“Beautiful and Graceful.”
Lijuan felt an inner glow, as it was so odd for her to hear anyone but her treasured brother, Dutch call her by the Chinese meaning of her name. “Yes. Now Chinese girls in Alamieda are rarer than four leaf clovers, so we have to stick together.” She warmly told the other woman to gain her trust. “But to help you, Shuen Yi, you have to tell me everything and leave nothing out.”
Shuen Yi Huang’s last bit of hesitation seemed to melt away under Lijuan’s gentle prodding and the floodgates opened as she revealed a deeply disturbing tale.
Last week, two telegrams had arrived at the Huangs’ home at the same time. Unlike her father, Shuen Yi spoke no English nor read it either. The older Huang, in order to make a success in America, had found it one hundred percent necessary to be fluent in the language of their adopted land. Shuen Yi’s late mother, however, was a traditionalist and refused to learn the language or allow her daughter to either. She had never wanted to leave their native China, but she had been a dutiful wife and had followed her husband across the Pacific.
Enlisting a servant who was fluent in English, she had learned from the first telegram that her father had gone missing in Arizona. The second one said to disregard the first one without any explanation as to why and wait for a visit from a Mister Ping, and she was to tell no one of either telegram. After swearing the servant to secrecy, all Shuen Yi could do was spend a sleepless night wondering what was going on in Arizona and when this man would arrive.
The following night, a rough looking character, missing several of his teeth and his slicked hair shining of grease, had visited the house. When she had opened the door, Shuen Yi narrated that he strolled in without invitation, brushing past her. The man had leered at her and made several rude comments about her before finally getting down to business.
According to this Mr. Ping, her father was alive and being held captive. If she wished to see him alive again, she must liquidate as much cash as possible and bring it to Alamieda, Arizona as soon as possible. Upon getting off the stage, she would be met by someone who would take her to her father. As long as she had the money, both would be allowed to leave unharmed.
In addition, Shuen was to allow Ping to take whatever valuables that he wanted from the house. Shuen Yi continued to narrate how she could only stand mutely by, as the man made several trips to his wagon waiting in front of the house. The man had sneered with laughter, apologizing for making her wait for him all day and that he preferred to make his withdrawal as he called it, under the cloak of darkness, for better protection against prying eyes in the well-to-do neighborhood where successful Chinese immigrants had made their homes.
As he hauled off such valuables as her late mother’s silver tea service, Shuen Yi said that he heard the man laughing to himself that his current haul was even better than the one he’d made in Galveston. She didn’t know what that meant, and she did not ask him. He was terrifying to her. Finally, when he had all he could manage, he once again told her to get all the money she could and be off to Alamieda as soon as possible.
In the morning, Shuen Yi recounted that she had done as he asked. The bank seemed suspicious, but her father had given her complete access to the funds, so she cleaned out their savings and headed east, leaving the servants behind and bewildered at their plundered home.
By the time Shuen Yi got to this part of her tale, finishing the account of her recent ordeal, tears were welling in her eyes. Lijuan swung her feet to the floor and crossed over to the girl, giving her a hug. After a moment, she returned to her seat and laid her hands flat on the desk. Her mind swirled with the information that the young immigrant had given her. Pieces began to fall into place as she put her analytical mind to work. A picture began to emerge like a jigsaw puzzle with only a few of the pieces remaining, but yet elusive.
Suddenly, her eyes widened as a huge piece fell into place, as something she had been struggling to remember earlier at Jaden’s broke through the barriers of her subconscious. The memory was the key that opened the doorway to this whole desperate situation wide open, giving her a chance to find the salvation for the woman’s father she was so desperately seeking. Lijuan now had enough to formulate the genesis of what she knew needed to be done.
“Don’t you worry; if your father is still alive, I’ll get him back, Shuen Yi,” she assured the poor woman. “You got my word as a Wilde. I know that wouldn’t mean anything to you, but I promise you, it means everything.”
