Heresy

by Melissa Lenhardt

  34

  Claire Hamilton’s Case Notes

  Wednesday, August 28, 1877

  Idaho Springs, Colorado

  My first thought when Jehu told us we were leaving Denver and not returning was, We sewed all those damn purple sashes for nothing. We were to meet in Idaho Springs, a gold town on Clear Creek west of Golden, in two days, and travel north to the Yampa River to follow it to the Green and Brown’s Hole. It was going to be hard riding, cold camp most nights. Hattie gave us a list of supplies to buy and some money and told us Luke was buying us horses and tack at four different stables. He would tell us where to go when he got back.

  “Ruby and I are going together?”

  “Just as far as Idaho Springs. Is that a problem?”

  “Um, no. Of course not. It’s just … I don’t know how to get to Idaho Springs. Do you, Ruby?”

  She took the list from Hattie. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “There’s a little extra in there so you can get some riding clothes. Men’s clothes would be a good idea. Hat and a coat. It gets chilly at night up at altitude.”

  “Where did you get all this money?”

  “Me,” Garet said. “I lied when I said Connolly didn’t have any money in the safe. I wanted to keep it back for Hattie and Jehu to start over. But we need it now.”

  “Don’t go throwing it around. Ain’t bottomless.”

  We left not long after Luke arrived. Ruby led the way, and we kept going deeper and deeper into the tenderloin district. “Where are we going?”

  “To get clothes.”

  “Here?”

  “The vice districts have some of the best secondhand shops. Men lose their money and have to sell their coats, hats, boots. Sometimes even their guns. But that’s always a last resort. But the best reason to go here? No one asks questions, and you and me going into a reputable shop to buy men’s clothes? Would cause questions.”

  “I thought lost the shirt off his back was an idiom.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  To my surprise a Chinaman greeted us when we walked into the store Ruby chose. Ruby spoke to him in Chinese and he looked us up and down and started picking clothes off the racks and handing them to us. He glanced at my gloved hands and came back with a pair of sturdy leather gloves. He motioned for the back room, and we went to change. Everything fit perfectly.

  “How did he do that?” I marveled, looking at myself in the mirror. I was dressed all in black, with tall brown boots, a waxed brown leather coat, and a buff John Bull hat.

  “Yung Su was a tailor in San Francisco before he came to Colorado during the gold rush.”

  I caught Ruby’s gaze in the mirror. She wore tan pants, a white shirt, and a dark-green wool short coat. A red bandanna was tied around her long neck, and she held a navy slouch hat in one hand.

  We complimented each other on our transformation and left the room, avoiding each other’s eyes. Yung Su nodded his appreciation, and when Ruby tried to pay him, he shooed the money away. She argued with him, but his round face had a determined set to it. She hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. Yung Su handed us both thick wool overcoats, and he gave Ruby a pair of dark-green-tinted glasses. When she put them on, my stomach fluttered.

  When we were outside she answered my question before I had the courage to ask it. “He’s my uncle. Did you leave anything of value at the boardinghouse? Anything you can sell one day?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? You understand you can never come back to Denver. Not as long as Dorcas Connolly is alive.”

  “Yes. There’s nothing I need.”

  “Then let’s get our horses and get out of here.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?”

  Ruby laughed and didn’t answer.

  We were confident enough in our disguises that we didn’t bother going a circuitous route to Idaho Springs. The road to Idaho Springs was well traveled, and we made good time, arriving at the end of the day. It hardly seemed as if it had been less than eight hours since we left Garet and the gang. We rode through the main part of town and stabled our horses at a smithy run by a large black man with a voice that sounded like falling rocks. He told us the price, which was fair, and didn’t ask questions about why two women dressed as men were riding alone into a town like Idaho Springs. He said that if we were looking for a place to stay, the cooper along the way a bit would rent us a room, no questions asked. We thanked him and procured the room. When the door was closed behind us, we smiled at each other and let out sighs of relief.

