River Queen (34 page)

“Lyle can take care of all of that,” she said disdainfully. “He’s already done lots of work on the
Columbia Lady
, and he’s got contacts in all kinds of businesses, and he’s got craftsmen of all kinds working for him on different enterprises. He says he can probably get the
Queen
renovated and back on the river in a week or ten days.”

“Yeah, he’s got contacts all right,” Dallas growled. “And a lot of investments, including a bunch of saloons and gambling halls and brothels in Natchez-Under-the-Hill. He tell you about those business ventures, Miss Ashby?”

Her face paled for a moment, but then she resumed her defiant gaze. “I’m sure Planter’s Bank does business with those kinds of places, but you wouldn’t say a word if I was getting the loan from them.”

“Oh yes I would. If you’re so taken with Dennison that you want to make excuses for him, fine. I’ll leave him out of it. But haven’t you learned anything, Julienne, from losing your house and plantation? If you take out a loan against the
River Queen,
then you don’t own her any more. You might lose her. Didn’t that ever enter your mind?”

“No, it didn’t! Lyle’s a friend, and we’re going to be able to pay him back whatever money we use for the
Queen
in a few months. He would never take the
River Queen
away from me!”

“She’s not just yours. She belongs to your family. Did you talk to them about this?”

Julienne’s face worked, and now she, too, jumped out of her chair and came to stand in front of him, scowling. “You seem to be forgetting something. You’re not in my family. You are the pilot of the steamer that my family owns. You have no right to ask me any questions about my family!”

“So you didn’t tell them,” he said tightly. “And you’re exactly right, ma’am, about you and your family. I just work for the Ashbys. But even though you’re as blind as a bat, I can see it coming. As of today everyone on this boat’s working for Lyle Dennison. And I’m not going to work for him. I don’t care if I have to go back to being a roughneck.”

“Well, I guess that means you’ll be leaving then!” Julienne shouted angrily.

“I guess so!” he shouted back. “And one last thing,
Miss Ashby.
I was working for you and your family to help you, and you helped me too. But you’re not going to find another pilot on this earth that’s going to work for seventy cents a day. You’re looking at three or four hundred dollars a month to replace me. Maybe that ten thousand dollars you borrowed isn’t so much money after all!”

He stalked through the doors, and Julienne knew he was going to his stateroom to get his things.

She was so angry that for a few moments she was glad he was leaving. Throwing herself back into one of the cheap slat chairs, she thought with vicious triumph,
Soon I’ll be sitting on a heavy padded chair covered in velvet. Blue, maybe . . .

But after awhile of gloating, she began to think of Dallas’s words, and for the first time she let some of those faint voices of doubt finally filter through to her conscious mind.
Three hundred dollars a month for a pilot? And just the payment on the loan another hundred dollars? That’s four hundred dollars a month I just committed to, and that doesn’t include anything else at all!

She started feeling slightly panicky, but with an iron will she forced herself to be calm. How many times in the last months had she said to herself,
I can’t do this! I won’t do this!
but then she did do whatever it was, whether cleaning the sanitary rooms or eating oxtail soup. She could do this, and she would do this. Even without Dallas Bronte.

Her heart sinking, she realized the plain truth.

As of today she no longer had Dallas, and she no longer had a choice.

DALLAS PACKED HIS FEW belongings and left the
Queen
. He didn’t say anything to any of the crew or to the rest of the family. This action of Julienne’s had been like getting hit in the face. Once he had actually been hit in the stomach so hard it had knocked the breath out of him, and that’s what he had felt like when Julienne had told him of this disaster.

He went back over to the Blue Moon, and with one look at his face Otto poured him a double. Dallas took it, downed it, and grunted, “Another.”

While he was pouring it, Lulie came up, wearing the same grubby green dress she’d worn the day and night before. It was soiled, and the black lace around the neck was torn. She had lost weight, and one shoulder of the limp fabric kept slipping off. “Back so soon, Dallas?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said shortly. “And I don’t want to talk about it. Otto, give me back the room for the night, and another bottle of the real stuff. Lulie, I don’t want to be rude, but I just want to be alone for awhile.”

“No, no, Dallas, you go on, I just now got down here. I need to work, earn some money,” she said quickly, then added in a low, slightly ashamed voice, “and I could use a drink.” Lulie had drunk the entire bottle of whiskey last night, except for two shots that Dallas had had.

“Give us both a drink, Otto,” he said quietly. Ritter Kahn wasn’t there, but two dusty-looking hard-faced men with guns were sitting in the corner, their boots propped up on the tables, watching.

Otto poured Lulie’s fake shot and Dallas’s real one, Dallas turned his back and traded them swiftly. Lulie downed hers, and sighing, Dallas tossed back the tasteless tea as if it were the best smooth whiskey. “I’ll come back down later tonight,” Dallas said to her. “I’m just gonna take a while and think.”

“Okay,” she said lightly, kissing him on the cheek. “Goodness knows I can’t help you do that.”

“Want a bottle?” Otto asked.

“No, maybe tonight,” he answered and went upstairs, back to Room 12. The empty bottle and two shot glasses were still on the table. The cot’s sheets were mussed, where Lulie had slept, and the pillow was still on the floor where Dallas had slept. He had told Julienne the absolute truth. To him Lulie was something like a little sister.

He ached all over from sleeping on the floor, so he tossed the pillow up onto the cot, took off his jacket, gunbelt, and boots, and laid down. It was sweltering in the room, and it stank of whiskey and sweat and just plain old dirt and grime, and Dallas thought he would never go to sleep.
I’ll just lay here for awhile and figure out what to do,
he thought grimly.
I thought I’d never find myself in this position again, holed up in a fleabitten room with no job. I should know by now that you can’t count on a soul on this earth. I was a fool to think I’d ever be anything but a servant to Julienne, I mean to the Ashbys,
he mentally corrected himself. Their conversation played over and over again in his mind until he was actually physically tired from the mental exertion. And so he finally let himself drift off into an uneasy doze.

