Adobe Palace

by Joyce Brandon

  The next month he had returned to the store in his rags, with his usual film of dirt and his friend, Speaking Water, and she’d been back to normal, hanging on to her candy and muttering under her breath, Filthy Indian brats.

  He’d never forgotten the lesson he’d learned from that woman. So when he was old enough to make his own decisions, he washed carefully and dressed well.

  Three days ago he had been on his way from San Francisco to Waco. He’d stopped at the Papago Indian Reservation to visit. Crows Walking had told him that Arden Chandler, the new Indian agent, had issued a summons “requesting the presence of Steve Sheridan, my white son.”

  Something about that message had set all Crows Walking’s alarm bells ringing. He had ordered Steve to leave immediately. Steve had wanted to meet with Chandler, but Crows Walking warned him against it, insisting that Steve would have no defense if the agent meant him harm. An Indian agent had the power of life and death over his charges. At any excuse he could call in the soldiers, some of whom loved an opportunity to kill Indians—or a stray white man if he seemed too closely aligned with them.

  Steve had felt a chill of apprehension knowing Arden Chandler was looking for him. That had never happened to him before. Even now, just thinking about it, his stomach felt heavy, as if he carried a rock there.

  To please Crows Walking, Steve had cut his visit short and ridden away. That’s when he’d come upon Elunami and her dead companions.

  So now it seemed Chandler had two reasons to send the soldiers after him. But he had no intention of playing into their hands or of walking into a trap that might destroy him. Steve considered himself a pragmatist. In this world, he knew, there were winners and losers, and he knew which he’d rather be.

  He admired Indians for their honesty, spirituality, courage, and ability to survive under circumstances that would break a cockroach. He knew few white men he looked up to in the same way. But he was white, and he had no intention of deliberately joining the losers. Money was power. And he wanted power for himself. He was a good builder. People wanted the houses he could build, and they were happy to pay his price. He was not about to jeopardize his future by meeting with Arden Chandler or by tying himself down with Samantha Forrester—or any woman. He’d made that mistake once.

  Caroline Plummer, the daughter of wealthy financier Atchison Plummer, was beautiful and popular and busy. She had a wide, full-lipped mouth, slanted green eyes, and pretty little pink freckles scattered over her cheeks. Steve had fallen in love with her and she with him, apparently. He had intended to marry her. But one day at work, a man had fallen off a scaffold at quitting time and broken his leg. Steve had loaded him into a wagon and taken him to the hospital in the northern part of San Francisco. He’d stayed until the doctor had reported that all was well and the leg would probably mend just fine.

  Then he’d taken the man home to his worried wife and gone home himself. Already late for his appointment with Caroline, he’d changed into his dinner clothes and rushed to her house. But instead of being glad to see him and listening to his explanation, she’d been furious. He endured her angry tirade for a while, then turned and walked out. She followed him outside, yelling something about his making her late to the social event of the season. He’d told his driver to take him home.

  Caroline had screamed and run down the street after him, but he’d never looked back. He’d sat inside with sweat running down his forehead and into his eyes.

  Until that night she had been his ideal woman—half courtesan, half playmate. A week later she’d come to his office and apologized, told him she loved him and wanted him back. He had been kind to her, but he had not called on her again. He’d missed her and been fairly miserable for two months before he left San Francisco, but he hadn’t gone back to her.

  He didn’t know why he was so unforgiving. Other men he knew condoned a lot more. Some even forgave infidelity. But he couldn’t, even when part of him wanted to. He didn’t like knowing that, either, because it implied things were happening in him without his permission.

  Leaving San Francisco hadn’t changed that. At any given moment, he couldn’t decide whether to worry about Chandler setting the soldiers on him, strangers shooting at him from ambush, Ham Russell threatening him, or Samantha Forrester disappearing from his life forever. The last seemed the most urgent and disconcerting, however.

