by Tess LeSue
A shy little girl crept through the open door. She couldn’t have been more than ten, and she was all but dwarfed by the stack of books she was carrying. Each and every one of them dime novels, Tom saw.
“Thank you,” he said, even though the words felt stuck in his gullet. How many of those stupid books had his name in them?
The woman took the books off the girl and put them on the desk in front of Tom. “I’m Anna and this is Winnie.”
“Nice to be meeting you. I’m . . . Tom.” He’d be damned if he was letting Deathrider keep his name.
“Another Tom.” She smiled at him. He forced himself to smile back. There was no another about it. He was Tom. He took up a book, to keep from saying something he might regret. It wasn’t Anna’s fault he was in a mood. Or that Deathrider and Matt were imbeciles, or that this wretched Archer woman was a bigger liar than Mephistopheles . . . It was just the way things were, he thought grimly.
“Don’t bend the cover,” Anna scolded Tom as she poured his coffee. “That one’s my favorite.”
He hadn’t been aware of his hand clenching around the book. He unclenched and glanced at the cover. There was an etching of a wild mountain man and a swooning woman. Presumably, the woman was swooning because of the bear looming over them. The mountain man should have been paying more attention to the bear and less attention to the woman, in Tom’s opinion.
“That’s the story of Little Bill Lench and the Widow Dell,” Anna sighed moonily.
“I assume they survive the bear,” Tom said dryly, taking the coffee from her.
“Oh yes, indeed. Little Bill makes her a lovely bearskin coat out of it.” Anna passed him a jug of cream. He shook his head. He liked his coffee black. And in quantity. The dainty china cup she’d given him held barely a thimbleful. He tossed it back and reached for the pot.
“I feel sorry for the bear,” the little girl said in a half whisper. Tom glanced up. She was clinging close to the door, watching him with cautious eyes.
“The bear!” Anna snorted. She was busy sawing biscuits in half and slathering them with butter. She piled them on a plate and passed them to Tom. “That bear would have eaten them up, my girl, just like Mr. Tom here is going to eat up these biscuits.”
“Would you like one?” Tom offered the plate to the girl.
Her eyes widened, and she shook her head vigorously. “I’m not to take things from strange men.” She paused. “Or any men.”
Anna smiled. “Good girl.” She buttered another biscuit and handed it to the girl herself. “We’re strict on that,” she told Tom, “this being a house of ill repute and all. We don’t want any nasties taking advantage of our girl, do we, Winnie?”
Winnie shook her head. She’d already crammed half the biscuit in her mouth.
He hated to think of the kind of men who’d take advantage of a girl as young as Winnie. “Is she your daughter?” he asked Anna.
“Oh bless, no. Though I’m touched you think I could turn out something as pretty as Winnie.”
“I’m an orphan,” Winnie told him gravely.
“Poor little mite,” Anna clucked. “She was half-starved when she came begging at the kitchen door last winter. Ella let me take her on, on condition that she earn her keep.”
“I clean out the fireplaces,” the girl told Tom proudly.
“And you do a right good job of it too.” Anna tugged at her braid.
The coffee was doing its task. Tom’s saddle sads were retreating. He poured himself another cup and turned his attention to the biscuits. “They’re good,” he admitted, relaxing against the chair back in pure pleasure. He hadn’t eaten a hot meal in days. The biscuits were buttery and just slightly crumbly; they melted in his mouth.
“Everything at La Noche is good,” Anna said primly. “Pleasure is our business.”
Tom kept his gaze on his plate. He didn’t want her thinking he wanted any other pleasure than coffee and biscuits. He was too tired for whoring. He wasn’t much for it at the best of times, to be honest, and he certainly wasn’t in the mood this afternoon, no matter how fine and fancy those whores downstairs had looked.
“Come on, Winnie, let’s leave Mr. Tom to his reading.” Anna held her hand out to the little girl. “Mr. Slater said he’d be back directly,” she told Tom.
