Read Online The Six-Gun Tarot by R. S. Belcher - Free Book Online Page B

opponent in decades. She had hesitated, been frightened, acted like a mousey, untrained woman. Gran would have cursed her up one side and down another for that, rightly so. It had worked out well, but due to luck, not preparation. And luck was as reliable as the men’s smiles that passed them.
    “That Indian deputy was looking at you funny,” Constance said with a half smile. “Especially when he was on top of you.” She giggled.
    Maude looked down at the planks as they walked. Her face reddened. She smiled and laughed with her daughter. “I suppose he did. But what men other than your father do or think is none of my concern, young lady. Or yours.”
    Constance snickered. “Yes, Mother.”
    They rounded the corner of Main Street and stepped down a short set of steps off the sidewalk. They began to head up Prosperity Street toward their house, near the base of Rose Hill. The dusty, filthy streets of Golgotha grudgingly gave way to a narrow, smooth stone path lined with shading desert willow trees. The path ran adjacent to a gently sloping dirt road that wound leisurely up Rose Hill, past the homes of the town’s most wealthy and respected citizens. The Stapleton homestead resided near the base, as afforded their station in the town’s aristocracy. Bankers, like Arthur, were wealthy, true, but they were functionaries, a necessary evil and not privy to the heights. The subtle distinction in class irritated Arthur, who constantly strove to climb Olympus, but Maude didn’t care. She had money; she’d lost it. What she carried was infinitely more precious than any treasure or status and no one could take it from her. Well, apparently no one but herself.
    Maude and Constance waved to Mrs. Kimball, their neighbor, who was tending the water pump that resided in the center of the cluster of homes on this stratum of the hill.
    “You poor dears look like you’ve been feeding the hogs!” Mrs. Kimball called. “What happened?”
    “Trouble at Shultz’s,” Maude said as she unlocked the door to her home, a modest Italianate Victorian, whitewashed and bleached silver by the attention of the desert sun.
    “Regular trouble or Golgotha trouble?” Kimball asked.
    “Regular, as far as I could tell,” Maude said.
    “Oh, good. We’ve had quite enough of the other kind to last us for some time!”
    The house was shady, quiet and cool. Dust motes drifted lazily in the shafts of light through the leaded-glass windows. Constance unloaded their baskets on the rosewood dining table they had brought with them from South Carolina, while Maude opened a few shutters to let in enough light to chase off the gloom.
    “You are a mess,” Constance said, smiling.
    “Well, you are certainly not in your finest form either. Put the provisions away and then fetch us some water. We’ll clean up.”
    “Then practice?” Constance said eagerly.
    “Haven’t you had enough excitement for one day?”
    “Please!”
    “We’ll see. Off with you!”
    Maude retired to her and Arthur’s bedroom. She closed the door and began the byzantine ritual of undressing from her muddy clothes. First the dress, gloves, boots, then unlacing the canvas stays that held her chest and spine erect. She sighed with pleasure at her escape from the bindings. Then the layers of petticoats, followed by her thigh-high stockings and finally her simple cotton shift. Maude regarded herself, nude, in the mahogany cheval mirror that Arthur had brought back with him from one of his trips to San Francisco.
    She had to force herself to look up at her image. Her skin was pale; the faint memories of scars from her years with Gran Bonnie and the training were even paler and crisscrossed her body. While she carried the marks of her years and motherhood on her flesh, she retained a surprising amount of her strength and wiry youth. It was a good body, and she knew it deep inside, but it was hard to feel it under the weight of her life. She was ashamed and she hated herself for