A murmur ran through the ranks along with a shaking of heads. They weren’t loud, but they were firm in their resolve.
With a banner reading ‘We want to be heard’ to her right, and one proclaiming ‘Full rights for Women’ on the other, Rachel Kincaid led the silent women of Gold Gulch up the center of Main Street to the cheers of the few humans in the crowd. They were used to public displays of civil disobedience.
The watching wolvers were different. The visitors, many of whom were currently staying at the hotel, clapped and laughed right along with the tourists. The local wolvers were divided. Some of the men frowned openly or turned their backs. Some watched with solemn faces and admiring eyes. Others, like Achilles Marbank, cheered loudly and raised their fists in the air to show their support.
The Gold Gulch women who did not march were a mixed batch, too. Some pursed their lips in disapproval or shook their heads, clearly tut-tutting their opinions of this unrefined and inappropriate behavior. Others stood quietly along the walkway, hands folded serenely over their aprons, heads bowed meekly as they stood beside their male caretaker. Those were the ones Rachel worried most about; the ones who were afraid to openly voice any opinion, for or against, at all.
What they were marching for was clear. The homemade placards told the tale.
No pay, no work.
We are not children.
We are not chattel.
No one owns me.
Share the work. Share the profits.
We want our voices heard!
Pleased as she was by the turnout, the marchers and the crowd were too well behaved for the demonstration’s second purpose. Rachel turned to the Madam of the house on the hill for help.
“Daisy,” she said from the corner of her mouth. “We’re stopping in front of the Bank. We need every employee watching at the windows.”
“Then you’d better start making some noise,” Daisy said as she moved off to find her girls. She turned back only long enough to wave her hand, encouraging Rachel to increase her volume. “Come on! Where’s that voice you were talking about? Let them hear it.”
“Full rights for women!” Rachel shouted with her fist in the air. “Full rights for women!”
She thought for a moment she’d be shouting alone. Well-bred and well-mannered, the women of Gold Gulch weren’t used to raising their voices.
Bertie, dear and faithful Bertie, joined in on Rachel’s third shout and timid Liddy’s voice followed. Glancing behind her to give them a smile of thanks, Rachel saw them raise their joined hands in the air and shout out again. Cassie was next and then one by one, the others joined in.
“Full rights for women! Full rights for women!”
The sound of their shouted slogan became louder and louder until it became a roaring demand. A dam had burst for the women of Gold Gulch. After remaining silent for so long, their voices were finally flowing out over the streets.
Daisy’s girls flounced along the sides of the street and in their raucous and ribald way, urged the crowd to join in. They did, with surprising and unexpected enthusiasm, tourists feeling like they’d been invited to join the show and visitors believing this might be real. Whatever their reason, Main Street now rang with many voices shouting as one.
The first tomato was thrown right before they reached the bank. It acted like a call to arms and suddenly her ladies’ brigade was under attack. A barrage of rotten fruits and vegetables, and half-eaten food from the garbage bombarded them. The shouted chant stopped abruptly as women raised their hands to protect themselves. Some ducked; some scurried for the protection of the bank building; some, not knowing what to do, began to cry. A few, like Rachel, attempted to march on.”
“Don’t let them stop us,” she cried as she linked arms with Cassie. The bombardment was disgusting, but caused no real harm. Others joined the human chain, now shouting “We want our freedom!”
Rachel’s wolf was snarling and snapping, angered and offended by the humiliating treatment her human endured. It gave Rachel strength and a glance at Cassie’s feral grimace told her that the young woman’s wolf was speaking to Cassie, too.
The woman on Rachel’s left screamed and fell as a maliciously thrown apple struck her face.
If John Washington needed a diversion, he certainly got one, though the method of it was not Rachel’s intent.
“Hey!” someone shouted angrily from the crowd, “That’s my woman!”
