She was saying the truth. She possibly could have spent the entire time on the train thinking about Evan. Instead, she had shared cocktails with him and felt so close to a stranger; more than she had ever been before.
“Oh, God, you are so beautiful!”
Connor was stepping towards her, in his eyes, lay a reflection of the same feeling she had but couldn’t define yet. She wanted to tell Connor that they would see each other again tomorrow when he would take her to her destination, but another part of her wanted to drag him close and flatten her breasts against his chest. Connor seemed to be closer to obeying his instincts than she was. He closed the space between them in a single stride and smashed his lips against hers, giving her no choice than to kiss him back.
His lips were warm while his tongue was intriguing as she welcomed it curling around her own in a dance. Allie breathed into his mouth, wanting more … unable to think of anything but the tingling that was growing between her thighs and on her breasts.
Stop him. Stop him!
Allie couldn’t. She stepped back towards the bed, loving the way his hand firmly gripped her waist and began to find its way to her chest.
“Oh, Allie.”
Whatever had dulled her thoughts, it was affecting Connor too. Allie groaned, biting his lips and tasting the cocktail on them. His palm found its way to her soft shoulders and began to caress them, giving her more reasons to fasten her body to his. However, when his lips left hers and began to trace kisses downwards from her neck to her cleavage, his hands moved along her body too, clasping her right arm. Allie held her breath immediately, countless unfathomable images flashing in her head. She finally willed herself to put a stop to everything when his hands moved again, trailing the edges of the same arm.
Stop. Stop!
“Stop!” she finally cried placing her palms on his chest and pushing him off.
He staggered back, seeming more lost than she was. His eyes blinking wildly for a few seconds as Allie tried to figure out what they had both done too. It must have been the cocktails working on them. It had to be. She didn’t even know anything tangible about him yet.
“I am sorry, Allie … I … I am …”
“It’s okay. It is the drink,” Allie interrupted, lunging to her feet and swiftly heading towards the door.
“I think I would love some sleep now,” she sighed opening the door.
Her top had lost a button or two, and she could feel her breasts jerking violently as she moved and breathed. If Connor had noticed this too, he was very good at hiding it. He simply nodded, looking morbid about everything. She managed to smile at him as he slowly headed out of the door and turned to smile at her too.
“Tomorrow morning?” he asked.
“Sure. It would be a waste if I come here and never delivered the letter,” Allie conceded. She hoped she was doing a good job hiding the fact that they had just made out.
“Good.” Connor chirped “I will see you tomorrow then.”
Allie nodded and watched him leave. She closed the door a second later, wondering what had just happened.
*****
As soon as it was morning, Allie quickly freshened up and slid into a sky-blue dress that fitted around her waist, but sadly, she thought, hid her shapely legs, which she always considered her best feature. She didn’t wait for Connor in her room. She slid out early and waited for him in the hotel lobby instead. As expected, he arrived five minutes later, looking casual in jeans and denim shirt. Looking much more western than the suit coat clad lawyer from the train.
“Good morning, you,” Allie welcomed him with a cheerful look, instantly walking with him towards the desk clerk. She needed to drop her room’s key for safekeeping before heading out.
“Good morning,” Connor replied in a likewise manner. “I bet you had a good sleep and are ready for the trip to Cedar Ledge.”
Allie didn’t reply to his words but did smile at him and at the clerk at the same time. He was an older man who had replaced the young woman from the night before. The clerk collected her key with fluttering eyes and a concerned look.
“I am sorry, did you say Cedar Ledge?” The clerk suddenly asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Allie replied politely. “Connor here promised to take me there.”
“And why in heaven’s name would you want to go out to Half Breed Haven?”
“Half Breed what?” Allie wasn’t sure she was following. She was about to ask the clerk what he meant and why he looked shocked and concerned about her intention to visit Cedar Ledge, but Connor stepped in.
“We should go,” he said. “We will be back before evening,” he said to the still-mystified clerk.
