Devil's Brand

by Len Levinson

  She didn’t bat an eyelash. “I been with a lot of men in my day, and they twisted me every which way you can imagine, but I ain’t never been twisted the way this here man twisted me, and I ain’t lettin’ him go. That answer yer question?”

  “Let me buy the both of you a drink. Bartender?”

  The bartender set up the glasses, as the tall woman reappeared in the main part of the saloon, purring a German tune, and the cowboys gazed at her with lust in their hearts. She could be singing about the price of turnips in Bavaria, for all they knew.

  Stone examined her once more from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, and decided she was worthy of him. Why go to bed with your basic frontier whore, when you could go to bed with something like that? Marie had been around five-six, but Stone had always wondered, in the deepest most secret part of his mind, what it’d be like to love a woman built to his proportions, like that German singer with the big diamond pendant hanging from the thick gold chain around her neck.

  “What’s her name?” Stone asked.

  “Veronika,” replied Eulalie Parker.

  “Veronika what.”

  “Just Veronika.”

  During the long years he’d searched for Marie, he’d tried not to see other women, so he wouldn’t fall in love with one of them, but now the veil had been torn away, and he found himself staring at one of the most voluptuous women he’d ever seen, begging him to play with her.

  He stood in the smoky dimness of the saloon, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, and his hat perched on the back of his head. He was surrounded by a variety of sombreros, stovepipe hats, modified derbies, and cowboy hats of all types. Every eye was on Veronika as she slipped among them, patting their heads and pinching their noses, driving them wild.

  Yesterday the gods had their big laugh when they told him Marie wasn’t Cassandra, and today, so he wouldn’t become complacent, they threw in Marie’s replacement, the woman who appeared to be looking directly at him just then, singing her strange Bavarian love song.

  Shamelessly he undressed her with his eyes, and Marie couldn’t hold him back any longer. Stone marveled at Veronika’s long legs, those abundant breasts, but most of all her bewitching eyes and sinuous mouth. She looked like a Nordic Amazon Queen, and he thought she was just what he needed.

  She came to the end of her song, and the audience burst into boisterous applause, as only a frontier audience can. Somebody threw a twenty-dollar gold coin at Veronika’s feet, she picked it up deftly; a cowboy fired his gun into the rafters. The crowd surged toward the dancers, and the women blew kisses, then ran daintily up the stairs and disappeared into the murky depths of the second-floor whorehouse.

  Stone felt touched by a magic wand. He was coming to life again, the cloud that had been over his head was passing, everything would be all right from now on, he was free to forge his destiny, and with that incredible woman at his side, there’d be nothing he couldn’t accomplish. He looked up at the second floor.

  Blakemore dug his elbow into Stone’s ribs. “Forget about it. She’s not for the likes of you, Johnny Reb. If you want to git into her laundry, you got to be more than just another saddle tramp.”

  Stone turned to him. “Now you listen to me, you damned blue belly. I may not look like much now, but I was an officer and a gentleman once, and I’ve had a first-class education. You may find it hard to believe, but not every woman is looking for whatever a man has in his pocket. Some women fall in love with a man’s spirit.”

  Blakemore looked at Stone, and saw a ragged vagabond with a mad gleam in his eyes. He slapped Stone on the shoulder. “Johnny Reb,” he said, “you remind me of the flea who wanted to marry the elephant. But I’m a sportin’ man, as I’m sure you are. I’ll bet you five dollars, cash on the barrelhead, that you’ll never get into the bed of that high-priced drink of water what was just singin’ out here.”

  “You’re on!” Stone said.

  Stone fished five dollars out of his pocket, and Blakemore pulled the same amount out of his. Solemnly, they gave the money to Duvall.

  “How’ll I know whether or not you do it?” Blakemore asked Stone.

  “You’ll have to take my word for it, but you needn’t worry, my word is good. I used to be an officer and a gentleman.”

  “And I used to be the king of San Francisco. I think I just made a bad bet.”

  “You did, but not for the reason you think. Bartender, may I please have another glass of whiskey?”

