by Delynn Royer
"A woman's hands are too small," he had explained one day, displaying the deck in his left hand and then deftly releasing the lower half to fall into his palm. "And it takes a certain dexterity that a woman could never hope to master as well as a man."
Gwin had watched solemnly as he extended his second and third fingers so that the upper portion of the deck passed the upturned side of the lower portion before dropping down neatly beneath to square the deck once again. It was done in the blink of an eye.
Clell handed the cards back to her. He grinned as he walked away with a swagger. "Why, if you pull that one off, Gwinnie, I'll eat my hat."
"I'll do it, all right," Gwin had muttered, "and when the time comes, I'll darn well pick the hat."
And so it was that on that particular night, by candlelight and at ten past one in the morning, Gwin was still struggling to master the one-handed shift. And she was finally getting close.
She had just released the lower portion of the deck with her thumb to fall into her palm when she heard it. A woman's laugh coming from the alley below her open window.
This alone would not have normally caught her attention. Gwin usually kept her window cracked open, even on cold nights, preferring fresh air to the acrid tobacco smoke and kerosene fumes that permeated the building. An occasional giggle was hardly out of the ordinary. This woman's laugh, however, caught Gwin's ear and froze her fingers on the deck. It was Emmaline. And she wasn't alone. Gwin caught the deep murmur of a man's voice.
Gwin tiptoed to the window, pushed the curtain back, and peered outside. The air that poured in through the window was icy, biting at Gwin's thin body through two layers of flannels and her nightdress, but she didn't shy away from it. A distant street lamp illuminated the narrow alley enough for Gwin to make out two featureless figures below. It was her mother and a man she didn't recognize. Their words came out in little gray puffs that swirled and evaporated above their heads.
Emmaline sounded eager. "Did you—?"
"Yes," the man said. "I spoke to Gallagher and he's interested. The singer he has now is a drunk, and he's looking to get rid of her."
"Oh, Frank! That's wonderful news!" Emmaline threw her arms around the man's neck. "When would I start?"
"Soon. Next week." Gwin could see that the man's hands settled comfortably around her mother's waist; too comfortably, as if they had been there before.
"Next week! Oh, dear, I'll have to wean the baby. I've been trying, but—"
"Gallagher doesn't care much about babies, honey." The man pressed his lips to her neck.
"Oh, well, I guess what he doesn't know won't hurt him. Besides, if I can wean Arthur, Gwinnie will be glad to take care of him. She fawns all over him as it is."
"Fine, it's settled. That is, as long as your husband doesn't make a fuss."
"He wouldn't dare. He knows I'd leave him." Emmaline threw her head back, giving the strange man free access to her neck. Even from where Gwin stood, she saw that her mother's eyes were closed. If they hadn't been, Emmaline Pierce might have seen her own daughter gazing down at her in numb disbelief.
"Oh, Frank, how can I ever thank you?"
The man lifted his head and Gwin caught the flash of a grin. "I can think of a few ways. It's been a long time for you and me, too long."
"Too long, yes, but we can't," Emmaline said.
"Your husband won't be back for hours."
"No, but the baby will wake and want fed again."
"Then we'll just get reacquainted right here."
The man slipped Emmaline's woolen cloak down from one shoulder to nibble eagerly at bared flesh.
"Here?" Emmaline sounded surprised. "Now?"
The man laughed as he pushed her back up against the wall. Alarmed, Gwin's heart started to pound. The playing cards slipped from her fingers, scattering to the floor. She opened her mouth to shout at the man who was attacking her mother, but her mouth clamped shut again as she saw her mother's arms wind tighter around the man's neck.
Emmaline giggled like a school girl at a cotillion. "Oh, Frank, we can't! Not here!"
"We damn well can try, honey. Lift your skirts and belly up to the bar."
Gwin dropped the curtain and scrambled back to bed, yanking the blanket up to her chin and pulling the pillow around to cover her face. She could still hear her mother's giggles, faded and faraway, mingling with the muffled laughter and melodeon music that drifted up from the dance hall below.
