“So,” he said. “You’re Midnight.”

  Midnight? David sure had imagination.

  “Yes, that’s my name,” I said. I fixed him with a brittle smile. “And you are?”

  He chuckled at my refined Boston speech, which of course I was exaggerating.

  “Charles Hollister,” he said. “Madam.”

  “Would you like to play cards, Mr. Hollister?” I said sweetly.

  He glanced at David, who glared at me. But I had him. Laughing, he sat down. I tried not to show my relief. “Sure. What do you play?”

  “Spades,” I said immediately. “But first, we should all have a nice long drink.”

  “I don’t-”

  “The lady wants a drink with me,” said David. “Who am I to refuse? Maureen!”

  “A bottle for the table,” I suggested.

  A bottle was brought. I dealt the cards quickly, sizing up the Sheriff from the corner of my eye. He looked like a big brute alright, but not a crazy one. I felt I could handle him.

  David was another story. He was furious with me- but I think he still feared hitting me in public. That fear disappeared with every gulp of whiskey. His eyes grew redder, and his anger mounted.

  “This is my first time in Branson,” I said. “It sure is different from Boston.”

  “You shoulda come to Mill Town,” said the Sheriff. “Much bigger. We have a fair about twice a year. Don’t allow no cowboys, so it’s peaceful. Just farmers and their families. A right pretty spot.”

  “Ooooh,” I oozed. “And you’re the Sheriff?”

  “That I am,” he grunted.

  “How about we play a game, Sheriff?”

  “We are playing a game,” he chuckled, tapping the cards.

  “No, no.” I let a wicked spark enter my eyes. “Let’s say the winner of this game gets to watch the other two finish the bottle between them.”

  “Absolutely not,” snarled David.

  The Sheriff eyed him in disgust. “It ain’t nothin’ but a little whiskey, man.”

  “Do you agree?” I pressed.

  Mr. Hollister looked at me. I was already becoming of more interest than the sour David. I thought he might enjoyed the flirty game developing between us.

  “Well alright, Miss Ada. But don’t think I’m forgettin’ what we’re gonna do later.”

  I only smiled. “Are you afraid I can’t handle my drink?”

  “Oh no,” he said. “You look like a woman that can handle a lot of things.”

  “So let’s play.”

  We dealt the cards. I was on thin, thin ice. He’d seen through my little scheme. Oh well. They didn’t make a man Sheriff for nothing. And there was still David to deal with. I had plans for him.

  “Did you hear about the stagecoach upset in Oklahoma?” I asked.

  David spluttered over his ale jug.

  “The what?” said Hollister.

  I leaned in conspiratorially. “Well, before I came here I was ridin’ with some cowboys,” I said. “And they told me, there was a party from New England ridin’ off from Texas on the way to California. Thirty thousand dollars in bullion under the wagon bed. But a group of renegades came through and cleaned the whole thing out.”

  “Thirty thousand dollars?” Hollister exclaimed.

  “That’s right,” I said. “In gold bars. Can you believe it?”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Oh, about a month,” I said. “Maybe more.”

  Hollister sniffed. “Sounds like a frontier rumor.”

  “I thought so too,” I said, “Until I saw a piece of it with my own eyes.”

  David aimed a sharp kick at me under the table. His aim was off, though. He rammed his boots right into Hollister’s kneecap.

  “Hey now!” exclaimed the Sheriff, jumping up.

  It was worth it to watch David babble his way out of a pummeling. While they were distracted I took a look at the Sheriff’s cards.

  “Somethin’ is wrong with you,” grumbled Hollister.

  “Sit down, sugar,” I preened.

  “Go upstairs,” David snapped. His bloodshot eyes bored into mine.

  “Pardon?” said Hollister.

  “Are you takin’ her upstairs, or not?” David growled. “We don’t need to sit around and play cards all night.”

  The Sheriff looked at him. “I’ll go upstairs when I’m good and God-damned ready, Harmin.”

  “It’s your turn,” I reminded him.

  “Jesus,” he grunted, and turned back to the game.

  For a while we played in silence. I thought I had lost my opening. But then he said, “So you know anythin’ else about that stagecoach?”

  “Only what I heard,” I was quick to reply. “I heard the fella that lost it was runnin’ around tryin’ to find men to go recover it.”

  “Funny,” said Hollister. “I heard the same thing.”

  “You heard this story before!” I cried.

  “Some version of it. Word was the fella was hangin’ around Mill Town a few days ago. But I missed him, ‘cause was out visitin’ my sister in Bradshaw. Would have loved to get a conversation with him.”

  “I wonder where he got that gold from,” I said. David’s face had gone a curdled white. I struggled to hide my glee. “Thirty thousand dollars sure is a lot of money.”

