City of Widows

by Loren D. Estleman

  The coach driver, around thirty with a full beard and that facial twitch you saw often in men who spent much of their time trying to keep arrowheads and bandits’ bullets out of their backs, was checking the team for fistulas in front of the freight office when I returned. I saw that rather than waste one of his pretty Concords on a flyspeck like San Sábado, Mr. Butterfield had sent a common mud wagon, open on both sides with only canvas flaps between passengers and the weather. The seats were empty now and the luggage gone.

  I found Junior conferring with the cedar chief in front of the Apache Princess, smoking a tailor-made with ladylike puffs to avoid drawing smoke too far into his finely balanced system. The day was warming up but he still wore a sheepskin over his frock coat and vest and a wideawake hat that made him look like something stunted in the shade of the great brim. “Our partner got in an hour ago and is waiting for us at Señora Castillo’s boardinghouse,” he said. “The señora is one of our celebrated widows. Ugly as a washboard and cooks like one, but it’s the only place to stay in town until we get a hotel built. I didn’t know we’d need another room when I put up this place.”

  “Who is he, Jay Gould? Why can’t he meet us here?”

  “You saw the stage. Would you feel like walking this distance once you finished scrubbing off New Mexico?”

  “This rig okay to meet him in, or do I need a morning coat?”

  “Let’s go. You are the complainingest partner.”

  The house was on an alley off the main street and was probably the oldest wooden building in town, built of barked logs with the chinking as thick in places as a man’s wrist. Señora Castillo, older yet, greeted us at the door holding a straw broom in the fashion of a weapon. She was as dark and wrinkled as a chili pepper and bent nearly double in a coarse black dress with a dusty hem and hundreds of black bead buttons up the front. A plain gray scarf completely covered her hair. No eyes showed in the black crescent hollows between the puckered lids. I had seen more life in Aztec masks. When Junior told her what we were about she turned and led the way inside, dragging both feet with a sound like a locomotive champing at the platform.

  The parlor was a combination of Mexican and Chicago Victorian. Oval portraits of bitter-faced men in whiskers hung on the log walls, a serape covered most of the worn spots on an overstuffed sofa, a tea table with yellow pottery on it stood on an earthen floor swept as bare as tile. The place smelled of extinct meals and dry rot.

  “Good morning, Marshal. I suppose it is Mr. Murdock now.”

  I stopped, letting Junior walk past me to the middle of the room. The voice coming from the direction of the sofa was husky for a woman, slightly roughened from years of calling for wagers in smoky barrooms full of loud men in a fever to lose their gold dust and coppers. She had aged some—her cheekbones were more pronounced and there was a vertical crease where before there had been only white forehead as smooth as glaze—but her hair, done up loosely, was still Indian black and the eyes, set just a shade too wide, were clear blue with tiny gold points floating in them like snowflakes in a crystal paperweight. The mouth was excessive too for fashion but well formed, the chin cut delicately but firm. Her dress was cambric, plain white and cut simply to her clean figure and closed at the throat with an amber brooch set in rose gold. The contrast with her black patent leather high-tops, and with the dark colors that surrounded her, was marked. But then I knew from old experience that it was her business to stand out.

  “Just Murdock will serve,” I said. “Is it still Mrs. Bower, or have you gone back to Poker Annie?”

  “I never went by it. That was a mistake on a circular that went out in Dakota and it stuck. The circular was a mistake as well. I see you are as sweet-natured as ever.”

  “Mrs. Colleen Bower, Page Murdock,” Junior said. “The old man always insisted I was born a day late and managed to fall behind an hour a year. I had a notion you two were old acquaintances. It had to be more than just your reputation that almost backed Mrs. Bower out of the deal when your name came up.”

  She had been dabbing at her throat with a lace handkerchief when we entered, blotting the moisture that surfaced in the dry heat through pores freshly open from the bath. Now she returned the pretty to the reticule in her lap, white satin with a black drawstring. “Breen, Montana, is a ghost city now. Lumber rats got the boards after the cattle interests pulled out, leaving just the foundations and broken glass where the saloons were. Two years ago it was wide open and filled with desperate men. Mr. Murdock held his own.”

