Two Brothers (6 page)

The prostitute shook her head, marveling. “If I did that, I’d just get beat up all over again.”

“Surely the marshal wouldn’t—”

Liza Sue’s smile was grim. “It isn’t Shay McQuillan I’m afraid of—he’d throw the feller in jail right enough. The next day, he’d get out, and come after me again, only it’d be a whole lot worse the second time. No, ma’am. If Marshal McQuillan asks me how I got myself all black and blue, I’ll tell him I fell down the stairs. You say different, and I’ll swear on the preacher’s prayer book that you’re a liar.”

“Surely you don’t mean to go back to that place?”

“Where else would I go?”

Aislinn flung out her hands in frustration and nearly
overset the lantern. “I don’t know. I could speak to Eugenie—somebody runs off to get married at least once a month, and they always need help—”

“You really are addlepated,” Liza Sue scoffed, but her tones were hollow and her smeared eyes were enormous with a yearning she couldn’t quite hide. “I step foot over the threshold of that place and they’ll toss me right out again, quick as they would that old dog by the back step. Quicker, probably.”

Aislinn considered the dilemma. Liza Sue had certainly strayed from the fold, but she was well spoken and obviously intelligent. “Do you have any other clothes? If we scrubbed that stuff off your face—”

“We’d never fool anybody.”

“I can’t solve the whole problem myself, you know,” Aislinn pointed out. “For my part, I don’t see where you’ve got a whole lot to lose.”

“You’d lie for me? Why?”

“I wouldn’t be lying, you would.”

Liza Sue giggled tentatively. “It won’t work. I’ve got these bruises, and somebody’s sure to remember me from the Yellow Garter.”

“There are a lot of ways to get hurt—you said as much yourself. And if someone recognizes you, well, it seems unlikely to me that they’d want to admit to frequenting the saloon, not in respectable surroundings like the hotel dining room, anyway.”

The other woman was silent for a few moments. “I don’t have any clothes. Jake Kingston took them away from me when I signed on at the Yellow Garter.”

“Then I’ll give you one of my dresses. I have two to spare.” Another silence. The brindle dog came around the corner and tried to lick Aislinn’s face. She pushed him away in a distracted motion of one hand.

“Why would you want to do this?” Liza Sue asked. “When those hotel folks find out, they’ll send you packing, right along with me.”

“That’s probably true,” Aislinn confessed. “But I’ve got somewhere to go.” She was thinking of the homestead, with its sagging roof, broken windows and overgrown vegetable patch. She
almost
had somewhere to go, and in another month, if she scrimped, she’d finally have the funds to send for her brothers.

“Pardon me, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

Aislinn sighed. “I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s not that I’m particularly noble or anything like that …”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I can’t leave you like this, Liza Sue. My conscience will chew me up alive if I do.” Aislinn stood, resigned to her duty. “If you don’t come with me, I swear I’ll go and report this whole incident to the marshal. You can say I’m lying, but it will be your word against mine.”

“Hellfire and spit,” Liza Sue muttered, getting up. “You just don’t listen, do you?”

“Come on. You can hide in the pantry while I go upstairs and find you something to wear. We’ll stuff those clothes into the stove and burn them.”

“You won’t either,” came the protest, but Liza Sue tottered along behind as Aislinn led the way toward the back door. Mercifully, no one had bolted it.

“Hush, now,” Aislinn warned, as they crept inside. Every board in the kitchen floor seemed to creak as they crossed the room, but soon Liza Sue was safely tucked away in the pantry, with the smoky stump of a tallow candle for light. She looked small and fearful in the gloom, like a bit of colored paper crumpled up and discarded.

“You’ll come back, won’t you? You won’t forget I’m here?”

“I won’t forget,” Aislinn assured her. “Just be quiet.”

She was halfway up the rear stairs, the lantern in one hand, when Eugenie appeared on the landing with a lamp of her own. “Aislinn? What’s the matter? You feelin’ peaky?”

