“Mitch is here, dear,” she told Elizabeth, looking her over. “You look lovely, Elizabeth.” She gave Elizabeth a sly smile.
“Ma, don’t be making something out of nothing.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’m doing that at all.” Ma chuckled and walked into the kitchen, and Elizabeth went down the hall into the parlor. Mitch Brady’s tall, broad presence seemed to fill up the room, and there was no way Elizabeth could miss the pleased look in his blue eyes when she came closer. Part of her was happy to see him, and part of her wished she’d not taken so much care about how she looked today.
“I…Sarah made this dress for me. Is it plain enough? I mean…I don’t want to be out of place when we’re going out to shoot guns and visit mining camps.”
Mitch grinned. “You look perfect.”
She felt naked under his gaze.
“But then how could you not look perfect?”
Damn, if he didn’t look more handsome than ever himself. He wore dark pants with a blue shirt that matched his eyes, a leather vest with a badge on it, a small red cotton scarf around his neck, and, of course, the ever-present six-guns on crisscrossed gun belts. “You always look ready for a small war,” she told him.
He flashed the handsome smile that only accented his full lips and his tanned, clean-shaven face. “If all I was going to do is sit in the parlor like last time, I would have left the guns off. But a lawman headed for Alder Gulch has to be ready for anything.”
“I’ve already seen why you need them.” Elizabeth struggled not to show her secret pleasure at seeing him again. She reminded herself of his size, and the fact that he was, after all, a man…and one who was no stranger to violence. When Alan Radcliffe married her mother, he’d seemed like a nice man, too. And he’d been tall and handsome and charming…and cunning. Could Mitch Brady be cunning? If he knew about the valuable necklace she owned, would he be attracted to her only because he wanted to get his hands on it? Knowing about the necklace could change him completely.
“I’m glad you made it back here fine and healthy. I was a little worried about you taking Sam Wiley to Virginia City.”
“Well, it all worked out fine and he’s likely already on his way to prison.” He looked her over again in that way he had. “I hope you got plenty of rest while I was gone.”
“I did. I’ve stayed right here, away from all the bustle out there in the streets. I did go shopping once with Ma Kelly, and your young friend followed us around like a puppy. I really don’t need so much guarding now, Mitch. People in this town are getting used to me, and all the craziness over how I arrived has mostly gone away, from what I can tell.”
Mitch put on a wide-brimmed hat. “Maybe so, but you’re still going to be a curiosity for several weeks, and there will still be times when you might be glad you have that gun. Did you put it in your handbag?”
Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, sir.” She handed over the box of bullets. “And I brought these. I also have a few flyers I’d like to hand out if I get the chance.”
Mitch took the box of bullets and headed for the door. “Well, let’s get going then. I borrowed a buggy from Doc Wilson. Couldn’t find a sidesaddle, so I figured the buggy would be best, especially since that shoulder of yours is probably still hurting. I’m not much for riding in a buggy, but I’ll put up with it today.”
“I appreciate that.”
Mitch opened the door and Elizabeth stepped outside, going down the steps and climbing into the buggy, which she was glad to see had a top on it that would shade them from the hot sun. She noticed Mitch had tied his own big roan gelding to the back of the carriage. Was he wanting to be prepared to go charging after some outlaw if need be? She decided not to ask. He came around and climbed into the buggy beside her, picking up the reins and slapping the rump of the big black mare hitched to the vehicle to get the horse into motion.
Elizabeth shoved her flyers into a leather pocket at one side of the buggy, then held on to a seat railing as Mitch drove the buggy out of town and past staring eyes. A few men whistled and a couple of them made remarks about Mitch Brady getting the prettiest girl in town.
“Ignore the remarks,” he told Elizabeth.
“I’m trying my best.”
He glanced sideways at her. “You are the prettiest girl in town, though.”
Elizabeth stared straight ahead. “Thank you for the compliment, but this isn’t a courting trip, I hope you know. You’re going to show me how to use my gun and you’re escorting me to some of the mining camps so I can hand out my flyers. That’s it. Nothing more.”
“Oh, I assure you, I don’t consider this courting either. Just keeping a promise to teach you how to use that gun and introduce you to a few people in the gulch. Believe me, when I court you, you’ll know that’s what it is.”
His closeness upset Elizabeth in ways it shouldn’t. The buggy was so small, their legs couldn’t help but touch. “This is a one-passenger buggy, isn’t it?” she commented.
“It was all I could find. If you want to ride, we can go back and saddle a horse.”
“No, thank you. This will do.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Elizabeth caught the sarcasm in his answer. She wanted to hit him and make him take her back to Ma’s place, but she needed to learn how to use her gun.
She had to keep her guard up. Most men wanted only two things—women and money. If both things were wrapped into one package, all the better. Love was not part of the equation. Such feelings meant nothing to a man. She must remember that. She stared straight ahead as Mitch drove the buggy out of town and toward the mountains.
