“Sounds like you have a point, but I don’t know what to do about it.”
“I don’t suppose there’s anything to do. As long as women are treated as second-class citizens with no rights, we’re simply stuck with the way things are. It’s terribly unfair.”
Nick said, “Hmm.”
Eulalie suspected he didn’t dare say more for fear she’d snap at him. And she might. Ever since Gilbert Blankenship showed up in Rio Peñasco, her temper had been short. But, curse it, she had every right to a short temper. And, curse it, she was also correct about women being treated unfairly by the laws of the land. Which were enacted by men. Curse them, as well.
The show that night went without a hitch. Eulalie was ever so glad to see that Junius and Fuller kept Patsy between them during the entire performance. She was less glad to see Gilbert Blankenship smiling at her throughout her act. She wished she could just shoot the devil herself and be done with it, but she knew she’d only get herself arrested if she did anything so dramatic.
She hated most men because of Blankenship. Except for Nick Taggart, whom she couldn’t help but love. And she hated that, too.
* * * * *
And so their waiting game commenced. August had rolled over and died, and September had come to the territory, as it had to everywhere else in the world. However, in the territory, there didn’t seem to be much difference between summer and autumn, Eulalie noticed. Patsy and Gabriel Fuller had to wait until the circuit judge rolled around before they could be married, a circumstance neither appreciated. The judge was expected any week now, but the wait was hard on everyone.
“Back East, the nights would be getting a little nippy by this time, wouldn’t they?” she asked Patsy one evening as they were getting ready to trek to the Opera House.
“You never know. I guess these are what they call the dog days of summer back East,” Patsy murmured. “It might still be warm there. I suppose someone will write when the leaves start to turn.”
Eulalie heaved a sigh. “The fall leaves are so beautiful.”
“Yes, they are.”
“I wonder if the leaves will turn here.”
“I don’t suppose anyone will know until more trees are planted,” Patsy observed.
“True.” There were some advantages to living out here in the middle of nowhere, but now that Gilbert Blankenship had come to town, Eulalie was hard-pressed to recall any of them. “Nick tells me there are aspen trees in the nearby mountains that turn yellow in the autumn.”
“Hmm.”
Patsy didn’t seem to mind the inconveniences of the territory. She’d told Eulalie all about her grand passion for Gabriel Fuller, and Eulalie was happy for her, even as her own heart hurt because she didn’t have a grand passion of her own.
Well, she did have one, but it wasn’t reciprocated, which made it not at all worthwhile. In point of fact, the realization that Nick didn’t love her as she loved him made her very sad, although she tried her best to disguise the unhappy truth. It wasn’t Patsy’s fault that she’d found true and abiding love and Eulalie hadn’t. Eulalie had once had Edward, hadn’t she?
Still and all, she couldn’t help but wish Nick loved her as she loved him. However, as her uncle Harry used to say, although he invariably credited the bard for the sentiment, “If wishes were horses, all men would ride.”
Every time she thought of that old saw, she detested it more.
* * * * *
For the tenth night in a row, with time out for Sunday, when Eulalie didn’t work, Nick and Junius clustered around Patsy Gibb. Gabriel Fuller had joined them this evening, too. Now Patsy was seated demurely on a chair in the very back of the Rio Peñasco Opera House. Nick was getting sick of this nonsense. If there were any justice in the world, he could just shoot Gilbert Blankenship dead and get it over with. The world would be a better place for it, and so would Eulalie and Patsy Gibb.
He couldn’t do that, however, because if he did, he was the one who’d get arrested and locked up—and for a worse charge than breaking and entering and aggravated battery, too. For doing the good deed of ridding the world of a cowardly bastard who stalked women and tried to kill them, he, Nick Taggart, would be charged and probably convicted of murder. Nick had got it straight from Sheriff Wallace himself, and he knew that Wallace wasn’t a man to joke around about stuff like that. In actual fact, Nick had yet to see a single vestige of humor in Rio Peñasco’s sheriff, who was remarkably dull for so young a man.
