Dare to Love (67 page)

“Brence Stephens,” he said.

“It's been a long time, Wayne.”

“You! You're the one who's been hiding behind that hood! I should have guessed it.”

“You should have, yes, but then there were dozens of other candidates, dozens of other men you and your kind robbed. It didn't feel so good when you were paid back in kind, did it, Wayne?”

Nick didn't answer. He stared at Brence for a moment, his hard brown eyes filled with hatred, and then, with one quick movement, he reached under the flap of his jacket and whipped out a small pistol. I screamed, but Brence didn't blink an eyelash. For a long, terrible moment the three of us seemed frozen in an incredible tableau, Brence cool and unperturbed, me with hands clasped in horror, Nick standing with his legs spread wide, the pistol leveled at Brence's head. Until smoke began seeping into the room.…

Nick's lips lifted at the corners in a terrible smile that chilled my blood. He cocked the pistol, took careful aim. I screamed again, flinging myself at him, seizing his arm. As the gun fell to the floor and skittered across the carpet, he gave me a brutal shove that sent me reeling backwards. I fell, knocking the side of my head against a chair, and I must have blacked out for several minutes. When I opened my eyes my head was throbbing painfully and the room was rapidly filling with smoke. Through the curling gray swirls I could see the two of them fighting, swaying together in a deadly embrace, arms locked around each other.

They staggered back and forth across the carpet. They reeled, toppled, crashed to the floor. Nick was on top. He wrapped his hands around Brence's throat, fingers tightening mercilessly, that chilling smile on his lips. But Brence reared up, flinging Nick to one side. The smoke grew thicker. I began to cough, taking hold of the chair to pull myself to my feet. There was a deafening shatter as the windowpane burst from the heat and gusts of swirling gray-black smoke poured through the opening.

Nick was on his side, Brence behind him, an arm wrapped around Nick's throat, his legs locked around Nick's. The pistol wasn't more than three feet away. Nick grunted, straining, reaching for the pistol as Brence continued to strangle him. Nick's fingers curled around the pistol. He raised it, and with one mighty thrust rolled over backward, trapping Brence beneath him and breaking the hold. The smoke billowed, thicker now, so thick I could hardly see them thrashing and rolling, the pistol still in Nick's hand as he tried to position the barrel against Brence's chest.

I heard the shot. I held my breath, too terrified to breathe, and I backed against the wall as I saw one of the men rising, the other sprawled at his feet. Dear God, I prayed, dear God, don't let it be Brence. Don't let Brence be the one on the floor. Nick staggered, looking for me through the smoke. He started toward me, took three steps, moving heavily, and then flung his arms out and fell face forward. I screamed, and I was still screaming as Brence climbed to his feet and hurried toward me.

He seized my arm, but I pulled away from him and screamed again. He slapped my face with savage force, and he started toward the door, dragging me behind him. The hall was full of smoke, too, but it wasn't nearly as thick as it had been in the room; a fine gray haze filled the air. My cheek stung painfully and the side of my head throbbed, but I was coming to my senses now.

“The back stairs!” he cried. “They're closer!”

We raced down the hall, Brence holding my hand in a crushing grip. I coughed as swirls of smoke rose up the stairwell. There were no flames. Not yet. There was no carpet on the stairs and our footsteps rang out loudly. As we reached the first landing, the smoke was so thick I could hardly see him. My eyes were burning, I couldn't breathe, and my lungs seemed about to burst. Brence scooped me up into his arms and raced down the last flight of stairs, across the wide hallway, and through the door that led out into the alley behind the hotel.

I was unsteady on my feet as he put me down. The alley was narrow, and the building on the other side of it was already ablaze, the wall facing us a burning mass, the flames leaping voraciously, devouring the wood. Pieces of burning wood fell into the alley, and the whole wall began to tremble, tilting toward us. Brence must have been as terrified as I was, but he gave no indication of it. He hesitated only a moment, then swung me up into his arms again and started running down the alley as blazing lumber tumbled all around us, shooting up fountains of sparks.