Eighteen
On her journey West, Elizabeth had been so fearful of being found and dragged back to New York that she’d not paid a lot of attention to the landscape. Rather, she’d huddled inside trains and stagecoaches, trying her best not to draw attention to herself. Even when she rode horseback to Alder after the accident, she’d been so shaken and in so much pain that she did little more than just follow behind Mitch, in no mood to look around. After that, there had only been Alder.
Now that she had a chance to truly feel safe and feel free to notice her surroundings, she marveled at the immensity of the yellow-grass valley through which they rode, feeling tiny and insignificant compared to the endless horizon to the north and south of the little winding dirt road. An array of colorful wildflowers were sprinkled amid the yellow grass, creating a view that almost looked like a painting. Mitch headed the buggy into hillier country beyond which lay mountains that rose up in a looming wall that made her wonder at the bravery it took to go into them and try to settle.
“Do you like this valley?” Mitch asked her.
“Yes, it’s beautiful. I like all the wildflowers. But it’s so big! I feel swallowed up.”
They passed a huge supply wagon coming down out of the gulch, and Mitch nodded to the driver.
“I love this place,” he told her. “It’s magnificent country, and a man can be as free as he wants out here, settle where he wants.”
“Do you think much about settling?”
Mitch reached down and broke off a piece of tall grass, putting it between his lips to chew on it. “Sure I do. But I wasn’t raised to know much about family life, so I’m not sure I’d be very good at it.” He glanced at her. “A man needs just the right woman for that.”
Elizabeth looked away. “I’ve heard Montana referred to as big-sky country,” she commented.
“It certainly fits,” Mitch answered. “It’s only been an official territory for a couple of years, and right now Virginia City is the capital. You probably didn’t pay much attention when you were on the stagecoach, but from Virginia City on north and west there are settlements scattered all over because of the gold mining. This is one of the few more open areas, but soon we’ll head into the mining area where there is a streambed off the Ruby River and se
ttlements that stretch for a good ten miles. If you wanted to see it all, we’d have to stay somewhere the next couple of nights. There are a couple of rooming places in small settlements throughout the gulch. The gulch runs for about fourteen miles, with little towns, if you want to call them that, situated all along the creek.”
“I think if we go that far, it should be another time. I didn’t come prepared to stay overnight.”
Mitch nodded. “Miles of mining through the gulch is why I’m sometimes gone for days at a time. Vigilantes are pretty much the law in Montana Territory, and wherever there is gold, there are men willing to try to steal it, or steal someone else’s claim, or rob the supply wagons that take the gold to and from Virginia City.”
They passed more wagons and riders coming out of the gulch.
“If and when I settle, I figured I would take up ranching, maybe settle somewhere in this valley, but like I said, I wasn’t raised to know how to do that, especially how to be a father.”
Elizabeth wasn’t sure what to say. The man was opening up a little more to her. Why?
“Do you have family back in St. Louis, or wherever you’re really from?” he asked then.
I’m from New York, just like you. Elizabeth thought about the normal, happy family life she’d once known. “I have no family—never had siblings, and both my parents are dead.”
“How’d they die?”
“You’re asking too many questions.”
Mitch sighed. “Just trying to make conversation, that’s all. My own pa was never around much before he drank himself to death. My mother was…” He paused. “Let’s just say she had it rough. She was finally beat to death…right in front of me when I was too little to stop it.”
The air suddenly hung too silent. Elizabeth was stunned at what he’d just told her. They had both watched their mothers die right before their eyes. She felt a new connection to the man. Part of her wanted to tell him about her own experience. Surely Mitch Brady would understand… But there was always the fear of Alan Radcliffe finding her and painting a very different picture. “I…I’m so sorry,” she told him.
He reined the horse to a halt. “So am I. I didn’t mean to tell you something so ugly and so soon.” He sighed, staring at the landscape ahead. “Being around you makes me want to talk, and I have no idea why. At any rate, I shouldn’t have told you that, but the fact remains that life was never very normal for me when my mother was alive, and then after she died, I just grew up a homeless kid fighting his way through life. So like I said, I know next to nothing about a normal family life other than what I’ve seen at times in other families…and what I sometimes daydream about. I guess all men at some time in their lives think about settling, taking a wife and all.”
Elizabeth was beginning to realize that the way his mother died was something that deeply affected Mitch Brady, leading to his apparent need to defend women. It began to dawn on her then that whatever else Mitch Brady might be, he was not a man who would ever beat on a woman. After living with the likes of Alan Radcliffe and seeing the bruises on her mother, terror over the possibility of marrying such a man herself had made Elizabeth vow to never marry at all. She never saw the beatings. It always happened when she wasn’t around…until that one fateful night.
“I think every man has a right to settle and marry,” she told Mitch. “Maybe, because of how you grew up, you’d make a better father than most men, because you know how you would like that kind of life to be.”
Mitch nodded. “Maybe.” He turned to meet her eyes for a moment…close, so close, still sitting side by side in the buggy. For one quick moment she thought the man was going to lean in and kiss her, but he turned away again and snapped the reins. “Up ahead there is an area where there is plenty of loose rock, just before we head into the deeper part of Alder Gulch. We’ll stop there and do some practice shooting.”
