The Queen Of The Cow Towns

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The Queen Of The Cow Towns - book excerpt

Prologue

September 11, 1874

Forrestville, Colorado

The sleet mixed in the windblown snow stung their skin. The two women watched the two tiny coffins as the men lowered them into the graves. A preacher in black read from the Bible with some difficulty. The strong wind kept blowing the pages, and snow blinded his eyes. All dressed in their Sunday Suits, four men carried the little wooden boxes and laid them to rest in the rocky soil. Soon the ground would be freezing solid. The shivering pastor hurried the service along with a quick prayer, followed by condolences to the grieving mother of the two inhabitants of the boxes.

Roxanna Edwards and her friend Mattie Wallace stood together, sharing more than one another’s warmth until the finalshovel of earth emptied on the last tiny grave. Mattie held her friend, whose twin children now rested side-by-side beneath the freezing Earth of the Forrestville Cemetery.Life in the mining towns in the Colorado Rockies' highest reaches tended to be short for children, with accidents, disease, and harsh weather claiming many young souls.

With a strong arm around Roxie’s shoulder, Mattie led her petite friend to a waiting buggy, draped in black.

“Come on, Rox.” Mattie tugged at her friend, who stood reluctant to part with her babies even now, with the snow and wind increasing by the minute.

“Let’s get you home.” Mattie led the sobbing Roxie to the buggy and helped her up.

Mattie climbed up and took the reins. Roxie turned around in the seat to look back at the two tiny fresh mounds in the cemetery. Mattie feared the grieving young woman would jump from the buggy and run back to where her children lay buried. She took Roxie’s small, cold hand in hers and held it tight. Roxie had always been thin, but now Mattie noticed how frail and thin the woman had become. Dark circles beneath the once lively blue eyes gave her a sunken hollow appearance.

The black mourning dress billowed in the strong wind and hung on her emaciated frame. It looked to be three sizes too large. Her powder blonde hair hanging below the black mourning bonnet looked as though it had not seen soap and water in some time. Mattie could not believe this was the same woman who befriended her and ushered her into The Trade a little over four years ago. That woman had exuded style and vitality. This one did not.

Mattie saw Roxie the last time, not quite two years ago, when the little blonde’s twins, Georgie and Mattie, were born in Denver. Not long after their birth, Roxie and her husband, mine engineer Willard Edwards, had come here to Forrestville, where he was hired to help dig a gold mine in the surrounding mountains' hard rock. They had traded letters regularly at first, but Roxie’s letters came to the Dodge City Post Office less often after a few months.

Two weeks prior, Mattie had received a telegram begging her to come because the babies suffered from lingeringfevers. Willard, off someplace else at another mining operation, could not be reached.

She had immediately taken the train to Denver, but the trip to Forrestville by wagons took her several days. By the time she arrived in the shabby mining camp, one babe had already died, and the other was only hours away from taking his final breath. Nothing Mattie or anyone else could have done would have helped him. The fever had severelydehydrated him and sucked the life from his frail little body. Roxie, still breastfeeding the babes, looked as though the life had been sucked from her, too. Feeding both children from her own body had rendered her not much more than a walking sack of bones.

Mattie gasped at the squalor of the shack, where Roxie had tried to survive alone with her children. It appeared to be just one room with a single bed that Roxie must have shared with her twins. A poorly built fireplace filled the room with more smoke than heat. Roxie carried her water from a nearby creek that drained downstream from the main camp, no doubt bringing waste and filth down with it.

I can’t believe Willard would leave his family in a place like this. He seemed so happy and proud of them all. Where the Hell is he anyway? We just buried his children for God’s sake.

Roxie trudged into the smoky cabin and dropped down onto the bed, sobbing. Mattie tried to comfort her, but Roxie remained inconsolable in her grief and loss. Mattie went to the hearth to put on some coffee but found the wooden water pail empty.

