The Beholding, page 25
If the townsmen could view this, Jim was certain they wouldn’t waste their time trudging up here to offer marriage to Contessa. She and her son had only one choice in mind for Clifton’s replacement. Contessa might not know her own mind yet, but her body spoke volumes. The way her eyes lit with pleasure when Reeves walked into the room, the way they threatened to shed tears at learning he intended to leave, conveyed how much she loved the bastard. Yes, he needed to get rid of Reeves once and for all. In such a way she would never allow the bounty hunter back into her life.
By the first rays of dawn, word spread through camp of Tess’s eligibility. She found herself swamped with offers of marriage that staggered the imagination. Even Georgetown’s elite—judges; doctors, a lawyer or two—joined in the race. Gamblers, drifters, prospectors and gunfighters alike played the fearsome odds of winning her hand. Addicted to the game of chance that had brought them to the silver camp, most staked a claim on her before the sun fully crested the Rockies.
At first, Tess felt flattered and amused. Another knock on the shack door announced a well-dressed stranger who indicated he hoped to visit Tommie Harper. Hair slicked back and smelling of bay rum, the man nodded a greeting to Tess, offered a gift to her son, then accepted one of the ladder-back chairs and stiffly lowered himself into the seat. While Tommie oohed and ahhed over promises of a rocking chair, carved soldier, a horse, or puzzled over dishes, a bolt of calico, a churn, the caller proudly recited his assets and the lavish manner in which he could provide for the boy.
The offers surprised Tess: mining stock, precious gems, a small fortune in gold pieces, all willingly given in exchange for a marriage vow. Without fanfare, or even the slightest attempt at small talk, the men presented their intentions with little delicacy and intense solemnity. Tess ceased being amused by it all and began to resent the endless bartering. Though she had a sleepless night and looked more like a scrub woman, suddenly she felt like a prized brood mare on an auction block, with each man trying to outbid the other. The feelings evoked memories of standing in front of the Hot Springs bathhouse listening to her father lie about her age, convincing men and women alike that his waters provided such healing they restored youth.
Of all who sought her favor this morning, Jim was the only one who asked for her hand without the ruse of visiting Tommie. “I’d consider your proposal more kindly,” she told the gambler who bent on one knee before her and gripped her hands in his, “if you’d give me a bit more time to think.” Tess’s shoulders ached from the long night of cleaning. She yawned. “All I’m interested in right now is a hot bath and a few hours sleep.”
Tommie yawned, tired from all the attention and weary of all the men who stood around awaiting his mother’s decision. “I sleepy, Mista Luke.” He held his arms out for Luke to lift him. The bounty hunter pressed him against a strong shoulder which made Tommie feel warm and protected. His lashes bhnked fast, making his eyes feel suddenly so heavy he couldn’t keep them open. But Tommie didn’t want to go to sleep. Not yet. He had to know just one more thing. “You be here tomorrow, Mista Luke?”
Luke’s hand pressed against Tommie’s back and snuggled him closer. “I’ll be here.”
“Gooo-ood.” The word escaped Tommie’s mouth in a restful sigh that sent away the troublesome thoughts stirred by his daddy’s friend Jim. Luke would be here. It was safe to sleep now. Safe.
“This little man’s gone, Tessa. Where can I lay him down?”
Unconsciously Tess brushed back a wisp of hair and flicked the dust from her skirt. She glanced at Nugget who stood near the stove, devouring one of the sourdough biscuits she had made. “May my son use your cot, Nugget?”
“Manna from Heaven,” the French complimented as he licked his fingers. “Oui, madam. I give up the cot gladly for the boy. For the biscuits, I too will propose.” He winked.
Tess laughed. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all morning, don’t you think, Luke?”
Luke placed the boy on the cot and covered him with the blanket. His gaze lingered on the freshly scrubbed pink cheeks and the wisps of blond hair still damp at the ends. Could he endure the sight of this boy calling any other man Pa?
The bounty hunter stared at the crowd of men, Jim in particular. She wanted an honest answer. He would give her one. “I think Phinneas Wideacre is the best.”
