Only My Love (39 page)

Ethan tossed his hat on the wing chair as he approached the bed. He shrugged out of his coat and threw it aside also. "Michael?" Sitting on the edge of the bed, Ethan reached for one of her hands and took it in his. Her skin was cool. "Michael? It's Ethan. I'm back." He watched her head turn slowly toward him. There was a faint smile and her lids fluttered open. Her eyes were unfocused.

"Ethan," she said softly. She felt him move, leaning closer to hear what she said. "I'm glad. No more drugs."

"No," he said. "No more drugs." He slipped an arm under her shoulders and helped her sit up. She leaned heavily against him. "We have to leave here tonight, Michael. It's time."

"Time," she repeated sleepily.

"Michael. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

How much had Dee given her? Ethan wondered. Surely there'd been no need for Michael to be all but oblivious to her surroundings. "Michael, Dee says that you went somewhere while I was gone. Did you talk to anyone? See anyone?" He watched her struggle to make sense of his questions. Could he trust her answer? "Never mind. It doesn't matter. We're leaving together."

The door to the room banged open. Houston and Jake stood on the threshold, Dee just behind them. The men looked grim. Detra's smile was complacent.

"We need to talk about her," Houston said, jerking his chin toward Michael. "Dee says she's the reason Obie's dead."

Chapter 11

They sat around Dee's dining room table. By some unspoken agreement they took the same chairs they had while planning the robbery. Obie's chair was left in the circle, unoccupied by anyone. It served as a reminder of betrayal and as focus for their anger.

Michael was forced to sit beside Houston and across the table from Ethan.

"This is ridiculous," Ethan said. "Look at her. She can barely sit up. You can't expect that she'll be able to defend herself."

Happy stared out the window at the darkening sky. A storm was moving in. A few inches of snow would cover their tracks. He wondered if it mattered. Had Michael done more than warn someone about the robbery? Had she identified them to the law? "I don't think it matters much if she can defend herself," he said. He glanced at the cuspidor beside his chair and spit. "She got you to speak for her, don't she?"

"I wasn't here," Ethan said. "Neither were you. It seems to me we have Dee's word and nothing else."

"My word should be good enough," Dee said sharply, glancing around the table. "I tell you she was missing for a few hours. I know I locked her in at night but somehow she got out. It was three in the morning when I went to check on her and found her gone. It was nearly six when I caught her sneaking in the back door."

Michael pulled the shawl she was wearing more closely about her shoulders. She stared at her lap, shaking her head slowly. "It's not true," she said quietly. "Not true. I never—"

"Oh, for God's sake," Dee said, throwing up her hands. "How can you deny what—"

Ethan slammed the flat of his hand on the table. Dee's chin came up defiantly but she stopped talking. "Let Michael at least finish," Ethan said. "Let's hear what she has to say."

Michael raised her eyes. She looked at Houston, not Ethan. It was an effort to speak. "Detra's lying. I never left my room. I couldn't. I was too sick. I barely remember anything since—"

"There!" Detra said triumphantly. "You see. She says herself that she barely remembers. Well, I tell you she was gone. I don't know who she spoke to on her little trek from the saloon but you can be certain she spoke to someone. You wouldn't have had a posse meet that train otherwise."

Ethan pushed back his chair. "This is ridiculous. You assured us that your damn powders would keep her bedridden for the length of our trip. Now you're saying that it didn't happen that way."

"It was a problem with the amount," Dee said. "When she came back I increased the dose. It was only this morning, when I anticipated your return, that I could reduce it again. You can see for yourself that she's shaking off the effects. In a few hours it will be as if she'd never taken anything at all."

Ethan found that difficult to believe. Michael's speech was slurred, the cadence uneven. He had forced her to drink three cups of coffee while they waited for Happy and Ben to join them and she still had little command of her posture. Though she denied Dee's accusation, she seemed to not understand the gravity of her position. It worked in Dee's favor. "Michael says it didn't happen," Ethan said.

"Are you sayin' Dee's a liar?" asked Ben.

"I'm saying that something's not right here. Even if Michael was gone for a few hours in the middle of the night, where would she go? What would she say?"

Houston held up his hand, stopping Ethan. "You know damn well she knows too much. She heard our conversation the night we were planning. She had plenty to tell someone."

"Who?" Ethan asked. "Who the hell would listen to her?"

"Ralph Hooper," Dee said. "Why not? He's one of her favorites. Or Billy Saunders. Someone not only listened to her, someone believed her. Can't you see the evidence that's in front of your face, Ethan?"

"There
is
no evidence," Ethan said.

"I heard plenty," Happy said. "It ain't safe to have her around. I said so from the beginnin', didn't I?"

Michael tried to get up. Houston pulled her back and kept his hand on her forearm. "I didn't leave," she said again. "Never left at all."

Silence greeted her words.

Ethan stood and went to the window. He faced the others and pressed his back against the cool panes of glass. His arms were folded in front of him. "I still say there's no evidence," he said finally. "We can't ask Billy or Ralph or anyone else for that matter without giving ourselves away. I think it was Cooper himself who betrayed us, not my wife."

Houston and Dee exchanged glances. There was a slight nod from Houston and Dee rose, left the room, and returned less than a minute later with a half a dozen newspapers under her arm. She gave one to Ethan and dropped the rest on the table.

