The Outlaw's Kiss (an Old West Romance) (Wild West Brides) (14 page)

I followed Mr. Bullock to the door, but as soon as
he saw the torches, the horses and the brandished guns of the Sioux, he shoved
me back through the door.

“Clara!” He shouted. “Whatever you do,
don’t
go out there. Do you understand?”

A war cry pierced the night, followed directly by
another massive crack.

“Where did they get dynamite?” Someone beside him
turned and yelled. “How did them Sioux get dynamite? We can’t even get it for
the claims!”

Seth shook his head and shoved the man back.
“Clara,” he said again. “Answer me. Whatever you do, you stay –”

“Clara?” I recognized Itan’s voice, though was
surprised to hear him struggle with saying my name.

My eyes got as wide as they’d ever been. A huge,
shirtless man with tanned-buckskin trousers, cleared his path by waving a
repeating rifle over his head and charging through the loosely-packed crowd.
One man tried to pull him down from his horse, but received a sharp kick in the
face for his trouble.

“Itan?” I said with a hollow, helpless voice. “Is
that you?”

“Clara, you are brave, or were before. Tell me
where is my brother.”

The rampaging braves threw ropes around the
balcony of a small bar a ways down the street from the Gem and pulled what
seemed like half the building down before throwing torches into the wreckage.

Seth’s chest was heaving as he stared back and
forth between Itan and me, mouth agape.

“Clara! No time! These savages will kill him. Tell
me where is Eli!”

I balked. The sheriff watched my face. By
instinct, my trembling fingers went inside my handbag and clutched the note Eli
had sent via Mr. Star. I don’t know why I grabbed it, for comfort I suppose.
His words, something his hands had touched, I thought, acted as an anchor.

“Itan,” I stammered, “I-”

“Now! Tell me where he is! My braves will tear the
town apart, no matter what I do. If we get my brother, we leave!”

“I can’t.” I looked at Seth, studying his face for
some idea what I should do, but he was just as surprised as I was. “Itan, I
just can’t.”

“You know him?” Was the first thing Seth managed
to say.

Another building fell, another fire went up.

“
Now
, Clara,” Itan insisted. “I don’t want
to hurt people. My braves are less kind. Where is the jail?” He kicked another
man away from his steed, but almost everyone was just standing around in shock,
looking back and forth with vacant expressions.

“No time!”

“O – okay, okay,” I said, steadying myself. Seth
put his hand up to stop me. “Down the road,” I shouted over the noise. “Down
the road and left, second building!”

Itan ducked his head. “
Philamayeye,
Clara.
Every bit as brave as them,” he tilted his head to his warriors. “Eli is a
lucky man.”

A second later, he rushed off, shouting
instructions to his band which were immediately followed. They disappeared from
sight, and then a huge explosion seemed to rock the entire world.

Seth snatched the letter out of my hand. “He wrote
this? Clara, answer me,” he demanded. “Eli wrote this and sent it to you?”

All I could do was open my mouth and close it over
and over again. There were no words.

No words. Just confusion and fear.

There was only smoke and fire, and the sulfurous
smell of dynamite.

September 27, 1878

Deadwood, Dakota Territory

––––––––

T
he next morning was as gray as the cloud over my
heart. I knew I’d done right by helping Itan find Eli. I
knew
that. But
knowing things and feeling them are very, very, different.

Eli had done nothing wrong. He was as anyone in
Deadwood, which is a bit of a funny thing to say, considering the general lack
of innocence abounding the hills, but what happened to him wasn’t justice. It
was a set up that an angry man perpetrated to get revenge. Base, foul, revenge
– it had nothing to do with justice when Eustace Rawls set him up.

But what I did put my friend, Seth, in a terrible
spot. Suddenly, he had to deal with a town that wanted justice for
two
raids instead of just one. There was also the issue that the sheriff knew
exactly how Eli got free.

On the other hand, those Sioux weren’t going to
stop until they found him.

Knowing and feeling; two terribly different things.

When the first knock came at my door, I’d not been
to sleep, but I chose to act ignorant of the sound anyway. All I wanted to do
was write down what happened then burn my journal. If I did that, I thought, I
could maybe make everything return to the way it’s supposed to be, the way it
was before Rawls had my sweet Eli taken away, like an old, dusty fairytale.
Just like an old fairytale though, burning everything I’d written – Rawls’s
half confessions among other things – would bring more trouble than it was
worth.

