Heart of Thunder

by Johanna Lindsey

  “How can you know?” Hank demanded. “When you have yet to process the silver?”

  “I have had it analyzed. We have top grade ore here, the best, and so much of it! It’s only a matter of processing it as soon as the smelter gets here. Of course, that will take a little while.”

  “How long? A year—two years?”

  “I cannot say, laddie. I sent to England for the newest and best equipment.”

  Very suddenly, Hank let go of Pat and turned away. The older man sighed in relief. Hank was a much taller man, and stronger, lean yet well muscled. Angry, he could easily kill Pat with his hands.

  “How could you do this to me, Pat? I trusted you. We were amigos.” Hank’s voice was barely audible.

  “We still are,” Pat protested. “See reason, will you? I have made you a rich man.”

  “Riches that I do not see cannot help me now,” Hank growled.

  Pat eyed Hank warily. He had known Hank Chavez for a long time, but he had never seen him like this. A darkly handsome man, usually dressed in dark clothes, Hank had always looked dangerous. At first glance, he appeared to be a gunfighter. But the warmth and amusement in his eyes dispelled the image quickly. The young man could find humor in almost any situation, and his genuine love of life despite the tragedies in his past made him remarkable.

  Pat tried again. “Hank, me boy, can’t you see this from my side? This was my one chance. We had plenty of money, but you know how I am. I would have lived it up for a while and soon had nothing left.”

  “You could have bought a business or a ranch, Pat. You could have settled down.”

  “That’s not for me,” Pat replied, hope rising. At least Hank was listening. “I’m not one for workin’ at anything steady.”

  “You are working here,” Hank pointed out.

  “Work? I’m payin’ others to break their backs splittin’ rock.”

  Hank’s eyes narrowed. “With what are you paying them, Patrick?” he asked softly.

  “Well, there was a little left over. A thousand or so,” Pat admitted reluctantly, sorry he had trapped himself. “I thought I’d save time by gettin’ all the rock ready so we could get right to work once the smelter gets here.”

  “I will take what is left, Pat.”

  “Now, laddie—” Hank started toward him again, and Pat conceded quickly. “All right, all right. I suppose it won’t make any difference.” He saw Hank relax slightly and believed there would be no more trouble. “Tell me, what took you so long getting here? I expected you to be right behind me.”

  Hank tensed. “I was in jail.”

  Pat frowned. “Not…?”

  “No, it had nothing to do with our robberies,” Hank said bitterly. “I ran up a few damages after reading your note and getting drunk.”

  Pat grimaced. “I’m sorry. But you do see why I had to do it that way? I’d won this mine in a card game, and I knew how valuable it was by the way the fellow was actin’ after he lost it. Took it real bad. He had been on his way to south Texas to borrow money from friends for a smelter. I knew I couldn’t buy the smelter on my own, so I borrowed your share, laddie. I had to do it.” Pat hesitated. “What will you do now?”

  “I will get drunk again, and most likely destroy another saloon or two,” Hank said darkly.

  “All is not lost, laddie. You’ve had fair remarkable luck with the cards. You could double, triple your money easily that way.”

  “Or lose it all.”

  “There are other ways.”

  “I am through with stealing!” Hank growled.

  “No, no, I wasn’t going to suggest that. There was a big gold discovery down in New Mexico a few years back. Thousands of men have rushed to that new settlement, Elizabethtown.”

  “You think I should pan for gold?” Hank snapped. “I might as well wait for this mine to produce. Either way will take too long. My lands are there, and I burn for them. For years, I burn. I cannot wait any longer.”

  Pat grew uneasy again. “You always were hotheaded about your land. You never would listen to reason. You should have found out a long time ago just how much you would need to buy back your land. Did you ever consider that you might not have enough?”

  “I had enough—until you stole it.”

  “Now, laddie, you don’t know that for sure. You could have got down there and found out the owner wanted twice what you had, or even more. You just don’t know. Why don’t you find out now?” Pat cried with sudden enthusiasm. “That’s what you can do! Go and find out exactly what you’ll need. Hell, by the time you get back, this mine of ours will be producing and you’ll have whatever you need. You said you don’t want to wait. Well, this way you won’t have to. You’ll be doin’ something now to get your land.”

