by Ward, Marsha
James made a fist and thumped it against the coverlet over his thigh. “When you kidnap a man, you do a thorough job of work,” he said, sighing.
“That I do. I figure once you’re up and about, you will owe me a couple of weeks worth of labor, my boy.” He laughed again. “That is, if we can keep you out of harm’s way. Danny O’Brien’s friends have been boasting about how they’ll turn your hide into a sieve the day you walk out the door. But that’s mostly talk, my boy, big talk and mighty little action. After all, them’s the same brave ruffians that shot up the jail in the dark of night.”
Hilbrands got up and stepped toward the doorway, passed through it and pulled the door almost closed behind him. Then he poked his head back into the room to grin at James. “I’ve got guards posted upstairs, my boy. I’m not going to let them shoot a man I don’t have to pay.”
“I’ll be up, work off those two weeks, then be gone before you can wipe your mouth, Randolph Hilbrands,” James declared, glowering from the bed at the departing man.
~~~
Two nights later, James asked Sylvia to bring him underclothes from his war bag. He awoke before first light the next morning to struggle into the garments by himself, then lay on the bed, breathing hard, until the pain from his side abated enough that he could sit upright. He rested on the edge of the bed, gathering strength and courage to rise and walk to the window.
He lurched to his feet, arms outstretched as much as he could lift them to balance himself, and took one step away from the bed. His legs quaked and shivered, but he forced a foot to shuffle forward for another step. Then his knees buckled, and he grabbed for the washstand to break his fall. Sylvia came running to pick him out of the shattered remnants of the washbasin he pulled down. Every morning and afternoon from that time on, the girl insisted on standing beside James, with his arm over her shoulders as he took halting steps across the room.
After several days, he no longer needed assistance, and when Sylvia came to his quarters to help him take his afternoon stroll about the room, she found James dressed and booted, with his gun belt buckled about his hips, looking for his hat.
“Land of Goshen! Where do you think you’re bound, Mister James?” she demanded.
“Where did you put my hat, Miss Sylvia?”
“It’s in the cupboard on the high shelf. Where’re you going?”
James went to the armoire, retrieved his hat, and jammed it on his head. “It’s time I worked off the debt to your pa. I’ve had enough of lying around in bed.”
“But your side isn’t healed!”
For answer, he stretched his arms above his head, without wincing. “I told myself when I could do that, I was ready to work. Move away from the door, Miss Sylvia.”
The girl stood with her arms spread in front of the portal. “I’ll get my mother. She’ll make you stay put.”
James shook his head.
“Pa will make you.”
“He’ll welcome the help.” He bent to take her by the arms and put her aside, but she evaded his grasp by stepping closer to him. James retreated backward, arms flung wide, until his knees buckled as they hit the bed. He sprawled back, clutching at Sylvia in a vain attempt to balance.
“Oof,” he gasped as the girl fell atop him.
She scrambled up and stood glaring down at James. “You’re going to get yourself shot by those horrid men!”
“Tar nation!” he grumbled, panting. “Don’t you think I know that? They won’t expect me to be up and around so soon. Now get out of my way, Miss. I’ve wasted enough time.” James got to his feet.
Sylvia put out her hands and shoved James hard in the belly. He doubled up and fell once more on the bed, twisted as he fell, and caught his spurs in the quilt. The girl cried out, “I worked my hands to the bone helping you mend, and now you want to get up and get shot again by those bullies. Get back in that bed, James Owen. I’m not through with you!”
He looked up, gasping for a breath. “Miss Sylvia...you’re a caution. I own you been...almighty kind. But that don’t give you...the right to boss me around.”
The girl was looking round eyed at him. “Pa said different. Pa said he would arrange things for me.”
“What’re you talking about?” Now that he had caught some air, he sat up, trying to get his spurs clear of the coverlet. “What did your pa tell you?”
“He said he would fix it so you’d stay on. He said....” She caught her breath in a gasp, her face blushed pink, and she stood still for a moment, as though frozen. “Oh, never mind,” she blurted out, then whirled about and ran from the room. James struggled once more to his feet.
