Wanton Angel (16 page)

He was saved by that scrawny little lawyer Callahan, who left his own place at the bar and craned his neck to look into his client’s face and say with authority, “Eli, that will be quite enough.”

Eli released his hold on Walt’s coat and thrust him onto the billiard table. Forbes winced, remembering what it would cost to replace the felt that covered it.

“Where is it?” the giant demanded, his gaze shifting to Forbes.

Forbes swallowed. “Where is what?”

Eli advanced a step, looking dangerous. “The house, you idiot. Hutcheson’s house.”

“Two miles due north of the ferry landing,” Earline supplied helpfully. “But you’ll never get across that river in this rain.”

I wouldn’t bet on that,
Forbes thought, careful to keep a straight face.

Thunder cracked in the sky as Eli McKutchen turned and strode toward the door. The lawyer slapped a bill down on the bar and ran after him.

For the Angel’s sake, Forbes hoped some stupid son of a bitch wouldn’t offer the use of a rowboat.

The house was snug against the cold and the rain, and Webb had lit lamps all around. They’d made supper of the leftovers from the picnic and a warm fire was blazing on the living-room hearth.

Rose slept comfortably in a corner, Webb having made her a bed of his coat and the lap robe from the buggy.

Bonnie was miserable. “I’m ruined,” she said to the flames in the fireplace. “Ruined!”

Webb returned from the barn just then, his hair dripping wet, his shirt transparent. He chuckled as he sat down beside Bonnie in front of the fire. “This is ironic,” he said. “The Angel, worrying about her reputation!”

“I do have morals, you know!”

Webb grinned and planted an innocuous kiss on the tip of Bonnie’s nose. “Be honest. It isn’t the talk you’re worried about at all. It’s what you think I expect of you.”

Bonnie blushed. “What exactly do you expect?”

Webb gave a heavy and rather exaggerated sigh. “Nothing you don’t want to give, Bonnie, so calm down.”

Bonnie drew a deep breath. Of course, she knew that Webb would never force her, but she had to worry about something, it seemed. “Suppose it rains for days and days, Webb,” she fretted, gazing into the flames again.

Webb took the newest edition of his paper from the picnic basket and handed it to her. There was just the merest hint of sadness in his voice as he said, “If it does, I’ll build an ark. Read the paper, Bonnie, while I look around for something we can sleep on.”

Bonnie had no intention of sleeping, but she did need something to distract herself. She unfolded the latest issue of the
Northridge News
and tilted the paper toward the fire in order to see the print. Webb’s article about the troubles at the smelter caught her eye immediately, and she read with growing concern. Hem Fenwick had been right when he’d said this piece would squash a few toes.

Knowing Webb as a gentle, caring man, Bonnie was always struck by the blunt manner in which he wrote. The article was a scathing indictment of outsiders who stirred up trouble for their own purposes, and it urged the workers of Northridge to give Eli McKutchen a fighting chance to right the wrongs that had been done them. If he refused to meet their demands for higher wages, and better conditions in which to live and work, then and only then should they strike.

Bonnie was staring thoughtfully into the fire when Webb returned with an armload of work clothes. Of these, he made a makeshift bed on the floor in front of the fireplace.

“I’m afraid this was the best I could do,” he said. “Next time I come out here, I’m bringing food and blankets.”

Bonnie could only think of the article. “Webb, Hem was right. The union people aren’t going to thank you for this piece.”

“I don’t write to please them, Bonnie.”

She drew her knees up and rested her chin on them. “Frankly, I’m surprised that you took Eli’s side the way you did. You’ve always been critical of the way the smelter has been managed, and you’ve waged a one-man campaign against Patch Town.”

Webb sighed and, after one cautious look at Bonnie, removed his sodden shirt. Only then did she notice that he was shivering. “I’m no friend of Eli McKutchen’s, Bonnie—he knew about Patch Town and all the other problems connected with the smelter, and he took his sweet time looking into things.”

“But still you defended him.” Bonnie took up a heavy coat from the pile of work clothes and gently draped it over Webb’s broad shoulders.

“I wasn’t defending McKutchen,” Webb insisted quietly. “I was only trying to avoid more trouble. If he’s willing to make things right, then the town ought to give him that chance. I just hope it isn’t too late.”

