Desperate Hearts

by Rosanne Bittner

  Elizabeth could do nothing but stare as they drove past cabins and tents and all sorts of crude shelters. Some were supply tents and makeshift saloons. Roughly dressed men with long hair and beards worked stooped over the stream with pans and sluices. She turned to look behind them. “Are you sure Trudy and her men won’t come back for us?”

  Mitch shook his head. “You can bet Hal and David are scouting around behind us, making sure that bunch goes back home. Don’t worry about it.”

  “But Trudy wants to kill you.”

  Mitch held his cigar at the corner of his mouth as he talked. “She’s not the only one. A lot of people talk big, Elizabeth, but they don’t follow through.” He slowed the buggy and took the cheroot from his lips, pointing.

  “Those wooden troughs you see going way up into the mountains are flumes built to bring water down to keep it flowing through the sluices,” Mitch told her. “The miner shovels gravel into the sluice from the streambed and is able to wash away most of the dirt. Gold is heavier than dirt, so it is usually left behind—mostly tiny nuggets, sometimes bigger scads that can be worth four to five dollars, sometimes more. Some miners go higher up into the hillsides and the mountains in the distance and blow their way into them looking for heavier veins of gold.”

  Men dug ditches. Some were up higher, chipping away at the rock walls with picks. Another explosion even higher made the ground shake.

  “Some of these miners have four and five men working for them. Some find ways to pocket some of the nuggets and dust, which leads to trouble. Then there are the road agents, like Hugh Wiley, who decide to rob a payload headed for Virginia City, or rob one of the wagons coming out of here carrying gold.”

  Elizabeth struggled to concentrate on what he told her, still upset over the shooting. Mitch apparently thought nothing of wounding a man. She realized he’d done what he had to do, but it seemed so easy for him.

  The wild and noisy activity in the gulch helped steer her attention to things Mitch was showing her. “They’re tearing up the earth, destroying the natural beauty of this place,” she observed.

  “It’s like I told you, men will do anything to get rich. There used to be a lot of alder bushes and trees all along this creek, but most of them have been cut down for building cabins and burned for heating and cooking.” Mitch snapped the reins again and drove the buggy over a crude wooden bridge to the other side of the stream and toward a cabin made of wood slats. “The woman with a little boy that I told you about back in town lives up there in that cabin. We’ll go talk to her about schooling.”

  Men glanced at Elizabeth and whistled. Some stood up straight and just stared at her. A couple of them nodded to Mitch.

  “Stop for a minute,” Elizabeth told Mitch.

  Mitch halted the buggy and looked at her. “What is it?”

  “How can you… I mean, aren’t you worried about what just happened back there?”

  Mitch sobered. “Elizabeth, it’s like I told you. People like Trudy and those men talk big and make threats. Trudy is probably angrier at Hugh for what he did than she is at me. She’s just angry at the whole world right now.”

  “But they seemed to truly mean it. They want to kill you.”

  Mitch pushed his hat back. “A lot of men want to kill me.”

  Elizabeth frowned, still wary. “I heard about Sheriff Henry Plummer and his bunch, and the shootings and hangings that went on,” she told Mitch. “If you were a part of all that, it makes me wonder…”

  “Wonder what?”

  Elizabeth looked away, refusing to meet his blue eyes because whenever she did, she felt things she shouldn’t, and she was having a lot of trouble trusting anything Mitch told her. “It makes me wonder how you would treat someone you cared about if you knew they had broken the law. I have a feeling the law comes first with you and feelings second.”

  Mitch sighed, resting his elbows on his knees and staring at the activity that stretched all up the gulch. “It would depend on a lot of things, Elizabeth, and if it involved a woman, I’d no more hang a woman than I’d hang myself. I know Hal and David and I threatened we’d even hang Trudy Wiley, but we wouldn’t.”

  Elizabeth looked at her lap as he leaned closer…too close in the small buggy.

