No Place for a Lady

by Vivian Vaughan

  “Ahora, Raúl,” he whispered. “Time to get movin’. You first.”

  Raúl scooted back from the cliff, standing only when he was beyond sight of those in the gulley. Tyler watched the minutes tick off. When he had given Raúl time to get in place, he signaled Sánchez.

  “Ahora.”

  Sánchez followed the path Raúl had taken to his horse, which was tethered out of range in a thicket. Again, Tyler concentrated on his watch.

  The moon was up now, a ball of white at about eight o’clock in the night sky. He quietly made his way to his horse, tightened the cinch, and mounted. He hoped Raúl and Sánchez were listening for his whistle, instead of dreaming over black-eyed señoritas.

  What a thing for him to think! What he really hoped was that Raúl and Sánchez never found out he had entertained such an idea! Not after the way his mind had roamed the last few days.

  Suddenly he was moving. He hooted in his best imitation of an owl, then galloped hell-bent-for-leather into the clearing. They didn’t frighten the Rurales, but they took them by surprise.

  “Buenas noches, señores,” Tyler greeted the two men who stood guard at the north end of the clearing. They were dismounted and had squatted on the ground, smoking and swapping stories. Tyler wagged his pistol at them. “Throw down your guns and get movin’.”

  One man lifted his rifle, and Tyler fired. The man dodged, and Tyler cringed, hoping he hadn’t dodged the wrong way. The bullet thudded into the crown of the lawman’s sombrero, knocking the heavy braided hat to the ground.

  When the man reached for it, Tyler stopped him. “Leave it; you can buy another when you get home.” When they tried to step in their saddles, Tyler stopped them again. “Not this time, amigos. Tonight you travel on foot.”

  A sudden shot from across the way drew their attention. Sánchez rode up. “Any trouble?”

  “Not yet. These fellers aren’t too keen on swimmin’—”

  Animals splashed into the river.

  “By damn, if that’s my cattle—” Tyler began.

  “It’s horses.” Sánchez motioned to the two Rurales. “If you two hombres want to catch a ride back to headquarters you better get a move on. Don’t look like your compadres are waitin’ for you.”

  Raúl rode up cursing the two that got away. After that, it didn’t take the remaining Rurales long to head for the river. Tyler and his vaqueros watched them swim into the black current.

  “They’ll be back,” Sánchez commented.

  “Bank on it,” Raúl agreed. “The Mex government ain’t gonna give up this easy.”

  “That’s why we have to move these cattle away from the river tonight,” Tyler informed them. “After all the trouble we’ve gone to, I’d hate to lose them.”

  With a whoop, they started the cattle back up the ravine. Tyler glanced at the night sky, which was black by now and glittered with stars. He wondered whether Maddie had seen the sky out here. By damn, he’d like to show it to her. If she was still around.

  “Think we can make that free range before dawn?” Raúl asked.

  “We’re takin’ ’em to Buck.” The idea had come suddenly, and he liked it. “We’ll ship ’em off to market before the Rurales or Morley Sinclair can get their sticky hands on ’em.”

  “Looks like you an’ me are fixin’ to be out of a job, Raúl,” Sánchez told the tophand.

  “No way,” Tyler replied. “Once we get these critters off to market, we’ll swim the river and bring back another herd.”

  The week had been a disaster for Madolyn. She couldn’t keep her mind off that man. No matter what she did, Tyler Grant was on her mind; no matter to whom she talked, she thought about him.

  It was that last kiss that had done it. If only he hadn’t kissed her like that—so tender and sweet a deep longing burrowed its way inside her, thinking about it.

  And think about it she did—morning, noon, and night. She tried to dispel his image, to force him out of her mind, by diving head first into the town’s difficulty. But every day that passed, she missed him more, rather than less.

  It made absolutely no sense. But for once, she had no control over her own mind. Miss Abigail’s dictums were the first to go. In desperation Madolyn turned to the system of survival she had learned as a child.

  She set limits: She would not think about Tyler until after she met with Loretta James, the schoolmarm. She would not think about him until after she talked with Price Donnell about printing extra copies of the Buckhorn News to distribute across the tracks in Horn.