Aislinn’s heart pumped with sudden and painful force. “I was hungry,” she said, and hated herself for the lie. Eugenie was kind, for all her gruff words and ways, and she might have sympathized with Liza Sue’s situation. In the end, though, Aislinn couldn’t take the risk of explaining; there was simply too much at stake. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

Eugenie assessed her in silence, as though weighing what she’d said. Then, with a weary sigh, she nodded and went back to her own room.

Aislinn got out her spare dress, a plain green gown of lightweight wool, praying no one would recognize it, and took the stairs one step at a time, barely daring to breathe. Liza Sue was still cowering in the pantry, but she’d found a piece of bread and was nibbling on it. She looked hungrily at the woolen dress.

“Put this on,” Aislinn whispered crisply. The lamp was burning low and the candle had already guttered out. Soon, they’d both be in the dark. “I’ll get you some water and soap.”

“How are you going to account for me just appearing all of the sudden?” Liza Sue demanded, but she was stripping off her disreputable gown. “This whole plan is plain crazy—”

“Maybe so, but it’s the only one we have. You’ll sleep in the storeroom next to the dormitory. In the morning, we’ll pretend that you’ve just arrived in town. You can present yourself at the kitchen door and ask for work.”

“What if they say no?”

“Oh, for mercy’s sake,” Aislinn hissed, “stop fussing. We’ll worry about that when and if it happens. I told you, Eugenie’s always looking for help.” She brought a basin of cold water, a sliver of soap and an old dish towel from the kitchen. “Here. Wash your face. Have you eaten? There are some corn biscuits left from supper, and there should be some cold venison, too.”

Liza Sue was already scouring industriously, and it
must have hurt plenty, she was so badly bruised. “I’d be obliged for a biscuit,” she said.

The second trip up the stairs was more harrowing than the first, for this time Liza Sue was right on Aislinn’s heels. They’d left the lantern behind, on the kitchen table, and outside, the brindle dog began to howl plaintively, calling to the absent moon.

There was a line of light under Eugenie’s door, and as they passed Aislinn could hear the steady squeak of a rocking chair within. She held her breath and did not release it until they’d reached the threshold of the storeroom.

“Good night,” Aislinn whispered, after fetching the blanket from her bed.

Liza Sue’s eyes glittered in the gloom. She nodded and slipped back into the darkness.

Chapter 3

T
HE MARSHAL CAME TO BREAKFAST
the next morning, looking all scrubbed and spit-shined, and put in an rder for ham and eggs. That wouldn’t have been strange, but for the fact that he’d already been in, an hour before, and consumed a double portion of corned beef hash.

Aislinn, preoccupied with the logistics of getting Liza Sue from the storeroom to the back door, where she could ask for work without arousing too much suspicion, put it down to a hearty appetite. After all those months of seedy living, Marshal McQuillan was surely in sore need of nourishment. Out of loyalty to Eugenie, who thought highly of the man, she even managed a hasty, fretful smile.

“You are a lovely creature,” the marshal drawled, rising to leave. He flashed that infamous grin, but to Aislinn’s surprise and relief, it didn’t affect her as it had before. “Maybe I’ll see you tonight, at the dance?”

Aislinn bit her lower lip. The hotel manager put on a social, with music and fruit punch, the first Saturday of every month, but the maids and kitchen and dining room employees were not allowed to attend, lest there be an implication of impropriety. “I’m afraid that’s against the rules,” she said.

“That,” he replied smoothly, taking up his hat, “is a pity. In fact, I’d say there ought to be a law.”

Nearby, a red-eyed cowboy with bad teeth slammed down his china mug. “I need more coffee,” he barked. “Right now.”

The marshal took the large blue enamel coffeepot from Aislinn’s hand with easy grace and refilled the cowboy’s cup, bending low to speak to him. “What you need,” he said mildly, “is a lesson in manners. Talk to the lady that way again, and you’ll get one that’ll stick with you till your dying day.”

The other man backed down, but he didn’t look happy about it.

“Thank you,” Aislinn said uncertainly, taking back the coffeepot.

“Anytime,” said the marshal, and left the dining hall. A glance around the room showed that every woman in the place, whether serving or being served, watched him go. Including Eugenie, though her expression was markedly different from those of the others.