A terrible rending, crunching noise followed us and we cleared the alley only seconds before the wall collapsed entirely and filled it with blazing rubble. Brence kept on running for a few moments more, stopping finally when we were clear of the burning building. He set me down. I clung to him still, sobbing, and I felt his chest heaving. He put his arm around me, stroking my hair with his free hand.

“It's all right,” he said. “It's all right, Mary Ellen.”

When I managed to control my sobs, he ceased stroking my hair and dropped his arm from my shoulder. Looking up at him, I saw that his face was grim with unspent anger. There was a bad scrape on his left cheekbone. His eyes were remote. I remembered Barivna. He had rescued me then, too, and he had killed a man, just as he had done upstairs in the sitting room. He had seen me to safety and then abandoned me. Was he going to abandon me again? I couldn't stand that. Better to have perished in the fire than to be abandoned again.

“Brence—”

“There's no time for talk. I must help. They'll need every man they can get to put out this fire.”

“But—”

He took hold of my hand and started around toward the street in front of the hotel. Hundreds of people were rushing about, shouting. Horses reared and whinnied in panic as the fire wagons tried to get through the crowd. Men were spraying the hotel with water from the huge cisterns on the backs of wagons, and a congested river of humanity moved up the hill away from the path of the fire, urged on by the volunteer firemen in their shiny red hats. Plump matrons in evening gowns tottered along beside scrubwomen and Chinese laborers. Men in ragged attire shoved against gentlemen in top hats, and excited children darted about, the whole scene illuminated by the advancing flames.

“Up the hill! Up the hill!” a volunteer shouted. “Hurry! We're going to blast!”

Brence and I stood on the corner, jostled by the crowd as he searched for some way to help. I heard someone call my name, and saw Millie struggling toward me, pushing people out of her way. Her dress was smudged with soot, her hair all atumble. She stumbled forward to clasp me in her arms, hugging me tightly as tears brimmed over her lashes.

“You're all right! You're all right! James and I were on our way to the restaurant when the fire started. I told him we had to come back to find you! Thank God you're all right!”

Bradford was right behind her. He and Brence exchanged looks and he explained that they were going to try to block the advance of the fire by blasting the building in its path. They hoped to contain the fire to the immediate area. Kegs of gunpowder were waiting, but more volunteers were needed to help with the blasting. Brence nodded curtly.

“You women go on to the boarding house,” Bradford ordered. “It'll be safe there. It's blocks away, on top of the hill. You know where it is, Millie.”

“No, you're not going to help them blast! I won't let you—”

“Start moving!”

Millie's cheeks were pale, tears streaming down them, but she managed a meek nod and took hold of my hand. Brence was already heading toward one of the wagons loaded with kegs of powder. Bradford started after him. Millie bit her lower lip, fresh tears brimming over her lashes.

“He'll be killed. I know he will. Blasting's the most dangerous job of all. That's why they can't get anyone to help. Oh, Elena, I don't know what I'll do if anything happens to him.”

“He'll be careful,” I said. “Come on, Millie.”

She brushed the tears from her cheeks, and we joined the stream of people trudging up the hill. One block, two, and it was still as bright as day, the street illuminated by the flickering orange glow. Three blocks, four, climbing steadily, shoes sinking into the mud. The crowd began to thin, people turning off onto side streets, standing in clusters to look back at the inferno. Clouds of smoke drifted our way. The noise in the distance never ceased, loud shouting accompanied by the horrible crackle of flames and the crunch of collapsing roofs.

We walked on for several more blocks and had turned down a side street, when we heard the first explosion, a deafening rumble like a clap of thunder. The ground seemed to shake beneath our feet. Millie stopped walking and gripped my hand fiercely. The rumble was followed by a tremendous crash as the first building toppled.

We moved on. The side street slanted upward, too, and my knees seemed about to give way, bone and muscle straining to the limit. It was six more blocks to the boarding house, a ramshackle white frame structure with a wide verandah. People stood in the shadows of the verandah, talking in hushed voices, watching the distant flames. There was another blast as Millie and I climbed up the steps.

