Wild Boys: Six Shooters and Fangs

by catt dahman

  He left before he did lose control, and he knew that he wanted her more than anyone or anything ever before.

  Ever.

  Chapter 10

  Secrets

  Mary Finder, owner and madam of Finder’s Saloon, walked down the hallway as she checked the girls who were cleaning rooms for the upcoming evening. She’d have to remind them about the drapes and rugs again so the dust wouldn’t pile up. They could be a lazy bunch of whores, but they were cleaner than most, mostly disease free, and somewhat attractive, and they did clean the rooms much better than expected, thanks to Mary’s harping on it. Not very many of the cowboys appreciated clean whores or clean rooms, but Mary took pride in what she could.

  Her man tended the bar and broke up the fights over cards and hired the ones who cleaned up the bar down there, and she handled the girls and rooms upstairs that made as much money or more than the liquor business. It wasn’t much to carry water and use plenty of soap, and that’s all it took to have clean whores and clean rooms.

  “Edna, wake up; you have a room to get clean.” Mary knocked at the door, waiting to hear the grumbling within which meant the girl was awake. “Get yourself up, girl.”

  She expected they’d sleep until after sunrise since that was when the last of the men drifted off, but the rooms had to be cleaned and the girls fixed up before the afternoon was gone.

  Lazy.

  Edna wasn’t up and moving around which meant her room was still dirty from the men the night before. No doubt the chamber pot would be full. Mary shook her head in disgust.

  Mary opened the door and immediately cringed, as she smelled the reek, knowing it meant the loss of revenue and a cleaning job for her. There had never been a chamber pot that smelled that badly; in fact, there was only one thing that smelled like that. Although she wanted to back out and call for the doctor and the other girls, this was her duty, so she went inside, closing the door behind her. Bodies in death, just as in birth, were dirty.

  The girls would fight over having this room, Edna’s three dresses, and her few personal items. Mary sighed. There wasn’t much else to fight over besides the cracked mirror, a broken comb, and a few buttons, and scraps of letters.

  Edna lay naked on the sheets, one chubby arm thrown over her head amid the mousy brown curls, and her meaty legs were spread and covered with blood in random hand patterns. Many men had enjoyed her generous curves. Someone had carved out her female parts from her stomach, piling and leaving them to congeal in a red paste between her legs, while her breasts had been sliced away and left like little flat cakes on the side table. Gagging, Mary covered her mouth and nose.

  She had seen worse in her life than the murders of girls like this by brutal men, but it never got any easier to look at or clean up after. The poor girl had deep slashes on her face and her cheeks, her lips were shredded, and her ears almost were cut away by a very sharp knife. White men seldom did this much damage, but she hadn’t seen any Indians in the saloon.

  Mary paused a few seconds to run her fingers over the girl’s throat which had been opened less brutally, the marks almost delicate. Parts looked chewed. She shivered..

  The water pitcher on the washstand was empty, the basin full of red-tinted water where the killer had washed himself before leaving the room. Towels and the top sheet were smeared with blood, some dark marks and some pinkish. The crimson stain could be scrubbed, but the stain on the boards would have to be covered with a rug; everything was ruined in the room with the smell.

  Mary called out the door, “Bring me pails, soap, and brushes. I need plenty of water, and bring some rags. I have some cleaning to do, and I need a bunch of water.”

  Ann came to help. “What’s wrong?”

  “One of the men got too rough with Edna. Leave that here, and go fetch the doctor and the marshal.”

  Ann caught a glimpse of the bloody linens and smelled the odor; she ran to get a dress to throw over her chemise and do as Mary asked. Edna had the best room in the place, but Ann wasn’t sure she’d ask for it now. She felt guilty, but she was glad she hadn’t served the man Edna had come upstairs with.

  Chapter 11

  Memories

  Quinn Masterson adjusted his white bowtie while watching his own movements reflected in the parlor mirror. Although the silk sash lay perfect around his trim waist, he continued to pluck at it; it was as elegant as was his black suit and shiny black boots.

  "You are worse than any woman," a voice behind him admonished.

