Jewel and Fancy kept their vigil as the night wore on. Every hour Fancy checked the girl's bandages, poured a little of her medicaments into Nellie's unresisting mouth, watched and waited.
"I cain't help thinkin'," Jewel said once. "That poor kid on the bed coulda been me."
"Or me," Fancy replied.
"No. I mean really. I know a lot about not gettin' pregnant... bein' in this business and all. I know about eelskin tents that you put inside you, and French secrets that a man can wear. I know all the recipes for douches—alum, pearlash, sulfate of zinc, you name it. Even know the natural remedies, like oak bark and red rose leaves and nutgalls, not that I ever put a store of faith in 'em. But once, a real long time ago, I got caught like Nellie."
"You were pregnant?" asked Fancy, surprised by the revelation and the display of friendship that prompted it.
Jewel sighed. "Yeah. I surely was. Lookin' back, I think I wanted it to happen. Wanted a kid, you know? Way down deep.
Somebody to belong to me. I was in love real bad..." She paused, remembering.
"Anyways, when I realized the daddy couldn't marry me, 'cause he had troubles of his own just then, I decided I didn't have no choice but to get rid of the baby—but by that time, I'd waited too long. Near five months it was, so none of the remedies I knew were worth a damn, except to make me so sick I wanted to die.
"So I found me a quack who did a big business with the crib girls in the back alleys."
Fancy noted that Jewel had leaned forward in her chair, her arms folded protectively across her belly as if safeguarding something inside. She was sure the woman didn't realize she was doing so and Fancy tucked the eloquent gesture away inside herself.
"I was scared shitless, kid, believe you me. I walked around in torment for a week before I got my courage up. Cried all night before I went in there to that quack. Cried 'cause I'd grown to love that baby... and 'cause I was real alone. I hadn't even told Ford about it, 'cause the law was after him and he was on the run."
She took a breath before continuing. "This abortionist had a dirty old table where he did his butchery. Christ, I can still see that filthy gray sheet he laid over me...." Fancy could feel the woman's anxiety all the way across the room.
"I was naked down there and quiverin'; and this quack was just about to start in on me with a long wire of some kind, when Ford come bustin' down the door and grabbed me. How he even knew what I was up to, I ain't sure. Damn near put that old geezer through a wall he did, hangin' on to me half naked as I was with one hand, punchin' the doctor with the other. He drug me outta there and saved my life most likely."
"Great God, Jewel! What happened to the baby?"
Jewel was silent for a moment, lips tight shut, eyes distant— finally she smiled. "I give her birth a few months later, of course. I got a real fine daughter back East, Fancy... her daddy even sees her from time to time." Jewel said the last with shy pride.
Fancy stared at the woman and bit back the questions she longed to ask.
"Her name's Dakota," Jewel volunteered. " 'Cause that's where we was when it all happened. Her father got 'em to put his last name on the birth certificate. Jameson, it says. All real official and everythin'. I mean, nobody would ever know to see it that him and me wasn't really married when she got born."
So Ford Jameson was Jewel's lover... Hart and Chance had told her of their time with the gunfighter.
"Why in God's name didn't you get married?"
"How could we?" Jewel snapped at the stupidity of the question. "We couldn't very well go before no judge with Ford wanted by the law in damn near every state west of the Mississippi, could we? It wouldn't be much of a christenin' present for Dakota to get her daddy hung, now, would it?"
Fancy wanted to cry. Why was life so full of questions without answers, unfairness with no hope of redress? Babies without fathers...
"I'm glad you've got a daughter, Jewel. No matter what, you've got someone to love you."
"She don't know nothin' about my real life, of course. I sent her East when she was just a little tyke. I figured that way, maybe someday we could all be together, her and us, I mean, if things changed and all."
"That would be lovely, Jewel. I hope it works out for you."
Nellie groaned just then, and Fancy checked her patient. The pulse was less erratic, the skin less fiery—if Nellie lived until morning, there was a real chance of saving her.
