Colorado Dawn

by Kaki Warner

  Clete snatched the pouch from Si’s hand and opened it. Nuggets. All sizes. Sharp edged, not rounded and smooth like the placer gold men were digging out of the Blue River north of town. There was even a strip of rope gold. He held it toward the lamp. “This here’s from a vein, Si. Proof the bastard struck big. I knew it.”

  Si grinned and nodded vigorously. “You were right, Clete. You were always the smart one. Everybody says.”

  “Shut up.” Clete dropped the gold back into the pouch and shoved it into his pocket. His brief triumph gave way to unreasoning fury when he realized that with the man dead they would never know the location of the strike. He wanted to hit something, kick his brother until bones snapped. Kill him. “Now we’ll never find the claim, you moron, because you killed him. I ought to kill you, too, and get it over with. Where’s that knife?”

  “No, Clete, wait! There’s something else.” Si scrabbled over to the dead man’s pack. He dug for a moment, then pulled out the cards and papers and offered them to his brother. “Look, Clete. Pictures. Pretty pictures. And papers with writing on them.”

  “Idiot!” Clete kicked Si’s hand and sent the cards and papers flying. “I don’t care about damn pictures. I want to know where the strike is.”

  “He didn’t say, Clete, I swear it.”

  “Quit blubbering, you whiny bastard. I can’t take it anymore.” He made a show of looking around. “Where’s the knife?”

  “No, Clete! I’ll stop!”

  “Stupid, crying moron.” Clete paced, his hands opening and closing at his sides, his mind still fogged with rage. Why didn’t anything ever go right? All they needed was for the man to tell them where he’d found the gold, but his idiot brother couldn’t even do that right.

  “Just watch him,” Clete had instructed his brother. Then he comes back to find the man dead and Si blubbering about pictures. Son of a bitch! Now how would they find the claim? Damn him.

  He paced a few more loops, then stopped before Si. “Give me the pack. Maybe there’s something in there that’ll at least tell us who he is.”

  All he found of interest were some letters from an Aaron Zucker in Pennsylvania addressed to Ephraim Zucker of Breckenridge. Brothers? Clete studied the dead man’s battered face. He looked like an Ephraim. Small and skinny like Si, but twenty years older. Late thirties.

  A plan formed. Clete played with it, studying it from all angles.

  Assuming the dead guy was Ephraim Zucker, and if Clete posed as his brother Aaron, from Pennsylvania, he could ask around and maybe retrace Ephraim’s trail back to where he’d found the gold.

  Might work. Might not.

  Hell, it was their only shot.

  He tossed the pack to his brother. “Bury this. And him. Deep. And don’t you botch this up, Si, or by God, I’ll gut you. You understand?”

  “Yes, Clete. I’ll do it. You can count on me.”

  “Yeah, right. Moron.” He started for the door.

  “Where you going, Clete? You’re not leaving me, are you?”

  Clete heard the fear in the whiny voice and knew his brother was about to start wailing again. He gritted his teeth. If he hadn’t promised Ma he’d look after the pathetic little freak, he would have shoved him in a river when he was born seventeen years ago. He might anyway, once this was over. A man can’t spend his whole life wiping up his idiot brother’s snot.

  “I’m going back to the saloon where we first saw him. See if anybody knows him. You bury him and the pack, then wash off all that blood and wait here. I’ll be back.”

  “You promise, Clete?”

  “Shut up.”

  As soon as the door slammed and Si knew he was alone, he swung his fists in the air and kicked his feet in a furious pantomime of what he wanted to do to his brother. “I hate you, Clete,” he cried, tears running down his cheeks. “You bastard, moron, freak, shut up, I hate you.”

  After a while, the tears stopped. Wiping a sleeve over his runny nose, Si crawled over to where the pretty pictures had fallen. He picked them up and studied each one, feeling sad about the man on the floor.

  He looked over at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But you shouldn’t have run at me. It scares me when people run at me.”

  He hadn’t intended to hurt him, but when the man saw the knife in Si’s hand, he had rushed at him and then things happened all at once, and the next thing Si knew, the man was on the floor and blood was running everywhere. “It was an accident. I swear.”