“I’m gonna go down to the creek and get water for coffee, Rox.” Mattie walked slowly to the door with the bucket in hand. “Why don’t you get some things together and come to stay with me at the Hotel in town?” Mattie pushed her way through the driving wind and snow to the creek. Willard or someone had built steps down from the cabin, but it made slow going for Mattie with the stinging snow biting her face. With the creek not yet frozen over, Mattie knelt and filled the bucket from the fast-moving current.

Back inside the cabin, Mattie found Roxie folding yellowed linen diapers and infants’ gowns. She stacked them in the center of the old bed, along with some rag dolls and carved wooden animals. Tiny tooth marks marred the surfaces of the toys.They were all Roxie had left of her babies. In an old leather suitcase, Mattie eyed some petticoats and calico dresses folded. The doors of an empty wardrobe stood open, and a small bureau sat with drawers pulled out. On the bureau sat an oval framed tintype of the old Roxie with her bright smile, leaning her blonde head on the thick shoulder of her smiling, curly-haired husband.

I wonder what happened to the two of them?

“Let’s go, Red,” Roxie said. She picked up her case and walked toward the door. She looked around the room, her eyes settling on the photo for a moment. “There is nothing for me here anymore.” With that, she picked up the oil lamp sitting on the mantle, lit it from a smoldering ember in the hearth, and pitched it at the bureau with all the strength left in her frail body. The glass chamber holding the oil smashed into the photo and burst, igniting the bed sitting next to it with the piles of children’s things atop it. It saddened Mattie, but she saw a little of her friend's fire and spirit in the violent action. She hoped she wouldn’t be there the day Willard Edwards ever happened to drop back into Roxie’s life.

They rode in silence up the hill and into the mining town. Mattie dropped the buggy off at the livery stable, and they trudged through the drifting snow to the Forrest House Hotel,where Mattie had rented a room on the first floor just down the hall from the lobby, a small bar, and restaurant.

Mattie stopped at the desk and spoke with the clerk for a short time before going on to her room with Roxie in tow. The room only heldone bed, but it was a double they could share. While Mattie was at the cemetery, someone had come in and lit the stove in the room against the droppingtemperature. They had also pulled the drapes to keep out the frigid drafts. Roxie sat in a rocking chair by the stove, and tears began to trickle down her gaunt, pale cheeks again.

“I wanted a chair like this,” she whimpered. Roxie ran her delicate, chapped hands along the smooth arms of the chair. “Willard said we’d have one, but…” Roxie broke into wracking sobs once more. “He lied to me, Red. The bastard lied to me about all of it. He took all of my money and invested it with one of the Mining Companies. He told me we were going to be rich.” She sobbed. “I sold all of my clothes and jewelry for a stake in that mine he and his partners were supposed to bebuilding. He dragged me and my babies up here to this God-forsaken mountain, and then he ran off to someplace else and just left us alone to here--to die.” Her grieving sobs had turned into an angry rant.

“Doesn’t he send you money for provisions?” Mattie asked, astonished at her friend’s revelations.

“He did at first,” Roxie said through choking tears. “Red, I haven’t heard from him in ten months. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. For all I know, he’s found another woman,” she wailed.

“Rox.” Mattie went to her friend and put her arms around her. “Why don’t you lie down and rest for a while.” She helped Roxie to the bed and covered her shivering body with the quilt folded across the foot of the bed. She unlaced Roxie’s weathered boots, pulled them off, and then sat in the rocker and watched her friend fallasleep.

An hour later, a knock at the door let her know their baths were ready. Mattie roused her sleeping friend, and they went down the hall to a room with two waiting copper tubs of hot water. After going through Roxie’s bag and not finding a dressing gown, Mattie took two of her own to the room with them.

Mattie gasped when she saw Roxie undressed. She looked like one of Poppa’s old bitch hounds after it had suckled too many pups. Mattie could see every rib and the bones of her spine through her thin, pale skin. Her breasts were still full and leaked a little milk. Those would dry up soon enough, but Mattie felt such profound sadness for her long-time friend. Her arms and legs appeared to be just skin over knobby bone, and her backside no longer had any shape to it at all.