  “Mrs. Bower is a fair judge of that breed. She’s known so many.”

  “That’s small even for a killer.”

  I pointed my chin at the purse. “Do you still carry that pocket pistol in your bag, or have you stitched the holster to your petticoat by now?”

  Junior interrupted. “A gentleman never discusses underwear with a lady. Anyway we are here to talk business. Sundays are for reminiscing.”

  “Sit, Mr. Murdock. I assume you still bend far enough for that.”

  I thought about answering. Instead I stepped past a walnut rocker and pulled up a ladder-back that someone had promoted from the trash pile and put back into use with splints and buckhide thongs. A thousand acres of dust had settled since the last time I had wanted to be comfortable in Colleen Bower’s company.

  “Now we are all friends.” Junior perched on the opposite end of the sofa, placing his hat in his lap. “Let’s not show off our Spanish, by the by. The old hag has ears like a bat.” Señora Castillo had removed herself through a doorway behind a hanging shawl.

  “I will come to the point. As I recall, you favor that approach over all the others.” Flecked blue eyes fixed me. “As Junior said, when we met in El Paso and he told me you were involved I considered withholding my end. However, my situation there was hardly an improvement.”

  I nodded. “Poke Allyard was marshal there last I heard. He isn’t the kind to be gotten around with paint and scent like the late peace officer of Breen.”

  “The circuit is a cruel enough place for a man. Try being a woman and see if you don’t employ what God gave you to keep you in biscuits and sardines. To continue. This is a business relationship as Junior pointed out. Men are finding silver all over this country and the butchers in Chicago are standing by the U.P. tracks with their knives out just waiting for that cheap Mexican beef. El Paso—”

  “Cheap meaning stole,” Junior said.

  “‘Every great fortune begins with a crime.’ Balzac.” She kept looking at me. “El Paso is too far for these cowboys and miners to go to spend their money on cards and liquor. There are too many Apaches on the way to Socorro City and a bandit behind every piñon tree between here and old Mexico. San Sábado promises to become the next Tombstone. I’m certain you know what that signifies.”

  “For starters I’m happy it’s not my job to keep the peace. All the news I hear from Tombstone has hair and fangs.”

  “A fine peace you kept in Breen.”

  “It got kept. I didn’t seek the post. Your benefactor strangled on a piece of gristle and Judge Blackthorne appointed me.”

  “Beside the point. I should not have brought it up, What I am driving at is people are making their fortunes in Tombstone. We could make ours here if we will only forget the back trail and pull together between the traces.”

  “I have nothing against making a fortune.”

  “Then perhaps we should start by shaking hands.” She offered me one of hers.

  I let out air and took it. It was as cool and smooth as I remembered, all except the small callosities on the fingertips from handling pasteboards and chips. She had been clutching her reticule with it, and when she changed hands I admired the plain band on the third finger of the left. I knew her as a self-made widow who didn’t wear one. “I guess good wishes are in order.”

  “Thank you.” She withdrew her right and placed it on top of the other, covering the ring. “Now that we have smoked the peace pipe, you can settle a point. Fo
r weeks now Junior and I have been burning up the wires arguing over whether the Apache Princess should be renovated. I hold that it should.”

  “Why renovated? It’s only just built.”

  “That’s what I said.” Junior pushed the dents out of the wideawake’s crown and put them back in.

  “You and I and Junior Harper are not the only people on the frontier with vision,” she said. “Once we begin separating these miners and cowboys from their pokes, just how long do you think it will be before this town has more saloons than widows? If we are going to draw more than just a grubstake to start over somewhere else when the others crowd us out, we must plan to meet the competition now. Junior informs me that you are adamant about not keeping whores.”

  “I am.”

  “He holds the opinion that my presence alone will draw customers away from the women at the Mare’s Nest.”

