There had been talk of a meeting in the library, but now she stood there with no one but Cole. “Where is everyone?” she asked again.
“Newlyweds.” Cole smirked a little. “They all turn in mighty early. Sadie and Heath have taken over the house Alonzo used to live in.”
“He was a ramrod, wasn’t he?” Mel said.
“Yep, and he betrayed us. We aren’t hiring anyone new until we find out who we can trust. So the house isn’t in use, and I leave the upstairs to Justin and Angie and sleep down here in Ma and Pa’s room. You’re gonna end up in a bedroom in the back of the house near Rosita.”
“I know the rooms. We played all over this house when I was a kid. Rosita’s making up the bed right now.”
“Can’t say as I blame my brother and sister for wanting some private time. They haven’t been married long and probably haven’t had a word just between them since this morning. We used to gather in here at night, but lately it’s only me.”
“Well,” Mel said, clearing her throat, “I reckon I’ll go. It’s been a powerful long couple of days, and I’ve got gold to dig tomorrow.”
Cole said, “I heard Walt wants to head down into the pit in your mine tomorrow.”
“Walt talked about it. We found a vein of gold in his today, thin as a hair.”
Cole gave Mel a slight smile. “You’re lucky. Most everything on the same level as the mine entrance is played out, which is why they’re digging down.”
“Good night, then.”
“Wait, before you leave, you need to stay with Justin or whoever rides out to the mines tomorrow until you find your uncle Walt.”
Mel shrugged. “I reckon I can stick to Justin.”
“I won’t be going because of questioning Ramone. Not sure about Heath. He seems to like to stand guard out there, so he might be going along.”
Since he seemed to want to talk, she let the blaze burning in the huge stone hearth draw her. She did need sleep, but she wasn’t quite ready to go to a strange room. That pried a smile out of her, because last night she’d done exactly the same thing at her little cabin.
After holding her hands out to warm for a minute, she admitted to herself that she didn’t want to go because she wanted to stay here with Cole. And that was foolish, so she gave herself a mental shake and turned to leave. She walked straight into him. She’d been so focused on not looking at him, she hadn’t noticed him come to the fire.
He caught her upper arms as if to steady her, even though she was steady as a rock. He didn’t let go but instead looked down at her for a long, silent moment broken only by the crackle of the fire at her back.
Finally, without saying a word, he lowered his head toward her mouth.
“Cole,” she said against his lips, “we can’t do this.”
She turned her head aside and rested her cheek on Cole’s broad shoulder. Her hands stayed on his chest, as she wasn’t quite ready to step back but knew she should.
“It’s all wrong.” Cole’s words so exactly echoing her thoughts brought her head up. She looked into his eyes and saw regret.
It was as if he’d slapped her. It certainly cleared her mixed-up longing. She stepped around him and forced herself to walk.
“Mel, wait. I didn’t mean . . .”
“Let’s don’t talk about it, Cole.” She didn’t look back but moved faster toward the door just ahead. She needed to escape badly.
She quickly reached the door and stepped into the hall. Only then did she glance sideways at him. There he stood, right where she’d left him. He’d made no move to come after her, and she knew why. He was drawn to her just as she was drawn to him, and it was exactly as he’d said—all wrong.
“Hola, Señor Cole, Señora Rosita.” Ramone swung the door open, his one working eye, nervous, looking away from Cole to Rosita.
When Ramone was in profile, looking at Rosita, Cole was struck by what a handsome man he’d been. Then he looked straight at Cole and the devastation of his wound was a horror.
What would it do to a handsome man to suddenly be so disfigured? Yes, it would be an awful thing, but Ramone had once enjoyed a decent life. He’d married and had children—one of them the betraying vermin, Alonzo, who’d kidnapped Angie and used her to lure out the Bodens, hoping to kill them. Alonzo was now in prison, and Justin ended up marrying Angie. His anger at Alonzo lingered and might’ve overflowed onto Ramone. It was just as well Cole’s little brother hadn’t come.
But Ramone had daughters, too. By the few accounts Cole had heard, they were happily married back in Mexico City. Ramone had a job that kept him supported most his life. And many men came out of the war and out of the tough life on the frontier with scars or missing fingers, arms, legs. Still, they stood strong and kept going. But Ramone seemed to fold up every time he was faced with adversity.
“Welcome.” Ramone stepped back, his expression etched with fear at the sight of Cole.
Cole let Rosita go in first. Ramone hadn’t taken part in any of the wrong that’d been done to the Bodens, and he was innocent of Frank Chastain’s death. And yet he’d known things he should have told the sheriff, which would have helped put right a wrong that allowed a murderer to roam free for decades.
Ramone was no villain, but he was a coward, and there was no reason to believe that would ever change.
Cole said, “Sit, Ramone.”
There were two extra chairs in the small cabin. Rosita sat at the foot of the table, Ramone at the head.
Cole sat between them and started talking. “We’ve found some strange notes among the possessions of the men who attacked us. We’ve got a few questions for you.”
“Sí, Señor Cole. Ask me. I will help if I can.”
“How well did you know Señora de Val?”
