusting of powder to obscure the yellowing bruises. She looked into the mirror once again and the sight of herself almost took her breath away. With her hair tamed and her face showing the innocent look of a young woman of twenty, she felt like a new person, unspoiled and innocent. Was this how she looked to Jo Barclay that one night? She blinked back tears at the sight of the woman she should have been for the last four years.

She took a final glance at Amelia and slipped out of their room.

LORETTA STOPPED AND gazed at the sign in the window again. She took a deep breath, straightened the front of her dress, and grabbed the door handle.

The establishment was locked and she looked around, placing her hands on her hips. The café was next door to the Cattleman’s Saloon. Although it might look unseemly for a young woman to do so, she walked to the saloon entrance and pushed the doors open.

Memories of her days with Jack flooded back when she saw the long bar, two or three women lounging near the bar or on the laps of dusty-looking cowboys.

All heads turned toward her and she almost left.

Steeling herself, she marched up to the bar and waited for a middle-aged man with a handlebar moustache to saunter toward her.

“What can I do for you, miss?” he asked as he dried his hands on a towel.

“What time does the café next door open?”

“In about an hour.”

“Do you happen to know who I would need to speak to about the waitressing position?”

“You’re lookin’ at him.” He extended a hand over the bar. “Willis Manning.”

“Loretta Dig…Langford,” she returned as she shook his hand.

“New in town?”

“Just arrived today. My…um…brother-in-law is the new pastor at the Presbyterian church here.”

“And your husband?” Willis asked with a glance at her hands.

“My husband was killed in an accident last year.

His brother, Reverend Cyrus Langford, invited me to join him here.”

“Ah, I see. Do you have any experience?”

More than you’ll ever know.
“Some, but I’m a quick learner.”

“Don’t pay much,” Willis said, twisting the tip of his moustache.

“I don’t require much.”

“Can you cook?”

“I’ve been known to,” Loretta answered with a smile.

“My wife is the cook, but sometimes she gets sick or one of our kids does and she has to stay at home with ‘em. I usually close the café then.”

“I’m confident I could handle the job, Mr.

Manning. Have others applied?”

Willis laughed. “Nope. I’m a barkeep and my wife is a Mexican. Not exactly in the upper crust, if you know what I mean. If you want to give it a try, I’m willing to give you a shot. But I should warn you, Rosario is pretty picky about how things are done.

The café is hers. I opened the damn thing to shut up her naggin’. I can hire you, but if she ain’t happy with your work, she can fire you just as quick.”

“When can I start?”

“Is an hour too soon?”

“I’ll be here,” Loretta said, extending her hand again to seal the deal.

“Got a new girl for us to break in, Willis?” a woman’s voice asked.

Loretta recognized the smell of the perfume the woman was wearing. She had used it herself. She turned and saw the face of someone who looked to be in her mid- to late thirties, but it was hard to tell through the make-up. She didn’t look cheap, but had definitely been around more than one corral. The woman looked Loretta up and down, giving her a smile through ruby red lips. Finally extending an extremely white hand, she said in a confident voice,

“Mavis Calendar.” Loretta understood the inflection in Mavis’ voice. She was a prostitute and made no excuses for it. For an instant something in Mavis Calendar’s eyes told Loretta the woman knew who she had been. Loretta smiled back and took her hand.

“Loretta Langford.”

“I hired her to help out Rosario,” Willis interjected.

“Too bad,” Mavis said as she released Loretta’s hand and perused the young woman closely. “We could use some younger blood around here.”

Loretta opened her mouth to say something then thought better of it. Instead she turned back to Willis.

“I’ll be back in under an hour, Mr. Manning. Thank you so much.”

“I’ll let Rosario know to expect you.”

In her excitement Loretta couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel to tell Cyrus and Hettie about her new job. She turned and ran into the firm body of a tall cowboy who had just entered the saloon, followed by three other men who stepped around them and made their way to the bar. The cowboy’s hat was pushed back on his head, revealing a boyish face. His mouth leered down at Loretta as he grabbed her by the shoulders to steady her. Loretta inhaled the scent of dust and leather that wafted off the stranger.

