by Sharon Ihle
Cain hadn't the foggiest notion of why he felt that way. He just did.
Chapter 5
In spite of his reservations about the products, Cain came to care deeply for the Pennys over the next two weeks, and even began to think of them as his family. His memory had yet to return, but he'd come to terms with this new Cain Law, and even found a certain peace within himself.
The strange rage still lay coiled in his gut like a hibernating dragon, and every now and then, a little twinge warned him that it might just raise its ugly head again. But as the days went on, the awareness of this malicious thing inside himself faded to an occasional burst of unexplained irritation. Other than that, he felt a distinct calm, along with an almost delicious sense of peace.
Cain also began to make himself useful to the medicine show, although his contribution to the actual hawking and selling of wares remained nebulous, and at times, nonexistent. In the little burg of Pagosa Springs he turned out to be more of an interested observer than a bouncer. He supposed the real test of his worth would come in the larger towns such Durango or Denver.
In the meantime, not only did he help Mariah in the preparation of the medicines they would sell—including Sagwa Worm Syrup, with Brother Law's name on the label—but he also came up with an effective way to advertise the show as they traveled down the road to Durango. Without halting or even slowing the wagons, Cain would dig into a goatskin trunk filled with advertising circulars, grab a handful of the fliers, and leap off the wagon. Then, after tacking the circulars to fence posts and telegraph poles along the way, he'd leap back aboard the cart, laughing along with Mariah over how long or fast he'd had to run to catch up with her again.
Of course, every time that happened, Cain would have to turn away before he got too caught up in her infectious laughter or playful eyes. Before he forgot she was his cousin again.
That persistent little problem with Mariah was really the only difficulty Cain continued to stumble over in the face of all this newfound contentment, but once they arrived in Durango, he was pretty sure he'd come up with a plan to alleviate even that. All he need do was convince Zack to grant him a small loan. Then he would head on down Main Avenue to Tenth Street, where he was told the saloon business thrived. And he would go there alone.
* * *
Far from wealthy, but comfortable financially, the Penny family always stayed in the best hotels available along the show route each year. When not selling their wares in the more cosmopolitan towns, Mariah always dressed and behaved like a proper young lady, and to avoid being recognized as Princess Tanacoa, she took the precaution of obscuring her features under oversized bonnets.
For that same reason, she pretty much stayed hidden in her room most of the time, and usually only ate in the hotel restaurant the first and last nights in town. In between, Zack and Oda brought her meals to her in her room. Mariah didn't mind the isolation too much, although the show season lasted anywhere from seven to ten months of the year. Because of this, she didn't get much chance to meet many people her own age, men in particular. But she really hadn't been interested in finding a man of her own before now. Before Cain.
All she'd ever really aspired to since she'd come of age was having one of her nostrums accepted by the general public on a nationwide basis, the way her idol had when she formed the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company. If Lydia Pinkham could do it, so could Mariah Penny. In fact, she'd written to Mrs. Pinkham on several occasions asking for a little business advice. So far, all she'd gotten in return for her trouble were a few letters which were nothing more than advertisements for the famous Pinkham Compound, but Mariah remained undaunted.
Now safely ensconced in her room at the Strater Hotel, she dropped down on the fluffy bed, testing the softness of the mattress. It was firm, but resilient—just the way she liked it. She breathed deeply, inhaling the rich aroma of crisp new fabrics and Belgian wool rugs, and then ran her fingers across the bedspread. Slick and cool to the touch, it was made of sea-green chintz embroidered with clusters of bright blue forget-me-nots, a match to the pair of curtains hanging in front of the only window in the room: a wide, floor-to-ceiling sheet of glass sectioned into four panes.
The bed itself, made of oiled walnut, sported a tall carved headboard with matching canopy, and beside it sat a small table and a Queen Anne chair upholstered in blood-red velvet. Across from it was a large walnut armoire with carved finials and dark wainscoting, and a matching washstand featuring a marble top and a huge mirror. Over by the window, a small desk and chair provided a comfortable place in which to jot letters on the hotel stationery.
