The first night in L’amesa, we dined in our fine clothes again. When I paid for her hotel room, she asked why I didn’t get myself one.“No need to waste the money. Rooms aren’t free.”I don’t think she’d considered that. “It’s not right that you pay for a room you don’t sleep in, and you still have credit.”“Then take me to bed without a debt. Otherwise, I’ll save the credit for when your warmth will do me good.”Her slap stung, and I slept in the livery.The second night there, L’amesa had a fall harvest festival. During the dance, I shot and killed the town mayor, and his brother. No one saw them accost her, but they drew first. That night, with her fingers dancing in the hair on my chest, I wondered how many innocent men I’d killed for the pleasure of her company. How many more would I?After earning five more nights with her, we turned north to the Territory and Kansas. By the time we left Missouri, I had twenty nights’ credit. A posse of shopkeepers learned there was no safety in numbers. I didn’t kill again until we were almost through Ohio, where a Quaker with his shotgun, put me down for a few days. Oddly, Sarah was next to me every night, while I healed. But once I was back in a saddle, it was back to business.Our relationship was strange. Unless I killed for her, she had nothing to do with me, but she clearly enjoyed making good on her debt. More than I realized a woman could. One morning, before dawn, I woke up inside her, but as the sun rose over a mountain behind me, she withdrew, got up, and got dressed. The night was over, and so was my payment.She looked at me with disgust in her eyes, when I complained. “That wasn’t the bargain. One death, one night. You should have awoken sooner.”I was sullen until the sun dipped under the horizon. She slipped her dress over her head in the last slivers of sunlight, and said, “I’ve waited for this all day.”I moved between her legs and said, “I love you, Sarah.”She slapped me, then kissed me. “Don’t say that.”It was the first time we’d kissed. I could taste coffee on her breath, but it fueled my hunger for her. As we lay under the stars later, she said, “Only at night.”“I know. You’ve made that clear.”“At night, I’m your woman. I’ll satisfy you, giving you what I meant only for Bull.”“And in the daytime?” “In the daytime, you’ll kill to earn my nights. Pull your trigger every time I tell you to, and you won’t ever sleep alone.”There it was, out in the open. Kill for her, and she’d reward me with her body. She was confident when she controlled my gun. The first man I’d ever killed was worth a twenty-dollar gold piece to me. Over the years, that price had grown to a hundred dollars. I had even charged five hundred once. Now I was plying my skill to have her body. And I’d have paid more.“No more liveries for me, then.”“What?”“I’ll sleep in your bed, in towns, or on the trail. You don’t have to give me your body if I haven’t earned it, but you’ll keep me warm.”She sighed deeply. “That’s fair enough. But if you haven’t killed for me, don’t ask for my body.”I collected every night in Pennsylvania, and it was justified according to the law. One man touched her. Another wanted her as his wife. In Harrisburg, I shot a preacher who called her a harlot. Unfortunately for him, that insult was a crime. Scranton, Danbury, and New Haven were the same.She targeted weak men of questionable morals, and I killed them all. Maybe I was doing the world a favor, but I was buying her body with blood, and I had accepted it.I was a bad man, and she was a puppeteer. Every time my gun cleared leather, her wiles pulled the trigger. When she wanted me, she condemned men, innocent and guilty alike, to death. She whispered into my ear at night, and her voice twisted my conscience. Every passionate word she said steadied my aim, and I’d have shot God Himself to be inside her.In Worcester, we were staying as husband and wife in a boarding house, run by a widower and his daughter. I had killed enough that I didn’t have to kill them, and we enjoyed our nights. She asked me again about my family, and suggested we try to find them in Boston. I had wanted to go to Canada, but she insisted on meeting my mother’s sister. I was afraid she would ask me to kill my own family to win her attention, and I was ashamed that I would have.
©2016 Shawn Jones