The Killer and the Bluff
2016 Edition
- CHAPTER ONE -
"There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope."
Baruch Spinoza
I was a prostitute in 1914.
It was the exact thing my sister didn't want me to become.
When the Mexican Revolution came to a screeching halt, and my sister's former lover became president, I traveled back to my homeland to find her.
What I found however, was my entire family dead or missing. Louisa had been killed by the Army while trying to save that good-for-nothing, brutal, bastard of a president, and Father was killed by the Army sometime before her death. My brother and mother were nowhere to be found, and though I searched in vain until my finances were depleted, I found no trace of them or anyone who knew them.
They were ghosts. It was like they never existed.
And suddenly I realized, as I boarded the train that took me to America, that life as I knew it was destroyed.
Before my search for my family, back when a kind man named John Marston gallantly drove me to the docks in Nuevo Paraiso amidst gun fire and crazed soldiers who wanted me dead, I was instructed to go to work in the Yucatan. And there I did work, for nearly a year, until I grew fed up of the conditions and hitched a boat ride back to Mexico.
When I moved to America, I wanted no connection to the ghosts I left behind. I wanted to marry a bureau man in Blackwater, be involved in politics, and become a socialite woman.
My childish sights were washed away as soon as I arrived in that dusty little town called Rathskeller Fork. No Mexican ever became an American socialite.
My circumstances were dire, and I turned to prostitution to find my way north-east to Blackwater. That town was my end game, the goal of my life. If only I could get there, everything would be better. I promised myself I'd prostitute only for a little while, until I could afford a train ticket northbound.
In Rathskeller Fork, my hopes and goals slowly faded as I continued to work in the saloon for months, and instead of moving east, I moved into a little rundown shack known as the Scratching Post by the locals. From the yard I could see Mexico across the San Luis. The place I fought so hard to disassociate from, I saw daily.
After a month in America, I purchased a horse, my Belleza de la Sierra, a beautiful palomino horse. The man I bought her from called her an insult to the Kentucky Saddler breed. She was sickly and had a limp. She couldn't run very far or fast. But I loved her, because she was mine.
Every day I rode her to Rathskeller Fork where I continued my work as a prostitute. As the months passed I eventually rose to become one of the "high-rate hookers," as they called us. We were the ones who had busy nights and regular customers; the girls who didn't have to flirt with men in the saloon to seduce them upstairs. I suppose it meant something that I was at least high-rate. Some other girls thought this entitled them to bragging rights. I didn't really care. Sex was sex, whatever my reputation.
My showgirl name was Annabelle, and in my determination to abandon my Mexican roots, I picked up on the English accents of the gentlemen I entertained, and began changing the way I spoke. I practiced in my off-time. It didn't take long before I didn't sound Mexican.
Instead of being an obvious immigrant to the men I entertained, I soon became known as the "tanned belle." The drop of my accent would surely make my parents and sister turn over in their graves, but it had to be done. Everyone wants an ethnic girl, as long as they aren't really ethnic.
One day a woman came along that we all addressed as "Madam." She said she worked at the Dixie Rose in Thieves' Landing and was traveling New Austin looking for some fresh faces. She was one of the few who picked up on my fake accent and asked me about it. She listened patiently when I told her my story - about the Revolution, about the Yucatan, about turning to prostitution, about changing my name and my story for my customers. She thought I had the makings to become as succesful as her. Maybe oneday I'd run my own brothel, she said.
She was a beautiful woman with a robust and curvaceous body. Her personality was strong yet charming, and many of the girls at Rathskeller Fork fell under her lure. Madam promised us a better way of life with much higher rates for a small traveling fee to get to Thieves' Landing. From the porch of Rathskeller Fork' brothel and saloon, I watched three girls climb into Madam's carriage and head off into the desert heat. Jealously, I wished I was one of them. Thieves' Landing was a short ride away from West Elizabeth and I could walk to Blackwater from there.
As the days drone on, the only thing that kept me from shooting either my customers or myself was the idea that once I had enough money, I'd go to Thieves' Landing to make the biggest profit of all – enough to buy a home in Blackwater.
I didn't dwell on the fact that no man would want to marry a whore, let alone a Mexican whore. If I met any man willing to take me, I already developed a back story for my new self. Each day I'd fill in the details of my new character from stories I heard from the men in the saloon. One time, a man boasted he was from a long line of rich, Dutch immigrants by the name of Koen, and from then on my Annabelle showgirl name began to take root.
