A Claim of Her Own (14 page)

It was a typical night in Deadwood, which meant that drunken men were stumbling along the street and any minute now there would likely be gunfire somewhere. Her hand went to the Colt in her pocket, and just as she crossed the street, someone stepped out of the shadows and called her name. Someone with a gray beard. Her heart lurched. She was pointing the gun at the shadowy figure when a voice called out, “Whoa, don’t shoot! It’s me. Judd Morgan. The sign painter.”

Aron Gallagher hurried over from the direction of Swede’s lot. “Everything all right?”

Mattie tucked the pistol back into her pocket. “I’m sorry. I thought—” She broke off. “Never mind. I’m sorry.”

“Freddie thought you’d want to see the finished sign,” Morgan said. “I was just headed over to the Cricket for a drink and saw you coming out of the hotel. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’d love to see the sign,” Mattie said. “How about if I stop by on my way back up to my claim tomorrow?”

“That’d be just fine,” Morgan said. He glanced at Aron Gallagher. “Came darned near needing you to preach at my funeral.” He nodded toward Mattie. “Dangerous woman. Better keep an eye on her.”

As he tugged on the brim of his hat and said good-night, it was impossible to tell if Morgan was angry, impressed, or a little of both. Gallagher, on the other hand, made no attempt to hide his reaction, which was concern. For her. “What are you so afraid of?” he asked once Morgan was out of earshot.

Mattie snorted. “I’m not afraid of anything,” she said, hoping she sounded convincing. “Any woman would be a fool not to—”

“—shoot first and ask questions later?”

“Exactly.”

Gallagher’s voice was gentle as he said, “That could end badly for you someday.”

“It’s more likely to end badly for any varmint lying in wait to prove his manhood by taking advantage of the weaker sex.”

“Sounds like the voice of experience.”

“Every woman alive has had an experience or two with varmints,” Mattie said. “The only difference between me and them is I’m not one to wait around for somebody in pants to rescue me.”

C
HAPTER 7

Let them be turned back and brought to confusion
that devise my hurt.

Psalm 35:4

L
ook, mister, if you want to provide the red devils with a new scalp, you just go right ahead. But I’m telling you the best way to Deadwood is to hook up with a string of freighters and share their campfire.” The balding livery owner planted his feet and hooked a thumb behind his holster buckle. “Either way, yer gonna have to buy a horse outright instead of renting from me, and that bay ain’t fer sale.” He nodded toward the first stall. “He’s the best horse I’ve got, and I owe him better than to send him where I know he’s gonna end up crow bait on account of some idiot who won’t listen to reason.”

Jonas grabbed a handful of the man’s worn shirt and gave it a twist. With his hook he snatched the gun from the man’s holster and tossed it toward the corner of the barn, where it landed in a pile of fouled hay.

“Now, you listen to me,” he said, enjoying the sound of the cretin’s vain struggle to breathe. “I understand your reluctance. Really, I do. But I’m convinced that if you think about it for just one minute more you’ll see how misguided it is for a businessman such as yourself to refuse to sell that horse. Why, I looked him over carefully, and I can tell you that bay is very nearly at the end of his usefulness.” He smiled at the question in the man’s eyes. “What you may not understand is that I have an uncanny ability to evaluate horseflesh, and that bay has a look about him. Just think how you’ll feel tomorrow when you find he’s foundered or got in the way of a stray bullet. Think how you’ll regret missing the chance to make some money off him.” Jonas held on a little longer, and just at the second when the man’s eyes began to roll back in his head, he let go.

The man gagged, coughed, bent over, gasped, then staggered backward and dropped onto a stack of hay bales, his hand at his throat. He glanced at his gun, now resting atop the manure-laced hay. “Forty-five dollars,” he croaked.

“I’ll need the whole outfit,” Jonas said. “Saddle, bridle, saddle blanket.”

“Forty-five dollars,” the man repeated, waving his hand toward the barn door. “Just take what you want—and go.”

