Before the Dawn

by Beverly Jenkins

  Leah had no such illusions. “Does Monty have more money?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Can your personal finances cover the difference?”

  He shook his head solemnly.

  “Then I am going to prison.”

  Seth had been driving silently, but now said, “The judge said that settlement was thirty years old. I can’t believe the court still intends to collect.”

  Leah couldn’t believe it either.

  Upon entering Helene’s house, Leah felt as brittle as a piece of glass. The thought of incarceration loomed like a gathering storm. She could see nothing but dark clouds and terror ahead.

  Helene took one look at Leah’s face, and said, “I take it the hearing didn’t go well.”

  Seth answered for her. “The judge threatened Leah with prison.”

  “Whatever for?”

  Cecil replied bitterly, “A thirty-year-old settlement I knew nothing about.”

  “Why don’t we go into the parlor?” Helene told them all.

  Leah wanted to go straight to her room but followed the others into the parlor and took a seat on one of the overstuffed burgundy chairs.

  Helene leaned forward and said, “Now, tell me everything.”

  Seth gave her the details. When he finished, Helene looked over at Leah and shook her head sympathetically. “Now that’s a shame, and the women’s prison is such an awful place.”

  Leah’s chin rose. Helene’s false smile and triumphant eyes weren’t improving her mood.

  Helene then added, “Now that I think back, I do remember a judgment against Louis. It was right after the two of you disappeared, Cecil.”

  “Why didn’t you say something about this yesterday?” he demanded.

  “I told you. I just now remembered. Messy affair, too, if my memory serves correct.”

  Leah wanted to shake the woman.

  “Then tell us now,” Cecil replied evenly.

  “Let’s see, there were miners in Central City who were never paid. Timber cutters in Boulder, suppliers from Virginia City to St. Louis. Then there were those mining stocks you and Louis advised everyone to buy. Turned out to be worthless. Many people were quite angry when they learned you two had slunk off in the middle of the night like thieves.”

  Leah thought that for a woman who hadn’t remembered anything yesterday, Helen sure had a whole trunkful of memories today, now that it was too late.

  Cecil shook his head in contradiction. “Louis and I both lost money on that stock deal, and you know as well as I that we didn’t slink away in the middle of the night. And we did not leave unpaid bills behind.”

  “That isn’t the story your workers and business partners told the court. Three months after your disappearance some of your White associates brought suit against Louis for all those unpaid bills. Since he wasn’t here to defend himself, and no one knew his whereabouts, he was convicted of swindling. Hundreds of people added their names to the list of injured parties.”

  Leah’s eyes widened. This conundrum was becoming more and more convoluted.

  Helene looked to Leah and cooed, “By now, the judgment must be higher than Pikes Peak.”

  Seth answered. “It is, and Louis’s estate doesn’t hold enough to pay it off.”

  “Isn’t that too bad,” Helene replied, voice dripping with insincerity. “I’m certain that Louis is somewhere anguishing over the mess he’s left you, my dear.”

  Cecil cast Helene a cold look. “Well, we have a day and a half to try to right this. I’m going back into town to talk to the judge. Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”

  Seth stood. “I’m headed back. I’ll give you a lift.”

  Seth then turned to Leah. “Try not to worry, Leah. Mr. Lee and I, we’ll figure it out.”

  Leah gave him a weak smile.

  Cecil added, “Seth’s right, don’t worry.”

  She knew that she would worry, but told Cecil, “I won’t. I know you’ll fix this.”

  Helene chimed in, “Of course he will. He’s Satan’s Butler. In his prime he could fix anything.”

  Cecil ignored her. “I’ll see you later, Leah.”

  Seth promised Leah, “I’ll see you later as well,” then followed Cecil to the door.

  Since Leah had nothing further to say to the sly-eyed Helene, she left her sitting in the parlor alone.

