Chapter 2: The Woman Behind The Desk
A tinkling bell on a spring above the door announced his arrival. To his right,
as he entered, was a square arch way and beyond a small dinning area with an oak
table and half a dozen chairs placed around it. Upon the table cups and plates
had been placed face down. A kitchen area could be seen through an open door. In
front of him a sofa, just past the archway, and beyond a reception desk with
several keys hanging from hooks on the adobe wall behind. At the left was a
stairway to the second floor. In between was a curtained doorway.
After the tone of the bell had died down, the curtain was pulled aside and a
petite woman with brown hair fixed in a bun came out, one hand smoothing back a
loose strand over her forehead. She was wearing a blue and white plaid gingham
dress with a full skirt. She moved behind the desk, her manner unhurried,
collected; her face was smooth and tanned, set with sparkling hazel eyes; her
figure shapely. She gave Green a calm, friendly smile.
On top of the desk beside the register was a short-barreled, pearl-handled .38.
"The six-shooter is for the Indians," she said, in a voice that was soft and
charming with a trace of southern accent followed with a faint smile. "Not for
guests."
She turned the register so he could sign it, then turned it back around.
"Welcome to Red Rock, Mr. Green," she said, after glancing at his signature. A
hint of irony played in her voice, her lips pinched in a wry smile.
"Thanks. Maybe I'll live long enough to see some of it."
"Um hmm," she replied.
She turned to the side and slowly reached up to take a key off one of the hooks;
the fullness of her breast was accented under the soft cotton bodice.
"I'll give you one of the center rooms. Not as many shutters to close when the
bullets begin flying."
"Appreciate it," he replied.
"By the way," she said, handing him the key, "my name is Abigail Crane. Everyone
calls me Abby. If there is anything you need just let me know."
"Need a bath, but the barber shop had a closed sign."
"Yes. Mr. Ames, our barber, was shot in the arm two days ago during the last
Indian raid. His shop won't be open for awhile, I expect.
Green nodded, finding it difficult to keep his eyes from ranging over the
shapely figure of the woman.
"But we have a bathing room upstairs at the end of the hall. I could heat some
water for you, if you like."
"That would do it. I haven't had a hot bath in a long time."
"Well then. Your room is to the left at the top of the stairs. First door on
your left."
The room was small with one narrow window facing the street. A bed to his left.
Opposite it, to the right, was a chest of drawers with a japanned wash bowl and
pitcher on top and next to it a pocket mirror with easel back. He hung his hat
on one of the coat pegs next to the door and removed his gun belts. He sat down
wearily on the bed, unstrapped his spurs and pulled off his boots. He was asleep
as soon as his head hit the pillow. One of the nickel plated .44s lying by his
side.
A light tapping at his door woke him. His gun was in his hand and cocked before
he was fully aware.
"Yes?" he said, when he realized someone was at the door.
"Your bath's ready," a woman replied. It was the voice of Abigail Crane.
In the bathroom was a steaming foot tub full of soap suds. A faucet connected to
a metal pipe that ran to a cistern on the roof provided the cold water. A bucket
of hot water sat next to the tub. On a stool nearby was a sponge and an oval bar
of coconut oil soap. A towel hung from a rack on the wall.
He laid his pistol, shaving gear and a fresh change of clothes on the stool and
stripped off the sweat-stained shirt and dusty buckskins he was wearing. When he
was settled in the steaming, wet warmth of the tub, he heard a tap on the door.
"If you would like," Abigail said, sticking her head around the half-opened
door, "I can have my servant, Maria, wash your dirty laundry."
Her face was impassive, but her eyes didn't fail to notice the broad, sloping
shoulders and muscular chest of her guest.
His eyes held hers as he nodded.
After she was gone, he found himself becoming hard as he fantasized holding her
naked body in his arms, melting her cool, efficient facade with a raw, unbridled
fuck, for he knew it was only a facade. He had seen the heat in her eyes when
she had looked at him, and he was equally certain she had seen the heat in his.
When he left the hotel, she wasn't in sight, but he could hear movement and
voices coming from the kitchen area.
He stepped off the porch and started down the street toward the general store.
The sun was farther to the west now. The air was still and hot after the
relative coolness of the thick-walled adobe hotel; the heat from the sun
penetrated his clothes; he felt sticky beads of sweat already forming on his
freshly scrubbed body. Beyond, a pale, earthshine moon hung its ghostly rim over
a purple range of mountains in the distance. Hawks swirled far off with majestic
leisure on an uplift of air as they had done since the beginning of time. Barn
swallows flitted about the loft of the livery. Below the liveryman was bent over
shoeing the pinto, the necessary tools stuck in the top of his boot for easy
access, his curved pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth, gray smoke rising.
The men who had been loading their buckboard were gone now. The guard who had
been posted on top of the doctor's office was still there, idly watching him as
he crossed the street.
Inside, the store was deep and high-ceilinged. The floor was hard-packed clay
swept clean. Long glassed-in counters ran the length of it on both sides
offering a wide assortment of goods, as well as the walls which had shelves
packed with the luxuries and necessities of life.
The proprietor, a fat man with a cigar in his mouth and a sweat-stained white
shirt, was standing behind the left-hand counter scribbling something on a piece
of paper, beads of sweat trickling down his cheeks. When he noticed Green he
paused in his scribbling and wiped his face with a wet hand towel that was lying
on the counter next to him. Gold rings glinted on his fat fingers.
"This heat's something else, ain't it? I'm gonna halfta find me a cool cave
somewhere and crawl in it till winter." He turned leisurely to a bucket of water
setting on a stand behind him and dipped the towel in it, rung it out and placed
it around his fleshy neck.
Green stopped in front of a rifle rack on the wall. The fat man moseyed up still
wiping his fat neck with the towel.
"Don't have much left," he said, eyeing the rack. "Folks just been buy'n'em up
purt' heavily since we started having Injun troubles. Alls I got left is that
ten gage and the saddle carbine, only twenty inch barrel though if you're
lookin' for a long shooter. The gage is used but in real fine shape; the
Winchester is brand spankin' new. Got a real purtdee burl stock and cleaning rod
trap; it's a forty-four."
Green nodded.
"I'll need a couple of boxes of cartridges to go with it and a saddle sheath and
a box of matches too," Green said, reaching in his pocket for some money.
The fat man took the rifle down from the rack and laid it on the counter along
with a pale orange scabbard which he placed it next to the rifle. Out of a
drawer nearby, he took out two cartridge boxes and placed them on the counter
also.
"Box of a hundred each." He took a box of matches from the shelf behind and
jotted down some figures on a piece of scrap paper.
"Yes, sir, that'll come to fourteen dollars and eighty-three cents. Get you
anything else?" he added with obsequious rapaciousness as Green paid him.
"Nope, that'll do me," Green answered. He slid the rifle in it sheath, picked up
the boxes of cartridges and matches, nodded curtly and walked out.
