One Silver Dollar by Bonnie Hobbs

DODGE CITY, 1880

The tousled-headed boy eased the door open a crack, then ducked inside, looking loose-limbed and trail-weary. He hadn’t even been to the barber shop to be shorn like the rest of them always did. He did look fairly clean, though. That was something, anyway, but he was still wearing his old trail-beat boots and trousers. Most of the boys driving those animals to the railhead went for new boots and trousers first off. So, this boy must be mighty eager.

He fumbled to snug the door tight, then turned his gaze to her. Sophie lazed back on her cot. A candle flickered and puddled on an up-turned wooden box. Its sputtering flame made shadows dance. The boy stepped closer. “I can’t hardly….” He cleared his throat. “Coming in from sunlight, it’s dim as a root cellar. Ain’t you got a lamp? Can’t even see your face.”

Sophie cut him a sidelong glance. She lay her stare down hard on him, then sat up, pressing her knees tight together, sitting prim as a preacher’s wife, though powder caked her face and paint rouged her lips and sharp-boned cheeks. She tugged at a ragged ruffled skirt. “I doubt you come for my face.” She sneered and crossed her arms.

He hauled his gaze away, working his mouth, likely struggling to find a clever word. “I’m supposed to come see one of you.” He shrugged and threw her another quick glance. “You know.” He thrust out one hand and uncurled his fingers. “I got a silver dollar and was told it’d be enough. It’s a whole day’s pay for me.”

She stayed silent for a while, but when she spoke, her words came low and slow. “I guess I know I’m a whore, and you’re here with money. Ain’t no mystery but seems like you can’t even say it. How you going to be doing it?” She closed her eyes and sighed, feeling bone-weary. “Go on, unbuckle and unbutton. Let me get at it. I been told how. Guess I have put worse things in my mouth.”

He stumbled back a pace, knocking up against the creaking door. “Girl, you are like some slinking animal. A weasel, maybe, or a fox. Like you’re holed up in this cave.” He snorted a nervous chuckle. “Such an animal can get plenty riled with little goading. I’ve seen it happen. So, I don’t aim to do the riling. I don’t want what you said.” He stepped forward again. “I don’t want nothing. My pa says I got to, is all. I ain’t fixing to tell him no. The man is mean when he’s crossed.”

Sophie opened her eyes and flicked her gaze up and down “You think your pa is rough?” She gave the words a sneering twist.

“Ever run across him? If you did, you’d know it.”

“Ain’t been in this whiskey-soaked town long enough to be plowed by every son-of-a-bitch driving cows up from Texas.”

“You got a mouth on you, you know that?”

“Had me a good teacher. You can hear her coughing next door.”

“It just don’t sound right, coming from a girl.”

“Well, ain’t you just Mama’s little angel? A big boy like you, letting your pa call the shots. You a mama’s boy?”

He drew himself up. “Best you don’t speak nothing about my ma,” he said in quiet, slow-spoken words.

Sophie took in breath enough to let a string of words fly at him fast and all at once. “My ma died, and my pa sold me cheap two years past. I suspect mine beats yours for hard.” She gave a little nod as if something had been settled.

The boy pushed his hat back. “All right, all right. Easy does it. I just need to bide here a while. Pa is likely standing nearby, his pocket watch in hand.”

“In the alley? Naw, he’s likely whooping it up in Beeson’s fancy Long Branch Saloon.” She leaned a bit closer like she had a secret to share. “The old gal in the crib next to this says sprats like you give a quick poke and hardly a fare-thee-well.” She straightened and stared at her hands where they patted and pulled at her skirt. “Your pa likely knows as much. He’ll think you have done what he sent you to do, so get on out of here.” Then her voice broke on sharp words she hadn’t meant to say. “You think me nothing but trash? Think I ain’t even worth your silver dollar?” She felt the heat of color blossom on her chest and burn up through the face powder.

“I see I have given insult,” he said. “Though I can’t see how.” The boy’s own face burned red. “I can do it if I want. You’re as good as any, I expect. But you don’t want it, and I don’t want it, so let’s leave it be. I sure ain’t in no kind of mood for it, anyway.”

“Don’t make no never mind to me.” Sophie sang the words.

