The Sheriff (Historical Romance)

by Nan Ryan

  “That’s good. You ready to give walking a try?”

  “Ready,” he muttered, then groaned in agony when she moved him.

  “I’m so sorry,” Kate murmured, supporting the little man’s weight as she half dragged, half carried him across the street.

  “Can I help?” asked a toothless old sourdough with a miner’s pallor who looked as if a puff of wind would blow him away. “Want me to carry him?”

  “We can manage,” Kate said with a smile of gratitude, “but thank you, Mr….”

  “H. Q. Blankenship,” the man said, and backed away.

  Dr. Ledet, seated at the desk in his front office, looked out the window, saw the pair and came running out to meet them.

  “Chang Li, who did this to you?” asked the white-haired physician. The battered Chinaman gave no reply. Dr. Ledet instructed Kate, “Let’s get him into the back room, Miss VanNam.”

  Once there, they carefully lifted the suffering man up onto the examining table. While the doctor turned away to wash his hands, Kate stood gently patting Chang Li’s shoulder while she stated, “Two bullies, Doctor. Both very large, very dirty men. One had a black eye patch, the other a full red beard.”

  Over his shoulder as he soaped his hands, Ledet said, “Titus Kelton is the one-eyed man. The red-bearded fellow is Jim Spears. Miscreants both. Always trouble, they are. Mean as snakes and—”

  “I must go, Dr. Ledet,” Kate interrupted, then smiled down at Chang Li. “The doctor will care for you.”

  “Yes, yes, you go on, child. I’ll take over,” Dr. Ledet said as he dried his hands on a clean white cloth.

  Once outside she took a deep breath but quickly lifted her skirts and hurried across the dusty street. The few men who were loitering about noted the set of her jaw and the flash of her eyes. Everyone wisely stayed out of her way.

  She marched two blocks up the sidewalk to the city jail.

  Blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light inside the office, Kate saw Fortune’s fearless sheriff, his feet propped up on his desk, his hands laced across his stomach. He was dozing in his chair.

  Her anger immediately flared.

  While a poor, defenseless little Chinaman was being brutally beaten in an alley two blocks away, the town marshal was asleep at his desk. Unforgivable! Seething, Kate swept over to Travis. Peaceful as a baby he was, shiny star moving up and down on his chest with his slow, rhythmic breathing.

  She reached out and shoved his booted feet to the floor.

  “What the devil!” he snarled.

  “I’ll tell you what the devil!” Kate said, leaning close. “You! You’re the devil! The big, bad sheriff who’s supposed to be some kind of legend. Everybody talks about your he-man prowess, your pistol-packing, rifle-toting, frontier-taming…your unsurpassed greatness. You think you’re tough. You’re not so tough. Dear Lord, here you are sleeping on the job! You’re supposed to keep the peace in this town, Sheriff! Do it!”

  She turned to leave. Travis’s hand caught hold of her flowing skirts.

  “You let me go!” she ordered, trying desperately to free herself.

  “Go? You came here to make a complaint, didn’t you?” He reeled her in by her skirt. To her chagrin, he plunked her down hard on his left knee. “Make it. Tell me what has happened to bring you here in such a state of agitation.”

  “I am not agitated and you are not awake. I’ll come back later to—”

  “You’re going nowhere until you tell me what this is all about.”

  “Let me up this minute or I will scream,” she warned.

  “No you won’t,” said Travis, clamping a long arm around her trim waist.

  Kate stiffened. “I will, so help me.”

  “You do and I’ll arrest you for disturbing the peace,” he said, unsmiling. “Toss you right into a cell and lock you up. Now what’s on your mind, Miss VanNam?”

  Leaning away from his muscular chest as far as she possibly could, Kate stated, “Two of your town bullies—Titus Kelton and Jim Spears—have beaten a poor, helpless man within an inch of his life while you were sitting here sound asleep!”

  Travis said nothing. Looking directly into his dark eyes, she continued, “They attempted to cut off his queue, but I got there in time! Swear to me you’ll make them pay.”

  “I swear,” Travis said. He yawned, pushed her to her feet and rose to his own. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  Kate took a step back. “What are you going to do to them?”

