Denver (4 page)

While he waited, he looked around at the small room. A square of red satin was hung over the one window, and the kerosene lantern shed yellow light. There were a washstand, a chair, the iron bed, a trunk with dresses spilling out of it, a table, and a cracked mirror on the wall. The plainness prevalent here was common in the small mining towns that had sprung up, different from the lavish decor of the bordellos of the cities. Dan gave little thought to the squalor, knowing it was better than the cribs, where the girls usually got paid two bits to a dollar. In minutes she returned. When the door opened, his hand flew to his revolver. He relaxed as she appeared with a steaming kettle, a large woman coming in behind her with a copper tub. Dulcie poured water from the kettle into the tub and gave the empty kettle to the woman.

“She’ll be back with another kettle of water, and we can have a bath,” she said, hanging the robe on a
hook, giving him a view of her bare backside that set him on fire.

She smiled at him. “In the meantime, want a smoke?”

She moved to a chiffonier to pick up two cheroots, crossing the room to hand him one. He stared at her, trying to get his gaze up to her eyes and away from breasts that were full, upthrusting, and conical, with rosy-brown nipples.

“Honey,” she prompted in a voice filled with amusement, “want a smoke?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah! Sure.” He pulled out a match and struck it, lighting hers first, fascinated as he watched her. She was the first female he had ever seen smoke, and she seemed to enjoy it as much as any male connoisseur. Dan inhaled without knowing what he was doing. He couldn’t keep his stare at her face—the pull was too great, and his gaze slid down slowly, setting him on fire.

“Maybe we should forget that bath,” he whispered, and she laughed.

“You’ll be glad you waited,” she said, moving away from him. In seconds she had smoothed over the bedcovers, pulling up a coverlet. She answered a knock on the door. Dan forgot about danger, his pursuer, and sat on the chair openly in view as the woman returned to add two more steaming kettles of water to the copper tub. Dulcie closed the door after the woman left.

“Care to join me?” she asked.

He stared while Dulcie moved to the tub and stepped in. “Yeah, oh, yeah!” he said, standing up and placing the cheroot in an ashtray. He crossed the room to the tub, gazing down at her body, which was slickly wet now, more appealing than ever.

“I’m Dulcie.”

“I’m Dan Castle,” he said, his voice husky.

“Gonna bathe in all your clothes, Dan honey?” she drawled.

Flushing, feeling young and foolish, he started yanking them off. “No. No, I’m not.”

He stepped in with her, sinking down beside her,
and all his hesitation vanished as he pulled her onto his lap.

He told Silas about Dulcie, recalling every detail of her looks, until Silas leaned on a shovel, whistled, and grinned. “Dan, no woman is that marvelous—except Mary, of course.”

Dan grinned and flushed. “Sorry. I have talked about her a lot, haven’t I?”

“Yes. The only thing you haven’t mentioned is her age.”

Silas said it lightly, but his eyes narrowed and Dan felt his face flush. Silas focused more intently on him. “How old is she?”

“Well, it doesn’t matter.”

Silas blinked. “I guess it doesn’t, at that.

“She’s twenty-six.”

Silas grinned. “And to someone of your young years, that’s damned ancient.”

“She doesn’t look old,” Dan said. “And I’m not so young. I’m eighteen, and out west that isn’t young.”

“That’s a little young for twenty-six.”

“You’ll have to come to town with me some weekend.”

Dan went to town each week, keeping a wary eye out for the man who had tried to shoot him. Late in April he arrived on a cold, blustery night and couldn’t find Dulcie in the parlor. One of the girls told him she was in her room. He knocked, and when the door opened, he gazed at her in shock. Facing him in a red silk kimono, she clutched it closed over her breasts. Her eyes were puffed and black, her jaw cut. An ugly bruise darkened her cheek, and black spots were on every visible part of her. He stepped inside.

“What happened? Tell me his name,” Dan said, anger surging in him.

Moving carefully, she turned away and shook her head. “Leave me alone. It wasn’t a man. It was Nola.”

“Why?” Nola owned the sporting house, and Dan stared at Dulcie in shock.

Dulcie’s lower lip jutted out. “I wanted to quit.”

“Surely you can quit!”

