Clay considered. “It’s only ten miles, and you’re light. We’ll do that and take everything for now.” He smiled at her, the happiness he could read in her expression easing his worries over their future. “It is not every day a man gets to ride into town with a beautiful bride in the saddle behind him.”
* * *
For three more days they stayed at the camp, roaming the forest, bathing in the creek. Clay taught Annabel how to load the big Walker Colt and fire it with enough accuracy to stop an attacker at a close range. Annabel cut his hair and mended his clothing and taught him to sing some of her favorite sea shanties.
Clay called it a vacation. Annabel saw it as a farewell to their mountain sanctuary—a place where she had found happiness and a sense of purpose, despite the tragic death of the old man she had come to like and respect.
At night, they slept in each other’s arms. “We won’t do it again, until we are wed,” Clay whispered in the darkness as Annabel snuggled up against him.
“We couldn’t anyway,” Annabel whispered back. “I have my monthly flow.”
Women’s reproductive cycles were a mystery to Clay, but he understood it meant she couldn’t be with child. Relief flooded over him. It had been wrong to succumb to the temptation, but at least they had avoided consequences that would have added to his sense of guilt.
And yet the thought of a baby stuck in his mind. While Billy and Lee lived, he’d gained a sense of pride from looking after them. What would it be like, to be responsible for a child? He tried to imagine a little boy with green eyes and unruly curls, but it kept turning into little girl with amber eyes and straight, midnight black hair.
Before they got ready to leave their claim, Clay climbed up on a ladder and hacked an inscription above the entrance to the mine.
Aaron Hicks 1834–1889
He added a large cross, turning the cliff into a headstone.
After he came down, they tore down the kitchen canopy and burned the timber, including the ladder and the handcart and the arrastre spokes. They scattered the gravel from the mine dumps and rolled the stones that had formed the arrastre into disarray, in the hope of disguising any signs of the mine.
Anything they couldn’t feed to the flames or take with them—the stove, a few empty grain bins, loops of rusty iron chain—they hid inside the mine tunnel. To cover up the opening, they dragged back into place the dead oak that had served as a screen and transplanted saplings around it, spruce and oak and aspen.
If the trees took, they would form a thicket that hid the entrance, even if someone ventured close by. And if another prospector found the mine by chance, the inscription would warn him it was a tomb, and he might choose to move on.
* * *
Annabel sat behind Clay on the buckskin as they rode into Hillsboro at sundown. It was the first boomtown she had ever seen. The noise was deafening. Up on the hill, a huge stamp mill smashed the ore. In town, music and raucous voices blared out from the saloons that seemed too many to count.
In the street, horses stood tethered at hitching rails and people milled about. Among them Annabel could see women, dressed in gowns with a narrow waist and wide skirts. With dismay, she considered her own ragged clothing. No longer pretending to be a boy, she wore her hair in a single braid that hung down her back. Tomorrow she would buy a pair of boots that fit her feet. And before she took her wedding vows, she would purchase a gown.
Dodging a speeding cart and a pair of snarling dogs, Clay rode up to the livery stable at the end of the street. He swung Annabel down and dismounted. The hostler, a tall man with a huge drooping moustache, came to take their horse and mule.
“Two dollars a night,” he said. “Half for the mule.”
Clay’s brow puckered. “That’s twice the going rate.”
“It’s the going rate here. If it doesn’t suit, go elsewhere.”
“Is there a good hotel in town?” Annabel cut in.
“Mrs. Orchard runs a clean establishment.” The man pointed down the street. “Her husband runs the stage line, in case you’re looking to travel out.”
They made their way along the crowded street to the hotel. “We only have a suite, with its own bath,” the portly, balding clerk informed them. “Five dollars a night. Payment in advance.”
“Can I pay with gold?” Clay asked.
“Cash only,” the man replied. “The bank will change your gold. They open at nine in the morning.”
