When he had got to the mine last night, the gates were locked and there was no sign of a guard, but he could hear the sounds of shouting in the camp and some women screaming words of anger. He hid his horse and carriage in the trees and went up the mountain and down the steep side and got into the camp the back way. He ran under cover of the houses and the dark to one of the miner’s houses who he knew was likely to take the risk of hiding the unionist.
The miner’s wife was there, wringing her hands because the guards were searching every house and the unionist was hidden in the weeds at the back of the outhouse—and he was bleeding and moaning. No one dared go to him because if he were found, it would be death to anyone found with him. If the guards kept up their search and found nothing, and no trace of an infiltrator, they’d not harm the miners, but if he were found…The woman put her face in her hands. If the unionist were found there, she and her family’d be thrown out of the camp with no jobs nor any money.
Lee gave her a few words of sympathy but didn’t spend much time talking. He went to the weeds at the back and hauled the short, stocky man across his shoulders and began the long, arduous task of trying to sneak him out. The only way out was straight up the side of the mountain, and that’s the way Lee went.
He had to pause several times, both to rest and to listen. The sounds below seemed to be quietening. There were always many saloons in a mining camp, and the men too often spent most of their wages on drink. Now, Lee could hear the drunks singing as they staggered home, probably unaware that their houses had been searched—as was the right of the mine owner’s representatives.
Lee stopped at the crest of the mountain and tried to see, in the moonlight, the man’s wounds. He’d started bleeding again when Lee’d moved him. Lee wrapped the man’s wounds as best he could to stop the bleeding, then started across the crest, and then down to where his buggy was hidden.
He couldn’t possibly put the man into the cramped little compartment in the back, so he propped him up beside him and drove as carefully as he could.
He took the road north toward Colorado Springs. He couldn’t return with the man to Chandler, or there’d be too many innocent questions about who he was and where he’d been hurt. Lee didn’t want to risk being found out. He’d never be able to help anyone again if there were any suspicions attached to him.
On the outskirts of town lived a friend of his, a doctor who wasn’t inclined to ask too many questions. Lee put the wounded man on the doctor’s surgery table and mumbled something about finding the man on the trail. The old doctor looked at Lee and said, “I thought you got married yesterday. You were out lookin’ for half-dead men on your weddin’ night?”
Before Lee could answer, the old man said, “Don’t tell me nothin’ I don’t want to know. Now, let’s have a look at him.”
Now, returning to Chandler, it was two o’clock in the afternoon. Lee was past being tired. All he wanted to do was eat, sleep, and see Blair. He’d spent most of the past several hours planning a story to tell her about where he’d been. He thought he’d tell her that he’d been called to a shootout between members of a gang of bank robbers and that he hadn’t wanted to risk her coming along and getting hurt. It had a ring of truth, and he thought he could get away with it. He just prayed that she wouldn’t ask him why he had to go when there were other doctors in Chandler who could have gone. Also, there would be no account of the shooting incident in the paper.
If worse came to worst, he planned to act hurt that she didn’t trust him and that she seemed to want to start their marriage off on the wrong foot.
At home, he was almost relieved when Blair wasn’t there. He was too tired to do his best in the telling of a major lie. He stuck some ham between two thick slices of bread and went up to the bedroom. The room was a mess, with Blair’s clothes tossed on the bed, the bed unmade. He glanced at the closet, saw right away that her medical uniform was gone and knew that she’d gone to the hospital. He’d have to do some talking, for the men of the board to continue to allow her to work there. Last time, he’d had to promise to take on nearly every shift before they’d let him bring her into the operating room. He’d nearly worked himself into a stupor, but it had been worth it. He’d won Blair in the end.
He ate half the sandwich, crawled onto the bed, hugged Blair’s discarded satin nightgown to him and went to sleep.
When he woke, it was eight o’clock, and he knew right away that the house was empty—and instantly, he began to worry. Where was Blair? She should have been home from the hospital by now. As Leander rose, starting to eat the other half of the now-stale sandwich that was lying beside him on the bed, he saw that her medical bag was on the floor of the closet.
For just a moment, his heart stopped beating. She’d never, never leave the house without taking that bag. It was a wonder that she hadn’t carried it down the aisle with her when she’d married him.
But now, it was there on the floor.
He threw the sandwich down and went tearing through the house shouting her name. Maybe she’d come back while he was asleep, and the house just seemed empty. It took only minutes to find that she was nowhere, inside or out.
He went to the telephone and told the operator to give him the hospital. No one there had seen Blair since the wedding. After enduring some rude jests, saying that Blair’d already realized her mistake and run away from him, Lee put the phone down.
It rang almost instantly.
“Leander,” it was the day operator, Caroline, “Mary Catherine said that Blair called your father right after you left last night to go treat your poor Mr. Smith. Maybe he knows where she is.”
Lee bit his tongue to keep from telling Caroline to stop eavesdropping, but maybe this time he had reason to be grateful to her. “Thanks,” he murmured and went out to saddle his stallion and get to his father’s house in record time.
“You told her what?.!” Leander yelled at his father.
