“But you didn’t come, did you!” Flossie jerked his boot off his foot, then tossed it on the plank floor beside its mate. “I waited at that boarding house until the money ran out. I’ve been fending for myself, near a month now. What makes you think I want you here? I was doing just fine without you.”
Billy waved his hand in the air at the cozy room. “Looks like you’re doing just fine.” He slid his hooded gaze down the length of her with slow deliberation, taking in the fine satin gown as blue as an ocean and the white feather boa trailing around her neck. “You sure look fine.”
“That’s right, I am doing fine! No thanks to you. Working in the dance hall pays my room and board and Mr. Perry allows us girls to do the pickin’ of the customers we invite upstairs.”
“You always were a smart one. That’s what I like about you. No matter what happens, you always land on your feet.”
“Save it, Billy.” The sweet scent of rose water stirred through the air with the rustle of her crinolines as she marched to the high chest of drawers between the opened windows. She poured out a shot of whiskey. “You finding me was an accident. You know it, and I know it. So you might as well tell me what you want.”
He pushed himself upright. The carved acorn bedposts swam against the green leafy paper on the wall. “Of course it wasn’t no accident. I’m here, ain’t I? Where’s that drink? I’m as dry as a fart in a wind storm.”
“Here.” She shoved the glass in his face. “You can rest a while, but then I want you out.”
He swung his legs over the side of the bed to grab the whiskey. After taking a long draught, he slathered his tongue across his lips. “Hank’s dead, Floss. He’s gone.”
“What happened?” Flossie’s breath ruffled the white feather boa around her neck. “Did they hang him?”
Billy shook his head hardly able to believe it himself. “Nat Randall, that’s what happened. I don’t know what he said to him, but when we made the exchange, Hank was so scared he was near pissin’ himself. He ran right into my gun. It went off. I couldn’t stop him.” Billy curled his lips in disgust. “That ain’t the worst part. The worst part was after I planted him in the ground and looked over to see Cecil was all I had left. If Hank hadn’t been already dead, I would have killed him myself. It was real disappointing.”
“I’m, sorry.”
“Yup, that’s when I decided that bounty hunter was goin’ to have to pay.”
Flossie gasped. “You killed him?”
“I would have if Cecil hadn’t got edgy and fired off a shot. I told him to wait for my signal, but you know how excited he gets. Damn fool! We spent all morning killin’ cattle to get Randall out there in the open. Had a real nice spot on that bluff too. Then Cecil just gave us away.”
“Where is Cecil?”
“He’s downstairs trying to rustle up a piece of tail.” Billy tipped back his glass to drain the last of the whiskey, then held it out for more. “I hope he gets some. He’s been hornier than a three-peckered billy goat every since that Wallace girl got away.” Billy dreamt of her himself upon occasion, then woke up, cursing his headaches for robbing him of the chance to get between her legs. Just thinking about it made him throb. “She was fine.”
Flossie snatched the glass from his hand. “What do you mean, got away? I thought you were going to trade her for Hank?”
“That’s what I meant.” He pulled her toward him to run both hands over the opened back of her blue satin dress. “But you know Cecil. He’d have kept her for a pet if I’d let him.”
“I know you.” She jerked away, leaving him with a handful of feathers. “But just the same, I counted on you keeping your word. Miss Wallace was nice to me — real nice. You said you wouldn’t hurt her!”
“I didn’t hurt her! Goddamn you!” He struggled to his feet to make another grab for her. She tried to skitter away, but he snatched a handful of her dark curls and hauled her back. “I never touched her.” One hard smack knocked her to the floor and wiped the sassy look off her face, replacing it with fear. “But if I did, you got no say in it. Do you hear me?”
She threw her hand up in front of her face and started to whimper. “I hear you! I hear you!”
His raised his hand again for the satisfaction of seeing her wince. “Good, now shut your trap! Quit your blubberin’ and get me another drink!”
She struggled to her feet with a half-sob, panting for breath. “I’m sorry, Billy, I’m sorry!”
He reached for her again just to make sure, but this time all he got was air. She whirled away like a brightly painted top, leaving his head in a spin.
He flopped back on the bed, panting for breath.
She returned with the glass of whiskey and a quivering smile. “I don’t know why, but I believe you. I do.”
He didn’t know either, except most women were ready to accept the first lie that rolled off his tongue, rather than believe the truth when he told it. He took another swig of whiskey, then leaned back on his elbows while she fumbled with the buttons on his trousers. “A whole month, Floss, and I’ve been saving it all for you.”
Her fingers flew faster.
“I nearly burst when I saw you downstairs flashing your ankles on that stage.”
She gave a nervous laugh. “Mr. Perry says I’m a natural.”
He picked up the boa, then wrapped it around his neck with an awkward swing of his hand. “You got rhythm, that’s for sure.”
She started tearing off her clothes.
Things started to get blurry about then. His mind went a-wanderin’. “Tonight I’m going to board me a paddle wheeler and win us some money, you wait and see.”
• • •
Nat emerged from the express office, feeling a great deal lighter than before he went in. A telegram was a poor excuse for a letter, but assuring his father and Aunt Carolyn he was well and promising to come home soon to Charleston was the best he could do. He didn’t have time for long correspondence. Not with Billy Everett this close.
