Lady or the Tiger

Chapter 1
The End

Now—­Summer 1886
Dodge City, Kansas

Not all little girls are born murderers, but every woman becomes one.

Most simply destroy pieces of themselves—­their dreams, their desires, their right to speak to whom and what they please.

I kill men instead.

You see, I rather like my dreams, dark as they are. And my voice is my own. In fact, it has made me a fortune, slipping and sighing its way across the world’s greatest stages, then rising to steal unapologetically from the private opera boxes of the rich. I’ve ruined many a silk shirt with my glass-­shattering operettas.

Many a man too.

As of this, my nineteenth year, I’ve killed a dozen men. More, if you count the time I helped my
mother.

But right now, there is only one man on my mind. And if I’m not careful, he’ll catch me.

It is midnight, and I stand in the middle of a dirty street in Kansas, letting the ebb and flow of humanity swell against me. The air smells of cow shit and danger. Ladies of ill repute who have been flung here by careless fate, buffalo hunters who kill hundreds of beasts a day without a spark of remorse, and men with no names come to seek riches. Amongst them travel a very few of the land’s original people, nearly washed away now by this crushing wave of greed and guns.

For a moment, I think of running.

I could be in Boston by midweek. Paris in four. I have friends all over the world. Palaces to harbor in. Ancient manors with priceless wine cellars eager to fling their doors open to me. No one could stop me. I could run forever.

But then I see it. The single shadow of a bird, its daylight wings pressed against the moon, where it should not be.

He’s close.

And I know. There is only one place I will be safe.

As for all my performances, I have dressed for the occasion. Wrapped around me is a blanket of pure emerald silk, given to me by a king’s nephew in London. He paid an unspeakable sum for the treasure, hoping I would lay myself upon it like a fine treat waiting to be consumed.

Instead, I’ll spoil it here.

When I was a little girl, I wore a single dress for three years, my mother letting out the hem with each inch I grew until the dirty yellow calico finally fell away from me like a skin I was shedding.

Now I have money enough to buy a dressmaker’s factory. A dead empress’s trousseau if I so choose.

Not that it matters anymore. The dead don’t need dresses.

Overhead, the night is the kind of black that is almost clear, as if someone painted it on the back of a crystal plate. Tiny holes of brilliant light poke through, scattering the sky with stars.

A perfect necklace. Tilting my head back so that they lace my throat, I open my mouth and scream.

Here, on the prairie, there is nothing to stop it, no trees or hills or rivers to dampen the sound. Only a tiny spill of buildings, laughably small against the endless flat land, cobbled together like children’s toys with pasteboard and bricks.

My voice, trained for crowds of thousands, rises easily into the night, filling it, but no one seems to notice.

Screams, in this town, are apparently as common as spurred boots and tobacco spit.

A cowboy brushes against me, stumbling drunk and following the guiding red light of a trainman
who uses his lantern’s glow to lead new arrivals to the town’s brothels. Because of this, they’ve started to call this collection of watering holes and entertainment the red-­light district. The sound of a shot is followed by the crescendo of a player piano’s canned notes as a saloon door swings open and two gamblers tumble into the street, fists swinging.

It is, overall, a rather rude audience.

The people here are a mix of outlaws and citizens trying to maintain their morals in Gomorrah. Dodge City, the Wickedest Town in America, according to the papers.

But I’m the wickedest of them all.

And I don’t like to be ignored.

I let go of my silk and step into the street. In this moment, I want them to see me in all my power.

I scream again, lifting my voice to the sky like a wild animal. Which is exactly what I am.

Finally, someone pays attention. A startled man with a curled mustache nearly falls off his horse trying to get a better look before stating the obvious. “That girl’s stark naked!”

