Wicked Wyoming Nights (10 page)

Cord’s open and friendly eyes made him look amazingly attractive, and Ella wondered how Eliza felt about this surprising young man.

“Now that brings us back to you.” she said.

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“What do you expect to get out of this? You needn’t try sweet-talking me into thinking you’re out to build good relations with the homesteaders and merchants. I’m not a fool. And whatever reason you have to think Eliza Smallwood will welcome this intervention, her uncle is liable to refuse to allow her to have anything to do with it if he thinks you’re behind it.”

“I was hoping you could front this whole thing so he wouldn’t have to know I had anything to do with it.”

“And Eliza?”

“She’s not one to make trouble.”

“Nor know how to handle it once it’s stirred up. You can bet your last maverick Ira Smallwood will make her life miserable if he discovers your hand in this.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but I don’t think he will.”

“Why not? He’s completely selfish.”

“I had a little talk with him,” Cord said with a deprecating smile, “and explained he ought to take better care of his niece if he didn’t want someone else to do the job for him.”

Ella stared; you never could tell about these quiet ones. Here was a great big lump of a man never showing the slightest interest in any of the women only too anxious to throw themselves at him. But let a shy, schoolteacher type show up, and he not only takes the trouble to see to her welfare, he decides it’s time Buffalo has a schoolhouse and wastes no time in seeing it gets one. And all the while no one is supposed to know he has anything to do with it. Rather clever, this cowboy, and clearly determined to get what he wants.

“I’ll take on your project, but I never knew a good deed that didn’t lead to a lot of bother and aggravation. How soon do you want this schoolhouse?”

“Would the end of the week be too soon?”

Ella gaped.

“I don’t see any sense in putting off things,” he explained.

“No, and the sooner we give Eliza a chance to get started the better,” Ella said, faint but recovering. “You leave things to me.”

“The boys and I will be willing to help.”

“I hope you won’t take offense, but it might be best if you didn’t. There’s a lot of bad feeling toward big ranchers, if not you directly, and I’d just as soon not be a party to causing any ruckus.”

“That’s okay with me, ma’am, but it’s not all I came for.”

“You got something else in your craw?” Ella’s curiosity was aroused.

“Yes, ma’am, I do.”

“Then out with it. I never thought you’d be bashful over anything.”

“It isn’t that I’m bashful exactly, but I’m afraid you might say I’ve overstepped my limits. You might even be so displeased you’d withdraw your offer to help with the schoolhouse.”

“I can’t imagine what you can be thinking of that’s so terrible, but as the schoolhouse is a benefit to the town, I’ll try and keep an open mind.”

“It’s about Miss Smallwood going to Lavinia Pruitt’s every night.” Ella’s look of amiability began to frost over. “It’s not fitting for a nice girl to know about women like that, much less talk to them and know what goes on in that place.”

Ella thawed completely. “I’ve told Ira Smallwood a dozen times if I’ve told him once he should be ashamed of himself, but he never listens,” she said.

“That’s because he doesn’t have another choice. Eliza won’t stop singing, so that’s not the way out either. The only solution I see is for some decent woman to keep her belongings for her.” A weaker man than Cord would have begun to study the carpet or the wallpaper, but he heroically engaged Ella’s baleful glare.

“Are you saying I should allow Eliza to bring those disgraceful clothes into my house and help her get herself up to look like some Hell-bound harlot?” she demanded, her ample bosom swelling with indignation.

“No. I’m asking if you won’t help a young lady who has no place to go but a whorehouse and no one to see after her but a madam.”

“Phew! When you go after something, you use your teeth.”

Then you’ll help her?”

“How can I refuse when you put it like that?”

“I never thought you would.”

“Cord Stedman, you’re a conniving devil. I never met a man in my life with more gall, and any female who allows you to lend her a hand, much less talk to you for as long as five minutes, is weak in the head.”

“I sure do appreciate all the trouble you’re taking,” Cord said with a broad smile that made Ella’s knees weak.