  The man didn’t say anything because he was dead.

  “I’ll keep your pictures safe. I will. I promise.” And Si carefully slipped them into the secret place beneath the torn lining of his jacket where Clete would never find them. He added one of the letters and the folded papers to his stash, too. Someday he would learn to read and the papers would be good to practice on. He’d show that whiny moron bastard brother of his that he could be smart, too.

  He stood slowly, his back stiff from his brother’s kicks. Seeing a rusty shovel leaning against the wall by the door, he picked it up, then inched open the door.

  It was really dark outside. Sound whispered around him—­leaves rustling, something moving through the brush, a mouse gnawing on the wood under the stoop.

  He began to tremble.

  Si hated the dark. Bad things lived in the dark. Things even worse than Clete with his spooky mismatched eyes and mean hands. Si looked fearfully around but saw nothing move. Sliding a trembling hand into his pocket, he wrapped his fingers around the cross pendant Ma said would keep the demons away, then stepped out into the yard.

  Walking as fast as he could, he crossed to a grassy spot well away from the shadows of the woods. Humming softly and with his eyes fixed to the ground so he wouldn’t see the bad things and they wouldn’t see him, he began to dig.

  Two

  Cursing softly, Ash braced his elbows on top of the boulder he was leaning against and adjusted the focus on his new binoculars.

  Damn newfangled contraption. He liked his old field glasses better. The offset lenses might have been bulkier, but the image was brighter. This roof-­prism design darkened everything too much.

  He twisted the adjustment again. The figure beside the creek blurred, then came into focus. A woman. Auburn hair. Undressing. Undressing?

  He pulled the glasses down, then quickly raised them again and scanned until he found her. Definitely undressing. In the open. Like a wee highland fairy. This couldna be the woman he’d been tracking across two continents for over a year and a half. The woman he sought was a gently bred Englishwoman. Much too proper to do such a thing.

  But just to be sure, he continued to watch.

  Nice form. Long legs. Skin as pale as pink marble even with these darker lenses. And that hair had the look of the Highlands in it, catching the sun like burnished copper as she lifted her arms—­Bluidy hell.

  Leaning forward as if that might bring the image closer, he peered in disbelief at the silver dollar–­sized birthmark below her right breast.

  God bless Scotland. He’d found her. Damn her hide.

  Lowering the glasses, he pushed away from the boulder, then flinched when something jabbed into the middle of his back. Something hard and round and cold. Like a gun barrel.

  “Hands in the air,” a gravelly male voice ordered. “And don’t move, you damn lecher.”

  Unclear how he was expected to do both, Ash hesitated, then raised his hands. “I’m not a lecher.”

  Another jab in his back almost knocked him off balance. “You were spying on a lady.”

  “I wasna spying. And any woman who parades herself about half naked like a Newmarket tart on race day is no—­”

  “Show some respect!” A sharp crack on the side of his head sent him staggering.

  Pressing a palm to his temple as if that might slow the familiar dizziness, he let loose several Gaelic curses, adding more from India, and a few from Ireland.

  “What’s that? Foreign talk?”

  “Bug
ger off, ye manky bastard.”

  “Damn foreigners. You’re everywhere. Keep your hands up and turn around.”

  Hands raised, he turned slowly to keep his balance, and found a rifle—­a Winchester Model 1866, by the look of it—­an inch from his nose. Behind it, a grizzled old man peered up at him out of a face full of whiskers. At least, one eye peered up at him. The other was pointed off to the right somewhere, which told Ash this was probably the walleyed man Sheriff Brodie had mentioned. Concentrating on the one aimed in his direction, Ash debated putting down the old man now, or waiting to see what he wanted. He’d truly like to have that Winchester. His breech-­loading Snider-­Enfield cavalry carbine was no match for these newer American lever-­action repeating rifles.

  The gun barrel banged against his nose to get his attention. “Manky. That’s good, right?” When Ash gave no answer, the barrel banged again.

  “Dinna do that,” he ground out, his temper fraying.

