Much Ado About Madams (16 page)

She bounded off the porch of the Comfort Palace and hollered, “Reese, are you heading into a town where there’s a store?”

“
Yes, ma’am.” He chuckled at the sight of her. She must have had a hard night. Her red hair lopsided and she wore twice as much makeup as usual. She reminded him of the pet raccoon he’d had when he was a boy. That cursed raccoon never would mind worth a tinker’s damn, either. “What’s so all-fired important that you’d get up before you ever went to bed?”

“
Didn’t go to bed, yet. I need you to buy something.” She looked at nothing in the sky and frowned, as if forgetting something. “Just a minute.” She dashed back into the building. A few minutes later she brought out a bulging flour sack.

He took the bundle. It looked suspiciously like food. The last time he’d accepted food, he’d ended up with a crazed woman on his hands.

“
Just a bite to eat,” Fannie explained. “I didn’t know if you were headed to your ranch or to a town.”

“
I can get you something. What do you want?”

Fannie handed him some money. “This here’s from Miss Sharpe. She’d like a dress this color...” she dug into her pocket and produced a piece of green silk material and handed it to him. “It’s green. Now be sure to show this to the clerk and make sure the dress comes close to matching this color.”

Reese saw colors just fine, but Fannie insisted that he didn’t, so she’d assigned each woman her own color. She’d given him a swatch of cloth for each of them, and now he had one for Miss Sharpe, too. He could see green, though, and he knew the cloth color matched the schoolmarm’s eyes. Yes, green was a good choice. He put it in his wallet with the rest of the samples. “What’s she want a new dress for?”

“
Now if that ain’t the dumbest question I ever heard.”

He hadn’t thought so. There wasn’t exactly a plethora of fancy balls in this territory—a far cry from his days at Harvard, to be sure—and she had at least three or four dresses that he’d seen. Plenty for Dickshooter.

But Fannie was right. He’d never known a woman who didn’t get all gushy over a new dress. That’s why he got a kick out of buying clothes for the whores when he had the money to do it. They beamed and twirled their skirts for days after he brought their new dresses back. Hats, though, he didn’t understand. Women, whether in Boston or Silver City, wore the ugliest hats in all God’s creation.

“
Here’s her money.” Fannie shoved several bills at him, enough to buy a real fancy gown.

He wouldn’t take any woman’s money. “I’ll get it. Tell her to consider the dress payment for all her time and trouble.”

Fannie raised an eyebrow, but he ignored it. She handed him a piece of paper. “Here’s her measurements.”

He started to read the paper, but thought better of it and shoved the schoolteacher’s most private information into his wallet with the fabric. He didn’t want to know her measurements anyway.

A lie, of course, and not a white one, either. He desperately wanted to know, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to look while Fannie stood there staring at him. Or through him. A man couldn’t keep too many secrets from her.

Stuffing the wallet in his vest, he took up the reins. “Hank’s gone. Said he was heading up north to Montana. He probably thinks there’s some easy money to be had in the mines up there. I don’t suppose he’ll be back before I am, so you ought to be safe enough with the twins and Gus.”

Fannie nodded. “I s’pect so.”

He tipped his hat. “I’ll be back in three or four days.” He nudged Buster to a walk, then called over his shoulder, “and I damned well don’t want to find anyone sleeping in my new room when I get back!”

She waved and grinned. It was an ornery grin.

* * * * *

Fannie yawned as she took the pins out of her hair. It had been a long day and night—and morning. Staying up until six to catch Reese was necessary, but a blasted nuisance. The old body just can’t take the wear it used to, she thought. Four hours of sleep hadn’t been nearly enough.

She splashed water on her face and put on her nightgown. Just as she plopped into bed, someone knocked. She groaned. One of the girls probably thought she was in love again. She stayed in bed and called, “Come on in.”

The door opened and in walked every damned one of the girls, including Sadie. She groaned again. This wouldn’t be a five-minute talk. Their worried faces told her they expected trouble.

