Arizona Gold (13 page)

“Wait a minute.” Opal leaped to object. “She’s just a kid. She doesn’t know anything about gambling, much less dealing. And it’d be like throwing a lamb to lions to put her to work serving drinks. She’s still wet behind the ears. She wouldn’t know how to handle them drunk rowdies. Now, I know it’s going to be next to impossible for her to find a job working in a stable, but I thought I’d introduce her to some of the store owners. Maybe they can put her to work as a clerk.”

Wyatt smiled. “I doubt that. I can’t imagine a store owner’s wife allowing somebody as pretty as she is to work around her husband. Besides”—he drew on the cheroot again—“I wasn’t thinking about her dealing or working the bar.”

Both Opal and Kitty stared at him expectantly.

“I was thinking of hiring her to sing.”

Kitty was sure she’d not heard right. “Did you say—
sing
?”

“That I did. I heard you just now, singing to that dying man. You have a lovely voice, but, of course”—he paused to chuckle—“you wouldn’t be singing
hymns
at the Oriental. But I’m sure that Jim—he’s the piano player—could teach you some songs the patrons would like. So what do you say, Miss Parrish? I think you would be a great addition to my establishment. And you can have your room free, too, like Opal. I’ll also pay you, but we can discuss that later.”

“Oh, say yes,” Opal urged, bouncing up and down on her toes in delight. “It’s your lucky day, honey. The Oriental is the nicest place in town. Everybody will flock to see you. I just know it. We’ve never had anybody as pretty as you.”

Kitty knew it was a wonderful opportunity, but thinking about actually standing up in front of people to sing made her shudder. “I…I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. “Maybe I’m not that good. They might not like me. And I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“You just did,” Wyatt said. “And you’ll do fine.” He looked at Opal. “You know your way around. Show her upstairs. Find two empty rooms, and they’re yours. I don’t know what’s available. I leave that to someone else to take care of. Then take her to see Madelaine Dubosene, the dressmaker up the street. She sews for my wife. Tell her to make Miss Parrish a complete wardrobe and send me the bill.”

He turned to go, then snapped his fingers and turned about with an excited grin. “Tell Madame Dubosene that I plan to feature Miss Parrish as ‘The Singing Angel.’ After all, that dead man back there thought she sang him right into heaven.”

With a tip of his hat, he left them.

They stared after him, and Opal exulted, “I don’t believe it. Free room, free wardrobe, and a job, to boot. This is truly, truly, your lucky day.”

Kitty felt the same, until some of the sparkle faded upon visiting the second floor to try and find a room. Most, they were told by a boy mopping floors, were occupied by high-rolling gamblers from out of town who showed no signs of moving out any time soon. The only two empty were at opposite ends of the hall. She and Opal would not be next to each other.

Opal said it wouldn’t matter. “We’ll be working nights, and we can visit back and forth during the day. Do you have any preference as to the front or the rear?” She rushed on before Kitty could respond, “Okay. I’ll take the one in back.”

That left Kitty with a room overlooking the noisy street. She knew she would have a hard time sleeping but thought maybe once she got to making money she would find somewhere else to stay. Living upstairs over a saloon, no matter how fine the establishment, was not very appealing.

While Opal went to look around her room, Kitty went to her own. There were two windows, and the curtains were thick enough to keep anyone from seeing in from below when they were drawn. The bed was long and narrow with a carved cherry headboard. Beside it was a table and lantern. A stack of fresh linens was on top of the small dresser, and a chifforobe on one wall would provide storage for the clothes she did not yet have.

The wallpaper had a beige background with roses and leaves. The pine floor was almost covered by the burgundy and gold rug.

It was a pleasant, bright room and, aside from its location, was quite nice.

“Ready?” Opal stuck her head in the door. “We need to go see Madame Dubosene and get you fitted, and then we can go back to the shanty and start packing. I’d like to be out of there by night, and if we hurry we can. And believe me,” she said with a grimace, “now that we know who that Apache is and what he’s after, I can’t get out of there fast enough. He’ll never try to bother us here. Not with so many people around. You’re safe now, honey. We both are.”

Kitty hoped…prayed…she was right.

Madelaine Dubosene was delighted to have the assignment to create a performing wardrobe for Kitty. “You have a nice figure, mademoiselle,” she said in her thick French accent. “And I can make you shimmer on the stage with my imported satins and taffetas.

“Combs for your hair,” she delighted to continue as she lifted a strand of Kitty’s dark hair, “and feathers and pearl tiaras. You will be even lovelier than you are now. So tell me. When is your first performance?”

