The River Devil

by Diane Whiteside

  “Undoubtedly self-defense, mon brave,” Bellecourt remarked, coming up to stand behind Hal. “The police will raise no fuss over his departure. They’ve been trying to get rid of that murderous fool for a year now.”

  “I’ll have to talk to them about it, of course. And pay for his funeral.”

  Bellecourt shrugged. “Mais certainement.”

  Hal nodded agreement and knelt beside the ragged burlap bag, remembering all too well the first time he’d held a lifeless dog.

  “Do you need any help, mon ami?” Bellecourt’s voice brought him back to the present.

  “No, I can manage.”

  Now what? As ever with an injured animal, it was best to start off by mimicking Viola.

  “It’s okay, fellow. It’s okay,” he mumbled, gently smoothing the coarse fabric to find the animal inside. The dog growled softly, then uttered a single, sharp warning bark.

  Hal sliced the bag open carefully. Damn and blast, just how foul could one dog smell? Matted, rough, red fur brushed his fingers, a few more barks sounded, and he soon found the dog’s head. Dark eyes blinked and the dog’s lip curled in an almost silent growl.

  “Good fellow,” he crooned, petting the floppy ears, soothing words coming easier now. “That’s my good, patient boy. Just rest easy while I look you over.”

  Hal grimaced at the sound of his voice, as he quickly cleaned his knife and sheathed it. This sort of cloying affection sounded so much better when coming from a woman. Still, frightened strays didn’t bite females as often as they did men, so it was worth sounding like a fool. It wouldn’t be for long, either, since this dog would quickly cling to his groom as all the others had.

  The dog relaxed slowly and fell silent, except for an occasional yip as Hal gently checked him over for injuries. He never tried to bite Hal, but simply watched from half-closed dark eyes.

  “Well, boy, looks like you’re covered with bruises and a few nicks but no broken bones. Nothing you can’t recover from with rest and good food. And a bath,” he added, gagging under another wave of the dog’s aroma.

  The dog woofed once in agreement and licked Hal’s fingers. He’d rescued other stray dogs before, seen them back to health under his groom’s care, and then given them away. None of them had ever tried to stay with him.

  “Feel like eating, boy?” Chuckling softly, Hal slipped the bag completely off the battered little body.

  The dog barked weakly and staggered to its feet, weaving from side to side. Hal steadied it, an aid that it seemed to just tolerate.

  It looked like one of the terriers from Ireland, standing almost two feet high, with a long head, floppy ears instead of the more typical upright ones, and short fur. It raised its chin fearlessly as it considered the man, then wagged its tail slightly. The little fellow was game to the bone and could probably have successfully defended itself, except for being tied up in that burlap bag.

  “Doing better now, fellow?”

  The dog woofed again, its eyes still a little unfocused. It took a hesitant step forward toward Hal, staggered, and started to collapse.

  Automatically, Hal reached out and caught the plucky beast before it landed in the mud, wincing at its prominent ribs. He’d never allow one of his horses to become this thin. “Let’s get you home, boy,” he soothed and picked it up in his arms, then stood up.

  The long head turned to consider him from the new vantage point. Dark button eyes met blue eyes as the terrier took Hal’s measure.

  Hal blinked, startled by the intelligence in the dog’s gaze. Then he looked back soberly, one eyebrow cocked as he waited for judgment.

  The terrier stared at him for a long minute. Finally, he woofed softly and laid his head against Hal’s shoulder, his battered body snuggling into the man’s warmth. Hal stiffened in surprise, then automatically cradled the little fellow. Hopefully, his valet would be able to save his suit.

  A cop shouldered his way through the crowd then. He took a long look at the dead thug and raised an eyebrow at Hal. “Tried to kill one too many, didn’t he? Just give me a statement before you leave town, both of you.”

  “Yes, sir,” the two pilots agreed.

  “I’ll pay for the funeral,” Hal added.

  “I believe you have a dog now,” Bellecourt remarked as they headed back to the boat.

  Hal snorted. “Don’t be absurd. Just like all the others, this one will happily trot off to a household filled with children.”