Clay turned to leave, but Annabel tugged him back. “I have money.” She pulled out the leather poke hanging around her neck, lifted the rawhide cord over her head and offered the poke to Clay. “There is twelve dollars in there, enough to tide us over until we get to the bank.”
Clay balanced the poke in his hand. Annabel could read his thoughts. Accepting her savings hurt his pride, but he turned to the clerk, counted out five silver dollars and took the key the clerk handed out.
When they got upstairs, Annabel rushed around the airy room with a small bathing alcove and a pair of tall windows overlooking the street. “A bath,” she exclaimed. “And clean linens. It seems forever since I slept in a bed.”
She caught Clay watching her with a thoughtful expression on his face. Annabel bit her lip, wishing to take back the words. She’d have to watch out, to avoid giving him the impression she missed the everyday luxuries of her former life.
* * *
In the morning, they had breakfast in the hotel dining room, then went to the telegraph office. Clay wanted to send a message to the man in Valverde who sent the supplies and settle any debt Mr. Hicks might owe. Annabel wished to let her sisters know that she was safe and well.
The small office attached to the drugstore was empty, but they could hear the telegraph key clacking behind the low partition at the back. Pencils and blank telegraph forms lay scattered on the wooden counter.
“I’ve got it down to four words.” Annabel picked up a pencil and wrote: “Hicks dead. What owing?”
While Clay filled in the address for the merchant in Valverde, Annabel composed a telegram for Charlotte. At ten cents a word she did not wish to waste them. After several attempts, she was satisfied with the balance between brevity and clarity.
Missed train. Stranded in Hillsboro. Will ride west. Have trustworthy escort. Please send funds. Annabel.
“Please” was not strictly necessary, but she was willing to sacrifice ten cents in the name of polite manners. She considered adding she was fit and well, but decided to save the money. Her sisters would figure it out. After a moment of hesitation, she glanced over at Clay. Satisfied his attention was on the mining notices tacked to the wall, Annabel inserted an extra line.
Spotted Gareth Southern Pacific train month ago. Watch out.
If Cousin Gareth had been on his way to Gold Crossing, most likely he had already arrived, but if he had not, she wanted to alert Charlotte and Miranda to his presence in the area.
Unease filled her at concealing her affluent background from Clay. Why was it that when you didn’t tell something because it didn’t seem to matter, keeping the information a secret seemed to blow its importance out of all proportion?
The clacking of the telegraph key ceased, and a small, sharp-featured man with a visor over his eyes and garters on his shirtsleeves came out from behind the partition. Appearing harassed, he accepted their forms without as much as a greeting and added up the words. “That will be four dollars and thirty cents.”
“When can we expect a reply?” Clay asked.
“Just as soon as the person at the other end sends it” came the surly answer.
The operator took their five dollars, made change and hurried back behind the partition, where the telegraph key had burst to life with an incoming message.
When they stepped out into the sunshine, Annabel nearly collided with a tall m
an coming out of the drugstore. He swerved to avoid her, his walking stick tapping against the boardwalk. Annabel caught the flash of silver on the handle—a handle shaped like a wolf’s head!
Her eyes darted upward. Her throat closed up. Cousin Gareth. And his eyes were sweeping up and down her ragged clothing with a glint of recognition in them.
She could run. But Cousin Gareth had seen her come out of the telegraph office. He might go inside, bribe the operator—Cousin Gareth was good at bribing people—and get his hands on her message addressed to Mrs. Maude Greenwood in Gold Crossing, the false identity Charlotte was hiding behind.
She had to distract him, to avoid exposing Charlotte. Boldly, Annabel stepped forward. “Sir, I don’t know if you remember me. I ran from you on the train.” She lifted her bowler hat and flicked her long braid over her shoulder.
“I am sorry I ran off like that, but you said I reminded you of a girl you knew, and I thought you might have caught on to my secret—that I was a girl masquerading as a boy. I fled from you to avoid exposure.”
