Allyson met his eyes, refusing to look shocked or afraid. “I can learn, Mr. Gibson. You might be surprised at how easily I adapt to situations, and how hard I can work. I don’t doubt that in my nineteen years I’ve worked harder than you have in your whole life, and you must be almost three times my age.” The man reddened a little in anger and insult. Allyson took delight at the look on his face. “As far as being afraid of all those men, I think most men recognize a proper lady when they see one. Those who don’t will just have to answer to my pistol. In fact, I’ll buy myself a rifle or a shotgun before I go. And I don’t think too many men will be willing to kill a woman, do you? Besides, whoever killed Mr. Sebastian wouldn’t dare kill me, too. It would be taking too great a risk, stir up too much trouble. Whoever it is probably thinks he can just take over the claim or easily buy out whoever backed Sebastian.” She walked back to stand in front of Gibson. “He figured wrong. It’s pretty obvious why Sebastian was killed. That claim must be worth more than we think. Why should I sell it for a pittance when I might make a fortune from it?”
Gibson got up from his desk and faced her. “You’re crazy. A woman can’t go up there alone and dig for gold. It’s damn hard work, and obviously too dangerous.”
Allyson smiled. This was a challenge, like the day she decided to run off that orphan train and join the land rush. “This woman can do it, Mr. Gibson.”
“You’re only nineteen years old, and you don’t know the first thing about prospecting! You don’t even know how to find the claim! On top of that, it’s still winter up there! Everything is buried in snow!”
Allyson decided not to tell the man that she wouldn’t really be nineteen until May. After all, it was only two months away. She picked up her cape and threw it around her shoulders. “I am perfectly aware of the season, Mr. Gibson, and I have been here long enough to have heard all the stories about snow in the Rockies. But that doesn’t stop the mining from continuing, does it?” She smiled, feeling a new excitement growing in her soul. “Like I said, I can learn everything I need to know. You told me you have maps. I’ll simply hire a guide to take me up there.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“Please give me the maps, Mr. Gibson. You’ve done your job. The rest is up to me.”
He scowled, walking around behind his desk and opening a drawer. “Use your head and sell out. You can get a good price, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that. Someone will give me a few hundred dollars, claiming the site is worthless, then turn around and mine it and make millions. I prefer the millions in my own pocket.” Allyson reached out and took the maps from him, suspecting Gibson had pulled things like this before. He could be a silent partner with whoever bought these supposedly worthless claims, then share in the fortune once they were properly mined. “I would like a signed paper from you, Mr. Gibson, stating you have no further interest in me or my claim. I don’t want you to come running and claiming I owe you something when you find out I’ve struck it rich.”
Gibson reddened with anger at her haughtiness. “I am not part of some kind of scam here, Miss Mills!”
“Aren’t you? You seemed awfully sure that I would sell out right away. For all I know, Mr. Sebastian isn’t dead at all. Maybe he found a good vein and you paid him off to leave it and go on to other digs, thinking I would in turn sell out. Then you and whatever mine developer with whom you’ve made a deal can take over the claim.”
The man’s eyes did seem sincere then as he leaned closer. “I’m telling you, Miss Mills, that John Sebastian was murdered. I don’t know why, and I have nothing to do with anything going on up there.”
“Then write that all down on a piece of paper and sign off any rights you might think you have to the claim. I want to be sure it is all mine, free and clear. I also want a letter from you that I can give to the claims office up at Cripple Creek, proving I grubstaked Mr. Sebastian and am the rightful owner.”
Gibson sighed in resignation, turning to his desk and sitting down. He took out a piece of paper and dipped his fountain pen into an inkwell. “Fine. It’s your funeral,” he grumbled. “I predict that within a few days you’ll either be dead or wishing you were. If the work or the weather don’t get to you, whoever wants that claim will…or maybe something worse than death will happen at the hands of men who simply like the way you look. Either way, you’ll never survive.”
