Latigo 3, page 22
“But Uncle Martin wrote that everything turned out all right after all,” Carrie said, her anxious eyes on Max’s face. It had darkened with anger at the memory of Cantrell’s part in it. He was about to storm out of the café and leave the two young nitwits. But Carrie slipped warm fingers over his great ham of a hand. Her touch ended his icy anger.
“Your uncle knows you’re here?” he asked bluntly.
Carrie shook her head, saying that Martin Gale knew she was on her way west with Annetta, but that was all. “Uncle Martin wouldn’t know me by sight. He hasn’t seen me since my mother died. I’m grown up now.”
“You are,” Max beamed. “Delightfully so.”
“I just had to see you in person,” Carrie explained. “That was why we were outside your house, hoping you’d come out. And you did. Such a daring thing you planned, the kidnapping ... it just sort of took my breath away when I heard about it. Don’t you see?” Her blue eyes pleaded for understanding.
A portly man in a brown suit and diamond stickpin and gold watch-chain halted by the table. “Ah, Mr. Max. Senator Randall suggested I speak to you about a railroad ...”
Max waved him away, not wanting to spoil Carrie’s rapt attention. An idea had suddenly surged across his mind.
“I would like to do the portraits of you and Annetta,” he said, the possibilities making him hoarse. Theodora was presently having her portrait done by a local artist. Max knew that certain details could be arranged with the artist, for a price. Max explained that to ease the strain of the business day he spent evenings in his studio. Carrie and Annetta exchanged glances.
Then Carrie said in her sweet voice, “We came west for adventure, and it seems we might find it after all.” Both girls tittered, hands over lovely mouths. Claudius knew that other men, in the café for their morning coffee, envied him. And he also knew that the story of his being in the company of two such charming young ladies would soon reach Theodora. He was past the point of caring very much.
After seeing the girls to their hotel and with their promise to meet him that evening, Max hurried away.
Max made an arrangement with the artist, Raoul Dupree, who had interests in directions other than the females who sat for their portraits. Max recalled that Theodora had sounded a little disappointed when she mentioned that side of the handsome Dupree’s nature.
The artist agreed to spend a month in Denver; Max could be quite generous when it suited him. He was certain that thirty days would be sufficient. He was not vain enough to think that he could continue gentle combat with two attractive young ladies for any longer.
After their first visit to the Dupree studio, he made no attempt to pretend he was a painter. But he did convince the girls that he enjoyed studying the female form. The fine French wines that he ordered sent to the spacious studio by the case loosened the corset strings of their inhibitions. At first he thought they were twenty-one, because they had come west without chaperones; quite a departure from custom even at that age. When he learned they were only nineteen, it made the game even more exciting.
At first the game, the three of them sitting on Dupree’s bearskin rugs, wineglasses in hand, had consisted of the girls removing shoes and stockings only. But that soon led to much exploration through layers of clothing. He talked them into removing their dresses.
“We’re bohemians of Montmartre.” Carrie laughed, spilling wine down the front of her camisole and between her breasts. In school she had secretly read novels about life in the Paris art colony.
After the first week Max gave each of the girls a thousand dollars in gold.
“We’re courtesans,” Carrie whispered to Annetta, appalled and at the same time thrilled that a man who was said to be able to bring half the nation to its knees should take time from his vast holdings to pay court to a pair of young belles from St. Louis.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
WHENEVER HELEN HAPPENED to meet Jed Lockwood face to face on the streets of Scalplock, she would say, “Good morning, Mr. Lockwood,” or whatever greeting was appropriate for the time of day. Then, with her head held high, she would walk on down the street. He always glared. She did make one concession to him and the other churchgoers, however, by closing her establishment on Sundays, something Annie, the previous owner, had never done. Whether Lockwood appreciated it or not, she never knew. And didn’t care.
One day in early spring he blocked her on the walk, eyes in the wind-burned face furious. He towered over her as he shouted, “My boy, Ralph, has left home on account of you! You’ve put a curse on that boy, turning him against his own father because ...”
