Passion's Wicked Torment

by Melissa Hepburne

  It was a full-time job once she decided to do it. And it provided her with an insight into her character that she had never had before. Ever since she had grown out of childhood, she had never really wanted to do anything. She knew it sounded silly, thinking about it, but it was true. Until now, there had never really been any activity or goal she’d gone after with a passion.

  Now she decided she wanted to become an entrepreneur and earn a lot of money, and this she did go after with a passion. Part of the reason was that she liked the idea of becoming a successful businesswoman. Another part, which was darker and grimmer, was that she intended to someday get even with Ironman, to make him pay for Chad’s death. She did not know how she would do this yet, but she did know that when the time came, it would take a lot of money—money that could be used to bribe people, to hire cutthroats or to do whatever turned out to be necessary.

  Now that Kristin had found a cause worthy of committing herself to, she discovered that she was very skillful in figuring out what needed to be done and then doing it extremely efficiently. First, a building had to be secured. It was not necessary to buy one. The revitalized ghost town had an abundance of buildings that were simply up for grabs. No one used them, and whoever had owned them decades ago had left them when the last boom had ended. Kristin acquired a long hall simply by laying claim to it.

  It needed fixing up, of course. And not just in a slapdash manner. Kristin wanted it to be a truly nice, comfortable place to be. She had McShane hire two men to work as carpenters, and under his direction the refurbishing began to take shape. Equipment had to be brought in from neighboring towns. Fortunately, Yukon was not as isolated as it had been in former days. It only took a few days’ transport by horse team, or a day by truck and then another day or two by horses to bring almost anything she needed. She ordered and received chairs, tables, giant mirrors, even a roulette wheel and table, which were the most difficult to obtain.

  McShane financed her purchases, grumbling only a little. She understood him well enough to know that his grumbling was only for appearance’s sake, to show that he was not accustomed to doing a woman’s bidding. The fact was, he recognized that her idea was a sound one, and he fully expected a healthy return on his investment.

  The townspeople began taking an interest in the project as it was shaping in, and soon they began dropping around to visit in a friendly, inquisitive way. McShane succeeded in pressing many of them into service, helping with the carpentry work, in return for Kristin’s home-cooked meals from the makeshift kitchen. In fact, after a few of the single miners had tasted her cooking, a committee of the townspeople was formed to demand that she return to her original intention of adding a restaurant to the premises, an idea that Kristin had decided against doing, simply because she wanted to devote all her energies to the casino operation. She submitted to the pressure finally—secretly prideful, if truth be told—and gave a good part of her attention over to installing a well-equipped kitchen, from which she could do good work.

  She began taking a real liking to the townspeople. These were not the cold-hearted ones who had patronized Vroman’s whorehouse when she was a captive there. Instead, these were the kindly, hardworking common people who comprised the bulk of Yukon’s inhabitants. They all called her Kristy, and she called many of them by their first names, or more commonly by their nicknames. She got to know “Gopher,” “Screamer” and “Turtleback Sam.” She became quite a celebrity in the small, booming community for three very good reasons.

  First, she was the only beautiful woman in town. There were camp followers, of course, but these were, for the most part, only moderately pretty girls who had developed a very hard, unfeminine edge. Second, she was the best cook in town, and even before her establishment opened, she had taken to serving dinner every evening for those who helped McShane with his labor.

  The last reason for her popularity was that she had come to understand and believe Dallas Hunter’s feelings about letting men do what they would do anyway without badgering them about it. The men got enough badgering from the town preacher or from their wives, for those who were married. Once the casino and saloon opened, they knew they could come in and never hear Kristin say a negative word about their getting drunk after a hard day’s mining or panning, or about their gambling. Still, when she saw a man gambling away money she knew he needed for his family, she gently had McShane order him to stop. If he refused, he was not-so-gently bounced out of the club.

  The opening day was marked by a major celebration. Gopher and Turtleback Sam provided the music on the fiddle and harmonica. And the first round of drinks was on the house—over McShane’s objections. He was already nervous about bank rolling the start up gambling. What if the house should lose money the first night? What would they do then?

  They did not lose money though. They made $3,270 that first night. Customers came from miles around. It was a rowdy, festive occasion for all concerned, except those who lost more money than they had intended. But even they were appreciative of the fact that Kristin provided them with a free meal and free liquor after they lost their money, something Billy’s saloon had never done.

  Kristin was happy. McShane was happy. The townspeople were happy. And in the days to come, her establishment prospered. She learned very early on to hire two local housewives to serve as cooks, with Kristin herself doing only the supervising of the restaurant. This task alone would have run her ragged. Besides, she enjoyed wandering through the casino, watching the action—“patrolling,” McShane laughingly called it. Kristin had not realized how much she’d learned from Dallas about the operation of a casino until she actually put her knowledge to work. Then it surprised her how much she had soaked up by just being exposed to him and the Crimson Club.

  She had also learned quite a bit about handling customers from him. She almost never had a problem. Occasionally McShane was called upon to bounce an unruly patron or two, but mostly it was the social pressure of the townspeople themselves that kept the unruly ones in line. If a patron became obnoxious even after Kristin had asked him to quiet down, for instance, or to quit gambling until after he had given his wife the grocery money, it was usually those around him who began badgering him and hitting him with their hats until he did as he was told.

