Soiled Dove Read Online Free PDF Page A

crowded, smelly passenger car, surrounded by any number of unsavory looking characters and crying children.
    The man leaned forward and stuck his hand between the bars to point to Hettie’s right. “That way two or three blocks. It’s a white two-story with a white picket fence. Two large bougainevillea in front.
    Can’t miss it.”
    Hettie turned to walk away, but paused for a moment. “I’m traveling from here to Trinidad in the Colorado Territory. Can you tell me how long that trip might take?”
    “Depends on how many times the train has to stop, but I’d count on at least three days. Maybe four.”
    “Four days!”
    “Could be three,” the man shrugged. “Lots of little towns have sprung up along the railroad right of way in the last few years. Course, the train only goes to Pueblo right now. You’ll have to take a stagecoach the last sixty miles or so.”
    “And what about my luggage?”
    “We’ll keep it locked up in here until your train arrives and then load it.”
    Hettie began walking toward the rooming house, her mind filled with thoughts. Possibly four more days crammed on a train car. God! What had she been thinking? She knew absolutely nothing about the people or the town she was traveling to. Calvin wanted to marry her. Why hadn’t she accepted?
    Because Calvin was boring. Just another farmer looking for a woman to cook and clean and bear children. She stopped and smiled to herself. She had read that families in the west were large, sometimes more than six children so they could grow up and help work their homesteads. But this would be an adventure. Hettie nodded in an attempt to convince herself. She stopped in front of the large two-story boarding house, took a deep breath, and made her way up the steps.
    “RETTA! WAIT UP!” Amelia called out. The puffiness on her bottom lip had gone down considerably, but the remnants of bruises remained around her eyes and there was only so much make-up could do.
    Loretta paused and looked in the window of the mercantile store a few blocks from Jack’s establishment. Some very nice material was on display in the window. She hadn’t seen it the last time she had been to the business district and it would make a beautiful dress.
    When Amelia reached Loretta, she was out of breath. Taking her by the arm, Loretta said, “Look, Amelia. Isn’t that cloth beautiful?”
    “I guess,” Amelia shrugged.
    “What’s wrong?” Loretta said, resting her parasol on her shoulder and twirling it as she smiled at the men passing them on the sidewalk.
    “I…I can’t do this anymore, Retta,” Amelia said.
    “Do what?”
    “You know what. How can you stand it? All those filthy, panting old men touching you and sweating all over you every night. It’s disgusting. I hate it,” the young woman frowned.
    “Jack has put you back as a bar hostess, Amelia.
    No one’s going to pant or sweat on you there. At least not as much.” Loretta looked around absently.
    “How can you do it, Retta?”
    Her eyes flashing, Loretta looked sharply at the younger woman. “I’m doing what I have to do, Amelia. Jack saved my life. I could have become a crib girl to survive instead. You think you’d like that better? Having men who have never had a bath in their miserable lives and willing to fuck anything half alive climbing into your bed for two bits?”
    “Well, I never thought…”
    “Don’t you ever judge me, girl, you hear. I almost have enough money saved to get out of here and not you or anyone else is going to take that away. If this is what I have to do for now, then I will. Once I leave here no one will ever know what I did in the past.”
    Amelia laughed. “Jack’ll never let you leave.
    You’re his woman and you know it.”
    “No one owns me, Amelia. Not Jack Coulter. Not anyone. Understand?” Loretta said forcefully.
    “But those men…what they want you to do to them…or do to you…,” Amelia shivered.
    “You have to shut it out of your mind and