The silver dollar still lay in his sweat-slick palm, shiny in the candlelight. “I’ll leave this here.” Taller than most men, he bumped a rafter with his hat when he stepped closer, bringing down a rattle of gritHe lay the dollar down on the cot beside her. “I’m obliged for your time.” He backed toward the door, groped behind him for the latch with one hand, touching his hat-brim with the other.

Sophie whipped her head around, her eyes round as the silver dollar he’d just parted with. She strained toward him, stretching out one hand. “Wait,” she whispered. “Forget what I said. Do whatever it is you do.”

He stopped, watching her. “Now you’re seeming more like a lost cat than a cornered fox.” He drew close again. “You’re scared, ain’t you?” He grasped her fingers, and she let him. Her fingers lay long and white against his calloused palm, and he coughed as he chocked back a sob. He blinked and nodded once. “I ain’t here to hurt you. I’m guessing we’re both being made to do something we don’t want.” He tried to chuckle, but it came out strangled. “I can stay some longer, I reckon.”

“You see, if you go, some other bastard is sure to come along toting his own dollar.” She shuddered. “Mean, sick maybe. It ain’t like I can choose.”

“Is this the first time you ever...?”

“I wasn’t born with my legs spread.”

He colored slightly and looked down at their hands, still linked.

She raked her free hand through a tangle of yellow hair. “My pa sold me, like I said, two years back but not in Dodge. It was to an old bastard running a crummy old store along the trail. He lay down his money for me. Said he’d marry me. He didn’t. He fumbled and grunted, then beat on me for his failing. He did all the doing, not me. Never me.” She held herself fierce for a second, then sagged. “He kept me fed, though. But he has died, and I am near to starving.” She clamped her teeth onto her bottom lip, let it free, then spoke again, a whisper. “I got nobody. There ain’t no work I can get but this, and I got to eat. I figured keeping to myself, and not signing on with the fancy ladies in town, I could stay a bit free, you know. But it don’t work that way.” She stared hard at him. “The old gal dying next door says it ain’t so bad once you get used to it….” Her voice trailed away to silence, but she kept her gaze fixed on his face, moving it from his eyes to his mouth and back again, searching for something, though she didn’t know what.

“I wish I could, you know, wish I had….” He took a breath. “As skinny as you are, you likely ain’t ate for days.” He eased down next to her on the cot. Still holding her hand, cautious. “You’re looking like one of those wild-eyed calves I’ve been driving. Won’t your pa…?”

“He’d just sell me again. I’d sooner cut my throat than give him the profit. No. If I got to truckle to men, I’ll get paid my own self. I’ll keep it, too. Save it and….” She crushed his fingers in her own and spoke in a clench-teethed hiss. “I wish to God I never had to smell another cow nor see another man. Not for nothing. Never yet run across a man who didn’t do me wrong.”

He smiled, just a bit. “Have I harmed you?”

Sophie squinted at him. “How old are you?”

“I could ask you that.”

She shrugged. “No secret. Fifteen last week.”

“I’m near about the same. Some older.”

“That’s why you done me no wrong. You ain’t hardly a man.”

He looked to be mulling those words over, sitting in silence. Sophie feared she had riled him, wondered what he’d do. She steeled herself for violence.

Instead, he smiled and cocked his head to one side. “I expect I will be someday.”

She closed her eyes, much more than relieved, if truth be told, cheered almost.

“My name is Will Martin. Me and Pa ran cattle up from Texas. Come in yesterday.”

Sophie turned a heated gaze on him, hoping to scorch his words away, so they’d be ashes in his mouth. “I don’t need to know nothing about it. I been hearing all the cowpunching talk I need to.”

He started again, quiet words. “Your eyes are so blue,” he whispered. “Like the sky at noon. You know? When there ain’t no clouds. The sky so bright.” He ran out of words.

“Sophie,” she whispered. “My name is Sophie. The other name is my pa’s. I don’t want it.”

“It’s a good name as it is, I guess.”

She shrugged.

He reached up to swipe at sweat trickling down his forehead and bumped a knuckle against his hat. He quickly pulled it off, then set it on the bed. “Sorry. I been raised better.”

“What do you mean?”

“My hat. Ma would skin me, wearing my hat inside a lady’s house.”

“A lady’s house,” she said, then moved her gaze slowly along each wall and into each corner.