Reed seemed to shrink under his son’s anger. “I had to come up with a story fast. And the only thing I could think of, that was guaranteed to keep her from following you, was a story of another woman. From what I’ve heard of your recent escapades together, I thought fire, war, or union riots just might make her tear into the thick of things.”
“You could have come up with another story—any other story but that my one true love was here and that I married Blair because I’d lost my real love.”
“All right, if you’re so smart, you tell me where you were supposed to be that would keep her from following you.”
Lee opened his mouth, but closed it again. If Reed had told her of a disaster, no doubt Blair would have come to help. He knew bullets flying toward her didn’t stop her. “Now what do I do? Tell her my father is a liar, that there is no other woman?”
“Then where were you on your wedding night? Other than climbing up and down the side of a mountain and hauling a wounded unionist to safety? What will your little wife do next time you’re called away?”
Lee groaned. “Probably something really stupid like hiding in the back of my buggy and joining in the fracas. What am I going to do?”
“Maybe we should find her first,” Reed said. “We’ll start looking as discreetly as possible. We don’t want the town to realize that she’s walked out, or there’ll be questions.”
“She hasn’t walked out,” Lee spat. “She’s…” But he didn’t know where she was.
Chapter 20
Leander and his father looked for Blair all night. Lee had an idea that she might walk when she was upset, and so they combed the streets. But she was nowhere to be found.
By morning, they’d decided to pass the story around that she’d gone to a medical emergency without telling anyone where she was going and that Lee was worried about her. At least, this story allowed them to ask questions about her in the open.
There was some teasing about Lee losing his wife on the first day of their marriage, but he managed to weather it well. His one and only co
ncern was for Blair and where she was. She was so headstrong, and they had so little to base their marriage on, that he was afraid that she’d returned to her uncle in Pennsylvania and that he’d never get her to return. He’d gone through hell trying to get her to marry him, and he certainly didn’t want to have to go through anything like that again in order to persuade her to live with him.
By afternoon, he was exhausted and he collapsed on their still unmade bed and slept. He’d have to telegraph Dr. Henry Blair tomorrow morning and tell the man to keep Blair there until he could come and get her.
He was wakened by a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Westfield! Wake up.”
Sluggishly, Lee turned over to see Kane Taggert standing over him, the man’s face showing anger. In his hand was a piece of paper. “Where’s your wife?”
Lee sat up, ran his hand through his hair. “I think she may have left me,” he said. It was of no use trying to conceal the truth. Soon, the entire town would know.
“That’s what I thought. Look at this.”
He thrust a dirty, torn piece of paper into Lee’s hands. On it, in primitive block letters, was the message:
WE HAVE YOUR WIFE. LEAVE $50,000 AT TIPPING ROCK TOMORROW. YOU DON’T SHE DIES.
“Houston?” Leander asked. “I’ll get my gun and go with you. Do you know who has her? Have you told the sheriff yet?”
“Wait a minute,” Kane said, lowering his big form to sit on the bed. “Houston’s fine. Me and her’ve been gone since the weddin’. We just got back this mornin’, and this was on my desk with a lot of other mail.”
Lee stood as if lightning had struck him. “Then they have Blair. I’ll get the sheriff or…That man’ll never find her. I’ll go by myself and—.”
“Hold on a minute. We got to think about this. When I got back this mornin’, there was a man to see me, a man that’d come down from Denver, and on the way here he was robbed by a new gang that seems to wanta make their headquarters outside Chandler. This little man was real upset, sayin’ that all Westerners were outlaws and that they even captured women. It seems he’d heard one of the men that came ridin’ up durin’ the robbery say that they’d got ‘her.’ That could mean your wife.”
Leander was changing clothes, into denim pants, chaps, a heavy cotton shirt, and a gun on the belt at his hips. Some of his original fury was leaving him and he was beginning to think. “Where was the man held up? I’ll start there.”
Kane rose and Lee gave only a glance at the man’s heavy work clothes. “I figure this is my fight, too. They want my money, and it’s my wife they think they got.” He looked at Lee out of the corner of his eye. “When I saw this note and realized that it was Blair that they had, I figured this town would have been turned upside down lookin’ for her but, as far as I can tell, don’t nobody know she’s missin’. I think there’s some reason you wanta keep quiet about this.”
Lee started to tell him that he didn’t want her many friends upset, but he didn’t. “Yeah,” he said, nodding, “there’s a reason.” He waited, but Taggert said nothing more. “You know how to use a gun? How to ride?”
Kane gave a grunt that sounded somewhat like a bear. “Houston ain’t civilized me that much. And don’t forget that I grew up here. I know this area, and I have an idea where their hideout is. Twenty miles north of here is a box canyon that’s almost hidden from the outside. You could walk past it and not even see it. I got caught in there in a flash flood once.”
For a moment, Lee hesitated. He didn’t know this man, didn’t know if he could be trusted or not. For years, he’d heard stories about the illegal means Kane had used to obtain his money, that nothing else mattered to the man but money. But here he was telling Lee that he was willing to help—and willing to respect Lee’s right to keep secret whatever he wanted kept secret.
Lee tied the holster of the gun to his leg. “You got a gun with you?”