Nat gazed down the street to find Holt right where he’d left him — slouched on a wooden bench with his arms crossed and his hat tipped down over his face. He’d done nothing but sleep since they arrived in San Francisco.
Too much whoring.
As usual.
The sooner they left civilization the better.
They had no time for whores just now. Nat felt an urgent need to end this game of cat and mouse and ride on home. Strange, he’d never thought of the rancho as home before. It had always been a rest stop — a place to catch his breath once or twice a year. Charleston had always been home.
Until Christie Wallace turned his roost into a nest.
Damn.
Another problem he was going to have to deal with when he got home. She said she didn’t hold him responsible, but the trouble was, he did. Guilt ate at his gut every time he thought of her.
He couldn’t change what had happened, but he could offer compensation, buy her a house, see that she was taken care of. She needn’t return home to Boston if she didn’t want to. If she did and things didn’t work out, she’d have something to fall back on — money of her own — independence. Wasn’t that what she’d been fighting for?
He gave Holt a kick on the toe of his boot. “You’d better hope nobody shoots you, because I’m not dragging your dead carcass all the way back to Texas.”
Holt pushed his hat back, then came to his feet and stretched. “Who said I wanted to be buried in Texas? I might want you to put me on a boat to Charleston.”
“That’s just the white part of you talking.” Nat untied Diablo from the hitching post, then swung up into the saddle. “I think I’ll ship you by way of Panama and then telegraph both of your folks. Whichever one gets to you first can bury you where they want.”
“Thanks.” Holt chuckled. �
��You’re such an ass.”
“I know.” Nat started off through the mist, down the dusty, sloping street.
“I thought you always wanted to sail around the Horn?” Holt said, cantering up beside him.
“Ha!” Nat tossed Holt a sidelong glance. “Not with your dead body in the hold, haunting me the whole way.”
“You’d send me by myself?” Holt sounded wounded. “That is a cold way to treat an old friend. What if the ship goes down?”
“Then I expect your coffin will float.”
“I could end up in the Sandwich Islands or God knows where. Who’ll bury me then?”
“Why don’t you just stay awake and you won’t have to worry about being shot.”
“I wasn’t sleeping. I was thinking.”
A Chinese merchant with a cart loaded with corn cut across the street, forcing them to ride single file. The town had begun to wake. Shopkeepers opened their doors to early morning customers. The sound of a newsboy calling out headlines in Spanish, German, English, and Italian echoed behind them as they continued to weave their way down the sloping street toward the waterfront.
As soon as the way cleared and they were able to ride abreast again Holt said, “Don’t you want to know what I was thinking about when you were in the express office sending that telegram?”
“Nope.”
“I was thinking that Billy’s not as stupid as he makes out. There’s something to be said for getting lost in a crowd. Every time he enters civilization we get further behind.”
“The trouble with Billy is he’s predictable. Now that he’s got his opium, he’ll be ready to kick up his heels again.”
“The money from that stage they held up outside of Sacramento must be burning a hole in his pocket.”
“No doubt. And he won’t be satisfied until he’s drunk and gambled it all away.”
“If he’s down on one of those riverboats, he won’t last long. They play for high stakes. If your hand so much as leaves the table they’ll call you a cheat and draw their gun.”
Nat gave a grunt. “Maybe one of them will shoot him and save us the trouble of taking him in.”
Holt’s face split in a slow grin. “Then you’ll have to think up a new excuse to put in those telegrams.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Christie lifted the glass of champagne to her lips, silently cursing Leigh for abandoning her. Ordinarily, she’d have considered it a privilege to sit at the Captain’s table, but the half-empty dining room offered little distraction from the probing gaze of Mr. Burke. She felt like a bug under a magnifying glass sitting across from him. If the meal didn’t end soon, she’d be too intoxicated to navigate back to her cabin.
As of yet, she’d avoided speaking directly to him by giving the captain her full attention. But it was difficult to concentrate with the captain’s warm glances flitting over her and Mr. Burke’s inquisitive stares. Why she cared, she did not know — call it foolish pride, but the thought of her kidnapping being revealed before the twenty or more guests made her heart sink.
Strangers or not, they represented the cream of San Francisco society, and she had no wish to become the object of their latest gossip. Better they discovered the truth when she was gone — safe in Boston where her father’s reputation might shroud her from malicious intent. Oh, there would be gossip, of that she had no doubt, but no one would dare snub her publicly. Her father was too powerful.
“Have you left behind a large family in Boston, Miss Wallace?” Mrs. Beaton, to her right, shifted her substantial girth.
Christie leaned back in her chair, allowing the waiter to place a dish of smoked oysters before her. “My father and two sisters.”
Mrs. Beaton crinkled a sympathetic smile, tilting her head of dark curls. “And where do you fall in the pecking order? No, don’t tell me. You’re the eldest.”
“How did you know?”
“There’s an air of confidence about you. One doesn’t acquire that without responsibility. I should know. I’m the eldest of six.” She appeared very proud of that.
