Mercury's Rise (Silver Rush 04)

by Ann Parker

  “Bastard!”

  She no longer flung that epithet or any others at him through the closed door. Saying anything at all just seemed to open the door to escalated screaming on her part and shouting or endearments, or entreaties, or explanations on his part. All of which, she had finally come to realize, only led to a hobbling fatigue, an inability to arise at the appointed time, burning eyes, aching head, and a churning stomach that refused the breakfast meals prepared by the saloon’s cook, Bridgette. The refusal of meals increased Bridgette’s hovering, concern, and offers of advice—none of which Inez had the patience to bear.

  For the first three nights, that had been the pattern. Inez, locked in behind her barricaded door. Mark, locked out on the other side. Inez yelling, Mark placating.

  “You were gone for over a year!” she’d shout. “Not a word, a note, nothing! How dare you come back now!”

  Over and over, in murmuring counterpoint to her staccato accusations, he said, “Darlin’, I was bushwhacked, hauled out of the back alley, not even conscious, thrown in the back of a wagon and hauled out of town like a load of dirty laundry. I’d never leave you on my own. You and William are my world. The only thing that kept me going all this time was the hope I’d see you both again. It took months for me to even come to my senses. By the time I finally realized I was far away, in a different town, almost a prisoner.”

  “If you had cared, really cared, you would have found a way to get word to me. I waited, and waited, until there was nothing left but despair. I was certain you’d died.”

  “I wrote letters,” the disembodied voice on the other side of the door insisted. “You never answered. I thought you’d turned your back on me. Wouldn’t’ve been the first time. I thought you’d gone back East, to your family.”

  “Oh, you always have a story ready, don’t you,” she sneered.

  “I was ready to head to New York,” he insisted, “but then I saw the divorce notice in the Rocky Mountain News. You were still here, in Leadville, wanting a divorce, saying I’d deserted you. I hadn’t deserted you, I’d written, but you didn’t write back. Why didn’t you try to find me?”

  “How was I supposed to do that when I had no idea where you were?”

  The words went on and on until dawn, back and forth through the wooden barrier. On the third night, Inez realized that it wasn’t going to end until Mark wore her down and finally got his way and she opened the door. That third night, she’d cocked and pointed the revolver at the door, saying in a tone both deliberate and cold:

  “Mr. Stannert. If you do not go away from this door tonight, this minute, I shall shoot. You always said I was no good with a knife, but with guns and words, I excelled. Do you remember? Since words do not seem to reach you, I shall shoot if I must. So listen, and listen well. Do not talk to me again, unless it is daylight, during business hours and about business and business only. Do not expect that you can waltz back into my life, just as you please, and take your place by my side. At first, I thought you were dead. And then, I thought you had deserted me.”

  “But Inez, our son—”

  “I have told you, I sent William back East to live with my sister. He is there now. Here in Leadville, I have rebuilt a life for myself after all the heartache and hell I went through after you left. There is nothing between us any more except the business. As you told me after you won the saloon in that card game, you, I and Abe own the saloon together: A third and a third and a third.”

  “Darlin’, I—”

  She fired the bullet into the doorframe.

  With her ears ringing from the shot, her hands stinging from the recoil, she said, “That was a warning, Mr. Stannert. Next time, I aim three feet to the right.” The splintered wood showed where the projectile had entered. It lay buried in the heavier wood of the frame, a mute and leaden reminder of her final words to him that night.

  ***

  After that, there was no talking, but the nightly visits continued. Only the stealthy twist of the knob, the silent testing, to see if she’d relented, rethought, forgiven, and forgotten.

  But she swore she’d never forgive.

  Or forget.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Inez awoke in her Manitou hotel room, addled by sleep and utter darkness. Her hand flailed through the air, searching for a nonexistent night table holding Mark’s Navy Colt revolver. Wisps of her interrupted dream thinned and vanished.

  She relaxed, dropped her hand over the edge of the bed, and tried to still her galloping pulse.

  A sound.

  She’d heard something, she was certain.

  Inez rolled over, toward the window. The shade was drawn and still. No breath of air moved it. The moon had set, plunging the room into deepest night.

