The Hen House Read online

  “Okay, okay,” Letty murmured. “We’re almost there.”

  Alice moaned.

  The baby made a mousey little squeak.

  Letty wanted to cry. Instead, as soon as they were inside the doctor’s front yard, she began to yell.

  “Doc! Hey, Doc! Help us! We need help!”

  The front door opened almost instantly. Letty recognized the doctor’s wife, Mildred. In seconds, Mildred’s expression went from questioning to shocked.

  “Oh dear Lord,” she muttered, and yelled over her shoulder. “Angus! Angus! Come quick!”

  She ran out the door and down the steps, catching Alice just before she pitched forward.

  The doctor was only seconds behind, and quickly lifted Alice up into his arms and carried her into the house.

  “What’s happened here?” he asked, as Letty followed behind, still carrying the baby. “Was there an accident?”

  He laid Alice down on the examining table and motioned to his wife.

  “Unbutton her dress. We need to see the extent of her injuries.”

  “The baby… what about the baby?” Letty asked.

  Dr. Warren turned, took one look at the child and paled.

  “Give it to me,” he said softly, again directing orders at his wife, Mildred. “Make a pad out of that blanket and lay it on the table, quickly.”

  His wife folded the blanket to fit the table, then laid a small piece of linen over it. Angus laid the baby down and then removed the blanket in which she’d been wrapped.

  Her skin was so fragile, Letty could see the tiny blue veins beneath, and her limbs were hardly more than matchsticks. The baby was so lethargic it could do little more than squeak.

  “Dear God,” Mildred said, as she looked from mother to baby and back again. “What’s happened here?”

  Letty sighed.

  “I’m not sure. I just got myself involved by accident. This lady and her family are staying in the hotel room next to me and my husband. We’ve been there nine days now, and I can count on my hands the number of hours of silence. Most of the time one or both of them have been wailing. Today I knocked on the door.” Letty’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry I waited so long.”

  “Mildred! Warm up some milk. Fill one of the nursing bottles and bring it here as quickly as you can.”

  Mildred flew out of the room to do his bidding, leaving Letty alone with Alice.

  Angus Warren pointed to Alice’s dress.

  “Would you please unfasten her dress for me.”

  Letty nodded.

  There were a few moments of silence as Letty undid buttons. Dr. Warren stood beside her, his expression unreadable.

  “She’s been beaten, hasn’t she?” he asked.

  Letty nodded.

  “Her husband?”

  “Said his name was George,” Letty added.

  “Damned gold fever makes fools out of all manner of men.”

  “Wasn’t a fool who beat Alice half to death. It was a devil.”

  Dr. Angus sighed.

  “They happen, too, sometimes.”

  Letty bit her tongue to keep from saying anything more.

  “Look here,” Dr. Angus said, as he moved the fabric aside on Alice’s dress. “Broken ribs. One is close to protruding through the flesh. I’ll have to set these before they puncture a lung.”

  “Is she going to make it?” Letty asked.

  “Maybe,” Dr. Angus said.

  Letty glanced over to the tiny baby lying so still on the adjoining table.

  “What about her?” Letty asked.

  Dr. Angus just frowned and shook his head.

  “Jesus,” Letty muttered.

  At that point, Mildred came back into the room carrying the milk. She lifted the baby into her arms and sat down in a nearby rocking chair.

  Just as she was about to put the nipple to the baby’s mouth, she froze. Letty heard her breath catch, and her voice began to shake.

  “She’s gone, Angus.”

  The doctor spun around.

  “Let me see,” he said, and laid a finger against the baby’s neck, feeling for a pulse.

  “Damn it,” he said softly. “Damn it to hell.”

  “Cursing won’t help either one of them,” Mildred scolded.

  “I wasn’t cursing for them. I was cursing for me,” he mumbled.

  Letty felt as if she was smothering. Only minutes ago she’d held that tiny life and now it was gone. The pain in her chest was spreading up her throat. Her vision blurred.

