Anita Mills (8 page)

He was ready to strangle her, but he reached for the cup instead. Taking a polite sip, he found the stuff too bitter to drink, even worse than that concoction of Laura Taylor’s.

“It’s not very good,
is it?” she asked, sighing.

“No, it’s all right,” he lied. “You were about to tell me what you knew of Liddy,” he added, pointedly reminding her.

“What is there to tell? She’s just gone.”

“Where?” he managed through gritted teeth.

“They certainly didn’t tell me where they were going.”

“Who is
they,
Mrs. Stephenson?”

“Why, she and that man. One of the Donnellys, I believe—yes, I’m sure it was.”

“Oh.” Somewhat relieved, he sat back. “I expect if I asked around, she’s somewhere here in town, then.”

A thin eyebrow shot up. “I hardly think so, sir,” she said stiffly. “Macon is not that sort of place. We don’t welcome jezebels here,”

“It’s not what you think, ma’am. I knew he was here—I sent him to Jamison’s Landing myself.”

For a long moment, she regarded him as though he were an utter fool. “Then you set the fox in the henhouse, Dr. Hardin. And you needn’t take my word for that, because there are-plenty of others who can tell you what went on out there.” Taking in his thunderstruck expression, she nodded. ‘There’s no pleasant way to say this, but she’s run off with him.”

“What?
I don’t believe you!”

“Shouting won’t alter the truth, I’m afraid.” Feeling genuinely sorry for him, she looked away. “I didn’t want to believe it either, but die morning after she left Sally here, I walked downtown, which wasn’t an easy thing to do on these old legs, believe me. You cannot imagine my shock when I discovered Lydia and young Donnelly been living together as husband and wife for a good month before they left. Leaving like that wasn’t any spur-of-the-moment thing, sir—they’d planned the whole thing.”

“No,” he said hoarsely.

She nodded. “After Cullen died in January, Lydia put everything up for sale with absolutely no regard to the fact that it was Sally’s, not hers. When she couldn’t find anyone with enough hard money to buy the Landing itself, she sold things piecemeal, according to the banker. She made a tidy sum for herself—close to twenty thousand dollars in these hard times—and that wasn’t the whole of it. The conniving little thief found where Cullen had buried his strongbox, and she brought four thousand dollars in gold to the bank two days after his death. When Mr. Davidson said she had to put the money in her mother’s name, she caused quite a scene, insisting Sally was too incompetent to be trusted with it.”

“My God.”

“He refused to let her take it back, or it’d be gone, too. As it is, Sally sits here starving with me, because she can’t touch that four thousand dollars until it goes through probate, and as far as I know, there hasn’t even been an executor appointed. She’s not going to live long enough to see a penny of it, and then it will go to Lydia anyway.”

“Liddy wouldn’t—she couldn’t leave her mother destitute.”

“Oh, you don’t have to believe me, sir—you can ask the banker or Cullen’s lawyer or anyone else, for that matter. With no regard for decency or the law, she cleaned out everything that should have gone to Sally. Then she and Mr. Dormelly packed up what they wanted and left town. I worry about that little boy, sir—anybody as indifferent as Lydia was to the woman who bore her cannot be much of a mother herself.”

He was too numb to respond. It couldn’t be, he told himself. Liddy didn’t even really like Ross. “Handsome enough, but exceedingly shallow,” she’d pronounced him once.

“When they were driving out of town, she had her head on his shoulder, and he had his arm around her, according to those who saw her. The way they were acting, Mrs. Henderson said she thought the man was Lydia’s husband. Now if that isn’t a jezebel, I don’t know what is.”

He had to get out of there before he exploded. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t even breathe. Pushing the coffee cup out of the way, he stumbled to his feet and bolted for the front door. In the front yard, he leaned against a huge oak tree and closed his eyes, waiting for the rage to pass. The woman had to be lying about Liddy. But that didn’t make any sense either.

“Don’t you want to see Sally?” the old woman asked from the porch.

Straightening up, he managed to answer, “Later—not today.”

Once out of Macon, Spence rode hell-for-leather to nowhere in particular, with no regard for anything until his exhausted horse slowed to a walk, then finally stopped, too winded to go any farther. Dropping from the saddle, Spence lay facedown in the steamy grass, cursing Liddy, Ross, and the whole damned world.

