Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  He sat waiting for her in the sunshine on the seat of the phaeton, the reins of the grays in his capable hands. He was looking much better too. They had been worried about him for a time. The gunshot wound he had taken that terrible day had broken two ribs. During what followed, when he had been forced to jump with the rest of them from the top floor of the parlor house, he had punctured a lung. The greatest dread had been pneumonia, but he had escaped that, thank God. He was still a little pale, perhaps under the bronze of his skin, but he was fit, fit enough for anything.

  A smile played around Serena’s mouth as her thoughts went to the night before, and what had passed between them in the great paneled bed in the gold bedroom of Bristlecone. They had shared it for the past four weeks. That was Consuelo’s doing. By the time they had reached the house, Serena and Ward had been too exhausted and in too much pain to care what became of them. Mrs. Egan had pointed out Serena’s room, and Consuelo had directed the miners who had brought them to dump them into the bed. There they had lain through fever and chills and the incoherence of delirium. There they had turned to each other with a touch and a smile, though there had been little more, until the night before.

  Serena let her mind wander back over those weeks, and that last day of blood and fire. She could remember hearing the three shots of the fire alarm, remember half jumping, half climbing down a rope of sheets to escape the flames that engulfed the parlor house. She could recall the way she felt when she realized that a group of miners, men who remembered her as Gold Heels, had fought off what was left of Pearlie’s hired bullies and were getting ready to storm the parlor house when it caught fire. The rest was vague, though she knew her grays had been caught and brought around, and that a pair of the strongest of the miners had ridden with them out to Bristlecone. The guard had been necessary not to protect them, but to keep the grays from being stolen. For by that time, the fire had spread, and a large portion of Cripple Creek was ablaze. People were laying hands on every vehicle and animal they could find to move their belongings out of danger. The Eldorado had gone up in smoke, as had much of Myers Avenue.

  Ward got down as he saw Serena. She descended the steps and allowed him to hand her up into the phaeton. As he climbed to the seat beside her and took up the reins once more, he turned his head to smile down at her, surveying the oval of her face beneath the wide brim of her hat, his green gaze resting briefly on the cape she wore. With a shading of reluctance in his face, he turned his eyes forward and clucked to the horses, sending them down the drive.

  Serena watched his hands as he handled the ribbons, liking the strength and competence with which he held the grays. He was competent about most things, some in particular. Yes, she owed Consuelo much.

  Her indebtedness to the Spanish girl did not end with her gratitude for putting her to bed with Ward; it only started there. She was grateful for the warning Consuelo had given her of the threat against her, for her support in standing with them against the mob, and later against Elder Greer. She was thankful for the time the Spanish girl had spent at Bristlecone, helping nurse her and Ward, and for the care of Sean when Serena had been too weak to see to it herself. More than that was Consuelo’s understanding of her marriage to Nathan, her lack of blame toward Serena for his death, or her inability to make him happy, and more, a thousand small things more.

  “What are you thinking of?” Ward asked, his tone casual.

  “Consuelo,” Serena answered, tucking her hand into his arm.

  “Too bad she had to leave.”

  “Yes, but it was her own choice, a decision made a long time ago.”

  For a day or two after the fire, Serena had been afraid Consuelo’s exertions might bring on a miscarriage. It had not happened. A full night’s sleep, and she was perfectly well, or so she said. Her ancestors had been peasants; it took more than a mob and a sliding fall from a two-story building dislodge the seed once it had been planted. The work she had done, carrying trays, changing beds, lifting Sean, was good for her, she maintained; it kept her from thinking of Nathan, or brooding on what she would do when she reached Mexico.

  Serena had tried to dissuade her from going. Consuelo only shook her head. “I know what I am doing. You have been a sister to me, and it pains me to leave you, but it will be best. Nathan’s son will grow up in the warmth of the sun. I will find for him a father who will love us both without regard for the past. There will be enough money for our needs, and a portion for our desires, but not so much that it makes us proud. And if sometimes I dream of Cripple Creek and of another life, I trust that when I wake I will have forgotten. Surely God, who is good, will grant me that much.”

  It had been a week ago that Consuelo left. By then, Serena had been up for some time, gradually resuming the duties Consuelo had taken on. The crates and trunks that contained the belongings the Spanish girl would be taking with her to Mexico had been carted to the station. The house Nathan had bought her had been turned over to its new owners.

  Consuelo spent her last night at Bristlecone. The two women embraced on the veranda as Jack Coachman brought the town carriage around to take Consuelo to the train station. There were tears in her dark-brown eyes as she turned away. From inside the carriage, she waved, then, sitting straight and proud, she turned her face forward toward Mexico.

  “Consuelo should have been the one to marry Nathan,” Serena said abruptly.

  “I don’t believe he ever asked her.”

  She slanted him a quick glance, continuing despite the stiffness of his tone, “He might have, if he had never met me.”

  “If he had never met you, I’m not sure Consuelo would have appealed to him. It’s my understanding that her resemblance to you was what he found intriguing.”

  “We are nothing alike, not really,” Serena protested. “Consuelo has a much stronger character.”

