Midnight Lover (5 page)

Chapter 3

Silver Spur - June 1876

For half an hour, Jesse had been listening to Harry Calhoun rattle the rafters of the Golden Dragon. The old man had shouted and cursed and filled the men with tales of horror and slavery until he had almost everyone in that room ready to bear arms against the enemy. Short of bringing General Custer back from the dead to lead them into battle, Jesse didn't know what the old coot could do to stir his audience up any more than they already were.

"What I'm tellin' you, men, is we got to stick together." Harry was so fired up he sprayed saliva on the first three rows of the audience. "These addlebrained petticoats can swoop down on Silver Spur all they want, but they can't make us marry unless we're willin to marry and I say we ain't willin'!"

The men crammed into that smoke-filled, whiskey-soaked room with its red velvet drapes and gold chandeliers exploded into whistle and cheers that drowned out Harry's words.

Jesse lit another cheroot and tilted his chair back against the wall while Old Tom, the crazy prospector, cleaned his nails with the point of his pick axe.

Damn fools had themselves all worked up just because a couple stagecoaches packed full of spinsters with marriage on their minds had arrived in Silver Spur and those spinsters had managed to corral a few old timers who'd been down in the mines so long that a hot meal and a clean house sounded better than freedom.

Sam Markham, his bartender at the King of Hearts, ambled over and leaned his narrow butt against the ledge of the window next to Jesse's chair.

"So, what do you think?" Sam asked "That Calhoun sure can stir 'em up, can't he?"

Jesse grunted. "The whiskey they guzzled had them pretty stirred up before Harry started talking at them."

"You ain't takin' this thing serious enough, Jesse. Women comin' into Silver Spur is gonna change things and I don't mean for the better." He waited for an answer but Jesse wasn't about to give him one—not after Sam made him sit through this hogwash.

Sam's eyes narrowed like he was looking into the midday sun.

"Quit scowling at me, Sam. You're the one who wanted me to come to this thing." Sam's expression grew more fierce and Jesse tipped his hat over his forehead and made a show of closing his eyes. "You don't scare me."

"Maybe I don't scare you, but all them women comin' to town ought to."

"The day I'm scared of something that weighs less than Billy Hansen's mutt is the day you can drag me kickin' and screamin' up to Cemetery Hill."

"You won't be feelin' so all-fired cocky when your gambling halls and Jade's cathouse go out of business."

Jesse opened one eye. "You been hittin' Carlos's tequila again, Sam?"

Sam refused to be cowed. "For a smart man, you're mighty stupid, Jesse. Once the marryin' starts up, there ain't going to be much call for saloons or the Golden Dragon."

"Then you don't know much about marriage, Sam, because there's nothin' like taking those vows to send a man out looking for a bottle and a willing woman."

Sam tossed his half-smoked cigar into the spittoon by the door, barely missing Jesse. "Good thing you got better aim than half the cowboys in town, Markham. I'd hate to have to shoot my best bartender."

"Make jokes all you want, Jesse. I ain't gonna fight you. You own half the goddamned town as it is."

Jesse raised one hand to stop him. "I own the whole goddamned town and don't you forget it."

Sam caught on to Jesse's meaning real quick. "Ain't none of us gonna forget it. You're the most powerful man in town and that's why the League needs you, Jesse. Without you it don't stand a chance."

"League? What League?"

Sam glanced away and Jesse followed his gaze back to the lectern to the right of the full-length portrait of Jade wearing nothing more than a feather boa and a diamond ring. Old Harry Calhoun, Big Red and Three-Toed Morton stood there watching them right back.

"Ain't you been listenin' to nothin' we got to say, Jesse?" Sam's voice was low and urgent. "The Single Men's Protection League. We're bandin' together to make sure Silver Spur don't become another one of those sissified towns like Chicago or New York."