“Hush, that girl acts like she owns me,” he complained out loud, and followed her through the door.
~~~
“Well, you look fit, James. Must be that good food Sylvia hand fed you, heh? Except for your faded color, I’d say you was just in from off the range.” Hilbrands chuckled as he sat back in the leather chair he shoved away from a roll top desk in the hotel office. “Sit down. Are you ready to work?”
James wondered if his face looked as taut as it felt. He perched on a chair made of peeled saplings. “I’m ready,” he answered. “The sooner I work off this debt, the sooner I can get shed of this place.”
“As you say.” Hilbrands chuckled, leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. “Now, I’ve got contracts to deliver dry goods, explosives and machine parts, when they come in, to several mines in the area,” he said. “I also order all the goods, so I’ve really got two hands in the pie.”
“But what do you want me to do?”
“I’ve built up a stable of mules to haul my big freight wagon up to the mines, and I need someone to take care of them. Up to now, I been doing all the driving and all the handling and swamping myself, my boy, and I can’t attend to business when I’m out back or up in the hills.”
“Hard work never hurt a man.”
“I know that, my boy, but I can’t expand the business if I don’t have time to do the paper work. I want you to take on the stable for a week or so, until you get strength enough to do the hauling. I’ll get a boy for the swamping once you start driving.”
“Suits me.” James stood to go. “‘Til my time is up.”
“Fine. Fine. The stable is right out the back door, across the alley.” Hilbrands’ feet came down to hit the floor with a thud. “Just one more thing, my boy.”
“What is it?”
“Sylvia came rushing out of your room a while ago, crying like she was mighty upset by something. You haven’t been trifling with her, have you?”
James looked hard at the man, squinting his eyes. He took a deep breath, and knew why he’d never much liked Randolph Hilbrands. “I’m not the sort that takes a woman’s favors where they ain’t offered. On the other hand, I don’t sell myself cheap, either.”
Hilbrands bounded to his feet. “What kind of answer is that?”
“You bailed me out of jail against my will and named a fair price for your good deed. I owe you two weeks of work. That’s all. Nothing beyond that. Surely not my future.”
The man’s slack face scrunched up as he took a step forward, and James wondered if he was angry, but even if he was, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was paying off the debt and leaving Pueblo City in one piece. The young man drew himself up to his full height.
Hilbrands stopped and glared at James. “Then get to it,” he sputtered, his face brick red.
James obliged the man by turning away and stalking out of the room and down the corridor to the back door.
Chapter 6
By the time three o’clock rolled around, James thought evening would never come. Although he felt stiff and sore, he stuck to his job, cleaning out the stalls, shoveling manure into a pile behind the stable, and rubbing down the mules when Randolph drove them back from the day’s short haul. When the supper bell finally rang out from the kitchen, James looked up, wiped his sleeve across his dripping face, and hung the scoop shovel in its pl
ace against the wall.
After a cautious glance around the alley, he washed at a bench behind the kitchen where a bar of yellow soap lay in a pool of suds beside a basin of gray water. A towel, gray as the water, was nailed above the basin. James shook the water off his hands and arms and hoped his face would pass Amanda’s inspection without washing it. Then he stepped into the back hallway and went toward the hotel lobby.
As he came past the desk, James paused, his hand near the grip of his pistol, and glanced into the room at his right. He remembered it as a bar, and a bar it remained, full of silent men and clinking glass. No one looked in his direction as he passed the door, and he figured Danny’s cronies would not be drinking in Randolph Hilbrands’ bar.
The dining room lay beyond a closed door to the left. Through the barrier he heard a man suddenly laugh and a woman join in. James pushed open the door and looked for a place to sit at the trestle tables fronted by benches and the occasional chair. Near the entrance was an empty table. James walked to it and sat on a bench with his back to the kitchen.