Jonas peeled forty-five dollars off the money roll in his pocket, then made a ceremony of raining bills over the man’s head. As they drifted to the ground, he said, “See there? I knew we could come to an agreement if we really tried.” He headed for the door. “I’ll be back in an hour. Have my horse saddled and ready.” He didn’t bother to look back. After a while it got boring watching weak men tremble.

Mattie had been staying on her claim for nearly three weeks when she woke one night to the realization that someone—or some
thing
— was snooping around her claim. She could hear them—or
it
—circling the tent. Her stomach clenched. An owl hooted. Closing her eyes, she listened. Wouldn’t there be some kind of animal sound if it was one of those mountain lions? What did bears do in a camp? Did they just come crashing through the canvas or would she have some warning? Could whatever it was smell her fear? Almost holding her breath, she leaned down and felt around in the dark for the shotgun Tom had loaned her. When at first she couldn’t feel it, her heart sank. Would the Colt be enough?

Someone cleared his throat. Instantly she thought of Jonas, but just as quickly she knew it wasn’t him. Jonas was stealthier than a snake. He’d never make a mistake that warned his prey.

She was about to have her first encounter with a claim-jumper, and all of a sudden she wished she’d loaded Bessie II with something besides Tom English’s homemade rock salt cartridges. It didn’t help that Fergus McKay had an entire complement of stories about claim-jumpers and loved telling them around her campfire.
Well, here you go, Fergus. Hopefully this will give you another story
I’ll live to hear.

She lay back with the shotgun pointed at the tent flap. Whoever was out there was fumbling around at the opening now. She’d always felt like those ties weren’t enough. But—a
hand
. Someone was sticking their
hand
inside.

Mattie pulled the trigger. As the claim-jumper roared with pain, she dropped the shotgun, grabbed her pistol and, leaping up, ripped the tent flap open. “You’d better lay still,” she said as she pointed the pistol. “If I pull
this
trigger it’ll do a lot more damage than wadding and a few pellets of rock salt.”

The intruder stayed put, moaning and rolling from side to side in agony while Mattie tried to think what to do. She should probably tie him up, but to do that she’d have to put her gun down. He might be playacting about how badly he was hurting.

The McKays were still in town or they would have come running by now. The two men supposedly working the claim just above her hadn’t actually been
on
their claim since she’d arrived. Apparently there was some rule that a miner could put in his work on a road or a trail around here and it still counted as working a claim. At any rate, there didn’t seem to be anyone nearby.

Finally someone from down below shouted, “Ho there, what’s happened?”

“Shot a claim-jumper on Mattie’s Claim,” she hollered back.

“Is he dead?”

The claim-jumper tried to sit up and hollered, “No, I’m not dead!”

Mattie kicked his boot. “You shut up,” she snapped. “Whatever you were up to, it was no good and you deserve whatever you got, you good-for-nothing—” Just when she’d spouted some of the most colorful terms from her Abilene days, she noticed a half-dozen lanterns coming up the hill.
Let them hear it. Maybe it would make
the point that she wasn’t some little lady to be taken for a fool.
And so she kept up the swearing about everything from the cold stream to the worthless claim to low-down varmints who tried to take advantage. Although she had much more useful words than
varmint
in her vocabulary.

“Are you really all right, Miss O’Keefe?”

Great. Just great. In the light of the lanterns she could see concerned faces, and among them the preacher. When she felt a flush of embarrassment creeping up her neck, it made her angrier still. After all, she didn’t even think he was a
real
preacher.

“I’m fine,” she snapped. “What in tarnation are
you
doing up here?” She glanced at the others and recognized more than one face. “I didn’t know you boys were in the habit of holding prayer meetings.” Of course they weren’t. But they all played cards and gambled around their campfires. And if her suspicions about him were correct, Gallagher had probably been winning.

Gallagher knelt beside the intruder.

“It’s just rock salt,” Mattie said. “I didn’t use the pistol—yet.”

Gallagher held the lamp up to the man’s face. “Brady? Brady Sloan? Is that you?” He sounded surprised.

