by Nancy Bush
Harrison stared into the crystal wine goblet in front of him, slowly chewing on Cook’s special Beef Wellington, which had been specially prepared in celebration of his return. “Those men may have been the highwaymen who kidnapped Miracle. If that’s the case, they’re the ones who’ve killed other women along that stretch of road.”
Silence fell across the room, and Joseph Danner, who’d been listening to the conversation with only half an ear, too worried about the fate of his wife to concentrate on anything else, finally surfaced. “Then Jace is in danger. They would have killed him if Raynor hadn’t gotten there first. Jace can identify them.”
And so can Miracle, Harrison thought with a wrench of fear.
¤ ¤ ¤
Miracle tied Tillie and Gray to the rail outside the Half Moon Saloon. She glanced longingly down the street to where Garrett’s Hotel stood. What she wouldn’t give for a real bath and a real bed! But she had no money. All her money had been inside the stolen tin box. She would have to sleep in the wagon tonight, her only protection the knife, which was once again strapped tightly to her upper thigh.
A wave of laughter erupted from the Half Moon, followed by the tinny sound of the piano playing somewhere in the saloon’s interior. Miracle stood on the boardwalk, shivering, wishing she’d put on a cloak or shawl. But her shivering wasn’t only from the cold. If she were ever to find Uncle Horace, the Half Moon was her best bet. She dreaded the thought of walking into a room of mainly men and asking questions which could alert someone that she’d been at the barn that night, but what choice did she have?
You could wait for Harrison, her treacherous conscience pointed out. He would help you.
Squaring her shoulders, Miracle rejected that idea outright. Harrison had his own problems, and he had a fiancée to help him solve them.
The swinging doors to the Half Moon creaked loudly beneath her hand, but the noise was swallowed up by the raucous crowd. Miracle stepped inside and narrowed her eyes against the curling smoke. A dozen or so tables supported card games of various sorts. Through the haze Miracle could see seven or eight women lounging across an upper balcony rail, their postures so languid and suggestive she rightly assumed they were whores. A small door to one side of the highly polished bar was open, and she could see inside to a carpeted office. The manager’s office.
With determined footsteps she crossed the room. Heads turned, and men stared at her unabashedly. Unlike the gaily and scantily dressed women draped over the balcony, Miracle was a disheveled, torn mess. Her presence created a stir only because she was someone new, someone with a mysterious purpose, someone who made a point of not meeting the speculative gaze of any of the Half Moon’s other occupants.
There was a man at the bar with thin, graying hair. He watched as Miracle approached, but he didn’t change expression.
“I’m looking for my uncle,” she told him in a low voice. “Are you the owner?”
“The name’s Conrad Templeton,” he answered. “I’m the manager. If you want the owner you’ll have to speak to Mr. Garrett.”
Miracle frowned. “As in Garrett’s Hotel?”
Templeton guffawed, as if at a private joke. His eyes twinkled, but he said, “As in most everything in Rock Springs, ma’am. Jason Garrett pert’ near owns the whole town.”
The man sitting on a stool to Miracle’s left gave a satisfied belch. “And the Danners own everythin’ else.”
Miracle’s gaze swung to him. He was disgusting, grinning at her through a mouthful of rotten teeth and pus-filled gums. “You should wash out your mouth with a rinse of sumac blossom,” she said. “It heals the gums quickly. But you should also dip a piece of cotton in carbolic acid and lay it in alongside the teeth.” At his stare of disbelief, she added gently, “It looks like you might need an extraction or two.”
“I’ve got me medicine, little lady.” He lifted his mug of ale.
“You’ll lose all those teeth unless you take care of them now,” Miracle answered.
“What’s your uncle look like?” Conrad Templeton broke into this illuminating conversation.
“He’s about fifty-five, but his hair is still black. He’s not very tall, only a few inches taller than myself.” Miracle chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. That description fit a lot of men. “He’s got a gold tooth. And he’s a great yarn-spinner,” she added. “Especially if someone else is buying whiskey.”
“I seen him,” the man at the end of the bar put in unexpectedly. “He was here.”
