The Outlaw's Kiss (an Old West Romance) (Wild West Brides)

by Karin, Anya

  “This is what we came here for, isn’t it?” I said, rubbing his shoulders from behind.

  He chewed his mustache and squinted. “Was it?”

  “What other reason would you give? Whatever else has happened, the entire point of coming here was to try your hand at something other than banking,” I replied.

  “Suppose so,” he said. “Even still, I don’t know if it matters what I did, precisely, as long as it was something else.” Father shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I’m just a sentimental old fool. The more pressing issue, ideas of philosophy notwithstanding, is that I haven’t the first damned clue what to do with a gold mine.” He bent over, grabbed a rock and tossed it in the creek. “Past ‘mining it’ anyway.”

  I can’t say why exactly, but that moment seemed like the best time to broach the subject of satisfying Mr. Swearengen’s demands. “What about Mr. Clark?”

  “What about him?” father said. “Last I talked with him, he informed me of his fear he had that his claim hasn’t turned out quite as productive as he hoped. Still working, but not as much.”

  “Well, there’s the issue of Al Swearengen, and his desires.” I let that hang between us for a moment. “He wants Mr. Clark’s claim, and if his claim isn’t doing as much as he thought and then if yours is apparently quite rich, then,” I stopped, hoping he’d fill in the rest for himself.

  Father just kept gnawing on his mustache. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “It seems to me, that you could help each other out. He knows what he’s doing with regard to gold, and you have a huge claim. Have him sell his to Swearengen, in exchange for a share in yours? With his management skills, and your gold vein, you two could do very, very well, and you would be free to go wherever you like, while he stays here and runs the claim. Or, the mine, I suppose.”

  “There’s an idea,” he said. “But I don’t know about all this. What if the deal with Mr. Swearengen ends up being a raw one?”

  I thought for a moment. “It could, yes. I really don’t believe it will, though. I can’t think of any particular reason for him to try and defraud either me or Mr. Clark. If he was going to do that, why not try and get ours? It’s much richer.”

  “How would he know, though?”

  “He watches,” I said. “That’s all he does. He knows every single bit of business in Deadwood, inside and out.”

  Just as father began mulling over the idea I’d just given him, noon struck, and with it, Davis Clark’s daily visit, right on time.

  “How-do, neighbor?” A smiling, but very tired looking man came up the dirt path between the two claims. He and father built it to connect their plots, ostensibly as a safety measure, but really it was because they wanted to have easy access to one another when boredom settled in.

  Father waved, but his strained face didn’t change. “Well enough. I think we’ve found the tail of the vein running underneath here. The only problem is that I don’t have the slightest idea what to do now, if I’m being honest. Mr. Star set me up with those two miners, and they’re hard at work, but I haven’t a clue what I’m doing.”

  “Hey now,” Mr. Clark sat down on a stump beside father. “Any rate, you’ve been doing fine so far. What’s got you down, Jeffrey? Nothing a fine, fat ham sandwich won’t cure, I hope?” He handed something wrapped in paper to my father. “My apologies, Miss Clara, if I’d known you were to be here, I would have brought more. I get them from the inn of a morning. That Nettie can make a sandwich as good as she can a pot of greens.”

  “Oh that’s all right, Mr. Clark,” I said. “I’ve brought something of my own. And now seems a good time to eat it. If you need me, I’ll be under my tree, though I may take a stroll to stretch my legs. So long in that creek has got me cold and stiff.” I pointed to my favorite spot – an old, smooth-trunked pine in the distance with a spot that fit my back just perfectly.

  Father took off his hat and slid his hand over his sweat-slicked hair, shaking the moisture off when he was through. He only acknowledged me when I was halfway to my tree, with an absent-minded wave. I sat and ate, pretending to flip through my journal. Two or three chunks of biscuit were enough to satisfy the tiny shred of an appetite I had.

  Mr. Clark and father were seated and laughing, which it seemed they both needed. I trusted the seed I put in his mind about acquiring the claim sprouted already, but I knew it would take time to fruit. In the meantime, I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for magic to happen. Eli’s fate – and our destiny – rested in my hands, and even as scared as I was, there was no possibility of my leaving that to chance.