Recognizing the name, Mattie blurted out, “He wanted to buy my claim!” She looked at Gallagher. “Ellis Gates had his offer all written out the same day I got into town.” She kicked Sloan’s boot again. “Decided to just help yourself to what wasn’t for sale?”

Sloan moaned and tried to sit up. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “I just wanted to borrow—”

“—some sugar? Coffee? Tea?” Mattie leaned down and yelled,
“GOLD?”

“No!” Sloan protested, but he was in no condition to explain any more. Hugging himself, he began to moan again.

Gallagher called to the men who were with him. “Let’s get him down to the doctor.” He turned around to face Mattie. “We’ll need a blanket.”

“Check Mr. Sloan’s shanty,” Mattie said, but then something in the way Gallagher looked at her—as if he was disappointed in her—made her grab one of Dillon’s extra blankets from inside and hand it over. Two men she’d never seen before rolled Sloan onto the blanket and, with a man grabbing each corner, hoisted him off the ground and headed down the gulch with two others holding lanterns to light the way.

As soon as they were a few feet away, Mattie sat down abruptly on one of the tree stumps she used as camp seats. She saw Gallagher say something to one of the stretcher-bearers and head back her way. She began to tremble.
Here we go again. Just like always. Near
to fainting as soon as the crisis passes.

“Give me the gun,” Gallagher said gently and held out his hand.

Mattie handed her pistol over. Gallagher ducked into her tent and emerged with another blanket, which he draped around her shoulders before stirring up the fire. Removing the lid to her coffeepot, he peered in, inhaled, and made a face. “Care if I dump this?”

“What? You don’t like my coffee?” She swiped at a tear.

Gallagher made a fresh pot, set it on the fire to heat, and sat down. Mattie sniffed and dabbed at her cheeks with a corner of the blanket. Gallagher was at least polite enough to appear not to notice. All she needed was for him to think she needed some kind of maudlin comforting. She’d really fall apart then. “You don’t have to stay,” she said. “I’m a little shaky, but I’ll be fine.”

“I’m quite certain you will be fine,” he replied. “I just thought I’d hang around and make sure Sloan was acting alone.”

She hadn’t thought about that.
What if Sloan
wasn’t
acting alone?
What if his partner was out there somewhere watching them right this
very minute? What was the partner’s name again? It had been on that
bogus offer Ellis Gates had worked up.
She couldn’t remember. She glanced at Gallagher. He was unarmed. She wished he hadn’t taken her Colt into the tent.

Clutching the blanket around her shoulders, she peered up toward the top of the gulch. “There’s a ledge up there,” she told him. “Finn McKay was up there the other day. Said he found a vein of quartz.”

Gallagher followed her gaze but said nothing.

“He used a rope to lower himself down to it.” Mattie shivered involuntarily. “I hope he pulled it back up after he did whatever it was he was doing.”

“I’m sure he did,” Gallagher said.

They sat quietly while the coffee brewed and Mattie regained most of her composure. When it was ready, Gallagher poured them each a cup. Mattie kept her palms curled around the tin cup after taking her first sip. The warmth felt good. She finally stopped shivering. “Good coffee,” she said.

“Thank you.” Gallagher picked up a stick and poked at the fire. A shower of sparks flew up.

“I-I’m grateful you and your friends came to the rescue.”

“I’m glad someone was around, too.” The edges of his mouth turned up in a little smile. “I guess the word will get out now that Mattie O’Keefe shoots first and asks questions later.”

Feeling defensive, she answered, “I suppose you would have turned the other cheek and all that.”

He took a sip of coffee. “I don’t know what I would have done. But I’m glad you did what you did. There’s already one too many O’Keefes in the cemetery as far as I’m concerned.” He cleared his throat. “Saying words over your brother wasn’t easy. He was a good man.”

“You knew my brother?”

Gallagher nodded. “He caught my attention because he didn’t heckle when I preached.” He smiled. “Although he did ask some of the darndest questions.” He looked across the campfire at Mattie. “Your brother was a hard case when it came to the things of the Lord.”