by William Gear
“Did Margarita do something to you?”
Billy shook his head. “There’s times … like with that little Margarita girl, that I got the devil in me. But Sarah’s demon? She’s plumb evil. Comes in the night, Danny. She’s naked, all bit up and bruised, and her hair’s blowing around. Her eyes is insane and hellish. I can’t run. Can’t get up. She stands over me and reaches down. Grabs me by the cock … and all hell breaks loose.”
“Jesus.” Danny gestured his helplessness. “It ain’t yer fault, Billy! You saw. You was there when old man Darrow started the raiding. Yankee or Reb. Wasn’t no one safe. And it wouldn’t have made no difference if’n you’d been there when Dewley rode in. They’d a shot you down without a chance. Yer Maw’d still be dead. And not only would Sarah have been taken and raped and kilt, but you’d be dead, too.”
“I was responsible.”
“That’s no more than horse shit in the street. You saved your sister, and at least your maw got a decent burial. And you’re still alive. She’d a wanted that.”
“Not as a devil-filled killer.”
“So, stop! We’ll walk away. We got enough money. Hell, let’s go back to Arkansas. Buy a farm. Make whiskey. Hunt for a living. Who cares?”
“Can’t quit,” Billy said quietly as he continued to rub his shaking hands over his hot face.
“Why not, fer God’s sake? So what if the Meadowlark just up and disappears? George Nichols can do his own killin’.”
“I gotta pay.”
“You already paid enough, Billy.”
He shook his head. “That’s what Maw rises up from the grave to tell me. That I let the devil into my heart, and I’m his. It’s just a matter of time, Danny. I’m damned. He can collect me whenever he wants, and God’s gonna look the other way. Then it’s just Sarah’s demon and me, fighting it out for all eternity.”
“Billy, if you’d just let me—”
“I fuck my sister in my dreams! I’m a sick son of a bitch, Danny.” He laughed in open defiance of the desolation inside him. “And one of these days, I gotta burn in hell fer it.”
76
December 27, 1866
“Who is he?” Doc asked as he stepped out of his surgery and into the front office where Big Ed Chase waited before the heat stove. Doc was still drying his hands after washing them. There had been a lot of blood as the frozen corpse thawed.
Doc’s front office was ten by twenty, the room finished in cut pine, spruce, and fir—depending upon what had been hauled down from the mountains on any given day. The room still had the smell of fresh-cut lumber. Two windows looked out onto snowy Fifteenth Street. Pocked by horse and human tracks, lined from wheeled traffic, the street sported frozen piles of horse manure and a couple of empty bottles abandoned just out past Doc’s boardwalk.
Big Ed Chase turned, fixing Doc with his hard blue eyes. The man was six foot four, with pale blond hair. The broad jaw, wide and firm mouth, and prominent nose gave his face a powerful look—one that complemented his position in Denver society. Chase wore a buffalo coat, now thrown back on his shoulders to expose his fine black wool sack suit and the boiled white shirt beneath.
Not only was Chase on the city council, he and his partners controlled the city’s entertainment business. When it came to the better gambling dens, parlor houses, theaters, dance halls, hurdy-gurdy, and burlesque, Big Ed had an interest, as he did in much of Denver City’s prime real estate.
In the beginning, Big Ed had made a name for himself running fair games, and overseeing it all from a high stool in the middle of the tables. He always kept a loaded shotgun laid across his lap. So intimidating was he, that he had never had to use the scattergun to enforce his warnings. He backed people he thought were winners, investing in such diverse enterprises as Phillipa’s parlor house, and Doc’s surgery.
Big Ed said, “The man you just looked at back there was called Nelson Dunn. If it wasn’t for these damn dog packs running loose all over the city, we might not have found him for months. The mongrels had dragged him out from under a pile of tin cans down by the river. One of the marshals recognized him and sent word to me. I had Macy bring him to you. What can you tell me about how he died?”