  “What you suggest is a waste of time,” Hank said brusquely. “Yet, because of you, I have time to waste and nothing better to do. So be it.” Then he smiled, his eyes crinkling in the old familiar way. “But the money you have left, amigo—I will take that.”

  Hank left Denver the following day, riding directly south. He would be crossing most of the Colorado territory and the whole of New Mexico, a large area that was not at all safe for a lone traveler. But Hank was adept at avoiding people, including Indians. He had learned well after his escape from prison, learned how to hide in the mountains or on the plains. His senses, always keen, had been honed sharp after his escape and during his outlaw days.

  Hank had seven hundred miles of unfamiliar terrain to cross just to reach the Mexican border. Even at a grueling pace, it would take him more than a month, but he had already decided not to push himself. Not this time. There was no hurry, thanks to Pat. He was furious over the new delay, yet he could do nothing to hurry matters along except steal again—and Hank would not do that.

  Damn Pat and damn his silver mine!

  For the next few days, Hank brooded on his luckless life. By the fourth day, his mood was so dark that he became careless. He was riding the base of the Rocky mountain range, pushing his horse cruelly, trying to ride off his anger, when suddenly the horse floundered in a hole. Hank was thrown several feet. He twisted his ankle, but, worse, the horse had broken his foreleg and could go no farther. He had to be shot.

  Hank found himself without a horse, filled with remorse over the accident, and stranded a long way between towns.

  Chapter 5

  IT was stuffy in the stagecoach. Two of the passengers, a woman and her young son, had left the coach in Castle Rock when the son got sick. No one had taken their places, so there were only four passengers in the coach. But there would be many more small towns and many stops before Elizabethtown, so the stage would undoubtedly fill up again.

  Even with the roomier arrangement, the coach was still warm and stuffy. Mr. Patch, riding with Samantha and the Allstons, insisted on keeping the window shades drawn shut because it was an old coach and the windows were all broken. Patch had said he had a condition aggravated by dust. The man shouldn’t be traveling in the Southwest if he wants to avoid dust, Samantha thought to herself in annoyance.

  She wasn’t really annoyed with Mr. Patch, though, not even when they were forced to light a smoky old lantern for light. No, it was Adrien who had her miffed. It was always Adrien. Sometimes she wondered how she could ever have fallen in love with such a man. After all this time, all the traveling together, he still remained distant. Why, he wasn’t even talking to her just then.

  Of all the childish ways for a man to act! It was something she might do in a sulk, but a man of thirty? And all because he had been reminded of Tom Peesley.

  She could thank Mr. Ruger for that. Hearing that she was leaving Denver, he had come to the stage office just before the coach departed and had had the gall to ask that she not leave until he was sure no crime had been committed. He couldn’t insist, however, and they both knew it. Tom Peesley had not made a complaint against her, and Samantha knew he never would. He didn’t dare.

  She appeased Floyd Ruger by telling him whe
re he might find her if necessary. But there had been no appeasing Adrien.

  She just didn’t understand Adrien. She couldn’t even put his behavior down to the fact that he was an Easterner, for other Easterners weren’t so…so childish. She had complained to Jeannette about him, but the petite blonde had sympathized with her brother.

  “He is sensitive, chérie,” Jeannette tried to explain. “He just cannot abide violence.”

  “But this is a violent land he has chosen to come to,” Samantha pointed out.

  “Oui, and he will get used to it in time. But it will take time.”

  How long would it take for him to get over Tom Peesley? Samantha wondered. She was coming to the conclusion that she would have to do something drastic. She considered making Adrien jealous. After all, she had rebuffed all other men since meeting Adrien. He really had had no competition. Perhaps he needed a good shaking up. But Mr. Patch, with his nearly bald pate and heavy paunch, was the only man available just then, so she had to dismiss the idea for the time being. The trouble was that when they reached Elizabethtown, Adrien would be busy.

