“I can handle you any day of the week, you goddamn Indian,” Trapp answered. “You come in here tryin’ to get my job. We’ll show Roy Holliday here and now who the better man really is.”
“Wayne, I don’t want—” Holliday’s words were interrupted when Ethan suddenly landed a big, hard fist into Wayne’s soft middle. Wayne’s body jerked back slightly, and he let out a loud grunt, his eyes bulging with surprise. Before he could react, Ethan repeated the blow, a hard, fierce slam to the man’s soft belly, then twice more, until the man doubled over. In spite of his size, Ethan jerked him to his feet as though he weighed nothing, and while Trapp grasped at his gut with his hands, Ethan rammed his fist into the man’s face, sending him sprawling over a railing and into a watering trough just below it. He landed with a huge splash, and immediately the sides to the trough broke away, spilling out what was left of the water. Wayne rolled off of it and landed groaning on the ground.
A cheer went up from the crowd, and Ethan picked up Wayne’s hat and walked down the two short steps to the trough. He placed the hat on Wayne’s head. “You’ve got to stop so much eating and drinking, Trapp. That big belly of yours is getting much too soft. Being big doesn’t help you if it’s mostly fat.”
The men all laughed, and Ethan turned to face Roy Holliday. “I’ll be back later for whatever pay you owe me.”
“Ethan, let’s talk about this. You’re too good a man for me to lose.”
“I never have liked you, Holliday, but I thought I could work for you, until today. I don’t work for a man who bullies a woman, especially when that woman used to be my wife.”
The word wife was mumbled and passed through the crowd of men. “She was married to the Indian?” someone exclaimed.
Ethan left Holliday and went back up onto the boardwalk. He reached down and took hold of Allyson’s arm. “Let’s go. We’ve got some talking to do.”
“Ethan, how did you end up here?” Allyson sniffed and wiped at her eyes again.
“How about telling me how you got here?” He took the leather bag from her. “Come on, let’s get away from town first.” He helped her up, and to his surprise, she flung her arms around him and hugged him tightly.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” she wept.
He wanted to still be angry with her, to yell at her for being dumb enough to come to a place like Cripple Creek alone and risk her person and her life trying to mine a claim; wanted to hate her for how she had hurt him; but all he could do was give her a gentle squeeze and kiss her hair. “Come on. Blackfoot is right around the corner.” He led her to his horse—the men stared as he lifted her up onto it. He handed her the leather pouch, then mounted up behind her. They headed out of town.
23
“I looked for you in Guthrie,” Ethan said as he led Blackfoot up a mountain pathway that led out of town. “I hoped maybe you’d still be there. Everybody thought you’d gone to Denver, just like you said in your letter. I was going to look for you there, but then I figured maybe you didn’t want to be found. It was pretty obvious when you sent me those papers to sign that you didn’t want anything more to do with me.”
Allyson rubbed her eyes, her head aching from the strain of her trip and the unexpected events of the last hour. “I thought you wouldn’t want anything more to do with me. That’s why I tried to make it easy for you.” There came the unwanted tears again. It felt so good to run into someone she knew, someone she could trust, even though he might hate her now. She knew Ethan Temple. Even if he hated her, he would help her if she needed it.
He halted Blackfoot, dismounted and lifted her down, taking the leather bag and tying it over his saddlehorn. “We’ll sort through this later.” He removed her hat and studied the familiar red hair and her sunburned face. She seemed just a little taller, and as pretty as he remembered. Had he really bedded this wisp of a woman, and had she really been as passionate and loving as he remembered? Was that all an act, or was it real at the time?
Their eyes met and held, and behind it all was something else. Ethan didn’t want to believe it could be love. Surely she had never loved him, and he’d be a fool to think he still loved her. He turned away, fishing through his gear for a smoke. “All right, let’s have your story. What are you doing here in Cripple Creek?”
