Wicked Wyoming Nights (48 page)

Cord looked worn down and worried. “I’m glad I was out cold,” he said with the reluctance of a man who made it a habit not to be indebted to anyone. “I would have blushed like a girl to see what you were put to to save my hide.” Eliza tried to demur, but he wouldn’t let her.

“I’ve had your exploits described by nearly every man at the Bar-T, and a few I suspect were safe at home, so you can save yourself the trouble of denying you took an awful risk. I’d give a lot to see you leap on a moving wagon, but I hope you never have any more dealings with dynamite. Do you know how close you came to getting killed?”

“All I could think of was getting rid of the dynamite.” She didn’t add that nothing would have mattered if he had died; he could see that in the way she stared at him and in the way her hands gripped the sheets.

“Apparently you have greater strength than you know. That first dynamite stick landed in a group of Croley’s men. They scattered like a flock of prairie chickens, all the while straining their necks to see what you were going to do next.” Eliza tried to smile, but Cord didn’t miss the signs of fatigue.

“How is your shoulder?” she asked. “It’s not good for you to be up so much.”

“It’s still a mite stiff, but as long as I don’t try to spend the whole day in the saddle, it doesn’t pain me too much. I was forced to use a buckboard for two days.” A ghost of a smile lightened his expression. “I was almost ashamed to be seen in such a contraption, but the worst was when Ginny offered to drive me about.”

Eliza’s grin of response was a weak imitation of her usual smile.

“You need your rest,” Cord said, bringing his visit to an end, “and I need to get back to the Matador before they send out a search party.” He took Eliza’s hands in his. “I don’t want to embarrass you with my gratitude, but it’s the first time anyone ever put my life before theirs, and I won’t forget it.” He kissed Eliza roughly and quickly, leaving her shaken but radiant.

Ira did not show similar restraint. Less than five minutes after he’d closed the door behind him, his upraised voice brought Ella and Lucy down upon him, and their combined fury drove him from the room, Ella giving him the strictest orders not to “set foot on my property again, or “I’ll take a shotgun to you faster than to a coyote in a henhouse.”

“I have a right to see my own niece,” he objected.

“As far as I’m concerned, Eliza doesn’t have any relations,” Ella decreed. “She sure doesn’t need one that acts like a mad dog, biting and snapping at her until she’s worse off than when she arrived here.”

“I want her home where I can watch her.”

“She’s not setting foot out of this house until I say so,” Ella informed him. “It was you and your hateful vengeance that put her here in the first place.”

“I know why you’re so anxious to have her back” said Lucy, pointing an accusing finger. “You want to make her sing.”

“It can’t hurt her to sing a few songs,” Ira complained. “She can sit down if she wants.”

“You’re afraid you won’t get much business without Eliza. I know what people are saying about you, and I heard Mr. Blaine grave you orders not to show your face downstairs. Miss Eliza kept telling you to leave Mr. Cord alone, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“It’s Eliza’s responsibility to sing—” Ira began, but Ella cut him off.

“You don’t deserve a niece like Eliza! She’s too kindhearted to tell you what a miserable little dab you are, but I’m not. You’ve bullied her for the last time. She’s not singing one note until she’s good and ready. And if she takes my advice, she’ll never set foot in that saloon again. Now you get out and don’t come pestering her again, or I won’t let her out of bed for a month.”

“You can’t keep my own niece from me,” Ira announced, firing up.

“See if you can get that sheriff to do something about it. You come around here again, and Eliza’s going to be an orphan.”

Eliza was much improved the next day, but Ella thought it was better to tell Susan Haughton to wait one more day. As it turned out, even though Eliza was anxious for visitors, things weren’t any better. All anyone could talk about was the cold-blooded murder of the new foreman of one of the big ranches.

“And the worst of it is he hadn’t set foot on the ranch. He hadn’t even reached Buffalo,” Susan added for emphasis. “Somebody shot him just for meanness. They shot him in the back too.”