  "Then, I am indeed terrible." Quinn smoothed his hair once more before turning to Frannie.

  She was lovely, even more so than her mother had been, and Quinn felt nostalgia tearing at his heart, "Oh, Frannie...."

  "Daddy?" A frown poured over her face.

  "You look a lot like your mother when she was nineteen."

  She smiled and replied, "And she already had Patrick, Ford, and Joshua running around, and I was about to be born. It is hard for me to imagine a husband and four kids."

  "She grew up fast. You've been my baby, Frannie. I think you've grown up, though."

  Frannie sat in the parlor with her father and arranged her skirts so they wouldn't wrinkle. She sensed that he wanted to talk, and it might have something to do with her relationship with John Holliday; of course, he must realize that the man intended to marry her.

  Quinn crossed his legs, "I made your mother grow up; we married when she was just fourteen."

  "But you loved one another."

  "Not at first."

  Very rarely had Quinn spoken of her mother as if he were afraid to let the ghosts into his mind. Frannie was afraid that he would end the conversation, was afraid he wouldn't keep talking to her.

  "I know that you and Holliday have become close. I had hoped you would marry some fine boy who would stay here and work the ranch. That's selfish of me because I don't want to lose you. I see now that my raising you to think for yourself has been my undoing. If it is this man you want, then I cannot stop you."

  "I can't help whom I love."

  He smiled wistfully. "I want to protect you and to keep you safe from the world. Holliday is worldly. I don't want you to experience all the sad and terrible things I have."

  Frannie saw that he was looking through the wall as if into the past, and he began to speak as if to himself.

  He explained, "There were eighty-nine of us in the wagon train: men, women, and children. It was 1846, and I was twelve that year. Your Uncle Thomas ran off when we went to the West. You know he did fine: met and married your Aunt Catherine and went to Quebec. He made a good life and then went to Wichita later."

  Frannie knew about her cousin Bat's parents.

  Quinn went on, "I was too young to go with Thomas, but I wanted to." His memories were painful. "All eighty-nine of us were led by James Reed, George Donner, his wife Tasmen, and Jacob Donnor. They had organized the trip. Jacob wasn’t really old, but he also wasn't young; he was sixty-five, and George was three years younger. They were okay fellows." He paused and then began again, the words difficult. "We crossed the Little Sandy River in Wyoming country in late July. It was hot, and there was always a terrible fear of the Indians. We had false bottoms in our wagons in case we had to hide, but we weren't attacked. It was beautiful out there, Frannie, but beauty can be deadly."

  "Reed and the Donnors said they knew a shorter way to California, and by that time, we were tired and road weary. There wasn't ever enough water to bathe in or to drink or for anything else, and there were no decent beds with clean, cool sheets. Nothing was nice or fresh. We were just ready to be there: in California where all of our dreams waited."

  Frannie nodded.

  "They knew a short-cut: four hundred miles shorter and a month and a half shorter, which would be a life saver, especially to people who had been on the road so long. We tried the shorter route to Hastings Cutoff," Quinn said as he sighed, "and my parents had high hopes for California."

  He had never spoken of his parents, h
er grandparents.

  "It might have sounded shorter, but it was harder, too much harder to be worth it. We had to use ropes to lower the wagons down some of the steep trails, and it was very bad. My hands blistered and then calloused." He spread his palms up and open as in memory. "My hands were always cracked and bloody."

  "We reached the Sierras in October, but we were very low on supplies by then. It took us a lot longer by that trail. We were hungry from all the work we did, and there wasn't enough food left. I was so hungry, and rationing only made us hungrier. My sisters cried so much. I remember that. Hunger hurts."

  "We were in Truckee Pass when winter set in hard. It came in like a solid wall in the Sierras, everything going cold, hard, and white. Lonesome." Quinn stared at the ceiling thoughtfully and continued, "Nothing was there but cold and hunger. We were snowed in tight and couldn't move at all, and there weren't enough supplies. Frannie, it was hell on earth."

  "I'm sorry."

