Wagon Train Sisters (Women of the West) (13 page)

Loud sounds of an argument came from one of the tables where men were playing poker. She stopped and looked. A bearded man in a dirty slouch hat rose from one of the tables, eyes blazing with anger. He reached for the holster hanging from his belt and pulled out a gun.
Josiah Peterson, the man who attacked me.
He aimed his gun at a man across the table. The man leaped up, gun in hand, aimed at Josiah
.
A shot rang out. Josiah fell to the floor, blood spurting from his head.

The whole room erupted into chaos. One man punched his fist into the face of another. Women screamed. Men shouted, shoved, and swung their fists. A dark, foreign-looking man yelling in some unknown language leaped on a table brandishing a knife. Sarah’s breath caught in her lungs.
Must get out of here
. She tried to fight her way to the doors, but before she could, someone’s fist struck her on the forehead and sent her flying against one of the tables. Suddenly she found herself flat on the floor, surrounded by groups of shouting, brawling men who didn’t know she was there and wouldn’t care if they did know. If she stayed there, she’d surely get trampled. She pulled herself to her hands and knees and tried to crawl, but got nowhere. Panic swept through her. She curled into a ball, hands protecting her head, and waited to get shot, trampled, or stabbed.

Two firm hands circled her waist, lifted her up, and placed her on her feet.
Jack
. Amid the jostling crowd, he swooped her into his arms. Holding her close, he shouldered his way through flying fists and falling bodies to the wide-open doors and down the steps. When they reached the wooden sidewalk, he set her down. “Are you all right?”

Between shallow, quick gasps she managed, “I’m not sure.” She didn’t know if she was all right or not, only that she’d never been so frightened in her life.

He stepped back to take a look. “Anything hurt?”

She pressed her hand to her forehead and brought it back.
Blood
. Not a whole lot, but blood, nonetheless. “I got thrown against a table. It hurts a little, but not bad.” A strand of hair hung over her face. She reached for the jeweled comb. It had come loose. The tresses Becky had so carefully piled atop her head hung in a tangle down her back. “I’m a mess.”

He took her arm. Gruffly he said, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Did you see Josiah Peterson?”

“He’s dead.”

He said nothing more as they started walking back to camp. Was he angry? She had no idea what he was thinking. Her best guess was her temper tantrum in the dining room had so disgusted him he could hardly wait to get her home and off his hands. The camp lay in darkness when they arrived, all silent except for an occasional dog bark. They reached her tent. She started to turn in, but his firm grasp of her arm prevented her. “What are you—?”

“Don’t talk.”

They kept on. He was leading her toward the river—toward the isolated area where he’d pitched his tent. When they reached it, he stopped at the entrance. “Go in. I’m going to fix that cut.”

His voice was so commanding she wouldn’t dream of arguing. Inside, a bed, small chest of drawers, and table made up the tent’s furnishings. He took a match from the table and lit the kerosene lamp that hung overhead. “Sit on the bed.” She dutifully sat and watched while he took a piece of cloth and dipped it in a pail of water. He bent to dab the cut on her forehead. “Hurt?”

“A little. Not much.” Her heart pounded, not from the excitement of the brawl but because he was so close she could feel his body heat. So close, yet so very remote. Judging from his unreadable expression, he could be tending the wound of a stranger. He must be very angry.

“It looks all right now. It doesn’t need a bandage. You’ll be fine.” He disposed of the cloth, sat beside her on the bed and turned to face her. “Do you want to leave?”

His question caught her so by surprise she had to gather her thoughts before she asked, “Do you want me to leave?”

“No.” His expression softened. His steady gaze bore into her in silent expectation. Suddenly he shook his head. “I don’t have any right to do this. What was I thinking? It’s just that you’re so… I’ll take you home.”

If she had any sense, she’d leave, get home and to bed. A quiver surged through her veins.
I want him
. Pride be damned. Dignity be damned. Consequences be damned. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears. With a ferocity that astounded her, she yearned for the touch of his hands, the warmth of his flesh. “No, I don’t want to leave.”