Cousin Gareth contemplated her, a baffled frown on his face. “Oh, yes, I remember,” he said after a moment. “I did indeed think you reminded me of someone, but the recollection has faded now. You see, I’ve lost my memory.” He touched the scar on his brow. “I go by the name Gareth Wolfson. See here.” He lifted the walking stick. “The handle is shaped like the head of a wolf. That gave me the name Wolfson. My first name I got from a woman who thought I resembled a relative of hers called Gareth.”
He gave a small, self-deprecating shrug. “I seem to be an educated man, and I am rather good with cards. I earn my living as a gambler, and I don’t cheat.”
He exhaled a long, slow sigh. “I hoped you could shed some light on my identity. I’ve only had one lead up to now. A saloon singer, by the name Miss Randi. She is the one who gave me my first name. When she saw me, she blurted out Gareth, but when she took a closer look at me she decided she had been mistaken.”
“Gareth?” Annabel breathed.
“That’s right.”
“What...what did this Miss Randi look like?”
“She was quite tall for a woman. Blonde, with blue eyes. A very beautiful woman. Married to a Cheyenne Indian. The strange thing is, when I looked at her, my mind conjured up the roar of the ocean and the smell of salt spray, and yet we were in Wyoming.”
“In Wyoming?” Annabel echoed.
“Yes. Miss Randi—Miranda something, her real name was—was on her way to the Arizona Territory. I tried to follow her, in case she held a key to my past, but I lost her trail. I decided to head south anyway, and then I crossed paths with you.”
His eyes narrowed, and the easy manner vanished. “And now I shall have to look for the key to my past in your pockets. Figuratively speaking, of course. Are you certain we’re not acquainted?”
“No,” Annabel blurted out. She pushed past him and fled, her boots stamping a frantic beat against the boardwalk. Her mind was reeling. Miranda, in Wyoming, as a saloon singer, married to an Indian? Could it be true? Blindly, Annabel rushed ahead, almost toppling over when the boardwalk ended and she stumbled on the steep step down to the rutted street.
Clay caught up with her. “What was that all about?”
“I...” Annabel shifted her shoulders and fell silent. Anxiety clouded her thinking. Unable to make a rational assessment of how to best navigate between honesty and caution, she clammed up, putting loyalty to her sisters first.
“Do you know that man?” Clay studied her with a suspicious look in his green eyes. “He claims he has lost his memory, and yet he thinks he knows you. Are you running from something?”
“No.” Annabel’s tone was fraught. It had been bad enough not to tell him that she grew up in a mansion and her sister Charlotte was the heiress to a great fortune. Now she was adding an outright lie. “He is known to me...but the secret is not mine to reveal...it concerns my eldest sister... I will tell you once I’m able to secure her permission to speak about it.”
Chapter Eighteen
Clay perched on a rickety chair in the corner of Miss Jolie’s Fashion Emporium and watched a Frenchwoman with red hair rifle through the rack of dresses, occasionally pulling out one and draping it in front of Annabel.
They’d been to the bank to exchange their gold for cash, and the teller had charged them twenty dollars in commission, putting another dent to their funds.
The redhead held up a dress. “Thees ees very becoming for Madame.”
“No,” Clay said. “She will need a dress she can ride astride in.”
“Ride astride in?” The woman looked aghast. “But a true lady like Madame does not ride astride.”
“This one does.” Clay crossed his arms over his chest. “And no corsets. No feathers. No plumes. No sequins. And something warm enough for the cool evenings when the winter sets in.”
“Poof.” The woman, around thirty-five, short and plump, threw her arms up in the air. “I sell no such gowns.” She pursed her mouth and tapped her forefinger to her lips. “Perhaps there ees something...”
She delved into a box of clothing beneath the rack, wiggled her rear end and pulled out a bundle of green and brown.
“Thees is a split skirt for riding. Very petite. Made for a lady who...” her brows made a delicate leap “...has lost the amour of the gentleman who was going to pay.”
Clay watched the woman unravel the parcel of leather and velvet and push it at Annabel. “Madame try eet on. Vite. Vite.” She flapped a hand to usher Annabel along. “Monsieur is getting bored.”