The man began writing, and Allyson swallowed back her own secret terror. She walked back to a window to wait while Gibson wrote. She reminded herself that she had faced danger before and had survived. She would simply use her womanly charms, make the men feel sorry for her. For any man who had other thoughts about her, she would have a shotgun ready. As far as the work, she wasn’t afraid of that. The claim John Sebastian had staked must have great potential, or someone would never have had the man killed, if that was what had really happened. Maybe it was just an argument over cards or something, just some enemy of Sebastian’s who carried out a grudge. That would have nothing to do with her. There could be all kinds of reasons for the man’s death.
The fact remained she had a gold claim! Things were not going well for her here in Denver, so what did she have to lose? She was going to Cripple Creek! If the gold claim didn’t work out, maybe she could find some other work up there to get rich. After all, she’d heard plenty about those wild mining towns, how men would pay a fortune just to get a shirt laundered. She wondered why she hadn’t thought to go there before now.
“Here’s your damn paper,” Gibson told her after several minutes of writing. He held it out. “I think you’re crazy. Whatever happens to you up there, you deserve it.”
Allyson took the paper and read it. “Is your secretary a notary? I want this witnessed.”
Gibson rolled his eyes. “Yes, she can notarize it. We’ll do it on your way out, and for my part, I hope I never see you again. I feel obligated, though, to urge you once more not to go up there. Sell the claim, Miss Mills.”
Allyson picked up her gloves and began pulling them on. “That claim is all I have in the world, Mr. Gibson, and I have no one to answer to but myself, so I guess it doesn’t matter much what happens to me.” She picked up her handbag.
“Miss Mills, if I may be so bold, you’re a beautiful young woman who could have any man in Denver at the drop of a handkerchief. There are a lot of single, wealthy men who I am sure would be glad to have you for a wife. Why are you doing this?”
Allyson met his eyes, realizing he looked at her like all other men—as a poor, helpless woman who couldn’t get by without a man; or, like Henry Bartel, as a poor, helpless woman to be used by any man who wished to take advantage. “Contrary to your notions, Mr. Gibson, not all women need a man to be successful and survive. If I am going to become a wealthy woman, I will not do it on the coat strings of some man who treats me like a paper doll and supports me as though I were some helpless creature incapable of earning my own way. I have survived a father’s abuse and the lowest forms of human life in the alleys of New York City. I have survived abuse by a bastard of a man who ran the orphanage where I spent four years, made my way through the land rush in Oklahoma and built my own restaurant and rooming house there. By hideous fate I lost it all, but I did not let it get me down! I came to Denver to try another route, and now perhaps I have found it. I am going to Cripple Creek and I will learn how to mine my claim. If God is with me this time, I will make my fortune. I won’t need to hang on some man’s arm and be Mrs. So-and-So to do it!” She turned and walked to the door, waited for a surprised Gibson to come into his secretary’s office with her. “You might like to know that I have been married once, Mr. Gibson, but I discovered I didn’t need him after all.”
She tossed her head and opened the door, walking to Mrs. Lang’s desk. Gibson followed her, asking his secretary to witness the papers he had just written up. “She’s going up to Cripple Creek to mine the claim herself,” he told Mrs. Lang.
The hefty woman gasped. “You
can’t be serious!”
“I most certainly am,” Allyson answered, becoming more determined every time someone told her it couldn’t be done.
Mrs. Lang shook her head and scowled, signing the papers. “You are behaving like a foolish child,” she said, handing Ally the papers. “God be with you, Miss Mills.”
Allyson kept her look of confidence. She thanked both of them and walked out, heading back down the hallway, needing to get away quickly to hide her tears and her inner terror. Could she really do this? Maybe it would be a lot easier just to sell her claim, but then her lips puckered in anger at the thought. Calvin Gibson and the big mine owners who would like to buy her out, they were all just like Nolan Ives, figuring they could take advantage of a young woman whom they thought had no experience and could easily be fooled and frightened.