  What was she going to do? She wouldn’t give up on Adrien. She had decided that he was the man she wanted, and she always got what she wanted. She dreamed about him, imagining him holding her, kissing her, making love to her in the way the girls at school had described. Yes, Adrien would be her first man.

  She had never even been held by a man, not tenderly, for she didn’t count Tom Peesley and his bruising embrace. But Peesley was the first man ever to kiss her with passion. She prayed that such brutal kissing was not typical, and that the kiss of Ramón Mateo Nuñez de Baroja, from the ranch nearest theirs, was also not typical. Ramón’s kiss had been a brotherly peck, given to her before she left for school.

  There had to be an in-between kind of kiss, something that would stir her, make her faint, as she had read about in the romantic novels that were smuggled into school. That was the kind of kiss Samantha dreamed about, the kind she knew Adrien would give her—if he ever got around to it. There had to be something she could do, some way to give him a little push in her direction.

  They had been bouncing along in the coach for five days, a miserable way to travel. The train ride from Pennsylvania to Cheyenne had not been so bad, but after her experience on the stage to Denver, Samantha had almost considered buying a horse and riding along beside the coach. But then she wouldn’t be near Adrien, so she had rejected that idea.

  Her father had been appalled to learn she was coming home across the country instead of traveling by ship, as she had gone. She had known he would be furious, so she had waited to telegraph him until they left Pennsylvania. His reply caught up with her a week later, telling her how furious he was. He would send an escort to meet her as soon as she let him know that she had reached Cheyenne. But she didn’t wire him again. She was giving herself more time with Adrien.

  Her father had cautioned her not to use her full name as she neared home and had telegraphed her other fatherly advice, or, more specifically, orders. Hamilton Kingsley worried about his daughter, but she didn’t begrudge him his protective attitude, not anymore. There had been too many years when he never scolded because she was so new to him. He couldn’t deny her anything. After all, she hadn’t even met him until she was nine years old. It had taken so long for him to get her away from her grandparents in England. And he never did get her brother, Sheldon.

  Her grandparents had been so strict that Samantha hadn’t known what a normal childhood was like. From the time she could walk and talk, she had been expected to act like an adult, but without the privileges of an adult. She hadn’t known what it was like to play, to run, to laugh. All of those things had been strictly forbidden by her grandmother, and, if she was caught acting in an unladylike manner, punishments were swift.

  Her grandfather, Sir John Blackstone, hadn’t been so bad. It was Henrietta who had been a terror. Henrietta Blackstone had hated the American Hamilton Kingsley for marrying her only daughter and had contrived to separate Samantha’s parents after the children were born. Ellen Kingsley had come home to the Blackstone country estate with her two children and had taken her own life a month later. Samantha could never blame her mother for killing herself, for she knew what it was like living with Henrietta. And she never once had doubted that Henrietta’s harping was what had driven her mother to suicide.

  When her father threatened to take the Blackstones to court, since they wouldn’t even let him see his children, Sir John had talked his wife into letting them go rather than face scandal. Samantha had jumped at the chance to leave Blackstone Manor, but Sheldon had refused to come. Henrietta’s influence over him was strong, and Hamilton had had to settle for only one of his children.

  Samantha had been so afraid, afraid that her father would expect the same things Henrietta had expected. When he gave no sign of doing so, Samantha had slowly started doing all the things she had never been allowed to do, balking at anything that had to do with being a lady. She had tested her father in their first years together, taking advantage of his love and his joy in finally having her with him.

  She felt terrible about that now, even going so far as to follow some of his directions. She used only half her name once they began traveling into the area where people knew of Hamilton Kingsley’s wealth. She would not make it easy for someone to get a lot of money by kidnapping Kingsley’s only daughter. Kidnappings were common, and the kidnappers were hardly ever caught. So she would have a large escort to take her the rest of the way home, even though that would leave the ranch short of men.