  An image of Samantha’s face filled his mind and interrupted his thoughts. Her skin glowed with the softest, steadiest light. It seemed to gather light and reflect it back with more capacity to confuse the viewer than any face he’d ever seen. The slim, white stem of her lovely neck gleamed with the same soft light. Her light hair added to the illusion. She was a passionate, intense young woman and thoroughly accustomed to getting what she wanted.

  He was still surprised she’d let him kiss her, though. He must have been at least half crazy to do it, but with all the opportunities he’d had today to get himself killed he must have felt he deserved a kiss or two.

  He stood up abruptly. Fantasizing about Samantha would get him nowhere. He glanced at the sagging mattress on the bed across the room. His roommate, a tall, skinny whiskey drummer, had gone out for the evening, saying he’d be back later. Steve knew he should lie down and wrestle himself to sleep, but he didn’t feel tired. He just felt restless.

  At last he left the room and headed for the Red Rock Saloon, which seemed the liveliest. Inside, the smell of unwashed male bodies mingled with the acrid pungencies of beer, tobacco, whiskey, sawdust, and cheap perfume. Men played cards around rickety tables and danced with the girls who worked there. A lone man at a table by the window gave his whole attention to the beefsteak swimming in blood on his plate. One young woman served drinks and flirted with miners and cowboys. Steve chose a chair in the corner beside the swinging doors separating the saloon from the back. A man played the piano.

  Steve ordered a beer, watching the men at the next table play poker. After a while, one of them, a sharp-eyed man in his fifties, with a week’s stubble of gray beard on his face, turned around and looked at Steve pointedly.

  “We’re looking for a little new money for this here game.”

  “I don’t mind making an occasional donation,” Steve replied.

  The man introduced himself as Eagle Thornton and the other three as Bill, Santa Fe, and Artemis. They, too, sported a week’s growth of beard, dirty clothes, and a fragrant aroma.

  After about an hour, Steve had a sizable pile of money in front of him. One of the men dropped out.

  Eagle Thornton pushed a chip into the center of the table. “It was a mistake inviting Sheridan to sit in. He’s about to take all our money.”

  Steve chuckled. “If you haven’t got any more money than this little pile, you aren’t going to miss it.”

  Thornton laughed. “I guess you got a point there.”

  The game broke up at midnight. Steve bought the players a round of drinks, relieved when it looked as if they were going to let him get away without gunplay. Some men took losing money a lot harder than these boys did. The other three wandered out of the Red Rock, but Thornton seemed inclined to talk. Steve still wasn’t sleepy, so he listened.

  A little later, a tall, thin, well-dressed man with shifty black eyes stopped at the bar. He downed a couple of drinks in quick succession and then hunched over the counter, glancing up now and then at the mirror to catch sight of the swinging doors behind him. He seemed to be waiting for someone.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Grover Bush,” Thornton told him. “He’s ramrod at Mrs. Forrester’s spread.”

  “He any good?”

  “Depends on what you want done.” Thornton turned a piercing glance on Steve. “For some things, I guess he’d be handy as molasses to have around.”

  Ham Russell and the men who’d ridden into town with him entered the bar. Engrossed in their conversation, they walked through the room without looking either way and disappeared into the back. A girl followed them
and came out shortly with orders, which she relayed to the bartender. She carried a tray of drinks to the back room and came back smiling and counting money. A moment later Grover Bush walked through the swinging doors into the back.

  Steve had an irresistible urge to see if Bush and Russell were together. He hefted his beer bottle and groaned. “I think I’m overdue to read a catalog,” he said, referring to the paper used in many frontier toilets.

  “You’ll smell it before you see it. Just bear to your left.”

  Steve walked through the swinging doors into the shadowy hallway and glanced back at the room he’d left. No one seemed to pay any attention to him. He eased past a closed door, through which he heard men talking, and stepped into the room next to it, an empty office. He walked quietly over to the wall and pressed his ear against the pine.