Opal answered for her. “Mr. Earp didn’t say, but I figure right away, as soon as you can get her fixed up.”

Kitty was quick to protest, “Oh, I hope not. I need time to practice with his piano player he talked about, to learn songs.”

“I will have your first gown ready tomorrow,” Madelaine said. “I have been experimenting with a new creation that I think will be perfect for you—white satin covered with seed pearls and soft pink net overlay.” She kissed her fingertips. “You will look like an angel, for sure.”

Kitty did not want to look like an angel. She did not even want to be a singer. But she had no choice. Not for the time being, anyway.

Leaving the dressmaker’s, she asked Opal if they had time to go to the cemetery. “I want to visit Daddy Wade’s grave.”

Opal’s mood turned somber. “Well, if you’d really like to, I guess we can. I usually try to go on Sundays, and we do need to get busy if we’re going to get out of the shanty by dark.”

“We won’t stay long.”

“Sure. I understand.” Opal gave her a hug. “When I go there, it gives me comfort. Maybe it will do the same for you.”

But Kitty felt no solace as she looked down at the mound of dirt and rocks Opal led her to. Only rage—cold, deep, and throbbing. Her uncle was the only person she felt had ever truly loved her, and she would have no peace until his murderer was punished.

Opal gestured to the crude wooden cross at the head of the grave, on which had been carved Wade Parrish, March 10, 1881. “I plan to get a nice monument later on. I just had that put down real quick so the spot where he’s buried wouldn’t be lost. As you can see, this place gets bigger and bigger.”

Kitty saw that the graves in the section known as Boot Hill were dug one after the other in procession. Her uncle had been dead only a few months, but she quickly estimated there had been over a hundred new graves since he was buried.

“So sad,” Opal said with a shake of her head as she brushed tears from her eyes with the back of her hands. “We were going to have a new life, away from all the hell-raising and killing. And I tried to tell him we should go on and get out of here and not worry about gold, but he said he’d be a fool to do that. He had a rich strike. We were going to have money to live like royalty the rest of our lives. Lord knows, I’d rather have lived in squalor if it meant keeping him alive.”

Kitty’s gaze locked on the grave next to her uncle’s. There was no marker…no cross. “Is this where Dan McCloud is buried?”

“Yeah, it is,” Opal said with a scornful sniff. “But I guess that half-breed son of his doesn’t care enough to give him a marker. All he wants is his gold, but at least we can take comfort in knowing he won’t get it.”

“And neither will we,” Kitty said quietly.

Ryder felt an inward cringe to see Coyotay blocking the trail. He had been hunting, wanting to ensure that his mother had meat during the time he would be away from camp. He had left before dawn and returned on a back trail, still avoiding the others in his chagrin.

Coyotay was astraddle his mustang, his expression stony.

Ryder braced himself. No doubt Coyotay was champing at the bit to laugh in his face and deride him for his stupidity. Might as well get it over with, he thought, reining his horse to a stop alongside him.

Coyotay nodded to the ten-point buck strapped across the horse Ryder was leading behind him. “You have made a good kill, my brother.”

Brother
? Coyotay had hardly spoken since the stagecoach incident and then hadn’t called him brother. “I plan to be away for a while. I wanted to make sure my mother has enough to eat so the braves won’t have to look out for her.”

“You know I will take care of her as I always have. You need not worry.” He held out his hand. “And I want to offer you my apology for what I caused to happen.”

Ryder was stunned.

“Pale Sky would not have been frightened into setting the girl free had I not been crazy from the
tiswin
,” Coyotay said sheepishly. “Then she would have been here when you returned. I am truly sorry, my brother. Sorry, too, that my anger poisoned my mind to all reason.”

Ryder let out a long sigh of relief and smiled. “I always did consider you a man of strength and honor, Coyotay, and for you to admit you were wrong reinforces that belief.”

“And you are no longer angry with Coyotay?”

“No. We are brothers once more.”

“I am glad. So where do you go now? What do you do? The woman called Kitty Parrish is lost to us, along with her part of the map. Is this not so?”

“I’m not ready to give up, so I’m going into Tombstone, as a white man, to try and figure out what to do next. I’m taking this buck to my mother, and then I’m on my way.”

Coyotay reined his horse beside Ryder’s as they rode on toward the village.

From the corner of his eyes, Ryder saw how the corners of Coyotay’s mouth twitched as though he were suppressing a smile. Finally, just before turning their separate ways, he could not resist saying with good humor, “All right. So I was a fool not to see Billy Mingo was really a woman. Go ahead and say it, because I can tell that’s what you’re thinking.”