“But how … how will you help me?” Shuen Yi asked, looking puzzled. “We are just women and these are evil men.”
Lijuan grinned at her. There was no way Shuen Yi could know just what a daunting woman was now in front of her, promising her aid, but she would find out. Even before Shuen Yi had finished her tale, Lijuan was already further solidifying an idea into her head as to what she was going to do.
“There’s a fair share of evil men resting peacefully in Boot Hills across Arizona, who underestimated the daughters of Half Breed Haven,” Lijuan boasted. “Put quite a few of them there myself … and with this.”
She raised up her hammer and Shuen Yi could only look at it blankly. Lijuan knew none of what she said would make any sense to her, so she laid the hammer on Whip’s desk.
“Are you going to go to … what do you call them? The constable?” Shuen Yi asked.
“There’s been no sheriff in Alamieda for a passel of years,” Lijuan shook her head. “They had a bad habit of getting themselves killed in the line of duty. It seems to be a regular occurrence that it falls to my sisters and I to keep the law and order around here. I won’t lie, I’d prefer to have them with me on this, but I can handle it just the same. Still, I would be foolish not to have some sort of backup plan.”
“Please, tell me how we can rescue Father,” Shuen Yi she questioned, the rigid posture she has assumed since sitting down unchanged, seeming unconvinced that Lijuan could really do anything to such effect.
Ignoring the other woman’s puzzled look, Lijuan thought about it a moment more. The plan she had come up with would fail immediately, if the kidnappers were locals who knew of her, but a hunch told her that they weren’t. And if all else failed, she thought as she laid one hand on the hammer on the table and rested her other hand on the Colt on her other hip, there was always the direct approach.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
The bucking stagecoach passing underneath the weatherworn sign proclaiming the town of Lake Bliss delighted Cassandra. She had arrived at the destination of her spur-of-the moment trip, making her grin with joy.
Earlier, she had enjoyed a fine breakfast opposite Bennet Boxhall on the veranda of his hilltop estate. As she took in the lush view of the gentle hills of the valley beyond the house, the man had finally gotten around to broaching the subject all the Wilde sisters’ lovers more often than not had been unable to resist. How did it come to pass the sisters were of the different races?
The sisters themselves would not have any qualms about revealing their story, but their father, despite being a public servant, was very private. He chose very carefully with whom he shared the period of his life that had begat him such varied children. The family understood his reluctance to talk of it because for all the joy he had with their different mothers, there was enough tragedy to form an ocean of sorrow. They respected his wishes and only to a very, very select few would they tell the tales. She had given him their usual answer that their father simply led a very interesting life between the years of Cassandra’s birth and Blue River’s. Boxhall, being the gentleman that he was, didn’t press the matter when he sensed her reluctance to speak of it. He was a good man and that’s why she felt bad about the disenchantment she was about to heap upon him.
After their breakfast, she had broken it to him, and his disappointment was clear when she said she was ready to head home. Her time with the handsome banker had been pleasurable, to say the least, but in the end, that was all that Cassandra had sought in the br
ief fling, and now that she had fulfilled her desires for the man, she was ready to move on.
Unfortunately for Bennet, he had to join the ranks of others before him who thought the passion they shared with one of the alluring Wilde sisters would lead to something of a permanent basis, but that was not the way they did things.
Cassandra had indeed intended to return to Half Breed Haven when, as she was watering Lily at a trough, she heard two women talking about a recent trip to the nearby town of Lake Bliss. According to the women, Lake Bliss had one of the best dance halls in Arizona. Being well traveled on her assignments for Governor Duvalier, this was not the first time she’d heard of this dance hall.
What had intrigued her the most was that the women were making a big deal about it being a talent night when amateurs could try their hand at singing for the crowds. Singing had long been a pastime for Cassandra. Many nights, she would strum on her guitar in the sizable gazebo in the corner of the back yard of the ranch house—in the shadow of the ledges that gave the ranch its real name.