  She rolled back in the other direction, then sat up slowly.

  Listening.

  The inner-spring mattress creaked beneath her, and Fountain Creek sounded in a pulsing, unceasing roar outside. Otherwise it was as if the entire world—all its creatures, the elements, the very earth itself—slept.

  Or perhaps, like her, it was all awake, and holding its collective breath.

  Then…

  There!

  A faint scratching at the door, like someone trying to wake her up, but too timid or cautious to knock.

  “Inez?”

  It was the smallest of whispers, hardly more than an exhalation. No clue to whether the speaker was male or female came through in that one faint word.

  “Who is there?” Inez clutched her covers.

  The scratching stopped. The whisper became incrementally louder. “Come quickly! It’s William!”

  Oh no! William!

  Bounding from the bed, heart skittering, Inez raced to the door in her nightgown. Throwing caution aside, she yanked it open, and peered down the long hallway of rooms. The wall lamp at the end of the hall was out, allowing no access into the gloom. She thought one of the doors might be the slightest bit ajar, which one she couldn’t be certain, the dark flattened all perspective. Was that a dampened light shining from underneath? Was it William’s room?

  She started down the hall, hastening toward the ghost of a partly open door.

  Inez pulled even with the grand staircase leading to the ground floor, all of her attention focused on the tunnel ahead of her. A shadow detached itself from the niche at the top of the staircase. It was as if the statue of Hermes had suddenly come to life. Startled, Inez only glimpsed a shape entirely cloaked, hood pulled low, before she received a violent shove that sent her reeling toward the staircase.

  A misstep as she tried to regain her balance, and her foot met empty air.

  The dark shadow fled down the hall, away from Inez.

  Inez clutched in vain for the staircase’s banister, beyond her reach, and fell.

  Jarring pain rocketed through her elbows, ribs, knees, and back as she tumbled down stairs. She yelped as the back of her head smacked a stair’s edge, and a burst of light tore through her vision. Inez grabbed frantically, trying to stop her downward plunge. Her hand whacked into one of the vertical balusters, and she grabbed hold. She felt, more than heard, a pop in her shoulder as her arm twisted and took her full weight. The pain was instantaneous, intense, deep. For an agonizing moment, she thought her arm would rip from her body.

  Unable to hold on through the pain, she let go. Her tailbone bumped down one more stair, adding a second jolt of pain. She finally stopped, sitting upright, short of the floor by about six steps.

  Up above, doors slammed, indistinct voices exclaimed. Even through the unbearable throb of her shoulder, she made a point of tugging down the hem of her nightdress, which had rucked up about her knees in the tumble.

  The wooden staircase vibrated with footsteps, clattering down to her. A flickering light grew brighter, casting her shadow long and wavering across the reception area to the hotel’s front door.

  “Mrs. Stannert! Good Heavens, what happened?” Jonathan DuChamps knelt beside her and set the can
dle lamp on a nearby tread. He peered at her, looking strangely vulnerable with no glasses and a jacket thrown hastily over a nightshirt with buttons askew. His expression turned grave. “Your shoulder,” he said.

  Inez spared a glance at her left shoulder, which radiated pain. Beneath the flannel nightgown, it sloped grotesquely and unnaturally down and forward. Looking at it seemed to make it hurt even worse, if that were possible. She took a hissing breath between her teeth and looked away, pain filling her mind like a red mist.

  “Inez!” Harmony’s worried face appeared in the mist beside her husband’s. She clutched her shawl with one hand, and covered her mouth with the other. “Your shoulder,” she whispered between her fingers.

  Aunt Agnes’ voice floated down from the stairs above. “What on earth were you doing on the stairs?”

  “Did…you come to my door?” Inez gingerly cradled her arm, trying to take the weight off her shoulder, her mind fuzzy with pain.

  “This time of night?” Agnes moved past Jonathan and Harmony, stopping at the stair below Inez. She set down her own candleholder on the tread. “Who would have reason to be out and about right now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Inez faintly.