All she wanted was sleep, but it looked like the whores planned to have a discussion whether she wanted to or not. At least she didn’t have to deal with Miss Sharpe, too.

“
Reese’s new foreman, Charley, says there’s cattle missing,” Sadie announced.

“
Good gravy!” Fannie pulled the pillow over her eyes to curb a dull ache that threatened to grow into a monster of a headache. “Why’s that a reason to keep me up?”

“
I had a gent who said they’ve been missing cattle from their spread, too,” added Trinket.

“
We all did,” reported Petunia. “I made a feller stop right when he didn’t want to and tell me.” She giggled and went on, “They’ll tell you ‘most anything at certain times.”

“
Ain’t that the truth! I had another cowpuncher, too,” added Trinket, “and you better believe, once I got ahold of his
cojones
, he told me all about it.”

Chrissy and the rest of the girls laughed. Fannie wished they’d just leave. Tired and achy, she didn’t feel like joking about men’s weaker points.

After the laughter died down, Holly said, “When I was serving drinks, I heard one old puncher say that every ranch around has lost cattle except Reese’s.”

“
Remember the sheriff came here the other day, wanting to talk to him,” Trinket reminded.

“
You leave that sheriff alone,” warned Fannie. “You’re setting yourself up for some hurt if you mess around with a lawman.”

Trinket huffed up. “Back off, Fannie. I ain’t taking up with no lawman and you know it. I just said that maybe the sheriff s’pects Reese of stealing those cattle.”

Fannie’s headache grew and she rubbed her temples. “Sadie, get me a sup of laudanum. I have a headache. And you ladies get to your rooms and go to sleep. We don’t have to talk about this now—Reese’s out of town for a few days.”

“
Aw, Fannie,” protested Chrissy. “We need to make a plan.”

“
In the morning,” Fannie insisted. “Not before. Now get out of here and let me get some sleep.” She blew out her lantern but the light changed little. The whores left and the last one shut the door. Ten in the morning was too early for a decent whore to be awake.

Silence. Fannie sighed. Silence and sleep, that’s what she needed, but her eyelids wouldn’t cooperate. What if the women were right? They probably were, since the sheriff had come to the Comfort Palace to talk to Reese about the rustling problem.

“
Reese ain’t no cattle rustler,” she grumbled. Where the hell was Sadie and the laudanum? She pressed her pillow onto her forehead to relieve the building pressure.

A few minutes later, Sadie walked in without knocking and handed Fannie a steaming hot cup. “Here’s some doctored-up tea. You ain’t had no laudanum for the better part of a month, now, and I won’t give you no more. It just ain’t good for you.”

Fannie had to agree. It had seemed like she needed it for some little ache or pain every single day, and she kept needing more of it to do the job. Sadie had talked her out of using it, saying she thought that the laudanum itself was causing her misery. The first few days without it she’d been sick as a dog, but since then, she’d felt better than she had in years—since the day Stuart McAdams introduced her to it.

“
Did you know that Charley is Reese’s new foreman?” Sadie asked.

“
No.” And she didn’t care right then, either. Fanny took a sip of tea and let it trickle down her throat. It must have been half whiskey because it was the strongest, smoothest tea she’d ever had.

“
Well, he is.”

“
Hurrah. Now would you leave me and my headache alone?”

Sadie didn’t budge an inch. “Did you know that Charley used to be a preacher-man?”

Fannie sighed. “Ain’t you just a bag full of facts.” She didn’t want to be ornery to Sadie, but the woman sure as hell wasn’t getting the hint to leave. “Why are you so interested in Charley?”

“
Oh,” Sadie shrugged, “no reason, other than he’ll be eating here ever now and again.” Sadie sounded almost too aloof. “You just drink that tea down. It’ll cure what ails you.”

Strong as it was, Fannie had no doubts about its medicinal value. She took a bigger sip. “So he’ll be bugging you and the girls, is that your problem?”