  “Elizabeth, if you’re talking about yourself,” he continued, “I can tell you right now that if you’ve done something you’re afraid to tell me about, don’t be.” He sighed. “I’m your friend and I’ll protect you with my life if need be. And right now, I know you’re upset over what just happened, but that’s just how life is out here. It’s survival of the fittest, and there is nothing wrong with admitting you’re scared or that you need help sometimes.” He put a hand on her arm. “You okay? We can go back to town right now if you want.”

  “No.” Elizabeth raised her chin. “We’ve come this far. I just have to get used to all of this. Let’s go meet that little boy.”

  Elizabeth felt torn between a desire to let him hold her and distrust of all men. Mitch pulled the buggy closer to the cabin, then put on the brake and handed her the reins before climbing down. “I’ll go see if she’s there.”

  Elizabeth watched him walk up to the cabin and knock on the door. The door opened and a very thin, haggard, and sad-looking woman greeted Mitch. They talked a moment, and then the woman shook her head and broke into tears. Mitch said something more to her, then touched her arm before turning to walk back to the buggy. The woman glanced at Elizabeth, then closed the door.

  Mitch returned and climbed into the buggy. He just sat there a minute, not speaking.

  “What’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked. “That woman was crying. Is her little boy sick?”

  Mitch shook his head. “He died a few days ago—run over by a supply wagon. She’s in a pretty bad way.”

  “Oh, no, that poor woman!” Elizabeth felt like crying herself. “Should I go talk to her?”

  Mitch pulled off the brake. “No. I offered, but she doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now. Life is hell out here for the few women who choose to come to these mining camps with their husbands.”

  “But she needs to talk to someone. The women out here need each other’s company.”

  “The few up here in the gulch find ways to get together. And there’s a dance and picnic coming up in Alder in a couple of weeks. You’ll meet some of them then. That’s probably the best time to hand out some of your flyers.” He faced her before getting under way. “Now you see how hard life is here. Between that thing with Trudy and her men, and seeing how the people live up here in the gulch, maybe you understand why I want to look out for you and why I wanted you to get that gun. More than that, I’ve got feelings for you I’ve never felt for another woman. I want you to know you can trust me, Elizabeth. Please just trust me, and help me know whether or not I should do anything about these feelings I have for you. I know this isn’t a courting trip. God knows the way things turned out it would have spoiled all that anyway. But I don’t want you to keep judging me by these guns.”

  Close again. So close in the small buggy seat. He had a way of drawing her to him without touching her. Elizabeth found herself leaning closer, wondering what it felt like to be gently kissed by a man, truly loved by a man instead of…

  The sharp memory of Alan Radcliffe’s cold lips and rough hands made her stiffen and pull away. No! She could not allow this!

  Mitch grasped her hand. “What is it, Elizabeth? What are you afraid of?”

  She pulled her hand away. “Nothing. I mean…everything. My whole life has been turned upside down, and all this—” She waved her hand to indicate the gulch and the mining and the people there. “All this. I hardly know where I am or who I am. I don’t really know you. You’re telling me you have feelings for me, yet you don’t know me any better than I know you…and…all this violence and—”

  “Stop,” Mitch told her. “Look at me.”<
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  “I can’t.”

  “Why? Because you know damn well you do have feelings for me? It isn’t this place or what you’ve been through or me voicing my feelings that has you confused and afraid, Elizabeth. It’s something else. Someone, somewhere, has terrified you. You’ve been through something as bad or worse than what you’ve experienced here, back wherever you came from—and don’t tell me it’s St. Louis, because I don’t believe it. Look at me, Elizabeth.”

  She finally obeyed, angrily wiping at a tear.

  “You say you don’t know me, but you do, because I don’t hide anything and I’m not a liar. I’m Mitch Brady from New York City. I’m a man whose alcoholic father abandoned him. My mother turned to sleeping with men for money in order to feed me, and one of them beat her to death right in front of me when I was too little to stop him.”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes and shook her head. “That’s so sad.”