Allie allowed him to lead her out of the building. She would have asked him to explain what the clerk was talking about as soon as they stepped out, but the automobile parked in front of the hotel with the morning sun reflecting of its polished metal and glass windshield put her out of speech.
“Is the 1912 Oakland yours?” She had totally been expecting a horse and buggy.
“It certainly is, madam!” Connor replied with more than a touch of pride in his voice as he helped her into the car. “You know automobiles?”
“Sure.” Allie replied as soon as he cranked the engine and climbed in beside her, roaring up the engine.
“You can drive as well?” he asked, seeming surprised.
“Well, I can too. At least, I should be thankful that Evan made sure of it whenever he came home. He loved engines and automobiles and would always have me assisting him whenever he was dismantling things or fixing them back.”
“Seems like the twin brother isn’t really annoying, after all,” Connor remarked.
“Yeah, Evan has his usefulness,” Allie chuckled.
For a while, both of them said nothing else as the car sped off down the road. Allie stared at the various streets that they passed by, admiring the old town and her dusty roofs. Her thoughts were about the letter that was carefully kept in the purse that she had carried along. She imagined the details that a dying man must have left in there for his wife and wondered if they were really the kind of words that his wife needed to read. Thinking about the letter reminded her of Cedar Ledge and the worried look on the clerk’s face. Allie turned to Connor and decided to ask him about it.
“Connor,” she said, knitting her brow as she spoke. “Half Breed Haven. What was the clerk referring to when he said that?”
Connor didn’t take his eyes off the road. He simply shook his head and smirked.
“The clerk probably is a relative to one of the numerous people the Wilde family put into the cemetery,” he said. He glanced to his right and pointed to a graveyard they happened to be passing by. “That, right there, has corpses in number put there by the Wilde sisters themselves.”
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
“Oh, you will, soon enough,” Connor said. “No one gets to Cedar Ledge and doesn’t understand.”
Connor drove the car swiftly onto another street and kept mum once again. She wanted to press him further, but she noticed the way his lips twitched together as if he intended to say nothing else on the matter. She became quiet, too, as he drove on, admiring the graded lands on either sides of the road and sometimes staring at the tall trees that beautified the seemingly better homes on the outskirts of Alamieda.
Soon, they left the town altogether for a wide-open landscape, and she was able to grasp the uniqueness of the town’s location. There seemed to be every type of geography in whatever direction she was looking. She saw a sweeping desert stretching out seemingly into infinity. In yet another direction, tall mountains loomed majestically, and straight ahead where they were traveling was lush pastureland that morphed into gently rolling hills and more mountains beyond.
As Connor motored along, Allie glanced at him, intending to ask him how much longer when suddenly he turned the car to the right and stopped beneath the decaying beams of a large wooden sign. The gates that on
ce might have closed the driveway off from the world hung twisted and bent on their hinges.
Catching Allie’s attention was a sign dangling on its side, having once apparently adorned the top beam of the sign. Connor appeared entertained as she tilted her head to read it. Between the words Cedar and Ledge, on it was the rusting metal emblem of three large letters in a huge circle.
“HBH.” Allie shook her head, “Let me guess, Half Breed Haven?”
Connor only shook his head in amusement and shrugged, leaving the rest to her imagination. He resumed driving further into the ranch, giving Allie a wider view of the entire estate. She saw once beautiful pastures that now were overgrown, surrounded by rotting and crumbling fences that must have once contained the long-vanished cattle.
As they drove deeper into Cedar Ledge, Allie couldn’t help wondering why such a beautiful land had gone to waste.
“Slow down a little,” Allie insisted, curious about the land and the dilapidated buildings she was now seeing appearing on it. None were more imposing than a large dilapidated structure on a rise in the land, with severe looking ledges of rock jutting out behind it.