A chunk of biscuit lodged in his throat when she called Deathrider “Mr. Slater.”
“You should read the new one first,” the little girl told him, her words coming in a nervous rush. “It’s about a lady and a mail-order groom.”
“Oh yes, that one’s delightful,” Anna agreed as she led the child from the room, “and it has our Mr. Slater in it too!”
Did it now? Tom picked through the stack of books until he found the one they meant. It was so cheaply printed that the newsprint had bled across the cover. His stomach dropped when he saw the title. The Notorious Widow Smith and her Mail-Order Husband.
Oh God. It was about Matt and Georgiana. He felt sick as he thumbed through it. It wasn’t accurate, but it was close enough to the truth to be recognizable. At least the beginning was: it had Georgiana’s advertisement and the flock of suitors who had answered it. But then the book introduced the Slater brothers: Matt and Tom. Matt was a hulking brute with all the intelligence of a stuffed moose (she got that right enough, Tom thought uncharitably), and then there was Matt’s brother. Tom Slater. The Plague of the West. A shape-shifting Indian, who could turn himself into a wolf at will, and could also appear as a white man. At this point, the novel diverged considerably from fact. And not in a good way. Tom’s skin crawled as he read about the exploits of the notorious widow and her brutish husband. And every time he saw his own name, he jerked, as though snakebit.
By the time Deathrider returned, Tom had finished the scurrilous rag and was in a filthy temper.
His friend paused in the doorway. “I’d hoped some food and rest might have improved your outlook.”
“It did,” Tom snapped. “Without it, I might have belted you. Do you have any idea what that woman has said about us?” He waved the book.
“Us?”
“Me. All mixed up with you. Us.”
Deathrider nodded. “I have some idea.” He closed the door and leaned against it. “But we have other problems right now.”
“We?”
“Well . . . They have problems.”
“Why do you always talk in riddles?” The whole day had taken on a nightmarish cast. Tom knew it was partly because he hadn’t slept, but how in hell could he sleep, knowing a posse was on its way, and Tom Slater was in their sights? Deathrider/Tom Slater or him, what did it matter? None of them had ever seen Deathrider in the flesh, so how were they to know which was which? One Tom Slater would be as good as another. “Who has time for riddles, goddamn it. Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said? There’s a hunt on. For us.”
“You said you’re headed for Mexico?” Deathrider asked.
“I was, before I got snarled up in this nightmare.”
“You need to sleep, Slater,” his friend told him. “You’re wound tighter than a clock spring.”
“Nate,” Tom said tersely, rising from his seat, “you listen to me, and you listen to me good: they’re less than a day behind me, and they’re armed to the teeth. If we don’t get out of here now, we’re going to be hunting trophies.”
“I believe you.” Deathrider met his gaze. His icy eyes were steady and grave. Finally. He was listening. “We’ll ride out before morning.”
Tom let out his breath. He hadn’t been aware he’d been holding it. “Good.”
“I’ll take care of everything,” Deathrider promised, “provisions, extra mounts: everything. And while I do that, I need you to get some sleep.” He cut Tom off when he made to protest. “You’ll need to be fresh. The next few days are going to involve some hard riding.”
“
There’s no time.”
“There’s the time it will take me to get things organized. Use it. Ella said you can use her room. Get some shut-eye. You’re no good to us without it.”
“Us?” Reluctantly, Tom followed his friend through to the madam’s bedroom.
“Yeah, us.” Deathrider yanked the bedroom blinds down, blocking the late-afternoon sun. “Now shut up and sleep. We’ll leave after moonset tonight, when it’s dark.”
He was getting his way, Tom realized. He’d done it. The stubborn Indian was actually going to be leaving town with him.
But if he was getting his way, why did he feel so uneasy? There was something in Deathrider’s expression he didn’t like. Something about the way he said the word us.
Who was us?