“I got enough for a small army outside on my horse, and I also got the fifty grand they want. I’d rather give the money away than risk shootin’ around a lady,” he said, grinning. “After all, she did wanta marry me a couple of days ago.”
At first, Lee didn’t remember what he meant, but then exchanged grins with him. “I’m glad it worked out the way it did.”
Kane ran his hand over his chin and seemed to be laughing at some private joke. “Me, too. More glad than you know.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were saddled, their bags packed with food, and on the trail out of town. Lee had left a message with the operator to tell his father that he’d gone to see about Mrs. Smith. Lee didn’t even listen to the operator’s murmurs of sympathy about the poor Smith family.
Once outside the town limits, they rode hard, Lee’s big horse eating up the miles. Kane’s animal was a magnificent beast that carried the two hundred and fifty pounds or so of the man with relative ease. Lee’s only thoughts were of Blair, and he hoped she was safe and unharmed.
Blair struggled again against the ropes that held her to the heavy oak chair. Once, she’d managed to escape, so they’d tied her to a chair, and yesterday she’d managed to turn the chair over, but before she could get untangled from it, that woman had come into the room and ordered the chair to be nailed to the floor. Blair sat there for hour after hour and watched the woman as she gave orders to her men.
She was called Françoise and she was the leader of the outlaws. She was tall and pretty, slim, with long black hair that she obviously took an Inordinate pride in, wore a gun belted about her hips, and was smarter than all the men who rode with her put together.
And Blair knew immediately that this was the woman Leander loved.
Everything fit what Reed had said. She was French, speaking with an accent so heavy that at times her men had difficulty understanding her, and she was involved in something that Lee could not approve of. Blair couldn’t help feeling her opinion of Lee fall somewhat because he loved a woman who was capable of such dishonesty.
She sat in that hard chair and watched the woman with unconcealed hostility. Because of her, she’d never have her husband to herself, she’d never be able to erase the past from his mind. Maybe men liked the glamour of being in love with a criminal. Maybe Leander wanted to nurse his broken heart all his life.
The woman stood in front of her for a moment and watched Blair’s eyes blazing above the gag. Then she pulled a chair from under an old table and sat across from her.
“Jimmy, remove the cloth,” she said to the big bodyguard who was always with her. She said it as, “Jeemy, remove zee cloth.”
Once it was gone, she motioned the big man away so that they were alone in the room. “Now, I want to know why you look at me with such hatred. You do not look at the men that way. Is it because I am a woman, and you do not approve of a woman who is so skilled as I am?”
“Skill? Is that what you call it?” Blair asked, flexing her sore jaw. “Just because men are such fools that they can’t see through a woman like you, doesn’t mean that I am. I know what you are.”
“I am so glad that you do, but then I don’t believe I have ever lied to anyone.”
“You can stop lying to me for one. I know all about you.” She Lifted her head somewhat and tried to muster what pride she could. “I am Leander’s wife.”
Blair had to admit that the woman was certainly a good actress. One after another, emotions passed across her face. They ranged from puzzlement to disbelief, and ended with humor.
The woman stood, her back to Blair. “Ah, Leander,” she said at last. “Dear Leander.”
“There’s no need to act so smug,” Blair shot at her. “You may think you have him and that he’ll always be yours, but I’ll make him forget everything that ever happened between the two of you.”
When the woman turned back to face Blair, her face was serious. “How could he forget what we had? No one alive could forget something like that. It happens only once in a lifetime. So, he has married you. How long ago?”
&n
bsp; “Two days. You should know, since he spent our wedding night with you. Tell me, how did you try to kill yourself? You look as if you’ve recovered well enough. Perhaps it was merely a play for sympathy and not a true attempt at suicide. I can’t imagine that you’d be a good loser when it came to someone like Leander.”
“No,” she said softly. “I didn’t want to lose Leander, but I didn’t want anyone else to have hum, either. Did he tell you why we are no longer together?”
“He didn’t tell me a word about you. After finding out what you’ve become, I’m sure he can barely stand to think of you. Reed told me. But perhaps you don’t know Lee’s father, since you’re not the sort of woman a man can bring home to his family. Lee thought you were dead, and he left Paris thinking you were dead. He returned to Chandler.” Blair thought of all the stories he’d told her about his years in Europe, and he’d never even hinted about another woman. But maybe it was too painful a subject for him to talk about.
“I’m going to win him,” Blair said. “He’s my husband, and neither you nor anyone else is going to take him from me. He’ll come for me and you may see him again, but you won’t have a chance with him.”
“Paris, was it?” the woman said, smiling. “Perhaps this Leander Taggert and I—.”
“Taggert? Leander’s no Taggert. Houston married Tag—.” She stopped. Something was wrong here, but she didn’t know what.
Françoise put her face close to Blair’s. “What is your name?”
“Dr. Blair Chandler Westfield,” she said, frowning.
Immediately, the woman turned on her heel and left the cabin.
Blair slumped back into the chair. She’d been here for nearly two days now, and she’d had very little sleep and even less food, and she was beginning to have trouble fully comprehending what was going on.
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