“Rox, why didn’t you wire me sooner? I would have come. I would have wired you money.”

“They were my troubles, Red. I should have taken my babies off this damned mountain when I stopped hearing from Will.” She wailed. “I just kept hoping he’d come home. I sent a wire to him at the last place he said he was when Georgie first got sick, the same as you, but I never got any word back from him,” she began to sob again. “I know he loved Georgie. We named him after his Grandpap.”

“Don’t you think his partners would have let you know if something terrible had happened to him?” Mattie asked, watching Roxie closely. She feared the distraught woman might drown herself if she didn’t.

“I don’t know.” Roxie relaxed with her head leaning back on the edge of the tub. “I never met them. Will told me they were from Colorado Springs, and he’d done business with them before. The paperwork I saw said the company's name is Harvey and Rowe Mining, Incorporated, from Colorado Springs. I don’t even know if it actually exists. I honestly think he lied to me to get me to hand over my money. When we got married, he said that money would be for building our permanent home, but then when we got up here, he built that shack, and then he left us.”

Mattie could tell Roxie did her best to keep herself together, yet tears still trickled down her hollow cheeks. “I should have known he wasn’t coming back when he took all his clothes and things. The only things he left behind were his babies, his wedding photo, and his wife. Everything else, he packed on a wagon and took with him.” Roxie broke down sobbing again. “I should have known he wasn’t coming back when he took his Grandpap’s fiddle. He always left it with me before, but this time he took it. He said he’d need the distraction on the long nights.”

Yes, Mattie thought, that should have been a sign. Willard loved that fiddle from his Grandpap and wouldn’t be parted with it. If he didn’t plan on coming back, he would certainly have taken that with him.

After soaking the fatigue from her bones and allowing Roxie to soak and warm up for a bit, Mattie got out of the tub and dried her body. “Come on, Rox. Let’s get some hot food in you.”

Roxie refused her offer of a dress and put the black mourning dress back on to wear to the Hotel's simple dining room. The room only offered four or five tables with ladder-back chairs, but the coffeesteamed hot, and the food tasted good. They ate a thick soup with chunks of elk meat and biscuits that were a little dry and probably leftover breakfast.

“It’s hard to get things to cook up here on the mountain,” Roxie explained. “The soup has to be put in an iron pot with a lid and cooked in the oven. It takes forever because of the thin air.”

“Well, my friend,” Mattie told her. “Soon, you will be back down the mountain. We’ll take the stage back to Denver tomorrow, and then the train to Dodge.”

“I can’t leave my babies,” Roxie said with a quiet sob.

“Your House is gone, Rox. Are you planning to sleep in the cemetery?”

“I should.”

“What do you think Madam Ophelia would say if she heard you talkin’ like this?”

Roxie looked up at her and smiled for the first time in days. “She’d tell me to shut the fuck up and go buy some new dresses.”

“Yes, she would.” Mattie chuckled. “And that’s just what we’re gonna do when we get back to Denver. I’m gonna take you to all the shops just like you took me in St. Louis. Do you remember that? I didn’t have a stitch except for the things you’d given me.”

“Now look at us,” Roxie said as she looked down at the frayed black mourning dress given to her by the pastor’s wife. “You are the high-class Fancy Lady, and I’m the dirt-poor miner’s widow.”

“Widow?” Mattie inquired with an arched brow.

“Yes, a widow. If that man I married isn’t dead, he’ll sure as Hell hope he is if I ever see his sorry ass again. The Willard Edwards I loved and married burned in that shack today after we buried his two beautiful children. I’m now the widow Edwards, and nothing more.”

Chapter 1

Roxie sat, bored, at a table in the Lady Gay listening to Dora Hand singing one of her fancy opera tunes, a little bored. The end of another long summer day in Dodge City and she needed to sleep. Mattie had promised to join her here after her last customer, but that had been two hours ago. Suppressing a yawn with her black-gloved hand, Roxie looked around the smoky room.