“When?” Miracle asked eagerly.
“Tonight, and yes, little lady, he can tell a story like nobody’s business. Excep’n’ he’s right miserable, he is. Cryin’ in his cups. Seems he lost someone special to him.”
Miracle had been so worried about Uncle Horace she hadn’t really considered what he’d been thinking had happened to her. Her throat tightened at the thought of how depressed and sad he must be. But he was alive!
“He was here at the Half Moon?”
“Yes. Sittin’ with James over there.” He pointed to the corner table, where a white-haired gentleman was conducting an earnest conversation with a younger man. “James is a soft touch for a broken-hearted drunk, if’n you know what I mean.”
“Yes, thank you.”
James had obviously been picking up Uncle Horace’s bar bill. Miracle was so elated that she raced over to James’s table without a thought for anything but finding Uncle Horace alive and well.
“Hello, sir. The man at the bar pointed you out to me. You were buying drinks for another man earlier. I think he’s my Uncle Horace. Could you tell me where he went?”
Her words tumbled out one after the other. Miracle’s fevered gaze was directed at the white-haired James. She didn’t even consider his companion.
But it was his companion who spoke. “I had to kick him out of here,” he said smoothly. “He was making a nuisance of himself. Crying all over everyone. Begging drinks.”
Miracle’s back stiffened instinctively. The rum-smooth quality of the man’s voice riled her even though she was certain he spoke the truth. She didn’t trust men with that much polish and assurance.
“The name’s Jason Garrett,” he said when Miracle’s ice-blue gaze was leveled on his face. He held out his hand for her to shake. “Who might you be?”
Chapter Eight
“Miracle Jones,” she answered, meeting his assessing look with one of her own.
“Well, Miracle Jones, your uncle is sleeping it off down by Fool’s Falls unless Sheriff Raynor’s moved him.” Jason Garrett arched a brow. “The jail’s located around the corner. Raynor sometimes collects worthy specimens and throws them in a cell until they sober up. You could check there.”
Miracle didn’t answer. The white-haired James seated across from Garrett sent her a sympathetic look. “He’s a very entertaining fellow,” he told her. “But he’s grieving something fierce.”
“Thank you.”
Miracle turned stiffly toward the door and was surprised and annoyed when a hand circled her arm to detain her.
“Let me help,” Jason Garrett said smoothly. Then he swept his arm outward in a gesture that meant she should precede him.
Miracle was in no mood for company, but then neither was she eager to step inside the Sheriff’s office and ask to see her Uncle Horace.
“The jail’s this way,” Garrett said once they were outside, pointing to an ugly, square brick building at the end of the street.
“I think I’ll go to the falls first.”
Garrett smiled and inclined his head.
What his interest was in her, Miracle couldn’t guess, but rather than draw extra attention to herself by spurning help from one of Rock Springs’ most prominent citizens, she didn’t protest when he fell in step beside her.
Jace, too, wasn’t entirely sure why he found Miracle so fascinating. But he’d heard enough over her drunken uncle’s ramblings to convince him that good old Uncle Horace had been near the scene of the barn arson,
enough anyway that he believed his niece had died in the fire. So Miracle must have been at the scene, too, yet here she was, unharmed, not a scrape on her except for some smudged dirt and minor tears in her clothes, self-reliant to the point of coolness, and damn beautiful in the bargain. Jace’s interest was piqued. Where had she been the last few days?
The answer was so blindingly clear that it made him sweep in a startled breath. With Harrison Danner!
Jace had already heard the rumors that Harrison had returned; several people in town had seen him talking to Billy Greaves before jumping onto the wagon seat of the peddler’s wagon. Her wagon? Jace swung around to look at her again, closely. Why, by God, she was part Indian! That would be right. “Uncle Horace,” wallowing in grief and maudlin to the point of making you want to kick his drunken ass right out the door – which Jace had actually done – had called her a shaman.
Because anything the Danners did was of prime interest to Jace, he said in a friendly tone, “I understand you’ve spent the last few days with Harrison Danner.”
Miracle stared at him. How had he known? “He was injured. I took care of him.”
