Double Eagle, page 13
“No forgery at all.”
“A deed he never signed. Gold he never got.”
The sudden edge to Cole’s voice brought a quick warning from Pyne. “Don’t try anything foolish. My men are at your back.”
“At my back, sure. What else to expect from a Quantrill man? Just like Lawrence, Kansas.”
“That was war.”
Cole looked around and saw Pyne’s six men, lounging against the front wall of the hotel. Hard-faced and dressed alike in dark suits.
At that moment Claudius Max came bouncing in his fat man’s walk from the hotel. Clinging to his arm was the beautiful Theodora.
“Cantrell, I’ve heard rumors that you don’t favor my choice for town marshal,” Claudius Max said and chuckled.
“Hendricks was the better man. Younger, tougher … honest.” Traffic rattled and banged along the street, blooded horses stepping smartly, work teams straining with heavy loads. Women on the walks fashionably dressed, at least at this end of town. And many of the men elegant in ruffled shirts.
Cole had an urge to smash that gloating face, thinking what the man’s greed had cost him. But his gaze shifted to Mrs. Max and met the wide green eyes that sent a tingle along the spine. She averted her gaze. “Claudius, we better go or we’ll be late for the reception.”
“More pleasure in baiting Mr. Cantrell than in greeting dignitaries.”
Cole’s temper spilled over and he said, “I guess congratulations are in order. For beating Martin Gale to his knees so you could buy out his stage line.”
Max, leaning on his gold-headed walking stick, regarded Cole from under the narrow brim of a black hat. “I heard what had happened to him and thought perhaps he had lost the will to continue with his stage line. And he had.”
“I think you hired Deal and his cohorts to beat Gale.”
“Always you accuse me of misdeeds,” Max said with a doleful shake of the head. “Always without proof.”
Cole stepped around Theodora Max, again feeling the impact of the green eyes. He caught a scent of expensive perfume, no doubt French. Her gown was a lighter shade than her eyes, of elegant silk.
Midway down the walk, Pyne caught up with Cole, his slash of mouth stretched in a wide grin. “You keep on bothering the boss and one day I’m liable to cut you up the middle.”
Cole matched his smile. “Before you try, make arrangements with your undertaker.”
Here was the Crow camp with the memories, spread out at the foot of the bluff where he, in Indian ritual, had consigned the bodies of his murdered parents to the land of shadows. Here each spring he sought to renew himself in the traditional sweat house; purification after poisons of mind were drained in contemplation and those of the body washed away in rivulets of perspiration.
He emerged, renewed, and found Dark Star waiting for him. Always the beauty of this medicine woman stirred him. His true friend from childhood. It was evening. The creek twisted through dark trees. One end of a crescent moon spiked a knot of shadowed forest on a distant mountain. Stars blazed against a velvet sky.
As they walked together they spoke in Crow concerning his current plans. Dark Star said firmly, “You do not belong in the white world.” It was an old argument.
“But this is another chance to do something for my red brothers.”
“You Were a scout for the dog soldiers before,” she reminded. “It was poison to you.”
It would be different this time. “I want to try again.” He touched her soft hair. Her back arched, and she halted.
“Do that again,” she whispered; her eyes were luminous in the half shadows of evening.
He slid his hands over the sleek head, down the twin braids. Then slowly his fingers played down her spinal column to the narrow waist and to the swelling below. Her back arched again and her breathing was suddenly quickened.
She almost spoiled it when she said, “How can I ever convince you that you are more Crow than white?”
“I like the way you try to convince me,” he said lightly after their lips had clung together.
“You tease me.”
Bending his head, he found her mouth again. Her lips opened and he probed the inside of her mouth with his tongue. This caused her to clasp him so fiercely that the points of small but perfectly formed breasts were hard against his chest.
Her teeth gleamed through slightly parted lips. “The bed of furs in my lodge? Or here?”
They both laughed shakily, for they knew here it was to be. A moment to be captured, not postponed by a long walk to her lodge at the far side of the camp. When they knelt together on the bedding of pine needles he helped her out of the deerskin dress. And then the shift that clung like silk was gone. She kissed him, strong teeth nipping about as he shucked out of his clothing. Finally he lay back and drew her to him.