  “Find ’em first,” he said with slow smile that made her want to smack his smug face.

  “And then?”

  Travis shrugged broad shoulders, “Perhaps a dose of their own medicine.”

  Kate was appalled. “For heaven’s sake, are you saying that you intend to beat them?”

  “What would you suggest I do with them?” he asked, running a hand through his thick raven hair. He reached for his hat.

  “Why, that’s barbaric! You simply cannot behave like an animal, Sheriff. You’re supposed to be an officer of the law and—”

  “I am the law, Miss VanNam. And you have just reported a criminal act, one that calls for harsh punishment. This is not Boston. It’s Fortune, California. If you don’t like the way things are done here, may I suggest you return to the civilized East.” He picked up his gun belt, slung it around his hips and buckled it. “You come in here and tell me that Kelton and Spears beat up a defenseless man. Fine, I believe you. Now believe me when I tell you that they will pay.”

  Travis stepped around her, headed for the door.

  “Marshal McCloud.”

  He turned back to look at her. “Yes, Miss VanNam?”

  “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “What’s that, Miss VanNam?”

  “Sit me on your knee.” Her face flushed as she said the words.

  Travis put his hat on his head and adjusted the brim. “Wake me like that again and you’ll be lucky if I don’t turn you over my knee.”

  He tipped his hat and left Kate glaring after him. She watched him unhurriedly cross the street, and felt again the heat of his arm around her waist when he’d sat her on his knee. She shivered inwardly. There was an air of mystery and power about the town sheriff that both repelled and excited her. He was handsome in a ruthless way and she had no doubt there were women who looked upon him with favor.

  Kate shook herself out of her foolish reveries and hurried back to Dr. Ledet’s office to check on the patient.

  For the next hour she stayed at the physician’s elbow, assisting in any way she could while he worked on Chang Li. Dr. Ledet had given the suffering man a liberal dose of laudanum, and Chang Li was now sleeping soundly.

  When finally the doctor was finished with the task, and both he and Kate had washed their hands, he quietly motioned her to precede him out of the room.

  Once they were in the front office, Kate reached for her reticule. “How much does he owe you, Doctor? I want to pay.”

  “Not a thing, Kate.” He smiled as he rolled his sleeves down. She tried again, but he refused to take any money. He said, “Chang Li is resting well, so we’ll leave him here in my office for a couple of days. He’s going to be fine. Sore for a while, but no permanent damage was done.”

  Kate nodded. “Thanks to you.”

  “No, I’d say it’s thanks to you, child.” He chuckled and said, “You faced down the town bullies. I don’t know of many men, much less a woman, who would….”

  A disturbance outside caused the doctor to stop speaking. He and Kate exchanged glances, then quickly turned to look out the window.

  Marshal Travis McCloud, mounted atop a snorting Appaloosa stallion, came riding down the center of the Main Street with two big, dirty prisoners—one with a black eye patch, the other with a full red beard—stumbling behind him. A long length of rope was wrapped around their bound hands and tied to the sheriff’s gun belt.

  Bordello girls, bartenders, hotel clerks, store proprietors and anybody else wh
o happened to be in town spilled out into the street. The spectators pointed at the humiliated pair and laughed merrily. They shouted and whistled and applauded.

  “Dr. Ledet,” Kate said, aghast at the sight of the men’s bloody noses and blackened eyes. “Those prisoners have been beaten. Did the marshal…?”

  “Indeed he did. Found them and fought them both and brought them in to jail. And look at Travis—not a scratch on him,” the doctor said admiringly.

  Kate’s jaw dropped. “You approve?”

  “Absolutely,” he declared with a smile. “Street fighting, stabbing, shooting and claim jumping. You name it, Travis handles it with ease. He’s the bravest, finest sheriff in all California.”

  Ten

  “Don’t shoot!” shouted a strapping, ruddy-faced man in dirty overalls, raising his big hands in the air.

  “I surrender!” called another, pretending to be frightened.

  “Take me prisoner, please!” pleaded a grinning young boy as he fell to his knees on the sidewalk and offered up his wrists.