  “Were you sleepwalking, Inez?” Agnes inquired. “I recall, you had an unfortunate habit of wandering about your room, still asleep. Your mother was worried sick you would wander out into the halls and who knows where, so she locked you in at night. Do you remember? You were no more than seven or eight.”

  Inez opened her mouth to say she hadn’t been sleepwalking, someone had shoved her down the stairs, but then snapped it shut. Perhaps it’s wisest to keep that to myself. “I thought I heard someone calling. I went out to see who it might be and, next thing I knew, I was falling.”

  Agnes nodded, vindicated. “Sleepwalking. I have heard that a copper wire, wrapped around the limb of a sleep-walker on going to bed and extending to the floor prevents sleepwalking. Has something to do with electricity, I believe.”

  “Mrs. Underwood, she’s had a bad fall and injured her shoulder,” said Jonathan sharply. “Mrs. Stannert needs medical assistance, not advice on sleepwalking.”

  Inez mentally gave Jonathan points for explaining the obvious to Aunt Agnes and stopping her blather. Other visitors clustered about now, up on the second floor. Inez could only imagine the racket she’d made, crashing down the staircase. Nearly the entire floor seemed to be either up on the landing in their nightwear and hastily thrown on shawls and jackets.

  Jonathan looked up at the gathering crowd, made a gesture as if to push nonexistent glasses up the bridge of his nose, and addressed the watchers. “Can someone bring a physician? Dr. Prochazka, or Dr. Zuckerman or…there’s another one I met just this evening in the smoking room, can’t recall his name.” Under his breath, Jonathan muttered, “The place is crawling with damned doctors, surely one of them could be found at this hour to do what he’s paid to do.”

  Jonathan DuChamps rose another notch in Inez’s estimation, even as Harmony whispered, “Jonathan! Language!”

  The front door squeaked open and Nurse Crowson entered, covered neck to toe in a voluminous cape and carrying a black leather bag. She froze as she took in the scene on the crowded stairs, but when she spoke, her voice revealed no surprise, only mild curiosity. “Is something amiss? Mrs. Stannert, did you fall?”

  “She was sleepwalking and fell down the stairs,” explained Agnes. “Her arm bothers her.”

  Nurse Crowson set the bag by the newel post at the bottom of the staircase, and knelt by Inez. “Let’s see, then.” She reached out.

  Jonathan DuChamps snapped, “We need a real physician, Mrs. Crowson.”

  Inez held her breath and through a haze of pain, watched to see how Nurse Crowson would take this inadvertent slap to her vocation. All she said was “Dr. Prochazka is often up late. I’ll see if he is still in the clinic.”

  She rose, retreated down the stairs, picked up her bag, and vanished toward the back of the hotel.

  Inez closed her eyes just as Harmony said, “What was Mrs. Crowson doing out this time of night?”

  “Maybe taking a walk. Who knows?” Jonathan sounded tired.

  “He, or she, knew my given name,” Inez said.

  “What?”

  Inez shook her head, hurting too much to repeat it.

  Whoever came to my door, whoever drew me out, called me by my first name.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  People had begun to drift back to their rooms when Dr. Prochazka hurried up, not a handful of minutes later. He still wore his rumpled evening clothes from that night’s concert, but now had a half-buttoned laboratory coat over them.

  Without preamble, he said, “Nurse Crowson said you fell down the stairs. That you have an injured shoulder.”

  “She was sleepwalking,” said Aunt Agnes promptly. “What a rude awakening, I’m sure. She certainly woke most of us on the second floor with her crashing down the staircase.”

  Prochazka didn’t seem to be listening. He set one surprisingly gentle hand on the misshapen shoulder area. Inez winced.

  “A humeral dislocation. Or, as often said, your shoulder is out of joint. It is a simple procedure to correct. Although it can be painful.” He looked around. “Where is Mrs. Crowson? It would be best to give you laudanum beforehand. It will help with the pain and allow you to relax. This goes faster, easier, if the muscles are relaxed.”

  “No laudanum,” Inez said through gritted teeth.

  Dr. Prochazka adjusted his wire-rim glasses and peered closely at her. “You are obviously in pain. The laudanum is my own formulation. You will taste cinnamon, honey. It will work quickly, make my task easier, allow you to recover more efficiently. I use only the minimum amount of alcohol, if that is what concerns you.”