  Stone’s head was spinning, and he coughed from the volume of cigarette and cigar smoke around him; the roulette wheel couldn’t be seen from the bar anymore. Stone wanted to go someplace, but didn’t know where, and didn’t realize he was just trying to escape the pain of loneliness now that Marie was gone.

  The bartender poured the whiskey, and Stone drank half of it down, then rolled another cigarette. Somehow he’d have to get into her room, and he’d plan it like a military expedition, with a diversion, then the main attack. “Hold ’em by the nose, and kick ’em in the pants” is what Jeb Stuart used to say.

  If he just walked upstairs and asked for her, they’d throw him out a window. How could he push through enemy resistance? A waitress walked by, carrying a tray, and he got an idea. When the bartender came into his vicinity, he leaned forward and whispered into his ear.

  Blakemore nudged Stone again. “Why don’t you admit you’re just afraid? You ain’t kiddin’ me, Johnny Reb. It’d be easy for you to go upstairs and screw one of ’em, but instead you have to go for somethin’ impossible, so you’ll fail. What’s the matter, Johnny Reb? Can’t git it up?”

  Stone looked coldly at him. “I ought to kill you, but I’ve wasted enough good lead on Yankees already. If I go upstairs and pay a whore five dollars, it’ll only be a quick professional roll on the mattress, and then your time’s up, and the next man walks in. A whore will do it with anybody who puts his money down, and if you paid her to screw a donkey, she’d do it. Billy Yank, I need something a bit more satisfying than that. I need to feel privileged in some way. Do you think you can catch a glimmer of what I’m saying?”

  Blakemore laughed out of the corner of his mouth. “Son of a bitch is lookin’ for true love at the Last Chance Saloon. I’d better roll up my pants, ’cause the shit’s gittin’ deep in here.”

  The bartender set down a tray with a small bottle of brandy, pot of coffee, cups, saucers, and a white dish towel. Stone reached into his pocket for the money, counted it, and was nearly tapped out. He passed his Confederate cavalry officer’s hat to the bartender and said, “Hold this for me.” Then he smoothed down his hair, straightened his shirt, took a deep breath, picked up the tray, and folded the dish rag over his arm.

  He marched toward the stairs, and they watched him ascend to the second floor. Blakemore turned to Duvall and said, “I’ll bet somebody shoots him.”

  “A miracle he got this far,” Duvall replied. He reached for Stone’s glass of whiskey and poured the contents into his own empty glass.

  Stone walked down the corridor, and a door opened in front of him. A whore and her customer stepped out, and Stone said to her, in his most precise enunciation, because he knew he was loaded: “Could you please tell me where I might find Veronika’s room?”

  “Down the hall on the other end.”

  Stone walked in the direction indicated, the bottle of brandy dancing on the tray, and he wondered how real waiters carried their trays so effortlessly. He came to the end of the corridor, and saw a sign that said entertainment. He knocked on the door, it was opened by two men wearing range clothes and hostile suspicion.

  “I have something for Veronika,” Stone said.

  “I’ll take it,” one of them replied.

  “I’ll deliver it myself, if you don’t mind.”

  “Gimme the goddamned tray.”

  “Can’t do it. Now if you’ll just let me through, I’ll—”

  The one in the red shirt punched him in the stomach, Stone d
oubled over and dropped the tray; it went crashing toward the floor. The other, in a plaid shirt, hit him with an uppercut, straightening and sending him flying out of the room. Stone landed in the corridor, the taste of blood in his mouth.

  “Vhat is going on here?” Asked a female voice.

  Stone, covered with brandy and hot coffee, looked up and saw Veronika standing like a tall raven-tressed valkyrie in the doorway.

  “He was tryin’ to break into yer suite, ma’am.”

  “I wasn’t trying to break in,” Stone replied, picking himself up off the floor. “I just wanted to talk with you about something important.”

  She examined his husky shoulders, prominent pectorals, and bulging biceps. “Well,” she said with a toss of her head, “everybody else has been annoying me tonight, so vhy not you?”