  Samantha sighed and looked across the coach at Adrien sitting next to Mr. Patch. She no longer balked at being a lady. In fact, she was trying her damnedest to remember everything her grandmother once had forced her to learn. Adrien wouldn’t take anyone for a wife except a lady. She would be that lady. She would be Adrien’s wife.

  Her long lashes were lowered so that he couldn’t tell she was watching him. Samantha unfastened the top button of her white silk blouse. The mulberry-blue jacket that matched her skirt was on the seat beside her because the coach was so warm. She could use that warmth as an excuse to undo another button, then another. The ruffles up the front of her blouse fell slowly to the sides, baring her throat after the fourth button had been undone.

  Adrien did not look her way. She tapped her foot on the floor in vexation and unfastened two more buttons. She felt cooler, but she fanned herself briskly anyway, to see if that would draw Adrien’s attention. It didn’t. She got Mr. Patch’s full attention, however, and bristled silently. She wanted to scream. What would it take?

  The coach slowed suddenly, and Adrien opened the shade nearest him. Mr. Patch started coughing.

  “What is it, Adrien?” Jeannette asked.

  “It appears we are taking on a passenger.”

  “Have we reached a town?”

  “No.”

  Adrien watched as the coach door opened and a tall man climbed inside. Adrien moved over to make room, and the stranger took the seat next to him. He tipped his wide-brimmed black hat to the ladies, but didn’t remove it. Samantha nodded briefly but moved her eyes away from him quickly. A saddle tramp, she assumed, and dismissed him, her eyes resting on Adrien again. But Adrien was looking at the stranger curiously, ignoring Samantha.

  “How is it you came to be out here without a horse?” Adrien asked in a friendly manner.

  The man did not answer readily. He studied Adrien before he spoke in a deep, curt voice. “I had to kill my horse.”

  “Mon Dieu!” Adrien gasped, and Samantha sighed, disgusted by his unmanly reaction.

  The stranger’s eyes were drawn to Samantha on hearing her sigh. She felt compelled to ask, “Your horse was injured?”

  “Sí, he broke a leg. I have injured mine, as well. It seems I will go to Elizabethtown after all.”

  He chuckled then at some humor that escaped the rest of them. Samantha looked at him more closely. The top portion of
his face was hidden by the shadow of his hat, but the lower half showed a strong jaw faintly covered with black stubble, a firm mouth quirked up at one corner to reveal a dimple, and a narrow nose, straight, but not too long. It was the promise of a handsome face.

  He slouched in his seat in an almost cocky manner. Or perhaps he was just tired. His long legs spread out before him took up a good portion of the aisle and nearly reached Samantha’s knees. The hands he folded across his middle showed long, tapered fingers, almost graceful, which surprised Samantha. He took care of his hands. There were no calluses, so he probably wore gloves when he rode.

  At first glance he looked like an ordinary cowboy, dusty, a little rakish in his dark clothes. But, on closer inspection, she began to wonder. He was dirty, yet there was nothing really unkempt about him except the stubble on his chin. His ebony hair only just reached his shirt collar, and his clothes fit him well and were of good quality. His dark brown shirt was chambray linen, the bandanna around his neck was silk, and the black vest was a superior grade of Spanish leather. So were his boots.

  Samantha was slowly growing curious about the man she had dismissed so quickly. It was the first time she had felt an interest in another man since meeting Adrien, and she was surprised.

  His body was lean, but his chest and arms were well muscled, as were the long legs in tight black pants. Samantha mentally compared him with Adrien. The stranger was young, vital, in superb condition. In fact, blond Adrien paled beside the cowboy, looking almost sickly.

  Adrien was studying him curiously, just as Samantha was, but the man was looking at—whom? Jeannette or herself? She couldn’t tell, unable to see his eyes clearly. But he was probably looking at Jeannette, she told herself, for Jeannette had a classic beauty. Petite, she was the type of woman men were drawn to, inspiring protectiveness, making them want to cuddle her. Though she was neither ungainly nor too tall, Samantha felt downright awkward next to Jeannette.