  I looked at him. “You said that?”

  “Not first thing,” he said. “They will all want their turn, women of easy virtue being an improvement over a knothole in the side of a buckboard, if you’ll disregard my coarse language, ma’am.” He’d have tipped his hat if he were wearing it. “My guess is you haven’t seen the Mare’s Nest women yet.”

  “That bad?”

  “Coyote girls, the lot. You know, when you wake up to find one laying on your arm and you chew it off to get away. Once they have all had their turn they will come here to look at something that reminds them of a female. Don’t forget these are men who will ride forty miles to see a picture of Lillie Langtry. All the renovation we require is to paint ‘Poker Annie’ in big yellow letters under the Cold Beer sign and they will bet on there being fifty-three cards in a standard deck just for the opportunity to sit across the table from Mrs. Bower and tell their friends about it back in camp.”

  I grinned. “Junior, how is it no one sold you the governor’s palace in Santa Fe on your way down here?”

  He looked blank. “I came by way of El Paso.”

  Colleen reached across the sofa to pat his knee. “You’re a ring-tailed dreamer and that’s why I took you up on your proposition and came here. Boomtowns attract good-looking women. In six months I will look like Señora Castillo next to some of them. Ask Murdock.”

  “That’s true enough. They follow the market.”

  “Lumber is cheap now,” she said. “We need to expand, build a gaming room in back. That will allow more than just faro and poker and free up space here for more drinking and a stage. I know a theatrical agent in Saint Louis who can supply talent, singers and tumblers and Shakespearean companies. It would surprise you to learn how starved these illiterate tinpans are for Troilus and Cressida. Next month they are auctioning off the fixtures at the Crystal Palace in El Paso. The owner shot himself over a marital misunderstanding and his widow needs cash. We can pick up a hickory bar and brass pulls and a chandelier with gimcrackery and doodads. Items like those are bound to impress the rubes clean out of their overalls and everything in the pockets. People will read about the Apache Princess in Boston.”

  “I have a line on a bar.” Junior was petulant.

  “What will we use to acquire all this elegance, besides a six-shooter?” I asked.

  “We can borrow the money and offer the saloon as collateral.”

  Junior bared his teeth. “Borrow from who, Geronimo? The nearest bank with that kind of capital is in Santa Fe and it won’t gamble on anything this close to the border. It’s the first place I went when I decided to become a saloonkeeper.”

  “There has to be someone in the vicinity with means and the itch to increase them. A rancher.”

  He shook his head. “That’d be John Whiteside, but everything he has is tied up in cattle. I doubt he would invest in an enterprise in town anyway.”

  “Frank Baronet.”

  Four eyes met mine. Junior’s treadle-shaped jaw fell open. “That diamondback son of a bitch? Your pardon,” he said to Colleen.

  But she wasn’t listening. “Who is he? Does he have money?”

  I told her who he was. “Sheriffing is a porkbarrel job out here. He gets to claim a percentage of the taxes he collects, and the registration fees and whatnot he imposes by his own order probably go into his personal war chest. On top of that he has the gaming concession at the Orient in Socorro City and who knows how large a piece of how many others. It’s his county, he answers to no one but the governor, and he doesn’t answer to this governor. Then his brother is a desperado, a dead one officially but alive probably, and successful. Brothers share. Yes, I would say he has money.”

  “You don’t make him sound like a friend. Would he be interested in investing?”

  “I’ve only known him a short time. With some people that’s all you need. My impression is if this place has as much potential as you say, he’ll find a way to cut himself in even if we don’t invite him. Especially if we don’t. This way at least we’d have some of his money to play with.”

  “And his hand in our pocket till Gabriel blows.” Junior stood and tugged on his hat. “You know my position. The notion of cutting Frank Baronet in as a fourth partner don’t sweeten the tea.”

  “That’s one vote. Murdock?”

  “I’ve sided worse. At least we can trust Baronet to deal us dirt if he sees the chance. It’s the not being sure that makes most arrangements go south.”