  “I wanted to tell you something that could change your life.”

  She made a wry smile. “Another lunatic, but I haf alvays had a veakness for lunatics. You may come in for a few minutes, undt tell me how to change my life, because it has become clear to me lately, to judge by my surroundings, that I must be doing something wrong.”

  Stone followed her like a hound dog who’d picked up the scent of his prey, passing the two men who looked at him as if he’d just crawled out from underneath a pile of buffalo shit.

  She entered a room furnished with a dressing table, a few chairs, and a sofa in front of the window through which shone the light of the sun setting behind mountains in the distance.

  She sat at the dressing table, bent forward, and looked at herself in the mirror, pursing her lips, and Stone wanted to rip her clothes off.

  “What is this important information?” She asked, brushing cosmetics onto her cheek.

  “Let’s go to bed, and I’ll show you.”

  She looked at him with new concern. “You are not dangerous, are you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You should not say things like that to a voman, as if ve are toys to be played vith undt thrown away.”

  “I’d never throw you away.”

  She laughed darkly. “That is vhat they all say.”

  “Listen to me,” he said earnestly. “It’s rare when two people meet who are so completely matched as the both of us. There aren’t many like us left.”

  She couldn’t suppress a smile. “There are millions like you everywhere I go, men who promise to love me forever, then ends the night undt comes the dawn, I look beside me undt they are gone.” She gazed at him tenderly. “I know you belief vhat you are saying, but you are lying, to me undt to yourself. My advice to you is haf another drink, undt enjoy the next show. It starts in fifteen minutes, undt I haf to get ready, so if you vill excuse me …”

  Stone was deflated by the realization that she was right, he had nothing special to offer, not even the price of a hotel room, but he arose and moved toward her.

  “Vhere do you think you are going?” She asked, still looking at her face in the mirror.

  He touched his hand to her silky hair, then dropped to one knee.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  “I can’t.”

  She punched him in the solar plexus, and the wind went out of him. He dropped to the floor, hugging his chest, gasping.

  “I told you,” she said with Teutonic crispness, “that I haf to get ready for the next show, but if you come to my hotel later, perhaps ve can haf a drink. I am at the Barlowe House, room three tventy-one, around two in the morning?”

  “Could I have a little kiss now, to keep me going?”

  “That vill disturb my cosmetics. Auf wiedersehen, schatzchen.”

  She returned to her cosmetics, as if he weren’t there. He opened the door and stepped into the next room. The two bodyguards sat on opposite sides of a table, playing dominoes, and they looked up at him as he passed. He felt tense and crazy, and remembered them beating him in the corridor, for no reason at all. In a sudden impulsive move, he kicked the legs out from one of the chairs, and the bodyguard in the red shirt was dumped to the floor, while the one in the plaid shirt went for his six-gun, but Stone beat him to the draw.

  The man’s hand froze on the elkhorn grip of his gun, while the one on the floor raised himself to his feet. Veronika’s door opened, and she stood backlit by the lamps at her dressing table. “Schatzchen, please do not make trouble. Put avay your guns undt go now, like a good boy, all right?”

  Stone holstered his guns and looked at the bodyguards. “Hope to see you galoots some other time.”

  “So do we, varmint,” said the one in the red shirt.

  Stone holstered his guns and walked to the door, stepping into the hall. He wanted whiskey, but first he’d take a walk and clear his head. He stepped onto a small balcony atop a flight of steps that led to the backyard of the hotel, and climbed down, the night breeze cool and pleasant through his hair.

  He walked down a dark alley and came to the main street of San Antone. Lamps glowed through the windows of saloons and billiard parlors. Horses were hitched to the rails, and he remembered Tomahawk. He didn’t have money left for a stable and whiskey both, so it looked as though the poor animal was going to spend his night in the street, but it wouldn’t be the first time, and wouldn’t be the last.

  Stone noticed a candle in a window, and the sign said:

  YOUR FORTUNE TOLD

  25 cents

  He looked through the window into a small room where an old crone wearing gold earrings and a red silk bandanna on her head sat at a table, looking at him with an amused smile, and then she beckoned to him, her lips forming the words: “Come in, cowboy—I am not going to hurt you.”