At that, Coyotay’s lips spread in a wide grin. “No. That is not what I was thinking at all. You have no reason to be embarrassed because you did not see through her disguise. None of us did.”

Irritated, Ryder countered, “Well, if that’s the case, why are you snickering at me? You just said I had no reason to be embarrassed. All the warriors were fooled just like me.”

“That is true.” Coyotay’s black eyes were twinkling with his mischief. “But they did not make her give them a bath, either.”

Laughing with glee, Coyotay kneed his mustang and galloped away.

Ryder stared after him, fury worming through his body, but not at his friend. Oh, no. Coyotay was jesting and meant no harm. All their lives they had provoked and teased each other, but always in good nature. So Ryder had no animosity for Coyotay’s glee. It was Kitty Parrish who stabbed at his masculine pride for having bested him—something few men had ever succeeded in doing…and something no woman ever had.

Till now.

Chapter Twelve

Kitty flashed with annoyance as she tugged at the low neckline of her gown. “I told Madame Dubosene she should have made it higher. My bosoms are practically hanging out,” she fretted.

Opal slapped lightly at her hands. “Stop it. You aren’t singing in church, you know. You’re performing in a saloon, and you’re supposed to look, well, fetching,” she said with a shrug.

“Fetching?” Kitty yelped. “Opal, if I walk out there on that stage in front of all those drunken rowdies, there’s no telling what they’re liable to do.”

“But the gown is fashionable.”

“Not for me. And what about you?” She gestured to Opal’s gown. It had a high neck with little buttons down the front. “You look like a…a
schoolmarm
, and
you
work here. So how come you aren’t”—she wrinkled her nose—“
fashionable
?”

“I’m sort of running a business,” Opal replied defensively. “The men are supposed to pay attention to the game—not me.”

They were in a small room behind the stage. Primarily it was for storage, but the girls working the dance hall and saloon used it to change costume when necessary or take a short rest.

Glancing at the clothes scattered about, Kitty snatched up a red feathered boa from the back of a chair and draped it around her shoulders and down her chest. She said, “Madame Dubosene said I’d look like an angel in this gown, remember? But I feel like a soiled dove.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Soiled doves don’t wear white satin with pink net, much less pearl tiaras. And you can’t wear that boa. You look like a red chicken.”

Kitty twisted about in front of the mirror. “I don’t care. I’m not going out there half-naked.”

“But you don’t understand, honey. The men expect it. They want to see a pretty girl with a nice shape. You just aren’t used to dressing up, that’s all.”

Kitty had to admit that much was true but pointed out, “I’ll be so self-conscious I won’t be able to sing a note.”

“Now you’re being downright silly. The men will boo you off the stage if you go out there looking like that.”

“She’s right.”

They both whipped their heads around to see Jim Haynie, the piano player, standing in the doorway.

“Forgive me for barging in. I knocked, but you couldn’t hear me for your talking.” Sweeping Kitty with an admiring gaze, he added, “You should be proud of your beauty, girl. Don’t be shy about it. And what Opal says is true. You walk out there smothered in red feathers, and they’ll laugh you right off the stage.”

Kitty guessed Jim Haynie to be in his sixties. He had a grizzled, timeworn face, gray hair, and a thin mustache. He was tall, rangy, and stoop shouldered, with eyes the color of a larkspur and crinkled at the corners when he smiled, which was often. His long, thin fingers made magic on the piano, and his personality was very likable.

He crossed to put a friendly hand on her arm as he offered encouragement. “You have nothing to worry about. You’ve got a beautiful voice and a face to match. Just sing your heart out and forget about everything else.

“And forget the feathers, too,” he added with a laugh. “Opal hit the nail on the head—you do look like a red chicken.”

Glumly, Kitty took off the boa and stared at the swell of her breasts above the white satin. She felt almost naked.

Opal said, “Need I remind you what an opportunity this is for you, Kitty? You know you’re welcome to anything I have, but I can’t support you. If you’re going to stay out here, you’re going to have to learn to take care of yourself. And if you lose this job, you aren’t likely to find another one like it. You’ll have to settle for anything you can get…which won’t be much.

“And,” Opal added with eyes narrowed, “you won’t have a roof over your head, either. You’ll get kicked out of your room. You can’t share mine. And somebody has already moved into the shanty, so we can’t go back there.”

“You’ll do fine.” Jim again assured Kitty as he walked out. “We’ll start in fifteen minutes or so. I’m gonna get me a beer and then I’ll warm up the ivories. Listen for your cue and then go out onstage. Somebody will open the curtains when I give the signal. You be ready.”

