Gasping loudly like a beached fish, Harley separated from his tormentor as Neil fell back on his ass. Ivy withdrew the candle so Harley could fall back, too, and the two men sat there stunned, blinking at each other.
Neil wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grinned. “That’ll teach you. Think twice next time you break the law, prisoner.”
Ivy made no move to untie Harley’s hands, paying close attention to wiping down the poor misused candle before inserting it into the holder. Neil got to his feet, an enormous erection bulging between his leather chaps, but Harley remained helpless on the floor, panting. “Yes,” Harley agreed. “I will definitely think twice next time.” He cast Neil a playful grin. “Think twice about doing it more often to displease you.”
A pounding on the door brought Harley to his senses. “Tempest!” It sounded like that saloonkeeper, Ace Moyer. “I’m here with the forty rod. Where’d you put the prisoner?”
“Untie me!” Harley whispered as Neil went to unlatch the door. “Stuff my cock back into my trousers, woman.”
Moyer could probably see his naked ass when Harley turned his back to the door. But Harley heard Neil say, “Don’t drink it all, Moyer. We need to placate Shortridge, since I really have no reason to be holding him anymore. He’ll need all the forty rod he can get.”
Don’t drink it all…For some reason, those words echoed in Harley’s addled head. “Hurry,” he told Ivy. Once his hands were loose, he stuffed his cock into his trousers and buttoned them, turning around.
Just in time to see Ace Moyer in the doorway, limping as he followed Neil to the lockup.
Chapter Nineteen
“How many children do you want to have, Ivy?”
Ivy’s fingers on the glass tumbler stilled. She had not expected this question so soon in her courtship with Neil. Of course she’d discussed children with her former fiancé, John Prahl. Ivy imagined she was capable of bearing children and assumed Mr. Prahl would want a son, so they’d agreed to start right after their wedding.
She thought Neil was joshing just to pass the time while Harley developed the photograph he’d taken of Ace Moyer in the Bucket of Blood. Harley had pretended he wanted the photograph for the wall of the new depot restaurant, to show various businessmen in action, and Moyer had fallen for it. Little did Moyer know they suspected him of being the Laramie Strangler—of owning a derby and the partner to that fringed, beaded glove they’d discovered next to the brothel’s bathtub.
So she continued pouring the claret and answered lightly, “Oh, a passel of children. Why not? How many do you want?”
She turned to face Neil, who sat at her father’s desk chair idly glancing at Shortridge’s illiterate letter. He looked at her and grinned. “A passel, too.”
He was being as flippant as her, which irritated her to no end. So she took her glass of claret and meandered over to where he sat, leaning back in her father’s chair with ankles crossed. She knew he enjoyed this position since it enhanced the look of his cock cradled in the crotch of the chaps. Perching on the edge of the desk, she leaned toward him, displaying her swelling bosom. That made him lower the letter.
“Sincerely?” she asked. “You honestly want a passel of children?”
“Of course. I was an only child. My father was a floored lush, so it was just me and my mum.” He added with a touch of shame, “Which was why I was arrested for being such a flash cracksman so many times. As a lad, I had no other choice than to break into other folks’ swell cribs.”
“I’m sorry. I knew you weren’t some out-and-out criminal or they wouldn’t have hired you as head of security out here.”
“Oh, they would have, all right,” said Neil cheerfully. “They’d pick anyone from a backwater drugstore in Yankton, which is where they seem to have chosen Ezekiel. I just became a much better candidate for head of security once I was hobbled.”
They both looked to the front of the house, where the discordant notes of a new harmonica wafted down the hallway. They had roped Zeke into attending their newest séance but hadn’t told him they suspected Moyer. Zeke had a tendency to blab, and they didn’t want to tip their hands.
“So,” said Ivy, “being an only child made you yearn for a big family of your own?”
“Something like that, yeah. I’ve worked hard to get the Serendipity Ranch, which is why I refused to sell to Moyer. I’m thinking that by getting rid of Shortridge’s wife, he reckoned on Shortridge going loco, which is what happened. Shortridge confirmed that Moyer was the ‘sinister character’ who had tried to buy his ranch. And Whit Gentry has no children, making his wife much more liable to sell.”