Ramone jerked his head back so hard he might have fallen off his chair if it hadn’t been close to the wall behind him.
“Señora Lauressa?” Ramone swallowed hard but forced the words from his throat. “She is el diablo. She did everything to drive me away from my work. I only stayed because mi padre scorned her orders and demanded she keep away from me. I feared her and she wanted it that way. But it was all behind the old Don’s back. She never defied him openly. I would have gone, but I did not know if anyone else would ever give me a job. Mi padre said no one would because I was so ugly.”
“Your pa sounds like he’s as much of a devil as his wife,” Cole said grimly. “Tell me about her, Ramone. Not just how she treated you, but how she treated others who angered her. How did she act about Don de Val’s unfaithfulness? Was she vengeful? Did she hold a grudge?”
“Señora tolerated Papa’s unfaithfulness because he gave her no choice.”
“Did she accept it easily or did she make people suffer through misplaced anger?”
Ramone had nodded through Cole’s questions. “She was not just angry, but dangerous. Her punishments came suddenly and ruthlessly. I believe she would have ordered executions if she’d had the power.”
Rosita gasped and whispered what Cole thought was a prayer.
“My wife and I had Alonzo and also three daughters. They all married but they live quietly. They never came back to our house, though we went to see them. None of them wanted to draw attention to their families for fear of Señora de Val.”
“She’d have turned her anger on women grown and gone from you?”
“Yes, she wanted them as servants, did her best to ruin their chances of marriage. Don de Val had other children with other women, and she drove them all away when the Don wanted to give them jobs. Only I stayed because of my scar. I had little choice.”
“Did you ever see a sample of her handwriting?” Cole’s question brought Ramone’s head up as if startled.
“Her handwriting? Why?”
“A simple question, Ramone.”
“I did see her writing. Horrible. Did she write so to make people fail her? Some, yes, but also she . . . I think she was estupido, her handwriting no es bueno. She can read
and write just a little only. She had a perfect accent when the Don was nearby, but when alone with servants she spoke Inglés, then mixed in Español. And write the same. The Don had many servants, so she gave orders, no need to write.”
“But you had to read it?”
“She takes pleasure in writing me notes, and then act angry when I fail her. So I learned but it was not easy.”
Cole looked at Rosita with barely contained excitement. “I have a note I want you to see.” He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to Ramone.
Nodding, Ramone stared for only seconds before he said, “Sí, this is Señora de Val. I have never seen its like.”
“Can you make out what it says?” Rosita asked.
His one eye widened as he looked at the note. “I had forgotten just how bad it is. I have done my best to avoid Señora de Val in recent years. It will take time, but yes, I believe I can figure out what it says.”
Sick at what Ramone might find out about his grandparents, Cole tamped down the urge to grab the note and run. Instead he produced a pencil and paper from the same pocket where he’d kept the note and passed them to Ramone. “We’ll be back. I have business in town.”
As he rose to leave, Cole saw something that almost knocked him back in the chair. He reached for a piece of fabric lying on a small table. A lantern sat on top of it and next to a book so that only a few inches of the cloth showed. Lifting the lantern, he picked up the cloth. “Where did you get this?”
Ramone stood, looking confused. “That bit of cloth?”
“It’s a pattern I’ve seen before.”
“It’s a Mexican fabric that was used much in mi padre’s hacienda. Don de Val used it, thought of it as his colors. I owned many things with that color at one time. This is something I sent to Maria years ago.” He referred to his sister, another illegitimate child of Don de Val. “It was among her things when she died, and they came to me later.”
“That’s where I saw it. Maria had this at the orphanage.”
With cold anger Cole clenched the cloth in his fist. Another connection between their trouble and the house of de Val. “Can I keep it, Ramone? I’ll bring it back soon.”
Ramone waved his hand at the cloth. “I do not want it. A reminder of unhappiness, both my sister’s death and the cruel household of my father.”
Cole and Rosita left. As they walked away from the house, Cole looked back uncertainly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have just left Ramone that note. What if he destroys it?”
Rosita kept moving. “We are in his hands anyway, Cole. If we get his translation of it, we only have his word for what it says.”
“What if . . . ?” His voice faded.
Rosita stopped and rested a strong, brown hand on his arm. “What if there is something in there about your grandfather and grandmother? Are you worried you will learn something about them you do not want to know?”
Cole didn’t answer.
“Or,” Rosita went on, “are you afraid you will learn something about them you have always known but ignored?”
He didn’t want to believe they’d hire killers, but the more he admitted they’d be party to destroying the CR, the more he was seeing the ugliest side of them. A side he’d deliberately looked away from all his life.
Cole looked down at her for a long moment. “They wouldn’t hire murder, Rosita. I don’t believe it.”
“And if the note says different?”
Cole closed his eyes. He tried to be honest with himself. He knew the way his grandparents had wielded power. “I’ll worry about that when we have our answers.”
18
Cole went out to the mines alone and felt as if he had a target on his back as he rode.
He reached the office, fought down the urge to go see Mel. What for? To tell her they were all wrong for each other again? A better idea was to just stay away from her. And he had plenty to do in the office.
