River 0f Death: Cassandra Wilde Adult Western (Half Breed Haven Book 13)

by A. M. Van Dorn

  "Please tell me what is going on?" she pleaded. Behind her, she could hear Carl shifting on his feet. Lord only knew what he was thinking. Five minutes ago, they were at the height of passion, and now he had a hammer through his window and a cadre of strangers swarming into his office apparently ready to take it over.

  Lijuan's index finger jutted out like a sharp blade at Carl, "You get that contraption fired up! We've got to get a message out. It's a matter of life and death!" she spun and faced her sister, and in those almond eyes, Honor Elizabeth saw they were awash with worry.

  “Lannie, what is going on? Catalina?”

  Her pair of sisters looked at each other and Lijuan began to speak telling her of the translated telegram, revealing that the Omegas were planning a deadly attack against their hated enemy the white man, and a whole lot of blood was going to be spilled this day. At last, she arrived at the heart of the matter.

  “I wired Cassie in San Francisco a few days ago to find out when she was coming home from that trial. She sent back her itinerary to give me an idea when she was likely to make it back to Cedar Ledge. That’s where I heard of a place called Sierra Bluffs. That was one of the places that she was going to be catching a stage route during her travels back from California. Honor Elizabeth, her message said that leg of the route was going to be happening today! Right through where those son of a bitch Omegas are laying their trap!”

  Honor stiffened, her eyes going wide as shock spread knowing the women before her would be feeling exactly what she was feeling right now. The urge was to go charging off to help, but it was impossible, the distance too great, leaving them helpless. The only hope was a warning.

  "Carl! Lijuan is truly right! You surely need to engage your telegraph machine this instant and get word to my brother at Fort Bessette. If Cassandra is aboard that stage, she is surely riding into her own valley of death right into the middle of a massacre!"

  CHAPTER 14

  THE HEIDELBERG RUN

  Just shy of the Heidelberg Escarpment

  Arizona Territory

  As the stage jostled along the roughhewn road to Cabot Center, Cassandra Wilde took a moment to raise the pencil made of red cedar to her nose and breathed in the aromatic smell. It undoubtedly was preferable to the obese man sitting next to her that had not likely seen the inside of a tub for several weeks.

  She slowly lowered the pencil until the lead touched the notebook that she was holding in her lap. The page staring up at her seemed almost as if it was mocking her. Determined, she moved the pencil point to the upper left-hand corner and prepared to write the letter to her old employer, the renowned founder and head of the country’s most famous detective agency, Allan Pinkerton.

  Honestly, she had no idea why she was so hesitant to write this letter and make her request. She had little doubt that Allan would say yes to her request … they both had cared for Kate, and he would understand why she was making this request of him. Still, a part of her knew that there was something of an unspoken rift between them.

  It had always been assumed that Cassandra would take Kate’s place as the head of the Pinkerton’s Female Detective Bureau following Kate’s death. However, Cassandra had been surprised when, instead of asking her to take the position in the Chicago headquarters, he had told her he needed her to be the lead agent of the “Lady Pinks,” as they were known, at the newly opened Philadelphia field office.

  On the surface, it had made sense as there was a need, and she was somewhat familiar with Philadelphia having been raised there as a small child and making several visits back there over the years as an adult to visit Whip's remaining family at their ancestral home. Only later did she learn that Pinkerton had decided that her presence would be too painful. He had nicknamed them the "Double W's" for Warne and Wilde, and they had been an outstanding team, Kate the mentor and Cassandra, the apt pupil.

  With Kate gone, it left a hole in his heart, and whether it was the correct thing to do or not, he decided Cassandra would be too much of a reminder, so he had sent her to Philadelphia. Unfortunately, she had not been there very long before she left the Pinkertons when her family needed her most in Arizona, and she had never gone back. Through contact with old friends in the agency, she learned Pinkerton had mistakenly thought more than anything her decision to leave had been hurt feelings for having been sent to the Philadelphia instead of filling Kate's shoes in Chicago.

