Kitabı oxu: «Wyoming Widow»

Chapter One

Laramie, Wyoming

June 10, 1879

“I know you’re in there, girlie,” the wheezy voice rasped through the thin planking of the door. “I heered you rustlin’ them papers in there like a purty li’l red-haired mouse! Open the door, now, so’s I won’t have to get out my key.”

Cassandra Logan huddled in the shadows beside the potbellied stove, her arms wrapped protectively around her bulging belly. Today was the first day of the month. The rent on the shack was due. The landlord, Seamus Hawkins, was here to collect.

And Cassandra had no money to give him.

Her stomach churned as her ears caught the jingle of his heavy key ring. In a moment he would be inside. Then what?

Things had gone from bad to worse in the seven months since her husband, Jake, had died in a gun-fight over a pretty blond saloon girl. For a time, scrubbing floors in the Union Pacific Hotel had brought Cassandra enough money for food and rent. But finding work was impossible now. What employer would hire a woman whose apron strings were wrapped beneath her armpits?

As the key slid into the lock, she forced herself to move. Cowering in the corner would only encourage Seamus to bully her—the last thing she needed at a time like this.

Before he could turn the knob, Cassandra swung the door open and stood facing him, arms akimbo, trying to look as fierce as possible. Since the man was at least twice her size, it was a ludicrous effort. He leered down at her, fat and unshaven, reeking of whiskey and garlic.

“Well, where is it?” he demanded, clearly savoring his power over her. “You knew I’d be comin’ ’round today.”

Cassandra willed herself not to writhe beneath his gaze. “I’ll have the rent by Monday,” she lied desperately. “Surely you can wait that long. I’ve always paid you on time.”

Seamus’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I’ll give you till this time tomorrow,” he said. “Have the rent in full by then, or it’s out you go. There be plenty folks needin’ a roof an’ able to pay.”

He took a step over the threshold. Cassandra’s stomach clenched as she sensed what was coming next.

“You know, girlie, there’s more’n one way to pay a man. You let me come ’round whenever I get a yen for somethin’ sweet, an’ you won’t owe me a cent.”

“I don’t think your wife would approve of that arrangement, Mr. Hawkins,” Cassandra said icily.

“What my old woman don’t know won’t hurt her none.” He winked slyly, edging closer as Cassandra battled gut-heaving panic. “This could be a li’l private business deal, just between you an’ me. I’d even buy you presents if you was nice to me. How about it, girlie?” His breath was warm and damp, his gaze hungry. “’Twouldn’t be so bad. You might even get to like it.” He groped for her, but Cassandra slipped away, moving back toward the stove, one hand fumbling for the iron kettle.

“Give me a chance to come up with the money,” she parried, stalling for time. “The other—that wouldn’t be a good idea with the baby—”

“Aww…I’d be careful. Truth be told, I’d take you over the money any day. ’Sides, ’twouldn’t be the worst if somethin’ did go wrong an’ you lost the young’un, you havin’ no husband and all. Why, a purty li’l thing like you, with no brat taggin’ along, you could—”

The words ended in a gasp as Cassandra flung the kettle at his head. White-hot rage fueled the impact of the blow. Seamus reeled backward, blood oozing down his temple. He lunged for her, but she spun out of reach, putting the stove between them as she bent to snatch the hatchet out of the wood box.

“What’ll it be, Seamus?” she hissed, gripping the weapon. “A finger? An eye, maybe? Take one step closer and you’ll find out.”

Seamus edged backward. Then, from a safer distance, he grinned at her. “So you like to play rough, eh, you little hellcat? Well, two can play at that game. If I didn’t have my old lady waitin’ down on the road in the buggy, I’d show you right now.” He turned toward the door, then paused, dabbing at his temple with a dirty handkerchief. “I’ll be back tomorrow to collect what’s owed me. An’ one way or another, girlie, you’d better be ready to pay, or you’ll be out in the street. An’ that’d be a damned, dirty shame, now, wouldn’t it?”

Spitting on the handkerchief, he wiped the blood from the side of his face, then turned away and ambled outside. Cassandra slammed the door shut behind him and barricaded it with a spindly chair propped against the knob. Not that it would stop a big man like Seamus Hawkins. When Seamus wanted to come in, he would. His wife had been waiting for him this time. But what about tomorrow?

Racked by stomach spasms, she sank onto the edge of the bed and pressed her hands to her face. Her limbs felt watery. Her skin was clammy with sweat. She had to get out of this place.

But how? Where could she go? What in heaven’s name would she do when the baby came?