  *

  Not long after I settled in to the brush that kept me hidden and safe from both the dirt trail along the outside edge of all the claims, and the creek where Eustace Rawls stood panning, my decision to scout a place to sit and watch paid off.

  Pulling out my journal and pencil, I realized that I’d gotten so secreted away that without a great deal of effort, movement proved impossible. Luckily, I’d chosen a good place to get entrenched.

  As it happened, Mr. Swearengen was right. People just love to talk.

  “Well, Captain,” Eustace said. “How long you reckon it’ll take to talk that fella out of his claim?”

  I noted that even with their apparent brazenness, Eustace and Captain Ernie skillfully avoided mentioning any names. Just like Gretchen told me – “The ones who ain’t there is just as important as the ones that is.”

  “The one over thataway?” Ernie grunted, pointing toward Mr. Clark’s claim. He shrugged.

  “No, no, the other one. Clark’s claim is good, but not as rich as the other one up the way.”

  “What other one?” Ernie said. “Oh yeah, him.”

  Up the way could mean a million different things. Of course, I knew exactly what they meant. My pencil darted across page after page. I jotted down all the little tidbits they spilled, one after another, no matter how inane or vulgar. Unfortunately, there was a lot more crass vulgarity than there was anything of note for quite some time.

  Mr. Rawls revealed his prurient interest in a particular prostitute called Leslie in Mr. Swearengen’s den of iniquity. The Captain agreed with a grunt and another shrug. I learned that Rawls left a string of wives across the country, one in every place he stopped to work a mine; except Deadwood, of course. According to him, the only women in Deadwood outside of two he named simply weren’t worth his time to court. That made me snort a bit.

  With the back of my hand, pressed on my lips I managed to regain my composure. I tried to imagine what sort of woman would relent and allow the creature in front of me to have her hand, but for fear of laughing, I forced myself to stop.

  Eustace Rawls, as it happens, prefers his eggs to be cooked half-boiled, though I thought perhaps that was a veiled lewd comment. And then, I began drawing a doodle of an egg that quickly became a fanciful picture of Eli. Once his face was finished, I went on to draw his arms.

  The two moppet-heads kept right on chattering away, still completely ignorant of my presence. After a particularly foul joke, Mr. Rawls made a honking sound, followed by some kind of rude gesture and I let my thoughts float back to Eli.

  Eli would never honk, or make a rude gesture.

  I rounded out the arms on my little sketch, making them a bit more muscular then dotted the line of Eli’s jaw with some stubble. I liked him both ways – clean shaven and with a few days growth – though I wasn’t sure which I preferred, if either.

  Even with my fanciful sketching, I made sure to keep my ears on Rawls and the Captain, which soon paid off.

  “And then if he still don’t sell the claim, we’ll just kidnap him.” Eustace tossed that tidbit out without a care in his voice, snapping me out of my silly fantasy. “I don’t see what the problem is. Ain’t like he’s gonna hold out that long anyway. Men like him don’t take even a good beating to convince to do things they don’t wanna do.”

  “What about his daughter?” Ernie asked.

&nb
sp; Furiously, I wrote down every word that passed either of their lips. Kidnapping, claim selling, a daughter, it was all right there; all laid out in front of me. Except for that obnoxious habit criminals like those two have of never using names. They knew better.

  But self-control with the tongue was not a trait either man possessed. Rawls quickly resumed with a guffaw. “Kidnap her? Why? That’d just make him madder’n an angry hornet. And worse than that, Eli’s loose and God-knows-where. That’d cause more problems on top of the rest.”

  Finally, a name, though it doesn’t mean much. Still, I wrote ‘Eli’, conveniently right above the portrait I’d draw of the two of us. Then I added a little flourish, and a flower.

  “What’s he got to do with anything?” The Captain asked in a halting, out-of-breath way. “Who cares about him?”

  “Have you somehow missed everything that’s been going on? They’re all buddies, them three. Maybe more in the case of the daughter, and if we were to kidnap Clara, he’d surely go after her. The father, he might assume the old man can take care of himself. And anyway, you thick-skulled idiot, if we kidnap the father, he’ll just pay his own way out. We need a claim, not a ransom.”