The same group of loafers slouched around the tables. Jimmy Masterson, one of the owners and brother of the Ford County Sheriff, the notorious gambler, Bat Masterson, ran the Faro tables. Jim, one of her regular customers, comped the drinks here, but free drinks or not, she decided it was time to be going.

Mattie must have hooked a lively one to keep me waiting this long. She usually sends a runner if she’s going to be held up. I better check on her.

Roxie waited until Dora finished her song, applauded, and stood to leave. Jimmy waved her over to his Faro table. She gave him a dismissive shake of her blonde head and slipped through the swinging doors out into Front Street and the dark. Roxie crossed the rutted, dusty track of the main thoroughfare in Dodge. She headed for the side street leading to the Santa Fe Railway Depot, where the row of cribs she and Mattie workedwas located.

Roxie saw the unlit lantern outside Mattie’s door. Her friend would not be taking more clients for the night. Only a dim light showed through the window of her door, and Roxie found that strange. Mattie always closed the privacy curtain on her door’s window when she did not intend to take more clients for the night. Mattie cherished her privacy, and Roxie could not fathom her, leaving the curtain open with a lamp still burning in her room.

She quickened her pace and hurried up the steps to the porch along the front of the seven rooms, making up the row of cribs. At Mattie’s door, she looked in and saw her friend sprawled naked across her bed, unmoving, with her bright red hair spread over the pillows, and her legs splayed wide for anyone to see who happened by. A turn of the brass doorknob released the striker, and Roxie pushed into the room. Mattie gave no indication she heard anything, and Roxie’s pulse quickened.

“Red,” she called to Mattie as she rushed to the bed. “Red, are you alright?” Roxie got to the edge of the brass bed and could see her friend beaten and unconscious, but breathing. Blood leaked from her nose, and purple bruises rose on her cheeks. Roxie rolled Mattie over and heard a moan from her friend.

“Oh, Dear Jesus, Red,” Roxie said when she saw the swollen purple eyes and split lip on her beautiful protégé’s face. “Red, wake up.” Roxie reached for the basin of water on the washstand by the bed, took the wet cloth,and flung the cold water onto Mattie’s swollen face. That brought about another moan, and Mattie’s swelling eyes fluttered open. Roxie saw blood in the whites of her eyes surrounding the green irises. She gently dabbed the blood from Mattie’s nose and lips.

“What happened, Red? Who the fuck did this?” Roxie continued to clean Mattie’s face when she heard someone come into the crib and turned to see Addie Miles, an occupant of crib three, dressed in only her camisole, corset, and petticoat.

“I think it was Billy Thompson,” Addie said as she rushed to the bed and pulled the quilt up over Mattie’s naked form. She shook her disheveled brown head as she went around the brass footboard to sit on the other side of Mattie’s limp form. “Is she breathin’?”

“Billy Thompson? I thought him and that bitch, Libby, were down in Texas somewhere. Are they back in Kansas again?” Roxie nodded in answer to Addie’s question.

“I heard Denver,” Addie told her. “You know how much Libby hates Mattie. She probably sent the bastard down here to hurt her. She blames her for gettin’ thrown out of her crib last year.”

“Libby Thompson got thrown out for bein’ Libby Thompson, stealin’ from drunken clients. Everyone knows that. Did you see the bastard here?”

“I saw him in the Mercantile yesterday talkin’ to Jimmy. They were talkin’ about puttin’ together a card game at the Lady Gay.” Addie went into Mattie’s kitchen and brought back some salve. All the girls knew where Mattie kept her medicinal herbs and salves. She acted as the official apothecary for the Trade girls in Dodge, helping to mend their wounds, deliver their babies, and terminate their unwanted pregnancies. Mattie’s little garden of medicinal herbs behind the cribs even drew the local doctor's interest, who consulted with her and bought from her.

“Here,” Addie handed the yarrow salve to Roxie, who smeared liberal amounts of it on Mattie’s face. “I’m gonna heat some water for some willow tea. Mattie says that stuff will stop the swellin’.”

