A Lady in Defiance (10 page)

“We hope you’ll come back to our table lots of times,” Hannah
invited between bites. “It’s good to have a friend in this town.”

Tugging nervously at his collar, Emilio rose to his feet.
“Eef I say to Meester McIntyre that you need more help, this would be true,
yes?”

“Oh, yes,” the sisters chorused.

“You’ve been more help than we can tell you.” Rebecca
excitedly waved her cup in the air for emphasis. “Truly you have.”

The boy nodded resolutely. “Then I tell Meester McIntyre
that.” Quickly, he turned, set his plate on his seat and disappeared into the
darkness, apparently taking a back trail to the saloon.

The boy’s abrupt departure puzzled the girls. Listening for
his footsteps to fade, the three sat quietly around the fire, but their silence
stretched on. Staring up at the stars, Naomi assumed they were all speculating
about the future. Or perhaps knowing that they had a warm bed to sleep in made
it easier to dawdle outside beneath this stunning canopy.

She had an urge to talk about the day, the boorish men, the
fighting prostitutes, but decided not to bring up any of it. Naomi felt so
emotionally fragile that she worried any talk about their current circumstances
might break down her defenses. She needed to be alone before she thought any
more about that.

Eventually, as they sat there, they became aware of the
rising volume of noise in the town. Naomi had assumed with darkness Defiance
would settle down a bit; but if anything, it was more rowdy. Listening to their
fire pop and hiss, they could also clearly hear a raucous, non-stop piano
belting out half-recognizable tunes down at the Iron Horse Saloon, accompanied
by drunken laughter, raised voices, and the shrill giggles of tipsy women. From
the street, the jangle of wagons and clip-clop of horses were punctuated by
yelling, cursing and the thud of fists on flesh. Sounds they had heard
throughout the day, but now they seemed twice as loud and a hundred times more
frightening.

Hannah looked off in the distance, her eyes wide and round.
“It’s noisy isn’t it? Will they do this all night long? Be so rowdy?”

Naomi poked the fire and watched the sparks swirl towards
heaven. She suspected the party was just getting started. Fear and loathing in
her voice, she whispered, “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

Chapter
8

As Rose grabbed a clean glass from the bar, she caught sight
of Emilio slipping in for the evening. Moving fast and sure like a little
mouse, he shot through the bat wing doors of the saloon and snaked his way
around crowded tables back to the storage room. She flexed her fingers
restlessly.

Stupid brat
, she thought. He hadn’t even tried to find her. Well, that
just meant she didn’t have to waste time being nice. He knew what happened when
he disobeyed her.

Forgetting the customer waiting on the glass, she sauntered
behind the bar and grabbed a plate covered with a white hand towel. Pushing
past Brannagh, the bartender and only man in town who seemed actually bored by
Rose, she marched towards her brother’s room.

“Emilio,” she snapped, bursting through the door. “Wake up
you lazy rat.” Irritably, she snatched the blanket off him and threw it on the
floor. “Get up,” she ordered again, setting the plate in her hand down on a
barrel and lighting the small lamp on the wall. Reluctantly, Emilio sat up and
looked at his sister with weary acceptance.

She sat down on a stool across from his cot and spoke slowly,
to let him soak up her anger. “I told you to find me before you went to bed.
Tell me about the
gringas
.”

He ran his hands through his black hair, showing his
frustration with her bossiness, which only made Rose smile. “I don’t know. They
seem very nice. What ees it you want to know?”

She sighed and looked around for something to throw at him. “
Stupido
,”
she growled, clenching her fists. “I want to know more. I told you to find out
anything you could. Where do they come from? Why are there no men with them?
Why are they in the old general store?”

“They come from some place called North Carolina but were on
their way to California. The skinny one,
Senora
Naomi, her husband died
on the trail. I don’t think there are any men with them. They’re going to turn
the store into a cantina−no, a, um,” he snapped his fingers. “A
Restaurant. A restaurant and a hotel. That’s all I know. But they want me to
help again
mañana
.”