Unbidden, the vision came: Ellen, light in his arms and his heart as he and she danced in the furniture free dining room, her shy smile and half veiled eyes masking emotion. Ida Hilbrands’ scream. Pa tapping his shoulder and waving to him to follow. Then he and Pa grabbing Carl’s arms before he could knock Cecil Gilbert flat. Hauling Carl kicking and struggling out of the dance and into the hotel lobby.
That was the night Ida broke her engagement to Carl to marry that English fellow. The night Carl played on Ellen’s sympathy to lure her from her rightful place. The night I lost everything that means anything to a man. Bitter gall rose in James’s throat, and he shoved himself to his feet and fled to his room, chased all the way down the hall by memories.
~~~
Determined to survive any further trouble with Danny, James buckled on his heavy gun belt every morning and lay the big Colt close to his hand each night. But he wasn’t looking for a fight. He kept to the shadows in the mule shed as he shoveled manure and pitched new straw down from the loft. Grooming each mule kept him behind the partitions that formed the stalls. His life revolved around the hotel and the stables, and when he set foot between them, it was only after he had looked down the alley both ways and figured the way was safe.
But irritation grew in him like a desert cat claw vine, rubbing at the scabs on his wounded sense of manhood. He couldn’t shake off a feeling that he was being guarded.
One noon he stalked into Hilbrands’ office. The hotel owner looked up from his paper work.
“What is it, my boy?”
“Pull off your guards, Randolph. It’s penny wise and pound foolish to pay men to keep watch over me.” He drew the pistol from his holster and held it in both palms. “See this? I can care for my own self.” James returned the revolver to its place.
“My boy! I don’t know what you—”
“You told me you had guards posted, Randolph. That was fine when I was abed, but I’m up now. Pay off the men and send them home.”
Hilbrands worked his mouth, then stood up and laid his hand on James’s shoulder. “My boy, I feel duty bound to see that no harm comes to you. Why, if you got hurt any more, or—perish the thought—got killed, your pa would be up here in a minute to put a bullet through my brain.”
James shrugged off the hand. “He doesn’t know I’m here. If he did know, he would expect me to look out for myself. Tarnation, Rand, I was in the war! As I recall, you stayed home.”
Hilbrands’ face grew red. “I had a store, daughters to tend to—”
“I’m not judging you, man. I’m stating a fact. Now, call off your guardian angels. If Danny or his friends want a piece of my hide, it’s my duty to deny them the pleasure.”
James turned on his heel and walked out the door. He paused at the doorway leading outside and looked into the yard. Everything seemed normal. Then he strode toward the stables.
As he entered the dimness of the interior, James stepped to one side of the door and stopped, hand on his pistol butt. This was the time for an attack, while his eyes were adjusting to the half light, so he listened. The scuffling sound he heard sent him into a dive behind a stall partition, trying to draw the revolver as he went down. He fell hard on his left shoulder, landing on scar tissue from a bayonet wound he’d received during the war. He swore softly, rolling to a crouch with his pistol in his hand.
James blinked several times to free his eyes of fragments of straw, but remained otherwise motionless, trying to locate the source of the danger. There was no sound but the pounding of his heart in his ears for long moments, then, the shuffling noise he had first heard came again from the other side of the shed.
From the darkness beyond the door, through the rectangular light, and into the darkness again, scurried a large rat. James holstered his revolver and wiped sweat from his eyes. He got to his feet and started toward where the hayfork hung on the wall.
James heard the report of the pistol at the same moment a lead ball whizzed past his right ear. He hit the straw covered floor again. James rolled to his left, toward the protection of the nearest stall. The shot had come from the direction of the shuttered window near the back of the shed, close to where the harnesses were draped to dry on pegs, looking like so many brown spider webs in the dim light.
Ma, they’re at it again. Can’t a man pay his debt and leave a place still in one piece? With his revolver in his hand, James waited for what would come next—another shot, a rush of men, or the marshal, Tate. As he waited, a bead of sweat ran out from under his hat, down his temple, and into his beard. His side and shoulder throbbed with pain. Six little beans! Why’d I ever stop in Pueblo Town?