  “She’s dead?” Letty asked.

  Mildred nodded, then set the bottle aside and clasped the tiny baby to her ample breasts and began to rock.

  “Mildred, don’t,” Angus said. “I need you to help me. Maybe we can save the mother.”

  Mildred’s chin was quivering as she got up from the chair. She carried the baby back to the table and then laid it down.

  Letty felt as if she was caught in a nightmare, unable to wake up. On one table, the tiny body of one victim had already escaped the hell into which she’d been born, while the mother wasn’t far behind.

  “I’ve got to go,” Letty muttered, and stumbled out the door.

  She paused on the porch and took a deep breath, but it didn’t help.

  Desperate to get away from the pain, she strode off the porch and headed back up the street. Her hands were doubled up into fists, and her head was down as if she would head-butt anyone who got in her way. When she stomped off the sidewalk and into the street, she was outrunning the dust stirred up by her feet. She didn’t know she was crying—huge, hiccupping sobs that shook her to the bone, or that people were whispering and staring as she moved through town. Everyone knew Letty Potter as a tough, no-nonsense woman. They couldn’t imagine what had happened to cause this kind of reaction.

  Letty didn’t know she was gathering so much attention. All she wanted to do was get to her room. She was almost running when she entered the hotel, and was heading for the stairs when she heard what sounded like a roar of rage from the second floor. The sound startled her enough that she hesitated. As she did, a man came storming down the hallway above and took the stairs down to the lobby, two at a time, then headed for the clerk behind the desk.

  “Where is she? Where’s my wife?” he yelled, and grabbed the young clerk around the neck.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I just got back from eating my noon meal.”

  Letty froze. She’d never met this man, but she had a sinking feeling that she knew who he was. And, there was only one way to find out.

  “Hey,” she said.

  The man turned the clerk loose so quickly that he staggered backward and fell.

  “You talkin’ to me?” the man growled.

  Letty stared at the man—all six plus feet of him—and could only imagine how Alice had felt.

  “By any chance, is your name George?” she asked.

  George Mellin looked taken aback, and then he recognized her as the woman who was in the room next door.

  “You’re that Potter woman, ain’t you?”

  “I asked you first,” Letty said.

  George blinked. He wasn’t in the habit of being back-talked by anyone, especially some female, no matter how rich she was.

  “You don’t talk to me like that,” George said softly.

  Letty glared. “Or what? You gonna beat me, too?”

  The clerk behind the counter had scrambled to his feet and made a run for the door. He wasn’t sure what was about to happen, but it didn’t look like any good was going to come from it. He headed for the sheriff’s office as hard as he could go.

  “You think because you’re rich that you’re better than ever’body, don’t you, bitch?”

  Letty shuddered. She’d been beaten up a few times in her early days as a prostitute, before she’d settled in at the White Dove Saloon. There, she’d at least had three meals a day and a roof over her head, as well as protection from the ones who liked to hurt a woman first before
they had their own pleasure.

  George doubled his fists and took a step toward her.

  Letty was so focused on the man in front of her that she never knew the clerk was gone. She waited for George to take that second step, fearing it, and at the same time, wanting some recourse for that dead baby on the table back in the doctor’s office.

  She could hear the rasping sounds of his heavy breathing and smelled the stench of his unwashed body. Her stomach rolled. She felt light-headed, as if she’d had too much to drink as the sounds of men drinking and laughing from the bar in the adjoining room began to fade. From where she was standing, she could see the man who drove freight wagons to and from Denver City finishing off a big steak. The bullwhip he used on his team of mules was hanging on the back of his chair only a few feet from where she was standing.

  Without giving herself time to think, she stepped through the doorway, snatched the bullwhip from the back of the chair, and uncoiled it as she walked. It snapped once, getting the attention of everyone in the bar, including the freight driver, who thought he was being robbed.

  “Hey, mister! That’s—”

  “That ain’t no mister,” someone said. “That there’s Letty Potter.”