Not this time! This claim was something no one could take from her. It was hers legitimately, no lies, no strings. If she handled things right, using her eyes and womanly charms to win over the friendship and support of the men around her, no man would dare give her trouble.
You can do this, Ally Mills, she told herself. The first thing she had to do was find someone to guide her up to her claim. It would take every cent she had left to outfit herself and have enough left to take a train to Colorado Springs, but so be it. If the mine didn’t work out, she could still sell the claim later on and get into some other kind of business. There were fortunes to be made at Cripple Creek!
She hailed a public carriage and asked to be taken back to the rooming house. There was so much to do. Cripple Creek was up in the mountains near Pike’s Peak, nearly sixty miles south of Denver. The first thing she had to do was go to Colorado Springs and find a guide, then find out what she would need to take with her. The basic mining tools she’d already paid for should still be up at the claim.
The carriage was an open one, and she bent her head a little and pulled her cape tighter around herself against the cold air, wondering just how cold it really did get in the mountains. Thank goodness spring was just around the corner. Maybe by next winter she would have found a rich vein and could start having it professionally mined. She could build herself a fancy home at Cripple Creek and sit in its warmth while men dug more gold out of her fabulous mine.
Her thoughts were interrupted when the carriage passed two men wearing buckskin clothing. She stared at them, her heart taking a little leap, as it always did at the thought that Ethan might come and find her; but neither man was Ethan. She thought how he would have made the perfect guide, would have protected and helped her. Was he even still alive? She didn’t dare think of it. Men like Ethan simply did not die. They were invincible, weren’t they? Besides, if he was dead, he could never, never come back to her, and deep inside she liked to carry the hope that he would.
She took a map from her handbag and opened it, studying the little red “x” that showed where her claim was supposed to be. Maybe she really was crazy to do this, but she had no one to answer to but herself, no one who cared about her. That was what hurt the most. Since Toby died there had been only one person who would have really loved her and protected her, and she had let him go. Why should she care anymore about what was wise or crazy, safe or dangerous? Oh, there was one way she was sure to make a fortune at a place like Cripple Creek, but she would rather be shot up at the mine than to sleep with men for money. She could not think of anything more horrible than strange men touching her, using her body. Only one man had been able to break down the barriers. Only one man had made her want to be a woman, had left a burning desire still lingering deep in her soul.
The carriage pulled up in front of the boarding house, and she paid the driver and stepped out. She would begin packing right away, then see about getting a ticket on the Denver & Rio Grande south to Colorado Springs. She was going to mine her claim, and anyone who wanted to try to stop her be damned!
18
Ethan gazed out the window of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad car carrying him toward Pueblo, Colorado. He had no idea why he was doing this, no real plan for what he should do next. He only knew that Allyson was no longer in Guthrie. People told him she’d gone to Denver, just like she’d said she was going to do in that letter she wrote him so many months ago. For some reason, when he discovered she really was gone, it had hit him with painful reality just how much he missed her, even though he knew it was probably best this way.
Did she know about what had happened up at Wounded Knee? Did she wonder about him, think about him as often as he thought of her? He was headed west now, with no particular ideas in mind other than to get away from the hell and misery left for the Sioux in the Dakotas and the painful memories in Oklahoma. He would find work elsewhere. Part of him considered trying to find Allyson in Denver, but what would be the use? It would just reopen old wounds when he saw her again and then had to let her go.
No. He’d get off in Pueblo, unload Blackfoot and his gear, and head on farther west, just pick up jobs here and there until he knew what the hell he wanted to do; or he could stay on this train, take the Denver & Rio Grande north to Cheyenne, then ride the Union Pacific west to San Francisco. He didn’t think, though, that he could stand being on a train that long. He was already tired of this one, and he had only been on it since catching it north out of Guthrie and up into Kansas. He didn’t like being cooped up in a rattling, swaying car with a bunch of strangers who gawked at him because he looked Indian, nor did he like the smell of the smoke that drifted into the cars through their open windows from the engine’s smoke stack. If it wasn’t such a hot day, the windows wouldn’t have to be open, and right now he wished he was out riding on Blackfoot, breathing fresher air.
