He lurched to the girls. Ashton stood. He grinned again, took her hand, and headed upstairs.
After latching the door, she helped him undress. She was so excited she pulled one trouser button too hard. It flew and ticked against the wall. He sat on the bed while she worked his pants off. "That was interesting talk downstairs," she said.
He blinked, as if he hadn't heard. "Where'd you come from, Yellow Shoes? You're sure no greaser."
"I'm a Carolina girl, stranded here by misfortune." A deep breath, and then the leap. "A misfortune I think we both know something about."
Despite all he'd drunk, and his aroused state, what she said put him on guard. "Are we gonna talk or fuck?"
She bent forward, ministering to him a moment to curb his irritation. "I just want to ask about those wagons —" He grabbed her hair. "Collins, I'm your friend. I know what was in those wagons."
"How come?" Furious, he yanked her hair. "I said how come?"
"Please. Not so hard! That's better." She leaned back, frightened. Suppose he really felt threatened? Suppose he decided to kill her? Then she thought, If you stay here you 're as good as dead anyway.
She collected herself and said carefully, "I know because I'm related to the man who owned the wagons. He was a Southerner, wasn't he?"
His eyes admitted it before he could deny it. She clapped her hands. "Sure he was. Both of them were. And you guided them from Virginia City."
She dragged the shoulder straps down to show off her breasts, red and firm already. Lord, she was all worked up over the mere thought of the gold. "Do you know where those wagons are, Collins?"
He just smirked.
"You do. I know what was in them. What's more, I know where it came from — and how to get hundreds, why maybe a thousand times, more of the same."
She detected a gleam of interest and pushed the advantage. "I'm talking about the mine in Virginia City. It belongs to me, because one of the men who died, Mr. Powell, owned it, and I'm related to him."
"You mean you can prove it's yours?"
Without hesitation or change of expression she said, "Absolutely. You share what's in those wagons, then help me get to Nevada, and I'll split an even bigger fortune with you."
"Sure — an even bigger fortune. And there's seven cities of gold waiting to be found round here, too — never mind that nobody's turned them up since the Spanish started searching hundreds of years ago."
"Collins, don't sneer at me. I'm telling the truth. We need to pool our information. If we do, we'll be so rich you'll get dizzy. We can go all over the world together. Wouldn't that be exciting, lover?" Her tongue gave a moist demonstration of her excitement.
Seconds passed without a response. Her fear crept back.
Suddenly he laughed. "By the Lord, you're a canny lass. Canny as you are hot."
"Say we're partners and I'll treat you to some special loving. Things I won't do for anybody else, no matter how much they pay." She whispered salacious words in his ear.
He laughed again. "All right. Partners."
"Here I come," she cried, dropping her dress and pantaloons and falling on him on the bed.
She kept her word, but after ten minutes his age and his drinking caught up with him, and he began to snore.
Ashton pulled up the covers, toweled herself and slipped in next to him, her heart thumping. Finally, patience had been rewarded. No more whoring. She had the man who had the gold.
Imagination painted pictures of a new Worth gown. The grandest hotel suite in New York City. Madeline cringing while Ashton slashed her across the face with a fan.
Delicious visions. They'd soon be real. She fell asleep.
She woke murmuring his name. She heard no answer. Daylight showed through slits in the shutter. She felt the bed beside her.
Empty. Cold.
"Collins?"
He'd left a penciled note on the old bureau.
Dear Little Miss Yellow Shoes,
Keep shining up the story of the V. City "mine." Maybe somebody will swallow it. Meantime I already know what was in the wagons because I've got it and I don't figure to share it. But thanks for the special stuff anyway.
Goodbye,
BC
Ashton screamed. She screamed until she woke the whole place — Rosa, the third whore, the señora, who stormed in and shouted at her. Ashton spit in her face. The señora slapped her. She kept on sobbing and screaming.
Two days later, she found the button that had popped from Banquo Collins's pants. After examining it, and crying all over again, she put it in her box.
Hellish heat settled on Santa Fe. People moved as little as possible. Every evening she sat on the hard chair, not knowing what to do, how to escape.
She didn't smile. No customers wanted her. Señora Vasquez-Reilly began to complain and threaten her with eviction. She didn't care.
MADELINE'S JOURNAL
July, 1865. To the city yesterday. Shermans insisted Andy drive the wagon, to protect me. Strange to ride that way, like a white mistress with her slave. For a few moments on the trip it was easy to imagine nothing had changed.
Impossible to imagine that in Charleston. Cooper's firm on Concord Street overlooks vast empty warehouses where turkey buzzards roost. He was absent, so left a message asking to see him later. Could not guess how he would receive the news. Little has been rebuilt from the great fire of '61. The burned zone looks as though Gen'l. Sherman visited it. Rats and wild dogs roam amid the ruined chimneys and weed-choked foundations. Many homes near the Battery show shell damage. The house of Mr. Leverett Dawkins on East Bay untouched, however. ...
If there was a fatter man than the old Whig Unionist Dawkins, Madeline had never met him. Fiftyish, with impeccable clothes specially tailored for him, Dawkins had thighs big as watermelons and a stomach round as that of an expectant mother of triplets. On the parlor wall behind him hung the inevitable array of ancestral portraits. When Madeline entered, Dawkins was already seated in his huge custom-made chair, gazing across the harbor at the rubble of Fort Sumter. He disliked having anyone see him walk or sit down.
She asked about the Mont Royal mortgages. There were two, totaling six hundred thousand dollars and held by Atlanta banks. Dawkins said his own Palmetto Bank would open soon, and he would ask his board to buy and consolidate the mortgages. "Mont Royal is fine collateral. I'd like to hold the paper on it."
She described the sawmill idea. He was less encouraging.
"We won't have much to lend on schemes like that. Perhaps the board can find a thousand or two for a shed, some saw pits, and a year's wages for a gang of nigras. If you can find the nigras."
"I had thought of installing steam machinery —"
"Out of the question if you must borrow to buy it. There are so many wanting to rebuild, begging for help. This is a wounded land, Madeline. Just look around the city."
"Yes, I have. Well, you're very generous to help with the mortgages, Leverett."
"Please don't consider it charity. The plantation is valuable — one of the finest in the district. The owner, your brother-in-law, is an esteemed member of the community. And you, as the manager, are an excellent risk as well. An eminently responsible citizen."
He means, she thought sadly, I am not a troublemaker. How responsible would he think her if he knew the nature of her next call?
... So we will not proceed as fast as I hoped.
Took myself next to the Freedmen's Bureau, on Meeting. A pugnacious little man with a harsh accent met me, calling himself Brevet Colonel Orpha C. Munro, of ''Vuh-mont" His official title — hardly less grand than "caliph" or "pasha" — is sub-assistant commissioner, Charleston District