Rocky Mountain Marriage

by Debra Lee Brown

  Chance glanced at the faces of the wet-behind-the-ears cowpunchers who’d come over from Garo to play cards with him that afternoon. Without preamble he folded his hand. Lucky for them. “I’m sitting this one out, boys.” He motioned to Rowdy who stood at the bar taking a break from his chores. “Keep my seat warm, why don’t you?”

  “Sure thing, Chance.”

  The two traded places. Chance leaned across the bar and glimpsed Dora on her hands and knees, her rump stuck up in the air like a Christmas roast. He resisted the urge to comment. He had a harder time resisting the natural response of his body as he watched her.

  “This one’s a fifty,” Dora said, holding the bank note up for inspection. “And it’s real!”

  If she’d been in on her father’s misdeeds, she wouldn’t be advertising the sudden appearance of stray bank notes. More and more he was convinced she knew nothing about Wild Bill’s business dealings.

  “Let me see that.”

  She glanced up at him. “Oh, it’s you.” Scrambling to her feet, she held the fifty-dollar bill closer to the light from the wall sconce flanking the blank spot on the wall where the portrait of Wild Bill’s favorite whore had hung. “I’m perfectly capable of distinguishing counterfeit bills from real ones.”

  “Gardner give you a lesson the other day?”

  He was kidding, but she took him seriously. “He did, in fact. We spent quite a long time together at the bank after you left.”

  She was lying. Not a minute after he’d made his withdrawal and had left the bank, Dora had come out with Gardner on her heels. Chance had watched them covertly from the corner.

  Despite Gardner’s insistence, she’d refused to let him take her home in his buggy. Gus had brought the wagon in to pick up a load of supplies for Jim, and she’d ridden back to the Flush with the ranch hand. So much for Gardner’s effect on her. Chance smiled, recalling the banker’s murderous look in his direction, the moment Dora and Gus were out of sight.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, returning him to the present. She stuffed the fifty-dollar bank note into the pocket of her dress and shot him a look before heading toward the kitchen. “Please don’t disturb anything.”

  “Who me?”

  The second she was out of sight, he leaped over the bar and landed in a crouch, like a cat, on the other side. Jim, who stood close by polishing Wild Bill’s collection of silver whiskey flasks, eyed him.

  Another bank note was barely visible, wedged between the shelving attached to the back wall of the bar. The moment Jim went about his business, Chance reached for it. When he pulled, two more bank notes fluttered to the floor. He quickly scooped them up. They were real, he realized, and stuffed them into the pocket of his vest.

  Dora’s booted feet came into view. “Mr. Wellesley!”

  “Chance,” he said, smiling up at her. “You caught me red-handed.” She extended her palm and waited. He fished the bank notes back out of his vest pocket and handed them to her.

  “Where, exactly, did you find them?”

  Jim came over and knelt beside him, his eagle eyes inspecting the burnished pine shelving of the bar. Delilah appeared, as well, along with Tom and two of the girls. Too bad there was no way to tell whose interest was purely innocent and whose wasn’t.

  Chance shrugged. “Just laying there, like the other one.”

  This time he was lying, and she knew it.

  Someone else besides him knew about Wild Bill’s money, and if he had to spend the rest of his life playing cards at the Royal Flush to find out who, then so be it.

  “I’d like to make something clear to all of you,” Dora said, looking directly at him. “Any money found on the premises, regardless of how little or how much, belongs to the house. Is that clear?”

  The others murmured their agreement.

  “Chance?”

  It was the first time she’d ever called him by his Christian name. He didn’t think she even realized it. For a moment it threw him off balance—literally.

  “Steady there, partner.” Jim placed a hand on his shoulder.

  Chance got to his feet and stood there for a moment looking at her. She was pretty, he decided, and smart as a whip. “Clear as the South Platte on a summer’s day.”

  “Good.” She glanced at the spot on the wall where the painting had hung and frowned.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Um…no.” She shook off whatever was bothering her, and her icy demeanor returned.

