by Sawyer Belle
The long-sleeved bodice stretched over her arms and torso with a high-collar that teased the underside of her chin. The pearled buttons formed a single line from the v-shaped bottom to the top. She had considered it her best dress of the three she still owned, but at the moment she wanted nothing more than to shred it so she could ride around in her corset and bloomers. Tiny beads of sweat trickled down her back and in between the deep cleft of her breasts. She worked the paper fan back and forth in front of her exposed throat to cool the areas not touched by the breeze.
For the past twenty days aboard the coach they’d sped day and night with only brief stops to change the mules, freshen up, eat a few bites and walk around. Just days ago they left the greenery and cool mountain streams of the Mormon stronghold of Salt Lake. They had been told that the stretch between Utah and the Sierra Nevada Mountains would be long and strenuous, but she had not been prepared for heat that made her toes slick, thirst that wilted her throat and dryness of air that sliced through each lungful of breath.
The road began to slope and curve, sweeping wide around a hill encrusted with sagebrush before the ground finally melted away from them. She gasped at the unfolding view. The mountains, whose highest peaks had only been visible above the mellow jut of desert floor before, now spread into the lowest point of a valley in strokes of deep lavender and bristlecone blue. Millions of diamond-points glistened off of the surface waters of a lake at the bottom while a verdant roll of emerald growth sped away from it to huddle in the ankles of the mountains.
“Is this it?” she asked on the back end of a deep breath.
“What?” came her father’s reply.
“California,” she managed.
Argyle Cameron, nearly three times his daughter’s age, leaned his gray head out of the coach windows to take in the view. Though he appraised the scene with awe and praise, he shook his head at her ignorance.
“This is not California,” he admonished. “California is on the other side of the Sierras where the endless stretch of ocean can be seen from any one point.”
Lila rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Well, California or not, this is a bit of Eden after miles of nothing but sand and sun. I’ll wager that our mules would consider that lake a far greater salvation than the entire expanse of the sea.”
Other guests in the coach began leaning toward the windows for a glimpse of greenery in the otherwise cracked earth of the dry desert, but before they could send their prayers of thanksgiving to the heavens, the coach veered away from the view and disappeared once again into the sandy hills near Mt. Davidson. Lila had just practiced a harsh swallow of imaginary water down her throat when the crack of a gunshot split the air. Fearful faces glanced from one another.
“Was that what I think it was?” she asked her father, but he didn’t have time to answer.
More shots came in quick succession, one blasting into the side of the carriage near Lila. Slivers of wood splintered off of the windows with a metallic zing and flew inside, slicing her cheeks. She held her hands up to protect her face as more bullets ripped at the transport. She yelped in protest as her father grabbed her valise and threw it out of the window so he could push her head down onto her lap. About that time she saw her first dead body in the form of the coach driver fall beneath the rattling wheels.
The other women in the coach cowered near their knees while the men inside covered them and drew their pistols to fire out of the windows. Lila knew that her father never carried a gun. He was a healer who did his best to save lives, not take them. His shrunken elderly frame was the only shelter she had from the whizzing bullets, and wooden debris. The thought of her remaining parent dying, defenseless, in a barren desert woke an anger in her and she bristled instantly.
They had braved miles of Indian territory with their scalps intact. Now that they were nearing the end of their travels some renegade mountain men planned to slow their progress for the last twenty-five pounds of property they owned? She would not tolerate it. Without care or concern she pushed her father off of her, lifted her skirts and pulled a derringer pistol from her boot and aimed it out of the window. Her father stared at the gun, no bigger than her palm and his mouth fell into a full, wide circle of shock.
“Where did you get that?!”
“Ft. Kearny,” she answered swiftly before turning her attention to the approaching threat. A quick survey showed four riders, their faces mostly hidden behind bandana masks swarming toward them with pistols braced in each hand. When the first bandit drew near enough, she pulled the trigger. Through the mottled screams of fearful women he fell from his saddle and bounced off of the spinning wheels.
As shots continued to ring out the other three bandits wove in and out of view and Lila saw the coach’s conductor, the last man controlling the horses, fall to the ground. She knew then that they were racing at a breakneck pace without a driver. What was worse? There were only three guns, including hers, firing back at the bandits.
A younger man inside the coach stood as much as the space allowed and promptly removed his coat, as if the thought of scrambling out to take hold of the reins was too dirty a job for his good attire. As soon as he tossed open the door he was shot back into his seat with a spurt of blood spraying from his shoulder. Lila’s father scrambled over six dovetailed laps to care for the wound as they were all jostled and tossed about.
