He tightened his grip on her shoulders and said dazedly, “Wait. Who are you?”
In her panic, she said the first thing that came into her head. “Ivy,” she panted. “Ivy Hudson.”
She lurched for the door, which wasn’t nearly as jammed with passengers now. She just barely remembered to whisk her carpetbag from the floor, where it had been stomped on. She only turned back for the briefest second, probably because she wanted one final, lasting impression of this man she knew she’d never see again.
And she felt herself smile then, too.
Yes. She was in love with him.
He smiled now, too, that mysterious lifting at the edges of his luscious mouth. Liberty knew he hid some pain and knew he had come to Laramie on a new and challenging mission.
But embarrassment forced her body to lurch down the corridor, shoving rowdy citizens out of her way, purposefully banging them with her carpetbag. “Excuse me. Let me by. I’m in a hurry.”
How could she be in love with a man whose name she didn’t even know? She’d been carried away by the excitement of her new, adventurous life. Laramie City held a thousand people now, and she could easily get lost in the tumult. This beautiful man’s mission was probably farther west, for all she knew. This was the end of the line, after all, Hell on Wheels. Most of the passengers on this train were not staying here long.
Once on the platform, Liberty shoved aside clamoring, “roostered” citizens with abandon. She decided this must be the main street, First Street, and she headed directly for the first hotel, where the proprietor could tell her how to find her father’s house. By that time, hopefully the crowds would have hidden her tracks from the stunning, glittering eyes of that exquisite stranger.
And…how could she have given him her sister’s name?
Chapter Two
Levi Colter arrived at Fort Sanders to find the place deserted.
Literally deserted. True, there was a soldier sleeping in the guardhouse next to the usual hangdog Brulé Sioux drinking tarantula juice out of chipped mugs, a pile of sunflower seed shells at their feet.
The soldier woke up a little when Levi asked to see Shadrack Barnhart, Indian Agent. He even sat up straight in his chair as he replied, “Why, I ain’t seen Shady in over a month.”
Levi fixed the private with his famous stare. “He’s out on the reservations, then?” Indian agents were supposed to spend some or most of their time actually with Indians, dispensing annuities. They would restrain the crowds of traders who wanted to cheat Indians and sell them illegal tarantula juice. An agent was supposed to teach Indians how to farm in the wind and sand with, say, a handheld hoe to crack the ice and plant tomatoes in zero temperatures. All this for the salary of a postmaster.
The soldier wiped drool from the corner of his mouth. “I wouldn’t expect so. His office is empty.”
“Empty? What do you mean, empty?”
“I mean his knapsack is gone, horse, tent, all his trappings. Gone over a month ago.”
“But he would take a tent and a horse onto the reservation,” Levi insisted.
The private shook his head and drooled some more. “No, sir. Even the photograph of his mother is gone. Why would he take his ma onto the reservation?”
Levi got directions to Shadrack’s quarters and proceeded across the vivid green grass of the parade ground. There were supposed to be six companies housed at the fort to protect Union Pacific tracklayers and grading crews, but only the occasional soldier or mountain man sharpening a knife came into view. Maybe they were all out protecting the railroad men. It was as silent as the grave—a shrub even tumbled by.
Levi did pass one odd sight. A fellow leaned against Shadrack’s quarters, a headdress of eagle quills and ermine skins covering his face. A couple of small bison skulls hung from thongs over his shoulders, and his bison robe was adorned with pictorial representations of hunting. That wasn’t the odd thing. He was clearly a white man with luminous white skin, his silvery ringlets looking to have been dressed in Paris. He seemed to be purposefully hiding his face from Levi, but Levi was irritated, so he breezed on by and entered the rooms.
The private was right. These rooms looked like a cyclone had blown through, as though Shadrack had left in a hurry. The bedroll had been torn off the bed frame and papers ripped from the walls, leaving only nails behind. A coffeepot even lay on its side on the floor, the puddle of liquid long dried.
Levi sat at the work table to examine the few papers left there in the light from the small window. “Well, this is balled up.” Was Shadrack some kind of chiseler?