Murray was at his desk when Cole walked in. “Things are almost back to normal.” Cole looked around, impressed.
“Yep, patched the roof and that hole in the wall.”
“Looks like it’ll hold.”
“A heavy snow might bother us, but the worst of the winter is over. I’ve got the filing cabinets repaired, too.”
Cole hadn’t even noticed. The cabinets were standing up, the drawers all closed. “Some of them were smashed . . .”
“I found enough scrap wood to build new drawers. It’s not fancy work, but they open and close well enough and I got all my paper work put back in order.”
Cole thought of the questions he’d had about his own files yesterday and again made a hard decision about telling Murray too much. He probably wouldn’t have trusted Gully either if Gully hadn’t been the one to talk about the men and how they’d died.
“I appreciate all the hard work, Murray. It’s good having a man around who knows how the place runs.”
“I oughta know. I used to run it.” Murray smiled and said that without any rancor. Cole hoped the man’s tone was honest. He’d taken over from Murray, no doubt about it, and that might’ve stepped on his toes. But Cole had given Murray a raise and less work, which should have been a good trade-off.
Nodding, Cole said, “I’m going to see how things are going outside before I settle in to work.”
“Need me to come along?”
“Not this time. Right now I’m going to talk to Gully. I’ll talk with you later about what still needs fixing.”
Cole wanted to kick himself for the suspicion. Gully and the other men were influencing him and that wasn’t fair. He stepped outside to the ringing of an ax and saw a stack of logs piled near the collapsed mine. All close in length, all about six inches in diameter. He found Gully working with a crew putting support beams in place. Looking around at the work being done, he asked, “Can you take a break, Gully? I hate to disrupt your work. You are all making good progress here. Thank you.”
He made sure to look the two men he could see in the eye. The main room was all finished, and a tunnel that wasn’t more than twenty feet deep had log support beams as far as Cole could see. Hammers rang out from farther in.
“Finish shoring up the tunnel just to where we’ve gone over the roof for cracks,” Gully said in the voice of a Civil War general. “If I’m not back, don’t do it alone. Take a break and wait for me.” Gully gave Cole a nod. “Let’s go.”
They emerged from the mine, and Cole had to force himself to walk away from the office in a direction that did not lead down the mountainside to Mel’s claim.
“Those five men killed together were all here before I started.” Cole pulled a slip of paper from the inside breast pocket of his black suit coat. “I’ve got the dates they signed their leases. Two of them came together, the others one at a time over about a year and a half.” Handing the paper to Gully, with names and dates printed, he went on. “Who did they take over for? And are all of them dead? What can you tell me about them?”
Gully studied the dates. “I remember when the third man arrived. We’d had a man die.” Gully’s light blue eyes rose to meet Cole’s. Gully had a white head of hair and gray bushy eyebrows. He wore an overgrown mustache but was clean-shaven otherwise. A miner’s lamp was strapped to his head, ready to light.
“A death led to an opening in that mine, right next to the first two men?”
“Yep. And he was a well-liked man and an experienced miner. He fell off his ladder climbing down into the pit. It hit us all hard.”
“They killed him so they could get his lease.” Cole’s heart started beating faster. “What about the other two?”
Tapping the fourth name on the paper, Gully replied, “This one I recall coming. The claim he took over, I knew the man who had it and he moved on after the death of the other man. He never wanted to go into the mine after that. Said he was sick of living underground and wasn’t making money enough to risk his life anymore. I understood how he felt and didn’t think too much about it when he headed out. The
new man who came in I barely met. He was a quiet one, kept to himself. Like I said, none of these five seemed overly friendly. In fact, considering they lived and worked so close and had little connection to the area, it was almost strange that they weren’t friendlier with each other.”
“That leaves one more.”
Gully shook his head, thinking. “I don’t remember why that miner left. I don’t think I ever knew. He was just gone one day. I remember Murray introducing the new man to me, and I asked about . . . Louis, I think was his name. Murray just shrugged, said he hadn’t paid his lease. Murray went to check and, sure enough, the cabin was empty. He waited a month before renting it out.”
“That story wouldn’t get my attention much.” Cole took the note back and pocketed it. “Miners tend to move on suddenly, except—”
“Except,” Gully interrupted, “when you look at it with the other five claims.” Gully’s eyes turned an icy shade of blue. “I wonder where they buried his body. . . .”
Cole avoided Mel all day, not counting when Walt told her to stay overnight at the Bodens and so he rode home with her along with Justin and Heath.
There was no repeat of the meeting in front of the fireplace.
The next morning was different. He found Mel ready to ride well before sunrise, and not a soul was stirring in the house.
“I should be out there,” Mel said as if he was invited, only so long as he could keep up. He couldn’t let her ride alone, and she was grabbing Rosita’s biscuits and stuffing them in her pockets. So he did the same. They headed out together before dawn, eating their breakfast on the trail.
Justin and Heath were purely poky about getting going in the morning these days. Cole liked to be riding in time to watch the sun come up.
He should have tried to think of a way to leave her behind, but what was the point? Mel was coming and there was no escaping it. What’s more, he just couldn’t let her ride alone.
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