“But why?” asked Ivy. “I mean, why does he need so much land?”
Harley appeared in the doorway holding a glass negative plate between his fingers. “Because in my advance survey, the new railroad goes right through the land of the murdered men. And of Serendipity Ranch.”
Neil sat upright, a hand on Ivy’s knee. “That’s right. A corner of my ranch does go through future railroad land. They’ve already paid me for the easement.”
“At a handsome profit, no?”
“Well, yes.”
Harley came into the study. “You wouldn’t believe how many bribes and extortion attempts have been going on behind the scenes. A surveyor could be set for life if he just mapped out a track through the richest lands where he could gain the richest bribes. If the route deviates in the near future from the maps I submitted to Grenville Dodge, it wasn’t my doing.”
“Ace Moyer is a Manifest Destiny man,” said Neil. “He’s always been first in line to run roughshod over any man to further his own aims. But then, so is every other cove in the West. You’ve got to be ruthless to survive here. I never noticed Ace standing out from the crowd as far as being on the make, aspiring and ambitious.”
Harley said, “The doctor said no earrings were found on Minerva’s exhumed body, as Rodney expected there would be. The key to arresting Shortridge would be finding the earrings on him.”
Ivy said, “Or the derby. Or the missing glove. What did the photograph show?”
Harley grinned. He came to the desk and held the plate up to a window. “A fairly interesting depiction of a woman.”
Neil craned his neck to view the negative. It showed Ace Moyer with crossed arms leaning against his fancy bar from St. Louis, neat rows of bottles and mirrors displaying his affluence.
Ivy said warmly, “A woman? In the photograph? Was there a woman in the bar when you made the photograph?”
“Not that you could see,” Harley teased. “But here she manifested herself.”
Ivy gasped, just as Neil saw the woman Harley referred to.
Standing directly next to Ace, her silhouette clear as day, the diminutive figure of Minerva Shortridge loomed. Neil was familiar enough with her by now to make out the harshly parted hair that fell straight to her shoulders, the humorless mouth that was the horizontal line of a bird’s beak, and—most frightening of all—that she posed clutching a forty rod jug, as though about to bash Ace Moyer over the head.
“Minerva!” cried Neil. “But I don’t recall Ace being pasted while we were in the Bucket of Blood today.”
“Perhaps,” said Ivy, “she decided to refrain.”
Harley said, “Maybe she only strikes the men she’s particularly fond of, like you.”
Disgusted, Neil got to his feet. He suddenly felt like downing some forty rod himself, but they had a lot of work to do. “Problem is, we can’t very well just arrest Ace based on the fact that he likes forty rod and he’s limping from a bullet you put in his leg when he tried to rob Ivy’s stage. We’ve never seen him wearing a derby, for instance.”
“And that he tried to buy land from all these neighbors who have wound up dead,” mentioned Ivy.
“Yes,” Neil agreed heatedly. “Let’s start this damned séance. If we learn nothing from it, I’m going directly to Ace’s house to investigate and find out what he’s got stashed.”
But the séance apparently had already started. Zeke came clattering down the hallway waving his harmonica as though it was an opera ticket. “Where is she?” he demanded. “Where is that seductive prairie flower who was just here?”
Neil sputtered in disgust, but Harley had the presence of mind to question the adjutant. “Which woman, Zeke? A few just passed through here,” he lied.
Zeke looked a bit embarrassed, looking to all four corners of the room as though his “prairie flower” would be revealed. “Why, the brazen yet stimulating strumpet who just tried to dab me up!” He fairly elbowed Neil in his camaraderie. “Right, Neil? Dabbing it up? That’s how you say it in—”
It was becoming clear to Neil. “How did she try to ‘dab you up,’ Zeke? What did she look like?”
“Why…Just an average woman, Neil! Brown, shoulder-length hair, curvaceous figure. You know, the usual!”
“What did she do?” Harley prodded.
Zeke was really sweating it now. “Why? Who is she? She merely came up from behind and grabbed my—ah, my posterior region. She said she was no longer your belle, Neil, and she was looking for a better man. I hate to tell you that. Don’t think I’ve come to steal your belles from you, pal.”
