“It’s true, honey, much as I hate to admit it. During the war, I ran off with a man named Paul Garner. I was young then, younger than you are now. Paul was a gambling man, and he promised me a life of fun and excitement. At the time, anything seemed better than living on a dirt farm in Missouri. We went to Fort Worth and stayed there until the war was over. Then after my gambling man got himself killed, I got a job as bargirl working in one of the saloons in Hell’s Half Acre. That was when I met your Papa, fresh back from the war, a wounded hero. Oh, he made quite a presence, Becca. He was a magnificent and kingly-looking man. I fell head over heels in love with him, and one thing led to another, until I became pregnant. I feared that he might run away then, but he didn’t. As soon as he learned I was pregnant, he moved me out to Live Oaks. I stayed there until you were born.”
“But you and Papa were never married?”
“He asked me to marry him, but I couldn’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Honey, your Papa was one of the richest men in Texas. Before I met him I was a gambler’s widow, and a part-time soiled dove. Can you imagine what his enemies would have made of that? Someone would have said something and your father would have challenged him. He would have either killed someone, or gotten killed himself. I would not have been able to accept either outcome.
“I didn’t fit in his society, Becca. I was a mule in a horse harness. So one morning I just left. I know that sounds harsh, but believe me, it was much better for both of you. And I found out that, within a couple of months after I left, your Papa had married a decent and respectable woman.”
“That would be Julia,” Rebecca said.
“Has she been good to you, Becca?”
“Oh, yes, she has been a moth ... ,” Rebecca halted in mid-sentence, not wanting to hurt her mother’s feelings by comparison.
“You can say it, honey. She has been a mother to you. And judging from the way you turned out, she has been a much better mother to you than I could have ever been.”
“But you are my mother,” Rebecca said, not exactly knowing where to go with this.
“Yes, I am your mother,” Janie said, almost as if apologizing. She was quiet for a long moment. “After I left your father I went farther west, where I whored for quite a number of years, then I met Oscar. Oscar didn’t care that I used to be on the line. But I want you to know, Becca, that I have reformed. And you know what they say. No one is more righteous than a reformed whore.” Janie chuckled.
“That’s why when I learned that Kirby thought I was dead, I decided not to ever tell him any different,” she concluded.
“Your brother’s name is Kirby?”
“Yes.”
“What is Uncle Kirby like?”
“Honey if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. He is a man of legendary accomplishments. Why, did you know that books and plays have actually been written about him?”
“Really? What are some of the things he’s done?”
Janie thought for a moment, then she laughed. “I know something he did once that has never been in any book or any play. In fact, I doubt that anyone who knows him knows about this. It happened when we were both very young. But I’ll tell you, and then you will know something about your uncle that no one else knows.
“It was back before the war, I was twelve, Kirby was ten. We lived on a farm and Ma and Pa had a couple of milk cows. Kirby and I had the job of milking the cows, and oh how Kirby hated that. Well, the two cows were kept in the same stall, and one morning Kirby got it in mind to tie their tails together. Well of course, you can’t tie the tails themselves, but he took the hairy tufts at the end of their tails and tied them together. Then, when the cows were turned out into the pasture, one wanted to go one way and the other wanted go in the opposite direction, so they pulled against each other, and the harder they pulled, the tighter the knot got in their tails.”
Janie was laughing now, and so was Rebecca. “Well, those two cows just kept pulling, and bawling, and pulling and bawling, until finally Pa came out to see what they were bawling about. When he saw those two tails tied together he liked to have had conniptions. Kirby had tied so many of the hairs together that Pa couldn’t get them untied, so he finally gave up trying and just cut them apart. Then he asked Kirby what he knew about it.
“‘Well, Pa, the flies were real bad,’ Kirby said.” By now, Janie was laughing so hard that she was having a hard time telling the story. “‘And those two cows were being tormented something awful by the flies, so they commenced to sweeping their tails at them, trying to keep the flies away, you see. Now I didn’t exactly see it happen, but if you was to ask me, I’d say that those cows tied their own tails together while they were trying to swish away those flies.’ I think that was the only time I ever saw Kirby get a whipping,” Janie concluded.
By the time she finished telling the story, both Janie and Rebecca were laughing hysterically. They were laughing so hard that they didn’t even hear the knock on the door. That was when the door was pushed open and a man stuck his head in. “May I come in?”
“Yes, of course,” Rebecca said, getting up from her chair.
The door opened, spilling a wedge of light into the room. Janie’s husband, Oscar Davenport, stepped into the room.
“Were you two telling jokes up here?” Oscar said.
“No, we were just having girl-talk, that’s all,” Janie answered.
Oscar was considerably shorter than Rebecca, and nearly bald except for a tuft of hair over each ear. He walked over to the bed, then leaned down and kissed Janie on the forehead.
“How are you feeling, my dear?” he asked, considerately.
“I’m in no pain,” Janie answered.
“Good, good. That’s good,” Oscar said. He turned to Rebecca. “Becca, I was wondering—well, we have a pretty good gathering downstairs, and I thought I might ask you come down and sing a couple of songs. You have such a good voice and everyone seems to enjoy your singing so much. It also helps to keep things calm.”
“Mama?” Rebecca asked.
“Go ahead, child,” Janie said. “You do sing so beautifully, I just wish I could be down there to hear it.”
Rebecca leaned over to kiss her mother, then she followed Oscar downstairs. Oscar was good to her, as he had been to her mother, and he looked out for her.
After coming to Dodge City to join her mother, Rebecca had taken a job working for Oscar in his saloon. Like the other girls who worked in the Lucky Chance, Rebecca would drink with the customers, though with Rebecca the bartender was under strict orders to serve only tea. Unlike the other girls, Rebecca would never visit one of the cribs. Often she would sing for the customers, most of the time the cowboy ballads that they seemed to like. But upon occasion she would sing an operatic aria, doing so with a classically beautiful voice. With her shining auburn hair, full lips, high cheekbones, and dark eyes shaded by long eyelashes, Rebecca was as beautiful as her singing.
Frank Lovejoy stood at the end of the bar watching Rebecca sing. As usual, he was dressed all in black, with a low-crown black hat, ringed with a silver hatband. His ever-present pistol was hanging low in a silver-studded holster on his right side. He was smoking a long, slender cheroot and drinking bourbon.
“Ain’t no sense in lookin’ at her,” Mike Malloy said. “Ever’body knows that she don’t do no whorin’.”
“Oh yeah, she whores, all right,” Lovejoy said confidently. He took a swallow of his bourbon, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “She just don’t know it yet, is all.”
CHAPTER NINE
Duff and Smoke Jensen met in Cheyenne at the Cheyenne Club. Established in 1880 by twelve Wyoming cattlemen, the Cheyenne Club was the place to be for cattlemen from all over Wyoming. At the moment, Duff and Smoke were in one of the club’s parlors, enjoying their cigars and drinks, bourbon for Smoke and Scotch for Duff. They were speaking about the letter Duff had received from Benjamin Conyers.
“I met Conyers once,” Smoke said.