Once again Bonnie sat with her chin on her knees. She thought of the men already out on strike, and a shiver ran up her spine. “In a way I blame myself,” she said. “For the conditions in Patch Town, at least.”

Webb was silent, thoughtful.

“No one knew better than I did how it was—how it is—to live there. I should have pressed Eli to make changes.”

“You were young, Bonnie. And how much influence would you have had?”

Bonnie wanted to cry, but she held back. “There was a time when I had a great deal of influence with Eli, Webb. He loved me very much. Until—until—”

Webb’s hand came shyly to cover Bonnie’s. “Until your baby died?”

Bonnie cast a quick look at the sleeping Rose Marie, in an unconscious attempt to reassure herself that this child was indeed safe. “Everything went wrong after that. Eli blamed me, you know.”

Webb nodded and his grip on Bonnie’s hand tightened for a second. “I know.”

In spite of herself, Bonnie trembled at the memory. “I thought it would pass, that it was his grief making him act that way. But things just went from bad to worse and finally everything fell apart. Eli ran away, and so did I.”

Webb glanced at Rose Marie. “There must have been moments when you could reach out to each other.”

Bonnie would have been embarrassed to speak of such intimate matters with any other man and most women, but
this was Webb. Her friend. No matter what she said to him, he always seemed to understand. “Eli moved out of our house the day after the funeral, the very day. I know he took at least one mistress. I—I was desperate to reach him somehow—”

“You don’t need to tell me, Bonnie.”

“I need to tell someone, Webb—I so need to tell someone!”

Webb put one strong arm around her shoulders and held her close. Bonnie sensed that he had braced himself against whatever she might say, but she was unable to keep her peace.

“J-just before Eli left for Cuba, I telephoned him at—at his club. I begged him—oh, Webb, I actually
begged
him—to come home. I thought we could talk—”

Webb waited in silence for Bonnie to go on.

“I th-threw myself at him, Webb. I was so afraid and so desperate—”

“And he made love to you.”

Bonnie shivered and tears sprang to her eyes. “That’s putting it kindly. I’ve never seen Eli like that—he tore my clothes, Webb. It was as th-though he hated me.”

Webb stiffened, and Bonnie could feel the quiet fury coursing through his big frame. “Did he hurt you?”

“Oh, yes. But not in the way you think. The pain wasn’t physical, Webb.” Bonnie ached to remember that afternoon in the sumptuous room she had once shared so happily with her husband. Eli had used her, driven her to one shameful response after another, and then left her. “It was the contempt. Webb, he was so cold. So brutally cold.”

“It’s over now, Bonnie,” Webb pointed out, after a very long time. “I know you were hurt, but that part of your life is behind you.”

Bonnie thought of a night just past, when she had lain with Eli McKutchen. She’d forgotten everything, every hurt, every insult, and responded to him with an abandon that could only be described as wanton. And in the morning she’d awakened to find a fifty-dollar bill on her bedside table. For all of that, Bonnie couldn’t be certain, even now, that if Eli crooked one finger, she wouldn’t go to
him. Her need of him was that consuming, that dangerous.

She sighed.

“It’s over,” Webb said again.

Solid, substantial Webb. How Bonnie hoped and prayed that he was right.

T
HE BACK OF
Eli’s head throbbed, and the thin light flowing in through his bedroom window was an assault on his eyes. He drew the covers up over his face and groaned.

“I don’t remember getting drunk enough to deserve a hangover this bad,” he muttered, the words muffled by several layers of bedding.

Seth’s voice came from somewhere near the foot of the bed. “You didn’t. I clubbed you over the head with a bottle.”

Slowly Eli drew his covers down to the middle of his nose and tried to focus on the man who claimed to be his friend. “What?”

“You were bound and determined to swim the Columbia River,” Seth huffed. “I had to do something.”

Eli grimaced as he touched the back of his head and found a goose egg the size of a croquet ball. “You might have tried reasoning with me, you know,” he complained.

“I might have tried reasoning with a stump, too. Get out of that bed, Eli, and get dressed. We’ve got to meet with the union people again.”

“Talk about reasoning with stumps,” Eli sighed, squinting up at the ceiling until his vision came right. “We tried that yesterday, remember?”

“Yes, and we’ll try again today. We’ll try tomorrow, if we have to, and the day after that and the day after—”

“Talk isn’t going to accomplish anything, Seth. We need action.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Those poor bastards in Patch Town must be up to their knees in river water, after last night’s storm. Get them out of there.”