  “I wonder, too. Ain’t natural for a man to be transportin’ that kind of riches.”

  “Unless he stole it,” I said.

  “Well, that was my thought,” said the Sheriff.

  “Gold bars,” I said. “About three inches long and a half-inch wide. Got letters on ‘em too. ‘J.W.’ That’s what the cowboys said.”

  “J.W?” said Hollister.

  “Jules Woodward Bank,” I said. “That was my guess.”

  “Well, there’s a lot of speculation but no real proof in that story.”

  “The absence of evidence isn’t the evidence of absence,” I said, quoting my father.

  They both stared at me. I said hurriedly, “At least, that’s what my old Master used to say.”

  After that I let the subject die. But I’d got David rattled. He slipped up, and then I took the game away from there. I cheated until I won.

  “I win,” I said.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Hollister, slapping down his cards. He looked at me with a mixture of approval and trepidation. “You’re smarter than you look.”

  Because I look like a dumb nigra, is that right?

  “Thank you.” I nudged the bottle at him. “You know the rules.”

  For a moment he looked rebellious. But then he picked it up. “I like you, girl.”

  I needed David to play the part. I needed him to be happy and jovial. No man likes to drink with a sourpuss, after all, and the Sheriff was no exception.

  But David was determined to ruin it all. He begrudgingly took the bottle, brought it to his lips once, and said, “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Well,” said the Sheriff. “You’re about as fun as a wet leather.”

  “It’s alright,” I said.

  The Sheriff held the bottle in front of him. “I ain’t much of a drinker, you know.”

  “Then why’d you agree?”

  “I thought I could beat you.”

  “Oh- bless your heart.”

  He gave me a smile that told me perhaps I’d been too successful in my flirtation. And then stood up.

  “Let’s go upstairs.”

  “Oh- er-”

  “Come on. I been lookin’ at you long enough. Time I got a feel.”

  “But you didn’t finish!” I said, faking a laugh and pointing at the bottle.

  “I don’t care. Come on.”

  I had no choice. I stood up. David was down for the count, his forehead resting on the crook of his arm.

  The Sheriff went up Maureen’s stairs, and I followed. Every moment my mind raced for an escape, some thing I could do to not sleep with him. He was drunk, but not drunk enough to pass out in bed, as I’d hoped. Nor drunk enough for me to overpower him. Not nearly drunk enough for that. My only hope was he’d brought the bottle with him.

  I dragged my feet going up the stairs. My mind raced.

  Outside “my” room, Hollister made a grab for me. He jerked me by the arm and smashed my mouth against his. He smelled of pure mash whiskey and saliva. I tried to pretend I enjoyed it.

  He fumbled for the latch of the door, pulling me inside with him. My heart hammered in my ears. The closing door sounded like a death bell.

  “Now,” mumbled Hollister. “Why don’t you show me what’s under that big skirt?”

  “Sure,” I said, sitting him in the chair. David’s jacket still rested on the back of it. “Oh hang on a minute!” I cried. I made a great show of hanging it up.

  Something long and cold jangled inside. I pulled it out. It was the room key.

  “You sure do take your time,” he complained.

  “I like to make men feel comfortable. Why don’t you take off your boots?”

  He took a long swig from the bottle. My heart rose.

  “Why don’t you help me?”

  Hollister’s voice, so pleasant before, had taken on a menacing growl. Just my damn luck, for him to be a mean drunk instead of a sleepy one.

  I bent to his feet. The shiny spurs gleamed in the dirty lamplight. For whatever reason these things had always reminded me of decorations on a Christmas tree. Now they only reminded me of Cal. How many times had I seen him polishing them? How many times had I helped him with his boots?

  I cupped Sheriff Hollister’s heel. It did no good to cry.

  “Good girl,” he chuckled. And he planted a foot on my forehead, and pushed.

  The boot came off, right along with my dignity. I wanted to fly that dirty stinking shoe in his face. Instead I helped him with the other one. He wore a pair of very darned socks, which smelled like ticks. Don’t tell me that ticks don’t have a smell. They do, and it was on Sheriff Hollister’s socks.

  “Pretty thing,” he said approvingly. “Now how much do I owe you?”

  “Six dollars,” I said primly.

  He gave a bark of a laugh that sputtered off at the end. Another swig of whiskey. The clunk of the bottle on the floor.

  “You’re the most expensive whore in the world,” he snarled.

  “For good reason.”

  “Oh?”

  “You should ask David.”

  “Maybe I will. Or maybe you can just show me. Now take that skirt off.”

  “No,” I said. “You got to undress first.”

  “I already took my boots off.”