  “…Mrs. Forrester…”

  One of the men laughed. “Kind of a shame in a way. A pretty lady comes out West to lose that much money.”

  “Hell, any woman who’d buy a bunch of cows and expect them to just sit there until it was time to pluck money out of their ears don’t deserve to have money.” The voice was Ham Russell’s.

  Steve found a crack wide enough to see through. Six men sat around a poker table, each with a pile of bills in front of him. They were easy with their conversation. Steve picked up other comments that told him they were rustlers living off Forrester beef. Bush and Russell sat side by side, engaging in low-voiced conversation; money exchanged hands. Grover Bush stuffed the money in his pocket, nodded at the men, and walked out.

  A surprising anger swelled in Steve. Samantha Forrester didn’t stand a chance. Her own foreman was taking money from the men rustling her cattle.

  He gave Bush time to get out of sight, eased himself past the private room, and walked back into the noisy barroom. Thornton nodded at him, tossed down a drink, wiped his mouth, and set the glass back on the table.

  “Well, I can see you ain’t taking it all that well. The way I look at it, they’re probably doing her a favor. Without their help it would take her years to go broke. She might as well get it over with while she’s young and beautiful and can make a fresh start.”

  Steve grimaced. He wondered if everyone in the saloon knew what he had just learned. “That’s about the crookedest piece of logic I’ve ever heard.”

  “Stinks, don’t it?” Thornton said, grinning. “Well, I have to admit, you’re right. But since there ain’t a damned thing I can do about it, I guess I’m entitled to my own way of thinking. ’Least I don’t have any trouble sleeping nights.”

  At the hotel, Steve found a crowd of people in the hallway blocking the door to his room.

  “What happened?” he asked, elbowing his way through.

  Daley glanced up and saw him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “This is my room.”

  “Well, I might of known,” he said, gesturing to the twin bed on the left side of the room.

  Steve glanced at the bed and saw that a man still lay on it. Blood splattered the wall in front of the man and covered the back of the man’s head.

  “Dead,” Daley growled. “Looks like an execution. Someone slipped in here and put a gun against the back of his head.” He shook his own head in disbelief. “He was a whiskey drummer with no known enemies as far as anyone knows. Only been in town two days. So, maybe you’d like to explain this.”

  “I don’t know him. We’re sharing a room because we had no choice.”

  Daley and the crowd finally left. Steve was given another room, this time with two men who snored loudly. But it didn’t matter. He didn’t feel sleepy. The thought that someone wanted to kill him badly enough to fire at him in broad daylight and then sneak into his room in the middle of the night, was unsettling. He sat by the window, waiting for the sun to come up. Gradually, however, he relaxed. A knock on his door startled him. One of the men bolted forward, looked around, and then settled back into sleep.

  “Who’s there?” Steve yelled through the door.

  “Samantha Forrester.”

  “Just a minute.” Light streaming in through the window and the noise of traffic in the road downstairs told Steve he had slept, and later than he’d meant to. He rummaged through his satchel, found a bottle of bay rum, and splashed it on his face and chest and under his arms. He waved the bottle at the snoring men, then pulled on his pants, ran his hands through his hair, and walked to the door.

  Samantha gave him a hesitant smile. “Mr. Sheridan…”

  From what he could see of her through the mist she created between his usually keen eyes and his dazzled brain, her skin looked clear and silvery, her eyes the color of turquoise.

  Samantha stopped. Her gaze lowered to his bare chest, lean and hard and covered with wet black hair, then returned to his face. He smelled strongly of bay rum. “Excuse me…I didn’t think you’d still be asleep at this hour.” She particularly hadn’t expected him to come to the door shirtless and with his pants only half buttoned up. His smooth arms gleamed in the morning light, looking amazingly touchable; for a second she forgot what she’d come here to say.

  “Good morning,” he said, watching her intently.