He studied lists of supplies that Shadrack was supposed to have distributed to the Sioux. But in between the endless analyses of jelly, raisins, and stockings, images of that unique woman from the train yesterday kept poking their way into Levi’s brain.
She was a stunner, of that there was no doubt. Levi had been so shocked when she had first slapped her voluptuous body up against his in the car’s corridor, their faces just inches from each other. Her silken eyebrows of the darkest Egyptian night framed almond-shaped mahogany eyes. Her eyes simply brimmed with fresh excitement and a desire for adventure. Her beautifully tapered nose came to a perfect point, with indentations as though a sculptor had pressed his fingers there. And when she smiled—which happened instantly, the second her eyes locked onto his!—she revealed perfectly creased dimples.
Her face simply blotted out the crowd of roostered roughnecks milling about them. It had taken Levi many long moments to even note that her shapely and sunbrowned bosom was pressing against his clammy chest, that’s how taken he was with her angelic face. He had muttered something stupid—what was it, anyway? Something about the oiled thugs?—and she was suddenly gone. But her impression had lingered as though they’d been courting for months, as though her very spirit had carved a furrow in his heart.
Levi forced himself to look at the pages before him. All right, something about wheelbarrows, neckties, and tea cozies. Tea cozies? Why in hell would Indians want tea cozies? Levi started to daydream again about his second encounter with the Egyptian stunner, Ivy Hudson. It didn’t behoove him to dream about their run-in in the first-class compartment while he was scanning a ledger, because his cock would expand and elongate down his thigh. He had already spent a good part of last night at the Frontier Hotel in Laramie City frigging himself silly, but it hadn’t helped. And if anyone other than an Indian or a private entered the room, he’d have to stand, and his erection would look plumb silly, and—
Hell. An authoritative fellow wearing fancy Cheyenne-leg chaps and an army cap entered the room, spurs jangling. The smell of fresh sweat swept into the room with him, as though he’d just ridden to the fort, and Levi was compelled to stand, clutching his greatcoat in front of his gun belt.
“You Levi Colter, the new Indian agent?”
“I am.”
This fellow was unbelievably handsome, as though he should’ve stayed put in England and become a lord just on sheer looks alone. He shook Levi’s hand. “Neil Tempest, head of security for the fort.” He glanced skeptically around the room, nostrils vaguely flaring with distaste. Tempest’s accent was actually more Australian. Levi wondered if he was one of those former convicts who had come through San Francisco and raised so much hell there, so he had to tread carefully. “I see Shady hasn’t returned since I was last out here a few weeks ago. I was sort of suspecting he wouldn’t. He was well-known for nicking supplies meant for Indians and selling them to settlers. He managed to amass himself a tiny fortune of twenty-five thousand dollars, so I heard.”
That wasn’t unusual. On a postmaster’s salary, it was always tempting to chisel supplies out of the Indians. With a storehouse full of shovels, waistcoats, and valuable boots at one’s disposal and hordes of settlers clamoring for these things, the temptation was just too great.
Levi said, “From the looks of these papers I just perused, it might even be worse than that.” He picked up one page and rattled it. “Looks li
ke he accidentally left behind this bogus treaty covered with a bunch of scribbles where Indians might’ve signed away land that was rightfully theirs.”
Tempest looked at the page. He, too, looked confused at the illegible “signatures” scrawled by alleged chiefs with names like Brave Buffalo and Caeser Moxus, accompanied by pictographs of dying bison, soaring eagles, and squashed tortoises. The pictographs didn’t have the ring of authenticity to Levi. Indians could usually draw much better than that. “I just saw Caeser Moxus the other day, but he didn’t mention any treaty.”
Levi couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “Oh? Caeser Moxus is a real Indian’s name?”
He was glad that Tempest chuckled, too. “Well, what we named him, obviously.” He waxed serious again. “That land in question is over by my ranch, out toward the Snowy Range. I was going to ride back there tomorrow night after I finish dispatching the latest load of murderers and thieves that we rounded up during the festivities last night. The new train arriving, you know. Everyone knocking up a lark. Those brawlers are mean enough to eat off the same plate as a snake. I’m to be made marshal of Laramie, so I can’t guarantee much security here at the fort anymore. I could investigate it for you, see what I find.”
