The Chili Queen (24 page)

Both John and Emma were tired of the gambling-hall life, and they were glad to find something as lucrative as the bunco game. It let them spend a few weeks a year working, and the rest of their time was their own. They were good partners, each perfectly understanding the other, and Emma thought their relationship endured as much from their ability to work together as their affection for each other. John was as intensely loyal to her, Emma knew, as she was to him.

The two thought up their jobs themselves. They could have made more money robbing banks or stagecoaches, but holdups didn’t appeal to them. They liked the excitement and the challenge of using their victims’ own greed to cheat them. At times, they employed confederates, although they generally avoided anyone who came to them to avenge some wrong. Charley Pea was different. Emma had known him in Mingo, where he was the blacksmith. He had helped bury Tom, had worked the Sarpy fields for her after Tom died. She encountered Charley again in Denver, and he explained that Addie had told people in Nalgitas that his wife, Mayme, was a prostitute. “She didn’t need to say that. It wasn’t her right,” Charley told Emma fiercely.

Mayme, who was four months pregnant, brooded on the wrong, he continued, and when Mayme miscarried, Charley blamed Addie. Mayme hadn’t gotten pregnant again, and Charley wondered if he would ever have a son. He blamed Addie for that, too, and the blame had turned into hatred. “Addie French is worthless as fungus,” he told Emma.

Emma owed a debt to Charley, so she presented the idea to John, emphasizing the fact that Addie was a madam, a woman John would despise immediately. Besides, the challenge was ideal for John and Emma. The bunco would be complicated and dangerous, and the two of them liked that. So they agreed to trick Ned Partner out of the money he had taken in a bank robbery. Charley believed that Ned would be so angry at the loss that he’d blame Addie and quit Nalgitas. Charley would get even, and John and Emma would keep the money.

The plan was a simple one, although it almost died aborning, for Emma and John did not know that Addie had extended her stay in Kansas City. The two boarded five trains at Palestine looking for her, arousing the suspicions of the stationmaster, who inquired about their business. Emma and John agreed they would try only one more train before abandoning the job. Addie had been on that train. John had spotted her through the window of the coach and had nudged Emma ahead of him onto the car and down the aisle of the car, until he indicated the vacant seat beside Addie. “Sit here,” he ordered. “You shan’t ride beside a man. You are foolish in the ways of the world, Emma.”

Toward morning, Emma got a small nap, but she was up before dawn, and when John awoke, she had saddled the horses and built a fire, since they would be leaving soon. John had said it was a big country and Ned could have gone in any direction, but Emma imagined every minute that Ned was only a few minutes behind them. Still, she believed John when he said that by going west at Pueblo, they would lose Ned. He would go on north to Denver, and when he didn’t find them there, he might even continue to Cheyenne. At worst, he would look for them in one of the mining towns west of the capital city. There were hundreds of camps, and Emma believed Ned would search the larger, more notorious ones that were the hangouts of outlaws. He would never think of them hiding in Georgetown, which was every bit as respectable as Galena.

In fact, Emma had chosen Georgetown because its tidy houses reminded her of Galena. Keeping to themselves and having little social intercourse with their neighbors, John and Emma had lived there for four years, in a tiny cottage on Rose Street, with green shutters and a white fence and a lilac bush under the front window. John posed as a mining investor, Emma as his wife, although they had never married. John had asked, but Emma said it wasn’t necessary. She didn’t love him in that way, and she knew John would never love her quite as much as he had his wife.

John chewed his breakfast of crackers and cheese and dried beef, as Emma packed their things and saddled the horses. She had unstrapped the bundle of money the night before and tried to open it, but the purse was latched, and Emma was too tired to pick the lock. Besides, there was no hurry. Now she put it into her saddlebags. Her ribs chafed where the rough purse had rubbed her skin through the chemise, and she wondered if Addie had tightened the scarf against her ribs on purpose. Maybe Addie had had some premonition that things with Ned were spoiled, and that Emma was responsible. She pictured Addie sitting in the glow of the kerosene lamp, her wrapper hanging open across her sizeable bosom, sniffing over Ned’s perfidy. Welcome would be standing in a dark corner, muttering about deviltry. Perhaps Welcome would taunt Addie, but Emma did not think so. The African was not cruel; Emma was sure of it. Still, who knew what was in the heart of a human being who had been tied up regularly and whipped like a dog? Emma had seen the scars on Welcome’s back. Maybe Addie had, too.

“Perhaps I can shoot an antelope, and we’ll have fresh meat,” John said, as he broke off a piece of the tough beef. “Or we can dine in Trinidad and have ourselves a first-rate supper. We should make it there today.”