“Well”—Doc propped his butt on the corner of his desk, arms crossed—“he wasn’t out for long. Cold as it is, he wasn’t froze all the way through. It’s a guess, and only a guess, but I’d say he was stabbed Christmas night. Whoever did it came up from behind, stuck a long, sharp knife in just under the floating ribs, and very efficiently cut through the diaphragm, lower lobes of both lungs, and the bottom of the heart.”
“But what does that tell us, Doc? About the killer, I mean?”
Doc spread his hands wide. “Well, sir, I can tell you it wasn’t a street fight, brawl, or misunderstanding that led to violence. It wasn’t robbery. Mr. Dunn was wearing a money belt. Something any thief would have found. The killer was strong, silent, and right-handed. No way you could consider this as a random street crime. The assassin knew who his target was and wanted him dead.”
“An assassin.”
Doc shrugged. “Whoever killed Mr. Dunn did a damn competent job of it. He was either practiced, or damn lucky.”
“It wasn’t luck.” Ed Chase took a deep breath and walked back over to the stove where he extended his large hands to the heat.
“Then you might have a better understanding than I do.”
Chase’s wide lips bent in a humorless smile. “Your brother back there?”
“We’ve rented a small house. I found a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and gave it to him for Christmas. When I left, he was reading it aloud to his imaginary men. Given they were all Confederates, it’s been a lively old time.”
The smile widened on Chase’s lips. “You’re a good man, Doc. You don’t talk, so I’ll tell you that Nelson Dunn was my agent in a land deal. The hope was to encourage a group of investors back East to build a smelter. The gold is still up there in the mountains, but it’s locked up by something called sulfides. I don’t understand the chemistry, but the mercury pans won’t pick it up. The gold goes right out with the tailings.”
Chase frowned down at the stove. “Building a smelter here, we could process the ore. Not just from the mines up around Central City, but the whole Front Range. That gold would flow through Denver, making people rich from the top down to the workers. All of whom in turn need a fair game, entertainment, and refreshment.”
Chase smiled tightly. “Which, along with the value of the land I was offering through Mr. Dunn, would continue to make me a tidy profit.”
“So you think one of your rivals removed Mr. Dunn from making the play?”
“It appears so. Currently those investors are up in Black Hawk, looking at potential land. Nelson was supposed to carry the offer to them today. But one of the Black Hawk or Central City interests appears to have gotten to him first.”
“What about Mr. Dunn’s body?”
“Put him on ice, Doctor. I’ll cover his burial out at Jack O’Neill’s ranch when the ground thaws.” Jack O’Neill’s ranch. What they called the local cemetery.
Chase started for the door, and then turned back. “Doctor, I hear you’ve become quite the hero to the demimonde. But I understand that you don’t seem to avail yourself of their charms as your predecessors did. Nor do I hear of you investigating the eligible young ladies on the respectable side of our city, few as they may be.”
Doc lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Sir, I am full-time caretaker for my brother. Until I find a cure for his ailment, I suspect my chances of paying court are rather limited.” Doc wadded the washcloth into a ball. “It’s hard to impress my fine prospects upon a young lady when I have an entire company of Arkansas infantry in attendance whenever Butler is around.”
Chase narrowed his eyes. “I also hear that when you attend our most soiled of doves, you don’t seem to betray the distaste that others in your profession do.”
“Mr. Chase.” Doc pushed off from his des
k, walking over to look up at the man. “My first professional surgery was in a brothel, and at the time, I swore I’d never stoop that low again. Along came a war, and prison camp, the loss of everything. Butler dropped into my life. I had to live for him. After all that, I gave up worrying about morality, and virtue, and sin, and damnation. Because as low as these women might fall, I’ve been lower.”
Chase considered him, the cold blue eyes thoughtful. Then he shrugged his buffalo coat onto his shoulders saying, “I would appreciate it if you’d keep our conversation about Nelson private.”
“Of course, sir.”
Chase stepped to the door, reached in his pocket and tossed Doc a twenty-dollar gold piece. “For looking after Nelson.”
