Deborah Camp Read Free Page B

wasn’t right.
    “Cassie, go on,” Jewel urged. “We can’t let him lie here and bleed to death. You can go to hell for that.”
    “Some folks say you can go to hell for running a whorehouse too,” Cassie said with a lift of her eyebrows.
    “I can talk my way out of that when I see St. Peter, butI can’t talk my way out of letting a man die when I could have kept him from it.” Jewel pointed a finger toward the doorway. “Go on and fetch me that water.”
    Cassie followed Jewel’s orders. It seemed to take forever for the water to boil on top of the wood burner. Once Jewel had the water and rag, Cassie fell into a chair with a weary sigh. She glanced around at the place she called home. It wasn’t much. Four walls and the bare necessities. Shorty had built all the furniture except for the stove, which he’d gotten by mail order. Times had always been as hard as shoe leather, and there was never money for the finer things. Things like those Jewel had in her fancy house on the outskirts of Eureka Springs.
    Smiling weakly, Cassie remembered the first time she’d been invited into Jewel’s parlor for tea and cookies. Her eyes had damn near popped out of her head when she’d confronted the red velvet draperies, velvet-covered furniture, crystal chandeliers, and cut-glass dishes. The teapot had been real china with little rosebuds painted on it. The cups were so tiny that Cassie had trouble crooking her finger in the cup’s handle. She’d only managed to squeeze her fingertip through it. So many fine things, all crammed into one room! She could still remember the awe she’d felt when she’d looked up at the curving staircase and wondered about all the riches housed up on the second floor where “the girls” did their business.
    Jewel had given her a few floral sachets, which Cassie had placed in her bedroom. They were still there, dried and dusty now, but still holding a faint, sweet scent that never failed to make Cassie feel all soft and cuddly.
    The rest of the cabin smelled like wood smoke—dark and cloying. Cassie forced herself up from the chair and closed the shutters over the windows. She ran her hand down the splintered wood and thought fleetingly of curtains—white ones with pink tiebacks. Foolish, her mind chastised her. Fancy things would look silly in this place. She went back to the chair, easing her weary body onto the hard seat and resting her forehead against her folded arms on the table top.
    “It’s been a long day for you, hasn’t it, honey?” Jewelsaid sympathetically as she began cleaning the caked blood from the man’s shoulder.
    “I feel so old, Jewel,” Cassie admitted with a worried frown. “Like I was a kid yesterday and an old woman today.”
    “That’s normal. We all feel older when we lose our folks. You’re nobody’s little girl anymore. You’ll feel better after you get something in your belly and rest awhile.”
    Nobody’s little girl anymore. Tears pricked her eyes, and Cassie felt them squeeze out from the corners and roll down her cheeks. Pa was gone. The truth of that hit her like a hard fist in the stomach and she gasped, drawing Jewel’s sharp glance.
    “Poor darlin’,” Jewel crooned. She left the prone man and folded Cassie in her warm embrace. “I clean forgot your own grief. You must be plumb worn out.”
    “I’m glad you came by,” Cassie admitted, breathing in the flowery smell of Jewel. Jewel always smelled so good. “I don’t know what I’ll do now that Pa’s gone.”
    “Did you find him?” Jewel asked, straightening up. She lit one of the lamps and adjusted the wick until an amber glow lit the room.
    “Yes. I had supper ready, but he didn’t come when I called, so I went out looking for him.”
    “Where was he?”
    “Out by the old mine.” Cassie glanced sharply at Jewel and caught the other woman’s scowl of contempt.
    “The mine,” Jewel said disparagingly. “Shorty was obsessed with that thing. Did you see anybody else