“I did not turn Ralph against you, Mr. Lockwood.” She spoke quietly. “If you will stand aside and let me by.”
“Gone to Denver to find work, he has. And when I need him at the ranch ...”
In the turn-around next to the Scalplock General Store she could see Ralph’s younger sisters. The two little Lockwood girls were on the seat of the ranch wagon. Amy, the youngest, started to wave to Helen but lowered her hand when her father looked around.
Lockwood stepped aside, and Helen went on down to the store. It hurt her not to be able to go over and speak to the Lockwood girls, but it would only bring trouble to them.
It was the next evening that a restless Helen decided to take a walk before the night business picked up. She strolled leisurely to the east end of town, then up the steep walk that would take her past the marshal’s office and jail, now closed. Fanner, the town marshal, had quit suddenly over a salary dispute and left town. No suitable replacement had been found.
To her left was the church Jed Lockwood had promoted. A group of men had stepped from the livery barn and were coming down-slope. When they saw her in the glow spilling from the wide doorway, they looked away. She was used to it. They entered the church by the rear door; it was prayer meeting might. Two of them were regular patrons of her establishment.
Stars hung low over the mountains, a glittering mass of steel points in a violet sky. Midway up the mountain, night lanterns of the lead mine jiggled in the evening breeze. How delightful to have spring once again. The winter had seemed endless. Mainly it was good to be alive. So often she had come close to death.
Beyond the livery barn she turned and started back. Here there was no boardwalk, only a path. She kicked at a stone and listened to it clatter into some rusted tin cans. Here she had a good view of the town, a peaceful place, on the surface, with its rectangles of yellowed windows, the church steeple, the stores just about to close. On the far side of the main street were the boardinghouses for single men, the small houses for the marrieds. And far to the right, beyond empty lots, was her own place, the windows discreetly draped, and next to it the Shamrock Saloon.
On the rear steps of the church someone had left a lighted lantern for the convenience of those who wished to enter by that doorway. Evidently the bracket lamp beside the door was out of coal oil or broken in some way. A gust of wind struck her face, and she shrugged deeper into her coat, the cold reminding her of the winter just past.
She was at the main street and turning toward her building at the far end of town when the congregation began to sing a hymn. She halted, listening. Hearing it twisted her up inside, because during the period when she had lived at the Lockwood ranch she had come to town with the family and sung that very hymn with them. As she stood there another gust of wind brought with it the smell of smoke. She froze and watched a great flag of smoke come shooting over the roof of the church, momentarily shutting out the stars. She thought she knew what had happened. A gust of wind had tipped over the lantern on the rear steps, spilling coal oil.
Without stopping to think, she lifted her skirts and dashed up the church steps, pulled open one of the heavy doors and rushed inside. A woman wearing pince nez, in a pew to her left, happened to look around.
“You!” the woman cried.
Heads of the congregation jerked around. The hymn ended suddenly in mid-verse. Faces were aghast, especially those of older women. Their men drilled Helen’s face with their indignation. At the pulpit Jed Lockwood, graying hair combed, for a change, dropped his hymnal in surprise. He started to level a finger, when she spoke, trying to be calm.
“There’s a fire out back. I wanted to warn you ... your windows and door are closed and you can’t smell the smoke ...”
“No matter your excuse for entering this temple of God,” Jed Lockwood thundered, “I order you to leave!”
A woman screamed. “There is smoke! I smell it!”
“So do I!” a man yelled, jumping to his feet.
Two of them rushed to the rear doors and flung them open to a sheet of flame. A drum of coal oil in a lean-to next to the rear steps crashed when flames that had ignited drippings at a leaky spigot burned through the flimsy wooden support. The spigot was knocked loose, and out poured the coal oil remaining in the drum. It rushed like a small river along a drainage ditch beside one wall of the church.
