Chapter 13: Queen Victoria

Rebecca and I waited to order breakfast until Rosie and Cayuse came down to join us. Rosie was a little flushed, Cayuse looked the same.

The Bighorn had eggs that morning, went good with salt pork and biscuits and honey. Rosie and Cayuse didn’t mention the previous night so neither did Rebecca and me. I figured Rosie and her mother would talk things over when they were alone.

Although, thinking on it, Rosie was just as likely to talk with me. She’d gotten in the confiding habit back when she was just whispering.

Willowdean Sherrill came into the sheriff’s office looking grumpy, unhappy, as usual. She unfolded a sheet of paper and smoothed it out on the desk in front of Cayuse and me.

He came around to see it. I read aloud, “FREE! ONE ACRE OF LAND.”

I could tell from the carefully neutral look on his face that Cayuse didn’t know how to read.

There was a drawing of the staked-out parcels and a description of a brand new town in the soon-to-be State of Montana. It was obviously on the land once owned by the former homesteaders. And then forfeited to Ollie Chambers.

I continued reading, “To obtain ownership of your dream parcel requires a one-time Permit Fee of only ten dollars.”

Willowdean, frowning, arms crossed, said, “Hank Goodwin is in on it. North Platte too. He printed thousands of these.”

“Why come to me?”

“It’s illegal. Just like them counterfeit Confederate bills North Platte was printing.”

I glanced at Cayuse. New news. Would explain why someone would move thousands of miles away from South Carolina.

I read the piece again. So far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything illegal about the offer.

When Cayuse and I had ridden south that day, I had counted 113 lots staked out. At ten dollars each ... over a thousand dollars. Of course it was just rangeland with a few sodbuster shacks still standing. Outhouses. A few wells. No roads, no churches, stores, bars. No laws.

What were they planning? Sell the permits, get the new owners in hock? Borrow from Ollie’s bank, run up a tab at the Emporium? That had worked once.

Willowdean looked like she wanted to stamp her foot. “They’re going to have drummers going back East, passing out thousands and thousands of them handbills. Then Ollie and Goodwin will sell the permits for each lot as many times as they can.”

So. Fraud.

But I couldn’t do anything about stopping a crime before it happened. Even if it was in my jurisdiction. Which, it didn’t look like it would be. Although the actual exchange of money, and the signing of permits, might occur in Little River. Probably not, as I thought it through. Ollie and Goodwin wouldn’t be identified with the project, not by name. Or face.

However, the Gilmore Girls had always taught me to learn as much as I could about any situation that affected me. From Miss Adler’s whores to furniture to horses.

I looked at Willowdean, “Your husband is involved? Besides just printing the handbills?”

She nodded firmly, “It was his idea to sell the parcels more than once. They’re cutting him in.”

“Just curious, Mrs. Sherrill, why would you tell me about your own husband?”

“I hate him! My mother sold me to him and he’s a ... a beast! Sick in the head, the things he makes me do.”

Her face was flushed, her mouth in a grim line. I glanced at Cayuse; he was thinking of Rosie, same as me. A young girl in a man’s world.

With permission from Rosie, I had sent her quilt back to Indianapolis, to the Gilmore Girls. It looked to me like a fine piece of work, but then so did Rebecca’s. Quilting just wasn’t my field.

I did learn that Rosie had sewn a three-piece quilt. The top was the decorated part, then there was a filler and a bottom layer. Rebecca told me, “Most quilts are just plain whole cloth — for keeping warm.” She grinned, “When you don’t got two naked ladies to snuggle up with.”

Rosie winked at me.

Rebecca said, “Look at my quilts — they’re just patchwork. Pieces of different fabric sewed together. But Rosie, she’s fancy. It’s called applique in that magazine. What she did was cut her other fabrics into different shapes. Then stitched hundreds of them down onto the whole cloth.”

You could just glance at it and tell a lot of work had gone into it. And that Rosie had a pretty good eye for design.

Well, we’d see what the Gilmore Girls had to say on the matter.

Hotel Timmy was immensely proud of his mother, Hannah. And she was respected by the other whores. Respected for her intelligence, experience, and the way she had of making customers act, almost, like gentlemen.