  Chance prayed that no more stray bank notes would turn up while she was around. It just made the situation worse. The money was a draw for Wild Bill’s partner, and he didn’t want her finding it. He wanted her out of the way before she got hurt, and before he did something stupid he’d regret.

  “So, are you going to take Gardner up on his offer?”

  His question had the desired effect.

  She blushed.

  “What offer?” Delilah asked.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. John—I mean Mr. Gardner—offered some funding should I choose to open a school in town.”

  “You’re thinking of stayin’ on, then?” Jim’s expression was cool, his eyes hard to read. Chance took it all in.

  “Well, perhaps, but…”

  Delilah arched a painted brow at her, and Dora’s face flushed a deeper shade of pink.

  “I—I’m not really sure at this point.”

  “A school would mean you’d have to move to town,” Delilah said. Chance wasn’t sure about her, either. Hell, any one of them could have been Bill’s partner. Or maybe it wasn’t any of them. Damn it!

  “Not necessarily. Not yet, at any rate.”

  “She’s got other reasons to move to town,” Chance said, hoping to provoke her.

  “You do?” Lily, who’d come down from upstairs, looked at her with renewed interest.

  “I most certainly do not.” Dora brushed past him and made for the kitchen.

  “I knew you’d see things my way.”

  His words stopped her in her tracks, as planned. She turned, her embarrassment cooling to anger.

  “I’ll never see things your way, Mr. Wellesley.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We saw eye to eye here a few nights ago, didn’t we?”

  She stormed off, and he censored his smile. If he was lucky, she’d be gone that afternoon. Days ago, when he’d first learned of it from Jim, he’d paid the hotel clerk in town to hold their only available room. His investment was about to pay off.

  Her trunk sat packed and ready in her cabin for the whole of the next day, until she’d gained enough consensus in her own mind to finally unpack it again.

  “I will not let him drive me out,” she said to herself as she placed the last of her woolen stockings back in the bureau. “No matter how irritating he becomes.”

  Furthermore, she’d decided once not to toss him out, and she’d keep to her decision. Chance Wellesley brought business to the saloon. She’d continue to use him to insure the Flush turned a profit. She’d also continue to watch him. He was here for a reason, and more and more she grew to believe that reason was her father’s money.

  She would find it first. She was determined.

  And unbeknownst to him, Chance Wellesley was going to help her.

  She’d lain awake the past three nights thinking about John Gardner’s offer—or offers, if she’d read his behavior toward her correctly. The banker was prepared to personally back a new loan in her name that would solve all of her financial woes. She should have “jumped on it” as Mr. Grimmer had put it when she’d told him of the banker’s proposition at Sunday services.

  But she hadn’t. In fact, she hadn’t yet responded. She’d purposefully evaded John’s company ever since. “Why?” she’d asked herself over and over, and each time couldn’t fathom a answer that appealed to her rational mind.

  John had made no attempt to mask his affection for her. He was helping her because he cared. She ought to have been thrilled. In her diary she’d made a lis
t of all his admirable qualities, qualities any woman would treasure in a friend—and certainly in a husband.

  Late one night while she was doodling in the margins, she’d caught herself listing all of Chance’s correspondingly disreputable characteristics beside them. Why she would compare the two men, even subconsciously, worried her. In the end, she’d torn the sheets out of her diary, crumpled them up and tossed them onto the fire in her father’s study.

  The fact remained that she was, for no good reason, leery of accepting John Gardner’s help. She told herself Chance Wellesley had nothing to do with her feelings. The notion was ridiculous. If anything, his warning made John’s offer even more appealing. Greeks bearing gifts, indeed.

  Still, she wasn’t prepared to bind herself financially to John. She had a feeling that in this case financial ties implied other, more intimate connections, and she simply wasn’t ready to make that kind of commitment.

  She was ready, however, to stand on her own, to take charge of her destiny. She knew that destiny would be greatly improved should she uncover the location of her father’s money. So again she reread his letter, looking for clues, and for the dozenth time she studied the tintype and the tortoiseshell comb wrapped in newsprint.