  “Did that seem too easy?” Ruby asked.

  “Yes. I’ll take first watch.”

  “No, you sleep. I’m used to staying up all night.”

  Instead of sleeping, I decided to update my notes. It was quite the production, removing my journal from where I’d taken to secreting it, down the back of my corset. Ruby asked me what I was doing at the same time the journal fell to the floor. I was pulling my corset together when Ruby picked it up off the ground and asked me what it was. I told her it had started as case notes, evolved into a journal, and was now more like a novel.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Am I in it?”

  “A little.”

  “Only a little. That’s disappointing.”

  “I’ve only just gotten to know you.”

  “May I r—”

  “No.” Of course, that piqued her curiosity. “One day.”

  My hands shake recording the encounter. Ruby discombobulates me, and I’m not sure why. That’s a lie. I know why. I have always been drawn to women, more so than men, especially women who are gifted in ways I am not. With Garet it is her bravery. With Ruby it’s her dignity. With Hattie it’s her discernment. With Kate it was her determination. I try to soak up as much from these magnificent women as I can, learn, become a better person, a better detective, a better friend and, maybe, a better companion.

  There are times I think Ruby is flirting with me, but most times I think that’s ridiculous. I remember what Garet told me about her once, that Ruby is cunning and can adjust her personality to fit whom she’s with. Is she doing that with me, now? Does she think she knows me, knows what kind of friendship I respond to, and want to manipulate me? Or is this blossoming friendship I sense between us real? I’m afraid to ask.

  She sits by the window still, watching the street. I stare at her profile for I don’t know how long, memorize its curves, the way her cheekbones define her face, the way her eyes narrow slightly at the corners, the dark eyelashes that contrast with her pale brown skin. Last night I saw her hair loose around her shoulders, and it is long and looks like spun silk. Newt had been as mesmerized as I. He’d blushed, wrapped himself in a blanket, and slept in the corner.

  I put my journal aside and looked over her shoulder out the window. Though it was nearly midnight, the town was still alive. Barrels of fire dotted the streets, lighting the way for the men to go from saloon to saloon, brothel to brothel. An occasional gunshot broke through the air. Men laughed. A piano played in the distance. I wanted to release Ruby’s hair from its western twist, but I didn’t have the courage. Instead I rested a hand on her shoulder and offered to relieve her watch.

  “Opal is going to be furious.” Ruby’s voice was quiet. I gently squeezed her shoulder, and she placed her small hand over my gloved one. “I’ve been gone for weeks. We argued about who should go to Rock Springs. I won, of course. She’s a horrible judge of flesh.” I shifted my hand as if to remove it, but caught myself. Ruby noticed and met my gaze. “That’s what we are, you know. To the men. Merely flesh. Something to take their pleasure with.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Is the truth too difficult to hear, Claire?” When I remained silent, she removed her hand. “I wasn’t going back. To Timberline. I would put a few girls on the wagon with Jehu for Opal and go my own way. I’ve been putting money back for months. I just couldn’t do it anymore. If I had to spread my legs one
more time, I was going to kill myself. The thing is, there’s nothing else for me to do.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “What’s true is I’ll always be a half-breed, too white for the Celestials and too yellow for white men to marry. Johns, for the most part, don’t care as long as you’re warm and willing.”

  “Ruby …”

  “My name is Mingzhu.”

  “Mingzhu. That’s a beautiful name.”

  “I haven’t heard it in a long time.”

  “Would you like for me to call you by that name?”

  “Yes. But only in private. Opal doesn’t know my true name.”

  “Thank you for trusting me with it.”

  “I’m not going back.”

  “What?”

  “To Timberline. I should have left when I brought the news about Jehu, but … it is easy to get drawn into their world, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Come with me.”

  “What? Now?”

  “Yes. This isn’t our fight. They don’t need us. We will probably just get in the way. Let’s take the money and go.”

  “Mingzhu, I …”

  “We could start a detective agency in San Francisco. You could work the Anglo cases, and I would work the Chinese cases.”