Standing up to face the woman seated in the rocker, Fancy said, "I've got something I'd like to tell you, Jewel, but you've got to promise me you'll keep my secret."
"I'm real good at secrets, Fancy."
"I'm in the family way, Jewel. I fell in love with someone I shouldn't have."
"Hell, kid, we all do that, that's just part of bein' a woman."
"He doesn't know about the baby, and I don't want him to. It's all terribly complicated..." Fancy faltered. "I have this friend in Denver... if I can get to her, I know I can stay there until after the baby's born. She's very wise and she'll help me figure out what to do, I know she will."
"Listen, Fancy, you can stay right here with me. We'll work out something. Plenty of kids get born in whorehouses. Not as many as get conceived there, of course—"
"No! Not my child. Not here." Then, realizing she might have hurt Jewel's feelings, she started to speak again but the older woman cut her off.
"It's okay, Fancy. I understand. I got my kid out, too. I was just tryin' to help."
"I know that, Jewel, and I appreciate your generosity—truly I do. Fact is, I've been thinking ever since we talked about the auction... Maybe there's a way we could help each other. Afterward, I mean.
"What if I took part of the money the auction brings in and invested it with you in a partnership? I won't need much to live on until the baby comes, not if I can get to Magda and Wes. You've got a saloon downstairs—I could show you how to make it into a real theatre. Later, after the baby comes, maybe I could show you how to bring in customers like you've never seen before."
"I don't need no more customers. I got all I know what to do with now."
"There are lots of saloons in the Gulch, Jewel, but nobody else in this town has a theatre. It'd give you a legitimate business too— one where you could hold your head high."
"Son of a bitch! Ain't you the little sweet-talker?"
"What do you say?"
"I'd say you got real possibilities as a salesman, honey, but I'd have to think this through careful. This saloon's all I got... I need to be right smart about what I do with my money. How do I know you can do what you say you can?"
"Just get me a banjo, or bring in a piano player, and I'll give you a performance tonight that these miners will never forget. You'll have to show off the merchandise you plan to auction off anyway, won't you?"
Jewel rose and walked toward the bureau, her back to Fancy. She mistrusted partnerships but she liked the kid.
"I'll consider it, Fancy. If you decide to come back to Oro after the baby... and if like what I hear tonight. But the split would be fifty-fifty."
Fancy smiled for the first time in forty-eight hours; any circus performer worth her salt knew when she had a fish on the line. Always know when to quit, cara mia, Gitalis would say. Always leave them wanting more.
"We'll talk about the split," Fancy said quietly. "After you hear me sing."
Fancy walked to the bed to check Nellie's dressing and to hide the small smile that played on her own lips. Maybe there was hope after all.
You don't know it, Nellie, Fancy thought as she touched the girl's forehead. But if I save you, we'll be even. I'll have given you back your future and maybe you'll have done the same for me.
Fancy checked her music for the last time and breathed in the exhilaration of working once again before an audience. God Almighty, was there anything so seductive as applause? The miners out front in the Crown might be grubby and bereft of social graces, but they were an audience nonetheless, and she longed to touch them with her spiri
t.
That's what performance is, she thought, excited by the laughter and anticipatory applause, the ability for my soul to speak to theirs, directly—no barriers of class or style or education between us, only the strength of talent to bind us together. If a performer projected truth, be it song or dance or recitation, the audience would hear the honesty and respond. Fancy longed for the grace of that response to wash her spirit clean.
What incredible power it was—the power to create a new world, better than the real one, softer, safer, more compassionate. More everything, in fact, than poor reality provided.
Who shall I be for them tonight? she asked herself. What fantasy shall I fulfill? She stepped out onto the makeshift stage determined to be every dream they'd ever dreamed. She would make them want her and in so doing, their love would free her for the future.
Fancy danced to the tinkly off-key music of the nearly toothless piano player, then she sang. The men cheered the bawdy ballads, as she knew they would. They pounded their feet and stomped their gun butts on the tables. When she knew she had them where she wanted them, she recited stirring poems of battles victorious, of honor and of love.
