The Union Belle

by Gilbert, Morris

  Driver, he saw, also kept his eyes on Lola, and he thought with a jolt of surprise, Why, Jeff is smitten with her! The thought disturbed him, though he realized nothing could be more natural. With women so scarce, most of the male population of Cheyenne was probably mooning over Lola’s beauty.

  After the meal, Dooley got up and said, “Jeff, we got to go down and help Josh get them cars ready to pull out by sunup.”

  Driver did not want to go, but Young pressured him. “You heard what Reed told us. Now, come on.” He grinned at Mark and said, “Captain, please don’t get yourself shot tonight! Me and Jeff will only be gone mebbe two-three hours, so keep yore head down, all right?”

  “I’ll do my best, Dooley,” Mark nodded.

  The two marched out, and Lola asked, “What was that all about?”

  Mark shrugged. “I guess you know, Lola.” He looked at her and added, “Thanks for the warning—about Cherry’s intentions to rub me out.”

  Lola shook her head. “It’s serious, Mark. Shep says so, and he knows. You’ve got to be careful.”

  “Forgot how,” Mark said idly, seeming to be thinking of something else. “In the war, at first, I went around ducking under a log everytime I heard a gun go off. And I wondered how the more experienced men could just walk around like nothing was happening. I thought they were brave and I was a coward.” He looked up and his gray eyes were thoughtful as he added, “But that wasn’t it, Lola. You just can’t hang on to an emotion forever. Pretty soon I heard so many bullets that I just got used to them. You never think they’re going to get you.”

  Lola knew that look in his eyes, and she shook her head. “You mustn’t be careless, Mark,” she said urgently. “Cherry may have polished manners, but he’s a killer.”

  “Sure. I know that.”

  Lola realized that he was not to be warned, and she sat there silently. Finally she said, “Do you remember when we almost froze to death in that cabin, Mark?”

  The memory of their close call returned to him, and he nodded. “Sure. It was a pretty close thing. But we made it.”

  She put her hands together and looked at them. Then she lifted her dark eyes to his and smiled. “I’ll never forget that time, Mark. It was hard, but somehow it was—it was different from anything that ever happened to me. We were close to death, but I never felt so alive in my life.”

  He smiled and nodded. “That’s the way of it, Lola. You don’t know how precious life is until you come close to losing it.” He looked around the room and said, “Is this what you want, Lola?”

  She knew at once what he meant. “Oh, Mark, it’s better than what I came from. You know that.”

  “I heard you found your father,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know you were looking for him.”

  Lola saw the hurt expression on his face. “Mark, I should have told you, but after we left Texas things—went wrong.”

  He knew she spoke of the time he’d kissed her. The moment still burned in him, and he said, “Well, I’m glad you found him. I hear he’s a preacher.”

  She smiled, her eyes glowing. “Well, he is—and of all the things I didn’t want, it was to be preached at. But we’ve become very close.” She paused for a moment, then added, “I go and listen to him preach sometimes. And Shep goes with me—and even Jeff went.”

  “Maybe I could go,” Mark smiled at the thought, but then his brow creased, and he shook his head. “My folks are wonderful Christian people,” he murmured. “My grandparents, too. Guess I’ve missed all that somewhere . . . the war, maybe.”

  Lola said quietly, “I missed it, too, Mark.” A sadness touched her and she asked quietly, “Do you think if someone misses his way, he can ever get right again?”

  “My grandfather says you can,” Mark nodded. “He was a real rowdy one in his early days. Wound up in jail and nearly died. But he came through it.” He thought about Christmas Winslow, his grandfather, and said quietly, “I wish I could see him again. He was something!”

  “You’ll probably meet my father,” Lola said. “I’ve told him how you helped me.”

  “Did you tell him all of it?” Mark asked.

  “No. Just that I couldn’t have gotten away without your help.” She sighed and said, “Mark, why do we always have to end up talking like this? Why can’t we just forget the past—the bad part of it?”