  “You can say what you like but will he believe it?” Bellecourt nodded at the muddy bundle in Hal’s arms.

  “He’ll change his mind soon enough,” Hal retorted as he absently fondled the small, furry head. “Give him a bath and dinner, then he’ll be off to a dog lover’s home before you could back the Belle off a sandbar.”

  Bellecourt grunted noncommittally. “So you say, mon ami. But I’ve got five dollars that says he comes onboard tomorrow at your heels.”

  “Done. I’ll take the rest of your money tonight at the poker table.”

  Bellecourt laughed. “You can but try.”

  Still teasing each other about their poker skills, they headed back to the Cherokee Belle with the two roustabouts close behind.

  The crowd had mostly dispersed by now, but one figure caught Hal’s eye: a slender young man, with a carpetbag and a gold-headed cane, watching from the other side of Front Street. He was of average height, with brown hair and light-colored eyes that glinted under his broad-brimmed planter’s hat.

  He was probably a gambler, given his diamond stickpin, stylish clothing, and presence in this waterfront district. Judging by his muddy boots, he’d likely been stranded when the Pretty Lady sank this morning and was now looking for a new boat to ply his trade on.

  The gambler touched his hat in salute to Hal, who nodded in response, then stepped back into the shadows. A minute later, Hal’s attention returned to the dog in his arms.

  Rosalind Schuyler cursed her own recklessness as she found shelter in a miserable little waterfront hotel’s side doorway. She must discipline herself, forget her relief at escaping drowning one more time, and focus on staying free.

  She shouldn’t have watched the fight, not now, not when every instinct shrieked that her pursuers were close. She needed to find another boat to take her upriver, not stare at Hal Lindsay, even if he was given to rescuing small helpless beings like that terrier.

  Why the devil did he have to be just as magnificent now as she remembered? Ever since she first met him, she’d hoped her reaction to him had been simply a woman’s flutter over an attractive man in uniform. Then her father had died so suddenly in January, and David had broken off their engagement, and Lennox had…

  Rosalind closed her eyes for a moment, forcing herself to calm down.

  Nicholas Lennox might be handsome, but his heart was blacker than Hades. Her father had always said a gentleman should be judged by how he treated his inferiors. By that standard, Lindsay was the epitome of a gentleman, given his rescue of the wounded dog.

  But he didn’t—couldn’t—matter to her now. Only staying away from Nicholas Lennox did. She had to keep running, if she was to stay free another year until her twenty-fifth birthday next April, when she’d come into her inheritance. Then, and only then, could she laugh at Nicholas Lennox and his vicious insistence on marriage. And after that, she’d marry and build a family to replace the one she’d lost.

  All of which added up to Fort Benton, where neither train nor riverboat traveled in the winter. There, and only there, could she stay hidden long enough.

  She took a deep breath, then another. Her stomach churned again, sending acid into her throat. Hiding for almost four months had taught her all too well how to ignore the feeling. Only the loneliness—the continual longing for someone to talk to, someone who’d understand and care about her—was harder to bear than her stomach’s discomfort at the thought of boarding another boat.

  And she’d never be able to pilot a boat as Hal Lindsay just did—dodging a d
rowned tree as if it were a toothpick. She was capable of daredevilry at the card table, but never onboard a boat.

  Her father had left one other option: The trust ended when she married. But who’d marry a woman who wore men’s clothing? She snorted as she visualized that wedding scene, where both bride and groom wore trousers. No, running and hiding was the only option.

  A few steps remained to the packet line’s office, where she could buy passage to Montana. And next spring, she could ride a train again. Those lovely marvels of technology that never, ever sank. She’d been born on a train, reared on trains, and fully intended to travel only by train as soon as she could stop hiding.

  But for now, she had to keep moving. Her nerves were unsettled, as if Lennox were on the other side of this very door.

  Suddenly, a woman sallied out of the hotel and tossed a smiling good-bye over her shoulder. “Bon voyage on the Spartan, my dearest!”

  She bumped into Rosalind, sending them both staggering.

  Rosalind automatically steadied her, her eyes searching the other for injury. An older woman, perhaps sixty years of age, with graying hair peeping around a close bonnet and a curved figure tightly corseted to maintain the illusion of a young girl’s trim waist.