  She had so much trouble concentrating on the Spanish lessons she engaged Loretta to give her, that she considered dropping them, lest Loretta think her an imbecile. She didn’t drop them, though, for her two most private and precious goals concerned her newfound family: Before she left for Boston, she would hug each of her nephews and nieces and she would communicate with them in their own language.

  Her turmoil over Tyler had not been well hidden, however, she discovered one morning when Goldie approached her. Early in the week Madolyn learned that Nugget wasn’t the woman’s surname. In fact, it wasn’t part of her name at all.

  “My mama named me Mable, honey. Mable Thorndecker. You can imagine what customers did with a name like that!”

  Truthfully, Madolyn couldn’t begin to imagine what customers would do with a name like that, but she silently agreed that Goldie fit the woman’s lifestyle better than Mable. So she obliged the madam by calling her Goldie. And Goldie turned out to be quite an observer of human nature, Madolyn learned.

  “It’s my business, honey.” Goldie settled into the rose-red settee in Madolyn’s parlor. “Woman in my business has to be able to spot trouble between a man and a woman.”

  “Trouble?” This was Goldie’s first visit to the third floor since Madolyn arrived. Shocked to find her landlady at the door, Madolyn must have shown her uneasiness, for Goldie had exclaimed, “Just a little visit, honey. Thought you might be lonely.” Although the direction of Goldie’s conversation evaded Madolyn, the madam seemed to know exactly where she was headed.

  “Love,” Goldie explained.

  “Love?” Madolyn’s wariness increased.

  “Why, honey, you say that word like it’s new to the world. Let me tell you a thing or two. It ain’t.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Goldie.”

  “About you and Tyler, that’s what?”

  “Me and Mr. Grant?”

  “Whatever you call him, you can’t hide the fact that you’re head over heels.”

  “Head over heels?”

  Goldie tossed her mane of henna-tinted hair. “I’m good at spottin’ the trouble. Have to be, in my line of work. Anytime a girl of mine falls for a customer, she’s out the door.”

  The conversation was not only bizarre, but disconcerting. Was Goldie kicking her out? “There’s nothing for you to be concerned about, Goldie. I’m not…” She shrugged. “…head over heels—or anything else. Mr. Grant is just…” She sighed, wondering what on earth Tyler Grant was to her.

  “He’s always on your mind, that’s what he is, honey. It’s plain as mold on day-old bread.”

  “Oh, no—” Madolyn regrouped, attempting to put on a stern face, as Miss Abigail instructed. “I mean, I can change. I shall stop thinking about him. I shall. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Worry about it? Honey, I’m tickled pink.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said any of my girls. That’s a different horse, all together. One of my girls falls for a customer, her work falls off; she doesn’t want to accommodate anyone but him; times, she’ll even stop chargin’ him.”

  Madolyn clasped hands to heated cheeks. “My goodness. Well, I never…” Were she the fainting sort, Madolyn knew without a doubt she would be lying on her rose-red carpet this very moment. What a conversation!

  Miss Abigail would be mortified!

  But Miss Abigail, drat her, had already let Madolyn down. Her dictums were well a
nd good for life in Boston, where one was protected by the support of like-minded sisters. Madolyn observed the woman who sat before her. Out West more things than the landscape were different. She couldn’t imagine herself sitting, no living, in a house of ill repute in Boston. But here she was, discussing something sordid, yet not so sordid, either, with the madam of the House of Negotiable Love. No, out here things were different. Out here—

  She had met Tyler Grant, and heaven help her, but her heart raced every time she thought about him. Bracing herself against the pain of it, she explained to Goldie.

  “I am not a candidate for love, Goldie. Nor for marriage. I have pledged my life to the women’s movement.”

  Goldie cocked her artificially colored head, pursed her tinted lips, and arched her painted eyebrows. “Is that so? I’m here to tell you, Maddie, when the love bug bites, there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it.”

  “Well, I can do something about it. I mean, I could, if it were necessary. You’re worrying needlessly, Goldie. I couldn’t be in love with Tyler Grant. I’m not going to fall in love with anyone.”