  That afternoon, after a silent lunch in her room, Leah began to pace. Since returning from court, she’d tried to come up with a solution, a way out, but no matter where her mind turned, prison stood. Where in the world would she get fifteen thousand dollars, and in two days no less? She could sell the Swan, but even if she could find a buyer in a day and a half, the proceeds wouldn’t come close to covering the balance due. She contemplated selling all of her new clothes, but doubted that would be enough either, even if she could find someone to sell them to. The Swan and the clothes were all she owned; she had no jewelry or other valuables she could convert to cash. In her past, such items had been beyond her grasp. Soon, freedom could be beyond her grasp as well.

  Seated in his office at the Damien Mining Company, Ryder read over the figures from his upstate copper holdings and found them troubling. Mineral veins in Colorado were petering out. Having to strip the tiny bits of metal from the base rock was becoming more and more expensive, thereby making the digs less and less profitable. He’d been thinking about selling his shares for weeks. Looking at these reports sealed the matter. Ryder was still reading when Sam came in, as usual without knocking, and challengingly slapped a newspaper down on his desk.

  “Have you seen this trash?” he demanded.

  Ryder picked up the paper. It was the one of the city’s dailies.

  “It’s this afternoon’s edition,” Sam snarled disgustedly.

  Ryder scanned an announcement of an upcoming recital in Denver, and another on the two-headed calf born a week ago to a milk cow owned by a farm couple up in Boulder. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

  Sam jabbed his gnarled brown finger at an item at the bottom of the page. “This!”

  Ryder began to read:

  In court today, the widow of former mining king Louis Montague was hit with a ninety-thousand-dollar judgment against her late husband’s estate. Thirty years ago, many of Montague’s associates were left holding the bag when he and his business partner, Cecil Lee, snuck out of Denver in the middle of the night. It’s been said that Louis Montague was a swindler, a thief, and possibly a murderer. Mrs. Montague, a colored woman, has been ordered to pay the judgment or serve time in the woman’s prison.

  The article went on to relate the scandals surrounding the deaths of Monty’s first wife, Bernice, and Ryder’s mother but Ryder didn’t read the rest.

  Setting the paper aside, he looked up into Sam’s angry face. “Why are you so upset?”

  “That little lady doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “She’s his widow.”

  “What if she doesn’t have enough money?”

  Ryder shrugged.

  “Are you going to stand by and let her be thrown into prison with a bunch of prostitutes and murderesses?”

  “They aren’t going to throw her into prison. Those claims are thirty years old.”

  “Do you think the judge cared about how old those bills are? A Black woman? They’ll put her in prison, and you know it.”

  Ryder had to admit, Sam had a point. Granted, there were two levels of justice being meted out in the country nowadays, but money had a justice all its own. Many of the men who’d done business with Louis were still alive and were as predatory in their business practices now as they’d reportedly been back then. He had no idea how much Louis had left his widow, but if the estate held any value, Louis’s old enemies would feast on her like wolves.

  Unsettled by those thoughts, Ryder tossed the newspaper back down on the desk. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Something.”

  Ryder searched Sam’s
lined face. “Why? She’s done nothing but give me the back of her hand since we met.”

  “And she had no reason?”

  Ryder chose not to answer that. “Since when did you become a knight in shining armor? You’ve known her less than a week.”

  “But I’ve known you longer. She’s been on your mind, whether you want to admit it or not. I also know that any woman who’ll stand up to you is worth her weight in Colorado gold. You need a wife, and I think she’ll do.”

  Ryder’s dark eyes widened with amazement. “A wife? What have you been drinking? I’m not marrying anyone, especially not that proper-talking firecracker. Didn’t I tell you she was an adventuress?”

  Sam waited.

  The silent standoff lasted for a few moments longer, then Ryder sighed resignedly. “All right. I’ll see what I can do. Not because of her, but because you’ll nag me until next Christmas if I don’t.”

  Sam smiled.

  “And don’t smile yet,” Ryder warned. “If I do have to intervene, I do it my way. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you about my methods.”

