Texas Lucky (2 page)

In the distance she spied a church steeple, and the idea dawned that she could seek the help of the minister. But first she needed a bath and change of clothes.

Suddenly the sign above the narrow steps next to the saloon caught her eye.

ROOM AND BATH. TWO BITS.

As she walked up the steps, she did not notice the man standing in the shadows of the alley.

Neither was she aware that he had been there from the moment she got off the stage and had seen, and heard, everything.

Reaching the landing at the top of the stairs, she did not see anyone around or in the dimly lit hall beyond. There was a desk with a little silver bell on top, and she picked it up and gave it a shake.

She was about to do it again when the first door on the left opened and a man stepped into the hall. He was not wearing a shirt and, looking her up and down as he scratched his belly, asked almost belligerently, “You want somethin’?”

She felt like saying she would not have come to such a despicable place if she hadn’t. It was all she could do to keep from gagging at the sour smell of whiskey and choking odor of stale smoke.

“My name is Miss Partridge, and I’d like a room where I can change clothes, please.” She was thinking that once she cleaned herself up and found the minister, he would help her find someplace else to stay the night if they could not find Mr. Beckwith.

The man grimaced. “What’d you do—roll in horse shit?”

She raised her chin and glared at him.

“Okay, okay,” he said with a wave. “I’m Lester, the desk clerk, and I’ll fetch some water for the tub, ’cause you’ll want a bath. Whew.” He made another face. “It’s the last door on the right. You can have the room across from it. Cost you two bits.”

She gave him the money. “I hope this includes your being kind enough to bring my trunk up from the street.”

His eyes went wide. “You left it down there? Lordy, let me go get it…if it’s still there.” He took off down the steps in his bare feet.

Tess found her room. It was small, dingy, furnished only with a rusting iron bed, a rickety table, and a three-legged chair, and the window looked down on the alley below. A ragged sheet had been nailed over the window, but one side had pulled loose. She walked over to put it back in place, not wanting anyone to be able to see in.

As she stretched the sheet, she glanced down and saw a man staring up at her. With a frightened shiver, she rehung the sheet over the nail and stepped away from the window.

Lester found her trunk and brought it to her room, and a half hour later had her bath ready. She did not care that the water was barely warm. She told herself there were a lot of things she was going to have to get used to—and not having a hot bath was just one of them.

She had just sat down in the tub when she heard more gunfire from below.

Drawing completely under the water, she promptly surfaced, feeling like a fool for being so scared. Someone had just won a poker hand again, that’s all. Besides, it was going on downstairs, not where she was, so she was safe.

Dear Lord, if she didn’t get hold of herself, Mr. Beckwith was going to think she was a complete ninny.

After drying with a thin, scratchy towel, Tess wrapped herself in her robe and darted across the hall to her room.

She stepped inside and was turning to close the door when a hand clamped over her mouth.

“Don’t scream,” a deep voice said.

He whirled her about to face him.

“I was afraid when you saw me you’d yell and bring the whole town running.”

His smile was coaxing, and despite overwhelming panic, Tess dared hope she was not really in danger.

“Promise not to scream?”

She raked him with doubtful eyes. He had thick ebony hair that touched his collar, and his eyes, intently searching hers, were the color of cinnamon. He was a full head taller, with wide shoulders, and his open denim shirt revealed a muscular chest tapering down to a flat belly.

He was, she determined amid the turmoil churning within, a very attractive man.

“Promise?” he prodded again.

She nodded, and he let her go and said in a rush, “I’m sorry I’m late. I meant to be there when the stage got in so I could meet you, but—”

She gasped. “
You’re
Mr. Beckwith?”

But no, he couldn’t be. The way her father had talked, Saul Beckwith was much older. Besides, the man standing before her was not the sort to have to resort to buying a bride, for heaven’s sake. He probably had his choice of women.

“Yes, and I wish I could’ve got here sooner. They told me this was your room, so I just let myself in, then got worried, like I said, that you’d yell to high heaven when you saw me.”

Flustered to the tips of her toes, Tess remembered she was wearing only her robe. Gathering the collar about her neck, she murmured, “It’s…it’s nice to meet you, and if you’ll wait outside, I’ll hurry and get dressed and then we can make better acquaintance.”

“How about if I just turn my back?” he asked with a hopeful smile.

Something was not right. Tess could feel it. Saul Beckwith was nothing like she had imagined, and he was behaving very strangely. Surely he could understand the propriety of leaving the room. “I really think it would be best if you waited outside.”

“But I—”

He was interrupted by a sudden pounding on the door.

“Ma’am,” an unfamiliar voice called. “You in there?”

“Yes, I—”

His hand clamped over her mouth again. “Don’t say anything about me being in here,” he whispered. “We don’t want talk.”

Now
he
was worried about gossip, she thought, annoyed.

“Miss Partridge? That’s your name, ain’t it? Lester said it was. I’m Worley Branson, the law around here, and you don’t need to be afraid of me.”

“Tell him you’re fine.” He lowered his hand.

She did so, but uneasily, because she was anything
but
fine. In fact, she could not remember ever being so
un
fine.

“Well, could you open the door and talk to me?” Worley Branson implored. “I need to speak with you about a couple of things.”

She looked at the stranger, the man she was to share the rest of her life with, and, grim-faced and tight-lipped, he shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not dressed.”