Annabelle Koen was born to Mrs Edith and Mr Titus Koen, of a long line of wealthy Dutch immigrants that came to America in 1883. They gave birth to their one and only child in 1896 in a yellow house overlooking Flat Iron Lake near Blackwater. Mr Koen worked as a successful bureaucrat banker, and Mrs Koen was a busy midwife to the ladies nearby. Annabel, at the age of 15, went on a business trip with her father and mother to Mexico, where an unfortunate accident claimed the life of her parents – an accident involving a wagon full of dynamite. She was shipped off to the Yucatan to work and live with her Aunt Odette, a nun trying to teach the Mexicans there English. However, finding sisterhood painfully boring and frustrating, she ran away to America where she had no money and had to result to prostitution.
"Misses?" said the fidgety man beside me who was obviously married according to the tale the ring on his finger told. He held my hand in both of his and I turned to face him, blinking away the sunlight that had blinded my eyes. The dusk light poured into the dusty windows of the brothel and I shifted, the wood creaking beneath my shoes, and smiled at him.
"Darling, you look mighty nervous. Are you alright?"
"Y-yes. I was just saying - I hope my wife doesn't find out. Do you get many married men?"
"Oh Daddy," I crooned, stroking his cheek. I sat on his lap and wrapped my arms around his neck. "I don't ever ask if a man is married or not. But I think if a married man lusts after another woman, that's alright. As long as he's there for his children and wife when he needs to be, it doesn't matter."
Wrong. I didn't think that. But the man laughed, then sighed as if relieved. And that's all that mattered.
"Ma'am, I'm afraid I haven't got any goddamn clue as to what I'm supposed to do with a woman like you."
"A woman like me? What ever do you mean?" I asked.
"Someone so young and dewy." He paused, rubbing the back of his neck. My finger traced swirling patterns in his chest hair, my lips pressing kisses to his neck. "I'm afraid that sounded like I was appraising you like cattle. I mean to say, you're beautiful."
I looked into his eyes and saw honesty and nervousness. These customers were my favorite - the honest lovers. There were all kinds of lovers - the rough, the mean, the abusers, the disgusting, the appealing, the honest, and the sweet. The honest were the ones who came closest to respecting you.
"Just relax darling. Let me do all the work."
In the middle of the week, when business is none too high because the cattle hands and miners haven't been paid yet, a man came by Rathskeller that caught everyone's attention.
He was broad and tall, with dark stubble and a handsomely proportioned face. His gleaming blue eyes were mischievous and his smile was mysterious. All the girls fawned over him, and when he pulled out a wad of cash as he spoke to the saloon owner, everyone was watching him with hungry eyes.
"Whose gonna be the lucky one to ride that bull?" a girl I knew only as Mary asked.
The man leaned on the bar of the saloon, his eyes appraising us. When that startling blue gaze fell on me I felt... Strange. It was not a lustful gaze, but neither was it placid. There was intensity and interest. I looked away first.
Mary nudged me and said, in her thick Southern drawl, "He's been lookin' at you since he set foot in here."
Unfortunately for the girls, he was not a paying customer and left only half hour after he arrived. Later that night, after we collected our pay from the owner, he told us the man was named Ray Stinson and he had offered a huge lump sum for a couple of the finest girls here.
Apparently, he was trying to round up girls for his new brothel up north in Canada. The owner didn't sell - only because Ray Stinson asked for the best girls here and giving them up would put him out of business.
Riding home on Sierra was surprisingly tiring tonight. Her gated trot was hammering, especially with her limp, and I had to dismount halfway down the road to check her hooves for a lodged pebble.
"Sierra my poor darling," I crooned, patting her flaxen mane as I gingerly touched her limping leg. She had limped for as long as I owned her, an unfortunate accident had caused it according to her previous owner. He told me she was in no pain, but it was an uncomfortable ride. He told me without remorse that his first intentions had been to kill her once he realized her leg couldn't be fixed, but after consideration and a plea from his daughter he decided to sell the poor horse.
"And I'm sure as shit happy he did," I murmured, picking out the pebble from her hoof, "Or else I wouldn't have such a wonderful horse such as you."
She snorted and lowered her head to graze as I checked the rest of her hooves. A chilly breeze picked up, swept northward from the river, and I felt chilled in my riding clothes. My skin shivered and goose pimples formed on my arms as a coyote skittered past, giving one howling yelp as he disappeared into the brush. The night was dead of life and the overcast clouds made it tenfold as dark as usual.
Sierra's skin shivered and I placed my hand on her warm and soft hide.
"Everything's alright," I told her with a pat.
Satisfied that she was good to ride the rest of the way home, I checked the cinch of her saddle to make sure it was still tight.
