Double eagle, p.4
Double Eagle, page 4
“We can load one mule with clothing or anything else light,” Cole said. “Or one of you can ride him. Harve will have to ride. So it’s up to you.”
While they hurriedly talked it over, Cole took the time to use a shovel from one of the wagons and dig a shallow grave for Cal Rutledge. Oscar Tagmire already had his, along with three of the mules.
Whether he liked it or not, Cole would have to assume responsibility for the safety of the three Galways until they were safe at the Gulch.
They decided that Harve would ride one mule bareback. His wife, who had little experience with horses, would ride Cole’s Trooper. Cole and Cornelia would walk. She smiled up into his eyes and said she was more than willing. The trail they followed took them to the summit of a mountain, into a valley, and then across a high mesa thick with aspen. Before sundown he shot an antelope. They camped, and Cole broiled steaks for them. In the morning Cornelia cooked breakfast.
The next day where the trail was fairly level he let Trooper carry double. Cornelia was light. Although she said she preferred walking with him, Cole insisted.
But in the afternoon the trail grew steep again and she was at his side. Always Cole’s eyes were scanning brush, trees, rock for any sign of renegades, either white or red. Three white ones he was trailing. With any luck he’d pick up their sign in El Dorado Gulch.
When crossing a creek on slippery rocks or on a trail where rubble gave way underfoot, Cornelia took his hand. He liked the feel of her warm fingers. During his brief period as army scout he had had no touch of woman. His blood responded warmly when she smiled. He liked the bright-blue eyes. She was once drenched by a waterfall where the trail swung close. The faded calico clung to her.
Her aunt, riding behind them on Trooper, was upset. “Don’t show yourself off, Cornelia.”
“Afraid I can’t help it, Aunt Eloise.”
“You could walk in the back of us till you dry off.” Cornelia gave in to her aunt to save further argument. She gave Cole’s hand a squeeze, which her aunt did not miss.
“For a young woman who just lost her betrothed, you act shameless.” Eloise Galway sniffed.
Harve, who was bringing up the rear, prodding the pack mule along, said, “Leave her alone.”
“I already said I was sorry about Oscar, Aunt Eloise. Do you want me to sit on a rock and mope?”
They followed the creek till the sun was gone behind the western peaks but evening was still a long way off. Cole made camp with Cornelia’s help.
“Tomorrow we’ll be in the Gulch,” he said.
During the long trek across the mountains Cole had learned of the family hopes. Harve and the late Oscar had planned to make a killing mining gold. Eloise and her niece would run a dressmaking shop.
While eating the last of the antelope steaks, Cole felt it was time to point out the realities of El Dorado Gulch. The camp was about played out, and in another year there wouldn’t be much left. “These camps come and go,” Cole said. “If I were you, I’d locate in New Sodom.”
Cornelia listened in fascination, teeth sunk into the lower lip of her attractive mouth. The word about the Gulch depressed Harve Galway. His wife was past caring. She spent most of the time fighting off insects and complaining about the “brutal mountains.”
She was convinced that when they hired men to go back for their wagon and goods everything would be stolen. “Terrible country where you can’t trust anyone,” she said morosely.
“That’s the way it’s always been after a war, ma’am,” Cole said.
“Aside from fighting with hatchets are you also an authority on history, Mr. Cantrell?” she demanded.
“I’ve read a lot of books, ma’am.”
“I studied history.” She sniffed the air. “Where in such terrible country would you find a book to read?”
“My father didn’t have much education, but he made sure I got one. He was a good customer of every book peddler who came west of the big river.”
“How remarkable you were able to educate yourself,” Cornelia said breathlessly.
Cole picked up his rifle. “It’s still early. I’m going to have a look around.” He tramped off into the cedars. Smoke from the dying cookfire curled into the branches.