Rose fiddled with the little gold crucifix at her neck. Were
these pale-faced
gringas
trouble or just a small bump in the road? Maybe
the answer to that was up to McIntyre. Just how close would he get to them?
Best not to take chances. “Surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to get them to
continue on their way to California,” she purred. “They just need to understand
how inhospitable Defiance can be.”

Emilio groaned. “You should leave them alone. They don’t want
any trouble.”

Rose grabbed her brother’s jaw and shoved him back down into
his cot, her soul burning with hate. Gouging her fingers into the soft flesh of
his cheeks, she hissed, “Did I ask for your opinion? Tell me something like
that again and I’ll gut you like a pig. I take care of you. You do as
I
say.”

Giving him one last, vicious squeeze, she stood up and
straightened her gown. “Sleep tight.” Chin in the air, Rose spun and opened the
door into the light and smoke.

~~~

Pouring his friend a drink, McIntyre walked the whiskey over
to Ian then returned to his closet to finish dressing. As he buttoned up a blue
silk vest and reached for a tie, he noticed Ian was unusually quiet. He wasn’t
speaking, but the thud, thud, thud of his cane on the carpet spoke volumes.

“Something on your mind this evening, Ian?”

The cane stopped and he heard Ian shift in the chair. “I was
giving thought to the young ladies ye were telling me about.” McIntyre smiled
at his last word which sounded like
a boot
. 

Stepping in front of a full length mirror, McIntyre started
to work on his tie, but he couldn’t miss the worry he saw in his friend’s
reflection. “And what were you wondering?”

“How is it ye can be so sure they’re they’ll run a decent
place? Ye dunna anything about them.”

McIntyre grinned as he pulled his string tie into a
symmetrical bow and straightened it. “Naomi Miller is the kind of woman who
would die before ever lowering herself to debauchery. If I know one thing,
Ian,” he turned to his friend, “I know women. I can’t say they’re pure as the
driven snow, since the youngest one is with child and I strongly doubt she’s
married, but they are…” He thought for a moment then came up with, “decent, at
least by our standards.”

“Ye asked me to help ye run our mine and plan a town.” Ian
sighed and rose to his feet as McIntyre donned his hat.  “I can map out
ventilation shafts, lay out city streets, even plan a sewer system, but I canna
bring in schools and churches and decent folks to attend them. Ye must start
contacting respectable businesses for investment in the area.” Ian paused and
ran a hand along his graying beard. “And ye must treat decent folks well once
they arrive. Holding the land back from those decent girls wasna a good start.”

McIntyre raised his brow. Ian rarely chided him about his
morals, even though McIntyre sensed he often wanted to. “Well, I did agree to
sell her the lot and at a ridiculously reduced rate. Does that make you feel
any better?”

“Some…maybe.” Ian sounded doubtful and McIntyre thought the
man looked a little older tonight, as if fifty was weighing on him. “I know I
told ye that I’d stay through the winter,” Ian continued, “but as it stands,
now, I’ll be leaving at the end of September, or whenever the restaurant is
complete. I am an old man and this free-for-all is not to my liking.”

McIntyre shoved his right hand into his pocket and ruminated
on the announcement for a moment. “That pushes some of our plans back to the
spring. And are you sure you trust me with your half of the profits from the
mine? No one else would.”

Ian slapped his friend on the back and tapped his chest with
the handle of his cane–an ornately carved silver wolf’s head. A hint of humor
glimmered in his hazel eyes. “No one else saved ye from being shanghaied to
China. I know I have yer eternal gratitude.”

The reminder drew McIntyre to a halt. The events would never
be clear, thanks to the drug in his beer, but he recalled a dark alley, the vague
understanding that he was being taken where he did not want to go, feeble
protests…and the flash of a silver wolf’s head. If Ian hadn’t happened by at
that precise moment, McIntyre knew he could well be swabbing the deck of a
leaky freighter right now. The thought made him shudder and he rolled his
shoulders in an attempt to exorcise the memory. “I would say
eternal
is
an understatement of Biblical proportions, my friend.”