“No. When I came I promised I’d stay until I was thirty-five. They always make the good ones promise to stay. While we work here, Nola gets part of our earnings each week. She holds our money until the time is up on our agreement. She has several thousand dollars of my money. If I run away, she gets to keep it.”

“Well, hell. Can’t you go to the sheriff?”

“Dan,” Dulcie said as if she were talking to a backward child, “right now this town doesn’t have a sheriff, and if it did, he would uphold my agreement with her. She pays taxes to the town, so what little law there is will side with her.”

“You can’t leave the money behind?”

“No.”

“How much is it?”

“Too much,” she said, her voice softening as she crossed the room. Her hips swayed provocatively, and for an instant the fleeting thought crossed his mind that she was in the right profession. She was sensual in every way, her walk, her glances, her body, her voice, her movements.

“Do you have family anywhere?” he asked, sitting down on the creaky bed.

She gave him another pitying smile as if she found him incredibly naive. “No. My pa was a bully and a drunk who beat me. My ma worked the same way I do and didn’t want me around when I was a kid. She’s how I got started. She made me do this.”

“Jesus!”

“I married when I was fifteen and I found out all he wanted was to keep me doing the same thing and turn the money over to him instead of my mother. I decided that if I’m going to do this, I’m keeping the money. So I ran away.”

Dan stared at her, thinking how different her life was from that of anyone he had ever known. He wondered what she could do now.

“How much money is it?”

“I keep telling you, more than you’d want to give
me. You’re a generous man, that’s for sure, paying for whole nights with me so I can stay with you, and giving me extra that I don’t have to turn over to Nola, but you can’t come up with four thousand dollars.”

“Four thousand even?”

She stared at him. “You’re a good man, but you can’t—”

“Even?”

“No. Four thousand, three hundred and fifty-five dollars.”

“I’ve got that much in the bank. I’ll give it to you.”

She crossed the room to put her arms around his neck. He eased her to the bed beside him and gazed at her battered face.

“That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me. Absolutely the sweetest thing, and I won’t ever forget it.”

“The money’s yours. Will you leave?”

“I can’t take your money.”

He stared at her while he decided what he would do. It was useless to argue until he had the money in hand. He grinned. “You can’t make love either.”

She smiled up at him. “There are some parts of me that aren’t black and blue. I’ll show you.”

As she pushed away the red silk, he forgot about the money.

Dan rode back to town the following Friday and got in before the bank closed, withdrawing the four thousand, leaving a still-sizable account. Next he rode to Nola’s and went to Dulcie’s room.

Dulcie was soaking in a steamy tub of water, head back against a water-splotched pillow. A sweet perfume smelling like roses cloyed the air while she read a tattered book. She dropped the book to the floor and sat up.

“Dan! You’re early.”

“I needed to come to town. It’s cold out, and that bath looks mighty inviting.”

She grinned at him and scooted to the side. “There’s room. You should know that.”

He laughed as he pulled off his muddy boots.

An hour later he rolled over in bed, the iron frame creaking with each movement while he stretched out a bare muscular arm sprinkled with short golden hairs to yank up his sheepskin coat. He pulled out a wad of greenbacks and dropped them on her bare belly.

She yelped, saw what it was, and sat up. “What’s this?”

“Your money. Where will you go?”

Her eyes got round and she turned to look at him. “Dan, you can’t!”

“I can. I want to and I won’t take it back.”

“In my whole life no one has ever…It’s the nicest—” She broke off to cling to him.

“Where will you go?”

“I thought I’d go to California or Colorado Territory and set up a little place of my own. This is all I know. I don’t want to work anymore, but I can run a sporting house.”

“Will Nola have you followed?”

Dulcie looked away and bit her lower lip, which was thick and full, giving her the appearance of constant pouting.

“Big Bob takes care of troublemakers for Nola. When Etta ran away, he went after her. She never did come back. I heard he beat her badly. I don’t think Nola cares if a girl doesn’t come back—that leaves her the money—but she wants the rest of us to see what happens to anyone who doesn’t stay in line. I don’t think Big Bob would actually kill someone, but I’m not sure.”

“Dulcie, come with me. I have a cabin,” Dan said. “I stay with another man, but there’s room for you. We’ll leave sometime this year or next, and you can go with us to a big town. You’ll be safe.”