Approaching the building, Allie could see that it had been an L-shaped edifice, which had no doubt once been a regal place and clearly had been the Wilde family’s home. One wing of the building was more or less still intact, save for the roof where a mighty red cedar tree had toppled over, collapsing the roof. Another large cedar, however, still stood proudly by the house. That couldn’t be said for two other trees she noticed. One of them now lay across the front yard and the other was a burned-out husk next to the other wing of the house, whose top floor was nothing more than a charred ruin. Overall, the ranch looked like a monstrous structure in the middle of a vast land.
They finally drove by the ranch and arrived at a row of bunkhouses, most of which were collapsing in on each other, except for one. It was the only one that looked maintained and smoke was curling out of its chimney.
“Here we are!” Connor chirped, pulling over. “Home of the Wilde family. I look forward to hearing how your visit went.”
“Wait, you aren’t going inside with me?”
Connor shook his head rather quickly, glancing behind him at a rifle laying the back seat that she hadn’t noticed before. When his eyes returned, she noticed they had shifted and the eye contact they had been enjoying vanished, typical of a person that was trying to avoid the truth. When he did glance back at her, his gaze went to the endless lands around them first before he said, “The Wildes and their Half Breed Haven is known to everyone around here, but as I’ve said, the Wildes keep to themselves. I mean I’ve seen them around town from a distance over the years, but I’ve never met Catalina Wilde or any of them directly, so I wouldn’t be much good introducing you, as I would be a stranger too. It will be fine. As for me, I am looking to do a little hunting on the land while you visit her.”
“Okay.” Allie agreed, feeling a bit unconvinced, but she shook it off, already moving to step out of the car. She glanced over at Connor, though, who had also stepped out and was loading his rifle. “You sure hunting here isn’t too bold to do since the lands seemed to be privately owned?”
Again, Connor shook his head. “Most of the land is owned by the government now,” he explained. “From what I understand, the Wildes just own the land the houses are on and the immediate few acres that they managed to hang on to when they lost everything else.”
“Okay.” Allie replied still sensing a slight evasiveness from him.
“You are going to be fine,” Connor said after a while, noticing that she was anxious. “I will park in front of the old ranch house as it’s close to the trail I wish to use, and whoever gets done first should wait at the car for the other,” Connor said before he slipped back behind the wheel and slowly drove the car off.
For a while, Allie just stared at the porch of the house in front of her, holding her purse tightly at her side. She eventually stepped onto the porch and braced herself with a long sigh before knocking on the door.
Nothing. She knocked again and still, nothing.
If she hadn’t seen smoke earlier from the chimney, she would have assumed that no one was home. She decided to go around back and look around, and as she rounded the building she noticed a figure walking in her direction from the banks of a river that flowed some distance from the back of the house.
She was an older woman – probably in her fifties or sixties, though she looked rather agile and good-looking. Her long flowing dress kept moving with the wind as she moved towards the house. The figure’s eyes fluttered twice as she noticed Allie. Allie slowly stepped towards her with a cheerful expression, wanting nothing more than to put the woman off any worry that she was a nosy stranger.
“Hi, I am Allie Mastluehr,” Allie quickly introduced herself. “I was wondering if I could talk to a Rachel or Cattie Wilde.”
“Hi back. You’re talkin’ to Cattie,” she replied rather cheerfully too. Her eyes scanned their surroundings, though as if she wanted to be sure that Allie was alone.
“Good, Mrs. Wilde. Can we go in to talk?”
“It’s Miss,” Cattie said with a somewhat Mexican accent.
“Sorry?”
“It’s Miss Wilde. I never married,” she corrected again. Then her eyes scanned the fields around them for the second time. “You didn’t walk here on foot I’m guessin’? I heard one of those horseless carriages pull up and then leave.” she asked.
Allie shook her head. “This is true, I got someone to drive me here. He is parked by the big house, wishing to hunt for a spell while I met with you.”
Allie nodded when she said nothing about it, motioning towards the house again. “Can we talk inside?”
“Sure as sugar can!” Cattie said, already hurrying into the house through the back door.