A ruddy-­faced woman who’d been hanging off the porch of the Long Branch Saloon steps out from under a man’s arm and raises a curious eyebrow, sister to sister. She gives a sharp whistle that brings two other girls to her side. One of them is no more than thirteen, black curls frizzing about her pretty brown face. I hope she is not working there, but I know she is. The whistling woman’s hand goes to the breast of her gown, where I’ve no doubt she’s got a pistol tucked between her large breasts, but I ignore her unspoken offer of assistance.

Besides, it’s too late. A crowd is beginning to form, a circle of twenty or so of the wayfarers who’ve swollen this town like a tick on the blood of the frontier’s trade. Two men in dirty miners’ overalls, their reinforced pockets heavy with rocks, press eagerly toward me. It’s not hard to read their thoughts. Why pay for something you can get for free? To them I am a gold nugget glittering in a stream, ready for the taking.

I let them get close enough to touch me.

And then I begin to sing.

I thought long and hard about this, my last song. What should it be? In what key should I sing it? I could give them Offenbach’s Madame Papillon or something from Purcell. Perhaps “Dido’s Lament,” which sent men away from the opera house in Vienna weeping.

Instead, I choose a folk tune. One that used to be sung to me by my mother.

One that, once upon a time, I sang to the first man I killed.
Go to sleep now,
go to sleep now,
birdini, birdini
Go to sleep now,
go to sleep now,
birdini, birdini . . .

“That ain’t no girl.” The cowboy’s gaze flicks to the Wanted posters with my face stamped upon them. Dead or Alive. I watch dozens of other eyes skitter over.

It’s a poor rendering, unfortunately. There’s a painting of me hanging in a gentleman’s boudoir in Bruges, worth thousands, that’s far more flattering.

Here my chin is far too sharp, and my eyes appear small and close together. There is a hunger in them. A feral innocence that I thought I erased long ago. If I stare too long at the posters, I feel like I might cry. The girl in the drawing does not look like a woman at all. She looks like the frightened child I used to be.

So I don’t look. Instead, I sing.

Louder now, and I know that I have chosen the right song by the silence that surrounds me. It’s a simple song, for simple people, but it is one many of them have heard since they were babies. One their own mothers sang to them. One of love. Of lost innocence. Here, in the moonlight, I see the glint of tears in a cowboy’s eyes, a man, I’ve no doubt, who would not hesitate to put a bullet through the brain of any unwise enough to insult him.

But in this moment, I could reach out and touch his forehead, kiss his cheeks and demand he
lay down his guns for the rest of his life, and he would.

There is power in a woman’s voice. More power still when it reaches the ears of men unaccustomed to listening.

I finish the song, and the hush that follows swallows us whole. Crickets and the far-­off rumble of thunder, my coda.

There is a disturbance in the crowd as a man steps forward.

He is short, which is why, I’m certain, his hat is so tall. He walks with the tilted swagger of a man with lifts in his too-­new boots. And on his chest is a gold star, so shiny I know it’s freshly pinned. This must be the man I’m looking for. Dodge City’s newest sheriff, the man who replaced the famed Wyatt Earp.

“Are you Belle King?” He clears his throat like an awkward schoolboy. “Are you . . . the Seamstress?”

I straighten to my full height, which is a head taller than his own but, in the moonlight, appears two. It’s a trick I used onstage, throwing my head back and spreading my legs hip distance, sliding my shoulders down on my spine to appear larger than I really am. I’ve heard that cobras do much the same thing before they eat their prey.

I won’t go unnoticed. Not for this, my final performance. I answer him. “Yes.”

A man of more experience would already have taken me into his possession. Or tried to, anyway. This man stands with his mouth hanging open, like he can’t decide whether to cry or fight. Finally, though, he speaks. The crowd around him leans in closer. This is a story they will pass down to their children and their children’s children to come.

The sheriff’s voice is trembling, but to his credit the hand on his gun remains steady. “What do you . . . what do you want?”

And, naked, nineteen, and with my whole life in front of me, I hold out my wrists and whisper so that only he can hear.

“I want you to arrest me.”