Читать книгу Gabriel's Lady - Ana Seymour - Страница 10

Tin-roofed shacks, brush houses, tents and wagons made into temporary sleeping quarters dotted the steep, wooded sides of Deadwood Gulch like debris scattered after a storm. It was only on the floor of the gulch, the single main street of Deadwood proper, that the structures became real buildings. Amelia stepped down from the lumbering mail coach and looked up and down the block in amazement. It was solid saloons.

“How many drinking establishments does this town have?” she asked Mattie Smith.

Mattie smiled. “Twenty-seven, at last count. You temperance workers have your work cut out for you here.”

Amelia shook her head. “I told you—I’m not a temperance worker. I’m just here to find my brother.”

“So how come you went off to sleep in that broken-down coach last night the minute Gabe took out his bottle?”

“I don’t approve of spirits, Mrs. Smith. But I’m not a crusader.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Miss Prescott, because you’ll find Deadwood a sight easier to take if you don’t start in preaching. The truth is that most of these boys come here thinking they’ll be rich in weeks. Instead they end up broke and homesick. I figure they deserve what little comfort they can get.”

Amelia looked down at her pleasantly rounded companion. “You’re a compassionate person, Mrs. Smith, I can see that. I promise you that I don’t intend to set about reforming disappointed miners. I just want to find Parker.”

Amelia felt a sinking sensation as she realized that the task might prove more difficult than she had anticipated. It might even mean going into some of these…drinking establishments. She sighed. Perhaps Morgan would know what to do. He and Mr. Hatch had both left the coach at the edge of town in front of a tall, thin building with narrow letters that spelled out Telegraph squeezed across the front. Morgan was always proud when an occasion arose to show that he had book learning, a skill he had never had a chance to acquire during his childhood in the mines in Wales. He still worked with her father three nights a week after supper, though Morgan had mastered the basics years ago and their lessons had evolved into spirited discussions of various books they read together.

Mattie cocked her head to one side. “Parker Prescott. Now, that name sounds familiar.”

Two cowboys with wide leather chaps over their dirty denims came crashing out of a swinging door just a few feet from where the women were standing. Mattie gave them a brief glance, then continued speaking. “Why, that’s Claire’s young man. Of course…Parker.”

One of the cowboys was holding up a hand of cards. His face was a mottled red, and he was sputtering like a crusted-up teakettle. The other man reached down into his pants and pulled out a revolver. Amelia felt a quick rush through her midsection. “Mrs. Smith, that man has a gun!”

Mattie Smith took Amelia’s arm and drew her around the back of the stagecoach. “We’ll just stay out of the way back here,” she said as calmly as if she were discussing dress patterns.

Amelia leaned against a thick leather luggage rack. “That man pulled a gun,” she repeated in a shaky voice.

“Lordy, child. You’re pea green. We’ve got to toughen you up, I reckon. Everyone’s got guns in Deadwood. But they don’t do much harm. Most of these boys can’t hit the side of a barn with their eyes open.”

“Shouldn’t we call the police?”

“We don’t have any police. No sheriff, either. Why do you think Deadwood’s so popular with every no-account west of the Mississippi?”

Amelia gripped the edge of the stagecoach and peered cautiously around the corner. The cowboy who had pulled the gun was sprawled on the ground. The other man, cards still clutched in one hand, was sitting on top of him with his free hand pressed down on his opponent’s neck. Several feet away, the revolver lay discarded in the dusty street, sun glinting off its steely barrel.

“Come on,” Mattie urged. “Let’s get out of here. Charlie will take care of your bag until you come back for it.”

Amelia let herself be led down the street. “There’s no law in Deadwood?” she asked, her head turned back to the scene behind them. A burly redhead was trying to separate the two combatants as the sidewalk filled up with onlookers.

“There’s all kinds of law—the law of the gun, the law of the best hand, the law of the almighty dollar,” Mattie continued. “But if you mean real law…nope. Not in Deadwood.”

“I was hoping to ask the police to help me find Parker.”