“Oh, Ed? One last thing.” Doc reached into his pocket. “I found this on the body. Stuck in the wound actually.”
Big Ed took it. “A feather?”
“I’m no expert, but I think it’s from a meadowlark. And there are no meadowlarks around this time of year.”
Almost beyond hearing, Big Ed whispered, “George Nichols.” And then he was gone.
77
March 15, 1867
Sarah sat at her kitchen table, a flannel robe wrapped about her. She leaned with her elbows on the wood, watching the sky beyond her ice-rimmed window. A cup of coffee was cupped in her hands. Below her, Central City was dusted in white, as were the naked mountain slopes rising to all sides. Snow covered a lot of ugliness. It was the only time Central City and its sprawling, claptrap neighbor camps were in any way, manner, or form, pretty.
Only the distant peaks, so frosted and still-timbered, provided a sense of beauty. As if a beacon that heaven existed, but that to find it, a person was required to travel as far from Central City and its mine-scarred slopes as the eye and imagination would take them.
Sarah inhaled the aroma of her coffee as the woodstove popped and crackled behind her—the little explosions from the burning juniper powerful enough to puff tiny wreaths of smoke past the stove lids.
She’d been saving the few lengths of juniper that came mixed among the pine, spruce, and fir. It added a special aroma to the house.
Also, this day had been special. She and Bret had arrived home early from Aggie’s. Bret’s game was now two nights a week. Aggie had bought the lot next to her parlor house, and was expanding. She had hired two new girls brought in from Chicago by a cadet, or procurer, named Philo Waltee. In spite of the fact that many of the locals were worried about the reduced production from the mines, Aggie’s continued to draw an ever larger and more prosperous clientele.
The gold was there, but in lode deposits, locked in sulfates, and impossible to separate from the ore. Miners, owners, and merchants alike waited, word having passed that a smelter was coming to Black Hawk. That a man named Hill had a process that offered the hope of as much as eighty to ninety percent gold recovery from the recalcitrant ore.
Those thoughts, however, barely nagged at her as she watched the intermittent clouds rolling off the high peaks.
By all accounts, she and Bret would be gone before the smelter was built. Together they had invested most of their stake—nearly six thousand dollars—to allow Aggie to buy the lot, raze the rickety laundry, and begin construction on an addition that would house a larger gaming room downstairs and additional girls on the second floor.
Construction was scheduled to be finished by the end of May. Sarah estimated that come September her twenty percent share of the additional income would have repaid her investment, and would put her and Bret above their ten-thousand-dollar goal.
By Christmas, she figured, they would be in San Francisco and living like the lordly rich.
Funny how the world worked. All those childhood visions of fine houses, status, an influential husband in high society, raising children, and ordering servants about had been centered on her man’s success alone. Not once had she anticipated happiness or love, or even considered them goals to be striven for, let alone achieved.
Bret opened the door, bursting in, and pressing it firmly closed. “Bloody hell, it’s cold out there!” he blurted as he slipped his thick buffalo coat off and hung it on the hook by the door.
She laughed at the sight of him, shivering, as he clumped over to the stove and extended his hands to the heat. “Well, you fool, it has to be below zero. What kind of an idiot trots off to the outhouse in cold like this dressed only in long handles, a buffalo coat, and boots?”
He grinned at her, relishing the heat. Then he poured himself a cup of coffee, kicked the chair out, and seated himself opposite her.
His dark eyes were alight as he studied her through the steam rising from his enameled cup. That faint smile curled his lips. A couple of flakes of snow melted, gleaming like dew in his rich brown hair. Her stomach warmed at the animation in his eyes, the almost worship that seemed to radiate from his very soul.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“About happiness. I never thought I’d have it. And I thought love was some sort of mutual admiration and respect. A species of fond duty. Had you asked me, the notion of a lover as a best friend, a confidant and partner, would have entirely eluded me.”
“We do rather suit each other, don’t we? And this morning was … ethereal.” The little dimples were forming in his cheeks.
“Proud of yourself?” she asked.