“Ah, a true warrior,” she said softly, her eyes inches from his. “He suffers the hard ground, his woman the cushion of his body.” Her whisper of laughter was warm breath against his throat.
Always the sheath of her warm body brought him as close to earthly paradise as was possible. When she settled herself fully, becoming a part of him, she leaned forward so that he could tantalize her breasts with his lips. A nipple gently squeezed between thumb and forefinger added to her pleasure.
Sounds of night herders crossing the creek twenty yards downstream in thick pines momentarily stilled them. A faint murmur of voices, laughter, splash of ponies in the rushing waters. Then the herders and the ponies were on the far side of the creek and moving in a southerly direction where grass was good. Finally they could no longer be heard.
The soaring sliver of moon became wedged in clouds, and for a time there was only the faint light of a trillion stars.
In a primitive ritual of love in a cathedral of pines, the man and woman finally reached a mutual moment of rapture. Dark Star cried out softly, flung herself down on his chest. Her arms slid under his torso to lock them in an even tighter embrace.
When they were dressed and walking hand in hand toward her lodge, past the drying racks, the last curls of smoke from evening fires, she spoke of the future.
“I see much trouble in my medicine fire these days,” Dark Star said. “You must make a choice, Cole. It can no longer be put off.”
“The choice is already made.” It vexed him that she never seemed to understand … or wanted to.
“You belong with us,” she went on. “Here you could in time be a chief, revered by the people.” A shooting star speared the night with dizzying speed and vanished abruptly.
“I am Crow, I am white. I will never be all of either one.”
They ate an evening meal in her lodge in silence, huddled around a small blaze in a circle of stones. Smoke drifted skyward, blurring the stars where the poles of her lodge were lashed together.
She was not petulant because of his unswerving determination to serve both races, only hurt. Sensing her mood after the meal, he took her in his arms. A pile of soft furs afforded more comfort than the primitive bed in shadowed trees. At first she was passive, but gradually his skill dissolved the shroud of hurt and she became vibrant, eager to absorb his strength and power. Reaching the pitch of emotion after the sweet slowness of the long climb together, she started to scream. He cut it off with the pressure of his mouth on hers.
Although her lodge was set apart from the others, an honor reserved for her as medicine woman, it would not do to advertise their ecstasy to the whole camp. At last the great pounding engine of his body was stilled and she lay quite content in his arms. The moon slid higher into the sky, beaming pale yellow toward the smoke hole at the top of the lodge and upon the lovers entwined, unmoving.
Long after midnight, when he was sleeping peacefully, she built a medicine fire and studied it intently. Her dark eyes were troubled when finally she crept back into the circle of his strong arms.
In the morning she said, “I see danger for you at Fort Savage.”
He caught her chin in his hand, tilted back her head so that the glowing eyes met his. “I never expected the job to be a vacation,” he said, hoping to dispel her fears. “There will be trouble, of course, and unpleasantness.”
“Just be careful.” She arched her slim body, accepted his parting kiss.
As he was saddling Trooper, Cole heard a familiar male voice. “So it is the ba-ita-sheda hachka.”
Cole turned and saw Red Wolf with the strong shoulders. Cole laughed. “I am not a tall white man, as you said. I am a tall Crow-white.”
“There are ponies missing. Stolen during the night. Half a hundred. There is white man’s sign. You, a white man, in our camp.”
“Not your camp,” Cole snapped. “You drift from camp to camp. These are my mother’s people.” He swept a long arm to encompass the many lodges, the deer hide walls glistening from morning dew. And just what are you doing here, Crow with Latin blood? Cole wanted to say. You, an accomplished horse thief, one who served time in a white man’s prison because of it.
“One day we will fight again with the throwing ax,” Red Wolf chided. Just then Dark Star stepped from her lodge, beads jingling. Red Wolf spoke to her and called her “holy woman.”
She nodded gravely in response to the tribute, then turned her back.
Red Wolf’s broad face darkened at the snub. He stalked away, rifle swinging from a long brown arm.