“Everybody out by the front door!” Lockwood ordered his congregation.
Helen was already leaving when the wave of panicked parishioners streamed out. A woman fell on the steps, screaming. Helen reached out to help the woman to her feet. But the woman’s husband brushed Helen aside as if her touch might be contagious.
By then cries of “Fire!” swept the town. Wind-driven flames leaped up the rear wall of the church, hurling embers into the night sky.
A horn began to blast. The bell in the new schoolhouse was clanging. Although the lead mine midway up the mountain was presently in no danger from the flames, its fire whistle began to shrill.
People were still charging down the church steps when the rear of the structure began to collapse. Flames had reached the rivulet of coal oil. When the capricious spring wind suddenly shifted direction, embers began to rain down on Delaney’s Livery Barn and Wagon Yard.
Horses stabled under the smoking roof began to whinny in terror. Frantic men with knives rushed inside to cut them loose. A wave of frightened animals came pounding out the wide doors and down the hill.
“Hosses loose!” somebody shouted. “Watch out!”
A fat man who owned an interest in the lead mine and who had been attending church services tried to roll out the fancy buggy he kept in the stable wagon-yard. By then the stable roof was a mass of flames. It ate holes in the roof, caught hay on fire. The fancy buggy was burning by the time the gate in the wagon yard was reached. Its owner rushed to safety.
A dozen horses came swinging down the hill and onto the main street. Despite shouts of warning, several people were knocked off their feet. The shifting winds brought in clouds that killed what little light had been offered by the stars. But by now the flames spread a noonday brightness over that east end of town.
The volunteer fire department, half dressed, most of them, wheeled a pumper toward the front of the blazing church, yelling for people to get out of the way. A hose end was dropped into a horse trough. Two volunteers manned the pumper, but the thin stream of water it produced only sizzled and spat when it struck the flaming timbers.
Miners on shift came charging down from the mine to try and save what they could. Those with families desperately searched the milling crowd for familiar faces.
Frantic men, knowing the general store could go any minute, had formed a line and were handing from one pair of hands to another all the stock they could salvage. Before this night was over there would be need for it all ... and more.
In the darkness and flickering flames Helen joined the line that was handling the lighter things such as groceries and bolts of white cloth that could be used for bandages. She didn’t realize Jed Lockwood had slipped in ahead of her in the line. He took a box of medicines from a man, wheeled and passed it behind him to the next in line. He looked shocked when he saw who it was. But he said nothing. They worked for nearly twenty minutes, emptying the store, when somebody yelled, “It’s gonna go!”
And it did. The rear windows exploded from heat, and tongues of flame flashed across half-emptied shelves and the counters that held the remaining bolts of cloth. Helen turned and ran with the others when the front windows burst. By then the pumper had been wheeled to the opposite side of the street.
“Wimmen an’ kids git up the hill!” a man was yelling.
Stores on the south side of the street were pelted with embers. Flames danced along the edge of an overhang. Men were carrying supplies rescued from the store and piling them in a vacant lot. The downtown saloon, the Pines, was the next building to go. Alcohol fed the flames, and the structure didn’t last as long as the church, with its spilled coal oil.
A boardinghouse was suddenly engulfed, and the one adjoining it. Small dwellings on the hill behind them began to burst like flame bombs.
Helen hurried toward her end of town. Everywhere people were running, yelling, screaming. In front of Cindy Lou’s, Helen’s girls stood transfixed as they stared at the flames.
Millie, a tall blonde, began to cry when she saw Helen. “We thought you were caught in it.”
“Get your things together and be ready to clear out,” Helen ordered. “If the wind gets any stronger it could reach our end of town.”
The seven girls dashed back inside to grab clothing and trinkets.
Duke Sateen was with the crowd in front of the Shamrock, watching the fire at the other end of town. He saw Helen.
“How the devil did it start?” he asked her.
Helen told him about the lantern left precariously on the rear steps of the church. “I think the wind tipped it over.”