Allyson struggled with her emotions. Ethan Temple was even more handsome than she had remembered him. She had been so sure she had gotten over him, but to see him again, to ride on Blackfoot nestled close to him, to see how he had stood up for her again…it all came flooding back, all the womanly desires he had stirred in her, all the agony of knowing she had hurt him, lost him. He was probably still lost to her. She was not going to make a fool of herself by making the first move now. She had to wait and see just what he was feeling, what he intended to do now that he had found her again.
She sighed and sat down on a flat rock. “I left Guthrie because there were too many memories there, most of them bad. Besides, people weren’t very nice to me after everything that happened.”
Ethan snickered, inwardly struggling to pretend he didn’t care about her anymore. “I wonder why. All you did was lie to everybody there, use people to help you get ahead, play on their sympathies. I can’t imagine why they would be upset about that.”
She rested her elbows on her knees and put her head in her hands. “Ethan, please don’t. I know how much I hurt people, especially you. If people just understood my reasons…”
He lit the cigar and took several puffs. “I understand them, maybe better than you do. The trouble with you is you don’t know what’s really good for you, what’s really important in life, and it isn’t money.” He walked a few feet away from her. “So, you went to Denver. Why? Just for the hell of it?”
“I guess.” Allyson stared at a little wildflower blowing in a soft mountain breeze. “It was a growing city, busy, exciting. I figured with what little money I had left after all my debts, I could start over there. I never got one cent from Nolan Ives for all I had put into improving those lots. I needed a way to make back my money. At first I worked for a rooming house and did laundry, whatever I could do to get ahead.” She pulled the ribbon and pins from her hair and let it fall. “The trouble is, it’s expensive to build something of your own in Denver. I needed a way to get rich quicker, so I took what savings I had and grubstaked a prospector. His name was John Sebastian. He came up here and filed a claim. The next thing I knew, the man who helped connect me with Mr. Sebastian checked on how he was doing and found out he’d been murdered up at the claim.”
“Murdered?” Ethan turned around then, somewhat stunned by the transformation. The boyish-looking Allyson Mills had suddenly become a beautiful woman. Her red hair spilled over her shoulders fetchingly, and he remembered seeing that hair cascading around milky-white shoulders and breasts, partially hiding the pink fruits of those breasts so he had to push the hair away to find them. Damn her, he thought. If he wasn’t careful he’d fall all over again, and she’d find a way to use him for this new venture. “He’s sure it was murder?”
Allyson shrugged. “The man was shot in the head. Most figured it was somebody who had a grudge against him, since no one tried to file on his claim. Now I’m beginning to wonder.” Allyson met his eyes. “Roy Holliday and that fat man you beat up today came to visit me about a week ago. They threatened me with bodily harm and something worse than death if I didn’t sell out to Holliday. The fat one broke down my door, but I shot at him and made him get out of my cabin. They both finally left, but I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since. Now I’m wondering if Mr. Holliday had something to do with John Sebastian’s death. He might have known the man’s backer was a woman, and figured a woman would never come up here and take over; but I proved him wrong. As anxious as he was to get hold of my claim, I can’t help thinking it must be richer than I know. He knows something about it that I don’t. I’m sure of it.”
Ethan turned and gazed at the surrounding mountains. “You really went up th
ere and worked your own claim?”
Allyson rubbed at her forehead again. “I couldn’t afford to hire someone to help me. I’ve learned a lot. An old guide named Stan took me up and showed me the basics of panning and using a sluice. The gold in that leather bag is worth about two hundred fifty dollars—not much for three months of hard labor and living in constant fear. I was even chased by a grizzly. His claws left scars on the back of my right leg, and there are still claw marks on my door, which is now nailed shut because I don’t know how to fix it. I go in and out of a window.” She tossed her hair behind her shoulders. “I ran low on supplies, so I figured I’d bring in what gold I had and see what it was worth, put the money in a bank, get started on a savings. I’ll have a fine time now getting it sorted out of all that broken glass.”
Ethan stuck the cigar between his teeth and walked back to where she sat. He sat down in the grass near the rock. “Holliday actually came up there and threatened you?”
“Yes.” Allyson met his eyes. “He’s a cruel, vicious man, Ethan. What are you doing, working for someone like that? You aren’t that way.”