Mr. Beaton leaned behind her, feigning a grave look, while smoothing his luxurious silver mustache. “She’s certainly the bossiest.”
“And it hasn’t hurt you one bit.” Mrs. Beaton tapped him on the arm with her red silk fan. “Now where are you staying, my dear? And what can we do to add to the pleasure of your visit.”
Before Christie could answer a waiter in white livery arrived to speak with the captain.
The captain’s boyish features stilled, save a slow thinning of his lips. “Please excuse me,” he bade them, rising to his feet. “I have a small matter to attend to.”
Christie shifted in her chair, watching him stride from the dining room. With Captain Jackson gone, the Beatons became her only refuge from Burke’s unwelcome stares. But she wasn’t about to allow him to spoil her evening. This was the first opportunity she’d had to enjoy the company of society since being exiled to the West.
Mrs. Beaton shook her head with a look of consternation. “What a shame. I wonder what it is this time — a ruckus in the saloon, no doubt. Every gambler and wolf in the city races to the Belle when it makes port.”
“Easy pickings,” Mr. Beaton explained, “With so many new arrivals flooding into the city.”
Christie managed a polite smile. That explained Leigh flying from their cabin with a feverish gleam in his eye — the higher the stakes, the better for him. What new wrinkle had he gotten himself into this time? Well, no use fretting. After all, he was a grown man.
If he was bound and bent on destruction, there was nothing she could do about it. If he lost all of his money and had to work his way back home to Murdock, perhaps he’d finally learn his lesson. A little hard labor might do him good.
Their entrée of trout arrived, followed by a heaping fluted dish of blackberry trifle, during which time Mrs. Beaton regaled them with tales of her rambunctious siblings. Her humorous anecdotes flooded Christie with homesickness and a desperate need for news from home.
Leigh assured her that no letters had arrived in her absence, which seemed strange since Meagan was prone to excitability. Word of Christie’s kidnapping should have prompted a string of questions. Yet, the only correspondence since her disappearance was her father’s telegram, demanding she return home.
After they’d sipped their tea, Mrs. Beaton insisted Christie accompany her and Mr. Beaton to the ballroom. But Christie begged off, pleading tiredness. She tucked Mrs. Beaton’s calling card into her evening bag, promising to pay them a visit should she ever return to San Francisco.
Later, in her cabin, Christie rooted to the bottom of her trunk for Meagan’s letters. Perhaps reading them would ease her homesickness. What she found made her grow cold. The letters were there alright, tied in a yellow ribbon where she’d left them, but the money her father had sent was gone.
How could that be?
She rummaged to the bottom of the trunk — in every corner, hoping somehow the money had fallen out, that she’d been mistaken — perhaps hidden it somewhere else.
But it wasn’t there.
Not one bill.
Not one coin.
Nothing.
She’d been robbed!
• • •
“What in blazes is he doing here?” Captain Jackson demanded.
Before Nat could stop him, Christopher Jackson ploughed his fist into the side of Holt’s jaw.
Holt stumbled backward.
Nat rolled his eyes. “Here we go.” He’d told Holt to wait outside the wheelhouse, but he just wouldn’t listen. The two had scrapped and argued from the moment they met at West Point, mostly over women. “Hold on, Christopher!” He stepped between them to grab the next fist Christopher was about to let fly. “Now you don’t want to go and do that.”
> “Ohhhh, yes I do.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Nat said with as much authority as he could employ. “Not when Holt came all this way to apologize.”
“Apologize!” Holt roared. “Ha!”
“There, you see?” Christopher made a surge forward, rattling the brass buttons on his coat. “Out of my way, while I make room for his teeth on the other side of his face.”
Nat slashed Holt a pointed glare before continuing in mellow tones. “Yes, apologize. Holt feels very bad about what happened. You must realize he had no way of knowing you were keeping company with her. He and Clara go way back. Her circumstances were different then, before she married and went on to become a rich widow.”
Christopher’s face took on a reddish hue. “Are you saying I was after her money?”
“Not at all, I’m just saying you need to understand Holt’s position in all of this. He didn’t know you were courting her.”
“I wasn’t courting her, I was sleeping with her.”
“There, you see, it was all a big misunderstanding.”
“That doesn’t mean I couldn’t have been courting her.” Christopher jerked his arm free to stand with both fists clinched at his side. “I supposed I’ll let it go, this time, on account of old times and my recent good fortune in meeting someone I hope will obliterate all of this unpleasantness from my mind.” He drew in a long breath. “On one condition — he removes himself from my sight.”
Holt licked the blood from the corner of his mouth, then reached down to retrieve his hat, which had gone sailing from his head on impact. After placing it on his head, he tipped it in a gentlemanly fashion and flashed a brazen smile. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“So, who is this mystery lady you’re sparking?” Nat asked when the door closed behind Holt. The sooner he took Christopher’s mind off Holt, the sooner he’d be in a mood to co-operate. “Do I know her?”
“No.” Christopher scowled through the glass of the wheelhouse at Holt as he disappeared around the corner, manipulating his bruised chin with his hand. “She’s not from these parts.”
Time After Time Page 136