“There goes the Thompson boardinghouse!” a man yelled, pointing at a great sheet of flame.
“Ah do hope somebody cut my horse loose,” Sateen said. “Ah’d hate to have him die in that fire. Ah tried to find him, but there’s nothin’ left of the stable.”
By midnight there was little left of the town itself. Some pines were beginning to burn.
Just when everyone thought the only choice was to evacuate the town or be incinerated, the wind brought relief. It pulled rain-filled clouds across high peaks and began to empty them over Scalplock.
Downtown, weary men and some women praised the miracle.
Jed Lockwood dropped to his knees in the middle of the muddy street, rain pelting his bared head, and pressed the palms of callused hands together.
“Oh, God, we thank thee for sparing us.”
But upon realizing the only two establishments left standing in Scalplock were a brothel and a saloon, he wasn’t so sure ...
There was much to be done, Helen knew. She ordered the girls to strip the beds of fancy coverlets, to hide in closets, wherever possible, any indication of their profession. At the Shamrock she talked to her friend Chong, who ran the small café next to the dance floor.
“Put on every pot you can find, will you, Sam? Make the biggest stew this high country has ever seen.”
Chong smiled and said he would do as she asked. In a way he was as much of an outcast in Scalplock as she was. People called him “Chink” behind his back and made fun of his pigtail. But he cooked the only decent meals in town.
A crate of heavy canvas aprons had been salvaged from the store. Helen appropriated enough of them for herself and her girls. Also blankets that had been covered with a tarp and spared the rain.
There was great confusion, and with no town marshal as leader, no one seemed to know what to do. Helen took over, suggesting that single men bed down on the floor in the Shamrock. Women and children and the injured were welcome under her roof.
This produced silence for a moment, then a woman said, wearily, “Do we have much choice?”
Sunup revealed a once-prosperous and now-ruined town. On the slopes behind the charred remains of buildings were great piles of the junk frantic people had rescued from approaching flames. Bedsteads and barrels, chamber pots and washbasins. Portmanteaus, carpetbags and clothing, everything soaked and muddied and black with ash.
Because the railroad had purposely by-passed Scalplock, everything had to be brought in by freighter. Helen suggested that someone ride to the nearest telegraph station and send out word of the disaster. She wrote out messages to be sent, one to a freight outfit in Basin City, another to the Army.
Intermountain ran extra stages to carry out those who had had their fill of Scalplock. Jed Lockwood sent his two young daughters down to Denver to be cared for by his married sister.
The diehards were already clearing away debris with shovels and mule teams. Behind the town the new steam-saw screamed its way through fresh lumber every day but Sunday, and most of the nights.
When Sunday arrived Jed Lockwood thought it fitting that he conduct a service of thanksgiving. He declined the use of the Shamrock because it was a saloon. Helen, on her porch, gestured at the doorway. “You are welcome,” she said, knowing he would refuse.
And he did, not speaking but avoiding her eyes. He held his service in a light rain, on the slope behind the ruined church.
A freight wagon with supplies and a load of Army field tents rumbled into town.
“For once the Army has given and not taken,” Jed Lockwood muttered. He was thinking of his son, Ralph, who had written that he had enlisted and would be sent to Arizona Territory. Much too young, much too young.
Tents dotted the slopes. Frameworks of buildings shot up like spring grass. New timbers were laid over blackened foundation stones of the church.
One day Jed Lockwood walked to the west end of town, his steps dragging. It was midweek, but he wore his Sunday suit and his graying hair was combed. He had been up since dawn, doing chores out at the ranch. Usually after this was done he’d come to town to pitch in and help in the reconstruction. Today he had something else in mind.
He knocked on a door, and it was opened by a blond girl wearing an apron of heavy canvas. “Yes?”
“I would like to speak to Helen Lydia Horney please,” Lockwood said formally.
“Who? Oh, you mean ...” The girl disappeared inside.
