Gold Rush Bride

by Debra Lee Brown

  As they passed the clearing, a few slow-moving miners, hungover from last night’s drinking, mulled amidst the makeshift saloons and gaming hells ringing the still smoldering bonfire. Rose Beecham’s line of tents stood quietly among the others. Will swore under his breath, remembering his fool-headed behavior of last night.

  “I’d like to stop up ahead for a moment, if you don’t mind,” Kate said, jarring him back to the present.

  “Where?” He picked up the mare’s pace to keep up with her.

  “At my father’s grave.”

  He hadn’t expected that. Maybe because she hadn’t talked all that much about Liam Dennington.

  “Sure,” he said. “We can spare a few minutes.”

  Landerfelt would be miles ahead of them by now, anyway. It didn’t matter. Will knew just where to catch up with him. Along the levee in Sacramento City, where the riverboats and barges from San Francisco arrived. If he knew Landerfelt, the bastard would be spending their hard-earned money buying up God knows what to sell somewhere else for ten times what he paid for it.

  The more Will thought about it, the angrier he got. On impulse, as Kate dismounted, he said, “You hate him, don’t you?”

  “Who?” She looked up at him and frowned. “My father?”

  “Yeah. For leaving you all to come here. For getting you into this mess in the first place.”

  She looked at him as if were out of his mind. “He did what he thought was best for us, that’s all.” Dismissing him with her eyes, she handed him the gelding’s reins and started for the hill.

  Will called after her. “He wasn’t around much for you and the boys after your mother died, was he?”

  Kate stopped dead, then turned and looked him in the eye. “Perhaps he wasn’t, Mr. Crockett. But he was a man, not God. He made mistakes, as we all do.”

  “And…you don’t hold those mistakes against him?”

  Her expression softened then. “No, of course not. He was my father, and I forgave him.”

  Will shook his head, baffled by her easy acceptance of all the wrongs that had been heaped on her. “You forgave him, as simple as that.”

  “Aye,” she said. “As simple as that.”

  She turned and climbed the few steps up the hill to the stake in the ground marking the spot where Will had buried Liam Dennington a month ago. He started to dismount to go with her, then thought better of it. Instead, he waited and watched as she spread her cloak on the ground and knelt, bowed her head and made the sign of the cross.

  She seemed so small, kneeling there in her old ragged dress. She’d changed into it for the journey, and had wanted to sell the blue calico back to the miner’s wife she’d gotten it from, but Will wouldn’t let her. He’d made her keep it, along with the evening gown Vickery’s wife had given her.

  Will watched as Kate pressed her hands together, her lips mouthing prayers he’d heard her whisper at night in the next room after she thought he’d gone to sleep.

  He was reminded of the first day he met her, that first dark night when he’d surprised her at her father’s grave-side in the rain. He’d thought her unfeeling then. Hard and calculating. A woman much like Sherrilyn had been. He’d been as wrong as a man could be on that count.

  No. He was the hard one.

  When Kate finished her prayers and returned to the gelding, Will could see she’d been crying. His gut tightened with a feeling he didn’t recognize. A feeling that had started when he first met her, and had grown stronger over the past weeks. A feeling that, last night, was so overpowering as they’d made love, he knew he wasn’t the same man afterward.

  He started to get off his horse to help her onto hers, but she waved him off. “I don’t need you,” she said, avoiding his eyes, and remounted on her own.

  As they rode out of town in silence, he wondered how much more he could possibly hate himself had Kate been the one to die, pregnant, in some wilderness, loathing him for his negligence and pride.

  The thought of it was so incomprehensible to him, he knew now he’d never ask her to stay. He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve anyone.

  He’d put her on a ship if it was the last thing he did.

  They rode all morning and half the afternoon with only a couple of brief stops. The day was cold, the sky over-cast. Out of the south a howling wind blew dead oak leaves across the narrow trail Will had chosen for them out of Horseshoe Bar.

