Scandal. Molly Ann Wishlade

She hoped that she sounded more confident than she felt.

      “Come on, sweetheart, I’ll help ya pack.” Kacey strolled through the bar then up the three-tiered wooden staircase.

      Ellen followed, casting an apologetic glance at the girls as she passed them. Surely the time had come for her to cut the apron strings? It wasn’t easy for any of them. She knew that. She’d been where they were now. These poor daughters of Deadwood had little to make their lives bearable but Ellen had done her best for them. She’d protected them from Al’s fiercest rages, rescued them from violent customers and helped them to get rid of the babies they could never manage to care for. She had tried to ease the tragedy that surrounded them daily in the only way she could – by being there for them.

      But now it was her time. Time to leave and live a little while she still had the chance.

      She just wished that it wasn’t so difficult leaving them all behind.

      She’d been with Al since 1877, just after he’d opened the Gem. Thirteen years of her life dedicated to whoring then caring for the other girls. With her help, he’d rebuilt it following fire and flood. He was an old goat and could be hellish mean to the girls when his black moods took him. But he was all she’d ever known. Ellen had been just sixteen when he’d taken her in and she’d been swayed by his charm for, what, all of five minutes. Then she’d become a victim of his harsh treatment and bullying.

      And she had been so young and vulnerable then. Her mama had died of the smallpox and her stepfather had immediately taken up with another woman. An actress no less. He spent his days drinking and gambling away what money her mama had saved and Ellen was left with nothing. As a young woman, her choices were limited. She had gone to the handsome young Al Swearengen and naively asked him for employment, hoping that he would offer her a job cleaning the rooms or helping with the cooking. But he had coerced her into another role altogether. One flop led to another and before she knew it, she’d been whoring for a year with no prospect of escape.

      The years had passed and she had sunk into a kind of acceptance of her role. She was a whore. That was how it was. Whisky helped to numb the distaste and occasionally opium offered a complete numbness that helped her to drift away from her life altogether. But when one of the girls had overdosed on the drug, Ellen had weaned herself off it and sworn never to succumb to its deadly embrace again. It just wasn’t for her.

      Until finally, just after her twenty-seventh birthday, she’d found the bravery to stand up to Al and the lifestyle she loathed. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was that changed in her, but something snapped. Perhaps it was losing that last little baby…She shook the image of the perfectly-formed little corpse from her mind. It could well have been that.

      And enough was enough. Al had given her a few days to recover from the miscarriage then told her to get on her back again. She had refused. Sure enough, she’d gotten a black eye and a few cracked ribs in the process as she had continued to refuse, but after that he left her alone and stopped trying to make her whore. She was surprised at his acceptance…amazed if she was honest…but he was a hard man to understand and, in the face of the opportunity to keep her pussy to herself, she didn’t want to question his intentions. So, instead of being ground into the straw-filled burlap ticking of an evening, she stayed on as a kind of nurse to the other girls, helping them with their daily scourging and treating them when they got poorly. It had suited her…for a while…as she continued to save the money she got paid for her new role. It wasn’t much but it was what she intended on using to support herself once she got to Custer City. After that, she’d find work cleaning or perhaps in a shop. She had to believe that there would be a way for her to earn money that didn’t involve opening her legs for a string of randy men.

      “Hey, Al,” she called from the bottom step. “I don’t want no trouble atwixt us, ya hear? It’s been a long journey and I just wanna move on now.”

      Who was she trying to convince?

      He gave her one of his sardonic smiles then raised his shot glass. “I wish ya well, ma dear! I wish ya well.”

      ****

      In the small messy bedroom, Ellen handed Kacey her silver-plated hairbrush.

      “Here, I want you to have this.”

      She turned and stood before the smudged full-length mirror, gazing at her sorry reflection. She’d changed so much in her time at the Gem. Her long black hair still shone but a few strands had turned white and, though her eyes were still as blue as cornflowers, they were hard and tired. If only she could turn back time to be a sweet and innocent sixteen-year-old once more.

      But she was almost twice that. And she doubted that she’d have the energy to go through it all again.

      “I can’t take your hairbrush.” Kacey shook her head as she ran her fingers over the bristles. “Wasn’t this from yer…gentleman friend? The special one.”

      Ellen moved away from the mirror and perched on the end of the bed. “Mr Hawkins. Bill.” It still hurt to say his name and regret swirled like a grey storm cloud at the edges of her mind.

      “That’s the one. Didn’t he ask yer to marry him?”

      Ellen’s heart sank. “He did indeed and I was fool enough to refuse him.” She picked at a loose thread on the colourful patchwork coverlet, twirling it between her fingers and trying to push the handsome face from her thoughts.

      “He was setting off to…” Kacey frowned. “What was it he wanted to do again?”

      Ellen laughed. “To help design a railroad that would cover the whole of America.”

      “That’s it!” Kacey jabbed her finger in the air. “Knew it was something real ambitious.”

      “And not that far-fetched.”

      “No for sure,” Kacey nodded, running the hairbrush through her fine red hair. “I’ll bet he’s living it up now in New York or some place. All fine and dandy in a big fancy house.” She pursed her lips and lifted her right hand to her mouth with the pinkie jutting outwards, holding an imaginary tea cup which she proceeded to drink from.

      Ellen laughed. Kacey always knew how to make her smile.

      “Probably got himself a sweet little wife who keeps it all in apple-pie order.” Ellen sighed and fell backwards on the bed. Somehow she couldn’t imagine herself as a sweet little wife. She tried to picture herself keeping house but her face just didn’t fit. Wearing a proper dress and a tidy hairstyle would just feel so strange. Yet wasn’t that what she was hoping for…once she quit Deadwood?

      Kacey lay down next to her, cradling the brush to her chest. “And why was you it you declined his offer?”

      Ellen swallowed the lump in her throat. “I was so young. I was confused. I felt some misguided sense of loyalty to Al for taking me off the streets. And, I guess…I had my head full of romantic nonsense and I thought that I didn’t love Bill.”

      “Love!” Kacey snorted. “Love is a dollar bill and two fingers of whisky. What I wouldn’t give for a man who offered me that every night.”

      They fell silent as they sank into their own thoughts.

      Kacey was right. Ellen had been a fool to refuse a man because of some naïve notion about needing to be in love. After years as a harlot, she doubted that love even really existed, at least not in the form she’d dreamt of as a girl. Men were weak creatures who obeyed their basic urges – the ones that told them to drink liquor and to stick their cocks into anything with a pussy. Even the married ones regularly made their way to the nearest whore house. She bet there wasn’t a decent one out there.

      Pah! What would she want with love or marriage?

      All she wanted now was her independence and a hearth to call her own as she saw in her old age. No more dragging drunks off girls half their age in the hours before dawn and running to fetch the doctor as yet another whore complained of a burning where the sun didn’t shine.