At the same time as the shout, the offending apple rolled to Rachel’s feet. Angrily, she picked it up. The apple was not quite ripe and was as hard as a rock. Her wolf’s rage boiled over. Hefting the apple in her palm, she searched for the troublemaker and found him in front of the Tonsorium, his box of ammunition concealed behind the striped pole. He was readying another of his missiles.
“Asshat,” she muttered.
Without a second thought, Rachel leaned back on her right foot, raised her arm over her head and swung forward onto her left foot and let the apple fly. It sailed through the air with surprising speed. Her skills as a child rock thrower had not been lost in the intervening years. With perfect accuracy, the apple hit the attacker’s forehead where it split neatly in two and sent the man sprawling.
With the woman’s cry of pain, the male wolver’s angry protest and Rachel’s retaliation, the crowd erupted. A few outsiders, both human tourists and wolver visitors, turned on the attackers, sure now that this was no theatrical demonstration.
Not all were focused on saving the erstwhile suffragists. Pent up wolver emotions suddenly exploded, too, and what began as a peaceful demonstration turned into a brawl. Fists flew. Men shouted. Women screamed and fled. But not all. Led by the growls of their own inner wolves, some stood their ground. Placards were used both as shields and weapons. Watchers gathered their children and fled to the shops where they hid behind counters and shelves.
There was a sudden surge from both sidewalks into the middle of Main Street. Caught in the center of it, Rachel fought to stay on her feet as she was tossed about in the sea of brawling bodies. She was shoved to her knees and seeing no way to rise through the waves of fists and bodies breaking overhead, she crawled on all fours toward what she hoped was the sidewalk and safety. Head down, she plowed forward, slamming her fist onto sneakered or booted feet to make them give way.
Someone stepped on her skirt and she heard the fabric rip. A cruel kick sent pain shooting through her side. She could no longer see the walkway, had no idea where safety lay. Her wolf was snarling and snapping to get out and when she saw a polished shoe rise up in preparation to stomp on her hand, Rachel let her wolf out. She grabbed that shoe, hoisting it higher, and bit the argyle covered ankle above it. Her wolf howled with savage delight at the sound of the man’s screech.
Through the milling legs and stumbling bodies, she saw Cassie. On her knees as well, the young woman was trying to shield another woman with her body.
Rage and necessity gave Rachel the strength to heave upward to her feet. She elbowed, she punched, she bit someone’s hand when it grabbed her shoulder and tried to pull her back. Together, she and Cassie helped the woman rise.
Spying Cassie, Achilles Marbank waded through the tumbling mass, sending bodies soaring through the air if they failed to move from his path. He captured Cassie and the rescued woman, but before Rachel could grasp his outstretched hand, she was carried away on another wave.
Once more, she was pushed to her knees. All around her, she could feel the power of the pack, swirling like an electrical storm, frightening, yet exhilarating. Above her, she could hear the shouts of powerful men calling a halt to the donnybrook. Things began to settle and above the dimming roar, she heard her shouted name.
“Red! Where the hell are you, woman?”
The legs barring her way began to disappear as their owners were tossed to the side. McCall was coming for her and she almost cried with relief.
She crawled toward his voice and was about to pound on the instep of the square-toed cowboy
boot in front of her, when three booming shots rang out along with a swell of power that blanketed the area in front of the bank. Her head went down in obeisance and the crowd quieted. One toe of the suddenly familiar boots before her nose, tapped impatiently. She followed the long legs clad in heavy cotton twill up and up and up to the belt buckle she knew so well because he refused to wear the braces other men used to suspend their trousers. Up and up, past the chambray shirt he preferred, past the badge on his chest to McCall’s very angry face. He holstered the pistol he’d fired into the air. The area around them had cleared instantly.
“God damnit, Red. He said a distraction, not a damned fucking riot.”
Rachel took his offered hand. “Must you use such language, Mr. McCall? We’re on a public street.”
He took in her torn sleeves and skirt covered in muck, her smudged face, and the straggling bun that now hung in a ragged snarl at her back. Wrinkling his nose, he plucked some mashed and soggy leafy thing from her hair and dangled it in front of her nose.