"Perhaps these back issues of the
Chronicle
will convince you, Ethan," Houston said. "Dee did a little investigating on her own and received these a while ago. I wasn't sure then. I was still willing to give Michael the benefit of the doubt. I can't ignore this."

Ethan unfolded the paper. "What am I supposed to look for?" he asked, knowing the answer. "This issue's dated more than two weeks before the 349 robbery."

"That's right," Houston said. "And I think there's a story in the bottom right corner that's particularly interesting."

Ethan bluffed with impatience. "Just tell me what the hell it's about. I don't want to hear about your mysteries now."

Houston passed out other issues to Ben and Happy and Jake. He pushed one in front of Michael. "Look at the reporter's name, Ethan," he said. "Every issue I have has at least one story by her, one story that she reported from the touring
Chronicle
car."

Jake found one in his copy. "The Plains Truth by Mary M. Dennehy," he read with some difficulty. "Is that what you meant, Houston?"

"Precisely what I meant." Houston looked at Michael. "That's your work, isn't it?"

Michael stared at the article he pointed to in her paper. She wondered what she was supposed to say. "Yes," she said finally. "I wrote that." She retained the presence of mind to look sorrowfully in Ethan's direction. "I'm sorry, Ethan. I couldn't tell you. I wanted to... I was afraid."

Ethan could hardly believe she was trying to save him. His startled expression was real enough. "Michael, I don't think this is—"

She rested her head in her hands. The pain in her eyes was genuine, but it was physical, not emotional. "I should have said something... let you know why I was with the
Chronicle
... I couldn't... I just couldn't. Not after what you did to Drew."

"He wasn't your fiancé," Houston said. It was not a question. He was satisfied that he already knew the truth.

Michael shook her head. "He was a friend. A colleague. Please, I need to lie down. I don't feel well. I think I'm going to be sick." A small choking sound convinced everyone. Dee rushed her out of the dining room and into the apartment's tiny kitchen.

"Well?" Houston asked, leaning back in his chair. "What's to be done?"

"Jesus," Ben said. "A reporter. She's a goddamn reporter."

Happy tossed his paper toward the center of the table, disgusted by the revelation. "How the hell did you figure this out, Houston?"

Ethan wanted to know the same thing. He skimmed the article quickly and discovered the answer. It was the journal that Michael kept that had betrayed her. He remembered what she had said about writing being as individual as a signature. This was her work. Houston had read the notes she kept and recognized it as well. He only listened with half an ear to what Houston was telling the others.

"Dee's really the one you have to thank," Houston said, finishing his explanation. "She ordered the papers from New York. Woman's intuition, I suppose."

A woman scorned, Ethan thought. That's what had prompted Dee's search for information about Michael. Now he was faced with the problem of what to do about it.

Dee returned to the dining room. "She's resting at the kitchen table."

"Jake, keep an eye on her," Houston ordered. Jake left the table and stood guard in the doorway between the two rooms.

"Is that really necessary?" Ethan asked. "She's not going anywhere in her condition."

"That's what we thought before," Happy muttered. "It don't seem like you know your wife very well."

"She lied to me the same as she did all of you," Ethan said.

"Did she?" Houston asked. "I've been wondering about that."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that I've been wondering." Houston refused to say anything more. He looked at Happy. "What do you want to do about her?"

Happy spit. "Only one thing we can do," he said. "Question is when and how."

"It'll be dark soon enough," Ben said to his brother. "And the mines don't tell no tales."

"You're not serious," Ethan said. "You've proven nothing except that she's written a few stories for the
Chronicle.
That doesn't have anything to do with us. There's still only Dee's word that Michael left here at all. No one knows if she talked to anyone. I'm telling you, it's probably Cooper. We're fools if we trust him again. Let me talk to Michael when she's not drugged. I think there's more to this than we know."

"Sounds to me like you're sweet on her," Happy said. "And thinkin' with what's between your legs instead of what's between your ears."

"He's more than sweet on her," Dee said, sitting down on Houston's lap. She looped one arm around his shoulders. "I think Ethan's in love with her. Isn't that right, Ethan? Fallen in love with your wife all over again?"

"Shut up, Dee," Houston said. "Well, Ethan, do you have a problem with what Happy has planned for Michael?"

"It doesn't matter if I do," Ethan said. "When I signed on I agreed to majority rule. It appears I'm out voted." And out numbered, he thought.

"Then you won't mind helping Happy," said Houston. "It would go a long way to show that you're still one of us."

Ethan hesitated, knowing he could not appear eager after stating his opposition to the plan. He pushed away from the window. "I'll help," he said finally. "If
that's
what it takes, I'll help."

* * *

It was better to have no questions than to think of a plan to answer them. To that end Michael's belongings were packed and removed from the saloon when there was no one to witness it. Detra used more sleeping powders to make Michael, if not entirely compliant, then at least less resistant. She knew that all around her plans were being made and carried out and she was powerless to stop any of it.

The saloon was quiet, the street dark, when Ethan carried Michael out. He placed her in the back of the buckboard wagon that Happy brought around. She shared the space with a trunk of her clothes, her journal, pencils, and spectacles. There was no one up in the middle of the night to monitor their progress through town or bear testimony to the fact that Michael was not leaving of her own accord. Some miners might wonder at her leaving without a word to them, but no one would suspect it was anything but her own decision to do so.