  “It’s here,” she said, tucking the mementos safely away in the top drawer of the bureau. “Somewhere.”

  Her diary in hand, Dora locked the door to her cabin behind her, and set off in search of Rowdy and Gus, her father’s longtime ranch hands. She intended to interview the entire staff, faithfully record their remarks, then sift through the evidence, much like the sleuths in the Wilkie Collins installment mysteries she loved so dearly.

  Rowdy was more than willing to answer her series of carefully prepared questions. Gus, on the other hand, seemed to disapprove of her sleuthing.

  “Nope,” Rowdy said. “Your pa never asked me to dig no holes, exceptin’ for these here fence posts.”

  Gus retwisted a length of barbed wire around the post they’d just repaired. “Why you so interested in post holes?”

  “I’m not,” she said. “Did he ever ask you to dig any other holes?”

  “He didn’t,” Gus said. “But Chance did.”

  Dora froze, her pen poised in midair.

  “I thought that book there was a bible.” Rowdy tried to read her handwriting upside down.

  Dora tilted the diary so he couldn’t see. “No, it’s not a bible. It’s a journal.” She hadn’t wanted them to know, but she could hardly be expected to commit all their remarks to memory.

  “Hmph.” Gus knocked his wide-brimmed hat backward off his forehead. “Whaddya know.”

  “When, exactly, did Mr. Wellesley ask you to dig this hole?”

  “’Bout six weeks ago,” Gus answered, looking over at Rowdy.

  Dora continued scribbling. “Do you know what the hole was for?”

  “Sure,” Gus said.

  “You do?”

  Rowdy looked at the ground and kicked nervously at the dirt with the toe of his boot.

  “Well,” she said to Gus, who seemed to enjoy dragging things out. “What was the hole for?”

  “For your pa’s coffin.”

  Dora stopped breathing.

  Rowdy shrugged. “Chance said he deserved a proper funeral. Bought the coffin himself out of his own money. Had it made special in Garo.”

  “Chance did this?” She glanced across the yard, past the bunkhouse to the small hillock where her father was buried.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rowdy said. “Me and Gus whitewashed the little picket fence around the plot up yonder. That was Chance’s idea. For the fence, I mean. The headstone, too.”

  “What headstone?” She narrowed her gaze at the small wooden cross ringed with flowers.

  “It ain’t here yet,” Gus said and spat, then went back to work on the barbwire fence.

  Rowdy shrugged. “Chance ordered it from that company makes fancy monuments. You must know the one—in the Springs. Should be here in a couple a weeks, I reckon.”

  She did know the place, and knew for a fact that the hand-carved marble headstones were very expensive. “I see,” she said, but she didn’t see. Why would Chance Wellesley have done all this for her father? “Yes, well…” She finished penning their comments and snapped the diary closed. “Thank you for your time.”

  “You need any help, Miss Dora, you just say the word.”

  “Thank you, Rowdy. You, too, Gus.”

  “Ma’am.” They tipped their hats in unison as she took her leave.

  The girls were next on her list. Dora didn’t think she’d have time to interview all of them in one day, but she’d at least make a start. So far, nothing her father’s two ranch hands had told her was very helpful in discovering the location of the money. If anything, she’d have to broaden her search.

  She climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor. The saloon was busy for a Wednesday afternoon, and some of the girls were already working. Chance was playing cards with a couple of locals, and watched her as she moved along the balcony toward the upstairs parlor, which would be empty this time of day.

  Lily sat beside him at the gaming table, draped across the marshal’s lap. She gave Dora a little wave and a smile. Dora nodded politely in return. Their exchange was not lost on Chance who, much to her annoyance, let out a chuckle. A moment later the marshal spread his cards across the table and wiped the grin from Chance’s face. Max raked in his winnings.

  Now Dora was the one smiling. “Serves him right,” she muttered under her breath, then disappeared into the upstairs parlor.