Mattie gave a snort. “That’s what I was trying to tell you, child. I can take you to your brother. Come on with me to my place.”

Amelia’s eyes followed Mattie Smith’s hand as she pointed across the street and down a short distance. Nestled between two rough board saloons was a neatly painted clapboard house, looking for all the world like a little piece of New England. A trimmed row of bushes dotted with pink primroses edged the railing of a small front porch. Pink curtains showed at each of the six real glass windows.

“You live right here in the middle of town?”

Mattie didn’t answer. She waited until a buckboard had rattled past them, then took Amelia’s hand and led her across the street.

Amelia followed along, asking in some confusion, “How do you know my brother, Mrs. Smith?”

It wasn’t until they stood directly in front of the tidy yellow house that Amelia saw the discreet sign. Female Companions. Cleanliness Guaranteed. Mattie Smith, Proprietor.

Amelia pulled back with a kind of horror as Mrs. Smith said cheerfully, “Here we are.”

“I can’t go in there,” Amelia said stiffly.

A gleam of sympathy appeared in Mattie Smith’s soft gray eyes. “I don’t mean to go against your sensibilities, Miss Prescott, but you did say you wanted to locate your brother, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then you’d better follow me. Because the odds are ten to one that this is where you’ll find him.”

Amelia settled into the feathery softness of the rose damask sofa and closed her eyes. In her wildest dreams she would never have imagined that she would find herself in such a place. Although, except for a cloying scent that was fast bringing on a megrim, the little parlor of Mattie Smith’s…house…was not really much different than the sitting rooms back home where she and her mother would take tea with the other ladies of middle-echelon New York society. But when she had entered the front door she had had a direct view up the stairs to a room bathed in red light. Glowing red. She didn’t even dare think about the type of activity that might take place in such a room.

“Hey, sis.” The soft voice coming from the doorway popped her eyes open.

In an instant she had jumped to her feet and was caught up in her brother’s arms. “I could kill you,” she said, laughing and hugging him as great tears rolled down her cheeks.

Parker lifted her off her feet and spun her around. “I’d deserve it,” he said, giving her a sound kiss.

Amelia put her hands on her brother’s shoulders and pushed herself out of his grasp. “I mean it,” she said through subsiding sniffles.

Parker’s grin faded. “I do, too. I deserve anything you want to do to me, my darling little sister. But it’s damn good to see you.”

Amelia’s outburst of tears ended with a final jerky breath. “Don’t swear,” she said. The admonition was automatic. Though she was a year younger than her brother, she’d been giving him orders her whole life. Their parents had so often been away from home, involved in their own special causes, that Amelia and Parker sometimes felt that they had raised each other. Amelia mothered Parker, injecting some caution into his wild schemes, and Parker provided Amelia with a father’s strength and protection. At least, he had until he had taken off without a word.

“It’s very good to see you, sis,” Parker amended, tenderly pinching her cheek with a callused hand that Amelia did not recognize as belonging to her brother. His appearance was different, too. His dark brown hair was longer and had reddened in the sun. His skin was tanned and leathery, making him look years older. “But what in blazes are you doing here?” he asked. “Surely you didn’t come all this way by yourself?”

“Morgan’s with me. He’s down at the telegraph office sending a wire to Mother and Father.”

“How are they? And Matilda? I bet she misses having her pies stolen right off the cooling rack now that I’m gone. And Chops?”

Amelia smiled and motioned to Parker to slow down his questions. “Matilda says she always knew you were a scoundrel, and when you come home she’s going to give you a piece of her mind, if not a licking with her wooden spoon. And Chops wouldn’t eat for a week after you left until we finally took to mixing his food with liver paste. So now we call him Golden Chops. As to Mother and Father…” She bit her lip. “They were terribly hurt, Parker.”

Parker looked down at Mattie’s rose-patterned carpet. “I know. It was the one bad thing about this whole plan. I never wanted to hurt them.” He blinked and swallowed hard. “Or you, either, sis.”

Amelia let out a deep breath and asked the question that she had been waiting to ask for the past six months. “How could you do it, Parker? How could you leave us that way?”