With a quick intake of breath, he pulled her roughly, almost violently to him. “Ah, Widow Gregg,” he whispered in her hair with a voice that shook with passion. Next she knew, she was on her back on the bed and he was settling kisses on her forehead, cheek, the hollow at the base of her throat. He groaned beneath his breath when his strong, hard lips took possession of her mouth. She threw her arms around him and pulled his hot, hard body close to hers, reveling in the taste, the scent and feel of him. His mouth never left hers as his hand stroked a slow, increasingly delightful path from her waist to the curve of her breast where it rested, sending a wave of warmth pulsing through her. Breathless, her heart racing, she yearned for more.
You fool
, she told herself before a throbbing began, deep in the center of her being, and she surrendered to the unrelenting demands of her hot, fierce desire.

By the time Sarah got up in the morning, Pa and Hiram had already left for the diggings and Ma and Becky were cleaning up after breakfast. Since Sarah was usually the first one up, she wasn’t surprised when Becky jammed her fist to her waist and declared, “Well, well, our little princess is finally awake.”

Ma greeted her with a smile. “Good morning, how was dinner at the Alhambra last night? Did you have fun?”

Oh, indeed I had fun
. Sarah helped herself to a cup of coffee. “It was a lovely evening.” The less said the better.

Becky peered at her closely. “What’s that bump on your forehead? Did you hurt yourself?”

“I fell. It’s nothing.”

“When did you get home last night? It must have been awfully late.”

Shut up, Becky
.

Ma spoke to her daughter-in-law. “Let’s get these dishes put away, shall we?” She sent Sarah a knowing glance. “I’m sure your sister-in-law could do without all the questions.”

Thank you, Ma
.

As the morning went by, images of her passionate night with Jack swirled in her head. Her knees kept going weak. She had a hard time concentrating on the simplest of tasks. This was ridiculous. She must get him off her mind, but how? On the trail, she was laboring all day just to survive and never had time to daydream, but now they were settled in camp, she didn’t have much to distract her. And it didn’t help that her annoying sister-in-law was always around, always watching every move she made. By noon she had the answer.

* * * *

Mrs. Beatrice Amelia Butler was scrubbing tables when Sarah walked into The Miners’ Heaven Restaurant. “My, stars, it’s Sarah! Do sit down. Did you come for that job?”

“Yes, I did, Mrs. Butler.”

“Call me Beatrice. When can you start?”

“How about today?”

Sarah loved her new job. Dressed in a fresh white apron over one or the other of her two dresses, she and young Li served breakfast and supper to a crowd of famished customers. In between meals, she helped with the cleaning and cooking and usually had time to slip home for an hour or two. The restaurant didn’t provide such luxuries as a menu, so there was no taking of orders. Her job couldn’t have been more simple. In the morning, she carried platters piled high with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancakes to the tables, along with plates of sourdough bread and bowls of canned fruit, usually peaches. At night, she carried platters of hash, stew, fried pork chops, whatever Beatrice Butler chose to prepare in her makeshift kitchen, along with bowls of boiled potatoes, cabbage, or some other vegetable, and more sourdough bread. Dessert depended on Beatrice’s whim, maybe apple pie, plum pudding, or spice cake. For a beverage, the men drank tea or coffee in the morning but at night indulged in mammoth glasses of beer.

Her customers were far from being all rowdy troublemakers. They came from many walks of life: physicians, lawyers, merchants, teachers, farmers, even a priest or two. When news had spread of the amazing discovery of gold at Sutter’s Fort, they all dropped whatever they were doing and rushed to California to make their fortune. At night they came in the restaurant exhausted. Just to reach the gold-bearing streams, they climbed through unfamiliar wilderness, up steep hills, down sheer vertical canyon walls, crossed over huge boulders while pushing aside tangled brush, bushes, and the occasional poison oak or ivy. When they reached their claim, they stood for hours in icy cold water panning for gold or shoveling gravel into the sluice boxes. “Gold is heavier than water so it sinks to the bottom,” a physician from Illinois explained to Sarah. “So you scoop gravel and sand into the pan nearly to the top, fill it with water and swirl the pan with both hands. You keep swirling and swirling while all the water gradually splashes over the side. If you’re lucky, a nugget of gold awaits you at the bottom. If not a nugget, you might find gold dust or flakes.”