  “Call that a vote yes. Carried. We’ll discuss the details tonight. I’m dealing.”

  I was looking down at her now. “Friday is the first good night of the week. I might have known you’d claim it.”

  “The Princess has more than one table, and I have my own board and cue box. Deal or don’t.” She lifted a book off the arm of the sofa and opened it. The title on the pebbled cover read The Gentleman’s Guide to Percentages in Games of Chance.

  Outside, Junior asked, “Are you really fixing to climb into bed with Baronet after what he done to you in Socorro City?”

  “That was personal. This is business. The protection of his office is worth something. Anyway he’ll nickel and dime us to death if we don’t.”

  “I’m opposed to it.” Suddenly he grinned; his disposition had more varieties than the weather in Montana. “I thought for a minute there you and Colleen was going for your irons.”

  “I wish you’d told me she was the partner.”

  “Swear to God, you spend a winter with a man in a line shack you think you know him. I never suspected.”

  “Suspected what?”

  “That you could fall in love so hard.”

  7

  AS IT HAPPENED, Colleen Bower and I didn’t have the chance to discuss renovations that night. Early on the gamblers were stacked six deep at her table to play and watch, and later I had to kill a man, which makes concentration difficult.

  I dealt a few hands of faro and finished ahead, no slight accomplishment when you consider it’s the serious ones who keep track of the cards who will sit at a man’s table when someone like Poker Annie is dealing in the corner. Tonight she had a silver comb in her hair and a red silk choker around her neck that just naturally drew the eyes down the front of her dress, which was some kind of layered thing of lace and percale that made you think it was cut lower than it was, anchored at the shoulders by two simple bows. It was a rare bettor who could pay attention to the pasteboards when it looked like one of those bows would work loose any second, spilling her femaleness out over the table. Men have no understanding of costume architecture.

  About ten o’clock I ran out of dedicated players and went to spell Irish Andy behind the bar. You couldn’t have pounded a shim between customers there and for half an hour Junior and I were too busy washing and filling glasses to talk. When at last there was a lull he mopped his face and slung the towel over his shoulder. “I always wanted a job with a collar,” he said. “I never thought I’d be sweating into it so much. I might as well be roping and throwing.”

  “This pays better and doesn’t smell as bad. How are we doing?”
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  “Not as well as she is. What do you suppose it is makes a man bet so foolish with a woman he can’t even have?”

  “Judge Blackstone told me once there’s no desert harder to cross than the two feet that separate a man’s brain from his penis. He was hanging a man for rape at the time.”

  “It ain’t my business asking what soured you on her.”

  I drew a beer for a miner at the end of the bar, sliding it down the side of the glass to cut down on foam, and skidded it into his hand. “She is too much cards for me. There were three sides to take in Breen and she laid side bets with all of them. If I lived she won. If I got killed she won too. A situation like that is hard on a man’s good opinion of himself.”

  “Might could be you were expecting too much.”

  “No might-coulds about it,” I said. “But I won’t compound the mistake by repeating it.”

  “I don’t know. Some of my best mistakes was made on the second run. How’s the keg?”

  I pulled the bung-starter out of its socket next to the sawed-off and gave the beer keg a couple of raps. “Better have one ready.”

  “First one generally lasts past eleven on Friday. You have to stop being so generous, running the beer down the glass that way. We charge the same for air.”

  I was putting away the starter when three fresh customers came through the flap door. Trouble clung to them like wolf scent.

  Men had been coming in and going out, but when they arrived in a bunch they either stayed together or split between the bar and Colleen’s table. This crew peeled off in three directions. One, puny and consumptive-looking in a duster snagged with nettles and a miner’s cap made of greasy ticking, went straight to the table without pausing. Another, larger and bulkier in a slouch hat and a hide coat too heavy for the weather, stepped to the side wall and placed his back against it, the one spot in the room that yielded an unobstructed view of the tables, the bar, and the door to the street.