She knew singing would always be one of the few connections to the mother she could barely remember. Kelly Wilde had died tragically young, but to this day, the clearest memories she had of the woman was when she sang her and her younger brother to sleep at night.
Cassandra had always been proud to know from Whip that she shared the same talented voice that her mother had employed as a very young woman, performing on her uncle’s gambling boat that plied the waters of the Hudson River below the New York state capital of Albany.
The idea of taking part in the talent night appealed to her. Of course, she didn’t have her guitar with her, but one would be easy enough to get a hold of, once she got to Lake Bliss. Cassandra decided to give Lily a break, since she wasn’t going directly back to Alamieda and would put her up in livery for the night. Before going to the livery, though, she stopped at the general store to buy a traveling bag, since she would not have her saddlebags to carry her belongings in.
She had made a second stop at a dress shop on the way to the stage office to buy a new dress to wear at the dance hall that night. She could easily afford to make such a purchase on a whim because the lucrative cattle and timber business of Cedar Ledge allowed her family a very comfortable lifestyle. Still, she was glad she was instead using part of the money the Boxhall banking business had paid as reward for the return of their depositors’ money.
The truth was that she always felt a little guilty because all seven of the Wildes shared equal profits, but it was truly Lijuan, Cattie, and Blue River that worked the hardest to earn that money. She knew Honor Elizabeth and Dutch also felt the same guilt, as neither of them directly contributed to the operations of the Wilde family business enterprises.
At the moment, though, Cassandra had been having the devil of a time choosing between a lilac colored dress and a racy red number with plenty of frills on it before finally settling on the red one. After making the purchase, she went into the back room and changed into the dress deciding to arrive in Bliss in style.
Upon arriving at the stagecoach office, she was dismayed to find that perhaps she had been too hasty in boarding her Missouri Trotter. The ticket agent, a lanky young man that looked too serious in a white shirt and a colored bow tie that matched his hazel hair and brown eyes, had advised her that he had just sold the last ticket. He had pointed to a blonde woman who looked to be about ten years older than Cassandra but had the same voluptuous figure men found so pleasing. Cassandra was annoyed with herself that her indecision at the dress shop had cost her. Now she would have to change back out of the dress and go fetch Lily, after all.
The woman who had netted the last ticket had been close enough to hear Cassandra missing out and thumbed up her nose, saying in a very insincere voice, “Sorry, dearie. I done missed my stage yesterday and there’s no way I’m not getting on this one.” She then turned and bumped right into a very large man with a handlebar mustache and a shiny badge pinned to his vest. It seemed he, as well, had heard Cassandra being turned away.
As the woman stepped back, the lawman called over the woman’s shoulder to Cassandra.
“I beg to differ with that statement,” he grinned. “Hold up a minute, ma’am. I believe there is about to be an opening on the stage to Bliss. You see, Miss Marla here has got a stack of warrants out for her arrest that would rival the Bible in thickness. I am sure she’ll be happy to sell you her ticket because she is going to be needing a lawyer right quick!”
The blonde, Miss Marla had started to make a run for the door, but the man’s arm whipped out, striking like a snake and yanking her to a halt. The woman began to shriek that the sheriff had nothing on her, but the man simply grinned and said he was in disagreement with that statement as well.
“You can’t do this! I’ve got a job to do over in Lake Bliss!” she kept crying out in a bid to resist an arrest.
“Miss Marla, you have never done an honest day of work in your whole life,” the sheriff still insisted. “If you have business in Bliss, it’s sure to be of the shady variety! Now come on down to the jail. You are in luck. We’re serving beans and beef tonight!”
Just like that, the ticket was hers—and now, Cassandra was stepping off the stage into the town of Lake Bliss. It was a beautiful western town with clean streets, high gardens, and colorful trees growing at boundaries of houses clustering together. In the distance, there were visible dark horizons, probably from the few hilltops and the rays of the sun above it. The breeze was gentle too, the smell of purity so staunch in it. Subconsciously noting all these, Cassandra brought her fingers up to the healing cut on her face. The injury from the exploding barrel a few days ago had not been deep and she was fairly confident there would not be a permanent scar.