Wishes, after all, rarely get granted in just the
way the man rubbing the lamp hopes.

“Clara? Clara? Are you awake?”

I rolled over with a grumble, not wanting to see
anyone, speak to anyone at all. I couldn’t just pretend to be dead though, I
knew father would worry.

“I’m sorry, father,” I said weakly. “I overslept
again.” A lie, but it didn’t hurt anyone. It wasn’t late, either; the sun was
just coming up over the horizon. I stood and looked out the window to realize
that the gray haze I’d seen from bed was the last remnant of the fires from the
night before.

The little bar down the road from Mr. Swearengen’s
Gem still smoldered. “Clara?” He called again.

“Oh, yes, father, I’m sorry, I was lost in
thought.”

He was silent for a time before I heard his feet
scratch the wood outside the door. I knew he was turning the toe of his boot
back and forth against the floorboard, trying to figure out what to say.

“I heard about Eli. Mr. Bullock told me what
happened. I’m sorry that you’ve had to live through all this.”

“Sorry? You’re sorry for what? No, no,
I’m
sorry. I’m the cause of the trouble,” I said as I opened the door to see my
father with very red, puffy cheeks and a nose that looked like it had been
recently wiped one too many times. “If it weren’t for me, I –”

“From what Seth said, if it weren’t for you, the
whole damn town would be burned to a cinder like that flophouse down the way.
You were brave in the face of danger I can’t even imagine. And I was out,
fiddling around at a gold claim instead of protecting my daughter. I’m the one
who should be sorry.”

His hat was clutched against his chest.

“I’m fine, father. I wasn’t hurt, and I don’t
believe I was ever actually in danger.”

“That’s not how Seth told it. He said you that
right after all the explosions and fires started, you and he went out into the
street and you refused to back down when one of the Sioux came up and started
shouting at you.”

I shook my head and sat. “Father, no, that wasn’t
at all what happened. I foolishly followed Mr. Bullock out of the restaurant
into the street and he – Itan – the Sioux, he approached me.”

Father waved his hand, dismissing me. “No, no,
Seth also said you’d probably try to downplay what you did. In sending him to
Eli’s jail cell, you
do
realize you kept this town from burning, yes?”

“That’s not what it seemed like.” I trailed off. I
did
know that, but no matter whether I knew it or not, the guilt was
still tremendous. Truth is that it didn’t ultimately matter. “But father,
they’re going to blame –”

“You? No, no dear, no one blames you. At least no
one I spoke with.”

“That means they blame Eli, then.”

Father looked sullenly to the floor. “Yes. It
would seem that Eli somehow got word to the Sioux that he’d been incarcerated.”

“But you know that’s not true,” I said standing
up. “He would never have done that. You know that as well as I.”

With comforting hands on my shoulders, father
looked me straight in the eye. “
I
know that. And so do you. Seth isn’t
sure, but he and Eli have been friends for years, so he doesn’t believe the whispers.
But all he’s got to work on is that a few days after a man was tossed into jail
on suspicion of collusion with the Sioux, the same said Sioux appear and break
him out in rather glorious fashion.”

I chewed my lips, pushed my tongue into my cheek,
as father chewed his mustache. “Will you hand my journal to me?”

He did, and I thumbed through the last few pages
of notes. Things were scrawled about curiosities in Rawls’s story, and concerns
over his earlier insistence on taking over father’s gold claim. It was all
right there.
Right there
in my hands. I knew that man had somehow
incriminated himself in all this, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“Father,” I said, “I’ve got to go talk to Mr.
Swearengen.”

“Al? Why? Clara, you’re hardly dressed. I thought
you’d like to go to the claim today to get your mind off this business. That
couple of Welshmen is opening up the first part of our mine-shaft this morning,
and –”

“No,” I said, patting him on the chest and pulling
on the clothes I’d worn yesterday. “Ugh,” I grunted, smelling the smoke. “No,
you go. I’ve got a feeling that he can help me. Help us.”

