Hearts in Defiance (Romance in the Rockies Book 2) Page 19

  McIntyre’s jaw clenched. A man like you. Lately, he’d come to despise that phrase. As, perhaps, Paul had? But that wasn’t why he was here now. “Have you learned anything else about One-Who-Cries?”

  “I’ve done a little homework.” Beckwith took a long drag on his cigar and exhaled. “Mostly he’s been a lone renegade, hitting isolated claims and folk who are foolish enough to let their guard down. Seems to pick his targets carefully. No more than three or four victims at a time.”

  McIntyre knew all that. One-Who-Cries was of the Uncompaghre tribe, but had branched off on his own several years ago. His targets were smaller because he wanted to kill white people in the most brutal ways he could imagine. Men, women, children—it didn’t matter. He lived to rape, burn, dismember. The warrior was determined to instill fear in the heart of every white man in Colorado. One horribly tortured and dismembered body was better than three with simple bullet holes.

  Beckwith shuffled through the papers on his desk and settled on one with several notes scrawled on it. He skimmed it, set it back down, tapped it with his index finger. “The band he’s leading suffers from infighting. The young men he managed to get off the reservation last year have mostly scattered in recent weeks, but he picked up several more by rabble-rousing. The Indian agent down there, a blockhead by the name of Meeker, couldn’t catch him. He dispatched troops, but they lost the trail after two days.”

  McIntyre realized that was the situation Chief Ouray had referred to in his telegram. “Meeker is a disaster as an Indian agent,” he said. “He has this turn-the-ponies-into-plow-horses idea and the Utes hate it. White River is a breeding ground for angry, hot-tempered braves.”

  “The Red Man will not assimilate.” Beckwith sounded supremely confident in his assessment. “I agree that this Meeker is driving the Utes into a corner. He’s pushing them into a fight. Only good thing to come out of it is he’ll be the first to die.”

  “I’m surprised One-Who-Cries hasn’t killed him already. The Indian is …” McIntyre pushed away the stomach-churning images his nemesis evoked and crushed his cheroot in the ash tray. “… unusually violent, to put it mildly.”

  Beckwith shrugged, as if unimpressed. “Indians are a blood-thirsty lot, in general. What you don’t know is that Black Elk gave Hannah some information” Intrigued, McIntyre leaned in. “I’m trying to track down the facts. She said he and One-Who-Cries attacked some folks at Horse Mesa. That’s where he got his food poisoning and apparently One-Who-Cries abducted a girl. Black Elk further stated that One-Who-Cries is going to spread death and destruction between here and White River. Seems the savage has had a vision or some such.”

  McIntyre rubbed his neck and shifted in the chair. “One-Who-Cries is not known for the accuracy of his visions, merely the bloodiness of them.” The lawman grunted. McIntyre thought Beckwith sounded almost bored with the situation and that worried him. Fighting Indians was not the same thing as fighting outlaws. The difference was like night and day. Again, the image of a dearly-beloved friend being skinned like a deer—a live deer—streaked through his mind. McIntyre pinched the bridge of his nose in a futile attempt to block the memory. “I would urge you, Marshal, not to underestimate One-Who-Cries. He’s been running wild for nearly ten years and we haven’t caught him yet. We came close once … the last time, we got the jump on him.” McIntyre flexed his fingers as the picture of One-Who-Cries’ hawkish face rose in his mind. “I wasn’t any farther from him than I am from you. I raised my rifle … and got clubbed from behind.” The Indian’s escape was still a bitter disappointment, especially since they’d carried back three dead soldiers. How many had died since then? “He’s a rabid dog, Marshal, in need of killing.”

  “Just a matter of time. His range is getting smaller and smaller.”

  “What about the girl? Is that true?” God, for her sake, he prayed it wasn’t.

  Beckwith fingered a thin stack of yellow papers with Western Union printed at the top. “I sent out telegrams requesting information. The sheriff in Ruby said a peddler and his family came through about a week ago. They sold tainted food to a couple of miners and if Indians got ‘em, good riddance.”

  “Black Elk’s food poisoning?” McIntyre said more to himself than Beckwith.

  “Most likely. The sheriff said the family was headed to Gunnison. They haven’t been seen around there yet.”

