Wolver's Gold (The Wolvers)

by Rhoades, Jacqueline

  “You need a name,” she told it as she stuffed the first batch into the dryer. “Even a dog deserves a name. To call you Dog feels insulting.”

  She was referring to the age old prejudice wolvers held against dogs. They were inferior creatures, unable to communicate or reason as a wolver did in his canine form. They needed a master to care for them. A dog could never be anything more than a dog and to label a wolver with the name was an insult.

  The dog whined and laid down with its head between its paws, nose pointed at the door.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” she sympathized. “It’s almost like being a woman.”

  Rachel undressed down to her chemise and drawers and donned the silk dressing gown that once was her mothers. Free of her stays and tight fitting clothing, she propped her pillow against the headboard and settled in to read a few more chapters of Jane Eyre. Poor Jane; to be caught in a world where she couldn’t have the one man who saw the real woman she kept hidden inside. In what seemed like minutes, the dryer dinged and Rachel reluctantly set the book aside.

  While she folded the first batch of cloths, the dog became more agitated. It looked from Rachel to the door and back again, taking a few steps in each direction as if torn between what it was told to do and what it wanted to do.

  It finally dawned on Rachel that the animal needed to relieve its bladder. When she opened the door, the dog ran immediately to the gate while she stood in the shelter of the open door. The rain was little more than a drizzle, but the yard was already turning to mud.

  “No, she laughed, “Do what you have to, right where you are. I’ve cleaned up worse in the rooms upstairs.”

  The dog whined and paced some more and then suddenly stopped; head up, ears erect and twitching in their search for sound. Finding the direction, nose and eyes followed.

  At the sight of the dog’s intensity, Rachel froze and listened, too. And then she heard it; the low, faraway howl of a wolf. It was her inner wolf who recognized it as a call for help.

  The shepherd took one last look at Rachel and ran for the gate. In a graceful leap, it sailed over the obstacle to its freedom and was gone.

  Without thinking, Rachel ran to the gate. An unladylike word slipped from her lips as she fumbled with the stiff latch. Once through, she gathered the dressing gown up around her waist and ran after the dog. Challenger McCall was in trouble.

  Chapter 15

  The dog didn’t wait. It flew up Schoolhouse Lane and onto Main Street, running straight for the bordello and then veering right to head out into the open land beyond the town.

  Rachel couldn’t keep up. Her house shoes were too loose for running and after stumbling several times, she ripped them from her feet and threw them aside. The dressing gown followed, freeing her arms to pump along with her pistoning legs. She hadn’t run like this since she was a girl, but she was strong from hard work and her muscles remembered the motions. She gave no thought to what she must look like or what people would think. Challenger McCall was in trouble and that was enough to make her forget propriety and what she should or should not do.

  The dog paused and looked back. It waited until she was almost abreast and took off again.

  The land here was different than that of the town, with small rises of earth and outcroppings of rock that presaged the rough terrain of the foothills beyond. Unchanged by the passing centuries, Rachel felt its primal call, just as she had when she was a girl. She’d been taught her kind originated in Scotland, but running here as a cub, playing among these dips and rises and rocks, she’d doubted her history lessons. This land was meant for wolvers to run free.

  The dog sped up the next rise, higher than the others they’d already traversed. Its four legs found no hindrance in the loose dirt and stone that trickled down the slope as Rachel scrambled after it. She envied it those four legs. Her wolf snarled in unhappy agreement. Rachel had not run as a wolf since she was seventeen.

  She topped the rise, straightened, and started to run down the other side when a flash of light semi-blinded her. It caught the dog in mid-leap, giving the impression of the animal growing larger. Rachel had no time to contemplate this optical illusion because suddenly, she was tumbling down the hill, skidding on the four legs she’d wished for only moments ago. This was not the graceful and controlled change she’d experience years ago when the Alpha brought her over the moon that first time, nor the two times after, when the Hunter’s Moon called her to go over alone. Her wolf took control of her legs, restoring her balance, but it took a moment longer for Rachel to adjust to her perspective of sight.