If everyone else in the town hadn't been so likkered up and ready to shoot, Jesse would have thrown his head back and let out with the biggest belly laugh this side of the Mississippi

"Why don't you start a sewing circle while you're at it, Sam? Of all the damned stupid ideas, this one—"

Sam stepped in front of Jesse. "They're takin' this serious, Jesse. I wouldn't let them see you laughing at something that means a hell of a lot to 'em."

"And what do you expect your damn fool League to get you, Sam? A cut rate from Jade? Drinks on the house from me?"

Sam's broad face creased in a frown for a few moments then his usual smile returned. "We're gonna keep this town safe from do-gooders and Bible salesmen and spinsters, that's what. If we all hang together on this those gals will be back on a stage east by the end of the summer and this place'll be fit for men again."

Harry Calhoun cupped his hands and hollered, "Are you with us, Jesse, or ain't you?"

Three hundred men turned and stared as Jesse ground out his cigar beneath the heel of his hand-tooled boot. No money-hungry, dried-up, old-maid Eastern woman could rope Jesse Reardon into marrying if he didn't feel like marrying. He didn't need the protection of three hundred panic-stricken bachelors to keep him from tying that particular noose around his neck.

But, business was business and making a show of being one with them would go a long way toward keeping Jesse's coffers filled. He vaulted onto the platform and faced the crowd. Men who had once been bankers and lawyers stood next to desert rats who'd never seen the inside of a drawing room. The mines had brought them to Silver Spur but it was more than riches that kept them there. Silver Spur was a man's town, a place where a man could have whatever he wanted as long as he could pay the price.

And Jesse Reardon was Silver Spur in the flesh. "Harry asked if I was with you or against you." His voice was deep and rich; it rang out through the smoky room as he pulled his Smith & Wesson from his holster and spun it lazily, enjoying the nervous shuffling and coughing of the men who watched him. "I should turn this on Harry for askin' such a damn fool question."

Harry Calhoun looked as if he'd swallowed a whole bottle of Big Red's rot gut whiskey without coming up for air.

Jesse slid the gun back into his holster. The crowd of men started breathing again. "If you think it's time to take a stand then, hell, it's time to take a stand. We'll be there in front of the Crazy Arrow this afternoon when that stage gets in and we'll show those Bible-clutching old maids that they ain't wanted in Silver Spur!"

The crowd whistled, stomped, and yelled their approval and when Jesse said, "Follow me to the King of Hearts, men. The drinks are on the house!" Well, if the residents of Silver Spur had been law abiding enough to need one, Jesse Reardon would have been elected mayor on the spot.

#

The huge stagecoach lurched sideways as it bounced over a rut in the road near a cemetery marked Boot Hill.

Caroline braced herself as her right shoulder hit the side of the passenger compartment and tried to ignore the sign "Murderers Row" that swung from a tree near a cluster of fresh graves. Next to her, Abby crossed herself for the hundredth time since they left St. Louis four days ago.

"Abby, if I see you do that one more time, I shall not be held accountable for my actions. We're just a few miles out of Silver Spur and you're not accustomed to the coach yet?"

Abby, looking decidedly bilious, glared at her employer and crossed herself once more for good measure. "No, Miss Caroline, I wouldn't be used to it yet. Four cemeteries within two miles wouldn't be somethin' a body gets used to easy." She gestured toward the other travelers with a tilt of her head. "And, if I may say so, it would be lookin' like no one else on this coach would be used to it yet, either."

Caroline glanced around at her fellow passengers. The four spinster McGuigan sisters who had joined the trek to Silver Spur in Baltimore looked pale and slightly green. The two little red-haired Wilder girls from Dodge City had their eyes closed, hands tightly clasped in their laps. Young Reverend Nelson, the preacher bound for the one church in town, and his bride Penelope sat huddled near the door.

Penny's high, clear voice rose over the clatter of horses' hooves and the stink of dust and booze that seemed part of the coach itself. "We should have stayed in Philadelphia, William," she was saying. "We should have listened to Father when he offered to set you up with the finest congregation west of the Delaware River."