“We can’t stay in Trinidad. It would not be a prudent measure. Ned will find us.”

So when they reached Trinidad in the early afternoon, they stopping barely long enough for John to exchange their horses for fresh ones. Emma found a store and bought tinned peaches and sardines, and they spent fifteen cents for a piece of watermelon. Then they hurried on and made more than twenty miles that afternoon, and camped under the shelter of some cottonwoods.

They rode for two more days, stopping once at a sign that read
BRED FOR SAIL
. There they purchased warm biscuits and fresh milk from a farm woman who was doing a pretty smart business with travelers, although she charged thirty cents for a plate of six lumps of dough. But they did not argue about her sharp practice, as they themselves were not without fault in the matter of raw extortion. Finally, on the third day, they reached Pueblo. Emma was nearly perished from the ride, so they left the horses in a livery stable and found a room in a hotel. Emma was so fatigued that she threw herself on the bed fully clothed and slept for twelve hours.

When she awoke after the first night’s refreshing
sleep in more than two weeks, Emma was lying under a blanket, alone. She could tell from the imprint in the pillow that John had slept beside her, but he was gone now. Her boots were on the floor and her pants on a chair, and as she had no recollection of rising in the night to take them off, Emma supposed that John had removed them for her. She got up then, lazy, and stretched and wondered what time it was, but she could not tell, for she still had wound neither her watch nor Tom’s. She pushed aside the curtain, and as she looked into the first yellow streak of day, she was caught up in the memory of that prairie sunrise little more than a week before when she had left Nalgitas with Ned for the ride to Jasper. This morning’s early light was only a pale reprise of the fine dawn she had seen from the wagon.

Emma bit her lip as she stared out onto Santa Fe Avenue.

Pueblo was a prosperous young city of brick buildings and fine new houses. Just a block away stood a three-story building of dressed stone, with a brick tower reaching into the sky. Across from the hotel, an office block was going up, and beside it, a false-front frame building was being dismantled, probably to be replaced with a more imposing structure. Telegraph and telephone lines were strung from pole to pole down the street. She and John had chosen the hotel from among half a dozen hostelries because it was neither the finest nor the poorest but the most colorless. Emma felt safer, more anonymous in Pueblo than she had since she boarded the train at Palestine, Kansas.

She dropped the curtain, which slid back across the open window, and she let herself wonder then if she loved Ned, perhaps just a little. What matter if she did or not? It was madness to think things would have worked out between them. She had allowed herself to lose control, to daydream about the ranch as the two sat at dinner that evening in Jasper, to soften with reflection in a way that could have made her unfit for the job ahead.

She had loved farming, first as a child at Galena and later on the Eastern Colorado homestead with Tom. John would have been happy to live in a hotel, but Emma had insisted on buying the Georgetown house, where knowing she was too damaged to bear another child, she took solace in growing things. She spent hours in her garden planting lettuce and corn and beans, even though she was not always there to harvest them, nursing flags and heartsease and rosebushes. She had always been partial to the outdoors, in good weather and bad, and knew she would have loved ranching, watching the colts and baby calves grow. She had lost control of her emotions for a little while that night with Ned, but she’d caught herself and had grown curt—for her sake, and for Ned’s, too.

Perhaps he would return to Addie. Emma dismissed the jealousy she felt at that possibility. She did not have the right to be jealous. She remembered sitting in the kitchen just a few days earlier, watching Welcome blacken the stove, rubbing the polish onto the black metal with circular motions of a powerful arm. Emma had turned to look out the door and seen Addie run her fingers through Ned’s hair. Ned had grinned at Addie, and Emma felt a longing at the sight of the two of them that had been plain for Welcome to see. Welcome stopped the work to warn, “Be careful what mischief you stir up, or I’ll be after you like the devil chasing you with all his forks.” Welcome had looked at her darkly then. The African frightened her at times, and Emma wished she knew what was in that brooding heart.

Emma suspected that John knew something out of the ordinary had happened between Ned and her. When John had called a halt beside a clear, pleasant stream the day before, he had watched her as she scooped out water to drink, and he had said, “I believe he cared about you.”

It was her good fortune that men often cared about her. That made the job easier. Men in love were not suspicious. John teased her about it sometimes. She had always laughed it off, but this time she let the water run down the front of her shirt and had rubbed her wet hands over her face and had not replied.