  "October. Then November, and we ate our skinny, pitiful livestock. It was merciful since they were suffering from starvation, too. All of us knew that we wouldn't be moving until spring thaw, and we knew there wasn't near enough food to see us through. Hunger hurt so terribly, and cold, endless cold was so severe that no fire could have taken it away. I can still recall chewing on leather just for the taste, to pretend I wasn't starving. I was twelve, but I cried."

  "November crept by, and then December. More snow. We were dying, and we knew it. That's when, in desperation, seventeen of them went for help. We thought that surely one would make it. Frannie, we could see death waitin' for us, just waitin'.

  My father had pneumonia, and we got to the point we were just waiting for him to die. Of course, we were also waiting to die ourselves." Quinn said. "One of the women had a pet bird, and she ate it. God, it was horrible, the little legs on that bird were not even with enough meat for more than a mouthful."

  "We ate my dog, Frannie, and I cried while I salivated. Then, all the people were too cold and too hungry, and they started dying, the young and the old...my sister, Em. We knew right from the start that we couldn't be rescued until March at the earliest, maybe April. We knew that we had to eat."

  Frannie was staring with a strange, dawning horror.

  Frannie, you can't imagine what it feels like to starve, and at some point we realized we didn't have to suffer. There was fresh, frozen meat right there for us, and by eating it, we could live."

  "You mean those who had died?" asked Frannie as her eyes grew huge.

  "At first, we couldn't eat though we knew we had to do it. We were so hungry." Quinn didn't mention that the people they cooked smelled like pork frying. He didn't mention how he had drooled when he smelled the cooking flesh.

  "You had no choice,” Frannie told him.

  "No, we didn't. Many times, as we prepared to cook and then eat someone who had died, that person had already been drained dry of blood before we got to him or her. We knew then for sure we had some kind of monster among us. There were stories, Honey, from across the sea in the old countries about mythical creatures they called the vampyre who drank the blood of luckless victims, but the stories were told to frighten the little ones; we never dreamed….”

  "And we survived; at least some of us did. We weren’t rescued until that February, and by then, there were only twenty-seven of us left alive; some had gone mad with fear, and, of course, at least one was the monster, living and hiding right among us in sheep’s clothing. My sister and mother ran off into the snow during one of the storms; they didn't want to be someone's food. I guess they froze to death or met up with the monsters because we never saw them again."

  "Oh," Frannie said.

  "That was how I lost my family when I was with the Donnor party. I could have gone back East, but I didn't. I was an angry young man who set out to learn the ways of a gun." Quinn nodded to himself. "I saw it all as I roamed around this country. I saw Grafton and his troopers, thirty in all, try to take on the Sioux over twenty-five dollars and a cow, and I saw every one of those white men slaughtered. In '64, I saw five hundred Cheyenne women and children wiped out on Sand Creek close to Fort Lyon. I heard the stories of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and how Rain-in-the-Face cut Custer's ‘black heart’ out."

  "Frannie, those were fights that needn't have been. I didn't ever see General George Crook as any better than Red Cloud, Low Dog, Cochise, or Geronimo; they were all warring men. Then that North and South thing shouldn't have been."

  Frannie looked confused.

  "Honey, I'm tellin' you that a lot of people died ‘cause of a short-cut or a cow or land. Some men killed ‘cause they were shamed into it or were ordered to do it. Some men liked to kill, they had something to prove, or they got a reputation. I was like that, trying to make myself a name and gettin' to like the feel of a gun and the feeling of a draw."

  "You're a quick draw," Frannie said loyally.

  "There's always someone quicker," he told her, "I was twenty-two when I settled in Arquette, not far from Moscow, Texas."

  Frannie had heard of the town. "Did Mother live there?"

  "Yes, and she had those funny green eyes like you have. She was independent and didn't even notice me."

  "When did you fall in love with her?"

  "When I first saw her. She was young and didn't notice me: a rugged, worn-out deputy sheriff. I didn't have ambition and was quickly becoming a gun for hire. Her father took a liking to me. That's another story I won't go into, but he took me aside and offered me a large amount of money to start myself a ranch. He wanted me to get it going strong for two years, and then, I could come back and marry Katherine, who would be fourteen by then."

  "An arranged marriage?"