“Get out of this house before you talk me into something that’ll cause trouble between me and Mr. Baylis. I’ve given my word, so I’ll keep it, but don’t let that fool you into thinking I’m grateful for your visit, because I’m not. And to think I didn’t go see Anna Maude because she’s such a complaining female. Let that be a lesson to you, Ella Baylis. The Lord visits plagues on them that seek to evade their Christian duty.”

“Is that how you see me, as a plague?”

That’s a nice word compared to what I’m liable to call you unless things works out a sight better than I expect. Now you get out of here and go look after your cows. Come back in a week or two and we’ll see what progress I’ve made.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Lavinia shouted crossly in answer to the imperious knocking at her front door; the brightly colored robe she threw over her shoulders did little to conceal her straining bosom and deep cleavage. “Of course you girls are too busy to do a small thing like open a door,” she remarked caustically to three scantily clad young women lounging in the sitting room, waiting for the first customers of the afternoon.

Lavinia flung open the door with a jerk. “We ain’t open—”

Then cover yourself up. Nobody would ever guess it to look at you.” Ella Baylis was at the door, and if one could judge by the fire in her eyes and her flaring nostrils, there was at least one dragon in her pedigree.

“What are you doing here?” gasped Lavinia.

“Let me in and I’ll tell you,” Ella stated, and marched past Lavinia without waiting for an invitation. “I bet you wouldn’t keep a
man
waiting on your stoop.” Ella came to a halt about a half-dozen steps into the hall and turned slowly, her widening eyes taking in every detail of the gaudily decorated interior. “I came for Eliza Smallwood’s things. It’s a disgrace for a respectable girl to know about this place, much less come here every night.”

“If you think you can come in here and insult me—”

“I would if I would lower myself to speak to you,” Ella stated somewhat illogically. “Give me Eliza’s things without a lot of bother, and I’ll never set foot in this place again.”

“Polly,” Lavinia called up the stairs with a shriek that was nearly impossible to identify as human. “Have Lucy bundle up Eliza’s things and bring them to the front hall. And step on it.”

“Make sure she doesn’t forget anything. I don’t want to have to come back here again.”

“Get everything!” screeched Lavinia, before turning on Ella. “Now get out before I throw you out.”

“It’d take more than you to move me from any place I wanted, to stay,” Ella snorted contemptuously. “I’m not leaving until every piece of that child’s clothes has passed through that door ahead of me.”

“To hear you talk, you’d think we had the plague.”

“
You’re
the plague. If Eliza would take my advice, she’d burn anything that came out of this pesthole. Stand aside. Now that I’m here, I might as well see what a carious looks like.” She started down the hall, looking into one empty parlor after another, Lavinia following helplessly in her wake. “Sodom and Gomorrah can’t be anything to this place,” Ella said in wonder. But her eyes positively bulged from her head when they came to rest on the three girls.

“Hussies!” she exclaimed, indignation, condemnation, and consternation ringing in her tone. “You should be ashamed to get out of your bathtub without more on your bodies.”

“Now see here,” said Lavinia, firing up. “You can’t come marching in here and insult my girls.”

“Jezebels is what they are,” Ella exclaimed, snatching up a cover from one of the sofas and throwing it over the girls. “How dare you flaunt your shame.” The girls were unafraid of any cowboy living, but they shared an ingrained dread of a righteous woman.

“Leave if you don’t like what you see,” stormed Lavinia, who was not daunted by outraged virtue. “They’re the finest young ladies this side of St. Louis.”

“Young ladies!” shouted Ella, her eyes growing more enormous by the minute. “Tramps and strumpets is what they are, and it’s what they’ll remain until they stop painting themselves worse than any Indian.” She advanced upon Dorine and took her unresisting face into her hands. “You should be ashamed to call yourself a female,” she said contemptuously, and planting her thumb in the middle of Dorine’s pouting lips, smeared the heavy red lipstick in a broad line across her cheek and chin.