  Desdemona Lindsay? Hal Lindsay’s mother?

  What had the woman, famous for her love of fine clothes and rich living, been doing in a grimy waterfront hotel? She was the matriarch of a wealthy and ancient naval family, not a gambler fleecing passersby with a game of three-card monte or a nymph du pave entertaining a dockworker for an hour. Could she have been visiting a lover, given the streak of semen high on her cheek? Rosalind had brushed similar streaks from her skin, after private times with David.

  Lover? Dear God in heaven, could Lennox be here too?

  “Are you all right, ma’am?” Rosalind inquired politely, careful to let only concern show on her face. Her heart raced frantically.

  “Why, yes, thank you, sir.” Deep blue eyes, so very similar to Hal Lindsay’s, met hers and assessed Rosalind rapidly. Then she batted her eyelashes flirtatiously at Rosalind, who relaxed slightly when she realized she hadn’t been recognized.

  “It was nothing, ma’am, truly,” Rosalind answered politely, easily keeping to a riverboat gambler’s exquisitely—and meaninglessly—polite behavior. “May I escort you somewhere?”

  Desdemona Lindsay froze as genuine horror flashed across her face. She recovered quickly, though her words sounded rushed. “Oh no, no, no, that’s not necessary at all. I just need to walk another block or so. Please excuse me, sir, I must be going.”

  “Ma’am.” Rosalind tipped her planter’s hat and stepped back into the shadows to let Desdemona pass. She had to get out of Kansas City fast, before Desdemona or her lover found her.

  The dark clouds to the west echoed her mood as she studied the waterfront before her, looking for the recommended line’s offices. Two steamboats, the Spartan and the Cherokee Belle, were docked along the levee next to the wharf boat, with their pilothouses and upper decks visible above the railroad embankment. The layers of crisp white decks, ornamented with lavishly carved wood, reminded some journalists of wedding cakes. Rosalind compared them to cheese and crackers on a plate, ready to be scattered to the winds.

  The Spartan wore a broom on her pilothouse, silently bragging of her new status as the fastest boat from Kansas City to Sioux City. But she looked subtly unkempt, with faded gilding and dull paint, and her overly tall stacks made her seem slightly unbalanced.

  In contrast, the Belle looked exactly what her reputation called her: a very fast packet, fully capable of setting a speed record from Kansas City to Fort Benton in Montana. Every bit of her two hundred-fifty-foot length was freshly painted in brilliant white, with crisp black and gold on her stacks and pipes. Her gingerbread was crisp and elegant and, even from this distance, Rosalind could see that her stained-glass windows displayed a wider range of colors than any other riverboat. Her golden initials, CB, hung between her tall stacks like a necklace around a society beauty’s throat. Her name was proudly written high atop her pilothouse, as if challenging every other riverboat for the title of “fairest of them all.”

  Perfect for Rosalind’s needs, even if she was a boat.

  She sighed and headed for H.A. Lindsay & Company’s headquarters. Risky business, riding one of Lindsay’s boats. But what other choice did she have? Only the Spartan and Lindsay’s boats sailed all the way from Kansas City to Fort Benton. And if Desdemona Lindsay’s lover—dear God, may that woman not have been speaking to Lennox—was on the Spartan, then Rosalind would rather walk barefoot to Montana than step aboard that boat.

  Lindsay & Company’s offices were tidy and bustling with business, a good home for one of the best packet lines on the Missouri River.

  “How can I help you, sir?” the clerk asked politely. His perceptive gaze and empty sleeve neatly pinned to his chest gave him the look of a wartime veteran.

  “I’d like to book passage on the Cherokee Belle to Fort Benton. Single cabin, if you please,” Rosalind answered briskly.

  It never occurred to her that he might realize she was a woman. No clerk had looked askance at her since she was sixteen, the first time her brothers had taken her on the town in men’s clothing. She was taller than most men, at eight inches over five feet, but it still surprised her that so many gentlemen made sexual advances to her when they thought she was a man. Of course, since she’d only once been courted by someone who wasn’t a fortune hunter, any man taking a carnal interest in her femininity would be a surprise.