All the way across the mountain he had looked for sign. There was some, but no way of telling if it meant the three men he hunted or three gold seekers or hunters or trappers. Tomorrow he would know if his hunch was correct. They could still be at the Gulch or have moved on by now. He hoped they were still there and the matter could be settled. He might have to kill them. And there was always the possibility they might kill him. After all, the odds were a little in their favor.
A faint sound caused him to spin around and point the rifle. Cornelia stood with arms outstretched, her mouth open. “It’s me, Cole,” she managed to say. “I thought you wouldn’t mind if I walked with you.”
“Just don’t sneak up on me again. You’re too pretty to die young.” He laughed, and she joined in. They walked together. She began to sing. She had a rather pleasant voice. On the way up the mountain she had told him she wanted to be a singer, not a seamstress.
That was when he had mentioned his friend Aspen Grove, who sang at the Four Aces in New Sodom. “I’ll give you a note to her. Maybe she can help.”
“How kind of you, Cole.”
She found a grassy spot and wanted to rest. He put down his rifle and sat beside her, watching the mad froth of Cougar Creek.
“You’re a sweet girl,” Cole mused.
Cornelia leaned against him. “Maybe I don’t like being sweet.”
“But you are. Stay that way. Poor Oscar never had a chance to know what he missed in having you for a wife.”
“It would have been my second marriage.”
Cole squinted at her in the shadows that pooled the ground where they were sitting. “You married before?” he asked in surprise.
“Don’t ever mention it to my aunt or uncle. They like to pretend it never happened.”
“Why would they want to forget about your marriage?”
“They didn’t like the boy I married. We eloped and … and he was killed in a runaway.”
Cole made clucking sounds of sympathy. “How long were you married?”
“Just a couple of months.” Her bright eyes swept across his face, then on to the cliff that rose beyond the boiling creek, with its dwarf cedars and lichen, the rocks eternally damp where the creek made a sweeping turn and spilled over its southern bank.
“I’m sorry your husband was killed.”
“Seems I have bad luck with men. Bob and then … Oscar. I really didn’t want to marry Oscar, but Aunt Eloise was set on it. I was trying to please her, I guess.” She edged closer to Cole. “I’d be afraid here alone. But with you I’d go anywhere and have no fear.”
Cole felt her soft warm fingers resting against the back of a hand that supported his weight. He chewed a grass stem while studying her profile. She had a high forehead, a pert nose, and full lips.
“I wasn’t a wife very long,” she said dreamily. “But I did enjoy it.” She bit her lip, coloring slightly. “I guess I speak too boldly.”
“Why shouldn’t you enjoy marriage? I’m sure my folks enjoyed each other.”
“You see them often, I hope.”
“No. They’re dead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Cholera has taken so many. Or was it something else?”
“Something else.”
After a few moments of silence, she said, “I guess you don’t want to talk about it, do you?”
Perhaps it was an attempt to wash out the memory of a tragic day that made him instinctively reach out for her. And as his fingers touched her soft shoulders, her hands flew out like birds released from a cage. Her fingers laced across his back, her face buried in his chest. He fell back upon the soft grass, drawing her with him.
Their lips touched, explored, then locked together.
Finally she pulled back, gasping for breath. Eyes in the flushed face were round and very bright. “Lordy, not since Bob have I felt like this. Kiss me again, Cole, like you did before.”
“You did a fair share of the kissing yourself,” he said lightly.
Five minutes later her voice shook as she whispered, “Help me with my dress …I’m too nervous to reach all the buttons …”
Light and shadow fell across the long-waisted, slender body, touched the firm breasts with their delicate nipples now rigid in her excitement.
“Do you think anyone will see us?” she whispered hoarsely, looking around into the trees.
“Not likely.” He smiled and felt the first roundness of her long legs.
She was what he had been needing, to lose himself in a woman, to erase past days, the terrible scene with Colonel Landeau, the beating of Martin Gale. Not to mention the tension of his battle with the throwing ax, a fight traditionally to the death. On top of everything else, the mention of his parents, which always sent a name soaring through his skull like a rocket—the name of the man responsible for their deaths.