She was brisk for a woman her age. Allie stepped into the house after her, temporarily shocked by the neatness of the house. Despite the deplorable condition of the ranch, the small structure appeared well maintained. The scent of fresh flowers filled the air while the neat wallpaper on the wall was enough to impress her too.
“So, what you needin’ to see me for?” Cattie asked immediately. The back door had led them into Catalina’s kitchen and she fell into a chair at the table and motioned Allie to sit as well.
Allie took her place across from her, and began to search her purse for the letter.
“I am here to deliver a letter from a Dutch Wilde,” Allie expounded. “He was on the Titanic with my brother who luckily survived till date. Dutch gave him a letter to his wife, Bright Feather Wilde. I was told Bright Feather lived here Miss …”
Allie was unable to finish her sentence. She glanced up to notice that Cattie’s skin had suddenly become white. She looked crestfallen and kept blinking her eyes as if she was in a trance.
“I am sorry, but my sister-in-law is dead,” Cattie sighed the words. “She took her life a year ago upon learning of Dutch’s death on the Titanic.”
“I … I am … I am sorry,” Allie stammered.
“Oh, it is okay. It wasn’t your fault or anyone’s.” Cattie stood and began to walk towards one of the windows, beckoning Allie to follow her.
“You see yonder?” she said, drawing back the curtain and pointing to some tombstones on a nearby hill. “She’s up there. I buried Rachel myself. It grieves me to say, Miss Mastluehr, that from what once was such a big family, I am the last of the Wildes. When I die, I have no idea who will have the task of laying me to rest on the same hill.”
Allie stared long at the hill, feeling deep sadness for Cattie. The older woman gazed at the letter in her hand and reached out to collect it. She placed it on the nearby table, though, walking away and leaving Allie at the window.
“Aren’t you going to read it?” Allie asked.
“I don’t think I can bring myself to,” Cattie said, stopping in her tracks. She turned to face Allie fully and kept her eyes fixed on the envelope.
“Dutch may have left you a message too, you know,” Allie suggested.
Cattie shook her head, still having her eyes fixed on the table. She seemed to consider going back to the envelope for a few seconds, then she turned and returned to the chair she had earlier sat on.
Allie didn’t understand what was going on, but she could feel the sorrow emanating from Cattie. She was lonely and extremely sad.
“I come from a very small family,” Allie found herself whispering. She returned to her previous seat too, staring at Cattie with a grim smile. “Just my twin brother and me. We had an uncle who raised us, but he passed away some time ago. I can only imagine what it would be like to grow up with a big family.”
“Twins, eh? I knew a pair, two fiery red heads. I remember them well,” her eyes looked down and a silence ensued.
“How many were there of you Wildes?” Allie finally asked.
Catalina got up again and motioned for Allie to follow her. She grabbed the letter on her way, though, holding it in her hand as if she was afraid of looking at it. Allie was still mystified by the woman’s agility. One moment, she was sitting comfortably in a chair, another second, she was up on her feet and hurrying around the house.
“My Papa had six children and countin’ Bright Feather, there were eight of us all.” Cattie revealed as soon as they crossed into what served as the sitting room for the small home. Cattie stopped in front of the fireplace and gently placed the letter on the mantle top. Afterwards, she pointed to a large oil painting of the family hanging above the fireplace and grinned at Allie. “Luckily, this was in the wing that didn’t burn when the ranch house was set ablaze way back when,” she said, hands on her hips nodding in satisfaction.
Allie stared at the family portrait, dumbfounded. Something wasn’t quite right with the different appearance of everyone, to say the least.
“After all these years, I never get tired of that reaction. Though yours is probably the last I will ever see,” Cattie chuckled beside her.
“I don’t understand.” Allie puzzled, stepping closer to the portrait.
The Wildes of the West #1: The Daughters of Half Breed Haven: Old west fiction of action adventure, romance & western family drama (The Wildes of the West/Half Breed Haven) Page 4
