Days of Gold

by Jude Deveraux

  “The bullets have to be removed,” Matt said. “They’re lead, and if they stay in there very long they’ll poison him. Even as it is, I’m not sure...” He trailed off, glancing back at Naps, who was lying on the cold floor and trying to breathe through the pain.

  “Then do it,” Angus said. “Get the bullets out and wrap him up as best you can. I’m going to try to find the horses and get us out of here.”

  “Me?” Matt began, but one look from Angus stopped him. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Angus looked at T.C., who was studying something that was growing from the wall of the cave. “Help him. Do whatever needs to be done.”

  Angus moved close to the mouth of the cave, where he could see out but not be seen; Mac was right beside him.

  “You know what’s going on, don’t you, lad?”

  “I think Austin’s hired some trappers and I think they mean to kill us.”

  “All over a girl as worthless as Betsy Wellman.”

  “There are women you fight for and women who don’t deserve it,” Angus said under his breath, but Mac heard him.

  “Sounds like you wish you’d done more fighting.”

  “There are some things that a man can’t fight.” Angus moved away from the wall and went to where Matt was hovering over Naps. His eyes asked whether the boy was going to be all right, but Matt shrugged that he didn’t know.

  “I’m going down,” Angus said. He looked at the four men and hated leaving them. Mac knew how to take care of himself, but the others were young and inexperienced. “My horse will come when I call and I’ll ride for the fort. It’s not that far away, and I’ll bring help back.”

  T.C. and Matt nodded at this, and Naps gave a faint smile, as though he now knew that he’d be saved, but Mac looked at Angus with serious eyes. Mac was going to be left alone with three neophytes, little ammunition, and heaven only knew how many men surrounding them.

  “It’s the only way,” Angus said. “None of you would make it through them.”

  “Aye, lad, I know,” Mac said softly, and his eyes said that he knew that when Angus returned—if he did—they wouldn’t be alive.

  “I have to go now,” Angus said. “I can’t wait until dark.”

  “I know,” Mac said. “Go on, then. Tell the colonel hello for us. And if you see Austin you might hit him for me.”

  Angus put his hand on Mac’s shoulder. “If anything happens to you or the lads, I’ll kill him.”

  “Fair enough,” Mac said, then, after one more glance at the three young men, Angus slipped out of the cave and into the sunlight.

  He stayed behind trees and rocks and moved as silently as he could, but he still felt that he was being watched. Whoever was shooting at them had allowed them to get into the cave, but he doubted if they were going to let Angus get to his horse and ride to the fort.

  It was slow progress going down the hill. Angus would take two steps then wait. It’s what he’d learned how to do when he was a boy, moving about the heather on his belly, looking for any sign of the rustlers.

  When he got within fifty feet of where they’d camped the night before, he gave the low whistle that he’d trained his horse to come to, but the animal didn’t show up. He wasn’t sure but he thought he heard a laugh in the distance. If the men were trappers and lived their lives alone in the woods, then they knew a bird whistle from a man’s.

  As Angus walked along the edge of the riverbank, he tried to calculate how long it would take him to run the distance to the fort. Three days, he thought, but if he could get a horse from one of the trappers...

  Slowly, stealthily, he made his way toward where the gunmen were hiding. He thought he was nearly there when he heard the unmistakable whiz of an arrow. Ducking, he swerved and missed the arrow, but his foot slipped on the wet grass and he lost his balance. He grabbed at a tree but couldn’t reach it. In the next second he felt himself falling down the cliff and heading for the river. As he tried to curl himself into a ball, his hands covering his head in protection, he knew he was going to die because he was sure he heard bagpipes.

  Angus hit the water hard, but he came up to the surface quickly, and for a moment the current carried him. As he passed a tall rock, he grabbed it and held on. With water in his face, he looked at the bank, trying to see if a gunman was standing there. Or a man with a bow. Instead, he thought he saw Shamus—and he was smiling at him in delight.

  Angus shook his head to clear it, then looked back at the bank, but who or what he’d seen was gone. There were just trees and grasses.