  “Whatcha trying to do?” Gopher had demanded of a drunken gambler one night, when the man refused Kristin’s orders to quiet down. “Upset our little Kristy here? She get upset, she don’t cook as good. She don’t cook as good, that gets us upset.” He indicated the circle of men who had quickly gathered around the noisy one, threateningly. “You want to deal with us, friend?” That was usually all it took to restore order.

  Yes, Kristin had learned a lot from Hunter, she realized, and the realization was always accompanied by a sharp pang of hurt. She thought of him often, though she tried not to. She wondered what he was doing these days back in the States. She sometimes wondered what it would have been like if he hadn’t been a gangster and if things had somehow worked out between them.

  A lot about Kristin had changed in the past few months. The realization that she was strong enough and smart enough to go after what she wanted had been the start of it. Other things had followed. Even her manner of dress had changed. As the proprietress of a booming, Wild West type saloon, she could not very well go around in the prim schoolmarm clothes she had previously worn. Now she wore low bodiced, frilly clothes in a variety of colors. And she loved it! It wasn’t really her, but it gave her a chance to act out a fantasy she had always had. Her hair style changed too. Her hair had grown out from the short bob and now hung almost to her shoulders in long, golden waves.

  Kristin had even taken to joining her guests in a drink on rare occasions, laughing and joking with them. She still could not bring herself to use foul language however. And in fact, her patrons all respected an unwritten rule among them that no one was to use this language when Kristin was around.

  The main change that had occurred was in her relation
ship with McShane. As the weeks went by with them living together, sharing their lives together, she began to develop a stronger affection for him. Then, one day, she heard about the impending arrival in town of a man named Ambrewster. And she learned a startling fact: McShane intended to kill this stranger. He had been coldly, calculatingly awaiting his arrival for almost a year.

  It was on this day that she realized how much she truy loved the mountain man. She realized this at the moment she knew she was on the verge of losing him forever—and that there was nothing she could do about it.

  CHAPTER 19

  It started out simply. When she came home from the saloon that evening, she saw that his bushy beard was gone. He was bare-chested and clean-shaven. His hair had been cut shorter, and he was looking more handsome than she had ever seen him. After overcoming her first moment of surprised shock, she smiled happily and went to hug him. She ran her fingers over his newly bare square jaw, looking up at him.

  “And to what do I owe this surprise?” she asked playfully. “You’re shedding your mountain man image and entering a male beauty contest, is that it?”

  His expression was somber. He kissed her and then moved away from her to continue oiling and cleaning his rifle, which he had been working on when she first came in. “Kristy, lassie,” he said, looking at the barrel of the disassembled Winchester as he oiled it, “I’m going to have to leave for a few days. Maybe longer.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “There’s a man I have to see. I told you a little about him long ago when we first met. Maybe you don’t remember.”

  She was becoming tenser and more alert by the second. She now noticed other things that weren’t quite right, things she had not noticed when she first entered the cabin. His official Mountie uniform was laid out carefully on the top of the bureau. He had not worn it a single time in the two months she had been with him. In fact, as he now sat on a stool near the table, she noticed that he was wearing his black Mountie jodhpurs—tight-fitting britches with puffed out flanks.

  “What is it?” she exclaimed, going up to him and putting her hand on his bare shoulder.

  “Remember I told you why I joined the Mounties? They were going to put me in jail for killing a man, but instead they let me volunteer to keep the peace in Yukon?”

  “I remember. You said they were having an impossible time finding good men to serve in this area.”

  “Well, there’s a mite more to it than that. The fact is, they were only going to put me in the lockup for thirty days as sort of a token punishment. The man I killed . . . I had good reason to kill him, and the circuit court, they recognized that. You see, he and his cohort, a man named Ambrewster, they came to the tanning shed when I wasn’t there. My partner was there though.”

  Kristin had heard him talk several times about his partner in the tanning business, a man named Ned Boone. They had been close friends for years, having grown up together from childhood. McShane’s voice had always taken on a hard edge whenever she asked what had broken them up as partners. And she had soon stopped asking about it.

  “Those two vermin,” McShane continued, reassembling his rifle, “they told Ned they wanted to buy the pelts we’d spent a winter trapping. The price they offered was a dollar a pelt. Ned laughed at them. So they shot him.” His voice became very hard. “They shot him through both knees. And both elbows. It took him a long time to die. I was there with him when he died. Afterward, I went searching for the two . . . men,” he spat the word out venomously,—“who killed him. Ambrewster had stolen Ned’s horse, a black stallion with a tawny left flank and rear leg. He rode Ned’s horse to the coast, then booked passage on a steamer to a destination I couldn’t find out. I found his partner, though, in Billy’s saloon, drinking up a storm.”

  “You called him out to a gunfight?” Kristin asked softly, sympathetically. “And killed him?”