His grin burst into a satisfied smile. “What do you think? A couple of times I thought my body was going to burst. Nor did I know you could move like that.”
Even the thought of their long morning beneath the blankets brought a tingle to her loins. Dear God, was she insatiable?
She said, “We just seem to get better and better with each other. If I didn’t keep the inventory, I’d think you’d been into Aggie’s oysters. Where do you get the stamina?”
“You have the nerve to sit there with your hair spilling over your shoulders like flowing gold and piercing my soul with those sparkling blue eyes, your long, lithe body stretched out like the goddess you are, and ask me a question like that? I need only look at you, let alone run my hand over your skin, and somehow my cock can raise itself from the dead.”
“Isn’t it peculiar, Bret? As women we’re raised with the notion that the connubial act is an unfortunate but necessary duty.” She inclined her head. “The very idea that it is enjoyable, let alone that such sensations … Well, let’s just say I feel like I’ve been catapulted out of a dark and benighted pit into a brilliant revelation.” She paused. “Is this some secret married people keep among themselves?”
“No. For most it’s considered a mere necessity to produce children. They’ve turned it into a moral battlefield filled with flying shot and shell. One that has to be negotiated so very carefully.”
“And it’s not like this for the line girls, either, is it?”
“To them it is a job. Get him on, get him in, trip his trigger, get him off, and entice the next one. Business. Pure and simple.”
“So, how did we get so lucky?”
He gave her his tantalizing wink. “We are pariahs, you and I. And being so, we are set free to explore beyond the bounds of what our choke-throated, respectable brethren back in civilization consider prudent and godly.”
He reached out, taking her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. “I made the oath to love you with all of myself. Without reservation of body or soul, and in return, I would take any crumb you offered. First you gave me your companionship, and then your trust, and finally your body and soul. You gave me my life, a direction, and a way to discover who I am as a man. And being a pariah, I can love you down to the last drop of my blood.” He squeezed her hand again. “If I could, I’d put you inside me and melt your soul into mine.”
Her throat tightened; her heart skipped.
“Bret? I’ve never told you that I loved you.”
“Nor would I ask you to.”
She returned the squeeze of his hand. “I think, my dear, that we’ve saved each other. I sp
end most of my hours dreaming of you, seeing your smile, hearing what you’d say in response to my thoughts or notions. I try to keep that sparkle in your eyes down in a safe place inside my soul. I dream of your body, of holding you close, and locking you inside while we make love. If that isn’t loving you with everything I’ve got, what is?”
He swallowed hard, his smile trembling, an upheaval behind his glistening eyes. His voice almost broke as he said, “You have no idea what that means to me.”
“Never leave me, Bret Anderson.”
“Not even with my dying breath. We’re going to live, Sarah. Do all those things you’ve been dreaming about. We’re going to spend each day experiencing everything life has to offer. Never the trite or mediocre.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And if a child should come along?”
He locked his eyes with hers. “I’m surprised one hasn’t, given our healthy and athletic relationship. I will follow your wishes.”
“Meaning?” She felt her curiosity rising, having wondered what his desires were.
“Sarah, I can live with you as we are. Just you and me, adventuring and savoring life to the fullest. Were we to have a child, I will dedicate myself to loving it and raising it as a shared and cherished creation of our love. And, by God above, I swear I will be a better father than that cold fish who raised me.”
“I may not be able to have children, Bret. I’ve never told you. Never told anyone. After the rape … I knew I was pregnant. Hated it. Wanted it out. Did things. And one day, something tore inside me. Out it came.”
She paused, watching his eyes. “I don’t know what it did to my insides.”
His smile comforted, his hand gentle on hers. “Whatever comes, I will welcome it with delight and anticipation. I just want you.”
She smiled. “What about marriage?”
“Of course. If you’d like. Would it make a difference?”
“I have no idea.” She shrugged. “I won’t love you more for having stood up in a church. As far as I am concerned, Bret, you’re my husband. Right here. In the eyes of God, I declare it. In sickness and in health, until death do we part.”