  “Chinese cases?”

  “Lord, yes. Chinatown is corrupted to the bone.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to be in danger.”

  She laughed. “I hope to be. I haven’t felt alive in years.”

  “You’ve really thought about this.”

  She looked away. “I have. The idea came to me sitting next to you on the train from Cheyenne. The thrill I felt with just the little bit I did to help.”

  “But that was outlawing. Detective work is inside the law.”

  “Two sides of the same coin, and you know it.”

  “You’re right.” I paced the floor. “I have to admit, I like the idea. It’s always better to have a partner to bounce ideas off of. And we would be our own bosses.”

  “I’ve run my own business for a while. I can show you how to keep books and such.”

  “This might really work.”

  “It will.”

  She grasped my hands, her eyes shining with excitement to match my own. Slowly the smiles left our faces, and the air in the room thickened with a tension I’d never known. Mingzhu’s gaze dropped to my gloved hands, and slowly she removed one glove and then the other. My bare hands rested gently on her upturned palms. She traced one scar, then the other, and I trembled, feeling sensation in areas I’d long thought dead. I wanted to tell her to stop, that I could not survive the disappointment sure to come, but the words ricocheting so clearly through my mind could not find their way to my tongue.

  “You’ve been hurt,” she whispered.

  Still I couldn’t speak, my hands alive with a feeling so exquisite it was almost painful. Mingzhu lifted my hands and kissed each one. She held them close to her heart and said, “I will never hurt you, Claire. That is my vow to you.”

  “I vow the same.”

  I steeled myself for what I had to say, fear no easy foe to vanquish, even now. “There’s just one thing. I have to see this through with Garet and Hattie. I’ve worked so long to gain their trust, I can’t just disappear. And I truly want to write their story. I can’t do that if I don’t know how it ends.”

  She smiled and stroked my cheek. “I know. I confess to being insatiably curious as to how this all ends, too. So we help our friends, then we start over in San Francisco.”

  I embraced her to seal our agreement and to capture this feeling of pure companionship, friendship, and belonging. Finally.

  Events of September 4, 1877

  Written September 7, 1877

  Heresy Ranch

  Timberline, Colorado

  We rode down into Brown’s Hole from Cold Spring Mountain, me, Luke, Mingzhu, Joan, and Stella. We were to reconnoiter Timberline and the Heresy Ranch, discover if Spooner was in town, talk to Rebecca Reynolds, and in Mingzhu’s case, return to the Blue Diamond to smooth things over with Opal. Garet had pulled me aside the night before and told me not to leave Joan’s side, to be there when Spooner rejected her, and to keep Stella from killing him for violating Joan. No small task, I knew.

  She checked my gun and said, “I have faith in you,” which is the only reason I agreed to do it.

  Her faith was misplaced.

  Luke and Mingzhu rode into Timberline while I rode to the ranch with the sisters. Joan and Stella had been quieter than normal on the journey here. We’d passed five days and nights together and I don’t think they’d spoken one word to each other. I understood Stella’s silence all too well. Stella’s threat from the night of Spooner’s bet hung in the air between them. Stella couldn’t believe her sister would betray her like that, that Joan would choose the warmth of a man over her sister’s love and loyalty. The baby in Joan’s belly was incontrovertible proof that Stella wasn’t the center of Joan’s universe, as Joan was the center of hers. She had been supplanted by a man, and in nine months she would be forever supplanted by a child. Stella wasn’t the nurturing type, and Joan’s description of Stella drowning her babies in the water barrel played over and over in my mind. Part of me hoped that Spooner would do right by Joan, if only to protect the unborn baby from Stella.

  Someone was in residence. Men worked around the barns. They were too far away for us to see their faces, but there were more men than had arrived with Spooner a few months ago. Garet said the gang’s members ebbed and flowed, but as we rode closer, and they came into clearer view, they didn’t look like cowboys or bandits to me. Their clothes were too well fitted, and they almost looked like uniforms.