  Kate closed her eyes for a moment, breathed winter on the air, and listened to the rhythmic crackling of the leaves under their mounts’ hooves.

  If the weather held and if they forwent a full night’s sleep in favor of short rests, they’d make Sacramento City sometime in the middle of the night.

  “You hungry?” Will said.

  Her stomach had been growling for an hour, in fact. The only thing either of them had eaten all day were a couple of biscuits Mei Li had brought them before they’d left town.

  “I could use a bit of something, if we can spare the time.”

  “There’s an old cabin just ahead. We can stop there.”

  It had been like that all day. They’d talked of nothing more significant than the weather or what route they would take each time they happened on a crossroads.

  From the moment they’d left Tinderbox, Will had been distant and coolly polite, as if he were a stranger charged with her care, but who cared nothing for her. It reminded her of the way he’d treated her when they’d first met.

  So much had happened since then.

  Absently she traced a finger along her lips, recalling his mouth on hers. She watched him from behind as he rode ahead of her, stiff in the saddle. He acted as if nothing had changed between them. Perhaps nothing had.

  A couple of times that afternoon he’d dismounted to study the muddle of hoofprints other travelers who’d preceded them had left on the route. He did so now and frowned.

  “What do you see?”

  “I’m not sure.” He remounted and pulled her father’s rifle from the saddle holster. She heard the distinctive click as he cocked it. “Wait here. I’ll check things out up ahead and whistle for you if it’s clear.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  He met her gaze, and for the barest instant she thought she saw a hint of the intimacy they’d shared last night shining in his eyes. Then it was gone.

  “If you hear shots, turn that nag around and ride like hell for Horseshoe Bar. Can you do that?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.” And then he was gone.

  Kate waited for what seemed an eternity. They’d seen no one since they’d left the main road nearly an hour ago in favor of the narrow trail. It was a shortcut, Will had told her, suitable for horses but not wagons, which explained why she hadn’t come this way on her journey from Sacramento City to Tinderbox.

  As the seconds ticked by she battled a strong urge to disobey Will’s order, and calmed her nerves by studying the thick stands of trees and uneven ground of the closed in landscape surrounding her.

  She nudged the gelding forward a few steps and examined the ground where Will had dismounted. Wood shavings, a burnt match and some broken hardtack littered the spot, almost as if someone had emptied their pockets here. And recently. That’s why Will had gone on alone.

  A low whistle cut the air. Kate breathed relief, letting go her trepidation, and snapped the gelding’s reins. Rounding the bend in the trail, she came upon a small clearing and was relieved to see Will waiting for her beside a ramshackle cabin that had clearly seen better days.

  “It’s abandoned,” she said as she dismounted, noting the missing door and caved-in roof, the rusted animal traps hanging from a nearby tree.

  “Trapper I knew built the place when there was still plenty of beaver, and a market for it.” Will grabbed their water bag and started for the creek running alongside the dilapidated structure.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” she said, and turned toward the trees.

  “Wait for me, I’ll go with you.�
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  “I’d…like some time alone, if that’s all right. Not long,” she added, and watched him grind his teeth as he considered her request.

  “All right, but don’t go far, and take the pistol.”

  She rummaged around in the gelding’s saddlebag and found the percussion cap pepperbox she’d almost blown Will’s head off with the night he returned to Tinderbox to watch over her, three weeks ago.

  The ground was rocky underfoot as she started down a gentle slope choked with gnarled oaks, pine and madrone. The trees would afford her the minute of privacy she’d been desperate for but hadn’t wanted to make a fuss over.

  Just below her she heard the rushing of another stream, this one much bigger than the creek beside the cabin where Will had gone for water. When she was finished she made her way toward it, the sound of the water so deafening that, by the time she reached it, she could no longer hear her own footsteps or the chirping of the birds overhead.

  It was a minute well spent. The icy water felt grand on her face. She washed away the road dust, then reached for the pistol she’d laid on the ground beside her.

  Her hand froze in midair as a familiar-looking snakeskin boot came out of nowhere and crushed the weapon into the dirt.

