“What is it?” Cattie asked.
Those eyes were staring back at her now, noticing the curious frown on her face and the way her chest hung high as she held her breath.
“How about EVERYTHING!” Allie gasped, finally letting go of her breath. “Your sisters taking down that blackguard villain Wendell and his wife! Saving the Dodges’ business! You catching Johnson spying on you and the no small matter of an early morning tryst with the town’s southern belle schoolteacher! Am I getting this all, down right?”
Cattie threw back her head and kept grinning. It took Allie’s entire strength not to shake the woman and tell her events weren’t supposed to unfold the way hers had been in the past. There was supposed to be limits to how adventurous a woman could be!
“That’s a pretty fair summary … actually, a mighty fine summary,” Cattie chuckled benevolently.
“I just … I do not know what … to say,” Allie stammered.
“I told you we girls led the life. Oh, what days those were!” Cattie replied dreamily.
Allie sighed, shaking her head at the same time. Her entire face flushed with color as she remembered Cattie’s narration about the town’s new schoolteacher.
“Forgive me if this is prying, but did … did you and Miss Evangeline … Did you ever enjoy each other’s company like that again?” she asked, fanning herself with her hand. There was no way she could stop the horde of images flashing in her mind.
“Just thinking about what you described … that is SO … provocative,” Allie seemed to be, gasping for breath.
“Yes … we did. She once described our encounters as a little slice out of heaven,” Cattie chuckled, ignoring Allie’s dramatic reactions. “But it didn’t last forever. She was like me—we both enjoyed the company of ladies and gentlemen. In my case, I always preferred the ladies, but in the end, for her, it was the gentlemen. She eventually married Sam Stinson down at the assayer’s office, raised a bunch of kids and grandkids. I heard she died in a rest home over in Alamogordo a few years back. A shame, but I guess we all arrive at that final abyss someday.”
“I think I need a moment to collect myself. You all really did march to the beat of your own drum, didn’t you?” Allie sighed for perhaps a record time that day, finally regaining control of her breaths.
Cattie, took to an uncommon silence as she closed her eyes and nestled her back closer to the boulder behind her. Her face lifted to the brightened sky with every hint of pondering. The happiness of her memories was evident in her expression and after a few seconds, her eyes fluttered open with an accompanying slow nod of her head.
“Soooo … did you tell the others on the way home about Johnson?” Allie asked.
“It bothered me seeing him there, but at that moment, there wouldn’t really have been a reason to tell the others, but later, there surely was,” Cattie responded, her voice becoming distant.
Cattie didn’t get the chance to delve into the story once more. The sound of raised voices suddenly resounded in the air, distracting her from the pondering mood that had washed over her. Allie slowly rose with her, peering down over the boulder at the well beneath them.
“What in the Sam Hill?” Cattie wondered as her eyes searched around.
The men they had seen earlier were shouting now, constantly raising a finger at each other. Finally, one of the men raised his hands in resignation, afterwards, before suddenly turning and disappearing between two giant boulders behind him. The other man seemed reluctant for a second before hurrying after the first man.
“Come on. Let’s loop around to over that way,” Cattie pointed towards the well immediately. “I wanna know what that was all about.”
*****
Allie couldn’t believe her eyes. Soon they swerved a few feet to the right and stepped down into a small plane of ground with bigger boulders that they could peep from. Beneath them was a small enclave created by the two giant boulders that the men had disappeared into moments ago. The two men were not alone anymore, though. There were another two men, both of whom were armed with rifles and another man lay unmoving on the short grass. Cattie’s palm flew immediately to Allie’s mouth at the same time that Allie realized that the prone man was dead and his blood still flowed into the earth beneath him. Finally, there was a last man laboring to dig what appeared to be a trench, while a similar trench and the mound of dirt that came from it was close by.
“Shhhhhhh!” Cattie whispered, keeping her palm clasped on her mouth.