That's when I saw a rider in the distance watching me.
He was cloaked in shadow. His horse was powerful looking, with feathers above its hooves and a thick, curved neck. The man sitting on him was just as big, just as powerful, and just as muscular.
Fighting the urge deep inside me that told me to run, I swung into Sierra's saddle and prodded her into a walk. Everything felt magnified – the crunch beneath her hooves, the way she snorted and shied. I wanted to tell the world to shut up. I was trying to disappear into the darkness so that the man could not see me anymore.
I knew he was watching me.
Why did I feel terrified?
Sierra's eyes rolled when she sensed my apprehension, and I leaned over to pat her neck. I kept the reins in tight, then changed my mind and loosened them so she could pick her own way home against the cracked and dried road.
A twig snapped behind me and the hairs on my neck stood on end.
"Don't look behind you," I told myself. If I did, I was half terrified I'd see the man right behind me and half terrified I'd see something much worse, like a cougar in mid-leap.
"Fuck," I whispered as I turned to look as quick as possible. The man was still there. His horse was trotting in place, its powerful legs pawing at the earth restlessly.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," I growled, kicking Sierra into a lope. We got home in half the time I thought we would, leaving the man and his beast behind in the chilly and dark night.
I removed Sierra's tack in two seconds flat and headed in doors with the only thing on my mind being to rest my tired head.
I changed into my nightgown and slid into the ripped and sweat-stained sheets of my bed. Still thinking of the man on the horse, I grabbed my kitchen knife and took it to bed with me. I found it incredibly silly that I hadn't accepted the owner's offer of room and board up there in the safe confines of Rathskeller Fork.
Living at the Scratching Post had been a stupid and rebellious mistake. I thought living on my own, so far away from civilization, would teach me how to survive better. It didn't. It was an awful place to live, even after I fixed it up a bit.
Gaptooth Ridge is known for its lawlessness, and a woman living on her own was just begging for danger. I think I might have thought I was immune to the dangers of wild west living, but after a couple weeks sleeping in the eerie confines of the Scratching Post, I had asked the owner about the room and board he had offered me.
"I'm sorry Anna," he had said though he didn't look a fucker's worth of sorry, "I sold the last room about a week ago."
"Sorry my ass," I had muttered under my breath. Each night I regretfully, woefully and tiredly turned myself to the long trail that led to the Scratching Post. I knew eventually Sierra wouldn't be able to handle the trek. When that day came, I wouldn't know what to do.
At the sound of another coyote yelping, I felt myself begin to relax. My mother used to tell me stories about what she said was truth but what I always took as myth. She said when we slept our souls went to the realm of the dead for a visit.
With a pang of grief, I suddenly wished it were true. At least then I wouldn't feel so alone all the time. I missed them terribly. I didn't even have a grave I could visit. They were just gone. Taken from me. There one day, ghosts the next. If only...
"Madres," I whispered, my eyes opening to the dark, shadowy room. Tears clung to my eyelashes and I wiped them away.
Clomp, clomp, clomp…
I paused and sat up in bed.
"Sierra?" I called, willing myself to hope that the strange and even clomping of hooves could belong to my very recognizably limp mare.
Suddenly, the wood of the front door splintered from the force of something hitting it. I jumped and fell from my bed, hitting the floor hard.
"MotherMaryDearGodinHeavensaveme," I choked out in one breath as a second blow fell upon my front door. Sierra screamed from the backyard, and I stumbled to my feet and made a beeline for the backdoor.
A third blow fell upon the door and I made the mistake of glancing back and seeing the blade of an axe poking through the wood. Suddenly voices were filling my ears – voices surrounding my home. As I reached the backdoor it was kicked open and a man was standing before me, leering into my face.
"Boss!" he yelled, and I jumped for the window. He grabbed my nightgown and threw me onto the bed, pointing a gun at my head. "Boss!"
The front door burst open and more men streamed into the room. I pulled my nightgown down to my knees and heaved fearful breaths.
"There she is. Miranda Fortuna, at last," said the man who entered. He was broad, muscular and handsome, with sharp, blue eyes… "I knew I'd find you."
It was the man from Rathskeller. Ray Stinson.
"You must be mistaken-,"
"I know who you are," he snapped, lighting up a cigar. "You can stop pretending." His boys jostled around him while he coolly threw his match on my rug that I'd bought only a few weeks before. He stomped out the flame before it caught, but it still left a burnt smear and a hole. I glared at him.
"I am Annabelle Koen and I do not know who you are, and I demand you leave my house at once." I tried to make myself sound brave and strong, but all the men laughed at me.