  “I—I just wanted to get my gun back…” Her words trailed off. The look in his eyes caused odd things to happen in her body. “Is your shirt torn?” she asked.

  “I don’t have on a shirt.”

  “I…know that…I was just wondering if it was because it was torn,” she said, flushing.

  In a black riding outfit and black-and-white hat, she looked dressed for traveling. A strand of her hair had escaped from its pins. He reached out to push it back, but the look in her eyes stopped him.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, putting his hand in his pocket, where it wouldn’t get into any more trouble. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead.

  “I…can’t believe I forgot my gun…So much excitement, yesterday…”

  “S’all right,” he said gruffly.

  “And I wanted to thank you again for saving our lives yesterday, both times, and to see if there was any way you might reconsider. I’m willing to pay more than the man in Waco,” she ended breathlessly.

  “I’m…deeply honored, but I already have men on the site, preparing the limestone bricks.” He walked to his cot. From under his pillow he picked up her .32 revolver, a small Hopkins and Allen Ranger, hefted it a moment in his hand, then walked back to the door and presented the handle to her.

  Samantha Forrester slipped the pistol into her pocket and started to turn away. “I don’t suppose you’re going to church this morning, Mr. Sheridan?”

  “No, ma’am. I don’t believe in hell, so I don’t have to go.”

  Samantha’s laughter was so rich and spontaneous, it made him feel good all over. “I’d be willing to see you to your ranch, though.”

  For one moment, Samantha wondered if there was any way she could get rid of Grover Bush without Steve’s finding out he was in town. “Thank you, but my foreman is in town and will escort us. You’re welcome to ride along with us, though.”

  “Wrong direction.” Mention of her foreman made him want to tell her that Bush was stealing from her, but since he would not be around to protect her from Bush, that could be dangerous information for her to have. He didn’t like the idea of her at the mercy of every crooked man in the country, but unless he was willing to stay around himself, he might as well get used to it.

  “There may be half a dozen trains piled up down there by now,” she said, smiling a wan little smile that tugged at his heart.

  “I guess I’ll just have to take my chances. Good-bye, Samantha Forrester.” It was a wrenching experience to watch hope fade from her wide eyes.

  “If you change your mind, just take the Boston House Road northeast. The first valley belongs to the Darts. The second is mine. You can’t miss my house. It’s so out of place the natives renamed a mountain and a road for it.”

  “I’ll do that.”

&nb
sp; Regretfully she turned and left. The sound of her footsteps died away. Steve closed the door and leaned against it. He should have confronted that foreman of hers and showed the man up in front of the town. But that wouldn’t stop the rustlers, who at least were robbing her in an orderly manner and not hurting anybody.

  Again he reminded himself it was none of his business. He’d saved her life—that was enough of a service. She was happy for it. He just needed to let it go now.

  On the sidewalk Samantha executed the plan she’d made during breakfast. She started with the shop next to the hotel and worked her way around the entire quad, buying some trinket in each one, chatting with the reluctant shopkeeper until he or she had remembered who she was and how long they had known each other, and then moving on. By the time she had made the circle, she had her arms full of packages—and people were no longer avoiding her.

  At the hotel she put away her packages and came back down to the lobby to find Grover Bush looking for her.

  “Morning, ma’am,” he said, taking off his hat.

  “Good morning, Mr. Bush.”

  “We’ve had a streak of good luck,” he said, watching her carefully.

  “Well, please tell me about it. I could use some.”

  “An Indian by the name of Silver Fish wants to sell us his herd of sheep.”

  Samantha frowned. “I thought you were opposed to running sheep on our range.”

  “Ordinarily I would be, but this is too good a deal to pass up.”

  “What makes it so good?”

  “The price, and I’ve looked at the sheep. They’re worth a lot more on the market than he’s asking for them.”

  “How much does he want for the herd?” Samantha asked. Bush had hit a sore spot. She had wanted to run sheep and cattle on her ranch from the beginning, but he had objected.