Doing that had actually gotten them continuously undetected. Allie imagined that her gasp would have echoed through the entire area if Cattie hadn’t acted impulsively. She was wide eyed now and her gaze wouldn’t leave the scene beneath them. Cattie held her finger to her lips, signaling for her to be quiet before finally withdrawing her palm and turning to the scene once more.
One of the men in the enclave seemed to be the one in charge. He wore a top hat and stood beside a skinny man who was in an elegant jacket and fitted trousers. The skinny man kept shaking in his classy brogues shoes, apparently afraid of the man beside him. The short man hissed like a disgruntled snake and pointed the gun in his hand to the digging man that looked exactly like … like Connor Kincaid!
“Oh, dear heavens, oh, dear heavens, oh, dear heavens!”
Allie wasn’t raising her voice, but she might as well be screaming. She ignored the warning look on Cattie’s face and inched closer, trying to be certain that she had indeed seen the man that had drove her into Cedar Ledge hours ago—the man that had made your skin burn with desire the night before, Allie.
He was supposed to be out somewhere in the woods hunting!
It was indeed Connor and every man’s eyes were on him. Forced to dig a six-foot trench with a shovel for the lifeless body lying in the dirt, Connor didn’t seem to be in a hurry digging the next one. He glared at the barrel of the gun that was pointed at him first and began to dig, unable to hide his disdain for the man holding it.
“That’s Barthalomeau,” Cattie hissed, referring to the man with the firearm.
“Dig faster, boy! Make sure it’s a comfortable fit, though, as you’ll be spending eternity in it,” Barthalomeau was laughing with gusto, keeping his eyes on Connor.
“You know, you remind me of Honor Elizabeth,” Cattie said, noticing the uneasy way Allie stared at the scene before them and right back into her eyes. “No matter what we went through every now and then, she would still have a little fit like you’re havin’,” Cattie revealed with amusement and keeping a surprisingly calm demeanor.
“I’m sorry, Miss Catalina, but can you blame me?” Allie replied. “I have never seen someone apparently digging their own grave! Have you?” Then she suddenly remembered whom she was talking to.
“Of course, you have!” Allie bemoaned, noticing the nonchalant way Cattie looked at her and shrugged her shoulders.
“I will tell you about that some time too, Allie,” Cattie winked, turning to the view of the enclave once more. “But we gotta get us a handle on this situation here. Now, that corpse laid out down there sure looks a lot like old Walt Daniels. He hunts out this way a lot and I’m guessin’ that’s your friend?” she asked, pointing to Connor.
“It surely is, and one of those two brutes has got his Winchester,” Allie was rubbing her hands together nervously. Her anxious tick was not lost on Catalina who observed it from the corner of one eye.
“The other one must have the one Walter brought. Now let’s sshhh so we can figure out what’s going on here,” Cattie quietly lectured.
Allie nodded in agreement, turning to the enclave while Connor gave a long sigh and turned to the men with a grimace.
“Well, Gentlemen, I think we can all agree that this has gone on long enough,” he grunted. “I say we end this joke now, adjourn to town, have a nice drink at the hotel bar and then go see the sheriff. I will simply tell him how your shooting Mr. Daniels was an accident and I shall mention nothing about this whole digging my own grave thing
.”
“Quiet!”
Barthalomeau obviously didn’t think that was an option.
“No, no, maybe he’s right! It was an accident and …” the nervous slim man beside Barthalomeau chipped in.
“Yes, it was. It was your accident, Steeples!” Barthalomeau interrupted. “I told you repeatedly not to bring that gun out here because your fool head has no idea how to use it!”
“And I told you this is my first time out west,” Steeples responded with a groan, still feeling uneasy with the entire operation. And all we hear back east is how this west here is lousy with bobcats, wolves, bears—what have you! I wasn’t going to be out at this drill site with no protection!”
“And how many of those varmints have we seen since we’ve been at Cedar Ledge?” Barthalomeau asked with a groan of his own. “Exactly … then you mistake that townie coming around a boulder for a bobcat and blow him away, made only worse by doing it in front of his hunting partner.”