  Angus looked at the rushing water and thought about how to get himself out. He knew of a place to cross the river, but it was nearly a mile upstream. He needed to get back to the nearest bank and try to find his horse.

  He moved from rock to rock, using his arms and legs to hold himself against the current. When he again thought he heard bagpipes, he was sure that when he went under he must have hit his head. When he got to the bank he was weak from the exertion, but he didn’t stop. He still had to climb up the embankment.

  He grabbed a tree root and hauled himself up, using the roots as a rope. When he got to the top, a hand appeared before his face. Angus was so startled that he almost fell backward, but the hand stayed where it was and a familiar voice said, “Give me your hand, lad, and I’ll help you up.”

  Angus looked up to see his uncle Malcolm lying on his belly, his hand extended. He wore a set of bagpipes on his back.

  All Angus could do was stand there, his feet on the side of the steep, muddy bank, his hands holding on to a tree root, and stare, his mouth open in astonishment. “Am I dead?” he at last said.

  In a sweet tone, Malcolm said, “Aye, you are, lad, and I’m here to welcome you into Heaven. Take my hand so we can go meet the Lord.”

  Angus’s eyes were wide but then he heard a guffaw that he’d heard since he was a child. Turning, he saw Shamus standing there, laughing at him in a derogatory way.

  Angus looked back at Malcolm. “Now I know you’re lying. Shamus will never be allowed into Heaven.” Taking Malcolm’s hand, he hauled himself upward. When he was again standing, dripping wet, he still could do nothing but stare at Malcolm and Shamus. “What... ?” he began. “How... ?”

  “We came to visit you,” Malcolm said.

  “And we ended up saving your life!” Shamus said, smirking. “If it hadn’t been for us, you’d be dead now. Why couldn’t you get away from them? There were only six of them.”

  “And it took the both of you to get rid of them?” Angus asked, still in shock at seeing them.

  “Naw,” Malcolm said. “I went after you, and Tam went up to the cave where you hid those others. Shamus dealt with the Frenchmen. A Scot’s worth more than a dozen Frenchmen.”

  Shamus was looking at Angus with a half grin that said it was clear to see who the superior man was.

  “Tam is here?” Angus asked.

  “Aye. Seeing to the others,” Malcolm said. “Do you give us no greeting?”

  “Malcolm, I...” Angus began, but then stopped. “I don’t know how...”

  “Ah, lad,” Malcolm said, embarrassed. “I didna mean to make you weep. A drink of good whiskey will do to thank me.”

  “I’ll buy you a bottle,” Angus said as he put his arm around Malcolm’s broad shoulders and held on. All that had happened since he’d last seen the man went through his head in a series of visions. It seemed so long ago, and he’d been such an innocent back then. He remembered trying to save Edilean from a forced marriage and how he’d ended up on a ship with her and heading to another country. And he’d fallen in love with her so hard that every day without her was an ache inside him. He saw her face every hour of every day, longed for her, wondered where she was and what she was doing.

  “Lad!” Malcolm said. “We thought you’d be glad to see us.”

  “I am,” Angus said, but his voice caught in his throat, and he could say no more.

  “Where’s the gi
rl?” Shamus asked.

  “What girl?”

  “The one you ran off with. The one you stole the gold from.”

  “I did not—” Angus began but Malcolm cut him off.

  “Could you boys wait a while before fighting? I think we need to get to the others, and Tam wants to see you.”

  “Aye, Tam,” Angus said, grinning, his arm still so tight around Malcolm’s strong shoulders that he was causing the man pain, but Malcolm didn’t complain. “You got them all?” Angus asked, looking at Shamus as though he doubted that he really could take down six men.

  “Hmph!” Shamus snorted. “Didn’t take me but a minute. They were standing in plain sight. Anyone could have seen them.”

  Angus couldn’t help grinning at Shamus’s arrogance. He looked at Malcolm. “So what do you think of this new country?”

  “Too hot,” Malcolm said. “Give me the coolness of Scotland. And their whiskey is bad.”

  “And they think we’re English,” Shamus said, as though that was the final insult.