First class all the way, Mariah thought to herself. She fantasized that she was the first guest to touch the chintz bedspread or to pour water into the porcelain washbowl. Given the newness of the hotel, that might even be possible, she realized. Mariah chuckled at the idea. What would the management think if they knew a fake Kickapoo Indian and her mongrel dog were the first occupants of room 222? They'd probably puff up like purple globefish and explode, she thought, laughing aloud at the image.
She glanced in the direction of Daisy, who'd been smuggled into the hotel along with her mistress. The dog was lying on the floor near the door, her tiny black nose pushed up against the crack between the floor and the bottom edge of the door. Her little black ears were pointed at the ceiling in anticipation, and even the pert tuft of white fur between her ears seemed more peak-like than usual, as if alert, too.
Every now and then Daisy would whine, calling, Mariah supposed, for the new light of her life, Cain Law. The dog had completely attached herself to him the last few weeks, and nothing Mariah did could tear the little animal away from Cain's side, save for occasions like this where Daisy was locked away from him.
"You really are a little turncoat," Mariah said to her pet as she stashed beneath the bed the soft damask valise she used for transporting Daisy to and from her hotel room. "Don't come crying to me when the new love of your life leaves us. He will someday, you know." At those last words—at the very real truth of them—Mariah's heart skipped a beat. Not yet, she prayed, please, not yet.
Someone knocked at the door then. She leapt off the bed, and as she crossed the room, she heard her father's voice sound through the thick oak barrier.
"Mariah, baby—it's me and your mother. Let us in."
Mariah opened the door, and waved both Zack and Oda inside.
"Is your room this grand?" she asked them.
Zack whistled long and low as he took in the rich appointments. "Ayuh. I believe maybe the citizens of Durango may have cause to lay claim to their town being the Denver of southern Colorado after all. This here hotel is evrah bit as first class as The Windsor in Denver, wouldn't you say, missus?"
Oda cast a glance around Mariah's room, and then shrugged. "I expect. Let's go eat."
To keep Daisy from running out into the hall to search for the new object of her devotion, Mariah kicked the door shut. "Where's Cain? Isn't he taking supper with us?"
Zack shot at uneasy glance at Oda. "Not tonight, honey. He, ah, decided to have a look around town instead."
"Whatever for?" Mariah shooed Daisy from underfoot, sending her to a corner of the room. "Couldn't he have waited until tomorrow and let us show him around?"
Zack hedged. "Ayuh... actually, no, baby. He was wanting to go in on his own so's he could have a little fun by hisself."
"Fun?" Mariah wrinkled her nose and looked at Oda. Her mother's expression, impassive as usual, seemed strange for a moment, but then that little hint that there was more than Zack let on faded away. Mariah turned back to her father, her eyes narrowed. "What kind of fun can a man whose pockets are turned inside out have in Durango?"
"He ain't exactly flat busted no more," Oda said, surprising both Mariah and her husband with this generous wealth of information.
"Why not?"
"'Cause of me," Zack said. "I gave him the 'loan' of a little of his own money—about twenty bucks' worth."
"What? Why in all that's holy would you do a thing like that? We had him right where we wanted him—beholding to us."
"Oh, he's still beholding to us, baby, don't you worry your pretty head about it. He's beholding about another twenty bucks' worth is all."
"But... oh, I guess it doesn't really matter." It was, after all, his money. But, feeling a little jealous of Cain's freedom relative to her own, she had to ask, "What kind of fun is he planning to have in town that he can't have with us?"
"That ain't none of your concern, young lady." Zack turned to the door, bringing the discussion to a close. "Cain is a grown man. I'm sure he'll come up with a lot of ways to spend that money, and not a one of those ways is any of our business. Now why don't we all go downstairs and see what kind of chef this fancy establishment has in the kitchen?"