Their identical brown eyes met, hers accusing, his guilty. “It seems a lifetime ago, you know. At the time I thought I was leaving because I was sick of Father trying to badger me into working at his precious bank. And I was miffed when Cindy Wellington threw me over for Jack Hastings…”

Amelia gave an incredulous huff. “Cynthia Wellington goes through men faster than she does hankies. She’s had at least a half a dozen since Jack Hastings, and besides—”

Parker stopped her with a wave of his hand. “Come on and sit down. Just listen to me for a minute,” he said, leading her to the rose sofa. “I said I thought I was leaving for those reasons. But as soon as I hit the prairie west of St. Paul, I knew that none of those things were important.”

“Then what—”

Parker put a finger on her lips. “If you can keep still long enough, I’ll try to explain, though it’s all beyond words, really.”

He shifted his gaze from her to look out beyond the pink curtains to the view of the canyon rising above the buildings across the street. “I’ve never seen anything like the West, sis,” he continued in an almost reverent tone. “It’s fresh and majestic, wild and exciting. It…” He turned back to her as he searched for the words. “It fills me up. I don’t know any other way to say it. It fills all those places in me that were so empty back in New York.”

For once Amelia had no reply. It was as if her brother, the person she had always known better than anyone else in the world, had passed a boundary into a place she couldn’t follow. She had been prepared to demand that they return to New York immediately. Their father needed them, needed Parker. But as she watched this totally unfamiliar expression on her brother’s dear, familiar face, the words wouldn’t come out.

“Listen,” Parker said in a brisk tone designed to squelch the emotion that had crept into his voice, “I can show you what I mean better than telling you. Let me take you out to my place to see the mine.”

Amelia looked around once again at Mattie Smith’s parlor. “Well, at least let’s get out of here.”

Parker followed her gaze with amusement. “What do you suppose Mother would say if she knew we were sitting in a bawdy house parlor?”

The notion did not seem so shocking to Amelia now that Parker was beside her. In fact, nothing did. Not the broken-down stagecoach nor the fight out on the street. Parker would take care of her now. And she would take care of him. She gave a happy giggle. “She’d haul us up in front of one of her crusading friends—The New York Ladies’ League for the Rehabilitation of Fallen Doves, or some such.”

Parker stood with a grin and reached for Amelia’s hands. “Mother and her colleagues would have a field day in this town.”

Amelia had to admit that the scenery as Parker led them up the trail toward his mine was breathtaking. When they had left Mattie Smith’s parlor, the little proprietor had been nowhere in sight, so without taking their leave they had made their way back to the stagecoach to find Morgan and retrieve their bags. Then they had gone to the livery where Amelia and Morgan had rented horses over Morgan’s protest that there wasn’t anywhere he couldn’t go on the two good feet that God had given him.

Amelia’s mount was a trim brown mare that had taken to her new rider immediately. The stableboy had said her name was Whiskey, which had caused Amelia and Parker to burst into one of the laughs they had shared so often through the years.

“I’ve been in Deadwood less than a day and I’ve already visited a brothel and acquired a horse named Whiskey,” Amelia said, choked with mirth. It was remarkable how just a short time in her brother’s company had restored her good humor.

“You shouldn’t have gone into that place, Missy,” Morgan called from behind them. “Your mama’s going to say I didn’t take proper care of you.”

Amelia turned around in her saddle. “I suspect there are a few things about this trip that Mother will never know, Morgan.”

Parker threw back his head and laughed as he spurred his horse up a sudden incline in the trail. “It’s called independence, Morgan. Isn’t that what you left the coal mines of Wales to find?”

Morgan shook his head. “Independence is not about doing things your mama and papa wouldn’t approve of.”

Parker’s smile stayed in place. “I know. Maybe after a few days in the West you’ll start to understand the kind of independence I’m talking about.”

Amelia looked affectionately from her brother to Morgan, who appeared gangly and uncomfortable on the small gelding they’d rented. “You need a bigger horse, Morgan,” she shouted back.