“I…I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“Join me for a drink,” he said. “Then maybe you and me can get together upstairs for a little poke.

‘Bout time old Willis got some new girls in here.” He held onto her upper arm tightly and started toward the bar. “Lookie what I found, Pa.”

“She don’t work here, Clement,” Mavis said. She approached them and winked at Loretta. “Clement here don’t mean no harm,” she explained. “He don’t meet many proper women so his social skills leave a little to be desired.”

“Always been good enough for you, Mavis,”

Clement sneered.

“Your
money’s
always been good enough for me, sugar. Don’t confuse that with affection.”

Clement’s eyes blazed and his hand flashed out, catching Mavis with a glancing blow across the face.

When his grip loosened, Loretta seized the opportunity to jerk her arm away. Clement reached for her again. She side-stepped away and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him closer. The smile on his face vanished when she brought her knee up quickly into his groin. His hands flew to his crotch and he fell to his knees in front of the now heavily breathing Loretta. The snickers of the men at the bar came to an end when a gunshot rang out. All eyes turned toward the saloon entrance.

Loretta saw the silhouettes of three people standing in the entrance to the saloon and backed away quickly. The figure in the center held a still-smoking rifle pointed toward the ceiling. Loretta could smell the scent of burned gunpowder and watched as the rifle was lowered until it was parallel with the floor. When the men standing at the bar made a belated attempt to reach for their pistols the sound of a round being chambered was enough to stop their movements. Loretta doubted they would have had a chance against the weapon leveled at them.

“Stay off my property, Garner,” a deep husky voice said. Light from a front window fell across the stranger as she took a step closer to the bar, revealing a strong, handsome face with well-defined angular features and a square jaw. Loretta felt her heartbeat quicken as she realized the stranger holding the rifle was female. The woman’s hat was pushed back off her head and rested against her upper shoulders.

“We weren’t on your property, Clare,” an older man with graying hair and moustache growled.

“Everyone around here knows you don’t own that land you’re squatting on. It’s free range. You’re breaking the law by fencing it.”

“The cattle on it are mine.” The woman held a leather-gloved hand out toward a Hispanic man to her left. He placed a branding iron in her hand. She tossed it onto the barroom floor and it slid to the toe of Garner’s boot. “I think that belongs to you,” the woman snarled. “Took it out of a fire where some of
your
men were preparing to brand
my
cattle on
my
property.”

“Let’s go talk to the sheriff about that, Clare”

Garner said with a shrug. “I’m sure it was an honest mistake.”

“Everyone knows Beutler works for you,” the woman Garner called Clare said with a laugh. She gripped her rifle tightly and moved closer to the bar.

“Consider this your final warning, Garner. You won’t get another one.”

Loretta saw movement out of the corner of her eye as Clement reached for the branding iron on the floor.

“Watch out,” she said.

Clare turned her head in time to see Clement Garner close his fist around the iron. She swung the butt of her rifle back forcefully and caught him square in the face. Blood spurted from his broken nose and he howled in pain as she turned and shoved him onto his back with her boot. She brought the rifle around and pressed it against the young man’s forehead. His watering eyes widened in fear.

“Tell your boy not to do anything stupid, Thad,”

she snarled. “I’d hate to tell his mama he died because he’s a jackass.”

“Back off, Clement,” Garner ordered.

Clare pulled the rifle barrel back, leaving a deep, round imprint in the middle of Clement’s forehead.

“Let’s get on back to the ranch, boys,” Garner said. He took a step forward and stopped next to Clare. “We’ll finish this later, McIlhenney.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” she said softly.

Clare laid her rifle on the counter with a nod toward Willis Manning. As her two companions joined her, she pulled her hat off and ran a hand through shaggy brown hair that fell an inch or so above her shoulders.

“Ino, when we settle up here, check at the dry goods store to see if that wire I ordered has come in so we can get the hell out of here,” she said.