The festivities reminded Levi of something that was never far from his mind. This head of security might have heard of Ivy Hudson. Levi would like to accompany Tempest out to the Snowy Range, but he wanted to figure out who Miss Hudson was, or where, first. She must be related to this Simon Hudson fellow whose name was all over papers as a proprietor of railroad ties and lumber.
A stunner like that wouldn’t last long in a gal-starved town like Laramie, if indeed she wasn’t already married and arriving there to meet a husband. And if so, she’d been having one hell of a last fling. That, or the husband in question was extremely heinous.
So Levi said, “About those festivities. On the train yesterday—”
But a new voice sounded in the tiny room. It was a voice of such resonance and command that both men stood at attention as though suddenly in church.
“Caeser is dead.”
The speaker was a very tall, athletic, dark-skinned gent. Although his Southern accent pinpointed him as being from the Georgia region, his proclamation gave Levi the expectation of seeing a toga-clad actor in a Shakespearean play. Again, Levi chuckled. “Et tu, Brute? Is this part of some assassination conspiracy?”
Neil Tempest stepped between Levi and the serious actor. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Mr. Colter. Garrett’s just a cook here at the fort.”
For a cook, he certainly cut an imposing figure. Garrett looked strong enough to strangle a steer. He was clad in the usual private’s hodgepodge of attire—the army was never good about replacing uniforms and usually seemed unsure of who was stationed where, anyway. It was usually left up to the soldiers themselves to cobble together a “uniform,” and Garrett had decided to strut about in a pair of tight and red long drawers, most pants probably being too short for his powerful, long legs. He protected his legs with a pair of fringed leather chaps, which were stuffed into worn Wellington boots. He had retained his official dark blue frock coat with sky-blue piping but had replaced the cap with a wide-brimmed planter’s hat. Strange getups weren’t uncommon in the West.
Tempest turned to Garrett and asked, “What makes you think Caeser is dead?”
Garrett addressed his answer to Levi and seemed to be staring at his neck, strangely enough. Maybe he was afraid to raise his eyes, being only a cook. “I just know it.”
Tempest scoffed. “If you ‘know’ it, you must have also been present when he died. How did he die, then? Should I slap these bracelets on you and put you in the brig?”
Garrett turned his beautifully heavy, almost Oriental eyes onto Tempest. He looked Marshal Tempest in the eye. “No, I wasn’t there when he was killed. It was just something I heard.”
“Gossip, eh?” said Tempest. He finally regarded Garrett with seriousness. “This isn’t something that Caleb Poindexter might’ve told you, is it? Because I can check with Caleb.”
Who the hell was Caleb Poindexter? Levi was becoming restless and wanted to get back to the subject of Ivy Hudson. His brain wandered to his second encounter with the Egyptian lass, after he’d saved her from certainly smothering in a thousand putrid armpits during the crush upon arrival yesterday. His prick had been stiffly at attention before he’d even yanked her from that packed corridor, but when she collapsed back on his lap, he knew he was hopelessly lost. One might even say in love with her.
Yes, it sounded completely absurd, Levi knew that. He’d been briefly betrothed to a gal in Chicago when he’d been an idealistic journalist. When that hope and optimism had been abruptly shattered, of course he’d plodded through the usual roostered groupings in back alleys that young, disillusioned men were prone to. One always imagined that just one more faceless vertical fuck up against a trash bin with a half-cognizant gal would somehow enhance one’s opinion of one’s self, but of course it never happened.
Anyway, Levi wasn’t the most gullible chowderhead on the continent when it came to love. By the time he came west and first became an Indian agent at the Standing Rock reservation, he had given up the idea of ever marrying. There were not many unwed belles in the Far West, and being a lowly agent wouldn’t hold out much hope of riches even for a sallow grass widow with eight children. But the moment Ivy Hudson had fallen into his lap—even before she had straddled, kissed, and nearly fucked him—Levi Colter had been a goner.