  “We should turn around,” I said, but it was too late. If we turned and ran now, we would have the whole posse on us, and they would know our arrival was more than just a homecoming. Two men waiting on the front porch came to meet us, the preacher and Valentine. They grabbed my and Stella’s horses’ bridles by the shank. My horse tossed her head, but the preacher held firm.

  “We wondered when you might be back,” Deacon said.

  “This is our home,” Stella said.

  “Not anymore,” Valentine said. “You brought the wrong Pinkerton back.”

  “I’m not a Pinkerton.”

  “Salter said you were.”

  “Is Jed here?” Joan asked.

  “Inside. Waiting for you,” Deacon said.

  Joan was off her horse, and Valentine held out his arm to stop her. “Give me your gun.”

  Her hesitation gave me a glimmer of hope she wasn’t as lost to us as I’d feared. “Is he afraid I’ll shoot him, Val? The father of my child?”

  Val pulled the gun from her holster and pushed her toward the door. Stella flinched, but the blacksmith aimed her sister’s gun at her. “You, too. Both of you.”

  They took our rifles and our pistols, and I’d never felt so vulnerable. I’d long since lost track of my own Peacemaker, but having a gun on my person had become a comfort I’d never expected. Once they had our guns they lost interest in us. We went into the house unabated.

  “Keep your head, Stella,” I said.

  “Not taking orders from the likes of you.”

  I pulled on her arm to stop her. “Do you really think Spooner is going to marry her? Or to even keep her as a mistress? No. She’s a child. If you keep your mouth shut, she’ll realize it soon enough.”

  Stella jerked her chin down once and barreled through the door. The inside of the house hadn’t changed, other than smelling of sweat, piss, and tobacco instead of fresh-baked bread and saddle leather. Footprints of dried mud crisscrossed the floor, and there were open jugs of whiskey and tin mugs stale with beer littering the tables and the floors.

  “Love what you’ve done with the place,” I said.

  Spooner sat at the kitchen table with Joan in his lap. From her body language, she didn’t sit there of her own free will. Her eyes w
ere darting to her right, and I think she would have silently signaled more to me if Deacon and Valentine hadn’t walked in.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the lady detective. I felt sure Hattie or Garet would have killed you by now.”

  “They have not, though every one of them has threatened it. Except Joan.”

  “Joanie is a sweetheart.” He nuzzled the girl’s neck, but kept his eyes on Stella. “Inside and out.”

  Stella inhaled, but didn’t move or say anything. I took the opportunity to glance over to my left. The door to Hattie and Jehu’s room was slightly ajar.

  “Joanie says y’all’ve come to live with us. We could use a feminine touch around here, as you can see.”

  “She tell you she’s pregnant?” Deacon asked.

  “She did not. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sure it’s mine?”

  “Jed, of course it is.”

  “Right. I took your maidenhead.”

  “Jed,” Joan said.

  “When did you become so disgusting?” Stella asked.

  “Listen to that, boys! Stella used a four-dollar word!”

  “You used to be a nice man, Spooner. But you came back from Mexico with a mean streak as wide as the Mississippi.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you. We got hired on by the Texas Rangers, not officially, you see. Our job was to raid and kill Mexicans on the border. I never liked killing, as you know, but we were low on funds and we didn’t know the country well enough to make an escape after a job. Besides, the terrain out there is about as unforgiving as you can imagine. Hell, there weren’t no places to hide. So we did one job for the Rangers, and I got a taste for it, to be honest. Those Texas businessmen pay damn good money to kill Mexicans. More money than we make up here, and we’re protected from the law.”

  I glanced at the bedroom door. It had opened a fraction more, and a shadow moved in the gap between the door and the floor.

  “Should’ve just stayed down there,” Stella said.

  “I would’ve, but I heard the Spooner Gang was pulling some lucrative jobs up here and didn’t like the idea of a gang using my name. Then when I heard it was a bunch of women …”