~~~

Naomi sat by the fire for a long while after her sisters
retired, staring into the glowing, orange embers as if hypnotized by them. Her
mind mercifully blank, she circled high above her grief like a hawk soaring
through an empty sky. She simply wanted to float and let the wind take her
where it would. Sampson whinnied in the darkness and the sound carried her
spirit home.

She saw John riding his favorite mount into their backyard,
right up to where she was beating a rug without mercy. He slid down from the
saddle then swept Naomi up into a spinning embrace, laughing foolishly, almost
deliriously.

“I asked for a piano and God gave us a wagon!”

His laughter was contagious and Naomi couldn’t help but join
in, albeit with bemused confusion. When he smacked a big, wet, silly kiss on
her, she pushed away from him and placed a firm hand on his chest. “Now, hold
on a minute, John Robert Miller! What is going on here?”

Laughing with abandon, he pushed past the hand and pulled her
back into an air-stealing hug, spinning her around again as if she weighed no
more than an arm load of cornstalks. Struggling to bring his giggles under
control, he looked her in the eye and reported gleefully, “If I had tried, I
probably wouldn’t have been able to find a long-haul wagon for sale within a
hundred miles of here, and James Maynard has one right down the road.

“A freight wagon?” Naomi still did not see the reason for his
euphoria.

“A Conestoga. The best wagon ever made for hauling a family,
not just freight. I was worried it might take days if not weeks to modify our
farm wagon and I don’t think Page will give us that kind of time. This wagon
eliminates all the delays. It’s a sign, woman. A sign. I asked God to drop a
piano on me so I’d know we were doing the right thing. We’ve made the right
decision to sell out and go to California. I know it now, just as surely as I
know my own name.”

He hugged her hard again and this time she allowed herself to
melt to him. His excitement was so childlike, it gave Naomi a great deal of
pleasure to see him this happy. But it worried her, as well. 

“John, have you been so unhappy here,” she asked against his
shoulder.

“No, no.” He held her tighter. “I’ve been truly content here
with you, Naomi. If you said right now that you didn’t want to go, for whatever
reason, then that would be that. We’d try to stick it out here with
Hannah.  It’s just that the West beckons to me. There’s a tug I can’t
deny. If I can take my family with me, then I’ll go. That’s the only way I’ll
go.”

He kissed the top of her head as she snuggled deeper into his
chest. “Wither thou goest, my love,” she whispered softly. “Wither thou
goest.” 

She squeezed him again, then stepped back some so she could
see his face to tell him about a visitor. “We had a few folks stop by today.
You’d be interested in the second guest.” He held on to her, obviously not
willing to let her go quite yet. “Kate came for a visit.”

Stunned, he dropped his arms from around her and moved back.
“Kate Page? What in the world did she want?”

“Initially, she wanted us to talk Hannah into accepting
Frank’s money to leave town. She pretty much offered any amount it would take.
She’s afraid that if Hannah doesn’t leave, it may be years before Frank let’s
Billy come home.”

“She sounds desperate.”

“She is and she’s pitiful.” Naomi shook her head. “She
worships her children, especially Billy. I took pity on her and told her you
were going to suggest a selling price for our farms to Frank. If he took it,
then she would have Billy home in no time. I suggested she use her spousal
influence to talk him into accepting our price.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said if Frank didn’t take the offer, she would, with her
own money.”

Brow furrowed, John went and sat down on the back steps. “I
wanted to take a bite out of Frank, not his innocent wife.” He laced his
fingers together and fell into silence. After a moment, he shook his head. “I
wanted the high end of fair for our farms and not a penny less, but I reckon
I’ll be a little more willing to negotiate….”