  In truth, she didn't even know why she had never made an effort to clear that up with Allan. Maybe deep down inside there was a part of her that did indeed resent not being given the slot of her lost friend. Kate, she was sure, would have wanted that for her, and she had certainly earned it through all the cases she and Kate had cracked together. Many times, it was foolish, she thought, that she had never cleared the air between her and Allan. After all, they both missed Kate almost beyond description.

  It was because of Kate that she was now writing. Lately, she had been thinking a lot about her dear friend, and it bothered her that she had no picture of the woman. Allan, however, in his office had a picture hanging of the two of them, taken from a time when they had masqueraded as a pair of Southern belles and brought down a smuggling operation of dangerous corn liquor that had left a string of hapless partakers blinded or dead.

  She had always loved that picture, but she would never ask for it. However, that night at the gallery, when she had discovered this most remarkable artist who the gallery’s director said was named McKenna Riker, the seed of an idea had taken root. Given how talented the woman was, she wanted to commission a portrait of Kate. Immediately, the man had moved to discourage her. At first, Cassandra assumed he was going to try to tell her the price would be prohibitive, but that wouldn't be a problem. All six Wilde children and Whip had equal shares in the profits, so money was no obstacle, and she had told him so. The problem turned out that the woman had some type of job that left her regularly on the roads and trails of the West. She'd pressed him as to what that was, but he said he didn't know. Finally, telling him she would make it worthwhile by pressing into his hand a twenty-dollar national gold banknote she'd picked up in California, destined to one day be one of the rarest bills in the country, he proved helpful. Making the gold-colored twenty vanish into his breast pocket, he had suggested perhaps she could send a photograph for McKenna to work off. Adjourning to his office, he dug up two potential addresses for her to attempt to contact the woman.

  The first was an address McKenna had left on file in case her two landscapes sold, that listed an Abbie Maria Riker, clearly some manner of relative in Santa Barbara. Even more intriguing, was an address for the Department of War in Washington D.C. Instantly, Cassandra surmised this must be her work address, and she burned with curiosity to know just what kind of work the artist did for the government that had her traveling about the West. Cassandra had packed the slip of paper with the addresses away in her travel case, knowing that there was no point in trying to locate McKenna Riker until she was able to secure the photograph from Allan Pinkerton.

  If Allan would loan her the photograph, then she would entrust it with the artist, and once the portrait was done, she would see that it got back to Allan. Perhaps she would take a leave of absence from her work for her uncle, the territorial governor, and deliver it back to Pinkerton personally and show him the portrait she had commissioned from it. This would afford her an opportunity to perhaps at last resolve any misunderstandings or hurt feelings between them.

  Of course, nothing of the sort was going to happen if she didn’t write the letter. Steeling herself to do just that she put the pencil to the paper again and had just finished writing Dear Allan when the stage dropped into a rut, and the lead snapped off, leaving her to groan. Cassandra forged ahead anyway by reaching into her boot and pulling out a small knife she had concealed there, intent on using it to sharpen the pencil. Retrieving the knife, however, had elicited a gasp, and her eyes lifted to look at the two people sitting across from her.

  They wer
e a young couple, mid-twenties if she had to guess. The dapper-looking gentleman screamed "dandy" to her with his refined clothes, hardly suitable for the nature of stagecoach travel. His wife was what Catalina would have described as cute as a button. She had brilliant blue eyes with an upturned nose and blond hair just like Cassandra only several shades brighter. All, of course, was pinned up neatly in a bonnet. Mrs. Millie Endicott, as she had introduced herself, was attired in a smart-looking green dress with ruffles on the bottom. It had been she who had gasped at the sight of the knife.

  "It's the West, ma'am," she said with a smile. "Weapons here could mean the difference between life and death." To emphasize that, she tapped one of the twin pearl-handled Colt .45s she wore at her waist. "The more you have, the better."