  “Do you really think so?” he asked, smiling. “I would say she is louder, more obvious about it, but maybe it’s just a front with her, the way she wants to appear to the world. You’re quieter, but with you the vein goes deep, pure gold.”

  “Ward!” She turned to stare at him, amazement in her eyes.

  “Did you think I didn’t have sense enough to see it?”

  There was no way to answer such a question. Gathering her composure and scattered thoughts, Serena reverted to her original topic. “I — I was trying to say that if Nathan hadn’t married me, he would still be alive. It was my fault he rushed the installation of the hoist.”

  “I doubt that, but how so?”

  He knew of her agreement to go to Europe with Nathan. She told him what Nathan had said, how he had meant to get the machinery into operation as soon as possible so he could get away.

  “You give yourself too much credit, sweet Serena. I’m sure Nathan was anxious to take you away, but he would have been just as impatient without that. He liked having the best, whether it was a woman, a horse, a mining claim, or a hoist, and for him it was always a case of the sooner, the better.”

  It was true, Serena had to admit, though Ward’s words awakened echoes of things just as well forgotten; Nathan’s attempt to buy her, for instance, his attempt to hold Ward’s ruin over her head, and his insistence on heaping her with gifts. Nonetheless, Serena felt an easing inside her as she relinquished a part of the burden of guilt she had been carrying.

  “Mr. Patterson tells me the hoist and cage can be made safe if it is installed as it should be. I’m not certain it will do any good, however.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I seem to have blotted my copybook with the other mine owners. They may decide to close me down.”

  “They’ll have to shut me down first.”

  That simple declaration and the meaning behind it brought an ache to Serena’s throat. “It isn’t your problem,” she said unsteadily.

  “Anything that concerns you is my problem. Besides, I think you’re doing the right thing. As for the mine owners, your best course is to smile and explain how you weren
’t sure the miners would go down in the new cage that killed your husband unless they were offered special incentives. If you could manage to shed a few tears at the same time, they’ll go along happily. As I said before, I’ve instituted a raise in wages and a pension plan already. Starting next week there’ll be no children allowed down the shaft, and lights put up in the stable area.”

  She pressed the fingers that still rested in the crook of his arm. “That should help, having them see I’m not alone in my madness.”

  “I’m doing it because it’s humane, the right thing to do, not just to show a solid front.”

  “Of course,” she murmured.

  “You don’t believe me, but then you never do.”

  The grim note in his voice made her turn sharply toward him. “I do believe you.”

  “Sometimes, when you have no other choice.”

  Her lips tightened. “And you are completely magnanimous, I suppose, taking every word I say for gospel?”

  “Admit you believed I had a hand in killing Nathan right up until the minute Patterson told you it was impossible.”

  “At least I let you know I was mistaken. You are still stubbornly convinced I married Nathan for his money, and all because I was stupid enough to agree with you once when you so unflatteringly assumed that must be the reason I wanted to be a part of the gold rush!” She released his arm and moved to the far side of the seat.

  “No, Serena, I haven’t thought that for a long time.” He sent her a quick glance, the hardness leaving his voice.

  “I don’t understand why it’s such a terrible thing for a woman to want wealth, anyway; we have as much right to it as a man. It isn’t our fault if there’s no way to get it except through a male; if jobs are closed to us, or if men themselves make it too dangerous for a woman to work in the open alone. We can resign ourselves to being poor, or being prey; there is no in between!”

  “I said, I don’t believe you married Nathan for his money.”

  “What?” She stared at him, suspicious of the amusement that lurked in his green eyes.

  “You spend it, give it away, spread it around to all your charities much too freely for it to mean anything to you.”

  “So now you think I’m a spendthrift!” She looked quickly away, though she could not keep her lips from quivering into a smile.

  “I would show you what I think,” he told her, a caressing timbre in the words, “but this isn’t the place for it.”

  They had topped the hill above Cripple Creek. The town, or what was left of it, lay before them. The bowl of the crater valley was blackened and charred, an immense area of rubble that had been raked into piles like so much garbage. The fire that had started in the parlor house had eaten away a large section in the south part of the town, the main area of saloons, dance halls, vaudeville houses, and the like, before it had been brought under control that April evening. While the better people to the north were still celebrating the wiping out of such a sordid, crime-infested thieves’ den four days later, another inferno had begun with a grease fire at the Portland Hotel on Bennet Avenue. This time a driving wind had spread the flames, sending them roaring through the dry wooden structures, one-room cribs and gingerbread mansions alike. What had not been consumed in the intense conflagration had been destroyed by the dynamiting crews trying to create a firebreak to halt the driving spread of the flames.

  At Bristlecone they had been safe enough. Ashes and soot had dropped onto the roof from the pall of smoke that swirled around them at times, and they could see the flare of light in the sky and tongues of leaping flame, but there had been no danger. Many were the tales of hardship brought back by Jack Coachman and the stableboy when they were sent to help out if they could, and to bring back news. The weather, so warm the week before, had turned cold once more. When night fell on the Wednesday evening of the fire, more than five thousand people were homeless. Clutching the few possessions they had managed to save, sometimes odd bits and pieces like piano stools and wicker baskets, china figures and parasols, they gathered on the hillside above the town near the reservoir, huddling in the freezing wind.