I hate her, Gwin had thought fiercely, hot tears stinging her eyes. I hate her, hate her, hate—
"Ooooh yeah! Lady Luck is smiling on me now!"
It was Cole Shepherd's voice that shattered Gwin's reverie, snapping her back to the here and now. She opened her eyes.
The featureless landscape moving by outside her window hadn't changed from a few moments ago, and Cole and Arthur were still embroiled in their rummy game. Judging by his latest outcry, Gwin thought Cole must be under the mistaken impression that he had a snowball's chance in hell of winning this hand.
Gwin looked to the rear of the coach. The line to the ladies' washroom appeared even longer. Disappointed, she sank back with a sigh. This was only their second day on board and already she was sick to death of dust and smoke and cinders. What she really needed to soothe her raw nerves was a hot bath. Unfortunately, a bath was out of the question. The best she could hope for was a rushed toilette in the washroom of this cramped rail coach.
"You might as well give it up now, Arthur, my boy! It'll go easier on you!"
Gwin froze. What had Cole said? Her heart thumped, keeping a heady beat with the metallic click of the locomotive's wheels on the tracks beneath them. "Give it up! Give it up now and it'll go easier on you! "
Gwin's mouth dropped open. She knew where she’d met him before.
Chapter Six
"Holy Moses!"
Gwin didn't realize she'd spoken aloud until Cole glanced at her. "What's the matter, Gwin? Not feeling so good? Doesn't sneaking around at all hours of the night agree with you?"
Gwin swallowed hard, unable to formulate even a weak retort. Luckily, Cole was too involved in his game to notice.
Abilene. The memory, the one that had eluded her all this time, finally broke the surface. It swam up swiftly from the deep and burst into sunlight so bright, it was blinding.
Gwin remembered it vividly. She didn't just see it in her mind, she felt it, smelled it, the underlying stench of cow flesh, the dust, the summer heat rising up from the dry prairie. She even thought she could hear Silas pitching his miracle elixir from somewhere in the distance.
Oh, she had run like the dickens from Cole Shepherd, had tried her darnedest to shake him, but he had refused to be shaken. She remembered wondering why in tarnation this fella was so hell-bent on bringing her down when it hadn't even been his watch she'd filched in the first place.
She had gotten only two quick looks at his face—first, when she had spotted him eyeing her in the crowd and then when he had cornered her for the last time in the stock pen—but it wasn't until he had pulled her down from the fence and flipped her onto her back that it had really smacked into her. She had been trapped beneath him, staring deep into his shocked brown eyes when, despite the mud smears on his nose and cheeks, she had thought to herself, Sure as eggs are eggs, he’s about the handsomest boy I have ever seen in my life!
"What's the matter, Gwin? You look like you just swallowed a beetle."
"A what? A b-beetle?"
For a moment, it appeared as if Cole might say something, but he didn't. He merely gave her a bemused look and then turned back to his game.
Thank heavens. Gwin doubted she was capable of carrying on a conversation right now. She had to get her bearings. She stood, clutching her valise and towel to her stomach. She thought maybe she'd had just about all the remembering she could take for one day.
"Could you let me through?" she said breathlessly. "I'm going back."
Cole stood to let her pass. "Remember, Miss Pie
rce, five minutes."
His tone was such that if Gwin had had her wits about her, she would have tossed back a retort, but her wits seemed to be nowhere in the vicinity. Without looking back, she edged her way along the center aisle of the moving rail car.
*
Cole watched Gwin's behind as she made her way toward the ladies' washroom.
"You're still mad at her, aren't you?"
Cole didn’t answer. The alluring memory of Gwin's lush feminine curves pressed up against him in the baggage car was still all-too-fresh and immediate.
Arthur raised his voice. "I said, you're still mad at her from last night, aren't you?"
Gwin's posterior passed out of sight as another passenger stepped out into the aisle behind her. Disappointed, Cole looked at Arthur. "Why do you say that?"
"The way you're looking at her."
Cole tried not to smile. "How am I looking at her?"
"Real hard-like."