Mariah hung back, her arms crossed over her breasts. Zack didn't have to say another word for her to understand what he'd been hinting at. Cain would be spending his "loan" in the saloons and on the "erring sisters" so plentiful west of town and the railroad tracks near the area known as "poverty flats." She bristled at the thought of Cain cavorting with one of those women.
Oda contemplated her daughter a moment longer than usual, then waved a hand toward her husband, shooing him away in the same manner Mariah had banished Daisy. "Go on down and get us a table. I want a word with Mariah—alone."
Zack's brown eyes narrowed for an instant, but then he shrugged and said, "All right, but don't be too long."
"Don't worry, Zachariah. I've got a bigger appetite than you do." Then, making sure her cigar was snug in the usual corner of her mouth, Oda flatted her palms against his chest and practically shoved him out the door.
Oda stood rock-still for a long moment after her husband had gone, her back to her daughter, and when she finally turned to face her, there was an unusual softness to her blue eyes, and even a hint of sadness. "I ain't much good at this woman-to-woman kind of talking."
Mariah almost laughed out loud at the glaring understatement. She didn't, but nodded instead. "I've... noticed."
"What I can do, is see." Oda pinned her gaze on Mariah, to make her point as best she could. "I don't like what I see when you're with Cain. It don't look any better to me when you're just thinking about him, either."
Mariah's mouth dropped open. She hadn't been aware that Oda had even noticed she'd become a grown woman, much less went to the trouble to figure out what she was thinking. For the life of her, she couldn't think of a snappy retort, or even form the words to a denial. What she did do, much to her horror, was blush like a lace-covered, eyelash-batting society girl.
Oda squinted a knowing blue eye, the one directly above the butt of her fat stogie, and slowly shook her graying head. "Ain't nothing but bad gonna come from it, girl. I know what I'm talking about. Nothing but bad."
"Lord almighty, Mother," Mariah finally said, finding her voice, as well as a much higher pitch than normal. "I don't know what you could be talking about."
"You know. Even if you and I ain't had much opportunity to talk about such things, you know. And so does your 'cousin.'" She turned and slowly plodded to the door. "Mark my words," she said over her shoulder. "I know that marshal's gonna wind up hurting you if you keep after him this way. Hurting you something awful. You coming to supper?"
"I, ah—in a little bit." The color began to ebb from Mariah's cheeks as her embarrassment slowly gave way to resentment. While she and her mother were fairly close, they'd never been able to discuss intimate matters, and hadn't so much as ever flirted with a conversation concerning the relations between husband and wife. Even when Mariah had become a woman, Oda's information had been scant, just enough to keep her from thinking that she was dying, but not enough to offer the tiniest clue about the significant part menses would play in her life as a full- grown woman. What made Oda decide to offer such dire warnings about Cain, and at this late date of all times? Mariah might have welcomed this motherly advice when she was a girl of thirteen. But now? The subject was even more difficult to address than before. Much too difficult.
Working to suppress her jumbled emotions, Mariah bit the words off as she said, "You go on ahead. I need to do some thinking about all this. I'll be along later."
With a short nod, Oda opened the door and stepped out from the room. Before she closed it, she turned back to Mariah and repeated the phrase, "Mark my words." Then she was gone.
Resentment giving way to astonishment, Mariah numbly made her way to the window and drew back the sheer draperies. From her second-floor view, she looked out on the vacant lot across the street from the hotel at the corner of Main Avenue and Seventh Street. Frequently that lot was filled with Indian ponies, tepees, and Utes from the nearby reservation as they came to town to trade with the area merchants. Tomorrow, the Doc Zachariah Kickapoo Medicine Show would set up shop there, with Mariah as the "star" attraction.
She didn't feel like much of a star tonight, nor did the idea of disguising herself as Princess Tanacoa afford her any sense of security. Whether she welcomed her mother's observations and advice or not, Oda had seen through the Indian princess, beneath the daughter she'd borne, and caught a glimpse of something Mariah had been suspecting herself: that she was falling in love with Cain Law. Now, the time had come for her to face the world she'd created for both herself and the lawman the day she invented a new life for U.S. Marshal Morgan Slater.