  “Maybe they’ve camped somewhere.” Entirely possible. There were dozens of places to wash off trail dust and rest. Unfortunately, Horse Mesa was one of them.

  “Maybe.” Beckwith sounded doubtful … or bored. “The sheriff in Gunnison is going to look for them. Said he’d let us know if he found anything. What I can’t figure is if everything Black Elk says is true, why is he here in town? You’d think he’d still be with One-Who-Cries.”

  McIntyre ran his hands through his hair. Taking a deep breath, he laced his fingers behind his head and wished he had the answer. “He’s a nomad and mostly a loner. Maybe he decided he didn’t have the stomach for slaughter. I know he hasn’t been in Defiance for over three years.”

  The marshal crushed his cigar in a coffee mug, the creases in his forehead smoothing out. “Well, either way, One-Who-Cries should be out of the area by now. From what I’ve learned, he’s rarely seen in the same place twice.”

  Troubled by Beckwith’s nonchalant attitude, McIntyre stood up and grabbed his hat off the marshal’s desk. “That all the information Hannah got out of him?”

  “So far. Doc says he went through a bad spell, but seems to have turned a corner. We’ll see. Maybe he’ll feel more like talking this evening.”

  McIntyre slipped his Stetson on, dissatisfied with the lack of solid information. If One-Who-Cries had any designs on Defiance or its outlying settlements, they needed to know. Maybe it meant nothing at all that Black Elk was here, but McIntyre didn’t like One-Who-Cries within a hundred miles of Defiance. A thousand miles would be too close.

  ~~~

  Startled by a yelp from behind her, Hannah nearly dropped the heavy Dutch oven full of baked beans. Quickly setting it on the stove, she turned as Mollie and a young Negro girl hugged and gushed noisily in the kitchen.

  “Amanda! Oh, my goodness,” Mollie squealed. “What are you doing here?”

  As the two friends embraced, Hannah raised a brow at Rebecca, who had paused peeling eggs at the table to watch the reunion. She shrugged, at a loss as well. Mollie quickly remembered her manners, though, and stepped back to introduce her friend. “I’m sorry. This is Amanda. I worked with her for a short time down at—I mean, we were both—that is to say, Flowers. We were both Flowers.” Amanda dropped her gaze, but Mollie laughed and elbowed her friend lightly. “It’s all right. They’re friends.” The girl raised her chin, buoyed by the comment.

  “So, if you’re here, I take it you’re not working at a saloon.” Mollie wondered, sounding hopeful. “Am I right?”

  “I’m working here.” She glanced at Rebecca and Hannah. “Naomi hired me, and Mr. McIntyre says he is going to help me go to school.”

  The girls’ mouths dropped open. Mr. McIntyre was going to send Amanda to school? Hannah thought that was a much better idea than merely giving his former Flowers cash.

  “Amanda, you’ll have to catch me up—us—catch us up on that.” Mollie grabbed the girl’s arm and the four settled at the kitchen table.

  “You could have knocked me over with a feather, I’ll tell you that,” Amanda said, shaking her head in disbelief. “I went in, hoping to get a nice, cushy job at the cleanest saloon in town, but he asked me, straight up, did I want out?” She splayed out her hands on the table and tapped it nervously. “What was I supposed to say, especially when I realized he was serious?”

  “You mean you didn’t mean it?” Hannah asked.

  “No, no. I meant it. I just didn’t think he’d do anything about it. Now he’s working on setting up a scholarship for me, living expenses, and Naomi put me on here as a cook. It all happened …” s
he snapped her fingers, “just like that.”

  “Hallelujah,” Rebecca said, raising her hands to heaven. “I am so tired of working six days a week.”

  “So what’s changed in Defiance?” Amanda asked Mollie. “Is Rose still around?”

  Mollie sighed. “How much time do you have? She’s in the new state prison, but the marshal is still taking depositions—”

  “Marshal? Wade’s gone?”

  Mollie let slip a knowing smile. “That’s right, Wade was sweet on you.”

  “And I was a big fool. I ran off with Toby Johnson. He couldn’t stay sober for more than two days at a stretch. It didn’t last a year.” The regret thick in her voice, Amanda looked down at her hands.

  “Amanda …” Hannah waited for the girl to look up. “You are in the right place. We make mistakes. But they don’t make us. Mollie and I can tell you all about that.”

  “And we will.” Mollie winked at Hannah. “In due time.”

  After a few minutes of friendly conversation, the urgency of getting food ready for paying customers prompted them all to get to work, including Amanda. Hannah liked the way the girl jumped right in and took over the stew, but something nagged at her. She figured it was the way Amanda had said What was I supposed to say. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Most likely it didn’t. Who wouldn’t want out of that life? But the girl cooked and moved about the kitchen with almost grim determination. As if she was fighting an internal struggle.

  Troubled, Hannah sat down beside Rebecca and commenced helping her peel a dozen hard-boiled eggs. Mollie and Amanda chatted about their home states and future plans. The kitchen bubbled over with the sound of sizzling steaks, friendly conversation, and light-hearted laughs. The smiles, though, didn’t quite reach Amanda’s eyes. Unable to put her finger on what was wrong, Hannah gave up and turned the conversation toward wedding preparations.