Her shoulder, she knew, would be another matter, but she would wear it with a badge of honor like the other scars on her body. At the very least, they always made good conversation pieces in the afterglow of sex as her latest paramour would always be curious about them. She would speak of the dangerous life she led in her undercover work for the governor, and to a man, they always had been awed. Bennet Boxhall had been no different in that respect.
A throng of men were milling about outside the stage and they were making no secret of their appreciation for the busty blonde. Perhaps, she should have waited to change into the dress just before the talent night, Cassandra thought reconsidering her decision. She had little time to ruminate on that, anyway, as suddenly, the men around her were making a commotion. One man in particular seemed to be the biggest cause of it as he pushed his way towards Cassandra.
He was wearing a black hat crowning his head above his long oblong face. He had full eyebrows and hair the color of smooth sand, while his nose pointed sharp and downward in an interesting way. When he slowed down as he got nearer to her coach, Cassandra couldn’t help but notice his sparkling white set of teeth and his tiny moustache that pointed both ways off the side of his chunky cheeks.
“Out of the way, all!” he shouted at everyone. “I will be getting this lady’s bags! Driver, which one is hers? I want to get it off the roof of the stage right now.”
“Dag darn it!” the stage driver surprisingly cursed. “This here is my stage and my job to get the lady her luggage. You just stay right where you are, Mr. Thornway!”
Mr. Thornway. So that was his name, Cassandra thought with a grin. He wasn’t having any of the speech the driver gave him, even though he paused in his steps. “Then be quick about it, you old tumble weed. It’s not polite to keep a lady waiting!” she heard him snap.
As the driver climbed from the bench seat to retrieve her bag amidst the others, Thornway pulled her aside.
“It’s about time you got here, Miss Marla,” he said. “You were supposed to be here yesterday! I came down again today, hoping you would at least get here today. I’m thankful for that at least.”
Cassandra was perplexed. She turned to him and raised her index finger. “Now look, Mister,
you’re mistaken. I’m not …”
“Shhh.” He hissed dismissively. “I assure you that I am not mistaken. Thaddeus Thornway does not get his dates mixed up. You were supposed to be here yesterday! Now moving on, I know our mutual friend didn’t explain the whole deal to you, but when we get to my office, I’ll explain everything. Your money for this job is waiting for you. All you got to do now is earn it.”
The old stagecoach driver had rounded up her bag and was handing it to her. Cassandra accepted it and took a good long look at Thornway. He was dressed all in black right up to his hat. He looked for the all world like an undertaker. His attire, however, did not interest her, but his words certainly did.
Clearly, he had mistaken her for the now incarcerated Miss Marla, and the words of the rather eloquent sheriff back in Cloverfield leaped into her mind that any business Miss Marla was involved in was certain not to be of the above-board variety.
Thinking straight, Cassandra paused and considered what she might be getting herself into. Any possible perils and pitfalls ran through her mind but she was not surprised at the decision she arrived at. She had come to Lake Bliss to perform her love for singing, but her adherence to upholding the law trumped all other matters. Deciding to play along to find out what was going on came easy to her. She even knew she might likely enjoy it.
“Ah, my money,” she finally squeaked playing along. “Now you’re talkin’, Thornway! Lead on!” she said, adopting Cattie’s way of speech as part of her cover and a nod to the little sister she loved so much.
Thornway, smiling widely now, took her bag in one hand, looped his arm through hers and began escorting her away from the on-looking men of Lake Bliss. Many were left to scratch their head as to just what woman like her was doing in the company of the less-than-attractive man. In the end, they all privately concluded it had to do with money in some shape or form.
Wilde-Fire: Wonder Women 0f The Old West (Half Breed Haven Book 1) Page 13