  “With your accent?” Angus said happily. “Can they understand you?”

  “Not many can,” Shamus said, and for a moment his eyes told Angus that he was glad to see him.

  “Up there,” Angus said, nodding toward the path to the cave. Shamus went up, but Angus stood where he was, with his arm firmly around Malcolm’s shoulders.

  “You must let me go, lad,” Malcolm said gently. “I’m not a ghost and I’m here to stay.”

  “Ghost,” Angus said, smiling. “You didn’t come here in a coffin full of sawdust, did you?”

  “No,” Malcolm said slowly, “but why would you ask that? Is that how you sneaked into this country?”

  “No,” Angus said, his smile widening. “I came here as an English gentleman.”

  “I want to hear every word of this story,” Malcolm said.

  “I’ll be glad to tell it to you.”

  21

  NO, NO, NO, no!” Angus said, his words echoing off the cave walls. “I will not do it. I refuse. And that’s the last time I’m saying it.”

  Last night, a fire had made the cave almost homelike. Mac had taken Angus’s horse and was on his way back to the fort to get help, while T.C., Matt, and Naps had stayed with Angus. Thanks to Matt’s surgery and the plants that T.C. had found, Naps was resting comfortably, passing drowsily in and out of consciousness from the brew that T.C. had given him.

  Tam, Shamus, Malcolm, and Angus sat around the fire and talked in the Scottish burr that the other men couldn’t quite make out.

  They’d spent hours exchanging stories. Angus made them all laugh uproariously with his account of how he got rooked into helping Edilean escape her uncle’s treacherous plan. The first time he said her name, his breath caught and he didn’t know if he could go on, but the second time was easier. By the time he was well into his story, he was smiling and remembering it all fondly.

  He started telling the men about James Harcourt’s wife’s ugliness and how she’d tried to get him to stay in bed with her, but Malcolm cut him off by sending a burning branch flying. When they got it cleaned up, Malcolm asked about James, so Angus told of hitting James on the head with a candlestick. “And Edilean shaved me,” he said in an almost dreamy voice.

  “She shaved your beard off?” Shamus said. “I knew there was something different about you.”

  Throughout the story, Shamus kept shaking his head and muttering, “A wagonload of gold. The trunks were full of gold.” He sounded as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing—and what he’d lost.

  Angus told of dressing in James’s clothes and boarding the ship. For a few moments he was silent as he let himself remember the time with Edilean on the ship. He thought of tying her corset, of teasing her, of making her laugh. He could see it all so clearly that it was almost as though he could touch her.

  “Angus!” Tam said, bringing him back to where he was.

  Angus smiled, even though he hardly recognized him. Tam had grown until he was as tall as Angus. He was no longer the boy who trailed after his bigger, older cousin. In the four years that they’d been separated, Tam had become a man, and Angus regretted that he’d not been there to see him grow and change. But then, Angus wondered if his going was the reason that Tam had grown up so quickly. With Angus gone, Tam was now the one to inherit... What? Angus thought. There was nothing left of the McTern clan to inherit but the responsibility.

  “I’ve entertained you enough,” Angus said at last. “You didn’t come all the way across the ocean just to hear my stories. What have you come for?”

  “We—” Shamus began, but when Malcolm gave him a hard look he closed his mouth.

  “Kenna thanks you for the silk dress you sent her,” Tam said.

  “And how is she?” Angus tried to keep his voice steady as he thought about the sister who’d once been so close to him. “How many children does she have now?”

  “Six,” Malcolm said. “She liked that the dress you sent her had...” He didn’t quite know what to say.

  “An expandable front,” Angus said.

  “Ah, so that’s what she meant,” Malcolm said, then sipped his coffee and was silent.

  “What are the lot of you up to?” Angus asked suspiciously. “How did you even find me?”

  “That was easy enough,” Shamus said. “What with your picture everywhere, there were a lot of people with information about you.”

  Angus grimaced.

  “That’s true,” Malcolm said slowly. “But it’s also true that we wanted to see you.” He glanced at the leather clothes Angus had on. “This country suits you.”