  ~~~

  Thirty

  Billy talked in hushed, gentle tones to Prince Valiant while Emilio scoured the lean-to for his medicine bag. The walk back to the hotel had taken them much longer than they’d expected, but they’d made it by sunset. Now, before he lost all the light, Emilio said he had a treatment he wanted to get on the horse. He had draped Cochise’s reins over the fence and jogged over to the lean-to.

  Billy tied Prince Valiant to the fence and unsaddled Emilio’s horse for him. It was the least he could do. The kid had been exceptionally patient on the walk back, never rushing, and he’d checked the injured leg at least a dozen times. Under different circumstances, Billy was willing to admit he and Emilio might have actually been friends.

  Though they hadn’t talked much on the way back, Billy had learned that Emilio had hung with some pretty tough characters, his sister being the worst of them all, apparently. Emilio had told Billy the story of what Rose had done and his stomach rolled at the thought of a crazy woman threatening Hannah and Little Billy.

  Carrying a bottle filled with a golden liquid that had the same tint as beer, Emilio quick-stepped back over to Prince Valiant. “We need to put this on him a couple of times a day, for about a week.” He squatted down and pulled a long, cotton dabber out of the bottle. It reeked with an odor like camphor, menthol and a week-old corpse. Grimacing, Billy threw Cochise’s saddle over the fence and watched Emilio for a moment. He removed the wrap and slathered the liquid all over the horse’s leg, dipping the stick repeatedly.

  Billy blinked, the stench so heavy in the air it brought tears to his eyes. “What is in that concoction?”

  In the fading light, Emilio grinned and his teeth gleamed. Apparently he got this question a lot. “Peppermint oil, peppers, camphor, herbs, a few other things. It works well.”

  “Bet it keeps bugs away, too.”

  “Si, it does.” Emilio capped the bottle, handed it to Billy, and rewrapped Prince Valiant’s leg with great care. Billy swirled the pungent brew around and chuckled. One minute, they were trying to kill each other, and the next, Emilio was saving his horse.

  “Thanks.” No, that sounded stiff and proud … like his father. Billy knew he could be a better man than that and touched Emilio on the shoulder. “I mean it. Thank you.”

  ~~~

  Firelight flickered in the white girl’s eyes. They were wide with fear. One-Who-Cries knew that look. He had seen it enough in his own people. He enjoyed being the cause of it for her. His smile growing, he pulled his knife out of his sheath and watched her expression as the light glinted off his blade. With a soft whimper, the girl drew her bound hands up in front of her and cowered deeper into the shadows.

  “You’d better put that back, amigo,” an impatient voice warned from the darkness. A man in a ragged sombrero and poncho stepped out of the shadows and approached their fire. “Your temper has cost you three rifles already.” Squatting, he pulled out his own knife and used the light of the flames to inspect the blade. His hawkish features set like stone, he flipped one edge of his frayed poncho over his shoulder and carved a piece of rabbit loose from the spit. He snatched the steaming meat with the tips of his fingers and quickly dropped it to the plate at his feet. Blowing on the burned flesh, he warned One-Who-Cries, “You can’t keep killing the merchandise. If you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, Sanchez will not trade with you again. Comprende?”

  One-Who-Cries sneered at the man, wondering if he should kill him or not. “This girl’s sister is dead only because she fought. Her death is on her head.”

  “You lost your temper. You should learn to control it.”

  “She was a stupid white woman … and you should learn to keep your mouth shut.”

  The Mexican’s jaw tightened. “A stupid white woman worth three rifles.”

  One-Who-Cries considered this. A full belly made it easier to put the knife back. He had done enough killing for one day. “True, it would have been easier if I had not killed her. But I already know where to go to get another woman with yellow hair.” He ripped a piece of meat off the spit with his bare hands. “I will have another woman before we make the trade. Maybe more than one.”

  Taking a bite of his rabbit, the man glanced at the girl in the shadows. Tangled strands of molasses-colored hair hung in her face. “Good and healthy like her, he will give you one rifle. But you don’t get the three unless—”

  “Unless she has yellow hair.” One-Who-Cries stared into the flames and wondered if a roasting Mexican smelled like a burning white man. He would have to find out another time. “Tell Sanchez to have extra rifles. I will have extra women.”