Annabel vanished behind a curtain. Boots thudded against the plank floor. Fabric rustled. The curtain flung aside, and Annabel stepped into view. Clay held his breath. He’d seen her naked, he’d seen her in rags, but he had never seen her in clothes designed to enhance female beauty.
She wore a split riding skirt in brown cowhide and a green military-style velvet jacket, trimmed with brown and decorated with brass buttons at the front. She looked like a miniature general in charge of the troops.
“How much?” Clay asked.
“Feefty dollars.”
It was more than they could afford, but Clay could see the shine in Annabel’s eyes, could feel her pleasure as she twirled upon her feet, making the skirt flare. “Can you throw in a wide-brimmed hat in the same brown cowhide?” he asked. “A waterproof one?”
“Oui. Oui. Madame will need a hat. That bowler hat is ’orrible.” The woman reached for a shelf, lifted boxes, pulled out a hat that was slightly battered but exactly the right color and style to complement the outfit.
Clay rolled up to his feet and dropped five gold pieces on the counter. Turning to Annabel, he smiled at her open delight and spoke in a tone of affection. “Let’s get out of here before we go bankrupt.”
They made another stop at a boot maker, where they were able to exchange Annabel’s huge boots for a secondhand pair of boys’ riding boots. Annabel seemed reluctant to make the switch, peering inside her old boots as if something lay hidden there. Eventually she succumbed to the lure of the better fit, even though at the door she still turned back, craning over her shoulder, as if sad to leave the old boots behind.
* * *
The next day at breakfast Clay surveyed the elegant dining room, just as he had done the day before, and at supper last night. Women wore fashionable gowns, the gentlemen fine broadcloth suits. The coffee cups were rose-patterned china, so fine he was afraid they’d shatter in his calloused hand.
In his worn clothing, he felt like a crow among parrots. But Annabel fitted right in. What did he know about her? A true lady, the Frenchwoman in the dress shop had called her. And that dude in fancy clothing—he knew Annabel, yet she refused to admit the fact. What secrets was she keeping? What shadows might there be in her past that could reach all the way ou
t to the Western Frontier?
He poured coffee from the polished steel pot on the table, filled Annabel’s cup. “I want to go to the livery stable, to pay the man for another night and check on the horse and mule. While I’m gone, you can have a rest in the room.”
“I’d rather go to the telegraph office, to see if there are any replies.”
He frowned at her. “Are you sure you’ll be safe walking around the town on your own?”
Startled, she looked up from her coffee cup. “The telegraph office is only a few doors down.”
“Don’t underestimate the dangers in a boomtown. They contain an explosive mixture of men in possession of sudden riches and others who wish to relieve them of their fortunes.”
“I’ll be fine.” Annabel gave him a rueful smile. “After all, I have nothing to offer to a thief.”
Pointedly, Clay took in her appearance in her new clothing. Leaning across the table, he lowered his voice. “You have everything to offer to a violent man who has no respect for the law, no decency toward a woman and no mercy for the weaker. Remember that, and be on your guard.”
She made those dinner-plate eyes at him. “But you’ll let me go?”
Clay leaned back in the padded chair. “I intend to be your husband, not your jailer. You have a good head on your shoulders. I trust you to use it.”
Annabel sat straighter, appearing to grow taller. Clay felt a surge of affection. He’d noticed how much importance Annabel put on being treated like an equal, on being independent. He had little material gifts he could offer her, but he had done his best to give her a sense of pride and confidence in herself.
* * *
Annabel hurried down the street, her steps light, her heart brimming with pride. Clay had a knack of making her see the truth, and he’d done it again. She’d worried her feelings for him might be a naive girl’s infatuation with the first handsome man who came along, but she’d been wrong. She loved him with a true devotion that would last, for he had given her the encouragement and support she needed to forge her own identity as a capable young woman.
From Runaway to Pregnant Bride Page 17