The witch had left him. While he’d been away in the hell called war, she’d betrayed him with a man he’d counted a friend, and then she’d left before he could even get home, stealing his son. Jezebel wasn’t a strong enough word for what she was.

He didn’t care who had seduced whom. They’d both betrayed him. And they’d pay for it, he promised himself. No matter how long it took, no matter how hard they tried to hide, he’d track them down, and he’d kill them. And by God, they were going to look down the barrel of his gun and beg his forgiveness before he sent them both to hell.

F
lies buzzed, playing cat and mouse with the rolled newspaper in Laura Taylor’s hand. Drawn by food, they swarmed over the camp, and a closed tent flap was no match for the winged beasts, she realized wearily. By day, they held sway, feasting on everything from bread dough to meat cooking on a spit over fire, drowning themselves indiscriminately in coffee, milk, and gravy. Then at night, the mosquitoes from the Platte River took over, attacking any exposed inch of human skin in an insatiable quest for blood.

Today, the supposedly dry heat was anything but, and within the confines of the tent, the humid air was stifling. Between swats, she had to stop to mop the sweat from her face. Telling herself she had an easier life than Jesse, she uncovered the bucket long enough to fill the dipper and wet a rag with the tepid water. After wiping her face, arms, neck, and the crevice between her breasts, she felt a little better, but as she reached to put the piece of wood back, she realized she was too late. Two flies were already swimming in the bucket.

People who thought hell was a fiery pit deep in the earth hadn’t been to Nebraska in July, she decided as she secured the towel covering the bowl of bread dough. Sighing, she picked up the almost full bucket and carried it outside, where she tossed the flies out with the water. She supposed if she’d been like the men, she’d have just strained out the flies and drunk what was left, saving herself a lot of trouble. Bucket in hand, she headed to the river for water she’d have to strain and boil before she used it.

While Jesse had it hard, too, she couldn’t help resenting how much of himself he was willing to trade to the railroad for that good pay. All William Russell had to do was dangle a little more money in front of him, and Jesse’d volunteer to do anything, work anywhere, even if it meant he had to work six and one-half days a week so far away that he only got back to camp twice a month, and then for just long enough to spend the night and pick up a clean change of clothes before he left again.

He was doing it for her, he said, but she knew better. She hadn’t asked him to, she didn’t want him to, and no matter how much money he made, no dream was worth what he was doing to himself. She’d been alone through years of war, waiting for him to come home, and she was alone again, only this time she was fifteen hundred miles from home, living in a tent smack dab in the middle of a camp of the roughest, dirtiest men she’d ever laid eyes on. It was hard to dream in a place like this.

But perhaps the worst aspect of the situation was that for the first time in her life, she found herself regarded as a liability. Jesse’s foreman had made it more than clear that he preferred hiring bachelors. In his opinion, a man’s having a wife gave him divided loyalties and kept him from giving his all to the railroad. There wasn’t any place for a decent woman here, he’d told Jesse. And when he’d seen her, he’d suggested she ought to go back to North Carolina, which was impossible.

She and Jesse had sold her homeplace for just enough money to get them out there, so they’d have to make the best of things, she told herself resolutely. Her only other choice right now would be to go back to Omaha and stay there until fall, when the Union Pacific would be setting up winter quarters farther west. But she didn’t have anyone in Omaha, either.

The one thing that Mr. Russell had been right about was that there weren’t any decent women out here, or if there were, she hadn’t seen them. But there sure wasn’t any dearth of the other kind, the hard-eyed hussies who plied their unfathomable trade in tents a few hundred yards beyond the camp. Hog ranches, those places were called. After pay envelopes were handed out, the unwashed, unkempt men streamed across the staked rail beds to stand in line, money in hand, for a ten-minute turn with a girl dozens of men had already been with that day. And when they came back, drunk and loud, they’d brag about how such and such a girl wouldn’t be able to sit for a week.

No, she’d just have to get by alone until fall, she told herself. Russell had told Jesse if they got far enough west before they made winter camp, there was an abandoned trapper’s cabin on the railroad right-of-way out beyond Fort McPherson she and Jesse could use until it was time to move on in the spring. Jess didn’t know much about the place, but he said even if it was a shack, he’d make it habitable for her and the baby.

“Well, ain’t you something?” somebody said behind her. “Umm-umm—if you don’t look good enough to eat, honey.”