  One of Goldie’s painted eyebrows arched. “Well, then, that’s a different story. You can rest your mind, honey. You have nothing to fear from ol’ Tyler. He, too, has pledged to remain single for the rest of his life.”

  “He has?” Madolyn’s heart clattered against her ribs.

  “For a fact. He was married at an early age to a young thing back in Georgia. She died before the war was over, and Tyler vowed never to harness himself to another female again in this lifetime—those are his words, not mine.”

  “Oh.” He was married. Questions popped instantly to Madolyn’s mind. What had the woman been like? What was her name? Was she beautiful? Had he been in love with her? Was he still? She dared not ask Goldie. She couldn’t reveal the extent of her curiosity, even though confiding in one so learned in such matters was definitely tempting.

  “Way I see it,” Goldie continued, “you and Tyler are cut out for each other.”

  “I told you—”

  “I know, honey. That’s what makes it perfect. You can enjoy each other’s company without worrin’ about makin’ a commitment.”

  Madolyn wondered exactly what Goldie meant by company. The emphasis she put on the word brought Tyler’s kisses to mind, rather than their limited conversations, conversations better described as confrontations.

  “Maddie, honey, quit your blushin’. Kissin’ and cuddlin’ are downright healthy. good for the constitution.”

  “I already have a good constitution.”

  “But you’re lackin’ something, honey. I can see it in you. An’ Tyler is just the man to give you that little extra bit o’ life. Can’t blame you for not wantin’ to marry. Matrimony’s a different proposition altogether. Trust me, Maddie. There’s no reason for you to deny yourself some of the more pleasurable lessons in life when Tyler Grant is here to teach ’em to you. Especially since he won’t expect a commitment.”

  Seven

  Madolyn tugged on her black gloves and glanced up the circular staircase. No sight of Goldie. Taking her father’s pocket watch from her reticule, she consulted it. Daphne sashayed down the stairs at that moment, tails of her red satin kimono flying around her knees.

  “Where’s Goldie?” Madolyn asked. “Isn’t she ready?”

  “Says she ain’t goin’. For you to go on ahead without her.”

  Madolyn stiffened her spine. With a practiced flip of her wrist, she closed the watch and dropped it back into her reticule. “Then I shan’t go, either, Daphne. Please relay that message to Goldie.”

  Daphne started up the stairs, but stopped midway to the second-floor landing. “Miss Goldie!” she bellowed, in a manner that would have appalled Madolyn a week ago.

  A lady never raised her voice, not even in the privacy of her own home. Madolyn hadn’t needed Miss Abigail to teach her that, her mother had done it quite well. Now, after a week in Texas, the teachings of a lifetime were vanishing like so many soap bubbles.

  With each passing day Tyler was being proved more and more right. And Morley. The West was no place for a lady. She might as well have traveled to the moon, so different was almost every facet of life out here.

  But in another sense, life in this isolated corner of the world was invigorating, empowering in a way she had never experienced in Boston. Why, just this morning, she had despaired of girding up in a corset and tight-fitting basque. She had done it, of course. Oh, my, yes, she had done it.

  But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been changed by her week in Buckhorn. One week. Seven days ago if anyone had suggested she would find herself living in a house of ill repute, not only living there, but actively battling to save the women’s business, she would have accused them of tippling at the local pub.

  Now she felt—actually felt comfortable in the presence of women whose modesty was limited, whose conversations were often incomprehensible, and whose occupation was not only objectionable but highly degrading to the plight of women in general.

  Daphne continued to shout up the stairs. “Miss Maddie says she ain’t goin’ without you, Go—” Her voice stopped suddenly, when Goldie appeared on the landing.

  “Oh!” the chorus raised. Madolyn stood speechless. She had never seen any of the women attired in street clothes. She had actually feared Goldie might wear her brassy gold kimono to the meeting. Indeed, she had braced herself against such a possibility, after Goldie rebuffed her suggestion to hold the first meeting of the Buck-Horn Reunited Society here at the House of Negotiable Love.