  Sam turned an imaginary key in his lips. “Not a peep.”

  They both knew he was lying. Asking Sam to keep his opinions to himself was akin to asking the seasons not to change.

  Ryder shook his head good-humoredly. “Go home. I’ve work to do.”

  Sam smiled and left.

  As Ryder watched the door close, he acknowledged that Sam was the only person he allowed to see his true self. After his mother’s death, his Cheyenne grandmother, called Little Tears, raised him. She taught him life, the history of the Cheyenne, and how to survive the bittersweet, day-today existence forced upon the tribes by the ignorance and greed of those in power. She died the day after he left to attend school in Minnesota. It was almost as if her purpose for living ceased upon his departure. Miss Eloise, one of the local residents, had wired him to inform him of her passing. Had it not been for her, Ryder doubted he would have even known. No one else in the area gave a tinker’s damn about him or his redskin kin.

  He met Sam a month after arriving in Minnesota. At the time, the old man had been a cook at the boardinghouse where Ryder rented a room. The job suited Sam well after his years of cooking for the men and the mules of the highly decorated Ninth Cavalry. Initially, Ryder met Sam’s attempts at friendship with suspicion; soldiers, even retired ones, were symbols of death, bitterness, and betrayal to a man with Native blood, especially in light of Ryder’s personal connection to the massacre of the Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek. He wanted nothing to do with Sam, and bluntly told him so.

  But Ryder’s attitude changed the day Sam came across Ryder being beaten by some local town toughs. There’d been six of them. Ryder could’ve handled three, maybe even four, but his inability to handle all six cowards alone could be measured by his bloodied, swollen face and the way they were kicking him as he lay nearly unconscious in the dirt.

  To this day, Sam refused to tell Ryder how he extricated him from that hate-fed encounter, but Ryder knew he would have been kicked to death were it not for the old pony soldier. They became solid friends after that; Ryder listened to Sam’s stories about his life, and Sam listened to his. When the time came for Ryder to leave school, he asked Sam to return with him to Colorado and help him make his fortune and Sam agreed; they’d been together ever since.

  However, Ryder found Sam’s championing of the Widow Montague surprising. Sam rarely butted into Ryder’s private life, and never before had he ever mentioned any woman and the word marriage in the same sentence. Ryder shook his head. He could just imagine himself married to Leah Montague. They’d spend every waking moment arguing. He had no plans to hitch his fate to such an ornery female. If and when he decided to marry, he’d pick a woman with a lot less sass and a lot more deference. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t welcome Leah into his bed though. Sam was right, she had been on his mind. He found her dark beauty as desirable as an untapped source of gold, but claiming that gold would take a patience Ryder never had to exercise before when pursuing a woman. Usually he beckoned, they smiled and came willingly. He sensed the Widow Montague would be as combative as a wild mare, but taming and claiming her would undoubtedly be worth the loss of a finger or two, not to mention how it would affect Seth.

  His eyes strayed back to the paper. If the report about the lien on the Montague estate were true, prison could indeed be her fate. Ryder assumed Cecil Lee was out working his legendary magic in an attempt to get her a reprieve, but Ryder knew the Butler would find times had changed in the thirty years since Louis’s day; the cutthroat rules of business and finance were the same but the players had changed. Syndicates and foreign investment were now running things, and they had more gold than Zeus and more lawyers than an indicted politician. The political climate had changed also. With the death of Reconstruction, men of color were less tolerated and more likely to be given short shrift in everything. Without Louis’s influence and wealth behind him, Cecil stood little chance of gaining access to anyone powerful enough to aid the widow’s case. Maybe Sam was right, maybe he should intervene. But what would he gain? She’d probably not appreciate his help, and therein lay the challenge. Just like the wild mare he’d mused upon earlier, she’d fight his lariat all the way, but, given time and the proper handling, he saw no reason why she couldn’t be gentled. After all, the Cheyenne had always been excellent horsemen.