His gaze followed. A cracked wash basin on a twisted iron stand leaned into one corner. Chinks between the warped planks of the walls let in little slivers of light as the sun set down the west end of the alley. Rusted, square-headed nails held a worn wrapper, a calico dress, and a straw hat. “That hat looks like it’s been mauled by a dog,” he said.

“I found it here. If I ever need a hat, it’ll do.”

“I passed two other places. They had windows. Why don’t yours?”

She shrugged. “I took what I could get.”

“I heard coughing from one place, and I believe more than one fella was at his business with whoever lives in the second.”

“Lives?” She sneered.

“Don’t nobody live there?”

“She works there, sleeps there, eats when she can, just like me. But she’s drunk most of the time. Can’t say I’d call it living.”

Will sighed. He untangled their fingers and lay his hand on the cot. “What’s this thing? It’s slick and cold. Ain’t no blanket.”

“Oil-cloth. I had my pick of red or brown. The red seemed most cheerful. It’s to keep the muck off the blanket.

He looked confused.

“From the boots,” Sophie said. “The old gal says nobody’ll take his boots off.”

He rose up and turned his back, nodding toward the wall. “Come winter, you’re going to be wanting to stuff something in them cracks between the planks. Does the stove work?”

“Never tried it.”

He squatted and poked at the rusted metal. “Likely just needs cleaning out. You’ll need some wood, some kindling. I can bring that and an axe to chop it.” He stood and eyed the stove pipe. “I could tighten those joints, dab a little tar, maybe fix something up so you won’t be setting on fire where that pipe feeds out through the roof.”

“What’re you thinking to get for all your work?” Sophie said. “Fixing things so I won’t ask for any more of them silver dollars?”

“You’re a suspicious girl, you know that?”

She shrugged. “I know what I know. I know I need money worse than repairs.”

“Not if the winter coming is as bad as the last one. Cattle froze to the ground where we come from. You will, too—freeze to death in here.”

She thrust a glance up high. “Maybe that’d be best. They say it’s peaceful, going that way.”

“That is just stupid talk. Things ain’t that bad.”

“I suspect you don’t know so much about what is bad, and don’t neither of us know how much worse it can get.”

Will cleared his throat and wrinkled up his nose. “What was it that was kept in this shack?”

“Something with a powerful stench like death is all I know. I scrubbed it out with carbolic the old gal give me. Now, it stinks of that, as well.”

A hush fell over them. Whoops and drunken laughter and cursing and the tinkling of hurdygurdy music trickled down the alley from the saloons on the main street and nearly covered the constant coughing from the crib next to Sophie’s. “Stuffy in here, even with that sun slanting through the cracks like it’s doing,” he said. “I believe I’ll just prop the door open a bit and—”

“Don’t!” Sophie cried. “Some fool will take it as you being done. He’ll push his way in here.”

“Then I’ll just push him back out.” Will grinned and raised the latch.

“No! Don’t. I hear breathing.”

Before she could finish and before Will could brace himself, a man stumbled out of the setting sun and shoved through the doorway. He set his boots wide apart, swaying and weaving, squinting at Sophie, then at Will. “I been up on Front Street in a fine place, wondered where you got to. I only give you a dollar, boy. This one so dumb she takes so little for such a lengthy visit? But I been told she’s new.” He swiped Will aside like a bear would do a hound.

“Pa, I need more time—”

“Hah! You courtin’ her, boy?” He reached for Sophie where she still sat on the cot, grabbing her hair at the nape, then pulled himself tight against her. His belt buckle scraped her cheek. She yelped, twisted, and shoved at him with both hands.

“Pa! Stop it. You’ve cut her.” Will was tall, but only half as wide as his pa, yet it seemed the sight of her blood had crazed him. He snaked his arm around his pa’s neck and yanked him back. Will fell to his back, his pa on top. Sophie crowned the pile, reaching back to pry the man’s fingers from her hair, letting loose a string of curses.

She yanked free, then dove for her knobbed stick leaning in a corner. Upon standing, she straddled the men, holding the stick high.

“Don’t, Sophie! You’re likely to kill him.”

“I aim to if he ever touches me again.” She reached up and touched the smear of blood along her cheekbone. “Look,” she whispered. “Look what he done.”

“You got yourself a wildcat, boy!” The man was laughing, his face red from Will’s forearm pushing at his neck. “Let me up, now.”

“You got to go, Pa. Leave me be. Go on, now.”