John said only, “Perhaps you cared a little for him, too. This was not an easy job for you,” but he did not pursue the subject, perhaps because he would not accuse her of what he himself was guilty of. Emma was sure John had had some female company from time to time, for he had an appetite that must be filled, and she was not always passionate. She wondered if John would have satisfied himself with Addie, if she had not been their mark. Fair play, Emma thought, in light of what had passed between Ned and her. But, while John might turn to a prostitute, he hated women of Addie’s position too much, and so Emma knew he would not have had connection with her.

Yes, Emma decided, she had loved Ned, more than a little. He had made her heart light. He had awakened in her a feeling she thought had died with Tom. But it did not matter. She would bury it again.

Emma looked through the gauzy hotel curtain into the light, trying to judge the hour—early, she decided, not yet 6
A.M
. John must have gone for breakfast or to inquire about fresh horses, since the animals they had acquired in Trinidad had been ridden fast. Maybe he was ordering a bath sent up. His warm heart was always mindful of her comfort. Sitting in a little tub of water would be nice, and perhaps she would have time to purchase some clothes before they left Pueblo. She had only the shirt and pants she had taken with her from Nalgitas, and they were badly soiled. She thought for a moment about remaining in dishabille for John’s return, for she was curiously aroused. They had barely touched each other since they had embraced in What Cheer. He would be pleased, and it would be her delight to pleasure him. But there was time enough for that later on. It was not prudent to dally in Pueblo when Ned was only a day behind them, perhaps less. John’s instincts were right. They should turn westward and hurry along for a few more days. When they were safely home in Georgetown, they would celebrate at the Hotel de Paris. She would don her best gown, which would please John, and the laugh and song would go ’round. Thinking of home reassured Emma. Georgetown was not a city, although it was a place of some small importance, large enough so that they could come and go without much notice. She and John had been away for too long with jobs that year; she was weary of the gypsy life.

Emma inspected a tear in her pants and considered repairing it. No, she decided, it would be better if she were ready when John returned. So she pulled on the pants, tucking in the shirt she had slept in. A pitcher of water was on the dresser. She washed her teeth, then filled the basin and rinsed her face. The water was dirty when she finished. Emma had not brought along a comb, so she ran her fingers through her hair, then arranged it in a single braid, which she pinned to the top of her head. She was pulling on her boots when John opened the door without knocking and closed it quickly, going to the window and pushing aside the curtain, the way Emma had done a few minutes earlier.

“Ned is here, and he is red hot.” He turned to her, his eyes cold, almost sinister, and Emma wondered whether John hoped for a confrontation. There were depths in him she never would understand.

“Where is he?” she asked.

John shook his head. “I don’t know. He inquired at the stable if anyone had encountered a man and woman—the woman wearing a man’s clothing—riding hard. He said we were old friends whom he had arranged to meet in Trinidad, but we had left a message there that we were continuing on to Pueblo. The livery owner must have expected Ned to return in short order, for he nearly talked me to death to keep me there.”

Emma’s heart pounded. “Are you sure the man was Ned?” She didn’t have to ask. She knew he was.

“Yes. He fits the description. He promised the stableman five dollars if he would locate us. I told him Ned was a quite late pay and gave him ten not to tell.”

“And will he?”

John shrugged. “We can hope that Ned will go away only as wise as when he came, but the stable owner is a celebrated old pisser, who is not to be trusted. So I don’t intend to wait around and see. After I exchanged our horses, I rode toward the Denver road, but I doubt that I fooled the man.”

“We could abandon the horses and take the train.”

John considered that option as he spread his blanket on the bed. “We would be too easy to spot at the station—or in the cars, for that matter, if Ned were to board down the line. Besides, with horses, we can go anywhere. Horses will be slower but safer, I think.”

As they talked, the two of them quickly gathered their belongings and rolled them inside the blankets they had brought, then picked up the bedrolls and the saddlebags. John preceded Emma down the stairs and out the front door. “He will expect us to retreat down the alleys,” John explained. “So we will be bold and use Santa Fe Avenue.” They secured their things to the saddles, then mounted. Emma would have raced out of the city, but John slowed her. Two riders at a full gallop would draw attention, so they trotted the horses down the street. They made their way through oxcarts and mule-drawn wagons laden with building materials, past a trolley that had stopped to pick up passengers, until they reached the highway to the west. Then they took off at a smart pace.