Loretta exhaled the breath she had been holding and glanced at the clock behind the bar. She would have to hurry to tell Cyrus about her new job and then get back for her first day of honest work. Before she turned to leave she leaned toward Mavis. “Who is that?’ she asked, motioning toward the woman at the bar.“Clare McIlhenney. Owns a ranch over near Spanish Peaks.”

“I’ve never seen a woman dress or act like that,”

Loretta said as her eyes scanned the rancher from head to toe. Clare wore chaps over her denim pants and scuffed boots. The long sleeves of her light blue shirt were rolled up to her elbows showing off well-muscled forearms.

“Them’s chaps,” Mavis said. “They protect a cowboy’s legs when he’s riding through heavy brush.

Some of it’s pretty thorny.”

“She seems a little thorny herself,” Loretta observed.

Mavis laughed. “When Clare first got here, she was soft as a down pillow. She had to toughen up or die. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Loretta watched as Mavis stepped next to the Hispanic cowboy with Clare McIlhenney as he picked up a shot glass and threw the contents into his mouth.

He grinned broadly when Mavis linked her arm in his and drew him into a full, hungry kiss.

“How long you in town for?” Loretta overheard Mavis ask.

“Overnight. Clare needs to pick up a few supplies.”

“Will I be seeing you later, sugar?”

“If you can make time for a lonely old vaquero,”

the man said with a laugh.

“I’ll always have time for you,” Mavis said seductively as she leaned closer to him.

Loretta watched Clare drain the contents of her shot glass in a single gulp. Her hair fell down into her eyes and she brushed it over her head with her hand again.

Another saloon hostess, wearing a low-cut, red and black gown that displayed ample cleavage and was split open from the floor to nearly her crotch, strolled down the stairs and looked around the room.

Her eyes stopped and a broad smile lit up her face.

“Clare!”

Clare barely had time to steel herself before the woman with dark chestnut hair flew into her arms.

Clare lifted her off the floor and spun her around in a tight circle before setting her down again.

“Good to see you again, Peg,” Clare said, leaning down to kiss the woman on a heavily rouged cheek.

Loretta backed toward the swinging door to the saloon, prepared to leave. She stopped in her tracks when Clare McIlhenney’s walnut-colored eyes met hers. Clare nodded at her before turning her attention back to the others standing near her and picked up a second shot glass.

LORETTA STOOD ON the boardwalk near the saloon for a few minutes. She had to return to the hotel and let Cyrus know she had found a job and would be starting immediately, but she needed a few minutes to gather her thoughts. She had never seen or met a woman like the rancher called Clare McIlhenney.

She was a woman who apparently thought nothing of walking into a bar or mingling with the saloon girls who were so obviously there to entertain men. Flashes of the night she spent with Josephine Barclay swept through her mind. Their arrangements were made secretly and Jo had entered through a back door before the male patrons arrived. Seeing a woman act so openly like a man was unusual, to say the least.

Perhaps everything was different in the west.

Finally setting her feet in motion, Loretta virtually ran back to the hotel and burst into the room she shared with Amelia and Hettie.

“Where have you been?” Amelia asked. “When I woke up you were gone without a note or anything.”

“Where’s Hettie?” Loretta asked, breathing heavily.

“She went to Cyrus’ room. They’re worried and gettin’ ready to search for you. Wait!” Amelia called out as Loretta left the room and walked toward Cyrus’ room. When her knock on the door was answered, she saw Cyrus’ scowling face.

“Where the devil were you? Hettie and Amelia have been sick with worry.”

“I’m sorry, Cyrus, but I’ve found a job. And I start in less than an hour. I came back to tell you I won’t be here until later tonight.”

“What kind of job?” Hettie asked suspiciously.

“Waitressing at the café next to the saloon. The owner of the saloon owns it. His wife runs it and needs help,” Loretta explained.

“I don’t like it, Retta. Being next door to a saloon, you don’t know what kind of trash may go there,”

Cyrus objected.

“It can’t be any worse than the trash I dealt with in St. Joe,” Loretta snapped. The hurt look on Cyrus’

face made her wish she could take the words back.

“I’m sorry, Cyrus,” Loretta said, placing her hand on his arm. “You have always been extremely kind to me. I…”