Cole leaned above her, careful of his weight. Tm sorry the ground is no feather mattress.”
“Bob and I once … in a park … right at the edge of town. Wicked, wasn’t it—” She broke off, uttering a small scream. Her body tensed for a moment, then she relaxed. She looked up at him from under the screen of her lashes and said, “It’s all right, Cole … all right.”
Even as he hesitated she threw herself so wildly into the moment that all else was wiped from his mind.
When she cried out again, there was a different sound. Ecstasy, not pain. Then she seemed to collapse, trembling, eyes closed. He started to get up, but she clung to his shoulders. “Stay as you are … please. Bob used to … hold me … afterward.”
“There never was a Bob,” he said gruffly.
Her blue eyes flew open. “But there was!”
“If there was, he never got as close to you as I did just now.”
“What are you talking about?” And when he just kept looking down into her face she made no reply but put a forearm across her eyes.
He got up and dropped her dress and undergarments onto her nude body, then quickly put on his clothes.
“I should’ve known better,” he muttered. “One thing, though—you’d make a good actress.”
“Honestly, Cole, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t try to pretend.” Then his voice softened, mingled pity and anger roiling under his skin. “Was there much pain?”
“Some,” she finally admitted. “But I didn’t mind. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.” She sat up, swinging her head so that the long wheat-colored hair fell down her back. “I dreaded … thinking about it with Oscar.” She shuddered.
“And now you’re no longer a girl but a woman.” He stared at the savage flow of Cougar Creek racing beyond the trees. “I’m not proud of myself.”
“I led you on, as they say in novels.” Her laugh was strained.
“They also say in novels that it’s usually the female who gets tangled up in the web. Not this time, however.”
She hugged her knees and said defiantly, “I’ve got a body and I have feelings … just like a man has.” She beat a fist against the grass their bodies had flattened. “And darn it, why should it have to be with someone like Oscar … chained for the rest of my life?” Then fingertips flew to her mouth as she stared at him in a kind of horror. “Lordy, for a minute I forgot he’s dead. Poor Oscar …” She slipped into her dress and fumbled for the buttons. He helped her. She brushed twigs from her hair and said, “I suppose now you despise me.”
“I like you.” He cupped her chin and kissed her lightly on the lips. “But I’m sorry you roped me into this.”
“Now that you’ve plucked me from virginity, as they say, I suppose you’re morally obligated to marry me. But certainly not unless you really wanted it …”
“I’m not marrying … anybody.”
“Cole, I wouldn’t really expect you to marry me. I … I … guess the avalanche and Oscar getting killed and Uncle Harve with the broken leg and us losing so many of our possessions …”
“You’re getting yourself all upset. Calm down.”
“But I wanted it with someone like you. Do you believe me, Cole?
‘That part of it I believe.”
“Why did you say you won’t marry anybody?”
“Because I’ve got things to do.”
“I suppose you won’t tell me.”
“It’s something I don’t feel like talking about.”
She leaned against him as she put on her shoes. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “Oh, damn, I did what I wanted to do and I’m not ashamed … but I suppose I should be.”
“Forget the shame.”
“Losing one’s virginity out of wedlock is wasting oneself. How quaint they make it sound.”
At the camp her aunt was glaring. “You’ve been crying, Cornelia. What did he do to you?”
“I fell and … twisted my ankle. But it’s all right now.” Her aunt only sniffed as she continued to fuss about the camp.
Chapter Five
CLAUDIUS MAX RECEIVED good news on an otherwise bleak day. It came in a telegram from Major Landeau: YOUR NEMESIS NO LONGER PROTECTED BY ARMY.
Max sprang up from his desk and did a little dance, his weight making the floor shake. The joyful sounds caused E. J. Creed to poke his head in from an adjoining office and observe the paunchy nabob prancing around like an exuberant schoolboy. Max paused, gasping for breath, and grinned at Creed. He told him about the message.