Nevertheless, every night as he stood guard over Patsy in the Opera House and watched Gilbert Blankenship like a hawk, his fingers itched either to shoot the man or wrap themselves around Blankenship’s throat and squeeze until the bastard choked to death. It didn’t help his overall state of mental health that the woman he loved—God save him—pranced around half naked on the stage in front of Blankenship and every other slavering, lust-crazed man in town. She was so damned good at what she did, Nick was surprised nobody in the audience had grabbed her and made her his wife long ere this. He suspected this was because Eulalie had heretofore been bent upon protecting Patsy. He feared that as soon as Patsy and Fuller married, Eulalie, too, would be taken away from him. The thought made his belly clench and his heart hurt.
Damned bodily organs. They never misbehaved like this before he met Eulalie.
He entertained the idea that perhaps Eulalie might be persuaded to marry him, Nick Taggart. That notion lasted approximately thirty blissful seconds before it popped in his face like a soap bubble.
Hell, she’d never marry him. She was a lady from New York City and Chicago. What would she want with a rough frontier blacksmith like him?
She could do a lot worse, he told himself. And he was right. The unhappy truth was that she could do a hell of a lot better, as well, and Nick knew it.
Things had come to a pretty pass when he, Nick Taggart, a man who knew better, had allowed himself to fall head over heals in love with a woman so far above him, he might as well be reaching for the moon and stars. “Aw, hell,” he grumbled, and lifted his mug of sarsaparilla to his lips and took another swig.
“What’s the matter, Nick?” asked Junius, who remained his jolly self in spite of the peril threatening the Gibb sisters. Junius never let himself worry about anything. If crises arose, he dealt with them, but he didn’t allow them to ruin his mood until necessity claimed his attention. Nick wished he could cultivate Junius’s attitude.
“Nothin’. Just getting sick of this waiting game, I reckon.”
Patsy, who kept her right hand firmly ensconced in that of Gabriel Fuller during these nightly vigils, patted Nick’s arm with her left—the one with the ring on it. “I’m so sorry we’re putting you through this, Nick. It’s unfair to all of you.”
“Not your fault,” grunted Nick, feeling guilty. “It’s that fellow’s.” He tilted his head toward Blankenship, whose table this evening was even closer to the stage than it had been the night before. Nick wasn’t sure if Blankenship’s position in the room meant anything to anyone except himself, Eulalie, and the rest of their little group. He knew for a fact that Blankenship made Eulalie as skittish as a newborn colt—and he also knew that she took her foul mood out on Nick, who didn’t deserve it. Still, none of this was her fault, either. Every ill that had recently visited the Gibbs and the Taggarts and Fuller could be laid directly at the feet of Gilbert Blankenship.
Which brought him back to the problem of not being able to rid the world of Blankenship, who was a louse and a menace and wasn’t an asset to anybody or anything. Didn’t seem fair somehow.
So he kept watching. He’d watch Eulalie for a while, then he’d turn his attention to Blankenship. Then he’d watch Eulalie some more. It was a stupid way to spend his nights, but there didn’t seem to be any help for it. He absolutely hated feeling helpless.
On a Thursday night in mid-September, the house lights went down, Griswold Puckett played the opening chords of a bouncy melody called “The Sidewalks of New York,” Eulalie st
arted singing in her beautiful soprano voice, Nick took a gulp of sarsaparilla, and Gilbert Blankenship rose to his feet and calmly shot Eulalie Gibb.
Patsy screamed. Junius bellowed. Gabriel Fuller leapt to his feet and whipped his gun from its holster. Bedlam broke out in the Opera House.
Nick’s heart stopped beating for a second, and then soared into his throat. Without thinking, he raced to the stage, fairly throwing men out of his way to get there. He didn’t even think about Patsy or Gilbert Blankenship or anyone else. He only needed to get to Eulalie. Her scream had ripped a hole in his heart, and he prayed as he’d never prayed before, that the scream meant she still lived.
“Eulalie!” he bellowed, thrusting Dooley Chivers aside. “Eulalie!”
She lay as still as a stone where she had fallen. Since there was hardly anything to her costume, Nick saw that the bullet had hit her leg. She was bleeding like a stuck pig, but a leg wound probably wasn’t fatal. Even as he grabbed his bandanna and wadded it up in order to press it against the wound to stanch the bleeding, he thanked God for small favors.