Smart-aleck kid. It was difficult, but Cole managed to keep his expression serious. "I have no choice but to keep an eye on her, Arthur. Your sister has already demonstrated that she can't be trusted."
A companionable silence settled between them as Cole picked a card from the deck and laid out three aces. Gwin's scent, lilacs, still hung in the air to haunt Cole's concentration. Even when she wasn't sitting beside him, her presence lingered.
Arthur pulled a card and gave Cole a sneaky little smile. His own expression fell as Arthur laid off an ace, a three, three nines, and a discard, the remainder of his hand.
"I can't believe it!" Cole threw down his cards in disgust.
"Add thirty-six to my score. That gives me sixty-one."
Cole pulled out his tally book. That had to be the fourth or fifth time the kid had done it—calculating his points and adding them to the running total before Cole even had a chance to put pencil to paper. The kid was bright, real bright. And Cole was beginning to think this might be only a small sample of Arthur's capabilities.
Cole jotted down the score. Sixty-one to a dismal twenty-two in this, their sixth straight game. Arthur had won four out of five so far and seemed well on his way to yet another victory.
Now that Gwin was out of earshot, Cole decided to try an experiment to confirm the suspicions he harbored about the ragamuffin perched so innocently across from him.
He flipped the page of his tally book and scratched out a random arithmetic problem. "Arthur, I bet you a nickel that I can figure the answer to an addition problem faster than you can. Are you up to it?"
Arthur scooted forward in his seat. "You got yourself a bet."
"What's four hundred sixty-three plus two hundred ninety-six plus six hundred eighteen plus eighty-nine?"
Arthur's forehead didn't so much as wrinkle. Cole barely got a chance to carry the first two. "One thousand four hundred sixty-six."
Even though he knew Arthur's answer was correct, Cole finished the problem. "Okay, you earned yourself a nickel. Let’s try multiplication. Are you ready?"
"Double or nothing?"
Cole stifled a smile. "All right. Ready? This is going to be a hard one."
"That's what you think." Arthur placed his hands on the table and furrowed his pale brow in a scholarly manner. "Go."
"Twenty-six times forty-two times sixteen times nine."
Cole watched Arthur carefully. There was no screwing up of the face, no biting of the lip, no squinting eyes, certainly no sweating. His stubby fingers drummed the table staccato-quick. His mouth opened and the answer dropped out. "One hundred fifty-seven thousand, two hundred forty-eight."
Cole worked out the problem and looked up at Arthur. He couldn’t disguise his amazement. "I guess I owe you at the next whistle-stop."
Arthur beamed. "Easiest money I ever stole."
Cole closed his tally book and tucked it into his coat pocket. "So, Arthur, where did you go to school?"
"I never went to school. We moved around too much."
"Who taught you to read and write and figure?"
Arthur pulled out his slingshot, raised it to eye level, and pulled the strap, back, back, back. "Emmaline was a schoolteacher before she took up singing. She taught me some, but Gwinnie taught me mostly. That is, until I got smarter than her." He released the strap. Snap!
"Who's Emmaline?"
"She was my ma."
Cole dealt them each ten cards. It struck him as odd that the kid referred to his parents by their Christian names. Then again, he came from a background that was nothing if not unconventional.
"Gwin's been looking out for you for a long time, hasn't she?"
Arthur tucked his slingshot back into his pocket and reached for his cards. "Gwinnie acts like a mother hen. She still checks behind my ears and like that. She's got what they call maternal instincts."
"That's probably because she's so much older than you."
"Yeah, well, our ma was always real busy with her own stuff."
Cole drew from the deck and discarded. "What was your mother like?"
Arthur grinned. "Oh, she was great fun. She could sing like a nightingale, and, holy crow, could she ever tell a story!"
"It sounds like she was very special."
"She could shoot the ashes off a burning cigar at twelve paces. How many ladies do you know who can do that?"
"None."
Arthur looked down at his cards, his grin fading. "You bet your boots."
Cole watched the boy rearrange cards in his hand. "Did your mother pass away?"
"Yeah, a couple years ago." He threw down a card and picked Cole's from the discard pile.
