Unforgettable

by Rosanne Bittner

  “I think if Trevor tries anything at all, boss, it will be up at the mines,” Wayne put in. “One well-placed explosion could close down a mine for days, maybe weeks.”

  Holliday took his feet down from the desk and leaned forward to take a cigar from the silver box on his desk. “I’m well aware of that. That’s why I’ve got good men up there keeping an eye on things, and keeping Trevor Gale and his brothers well away from the mines. The last I heard they were trying to get work at the Silver Lady up on Calico Mountain, but other mine owners have heard what troublemakers they are. Nobody will hire them, which is going to make them even angrier at me.” He glanced at Ethan. “You did the right thing, Ethan, not letting Trevor go down that day, but it’s costing me time and men just to keep an eye on Trevor and his damn drunken brothers. It’s not your fault, just a fact of life. The extra cost is still nothing compared to what it would be to have one of my mines blown to bits and most of the men with it. I’d rather spend the money on precautions.”

  “When do I head out to start scouting?” Ethan asked.

  Holliday looked at Wayne. “Shipment goes out next Tuesday, six days from now,” Trapp told him, taking pride in being one of the few who knew just when the gold would be hauled to Colorado Springs.

  Holliday thought a moment. “Get started tomorrow,” he told Ethan. “That will give you time to ride all the way to Colorado Springs and back again before the gold train pulls out. Can you do it?”

  Ethan removed his hat and wiped at his forehead with his shirtsleeve. This was the warmest day he could remember in a long time. “You’re the boss, and I sure as hell don’t have anything better to do.”

  “You’ll be well paid,” Holliday told him. “I’ll—”

  “Hey, it’s her!” The shouted words in the street below interrupted their conversation. “Hall told me she’s at the assayer’s office—brought in some gold!” The words floated up through an open window of Roy Holliday’s second-story office. Ethan noticed Holliday and Wayne Trapp look at each other as though they knew something he didn’t. Trapp walked to the open window through which the words had come and looked into the street below.

  “Somethin’s up. A couple of men are runnin’ up the street like there’s somethin’ to see.” He turned to look at Holliday. “You think she could have made it to town by herself?”

  Holliday glanced at Ethan as though he wasn’t sure Ethan should be hearing what was being said. He looked back at Wayne. “A person gets short enough on supplies, he or she has no choice. Go on out there and see what’s going on. It might not even be who we think it is.”

  Wayne chuckled. “Who else would the men around here make a fuss over? He headed for the door, then hesitated before opening it. “What if it is her?”

  Holliday grinned slyly. “Just let her know you’re around and we haven’t forgotten she’s up there, but don’t make a big scene in front of the miners. Go easy and just make your presence known. Maybe she’s here to sell out.”

  Wayne grinned in return and headed out. Ethan watched Holliday, wondering what the fuss was about. “Something going on I should know about?”

  Holliday rose and walked to the window himself, watching Wayne head up the street. “Not really. Just some woman mining a claim all by herself. The men in town think she’s some kind of brave saint, but all she is is a near-child—a foolish, dreaming child at that. She thinks she can make a fortune off her claim, but it’s practically worthless. She’s up there risking her life for nothing, when she could be living in comfort down in Denver with some wealthy man giving her everything she could want. Hell, she’s pretty enough to have any man she desires. Why she chooses to stay up there and risk death is beyond me. She’s a stubborn little thing.” He turned away from the window. “I tried to buy her out a week or so ago, but she chased me and Wayne off her claim with a rifle. Can you believe that?”

  Ethan’s heart ached at the words. It sounded so much like something Allyson would do. “I knew a woman like that once,” he answered rather absently, staring down at the cheroot he had just taken out of his mouth. “I was even married to her for a little while.”

  “Married? I never even thought to ask if you’d ever been married.”

  Ethan continued to watch smoke curl up from his thin cigar. “Had a Cheyenne wife a few years back. She died. Then I met Ally. Turns out she only married me to keep title to some property she had back in Guthrie. When she found out being married to an Indian didn’t help her any, that was the end of the marriage. It lasted all of one night.” He shook his head and put the cheroot back to his lips. “That was one hell of a night, though.”