  The eye glanced up at his raised hand. “What’s that you’re holding?”

  “Field glasses.”

  “Hand them over.”

  “No.”

  “No?” The old fellow was clearly taken aback by the refusal. Then he grinned, showing more gum than teeth. “You’re a big one, ain’t you? But I doubt you’re big enough to win out over a bullet. Care to try?”

  Ash glanced around, wondering if the old man had come alone. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Huntin’. And looky what I found.” He poked at Ash with the rifle.

  “Do that again, old man, and I’ll hurt you, so I will.”

  A gummy grin. “Which of my eyes looks most concerned?” But wisely, the fellow took a step back. “I’d like to plug you here and now, foreigner, but she’d hear and get upset, and then I’d have to sit through another lecture. No thank you. So we’ll let her decide what to do with you. Open your coat.” When Ash did, the old man frowned at his sword belt. “No gun?”

  Ash shook his head, glad that he’d left his pistol in his saddlebag.

  “You army?”

  “Cavalry. British. Retired.”

  “Don’t sound British.”

  “That’s because I’m Scottish.”

  “Then why’d you call yourself British?”

  Ash sighed. “Can I put away my field glasses?” He dinna want them damaged when he disarmed the old fellow.

  “Where’s your sword?” the man asked after Ash stowed the glasses in the sabretache case on his sword belt. “And get your hands back up.”

  Ash raised his hands again. “Ireland.” What was left of it, anyway.

  “I thought you were Scottish.”

  “I am.”

  “Then what were you doing in Ireland?”

  “Fighting for the British.”

  “You foreigners confuse the hell out of me. I’ll let her sort it out.” The rifle waved in front of Ash’s face. “But make no mistake. You’ll show the lady respect or I’ll drop you where you stand. Understand?”

  “Aye.”

  “I what?”

  “Aye—­yes—­I understand. What about my horse?” He rotated an upraised hand to point toward the brush where he’d left Lurch tied. He dinna mention Tricks, not wanting to involve him unless necessary.

  “I’ll get him later. After she decides if I get to kill you or not. March.”

  They marched, although it was a far cry from any of the marches that had been drilled into Ash during seventeen years of military service. Following a faint trail, they cut through a forest of scorched stumps and blackened tree trunks, evidence of a fire that had swept through years ago. After several minutes, he called over his shoulder, “Can I put my arms down now? My hands are going to sleep.”

  “Shut your piehole.”

  Taking that as a yes, Ash lowered his hands. He knew he could take the old man at any time—­just slow down until the rifle was within reach, then do what he had been trained to do. Whirl, grab and twist, then kick. But his left side remained weak from his old injury, and after that crack on his temple, quick movements made his head spin, so he marched stoically on. Besides, he was anxious to see the woman up close, still not convinced he’d finally found her.

  Blasted, headstrong woman. She’d eluded him for months, but he had her now. The idea of that made him smile.

  “What’s the woman to you?” he asked, skirting a huge rock. “You seem protective of her. Bodyguard?”

  “Maybe we’re courting.”

  Ash stumbled, coming down so hard on his left leg it sent a shock of pain up through his still-­sore ribs. “Courting?” he choked out once he caught his breath. “Is that a jest, man?”

  “Why would it be a jest? You think I’m too old for her?”

  “Well, because…” He sputtered for a moment, his steps slowing, his mind reeling. “Because the lass is already married.”

  “Was, maybe. But her husband died. Keep moving.”

  “Died how?”

  “Soldiering. Veer right.”

  Musing over that bit of information, he followed the trail down a steep, sandy slope riddled with round river rocks that made footing treacherous. From below came the sound of rushing water. As they descended, firs and juniper and spruce gave way to aspens, the faint yellow of their rustling leaves hinting at the winter to come. He looked around, wondering if the woman was bathing nearby, then realized the old man had taken them in a wide flanking maneuver that put a dense copse of trees between them and where she had been.

  “What was he like? Her husband?”

  “Foreigner, like you. Deserted her, the bastard.”

  “I thought you said he died.”