  Later that afternoon Mrs. France came up to Leah’s room to inform her that she had a visitor waiting in the parlor.

  A wary Leah asked, “Is it a creditor, or someone with a summons?”

  “No.”

  Leah felt relief flood her. “Who is it then?”

  “Mr. Damien.”

  “Ryder Damien?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  For the life of her, Leah couldn’t come up with a reason why he’d want to see her. Unless he’d heard about her dilemma and had come to gloat, she told herself. Noting that Mrs. France looked a bit impatient, Leah finally said, “Tell him I’ll be down momentarily.”

  Mrs. France departed.

  Leah took a deep breath. Ryder Damien was the last person she wanted to see today. She had enough on her mind.

  When she walked into the parlor, Ryder was again caught by her beauty. Her dark skin was as pure and as clear as a jewel. The fashionably piled hair made him imagine how it might look after a night of lovemaking. As always his eyes slid admiringly over the tempting figure. The long-sleeved black dress sported a narrow band of black lace at the wrists and around the high-necked collar. She presented a prim widow’s innocence he knew she didn’t possess, and that made her even more desirable.

  “You wished to see me?” she said from the doorway.

  “I do. Word has it you’re having financial difficulties.”

  Leah didn’t deny it. “Yes, I am. Have you come to gloat?”

  “No.”

  “Did Seth send you?”

  “The only place my brother wishes to send me is to hell.”

  “Isn’t that where we are?” she asked in response.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Sarcasm?”

  “Truth.”

  He watched her walk fully into the room and take up a stance at the windows, her back to him.

  “You are more everything than I thought,” he admitted.

  She turned to view him over her shoulder. “Do you always offer such backhanded compliments?”

  “Only when necessary.”

  Leah sensed the male in him subtly seeking out the woman in her, and it made her look away from his penetrating eyes. “What did you want?”

  “Sam thought maybe I could help in some way.”

  “Do you have fifteen thousand dollars you can spare?” she asked boldly.

  “Yes.”

  Leah looked back at him once again.

  He shrugged those magnificent shoulders. “Obviously, I have more of my father in me than I care to admit. Making money seems to come easily.” />
  Leah scanned him silently. Could he really extricate her from this awful situation? If so, what would he ask in exchange? She already knew the answer, but needed to hear him say it. “And in return?”

  “That you be on my arm. Grace my table. The rest you know.”

  Leah fled from his unreadable eyes. His mixed ancestry had produced a man as beautiful and as formidable as a pagan god; women probably knelt at his altar often. “I’d like to wait until Cecil and Seth return before I make a decision. They may have found a solution.”

  Ryder hadn’t expected her to agree readily, and she hadn’t disappointed. “I have no quarrel with that.”

  For the first time Leah could see that he, too, bore a strong resemblance to his father. The chin and the shape of his mouth mirrored Monty’s exactly. As a result, pleasant memories of Monty rose unbidden. “He was a good man, your father.”

  “He left behind two dead women and abandoned two small sons. I see nothing good in that.”

  Leah was stung by his response, and her chin rose defiantly. “At the end he was sorry for abandoning you. He’d wanted to close the breach but was afraid he’d be rebuffed—afraid you and Seth hated him.”

  “An astute man, that Louis.”

  Leah wondered how much of Ryder’s bitterness was rooted in anger and how much pain. She sensed a great deal of both. “Do you truly hate him? Truly?”

  “I hate what he did to my mother, and to me.”

  “Is that why you don’t carry his name?”

  “I don’t carry his name because he never married my mother.”

  Leah felt the chill in his words. “But you don’t really believe he murdered her, do you?”

  “And if my answer is yes?”

  “I’d say you were wrong.”

  “Then we disagree.”

  Ryder supposed it made her feel better to believe in her version of Louis Montague, but Ryder had lived with the truth all his life. “A woman like you should know that men are capable of anything.”

  Leah stiffened. “A woman like me?”

  Ryder heard the temper in her voice. “We are who we are.”