“
He ain’t no problem,” Sadie was quick to reply. “He ain’t no problem at all. It’s just that he’ll know if Reese is missing any cattle, and I can chum up to him, sortta, and, well, find out things.”

Fannie’d never known Sadie to chum up with anyone, let alone a grizzled old cowhand like Charley. The man never cracked a smile and was as tight-lipped as a nun in a whorehouse. She finished off the tea and handed the cup to Sadie. “Thanks.”

“
Glad to help,” Sadie said as she took the teacup.

Finally
, she had some quiet, but not peace. She simply had to find a way to make Reese and Miss Sharpe fall in love, and she had to time it with the completion of the whores’ lessons. Reese didn’t know it, but all the women had been saving their money. Each night they gave half their earnings to Fannie, and they all had three or four hundred dollars—Felicia had almost six hundred—plenty enough to start themselves new lives. Once their learning was done, they’d be ready to go out on their own.

She worried about Holly, though, because she didn’t get much money serving drinks. Maybe the others would pitch in fifty bucks or so. Yup, they’d probably do that.

If only Reese and Miss Sharpe would fall in love and get married, everything would work out fine, but those two were mighty damned stubborn. Both of them put together couldn’t out-stubborn her, though.

Fannie smiled and drifted to sleep.

* * * * *

“
Class!” Lucinda tried again to get the ladies’ attention. “Class, please quiet down and be seated!”

Something had them abuzz, but finally they complied.

“
Today, we’ll learn about voting. You, as women of Idaho Territory, have the duty—no, the
privilege
—to insist on the right to vote. It is your responsibility to learn all you can about our government and its public servants, and to vote knowledgeably when we finally succeed. Your vote is your future. No matter what’s happened to the past, only your future counts. Voting is freedom.”

“
Hell, our votes wouldn’t count none,” disagreed Trinket.

“
Ah, but they would, especially when you find an issue dear to your hearts and campaign to promote it. And please don’t curse.”

Petunia—or Patricia—raised her hand. “What’s your issue, then? You want suffrage. Well, if we got the right to vote, then you don’t got an issue.”

“
I don’t
have
an issue,” Lucinda corrected.

“
That’s what I said. So why do you want to vote?”

“
There’s more than one issue. I haven’t researched local politics yet, so I don’t know what’s on the ballot this year.” Lucinda expounded upon the responsibilities of being a voting citizen. She hoped the ladies would become a little more enthusiastic about the whole idea. Many women had worked hard to achieve suffrage in Wyoming, and many more were working tirelessly around the country to get the right to vote elsewhere.

She tried to work the voting procedures into the arithmetic lesson, showing how a candidate could win in one town, lose in another, and still win the county race.

Chrissy’s hand shot up. “So if you count the cattle on one spread, and then count another rancher’s cattle, you could tell if one man has been rustling the other’s cows?”

The noise level raised as the ladies started to whisper among themselves again.

“
Well, yes, if you knew how many each rancher had...”

“
Not if the rustler hid ‘em somewheres else,” Trinket pointed out. “I hear tell that when the Judds’ cattle was run off, one of the hands heard the rustlers call their boss ‘Charley.’ They ain’t no ranch owner around these parts named Charley.”

Lucinda wished the ladies wouldn’t discuss unladylike topics, but at least they were developing their deductive reasoning skills.

“
Only Reese’s foreman,” volunteered Sadie. “A little cantankerous, but a good enough fellow for a cowpuncher.”

The room went silent. The ladies stared at Sadie, who sagged in her chair looking like she wanted to disappear altogether.

Fannie stood and addressed the class. “All right, ladies.” Lucinda was glad that Fannie remembered not to call them whores. “Which one of you whores knows a Charley besides Sadie?”

“
I ain’t no whore,” protested Sadie as she crossed her arms over her chest. “I
cook
for whores.”

“
Class!” Lucinda reprimanded. “We do not use the word
whores
.”

“
Who knows a Charley?” Fannie repeated again, unrepentant toward either Lucinda or Sadie.