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged, then asked, “Have you seen Ray Hayden lately?”

  “Why, he’s been gone for a month, Mark. But Jeff told me that he’s due back any day.”

  “I wonder if he and Moira got married?”

  “I didn’t hear about it.” Lola hesitated, then said quietly, “Mark, I know Ray’s a friend of yours, but . . .”

  She paused, and he prompted, “What is it, Lola?”

  “Well, maybe I shouldn’t say anything, but isn’t he supposed to be engaged to Miss Ames?”

  “More or less.”

  Lola bit her lower lip, then shrugged. “I thought he was too—friendly for an engaged man.”

  “You mean he was chasing you?” Mark asked.

  “Yes.”

  Mark thought about it, then shrugged. “Ray’s always been a ladies’ man. And strictly speaking, there’s no formal engagement between him and Moira. Don’t worry about it.”

  The thought still troubled her, he could see, but she dropped the matter. “All right, Mark.”

  “If he bothers you again, let me know, okay?” He got up to go, saying, “I’ve got to leave for Fort Sanders at dawn. Better get some sleep.”

  “Come back soon, Mark—and I wish you would come to hear my father preach.” A smile lit up her face, and she said, “If a saloon woman can go, I think the town bouncer can, too.”

  He grinned, and the smile made him look much younger. “I’ll take you up on that. A hard-nosed one like me’d give your father a real challenge!”

  He left the casino, and for a long time Lola sat there watching the door. Finally Shep ambled over and said, “I told him about Cherry, but he’s a tough one to scare.”

  “Yes, he is, Shep—but he’s not tougher than a bullet fired from a dark alley.”

  Shep thought about that, then said, “No, no man’s that tough.” Then he asked curiously, “Lola, what’s between you two?”

  “Nothing, Shep,” she said quietly. “We just seem to have a way of hurting each other.” A thought crossed her mind, bringing a sober look to her dark eyes. She got up suddenly and went over to the blackjack table, smiling at the customers mechanically.

  Shep watched her for a long time as she sat there, then finally muttered, “Winslow’s not the only tough one in this town.” He walked over and took a seat where he could watch over his little domain.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Fall of a Man

  “I’m glad you made this trip with me, Moira,” Ray said. “It’s pretty rough leaving the comforts of Boston for Cheyenne—but the worst of it was leaving you.”

  The two of them had come in on the afternoon train the day before, and he had let her persuade him to accompany her on a horse ride in the early morning coolness. He hated to get up early, but she had prodded him into it, and now they were walking their horses along the banks of Crow Creek, a small stream that encircled Cheyenne before meandering down to join the South Platte River. Over to the west the Rockies began to lift their heads toward the clouds, and the desert ran off to the east to such a distance that it was almost impossible to tell where the land ended and the sky began. They had seen several small bands of antelope, and as they crossed the bubbling creek, two deer sprang up and fled in long bounding jumps.

  Moira was startled by them and pulled her horse up suddenly, but she watched the floating leaps of the animals with admiration. “How beautiful!” Turning to Ray with a smug smile, she said, “Now, wasn’t that worth getting out of bed for?”

  He shifted in his saddle, standing in the stirrups to relieve his aching muscles. “I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning to see e
very antelope and mule deer in the territory,” he complained, adding, “but it’s worth it to see you all fresh and pretty.” He was a man who would always turn a phrase when a pretty woman was concerned, and he was pleased when he saw his words brighten her eyes.

  “It’s so different out here, isn’t it?” she said, touching her horse lightly with her riding crop. “Living in a city, you can’t see very far, but out here in the desert you’re aware of how big the world is.” Her green eyes swept the open spaces, soaking up the vista, then stopping to scrutinize the horizon. “Look, Ray—is that some sort of a signal, that smoke over there?”

  He turned to look in the direction of her gesture, studied the spiral of white smoke that rose straight up in the still air. Glancing around, he noted that another column of smoke was rising a few miles to the right.