Not all miners were professional men with good manners. Beatrice claimed she knew how to handle them, but at the beginning, Sarah feared she wouldn’t be able to cope with the rough, rowdy ones similar to Josiah Peterson and his friends. She needn’t have worried. She was always treated with respect. There were plenty of “please ma’ams,” and “thank you, ma’ams.” When she heard the occasional cuss word, a sharp reprimand was sure to follow. “Shut your mouth. There’s a lady present!”

Li didn’t fare as well. Even the more kindhearted men made fun of his pigtail, funny clothes, and pidgin English.

“Hey, Li, chop, chop! You want come scratchee my backee?”

He never seemed to mind and never lost his poker face, no matter how bad the insults.

* * * *

One evening, after she’d worked at the restaurant a week, Beatrice drew Sarah aside. “You’ve been wonderful. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” She held out her hand. “It’s time I paid you.”

Sarah knew she’d be paid, but they hadn’t discussed it, and she hadn’t given any thought to what she might be earning. She gazed in surprise at the five twenty-dollar gold pieces that lay on the palm of her hand. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Did you think I wasn’t going to pay you?” Beatrice laughed and returned to her kitchen. Sarah sat at one of the tables to contemplate her newly found wealth. She lined up the five gold pieces on the table and gazed at them incredulously. She had earned these herself, these beautiful, gleaming coins, engraved with the profile of Lady Liberty surrounded by a ring of stars. In her whole life, she’d never possessed any money she herself had earned. When she was growing up, her father provided whatever she needed. When she married, she depended upon her husband for support. Stingy Joseph, always so cheap, made her account for every penny. When he died, he left her penniless. The farm he’d inherited went to his younger brother, leaving her no choice but to move back home. Now, for the first time, she had money of her own, not by way of a man’s generosity but what she’d earned herself. Her own money! With loving care, she scooped up the coins and dropped them in her apron pocket. She wasn’t sure how she’d spend them. It didn’t matter.

What did matter? She wasn’t the same person anymore. Lots of things had changed her: that long, God-awful journey, meeting Jack McCoy, losing her sister in that tragic, heartbreaking way. But those five gold coins in her pocket had changed her the most, giving her a new, exhilarating sense of independence she’d never dreamed possible. What she would become, she didn’t know, but one thing was for sure—that naïve, dependent woman who’d left Indiana only months ago had disappeared forever.

That afternoon, Beatrice took advantage of the long break between meals to go shopping. Sarah stayed in the restaurant to finish cleaning the kitchen. When she stepped out back to empty some garbage, she had a strange feeling someone was watching her. She looked toward the river that flowed only yards away. Nothing but tall trees and a few miners standing in the water with their gold pans. A cluster of old whiskey barrels used for the garbage sat a few feet from the building beneath some pine trees. She looked closer. Was that someone hiding? She walked to the barrels and peered behind. Two dark, almond-shaped eyes peered back at her. Dear God, the Chinese girl with the awful scar on her face. The poor creature crouched low, arms wrapped around herself. She trembled all over. Tears stained her cheeks. She looked at Sarah with pleading eyes and whispered, “Please, please, go away.”

Sarah bent closer. “Why are you hiding?”

“Please! He’ll find me. He’ll kill me.”

Beatrice had mentioned that fearful Chinaman who ran the cribs. “Do you mean Au Fung?”

Upon hearing his name, the girl cringed and shook even harder. “
Please.
”

Sarah took a quick glance around. Still no one in sight except the miners in the river. “How long have you been here?”

“Don’t know,” the girl whispered, “since last night.”

“What’s your name?”

“Call me Anming.”

“But you must be hungry, and thirsty, too. Come inside and I’ll—”

“No!” Terror filled her eyes. “I must hide.”

“All right, you stay there, and I’ll bring you something to eat.”

Sarah hurried inside. She’d already thrown away the leftovers from breakfast, but she could scramble some eggs, throw in some bacon, and there was plenty of bread. She would fix the girl a plate and then…

Three Chinamen walked through the wide-open entrance, all dressed in embroidered tunics and wide-legged pants. Long queues hung down their backs. Not a smile among them. They carried no weapons, but the savage glint in their eyes sent a chill down her spine. It was a good thing she didn’t have a plate in her hand, or she surely would have dropped it. She gulped to steady her voice. “We’re closed right now. We won’t open until—”