  She shook her head. Inez didn’t trust laudanum in its various forms and concoctions. She had seen too many women—and men—fall under its power and fade into shadows of their former selves, as enslaved to its call as an infatuated lover is to an indifferent mate. “I’d rather take the alcohol. Brandy. Whiskey. scotch whiskey is best.”

  The physician looked exasperated. “This is ridiculous.”

  A sound at the bottom of the stairs, like a half-swallowed exclamation. Franklin Lewis, elegant hotelier, clothed in wrapper with the hem of a nightshirt doing nothing to cover an expanse of spindly white shins, knobby ankles, and feet stoppered by slippers. Nurse Crowson stood at his side, hands folded into her voluminous cloak. Lewis held a candle in another of the hotel’s brass holders aloft for light. The flickering of the flame bounced off their twinned, square-set faces.

  “Mr. Lewis,” said Prochazka. “Please bring a large dose of scotch whiskey, as the lady requests. Quickly. Mrs. Crowson, please measure out two doses of my laudanum. You know which cabinet.” He fished in the pocket of his white cotton coat and tossed her a ring of keys. “Mrs. Stannert insists on arguing she does not want it. However, she may change her mind later.”

  He looked at Jonathan DuChamps. “It would be far easier if she were lying down.”

  “Take her back up to her room, then,” Agnes suggested.

  Prochazka looked up at the long staircase, and came to a decision. “The bottom of the stairs are closer. A hard surface is better than a mattress. She should, however, have a blanket to lie on.”

  Jonathan promptly disappeared up the stairs.

  Lewis reappeared carrying an alarmingly full glass of whiskey. “Mrs. Stannert, I advise you sip this slowly, as it is a very powerful spirit.”

  Inez took the glass and held it to her teeth, which were chattering in pain. Normally, she would have worked her way slowly to the first sip, but this was not the time to savor the liquor’s complexities and nuances. The first sharp swallow brought tears to her eyes and anesthetized her throat. The next three slid down easier, creating a path of fire to her stomach.

  She gasped slightly, feeling the fire burrow out to her limbs and down to fingers and toes. Cradl
ing the half-empty glass, she said, “I believe I’m ready.”

  “I can reduce—that is, repair—your shoulder very easily,” Prochazka said. “It is not a complicated procedure. It will take but a moment, and the intense pain will be gone. Like this.” He snapped his long fingers.

  The sound put Inez in mind of a bone breaking. She shivered.

  Jonathan reappeared with a blanket and a shawl draped over his arm.

  Dr. Prochazka helped her to her feet and supported her around the waist, much as Aunt Agnes had done with Harmony hours previously. Jonathan spread the blanket on the polished wood entryway. The doctor lowered her to the blanket with Jonathan’s help, and said, “Wait.” He looked at Jonathan. “It would be best if you kneel by her as well. Hold her right arm, help her stay still.”

  The physician positioned himself next to Inez’s injured shoulder. Inez looked from one kneeling man to the other, suddenly put in the mind of a tableau vivant.

  But if it were a real tableau I wouldn’t have the urge to scream. I do hope screaming won’t be part of this scenario.

  She wondered if she needed more whiskey, but decided that she’d best save the rest of the glass for a celebratory knockout once the worst was over.

  Dr. Prochazka firmly grasped her wrist and elbow, and said to Inez, “I have done this many times. It will be quickly over.” He gave Jonathan a nod. Jonathan placed hands on the upper portion of her right arm, holding her steady. The physician pulled her left arm down and out, away from her torso, then rotated her forearm up and out. Something in her shoulder shifted with a bone-deep pain. She clenched her jaws to keep from crying out loud. An agonizing stretch on her shoulder, and something slid, popping into place.

  She couldn’t help it. A squeak escaped. But at least, it wasn’t a scream.

  The pain, indeed, had miraculously disappeared, leaving only a deep ache, camouflaged by woozy warmth. How her shoulder would feel once the whiskey wore off, she couldn’t guess, and frankly, didn’t want to know.