They rode westward along the Arkansas River, without talking. John took the lead at first, then Emma, then John again. The mountains with their streaks of white where crevices were yet filled with winter snow loomed up splendidly to the west. Still, the country they rode through was very dull, the road tolerable, although dry and dusty. There had been much travel on it, and the roadside was destitute of vegetation, except for the gray-green rabbit brush with its thick yellow blooms. After a while, John called a halt and filled their canteens with water from the river, wetting the pieces of blanket covering the metal containers to keep the water inside cool. He staked the horses to a spot where grass grew in some abundance—and mosquitoes in superabundance. Then, saying he had known they would not take the time to eat in Pueblo that morning, he produced a loaf of bread and pronounced, “Breakfast!” The wife of the livery stable owner had just taken it from the oven, and he had offered her a dollar for it, he explained, and Emma smiled at his thoughtfulness, as she brushed a mosquito off her hand. But when John broke open the heavy loaf, it was black inside and had a rank, disgusting smell, for it had been made of Mexican unbolted flour, without leavening. Despite their hunger, they could not eat the mess, and they threw it into the river. Emma felt miserable then. She ached from hunger, for she had had neither supper nor breakfast. But she would not complain. John was hungry, too. He had supped the night before, while she slept, but he had not eaten breakfast, either.

“We must keep a sharp eye out for a ptarmigan, and if we shoot one, we will build a small fire at our nooning and cook it,” John promised. But they did not find game birds, so when the sun was high and they stopped to rest the horses, John waded into the river to try to catch a trout. He had neither line nor hook, however, only his hands, and he had no luck. There was not time, of course, to go raspberrying. So Emma peeled the skin from a prickly pear cactus and scraped out the pink meat. The pulp did little to satisfy either of them. Other travelers passed by on the road, but John and Emma did not ask them for food, for fear of calling attention to themselves. By the time they reached Cañon City, making excellent time, it had been more than a day since Emma had eaten anything proper.

She was ready to stop for the night then but knew they must push boldly forward. Although both John and Emma believed Ned had gone to Denver, they agreed that it would not be prudent to stay in the small town. They must not dismiss the possibility that Ned had run into someone who had seen them riding west, and if he had discovered that they were in Pueblo, he would have no trouble finding them in Cañon City. They would be more noticeable in the smaller town, and John suggested that since Ned would be asking about two travelers, they ought to separate, going through Cañon City alone and meeting on the other side. He would stop to buy oats for the horses, while Emma procured victuals for themselves.

So she found a general store and bought enough food for two or three days, since it would take no more time than that to get through the mountains and reach Salida. She also purchased a flannel shirt, waiting impatiently as the clerk slowly wrapped her purchases in brown paper and tied them with string. It was not necessary, Emma told him, but he only stopped his work and told her, “That’s the way they done things here.” Then he took so long making change that Emma almost told him to keep it, but that surely would make the clerk remember her, so she fidgeted while he named each coin as he laid it on the counter.

Although she knew John would be finished and waiting, she nonetheless went two blocks out of her way to ride through the town on a residential street, just in case Ned inquired on the main thoroughfare whether anyone had seen a woman riding astride. When she joined John at the west edge of town, she handed him crackers and cheese, an apple, and some horehound drops, and they ate as they rode the next mile or two at a gallop.

The rail line followed the river, so instead of going that route, the two took to the high ground, where they thought they could make just as fast time without the risk of being spotted by someone on the cars. The river cut straight through the mountains instead of winding around their base, forming pretty rough cliffs that were steep and high. Although the scenery was grand, the ground was very barren. Emma was glad John had purchased oats, for the horses would not have good forage that night. Once, after climbing up a long, steep, and rocky hill, Emma rode to the edge of the cliff and stopped to look far down at the river. It reminded her of the crumpled indigo ribbons on one of the hats she had left behind at The Chili Queen.

They had hoped to gain the summit before nightfall, but not knowing the country, they decided to make camp wherever they were when the light was gone. So as the sky began darkening, they left the main road for a trail so narrow and crooked that Emma could not tell whether it had been made by deer or Christians. The route followed the edge of the cliffs, where the abrupt descent made Emma shiver, as she recalled the steep trail into the canyon with Ned. When it was too dark to see, John picked a low spot between the cliff and a rock outcropping that hid them from even that narrow trail. They picketed their horses and placed their saddlebags on the rocks. Emma stroked one of the animals. The horses were as tired as she was. They had been ridden too hard, and she and John would have to be easier on them the next day. Then while John made a small campfire, for the night was cool and fall-like and a little rain had fallen, Emma walked to the edge of the cliff and peered into the intense darkness. Although she could not see down into the deep, dark valleys, for the moonlight did not penetrate them, she nonetheless grew dizzy and sick to her stomach from standing on the tremendous height, and she turned and hurried back to the campfire.