“He’s not even here to speak his piece,” one of the others argued.
“That’s true,” Luke admitted. “But the note he sent clearly states she can keep her half of the mine without having to hand over control of it to him as her husband. I doubt most of you are willing to make the same concession.”
Most in the crowd could not meet his gaze.
“I thought so. Go on back to your diggings,” Luke ordered. “Mrs. Harper doesn’t need a man looking to court her and the boy for the sake of a fortune.”
Jim saw his chance. “How come you know what the mine’s worth? You’re new-arrived, same as me.”
When shamed, the fastest way to get rid of blame is to put it on someone else. This Luke understood as all gazes rested on him. If he told them the truth, he would reveal his cover. Months of work would be lost and those involved in the mine scams would be warned, particularly if Tess was not guilty of the crimes. Despite the hurt he knew it caused and partly because of it, he saw a way to make her forget him and what he might eventually call down upon her head. “Have I ever indicated I wanted her for any other reason? Wideacre is the man she should marry.”
“Please, everyone leave.” Tess stood and braced her hands against the table to keep from shaking. “I do not intend to make any decision. I haven’t even made up my mind to marry again. Now that you’ve all proven to me you’re the kind of men who would use a child”—her gaze locked with Luke’s and she forced back tears of fury and the deepest hurt she had ever felt—"to obtain a fortune, I’m not certain Georgetown is meant for homes and families and the trust that goes with them.”
Men slowly filed out of the shack, each unable to meet her rightful scorn. Jim doffed his hat. “I’ll see you later this afternoon. I’ll be at the Barton House if you need me. Get some sleep.”
“I doubt that will come easily.” Tess stared at Luke.
Nugget cleared his throat. “If madam will excuse me, I’ll make a bed in the mine and close my eyes. The biscuits were magnifique!”
Tess smiled at the Frenchman’s effort to lighten the mood, but the smile disappeared as the door closed and only she and Luke were left standing in the room. She glanced at Tommie to make sure he was asleep and did not hear what she needed to say.
“You used me … not just me, but Tommie.” The truth felt as if it ripped her heart. God, don’t ever let Tommie know.
“That’s not true, Tessa. I love Tommie as if he were my own son.”
She believed him. Wanted to. “Then you used me. You just wanted me. Never loved me.”
“Wanting you is easier than loving you, Tessa.” His tone echoed the loneliness engulfing him. He reached to touch her, but she moved away.
“Just leave, Luke. Get out of our lives.”
“Tess, don’t do this. There are things you don’t know about me.”
“I don’t want to know any more.”
Luke started to advance. “Trying to get something through that stubborn head of yours is harder than outrunning a prairie fire. I’m only doing a job, dammit. Just like you’re spending all your time being a mother and giving none to being a woman.”
She stepped closer, her face hot with anger. “The way I care for my son is my business.”
Luke frowned. “You don’t understand. I’m not condemning you for it. I’m saying you have your priorities, Tess, I have mine.” How could he make her understand? He was losing her. Losing the only woman who had ever loved him as equally as he could love her. All for the sake of his word and the past she would not reveal.
“Go. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
“I promised the boy I wouldn’t.” How could he live without her? How could he never hear her voice again? Ever sleep without knowing he would awaken and see her lovely face?
How would he forget her touch?
Tears rolled down Tess’s cheeks as she took a step backward toward the cot. Her heart pounded so fiercely she thought it might break and cease to beat. Luke was right about one thing … perhaps if she concentrated long enough, hard enough on raising Tommie, there would be no time to think about the night she’d spent in Luke’s arms. No time to miss what she was about to give up forever. No time to worry that she had something within her that Luke couldn’t love. “Leave us and don’t ever come back,” she whispered and turned her back to Luke.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The gambler kept careful watch on the shack, wondering how long he had to search through Reeves’s saddlebags. Contessa would keep the bounty hunter a few minutes, but it might not be long enough.