3
“IS HE AS good-looking as his brothers?” Emma couldn’t resist asking, even though she knew she had better things to worry about. When she and Calla had finally straggled into Mariposa, hotter than pigs on spits in their thick woolen nun’s habits and worn ragged from their dealings in Angels Camp, she’d been relieved to hear Deathrider was in town—but she hadn’t been expecting him to be with a Slater. Her stomach had just about dropped out at the news. At first, she’d thought, stupidly, that it might be Luke.
Deathrider shot her a curious look. They were in the stables, where he was checking over the wagon she’d just bought. Calla was done riding a horse in this getup. She said it was just asking for trouble. Besides, the small cart they’d hitched to their packhorse wasn’t coping with the weight of the luggage. It looked fit to rattle a wheel off.
Thank God for Deathrider. And thank God he was in a mood to help her. Ella had said he would. “It’s Tom,” Ella insisted. “He was always good to us.”
He had been good to them. Along with Matt Slater, he’d had their backs on that horrid trail out from Missouri. Emma couldn’t count the number of times he’d got between her and a mean drunk who was looking to rough her up. He was a stand-up guy.
“You want to know if he’s good-looking?” Deathrider said now, staring at her like she’d lost her mind.
“It’s a simple enough question,” she said defensively. “Generally speaking, those Slaters are a fine-looking bunch of men.” He didn’t need to know that it wasn’t Matt she was thinking of. Matt Slater was a nice enough sort, big and strong and sexy in a bearish kind of way, but Luke Slater was still the finest man she’d ever seen. The finest and the kindest . . . the sweetest and the gentlest and the most incredible . . . oh, best not to follow those thoughts. Thoughts of Luke still hurt, even all these years later. She cringed at the memory of the last time she’d seen him, when she’d begged him to take her with him . . . and of the sweet but horrified way that he’d said no.
“He’s tall. Dark.” Deathrider shrugged.
Men. They had no idea. Emma sighed. “I’d ask Ella, but she thinks you’re Tom Slater. There ain’t no way to ask her how he compares to the other Slaters without giving the game up.”
“It’s probably best if I stay Tom Slater for now,” Deathrider told her without looking up from the wagon. “Especially with the posse coming.”
“As if Hec wasn’t enough trouble,” Emma sighed. Damn Hec and his low animal intelligence. That man sure did have an instinct. He hadn’t gone one foot farther than Fiebre del Oro. Like an old hunting dog catching a whiff of its prey, he’d headed back to Moke Hill instead of carrying on to Sutter’s Mill. Blossom’s boy, Henry, had come tearing down to Angels Camp, all in a lather, full of stories about Hec’s rage and the hunting party he was getting up to come after her.
“I guess you could say I got a posse after me now too,” she said to the Indian.
“Mine’s bigger.” Deathrider held his hand out for the hammer.
Emma passed it to him. “They all think that, honey,” she told him dryly.
He gave her an amused look.
“I swear to God,” she complained as she watched him work, “what man even thinks straight when he has buxom German twins sucking at him?”
“A man who doesn’t like Germans?”
Emma snorted. “Hec is German. And in my experience, he likes any woman who’s as white as curd.”
“Sex ain’t what drives some men.”
She snorted again.
Deathrider stopped working. “You’ve got to consider, Seline, that for him it might not be about sex at all.”
“Emma,” she corrected.
“Emma.” He fixed her with his eerie pale blue stare. “Whoring doesn’t show you an accurate measure of a man.”
“No,” she agreed, “it sure don’t.”
“It shows you a certain kind of man, with certain kinds of drives. There are men who aren’t driven by lust; some men like other things more. Like power.”
She nodded. That seemed true enough. Even the ones who were driven by sex didn’t seem driven by it in the same ways. Some hammered at you like they wanted to hurt you; others hated you for seeing them in need; some were so lonely they were like children in your arms. And then there were the lovers. The ones who were shy and tentative, who touched you like you might break; the ones who liked to pretend you were a lady and just about court you into bed. And then there was Luke . . .