He never would have taken a train at all if he were not so anxious to get out of Guthrie. Once there, seeing Ally’s rooming house, remembering that first day he saw her, remembering their wedding night in one of those rooms, it brought back a flood of memories that were still more difficult to deal with than he thought they would be. Nothing was the same now. He couldn’t just go back to his old job scouting for the army. In fact, the army wasn’t needed in quite the same way as it once had been in Indian Territory. Everything was becoming more settled; civil law was taking over and after what had happened at Wounded Knee and the realization of how much land had been lost to the Indians in Oklahoma, combined with memories of Ally, it was simply too difficult to stay there and try to get back to his old life. There was no old life. Even old Hec was gone. He had died while Ethan was in the Dakotas. Most thought it was a heart attack. He’d gone to sleep and simply never woke up again. The loss of his old friend had hit hard, and it seemed everything he had cared about was gone…his grandmother, his father, his friend, Violet, the sweet freedom of his people…and Ally.
His thoughts strayed to the present when he noticed four men riding hard alongside the train. It began to slow down, but Pueblo was still several miles away. They were literally in the middle of nowhere, which meant that if the train was slowing, there was some kind of barrier on the tracks. The approaching riders immediately triggered an alarm. Train robbery had become a rather rampant pastime for outlaws—he had once helped the army track down one gang of train robbers who had hidden out in Indian Territory. In practically every town where the train stopped there were posters of men wanted for train robbery, like Oliver Curtis Perry and the James Gang. A national detective agency, called Pinkerton’s, had taken over where the law and the army could not keep up with such outlaws, and many had been apprehended; but the problem still existed, and Ethan’s sixth sense told him it was happening again right now.
Quickly he removed his gunbelt, casually looking around to see that no one noticed. He hid it under a coat he’d laid on the seat next to him, taking a quick inventory of how many people were in his particular train car. Several had gotten off at Dodge City, a few at Bent’s Fort. There were about twenty left on his car, only two of them women. One man in particular had the appearance of being quite wealthy, decke
d out in a silk suit and hat, a gold watch chain hanging from the pocket of his paisley satin vest. He was an older but handsome man, gray at the temples of his slicked, black hair, and his dark eyes held a kind of arrogance, as though he was accustomed to giving orders. The man sitting beside him seemed to be someone he knew well, and from watching them earlier, Ethan got the distinct impression the other man was some kind of bodyguard. As far as Ethan could tell, he was the only man on the train besides himself who was armed.
The train came to a full stop, and people began to mumble with concern. There were only two passenger cars on this particular train, plus a mail car. Ethan had barely finished taking inventory when a large man barged through the door at the back of the car, waving a gun. “Nobody move!” he ordered.
One woman screamed and ducked down, and everyone else just stared in fear. A shot rang out somewhere, and Ethan could hear a lot of shouting down by the mail car. “Let’s have it, folks,” the robber ordered. “Money, watches, jewelry, anything of value.”
The intruder stood perhaps six-foot-six, sported a grizzly beard and long hair, and had the appearance of a man who cared about as much for human life as he did a rabbit’s. Ethan had seen his kind before. He turned away, keeping still as the man moved through the car collecting valuables in a gunny sack. “Everybody cooperate, and we’ll be outta here in no time, soon as they get the safe open in the mail car. Ain’t any of you got nothin’ valuable enough to die for, so just be smart and hand it all over. Let’s see your wallet, mister,” he ordered a man at the back of the car.
“No!” the passenger protested. “I worked too hard for this money!”
Ethan heard the click of a gun hammer being cocked. “You willin’ to die for it? I don’t know you for shit, mister, and if I have to blow your head off to get that wallet, I’ll do it!”
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