  She was now lower to the ground and the abrupt clarity of her wolf-sight, coupled with her precipitous change, had her head reeling. She tried to slow, take charge and make sense of what was happening, but her wolf surged forth with pent up power of long denial. Heedless of Rachel’s efforts, it took control and, with a ferocious snarl, leapt into the battle before them.

  Unfamiliar with the wolf forms of those in her pack, she did not recognize the four who surrounded and lunged at the silver wolf in their midst. Her wolf, however, immediately recognized the silver wolf as Challenger McCall and there was no question as to where her allegiance lay.

  The she-wolf tore into the nearest wolf, her leap hitting it squarely and taking it to the ground. She rolled, righted and lunged with bared teeth where the human Rachel tried to back away. The two divergent personalities striving for control of one body caused more harm than good and when the skinny, dark wolf slashed at her shoulder with long yellow fangs, Rachel gave full command to her wolf, whose instincts for survival were stronger and had only one thought.

  “Mate!”

  The shepherd, too, showed no hesitation and dove at the smallest of the four assailants.

  The odds now more in his favor, the silver wolf shifted from defense to offense with a burst of aggression that was frightening to behold. It leapt at the largest of the wolves, drawing blood with its first strike and turned to meet another as it angled in from behind. A frenzy of snarls and yelps followed, but Rachel was too busy with her own role in the melee to keep track of what was happening to the others. Her thick reddish coat and quick movement saved her from further damage, but years lacking exercise had taken its toll on the she-wolf and she was tiring fast.

  There was a scream of pain as the shepherd was thrown to the side to land awkwardly on its back. In her concern for the dog, Rachel turned, neglecting her own flank. The largest wolf lunged for her. Challenger sprang to her defense and a rifle shot blasted through the night.

  For a split second, the wolves froze in their tracks. Then Challenger chuffed at her.

  “Down!”

  Rachelwolf didn’t question. She moved. She flattened her body against the ground, making herself as small as she could in the shadows of the night. Silence surrounded them as their opponents disappeared into the darkness following a quiet yip from their leader. Seconds, counted in heartbeats, passed, and when she felt no further threat, Rachel belly crawled to where Challengerwolf lay next to his dog. He licked at the blood flowing from the wound on the dog’s heaving side.

  “Challenger.” Rachel bumped him with her snout. She felt his worry for the dog, but this place wasn’t safe.

  The light flashed and Rachel sneezed. Her human body was kneeling next to McCall’s in the mud. The drizzling rain felt cold against her skin. She shivered.

  “How…?” she started to ask, but McCall was already on his feet with the faithful shepherd in his arms.

  He moved toward town, covering the ground in an easy lope that seemed impossible with the burden he carried. Rachel scrambled to catch up.

  “Mr. McCall, what is all this about? What happened back there?”

  “You weren’t supposed to be there.” He said it like an accusation. “I only called dog. And keep your voice down. Sound carries at night.”

  “So did your cry for help,” she hissed.

  They passed the place where she’d dropped her wrapper an
d she paused long enough to shrug her arms through the sodden garment before running to catch up. Her slippers were nowhere in sight.

  “It wasn’t a cry. It was a call,” McCall said when she caught up, as if there were no break in the conversation.

  “Cry? Call? What difference does it make except to your masculine pride?” she countered in an angry whisper, “I heard it.”

  “You couldn’t have. You followed Dog.”

  Rachel stopped in her tracks. “Do not presume to tell me what I did or did not hear, Mr. McCall.” She was so tired of these wolver males telling her what she must do, how she must act, what she must say, and now, what she must not have heard. “Damn it!” she added as an expression of her anger and rebellion.

  McCall said nothing, but she thought she heard him snicker as she hastened to catch up.

  “Psst. This way,” a voice whispered out of the dark. “They’ll see you if you walk through town. They’re out front of the jail.” Eustace limped toward them, holding a rifle in his right hand. “Head around to Daisy’s back door. She’s expecting you.”

  McCall barely stopped to listen, before heading to the back of the yellow Victorian house.