  “Sorry, sir, but only deck passage is available on the Belle. Or you could wait till Friday when her sister boat, the Cherokee Star, leaves.”

  Wait four days for another boat? Four days of living in terror that Lennox or the Pinkertons would find her? Dear God, would her luck never turn? She did very well at the gaming tables, but winning a ten-thousand-dollar bankroll seemed a mocking balance for her inability to lose Lennox’s hounds. She could feel that fiend breathing down her neck now, laughing at her attempts to escape.

  Rosalind answered the clerk smoothly, grimly certain her inner panic didn’t show in her voice. “A cabin on the Star will suffice, unless there’s another boat leaving sooner.”

  “Hatcher’s Spartan is leaving tomorrow for Fort Benton,” the clerk suggested.

  Rosalind shook her head briskly, barely repressing a shudder.

  “Thank you but I’ll sail on the Star.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  A few minutes later, armed with a ticket for the Cherokee Star and recommendations for local hotels, Rosalind headed back up the street, deliberately ignoring the churning river behind her. Staying close to water meant staying free. No one, even Lennox, would ever look for her on a boat.

  What next? She needed to keep her card-playing skills polished while she waited for the Star. Perhaps she might be lucky enough to sit in on one of Taylor’s famous poker games.

  Chapter Two

  “You can also visit the girls at Annie Chambers’s bawdyhouse, Monsieur Carstairs,” Bellecourt continued his ode to the delights of Kansas City as he drove.

  Rosalind blinked, but nodded politely. Taylor had promised her another player would give her a ride out to the game. He hadn’t mentioned the man could tell better tales than a tour guide.

  “Beautiful, lively, accomplished demoiselles, too,” Bellecourt went on. “One can play ‘La Marseillaise’ on a man’s balls.”

  Rosalind choked, pleased that Bellecourt obviously accepted her as a man but considerably startled by the latest boast. She’d heard a great deal of frank masculine conversation since she’d fled New York, including some very intriguing stories about what went on in houses of ill repute. Male gossip was fascinating, especially when they didn’t realize a woman was listening, as she’d first learned from her brothers’ chatter.

  She hoped they’d reach Taylor’s house before Bellecourt could invite her to accompany him on a visit to Anni
e Chambers’s house. She’d never managed any good excuses for why she’d be so curious about parlor houses and brothels—and so completely unwilling to visit any such establishment.

  Bellecourt fell silent as he neatly turned the horse and buggy into a graceful driveway, a ribbon of pale gravel in the twilight. Green grass flowed away on either side, with shade trees dotted across it. Rich beds of spring flowers marked pathways and ringed a gazebo. A fountain gurgled at the end of the drive, with a big white plantation house rising beyond.

  “Incroyable, n’est-çe pas?” Bellecourt said softly. “Taylor came up from New Orleans before the war and built an estate he’d be proud to call home.”

  “Magnificent,” Rosalind agreed simply, her voice huskier than usual.

  Actually, the estate’s elegant simplicity made her uncomfortable. She’d been prepared for a nouveau riche household’s ostentatious lack of taste, not a mansion whose classic beauty reminded her of Oak Hill, her family’s centuries-old estate on Long Island.

  This was also the first time since she’d fled New York that she’d been in anyone’s house. The Knickerbocker aristocracy that she’d grown up in allowed only family, close friends, and social superiors admission into their homes. According to their code, she didn’t belong in Taylor’s house, since she was both a stranger and a professional gambler.

  She forced the reflexive discomfort out of her mind. She was simply attending an evening’s poker game, something she’d done so many times since fleeing New York.

  “Thanks for the lift, Monsieur Bellecourt,” Rosalind said as she stepped down from the buggy. She drew in a deep breath of the humid evening air, rich with lilacs in full bloom.

  “De rien. It was pleasant to have company on the drive out from town,” Bellecourt answered as he handed the reins to a waiting groom. He was a tall, trim, older fellow, not as tall or as handsome as his friend with the Irish terrier, but riverboat gossip called him a clever poker player.