Neil roared at the ceiling, “Minerva!”
Zeke chuckled. “Jealous, eh? I saunter in picking up your offal—the damaged, deranged women reeling from your mistreatment!”
“Come out, come out, Minerva!” Neil shouted. “I know what you’re up to! If you’re trying to rile me, it’s working, so you can just knock it off now, hear?”
Zeke was now confiding in Ivy. “You might think twice about hitching your wagon to this maniac, Miss Hudson. See what he drives women to! Now poor Minerva is wandering around town lamenting, heading over to dab it up with Ace Moyer next, out of desperation and anguish after being thrown over by this heartless—wait, Minerva?” He chuckled. “That’s an unusual name. Two Minervas in one town?”
“Ace Moyer?” Harley questioned the clerk. “What makes you think Minerva was heading over to dab it up with Ace Moyer?”
Zeke shrugged. “She told me so.”
“What were her exact words?”
Zeke screwed up his face in an effort to recall what had just happened a minute ago. “Well. She grabbed a bottle and brandished it at the ceiling—at you, you pathetic lothario—and screamed, ‘Damn you, Ace Moyer, for tormenting so many women! I’m coming to get you next!’”
Neil queried, “Did she say ‘so many women’? Maybe she said ‘so many people.’”
Zeke looked deflated. “Yes. She could’ve said ‘so many people.’” He cheered up visibly and strutted like a peacock. “Your castoff women come running to me! Who would’ve ever thought? Ezekiel Vipham, Adjutant to Simon Hudson of the Union Pacific Railroad. A fancy man—me! I’m telling you, Neil, you can send them my way any time! Why, ol’ Zeke Vipham will be happy to pick up your loafers and losers, your rejects. My mother told me—”
Bonk. A large object brained Ezekiel Vipham square in the center of his forehead. His eyes crossed, his limbs went limp, and he dropped in his tracks, a puddle of limbs on the floor.
The object that Neil snatched up was a full forty rod jug with no cork, and the amber liquid oozed down Zeke’s cheekbones, pooling in the pit of his throat. A wave of raw alcohol, sugar, and chewing tobacco wafted up from his person, and Neil saw two tiny objects glittering by Zeke’s elbow. Grabbing them, he displayed them to Ivy’s feminine eyes.
“Minerva’s earrings,” she whispered. She looked up at the ceiling. “Rodney said they were emeralds. Did they just materialize from the thin blue sky?”
“It appears so,” said Harley. “I don’t think Zeke had them in his pocket or anything.”
“A buffalo,” it sounded as though Zeke breathed.
Neil looked at his friends. “Did he just say ‘a buffalo’?”
Ivy said, “Remember, Rodney said a bison skull was wearing earrings? And Caleb’s vision from several days ago…”
But there was no time to query the insensate Zeke any further. Right outside the study window, through the field that separated Vancouver House from its neighbor, an immense brown blob streaked past. The dull sound of thundering hooves resonated inside the study, and the blob was gone.
“Bison!” shouted Neil. “There’s a goddamned bison going on a tear through the goddamned town!”
Chapter Twenty
Ivy raced ahead of the men, who had taken a few moments to grab their rifles from the foyer.
She emerged onto Garfield Street just in time to see the bison’s hindquarters flashing as it rampaged north onto Third Street. Its enormous hooves glimmered as it turned the corner by the Fowler residence, kicking up little puffs of dust, glancing the side of a moving buggy. Ivy bounded down the street after it, her skirts whipping about her calves.
A lone bison charging through the center of town? After witnessing the rare herd on the Laramie River, Ivy had changed her beliefs about what was possible. There wasn’t even supposed to be a herd that far west, but there it was, witnessed by the three of them. It was not a case of mass mesmerism. When they’d returned to Laramie City, the whole town had been atwitter with talk about the earthquake, and many wooden structures had collapsed. The timbers of the Keystone Hall saloon had fallen on dozens of men engaged in three-card monte, smothering them with canvas. One man died with his face in a spittoon. There were rifts in the earth where plates had been torn asunder, now separated by ten-foot gaps. So many bottles had fallen from the shelves behind the Bucket of Blood’s bar, a river of booze flowed out the front door.