Mattie groaned again and tried to sit up. Roxie did her best to assist her and soon had the bruised woman propped up on pillows against the rails of the brightly polished brass headboard.

“You hurt anyplace else, Red?” Roxie asked. “Who did this? Billy Thompson?”

Mattie lifted a hand to touch Roxie’s, closed her eyes, and nodded. “He busted in after I got done with Roy,” Mattie said. She put a hand to her swollen face. “He was drunk and ravin’ about how I got Libby thrown out last year. I tried to tell him I didn’t have anything to do with it, but he wouldn’t hear it.” Mattie pressed her fingers into her skin around her face and tested it for broken bones. Her nose continued to bleed, and Roxie watched her friend feel for damage. When she fingered the dislocation about halfway up the bridge, she closed her eyes, took a breath, and pushed it back into place.

“Rox, check the bureau,” Mattie groaned and motioned toward the drawer where she kept her take. “I think the son of a bitch robbed me too.”

Roxie went to the bureau and opened the top left-hand drawer where Mattie kept the coins she earned. Roxie found it empty. She checked the right one where Mattie kept her jewelry and found that empty as well.

“He cleaned y’all out, Red. Your jewelry too. You know Libby always said she wanted your black choker and earbobs. How many times did that bitch try to get y’all to sell ‘em to her?”Roxie went to Mattie’s wardrobe and opened it on a whim. “Oh, Dear God,” she declared and took a hanger out to reveal a burgundy taffeta dress cut to shreds. Roxie pulled out others, and they all bore the same destruction. “The son of a bitch took a knife to your whole damned wardrobe,” Roxie hissed. Tears of rage ran down her cheeks. “I’m gonna kill that bastard when I get my hands on him.”

Addie came in with a cup of steaming tea and groaned at the destruction in the wardrobe. “I bet she told him to do that too. None of it would fit the short, fat little bitch, or she would have had him steal them too.” She took the tea to Mattie and helped her drink it. “You want some laudanum, Matt, or some whiskey?”

“Whiskey, please,” Mattie told her between sips of the hot, bitter tea.

“I’m goin’ for the Marshal,” Roxie said and headed for the door.

“Don’t bother,” Mattie told her. “You know the Earps are fast friends with him and his bunch. Just let it go, Rox. I’ll heal, and there wasn’t all that much in the drawer. I just went to the bank this morning.”

“Alright,” Roxie said. “But I’m still gonna go tell Jimmy. His brother is Ford County Sherriff. He can arrest Billy and hold him on County charges. The damned city law can’t do nothin’ about that.” Roxie stormed out the door, slamming it behind her.

Back at the Lady Gay, Roxie walked directly to the Faro table. JamesMasterson towered over Roxie, but he recognized the blood in the little blonde’s eyes when she marched over, color high in her generally pale cheeks.

“What’s the matter, Roxie?” he asked, his Midwestern accent gentle as he dealt his cards.

“That son-of-a-bitch Billy Thompson just beat the Hell out of Mattie, stole her money and jewelry, and cut up all her clothes, that’s what’s the matter,” Roxie yelled over the boisterous crowd, quieting the place immediately. “I came to you because Thompson and the Marshal and Deputy Earp are big buddies, you know. They’ll probably give him a personal damned escort back to Colorado so nobody can prosecute his ass for Mattie’s beating here in Dodge.”

“Sorry, boys, this table’s closed,” he told the two cowboys, who took one look at the fire in the little blonde’s eyes and scooped up their money without uttering a complaint.

“Is Mattie alright?” Jimmy cleared his table and took Roxie to a seat in a quiet corner where they could talk.

“No, she’s not alright. Her face looks like Hell. He broke her nose. Will you get me somebourbon?”

“Of course, Darlin’.” He got up, went to the bar, and brought back a bottle of her favorite bourbon and two glasses. At the table, he uncorked the bottle of amber liquid and poured them both some.