“You might change your mind,” she said softly.

“If I do, I’ll tell you,” he answered frankly, and she grinned.

“That’s as good an offer as I’ve ever had.” She flung her arms around his neck and he hugged her close,
breathing deeply the rose scent in her hair, wondering what Silas would say.

Silas stared at him. “You’ve lost your mind.”

“No. You saw her bruises. They might kill her.”

The two men stood in the snow between tall spruces that towered over them. The stream that had been such a boon gurgled between dark brown banks, the only sound except for their voices.

“She’s accustomed to men. She won’t be trouble. Ignore her.”

“Well, I can’t lie around in my underwear.”

Dan grinned. “Let me say this slowly and clearly: she’s accustomed to men. You can lie around jaybird naked and she won’t care. We can both sleep in the same bed with her and she won’t care.”

“To hell with that!”

“She’s a tolerant woman and she needs a friend.”

“A friend is one thing. A lover is another. Oh, hell, let her stay. Why not?”

Smoke curled from the chimney and the odor of frying meat reached both men at the same time. Their heads turned in the direction of the cabin.

“Holy saints,” Dan said softly, “maybe she can cook.”

Within two weeks they had settled into a comfortable routine. Dan built a wall, giving Dulcie and him their own tiny bedroom while at the same time giving Silas privacy. Silas didn’t lie around in his underwear, and he was politely cordial to her, becoming friendlier as time passed. Dan was delighted, spending hours in bed with her the first two weeks she was with them, lost in fleshly pleasure while Silas spent the days working outside. The third week, Dan joined him, grinning sheepishly at Silas.

“I’m surprised you can walk.”

Dan blushed and grinned. “I thought I’d better get back to work or you’ll claim it all for yourself.”

“I was about to do just that,” Silas answered good-naturedly.

“Silas, don’t you miss a woman something fierce?”

“Of course, but all I have to do is—”

“Think of Mary,” they said in unison, and Silas laughed. “She’s worth waiting for, Dan,” he said solemnly.

For the first time in weeks, Dan thought of Melissa Hatfield, and nodded, but he knew Silas had left Denver in 1866, and it was getting to be a hell of a long time to be without a woman.

“A woman like Mary happens once in a man’s lifetime.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Dan said, knowing if he could go home to Melissa, he would be true to her and avoid the bawdy houses as much as Silas had.

“Sorry,” Silas said. “There’ll be another fine woman in your life.”

Dan glanced at the cabin. “There is now.”

Silas gazed at their sturdy log home. “Dulcie
is
a good woman. Lord knows she’s a beautiful one.”

“But not like Mary!” Dan teased. “Someday I’m going to Denver to see Mary Katherine O’Malley.”

“I hope you do. In the meantime, we better dig if you have the strength.”

They had sunk a shaft to bedrock; the shaft was drained by a pump powered by the stream. From the bottom of the shaft, a drift ran along the bedrock, where the richest gravels were extracted. They took turns working, knowing it was dangerous as well as uncomfortable. Their excavation was shored up by timbers that could easily give way. Both of them often worked in wet gravel that could flow like quicksand, but they were bringing out sizable nuggets of gold, their money growing.

An extra boon was the fact that Dulcie could cook. Their meals went from just edible to marvelous. Game was abundant and Dulcie was an inventive cook. They worked diligently all summer, and Dulcie stayed with them. Dan no longer went into town, letting Silas take his money to the bank for him. Winter set in and all three of them put on weight from Dulcie’s roast venison, baked pheasant, and roast turkey.

Dan filled out, his shoulders growing thicker, while
Dulcie grew more round and soft, which was fine with Dan. He still enjoyed the sight of her moving around naked, and on the rare occasions when they had the cabin to themselves and it was heated sufficiently to go without clothes, he could simply sit back and watch her, trying to coax her into cooking and cleaning naked—until one afternoon hot grease spattered on her belly. Thereafter she insisted on an apron.

With the spring thaw their lives changed. They mined in earnest, working long days, eating and falling into bed. Between his mining and his nights with Dulcie, Dan was exhausted. By the end of July, the lode was playing out.

Both men had a fortune, a little over thirty thousand dollars. Dan’s was in the bank, while Silas stubbornly refused to part with his money, keeping it in a metal box in the cabin.