“That one I do not like,” Dark Star said, gesturing at the tall Indian just disappearing among the lodges.
Cole mentioned the missing ponies. He was tempted to join in the hunt for the thieves, but there was important business ahead at Fort Savage.
From a rise of ground Cole looked back and saw Dark Star’s slender figure. She lifted a hand. He waved, then turned north and west toward the fort.
Chapter Sixteen
DUKE SATEEN, FORMER Confederate lieutenant, whose neck had been saved by Cole Cantrell on the final day of the war, had also headed north. Sateen had grown tired of New Sodom and El Dorado Gulch and Scalplock and the other mountain communities and decided to find new fields.
With his earnings as a gambler he bought himself a rundown saloon called the Palace. A little paint here and there, a scrubbed floor, bullet-riddled window glass replaced, and he was open for business. Bullet holes in the front of the hardwood bar he didn’t bother to cover. There would be more. Rimfire was that kind of a town.
Sateen in his butternut cape and beaver hat, with a cheroot usually tilted from a corner of his bearded mouth, became a familiar sight on Rimfire streets. It was a country of flatlands, of sodbusters and far-flung cattle ranches. A place to fry the eyeballs in summer, as one cowhand put it, and freeze the other end of a man in winter. The coming of Centurion-Pacific Railroad tracks last year seemed to assure Rimfire’s future.
As a professional gambler, Sateen dealt honest cards until some slicker tried to deal three from the top or the bottom of the deck. Such a challenge amused Sateen. His face with mustache and trimmed chin beard would lose its usual mask and reflect delight in the battle.
One day Aspen Grove arrived on the noon train with carpetbag and the same portmanteau she’d had when she and Duke Sateen had gone off to Frisco together two years ago. Their love affair had been short-lived.
Aspen said, “I heard you were up here, Duke. By any chance do you have a job for an old friend?”
Sateen removed his hat, made an exaggerated bow, and kissed her fingertips. “Ma’am, ah welcome you to Rimfire.”
They both laughed. Over a midday meal at the Cattleman’s Cafe she told him what had prompted her to leave New Sodom. Sam Bishop, owner of the Four Aces, had begun to pressure her.
“Sam even asked me to marry him,” Aspen said, spooning a rich soup. “I also got tired of the killings.”
Sateen shrugged slightly at that, then produced a Rimfire miracle, a bottle of French wine. He studied her as he poured for them. She was pretty as ever, probably twenty-four by now. The same light hair and gray eyes that sparkled. She had an easy laugh. He liked her but would never become deeply attached again. He was like Cole in one respect; he would tolerate no female’s putting a ring in his nose.
“I’m sure this will be a pleasant change from New Sodom,” Aspen said with a smile.
“And ah believe you singing for the rough element we have hereabouts might soothe the troubled waters, so to speak,” he drawled in his deep voice.
Sateen explained about the cattle ranches and the wild cowhands. “However, nobody will bother you at the Palace, Aspen. Rufus Cain of M-Cross wouldn’t dare harm a lady. Which you are.”
“Don’t you have any law here?”
Sateen smiled. “Ah truly believe that we will not see law and order in the high country until well into the next century.”
“I’ll like working for you, Duke.” She put a hand across the table and touched his wrist. But he wasn’t fooled; the image of Cole Cantrell still swam in her eyes.
She got a sample of wild cowboys when the M-Cross outfit came swarming into Rimfire, plus the boss and his son Buck.
The first stop for their hoorawing was usually the Evergreen down the block from the Palace, a two-story building with peeling olive paint, a bar and a few tables downstairs, and six girls occupying cubicles on the second floor. Although business there was light during the other days of the week, one of the girls told Sateen that it took six days to recover from the previous Saturday night.
After the Evergreen, the cowhands would drift to the Glory Hole and then to the Palace, where Rufus Cain, Buck Cain, and Jobe Sanders did most of their gambling and drinking.
During her first week Aspen had met Mayor Campbell and Tully Dorgan, the newly hired town marshal, and Dorgan’s young deputy. Dorgan was said to have tamed a few towns and didn’t mind supplying graphic details even when not asked. He was solid through the shoulders, with a round skull topped with wiry red hair. He carried a six-shooter at his belt and a hideout under his shirt.