"And Silas, was he real busy, too?"
"Sure, but he still played with us and stuff. He always treated Gwinnie like his own kid, even after—" Arthur stopped, clearly troubled.
"After what?"
"It's a long story."
Cole picked a six, laid down a trio of the same, and threw an ace. "We've got time."
Arthur stared at his cards, but Cole could tell he wasn't thinking about the game. "A little while before she died, Emmaline left us in Dodge City. She had a terrible fight with Silas and told him Gwinnie wasn't his real kid. That hurt his feelings pretty bad. And the way she told him was kind of mean, right before leaving like that."
"You mean, Gwin wasn't Silas's natural daughter?"
Arthur nibbled at his lower lip. "Well, see, Gwinnie explained it to me. It all happened a long time ago in New Orleans before Silas and Emmaline got married. Emmaline was with Sidney then."
"Sidney?"
"Silas's brother."
Cole wasn't sure he understood Arthur correctly. If the boy was saying what Cole thought he was saying ... "You mean, Gwin's father was Silas's brother?"
Arthur nodded, drawing a card and laying off a six on Cole's original trio. "Emmaline and Sidney must have, uh, you know, done the thing to get a baby, but before Gwin could be born, Sidney and Silas had a big fight. Sidney got so mad he left for California."
"What ever happened to him?"
Arthur shrugged. "I don't know. No one ever heard from him again." The boy fell quiet as Cole drew from the deck and discarded, then, "Cole?"
"What?"
Arthur's face was pink. He didn't speak.
Cole straightened. "What's the matter? What's wrong?"
The kid swallowed hard. "Could you answer me a question?"
"I can try."
"Well, did you ever do the thing? You know, with a girl?"
Cole was taken aback by the question. He debated whether or not to lie. Seeing the strained, earnest expression on the boy's face, though, he decided against it. "Yes, Arthur, I have."
Arthur's face went from pink to scarlet, but he forged ahead nevertheless. "Did she get a baby?"
"No, she did not get a baby."
"Why not?"
Cole shifted position, uncomfortable with this line of questioning. "Because not every act has that outcome. It only happens sometimes."
The boy contemplated
this. About the time Cole began to hope that the subject would be dropped, Arthur cleared his throat. "How do you know when it'll happen?"
Why had Arthur picked Cole to deliver the birds and bees sermon? Cole glanced toward the rear of the car where Gwin still waited her turn. He caught her eye easily even though there were over a dozen other passengers moving around in the fifteen feet that separated them. She was watching him, looking guilty as original sin, and Cole wondered what was going on behind those beguiling blue eyes. Was she planning another escape?
Cole returned his attention to Arthur. Gwin was the boy's only family now, and she was a woman. Cole had to sympathize with Arthur. The kid was at an age where he was naturally curious about sexual matters, and this entailed questions that no boy could rightly be expected to ask his own sister.
Cole laid his cards face down on the table. "You don't know for sure when it'll happen, Arthur, but there are precautions that can be taken to lessen the odds. You understand about odds, don't you?"
"Yeah. Like in cards and roulette, right?"
"Like in cards and roulette. Exactly."
"What precautions?"
"That's a complicated question. There are a few different ways. One has to do with timing."
The boy seemed to accept this and moved on. "When you do the thing with the girl, you're supposed to love her, right? So ... did you love her?"
Cole sighed. His gaze was drawn again to Gwin. There had been a few women in Cole's past, most of them fleeting, impulsive affairs of the moment, but only one where the word love had crossed his mind. "I thought I did, Arthur, but it turned out I was wrong."
"Like Silas."
Cole looked back at Arthur curiously. "Like Silas?"
"Yeah. He loved Emmaline, but he was wrong. She loved Sidney. He was her Sir Lancelot."
"He was her what?"
"Sidney was her one and only true love, her Sir Lancelot. That's what she told Silas the night she left."
This Emmaline must have been some woman, Cole thought. Time enough to spout fairy tales but too busy to check behind her own son's ears. "I'm sorry, Arthur. That must have hurt him pretty bad. And you too, huh?"