  “When you can stay alive,” Shamus said.

  “Out with it!” Angus said loudly, making the men on the far side of the cave jump. Even Naps stirred in his sleep.

  “Miss Edilean’s uncle died,” Tam said.

  “Did he?” Angus said and couldn’t help a bit of a smile. It was one less person who was after him.

  “And he left all his property to Miss Edilean.”

  “Good,” Angus said, looking from one to the other of them, but they were silent. “You want to buy the place from her, don’t you?”

  “For a peppercorn a year,” Malcolm said quickly.

  “I think she’d agree to that.”

  “She don’t need the money,” Shamus said, “not with all those slave girls of hers.”

  “Slaves?” Angus said. “I can’t imagine that Edilean would own a slave.”

  “That’s not what he meant,” Malcolm said, glaring at Shamus to keep his mouth shut. “Miss Edilean has... Well, it’s...” He looked at Tam for help.

  “She started a business in Boston called ‘Bound Girl.’ ”

  Angus looked at him in astonishment. “Are you saying that she opened a... a house of... ?”

  “Did this new country put your mind in the gutter?” Malcolm snapped. “Miss Edilean is a lady. Mind what you say about her, boy!”

  “Or you’ll turn me over your knee?” Angus asked, smiling at the familiarity of it all.

  Tam leaned forward. “She sells the best and the most vegetables and fruit in Boston. She has a company that she owns and runs with the help of women who used to be indentured servants.”

  “I like her handbill,” Shamus said, grinning.

  “What’s he talking about?” Angus asked.

  “Well,” Tam said slowly, “Miss Edilean does have a rather, uh, enticing sign for her business.”

  “A girl,” Shamus said, “big and healthy, with her sleeves rolled up. Good muscles on her, and she’s got—” He made a gesture to show a large bosom. “Damn handsome woman!”

  They all looked at Shamus for a moment, then turned back to Angus. “Is this true? Edilean runs a business?”

  “From what we were told, she has over a hundred employees, all women, and she owns half a dozen farms,” Malcolm said. “How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”

  “Four years, three months, and twen
ty-two days,” Angus said quickly, then looked embarrassed. “I think. It’s just a guess.”

  “You always were good at guessing,” Malcolm said but lowered his head to hide his smile.

  “So Edilean started a business,” Angus said in wonder. “And it’s doing well?”

  “Very well,” Malcolm said. “She earns a lot of money, and she’s used it to set up a couple of houses for women without husbands, widows and such. She helps a lot of women.”

  “There were nine bound women on the ship when we came over,” Angus said, staring at the fire, remembering. “But Edilean didn’t like them. She hired one of them to do some sewing for her, but I could tell that she had no intention of keeping her on after the voyage. Funny how you think you know someone but don’t. I can’t imagine Edilean running a business and certainly not hiring women like them.”

  When his head came up, he was smiling. “She got into a fight—a bloody fistfight—with one of the prisoners named Tabitha. Edilean—”

  “Big girl? Pretty?” Tam asked.

  “Yes,” Angus said. “You didn’t meet her, did you?”

  “If she’s the Tabitha we heard about, she’s Miss Edilean’s farm manager,” Tam said. “She runs all the farms and she doesn’t take any guff off anyone.”

  Angus’s mouth dropped open. “Edilean and Tabitha work together?”

  “What did they fight about?” Shamus asked, his eyes alight at the thought.

  “Diamonds,” Angus said, and looked back at Malcolm and Tam. “Edilean and Tabitha together. What a world this is! Tell me, is Edilean still living with Harriet Harcourt?”

  “Oh, yes,” Tam said. “Harriet takes care of the money for all of the business.”

  Angus narrowed his eyes at them. “How long have you three been in this country?”

  “A while,” Malcolm said.

  “Over three months,” Shamus said. “It took some time to find you. It wasn’t hard, mind you, but it took time. Did you know that we could turn you in for a thousand pounds?”

  When Angus started to say something, Tam interrupted. “Don’t worry, James Harcourt is taken care of. His sister Harriet pays him to stay away from Miss Edilean.”