  Eustace hefted the rifle that looked like none Rachel had ever seen. He grinned when he saw her surprise.

  “I told you that bag was hefty. He’s got stuff I didn’t think they sold, even in the outside, modern world. You think Uncle Sam’s got wolvers working for him?”

  “I don’t think so, Eustace.” McCall’s survivalist pack evidently had resources. She started for the back porch at a trot. “I do know that you broke the Law. Man shall not kill wolf.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody.” His laugh was a whisper of breath. “I just let them know I could.”

  Daisy, from whom the bordello took its name, held the door for them. “You didn’t say it was for a damn dog,” she said to Eustace.

  “You didn’t ask,” he answered, shaking the water from his hat and oiled sicker.

  “Eustace,” McCall called quietly from the kitchen, “Can you get to the jail? I need…”

  “The black bag from under your bed?” He lifted the backpack he carried in his left hand. “I told you them mortise locks were easy to pop. Anyone around here locks their key inside, they call me. I’ve been doing it for years. Don’t worry, though. I locked back up when I left.”

  “Hold this.” McCall motioned to Rachel to take over the pressure he held against the dog’s wound.

  Rachel complied without question. The cloth was already soaked and Daisy handed her another. She took the bloody cloth to the sink where McCall was washing his hands and ignored the drips of blood that spattered her gown.

  In a just world that rewarded clean and virtuous living, Daisy would look twice her age, dried, and worn out with hard living. She didn’t. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was one of those handsome women who aged well and her use of cosmetics brightened her cheeks and highlighted a pair of bright, discerning eyes.

  Age and good living had rounded Daisy’s body to the point where a corset did more holding in than shaping what it held. By wolver standards, she was on the far side of middle age and yet she spurned the solid, dark colors of the other matrons and chose instead, to wear the bright colors of youth. Her bodices were cut dangerously low to show off what she laughingly called her charms. Yards of lace decorated the hems of her underskirts. When those skirts were lifted, garishly colored and patterned silk stockings showed off trim ankles encased in high buttoned shoes.

  Daisy was a living denial of the wages of sin.

  “What happened out there?” Daisy asked McCall.

  “Dog tangled with some wolves.”

  “Wolves or wolvers?”

  McCall shrugged and began rummaging through the pack. “Dog don’t talk much.” He gave Daisy his little boy grin.

  Rachel ground her teeth. She bent over the dog and whispered in his ear. “He smiles at her. He snaps at me. You don’t snap at me, do you, Arthur?”

  “You’re not calling Dog Arthur,” McCall said beside her, so close he made her jump. He began pulling packaged needles, scissors, ointments and bandages from the backpack.

  “Well, you can’t call him Dog. It’s insulting,” she argued, and if she sounded a little snappish, she had good reason. “And Arthur was a King. Knights of the Round Table,” she added for clarification.

  “I don’t care who he was. You’re not calling him Arthur.” He sounded quite definite. “Eustace, you’ve got to get Miss Kincaid home. Just in case anyone goes looking,” he added when Rachel started to protest.

  “There’s a small herd of ‘em out in the street, McCall. Don’t know how I can sneak her by without being noticed.”

  Daisy went to the door leading to the rest of the house. “Lily,” she called, “I need to speak with you, dear.”

  Lily waltzed in a moment later, smiling, but changed her demeanor immediately upon taking in the scene in the kitchen. She was a dark haired young woman who had no qualms about being seen in her scarlet corset without a chemise or corset cover. If it was cut much lower, everything would be exposed. Her underskirt was no skirt at all, but layer upon layer of something sheer and black, so sheer you could see the outline of her… Good Heavens!

  Rachel looked up at McCall’s appreciative expression and frowned.

  “Hey, Lily,” he greeted, as if he knew the girl, “How’s it going?”

  He continued stitching up the dog, deftly tying off each stitch and snipping the odd looking thread before moving on to the next. The shepherd’s eyes were open and aware, and Rachel marveled that the animal remained still each time the sharp needle was inserted. The bleeding, at least, had stopped.