  The two of them seemed to fall into a kind of lull for a time. Neither man spoke, but it didn’t matter. I had what I needed. Not everything of course, but I could hardly expect them to freely admit to one another that they were responsible for Eli’s capture, and were actually the one’s behind Itan’s raid.

  For that, I knew, I’d need Mr. Swearengen. Still, with what I had in my journal, I stood a chance even if his help fell through as father seemed to fear. I wasn’t worried, but it was nonetheless good to have a backup plan.

  Quickly, I looped the leather strap around my journal and pushed myself free of the bushes. Much to my pleasure, it went off without a hitch. No twigs broken, no unwanted visitors happening by at the worst possible moments – everything went perfectly to plan.

  *

  Two hours passed by the time I returned to the claim with a rather strange looking grin on my face. Mr. Clark and my father had long since finished their food, and were right in the middle of a serious discussion.

  “No, Davis, I’m not saying your claim is worthless, what I’m saying is –”

  “Well you’d be right if you were,” Mr. Clark cut father off. “Or close to it anyway. The deeper they dig, the less they find. That’s not exactly what you want to find.”

  “Davis, listen here.” Father stood and put his hands on his hips. He meant business. Or he meant to give Mr. Clark an ultimatum that he would either eat his peas or get a swatting. I covered my mouth to keep my dignity intact. “That isn’t what I’m saying at all. What I propose is that I have a claim here that I can’t possibly hope to manage. I trust exactly two people in this camp – the present company, and Sol Star. Mr. Star’s already said he’s not got the stomach for managing a claim in the owner’s absence, and so it falls to you.”

  Resignation was clear on Mr. Clark’s face. The sort of resignation that comes when one realizes an opportunity but is afraid to take it out of an inexplicable fear. “Thirty percent,” he said.

  “What was that?”

  “I said” he paused to take a breath. “Thirty percent, Jeffrey. Pay me that, and pay me expenses, and I’ll do it. I’ll go along with this fool’s errand. I’ll sell my damn claim to Al and manage yours.”

  A twinkle glinted in father’s eye. “Ten.”

  “Now come on, Jefferson, this is ridiculous! I have ten years of experience running claims and you’ve none! Thirty percent!”

  “Well now I want to say seven because you’re being so loud,” Father replied.

  “Okay, okay, twenty-five. That’s as low as I’ll go. Twenty five percent of gross earnings. No salary, but you pay my room and board while I’m managing the claim.”

  Both men had lusty looks on their faces. It occurred to me that this is what both of them loved – haggling, the fight; the war for a deal.

  Father sucked on his mustache. “Ten percent, expenses, and when Clara and I leave, I’ll buy that house Swearengen’s loaning us and give it to you.”

  Mr. Clark closed his eyes to slits. “All that, and twenty percent of gross.”

  “Ha!” Father snorted a laugh. “At first I thought you’d be a tough sell. Now I realize you’re the worst haggler for ten-thousand miles. I bought the damned thing! I’m not giving you twenty percent of the take!”

  “Well then, we’re at an impasse.” Davis Clark crossed his arms in front of his chest and puffed out his cheeks. “Fifteen?”

  “Ah now he’s talking,” father said with a grin. “Twelve.”

  “Twelve? And all the amenities? I don’t want your house though, on account of having got my own. So throw in a stagecoach that I can take on holiday.”

  Father slapped his thigh, laughing loudly. “A holiday coach? Okay, all right, fine. You want a wagon you get one. Twelve percent gross, expenses, and a damn stagecoach.”

  Mr. Clark had a worried look on his face. “I don’t know, Jeff, it sounds good but I’m still not sure.”

  “Tell you what. You think about it. You’re not going to get a better deal. Think about it and let me know.”

  “Yeah, all right,” he said. “But for now, I gotta get back. Those miners of mine aren’t gonna work on their own, that’s for sure. Obliged, Miss Clara,” he said as he walked past and tipped his hat.

  I sat down beside father, who was still reclined on his stump.