“The shot we heard before,” Catalina realized, having been listening attentively to their entire conversation.
“We didn’t actually come together,” Connor protested, “We ran into each other out here and decided to work together to flush the game,” he explained.
“Shut up!” Barthalomeau and Steeples uniformly shouted at him.
Connor shrugged and reluctantly went back to digging the grave.
“I’m sorry, I was all keyed and still delirious over us just capping the well and then they surprised us! How many times do I have to tell you that?” Steeples turned back to Barthalomeau.
“The well! Yes, the well. Here we are on the precipice of success and you go and kill that man,” Barthalomeau hissed. “It could ruin everything for us here. We could lose the well! That’s why this has to be. Are you willing to take a chance of going to the gallows if some jury of Arizona hicks doesn’t believe it was an accident?”
“As I thought,” Barthalomeau continued when it was apparent Steeples had no answer to his question. “No, we can’t have this man going back to town either. It’s simpler just to bury them here. From what I gather, people go missing in the wild all the time.”
“Is that true?” Allie gasped, turning behind the boulder to stare at Cattie with her mouth agape.
“It’s an unforgivin’ land if you’re a tenderfoot,” Cattie shrugged nonchalantly.
“…and we are supposed to trust these two men you brought from Pennsylvania to keep their mouth shut?”
Steeple’s voice distracted Allie before she could question Cattie on how she could sound so insensitive to such a dire plight as becoming lost in the wilderness. She secretly rolled her eyes at the older woman, resigning herself to the fact Catalina came from another time and place from the one she knew and focused on one of the oil workers who raised both hands in appeasement at Steeples’ question.
“You got our silence, friend,” he said. “But as we said before, this went from a paying job to being cut into a percentage of this strike.”
“You see, Steeples, we have their cooperation and silence, though I may be taking their percentage out of yours!” Barthalomeau frowned at his partner.
“We have to do something to save him!” Allie sighed. She couldn’t take it anymore.
“Shhhh … keep your voice down. I’m thinkin’,” Cattie ordered.
Finally, Cattie smiled and held Allie’s hand. “C’mon, young one. We’ve got to get back to my house before your friend finishes moving six feet of earth,” she grinned. “Good thing he’s probably tuckered out from diggin’ Walt’s grave first.”
Allie let Cattie drag her away from the boulders, glancing one last time at an exhausted Connor who briefly stopped digging and used the back of his palm to wipe away the sweat across his forehead.
“What are we going to do, Miss Catalina?” Allie asked as Cattie led her down the embankment.
“Tellin’ that story about Dodge’s stagecoach gives me a notion on what we are gonna be fixin’ to try! I’ll explain when we get to my home.”
Cattie’s reply was vague, but somehow, Allie instinctively trusted her. She hurried behind her, surprisingly finding herself curious, still in the continuation of the Wilde sisters’ tale, despite the recent change in events.
“Tell me more about what happened with your family and those men who hurt your father,” Allie called out.
That surely put a spring in Cattie’s steps. She halted immediately and glanced behind her shoulder at Allie with a shocked expression. “You wanna hear about this now?”
She didn’t bother to hear Allie’s reply before she whirled around and continued down the ridge.
“Yes! It’s the only way I can take my mind off thinking of that poor gentleman back there,” Allie declared with a tremble in her voice, hurrying behind her. “He wouldn’t even be in this predicament but for bringing me out here. First, I rebuff his advances just as we are about to do the deed and now, he might die for helping me.”
Again, Cattie halted and turned to her with a shrewder expression, “I would say it’s my turn to be colored surprised!” she said with good humor.
“Please, what happened with Everett and his schemes forty-five years ago?” Allie pleaded, ignoring her.
“My sister Cassandra is what happened to them!” Cattie rejoined, once again whirling around and heading down towards the end of the embankment.
*****
Cedar Ledge,
Arizona Territory
June 1868.