They passed a sagging sod house beside a stream a couple hundred yards to their right.
“That’s Moss Hillinbert,” Mitch told her. “Pans for gold all day long beside that stream. He’s alone there. He left a wife back East somewhere, like most men who live all along the gulch. Most of those living here are poor people hoping to strike it rich, a lot of them people who lost everything in the war. Some have already struck it rich and sold their claims to even richer men who have the means to actually mine it the right way. Of course, those rich men don’t live around here. They just do the investing from someplace back East and pay men to come out here and oversee everything, hire men to go into the mountains and hack their way through veins of gold and run it through stamp mills and such. It gets pretty complicated. Most of the richest miners live in Virginia City, getting richer from supplying the miners up here in the gulch.”
An explosion in the mountains ahead rumbled through the air like thunder. “Most men who come out here looking for their dreams don’t realize how much is involved in actually extracting enough gold to make big money,” Mitch continued.
“You’re not interested in looking for gold?”
Mitch shrugged. “Not really. Being rich doesn’t mean much to me. Just being happy is all that matters, and having enough to eat and a place to sleep.”
Being rich doesn’t mean much to me. How unlike the man Elizabeth was hiding from. Were there really men in this world who actually married for love, who didn’t rule over their wives like prison wardens, and who really wanted a happy family life and children?
She shook away the questions that raced through her mind as Mitch approached an area of huge boulders, below which lay scattered rocks. The horse pulling the buggy shied a little when another explosion rumbled in the mountains.
“Settle down, boy,” Mitch soothed. He climbed out of the buggy and tied the animal to a lonely pine tree that had somehow managed to find life beneath the rocky landscape. Elizabeth had to wonder how anything grew from such hard ground, yet for most of their ride from Alder she’d noticed thick shrubbery and even large groves of trees along the gulch.
“What kind of trees are those tall ones I’ve seen?”
“Alder trees. That’s how this area got its name. The short, bushy kind are what mostly grows all through here, but gray alder grows all over these hills, too. In the spring the leaves look more purple—a pretty sight against the blue skies and greener grass.”
Elizabeth was surprised that the big, tall, rugged Mitch Brady noticed such things.
“Climb down and get your gun out. I’ll show you how to load and shoot it,” Mitch told her. He looked around. “Won’t be more than six weeks or so when cold weather will start moving in. You’ll have to practice closer in to town then. I brought you out here so you wouldn’t draw so much attention for now.” He came closer, towering over her in that way he had, making her feel both protected and intimidated. She was never quite sure which way she should take being alone with Mitch Brady. “You should know that Montana winters can be pretty rough.”
“I’ve known some pretty bad winters,” she answered, reaching back to the buggy seat for her handbag and the small box of bullets.
“In St. Louis?”
There he was again, trying to pry information out of her. Elizabeth realized she’d almost given something away with her remark, and she was angry with herself. It was New York winters she’d known. “It gets plenty cold in St. Louis,” she answered.
Mitch led her over to a spot where there were some flat rocks. “You haven’t known snow and cold until you’ve spent a winter in Montana, believe me. The settlements all along the gulch get snowed in, and some people nearly starve to death because supplies can’t get through. The price of food supplies go up so high, people can’t afford it. Last winter there were some raids on some of the stores and men like me were busy trying to keep the peace.” He left her side to pick up some medium-sized rocks and set them on top of the flat rocks.
“I’ll survive,” Elizabeth ans
wered, secretly hoping they would get snowed in. Being buried here for the winter meant it was even less likely the wrong people would ever find her. They at least wouldn’t be able to get through to her.
Mitch came back to her side, looking around again in a watchful way. “Sometimes Indians will wander this way. That’s another danger here, but mostly down along the Bozeman Trail. The Sioux are not at all happy that we’ve come into their land to look for gold. There has been a lot of trouble, but not so much around here. We also have to keep an eye out for bears, mainly grizzlies.”
“Are you trying to scare me, Mitch Brady?”
Mitch grinned. That smile was full of such bold handsomeness that Elizabeth had to look away in an effort to control the attraction she felt toward him. “I’m only trying to make sure you know what you’ve gotten yourself into,” he told her. “That way you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I learned what I was getting myself into the day my stage was attacked.”
Mitch put his hand out. “Give me that gun and let’s get to work learning how to shoot it then.”
Elizabeth put the gun into his hand.
“I do have to tell you that the only way this thing will put a man down is if he’s really close. Don’t try firing at him if he’s several feet away. You won’t do much damage, and this thing won’t be very accurate at any kind of distance. And believe me, it sure as hell won’t bring down a grizzly.”
“Well then I’ll be sure to stay away from bears, and I’ll make sure to let a man get really close before I put a hole in his belly.”
Mitch frowned, meeting her gaze again. “Why do I feel like that remark was meant for me?”
Now Elizabeth had to smile. “Maybe because it was…you and any other man who gets wrong ideas about me.”
“Well then, I’ll make sure I have your permission before I get too close.” He gave her a sly grin. “Hand me some of those bullets and I’ll show you how to load this thing.”
Desperate Hearts Page 13
