Argentine and the Man in Black

Part one of two:

In that twilight hour between supper and the start of the night, Maggie’s girls drape themselves preening over the creamy velvet of her couches, like well-fed cats in dressing gowns. It’s the lull before the evening rush, when the cowhands and the miners crowd into Meridian, looking to drink the night away, maybe drop a day’s pay between the scented sheets of Maggie’s cathouse.

Argentine, drowsing in the soft wing chair by the window, starts at Maggie’s touch on her shoulder. “Here’s a gent for you, Argentine. Show him our best, will you now?”

Argentine uncoils herself from the chair. Nineteen and silky pretty, she’s Maggie’s star girl, the best in the whole Arizona Territory. These days, she’s not just working on her back. She’s singing too. Another year, and she’ll try San Francisco and the real music halls.

Tall and sun-hardened, the gent waits behind Maggie. His hat rests in his hand, a thick band of Mexican silver inlaid with turquise on one finger. He’s nice looking, Argentine decides – light brown hair and a tidy trimmed beard. And that ring cries money.

“Let’s make him a repeat customer, shall we, Argentine?” says Maggie, and Argentine smiles her best professional smile.

“Why sure, Maggie. Just come this way, hon.”

Argentine guides the gent upstairs to Maggie’s most elegant room. The bed has satin sheets with real down pillows, and a china pitcher and a basin of cool water waits on the stand by the bed. The room smells of lavender and tobacco, and the faint whiff of rosewood soap.

Argentine unlocks the door. The man – “What’s your name, sweets?” Argentine had whispered on the stairs. Smiling, he’d whispered back, “Don’t matter none.” – glances around appreciatively.

Argentine slips her dressing gown from her shoulders.

“So what’s your pleasure this evening?”

The gent drops his hat on the bed. He’s a quiet one, just watching her. He has nice eyes, she decides, soft and blue. And he’s clean. She can smell the fresh soap scent of him clear across the room. Doesn’t do this too often, she can tell; he’s not making a move.

Argentine thinks of all the sweaty grabby cowhands, way too eager to shoot their pay. This will be sweet money.

As Argentine leads her gent into Mag’s upstairs room in Meridian, Sixkiller thrashes awake on a smelly cot in a Tombstone flophouse. The dream that isn't a dream fills his head. Nothing but red, blazing bright, the raw crimson of new blood and the image of the man he has to kill.

The room is stifling, corners full of shadows thrown by a rising moon. Sixkiller sits up, dizzy and clammy-wet as always does wh the Boss invades his dreams to send him a job.

As his head clears, he takes stock: the pearl handled knife, still stuck in his boot; the tiny pistol in his jacket pocket; and under his pillow the beauties, jet handled revolvers in a tooled leather gunbelt, handsome compensation for his last job. Sixkiller is a professional. He keeps his equipment in tiptop shape, always ready to hand.

Sixkiller gathers his things. The jobs always come just before dawn, surging images laced in all the shades of red, burning bright in the landscape of his nightmares.

It happens often enough that he knows the drill. Find the one the Boss– that’s the name he’s given to the one who sends him these assignments – shows him, and kill. A day or two after, he’ll come across a prize: a sack of silver dollars, or these handsome pistols, or that sweet bay gelding waiting in the stable down the street. Decline the job? He’s learned the hard way about that.

Half an hour later, Sixkiller hits the road clean-shaven, in a fresh black shirt. He likes to look good. Tonight he has an easy ride, just up the river road to Meridian, to find a tall brown haired man with a silver and turquoise ring on his hand.

An hour, another, and isn’t he tired yet? Argentine gasps for breath. Trapped under the nameless man’s sweaty flesh, she listens to the raucous laughter and singing from downstairs, listens to the coyotes singing in the washes outside town. Listens to her own pulse pounding. Tonight she’s working hard for her money. It’s been one time right after another.

But now, there’s a change in his eyes. “Let’s do something new,” he says, and reaching for the end of the sheet, he rips off a long strip.