  “Could be an Indian sign,” he said. “But I don’t know what it means.”

  “I suppose Mark would know.”

  At her remark, Ray frowned and shook his head. “I doubt it. Mark’s good at cleaning up these end-of-track towns, but it takes a real scout to read smoke signals.” He changed the subject. “I’ll have to get back soon. Reed wants me to go to Sanders and talk to Major Steers about obtaining more troops to protect our track laying crews.”

  Moira looked up, noticing the intensifying heat of the sun, and said, “I’ll be sunburned if I stay out in this heat too long.” She turned her horse back in the direction of Cheyenne, and added in a tone that seemed idle, “I suppose that’s one advantage the Union Belle has, with that dark skin of hers. She can take the heat better than most women.”

  Ray shot a quick glance at her, wondering if her words were more pointed than they seemed. He had seen quite a bit of Lola before going to Boston, but had said little to Moira about it. He had been crestfallen that his advances to Lola had been deftly rejected, although he was the kind of man who would always view rejection as a challenge.

  “I guess most of the men in town are wild about her,” Moira continued, turning to look at him. “She’s very pretty.”

  “I guess she is,” he murmured.

  “You guess she is!” Moira laughed. “Come, now, Ray, that tells me more about how you feel than anything else you could have said!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why, you can no more help paying attention to women than you can help breathing, Ray,” she said. “You don’t guess whether or not a woman is pretty, you take one look and know everything about them!”

  “Why, Moira, I didn’t know you thought about me in that way,” he said with some agitation in his features. “You make me sound like a womanizer.”

  She laughed again at his instant defense. “It’s the way you are, the way you’ll always be. You see women as prey. It’s their job to run away, and it’s your job to pursue them. It’s all a game to you. If they get away, you shrug your shoulders and try again. If they don’t get away, you’ve got another notch to cut into your belt.”

  He rode along, considering her words, then said, “You know me pretty well, Moira, but then, you’re a smart girl. I just hope you don’t have it in your mind that I think of you that way—as just another woman. Because that’s not so.”

  Moira studied him, taking in his handsome face. “You’re too good-looking, Ray,” she commented. “And you’ve had too much success with women.”

  The edges of his lips turned up in a smile. “Yes, and there’s another one of us on this ride who’s in a very similar position.”

  They both laughed, and Moira nodded, “Exactly right. Both of us are spoiled. I expect that’s why I can’t make up my mind about us.”

  He wanted to press the issue, realizing that she had just expressed the truth about how she felt about him. But he was wary, knowing that she was not a girl who could be pressured. He had made progress with her during his stay in Boston, having taken time from his heavy work schedule to spend it with her. He had been around women enough to sense that she was poised on the verge of making a decision, and he had been delighted when she had decided to come along with him to Cheyenne. But despite Moira Ames’s poise, she was still vulnerable and as shy as a deer at a waterhole. One wrong move, he understood, would frighten her away, so he restrained the urge that rose in him to press her to marry him.

  “You’re the only woman for me, Moira,” he said simply. “No man in his right mind would ever think of another woman when he had you.”

  His simple compliment seemed to touch her, and she smiled up at him. “That’s very sweet, Ray.”

  The heat continued to rise and they turned their horses to head across the flat countryside. Eastward and northward, the land rose into the rolling, broken contours of the Black Hills, while off to the south lay the heavy peaks of the Medicine Bow range. When they dismounted in front of the stable at eleven o’clock, both of them were thirsty and tired. Moira handed the reins of her mount to the hostler and said, “I’m tired after riding for just a few hours. Think what it must be like to pound spikes for ten hours a day under this sun, Ray.”

  “It takes a tough breed,” he nodded. He led her to the hotel, asking as they walked, “Have you heard what the Central’s using for labor?”

  “No.”

  “Chinese gangs,” Ray said. “Charlie Crocker couldn’t get enough hands, so he tried fifty of them. Wes Odum was there, and he said it was a sight to see them! They don’t weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds apiece. Nobody thought it’d work out, but it did. They work well as teams, Wes said, and they get thirty-one dollars a month. The word is that there are over five thousand of them at work on the Central.”