Eli’s words were right in the front of my mind.
“Swearengen
only serves his own interest. If something behooves him, he’ll work himself to
death to get it done. Just don’t get on his bad side.”

“I don’t know what,” I said. “I don’t know how,
but I have the very distinct feeling that he’ll have some kind of idea.”

A knock down stairs, and Davis Clark shouting for
my father broke up my rambling locomotive. “Got room on my wagon if you want a
ride up to the claims,” he said. “Jeffrey? You up there?”

Father crossed the room and called down to Mr.
Clark that he’d be a minute. “He’s got quite an entourage with him. Four, no, five
miners, seems like? I wonder if there’s a reason for it. Hum,” he grunted. “You
do what you need to do, Clara. I trust you to do right.”

“You what?”

“I’ve been thinking. You’re not the same woman I
left New York with. Not by a long shot. And the funny part is I’m not sure what
happened. It’s only been two months since we left everything we knew and came
out here for this.” He waved his arm around. “For a town full of backstabbing,
wild cowboys, and I’m a little ashamed to admit that I think you might be
growing into it faster than I am.”

Resting my hand on my father’s shoulder, I studied
his face. “I’d never be here without you. For all my talking about running away
to a life of adventure, I’m not as brave as I like to think I am,” I said. “In
truth, I wasn’t asleep when you first knocked, nor the second time. I was too
much of a coward to answer. I thought you’d look at me the same way Mr. Bullock
did after I told Itan where to find Eli.”

“You impressed him, Clara. You saved the town.”

Mr. Clark banged on the door again. “Gotta get
moving! Daylight’s burning, Jeffrey.”

Father shook his head as a smile crossed his lips.
“Like I said, get out there and do what you need to do. I don’t have any idea
what’s going on in that head of yours, but I know when you squint a little, and
pinch your nose up like that, you’ve got an idea. And if Al Swearengen can
somehow keep those two rapscallions away from my claim, then so much the
better.”

He opened the door, but paused with one foot still
inside. “And Clara?”

“Yes, Father?” I answered as I hurriedly threw a
shawl around my shoulders and grabbed a sun hat.

“I love you, little girl. You do your old man
proud.”

My mouth fell open for a moment, and all I could
think to do was hug him and tell him I loved him, too.

*

O
utside, the mixture of burned pine and remnants of
the acrid, stinging scent of dynamite made it difficult to breathe without a
handkerchief over my mouth. A burned boarding house was nothing more than a
mixture of charred wood and coal muck from a brief morning rain.

Already, the remaining wood, and the fixtures,
were picked over. As I crossed in front of it, a man with a wild look on his
face was rooting through a burned dresser, looking for whatever might sell –
jewelry, clothes – but found nothing. He pushed the furniture over, and as soon
as it hit the ground, a black cloud puffed out around it, then the dresser
collapsed into a heap.

“Hope you weren’t lookin’ ta pick,” he called out.
“Goddam’ place’s been ruined already. Hey, wait a minute, ain’t you that girl?”

“No sir, not here to pick,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s you! You’re the one who did all
this! You told that damn Injun where to go! You’re with ‘em ain’t ya?”

The Gem wasn’t five hundred paces ahead. I walked
faster, careful not to step in any of the numerous pot holes or piles or horse
droppings that marked the dirt road.

“Get back here!” The man shouted, beginning to
jog.

Step, step, step, keep going.

Four hundred feet separated me from the door of
the Gem, from relative safety.

“Hold on, little girl! I just want to thank you
for what you done.”

I heard his feet, getting closer. I couldn’t move
any quicker without being reckless and the last thing I wanted was to fall. Just
a little ways to go.

“I said come here, girl! I’m tired of chasing you
down, whore!”

Briefly I glanced backwards. He was gaining on me
quickly. Three hundred feet. I started running when I felt the man’s hand on my
back.

“Stay still! I just want to say hello, little
girl!”

He reeked of whiskey and horse manure.

“No! Stay back!” He grabbed my shoulder, wrenching
me backwards. I slapped at his hand, freed myself and kept running. Two hundred
feet from the Gem, I saw Mr. Swearengen on his balcony, only he wasn’t in his
standard vulture-like, lurking position, instead he was hunched over, but still
watching.