The Furies Read Online Free PDF

revulsion. Amanda felt sorry for such warped creatures. The Sioux, both male and female, had a much healthier attitude.
    To the Indian philosophy of love she had added her own: a man and woman taking comfort from each other was not half so immoral as the casual taking of human life, a common occurrence on the frontier—and one with precious little moral stigma attached. Witness her friend Bowie’s respectability.
    She did recognize that charging for the services of her girls injected a certain commercial taint. But which was more reprehensible? Selling a man a jug of popskull that dulled his senses and, over the long run, could ruin his health? Or selling him an hour’s pleasure and peace in the arms of a woman?
    Perhaps the pious would declare than an honest brothel was an impossible concept. But an honest brothel was what she had tried to run.
    The puritanical segments’ of Bexar’s population couldn’t approve, let alone understand, such an attitude, of course. Although she prospered, she was only tolerated, never accepted, by the best families. Until his death, Veramendi remained one of her few influential friends. Another, surprisingly enough, was the parish priest, a thoughtful, tolerant man named Don Refugio, who had considerable respect for the religious convictions of most Indians—Comanches excepted—and found them in some ways more “Christian” than many of his flock.
    But the ostracism she’d suffered seemed trivial in the light of what she was facing now. Her gaze was almost unconsciously drawn to the symbols of the coming struggle: the pistols in the drowsing Bowie’s lap. The pistols and the infamous knife—
    Copies of Bowie’s knife were in demand all across Texas. Even in the States, people said. The inch-and-a-half-wide blade had a wickedly honed false edge that permitted a backstroke during a duel. There was also a concave scoop where the back curved to meet the edge at the point.
    The prototype had been given to Jim Bowie by his brother Rezin in 1827. Bowie had often laughed about the various legends that had sprung up concerning the original knife and its successors—
    That each had been forged with a piece of meteorite thrown into the cauldron of molten metal.
    That he was in league with the Devil, who had provided the knife’s inspired, lethal design in return for a claim against Bowie’s soul. There was almost no limit to the wild stories that were circulated.
    Bowie had once remarked to Amanda that it was the man more than the weapon that determined the outcome of a fight. But he also admitted he was flattered when others assigned supernatural properties to the knife—
    Abruptly, Bowie’s eyes fluttered open. He blinked, brushed at the stubble sprouting on his chin. When he spoke, it was evident that he had no awareness of having slept for a short time.
    “Still say, Mandy”—he coughed—“what Crockett said. You should have stayed outside. Maybe the Mexicans would have left you alone.”
    “What do you think I am, Colonel?” she teased. “A turncoat? I may run a whorehouse, but that doesn’t mean I lack principles!”
    Bowie laughed. Amanda smiled too, then continued more seriously. “I knew what I had to do when Buck Travis gave his little speech at the fandango on George Washington’s birthday. He said Americans down here had to stand up for liberty. My grandfather did just that back in Boston, sixty years ago.”
    “Travis is wrong.”
    “What do you mean, wrong?”
    “Wrong about the issue. It’s dictatorship.”
    “You’re not making sense. What’s the difference?”
    “We’re fighting because Santa Anna centralized all the power of the government in Mexico City. Overturned the constitution of 1824. Dissolved the state legislatures—”
    “That’s tyranny, Jim—and the other side of the coin is liberty.”
    “Depends on what you mean by the word. I mean the rights we were guaranteed in twenty-four. I don’t mean independence from Mexico.”
    Finally