Money—she would need money to get away. But she had so few treasures left to sell, and they were so dear—the garnet earrings that had been her grandmother’s; her grandfather’s fiddle; the gold locket with Jake’s picture in it—the only image of him their child would ever know. How could she part with any of them?

A raw wind, rank with the smell of the nearby stockyards, whistled through the cracks in the clapboard walls. Cassandra shivered, her stomach still churning from the encounter with Seamus Hawkins. A cup of hot chamomile tea would do wonders for her body and spirit, she thought. There were only a few sticks left in the wood box, but what did it matter if she wasted them? Tomorrow Seamus would be knocking on her door, demanding payment. She could not afford to be here when he arrived.

Groping on the floor, she found the kettle where it had bounced off Seamus’s head. Now for the stove—what a lucky thing she’d saved that discarded newspaper she’d found yesterday in the street. It would come in handy for lighting the fire.

Unfolding the paper, she ripped off the front page and began crumpling it to stuff into the stove. Suddenly her hands froze. Her eyes stared at the page.

There, smiling at her from beneath the headline, was the lean, handsome face of her late husband.

Cassandra’s knees went watery. She stumbled back to the bed and sank down on the mattress, her hands smoothing the creases out of the page as her disbelieving eyes scanned the headline: Rancher’s Son Missing, Feared Drowned.

She stared at the printed picture—a pen-and-ink drawing that some newspaper artist had copied from a photograph. Of course, it wasn’t really Jake. She had seen Jake dead in his coffin. But it was someone who looked uncannily like him.

Straining her eyes in the scant light, she struggled to make out the small print beneath.

“Ryan Tolliver, son of Wyoming Rancher Jacob Tolliver, was declared missing and presumed drowned last week when a dory containing his possessions washed ashore on the banks of the upper Yellowstone River. Tolliver, 23, had been completing a survey for the United States Department of the Interior, and was last seen alive on…”

Cassandra held the paper to the window, squinting in an effort to finish the article in the fading light. But it was becoming too dark to read the fine print, and she was loath to waste her one precious candle. The picture, however, was still visible in the semi-darkness. Only as she studied the handsome young face again did Cassandra realize she had seen Ryan Tolliver before—right here in Laramie at the Union Pacific Hotel.

It had been last November, she recalled, just a few weeks before Jake’s death. She’d been mopping the foyer when the tall young man strode in through the double doors, wearing chaps, spurs and a thick coating of snow and trail dust. Even then, Cassandra had been struck by his resemblance to her late husband. But she’d had no more than a few seconds to stare before he disappeared upstairs. Half an hour later he’d come down again, washed, clean shaven and looking even more like Jake than before. Whistling an airy tune, he’d walked out the front door and headed straight for Flossie’s House of Blossoms across the street. That was the last she’d seen of him.

But now, as she studied the picture in the paper, Cassandra had no doubt that the man she’d noticed months ago was Ryan Tolliver.

Smoothing the wrinkled page, she laid it on the table, then turned to fill the kettle from the water bucket. She had not really known Ryan Tolliver, but the sense of his loss weighed on her spirit. He had seemed so happy that winter evening, so young and strong and vital. Cassandra could well imagine what the Tolliver family must be going through now as they waited for the news that would end all their hopes.

Crumpling a back page from the paper, she stuffed it into the dark belly of the stove, added two sticks of wood and lit a single match. Shadows danced on the moldering walls as the fire flickered to a steady blaze. Cassandra put the kettle on the open burner to heat. Then she turned back toward the open shelf to find the store of chamomile she kept in an old jelly jar.

Only then did she notice the way the fire flickered through the grate, casting a finger of golden light across the low table—a finger of light that pointed straight toward the smiling image of Ryan Tolliver.

Could it be a sign?

Cassandra stared at the picture, the tea forgotten as a plan sprang up in her mind—a plan so audacious and risk-fraught that only a woman in her desperate state would have thought of it.

For the space of a long breath she hesitated, weighing the idea. It was dangerous. Worse, it was dishonest, even cruel. No, she resolved, her grandparents hadn’t raised her to be a cheat and a liar. She simply could not do it. She would live on the street first!

And the street was exactly where she was headed.

Cassandra sagged against the table, her hands clenching into tight fists. Blast Jake Logan anyway! Why had he gone to the saloon on that awful December night? Why had he gotten himself shot in that silly fight over a dance hall floozy instead of just coming home to her?