Finally, late in the evening, she sang the songs that reminded them of their lost youth, the haunting melodies that stir men's blood and make them dream again, despite the odds. She sang softly, tenderly, as if the lyrics were whispered to each listener alone.
Jewel and Rufus watched the girl's act wonderingly. Where had she learned so much about human frailty? Where had she learned that hearts break more often than they are fulfilled, and that life's long highway has many turnings that only the strong survive?
The final note of the last song lingered over the hushed room, over the rugged faces, now softened by their memories. The audience was so enrapt, it took a moment to collect its wits enough even to applaud, then wild, uncontrollable clapping and stamping and shouting thundered through the Crown.
Fancy smiled and blew kisses of promise to the men who crowded around her so closely, they took her breath away. It took Jewel and Rufus quite some time to extricate her from the crush of cheering, lusting men.
Chapter 37
Fancy paced agitatedly back and forth in the room Jewel had given her above the saloon. She looked hard at her reflection in the mirror to see if her fear about the auction taking place in the floor below showed. It would not do at all to face this night with red-rimmed eyes and a sniffling nose. She'd said yes to this auction for a purpose, she had paraded herself before the lascivious eyes of potential "buyers" through three shows a night, for three nights running, and this was not the moment to lose courage.
Your body is your own, Fancy, Magda had said, years before. No church, no laws, no God, no man can own it. Use it for pleasure or for profit, as you will. All the other resources of the world belong to men. You must use what resources you have been given to make your own way.
Fancy touched the lace edges of the borrowed peignoir and wondered, if life had been different, whether this was how she might have looked on her wedding night.
She took a deep breath and forced the fear back—an act of will, like Magda's domination of the great dangerous cats in the ring.
She might not have made this bed by choice, she thought, but by God, she'd lie in it without sniveling.
"What the hell's going on here, Jewel?" McBain grabbed the madam's arm as she whirled past him in the frenzied crowd of revelers. The Crown was filled to the roofbeams with more men than McBain had seen in one place since he'd gotten back to California Gulch. "You givin' away money here tonight, darlin'?"
Jewel's laugh could barely be distinguished above the noise of the rowdy miners, cowboys, businessmen, and drifters.
"Hell, no, sweetie. Got somethin' better 'n that. We're gonna auction off a goddamned bona fide A-number-one-type virgin here tonight."
"Holy Jehoshaphat, Jewel! Where in the hell did you find one of them critters out here? They're scarcer'n five-pound gold nuggets."
"Just sorta stumbled in here one day, you might say, Bandana. Got a body on her that'd make an old man young again."
"Then what in the Sam Hill is she doin' auctionin' herself off like a prize heifer?"
"The kid's got no money and no friends and she needs a grubstake real bad, Bandana, so I made her a proposition that'd get her some fast money. Anyways, she's smart and I like her, so I'm givin' her a piece of the take tonight, along with two-thirds of the purse from the auction."
Bandana rubbed his chin with his hand in wonderment at Jewel's exuberance. She wasn't known for her willingness to share profits, unless you were down-and-out, or a friend. Then you knew you'd find an open hand at the Crown.
"How much do you think you kin raise with this little auction of yours?"
"Oh, anywheres from a hundred bucks to a thousand, I'd say, dependin' on the mood of the crowd, of course. Last time we did this, the girl brought in three hundred and sixty, but she wasn't near the looker this one is."
"What time's the biddin' start, honey?"
"Nine p.m. Come back to see the fun, Bandana," she said, slapping the wiry miner on the shoulder. "Believe me, old Jewel wouldn't steer you wrong. Any man who gets to spend the night with Fancy's gonna carry a real sweet memory out with him tomorrow mornin'."
Bandana laid down the whiskey he'd been holding. "Shee-it!" he said aloud. Fancy. Poor kid. Then he swung into motion.
How in the hell had she got herself into a fix like this one? And where in God's acre had Chance got to anyway? Good thing Hart wasn't with them, there'd be no telling how he'd react to such news as this. Why, it was only happenstance that they were in town at all. If the Long Tom hadn't broken and the winch along with it, they'd be high up on Mosquito Mountain for another two months.