“I don’t know what things are coming to,” Ella lamented, finally forced to abandon her customary sanguine outlook. “I’ve lived through the War Between the States and more Indian wars than I care to remember, but never have I see men kill for sheer devilment. I always said people out here were rough and took a little getting used to, but they were honest and upright. I’m not so sure anymore.”

“People are crazy with fear,” Susan said. “Every day there’s a new rumor. Either it’s an invasion twice as big as the first on the way, or half the county is going to be arrested and hauled off to Cheyenne to stand trial.”

“But that’s no reason to go crazy. The fighting’s over. The Association is defeated.”

“Not yet. Ever since their hired guns got arrested, they’ve been trying to get President Harrison to declare martial law. Sam and I both have talked ourselves blue in the face, but people are still so mad about the invasion we can’t get them to see this kind of lawlessness is playing into the Association’s hands.”

“What’s martial law?” asked Eliza.

“They send in the Army with permission to shoot anybody who resists and hang people without a trial. The sheriff and the courts would be completely powerless. They’ve sent six hundred additional troops to the fort just this week.”

“But that’s worse man the invasion,” Eliza exclaimed.

“You try and tell that to those hotheads, especially after they’ve been in the saloon for a couple of hours.”

“You can be sure I won’t be selling them any more ammunition,” said Ella. “They can shoot each other to pieces if they must, but they won’t do it with my bullets.”

Two days later Cord came again. “I wanted to tell you I would be away for a few days.”

Suddenly Eliza’s heart was beating too rapidly. “Where are you going?” she asked uneasily.

“I’m taking two herds to Montana. My boys have been in the saddle around the clock for over a week. I’ve got to do something before they start acting crazy. We’ve closed up several herds to make them easier to watch, but there’s not enough grass to keep them in one spot for more than a few days.”

“I had no idea it was that bad for you too,” Ella said.

“Some of the boys have been shot at. One got hit in the arm. The other night someone took aim at me.”

Eliza turned white. “Will it never stop?” she exclaimed. “Has everybody gone crazy?”

“Just about. I warned people this was coming, that they ought to be looking for ways to solve their differences instead of creating more, but nobody wanted to listen. Now they got what they wanted, though it’s a lot worse than I expected.”

“It was that foolish invasion,” declared Ella. “I know these people. They’re good folks at heart.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Cord. “Right now there’re enough bad ones out there to make it nearly impossible to protect my herds.” He stood up. “Sam knows where to reach me. I’d rather you stayed here,” he said to Eliza. His eyes suddenly became warm, and Eliza longed to reach out and pull him down to her side.

“She’s not setting foot outside that door until I say so,” Ella informed him, “and Ira Smallwood can cry and moan for his lost customers all the way to Douglas for all I care.”

“As long as there’s a new rumor afoot, there’ll be enough new customers to make up for the loss of any old ones,” Cord said. “You stay here and let Ella take care of you,” he said, bending over to kiss Eliza on the lips. “When I get back, I intend to make taking care of you my permanent job.”

Eliza wanted to cry out, to say anything that would bring him back, but she knew she couldn’t. This was his work, a job he had to do.

Eliza walked along the plank walkway that fronted a row of buildings that included the Sweetwater Saloon. She was almost well, but after being in bed for a week she was as weak as a kitten. It felt a little strange to be up without leaning on a chair, table, or Lucy’s arm every few steps, but she couldn’t stay inside any longer. She probably shouldn’t have gone this far, and if Ella or Lucy had been around they most certainly wouldn’t have allowed her to leave the house alone, but it felt good to be out and breathe in the fresh air, and the walk would not have bothered her at all if it had not been for her notoriety.