  They turned into the hotel, and Moira paused before going up the stairs to her room. “It’s odd, Ray. We Yankees pride ourselves on being independent, but we can’t even build a railroad without the Irish and the Chinese.” Then she turned to mount the stairs. “Thanks for the ride.”

  It was an abrupt departure on her part, the sort of behavior that irritated Ray Hayden. He was accustomed to women who were more pliant, and as he went to his own room and cleaned up, a restless irritation began to grow in him. He dressed in fresh clothes, lit a cigar and left the hotel. A poorly cooked meal at a newly opened cafe put an edge on his rising temper.

  “Boston spoiled me,” he muttered under his breath as he left the meal half-finished and walked down Main Street. A stack of paper work awaited him at his office, but instead of turning toward the Union’s offices, he went into the Wagonwheel.

  At midday the huge tent had few patrons, and there was a cathedral-like air about the place, owing mostly to the high peaks of canvas that muffled the sounds from the outside and lent a cool impression of darkness. Only a few of the many clusters of lamps were burning, a single bartender stood behind the long counter, idly polishing a glass. “Hello, Mr. Hayden,” he nodded. He reached back and poured a shot glass full of the amber liquor without being told, and said, “Not much doing today.”

  Ray drank the whiskey, then slid it across the bar for a refill. The restless spirit inside him grew, and he asked, “Any games in back, Ed?”

  The barkeep nodded. “One. Cherry’s in it. Guess they’d be glad for some fresh blood.”

  Hayden drained his drink, paid for it, then made his way to a section at the rear of the tent that had been partitioned off by a wall of rough lumber. Passing through the opening, he followed the sound of voices and came to stand before a door. When he knocked on it, a voice said, “Come on in,” so he pushed the door open and entered the room.

  “Glad to see you, Ray,” Cherry said at once. “Pull up a chair—but watch these birds. They’re highway robbers!”

  Ray dropped into a chair, nodding at Phil Castleton and Archie Bleyer, the two men he knew. “Meet Jason Wallford. And Jason, this is Ray Hayden.”

  “Glad to know you, Hayden,” Wallford nodded, putting out his hand. He was a small man, but his grip was strong as Ray took his hand. He was well-dressed and a large diamond glittered from the ring finge
r of his right hand. He was not over forty, and his brown hair was carefully combed.

  “Hayden’s one of Sam Reed’s top men with the Union Pacific, Jason,” Cherry added.

  The information brought a quick look from Wallford, and he said, “That so?” He put a thin cheroot between his lips, savored it, then nodded, “You fellows are doing a fine job. Figure to beat the Central to Salt Lake, I take it?”

  Ray studied the man, saying, “Got to do it.” Wallford was not a typical citizen of Cheyenne. He had the look of a professional man, but something about him refused to be cataloged. As the game went on, it became obvious that he had money, for he lost several large pots with no apparent care. He traveled the country quite a bit, for he named several cities, including Boston and New York. Casually, Ray tried to trip him up, saying, “The Paxton Hotel in Boston? I thought that burned down a couple of years ago. The one over on Jefferson?” He had stayed in the Paxton recently, so he well knew it was still there.

  “No, that was the Regent, I think,” Wallford answered. “The Paxton is on State, not far from the Court House.”

  The game was a pleasant one, especially in view of the fact that Ray won over two hundred dollars. The restlessness left him, and as always when he won at cards, he became effusive. Soon he found himself talking about the Union and the problems that lay ahead, and more than once he referred to General Dodge in a personal way.

  Castleton and Bleyer left at two-thirty, and a little later Cherry said, “Well, I’ve got to get ready for tonight.” When he left the table, Wallford poured two more drinks, lit another cigar, and the two men sat there talking, mostly about railroading—a subject that seemed of great interest to Wallford.