  He hesitated, because he didn’t like incense and hocus-pocus. He was about to turn away, when the Gypsy woman came to the door. She wore several skirts, one over the other, and a blouse cut low over her wrinkled shoulders and withered breasts. She stood in the doorway, crossing her arms, looking haughtily at him, and her skin was olive, gleaming in the moonlight.

  “Tell your future, cowboy?” She asked in a throaty voice.

  “I’m not sure I want to know what it is,” he replied.

  “You were a soldier once, no?”

  “How can you tell?”

  “No magic would be required to see that. It is in the way you stand. Ready to jump on your horse and kill somebody, eh, cowboy?”

  “A man’s got to stay ready.”

  “The best way to be ready is to know what is coming. That is what I, Madam Lazonga, can do for you. I will tell your future, your past, and answer five questions of your choice, for only twenty-five cents. Never in your life will you find a bargain like this, cowboy, never.”

  Stone puffed his cigarette and blew smoke rings in the air as he regarded her. “You flimflamming like everybody else?”

  “It will only cost twenty-five cents, and at the very least, I will amuse you for a while. That is not so much money, is it? Why, one would think I was asking for your first-born child, the way you are acting!”

  It wasn’t much money, and maybe she did know something. “All right,” he said, “but make it good.”

  “That part is up to you, but I’ll give you a cup of tea, at no extra charge.”

  He followed her into a room whose walls were covered with beads and fringed curtains. It was furnished with a round table and two chairs, and in the middle of the table sat a crystal ball on a purple velvet cushion, with a lit candle on each side.

  “Sit down,” she said. “Relax and smoke your cigarette. I will be back with the tea.”

  He bent forward and peered into the crystal ball, colored lights sparkling and gleaming within its crystal depths. What am I doing here?

  She returned, carrying a pot with two cups and saucers. “Drink,” she said. “Relax. Tell me who you are, so I might know you better.”

  “I’m a drifter, and I just got a job today as a cowboy for the Triangle Spur.”

  “Once you were wealthy, yes?”

  “How did you know?”r />
  “I don’t know how I know. I just know. You have had terrible disappointments in your life, I see that too. And women have loved you, but that would be obvious even to a woman who was not a Gypsy, yet I, with my Gypsy eyes, can see far deeper than that. I see the friends who died on the battlefield, and I see the bullet that struck you on your body just beneath your ribs, on the left side, and nearly killed you. Yes, I see lots of things. Give me your hand, please.”

  How could she know about that old battle scar?

  “I asked for your hand, cowboy.”

  He gave it to her, she kneaded it with her strong fingers garnished with baubled rings, then flattened it, brought the candle closer, and gazed at the wrinkles and creases. “Oh,” she said, as if she’d been taken by surprise.

  “What is it?”

  She let go of his hand. “To tell you the truth, palmistry is not really my specialty. Drink your tea, and we will work better with the crystal ball.”

  “You saw something in my hand, and I’d like to know what it was.”

  “How can you believe this foolishness? I am only a poor old Gypsy, and I have gypped you out of twenty-five cents. Call the sheriff if you like, but I think it would be best if you leave now.”

  “Madam Lazonga,” he said, “we made a deal, and now you’re backing out. If you don’t hold up your end”—he took out a match—“I’ll burn this building to the ground, and if you look into my eyes, you can see I’m crazy enough to do it.”

  She gazed into his eyes, her brow furrowed. “It will be a long and difficult reading.”

  “I’ll pay for your time.”

  “Cross my palm with silver.”

  Stone gave her another quarter.

  “Again.”

  He dropped more coins onto her wrinkled hand, and she dropped them between her breasts. Then she took his hand. “What do you want to know first—the future, the past, or prospects for love?”

  “I want to know what you just saw in my hand, and don’t ask me to cross your palm with silver again, because I’m flat broke.”

  “This is your life line,” she said, pointing a long red fingernail. “Are you sure you want to know?”