  “She did what she had to do.” He turned away for a moment. “When she died, I ran the streets and did whatever I needed to survive. I ended up in the war and then wandered out here and fell into vigilante work, and that’s all there is to know about me, except that you don’t ever have to be afraid of me or what I do—or think that just because I’m a lawman, I’d somehow turn on you if you told me the truth about yourself.” He met her gaze again. “I’m an open book, Elizabeth, and you’re the first woman who’s come into my life who has wrapped herself right around my heart and made me think she’s supposed to be there. You might even say I’m in love with you.”

  He turned again and snapped the reins, heading the buggy out of the gulch and back toward Alder. “Admitting that is damn hard for a man like me,” he continued. “A minute ago, you almost let me kiss you, but something pulled you back like whiplash. That something has to do with why you came out here. Don’t deny it.”

  Elizabeth swallowed against more tears. “I don’t deny it. I just… I can’t allow myself to have feelings for you until I know for sure what you’ll think of me when I tell you why I’m here.”

  “You’ve got time. I’m taking you back to Alder because that run-in with Trudy and her bunch set us back, and I can tell you’re still pretty upset over it. I’ll bring you back here and show you about mining and introduce you to more of the wives another time. Once we get back, I’ll be leaving for a couple of weeks, so you’ll have plenty of time to do your thinking.”

  They rode on silently for several minutes. “I’m sorry about your mother. That’s an awful thing for a little boy to see.” I saw my own mother murdered. If only she could share that. “And I’m sorry for what life must have been like for you after that.”

  Mitch sighed. “Well, somehow I survived, and ever since then I’ve hated seeing a woman abused.”

  More silence.

  “Where will you go?” Elizabeth finally asked. “You said you’d be gone for a couple of weeks.”

  “I’ll make my rounds like I always do. I’ll come back up here and see what needs doing, visit some of the ranchers, scour the road to Virginia City, meet up with Hal and the others—general patrolling for trouble.”

  Elizabeth was surprised to realize she’d miss him. She didn’t want him to go away, but maybe that was best for now. “I’ll worry about you.”

  “Good. That means you care, at least a little.”

  “Of course I care. I’ve told you that more than once.”

  He slowed the horse. “How will you get by?” he asked her.

  “Get by?”

  “I mean, you still don’t have any kind of job yet.”

  “Thank you for asking, but…I have money. Enough to get me through the winter.” Elizabeth knew he was wondering where she got it. “I…inherited it.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Well, however you got the money, at least I know you’ll be all right while I’m gone. I want your promise to stick close to Ma Kelly’s when I’m gone, and if you have to go out, do it when she can go with you—or get a message to Randy or Benny or Len. They’ll all be around and they’ll keep an eye on you. And I’d like your promise that I can take you to the dance and picnic when I get back.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “All right.” She finally faced him. “But I really will worry about you. You have so many enemies.”

  “I’ll be fine. You know I can handle myself.”

  “Not against back shooters.”

  He brought the buggy to a halt again and gave her a reassuring smile. “You just lay low and keep that gun of yours handy when you’re out in the streets. We’ll see more of each other when I get back.”

  Again, so close. This time she didn’t pull away when he leaned closer and kissed her softly on the lips.

  “There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he teased.

  Elizabeth studied the honesty in his eyes. Could a man really be sincere and capable of love and gentleness? “No,” she answered, blushing. “It was nice.”

  Mitch grinned. “Tell me just one truth. How old are you—really?”

  Elizabeth gave in. “I’m eighteen.”

  “Truth?”

  “Truth.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. I was afraid you were even younger than that. If you were, I’d feel like a brute for wanting you.”

  A brute did want me, back in New York. I ran from him.

  Mitch snapped the reins again. “I don’t ever need to know anything more about you if you choose not to tell me, Elizabeth. It won’t change how I feel, but knowing more would make helping you a lot easier. And I’d do that much even if I didn’t have feelings for you.”