Rosie and the boy, close in age, became friends. Like the sporting ladies, Rosie looked out for him, was protective of his innocent, gentle ways. One night in bed, she told Rebecca and me, “Hotel Timmy told me that birth story again.”

Rebecca raised her eyebrows in a question.

“He said, ‘My mother worked right up to the day before I was born. Just her mouth of course.’”

Rebecca smiled, “What did you say?”

“Of course.”

Rebecca winked at her and bent down over me.

I pulled my note out of the center desk drawer. It helped focus my attention when I talked things over with Cayuse. Even though it was usually pretty much a one-sided conversation, it assisted me in getting things clear in my mind.

I read it aloud, “Venerable and the Deacons. The Cravens and No-Name. That whole new-town thing going with Ollie and Goodwin and Sherrill.”

Cayuse nodded.

I said, “Venerable is maybe wanted for murder back in Cleveland. Sheriff Jenkins is making inquiries. If we do arrest Venerable, we’ll have to get him to some official jurisdiction.”

Cayuse said, “Deacons.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem. Or could become the problem.”

I pointed to the second item. “The Cravens. They want to build their bordello in No-Name. Two selectmen — Mosby and Goodwin — voted against annexing No-Name into Little River. They want the Cravens to build that grand bordello.”

“Lumber.”

“Yeah. And Goodwin ... I’m not sure what he’d gain from having a bordello open up. But Martin Bisbee voted yes on the annexation; he don’t want the competition for Buffalo Cut. And Ollie voted yes for the same reason.”

“Bighorn.”

“Right. So it’s a stalemate right now. And add in the fact that Mrs. Chambers is financing Mrs. Hogg’s new tavern.”

Cayuse shrugged; he didn’t have an answer any more than I did. But I did have an idea of what the Cravens might could try. Offering Ollie the one-fourth ownership instead of his wife. It might mean the end of his marriage, but Ollie was a businessman first. On the other hand, he was pretty nervous around Mrs. Chambers.

“Now about that new town south of here. I guess it was never intended to be a town. It was staked out to have something to show the suckers.”

Cayuse gave me a small smile, “No stakes.”

“You?”

He nodded. Must have ridden down there one night and taken everything down. Well, that would alert Ollie and Goodwin and Sherrill that someone was on to them. But it wouldn’t stop the scheme. Not with thousands of handbills already printed and waiting for the drummers to distribute them.

Lord Sidcup, his lady friend, a man to drive the fancy carriage, and three armed beaters came into Little River. First stop — sheriff’s office. One beater on horseback led the way. Then the leather and canvas rig was followed by two more beaters.

Cayuse and I were seated in tilted-back chairs on the wooden sidewalk out front when we saw them from a distance. I was sipping coffee; he was sharpening his Bowie. We stood and moved apart as we watched the procession make its way up Market Street.

“Sheriff.”

“Lord Sidcup.”

“Miss Melanie and I will be in residence at the Bighorn for a week or so.”

I nodded. Cayuse was about five feet to my right.

“I understand your town rules on weapons forfeiture. Completely understandable, old chap. Code of the West and all.”

I nodded again; maybe Cayuse’s quiet was catching.

The word had spread and a crowd had gathered across Market Street to watch the spectacle of an English Viscount and his lady. Who looked to be barely 14. Beautiful, but a little hard looking, lines around her mouth.

“But I am — in humble servitude to Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria — Lord Lloyd Christopher Lyttleton Sidcup, sixth Viscount of Pelham.”

“Okay.”

“And as a valued member of the peerage, I never travel without armed escorts. Especially with all those red beasties out there.”

“No.”

As always, time slowed down, my senses sharpened. I saw everything in front of me with extra clarity. I was looking at Lord Sidcup, but my real focus was on the two gunmen behind the carriage. I knew that Cayuse would cover the one in front, the one to my right.

I thumbed back the twin hammers on my scattergun and could hear two women gasp across the street. The crowd started moving apart, some going right, some to the left. I continued to concentrate on the two men on horseback.

“My good man, you cannot possibly appreciate...”

I sensed Cayuse’s movement without seeing it and I brought my eight-gauge down from my left shoulder to point it at the two beaters. Cayuse’s shot hit the first man in the chest before his revolver had risen above his waist.