  “Same thing, as far as she’s concerned.”

  Rocks shifted beneath Ash’s leather-­soled cavalry boots, and he had to grab onto a sapling to keep from sliding down the slope toward a fast-­moving creek. “She speak of him much?”

  “Not as much as you do. We’ll cross there.”

  The air cooled as they climbed down into the shallow water tumbling over the rocky creek bed. He felt the cold against the leather of his oiled boots and wondered how the woman could bathe in such frigid water.

  On the other bank, they picked up the trail again. He smelled woodsmoke and heard a dog barking, and guessed there was a cabin nearby. Seemed odd, living up here. He’d heard the winters in the Colorado Rockies were brutal. Not what he would expect from a woman like her.

  Madeline. Even now, he couldna say her name without unleashing a storm of memories—­confusing, painful memories that disrupted the control he fought so hard to maintain. A soldier thrived on order and structure. It protected his body as well as his mind. But this woman brought only chaos.

  In truth, he had worked hard not to remember her or think about her. And for five years he had almost succeeded, keeping her so far in the back of his mind he could barely recall the sound of her voice, or her laughter, or his own desperation to feel her skin against his own. Because of her, he had gone against his family’s wishes. Because of her, he had jeopardized his military career. Because of her, he was here now, called to another kind of duty, and finding the prospect of seeing her again just as disturbing as it had been on his last visit home three and a half years ago.

  Why had she left him? What had he done?

  “You, Angus! Shut your yap!”

  Startled, he looked around, then realized the old man was talking to a dog that was tearing out of the brush, barking and snarling.

  Ash glowered down at the wee beastie menacing the toes of his boots. It was a pathetic excuse for a dog. More like a ball of hair sprouting improbably large, pointed ears, a stub of a tail, and four tiny feet. And she’d named it Angus? Bugger that.

  “Best hope she’s in a forgiving mood,” the old man warned as they stepped out of the trees into a clearing.

  Instead of a cabin, he saw an odd-­looking wagon parked beside a smoldering fire. Not a canvas-­covered buckboard, but more like a peddler’s wagon, with hard sid
es and small glass windows and crates strapped on top. There was even a smokestack rising out of the bowed wooden roof and a wee proper back door opening onto fold-­down steps. Rigged out like a shepherd or gypsy wagon, by the look of it, but with a black tentlike structure attached to one side and bold lettering above the windows in such a filigreed script he couldna make out the words. Two mules stopped grazing to watch their approach, and the woman from the creek stood by the rear step—­fully dressed, more’s the pity.

  The sight of her sent a shock of recognition through him, followed by a flash of emotion so intense he had no name for it.

  Finally.

  The dog ran toward her, the stub of a tail wagging furiously. He debated whistling for Tricks, just to show her what a real dog looked like, but decided not to further complicate what already promised to be a difficult situation. But with each step, his apprehension grew. He’d faced artillery barrages with more confidence.

  “Who do you have there, Mr. Satterwhite?” she called, lifting a hand to shade her eyes from the glaring noon sun.

  “A letch I caught spying in—­”

  “Who do you think, you daft woman?” he cut in, taking the offensive to hide his confusion. “Is this any way to greet—­”

  “I warned you,” the old man muttered behind him just before the gun barrel cracked against his head.

  “Mercy sakes, Mr. Satterwhite!” Maddie Wallace cried, running to where the stranger laid facedown in the grass. “What have you done?”

  “He was ogling you. Want me to shoot him?”

  “Gracious, no! Oh, dear, he’s bleeding.”

  “Barely.”

  Maddie bit back a retort. She really must do something about Mr. Satterwhite. This was the third time he had accosted a complete stranger, and had almost caused a riot in the mining camp by the Alamosa River. Didn’t he understand that she was here to make photographs, not enemies?

  Shooing the dog aside, she bent over the still form. “Help me roll him over, Mr. Satterwhite, so I can see if he’s still alive.”

  The injured man was quite tall and so sturdily built it took all their strength to get him onto his back. As soon as Maddie saw his face, she jumped back, almost tripping over Angus.