Whip Wilde’s bedroom rustled with the warm afternoon breeze that spun in through the opened shutters. The breeze came with a summer shade of the afternoon sun, settling across inches of the room and splattered beautiful colors everywhere. At the center of the room was Whip’s large king-sized bed, its polished brown wood gleaming beautifully with the rays of the sun; and on it laid Whip’s unconscious body, gradually losing its color since the old man hadn’t moved a muscle in some time.
Dutch and Blue River sat on opposite sides of the bed, sometimes glancing at the quiet Bright Feather who soaked a compress in a pitcher of water and gently patted Whip’s face with it.
"Your father has the strength of many stallions. He will come back to you,” Bright Feather encouraged afterwards, joining next to Dutch.
Dutch gazed at her for a long moment and compassionately held on to her hand. “Thank you,” he nodded at last.
The door opened at the same time, jolting all three of them to their feet as Honor scurried into the room first, followed by Lijuan and Cassandra. Catalina silently closed the door, being the last of them to step into the room.
“Oh, my …” Honor’s voice cracked and faded losing her breath at the sight of their pale father. Her knees began to buckle, but Cassandra and Lijuan were beside her in a flash, helping her back to a straightened position.
“Thank you. I shall be okay,” she managed, detaching their hands from her arms and slowly crossing the room to join Dutch beside the bed.
Dutch immediately dragged her close into a warm embrace to reassure her that everything was going to be okay. Honor exchanged an impassive nod with Blue River just before Dutch pulled back to give Cassandra a similar but briefer hug. Cassandra crossed over afterwards to hug Blue River while Dutch moved on to sweep Lijuan into a bear hug. The exchange of compassion seemed to finally break Lijuan’s strong wall. Her composure failed and in Dutch’s arms tears streamed down her face. She swayed back and forth in his embrace, unable to continuously fight back the raging emotions that she had holed up inside for long.
“Oh, David, I’m so scared!” she cried.
“Easy, easy … Beautiful and Graceful one,” Dutch comforted her with the meaning of her Chinese name, gently brushing away strands of her hair that swayed over her face.
Honor, had moved closer to their father, kneeling beside him and laying her head on his silent chest. She was close to tears and acted as if no one else was in the room with them.
“I’m here, Daddy,” her vo
ice nearly a whimper. “I’m here at last. Please, wake up for us. We love you … we need you to wake up!”
Lijuan and Cassandra joined her at separate sides of the bed, each holding their father’s hands.
“Honor is right. This world needs William Henry Wilde, and don’t think for a minute we are going to let you leave us,” Cassandra said with conviction.
“I’m going to help you pick out a new horse, father,” Lijuan promised, a mixture of sadness and joy washing over her face, “and when you are all better and your leg is healed, we are going to do what we did when I was twelve. We are going to ride the entire perimeter of our ranch: five hundred square miles of pure pristine Cedar Ledge beauty! Did you hear that? That’s what we are going to do, and all you have to do is wake up.”
Cattie inched closer to the bed too, resting her palm understandingly on Cassandra’s shoulders.
“Wake up, Daddy. Please, wake up,” Honor begged.
The entire room became silent afterwards, the beautiful walls coming alive with the silent prayers of hopeful siblings.
*****
Miles away, in the town’s most favored saloon, Gabriella’s Cantina, Everett angrily bolted to his feet and pounded his fist on the table, drawing the attention of a few men and women who drank a few feet across from him. Noticing their uneasy stares, he sat back and glared across the table at an equally shaken Johnson.
“So, I’ve been having you watching the stage arrivals for the last couple of days, waiting for the colored girl to get here, and she shows up with a sister in tow who against all reason is a Pinkerton,” Everett bellyached under his breath.
“Then there’s the China girl,” Johnson added.
“I don’t give two hoots about any China girl,” Everett waved his hands dismissively. “I care about if this is true … that the white one is a Pinkerton. How can that be?”
“I knew you weren’t going to like this. Hale, maybe you should just give this whole thing up and go back to your gambling den over in Carter Creek. It’s already not worked out by Judge Wilde not dyin’ in the fall.”
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 17