  "I see!" she said, putting her hand to her chest. "We are armed as well!" This caught Cassandra's attention. From their long ride in the coach that had started just on the other side of the California border, they had been presented with an abundance of spare time to converse as the stage traveled along. The man was a banker and the Mrs. a socialite. They had recently vacationed in San Francisco, the same city Cassandra was returning from, and were on their way back to Houston. Nothing about the man suggested he had any weapons training.

  "That right? What are you toting?" as soon as this question left her mouth, the man seemed to pass an annoyed look to his wife that she had brought it up. During the journey, she had been the more talkative of the two with the man saying little. He was the private type, and she could respect that. Endicott reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small derringer.

  Cassandra nodded her head, approvingly. It was a good model, the same type as she had used in the past, but it was lacking all the same. As the man put it away, she kept her thoughts to herself. A derringer had come in handy a time or two in her career, but in her opinion what the man carried wouldn't do much good up against road agents or Indians on the warpath. When Millie spoke again, she revealed the gun had a far more different purpose than mounting a defense … a very dark one.

  “Theodore calls it “The Escape,” she said as the formerly buoyant expression Cassandra had become accustomed to vanished off Millie’s face.

  “The Escape?”

  The husband leaned forward now, his brown eyes set into his angular face, fixing on her. “I am well aware of what would happen if my wife were to fall into the hands of a savage. I will not have her undergo such degradation. A single shot to the head will be her escape rather than suffer the horrors of being a prisoner of the redskins.”

  Cassandra remained quiet. There was a truth to the man's fears. There were some Indians whose lethal nature was without question, but there were far more like the tribe her half-brother and his sister Bright Feather belonged to that only wished to live in peace on their ever-diminishing lands. Still, in the end, she concluded, if one were about to fall into the hands of the wrong tribe, "The Escape" might be preferable to what would follow as a captive … especially for a woman.

  She had barely set in sharpening the broken pencil point when the thumping they had all grown accustomed to filled the small cabin of the stagecoach. Only this time it was accompanied by an undisguised moan of disgust bursting past the lips of Theodore Endicott. Cassandra sympathized as she turned her head towards Elliot P. Renaud, regional manager of National Rail, Fence, and Post Company. At least that was what the cards proclaimed that he had passed around to his fellow passengers at the start of their trip. Again, his meaty fist thumped against the wall right next to Cassandra's head, and she cringed to the side.

  “Driver! Driver!”

  There was naked hostility in Endicott’s voice as he gazed over at Renaud. “Again? Really, sir?”

  The man's face reddened, and his jowls shook as he lifted his bowler hat and ran his stubby fingers through his sweat-soaked hair, "Were it just you and I present, sir, I would whip it out and make do by opening one of these doors and going about my business. But there are ladies present, so the point is moot," He said haughtily and rapped once more on the wall separating the passengers from the driver. The third time was the charm as the coach began to slow. Cassandra and the others could be forgiven for their weariness at the multiple stops. It would be some fifteen years in the future when there would come a better understanding of the symptoms of the disease the man was afflicted with and sufferers of it like himself would become known as diabetics.

  On this day, all those in the coach knew was that they seemed to stop nearly every hour so that Renaud could relieve himself. As the man piled out, he waved a hand to the driver and shouted a hearty thank you as he scrambled off behind some brush to take care of business. The driver called after him not to go too far and to watch out for rattlers. Taking advantage of the stop, Cassie scrambled out of the coach as well. She paused long enough to stretch her arms and legs. Stage travel would always take a seat behind being astride her cherished mount Lily, but there was no way she was going to ride the Missouri Trotter all the way to San Francisco.