She had been so engrossed in the injury that she missed the approach of another bandit until he clutched onto the wooden railing beside her. He jumped from his horse and plastered himself against the door and she recoiled against her seat with a shriek. Sunlight glinted off of a shiny onyx ring on his little finger as he reached in, grasping for her throat, but his fist closed around the open side of her collar instead. She raised the derringer again.
Before she could pull the trigger, the echo of a far-off shot reverberated through the coach and she felt the warm spray of blood across her face and neck as the man’s body went limp and fell from view, taking a large chunk of her collar and camisole with him. The rear wheels thumped over his body, causing the coach to tilt dangerously toward the ground. She braced herself with a tiny yelp, but the carriage soon slammed back down onto its supports and continued to rattle away.
She wiped at the blood on her cheeks, smearing it onto the sleeve of her dress and leaned out of the window to see where the shot had come from. Another rider stood on the horizon, aiming a long-barreled rifle at the remaining two bandits. Mauve clouds of desert powder shot into the air as his aim was deflected into the brush. The two bandits finally broke away from the coach and disappeared over a hill.
The lone gunman kicked his horse swiftly toward them and their runaway horses. Spellbound, Lila watched as he maneuvered his mount slightly ahead of them, and just as the horses raced past he leapt from his saddle and landed in the leather rigging of the harnesses. She stretched out of the window to see as he righted himself and hoisted up onto the wooden seat of the wagon. Digging his heels into the boards, he yanked back with his full might. They skidded to a halt and the air was at once full of relieved sighs and grateful wails.
Lila collapsed back against the leather and shut her eyes with a sigh. Adrenaline pulsed through every inch of her. Her eyes flew open as the man pulled open the door. Stilted breath leapt up into her throat. Sunlight washed over his golden hair, a thin mustache brushing against his upper lip. His smile was wide and pure and produced two endearing dimples on either cheek. He wore the crisp clothes of a gentleman. Round, bright bluebell eyes beamed down at her and Lila felt herself tumbling into love.
Forgotten was the state of her dress. Soft, large waves of brown hair fell from beneath her skewed hat to tumble over the exposed mound of flesh swelling out of the frilly edge of her corset and she felt a blush work its way up to her cheeks. He looked from the deep line of her cleavage to the soft pout of her mouth.
“Are you all right, Miss?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you” she whispered. “That was so bra
ve of you.”
“Indeed, sir,” her father echoed. “We are forever in your debt.”
“Nonsense,” the man replied. “Since the hills have run rich with gold and silver, every conman and criminal from Boston to San Francisco has found a nesting place here. I was merely in the right place at the right time.”
“But where is ‘here’?” Argyle asked.
“You are in between the Dayton and Carson stations, nearly five miles from Virginia City, my good man.”
“Five miles?” her father echoed. “Good. We need to get this man to a place where I can tend the wound properly.”
The rescuer peered into the carriage to see the blood-soaked torso of the man and he nodded. “Is anyone else hurt beside the man and the girl here?”
“I’m not hurt,” Lila corrected. “He only ripped my dress.”
He ran a finger over one of the slashes on her cheek and she reached up, having forgotten they were there and that her face was full of the bandit’s blood as well.
“It’s nothing,” she assured with chagrin. “The gentleman there needs the help.”
“Well,” the rescuer replied, “I will drive you and your party into Virginia City then.”
“We would be much obliged, sir,” Argyle admitted.
“It’s no trouble at all, I assure you,” their rescuer supplied. “I am most willing to safeguard a party of such…lush treasures.” He lifted Lila’s hand to his mouth and brushed his lips across her knuckles as he spoke. “Please, call me David. David Gardner.”
“This is my daughter, Lila Cameron,” her father announced in a tone that revealed his dislike for the man’s open ogling. “And I am Dr. Argyle Cameron.”
“A doctor? We need doctors at the mines.” He spied the tiny pistol resting on her lap and picked it up with a look of amusement on his face. “Does this thing actually work?”
“You can ask the man who took a bullet to his chest,” she responded before sending a nod toward the direction they’d just traveled. “He’s back there.”
David chuckled and pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket. His horse had returned and he used a canteen from the saddle to wet the cloth.
“Here,” he said, handing it to Lila. “It will be easier to clean the blood off of you while it’s still wet.” Lila nodded her thanks. She swiped absently at her face while she watched David tie his horse to the back of the coach before closing her door again. He smiled once, a rakish grin that produced those fetching dimples and then climbed up into the driver’s seat.
She could hardly breathe as she resettled into her seat and set the fan to its erratic flutter again, but there was no mistaking the whirling sensations come to life in her belly and the quaking of her hands. The entire ordeal was wreaking havoc on her senses. The shots, the sights of dead men falling, the taking of a life, the unforgettable view of David’s heroics. Her heart could barely contain its pounding and she didn’t know if it was the incident or the man that was making her insides tremble.
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