  “Afternoon, Kate.”

  Her heart stopped. Looking up, she met Eldridge Landerfelt’s cool blue gaze.

  “Nice day,” he drawled, “ain’t it?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  He didn’t like this place. He never had.

  Will frowned as he filled their water bag at the small creek gurgling beside the abandoned trapper’s cabin. Something about what he’d seen back there on the trail bothered him, but he couldn’t put his finger on just what.

  He looked past the horses to where Kate had disappeared into the trees. Another minute and he’d go after her. He’d driven her hard that day, and she hadn’t complained once. All the same, the sooner they were out of here the better.

  Even the water tasted lousy. He swished it around in his mouth and spat it out. On the ground, not two paces from where he stood, something caught his eye.

  Narrowing his gaze, Will knelt and plucked a couple of curled wood shavings from the trampled meadow grass in front of the cabin. Pine. Just like the scattered pile he’d seen a few yards back on the trail.

  Breathing in the green scent of wood pitch, he tried to remember where and when he’d seen fresh shavings like this before, and why it bothered him.

  Then he saw something he’d missed on his first inspection of the area while Kate waited for him to whistle that all was clear. Something that made his heart seize up in his chest.

  A cigar butt—still warm, he realized when he snatched it from the tall grass. And not made from not just any tobacco. His nose wrinkled at the stench.

  Landerfelt.

  Kate’s scream pierced the air.

  In less than a second Will’s Colt was in his hand. He raced down the hill, dodging trees and stumps, his gaze sweeping the thick forest for some sign of her.

  Damn it! Why had he let her go off alone?

  Rushing water filled his ears, drowning out all other sounds as he skidded to a stop in a carpet of dead leaves just short of the raging stream at the bottom of the hill. Kate’s revolver lay at his feet.

  Will swallowed hard. “Kate!”

  “I—I’m here.”

  He whirled toward the shaky, hollow sound of her voice in time to see Eldridge Landerfelt step out from behind a tree, jerking Kate along with him. One arm snaked around her waist, Landerfelt held her at gunpoint, using her body as a shield. “Afternoon, Will,” he drawled.

  “Let her go, you spineless bastard.”

  The pearl handle of Landerfelt’s pistol quivered almost imperceptibly in his hand as he grazed the barrel along Kate’s throat and smiled. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. Not just yet.”

  Will trained his Colt between the merchant’s icy eyes as Landerfelt moved cautiously along the uneven stream bank, dragging Kate along with him.

  “Sh-shoot him,” Kate said.

  “Now darlin’, why would your husband want to do that? We’re all friends here.”

  Will’s finger slid along the cool metal of the trigger. He was conscious of his heart beating wildly in his chest and the thin sheen of perspiration filming his hands. “I said let her go.”

  “As soon as I’ve relieved y’all of somethin’ I’ll be needin’.”

  “You already got the money. What else do you want?”

  “Th-the money’s gone, Will.” Anguish shone in Kate’s eyes, as Landerfelt slid the pistol’s barrel to her temple. “He gave it to—”

  “Zundel,” Will said, finishing her sentence.

  A split second after he’d plucked Landerfelt’s cigar butt from the grass, it dawned on him what the pine shavings were, and where he’d seen them before. In Tinderbox, nearly two weeks ago, the day Brett Zundel served notice to Eldridge Landerfelt that his debts in Hangtown had finally caught up with him.

  Will had never seen Zundel when he didn’t have a buck knife in hand, whittling away at fist-sized blocks of pine—scrap wood from his lumber mill that he always seemed to have in his pockets.

  “She’s right.” Landerfelt cocked the pistol’s hammer. “All that nice money’s gone.”

  “I don’t care about the money.”

  “Well, I did.” Landerfelt’s smile twisted into a scowl. “Zundel took my horse, too. That’s why I’m relievin’ you of yours—or mine, rather.” He meant the mare. “And that old nag of Dennington’s, too.”