“Oh yes, how could I forget?” he asked in a mocking, snooty voice. “One must maintain one’s decorum at all times.” He snorted a laugh. “The exception being when one starts a fucking riot.”
Rachel slapped at the hand holding the wilted lettuce leaf. “I didn’t start this.”
“I’m pretty sure Eve said the same thing to Adam. Of course, she ate her apple.”
“He threw it first,” she argued childishly, before she saw the mocking laughter in his eyes. She sniffed indignantly. “I’m going home to change and while I’m gone, you might contemplate, Mr. McCall, how better off we all might be if Eve had beaned her foolish mate with her apple instead of eating it.”
McCall threw back his head and roared with laughter, then looked over her head at the crowd in the street who’d stopped at the sound. “What’re you looking at? Go on. Get home before I start kickin’ ass and takin’ names.”
It was then Rachel noticed the brawlers were all wolver. “Where are the tourists?”
“Eustace and the boys rounded them up and sent them home. These guys were having too good a time so I let ‘em rip,” he said of the sheepish, but grinning faces around him. “Of course, that was before I knew you were in the middle of it. So much for your promise to stay out of harm’s way.”
“I wasn’t harmed,” she told him, ignoring the bruise that was forming on her side and then she frowned. “But others were. How’s Mrs. Harper?” she asked about the woman who was struck by the apple.
“Just bruised and frightened. She’ll be fine. Her assailant, however, has a concussion. He’s gonna be cross-eyed for a week or two. You’ve got quite an arm there, Red.”
Rachel was suddenly too worried to be amused. “What happened here? Surely our little march wasn’t enough to trigger a reaction like this.” She waved her hand at the wolvers limping away. “Where was the Alpha? Why didn’t he stop it?”
McCall leaned down and whispered, “Later.” In a louder voice, he called to the few stragglers who lingered, listening.
“What am I, speaking Greek? Go home. Show the little woman what a real wolver looks like, but before you go, listen up and listen close. I catch any one of you continuing this party tonight and your ass is going to be hanging from that gibbet.” He poked his thumb at the wooden gallows that had been erected in the middle of the street. “Got it?”
That earned him a few grins and sloppy salutes. One of them called back.
“Will Mr. Washington be at Court tomorrow?”
“He’ll be there and so will I. Will you?”
“With bells on!” another answered.
“Bring your mates,” McCall added.
“Don’t know if she’ll want to be a part of this,” still another yelled back.
“Tell her she already is,” McCall said firmly.
After hearing the last man’s words, Rachel’s shoulders slumped. “After what just happened, I wonder how many others won’t want to be a part of this.”
“Like I said, they already are.” As they mounted the steps to the hotel McCall stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Things are going to change, Red, and some members won’t like it. Females in this pack will be given what they deserve.”
Rachel nodded, but didn’t smile. “I know this may sound silly to you, but I didn’t want my Ladies’ Brigade to be ‘given’ anything. You can’t ‘give’ someone something that is rightfully theirs in the first place and I want them to know that our membership in this pack is ours by right.”
She looked up at him and smiled weakly. “You see what you and John have done to me. You’ve created a monster. I’m no longer meek and demure as a proper lady should be. I’ve become loud and demanding and rebellious.”
“And here I thought those things just came with the red hair.” McCall smiled and offered his arm again. “How’s your wolf feel about that?”
Rachel’s weak smile turned into a grin. “Oh, she’s quite happy to be loud, demanding, and rebellious.”
“There, you see? You have nothing to worry about. It’s our beasts who tell us who we really are. It’s our humans who prevent us from getting carried away with it.”
Chapter 32
The Bank and Land Office robbery had been a resounding success. With a list of those who’d ‘retired’ from Gold Gulch and those who’d suffered untimely deaths, McCall and Washington knew what to look for and once the right files were found, the rest had been easy. They loaded everything in boxes which were delivered to the hotel that evening, right along with the boxes of chicken needed for the Hanging Day picnics.