“Is that why he missed his wedding?”
“I suppose so. You’ll have to ask him.”
Miracle didn’t want to think about Harrison and Kelsey. It was too depressing, and she had more immediate problems to think about. The rushing roar of the falls grew louder as she and Jace approached. Miracle let out a cry of alarm when she saw a crumpled figure lying on the ground just outside the falls’ basin.
“Uncle Horace!” she cried, rushing toward him. Spray from the falls dampened her cheeks, catching in her eyes.
She knelt down beside him and gently attempted to turn him over. Jace Garrett had no such patience. He shoved the body with a toe of his boot so it rolled over in an ungainly flop. Infuriated, Miracle was about to launch herself at Jace in a full-scale attack when she realized the man on the ground wasn’t Uncle Horace. Furthermore, he was dead. And she knew who he was: one of the kidnappers.
Jace Garrett swore and said shakily, “Good God Almighty, he’s one of them!”
“You – know this man?” Miracle asked in an oddly squeaky voice.
“He practically robbed me blind.” Swallowing, he glanced over his shoulder. “Come on. Your uncle’s bound to be at the jail, and I need to talk to Raynor myself.”
¤ ¤ ¤
The house was quiet and still except for the stately ticking of the grandfather clock in the entry hall. Harrison swirled the brandy in the bottom of his class, frowning into its amber depths. His mother was resting quietly and as comfortably as humanly possible. His father was with her. Lexie had gone home to her two boys, and Tremaine had been called to the Cullen farm. One of the Cullen children was ill. They thought it might be diphtheria.
The pressing worries surrounding his father’s household had kept the family from questioning Harrison too closely about the circumstances of his own whereabouts these past few days. It was just as well.
Harrison couldn’t really explain his feelings for Miracle; he didn’t understand them himself. But he knew he was consumed with a passionate need to find out where she was this evening and what she was doing. Tremaine’s words about the kidnappers gave him fresh reason to worry. Jace wasn’t the only one who could recognize some of the men at the barn that night; Miracle could, too.
Growling under his breath, he grabbed one of Pa’s coats from the closet under the stairs. He had offered to spend the night with Pa and his mother, but waiting made him tense and irritable. He would just make sure Miracle was all right, then he would come back.
Taking the steps two at a time, he hurried to his mother’s room. Cracking open the door, he met his father’s eyes. “I’m going to Rock Springs for a while, Pa, but I’ll be back. Will you be all right?”
“What about that knife wound, son?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Let me at least bind it for you.”
Joseph grabbed some of Tremaine’s supplies from the table and motioned Harrison to come near. Chafing under the delay, Harrison nevertheless let his father tightly wrap his chest.
“That’ll at least keep you from making it worse,” his father pointed out. “You should be resting.”
“I know. I’ll be back before morning.”
Joseph Danner nodded. He’d learned long ago that his children weren’t known for taking good advice. “Take care,” he said as Harrison and strode out of the room and down the stairs.
At the stables, he saddled one of his father’s best horses, Triumph, a stallion with a mean streak whose speed made up for his lack of manners. Only Harrison’s intimate knowledge of the quirky nature of the horse kept Triumph from unseating him. “You devil,” Harrison muttered fondly, patting the black stallion’s neck. “You don’t know what to do with me, do you?”
It was galling that Lexie, who was about half Harrison’s size, could bring this monster to heel with only a few words and the cluck of her tongue. But then Lexie had always had a way with animals that was truly mysterious. That’s what made her such an excellent horse doctor, and why the male population of Rock Springs couldn’t ignore her talents even though she was a woman.
Triumph moved with grace and speed, shying from the whispering leaves of the trees lining the road, leaping agilely over imagined obstacles, tossing his head and fighting Harrison even while he tore forward through the black night. The wind from his passage screamed past Harrison’s face, tearing his eyes. What an animal, Harrison thought, then was struck hard by the memory that his father had planned to give him Triumph as a wedding gift.
It was at that moment that Harrison faced the bald truth: he didn’t want to marry Kelsey Garrett.
The thought made him suck in his breath. He had to marry Kelsey. He’d offered for her. To back out now would be cowardly and cause her untold humiliation.