  Sufficiently limber, she looked to the horizon. Not far ahead and to the left of the road they traveled loomed the towering cliffs of the Heidelberg Escarpment. The travelers would be skirting around its vast circumference, but once they did, they would arrive in Cabot. From there she would rent a horse at the livery and ride up to Fort Bessette where she planned a rendezvous with her brother, Captain Dutch Wilde. Right now, she was more concerned with the present and put her boots to walking as she sauntered up next to the driver's bench and looked up at the man known as Montana.

  They had spoken briefly when she had boarded at the California to Arizona Overland Express stage depot in Sierra Bluffs. Truth be told, she liked what she saw. He was an attractively handsome man. His brown hair neatly framed his broad face, and his light blue eyes twinkled with good humor, which seemingly allowed him to keep calm and not show any agitation at the repeated stops. Before speaking, she lingered a moment more, simply enjoying the sight of his strong chin and angular jawline of a freshly shaven face. When she had introduced herself to him, she had been charmed when he revealed his name.

  “Folks have been calling me Montana for so long, I don’t reckon I would respond to anything but that.” He had laughed with an easy smile.

  “Montana it is then,” She had agreed and thrown in a little bat of her eyelashes. Cassandra had chuckled to herself, thinking that was so Honor Elizabeth. She preferred the direct approach, but she could be good at flirtation when she wanted to be. It was a skill she had developed working side by side with Kate in her Pinkerton days and had served her well when they had gone undercover. However, any flirting with Montana was the real deal.

  Before she had climbed out of the coach, she had paused long enough to loosen the top two buttons of her shirt. Here on this hot and dusty afternoon, Cassandra let her exposed cleavage pick up some of the heavy lifting when it came to catching the attention of the handsome coach driver. As she had slipped the first button free from the buttonhole, she had heard the faint sound of Montana humming. At the moment the second button came undone, she caught a glimpse of Millie raising her eye either disapprovingly or enviously, she wasn't sure which. Endicott, though, had not learned the fine art of furtively stealing a glance, and she had hopped out before Millie caught him, and she had to spend the rest of the journey to Cabot Center in a sea of awkwardness inside the carriage.

  Now, as she stood by the front of the coach, Montana was looking down at her, his eyes did the expected appraisal of taking in the sight of the tops of her breasts, but possessing so much more finesse than banker Endicott, he didn't let his eyes linger. Instead, he looked her dead on in her emerald green orbs.

  "So, I have to ask. Are you up for sainthood? I mean how else are you not hopping mad stopping this stage every hour so that Mister Renaud can paint some desert rocks yellow?"

  The man stopped his humming, and the laugh lines formed on his face as he snickered at her words and just shook his head.


  "Ma'am, I wake up each day and find I'm still drawing a breath. My body doesn't ail me, and my mind is clear. Those are all reasons for a man to be happy. Am I gonna spoil that for myself by being upset over such matters? I reckon not. How would I feel if I was Mister Renaud and had to be suffering whatever this condition is he's got? No, ma'am. Nothing saintly about me, I just figure swapping a little patience for the good things in my life is a fair trade."

  She liked this man before, and now she really liked him. There was something almost infectious about his positive attitude. "Please, call me Cassandra. I like your outlook, Montana. It's a rare one and a breath of fresh air, I might add!"

  He nodded appreciatively and then his eyes swung back to beyond her where Renaud was scampering out from behind a bush. His jacket was draped over his arm, and colossal sweat stains had blossomed under his arms. With a handkerchief, he was mopping his sweaty forehead as he padded his way towards the open door to the coach. Unconsciously, Cassandra wrinkled her nose, genuinely hoping that the man cleaned up before he approached his clients. Evidently, he must, or he would never have made enough sales to become the regional manager that covered much of the Arizona territory.

  She was dreading riding along next to him again, and not just because of him raising being a sweaty mess to an art form. Cassandra simply didn't care for his line of work selling fences. Hers was a ranching family ever since the day they had arrived from Philadelphia to start anew and be free of the past tragedies that seemed to stalk her father and all the women that loved him.