“This one’s plenty far off the ground for me, Missy. I don’t need to go breaking any bones in my old age.”

Morgan still had the strength of men half his age, and there was not a gray strand in his thick black hair, but once he’d passed what he had figured was his fiftieth birthday last year, he’d started talking about being old.

Amelia smiled and turned to the front again. The trail had leveled off and they emerged from the piney woods into a small valley. She’d seen such a vista once on the stereopticon at a party at the Hastings’, but it couldn’t prepare her for the real thing. Long grasses swayed green and golden in the sunlight, sloping down to a sparkling blue-gray stream where a group of deer drank and grazed. On every side pine-covered hills formed a dark majestic backdrop against the bluest sky she’d ever seen.

“Here we are,” Parker said, stopping his horse and throwing his arms wide like a circus ringmaster. “Pronghorn Valley.”

“Look at the deer!” Amelia said with a little squeal of delight.

“They’re not deer. They’re pronghorn antelope—the sweetest critters you’d ever want to meet.”

“It’s a beautiful place, Parker,” she said, her voice dropping.

Her brother nodded. “The mine’s right across the valley, upriver. Come on. I’ll race you.”

His horse took off gracefully in response to his signal. Amelia spurred hers to follow him, shouting back to a frowning Morgan, “We’ll wait for you.”

They raced along through the grasses, sending the herd of antelope bounding away into the trees. Fox hunting had been one of the few activities the brother and sister had shared with their busy parents, and they’d been well schooled in equestrian arts. Neither Amelia nor Parker had ever cared much for the actual kill, but both had enjoyed riding and the freedom of being out in the countryside, away from the cluttered streets and foul air of the city.

Parker slowed as they approached the end of the open grass. Amelia was by his side almost instantly. “Not fair,” she said, out of breath. “I’ve a new mount and don’t know the way yet.”

“You always did manage to find some excuse for losing,” he taunted.

Amelia pulled herself up in the saddle and adjusted the flat silk hat that had tilted crazily along with the chignon it was perched upon. “Mercy, that felt good,” she said with a grin.

Parker beamed at her as they took a minute to enjoy being together again. Morgan and his horse were still halfway across the meadow, heading toward them at a sedate walk. From this vantage point Amelia could look up the end of the valley and see a series of odd-looking wooden contraptions built next to and partly in the river. A rough bridge crossed the water and led to a small house built from unfinished pine logs.

They walked their horses up the hill toward the structures. “Home sweet home,” Parker said.

Amelia’s gaze had fixed on a tall blond man emerging from the door of the cabin.

“Oh, good,” Parker said. “You can meet my new partner.”

The smile faded from Amelia’s face as she let her horse take its lead from Parker’s. They picked their way through scattered mining equipment and what looked like mazes built of wood. When they reached their end of the little bridge Parker stopped and waved to the man across the river. “Gabe,” he yelled. “Come meet my sister.”

Gabriel Hatch sauntered across the log bridge. He’d bathed and shaved and changed his clothes. His dark suit was impeccable. His shirt was snowy white punctuated with a dark purple waistcoat and matching silk tie. He could have passed for one of the dandies from London who visited their father now and then on transatlantic business.

“We’ve met,” he said, approaching their horses. He turned to Amelia. She could see the sunlight actually glinting off his long blond eyelashes as he winked at her and drawled, “I had the honor of spending the night with your sister, Parker.”

Parker’s eyes widened. He snapped his head around toward Amelia.

She unconsciously tightened her fingers around the pommel of her saddle as her knees suddenly refused to hold her on the horse.

Gabe took a step forward and offered his hand. “May I assist you?” The formal politeness of his tone was contradicted by a smug smile.

Amelia ignored his proffered hand and slid off her mount as gracefully as her weakened legs would allow.

“It’s nice to see you again, Miss Prescott,” he persisted.

“The feeling is not mutual, Mr. Hatch,” she said stiffly. Then she grasped her horse’s reins and pushed her way past Gabe on to the wooden bridge, leaving Parker staring after her in amazement.