While Rachel and Bertie cleaned and floured chicken for frying, McCall and Washington sorted through the files. Eustace, sitting on a low stool in the corner near Arthur’s bed, had his own box of old and yellowed papers. Their discovery was frightening in its scope. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been stolen from the members of the Gold Gulch pack.
Washington’s jaw was clenched tight with anger as he leafed through the files. “It’s so neat and organized. Who would keep records of murder?” He dropped the file he was holding as if the poison it contained would seep into his hands.
“Maybe they weren’t all murders. Maybe they didn’t begin that way.” McCall laid another file open on the table. “Orville Prine, age one hundred and ten, died fifteen years ago without issue or heir. His nest egg was small potatoes compared to some of the others, only forty-seven thousand and change. Think about it. No one knows the money’s there, but the banker. He goes to the Alpha. What should I do with it? It’s the pack’s, right? So why not use it to buy a piece of land.”
Rachel turned from her work, hands held up, gummy with milk and flour. “The loans,” she said, coming to the table to search with her eyes. “Where are the papers that went with the map? There!” She pointed with her elbow as Washington sifted through them. “Down payment of forty-seven thousand, six hundred and twenty.”
McCall nodded. “So the next time they can’t make the payment or they want to buy more land, they find another donor. Maybe this one’s so old it would be a kindness to ease their passing and the one after that dies ‘accidently’.”
“Like Sheriff Porter’s fall from a horse,” Eustace added, looking up from his box.
“Exactly, though I suspect there was more to his death than money.”
“What about the Rutherfords?” Bertie asked. “Harold and Ora weren’t that old.”
“And chances are, their money was already gone,” Washington concluded. “Gold Gulch Bank isn’t a real bank. There are no government watchdogs, no audits. A tourist couldn’t open an account. You give them money. They promise to give it back with interest, but the only guarantee you have is your trust in their word. So the Rutherfords decide to pack up and leave. They ask for their money and Slocum writes them a check or promises to transfer it for them. Therein lays the dilemma. They can’t let the Rutherfords find out the check or transfer is bogus. They can’t let them live to tell anyone else.�
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“But why?” Rachel cried, throwing up her hands and spattering the table with flour. “They’re looking for fifty bars of gold that don’t exist.”
“They existed all right,” Eustace said firmly.
“We don’t know that, Eustace,” she argued. “All the records were lost when the bank burned. We only have the bank manager’s word before he died from his wounds. For all we know, he could have been like Slocum.”
“Bank burned, jail didn’t. These here come from the jail; old wanted posters and such. Someone, probably whoever was sheriff back then, used the backs to make notes. According to these, he suspected the banker was like Slocum, a thief, ‘ceptin’ his name was Holter, Barnabas John Holter. Sound familiar?”
“Too familiar.”
Eustace held up a wad of papers from the box he’d been searching through. These were old and brittle, hand written in faded ink. “Jake Brannigan and his gang didn’t steal ‘em. They just got blamed for it. Leastwise, that’s what the sheriff thought.”
Everyone gathered around Eustace and the papers he had spread on the floor. They began to sift through the things he’d already sorted. Along with the wanted posters, there was a log of arrests made and fines paid. There were scribbled receipts for prisoners’ meals and several from the Tonsorium for funeral expenses, which indeed cost five dollars. Most gruesome were the yellowed photographs of dead men propped up in their coffins, standing upright against the jail.
“Proof, I suppose, that they were duly hanged,” McCall said as he inspected one of a tall, skinny man with a drooping mustache.
“Pictures of the dead were quite popular back then. We have some up in the attic,” Rachel told him. “And they weren’t hanged,” she added when she saw the mischievous look in his eye. “They’re lying respectfully in their coffins with their hands folded over their bibles.”
“I got one in the family bible of my great-great granddaddy,” Eustace said proudly. “Not the one that captured Jake Brannigan, the one before that, the one that settled here when this was no more’n an exchange of horses for the Pony Express. Prosperity they called it then.”
Wolver's Gold (The Wolvers) Page 29