Like a prospector looking for an elusive piece of gold, Jim dug deeply into one bag, found nothing, then tried the other. Still nothing. As he buried his hand beneath the saddle, the dun snorted in objection. “Private men keep private compartments,” Jim whispered to the horse, groping to feel anything that might prove his opinion correct. Running his fingers along the aged leather, he searched for any minute difference. A bulge halted his progress. A pocket?
“Easy, Talon. Easy, boy,” Jim soothed as the animal moved to one side and nearly jerked Jim’s arm from its socket. “Damn you, be still! You’ll have Reeves out here plugging me full of lead. Just a bit more and I’ll have whatever this is.”
With a final tug, the gambler pulled a notebook from the hidden pocket. When he opened the leather-bound volume, Jim’s eyes lit with satisfaction. A quick glance showed the two folded documents were telegrams, but the notebook proved to be more incriminating. The written report gave Jim all the ammunition he needed to convince Contessa that Luke Reeves was up to no good.
Talon neighed, jerking against the reins looped in a low-hanging box elder branch. “Shut up!” Jim cursed as the horse continued to object. The hinges on the shack door squeaked as they opened, warning the gambler that Reeves had heard the horse’s protest. Not wanting to take the chance of being seen, Jim ran into the mine and took refuge in the first cave, where Nugget housed the supplies.
“Not you too, Talon.”
The gambler listened as the bounty hunter complained. Reeves’s voice echoed through the tunnel. “What’s your reason for being so grouchy? At least you got some sleep.”
From the grunt the bounty hunter made, it sounded like he had lifted something heavy. Crouching behind a stack of empty crates, Jim noted Reeves’s disgruntlement growing louder as he drew nearer. The gambler hid the report and documents between two of the crates. If he was caught, he didn’t want to be holding Reeves’s possessions.
“Maybe when she gets some sleep, I can talk some sense into her,” Luke grumbled, then paused. “Hell, maybe if I get some sleep, I’ll want to reason with her.”
Jim waited until he was certain his adversary had plenty of time to bed down, then edged away from his hiding place, retrieving the report from its haven. Like a lover stealing away from a married woman’s bedroom, he moved soundlessly through the tunnel. When he arrived at the opening, the dun looked up from the grass and stared at Jim. Would the animal raise a fuss and give him away now?
Deciding he didn’t have time to stick around and find out, the gambler circled around the hill and found the roan where he had left him to graze. Tucking the contraband in his shirt so his hands would be free to rein, Jim mounted and wound his way through the forest. When he arrived at a point about a mile down the path from the mine, he turned around and headed up the path as if he had come straight from town. Enough miners would see him come up the hill to confirm that he had been to town and had had no time to steal anything Luke Reeves might find missing.
Tess yawned, considering stretching out beside Tommie on the cot. She could easily give in to the sleepiness that threatened to close her eyes, but she needed to wash first. The sun shone brightly over the Rocky Mountains and radiated through the cracks in the planked walls. She wouldn’t have the privacy to strip down to her chemise, but she would at least wash her hair and scrub her face and hands.
“Hello the shack!”
Jim’s voice forced a perturbed sigh from her lips.
“I must talk to you.”
What do you want now? Tess grimaced at the thought of having to deal with one more man this day. But she remembered her manners and put on a polite face. Opening the door, she stepped out into the bright sunlight. As she shielded her gaze, the sun beat down on her hands and prickled them with heat.
Despite her effort not to appear rude, Tess yawned. The long hours of cleaning the shack had taken their toll. “Can we talk some other time, Jim?” she asked. “I’m very tired.”
Jim dismounted and hitched the roan to the yard post. “I don’t think you’d want me to wait where Tommie’s concerned.”
Immediately the sleepiness drained away. In its place, a premonition of trouble roused her lagging senses. She waited impatiently as the gambler dusted off his hat. She found it irritable that he took his own good time and she finally said so, “Speak up, man. What’s this about Tommie?”
Chestnut brows veed over his brown eyes in a look of momentary anger, then eased. “Is Reeves about? Noticed his horse near the mine.”
Tess shrugged. “I suppose he’s visiting with Nugget. Now what about Tommie?”
