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worked the pump on the shotgun, but he looked right at her and sneered, “You don’t have the balls, ” and then he was reaching for me with that awful glove.
    Horaz Standish had his hand stretched out like he might try to stop Bantle, but also like he hadn’t made up his mind to do it yet. I didn’t know yet if I was going to scream or run or try to hit him, or if Effie was really going to have to learn to shoot a man dead that night.
    But a big voice arrested him before I had to decide. “Peter goddamn Bantle, just what the pig-shitting hell do you think you’re doing in my house?”
    Madame is quick to correct Effie’s mouth when it gets coarse. But I know where Effie done learned it.
    Peter Bantle didn’t have the sense to turn around and run when he heard the ferrule of Madame Damnable’s cane clicking on the marble tile at the top of the stair, even though Horaz’s hand finally reached his sleeve and tugged him backward. He did let his hand fall, though, and stepped back smartly. Effie’s breath went out with a sound like surprise. I looked over at her pale, sweaty face and saw her move her finger off the trigger.
    She really had been gonna shoot him.
    I stepped back and half-turned so I could watch Madame Damnable coming down the stairs, her cane in one hand, the other clenching on the banister with each step.
    She was a great battleship of a woman, her black hair gone all steel color at the temples. Her eyes hadn’t had to go steel color; they had started off that way. Miss Francina was behind her on the one side and Miss Bethel on the other, and they didn’t look like they was in any hurry, nor in any mood for conversation. “You got one of my girls in here, Alice,” Peter Bantle said.
    She reached the bottom of the stairs and Miss Bethel fanned off left to come take the shotgun from Effie. “You speak with respect to Madame,” Miss Francina said.
    Bantle turned his head and spat on the fireplace rug. “I’ll give a tart what respect she deserves. Now, you’re going to give me my whore back. Aren’t you.”
    Madame Damnable kept coming, inexorable as a steam locomotive rolling through the yard. She was in her robe and slippers, like the rest of us, and it didn’t one whit make her less imposing. “I’ll give you your head back if you don’t step outside my parlor. You may think you can own folks, Peter Bantle, but this here Rapid City is a free city, where no letter of indenture signed overseas is going to hold water. The constable’s on his way, and if you’re not gone when he gets here I’m going to have him arrest you and your boys for trespass, breaking and entering, and malicious mischief. I pay more in taxes than you do, and most of the law would rather be with my happy girls than your broke-down sad and terrified ones. So you know how that’s going to end.”
    That, I thought, and the mayor just slid out an upstairs window. Unless he’s still in bed with the covers over his head.
    Well, I hadn’t seen Polly. Maybe the covers was over her head, instead.
    Madame gestured to the broken door and the busted-out window. “The evidence is right there.”
    “Your own girl shot out that window!” Outrage made his voice squeak.
    I had to hide my laugh behind my hand. Effie squeezed the other one. She was shaking, but it was all right. Madame Damnable was here now and she was going to take care of everything.
    Peter Bantle knowed it, too. He had already given way a step, and when you were faced with Madame Damnable there was no coming back from that. He drew himself up in the doorway as his bully boys collapsed around him. Madame Damnable kept walking forward, and all four of those thugs slid out the door like water running out a drain.
    Their boots crunched in the glass outside. He couldn’t resist a parting shot, but he called it over his shoulder, and it didn’t so much as shift Madame Damnable’s nighttime braid against her shoulder. “You ain’t heard the last of this,