So come to think of it, maybe he was a Christian after all, and a better one than most.
“What else is in that wrapper?” Madame asked.
The Marshal tipped his head. He handed her a little box, just folded stiff paper. “Sergeant Waterson will want to see that when you’re done.”
She lifted the lid and glanced inside. I snuck a look over her shoulder: there was a scrap of a hand-rolled cigarette inside.
“I ain’t no expert on tobacco leaf,” the Marshal said. “But that looks to me like those scraps on top of the wall. And I don’t know about you-all, but I save my cigarette ends and reroll them. There’s good tobacco left in there.”
Chapter Eight
After that night, it all got real quiet for a fortnight or so, so’s I weren’t sure whether to be apprehensive about it or grateful. We didn’t hear much else from Marshal Reeves or from Sergeant Waterson, though each one came by once or twice to check on us. We took up a collection for the dead girl — nobody would admit to knowing her name — and got her buried decent, at least. When the constables were finished with her.
The world, I thought, had finished with her firsthand.
Priya settled in right smart and got into the habit of coming out to sit in the library with us girls and read by the fire when the tricks had gone home. By the sixth day, she was helping Merry Lee come downstairs, and Merry sat with us all, too. She was wobbly, sure, but she was standing — and Priya got strong quick, once we started feeding her regular.
I remarked on it to Miss Francina, and Miss Francina gave me a funny kind of look — not sad, but not not-sad, neither — and said, “They’re young yet, Karen.”
Nobody suggested it was time Merry got on home. In faith, she weren’t ready — I didn’t imagine she could climb a ladder yet if her life depended on it, and she sure couldn’t do it without tearing her wounds open again. And she couldn’t do for herself yet, either — though by the end of the fortnight Miss Lizzie had her stitches out and she was healing up right sharp. Anyway, none of us was certain she had a home. We didn’t ask, and she didn’t offer much.
But she was a sister, or she had been; and she risked her life helping women who … well, there but for the grace of God went every one of us in that room. Both of ’em — Merry and Priya — took their turns with the books, too. Since it turned out Priya could read, though not as good as me — not in English, anyway. It turned out she could read Chinese just fine and I guessed probably her own language. She had a knack for tongues, like, and could read a sentence in Chinese and speak it out in English fast as anything.
Merry Lee, though, did the voices and everything. Different accents. She could sound as American as me if she wanted. Or as French as Bea. She said that after she’d escaped the cribs the next place she’d had to escape was the Education House of the Women’s Christian Anti-Prostitution and Soiled Dove Rescue League. Which was maybe better than the cribs, but it were an Improving Workhouse, no mistake. And I’d heard the only way a girl left there was if she could find a Christian man the matrons approved of to marry her — and how many Chinese men are Christians, I ask you?
Anyway, I got the idea pretty quick that Merry Lee was prone to disguise herself. As part of her chosen work, like.
I think she figured I figured. But we held a conspiracy of smiling silence and I don’t think anybody else caught on. In two days’ time, she was in demand to do readings every evening after supper. And we all gathered around to hear her, too.
One night the book she had was a dime novel called Deadwood Dick Defiant! brand-new and already yellowing. It was about Calamity Jane, who was a favorite in our house. Some would say she was nothing but a camp follower, just another new-state whore. But she could ride and rope with any man, shoot better than all of ’em, and she was a hero to us.
The way I saw it, nobody thought the worse of a man who followed his pecker anywhere it sniffed, like a droopy-faced hound dog led on by his nose. So why a woman did the same should be judged different … well, women always is.
Judged different, I mean.
Anyway, Merry Lee was reading on about something Jane had done or was supposed to have done the year previous:
“In the spring of 1877, Calamity Jane was riding her sorrel pony out on the range between Cheyenne and Crook City. She spotted a roil of dust on the horizon and rode hard to investigate.
“Before long, she caught sight of the Cheyenne to Deadwood stage, running flat out with horses lathered and a band of Indians in hot pursuit. The driver was nowhere in sight, the stage horses starting to slow with their reins flapping wild. She reined her sorrel alongside and spotted the driver, facedown in a pool of blood in the boot of the stage, an Indian arrow between his shoulder blades!
“Calamity Jane knew she could waste no time! She jumped up on the saddle of her running sorrel, standing on the horse’s back like an Indian herself. In a hail of arrows and bullets, she leaped across the gap to the stage. Swinging wildly from the rail, she got her foot on the step. Her hat blew back on its laces as she caught the reins of the stagecoach four, found the whip, and urged them on.
“Her rifle was still in the sorrel’s saddle holster. One of the six passengers climbed up the rattling, swaying exterior of the stage to take the reins, and Jane managed to lean out and retrieve the Winchester at risk of her own skin. A bullet creased the running sorrel’s shoulder so close that blood spattered Jane’s shirt cuff.
“Having retrieved the rifle, she mounted it to her shoulder and from the jouncing seat of the stage, returned fire against the galloping, whooping band of Indians. They fell away, and then under Calamity Jane’s care, the stage and its passengers made it safely into Deadwood.
“The driver survived.”
Merry turned the page and held up the book so we could all see the engraving of the woman on the next page. She leaned back on a bench with one foot kicked up, flourishing a Winchester rifle. She wore buckskin chaps, a fringed coat, an open-creased hat, and a good white neckerchief folded well. I liked her scowl and I liked her freedom to wear it.
Martha Jane Canary, it read underneath. “Calamity Jane.”
Priya bounced on the edge of her cushion, as pleased as a pup with two tails. “I want to be like her!”
“She drinks, they say,” Miss Bethel said, but kindly.
Miss Francina snorted. “A woman in the West? You show me one who doesn’t drink, and I’ll show you one that wants to.”
* * *
Well, as I was saying, Priya settled in right quick, and half the time I’d come down to breakfast to find her in the parlor with Miss Lizzie, taking apart that Singer sewing machine. With all her other smarts, she had a knack for mechanicals, too. Sometimes they had to race to get the thing put back together before the trade showed up, and I know once or twice there were pieces that got left off for a day or two when they ran short of time — because in my spare time I was sewing.
I didn’t tell her what I was sewing on or that it was for her, but I spent all day Sunday on that patchwork coverlid, a wedding ring pattern in orange and red, and with the machines and all it was finished by suppertime. Even quilted. I got to use the big machine for the quilting, stitching spirals with my right hand and measuring with my left. It was easier inside the frame, because the machine did all the measuring and math for you and kept the circles even and whatever they’d done to it made it work smoother even with the thick layers of fabric. I filled the quilt with wool bat instead of cotton, too. Priya being so skinny, I reckoned she wouldn’t mind the extra warmth.