“Now we can resume our vendetta against that bastard,” Max said, wiping his jowls on a linen handkerchief. “And no longer worry about stepping on cavalry toes.”
“It is indeed good news,” Creed admitted. He stepped into Max’s office and closed the door. Creed was of medium build, dressed in a brown suit. He tongued one of his crooked front teeth and said, “Any plans for … eliminating Cantrell?” He knew from experience to choose the right words when discussing plans with his portly employer. Max preferred to speak of an enemy as having been eliminated. Never killed or murdered.
For a time at the start of the war, Creed had been superintendent of an obscure military prison. But his tactics had been so extreme that word of them had finally reached the ear of old Abe himself. Creed was removed from his post and promptly hired by Claudius Max. Max reasoned that a man who could handle the worst prisoners from either North or South would be useful in Python. Shortly afterward Creed was sent to head up the Western office.
At first everything went well, until Cole Cantrell, a former Union captain, for a time threatened the very future of Python in the West. In a try to eliminate Cantrell, many lives had been lost. Because of these failures, Creed had been banished to one of Python’s South American offices. Only recently Max had relented and brought him back to Basin City.
During Creed’s absence the Python Building had been expanded. There were now a dozen bookkeepers, many clerks. There was a separate section set aside for the operation of Centurion-Pacific Railroad, a subsidiary of Python.
Max had welcomed Creed back by saying, “You and I are the only ones left out here who remember the old days.” And then Max had named former associates, deceased, most of them, at the hand of Cantrell. The fact that Cantrell had killed in defense of his own life made no difference to Max.
At first Max had referred to Cantrell as a mere gadfly, more of an annoyance than a threat. But that was when Max ruled his empire from the Python Building in New York. Here in the West, Max had come face to face with a reality he didn’t understand. Formerly, Max had been able to delegate authority. But when Max tried to do it all himself the results were humiliating.
The fat man’s steel-blue eyes were suddenly bright with fury. “A public hanging would be the ultimate punishment for the goddamn half-breed!” He paused. “But, conditions being what they are .. . the main thing is to eliminate him, no matter how.” Max sat down behind his desk. “I need a new bodyguard. Not a ruffian like that Brad Deal. Keep your eyes open, E. J.”
“Have you heard from Deal at all regarding his … er … present assignment?”
Max shook his head. At that moment Max’s young wife, Theodora, burst into the office. “Claudius, I was lonely and thought we could dine.”
Max looked annoyed. “Theodora, you remember E. J. Creed.”
She gave Creed a dazzling smile and her gloved hand. It was the first time he had seen her since his return from South America. Meeting her large green eyes, he always thought, was like peering into a firepit.
Before, when working in the Basin City office he had devoted himself almost exclusively to business and the whims of Claudius Max. But he knew from experience there was no sure way to always remain in the good graces of such a tyrant. Max would fly into a rage at the least provocation. This time he was determined to add more pleasures to his life.
After work that day Creed was in Bailey’s Saloon nursing a bourbon, Theodora Max still skipping lightly across his mind. Above the backbar was a painting of a dark-haired, green-eyed nude that always reminded him of Max’s wife. At least the face. But quite possibly the rest of her, masked by silks and ribbons and lace, actually matched the rosy flesh tones in the painting. Creed felt a stirring. He wondered if Max, who often came here, ever considered the resemblance.
Bailey’s was a place of gleaming brass and oak paneling. The bar had been shipped out from Chicago after escaping the great fire. The place was patronized by well-dressed men who dealt in timber, mines, cattle, and railroads.
Creed was finishing his bourbon when someone spoke his name. Turning, he saw a man in a fawn-colored suit next to him at the bar, hat tipped back, smiling. Creed did not recognize him.
“I was one of your prisoners,” the stranger said with a laugh. “Wardlow Prison was the official title. But it was generally referred to as Hellhole, Butcher Shop, Hangman’s Alley, among other things.” The man’s hazel eyes danced as Creed slid a hand toward the gun under his coat.