“What do you suppose has gotten into him?” she inquired, under her breath, when Aislinn passed her on the way back to the kitchen for another pot of coffee.

“I don’t know,” Aislinn answered honestly, “but I think I like him a little better than I did yesterday.” For the first time since she’d come to Prominence to work, she found herself lamenting that she couldn’t go to the hotel dance. Now that the marshal had apparently lost that irritating ability to slay her with a single, lopsided smile, she wasn’t so eager to avoid him.

Sometime during the busy clean-up process between breakfast and dinner, Liza Sue must have seen her chance and slipped downstairs, for when Aislinn went into the kitchen for a rest and a cup of tea, the other woman was there, seated primly across the trestle table from Eugenie, lying like a snake-oil salesman. She’d been in Prominence
awhile, she said, staying with relations, but she’d worn out her welcome and they couldn’t keep her anymore. The bruises? Yes, well, she was some marked up, wasn’t she? She’d caught her toe in the hem of her dress while going after a jar of apricot preserves and fallen right down the cellar stairs. It was a lucky thing she hadn’t broken her neck.

Eugenie listened inscrutably, and pondered for a while. Aislinn knew then that she didn’t believe the story; Eugenie had made her own way in the world for a great many years, and by her own admission, she’d “come up hard,” with no folks to speak of. She glanced Aislinn’s way once, making it known that she was nobody’s fool, and then cleared her throat.

“Well, girl,” she said to Liza Sue, “if you don’t mind making up beds and emptying slop jars of a morning, there’s a place for you here. You’ll have your room and board and four dollars a month. We’ll provide you with proper work clothes.”

Liza Sue’s poor, swollen and discolored face was suffused with color, and her eyes shone with startled excitement. “Oh, thank you, ma’am,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Humph,” Eugenie replied. “We’ll see how happy you are after a day of hard work. Cook here will give you some breakfast, and Aislinn can show you where you sleep.” She hauled her bulky body up off the bench at the trestle table. “Oh, and one more thing. We abide by stern rules around here. You’re free to socialize if you have the inclination, but we expect you in by eight o’clock at night. You got courting to do, you get it done afore then. You’ll go to church on Sunday mornings whether you’ve a mind to or not, and write to your people once a week if you have any. There’s no smoking, no swearing and no drinking permitted, and if I ever catch a man above the second-floor landing, day or night, there’ll be hell to pay. I reckon I’ve made myself clear.”

“Yes, ma’am” Liza Sue agreed, with an eager nod. She might have been pretty, though it was hard to tell, her features were so distorted.

Eugenie gave Aislinn another long and thoughtful assessment. “See your friend gets settled in proper,” she said, and went on about her business without another word.

Aislinn led Liza Sue up the rear stairs and showed her the small dormitory, where there were two empty cots to choose from. The newcomer selected the one nearest the window and stood with her hand resting reverently on the plain iron bedstead, as though it were something grand. When she looked at Aislinn, there were tears shimmering in her eyes.

“I wouldn’t have believed it was possible,” she said, in a small, tremulous voice. “I thought she’d see right through me, and show me the door.”

She saw right through the both of us
, Aislinn thought, still mystified. “Eugenie is like a mother hen—she’ll squawk and flap her wings now and then, but heaven help the rooster who tries to get to one of her chicks. And Liza Sue, she means what she says about following the rules—a few months ago a girl stayed out all night after a town picnic, and Eugenie bought her a stagecoach ticket home and sent her packing. No amount of crying and begging would change her mind about it.”

Liza Sue wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand. “I won’t do nothing to ruin my chance,” she vowed. “I mean to work like nobody she’s ever seen, save my money, and get a new start someplace far away from here.”

Aislinn had dreams of her own, and they centered around bringing her brothers out from Maine before winter came to the far West, and making a home out of a tumbledown cabin and a few acres of good land. If Thomas and Mark did odd jobs around town, and she kept
her position with the hotel until spring, when they could put in a garden, they might just make it. She certainly understood Liza Sue’s determination and high hopes, and she respected her desire to make a decent life for herself. “You’d best go and find Eugenie,” she said. “She’ll have a list of things for you to do.”