Whirling, she faced a leering stranger, and his manner frightened her. Running the tip of her tongue over dry lips, she considered her escape while she stayed outwardly calm.

“Whatsamatter? Cat got your tongue?”

“No,” she responded coldly. “I don’t like being startled.”

His gaze dropped lower, taking in the gentle round of her stomach. “Since you already got yourself a bun in the oven, I reckon you know how to show a man a real fine time, don’t you?”

“You made a wrong turn, mister—the hog ranch is on the other side of those tents,” she told him tartly. “I’m told you can get whatever you want for a couple of dollars over there.”

“I got no interest in some tired ole whore, honey. I got myself a real hankerin’ for fresher meat, and I don’t see anybody out here but you,” he said, lunging for her.

Dodging him, she flung the empty bucket at his face and ran back toward camp. He was so close behind her that she could feel his hot, reeking breath, and smell the ripe stench of his sweat-soaked clothes. His dirty hand caught her sleeve, ripping it from the shoulder of her dress as she jerked free. Gulping air, her heart pounding in her ears, she managed a desperate burst of speed.

“Damned bitch—I’m gonna hurt you for this— ain’t nobody ever gonna see that purty face again,” he threatened her.

As her foot gained the road, the heel of her shoe broke, sending her sprawling face first while white-hot pain gripped her ankle. She tried to scramble to her feet, but the ankle wouldn’t hold her. Feigning capitulation, she lay still.

“Yeah, you and me’s gonna have some fun, all right,” he said, bending over her. His hand grasped her damp hair roughly, jerking her down into a shallow ditch, as she tried to claw her way free. He hit her, snapping her head back, then crouched over her, unbuttoning dirty trousers. “Now you buck real good, you hear?” he said as his other hand pushed up her skirt.

A gunshot split the heavy, humid air, and her attacker jumped back, tripping over his sagging pants. “What the hell—? Tommy!”

“Leave her alone! You don’t, and I’m pulling this trigger again! I won’t miss twice neither!” a younger voice shouted. “I mean it, Jake! You back off her or I’ll plug you right there!”

“Hell I will! You damned little bastard—”

While her attacker was distracted, Laura scrambled on all fours for the stranger with the gun, “He was…he was trying to force himself on me,” she managed as he stepped between her and the man he’d called Jake.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” the red-headed kid reassured her. “He ain’t touchin’ you again.” Facing the
glowering
man, he declared, “You’re a no-count son-ofabitch, Jake Eldred, and I aim to see you get what’s comin’ to you. I don’t reckon you’re gonna be hurtin’ Maggie or any other woman like this again.”

“You sniveling, lily-livered little—you ain’t got the guts to shoot again, and you know it. You’re as spineless as that puling sister of yours.”

“Ain’t nobody on earth deserves a beating like that. She lost the baby, but seein’ as it was yours, maybe that part of it was a blessing,” the kid told him. “You ain’t gonna be gettin’ no more babies on her or anybody else, Jake.”

“Go to hell, Tommy. I ain’t afraid of you.” Rising cautiously, Jake measured the distance between them with his eyes.

“Watch out!” Laura screamed as he jumped for the kid’s gun.

Tommy pulled the trigger, and Eldred pitched to the ground again, holding his elbow, as blood soaked his sleeve.

“My arm—you broke my arm! You little bastard, you broke my arm! My elbow’s gone!”

Cocking the hammer, Tommy moved closer. “Let’s see you hit a woman now, Jake,” he gibed. “Let’s see you swing on somebody now. I took care of one thing, and I’m about to take care of another.”

“Don’t kill him—you’ll just ruin your life, too,” Laura argued. “Let the law take care of him.”

“Not much law out here, ma’am,” the kid said, leveling his sights on the wounded man. “But killin’s too good for him, so I’m just gonna fix him.”

Realizing what the boy meant to do, Jake Eldred cringed. “No, Tommy…don’t…don’t do this,

Tom. I didn’t mean to hit Maggie like that, but she riled me—dammit, a man’s got a right to do what he wants to his wife, Tom, and it ain’t like she…No…don’t shoot…No! No!”

As the gun fired, the man on the ground gave an unearthly shriek, then he doubled up, jerking and quivering. When Laura dared to look down, he was babbling incoherently, holding what was left of his bloody crotch.