Denver Read Online Free PDF

wary eye out for the man who had tried to shoot him. Late in April he arrived on a cold, blustery night and couldn’t find Dulcie in the parlor. One of the girls told him she was in her room. He knocked, and when the door opened, he gazed at her in shock. Facing him in a red silk kimono, she clutched it closed over her breasts. Her eyes were puffed and black, her jaw cut. An ugly bruise darkened her cheek, and black spots were on every visible part of her. He stepped inside.
    “What happened? Tell me his name,” Dan said, anger surging in him.
    Moving carefully, she turned away and shook her head. “Leave me alone. It wasn’t a man. It was Nola.”
    “Why?” Nola owned the sporting house, and Dan stared at Dulcie in shock.
    Dulcie’s lower lip jutted out. “I wanted to quit.”
    “Surely you can quit!”
    “No. When I came I promised I’d stay until I was thirty-five. They always make the good ones promise to stay. While we work here, Nola gets part of our earnings each week. She holds our money until the time is up on our agreement. She has several thousand dollars of my money. If I run away, she gets to keep it.”
    “Well, hell. Can’t you go to the sheriff?”
    “Dan,” Dulcie said as if she were talking to a backward child, “right now this town doesn’t have a sheriff, and if it did, he would uphold my agreement with her. She pays taxes to the town, so what little law there is will side with her.”
    “You can’t leave the money behind?”
    “No.”
    “How much is it?”
    “Too much,” she said, her voice softening as she crossed the room. Her hips swayed provocatively, and for an instant the fleeting thought crossed his mind that she was in the right profession. She was sensual in every way, her walk, her glances, her body, her voice, her movements.
    “Do you have family anywhere?” he asked, sitting down on the creaky bed.
    She gave him another pitying smile as if she found him incredibly naive. “No. My pa was a bully and a drunk who beat me. My ma worked the same way I do and didn’t want me around when I was a kid. She’s how I got started. She made me do this.”
    “Jesus!”
    “I married when I was fifteen and I found out all he wanted was to keep me doing the same thing and turn the money over to him instead of my mother. I decided that if I’m going to do this, I’m keeping the money. So I ran away.”
    Dan stared at her, thinking how different her life was from that of anyone he had ever known. He wondered what she could do now.
    “How much money is it?”
    “I keep telling you, more than you’d want to giveme. You’re a generous man, that’s for sure, paying for whole nights with me so I can stay with you, and giving me extra that I don’t have to turn over to Nola, but you can’t come up with four thousand dollars.”
    “Four thousand even?”
    She stared at him. “You’re a good man, but you can’t—”
    “Even?”
    “No. Four thousand, three hundred and fifty-five dollars.”
    “I’ve got that much in the bank. I’ll give it to you.”
    She crossed the room to put her arms around his neck. He eased her to the bed beside him and gazed at her battered face.
    “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me. Absolutely the sweetest thing, and I won’t ever forget it.”
    “The money’s yours. Will you leave?”
    “I can’t take your money.”
    He stared at her while he decided what he would do. It was useless to argue until he had the money in hand. He grinned. “You can’t make love either.”
    She smiled up at him. “There are some parts of me that aren’t black and blue. I’ll show you.”
    As she pushed away the red silk, he forgot about the money.
    Dan rode back to town the following Friday and got in before the bank closed, withdrawing the four thousand, leaving a still-sizable account. Next he rode to Nola’s and went to Dulcie’s room.
    Dulcie was soaking in a steamy tub of water, head back against a water-splotched pillow. A sweet