  It was the first snap of the whip that got George’s attention. He pointed at Letty as she walked back into the hotel lobby.

  “You put that down before I—”

  Letty swung it over her head once, and then aimed it at George’s face.

  The leather tassels at the end of the whip tore the flesh on his cheek as neatly as if he’d been bitten.

  “Godalmighty!” he yelled, and grabbed the side of his jaw.

  Letty was already swinging the bullwhip again when George lit for the door. She was right behind him, running as she went.

  Just as he was about to jump from the sidewalk, the bullwhip snaked around his ankles. Letty gave it a jerk and he went down like a felled ox. Dirt went up his nose and in his mouth. He tasted blood at the same time an intense wave of intense pain shot through his head. He’d bitten into his tongue so hard that the end had come off. He rolled over on his back and unwound himself from the bullwhip, spitting blood as he went.

  “You’re crazy!” he bawled. “Somebody stop her. She’s crazy!”

  People in the buildings heard the ruckus and began spilling out onto the sidewalks and into the streets. They didn’t know George, but it didn’t take long for them to recognize Letty. Everyone knew the woman in men’s pants who’d struck gold.

  Letty was past rational thinking as she drew back the bullwhip, cracking it time after time onto George’s back, and his legs, and his face.

  George Mellin was lying in the middle of the street, rolled up as small as he could get with his arms over his head, screaming and begging for someone to make her stop.

  Someone yelled at her. She didn’t know it was the sheriff, and at the time, wouldn’t have cared. Every time she drew back the whip, she taunted him with a dare.

  “What’s the matter, George? You like to hit women. Why don’t you get up out of the dirt and take a swing at me like you did your wife?”

  Suddenly, the onlookers got a sense of Letty’s justice.

  She swung the whip in the air. It cracked against the back of George’s neck like the echo of a rifle shot down in a canyon.

  “Come on, you sorry sack of shit! You wife is broken in so many pieces she can’t stand up any more, and you went and starved your baby to death. She’s dead, George! Do you hear me? She’s dead!”

  Letty didn’t hear the collective gasp from the crowd, or see the disgust spreading across the onlookers’ faces.

  Take a swing at me, you sorry bastard. I’m not like Alice. I’ll fight you back.”

  She popped the whip again. It ripped the back of George’s jacket, through the shirt, and all the way to the flesh on his back.

  George bucked like he’d been shot as he rolled, trying desperately to get out of her way. Every time he tried to get to his feet, she yanked them out from under him again. Just when he was convinced that he was going to die, he heard the sounds of running horses, and then a man shouting Letty’s name.

  ***

  Eulis was deep in the mine shaft when Henry Smith had reached the mine. Robert Lee was on duty. His first instinct had been to reach for his gun when the man had ridden up, then Henry had shouted.

  “Get Eulis! Letty’s got trouble.”

  Robert Lee turned on his heels and ran into the mine, shouting Eulis’ name.

  Eulis was loading ore into the mine cars when he heard Robert Lee.

  “Here! I’m here!” he called back, and leaned his pick against the wall. “Mose, take over here for a minute until I see what’s up.”

  He lifted a lantern from a peg in the wall and started walking back toward the entrance. Even though he’d heard concern in Robert Lee’s voice, he had not connected it with the possibility that Letty was in trouble.

  He rounded a bend in the shaft about a hundred yards from the entrance and ran into Robert Lee.

  “Whoa, there,” Eulis said. “What’s so all fired important?”

  “Henry Smith came riding in from town. He said Letty’s in trouble.”

  Eulis felt the ground go out from under him.

  “Letty?”

  “Henry said she’s in trouble,” Robert Lee repeated.

  Eulis pushed past Robert Lee and started running. He heard the footsteps behind him, but didn’t stop to wait. Moments later, he burst out into the open. Henry had saddled Eulis’ horse and was waiting by the mine, holding the horse’s reins. T-Bone was waiting, too; tongue hanging and ready to go wherever Eulis went.

