“You’ve made the right call to stay away from those lazy bitches in camp. They do some washing, maybe bring you a plate of food, but that’s the extent of their work. All high and mighty, they want payment for their services, even though we feed and house them. It’s madness, I tell you,” Scotch said, though the only time Ned had seen him do any work was during the train job and the current trip into town, both of which had been about Scotch’s pleasure. He wondered how Tom saw Scotch’s loyalty in light of this, but maybe to him Scotch was like an old dog. Not useful anymore, but still deserving of a bone to chew for his past achievements.
Following yet another grunt from Ned, Scotch pulled off his hat and tried to adjust the spots where it had bent out of shape due to misuse. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been damaged if the damn drunk watched where he rested his head.
“A man can’t get it up once, and suddenly everyone knows. How is it my fault that she was so ugly down there?” Scotch asked and threw his head back, draining the remaining booze onto his tongue. “I tell you Ned, I’m gonna sow my seeds all evenin’ today, and you should do the same while you got the chance. Unless something changed in Three Stones, you’ll know which lady takes your silver by the star on her cheek.” Scotch patted his own face with his finger and snort-laughed so hard it almost knocked him off horseback.
Ned glanced his way, air turning thick in his lungs. “What are you saying?”
“That the big cathouse here, the Red Lily, marks its girls, so that the men know who they can and who they can’t approach. Because, trust me, partner, you don’t want to even look funny at an honest woman in this town. They’re few and far between, and therefore precious. So keep your hands to the whores.”
Ned clenched Nugget’s reins, so angry his vision was getting white spots at the edges. “I asked you a question, Scotch! Are you trying to say Cole’s been marked that way for some reason?”
Scotch gave a low rumble and raised both hands as soon as he pocketed the empty flask. “I ain’t saying nothing at all about your sweetheart. Tom’s a friend, and I don’t question what he fishes out of the gutters.”
Ned’s face pulsed with heat, and he had no doubt it was as red as Scotch’s always was.
“He’s not like that,” he barked like a guard dog about to go for a burglar’s throat, even though Cole was very much like that. His mind burned with questions driven by the fact that Tom forbade Cole from going into town because of the star-shaped scar he carried. What if there was a grain of truth to Scotch’s not-so-veiled insults?
Cole had known what he wanted when Ned’s imagination wouldn’t even wander that way, but perhaps it was because he’d spent his childhood in a cathouse and had seen things most people didn’t? He’d mentioned his mother being a prostitute, but at twelve, Cole had been already travelling with Tom and the Gotham Boys. Could it mean that before…?
It sickened him to the pit of his stomach to think about things that could have happened to Cole in the past. Scraps of conversation swirled in Ned’s head. The way he’d commented on the scrawny boy in the saloon, his talk of dangers an orphan could face. If there was more shame to Cole’s past, would he have revealed it to Ned or kept it hidden for fear of rejection?
Scotch made a wheezing laugh, holding on to the horn as they approached the stretch of wooden buildings with a small white church at one end. Beyond it, the dark form of the mine’s main building leaned against a naked hillside like a drunk saloon girl sweet-talking to her client while she searched his pockets. Around it was a large encampment, which likely housed the bulk of the workforce, and the tiny congregation of cabins scattered nearby? Homes of dollar whores.
In the middle of the barren landscape and with nothing but rock for shade, Three Stones looked like the end of the world, even though the black line of the rail tracks ran across the plain, straight into the heart of the town that had surely been named for the three rock pillars shooting out of the parched dirt above the roof of the mine like giant worms. The air ahead trembled with heat, as if it were water Ned could drown Scotch in without leaving his dirty carrion out for any passers-by to find.
“He isn’t what? A rump rider? Who the fuck knows? He’s always liked his trinkets and pretty clothes a little bit too much. Changes his underthings more often than the girls, as if he were afraid of a little dirt, and for all I know, he might be wasting good whisky to rinse his hair. Mary does it, and I wouldn’t put it past Cole neither. The vain bastard struts around looking like a thoroughbred, and no one outside of Three Stones knows why he likes to smell like flowers.”