  Holliday chuckled. “That’s kind of a coincidence, you calling her Ally. The woman up at that claim—her name is Allyson. Allyson Mills. She wouldn’t by any chance be—” The man watched Ethan literally pale. Ethan took the cheroot from his mouth and walked past Holliday’s desk to look out the window, then turned to look at Holliday with eyes literally on fire with excitement.

  “Red hair? Young?”

  Holliday’s smile faded. “Yes,” he answered, “but you don’t think—”

  “My God!” Ethan exclaimed. He dropped the cheroot into an ashtray and strode on long legs to the door, charging out and down a stairway without a word of explanation.

  “Jesus,” Holliday mumbled. Was it the same woman? What the hell would Ethan Temple think or do if he found out she had been threatened by himself and Wayne? “And Wayne’s stupid enough to give her more trouble, which is the last thing I need happening in front of the miners,” he muttered aloud. He got up and hurried out himself—he could already see a crowd gathered around the assayer’s office up the street.

  Allyson carefully replaced the lid on the small jar that held all the precious gold flakes and nuggets she had managed to glean from the creek at her claim. The assayer, Lloyd Hunt, had told her the gold, a little over a pound of it, valued roughly two hundred and fifty dollars—not much for the dangers and hard work of the past three months. She could make that much in two months back in Guthrie when she had the restaurant, and at least there she was safe and could enjoy the company of other people and the convenience of living in town.

  “I’ll make out a slip declaring its value,” Hunt told her as he wrote something on a piece of paper. “You can take it to the bank and exchange the gold for money.” He handed her the paper and looked up at her over spectacles perched on the end of his nose. “That’s pretty raw stuff, Miss Mills. From what I can determine, the nuggets contain strictly gold, no silver, but extracting that gold in its purest form takes work, so you aren’t getting the full value of the nuggets. Pure gold is always worth more.”

  “I understand.”

  Hunt frowned, his freckled, bald head shining in a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight. “Miss Mills, considering the fact that those nuggets aren’t pure gold, you really have no bonanza up there. I hate to see someone so young and pretty waste her best years slaving away at something that is really not worth that kind of work. You really ought to give up on that claim. Sell it to someone who can afford to get inside that mountain and mine it right. At the rate you’re going, you’ll never have enough money to do that.”

  Allyson took the paper and shoved it into her pants pocket. “I suppose men like Roy Holliday pay people like you to say that.” She watched the man’s face and head redden slightly, and she knew she was right. “You think I’m dumb just because I’m young and a woman, but I’ve been around, Mr. Hunt. I have also met Mr. Holliday and his fat companion, and not by choice. You’d better not be lying about the value of my gold.”

  Hunt just shook his head. “I’ll admit some of the bigger miners like to know what’s being found up there, but I don’t lie about the value of what is brought in to me, Miss Mills, and what you’re digging out of that creek up there is hardly worth the effort.” The man studied Allyson’s tired but pretty eyes. Her sunburned face sported a few freckles, and he suspected her figure under her too-big denim pants an
d loose shirt was much nicer than she was allowing anyone to see. She was a delicate wisp of a woman, damn brave, he thought. He was tempted to tell her the truth about her claim, that if she just went up higher on that mountain, she’d find another digging—this one left by John Sebastian. The gold from that digging had been worth a fortune, almost pure nuggets, but Holliday paid him well to keep quiet about it. He personally didn’t want to think that Roy Holliday could have had anything to do with John Sebastian’s death. He didn’t like being involved in murder, and he couldn’t bring himself to believe that a refined, wealthy man like Holliday would stoop to such tactics just to get his hands on another mine. He already had all the money any man could ever want.

  “I happen to believe that somewhere up there I’ll hit the big one,” Allyson replied. She slipped her jar into a leather bag to guard it against breaking. “I’m not giving up yet, Mr. Hunt. You can tell that to Roy Holliday.” She headed for the door, then hesitated when she saw a small crowd gathered outside. “Damn,” she whispered.