Ivy thought as she raced along. A lone bison in Laramie City is entirely possible.
The bison cantered into the barn door of the Elkhorn Barn and Livery Stable, its hind legs skittering, tail swishing alluringly. Neil and Harley overtook Ivy before she could enter the barn, and the trio briefly paused, staring at the silent building.
Harley asked, “Do you think that bison is really ‘she who talks to no purpose’?” He looked at Ivy, perhaps as being the one most likely to believe that spirits could manifest as animals. “Could Minerva be that bison?”
“Anything’s possible,” uttered Ivy. “It manifested the moment Zeke got brained with the firewater.”
“But we’re all seeing it,” Harley said, more of a question than a statement.
“Yes,” Ivy and Neil replied.
“I need to go appeal to her,” said Neil, quickly adding, “if indeed that’s her.” He turned to Ivy. “You stay here.”
“I’m not staying anywhere,” Ivy mumbled, following the two swaggering men clutching their rifles.
“I wonder what she’s doing in there?” Harley asked. “She must be leading us to something.”
“She told Zeke she was looking for Ace,” said Neil. “But why would Ace be in the livery?”
The question was answered when they peeked around the edge of the barn door.
Thirty feet away, a man in a derby crouched over with his back to them, obviously strangling someone with a length of reata or other cord. He strained with the strangling effort as the poor victim flailed and clutched at the rope. There was no sign of the bison.
“That’s Tom Cudahy,” whispered Neil. “He owns this livery.”
Before Ivy could even think “That’s not Ace Moyer,” Harley shouldered his rifle and squeezed off a ball at the murderer. The derby shot comically into the air, striking a low wooden beam. The strangler stood upright, spinning around to face them. The victim still dangled helplessly, but the reata was loosened enough that color rushed back into his face. Harley must have intentionally only shot at the hat, Ivy knew. From the distance he’d blown out Ace Moyer when he’d tried to rob the stagecoach, she knew he was an excellent shot, probably more experienced than the head of security.
“Ace!” Neil hissed.
For it was Ace Moyer. He had attempted to disguise himself with not only the derby but with a most inappropriate, d
roopy, and ridiculous fake moustache. It appeared Ace hadn’t had time to glue the moustache on properly, for it teetered on his upper lip as though he’d pasted a porcupine there. Ace had to release the reata with one hand to reach for his holster, but Harley and Neil advanced on him with shouldered rifles, Neil growling, “Freeze.”
Ace froze as Tom Cudahy dropped free to the horse shit at their feet, gasping for air. Ace immediately bent and grabbed the reata ends again, strangling Cudahy afresh.
“What you got against Cudahy, Ace?” Neil shouted.
“He was in my way!” Ace shouted back, knuckles white as he gripped the reata. Cudahy choked, a purplish tongue sliding from his mouth like a rotten oyster. “I didn’t mean to kill him, but he caught me cutting off hair from a horse’s tail.”
“To make that preposterous moustache?” Ivy sang from her spot by the barn door. “It looks like you cut the bristles off a shaving brush.”
Ace flashed black eyes at her. “It’s not preposterous! It’s a very able disguise—when no one catches me in the act!” He yanked Cudahy off the ground to punctuate his words.
“Put him down, Moyer,” Neil bellowed. “We’ve got you nailed. There’s no way out of this.”
Harley commanded from the corner of his mouth, “Ivy, get out of the barn.”
But she didn’t.
His face twisting into all sorts of angry shapes, Ace appeared to struggle with his next step. Being at the barrel end of two Sharps rifles must have made the decision for him, for he released the grip on the reata and ripped through a rear barn door, out to where the animals were corralled.
Again, Harley shot, this time getting him in the same lame leg he’d shot the week before. Ace vanished out the door, though, and since Neil dashed off after him, Harley couldn’t shoot again.
Ivy followed, peering out around the corner of the door for protection, just in time to see Ace shoot his revolver into the air, perhaps as a warning. Blood already stained his injured leg, which he now clutched with his free hand, and he shrieked, “I was coming to get you next, Tempest! You’d be stone dead if it wasn’t for your sharpshooting, bum-sucking pal here!”
Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 16