“Doc!” he called out, his thundering voice cutting through the hubbub like a hot knife through butter. “Doc! Get the hell over here!”
“I’m comin’, Nick. No need to swear.”
Nick glanced up from Eulalie’s leg to see Dr. Canning, and he thanked God again.
“What happened?”
Eulalie’s strained voice cut through the red haze in Nick’s brain, although not enough to affect the tone of his voice or soften his choice of words. “That filthy bastard shot you.”
“Oh.” Her face was stark white under the lights, which Dooley Chivers had caused to be turned up. “It hurts.”
“Yeah. Well, that’s what happens when you get shot. It hurts.”
His heart hurt, too, it hammered so hard in his chest, but he supposed he might have been a little rough on her when she frowned at him. “There’s no need to take that tone with me, Nicholas Taggart.”
“Sorry.”
The doctor, a burly man who was puffing by the time he climbed the stairs onto the stage, tapped Nick on the shoulder. “Move aside, Nick. Let me see what’s to be done here.”
“Patsy?” Eulalie asked in a week voice. “Is Patsy all right?”
“Patsy?” Nick said as if he’d never heard the name before. “Patsy.” Then he remembered. “Aw, hell.”
Although every sinew in his body cried out to hold Eulalie, he surged to his feet and looked out over the crowd. He didn’t see Patsy. He didn’t see Junius. He didn’t see Gabriel Fuller. The relief he felt when he realized this phenomenon was probably due to the men having hustled Patsy out of the Opera House and to her home suffered a quick death.
Gabriel Fuller, his face as white as Eulalie’s, shoved the batwing doors open and stared at Nick, who still stood on the stage. Nick could scarcely hear Fuller when he said the words, but he understood them just fine. “He’s got her.”
* * * * *
Nick hovered over the table on which Eulalie lay. Doc Canning had given her a hefty dose of laudanum and sterilized his instruments, and was now digging the bullet out of her leg, while Nick watched, tense as a spooked jackrabbit, and wishing it had been he who’d taken the bullet instead of Eulalie.
“She’s going to be all right, Nick,” Dr. Canning said for approximately the five hundredth time. “Stand back a little, will you? You’re in my light.”
“Shit,” said Nick.
Gabriel Fuller sat in a chair against the far wall, his head in his hands, looking as if he’d just lost the woman he loved—which he had. Every time Nick glanced at him, he harbored the no-doubt treacherous wish that Blankenship had shot Patsy instead of Eulalie. That he’d shot anyone instead of Eulalie, actually.
A light knock came at the operating-room door and Junius opened the door and slipped in. Fuller lifted his head from his hands for the first time since they’d gathered in the doctor’s office, and he sent Junius a hopeful look.
Junius nodded. “I found out which way they went. Toby Beech says he saw him throw her on a horse and climb up behind her. They headed out towards the draw.”
Fuller leapt to his feet. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go after them!”
Junius put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Hold your horses, young feller. The sheriff’s getting some men together. We’ll have us a posse and ride out to get your lady back and arrest Blankenship, don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry?” Fuller’s voice was chock-full of scorn.
“We’ll get her back, son,” Junius assured him. “And at least Blankenship can be arrested now.” He glanced at Nick. “Nicky? You comin’?”
Nick cast an anguished glance at the table where Eulalie’s still form lay, covered from neck to hips by a white sheet. The doctor had cut her fishnet stocking away from her leg and looked up from his work with a sour expression on his chubby face. “Yeah, Nick. Go do something useful, will you? You’re just getting in my way here.”
“Aw, hell,” muttered Nick. With one last glance at Eulalie—he wished he dared kiss her, but didn’t want to do so in front of the other men—he reached for his hat, which he’d flung on a nearby table, and slammed it onto his head. Marching with purpose toward his uncle and the door, he growled, “Let’s go.”
So they went.