  Everyone guffawed and whistled.

  The teasing was directed at Kate.

  And she could thank Doc Ledet.

  The miners had learned from the physician that the pretty newcomer had boldly stepped into an alley, fired her big Colt in the air and threatened Kelton and Spears.

  Now when Kate went to check on Chang Li, the miners clowned with her as she walked down the street. Unconcerned with their childish ribbing, she headed directly to Dr. Ledet’s office two doors past the Eldorado Hotel.

  “Dr. Ledet?” Kate called softly as she stepped into the front office. “Are you here, Doctor?”

  The physician came through the back room’s curtained door and placed a finger to his lips. Kate nodded in understanding.

  In low tones, the doctor said, “Chang Li is resting. He awakened earlier this afternoon and ate a little broth. He told me the whole story of how you saved his life.”

  Kate narrowed her eyes. “And you promptly informed the rest of Fortune.”

  Looking sheepish, Doc Ledet said, “I might have mentioned it to a couple of people.” When she didn’t scold him, he smiled, offered her a chair and said, “Some of the miners are saying maybe Marshal Mc-Cloud should deputize you.”

  At the mention of the marshal, Kate frowned, but made no comment. She sat down and carefully spread her billowing skirts around her feet. “Doctor, why were those men beating Chang Li? What had he done to deserve such brutality?”

  “He did nothing to provoke them,” the doctor said, stepping behind the desk and dropping wearily into his high-backed chair. “Coolies are hated and reviled because they will work harder and longer for less, and that brings wages down.”

  The doctor knew a great deal about Chang Li, as he did about everyone in Fortune. And he was more than happy to share the information. Kate listened attentively.

  “Chang Li has been in Fortune for three years while his family is back in China. He’s longing for a better life, hoping to make enough money in California to bring his wife and children here one day.

  “He lives alone in the tent city at the southern edge of town.”

  “Those two bullies must be properly punished,” Kate replied. “They should stand trial. Chang Li must testify against them and—”

  The doctor interrupted. “Kate, Chang Li can’t testify. And even if he could, no one would believe his word against theirs.”

  “But why? Surely…”

  “The Foreign Miners License Tax Law of 1850 prohibits Indians and Chinamen from testifying in court.”

  “That’s unfair.”

  “It’s the law,” said Doc Ledet.

  Kate sighed wearily. “It’s getting late, Doctor. I’d better go.”

  “Yes, you shouldn’t be out on the streets after dark,” he stated, rising from his chair. “The sheriff wouldn’t like it.”

  Kate frowned. “I don’t give a fig what the sheriff would like.”

  “Now, now, you don’t want to get crossways with Marshal McCloud.”

  Kate bit her tongue, but did not reply. She rose and moved toward the door, then stopped and turned back. “Dr. Ledet, have you ever heard the expression ‘seeing the elephant’?”

  He chuckled. “Where’d you hear it?”

  “Sheriff McCloud accused me of that.”

  “Child, it’s a well-known term that best characterizes the forty-niners and the gold rush.”

  “It makes no sense.”

  “Yes, it does. When gold was found in these mountains, people planning to come out West announced they were ‘going to see the elephant.’ Those who turned back claimed they had seen the ‘elephant’s tracks’ or the ‘elephant’s tail’ and swore they’d seen more than enough of the animal.” Eyes twinkling, he rubbed his chin, warming to the story, one he’d told many times before.

  “But what does seeing an elephant have to do with hunting for gold?” she asked.

  “It’s a phrase that arose from the time circus parades first featured the giant elephants. A farmer, so the story goes, hearing that the circus was in town, loaded his wagon with vegetables for the market. He had never seen an elephant and very much wished to do so. On the way to town, he encountered the circus parade, which was led by the elephant.

  “The farmer was thrilled to death. But his horses were terrified, so they bolted, overturned the wagon and ruined all the vegetables. ‘I don’t give a hang,’ the farmer said, ‘for I have seen the elephant!’”

  Dr. Ledet laughed then, a deep belly laugh that brought tears to his eyes and caused his face to grow beet-red.

  Kate frowned. “Perhaps a metaphor.”