He took the cigar from his mouth and looked back out at the mountains. “He’s never asked me to do anything like that. My job has been to keep trouble from erupting among the miners. A lot of them are thinking about striking over wages and hours. I’ve also been spending time guarding gold shipments to Colorado Springs. I’ve never really liked Holliday, but he paid damn good, and as long as he didn’t ask me to do something dishonest, I figured I could work for him. I knew he was a bastard in a lot of ways, but I never figured he was one to bully a woman.”
Allyson studied the long, dark hair that hung from under his leather hat, the broad shoulders. A shiver moved through her at the memory of their wedding night. He had awakened something beautiful on the inside, leaving her aching to feel that way again. Part of her wanted that back, wanted to be in those strong arms again, to feel his mouth exploring her own, tasting her breasts, feel those strong fingers touching her in ways that made her feel on fire. He would probably never again want her that way. “How did you meet Holliday?” she asked.
Ethan puffed on the cigar once more. “I didn’t know what to do with myself after Guthrie. I couldn’t go back to living on the reservation any more. It’s all changed now. Most of the Indian land in Oklahoma has been lost to whites. Up north it’s even worse for the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne.”
“I read about Wounded Knee. I worried you might have been there, been hurt. I didn’t know how to find out. In fact, I was afraid to find out, so I never asked.”
Ethan wondered if that meant she still cared about him. He thought about how she had hugged him when he first found her today, but then that was probably gratitude for his help. “I was there,” he answered. “But I didn’t get there until right after it happened.” He sighed deeply. “There were bodies everywhere, mostly women and children. It was horrible. A snowstorm hit right afterward, and they couldn’t get to the bodies right away. Some were still alive but froze to death waiting for help that never came. Some crawled off into bushes and creeks, trying to get away. Mothers were found hovering over their babies trying to keep them warm. It wasn’t until four days after the massacre that the weather cleared enough so we could go pick up bodies. They were all frozen in grotesque poses, some looking like they were reaching out for help.” His voice broke, and he puffed quietly on the cigar for a moment.
“I’m sorry, Ethan. What happened to your relatives?”
He sniffed and took a deep breath. “My grandmother had died a few weeks before that, and I’m glad of it. She never lived to see what happened. My uncle and a cousin were killed in the massacre and a couple more cousins were wounded. They’ll be all right.” He shook his head. “I just couldn’t stay there after that. There’s nothing left. Their spirits are broken. They’d been practicing a new religion, thought a Savior was going to come and rescue them and bring back all their dead relatives and the buffalo. They know now that will never happen. The old ways are gone…just gone.”
Ethan got up, clearing his throat. “At any rate I came back to Guthrie, visited what’s left of my relatives on the Cheyenne reservation near there, found out a good friend of mine from my army scouting days had died, and decided I had to leave there, too. Like you, the area held too many memories. I just headed west for the hell of it, part of me thinking maybe I could find you, but not sure that I should. Roy Holliday happened to be on the same train and it was robbed. I managed to stop the robbery, saved a lot of people’s jewelry and money, and shot up some of the outlaws. Holliday liked the way I handled it and offered me a job on the spot as a troubleshooter at his mines up here. I sure as hell didn’t have anything better to do, and I wanted to get some money saved so I could maybe go to Wyoming and build a ranch there. A man has to settle sometime in his life.”
Yes, he does, Allyson thought. Was he thinking of looking for another woman, taking a wife so he could settle and have children? She never thought she would want those things for herself, but the thought of having them with Ethan…Stop it! she told herself. Ethan Temple surely wanted nothing more to do with her, and she had her gold mine to think about. She thought about his remark that she didn’t know what was really important in life, and that it wasn’t money. Didn’t he understand that for someone like herself, money was the only way she could have power, her only protection?
She looked up to catch him watching her, seeing the hurt in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Ethan. I never got a chance to tell you calmly, and I didn’t realize until you were gone how much I—” She looked away. “Cared for you. It wasn’t all just to save the business. I mean, it’s not as though I didn’t have any feelings for you at all.”