  “I thought you would be more comfortable in your own surroundings,” Madolyn had argued.

  “What about the other women? Ever last one of ’em would be glancin’ up the stairs, tryin’ to take a gander at the girls, wonderin’ which one accommodates her man, which one—”

  “All right,” Madolyn interrupted. Along with not to raise her voice, she had been taught not to interrupt people. But lately, she discovered her best line of defense against ribald conversations was to interrupt the speaker in midsentence. “We shall hold the first meeting at the schoolhouse. Tuesday. As soon as the children are excused—three o’clock sharp.”

  Three o’clock sharp had almost arrived. Madolyn tapped her toe. With the five-minute walk, they would have trouble making the meeting on time, even now.

  But above her stood the madam of this house attired in a day dress of uncommon beauty, if a trifle on the flashy side. The tone on tone striped satin was a shade of rose-red Madolyn had been taught belonged on flowers in the garden. Although the bodice was high-necked—a relief—its tight fit stretched across Goldie’s voluptuous bosom, giving one cause to wonder how strong the thread was and to hope for the best.

  Goldie even wore a hat. The same rose-red as the dress, broad brimmed, with a spray of matching ostrich feathers that must have cost the poor bird its entire tail.

  With her henna-tinted hair, fuchsia gown, and enough fragrance to eclipse the entire rose garden at the Boston Botanical Gardens, the madam presented a spirited front, to be sure. As it turned out, that’s all it was—a front.

  “I can’t go,” Goldie called down.

  Madolyn stared at the woman who ran her home and business with such authority. “Of course, you can go.”

  “I can’t. I would only hurt the cause.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “It isn’t nonsense. It’s fact. One look at me and the society would fall apart.”

  “You’re the driving force.”

  “I’m the local madam.”

  “This was your idea, Goldie. You stated your case with enough conviction to persuade me to join you.”

  “You’re the one to fight for us, Maddie. You have the experience, and the respectability.”

  “Respectability! What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Everything!”

  “Nothing.”

  “Everything,” Goldie insisted. “Every woman at that meeting
will be castin’ sideways glances at me, those who don’t turn tail and run the minute I step through the door.”

  “Speaking of which, we shall be late if we don’t set out immediately.”

  “I can’t go.”

  “And I shan’t go without you.”

  “You must, Maddie.”

  “Must I? This isn’t my fight.”

  “You’ve dedicated your life to betterin’ the lot of women. You said so, yourself.”

  “How am I bettering your lot by doing your dirty work while you hide behind your painted shutters and wallow in self-pity?”

  “Self-pity? Me? I do not wallow in self-pity.”

  Madolyn examined herself in the hall looking glass. She tucked a loose black curl beneath her black bonnet with black-gloved fingers. Seeing Goldie’s reflection behind hers, she was struck by the disparity. She and the madam made a startling pair. But maybe that was what the world needed, beginning with Buck and Horn. If she and the madam could come to terms, could work together for the betterment of all, surely others would join their ranks.

  She extended her hand. “Come, Goldie. Since I’m in charge, I shouldn’t be late. The meeting can’t begin until we arrive.” Madolyn held her breath, and realized that those around her were doing the same.

  “We need you, Goldie,” she encouraged. “To stand the slightest chance of succeeding in this world, we women must stand together, united, one for all and all for one.”

  “You won’t go without me?”

  Madolyn shook her head. “Not one step.”

  Goldie inhaled, a deep, tremulous breath that tested every stitch in her rose-red bodice. “All right,” she huffed. “All right.” She glanced around, her gaze alighting on one of her girls after the other, taking them all in, coming at length to Madolyn. “If it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “It is.” Madolyn reached again. This time Goldie took her hand, placing a rose-red crocheted mitt into the fine black leather of Madolyn’s glove. Madolyn led her out the door. Together they stood on the porch.

  Madolyn took a step, tugged, and Goldie followed. When they crossed the swept yard, the soiled doves began to clap. The applause brought a sense of satisfaction to Madolyn, but Goldie wasn’t convinced. At the edge of the yard, she dug in her heels.