The man kept laughing. Rolling off Will, swaying on his hands and knees, he crawling toward the door. “Get after her, son.” He used the doorjamb to pull himself upright. “When you’re done, I believe I’ll come back and have a try.” Wiping his eyes, he turned in what light was left from outside and squinted at Sophie. “Well, damnation. No wonder she thought nothing about bashing in my brains. I ain’t never erred in recognizing a damned Bohunk when I see one.” He backed out, stumbling when his boots hit the dust of the alley, stirring it into a choking cloud. “Them people from across the water are mean, boy. Big and mean.” He shook his head, hawked and spat, then turned to stumble away. “Never seen one of their women, though. Have at her, boy, but be careful.”

Will climbed to his feet. He held to the side of the doorway and leaned on both arms, to watch his pa stagger down the alley toward the street before turning slowly back toward Sophie. “Don’t know what to say. He’s—”

“Norwegian.”

“What?”

“Not Swedish or Danish or Finnish or German or any other thing he thinks he knows so much about. My ma and pa came from Norway.”

“I guess he thinks he’s never wrong about such things. I never would’ve known.”

“Are you like him? Make a difference? You feel that way about Swedes, too? Call ’em squareheads and worse?”

“Never heard nobody called that.”

Sophie lay the stick on the cot behind her. “Your pa is a son-of-a-bitch.”

“He’s just mighty drunk. That’s the only reason I bested him. He’s got years and weight on his side when it comes to fighting. He would’ve knocked me flat on my duff and kept at you, but he’s drunk and grieving.”

“What’s he grieving for? The loss of his mind?”

“We had a letter waiting for us here.” He paused and swallowed hard, like a river of spit had come rushing into his mouth. “My... well, my Ma died. Some kind of fever, I guess.” Will turned and closed the door, stood with his head hanging down for a heartbeat, then whispered, “You know? It ain’t so bad in here.”

Sophie watched him sway on his feet, dazed-like.

“Kind of like a den or a nest or some such....” He turned back around. “I suspect Ma’s dying has made him crazy.”

Sophie stepped close. “I said stupid words about your ma and you being her boy and all, not knowing her. Not knowing she had passed. I take ’em all back.”

“Like you said, you didn’t know.”

She stepped closer. She’d never felt tender toward any male before, young or old. “So, she was good to you, your ma?”

“She was the best of all of us.” He looked like he was about to bawl but blinked himself from it. He reached out slowly and touched the blood on her face. “He cut you pretty bad.”

She reached to where he touched her. Their fingers met, and a kind of serenity rose through her. “Likely not so bad, really. I expect I’ll have far worse before I die.”

He turned his hand so their fingers linked and shook his head once, side to side. “No. No, you won’t,” he said, raising his chin high. “Not if I can keep you from it. I’m thinking I got no need to get back to Texas. I’ll find some work and bide here for a while.”

With no good reason, she believed him and nodded, smiling just a little. The how and the why had nothing to do with it just then. The belief was all there was. They were young and strong, and she in particular was sometimes too hard, just like Dodge City had grown to be. But strong, like the rest of the country. There wasn’t anything they couldn’t do or be. She listened to the screeching laughter, the music and hollering of men just so danged happy to be done with that cattle drive that could have killed them fifty different ways and smiled at this boy. The times they’d be together in the time yet to come wouldn’t ever be measured in silver dollars. That’s all she knew, all she needed to know.

BONNIE HOBBS grew up in a reading family. She lived in the country, riding her horse in the rolling hills and beneath the oak trees of the central coast of California. Her father read western history; her mother enjoyed historical romances. Hobbs draws from both. She now lives in southern Oregon, east of the Cascades, where she raised Navajo-Churro sheep until moving to town. Bonnie is a retired RN, first helping with birthing babies, then retiring from Hospice Nursing about 20 years later. She began writing in the 1980s with a pen and notebook, standing up in the kitchen at a dresser. The kids thought she was “busy” as long as she didn’t sit down and left her to it. Patient and understanding in her youth, she has added fortitude and impatience as the years roll on. She has three published novels. A short story comes first, and out of it evolves a novel. She is always working on another, after returning from her 4 a.m. walks with her dog. “One Silver Dollar” is Bonnie’s first story to appear within the pages of Saddlebag Dispatches.