  Everything that could be spared from Bristlecone in the way of food and blankets was sent immediately. It did not go far. It was the mine owners living in Colorado Springs who came to the rescue. Warned of the disaster by means of the single telephone line from Cripple to the Springs, they rounded up tents by the dozens, blankets by the gross, food by the box and barrel, medicines, bandaging, and a precious consignment of baby diapers, and sent them roaring up Ute Pass on a special train. By midnight everyone had been fed and given shelter. Nor did the aid end there. There was another train, and another, until tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of supplies had been unloaded and the feud between the Springs and Cripple had been buried in the outpouring of aid.

  Beyond the human suffering was the financial loss. More than eighty percent of the town was destroyed in the two fires; less than twenty-five percent of it was insured. It was not going to be the end of Cripple Creek, however. Already there could be seen the fresh wood skeletons of buildings rising from the ashes. A few were nearing completion already, sturdy structures of brick with imposing facades and a more permanent look about them than the flimsy false fronts they replaced. Myers Avenue was rebuilding also, and going fancier, more ornate. By some quirk of fate, the Old Homestead parlor house was left standing, and was open for business as usual. On the whole, it seemed the fire might have been a good thing, a purging experience. There had been pain and loss, certainly, and people ruined, but in place of the shoddy gold camp with its flyblown refuse heaps there was rising a town of vigor and prosperity and cleanliness, a place of stability and a certain charm where children could be raised and life enjoyed for as long as the gold lasted.

  That looked to be a long time, since geologists estimated there was nearly a billion and a half dollars’ worth of the yellow stuff beneath the ground, even at a conservative estimate. In spite of the millions taken out, they had barely scratched the surface.

  Serena had thought the purpose of their outing was to view the devastated town and to see the new buildings going up. When Ward rolled through the streets and swung onto the road toward the mining town of Victor, she sent him a questioning glance. If he noticed, he paid no heed, for no explanation was forthcoming.

  It didn’t matter, not really. It was a fine day for a drive. After the cold had come warmth once more, a part of nature’s cycle. The air was fresh and sweet and clear. There was a mist of green on the slopes around them, and the trees and wild flowers were sending out new growth. A blue-and-black Steller’s jay dipped overhead, lighting on a rock to give his raucous call. A chipmunk whisked across the road in front of them, then sat on his haunches to watch them pass. The sun felt good on her face, and the wind from the high passes of the Continental Divide had just enough briskness to clear the depression of the winter just past from her mind.

  Serena’s wandering thoughts returned to the scenes they had just witnessed. A few buildings other than the Old Home stead had been spared by the fire, the new Midland Terminal Railroad depot, a hospital, and a section of homes on the west side of town. Consuelo’s house had been among the lucky ones, as had Serenity House.

  “I’m sorry about the Eldorado,” Serena said, slanting a glance at Ward.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Will you rebuild?”

  “No,” he replied with a definite shake of his head. “That’s over and done.”

  “I’m glad.” It was over, in more ways than one. Consuelo gone, Nathan, Lessie, Pearlie, Elder Greer, all dead. With them went many specters of the past for Ward as well as herself. What would happen to them now?

  “Do you ever think of going back to Natchez?”

  “I used to, often. Not any more. There’s something about this country; the air, the coolness. I don’t know, it gets to you after a while. What about you? You have grandparents in Louisiana, don’t you?”

  “Not r
eally. They washed their hands of my parents, and of me. If they wanted nothing to do with us two years ago, I can’t believe they would care to acknowledge me now. No, there is nothing for me in Louisiana.”

  She had known for some time she could not go back, did not want to. Putting it into words was still a lonesome thing. It would have helped if there had been some indication from Ward in the last few days that the situation between them might become permanent. There had been none. He had been as silent on that subject as he had on the deaths of Pearlie and the elder. The charred bodies of the pair had been recovered and buried in Pisgah cemetery. Ward had sent flowers for Pearlie, she knew that much. He had not been able to attend the services, and so far as she knew, he had not visited the grave.

  It was not that Serena seriously considered that he felt anything for the dead woman beyond pity and responsibility. What troubled her was that he might look on his ties to herself in much the same light.

  They clip-clopped along for several minutes. At last Serena said pointedly, “If I had known we were coming this far, I would have had a lunch packed.”

  “It isn’t far now,” he answered.

  Serena looked at him from under her lashes. Was it her imagination, or was his face paler, and yes, more grim? She opened her mouth to ask him straight out where he was taking her, then closed it again. If his present mood was any sign of the pleasantness of the place, she would just as soon wait upon her arrival to find out.

  They had turned off the main road. The track they had taken was narrow. It led upward toward the crest of a hill. Near the top, where the rough trail ended, Ward pulled up and got down.

  “We walk from here,” he said, his eyes a translucent green as he stared up at her.

  He helped her out of the phaeton and tethered the horses. With his hand beneath her elbow, they trudged up the remaining steep slope, their breathing labored in the thin atmosphere.