Seth made a rude harrumph sound. “And put them where, Eli? In your sister’s parlor?”

Eli ignored Seth’s questions, sensible though they were. “Get some lumber and start building those new cabins we talked about. On that stretch of land south of town. I want sewers and washrooms and be sure to leave room for kitchen gardens and the like—”

“Am I to hire help or just make a morning of it all by myself?”

In spite of his goose egg and the niggling knowledge that Bonnie had spent the night with another man, Eli laughed. “Hire help.” He tried to sit up, groaned and fell back to his pillows again. “What did you say you hit me with?”

Seth chuckled and left the room without answering

After a very long time, Eli managed to maneuver his way out of bed. Cleaning up and dressing were interminable processes, and by the time he’d gotten himself downstairs, he was in a foul mood.

Genoa was in the kitchen again, with the shoebox baby, and she smiled at her brother, undaunted by his scowl. “You’ve missed breakfast,” she said.

“I’m not surprised,” grumbled Eli, opening the icebox and peering inside. He found a milk jug there and pulled off its top, drinking directly from the bottle in a calculated effort to annoy his sister.

Just then Eli noticed the small person sitting at the table, huddled inside a blanket. Genoa rolled her eyes as she spoke to it. “You must overlook my brother’s rudeness, Susan,” she said. “He has the manners of a warthog.”

“Damnation!” Eli thundered, slamming the icebox door. First Bonnie had gone off to spend the night with some ink monkey on the other side of a raging river, then Seth had hit him with a bottle, and now his own sister was consigning
him to the social status of a warthog! “Hellfire!” he roared, as an afterthought.

The blanketed figure trembled.

“Now, now, Susan,” Genoa said kindly. “Drink your tea and don’t be afraid of Eli. Despite appearances, he’s really quite harmless.”

“Harmless,” Eli muttered, storming out of the kitchen and back through the house. They’d see how damned
harmless
he was when he got his hands on Bonnie and that lover of hers.

Five minutes later, Eli entered the dining room of the Union Hotel and ordered breakfast. He made sure his table was near a front window, which afforded him a clear view of the street. If anybody approached Bonnie’s store, he would see them.

His head injury having had no discernible effect on his appetite, Eli consumed two plates of fried ham, four eggs and six biscuits by the time a muddy buggy drew to a halt in front of the mercantile. With some help from her sweetheart, Bonnie alighted from the rig. She carried Rose Marie in her arms and smiled wearily, shaking her head at something Hutcheson had said.

Eli tossed a bill onto the table and abandoned his breakfast, striding out into the sunny, rain-washed new day.

“Papa!” Rose Marie crowed, extending both arms and wriggling in her mother’s arms.

Both Bonnie and her swain stiffened. Bonnie tightened her grasp on the child and retreated a step, but Hutcheson turned and faced Eli squarely, and there was no fear in his bearing or in his eyes.

Rose Marie began to squirm and shriek. “Papa!” she screamed, furious.

Bonnie calmly unlocked the front door of the mercantile and disappeared inside.

Hutcheson’s clothes were wrinkled, like Bonnie’s—they’d probably both been caught in the rain—and his hair stuck out all over his head. Despite all this, there was an unwavering air of dignity about him, and Eli liked him for it.

“Maybe we’d better talk,” Eli said.

Interested passersby were pausing in front of the mercantile’s
spotless windows, pretending fascination with the goods displayed there. “Not here,” Webb replied with a long sigh. “Let’s go over to the hotel. I could use a cup of hot coffee.”

Eli felt a muscle in his jawline jump, brought it under firm control. “Whatever you say.”

“If you don’t stop screaming for your papa, young lady,” Bonnie hissed, shaking one finger in Rose Marie’s outraged face, “I’m going to give you the spanking to end all spankings!”

Katie, always the peacemaker, made haste to interest Rose Marie in the oatmeal she’d prepared. “There now, our Rose won’t be needing a spanking, now will she. She’s such a good girl!”

“She’s such a McKutchen!” snapped Bonnie. Her hair was tangled and her clothes were rumpled, and she wanted nothing so much as to take a hot bath and sleep, but she wouldn’t be permitted the luxury because Eli and Webb were probably facing off in the street at that very moment. She had to get to them before yet another disaster could take place.