Ray Stinson took a long drag from his cigar, than he leaned down and blew it in my face.
"I've been hunting you down for months," he said, smoke punctuating his every word. I resisted the urge to cough at the plume of smoke that seared down my throat. "On special orders from your President, Abraham Reyes –,"
"Bastard," I muttered. Ray Stinson paused, his face expressionless save for his raised eyebrows.
"How do you know President Reyes is a bastard?"
"I was calling youa bastard."
Ray Stinson took another long drag. He put his dirty boot up on my mattress and leaned on it, leaning over me, invading my space.
"You do not understand, my poor girl. This is all but politics. Your president has hired my very capable services to find you. You see, he knows what you are capable of, because he knew what your family was capable of. I hunted down each and every one of them, you know."
I froze, my blood running cold.
"I know you were in Mexico a year ago," he said, his voice just barely above a whisper. He said it in such a creepy, 'I've got you' tone that I shivered and looked away. "Looking for your family." He grabbed my chin and turned me to face him. "It really upset the President. He forgot you existed." Ray Stinson paused to laugh. His boys laughed with him. "When you started asking around about the Fortunas, it turned some heads. Silly little girl. The President hired me to eradicate that family, and you shouted from the rooftops that you were one of them."
I felt a tear slide down my cheek. I wish I had enough strength to knock Ray Stinson's hand away from my chin and wipe it off. But I was frozen. And he watched my tear like a predator watching its prey slowly succumb to death.
"But to my pleasant surprise, you weren't rustling up trouble in politics. You were a filthy whore!"
"How dare you –,"
His hand flew across my face and I fell back on the bed, clutching my burning cheek.
"After some negotiations with the Mexican government we came to an agreement. You will be my whore, and I will ensure you never visit Mexico again."
"How—!"
"We will have you chained up. Naked." The men snickered and moved in closer. Stinson took a drag from his cigar and smiled. "The thing is, my gang is in cohootz with both the American and Mexican government. In other words, you will never be free. However, you will be fed, bathed, and looked after. How does that sound? Much better then death, is it not?"
"Never –,"
He reached down and before I could even comprehend what he was doing he extinguished his cigar on my leg. I screamed and pulled away, but he grabbed my arm and tossed me back onto the bed. I hit my head against the wall and my hand landed on something sharp.
"You'll be the first whore in our saloon up in Canada." He smiled as I blinked back tears of pain. "We're hoping to spread our services throughout all of North America and I think you will do the Canadians good with your brown skin."
My fingers closed around the kitchen knife I had stashed there earlier. My leg throbbed and more tears escaped my eyes.
"How dare you," I whispered.
"Will someone shut this whore up?" he snarled, approaching me again and grabbing my arm. His fingers tightened agonizingly and I yelped. "You'll do as I say or we'll take you the hard way. Now get –,"
I swung my fist up and the knife sunk into his eye. I leapt back as he howled in agony. Tripping and stumbling from the pain in my leg, I took this as a chance to escape. Al his men were distracted, yelling instructions and wondering whether to pull the knife out or leave it in. I jumped for the window and scrambled out.
"Shoot her, you idiots!" Stinson yelled.
Bullets fired after me and a searing hot pain shot into my bicep.
Amazingly, I reached Sierra and clambered onto her back. Her eyes rolled in fear but she immediately leapt over the low-lying fence as I wrapped my arms around her neck and willed her to get us away from here. Bullets grazed the ground under her hooves as we tore off into the wilderness.
The bullets continued for what seemed like an eternity after us, until in one instant it all seemed to stop. Sierra's sides were heaving and her breath was struggling. Her limp was as bad as I've ever seen it.
"I'm sorry I made you run so far," I whispered. I unwrapped my arms from her warm neck and opened my eyes, blinking tiredly at the early morning sky. It must have been about 5 in the morning.
We continued journeying until the sun began to rise. A numbness had taken over my body since our escape from the Scratching Post. When I glanced down and saw a bright red river of blood, it surprised me because I didn't feel any pain.
I knew I was in trouble when I began vomiting, but nothing came out after the fifth time yet still my body tried.
In the distance I eventually saw a structure, though I couldn't recognize what it was or where we were. My vision was blurred, the colors all smeared. The world was closing into darkness, and I could feel my body slipping from Sierra's back.
Down, down, down to the ground…
I hit it dully, landing on my arm. More pain, more blood. But I was oblivious to it all.
I blinked up into the sun – or was it the moon? – and saw it shadowed by a man's face.
"Lady? What on earth…,"