CHAPTER III: INTO THE FIRE
"Kay? Kay Dee?" Mabel Smart asked in total surprise. "Is that you?"
Kay almost dropped to her knees in stunned surprise--she would never have knocked on this
door if she`d thought that Mrs. Smart would open it! But she nearly wept when Mrs. Smart
called her Kay--the buffalo hunters had been calling her Katie for so long that she`d
almost forgotten what her real name was.
Mabel took a quick, strong grip of Kay`s slim arm. "You`d better come inside, child.
You`ll catch yer death o` cold out there."
Too weak to resist, Kay let the notorious Mrs. Smart pull her roughly inside the simple
one-room shack.
In all her life, Kay had never been in this shack. All her life, she and her parents had
always been polite with Mrs. Smart. But they`d always maintained the distance from her
that everyone else did.
Mabel Smart was the outpost`s one and only whore. Every evening, when the two daily
stagecoaches delivered their little crowds of passengers for an overnight stop at the
stage station, Mrs. Smart was waiting. She had never been pretty, and she had certainly
been younger, but she was acceptable enough to occasionally lure some passenger to bed in
the smaller of nasty Snappy Charles`s two tents.
Everyone knew, of course, that Mabel was a whore. The outpost was too tiny to keep such a
thing secret for more than a few minutes, and Mabel never tried to conceal it.
"It`s a good thing you came to me first, girl," Mabel said, studying Kay`s
naked legs as she shut her door. "People see you half-naked like that, they`ll start
wonderin` if you`ve turned whore."
"I think I ... I think I did." The words tumbled from Kay`s lips before she
could stop them.
Oh, damn the little bitch, Mabel thought, I`m in big trouble now. "Nothin` wrong
with that, girl," she quickly lied. "I`m one too, just like you."
Still shivering hard, and too exhausted to think about what she and Mrs. Smart had just
said to each other, Kay could only blurt, "I need a horse."
"Sure, honey," Mabel answered with all the warmth she could feign.
"Anything you want."
"I need one right away, Mrs. Smart," Kay blurted in pleading tones. "I
can`t stay here. I have to..."
Mabel`s eyebrows lifted, her gaze again fell on Kay`s naked legs. "Oh, really? Can`t
stay? Well, you can`t go around asking people to lend you a horse when you`re nearly
naked, can you?"
"Do you have a horse?"
Mabel snorted. "Ha! Me? I don`t like horses, girl. Now get those wet shirts off, Kay
Dee. I`ll get you some dry clothes."
As Kay`s shivering fingers fumbled with her wet shirts` buttons, she watched Mrs. Smart
get to her knees by her bed, reach under it, pull out a frayed cloth sack stuffed with old
clothes, and dump the whole load on her bed.
In the first few seconds of watching the outpost`s only whore poke around in a pile of
old clothes, Kay realized that the others were going to be hard to face, but they`d have
been much harder to face if she`d gone half-naked when she did it.
"Here," Mabel said as she held up a faded blue ankle-length skirt, and a
threadbare, long-sleeved, white shirt, "put these on."
When Kay stripped off the wet, stolen shirts, she saw Mrs. Smart looking at the faint,
faded bruises on her upper arms, then the bruises on her thighs. Gus had given her those
bruises the first day he and the others found her. Now Kay was sure that Mrs. Smart was
guessing how she`d got them.
Mabel wasn`t sure how the girl got her bruises. But she was very sure that Snappy Charles
would explode in his pants if he could see sweet young Kay, wet and half-naked, taking off
her rain-soaked shirts.
Mabel knew what others hadn`t even suspected about Snappy Charles and Kay Dee. Snappy
would kill--if that`s what it took--to get sweet little Kay whoring for him.
Oh, damn, damn, damn her anyway, Mabel thought. I`m in big, big trouble.
"Now sit right here," Mabel crooned, patting her bed invitingly when Kay had
pulled on the old shirt and skirt, "and we`ll figure out how to get you a
horse."
Then, thinking, Snappy`ll kill me if I let her get away, Mabel rose from her knees, sat
close beside the young beauty, and quietly asked the one big question that she didn`t need
to ask: "Something`s happened, hasn`t it?"
Kay nodded.
"Do your Daddy and Momma know you`re here?"
Seeing the sudden tears that the girl couldn`t stop, Mabel quietly asked, "They`re
dead, aren`t they?"
Kay threw a tragic gaze into Mrs. Smart`s hard, wily eyes.
Putting an arm around the tender young beauty`s shoulders, Mabel quietly asked, "How
long ago?"
Kay shook her head. She knew it had been weeks, but she couldn`t find the words for
saying that she wasn`t sure how many, and her realization that she didn`t know made her
ashamed of not knowing.
"A long time?
Kay nodded quickly.
"You`ve been all alone out there?"
Kay quickly looked away.
"Ah, you weren`t alone. Who?"
Kay swung her gaze back around to search Mrs. Smart`s penetrating eyes.
"Who?" Mabel quietly asked again.
Kay`s nose was just inches from Mrs. Smart`s nose when two whispered words left her lips:
"Buffalo hunters."
"Ah, buffalo hunters," Mabel answered as if the two words explained everything.
Then, taking the tone of someone talking to a child, she asked, "Hunters? More than
one?"
Kay nodded, bit her lip. A heavy tear slid down her cheek, fell to her lap.
"I guess they had a real good time with a pretty thing like you, didn`t they?"
Kay`s hands flew to her face. Sobs racked her shoulders. She forgot her need of a horse.
She forgot the deep fatigue of muscle, bone and soul. Too exhausted for any attempt to
hold it back, Kay let her sobs and her story come stumbling out of her heart like some
drunken passenger stumbling out of the biggest of Mr. Charles` two notorious tents. She
barely noticed when Mrs. Smart briefly left the bed.
Mabel returned with a glass of chokecherry wine in one hand and the nearly full bottle in
the other. When she held the glass out for Kay to take, Kay shook her head.
When Mabel insisted, Kay drank it. Mabel quickly refilled the glass, handed it back to
the girl, sat beside her, and coaxed more of her story out of her.
Kay could only let it go in bits and pieces. And she felt strange about doing it with
Mrs. Smart. But, an hour and four more helpings of wine later, Kay was done sobbing.
She was also done blurting and whispering to Mrs. Smart. She was completely exhausted
now, at the end of her rope. More than anything, she needed to close her eyes. Just for a
little while. She quietly told Mrs. Smart that she really needed to lie down.
"Is it OK?" she murmured sleepily.
"Sure, sure, child. Go ahead," Mabel said in her most reassuring tones."
"Just for a few minutes?"
"Sure. I`ll wake you then."
"Please? I can`t be here long. I have to..."
"Shh, shhh, it`s gonna be okay," Mabel lied. "I`ll wake you in just a few
minutes, and we`ll talk about getting you a horse."
The rain had stopped and the morning sun was bright and warm by the time Mabel Smart left
her shack and quietly closed its door. Mabel was in a hurry, and so flooded with violence
toward Kay Dee that she didn`t notice how quickly her old shoes absorbed cold rain drops
from the grasses with her every step.
If she`d stayed by the girl`s side a moment longer, she`d have slit the little slut`s
oh-so sickeningly beautiful throat. Thoughts of killing the goddamned girl remained with
every step Mabel took to Snappy Charles` shack on the little hill above all the others.
She was still thinking bloody murder when she knocked on nasty Snappy`s door.
| 