Explosion followed explosion. Neither of us felt any inclination to go inside. We sat down on the steps, huddling close together. From where we now were the fire didn't seem to cover so large an area—not more than six or eight blocks at the most. It burned furiously, a glowing orange patch surrounded by miles of darkness. The sky directly over us was a clear blue-black, sprinkled with stars. Millie squeezed my hand, worried sick about Bradford. I thought about Brence and prayed he wouldn't be hurt. I prayed he would come back for me. We sat on the steps as the hours passed, watching the fire grow dimmer, waiting.

XLVII

Stella stood with hands on hips, watching, an expression of disapproval on her plump, moon-shaped face as I finished drying the dishes and put them away. Two hundred pounds if she was an ounce, wearing a frilly white apron over her pale green work dress, her hair an extremely improbable shade of yellow, done up in sausage curls, her eyes brown and bossy, Stella was a wonder. Although she had been up since the crack of dawn, starting the stoves, heating the water, cooking a hearty breakfast for her boarders and serving it with customary vigor, she looked fresh and full of bustle, outraged to have found me in the kitchen.

“There,” I said, putting away the last plate. “I'm all finished. Is there anything else I can do?”

“You can get out of my kitchen!” she snapped. “The very
idea
of you doin' the dishes! Where's that Agnes? Daydreamin' somewhere, no doubt. I run the best boarding house in San Francisco and that means the best in the state, and it ain't because I put my guests to workin' scrubbin' floors and such! I got help for that, though Lord knows Agnes isn't much.”

“I need to keep busy, Stella, and since you won't let me pay for my room—”

“You think I ain't honored havin' a bloomin' celebrity stayin' here? I should be payin' you. Get on out now, let me fetch a cup of coffee and rest for a minute. I don't wanna catch you dustin' the parlor furniture, either, you hear?”

I smiled. Stella was a saucy, outspoken, lovable tyrant, and during the past four days I had grown very fond of her, a feeling Millie failed to share. Stella nourished a huge affection for Bradford and made no secret of the fact that she'd have married him in a minute if she'd been twenty years younger and a hundred pounds lighter. Yes, ma'am, she'd have bowled him over, and no flighty minx like Millie would have stood a chance. Such remarks hardly endeared her to Bradford's intended.

I hugged Stella's shoulders and, leaving the kitchen, went on upstairs to my room. The boarding house was large and airy and spotlessly clean, anything but sordid, as Millie had described it. Stella had given me a big room in front on the second floor, near James Bradford's. Millie had been consigned to a tiny attic room, which she bitterly resented. She could hardly wait to get away from the place. She and James were going to be married in two days, and they would leave for the ranch immediately afterwards.

I still had no idea what I would do. I had money in banks in New Orleans and New York, but not a penny in San Francisco. James had insisted that he wanted to loan me some, and perhaps I would let him. I had borrowed enough to buy a couple of new dresses, at least. Millie and I had gone back down to Montgomery Street the day after the fire, but everything was gone. Both of us had lost everything we owned. Millie blithely purchased a new wardrobe with her future husband's money, including a yellow silk gown identical to the one she had bought to be married in, but I had limited my purchases to the bare necessities, shoes, undergarments, a new petticoat, two simple cotton frocks, the dusty rose I was wearing and another of navy blue. Cleaned and mended by the Chinese laundry down the block, my burgundy taffeta would do for the wedding on Tuesday.

Perhaps I would allow James to loan me enough money to get me to New Orleans. From there I could journey on to New York and then take a boat to England. I couldn't stay in San Francisco, not with Brence so hear and so obviously never intending to see me again. He knew where I was staying. James said he had given him the address. The two of them had worked together throughout the night of the fire, helping set up powder and fuses. The fire had been contained and finally put out sometime after dawn, so that by ten o'clock that morning James had been able to return. He had trudged wearily up the steps of the boarding house, sandy hair covered with soot, shirt and trousers badly singed.

But there had been no word from Brence since he had left James four days before.

I stepped over to the window and looked out over the city. It was a beautiful morning, the sky a dazzling white only faintly stained with blue, sunlight spilling down in radiant beams. James and Millie had gone to buy provisions for the ranch. They wouldn't be back until late in the afternoon. I wondered how I was going to spend the day. Stella was adamant about my not doing housework, but I knew I couldn't stand to stay shut up in my room.