Hell's Belle (26 page)

He couldn't believe
she'd had the nerve to rush over to him like it was old home week. He'd always
known she could tear up on command—she's used that ploy on him half a dozen
times, at least—but in the time she'd been away from Wadsworth, she'd perfected
the art of turning on the tears at will. Now it was almost convincing, her little
wounded act.

Well, maybe it was
fair, after all. He'd humiliated one gal in public, then had another come up
and flat out embarrass the heck out of him. Because not only did Betty Lee turn
on the waterworks, she felt she needed to share their personal story with
everybody within earshot…which had been a whole bunch of other churchgoers.

But the classic
touch was Betty Lee having the temerity to proclaim she'd run off with the
gambler to spare Del's feelings
because she loved him so danged much
. He
hadn't been able to completely maintain his composure. He'd openly snorted in
derision and told her he'd felt anything but adored when he'd had to send a
cowpoke over to her place to find out what was delaying her on their wedding
day and all he got was a damned kiss-off note.

Well, she'd balked
at the last minute…

"Seriously,
Delancy, I'd been up several nights pacing the floor with worry over it!"
She realized she couldn't go through with marriage to him, she said, because
she'd been seeing someone else before and during her time with Del. And this
someone didn't want to end their affair; in fact, he'd sworn to pursue her,
even after marriage. Which would have possible and extremely awkward, since her
secret lover lived on Del's ranch.

He'd been about to
turn his back and tell her he wasn't listening to any more of her ridiculous lies
when the older woman had rushed up, informing him Hilde had taken his wife back
to her house. Suddenly she'd nearly passed out and gone queasy. The older gal
had patted Del's arm, insisting his wife was probably just fine. These things
happened once a man got his wife in the family way….

Del smiled bitterly
now. At least he'd had the minor victory of seeing the shock on Betty Lee's
face. "You're married? A wife…and she's
pregnant
?"

Somehow Betty Lee's
disbelief rankled a lot more than the actual inquiry. What did she think, that
he'd just go on for the rest of his natural born days single and miserable
because he'd lost her? That she still had some stranglehold on his feelings or his
life, even after walking right out of it?

"Yeah. Been
married about half a year now. I need to go."

"Oh yes, of
course. But you…you don't plan to be back this way any time soon?"

He could have laid
her so low right then. Replied with any number of nasty truths. Like no, he
wouldn't be back this way ever again if he could help it. He'd had nothing
against this town until this moment, but knowing she lived in Sacramento soured
his image of the whole place. He and his bride had settled their business here.
There was no other cause to venture this far west again…and five foot, five inches
of good excuse not to.

Instead, he shook
his head and grappled with what he could stand to reply. "Well no, it's
not likely…I—"

And then she'd done
it. Clipped him with an uppercut.

"I just want
you to understand, Del. Maybe I'll never see you again, but I feel you have a
right to know. I might have been strong enough if it had been anyone else. But
I just didn't trust myself to deny him, and I didn't want you hurt that way. I
mean, I know I hurt you, running off like I did. But this would have killed
you, and he knew it. I used to think that in some freakish way, that's just
what he wanted."

Del was about to
tell her none of it mattered when she spat out the worst of it.

"Anyone but
him. But you know how he could always goad others into doing what he wanted.
Always stir up trouble. It's for the best, I guess." She wiped away a tear
and walked off. Again.

Leaving Del to gape
after her with the sudden certainty that she'd been talking about Jordan Zoyer.
His best friend. The man he'd mourned for weeks.

There's being
played for a fool…and then there's being taken for a first-class, absolute
moron.

Barred from an hour
or so naked in bed with Twila, Del figured the only other remedy to ease his
hurt right then would be half a bottle of whiskey chugged down without the
pretense of needing a glass.

He vaguely recalled
that the section of town where the Vogels lived wasn't terribly far from a
business district. He turned the buggy in that direction. Didn't spot any dram
shops or saloons, but he found the next best thing. A barber who was open for
business late in the afternoon and had a handful of customers inside.

In towns lacking
the intrusive Amos Stanislaus as their postmaster, the next best way to glean
information was a local barber shop. Barbers knew men in town and a lot of the unsavory
details of the area. If a new whorehouse opened, barbers would hear of it
within a day or two…a barber might even know the names and specialties of the
whores working there.

So Del figured a
barber would know the best place to go get numb, could even have a vague notion
of where to start looking for Lucius Bell. Del snorted as he set the buggy's
brake lever and tied the reins to the hitching rail. Didn't it just figure that
in a city the size of Sacramento, Del would lose Twila's damned cousin and his
own best horse, while managing to find the one human being he'd hoped never to
run across again? Didn't that just figure?

"Howdy,"
Del offered as he stepped into the barber's establishment. The man paused in
the process of snipping a lock of hair between his fingers. "Wondered
where I'd find the closest watering hole."

The barber jerked
his chin to the left. "Three or four blocks down. Small place. Ugly yellow
front door."

Del hated the
loquacious type. Especially when he had to make himself look like a buffoon by
volunteering information that wouldn't make him seem like the brightest star on
the horizon. "My wife's cousin is in town with us. We're all from
Wadsworth, other side of Reno. Anyway, the cousin is a young fella, and I let
him take my prize palomino. Don't suppose any of you gents have seen a big
palomino in the past day or two?"

"What's he
doing with your best horse?" the man getting his hair cut asked.

"He'd brought
my wife in the buggy from my ranch. Then I rode out after them on my palomino.
We decided to switch, me squiring her around the city in the buggy, and him
using my quarter horse. But he hasn't come back to the home of the friends
we're staying with. I know he had some business for his father. They run a
general store. Just want to make sure the upstart's in one piece."