  Quinn nodded at his daughter, "Yes, and I took that money, and this is what I made of it. He spread his hands and looked around. I was glad that I took the offer. The hard work and discipline burned out the wildness in me, and I went back to marry your mother."

  Frannie asked him, "Did she want to marry you?"

  "No, not then. She hated the idea with a passion and fought it with a vengeance because she wanted what I had been: a wild, dangerous hired gun. She craved an exciting life. Her parents wore her down, and finally she became my bride."

  "That's sad," Frannie muttered quietly, thinking how she would have detested that.

  "On our wedding night, Katherine pulled a real bear-sticker on me. She told me she'd slit my throat if I came close to her," he said and smiled, "you are like her."

  Frannie grinned back and replied, "I can't imagine her and you like that."

  "I had to wait for her to love me. I worshipped Katherine, and I waited. There were months of her hardly looking at me and wishing me out of her sight, and as few words as possible were spoken. It was like I could have her there but not her voice. She was that way, holding something back and letting me know that she was holding it back."

  "Finally, I bought her this little foal, all skinny legs, shining coat, big ole sad eyes, pitiful lookin' thing. Katherine took one look at it and cried, and oh, how she loved that foal. That was the night she allowed me into her bed." He shifted uncomfortably.

  "That's wonderful."

  "It was. We loved one another so much. But I lost her, Frannie. You were seven when Kat and I went to visit her parents in Arquette. That November day, I was out with her father, and she was horseback riding alone like you are apt to. There was a man, really more of a boy of fifteen who had a violent, vicious temper; that boy was John Wesley Hardin.”

  "I have heard his name," Frannie said, eyes wide.

  "Cold- blooded killer, he was. He got into a fight with one of his uncle's ex-slaves. It started out as wrestling, but it escalated into a fight with sticks and should have ended with cuts and broken bones, but it didn't. Hardin got mad and pulled out his Colt and shot the Negro three times. The former slave, Mage, died a couple days later."

  "Hardin later claimed self-defense or some rot, but he hated
blacks and was a staunch Southerner who practiced shooting effigies of Abraham Lincoln," Quinn said, grimaced and continued, "anyway, your mother was riding through the woods right when the shooting happened, and a stray bullet supposedly hit her. She took the bullet in her head, but it didn't kill her right then. She stumbled out of the woods and fell right in front of Mage who had been hit three times, but he crawled a quarter of a mile for help. She died before anyone could get to her."

  "Daddy...."

  "Let me finish, Honey. I wanted to track Hardin down, but it was something your mother would have looked poorly upon. When it was time to bring the outlaw in, I rode with the Rangers. Marshal Tell Starr was a Ranger, also. We caught up with Hardin on a train. When he tried to pull his gun, John Armstrong knocked Hardin unconscious with his own Peacemaker. A couple of Hardin's men dove through windows, and they took bullets and nearly got away. Starr and I went after them, caught them, and hanged them without ceremony or pleasure."

  "What happened to Hardin?" she asked since she was surprised to know about Tell Starr.

  Quinn sighed and said, "Hardin spent time in jail with Johnny Ringo, I heard. He is still in prison, and when he gets out, I intend to hunt him down and kill him. That love of the gun and need to kill for vengeance...it has never quite gone away."

  "I can't say you are wrong in the way you feel. You have a good reason to hate Hardin," Frannie told him.

  "I don't know if that is so. I have no fears for Joshua and Ford; they'll be fine, but I worry for Patrick and you."

  She cocked her head and asked, "Why?"

  "This is where this long story has been going. You are just like your mother, uninterested in all the nice young bucks, yet half of them are in love with you. You love a gunfighter."

  "John is a good man."

  "To you, and that's what matters to me, but, Frannie, he is what he is, and you have to understand that. He can't change."

  "He plans to settle here in town." She knew she sounded petulant.

  "I'm glad of that. I know he has some good points, but, Honey, I'm afraid you'lt find a lot of pain if you choose him." Quinn didn't have the heart to say all he had planned to. "Make sure that you know what the truth is and that you are looking at things with your eyes open. Lord, but I want you to be happy."