Jim moved toward the shack. Tess realized he didn’t intend to discuss anything until they went inside. She motioned him in ahead of her, followed, then closed the door.
Taking a glimpse of the child asleep on the cot, the gambler turned to Tess. “Reeves means to take your boy away from you.”
No matter how much Luke’s words had hurt earlier, the accusation seemed ridiculous. “Why do you say such a thing?” she asked, unwilling to believe the claim.
Producing the notebook and documents from his shirt, Jim handed them to her. “Read these, then you’ll understand.”
As she unfolded each telegram and read, Tess’s fingers began to tremble. A sense of having been betrayed, worse than any she had ever felt against her father and Clifton, gripped her heart. With a quick glance at her son, she whispered in a voice made low by heartbreak, “He means to convict me of forging the mine claims, doesn’t he?”
She couldn’t endure the look of sympathy creasing Jim’s features. Tess knew him too well. The brown eyes glinted with grim satisfaction… a satisfaction gained by her and Tommie’s possible ruin. Yet he cared enough to bring Luke’s ruse to her attention.
“If Luke takes me to the sheriff,” she worried aloud, “what will happen to Tommie?” Icy fingers of fear crawled up her spine and brushed her neck with a chill that made her shudder. Cold reality gripped her thoughts. Luke meant to separate her from the only good thing in her life.
“Tommie will probably have to be sent to his grandparents,” Jim answered. “Since he has no fath … since he can’t rely on his father.”
“Never!” Tess shouted, then cupped one palm over her mouth to hold back the sob of grief that threatened to overcome her. Realizing she might wake her son, she lowered her tone. “They’ll never get the opportunity to do to him what they did to me, as long as I have breath left in my body to prevent it. Let’s go down to the creek where we can talk more. He needs to sleep, and I have to wash my face.”
A ray of sunlight beamed through one of the cracks warming Tommie’s face. He woke slowly and sat up. A glance around the shack informed him he was alone. Tommie lowered his legs to the floor. Someone had taken off his shoes and put them in the corner. Limping over, he sat down in the dirt to put them on. Mommie? Mista Luke? Maybe they were outside. He decided to look around.
Maybe his dream had come true. Mista Luke and Mommie were fighting in the dream, and Luke left. But the dream couldn’t be true… could it? Talon grazed in the grass near the opening of that dark hole where Mista Nugget lived. Mista Luke wouldn’t leave without taking Talon.
Jim’s horse stood hitched to the post outside the shack. Maybe the gambler and Mommie were visiting somewhere. Jim liked to visit Mommie too much. Tommie hoped the mean man went back to his own home soon.
He noticed Talon’s reins wrapped around the branches of a tree. Everyone must be with Nugget in the hole. If he took Talon away, Mista Luke might hafta stay. Then Luke could be his friend forever.
With determination the four-year-old limped toward the dun, thinking how much fun it was going to be climbing up the tree to loosen Talon’s reins. Maybe if he climbed high enough, he could jump down on the horse’s back like he saw some of the big Cherokee boys do.
“I’m sorry, Talon.” Tommie patted the dun’s foreleg as the horse curved his head and bumped his nostrils against Tom. “But I gotta take you away. Don’t be mad.”
When he got to the tree, Tommie wrapped his arms around the trunk and began to climb to the branch that held the reins. “When Mista Luke stays with me forever, I ask him to find you. Then he be both our daddies.”
The bark scraped his palms as Tommie climbed, but he pretended he was a grizzly bear and soon forgot the discomfort. The reins became two poisonous snakes in his vivid imagination. “Get off my tree!” yelled the bear cub as he reached the limb and pulled himself up to sit and rest.
As the branch shuddered beneath his weight and cracked, Tommie gripped the slender bark and tried to maintain his balance. For a heart-stopping moment he thought he would fall and get in big trouble with Mommie, but the branch held. “Bears gotta be careful, don’t they?” he told the big dun.
The horse raised his head and looked at Tommie as he inched across the branch toward the reins and tested his weight again. Talon bobbed his head as if to agree, causing the reins to shake the branch.
