Where the Deer and the Antelope Play (Code of the West) (12 page)

Lord, somethin’s goin’ on. I can sense it, but I can’t see it . . . or hear it.

He stood to his feet. A sharp pain shot through his ribs. Barefoot, clutching the gun, he stole to the thin wooden door that separated the tack room from the main part of the barn.

A flicker of light filtered into the barn from the less than airtight siding. The dirt floor was cold on Tap’s feet as he scooted to the main barn door. He threw the latch on the door, swung the door open about eight inches, and peered toward the yard.

Standing not more than a foot in front of the door was a man, his face covered with a dark bandanna, a wide-brimmed hat pushed low. Tap raised and cocked the Colt in one action.

The man jerked the bandanna down immediately. “Whoa. Tap, it’s me—Wiley.”

“What?”

“Wiley. It’s me—Wiley,” he shouted.

“Oh .
 . . Wiley. Yeah.” Tap shoved the big barn door open and signaled for Wiley to bring his horse inside.

“Didn’t you hear me call out?”

Tap shuffled over and lit a lamp. Wiley tugged off his gloves and blew warm air into his hands.

“I said,” Wiley began, “why didn’t you . . .? Good grief. What happened to the side of your head?”

“I ran into a rifle barrel. Can’t hear worth beans. Talk to this other ear.”

“Did you get April’s and the girls’ money back?” Wiley ho
llered.

“Yep. How ’bout you? Get them telegrams sent?”

“Yeah. I also got some news about Fightin’ Ed. He’s goin’ to move you out of here. He’s gone to see some of his friends at the Cheyenne Club.”

“Cheyenne? They don’t have anything to say about Col
orado.”

“I hope you’re right. How are the girls?”

“What?”

“Girls! How are the girls?”

“We just pulled in a couple hours ago. We let ’em sleep.”

“One of ’em ain’t sleepin’.”

“What?”

“I rode by there and heard one of ’em cryin’.”

“It must be Rocky.”

“You and Stack take any lead?”

“Bed? Yeah, go on. Stack will take care of Rocky.”

Wiley shrugged and put his horse away. Tap woke Stack from a deep sleep. The groggy piano player tugged on his boots and coat and crunched across the yard to the house.

Several minutes later he returned carrying a pan covered by a checkered napkin in one hand and the little purple bottle in the other.

“How’s she doin’, Stack?”

“Better now. That was one happy girl when she saw this.” He held up the glass bottle. “They had some extra biscuits in the kitchen.”

“Did ya tell ’em about the money?”

“Yep. They’re so excited they said they was pitchin’ us a party tomorrow. Have a biscuit.”

Lying on his back on the floor of a fifteen-foot-square, rough wood room filled with saddles, harnesses, bridles, mecates, hackamores, and halters, Tap ate a biscuit and stared into the darkness.

He thought about crying dance-hall girls.

Bank loans.

Fighting Ed.

Outlaws with grudges.

The Arizona Territorial Prison at Yuma.

The wedding.

And Pepper.

Mostly he thought about Pepper.

6

W
ith her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, Pepper stepped to the porch of the Franklin house and mopped the perspiration from her forehead with a flour sack tea towel. The cold December morning felt refreshing on her pale cheeks and face. She had slept little, spending most of the night caring for tiny Rebecca Marie Franklin.

Everything about her is so beautiful, Lord. The little fi
ngers, the nose, the ears, the little, round mouth. Alert brown eyes looking out at a great, big world. Everything’s new for her. All the joys, all the sorrows . . . Lord, may there not be many sorrows for her.

Pepper no longer brushed away sweat—but tears—as she stood facing the rising sun over the snowcapped mou
ntains to the east.

I’ve got to tell Tap about the miscarriage before the we
dding. No matter what. Every day of my life it ties my stomach in knots. The doctor warned me maybe I couldn’t . . . but I hope it’s not true. Of course, I can still have children. Cute little ones like Rebecca Marie.

Toting her carefully folded wedding dress to the buggy, Pepper pulled the hood up on her cape, shook hands with a grateful Nat Franklin, and drove north toward McCurleys’. The cold morning air colored her cheeks and numbed her chin, but she kept the tall, gray horse at a comfortable trot.

I’ll park in the middle of the yard. Surely Tap will be waiting at the hotel. Then he can go out to the corral or something while I bring the dress into the hotel. He’ll pitch a fit, of course, but “the groom does not get to see the dress, Mr. Tapadera Andrews.” And he’ll give me that hurt little-boy look . . . and I’ll . . . I’ll probably kiss him, and he’ll slip his strong arms around my waist and I’ll . . . and that’s all. He absolutely doesn’t get to see it.

Her mind raced with thoughts of Tap, and the trip passed quickly. She was surprised to find so many rigs parked around the hotel when she arrived right before noon. Robert McCurley, vest unbuttoned and tie hanging crooked, sca
mpered from the barn toward the hotel.

“Pepper, tie that rig off at the barn. I’ll be back out in a mi
nute and put it up. Glad you got back safe. If you’re up to it, Mama could sure use some help. The east pass snowed shut, and most of the traffic up to Cheyenne is coming through here. A man will either starve or die of commotion in this business.”

“Did Tap come in from the ranch?”

“Yep.”

“Where is he, Mr. Mac? Is he in the house or the barn?”

McCurley stopped and squinted his eyes in his wrinkled, leathery face. “He’s gone.”

“What do you mean, he’s gone?”

“Oh, he came down yesterday. But he didn’t stay overnight. There was trouble up at Pingree Hill. April’s place caught fire, and Stack Lowery asked him to come up and help find the culprits who did it.”

“The dance hall burned? Did anyone get hurt? What about April? And Danni Mae?”