  Susan was already there, waiting. “Howdy, Miss Dora.”

  “Susan,” she said and tentatively took a seat on the red velvet chaise in the center of the room.

  “You’re wantin’ to know about your pa, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right. What can you tell me about his affairs?”

  “Affairs? You mean business dealings? Money and such?”

  Dora nodded.

  The petite, dark-haired girl sat beside her on the chaise. Her big brown eyes lit up when she spoke. “Not too much, Miss Dora. But I liked him, your pa.”

  Dora faithfully penned Susan’s words into her diary, but suspected the girl wasn’t going to be of much help.

  “I once heard him say that a bank ain’t no place to keep money. Does that help?”

  “It does. Thank you.” Dora had already figured that out for herself. All the same, Susan genuinely seemed to want to help, and Dora didn’t wish to appear ungrateful.

  Susan looked around the room, and Dora’s gaze followed as the girl inspected every nook and cranny with narrowed eyes.

  “What are you looking at? Or for?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  If Susan had firsthand knowledge of her father’s actions, Dora needed to know. She was taking a risk, but could see no other way. “Did my father ever talk about where he did keep his money?”

  “Oh, no. I never rightly heard him say.” Susan inched closer on the chaise and looked at her with those big doe eyes as if she were about to impart a secret. “But I know he spent a lot of time in his study. A lot of time. And he got mad if Delilah or one of us girls went in there with a dust rag.”

  “Really?” Now here was something of interest. Dora scribbled madly into her diary.

  Susan smiled. “I told ’em all it wasn’t a bible. I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes.” She tipped the red leather-bound journal away, so Susan couldn’t read what she’d written, not that the girl seemed to be looking.

  “I knew I was right. Nobody exceptin’ a preacher carries around a bible. Not even schoolteachers. Even straitlaced schoolteachers like yourself.”

  “Straight…laced?”

  “You know. Proper-like.”

  Dora was familiar with the term, and knew it wasn’t a compliment.

  “I said, ‘Lily, Miss Dora’s not so prudish as you make her out to be.’”

  “Lily thinks I’m prudi
sh?”

  Susan glanced at the long, tight sleeves and high-necked collar of Dora’s hopelessly outdated gray dress.

  “No, don’t answer that.” Dora straightened her spine, banished Lily’s criticism from her mind and poised her pen. “Let’s get back to the money.”

  “You think your pa left you some money? Here?”

  Dora stopped breathing and looked at her. Susan’s eyes were wide with curiosity, nothing more.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps.”

  “What will you do with it if you find it, Miss Dora?”

  “I never said there was any money. I was merely speculating.”

  “But if there is…what would you do with it?”

  She considered Susan’s question. “One of the things I’ve longed to do for years is open my own school.”

  “That would be wonderful. And you’d do it here, of course, in Last Call.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.” She thought again about John Gardner’s offer. Intuition told her it was for much more than a bank loan, though he hadn’t been bold enough to state it.

  Yet.

  “And you’d teach reading and writing, and what else?”

  “Lots of things. It would depend on the interests and capabilities of my students.”

  “You’re good at readin’, I suppose?”

  Dora thought it was a strange question. “Why, yes, of course. I’m a teacher.”

  Susan bit her lip and looked away.

  “What is it?”

  The girl shrugged. She reached into the pocket of her dress—a lovely peach taffeta that set off her delicate features—and produced a folded paper. A letter, Dora realized.

  Susan handed it to her. “I wouldn’t dare to ask it, normally speakin’, of a proper lady like you. But seein’ as how you’ve been so nice to us, Miss Dora—to me, especially—” She gestured to the letter. “Would you mind?”

  “You want me to read it?”

  Susan nodded, blushing. “I usually ask Delilah, or one of the other girls, but it just came today.”

  Dora opened the carefully folded pages and took in the neat script. “You want my opinion on what it says.”

  “No. Well, um…yes, that too. But what I really want is to know what it says.”