  “What do you think?” I asked him. “Will he go for it?”

  “I think,” he said, taking a bite of an apple. “That we will have to see.”

  Fifteen

  October 7, 1878 - Noon

  Deadwood, Dakota Territory

  Fall settled in, along with cooler weather and intermittent ice on the roads which meant fresh food came slower, or sometimes not at all, from the farms in Yankton and further east. I roasted the last of the potatoes, mashed them, buttered them, and fried them into crunchy cakes. It was a recipe I learned from my nanny when I was a little girl. Whenever I was scared, or felt young, helpless or vulnerable, potato cakes made me feel better.

  As Eli tore into his fifth cake, I was just finishing my first. I watched in open-mouthed wonder as he shoveled it in.

  “This is just delicious, Clara, I thought rich women didn’t cook.” His voice came out around a mouthful of potato. “Clara? You all right? Quiet today.”

  Eli’s voice shook me out of my trance. “Oh, sorry, yes. I was just thinking about this claim problem. Davis Clark is trying to work out a deal with father, but I don’t know if he’ll go for it. And then there was those two ruffians and their threats, I-”

  “Enough,” he said. “You have done everything you can. Worrying yourself isn’t going to help. All’s gonna do is give you a dyspeptic stomach. Worry gives you the burps.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “I’m sorry, what? The burps?”

  He nodded. “Doc in town told me about it.” Eli swallowed another bite. “He says when people get upset over things, it manifests in their bodies. Says you can make yourself sick worrying too much, and the first sign of it is that you start burping. Out of the normal times that one would burp, I mean.”

  “When would that be?” I asked softly.

  I smiled as Eli grabbed yet another pancake – the pan was down to four now, from twelve – and dug in. His face, even with a slight bit of white potato fluff on his chin, was just beautiful. Merely by being present, he gave me such a sense of security and comfort that I could hardly imagine feeling more soothed in the womb.

  He lifted his eyes off his food and pushed my soul back inside my chest with those beautiful blues. “Eating, drinking, or the like. Especially prior to exercise,” he said in a low, smooth voice that dripped from his lips.

  A hint of potato remained on Eli’s chin, even after he used his napkin. I took up mine and dabbed him clean. As my finger ran along his jaw, the tiny rem
ainder of his beard pricked me through the cloth.

  “Eli,” I said in a whisper. “Is everything going to be okay? I’m worried. Not just about you, but about the claim, and father and the bank and everything else.”

  He pushed back from the table, walked to my side, and held out his hand for me to take, then pulled me to my feet. With measured movements, he draped one of my arms around his shoulder, and interlaced his fingers and mine. He flattened his other hand against the small of my back, warming my skin through the three layers of cloth between us and curled his fingers gently against me.

  Never once did his eyes leave mine. Our faces, just inches apart, were close enough that I felt his sweet, warm breath against the part of my throat exposed above my collar, and each time he closed or opened his hand on my back, a thrill shot through me.

  “I can’t promise anything,” he said softly. “But I have a feeling that,” he trailed off and just swayed with me against his chest for a moment.

  “That what, Eli?” I studied his face for any clue of what he was feeling, but he just had that impenetrable smile, and then he cradled my head against his chest as he took a deep breath.

  “I don’t know why, and I can’t help feeling that this is crazy, but it seems that as long as I’ve got my eye on you, nothing can go wrong. Not really wrong, anyway. As long as I can help it, I won’t let anything hurt you, Miss Clara.”

  Eli kissed my forehead, his lips warming my skin once, then again.

  I swallowed hard, overwhelmed with emotion but I wasn’t willing to give in and show how fragile my feelings were, not right then. “How do you do it?” My voice quavered slightly. “How do you stay so strong? You’re in such terrible danger and you’re sitting here holding me and taking care of me.”

  “You give me strength, Clara.” Eli grabbed my shoulders and held me still, searching my face. “It’s hard for me to admit this, but when I was out in the hills, waiting for a chance to come back to you, I was scared. The little sleep I got, all the hunger and the thirst, the bugs crawling all over me as I laid under bushes, covered up with dirt and leaves. It was terrifying. But you know what I was the most afraid of?”