Chapter Sixteen
The night wasn’t as black as Gilbert Blankenship’s filthy soul, but it was doing a fair imitation of that condition when the posse from Rio Peñasco left town and headed out toward Black Water Draw, where it was assumed Blankenship had taken Patsy, at least to begin with. For all anyone knew, he might have gone several yards and cut off in another direction, although that was doubtful. Gilbert Blankenship hadn’t been in Rio Peñasco long enough to understand the terrain. The moon helped minimally in guiding the posse’s path, as it was relatively full. Clouds scudded across the sky, however, often obliterating both moon and stars.
Since Junius and Nick owned one horse between them, Nick, who was bigger than Junius by a hair or two, rode Claude. A Belgian draft horse, Claude was by far the largest horse in Rio Peñasco. Junius borrowed a horse from Sheriff Wallace, and Nick prayed he wouldn’t break the poor animal’s back. Both Nick and Junius were too large to be especially elegant horsemen, but they could ride as well as they needed to. Nick was grateful for Claude, who was not merely large, but a placid, steady creature.
They didn’t dare force their horses to a gallop. The landscape was far too treacherous to consider doing anything so foolish. If there was one thing they didn’t need it was for a horse to snap its leg in a gopher hole. Nick’s nerves leaped and skipped like the ballerina dancers his stepmother had forced him to watch in Galveston a million years ago, only not nearly so gracefully.
Fat lot of good he’d done tonight in the protection department. Nick castigated himself for a good quarter mile before becoming aware of Junius beside him, whistling softly. He cast his uncle a reproving glare. “Hush, Junius. We don’t want to warn the bastard we’re on his trail.”
“Hell, Nicky, don’t you think he’s going to hear the horses? My whistle ain’t gonna do no harm.”
“It’s harming my nerves, dammit,” growled Nick.
Junius stopped whistling.
As they drew closer to Black Water Draw, Nick rode his giant horse up to the sheriff. “If he’s in the draw, we probably better dismount, Wallace. If we ride in all at once, we’re going to spook him, and God alone knows what he’ll do to Miss Gibb then.”
The sheriff looked as if he didn’t care to have Nick preempt him in the suggestion department, but he couldn’t very well fault Nick’s logic. “All right. I’ll send Sandy on ahead to see if they’re in there.” Sandy Peete was the smallest, slyest fellow in Rio Peñasco. What’s more, he’d had lots of practice in the spying arena, having spied for the Union during the Civil War when he was no more than a lad. “If he’s smart, he won’t camp there.”
“He’s not smart,” s
aid Nick. “At least not about the territory.”
The sheriff said, “Huh,” and beckoned to Sandy.
Nick grabbed Sandy’s arm before he set off on his little pony. “Be quiet, Sandy. Don’t spook the bastard.”
Sandy, who looked like an elf next to Nick, turned a scornful glance Nickward. “I know what I’m doing, Nick Taggart.”
Nick heaved a sigh. “I know, I know. Sorry.”
But he didn’t like it that it was Sandy who was checking out the draw and not Nick himself. He didn’t trust anyone to have the same sense of urgency about this matter that he possessed. He knew it wasn’t Eulalie with Blankenship, but he also knew that if anything happened to Patsy, Eulalie would never forgive any of them—including himself. He didn’t think he could stand having Eulalie hate him. She might never love him, but if she ever found reason to detest him, Nick had a feeling he’d never recover fully from the blow.
As the posse milled about on the desert, waiting for a report from Sandy Peete, Nick figuratively chewed his nails. His heart hammered away in his chest like a woodpecker after a bark beetle, and his nerves tingled and twanged like banjo strings breaking. He was just about to tell the sheriff he was going after Peete, when Sandy emerged out of the blackness. Nick expelled a huge gust of air and went to intercept Sandy before the sheriff got to him. “Well?” he demanded, trying to keep his voice down.
“Where’s the guy from?” Peete asked. “The idiot’s built himself a big fire in the middle of the wash. Didn’t he think anybody would be after him?”
“Hell, how should I know?” growled Nick, although relief nearly knocked him over backwards. “He’s crazy, I think. And he’s from back East.”
“Ah.” Sandy nodded. “I reckon that explains it.”
“All right,” said Sheriff Wallace, attempting to take control of his posse. “We’ll have to dismount and a few of us go in and get the girl back.”
“I’m going,” said Nick, his voice announcing his purpose and daring Wallace to deny him the privilege.
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