She probably should have encouraged her mother to talk more, but there was really no use in that. The only thing Mariah had ever learned when she questioned Oda was that her mother could be an extremely private woman, one whose life before she married Zack had apparently been difficult. She had also learned to recognize when her mother was approachable, and even more important, when she was not. So what had Oda really been trying to do today? Spoil the obvious good time Mariah was having with her new "cousin"? Wouldn't she want her only child to be happy, if only for a short time?
Perhaps Oda had been thinking ahead to the day when Cain's memory returned. There would be plenty to worry about then, for them all. But now? As far as Mariah was concerned, Cain was her man. She had, after all, gone out of her way to create him and make him into the kind of person he was today. She thought of the hours she'd worked with him, training him to meet her needs and the needs of her family. Of course he was hers, custom-made. He didn't need anyone else—or did he?
As Mariah thought of her man in the arms of a saloon girl and the reasons he might find comfort there, the blood rushed to her temples, making her feel a little dizzy. In the scheme of things, she hadn't thought to consider his hands on her, turned Mariah's stomach and dredged up something primitive and savage inside of her. Savage, his needs, but of course he had them. All men had needs. But just the thought of another woman's hands on Cain, or worse, yes, she realized, feeling more like Princess Tanacoa than she'd have believed possible. She would have to find a way to stop whatever he was up to now, and figure out how to help him assuage his needs later.
Her eyes glowing to their deep purple depths, Mariah glanced down at her clothing. She'd changed into a perfectly respectable two-piece dress of rust sateen trimmed with black lace and ribbon banding. Although her bonnet was oversized and outdated, it made her appearance more than suitable for public view—whether she chose to go downstairs to the hotel restaurant or out into the streets of Durango.
Her plan taking shape, Mariah grabbed a small bag and stuffed a couple of bills inside it. Then she dashed out of her room.
* * *
Some thirty miles due west of the Strater Hotel, Billy Doolittle sat near the edge of a cliff overlooking the lush Mancos Valley. Just east of this rich expanse of bubbling creeks and verdant meadows lay the snow-capped La Plata Mountains. Beyond them, the town of Durango sat waiting like a ripe peach, one Billy could hardly wait to pluck.
He turned to Tubbs, who'd joined him and Artemis on watch, and said, "Taking the dummy with you on this job is just about the stupidest idea y
ou've ever come up with." To prove his point, he glanced down the hillside a few feet to where Artemis sat out of earshot. The youngest Doolittle was hunkered down near a family of squirrels, giggling and talking to them as he offered bits of a stale biscuit to those brave enough to come near. "You want that numskull covering you if there's a shoot-out?"
Tubbs shrugged. "The kid likes animals. No harm there."
"There'll be a heap more than harm coming at you—hell, at all of us if'n I let you take that dunderhead into Durango."
"I don't happen to agree." Tubbs glanced down the hill and studied Artemis for a moment. "What if we just poke around a little to see if Slater's even showed up yet? Maybe he's already been and gone. If I can't take him out without drawing the law down on myself, then me and the kid'll head right back here so you can work up another plan."
Billy grumbled to himself a moment and then spat into a juniper bush. It really wasn't a bad plan at all, but he just hated the idea of Artemis riding off with Tubbs. "I still can't say it sounds like such a good idea. There's something about it I don't like."
"You don't have to like it. Just allow me to do it, and you know why? When the time comes to confront Slater, I want a fresh face with me, not someone who'll give him cause to draw those pistols."
Still grumbling, Billy muttered, "Artie's face may not give you away, but you watch—he'll think of something to do that'll louse everything up."
Tubbs chuckled softly. "It'll be all right. The kid listens to me." He might have added, "Even if he doesn't listen to you." But instead, he said, "Call him up here and tell him he's going with me. If we head out now, we can ride into Durango first thing in the morning."
"You might be right, at that," Billy admitted grudgingly. "But one other thing. How can you be so sure you'll recognize Slater? I thought you only seen him the one time."