  Will fought to keep his gaze fixed on Landerfelt’s eyes. One look at Kate and he knew he was likely to do something stupid. Somehow he had to get her away from him so he could get off a clean shot. She was just too close, and at this range the Colt’s accuracy too unreliable. He couldn’t risk it. He wouldn’t risk it.

  “My…father,” Kate said, turning her forehead into the handgun’s barrel in order to look Landerfelt in the eye. “He didn’t just die. You…you killed him.”

  Landerfelt’s scowl deepened. “Prove it.”

  Will slowly slid a hand to his coat pocket, his gaze willing Landerfelt’s to follow. The merchant’s eyes widened and his gun hand shook as Will retrieved the vial of strychnine they’d found in his storeroom. Casually he tossed it onto the ground at Landerfelt’s feet.

  “That proves nothin’.”

  Will inched closer. One small step. Two. If he could just get her—

  Without warning, Landerfelt jerked Kate tight against his body, lifting her nearly off her feet.

  “Will!”

  “Don’t!” he cried, and pulled his gaze from Landerfelt’s to couple with hers, where he read not fear but cool-headed intent. Will smiled at her, and that’s when Eldridge Landerfelt made his mistake.

  “Drop the gun, Crockett!” Landerfelt cried, and swung the pistol toward him.

  Kate wrenched herself free, and in that split second Will saw his chance and took it.

  They both fired. Kate screamed.

  In a flash of smoke and heat, Will watched as Eldridge Landerfelt staggered backward, his gun hand flailing, the other grasping at his chest where blood was already spreading across the gray paisley silk of his vest.

  Landerfelt’s eyes widened in shock. A second later he pitched backward into the raging water. Will watched, his heart racing, as the merchant’s body was carried downstream and out of sight.

  “Are…are you all right?” Kate’s voice brought him back to the moment.

  “Yeah,” he said, and checked himself for signs of blood. He’d thought Landerfelt’s shot had missed him clean, but he was too numb to feel anything, so he looked to make sure.

  Kate moved toward him, uncertainty in her blue eyes.

  “I’m fine. What about you?”

  She nodded as the color returned to her face.

  A visceral urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her, to tell her he wanted her with him always nearly broke his resolve. But he h
eld on, just barely, forcing himself to look away and casually holster his gun.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.

  Her eyes dulled. She retrieved her pistol from where it lay in the dirt. “What do we do now? About the money, your…ship?”

  He studied her, his face hardening to the cool look he’d begun to perfect the day he left Philadelphia. There was only one thing left for them, now. Only one way out. “I know a place we can get more.”

  Kate frowned, and he knew she didn’t understand. She didn’t need to. He turned his back on her and started up the hill, mentally counting off the hours it would take them to reach San Francisco.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Once, a heady draft of sea air had conjured up for him dreams of freedom and adventure. New beginnings. But now, as Will steered Kate along the crowded wharf in San Francisco, the brackish stench of the bay evoked only a hollow premonition of closure.

  An end to things.

  The incident with Landerfelt three days ago had shaken them both more than Will wanted to admit, and only served to reinforce his decision.

  In Sacramento City they’d sold the horses, and after a two-day riverboat trip marked only by the increasing coolness between them, he and Kate had arrived in San Francisco. Just moments ago he’d secured for them a tiny room in a boardinghouse just off Clay Street.

  All that was left to do now was to find Kate a clipper home, and to come up with the money to pay for it.

  “Do you mind if I duck into that shop for a moment?”

  Will followed Kate’s gaze to a squalid little building perched at the end of the wharf where, outside, fishmongers slapped carp and crabs onto trays for their customers’ inspection.

  “See the dried herring in the window? It’s cheap, and something we can take back to our room to eat later.”

  He’d noticed a subtle change in her behavior over the past week. It had started right after her run-in with the bear, and had grown in the last few days. She asked his permission to do things, and seemed always to be thinking of ways to make their journey easier. It was almost as if she were his charge and feared causing him too much trouble. It wasn’t like her, and he wondered what had provoked it.