  “Kate, Kate,” he continued, wiping his eyes, “don’t you see? For gold rushers, the elephant symbolized the high cost of their endeavor—the myriad possibilities for misfortune along the way or once they got out here. But, like the farmer’s circus elephant, it’s an unequaled experience, the grand adventure of a lifetime.”

  “It’s the journey, not the destination.”

  “You’ve got it, my girl.”

  “Well, I hate to admit it, but the sheriff was right. I have come to ‘see the elephant.’” She smiled then, and added, “And should I never find my gold, I will have had the grand adventure of a lifetime!”

  When Chang Li was able to leave Dr. Ledet’s office, less than seventy-two hours after Kate had taken him there badly injured, he told her that he would repay her the only way he knew how. He would work for her.

  Kate was delighted. She explained that she had looked for—with no success—men to help her work the Cavalry Blue Mine.

  “I understand the going rate for miners is $3.00 a day,” she said. “Is that satisfactory?”

  “Most satisfactory,” he said, happily bobbing his head and setting his plaited queue to dancing. “I help Missy find her gold!”

  That same afternoon, while Kate waited just outside, Chang Li quit his job in Mrs. Reno’s laundry, where for the past year he had been slaving twelve hours a day, seven days a week for a pittance.

  “You know anything about working a mine?” Kate asked when he came out of the laundry.

  “Know plenty,” he said as they fell into step on the sidewalk. “I work mine while you look for placer.”

  “No. The placer is gone,” Kate stated.

  “Not know that for sure. Stream that run across your property changes with every rain. You have good batea?”

  “Batea?” Her eyebrows lifted.

  “Is pan with…grooves…corrugations in bottom. You will need good one to wash the gravel.”

  “I’ll get one. What else will we need?”

  “Pick and shovel and sturdy bucket for me to work inside the mine,” he said. “Later we get lumber and build good rocker, handle more volume that way.”

  “All right. Let’s go on over to Barton’s and pick out the tools we’ll need to get started,” Kate said. “Can you be at my house bright and early in the morning?”

&n
bsp; “I be there at sunup!” he promised.

  Eleven

  Just as promised, a smiling Chang Li showed up just as the sun was beginning to rise.

  Within the hour he and Kate stood barefooted in the clear, sparkling stream that ran past her house. Chang Li had his loose white trousers rolled up, and Kate ignored the fact that the hem of her long skirt was saturated and sticking to her ankles.

  She didn’t care. She was eager to learn all that she could from her willing teacher. Patiently Chang Li instructed her in the fine art of placer mining. She quickly caught on and delighted in dipping the large pan into the shallow water, then swishing it slowly around to wash the gravel in hopes of seeing the unmistakable flash of gold.

  Panning for the precious metal was hard physical labor. By noon Kate’s back was breaking and her arms felt as if they would fall off. But she didn’t complain.

  At her insistence, Chang Li spent the entire day with her in the shallow stream, teaching her to identify and wash the grains that might yield specks of gold.

  “That’s enough for today, Chang Li,” an exhausted Kate finally said late that afternoon as the sun was westering behind the tallest mountain peaks. “I’m dead tired and you must be as well. Go home now.”

  The little man nodded and said, “I be back tomorrow. Go on up mountain to Cavalry Brue Mine while Missy pan down here.”

  “Yes, I believe I can handle it now, thanks to you.”

  From that day on the unlikely pair worked as a team. Kate panned in the stream and Chang Li hacked at the rock inside the Cavalry Blue. The loyal Chinaman quickly became her trusted right hand.

  Kate had become the talk of the town.

  The single men in Fortune wanted to court her, and the married men wished they were single so they could court her.

  Only one man in Fortune showed no interest in courting Kate.

  Sheriff Travis McCloud.

  Kate’s presence was nothing but a headache for Travis. He heard about the invitations she received daily from would-be beaux, and was relieved when she declined. He hoped she had enough sense to continue saying no to all the amorous young fools.

  Travis had also heard that Kate had employed Chang Li and that together they were working her worthless claim. He was certain she would now quickly tire of the futile project and get out of his town.