“I declare I don’t know if he told me that or not. He and Lowery needed to recover some stolen funds. But he said not to worry. He’d faced this gang down before.”

“What gang?”

“Cain’t tell ya that neither.” McCurley hustled to the porch. “But everyone must be fine, or he surely would have told me. He did say that he’d be gone a few days and then swing down by here to see you. There’s a note fer ya in yer room.” McCurley scooted inside the hotel leaving Pepper sitting in the black buggy.

This isn’t the way we planned it. We left Denver saying we would just sit out here nice and quiet and wait for the wedding.

“Miss Pepper, I’m glad to see you made it back safely.”

A young man in a suit and tie stepped out on the porch. His neatly trimmed sandy hair was parted in the middle.

“Little Bob! I thought you went to Fort Collins.”

“Wouldn’t you know, that pass was snowed shut tighter than a cork stopper on a bottle of champagne.”

Pepper drove the black buggy to the barn. Little Bob took the reins from her gloved left hand and tied off the horse while she retrieved her wedding dress.

“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned, revealing a full set of clean white teeth. “That snowstorm was sort of providential, I’d say.”

“Providential?”

“You see, I think me—an Easterner just graduated from Yale—meeting you out here in the wilds of Colorado might just be preordained by the Almighty.”

Hurrying across the yard full of crusty snow, she stopped to stare at Little Bob. “What does the Lord have to do with you being here?”

“Can’t you feel it in your heart of hearts? It sort of tingles way down in your toes and works its way right up to the top of your head. Know what I mean?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about, Little Bob. Perhaps you have a chill.”

“When I’m around you, Miss Pepper, I feel warm all over.”

She sighed deeply and brushed past him, grasping the wedding dress as he held the door open. She scampered up the polished wooden stairs and into her room with the high ceiling.

Lord, at the dance hall I had to put up with the Little Bobs of the world as long as they paid good money. I’m really, really going to enjoy being a married woman.

For the next several days Pepper helped Mrs. McCurley and her staff cook for the guests. For the most part she succeeded in avoiding Little Bob Gundersen.

Perched on a stool in the kitchen, she sipped a cup of co
ffee and glanced out the blue gingham curtains toward the yard. On a clear winter day, she could see across the shallow snow- and sage--covered valley for at least thirty miles. The hotel sat like an unwalled fort in a vast expanse of unsettled wilderness.

Is this the way it’s going to be? Always waiting for him to r
eturn? Always wondering if he’s in trouble, hurt, or dead? He’s not a lawman. He’s not an outlaw. How does he get mixed up in these things?

There’s got to be som
eplace on the face of this earth where we can just sit and watch the world go by. Mama and Daddy on the porch. A passel of kids scamperin’ about. Please, Lord, let there be children.

“Excuse me, Miss Pepper, I’m certainly delighted to see I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Little Bob, you startled me. Actually, I just finished my coffee. I’m going to my room to rest a bit before supper. Please help yourself to some coffee.”

“It certainly seems like you’re avoiding me.”

“Of course I am.”

“But why?” He glanced down at his slick black leather shoes and rocked back on his heels.

“I’m going to be real honest with you. You are an absolute aggravation. I’m trying to get ready for a wedding to a man I want to spend the rest of my life with, and you’re trailing at my heels like a dog with its tongue lolling out. This is really getting on my nerves, and I want it to stop. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned from ear to scrubbed-clean ear. “I feel the same way.”

“You do?”

“Sure. It’s sort of a tingly feeling in the nerves, isn’t it? Starts down at your toes and then—”

“You didn’t hear a word. What did they teach you at Yale anyway?”

“Dams.”

“What?”

“I graduated in engineering. Dams, aqueducts, canals—that sort of thing. Do you know that one day this whole West will be irrigated farmland?”

“Didn’t they also teach you not to badger ladies?”

“Yes, ma’am. And anytime you find me even mildly ve
xatious, you just say so, and I’ll leave.”

“So leave!”

“Huh?”

Throwing up her hands, she sighed. “Never mind. I really need to head upstairs. Don’t you have somewhere to go? Like maybe home?”

“Oh, no. My parents think a stay in the West will be good for me. Besides, they’re in Europe for Christmas this year. My mother’s from Austria.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yes. In fact, I have a cousin who is probably going to marry the duke’s son."

“Good day, Little Bob.”

"You don’t have to call me Little Bob. My friends in the East call me Robert.”

She plunked her empty coffee cup on the light green wooden counter. Then brushed past him into the dining room.
Why do they come west? They don’t work. They don’t contribute anything. They don’t build. They just watch from the rail. Go home, Little Bob. Go to California. Go build a dam. Go to Austria. Go to Australia, wherever that is.

By taking her meals in the kitchen, bypassing the parlor, and spending most of the day in her room, she avoided not only Little Bob, but most of the other guests at the hotel as well.

After supper on Thursday Bob McCurley burst through the swinging doors into the kitchen, chewing on an unlit cigar.

“Pepper girl, the guests in the parlor are complaining about not getting to visit enough with the yellow-haired beauty. Do you suppose you could break away and acco
mmodate them with some conversation?”

“You mean, Little Bob Gundersen is asking for me?”

“Actually it was some others that mentioned it. There’s a hardware man who just came down from Pingree Hill. He might have some news on April and the others.”

“You got to promise that if Little Bob gets me cornered, you’ll come pull me out.”

“I promise. Thanks, Pepper. I ain’t never known a woman who could visit with so many men at once like you.”

That’s because you’ve never spent much time in the hurdy--gurdys and dance halls.

She brushed her blonde hair back with her fingers and reset the pearl combs. Then she rolled down the sleeves of her beaded yellow dress, buttoned them, and brushed her skirt. With a pattern she had used for years, she smiled and promenaded into the -parlor.