  “A young lady pretty as you and up there mining a claim all by herself is going to attract attention in a town like Cripple Creek, Miss Mills,” Hunt said. “That’s just the way it is.”

  Allyson took a deep breath, moving the jar into her left arm and resting her right hand on the butt of the six-gun strapped to her hip. Behind her, Lloyd Hunt almost laughed out loud at the sight. Allyson opened the door, and a couple of dozen men stepped a little closer, staring.

  “How’d you do, Miss Mills?” one old man asked her. “You find that bonanza yet?”

  Allyson realized they were all rooting for her, and it gave her the courage and determination to go back to her claim. Suddenly it didn’t matter so much that all her hard work had only brought her two hundred and fifty dollars, part of which she would have to use for supplies. “Not yet,” she told them. “But I’m not giving up.”

  “That’s the spirit, ma’am,” another told her.

  “That’s stupidity,” came another voice. Allyson recognized the low, gravelly sound even before she turned around to see Wayne Trapp standing behind her. He grinned through brown teeth. “How much did you get, Miss Mills? A hundred dollars? Maybe two hundred?” He spit tobacco juice at her feet. “Ain’t much for riskin’ your life—” His eyes moved over her hungrily. “And your personal reputation up there every day. You could have a damn good life, lady, if you just sold that claim. You ain’t never gonna make no money off it.”

  Allyson held her chin high, so concentrated on Trapp that she did not notice another man looking at her from around the corner of the building. Ethan had come on foot, leading Blackfoot by the reins and taking a back street to the assayer’s office, wanting to be sure who the commotion was about before making his presence known. He watched the slender young woman with a big leather bag under one arm, overwhelmed with a mixture of joy and disbelief. He didn’t have to see her face to know it was Ally. Just the sight of that small frame, the sound of her voice, the way she was standing up to Wayne Trapp, all told him what he needed to know. How in the world had she ended up here at Cripple Creek? How long had she been here without his knowing it, and how did Wayne Trapp know her?

  “How much I made and whether or not I choose to keep mining my claim is none of your business, Mr. Trapp,” she answered boldly.

  Ethan grinned, almost wanting to cry, hating her…loving her. Ally! Should he even bother to see her? Did she hate him for leaving her and never coming back? One thing was certain, the way she stood up to Trapp, she had not changed one bit. Some of the other men were shouting their support for her answer.

  “You just remember, little lady, how easy it is to break into that flimsy little cabin you’ve got up there at your claim.”

  Ethan could not see them from where he stood around the corner of the building, but he knew Trapp had spoken those words. What did he mean by that? Had he already paid Allyson a visit? What the hell had he done? It seemed incredible that Ally would actually dare to stay up on the mountain alone to mine her claim, but then this was Allyson Mills. A man shouldn’t be surprised by anything she did.

  “Maybe you would like all these men to know what a brute you are,” Allyson retorted.

  Ethan peeked around the corner of the building to see Allyson turn away from Trapp and face the crowd. “Mr. Trapp and his fancy boss, Roy—”

  “Well, well, Miss Mills!” Roy Holliday interrupted, moving through the crowd and to the steps of the assayer’s office. “I see you finally made it back down to Cripple Creek. How did you do? Did you get much gold out of that claim?” The man smiled affably, putting on a grand show for the men who were watching. “We’ve all been rooting for you.”

  Allyson stepped closer to the edge of the boardwalk in front of the building, and Ethan noticed the gun on her hip. He grinned at the sight.

  “Is that so?” she answered Holliday. “You didn’t seem to be rooting for me when you and your friend paid me a visit a week ago and broke my door down.”

  The miners mumbled among each other, and Ethan’s anger began to build at her words. Roy Holliday had been bullying Ally. Why? To get her claim? What the hell did Roy Holliday care about one woman’s claim? The man had millions.

  “Now, Miss Mills, you know that was an accident. Wayne just doesn’t know his own strength. I’ve apologized for that.” He turned to the crowd. “We’re all rooting for the little lady, aren’t we, boys?”