Gunshots!

Without even blinking Dallas jumped up, put on his gunbelt and boots, and ran downstairs. He had heard three gunshots, a pause, and then two more. Now men were yelling and women were screaming. It was chaos when he reached the saloon.

He scanned the room, his sharp eyes taking in everything: a dead roughneck, another wounded, Ritter Kahn and one of his men standing holding smoking guns, a line of bottles broken along the wall, Otto peeking up from where he knelt behind the bar. And then he found Lulie. Two of the other girls were knelt over her, lying on the floor. A big black stain was creeping over her stomach. Dallas went to her, scooped her up in his arms, and ran down the boardwalk.

A few doors down in the next alley was a stairway up to an office above a gambling hall. Dallas took the stairs two at a time and kicked open the door. A small, stooped, gray-haired man with spectacles looked up from a book, startled. He stood up and grimly said, “This way.” He led Dallas to a room with two cots in it. Gently Dallas laid Lulie down. Her eyes were closed and her face was so white that he thought she might already be dead. The bloodstain on her stomach had spread around to her back, and Dallas’s sleeves were red with blood.

“Is she dead?” he demanded harshly.

The man bent over her and put his hand on her chest and his ear to her mouth. “Not yet,” he said grimly. “But I doubt I got time to get that bullet out. She’s probably going to die before I can get started good.”

Dallas nodded numbly. “Do you think she’ll wake up, Doc?” Everyone called him “Doc Needles,” because no one knew his real name, or if he was a real doctor. But he tended most of the victims of gunshots and knife fights and beatings in Natchez-Under-the-Hill.

“Got no way of knowing,” he said. “She might, before she goes. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. What do you want me to do?”

“I guess just let me stay with her. Would you leave me some morphine just in case she wakes up?”

“You can stay here, but it’s gonna cost you ten cents,” he said carelessly. “Morphine’s gonna cost, depending on how much you give her.”

Dallas gave him a fifty-cent piece and Doc Needles added in a more kindly tone, “If she wakes up she’s not gonna be able to swaller. I’ll fix up a shot. You just call me if you need me to give it to her.”

Dallas nodded, still staring down at her, watching the very slight, slow rise and fall of her chest.

Doc set a chair behind him, and wordlessly Dallas sat down, took Lulie’s hand, and began to wait. Silently Doc went back into his office, closing the door behind him.

Dallas didn’t know how many minutes it was before Lulie stirred. Her one eye opened—the other one was still black and blue and swollen shut—and she whispered, “Is that you, Dallas?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“I’m scared, Dallas! I’m going to die!”

Dallas had the impulse to try to offer her some hope, but something kept him from that. Doc Needles had been so certain and the shadow of death was already on Lulie’s face. He could not think of a single thing to say, and finally he said, “I wish I could help you, Lulie.”

“I’m going to die,” Lulie repeated. Her eyes were filled with dark shadows. She said, “I can’t face God, not after what I’ve done. Tell me what to do, Dallas. How can I get right with God?”

No question had ever caught Dallas Bronte with such force. He knew well what to tell the dying woman. His own grandfather had been a Methodist pastor, and Dallas had spent much time with him. Finally he remembered a day when he had gone with his grandfather to make calls. They had gone to a house where a man was dying, and very clearly Dallas remembered the man had asked his grandfather almost identically the question that Lulie had asked him.
I’m going to die, Pastor. What can I do to get right with God?

“Tell me, Dallas,” she groaned, “I can’t die. I’d go straight to hell.”

At that moment Dallas Bronte wished with all of his heart that he was a man of God, but he was not. He knew, however, the right thing for Lulie to do, just as he knew the right thing that he himself should have done years ago. He held both of her hands and said, “You’ve got to do two things, Lulie. You’ve got to tell God you’re a sinner.”

“Oh, Dallas, He knows that.”

“I guess He does, but that’s what the Bible says. If we confess our sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins.”

“Does the Bible say that really?”

“It really does.”

“I can do that. What’s the other thing?”

“You have to ask Him to save you in the name of Jesus. Jesus died on the cross for you and for me and for all sinners.”

“And that’s all I have to do? I’ve always believed in Jesus. I just didn’t obey Him.”

“That’s the way you get saved.” Dallas felt like an absolute hypocrite! When he himself had known for years how to become a Christian but had run from that very thing. Now he saw the dying woman had turned her eyes up to him, and she whispered, “I can do that, Dallas. Will you pray for me?”

“Sure I will, Lulie.” Dallas bowed his head still feeling like an absolute hypocrite he prayed for the girl. Even as he prayed, he heard her whispering a prayer, and when finally he said, “Amen,” he said, “Did you tell the Lord that you sinned against Him?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And did you ask Him to save you in the Name of Jesus?”

“I did that, Dallas. Is there anything else?”

“No,” Dallas hesitated and then said, “There was a thief on the cross next to Him, Lulie, when Jesus was being executed. That thief looked over at Jesus, and he did what you just did. He said, ‘Lord, remember me,’ which was what you said to God.”

“What happened?”

“Jesus looked at him while He Himself was dying, and He said, ‘This day thou shalt be with me in paradise.’” The old words came easily, for he had heard his grandfather preach many a sermon using that verse. He looked down and saw that Lulie was nodding, but her eyes were fluttering, and finally closed. He sat still, watching her, holding her hands. Finally her chest rose, fell, and she didn’t breathe again.

Dallas mumbled sorrowfully, “I’m no good, Lord, but I think You heard this woman’s prayer.” He got up and left. He knew then what he had to do. It was something that he had put off for years.