“And it’s time for me to get my faro game going,” Opal said, following after him. “But I should be able to hear you singing if the applause don’t drown you out,” she added to encourage.

“Or the shouts telling me to get off the stage,” Kitty mumbled to herself as the door closed behind them.

She was pacing about nervously when one of the saloon girls came breezing in a few moments later.

“You’re Angel, right? We haven’t met. I’m Lulamae.”

“Angel?” Kitty echoed. “But that’s not my name.”

“Sure it is. Mr. Earp said it was.
Angel, the Singing Angel,
that’s the name of your show. He had it painted on a big board outside. Everybody’s talking about it…about you, ’cause lots of folks heard you singing to that poor dying bastard out in the street the other day. That was really something. I wish I’d heard you.”

She lit a thin cheroot and took a deep draw before exclaiming, “God, I love these things, but Mr. Earp don’t allow us to smoke out there. Says it’s not ladylike.”

“He wasn’t dead when I started singing to him,” Kitty said, not wanting it to appear that she went around serenading lifeless bodies, for heaven’s sake.

“Huh?” Lulamae had already passed the subject from her mind.

Kitty nudged her memory. “The man I was singing to. He didn’t die till almost the end of the song.”

“Oh, well. I heard it was nice, anyway.”

Kitty stared at her purple-shadowed eyelids, bright orange cheeks, and ruby-colored lips. Dropping her gaze, she noted that Lulamae’s bodice plunged even lower than hers. She could even see a hint of her nipples.

Lulamae was also scrutinizing Kitty. “You’re frightened. How come?”

“I’m not used to singing in front of people. If you want to know the truth, I’m scared to death.”

“No need to be. The customers here are always a happy bunch, and everybody gets along most of the time. Everybody knows that at the first hint of trouble, Mr. Earp nips it in the bud.

“What you need,” Lulamae said as she went to a far corner and reached behind a stack of boxes, “is a drink. I keep a bottle stashed here, ’cause Mr. Earp don’t allow us girls to drink when we’re working. He says we forget what we’re supposed to be doing, which is make the customers spend money like water.”

“But don’t the customers buy you drinks?”

“Yeah, that’s part of it, but what the bartenders fix for us ain’t all whiskey. It’s mostly tea with a splash of liquor for the smell. The customers don’t notice. Besides, we got to stay sober so’s we can get them drunk enough they won’t realize how much they’re spending. We also urge ’em to gamble, because they’ll get so jack-fried on the hooch they won’t care how much they lose.

“It’s what it’s all about,” she said airily, waving the bottle. “So relax and get used to it.”

Lulamae found glasses, which other girls had stashed away with their hidden liquor stock. She poured Kitty a drink. “Here.”

Kitty looked at the amber liquid as though it were a spider about to spring and bite. She had never had a drink in her life. “I…I don’t know. Maybe I’d better not.”

Lulamae pushed it at her. “Go on. It can’t hurt.”

“If whiskey makes the men forget what they’re spending and losing, it might make me forget the words to the songs.”

“What are you singing?”

“Only three songs tonight—‘Aura Lee’ to start, because it’s slow and simple. ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ for the Yankees and ‘Dixie’ for the Rebs. Jim says it will balance things out, and he doesn’t want me to do too much the first night, anyway.”

“You probably know the words backwards. Now here. Drink up. You’ll feel better.”

Kitty took a sip. It burned going down. The next swallow felt better. By the third she was warm all over and not quite as nervous. By the time she emptied the glass, she was glowing.

“Feel better?” Lulamae asked, grinning.

“Much. But I think I’ve had enough.” She held her hand over her glass as Lulamae tried to refill it.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. If you have much more when you ain’t used to it, you might fall on your butt out there, and then I’d be in big trouble.” Lulamae poured another for herself.

She and Kitty were sitting on stools opposite each other. Tucking her skirt between her legs, Lulamae propped her elbows on her knees and leaned toward Kitty till their faces were mere inches apart. With fascinated eyes she asked, “What was it like with them Indians? I’ve heard they do terrible things to women. Was it real awful? Do you have nightmares about it?”

“Not really.” Kitty would hardly call nightmares the dreams she still had about Whitebear…dreams she wished would go away because they left her feeling so confused.

“You see,” she went on to explain to Lulamae, “they thought I was a boy. I dressed like one on the trip out here because I felt I would be safer if I did. As it turned out, I was right. The Indians never knew I was a woman.”

“But it must have been a horrible experience just the same.”