No shot came, and James slipped out of the stall and rushed to the doorway. He glanced into the alley. No one was in sight, so he slid through the door and made his way to the back corner of the shed.
Holding his breath, James craned his neck around the corner. One man stood there with a revolver pressed to a crack in the shutter and one eye up to a knothole in the wood. Two steps, and James was behind him. The man reacted to the slight noise of his coming by whispering, “That you, Li—”
James laid the pistol barrel un-gently alongside the man’s head and caught his body as he crumpled.
No. It’s me, James Owen, and I’m tired of dodging lead for no good reason, he thought as he holstered his gun and laid the limp body on the straw covered dirt. Tarnation. This can wear a man down.
As he stretched out the man’s tangled limbs, he glanced at the face, but it was no one he’d ever seen before. “One of Danny O’Brien’s bunch, I reckon,” he muttered.
“I’m another. Rise up and stand still,” said a voice close behind James, a voice that was accompanied by an urgent pressure against the small of his back. “I’ve got me knife ready, man. Don’t make a false move, now,” the voice continued.
James, back stiff, arms held extended, rose slowly. “Who are you? What is it you want?” He felt a hand slip his revolver from the holster.
“Justice, no more,” said the voice.
James half turned.
“No, man! Stand still!” The voice shook, and James recognized it.
“You’re Liam Connolly. You were at the saloon,” James said. He sighed. “Mr. Connolly, you struck me as one having a voice of reason. I reckon such a man would rather use his knife face to face than stab a man in the back.” He waited. He could hear the man’s harsh breathing. It seemed to slow, become less ragged. “I’m going to turn around. Then if you can look me in the eye and speak of justice as you spill my blood, so be it.”
James turned, slowly, carefully. He took a quick look at the man with the knife. Liam’s hair stood out in black, tufted spikes around his blanched face. He clutched the knife in a hand held close to his own body; James’s gun dangled from the other hand.
“Can you kill me now, man?” James whispered.
“No! I canna kill ye. Danny said— He said it would be easy t
o knife you and rid the earth of Rebel vermin.”
“Is it easy? Can you kill a man who has no weapon?”
Liam’s face fell. “I canna do it. Ye didna cause Danny’s troubles.” He looked up again. “Truth to tell, he was cruel to Rosie. She couldna take the abuse.”
“And now he’s passing it along for you to give out? Leave me be, Mr. Connolly. I’ll be out of town inside of two weeks.”
The man lowered his knife and came out of his guarded position. “Is that the truth? Ye’ll go?”
“I’m only here because I owe Mr. Hilbrands two weeks work. Once I have the debt paid, there’s nothing to keep me in Pueblo.”
“No ties in the town?”
“I was headed north when your friend stopped me.”
“Danny ever was a hothead. But now he’s lying abed, healing from that wound you gave him, half potted most of the hours of the day. From the looks of him, he plans to stay there as long as he can get us to bring him drink. Here.” He laid the pistol on the ground. “Ye have two weeks, no more. If ye’re still here thereafter, I’ll not answer for Danny’s actions.”
“That’s fair enough.”
“Turn around, now, and count to one hundred.”
James complied, and while he stood looking away, Liam left, dragging his companion with him.
~~~
James figured he’d learned more about mules than he cared to know before the week was out. But he kept working, feeling strength return to his muscles day by day, and near the end of his two weeks’ service, Hilbrands stalked out to the stable and hailed him.
“You drive tomorrow, my boy. Think you can handle the team?”
James looked down from the stool on which he perched, hanging a harness on pegs driven into the board wall of the building.
“I been handling ‘em for some time, now. Yeah, I can drive ‘em, too.”
“That’s good. You’re going up to Cañon City. There’s a bunch of mines up there waiting for supplies.”
“Is this a regular run or a special?”
“Regular. Once a week. Come over to the office when you’re through here, and I’ll show you the bills of lading.” Hilbrands stepped toward the door of the stable, then turned again to speak to James. “Better yet, I’ll go with you on the wagon. I don’t want you to lose your way.”