“Eeek!” shrieked Dorine, jumping to her feet to stare at herself in the mirror just as Ella, her wrath fully stoked, attacked the shrinking Belle.

“Pull your dress up,” Ella commanded, giving the thin garment a yank intended to draw it up over Belle’s exposed bosom. Instead, the flimsy material came away in Ella’s hand, and Belle stood up in her brassiere and panties. No one was more startled than Ella herself, but having begun a job, she was not one to leave it unfinished, and turned to her third victim. The girl wore her hair in thick, black mounds piled high on her head. Ella pulled out the large pin that held the heavy braids in place, and as the terrified girl shrieked and danced about, she gave the hair a vicious twitch. The whole thing came off revealing a head of thin, ordinary brown hair. “Your harlots don’t even offer genuine goods,” Ella intoned in righteous triumph.

Lavinia had never lacked courage, but the unprecedented events had occurred so quickly she stood with her mouth open and her own ample bosom in danger of escaping its token bondage. “Out!” she screamed, nearly hysterical. “Get out of my house immediately.”

“Not before I sweep this place clean,” vowed Ella, her blazing eyes lighting upon a large fan. “Get to your rooms and don’t come out till you’re decent,” she ordered, raising the fan over her head. Uttering a volley of shrill screams, the girls scampered out of the room. Lavinia gave a gasp and sat down in the middle of the floor.

Lucy entered the hall to find Ella standing over her mistress like a lioness at a kill.

“Are those Eliza’s things?” Ella asked with all the sangfroid of one making an ordinary request. Lucy nodded, speechless. “Then have the goodness to follow me. Do you help Miss Smallwood dress?” Again Lucy nodded. “Good. Bring her to my house in time to get ready for her performance tonight. This
woman
is unable to attend to her any longer.” Ella marched from the room, stepping over Lavinia with all the unconcern she would give a mud puddle after a spring rain.

Cord didn’t wait two weeks, or even one. Three days later he hailed Ella in the street, and on the following day he was on her porch before she’d finished lunch. When he stepped into her husband’s hardware store on the day after that, she boiled over.

“I never met a more impatient, pesky, bothersome man than you, Cord Stedman. You don’t give a body a moment’s rest.”

“Ella, you know better than to talk to a customer like that,” Ed Baylis said in mild surprise. “He’s liable not to come back.”

“And where’s he going to get his supplies? Over to Casper? You go on back to your barbed wire and pay no attention to me. Mr. Stedman knows what I’m talking about, and if he doesn’t know I don’t mean half of what I say, then he ought to.” Ed Baylis merely shook his head. He’d been married to Ella over thirty years and he’d never yet made a profit from interfering with her, or suffered a loss from letting her have her head.

“As for you, Mr. Cat-on-a-Skillet, the sooner that blessed school is up the better I’ll like it. You’ve hounded me until I’m worried to death.”

“Ma’am, you know I haven’t.”

“I don’t know any such thing, coming into a decent woman’s parlor looking too scrumptious for words, talking me senseless until I agreed to I don’t know what, and then dogging my heels to see it’s done. And don’t trouble yourself to deny it, because I don’t plan to listen to a word you say. The sooner this mess is over the sooner I can rest easy.”

“When will that be, ma am?” Cord asked with enough artful innocence to save him from having his face slapped, but enough saucy amusement to make her wish she’d done it anyway.

“This weekend. The wives jumped on the idea like a hen on a bug. They’ve bombarded Eliza with so many questions I’m almost afraid she’ll back out.”

“She won’t. You sure I can’t help?”

Ella considered a moment. “I don’t see why not if you come by yourself. It’ll give you a chance to mend a few fences as long as something doesn’t happen between now and then.”

But something did happen. The next day the body of a small rancher was found hanging from a tree in a gulch some miles from town. He had been taken away from his home eight days earlier by some deputy marshals whose papers were now presumed to be false. The poor man’s wife had not recognized anyone, but they were widely assumed to be in the hire of the big ranchers, and feeling was running high against those ranchers allied with the Association against the small ranchers and the homesteaders.