  McShane laughed. It was not a pleasant thing to hear. There was bile and bitterness in it. “I put my shotgun to the small of his back,” he corrected, “and gave him both barrels.”

  Kristin winced involuntarily at the brutality of it. It was not more brutal, though, she knew, than what the two men had done to his friend.

  McShane stood up from the table now that his rifle was together. He began dressing. “Ambrewster is on his way back to town. I got word from a friend in Tarry-ton, where he stopped. I knew he’d be back sooner or later. That’s why I waited.”

  “How did you know?”

  “The money he got from selling his half of the pelts, he didn’t take it with him on any tramp steamer, where it would be stolen from him by vagabond seamen. He put it in the town bank.” Once again, McShane laughed a scoffing, bitter laugh. “Aye, he was a smart one, all right. He figured no one could prove that the money he put in the bank came from selling the pelts. And he and his cohort figured Ned would die before anyone got to him to find out who it was that done him in that way. What they didn’t know was that Ned had a partner. Me. And I got to him in time to find out what happened, before he died. In my arms, I might add.”

  Kristin was confused. She almost hated to continue discussing this, seeing how terribly it was affecting McShane to recall it. But still, she needed to know some answers. After all, she had a stake in this too, if he was about to go risk getting killed.

  “Well,” she said, “once you knew he was the one who killed your partner and stole the furs, why couldn’t you lay claim to the money he put in the bank? And take it out, since it was your money, after all.”

  “I could’ve done that,” he admitted. His eyes took on a sly look.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “There’d have been no reason for Ambrewster to come back if I did it. Now there is a reason. He’s coming back to get his money.”

  “Does he know you’re here waiting for him?”

  He nodded. “It took some special doing to arrange it so’s he couldn’t get the money back without appearing here in person. I had to fill out forms, that sort of thing. He knows I’m here waiting. That’s why he’s bringing the Torry brothers with him.”

  “The Torry brothers?” Kristin had heard of them. They weren’t from Canada! They were from Chicago. They were notorious Chicago hit men! Gangsters who specialized in murder. She went up to McShane, her brow knit with worry. “Sean, you’re not going after them alone, are you? You’re taking a posse of the townsmen with you?”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re taking other Mounties with you, then?” she asked desperately. “Ambrewster is a wanted hoodlum. You’ve a right to bring along reinforcements.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and looked gravely into her eyes. “Kristy, lass, this is a personal grudge between me and Ambrewster. The things I plan to do to him, it’s best if other Mounties aren’t around. They won’t be strictly legal, if you understand me.”

  “But he’s got two Chicago gangsters with him! Are you trying to get yourself killed?” In desperation, she was almost shouting at him to make him understand. “Don’t be a damn hero, Sean! It’s crazy to go after him all by yourself.”

  He grinned at her in a confident way. “You don’t think you been living with a fool now, do you? No, it’s not crazy the way I got it planned. They don’t know I know they’re on their way to town. I’ve got surprise on my side. That’s why I’m leaving now. I’m going to move up the road apiece to Cloison Gap and meet them there. Without telling them about it in advance.”

  Kristin was still frightened. It was good that he had surprise on his side, but still, the Torry brothers were professional killers. They would not be so easy to get the drop on.

  Sean had finished dressing and was now grimly looking at her, but with deep affection in his eyes. He stood straight and tall in his Mountie uniform, appearing more dynamic and handsome than she had ever seen him. The crimson jacket lined in gold fit tightly over his muscular, broad chested physique. The black circular collar was buttoned at his throat, and a row of gold button
s ran down the front of the coat. He had a black Sam Browne belt at his waist, holding his black leather holster, with another black strap running diagonally across his chest and under the gold-leaf epaulet. His broad-brimmed, peaked Mountie hat was set low on his forehead, the strap going under his chin.

  He saw the saddened, frightened look on her face, and he tried to make a joke of it, to make it seem that the danger was less than it was. He put his fingers to the brim of his hat and saluted mockingly and grinned. “Sergeant Sean McShane of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at your service, ma’am.”

  She did not laugh. And when he could no longer disguise his own feelings, he simply looked at her with powerful emotion, and held his arms open to her. But she refused to come into them.

  It was then that she realized, for the first time, how much this man really meant to her. This Sean McShane, Royal Canadian Mountie. “No,” she said, backing away from him, putting her hands behind her on the edge of the table as she leaned back against it.

  He looked bewildered. “What do you mean, no?”

  “I won’t let you go.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” he said softly, but with firm conviction.

  “Damn it, Sean! Damn it!” The force of her words surprised even her. “Do you think I’ll take this passively, just coming into your arms and kissing you good-bye and letting you go get killed? What kind of woman do you think I am! And who do you think you are that you can do this to me? Live with me for these two months, let me care about you, grow to ... to . . . to care about you.” She lowered her eyes when she said this. She raised them again to meet his. “And then you think I’ll take it lying down while you go risk getting killed? Well, I won’t! I’ve got a stake in this too!”

  “Is that a fact, lassie? What stake?”

  “I love you.” It was the first time she had said it to him. It was the first time she realized it. But seeing him about to risk death, knowing she might never see him again, forced her to acknowledge the truth.