Maybe it was her thick masses of slinky, sleek curls. When he had plunged his fingers through that pinned-up bundle of inky curls, all he’d wanted to do was tear out her hairpins and bathe himself in those tresses. She smelled of violets or some other prairie rose, as though she had a sachet tucked away in her bodice. When she sat up and wrapped her arms around his neck and plied him with that sly, talented mouth, violets had wafted over him. In fact, later that night when he’d frigged himself so furiously, he could smell the flowers drifting over him, as though she still thought about him at that very moment. Or maybe her ghostly hands even touched his cock. And he had sappily vowed never to wash that shirt again and balled it up in the corner of his trunk, to perversely sniff later.
And he had certainly never expected her to straddle him! Why had she chosen him, of the hundreds of men in the train, to latch onto with her long thighs? When she wriggled her hips and humped him like a brazen vixen, he’d nearly come off in his pants. He imagined he could even feel her mushy honeypot clamped right down over his bulging prick, and it was only some vaguely remembered sense of propriety—which was practically out the window at this point—that prevented him from consummating their sudden coupling.
That, and someone’s umbrella bashing his skull, and the fact that the train had stopped.
She wore this airy, almost transparent gown of the “artistic” mode that modern women interested in dress reform were prone to wear. When she slithered away through the press of passengers, her skirts had been hiked up just enough to reveal that a wet spot saturated her seat. He had sat there, stunned, for many minutes afterward. There was a wet spot on his crotch, too. And now that he thought about it, perhaps he should never wash that pair of pants either.
“What?” Levi now gaped stupidly. Neil Tempest had been saying something to him.
“I’ve got to get back to town. I’ve got a whole railcar of rowdies to deal with. Thanks for letting me know about Shady, Mr. Colter. I’ll look into it when I get back to my ranch.”
And Tempest spun on his heel, heading for the door of the agent’s office.
Completely ignoring Garrett, who still stood there as though about to burst into a sonnet, Levi followed Tempest into the open air of the parade ground. That odd, spectral white man pretending to be an Indian was thankfully gone, and Levi said conversationally, “Say, Marshal. You wouldn’t happen to know a lady by the name of Ivy Hudson? I think she might be related to this Hudson fellow who sells railroad ties. R
eason I ask. I met her on the train yesterday—”
All of a sudden, Tempest stopped Levi cold. His arm went out at a right angle to his body like a picket fence gate, nearly slamming Levi in the gut. Clearly, Levi had said something wrong. Tempest’s eyes flashed angrily. “How could you have met her on the train? I was with her on the train yesterday. And I was with her all the time. I didn’t see you.”
Hell. This must be the husband Levi had been dreading. Tempest didn’t seem like such a bad sort. He must have some deep, hidden flaws that made women run to other men’s arms. Obviously, Ivy had been fleeing from Levi on the train, knowing her husband, Marshal Tempest, was about to board looking for her. Levi had to step carefully. “Oh, ah, we only met very briefly. I saved her from a throng of roostered thugs. You know how worked up these railroad men can get. Pitching into each other. A regular husking frolic.”
Hands on hips, Tempest frowned something fierce. He repeated, “But I was with her every moment of the day. She wasn’t out of my sight for one second.”
Both men stared dumbly at each other, probably for different reasons. Marshal Tempest glowered, and Levi wondered if the door to his new agent’s office had a strong lock.
Then came that resonant actor’s voice again, off to the side. “It wasn’t Miss Ivy. Mr. Colter, you met Miss Ivy Hudson’s sister.”
Again, both men turned to regard Garrett with a religious intensity. His pronouncement probably made the most sense to Marshal Tempest, for he was the first to yell, “How do you know Ivy Hudson’s sister?”
“I don’t,” Garrett said simply. “I’ve just…heard that Ivy has a sister who was coming into town.”
It was slowly seeping into Levi’s entrails, with a great deal of relief. He guffawed as though he’d known the whole thing was a joke the entire time, practically slapping Marshal Tempest on the shoulder. “Yes, her sister! That makes sense! Did Miss Ivy tell you she had a sister coming into town on the train?”
Disorder in the House [How the West Was Done 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 2