  ~~~

  McIntyre tied a blue silk cravat at his neck as he stood in front of his mirror appraising his appearance. Neatly trimmed beard and moustache, precisely tailored vest and pants, a new gray frockcoat, glossed black boots. His wavy, dark hair, still damp, grazed his collar. He laughed inwardly at how he used to dress to impress everyone, and now he only cared to impress Naomi.

  The answer to his telegram resided in his breast pocket. The preacher would be here on Friday’s noon stage. Please set the wedding for some time Saturday. McIntyre was sure the wheels were in motion for an enchanting event. He wanted to believe he could make the wedding night magical, but there was a finger of concern that poked at him.

  Would she think of John? It was only natural if she did. But would she compare the two—? Perhaps she would wonder if McIntyre was comparing her.

  Frustrated, he snatched the cravat out and tied it again. Ridiculous thoughts. It didn’t matter. In time, both their pasts would fade.

  He heard the door downstairs squeak, followed by the tromp of boots. Brannagh’s husky voice floated up to him as his right-hand man greeted someone, and then the boots, more than one pair, headed up the stairs.

  A sharp tap on his door and Ian’s lively Scottish accent. “Are ye presentable, mon?”

  “Not until I get this cravat tied.”

  His friend ignored the comment and entered, followed by two young men who had clearly had a rough day. Cuts and bruises marred their faces,
blood and dirt spattered their clothes. “I’ve come to ask ye a favor,” Ian tapped the floor with his cane and swept off his Balmoral bonnet, swinging it toward Emilio and Billy, “for the boys here.”

  “For what? A surgeon?” McIntyre assumed this had been the fight he’d heard about earlier today. Fat lips, swollen noses, and black eyes. Bruised and cut cheeks. Seemed it was a respectable fight. Emilio fared a little better, but only a little. “You win?”

  The boy shifted uncomfortably and strangled the hat in his hands. “No, sir, I just cleaned up a little better.”

  “Which is why we’re here,” Ian interrupted. “I should think these boys could avail themselves of yer bath facilities, seeing as how Maude’s Bathhouse could tempt them into trouble.”

  McIntyre heard the humor bubbling in Ian’s voice, but didn’t get the joke. Maude’s was fit for a preacher on Wednesday nights. It was Saturday nights you needed to keep your pistol in the tub with you. Still, it was a stone’s throw from the Lucky Deuce and they could definitely find trouble there. Emilio had proven himself a steady, focused lad. The other boy, who must be Billy, was the big question mark. “Fine, boys. You’re more than welcome. Emilio, you know where everything is and Brannagh should still have water heated.” He checked with Ian to see if the instructions met with his approval. The Scotsman nodded. “By the way,” McIntyre crossed the room to Billy and offered his hand. “We haven’t met formally. I’m Charles McIntyre.”

  “Billy Page. And thank you for the bath.” Billy took his hand gingerly, and McIntyre saw the war wounds.

  “You’re welcome.” McIntyre nodded, pondering the banker’s son. He’d spent a few thousand dollars determining the boy’s whereabouts last year, only to have Hannah reject the information. She’d never contacted him, yet here he was.

  Naomi might kill him for this, but these two looked like they could use a drink, solely for medicinal purposes, of course. “Help yourselves to a gentlemanly amount of whiskey, if you are so inclined. And the emphasis is on gentlemanly. But I think you two could use it. And, Billy, when you’re done, could I have a word with you?”