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And now you’re here doin this

Moses shakes his head, co

The woman recoils a bit in her expression, as if bitten She ainst it, folds her ar didn’t used to amount to much Now it counts I used to be a secretary for a real estate attorney Now I’m a survivor of the apocalypse and a whore I endure where others don’t It ot a problees, chastened He looks down at his dirty, brutish hands

Not as a general rule, he says

Then the woe of the bed, where Moses lies on his back looking at the ceiling

You and that redhead, she says You two are together soe is all

You’re a hired gun?

Sooes silent He gazes at the ceiling He ponders as the last time he laid beneath a roof and called it ho on and on and on, long after he thought it ever would

Come on, he says and reaches for the woet soet down to business

When he wakes in thethat his brother has got into trouble again – but this tihter

In the sitting roo merry with a passel of nizes as those of thetheir rifles at the ready when they rolled into town The redhead herself is lying across two of their laps, her bare feet resting on the ar playfully

Here he is, she says of Moses to the men My Rock of Gibraltar Coht

A couple of the other girls sit in the room also, but Moses sees that they are distinctly unhappy with this redheaded interloper

Brucie there gave my feet a nice hot salt bath, says the Vestal and points to a tough-looking man who nonetheless flushes when she says his name Men are lovely, she continues You try to pay theive so ain, and Moses wants to chop theoes over to the Vestal, takes her by the arm and lifts her from the laps of the men

Hey, there,in his voice They have already becoht, but the Vestal defuses it

It’s okay, boys, she says He is my saviour, after all

I’ll save you, one h, and the Vestal laughs with theirl Let me talk to my Gibraltar in private for just a little sec

He takes her into a small parlour down the hall and shuts the door behind them

What the hell was that? he says

It’s the boys, she says and smiles slyly Her eyelids are heavy, and she steadies herself against hiht

You were locked in the rooaveor two, but they ain’t a bad bunch

He looks down at her, horrified Her toes are still wriggling against the plush rug, and it makes him feel sick

What’s the ered you got enough last night, but p’raps that matronly lady didn’t quite satisfy

She puts her hand between his legs, and he swats it away disgusted

But – but, he stutters, the things you said last night

She laughs high and clear, slapping her palh he were a drum, an instrument in her own perverse and ritualistic dance

Oh hush, she says You kneere just playin, ain’t you? Coirl was raised in establish-boss cherry picker when I wasn’t hardly twelve years of age The celebrations of the flesh ain’t nothing new to me You want to be a bad boy? Well, then I can sure as anything be a bad girl

He pushes her away from him

You’re a liar, he says You ain’t honest

She stands for a ainst an oak desk – and a rows on her face

Honey, she says, honest ain’t the half of what I’m not

He leaves her there and fetches his brother fro and irritated

How coettin out of here, Moses says She’s a whore

Who’s a whore?

Coettin shut of her

For a ht when the men discover Moses and his brother want to take the Vestal away, but the girlsweetnesses and they relent