On this Saturday night, Dorgan stopped by Cain’s table. With Cain were his son Buck, a somber young beanpole. Across from Buck at the deal table, his back to the wall, sat Jobe Sanders, a large man with pockmarked cheeks who never said much. Although Jobe Sanders had the title of segundo, it was no secret that he was Rufus Cain’s hired gun. The few drifters who had attempted to test his lethal reputation were buried in Rimfire’s cemetery, usually in unmarked graves.
Aspen was singing “Yellowstone Lullaby” on this night, picking out the chords on the Palace piano with its peeling varnish and a bullet gouge on one end.
“Want your boys to hold things down tonight, Cain,” Dorgan said in his hectoring voice.
Sateen winced. Dorgan had been on the job only a few days and already was sticking his head in the bear’s mouth. Although Sateen didn’t particularly care for Rufus Cain, a little diplomacy on the part of the new marshal was certainly in order. Especially with a cattleman of Cain’s importance and one who boasted a temper as vile as any that could be found south of the Canadian line.
“Was I you, I’d keep it shut,” Cain said to Dorgan. “The mouth, I mean.” Cain had thick iron-gray hair and a matching beard. He slanted a cold gray eye from his cards up to Dorgan. “You understand me, marshal?”
Dorgan flushed a deeper shade of red than his hair, wheeled, and stomped out of the Palace.
“I purely don’t like that son of a bitch,” Cain muttered, scanning his cards. He was slightly shorter than his son’s six foot two, but, as some claimed, looked as if he was bolted together on an oversize iron frame. Cain said, “Weren’t no reason for Mayor Campbell to hire another town marshal anyhow.”
In his years on the frontier since the war, Sateen had learned never to involve himself in the other man’s fight. Only one time had he deviated, and that was in New Sodom, when he had killed the man intending to ambush Cole Cantrell. But that was different; to repay a debt.
It was past midnight when a series of Rebel yells came from the far end of town. Rufus Cain grinned. “My boys havin’ fun.” He cocked his leonine head. “Listen to ’em, Buck.”
“I’m listenin’, Pa.” Buck did not look up from his cards. The town was divided on Buck Cain. Some said he was just a gangling, empty-headed kid who would simply blow away like summer dust if anything happened to his old man. Others felt sorry for him because he was so dominated by his father.
The “fun” Rufus Cain had referred to happened to be a horse race between two of his cowhands down an alley. They were half-drunk, yelling, their horses scattering chickens and stray dogs. One of the riders, Sandy Phipps, his blue shirt billowing in the wind, was leading the two-man horse race when his mount shied at the sight of a snarling brown dog. Phipps in his inebriated state lost control of his roan. Urged on by shouting M-Cross riders, the roan buck jumped into a clothesline filled with laundry, stumbled on another twenty feet or so, then crashed through the flimsy rear wall of the New China Laundry.
Miraculously neither horse nor rider suffered from smashed window glass. But they did become entangled in garments on the clothesline. And the roan had kicked over several baskets of fresh laundry. Phipps howled with laughter and pulled a damp undershirt from his head and scraped some handkerchiefs off his saddle.
A string of Chinese oaths burst from the owner of the New China. Kim Sun came storming out of the wrecked building, pigtail flying. He tried to seize Phipps by an ankle. By then Phipps was backing his horse from the tangle of laundry, and laughing so hard that tears rolled down his thin, wind-burned face. He more or less playfully kicked Kim Sun away. Whereupon the laundry owner seized Phipps by the arm and toppled him from the saddle. Phipps came down hard on his rump. This produced jeers from the spectators, who were mostly M-Cross cowhands.
Phipps picked himself up and eyed Kim Sun. “You hadn’t oughta done that.”
“You, cowboy, you cause much damage!” Kim Sun cried, dancing around in his agitation. “You pay Kim Sun!”
“I don’t see it that way, China boy.” Quiet settled over the alley as everyone sensed a drama beginning to build.