Bandana did some rapid calculations; the gold in his poke might be worth a thousand, in a pinch. He hadn't planned to check in at the bank office until morning. He did some hasty mental gymnastics to assess how much he'd need to get the repairs made and keep the work going at the claims. Hell! What difference did any of that make? Fancy was in trouble and that's all that counted.
The night air on the street nipped at him as he passed the swinging doors and loped onto North Street—there were at least a dozen places Chance could have got to. God damn! He only hoped McAllister was at a nice visible poker table somewhere and not in some lady's boudoir with his pants around his ankles.
The Gold Coast Saloon on East Second Street was the next to last place Bandana thought of, but that's where he found Chance emerging into the darkened street, a disgruntled look on his face. Bandana called out, "Where the hell you been, McAllister? I been all over this godforsaken town at a dead run scoutin' you!"
"Looking for a friendly little card game, Bandana," Chance replied good-humoredly, "but the only action in town seems to be over at Jewel's place. Thought I'd give it the once-over."
"That's why I been huntin' you, boy." The exasperation in McBain's voice made Chance look sharply at the little man. "It's Fancy they're auctionin' off, for chrissake!"
Chance grabbed Bandana's arm so forcefully, it rocked the smaller man.
"You sure about that?"
"Damnation, McAllister! Why the hell else do you think I been runnin' all over hell's half acre to find you? We gotta do somethin'."
"First she up and disappears without a by-your-leave, then she pulls a damn fool stunt like this," Chance said harshly. "What kind of idiot is she?" He still smarted from Fancy's sudden departure and from the guilt he felt over his own relief that she was no longer a problem.
McBain looked up disgustedly into Chance's face. "I'd say the kind that's in a peck a' trouble, wouldn't you?" Without waiting for a response, he turned and made tracks for the Crown of Jewel's with Chance in his wake.
"Okay, boys!" Jewel shouted above the din of the packed saloon. "You know the rules well as I do. The biddin' starts at one hundred dollars and goes up from there to God knows where." A whistle of appreciation for the large sum
, and envy from those who couldn't afford to bid, rose in the room.
"Men, you all saw the little lady perform here last night, so you know she's prime merchandise. Pretty as a picture and innocent as a newborn." Murmurs of approval greeted this part of the speech; there was undisputed agreement about Fancy's desirability.
"Now I'll tolerate no bad treatment, as part of the deal. I don't want this one ruined right off the bat by some sadistic horse's ass who don't know how to treat a lady. So no matter who bids the highest, old Jewel here reserves the right to say no to any man who ain't worthy of this singular privilege."
"Any man with a hundred dollars to spend on one night seems purty special to me!" shouted a nearly toothless miner in the front row, and everyone, including Jewel, howled with enjoyment.
"This little lady's too good to be wasted on a piker, Louie," she called back jovially.
"Even a piker could give her a good poke," he returned, and the laughter was twice as loud.
"By God, I'll bet you could, too," Jewel agreed with a hearty laugh, and the audience roared and pounded on the tables with hands and pistol butts. "But now it's time to start the festivities. So what exactly am I bid for the sweetest little piece of virgin woman-flesh this side of Fort Laramie?"
"It can't be Fancy," Chance whispered to Bandana. "She's not a virgin."
"I sure as hell don't want to hear how you happen to know that, you young jackass," Bandana hissed back at him.
The two stood at the rear of the crowded room, to the right of the swinging doors. The smoke was so thick in the yellow light from candles and kerosene lamps, it was hard to see anything clearly, but it appeared from where they stood that every male in town, from age sixteen to eighty-six, was jammed into the saloon. Sitting, standing, leaning, the would-be bidders and the simply curious were all at as high a pitch of excitement as if a new Sutter's Creek had been discovered.
Bandana and Chance assessed the leering faces in the audience with rising apprehension. Whatever fluke of fate had brought Fancy to this predicament, neither wanted to see her spend the night with any of the rough, lecherous crowd that filled the barroom.