"General
store, you say?" A grizzled fellow was cheating at checkers with another
man awaiting their turns in the chair. "I'd go by the rail station. If he
had to purchase some goods, that's likely where they'd come, by rail car. Or
maybe he was dealing with someone who'd be at the depot. Someone's like to
remember that horse. Don't see palominos every day."

Del knew that.
Idiots like Lucius were pretty common. Caramel was a rarity. Which, to Del's
way of thinking, said a lot about which being was truly worth locating.

But he'd look for
Lucius Bell anyway. Twila was under the weather and Del's plan for showing her
some fun had been a flop. Running into Betty Lee had been the final corker in
that disaster. He just wanted to find the kid and get everybody headed back
home.

The hell with Betty
Lee and her fickle gambler, with Jordy and whatever might have gone on. It was
over and done with, all of it. Jordy was dead and buried. And Betty hadn't
seemed half so attractive as Del remembered…Or maybe he just hadn't taken a
good look at her without sexual desire clouding his judgment. Today he'd seen a
lush body and nice enough features, but she didn't have the inner sparkle of a
girl like Twila.

Betty Lee had never
kissed him like Twila did, either. In a way that set his blood roaring through
his skull, his pulse pounding, his tongue dissolving…even as he knew it was
being stroked and petted right back. God, but Twila could kiss. Every time he
got to seriously swapping spit with that woman, he wondered how he survived.
Not only was his breath hard to catch, but there were moments when he truly
felt like his flesh had just melted, his bones must have dissolved. The gal
left him in a human puddle.

Del grinned again.
Twila had been embarrassed that she didn't know how to dance. Basically, she
had two left feet. But if she ever understood how well she kissed and did a
couple other things while in a man's arms, she wouldn't give dancing half a
thought. His grin widened as he recalled that he'd been her teacher. He could
teach her how to dance properly, too. Someday.

Clinging to his
imagination's new vision of Twila twirling and spinning, lighting his blood on
fire as she spoke volumes with her golden eyes, Del set out to find the
Sacramento train yard. Maybe it was a long shot, but he'd start asking every
man his ran into if he recalled a big palomino and someone fitting Lucius
Bell's description. Somebody had to have seen the lad. He'd never come to the
Vogel place, the way they'd agreed…

Thoughts of the
Vogel house reminded Del that Twila was inside it, feeling poorly now, because
Del had planted his seed in her belly during the very love sessions where he'd
proudly been her teacher. The matron thought she'd been doing him a big favor,
cluing him in on what to expect in the immediate future, but that wasn't
completely true. Del knew from stories men swapped around the cracker barrel at
Wadsworth's dry goods store that this was only the first in a series of
episodes he and Twila would face together.

She'd get a lot
bigger, more cumbersome on her feet. She'd demand strange combinations of
foods, or become fixated on eating a certain food repeatedly. Or abruptly
decide to paint their bedroom blue, or plant daisies around the water pump.
She'd worry that he didn't find her desirable anymore; he'd worry that he
wouldn't find her any less so. Especially near the end of her time, when
relations were forbidden.

By that time, her
back would ache and he'd rub it. She'd weep for no reason and he'd try to be
patient. His nerves would fray and she'd laugh at him. Then they'd have a new
little life to show for it, and they'd go back to loving and laughing and start
over again.

This was how
families were built.

Family…Del had to
find her irresponsible cousin, who like as not was losing his butt in some
poker game or riding the plump thighs of a local whore. Or maybe young Bell was
indeed driving a hard business bargain. Whatever he was involved in, Del hoped
Twila appreciated how far he was going out of his way to find the whelp.

* * *

Scowling, Frederick
Cookson looked over at his partner of many years and asked himself why he'd put
credence in something as transient and meaningless as a twitch on the side of
Marquardt's nostril.

They'd now devoted
months to traipsing around this blighted area of northern Nevada and
California. A more desolate and unappealing landscape, Frederick could scarcely
imagine. Some said England was harsh, but he'd take foggy moors and the white
cliffs of Dover over this region any time. Everything about the place was sharp
and jagged. Even the pine trees spiked upward like stalagmites. The forest of
the Sierra Nevada was nothing like the forests back home, where fox and hound,
lush green depths, brooks and rippling pools awaited.

And Cookson should
know, since they'd spent a day and a half sitting on a stalled train in the
midst of rock and pines before finally arriving at their destination of
Sacramento. He was unsurprised to discover it was just as dull as any other
city he'd visited so far in the American west. Already he saw naught to
recommend the place, and they hadn't left the vicinity of the train station.

"Ever think
that perhaps we're paying the piper?" he abruptly asked Marquardt.

"No. Because
unlike you, good fellow, I don't waste much mental effort philosophizing on the
meaning of life and that rot. We need to find a hotel and figure out where
young Bell and his lady cousin might be lurking."

Lurking.

That was it,
Cookson saw in a rare moment of total insight. Marquardt loved to think of
their very existence as some grandiose game, a battle of wits played out in
smoking parlors, on train cars, in boudoirs of cheap strumpets, on boardwalks,
and in flophouses. People lurked or plotted.

"Hey, there!
Isn't that fellow down across the tracks there…" Marquardt had suddenly
squinted and now was pointing frantically, all but jabbing the air. "Isn't
that the horse rancher the cousin's shackled herself to? I believe it is!"

Cookson followed the
jabbing fingertip and squinted himself, peering into the distance. Good God,
for once his blathering cohort truly
was
on to something! "You
recognize that carriage next to him? Doesn't it look like the one we seen
parked over by the Bell Emporium that day? The one
she
was
driving…"

"One and the
very same!" his partner hissed. "What do you think they're up to,
this lot? Switching about carriages and horses, all of them convened over
here?"