  “Aw,” I said. “Well, what about the rest?”

  He eyed me. Then he stood up.

  Thumpthumthumpthump. This was it. I couldn’t talk my way out of it now. I couldn’t.

  His hands circled my waist. He led me to the bed.

  I won’t cry, I thought. But I don’t know if I had it in me to cry then. I felt emotionless. Blank.

  With Cal it had been different. I had melted into him like warm butter. Together we’d given and received pleasure, taking, offering, dancing in a hot rhythm that left us breathless and weak.

  What was this? I was being handed to this man for the benefit of a man I hated. David had given me up to Hollister like you would give someone a horse to ride. No, I couldn’t let it be like this. I had to do something.

  Slowly, slowly, I bent to unbutton my worn-down shoes. He watched me with a lazy eye.

  “Oh!” I gasped, straightening suddenly. “I forgot something downstairs.”

  “Forgot what?” he grumbled.

  “Please wait here,” I said. “David will kill me if I don’t bring it up here.”

  “What the fuck? No, you ain’t leavin’.”

  “Please?” I whined. “It will only take a second.”

  I stroked a hand down his barrel chest.

  “Well-”

  Without waiting for him to finish, I pushed past his chair to the door. He made a grab for me- too slow. I banged the door shut. The second it closed, and I knew he wouldn’t be following me, I took David’s keys from my pocket.

  It was a stupid, risky thing to do. My hands trembled. If he decided to come after me, I was finished. If he heard and made a fuss and started banging on the door, I was also finished. Look how they had lynched Tim Barlow. Poor foolish Tim swinging from a tree. What would they do to a negro girl that had just embarrassed the hell out of a local Sheriff?

  But Hollister just sat in that room. For once, mash whiskey was on my side. He sat inside that room and I turned the key in the lock. My only hope stood behind the counter, polishing a glass.

  “Maureen,” I gasped. “You have to help me.”

  She eyed me beadily. My heart sank. The only person of my race I’d seen since Texas, and she had to be a sour old prairie crone, didn’t she?

  “Have to do what?” she snapped.

  “That man there is tryin’ to sell me,” I sobbed.

  “You seemed to be havin’ a good time,” she said. She squinted at some specks on the filthy blue glass. “Why’d I got to bother?”

  I imagined she had not always been this way. But I also imagined taking the glass from her hand and breaking it over her forehead. Where I came from, most black folks stuck together and tried to help each other. Clearly that hadn’t spread to Branson, Kansas.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “That man-” I pointed at David’s slouched figure- “Is lyin’. He’s tryin’ to make me sleep with another man upstairs for money. Cal would know. Cal would tell you. Cal Sampson.”

  “Cal ain’t here,” she hissed. “So, where does that leave you?”

  “What? I thought you owed him favors!”

  She leaned forward. “You think I’m tryin’ to get lynched in my own place?”

  I stepped back from the counter. Her old face was twisted in resignation.

  “Thanks for your help, Ma’am,” I said.

  I took a last look at the snoring David, and the curious faces of Maureen’s regulars. My guest upstairs would be expecting me. My guest upstairs would be calling for me.

  Maureen went back to polishing her glass, her old brow furrowed. She seemed deaf to the world, and deaf to me.

  I slipped through the front door of her saloon, into the fresh air outside.

  A sultry night greeted me. The wind blew sweet and cool, with the scent of clover and dried grass. In the near distance a church service went on. They were singing hymns.

  Where was the rest of Branson? Those not filtering into Maureen’s were at home. The street was empty.

  On another night I might have stood there and listened. But frantic desperation does a lot to kill romantic ideas. I turned to run and careened into a full-breasted woman, who had appeared suddenly from the building next door. The basket of peaches in her hands went tumbling to the ground.

  “Shoot!” she swore.

  I bent to help her. “I-I’m so sorry.”

  “Careless, careless,” she tutted.

  My hands trembled. What was I doing? I couldn’t stay here and help some stranger pick up peaches. I should be running for my life.

  But something in her voice- I looked up. Another black woman. She was about my age, but wider in the hips, with a kind, oval face and bright eyes. Her hair was wound up in a rag. The light from Maureen’s saloon did her little justice. But I can’t tell you how relieved I was. Maureen might have been a stone cold bitch. But I could tell this woman wasn’t.

  “Oh my,” she said.

  “Help me,” I gasped.

  “What?”

  “Get me out of here. There’s a man in there tryin’ to sell me.”

  She looked around. Her wide eyes grew wider. “Who? Who are you?”

  “Please,” I said. “I’m beggin’ you.”

  Her mouth set in a grim line. “Where did you come from?”

  “Please- I can’t tell you now. I can’t let him catch me again.”