But then, she’d asked herself that question too many times not to know the answer. She wasn’t beautiful like the women in that painted and perfumed world. She was small and wiry to the point of scrawniness, with a rag-doll mop of cherry-colored curls and freckles that popped out at the barest touch of sunlight on her skin. Worse, she’d never known the right words to say to a man—words that would make him puff up his chest and feel like a hero. She was as blunt and honest as the grandmother who’d raised her, and if more vinegar than honey fell from her tongue, so be it. Pretense was not in her nature.

Maybe that was the reason Jake hadn’t treated her better. When he wanted to, he could be sweet and tender. But sometimes, especially when he’d been drinking, he could be downright mean. Cassandra had hoped the baby would change things. But on the very night she’d planned to share her news, Jake Logan had died. He had died with his pants down in a tawdry upstairs room, never knowing he was to be a father.

Deep in her body Cassandra felt a little flutter kick, then a shifting motion as her baby turned and stretched in its warm, secret world. Wonder flooded her heart as she smoothed the apron over the growing bulge, feeling for the tiny life that pulsed and stirred beneath her hands. Soon she would have a child, a sweet baby all her own to love and care for. Heaven willing, she would never be alone again.

But what could she offer this child? A safe home with food on the table? The closeness and joy of a family? A secure future with the promise of a fine education?

Cassandra choked back a whimper of despair. She had nothing to offer her baby except love. To provide the rest, she would sacrifice anything—her own pride, her own life.

But even in her desperation, she could not imagine carrying out the wild scheme that had lodged in her mind. To take advantage of a grieving family would compromise everything she knew to be right and good. She would never be able to look at her own reflection in the mirror without a spasm of self-loathing.

No, it was out of the question.

All the same, the story of Ryan Tolliver’s disappearance was intriguing. Cassandra could not resist wanting to know more.

The newspaper article lay on the table, begging to be read. Strangely agitated, she rummaged for another match and lit the candle she’d been hoarding. The story took up just two printed columns. She would only need a few minutes of precious light to read it.

Placing the candle where its light would fall on the open page, she finished making the tea. Then, cradling the chipped white cup between her hands, she sank onto a wooden box and began to read.

The room was a blanket of darkness around her, the tea warm and comforting in her belly. By the time she reached the second column of the news article the print had begun to blur. Cassandra’s eyelids drooped lower and lower. She had been up since dawn looking for work, and she was tired. So very tired…

Startled, she jerked awake. The candle had guttered to half its original length. She had dozed off, Cassandra realized groggily. What time was it? What had awakened her?

As she leaned forward to blow out the candle, plunging the room into full darkness, she heard the low metallic click of a key sliding into a lock.

Instantly wide-awake, she sprang to brace the door. It crashed open, knocking her to one side as Seamus Hawkins lurched across the threshold.

“Awright, girlie.” His voice was slurred, and his body stank of cheap whiskey. “I’m back t’ finish what we started. No need t’ fight me, now. You’ll start likin’ it once I git it ’twixt them sweet little legs o’ yours.”

Cassandra had been thrown back against the wall. As he stumbled toward her, she groped for a weapon, anything she could use to defend herself.

Her hand closed on an iron bootjack with a weighted base—a silly extravagance, she’d called it when Jake had brought it home, as if a man couldn’t pull off his boots with his own two hands. It was heavy and solid, but not long enough to keep Seamus at a distance. Her best chance lay in keeping away from him until she could reach the door and flee into the night.

Hoping to confuse him, she picked up a tin cup from the counter and tossed it across the room. It clattered in the darkness, bouncing against a table leg and onto the floor. Distracted, Seamus swung toward the sound, allowing Cassandra a split second to change her position. Not that it made any difference. He still stood between her and the door.

She shrank into a shadowed corner of the tiny cabin. The mica panes on the door of the stove glowed like little red eyes, giving the darkness a hellish cast. And it would be hell if he caught her. Being raped was unspeakable enough, but if he should hurt her baby, her darling…

Cassandra’s grip tightened on the bootjack. She could hear the rasp of breath in her throat—the breath of a hunted, desperate animal.

Seamus must have heard it, too, for he suddenly turned, blocking the light of the stove as he lumbered straight toward her. “I got you cornered now, you little hellcat!” he wheezed. “Now, I won’t mind if you put up a fuss. A good rasslin’ match gits me as hard as a—”

Cassandra flung the bootjack at his head with all her strength. It glanced off his forehead, doing only superficial damage, but the blow was enough to throw him off balance. As he reeled backward, out of control, one foot landed on the tin cup that had rolled to the middle of the floor. For a split second his legs splayed wildly. His arms flailed like berserk windmills. With a shriek, he pitched backward.

Cassandra heard the awful crunch of bone as the back of his head struck a corner of the iron stove. Then Seamus Hawkins crashed to the floor and lay still.