No, Kelsey Garrett was going to be his wife. He had no choice in the matter.
At the outskirts of Rock Springs he reined in the now sweating Triumph to a fast walk. Triumph didn’t want to slow down, and he let out a squeal of frustration that made Harrison smile in spite of himself.
“Relax, you dumb idiot. We’ve still got to go all the way back tonight.”
Rock Springs was closed up tight as a drum except for the music and noise spilling from the Half Moon Saloon and the welcoming lamp lit inside the front windows of Garrett’s Hotel. The name was a misnomer, for Garrett’s Hotel was owned by Tremaine Danner, not Jace Garrett. Years before it had been a rooming house, and the woman who ran it, Jenny McBride, had sold it to Tremaine before she left town. She and Tremaine had been friends, and that put her at odds with Jace Garrett by default. Not that she could stand Garrett herself. For years she’d turned down every offer he made to buy her out. Then she sold the place to Tremaine, and Tremaine, to the shock of Rock Springs residents and the amusement of Lexie and Harrison, had turned around and named it Garrett’s Hotel. It was a mocking edifice to Jace’s failure for anyone who knew the whole story. Jace hadn’t set foot inside the three-storied building since Tremaine bought it.
Harrison headed straight for the hotel. There were no other decent rooms in town, and it made sense that Miracle would be there. But then he saw her wagon parked outside the Half Moon, and he stared at it in dismay. Miracle was in the saloon?
He strode straight through the door, furious for reasons he couldn’t name. Conrad Templeton glanced up from the whiskey he was pouring when he saw him. “Jace ain’t here,” he said, misinterpreting the reason for Harrison’s anger. “Glad you’re all right, Danner. We were all convinced you’d burnt to cinders.”
“I’m not looking for Jace. I’m looking for a woman named Miracle Jones.”
“What she look like?” a man with a sorry-looking set of teeth asked as Conrad slipped him another whiskey.
“Slim, high cheekbones, blue eyes.” He hesitated. “Beautiful.”
“She was here!” he declared
loudly. “Lookin’ for her uncle somebody-or-other. Went and talked to James there.” He swept his arm toward James Roarke, who was sitting at a table across from a broken-down derelict. The derelict was telling him a tale of woe and adventure that had James, a lonely man who had a penchant for trying to save the losers of the world, sitting on the edge of his chair.
Or at least it appeared that way.
“Thanks,” Harrison said, threading his way to Roarke’s table.
“…and then I see this vision, all draped in white the kind that’s see-through, y’know? She starts floatin’ my way, and she says, ‘Charlie, it’s time to meet your maker,’ and I says, ‘No way, honey! I got lotsa livin’ to do. I can’t –’”
“Mr. Roarke?” Harrison cut off the wheezing derelict.
“Dr. Danner!” James Roarke came out of his chair, smiling with relief. “You’re alive and well, I see.”
Harrison smiled faintly. His disappearance had been the talk of the town, it appeared. “I’m trying to find a friend of mine, Miracle Jones. She’s –”
“She was here.” He nodded vigorously. “She left with Garrett to find that uncle of hers. An entertaining fellow, old Horace,” he added on a chuckle.
“She left with Jason Garrett?” Harrison repeated in a dangerously soft voice.
Roarke nodded. “Jace told her Horace was either passed out by Fool’s Falls or in Sheriff Raynor’s custody at the jail. Dr. Danner!” he called in surprise when Harrison suddenly turned on his heel. “Let me buy you a drink. Celebrate your return!”
“Another time,” Harrison answered through his teeth. He strode out the door to the corner of the street, where the falls lay at one end and a view of the jail was in a direct diagonal. Damn Jason Garrett’s miserable hide! What the hell was he doing with Miracle?
He saw the lantern and the group of people looking down at a crumpled body lying next to the falls. Standing a few paces from the light, holding up a staggering drunk, was a slim woman in a buckskin skirt with night-black waist-length hair – Miracle.
Purposely, with ground-devouring strides that said more about his fuming temper than even the black look on his face, Harrison approached the group.