  They put up their fists and cheered and nodded, and Ethan could see Holliday was trying to smooth over an embarrassing situation. What had really happened up there? He had never really liked Roy Holliday, but he didn’t think the man was capable of stooping low enough to harass a woman. The fact that it was Ally made him even angrier. It seemed that all her life she’d been bullied around by some man.

  “What your man did was no accident!” Allyson insisted to Holliday. That’s it, Ally girl, Ethan thought. Use their sympathy. Get the miners on your side and Holliday can’t do a thing to you. She was at it again, using the woman in her to gain help and sympathy. She was facing the miners now, Roy Holliday standing in front of them on the steps. “Mr. Holliday and his paid thug here came to visit me at my claim,” she told the miners. “They threatened me and tried to force me into selling out. Mr. Trapp even broke down my door, but I made him dance a pretty dance with my rifle, and he promptly left!”

  All the men laughed, and Trapp’s face began to turn red. “You lyin’ little bitch!” he growled. Before Holliday could stop him, he grabbed for Allyson, who tried to draw her six-gun. Trapp grasped her right wrist so she could not grab the gun, and in the struggle she dropped the leather bag. Everyone could hear the crashing sound.

  “Let her go, you damn fool!” Holliday told Wayne. “We don’t treat women this way, and you know it!”

  The tension in the crowd was heavy.

  “She was gonna shoot me,” Wayne protested.

  “And she’d have every right!” Holliday retorted. He reached down to help Allyson to her feet, but she yanked her arm back, glaring hatefully at him. “Don’t you touch me.” She could not hold back the tears then, realizing the jar full of gold had broken. It would be a mess trying to sort out glass from gold flakes inside the leather bag. The bank would not take it the way it was. She had been so careful, had taken hours gleaning the little flakes from her many jars of water and getting everything into one bigger jar.

  She wiped her tears with the back of her hand and knelt down to pick up the leather bag, when someone else stepped up onto the boardwalk. At first she saw only leather boots and denim pants. “That was a damn stupid thing to do, Trapp,” came a voice. It sounded very familiar.

  “It was an accident,” Trapp protested.

  “Like the door to her cabin?”

  Ethan? No, it couldn’t be! Allyson looked up, hardly able to see his face at first because of her tears, but he was certainly tall like Ethan.

  “You plan to do something about it, Indian?”

&nb
sp; Indian! Allyson sniffed, started to rise. “Stay put,” Ethan gently commanded. Allyson obeyed.

  “Ethan,” she whimpered. “How—”

  He walked past her. “I suggest you get down on your knees and apologize to Miss Mills, and then I suggest you go into the assayer’s office with her and help her sort out her gold from the glass. We all know what was in that leather bag. With the jar broken, it will take hours to get it all separated.”

  “Look, Ethan, Wayne’s done a stupid thing, I’ll agree,” Holliday spoke up. “I don’t want any trouble. I’ll help sort the gold.”

  Ethan kept his eyes on Trapp. “Stay out of this, Holliday. I am no longer under your employ.”

  Employ? Ethan worked for Roy Holliday? Allyson stared up at him in disbelief, scooting against the wall near the door.

  “I ain’t apologizin’ to no back-talkin’, gun-totin’ shrimp of a woman who’s crazy enough to try to mine gold all on her own,” Wayne answered Ethan, straightening and giving Ethan a belligerent stare. “Anybody comes to this country to mine for gold has to accept all the dangers and risks that comes with it, man or woman. If she can’t handle herself, she ought to sell out and get the hell out of Cripple Creek!”

  Ethan removed his leather hat and threw it down near Ally. “It’s real easy to bully a small woman who weighs a good hundred and sixty or seventy pounds less than you, isn’t it, Trapp? How about picking on somebody closer to your own size. Think you can handle that?”

  Trapp threw down his own hat, and some of the men pulled an embarrassed and enraged Roy Holliday out of the way, shouting at Ethan to “take Wayne Trapp down a notch or two.” Ethan suspected a lot of them would like to do the honors, but the man was so big, none of them had cared to try.