He grinned with sarcasm and shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you? Maybe it’s because you’re just too young to understand a man’s pride.” He walked closer to her. “Whether you had a little feeling for me, or a lot, the fact remains you wanted to hurry up and get married because you thought having a husband would save you. It didn’t work, and when I saw the look on your face when Cy Jacobs told you you’d married the wrong man because I was Indian, I knew what you were thinking, Ally, and it didn’t feel good. I’m just a man, Ally—Indian, white, it makes no difference. No respectable man wants to be used and made a fool of.”
“I know.” She closed her eyes. “I can never make up for that. I don’t even know why you allowed me to get an annulment instead of labeling me a divorced woman. I don’t blame you for leaving and not coming back, either, but now that you are here, maybe…maybe you could come back up to my claim with me. I can trust you, and I’m tired of being up there all alone.” She met his eyes again. “I’m scared, Ethan.”
Well, that’s a start, he thought. At least she was admitting she was afraid, something she didn’t like doing.
“I can’t pay you, but up there a person doesn’t need much. I’ll pay for all the supplies. I heard you tell Holliday you were through working for him, so you’re a free man now.”
Ethan decided not to mention he’d gotten a thousand-dollar reward for killing a notorious train robber. If there was to be anything at all between them again, it had to be real, not because she wanted to get her hands on his money. Why he even thought there could be something between them again, he wasn’t sure, except that if he went up to her claim with her, he already knew he couldn’t be around her without wanting her again. What was this she did to him? He had no control over his emotions, even after all these months apart and thinking he was done with her. He put the cigar back in his mouth and walked past her to stand on a ledge from which he could see most of Cripple Creek.
“Do you realize what you’re asking? After what we’ve had between us, it’s too hard just to be casual friends again, Ally. I don’t think I could do that, and after all the hurt, I can’t let things get serious again. Besides, I don’t even trust you anymore.”
Allyson stiffened. He’d wanted the remark to hurt
, and it did. “Ethan, I said I was sorry, and I meant it. All these months I’ve worried and wondered about you, realized I felt more for you than I realized.”
“But the most important thing to you right now is that gold, isn’t it? You’re still aiming to get rich, determined to go back up there and keep digging. You’d just be using me again, Ally. You need a man to help and protect you, and along comes good ole Ethan Temple, right? What if I asked you to give it all up, to start over with me someplace new, to settle down and help me run a ranch? Would you give up that gold mine?”
She got up and folded her arms stubbornly. “Ethan, that’s not fair. The fact remains I do have a gold claim, and if Roy Holliday wants it, then it must be worth something. I have to keep working it and try to find out what’s really there. If you owned it, you’d do the same thing.”
He shook his head. “Gold and riches don’t mean that much to me. I just want some peace in my life and a good woman at my side. I thought I had that, but it only lasted about twenty-four hours.”
Allyson reddened and looked away. “I can never make up for that. I can only tell you with all sincerity that I thank God I found you again, that you’re all right. I can only hope you will believe me when I tell you that after…after you made me your wife, my feelings changed. I truly wanted to be your wife in every way. It didn’t matter anymore that you might help me keep my property. All that mattered was that Ethan Temple was my husband and I…I thought I loved him. Now there are too many hard feelings to talk about love, but we could at least spend some time together, learn to be friends again. We owe that to each other. I want to salvage something from all the hurt, Ethan. There must be a reason God helped us find each other again.”
Ethan dearly wanted to believe her, but he was cautious. Allyson Mills was a determined, headstrong woman who could lie as easily as she breathed. She wanted to find her bonanza, and she needed a man to help her do it. It irritated him that it meant so much to her, yet the memory of her tears when Wayne Trapp broke her treasured jar of gold tore at his heart. There was something pitiful about her in spite of her stubbornness and feisty ways. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I have to think about it. Besides, what would all the men in this place think, you up there alone with a man? In their eyes it will be even worse because I’m Indian.”
Unforgettable Page 32