“No. Actually it wasn’t. I had to do chores, and I slept on the ground on animal skins, and I didn’t enjoy a lot of their food, but, all in all, I was well treated.”

Lulamae poured herself another drink. She stared at Kitty over the rim of the glass as she took a swallow, then said, “I’ve just heard so many dreadful stories that it’s hard to believe what you’re saying.”

“Some of the tales are probably true, but the Indians feel they are only fighting to keep what is theirs by right of their birth—their land. They aren’t all evil. They’re capable of love, and…” She trailed to silence when she saw Lulamae’s condemning expression, and was reminded once again of Pale Sky’s sad words—
They will not listen. They never have
.

Lulamae drained her glass, then tapped Kitty’s knee with her fist. “I’m going to give you some advice, sweetie. Watch what you say about the Indians. Some folks have had relatives slaughtered by those devils…tortured, scalped. And if you go around trying to defend them by talking about the white man stealing their land…shit like that…you’re going to make a lot of enemies. Best if you just keep your mouth shut.

“Besides,” she said, refilling her glass, “Mr. Earp don’t want nothing else said about you having been with them, anyway. From now on, you’re an angel.” She lifted her drink in salute, then lowered her voice conspiratorially to ask, “But I’m still curious about some things, ’cause if they thought you were a boy, you probably saw them naked, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but I tried not to look.”

Lulamae leaned even closer to whisper, “Did you wonder what it would be like with one of them? I bet it’d be terrible, them being such savages and all. I’ll bet they’re like animals, and—”

A loud rap on the door made them jump. It opened, and Kitty recognized Morton, one of the bartenders. His face was screwed with anger as he spotted Lulamae and he roared, “I figured you’d be back here sneakin’ a drink. You better get yourself back out here and get to work or I’m gonna see Mr. Earp finds out.”

Lulamae bounded to her feet. “If you do, you old goat, I’ll see to it your wife finds out you’re sleepin’ with Jessamine every chance you get.”

“You’d do it, too, wouldn’t you?” he snarled.

“You tell on me, I tell on you.”

They glared at each other in tense silence. After a moment, Lulamae, cursing under her breath, got up and went with him.

Kitty sat where she was and did not move. Lulamae had sparked memories and her thoughts began to drift.

Whitebear had been a fine figure of a man, and with the whiskey making her mellow, she could fantasize without guilt or shame over what it would be like to have him make love to her.

He would not be brutal. Of this she could be sure, for she had heard him with the Indian girl…had heard their tender sighs and satisfied moans as he took them to paradise. There was no coarseness. No savagery. No animal grunts or cries. From where she had lain outside his tent, every sound was audible. Remembering, she felt a flood of desire in her loins.

She thought of the morning when she had awakened in the silent graying dawn to find him standing over her. Her vision had slid up long, lean legs, the flesh smooth and golden, taut thighs stretched to a breechclout which hung low on his flat belly. A narrow waist veed up to a wide, solid chest, and he had stood with knuckled hands at his narrow hips. He had ordered her to get up and fetch water for his mother, but Kitty had been unable to move, unable to tear her gaze away from him in that crystallized moment of realizing for the first time in her life what it meant to be a woman…and want a man.

The revelation had abruptly ended when he yanked her up, so effortlessly that it was almost as though she were floating until he set her down on her feet.

Stop it
, she chided herself as she pulled herself back to the present.
Stop thinking about him, and if you’re lucky, you’ll never see him again
.

She had to go forward, not dwell on the past, for it was truly behind her—the brief episode of captivity, the grueling journey West, and, yes, too, the misery of her life in Virginia. All faded and gone…along with the dream of being with Daddy Wade again. Reality was a smothering thing, reminding her she had no family and was completely on her own. There was no one to look out for her, to care for her, and certainly no secret gold mine to be found with half of a tattered map. But now she had a chance to make money as a singer and support herself. Otherwise, there was nothing left except marriage for the sake of survival or a job trying to get men so drunk they didn’t know what they were doing.

With a deep sigh of resolve and determination, birthed all the way from her very soul, Kitty got up and returned to the mirror. Opal had styled her hair in swirls atop her head, then capped it with the pearl tiara. She had also applied her makeup—pink cheeks, pink lips, and eyelids dusted with a blend of blue and green to highlight her turquoise eyes.

Kitty felt as though she were looking at a stranger. She heard Jim start playing the piano but no longer felt any apprehension. Opal was right. She had no reason to feel bizarre in her costume—and that was what it was—a costume. She was a performer…a singer…and she would entertain the men and give them a show, and then walk away with head held high.