Free Devil's Creek Massacre by Len Levinson

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    â€œShe was formerly a Fontaine from Charleston,” replied Mrs. Cutler.
    â€œSo why'd she marry a damned Yankee?”
    Sometimes elderly people believe that advanced years confer the right to be obnoxious, and the lady with the trumpet had embraced this view with great fervor. The room fell silent as all eyes turned to Vanessa. It was her moment, but she had no idea of what to say. Finally she pulled herself together, and all she could think of was, “My husband was sympathetic to the ideals of the Confederacy. That's why he chose a daughter of the South to be his wife.”
    â€œWhat'd she say?” asked the old lady, making a public spectacle of herself.
    A kindly niece repeated Vanessa's improvisation noisily into the trumpet as Vanessa continued to receive introductions. She smiled politely and curtsiedflawlessly as they'd taught her at Miss Dalton's School in Charleston, but couldn't help remembering when she'd sung in saloons where rotgut whiskey went for fifteen cents a glass, and shootings frequently interrupted her great serenades.
    After introductions, the hostess moved on to other guests while Vanessa retreated into the shadows, covered the lower part of her face with her fan, and observed the guests. Young men conversed in one corner, young girls giggled in another, mature couples strolled about, discussing the great fashionable political and cultural issues of the month, while the biggest crowd gathered at the bar.
    It was like theater, where ambition, greed, and naked lust paraded before her, disguised by fashionable taste. Curiously, she felt no part of it, although she'd anticipated the party for weeks, hoping to meet somebody interesting.
    It all seemed rather dull to the former saloon singer. She'd had audiences of cowboys yearning for a glimpse of the celebrated Miss Vanessa Fontaine, and when she'd stepped onto the stage, they applauded so loudly, she'd thought the walls would collapse. They'd sung old Civil War songs together, but the grand ball was as measured and calculated as a society funeral. Vanessa smiled behind her fan, recalling smoky old frontier saloons from Nagodoches to San Antone. Her cowboy admirers had treated her like the Queen of the Golden West, life had been constant adventure, and she'd even witnessed killings before her very eyes.
    I can't flirt like a silly fifteen-year-old sparrow anymore, she thought, and it's never too late to grow up. Dudley Swanson carried two glasses of champagne toward her. She accepted one and said, “Thank you.”

    Bubbles ran up her nose as she sipped tart effervescence. She didn't dare ask for whiskey, although she preferred its dusky mellow kick in the pants. Maybe saloon life hadn't been so bad after all.
    â€œYou look bored,” said Dudley. “Don't you like the party?”
    â€œI was thinking.”
    â€œWill you be staying in our town long?”
    â€œI'm not sure, because my life is a roulette wheel these days.”
    â€œMine is a cartwheel, because I own a freighting business. Even as we speak my men are moving merchandise all across Texas.”
    Vanessa had talked to freighters and bullwhackers when she'd worked saloons, and knew that Swanson's hardworking employees were sleeping beneath their wagons in remote territories at that moment, with rain-storms and the threat of Indian attack, not to mention the occasional tornado, while their employer sipped champagne and wore a suit costing a freighter's month's pay.
    â€œWhen did your husband depart this earth?” asked Dudley.
    â€œAbout three months ago.”
    â€œAh, you poor woman.”
    Dudley tried to appear genuinely sympathetic to her pretended woes, but she'd been out of high society so long, she couldn't think of anything appropriate to say. Just then, out of the blue, a deep baritone voice said, “Evening, Dudley.”
    Vanessa turned to a big hulking fellow with a jet-black mustache, around forty years old, with an