Hell. She’d thought she’d exorcized that man. Now here he was again, popping into her head uninvited.
“Hec’s not looking to screw you,” Deathrider said bluntly. “At least not in the physical sense.”
Emma shivered, even though she’d already known it. No. Hec Boehm wasn’t looking to screw her. A screw would be simple. Hec wanted to own her. To dominate her. To destroy her.
“Men like that are the worst kind,” Deathrider sighed. “You can’t reason with them. At least lust is an itch you can scratch, even if it is mindless.”
Emma took a shaky breath. She knew it. She’d had some experience of it before. Just not with someone as rich and dogged as Hec; not with someone with the capacity to hunt her the way Hec was going to hunt her.
“You can’t go to San Francisco,” Deathrider warned her. “He knows that’s where you’re headed next. It’d be like running straight into a corral.”
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “I ain’t letting him stop me,” she said hotly. She had a plan. And that plan included a house with a view of the bay, a kitchen and a vegetable garden.
“Don’t die of stubbornness.” Deathrider slapped the side of the now-fixed wagon. “Your girl Calla wants to go back to her hometown of Magdalena, and here’s Tom headed to Mexico. Seems like fate to me. Go along with them down south, cozy up for the winter, and head to San Francisco next year, when Hec’s out of wind.”
Emma was many things, but dumb wasn’t one of them. She knew it was stupid to go to Frisco when it was the first place Hec would look for her after Mariposa. But it burned her up to let him chase her away from her plans. She’d worked hard. She’d earned the right to her little house with its view of the bay.
But Deathrider was right. And it might burn her up, but she was smart enough to know sense when she heard it.
“He know you’re dressed like that?” Deathrider asked, looking the ugly nun’s habit up and down.
Emma shook her head. “Not as far as I know.”
“Good. That’ll help.”
“He might find out when he gets here and talks to Ella though.” Because Hec would scare the living daylights out of her to get information. Or hurt her. Damn him. Emma fretted over her old friend’s safety.
“He won’t need to talk to Ella.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’ll be clear where you went,” Deathrider said. “I promise you he’ll be through this town quicker than a jackrabbit through a burrow.”
“What in hell are you planning?” Emma couldn’t understand why the Indian looked so amused.
“We’ll get
your posse tangled up with my posse and lead them well away from you.”
“I knew you were insecure about the size of your posse. You’re just trying to make yours bigger.”
He almost smiled at that.
“How on earth do you plan to get him chasing after you instead of me?” she asked, following him out of the stable. “He might want to keep his posse to himself.” She winced as the hot August sun hit her full in the face. She’d sweated this nasty habit through so many times over it was permanently steamy. Just stepping back into the sunlight had her sweating again. Hadn’t nuns ever heard of cotton?
“He won’t be chasing after me,” Deathrider assured her.
“Stop talking in riddles,” she complained, hiking up the leaden black skirts and traipsing after him back to the whorehouse. “I’m too hot and tired for it.”
Deathrider held the porch door open for her. “Hec’s still going to be chasing after you. Seline, I mean. And we’re going to let him. He’s just not going to know that what he’s really chasing is Micah in a dress.”
* * *
• • •
“MICAH IN A what?” Micah was none too happy to hear Deathrider’s plan either. They’d fetched him to help load gear onto the wagon. Calla and Emma had formed a chain, handing things up to the men, who tied everything down as firmly as they could.
“Seline and I are old friends,” Deathrider told him. “We traveled out to California together, so it makes sense we might take up with each other again. We make an eye-catching couple: the outlaw and the whore. People will remember us.”
“Emma, not Seline,” Emma corrected him.
“No. Seline. Hec doesn’t know Emma and never will. And we want people to see the whore, not you.”
Emma felt the words like a wash of sunshine on a cold day. It was true, she realized. Hec Boehm would never know Emma. Would never know her.
“Hec knows a whore in a fancy dress.” Deathrider looked at the mountain of luggage still to be handed up. “What’s in all of these?”