Worley Branson sighed. “Well, I’ll just have to talk through the door. There’s been a killin’, and the murderer got away. Somebody saw him near the stairs, and I’m checkin’ to see if anybody’s seen him up here.”

A tiny worm of apprehension began to wriggle along her spine, and Tess fought against the ridiculous notion that the man standing behind her could actually be the murderer. He had known her name, known where she was…”

“Miss Partridge?”

“Yes.”

“You seen anybody runnin’ through here?”

It could not be him, and it made sense he would want to protect her virtue by not letting it be known he was in her room when they were not yet married.

“No. No one,” she replied.

“Well,” he said hesitantly, “there’s something else I got to tell you, and I sure wish you’d open the door. It just ain’t somethin’ I want to yell out.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to.”

“It’s about the man you came out here to meet.”

She smiled. No doubt he was going to tell her he had been looking for Saul to let him know she had arrived. But now there was no need. She started to tell him so, but the man behind her suddenly yanked her to him.

The whisper at her ear was hot and fierce. “I’ll explain everything later, but you can’t let him know I’m in here. It wasn’t murder, but I’ll never get a fair trial, and if they catch me, they’re going to hang me. Please help me, lady. You’re my only hope.”

Worley Branson, concerned by her silence, prodded, “Did you hear me, lady?”

“Please…” the man beseeched as he reluctantly let her go.

Tess swallowed hard, then spoke through the door. “Yes, I heard you.”

“Well, I hate to have to tell you like this, but the man you came to meet—Saul Beckwith—got killed a couple of days ago. It was an accident. He was caught in cross fire when a gunfight broke out in the street.”

Tess could not have been jolted harder had lightning struck her then and there.

The stranger sensed what she was about to do and bolted for the window.

But he was not fast enough.

With a scream of terror, Tess yanked open the door.

Chapter Two

Too upset to carry out her plan to seek the preacher, Tess had endured a miserable night. The following day was not much better.

The hotel, she quickly realized, was no more than a brothel. The girls working in the saloon below brought their customers upstairs, and, the walls being paper thin, Tess had heard everything that went on.

Twice during the night, a fight had broken out when someone got tired of waiting his turn for pleasuring and started banging on a door.

Tess had alternated between cringing in a corner of her room with a blanket over her head and restlessly pacing about as she worried what to do now that the world had collapsed around her.

She had very little money. She had dumped the contents of her purse on the bed and determined that she had enough for perhaps two more nights’ lodging, and, if she did not eat much, food to last that many days.

And then what?

Nothing to do, she supposed, but send a wire to Aunt Elmina and ask for the money to return home, and only God above knew how she hated to do that.

Worley Branson said he had buried Saul in the graveyard at the edge of town and that the man had no relatives he knew of. Neither did he have a home where Tess might have taken refuge till she figured out what to do next. Saul was a prospector, said to have a cabin somewhere out in the desert. Worley had no idea where, and Tess wasn’t about to go look for it.

Also needling her was the awful memory of what had happened after she opened the door and began screaming.

Worley had looked past her to see the stranger trying to go out the window. He’d drawn his gun and yelled at him to stop or he’d shoot.

And the stranger, she had been stunned to see, had immediately raised his hands in surrender.

As it turned out, she was not the only one shocked he had not attempted to make a stand. Worley had held him at bay after shouting down the hall to Lester to get help, and, while Lester was running to do so, Worley had taunted, “I thought you were supposed to be quick on the trigger, Hammond, but you ain’t shit.”

The stranger had merely stood there in stony silence, arms over his head, looking at her like he wanted to strangle her.

“This here’s Curt Hammond, little lady,” Worley had told her. “He killed Abe Pugh in cold blood.”

Tess had turned away, withering beneath the scathing, hating eyes.

Others had finally come to take him away, and they were far from gentle. She had winced at the sound of fists striking flesh as they went down the stairs, and she gasped aloud when she heard him fall and tumble to the boardwalk below.

Lester had knocked on her door later to ask if she needed anything, and she had told him no, even though she was weak with hunger. She feared if she ate anything she would be sick because she was so upset.

The night had dragged by, and, at dawn, Tess was wide awake but could not bring herself to go outside.

Every so often there was more gunfire. More shouting and yelling. Horses thundering through town and women screaming as they snatched their children out of the street to safety.

The day passed.

Tess knew she could not continue hiding in her room. She had to have food.

Finally, toward dusk, she tied on her bonnet, eased open the door, and stepped into the dark hall.

Lester was not at his desk.

Good.

She had lost count of the number of times he had knocked on her door wanting to know if she needed anything.

He had even stood there and given her a description of the murder Curt Hammond had committed, even though she did not want to hear it.

Hammond, Lester said, had picked a fight with Abe, then shot him in cold blood.

Tess supposed things like that happened all the time and wished she could close her eyes and open them to find it was all a nightmare, that she was back home, her world neat and orderly as it had been before the war…before her father came home to die after sealing her fate.

She crept on down the dimly lit hallway, hoping she would not encounter some man looking for his evening’s pleasure.

Reaching the boardwalk, she saw that the street was fairly deserted. People were having supper, she supposed, which was what she desperately wanted to do.

She looked around for a café but did not see one.

The church steeple loomed in the distance.

She began walking in that direction. The minister would help her. He was probably married, and his wife would feed her. Maybe they would even invite her to stay in their house until she could figure out what to do next.