  The girl gave him a quick wave. “Hey, Sheriff,” she returned with a curious look, and taking in his shirtless attire and blood stained chest, she shrugged, “Guess you’re not here to play dominoes with me, huh? Is he going to be okay?”

  “Not tonight, darlin’, and he’s going to be fine.” Finishing the last stitch, he stroked the dog’s ear. “Aren’t you, boy.”

  Dog thumped his tail once in answer.

  “Lily,” Daisy’s voice drew the young woman’s attention, “Miss Kincaid needs to get home and she needs to do that without drawing attention.”

  Lily looked Rachel up and down, sizing her up. “She could probably wear something of mine.”

  McCall laughed as if she’d said something funny. “Honey, your wardrobe is meant to draw attention. Does a great job, too.” He grinned and winked.

  It was the wink that did it. Rachel pursed her lips. Her wolf growled, and when its teeth lashed out in a sharp snap, Rachel’s foot snapped out to the side, clipping McCall’s ankle.

  “What?” he teased lightly at the look on her face. “Don’t look so high and mighty, Miss Prim. Even with the mud…” His gaze ran down her body with a great deal more than an appreciative grin. “…I’d wink at you, too.” And then he did just that.

  Rachel felt that gaze burn all the way to her skin as she followed it downward. Her face flamed in embarrassment as she pulled her wrapper closed over her chemise and drawers. In all the excitement she’d forgotten what she wore.

  “A kind offer, Lily, but I was thinking of something else,” Daisy interrupted. She was all business. “There are gentlemen in the street who are looking for someone. We need to draw their attention elsewhere. Who’s in the parlor without a guest?”

  Lily understood. “Rose and Pansy. It’s a rainy night and business is slow. Should we take our umbrellas?”

  “Yes, but no coats or shawls. You want attention,” the Madam answered with a nod. “And Lily? There was no one in this kitchen but me.”

  “I already knew that,” the Soiled Dove answered with a wink. “Just give us a few minutes and a herd of elephants could walk down the street unnoticed.”

  “She’s a clever one, my Lily, and she has a kind heart,” Daisy said fondly when the young woman was gone. “She’s like a daughter to me and
I’d leave this place to her if I could.” She looked squarely at Rachel. “But it’s not really mine any more than that hotel is yours. Still, we do what we have to.” The softness in her voice hardened and she was all business again.

  “You, Sheriff, need a bath before we find you a bed. As for the dog, someone let it out while you were busy elsewhere. Miss Kincaid, if anyone has questions, you tell the truth as far as you can, but keep it short. And keep that prissy look on your face. It’s the only look you have that doesn’t give everything away. Eustace, go watch the street while I walk Miss Kincaid out back.”

  Daisy led the way to a spot behind a large Elderberry shrub at the corner of the house. She spoke while she kept an eye on the window above them.

  “My flowers don’t spread gossip about what goes on in this house, but they do talk to each other about the gentlemen who come here. Jack Coogan is a fool, but a decent one as fools go, and a smart woman can handle a fool. Plain speaking, Barnabas Holt is a cruel bastard, in bed and out. If he were anyone else, I’d turn him away, but I can’t. He owns the place and he’s bleeding me dry.”

  When Eustace tapped on the window and nodded, Daisy gave Rachel a little shove to set her on her way. “Choose wisely, Miss Kincaid, if all you’re looking to do is to save your hotel. A smart woman needs to look after herself. Don’t make my mistakes.”

  Rachel wanted to stay and ask how the Madam knew about the hotel. She was also tempted to ask Daisy’s opinion about Challenger McCall, but the Madam was already walking away.

  Chapter 16

  Rachel was warming some milk to help her sleep, when the pounding on the front door began. Without her wrapper to modestly cover her nightgown, she had to waste time slipping her skirt over it. Wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, she hurried to the front hall where a group of onlookers watched from the stairs. Her father was among them and he looked frightened.

  Barnabas Holt stood on the porch, an angry scowl on his face. Two other men stood behind him.