Argentine, wincing at the destruction of Maggie’s property, rolls off the bed.

“Time’s up,” she says.

“No it ain’t. I paid for the night, little girl.” He wraps the strip of satin around both his hands and stretches it taut.

Argentine edges toward the door. “No strange stuff, Mister. That's not the deal."

The gent laughs. “Strange stuff? You don’t know strange stuff, darlin. Come here to me now.” He reaches for her hand.

There’s a burst of laughter and song from beneath Argentine’s feet. If she called out now, who would hear? Aren’t frontier whores supposed to be able to take care of themselves? She’s always prided herself that she can. But this man’s eyes are terrifying.

She bolts for the door. Rounding the foot of the bed, the gent snags her arm and flings her down. Argentine lands hard on her back with his full weight on her chest. The strip of sheet presses against her throat, stifling breath.

Argentine brings her knee up, aiming for his crotch. He jerks back, flushed with rage, and smacks her hard across the face. “I paid, hear me? You do what I want you to do.”

Argentine twists her head away for a good loud bellow, but her voice is lost in the general ruckus from downstairs. The gent reaches one-handed into the tumble of his clothes on the floor. Lamplight flares along the sharp silver blade of the little knife in his hand. He grins. “One way or another, girl.”

Twisting like an eel in his grasp, Argentine squirms sideways. Seizing the pitcher on the bedstand, she heaves it at his head. He dodges, overbalances, and pitches sideways on the bed. The knife flies from his fingers, skittering across the floor. Argentine seizes the little blade.

“Just stop now, just go and we’ll be all right,” she tells him.

The gent pushes himself to his knees. “God damn you, you little bitch!” he hisses, and launches himself straight at her.

An eyeblink of time changes everything. Argentine swings up both hands in front of her face just as he slams into her. Hot warm wetness floods her face. With a gurgling grunt, the gent topples sideways, scrabbling with blood-slick fingers at the little silver knife stuck deep in his throat. He and Argentine exchange a long, speechless gaze. Then awareness fades from his eyes.

Argentine’s stomach churns. Face and fingers sticky with blood, she scrambles for the chamber pot in the corner. Down in the parlor, they’re dancing. Someone starts another song, and a chorus of ill-trained men’s voices joins in. Nobody knows what happened up here.

Wiping her mouth, Argentine glances back at the motionless man on the bed. Blood spreads across the satin coverlet, staining the rich colors of Mag’s pretty Persian carpet.

What to do now? Go downstairs and say, hey Maggie, I’ve killed a man in your best room? And Maggie, who’s a friend second and a businesswoman first, will say, you ruined the reputation of my house! Who’s to say it was self-defense? And sweet Argentine trades the music halls of San Francisco for a jail cell – or maybe a hanging.

Run, of course. Argentine considers. She can’t go back to her own room, off the parlor, without being seen. But while everyone’s making so much noise, she can get down the back stairs and out on the street. No clothes. No money. But she’s done this kind of thing before, running from the slums of New Orleans with a traveling man when she was fifteen. She can do it again.

Wiping as much blood as she can from her face and hands, Argentine flings herself into her shift and dressing gown. thrusting her feet bare into her slippers.

At the threshold she turns back, drawing a deep steadying breath. A working girl has to take care of herself. So she turns back to the gent’s abandoned clothes.

Downstairs, somebody’s pounding on the piano; boots thunder across the floor. She rummages quickly, coming up with a wad of bills in a pocket, and – she grins; Maggie makes everyone leave his gunbelt downstairs, but this gent kept himself a tidy little pistol in his vest. She slips it into her pocket. Then steeling herself to touch the dead man, she twists the silver and turquoise ring from his limp finger and eases out the door.

The story concludes in part two.

Behind the Scenes: Deep in the borderlands of Southern Arizona, a river runs toward Mexico. In the silver mining days, little towns and mining camps dotted its banks. Those towns attracted all kinds of characters and gave rise to plenty of legends. Sixkiller was a real gunslinger of those times, and he did kill many more men than his nickname suggests.