Eliza never considered herself a celebrity. Everyone knew her because of her singing and her beauty, but the fact that she was secretly ashamed of one and didn’t put much value in the other did much to help her keep her equilibrium. But nothing in her twenty years had prepared her to be pointed at and followed by a group of untidy urchins and roundly applauded by men who came out of saloons as she passed. She was so rattled she instinctively headed toward the safety of her room in the saloon. By the time she realized what she was doing, she had covered two thirds of the distance, and nothing would have made her retrace her steps to Ella’s house.

“Yoo-hoo, Miss Sage,” Amelia Craig called, virtually catapulting herself out of a shop in Eliza’s wake and leaving her purchases to the clerk who had attended her. “Though I suppose I really should call you Miss Smallwood, Miss Sage being your stage name and young
ladies
preferring to be addressed in a proper manner, at least when they’re not working, not in a saloon, that is.”

“Please call me Miss Smallwood,” Eliza told her, trying to recover her composure after the unexpected barrage.

“It doesn’t really matter what I call you, because you’re such a heroine everybody will know who I’m talking about. You’re just about the most talked-about person in Wyoming. Why, they’ve even heard about you in Cheyenne.”

Eliza blanched.

“And they should,” Amelia declared enthusiastically. “Any young lady who would leap onto a runaway wagon and defend her fiancé from a horrible death with her own body should be talked about. Not that young ladies usually are called upon to leap upon wagons, or consider it a proper thing to do, but it was very brave of you just the same. I don’t know how you did it.
I
never would have had the courage. Why I get gooseflesh every time my Horace mentions traveling as far as his sister’s place, and that’s just ten miles away. But I dare say you consider that no more than a morning’s jaunt, compared to riding across half the county on a mule. I know one has to take what one can find, but I will never understand how you kept your dignity on that horrid animal. And astride! Well, I realize these are terrible times and that heroes—I beg your pardon, I meant to say heroines—rise above every difficulty, not letting any consideration stop them, but me ride a mule! Well, I just couldn’t. You may call me a poor creature, and indeed I know I am, but I think I would faint if I were even forced to touch one. As for throwing myself on a wagon load of dynamite! Well, all I can say is you are an amazingly brave woman. I don’t see how you did it.”

“It really wasn’t so terribly hard.”

“Well, I can see that falling down on some dynamite doesn’t take much skill, but you must admit that you haven’t been in the habit of leaping onto racing wagons every day. You must tell me how you did it.”

“It had just started to move … I wasn’t very far away … I really didn’t stop to think how I did it.”

“I can assure you I wouldn’t know how to do such a thing without a great deal of thought. Your resourcefulness must come from farm rearing. Us city-bred folks are at a serious disadvantage.”

A particularly well-scrubbed urchin pulled at her skirt.

“Henry, you know I’ve told you never to interrupt Mama when she’s talking.”

“Mr. Huggins wants to know if you want the milk fresh, or are you going to wait till it’s clabber?”

“You tell Murty I’ll thank him to give me none of his sass.”

“I must be going” Eliza said feebly. “This is the first time I’ve been up.”

“Shame on me. I forgot you’ve been a great invalid. You run along back to your bed. I’m sure everyone in town will be calling to tell you how proud they are of your brave deed now that they know you’re up and about.”

Certain she would have a relapse if she were accosted by another person, Eliza hurried down the street, entered the saloon by the back stair, and tottered along the hall to her rooms, feeling very much like a cornered rabbit. She opened the door to her parlor and came face to face with her uncle.

Chapter 36

“So you’ve finally decided to come back,” he sneered, looking anything but pleased. “Or did that old battle-ax kick you out?”

Eliza was no longer surprised by her uncle’s cruelty. “I went out for a walk because I was tired of being cooped up all day. Do you know some little boys followed me singing a song that put my whole history into silly verse? Then I ran into that awful Mrs. Craig.”

It’s disgusting the way people have been carrying on, just like you didn’t turn your back on your own flesh and blood.”

Eliza was tired of the old complaint, and didn’t even bother to answer. “I need some more clothes. Mrs. Baylis has finally agreed to let me get out of bed for most of the day, and I’m tired of the same two dresses.”