  Elizabeth wished she could believe that. She dearly wanted to. She looked around the side of the buggy toward the now-distant poorly built little cabin where a woman sat alone crying over her dead little boy. Things she had experienced made her want to run away from this place. She could try it while Mitch was gone, but running again could mean risking being found by Alan Radcliffe. Worse, it might mean never seeing Mitch again. She settled back into the buggy seat, her hip touching Mitch’s, his presence emanating strength and making her feel protected.

  She’d stay in Alder. She’d stay because of Mitch Brady. She’d stay because part of her already knew that if she left, she’d never forget him. She’d stay because she already knew she was daring to fall in love with him.

  Twenty

  Elizabeth opened the parlor door after seeing through the curtained window that a woman and young girl stood outside. “Yes?”

  “I’m Anne Henderson,” the woman greeted Elizabeth with a very strong Southern accent. “My husband, Charlie, runs a general store up the street. I saw your poster about teaching, and I wondered if you’d teach my girl here. Her name is Tilly. She’s seven.”

  Elizabeth welcomed the chance to finally have a purpose here in Alder. “Yes, come in!” she told Anne, stepping aside.

  The woman and her daughter entered hesitantly. Anne Henderson was very thin, with ash blond hair and pale brown eyes. Her hair was drawn tightly back into a bun and her dress was a plain dark blue. Tilly stared at Elizabeth wide-eyed, but smiled when Elizabeth said hello to her.

  “Are you a trained schoolteacher?” Anne asked Elizabeth after they sat down.

  “Well, not as far as having a specific certificate to teach, but I…” She told herself to be careful about her background. “I went to a women’s finishing school in St. Louis, and I am quite well educated—enough to help teach reading and basic math to youngsters. When I arrived here I thought it might be a way to make a little money. I thought ten cents a day for each child would be fair. I would of course furnish the books. Do you think that’s reasonable?”

  Anne smoothed the back of her daughter’s hair. “In a gold town, suppliers like my husband do well enough to afford that. We came out here from Alabama. We lost our home and farm in the war. Luckily my husband had saved some mo
ney nobody knew about. We used it to buy a wagon full of supplies and headed west. We didn’t know what else to do.” A sadness came into her eyes. “I miss our home, but a man has to do what he can to feed his family, so here we are.”

  “I understand. I miss my home, too.”

  Anne nodded. “You do seem well-bred, so some of us can’t help wondering what brings a fine young lady like yourself to a place like Alder. After all, a lot of people come here with questionable pasts, and we will be entrusting our children to your care.”

  Elizabeth wondered how much longer she could avoid the truth. “It’s a long story, and I prefer not to share it for now. I assure you that I am reputable and well educated. I just thought I could use that in places like Alder, where there are no schools yet.”

  Anne scrutinized her warily. “Well, I suppose that’s good enough for now. At least you live here at Ma’s and not above one of the saloons.”

  “I assure you, I am not of that sort,” Elizabeth answered. She was growing tired of the constant reference to the town prostitutes, but she supposed it was a natural curiosity in a place like Alder. “You said earlier ‘we will be entrusting our children to your care.’ Are there other children you think might be able to take advantage of my teaching?”

  Anne nodded. “In a gold town, there are very few children or wives and mothers, of course, but there are four or five others who might want to take advantage of some schooling for their children. Up the street is a blacksmith who has a wife and little boy. The blacksmith’s name is Barney Deets. His boy is named Andy, and I think he’s about eight years old. And a lady named Ethel Green, a miner’s widow, runs a little restaurant in town called Eats. She’s awful busy trying to make ends meet and her daughter, Lucinda, helps her, so she wouldn’t be able to come every day. I think she’s about ten. I expect she’d only be able to come maybe once a week.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “That’s fine. I was thinking only two days a week anyway. I have a feeling that in a place like this, the children are needed to help with chores and such. I have to travel to Virginia City first to pick up some books and supplies, so I can’t get started right away. I’ll get word to everyone when I’m ready. I’m afraid I can’t get the supplies for several days yet. I have to wait for Mitch Brady to accompany me. After what I went through coming here, I’m not quite ready to make that trip back along the road to Virginia City by myself.”