"They don't need me in Philadelphia, Penny," Reverend Nelson said calmly, "and I want to go where I'm truly needed."

Penny sighed loudly and Caroline suppressed a smile. "There is sin in Philadelphia. Who needs a backwater town like Silver Spur? You are wasting your calling, William."

Her husband looked up and reddened as he realized everyone on the coach was listening avidly to the development of their domestic drama. "My apologies," he said in the tone of solemn forbearance necessary to his profession. "I believe Mrs. Nelson is overtired. No disrespect meant to anyone from Silver Spur, I'm sure."

"None taken," said Caroline. "Besides, I do not think there is a single citizen of Silver Spur on this coach."

Abby gestured out the window. "Of course there isn't," she said as they passed another cemetery. "I'd be thinkin' there wouldn't be anybody left."

Margaret McGuigan, one of the four Baltimore spinsters, looked up and spoke for the first time since they crossed the Mississippi River. "Don't you be fooled
by those cemeteries, Miss Abby. There's still plenty of folks in Silver Spur." A most surprisingly girlish giggle broke through her schoolmarm facade. "And if all we've heard is true, most of them folks are men."

Her three calico-clad sisters giggled behind their work-worn hands.

"They better be," said Jenny Wilder, one of the Dodge City redheads. "Sarah and I sure didn't come this far to join the Baptist Sewing Circle." She glanced at the Reverend. "No offense meant."

"None taken," he said. "I'm Presbyterian."

"If you don't mind my asking," Caroline ventured, leaning forward toward the girls, "why have you come this far?" Aaron's letters had portrayed Silver Spur as a hard-drinking town of miners and gamblers that only came to life on Saturday night.

"We're lookin' for men," Margaret said bluntly.

Penelope, the preacher's wife, fell back onto the cracked leather seat in a swoon and her husband dabbed at her forehead with a limp cambric handkerchief.

The McGuigan sisters nodded in unison. "So are we."

"Holy Mary Mother of God!" Abby's freckled face turned red as the Wilder girls' hair "They're fancy women."

Both Caroline and Abby stared at the plain, well-scrubbed spinsters across the aisle Caroline had seen fancy ladies once on a visit to Manhattan Island. These homespun travelers were a far cry from the bejeweled, bewigged beauties who had captured her father's eye.

"You're...umm...err—" she struggled with the phrasing. "You'll be working in Silver Spur?"

Jenny Wilder's laughter filled the coach. "I sure hope not," she said with a wink. "I expect to be married before the next harvest."

Margaret McGuigan tossed her head. "I expect to wed before the Fourth of July."

Caroline glanced at Abby, relieved to see her maid was as confused as she. "I am afraid I misunderstood. You are all betrothed to men of Silver Spur?"

Jenny's sister Sarah looked up from her tattered copy of Godey's Ladies Book. "Not yet but we will be. You'll see."

"But I thought Silver Spur was a rough-and-tumble mining town," Caroline said, thinking of her father's letters describing wild shenanigans that involved pistols, not petticoats. The men Aaron had written about had mayhem, not marriage, on their minds.

Across from her, Reverend Nelson nodded. "I am under the same impression as you, Miss Bennett. My bishop told me my services in Silver Spur were desperately needed. It's a lawless, godless town."

"Your services are needed, all right," Margaret retorted. "To perform weddings. Three of my cousins found husbands within six months of going west."

"Rich husbands," added Jenny. "The silver mines are all over Nevada."

A sly smile spread across Margaret's plain face. "And Silver Spur's the richest town of all."

Caroline and Abby listened, spellbound, as the sisters Wilder and McGuigan traded stories about Silver Spur. According to them, it was the flashiest, wealthiest town in the West, built around a mother lode of silver that showed no signs of being exhausted.

Apparently neither did the miners.

Marriageable women had first appeared in town two years ago and the rash of nuptials that followed their arrival had sparked a steady stream of spinsters bent on matrimony. Few of them had gone away disappointed.