Page 6 of Sweet Savage Love

6

G inny woke late the next day. Even as she stretched and yawned lazily, she realized that it must be almost noon, or past, for it was hot, and the sun left a wide yellow stain on the floor by the window. The window! Her forehead wrinkled as she remembered last night—those men, and the horrible women with them. In spite of the tightly closed window that had made her room seem unbearably stuffy, the sounds in the next room had kept her awake for hours. And now—how much of the day had she lost already?

Stretching again, Ginny sat up in bed, noticing that Tillie had gone, leaving the window open, fortunately, and the blinds drawn.

Her eyes felt heavy-lidded and swollen, and she had half a mind to stay in bed, but there was too much she had wanted to do today—go exploring the town with Sonya, and sit in the old, tree-shaded plaza watching the people go by. Sonya, as soft-hearted as usual, must have told Tillie to let her sleep late.

Before her resolve weakened, Ginny got quickly out of bed. She longed for a bath, but there was no time to order one now, and she was hungry. Perhaps if she hurried there would be time to have lunch downstairs.

Most of her clothes were still carefully packed away, but Tillie had unpacked a few and left them to hang in the small closet that the room provided. Stripping off her pale silk nightgown, Ginny pinned her hair up and washed herself all over with water from the pitcher on the bureau. A sponge bath, after all, was better than none at all, and it refreshed her considerably.

Choosing a cool organdie dress that did not look too wrinkled, Ginny slipped into it and studied herself critically in the small mirror. Its pale cream color, sprigged with tiny green and red flowers, suited her rather pale complexion.

Of course, it was considered fashionable to be pale, but she wished in spite of it that she had more color in her cheeks. In France, she had sometimes used rouge, but Sonya had already warned her that people here were a little more old-fashioned. Peering at her reflection, Ginny pinched her cheeks lightly and frowned back at herself. If only her mouth was a little smaller, her forehead higher! Still, it wasn’t too bad a face, and she had been told she was a beauty; which, though it was surely exaggeration, was still flattering. I suppose I’m passable, she told herself, arranging her hair high on her head, and brushing it into ringlets that fell around her face and down her neck. At least I have nice ears, she thought, and I like the new hairstyles. No more smooth, decorous chignons—following the Empress Eugenie’s example women in Paris had begun to arrange their hair differently, and it was now quite proper for a lady to let her ears show. Ginny had had her ears pierced before she left for America, and now she wore her favorite earrings—tiny pieces of jade set in antique gold studs that had belonged to her mother.

Turning away from the mirror, Ginny walked impulsively to the window and pulled the drapes aside so that she could look down into the street. It had been getting dark when they had arrived here last night, and under the hot sun, everything looked different.

The heat, reflected off the small balcony just outside the window, seemed to assault her senses.

It must be just past noon, she thought, shading her eyes.

The dusty street seemed to shimmer in the glare, and there was no breeze to cool her cheeks. She supposed that it was the intense heat that made everyone stay indoors, for there was hardly any activity to speak of. Horses, tethered to hitching posts that lined the avenue, hung their heads; a few loafers sat rolling dice or smoking on the porch of a saloon just opposite.

The street was wide, but at this time only an occasional buckboard or a lone rider travelled its length. She had been told that wagons sometimes rolled through the streets of San Antonio, that it was a busy, bustling town. But this afternoon it seemed lazy and half-asleep—almost too quiet.

Voices carried up to her, through the still, hot air. A good town for eavesdropping, Ginny thought wryly, but she could not help listening—perhaps because of the rather tense note in the voice that spoke first.

“He’s in that saloon, Bart. Been drinkin’ in there with that half-breed sidekick of his since mornin’. Want me to go hurry him up, some?”

“No.” The second voice sounded nasal and flat. “If he’s drinking, he’s scared. I can wait. He’ll come out some time.”

Curiosity made Ginny lean out cautiously to look down. Three men stood on the sidewalk beneath her window, completely unaware of her presence. One of them was tall and rather thin, dressed like an Easterner in a black suit, his hat a fashionable derby. His two companions wore typical western clothes.

The man they had called Bart spoke again.

“You find out who he is?”

“Naw. Calls hisself Whittaker, an’ he came in with that wagon train, all right. All the way from Louisiana.”

“He sure don’t wear his gun like no scout,” the third man put in. “I asked around, Bart. No one recognizes him for sure, but I heard one man say he used to ride shotgun for Barlow stepping back and sideways as his hand seemed to blur downward for his gun.

Ginny supposed afterwards that Whittaker must have moved too. When horrified realization hit her, he had a gun in his hand and he was standing with his knees slightly bent, firing. There were three shots at least that seemed to merge into one rolling explosion. Haines’ gun dropped before he could bring it up—the man seemed to have been picked up and flung backward by the murderous force of the bullets that pounded into his body.

Ginny leaned against the window frame, her nostrils stinging from the smell of burned powder, her eyes fixed with a sick, frightened fascination on the broken body that lay sprawled like an ungainly puppet in the dust, blood seeping from holes in the black coat.

She was hardly aware of the voices that floated upward, of the footsteps of men who came running.

“My God—Haines never even got a chance to shoot!”

“Never seen anyone draw so fast in my born days…”

“Somebody better get the Marshal, I guess. But Haines was asking for it.”

“If the Marshall wants to talk to me, I’ll be in the saloon, finishing my drink.”

How could any man who had just killed another sound so coolly unconcerned? Duels had always seemed so romantic, so dramatic, but there had been nothing so very dramatic or noble about this one—and even when she closed her eyes, Ginny could see the broken, bleeding body, just lying there.

Half-sick with revulsion, she stumbled away from the window and found herself sitting on her bed, fighting to control the waves of nausea.