  “What happened to her?” Eulis cried, as he swung up in the saddle.

  “I don’t know what all happened, but when I saw her, she was carrying a baby and helping a woman down the street. I reckon they were on the way to the Doc’s house.”

  He immediately thought of the woman and the baby who’d been crying in the room next to theirs.

  “Oh lord,” he muttered.

  “I’m coming with you,” Robert Lee said, as he mounted his own horse.

  Henry took off his hat and shoved a hand through his hair, as if uncertain of what else to say.

  “Hey, Eulis… about that woman who Letty was helping…”

  “What about her?” Eulis asked.

  “She looked near beat to death.”

  Eulis paled.

  “You said she was on her way to Doc’s house?”

  “Looked like it,” Henry said.

  Eulis spurred his horse and took off across the valley at a gallop with Robert Lee and the dog right behind.

  There had been a warm, steady wind blowing all day, whipping through the new growth of ankle-high prairie grass and rustling through the trees, but Eulis didn’t hear it. He didn’t hear anything but the hard, steady gallop of his horse’s hooves, and the bone-jarring sound of his own heartbeat thundering in his ears.

  Each leg of the trip that he made into town was marked by a different thing. From the mine as they rode into town, it was a large boulder in the shape of a man’s bowler hat—the lightning-struck tree that had been split into three pieces but continued to grow—then the twin pines at the crest of the road, before it began to slant downward toward the city below. It was three miles from Denver City to the Potter mine, and it was the fastest trip he’d ever made.

  As he rode into town, he saw a huge crowd gathered at the far end of the street. From the corner of his eye, he saw the sheriff come running out of his office as he went riding past. Then, only a few yards from the edge of the crowd, he saw her.

  It was his Letty. But he’d never seen her this way. Her face was streaked with tears and dust—her features contorted with rage. It was the bullwhip in her hand, and the bloody man on the ground at her feet that sent him flying off his horse. He went running through the crowd, shouting her name. Robert Lee had dismounted, and was right behind with his hand on his gun. The dog saw Letty, a
nd lunged at the man on the ground.

  ***

  One minute Letty was pulling back her arm for another blow and the next thing she knew the whip was yanked from her hand. She reacted like an animal, spinning around in a crouched position, readying herself for a fight.

  Then she saw Eulis. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. There was nothing in her head but the hammer of blood pounding through her veins, and the memory of a baby’s last cry.

  Eulis could tell something awful had happened. He tossed the bullwhip into the dirt and then wrapped her in his arms.

  “Letty, darlin’, it’s me, it’s me. Let it go, girl, let it go. Whatever he did, let it go.”

  Letty froze. The voice in her ear was familiar, as was the feel of the arms holding her close.

  “Can you hear me, honey? It’s okay now. It’s okay.”

  Letty shuddered. Eulis. Was he truly here?

  “Eulis?”

  Her voice was so soft that at first Eulis imagined she’d spoken, and then he felt her trembling and looked down at her face.

  “It’s me, Letty. It’s me.”

  She swayed where she stood, and if he hadn’t been holding her, she would have dropped.

  “What happened here?” the sheriff yelled, as he ran onto the scene. Then he saw the bloody and beaten man on the ground and turned on Letty. “Did you do this?” he growled.

  T-Bone growled.

  Robert Lee stepped between Letty and the sheriff without saying a word.

  The sheriff had heard about Potter hiring a gunslinger at the mine and took a quick step back.

  “Now see here,” he said. “I’ve got to do my duty. Step back, mister. Step back now or I reckon I might have to arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

  Robert Lee grinned, but he didn’t move.

  Letty turned to face the sheriff, and gathered what was left of her wits.

  “It’s all right, Robert Lee,” she said, and then pointed at the man on the ground. “Is he dead?”

  George was rolled into a bloody ball, whimpering like a dog.

  Robert Lee glanced down.

  “No, ma’am.”