This Loving Land - Dorothy Garlock [9]
Summer stood at the end of the bed. The light from the flickering lamp played on the girl’s pitifully thin shoulders and arms. When she looked up, her eyes were swimming with tears, her mouth looked puffed and bruised, and there were teeth marks on her neck.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
“No thanks are necessary. I think my brother was smitten with her,” she said, indicating the sleeping boy. “They took to each other right away.”
The girl looked searchingly at Summer, then at the boy on the cot. She covered the little girl and got shakily to her feet.
“I’m at the end of my rope,” she blurted out. “I just don’t know what I’m goin’ to do.” Tears streamed down the tired white face, and her lips trembled. “I’m not a whore, ma’am. Not yet! But I’m just the same as . . . ’cause I don’t know how much longer I can hold out without going to bed with ’em! I don’t care about me, anymore, but I got to find a place for Mary Evelyn. You like her, don’t you? She’s sweet and real . . . good.” She sank down on the bed and buried her face in her hands.
Summer put her arm across the shaking shoulders and the girl’s story poured out in sobbing, broken sentences.
Her name was Sadie Irene Bratcher; married at fourteen, mother at fifteen and widowed at seventeen. She’d married a young drifter and they had tried homesteading, but the lure of town was too much for her young husband. He died in a shootout over a card game, and Sadie and the little girl had been on their own for almost a year. She had come to Hamilton about a month ago. The only work she could find was in the dance hall, and it took most of her earnings to pay the hotel man.
“I’ll go to whorin’, if it’s the only way I can feed my baby,” she said firmly, then trembled violently. “Oh, God, ma’am, you can’t know what it’s like . . . pawin’ . . . slobberin’ . . . and they stink and dip snuff and spit! But I could do it if I had a decent place for Mary to stay.” The girl rocked back and forth in her misery.
Summer went to the window and looked down. The street was empty, except for a horse tied to the rail in front of the saloon. The horse stood, head down, stamping or pawing occasionally, to relieve the boredom of waiting. Summer felt the shadowy presence of Sam McLean more distinctly than any time since her mother had died. He was in the back of her mind, a person to lean on. He stood solidly between her and her becoming like this poor, miserable girl. The girl was desperate, and Summer knew what she was leading up to; the request she was about to make. She couldn’t take on the care of another child. She couldn’t. But . . . Bulldog had said something . . . something about if she wanted a woman . . .
Not one to hesitate after making a decision, Summer went back to the bed and faced the girl.
“I’ve a solution, if you’re willing to go out to a homestead with me and my brother.” She sat down on the bed. “We have a homestead about thirty miles south of here. I don’t know what kind of place it is, but it’s near a large ranch owned by . . . our guardian. We’re going out there tomorrow. You and Mary are welcome to come with us. I don’t really look forward to being the only white woman for miles and miles around. Another thing, Sadie, we don’t have much money, but we’ll have a place to live. We’ll have to work hard, put in a garden first thing and . . .”
Sadie was speechless, stupefied with disbelief. Then the words burst from her.
“Oh, ma’am! You’d take me and the baby with you?”
“Why not? And my name is Summer.”
One girl laughed, the other girl cried. Summer felt as if a load had been lifted from her shoulders. Here was someone she could talk things over with, someone who, hopefully, would work beside her. The girl’s need was even greater than her own. They began to talk, to plan, and finally slept when dawn was just a few short hours away.
By sun-up, the town was astir.
Through a crack in the door, Summer watched the hotel man’s retreating back. She closed the door softly and smiled reassuringly at Sadie. Green eyes stared unsmilingly back at her. The freckles