Dorothy Garlock - [Wyoming Frontier] (41 page)

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GEORGE

“It’s over, Helga,” Anton said putting the telegram back into his pocket. “Ian is safe. You can leave here tonight.”

“I . . . can’t believe it. It’s happened so fast. Oh, Anton . . .” She threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. “Thank you! Oh, thank you, dear, dear . . . friend!” She kissed him square on the mouth, bringing a pleasure to the vicinity of his heart, along with a pain lower down.

“I haven’t been thanked so nicely in a long time.” Anton’s voice was raspy. He liked her arms around him and his around her. She was soft and sweet-smelling, every inch a woman. The smile on her face was beautiful. She leaned back now and looked at him.

“You’ll have to read it to me again. What was that about Junie? Who is . . . Junie?”

“I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have Junie. She was our mother after Mamma died, our nurse, our housekeeper. She was boss of the house and we didn’t dare cross her. She’ll love Ian and he’ll love her. You just might never get him away from her,” he teased.

“He’s safe? Really safe? Justin can’t find him?”

“I’d bet my life on it.”

“Oh, Anton. I’m going to have to kiss you again.”

“I’ll certainly not complain about that.”

They sat down on the edge of the bed. Anton opened the telegram so she could read it for herself now.

“He
is
a fine lad, Anton,” she said proudly.

“It won’t be long until you’ll be with him. Now what are you taking from here?”

“Everything!” Helga went to the wardrobe, opened it, and took out a valise.

“I don’t have any money, Anton,” she said hesitantly.

“I know that, and I told you not to worry about it. Pack your things. You’ll not be coming back here.”

Anton watched her fold her dresses neatly and put them in the case. She emptied the bureau drawers of her belongings, moving swiftly as if she couldn’t wait to leave this place. Anton spotted the carpetbag in which Helga had told him Justin had put the letter that had upset him when they first arrived.

“Helga, I would like to see that letter you told me about. Do I have your permission to cut open that bag?”

She turned and looked at him for a long while. “You have my permission to do anything you want to do. If you want the letter, by all means break open the bag.”

Anton pulled up his pant leg and removed a thin-bladed knife from a holster that fit inside his boot. He grinned at her and she laughed.

“Anton Hooker! I didn’t know you carried that . . . pig sticker!”

“I never know when I’m going to have to stick a pig, Helgy.”

“Helgy. No one’s called me that since my papa died.”

Anton placed the carpetbag on the table and cut along the metal frame until the side lay open. He drew out a handful of papers, carefully sorted them, and tossed them aside. They were stock certificates, bankbooks, and various papers. He drew out a white envelope. It’s address read: Mr. Garrick Rowe, in care of Crescent Hotel, Virginia City, Montana Territory. The letter was from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He opened it and quickly scanned the contents. He whistled, then read it again slowly.

“What is it?” Helga came to stand beside him. He gave her the letter and watched her face as she read it.

“Oh, my goodness! No wonder he was in such a state.” Suddenly she began to laugh. “All this time, he thought—” She giggled uncontrollably. “He thought—”

Anton took the letter from her hand. “We don’t care what he thought. Hurry, so we can get out of here. He’s going to be madder than a turpentined cat when he finds this missing. He’ll know just where it will go.”

“He’ll go after Rowe! Oh, Anton! What have we done?”

“We’ll head for Trinity at dawn. It’ll take Justin a while to find someone to guide him there.” Anton put the letter in his pocket, shoved the rest of the papers back in the bag and set it back on the floor of the wardrobe. “Get your shawl and let’s go.”

Helga went out the door without a backward look into the room where she had spent so many miserable days and nights. Anton carried her valise as they went down the hallway toward the stairs. They had just started down when the clerk came running up the stairs.

“He’s coming back!”

“Oh, no!” Helga gasped. “What’ll we do?”

“In here,” the clerk leaped past them and unlocked the room at the top of the stairs. “Quick.”

Anton shoved Helga inside and closed the door. They pressed their ears to it and could hear the clerk whistling as he went back down the stairs.

“Oh, my! I should have known it was too easy.”

“I’m going to have to give that clerk a bonus.” Anton grinned at her.

“How can you be so calm?” she whispered and laid her head on his shoulder. She was trembling violently. He held her tightly, loving her dependency on him.

Justin’s heavy footsteps came up the stairs and down the hallway. They heard him open the door and throw it back against the wall.

“Helga!” Justin’s roar could be heard on the street below.

Helga trembled violently. Anton had a fierce desire to kill Justin Rowe.

It was the first time Justin had opened that door and his wife hadn’t been there. Where was the bitch? He would not have been back until morning except that he needed the gold coins he had put away in his valise. The Doll had refused to give him more than one of her potions until he paid her again.
He had to have it!
Women were greedy bitches—every damn one of them.

He jerked opened the wardrobe, his vision so blurred that he failed to notice Helga’s clothes were missing. He reached down for the carpetbag. When he lifted it, the side fell open and the contents spilled out onto the floor.

His roar of rage was inaudible. Then words spewed from his mouth in an angry torrent.

“Bitch! Whore! I’ll kill you! I’ll beat your ass till it’s raw meat!” On his knees, Justin frantically searched for the letter from the Pinkerton Agency. When he failed to find it, he staggered to the door. “Helga! Damn you for a whore. If you take that letter to him, I’ll kill you!”

He charged blindly out of the room and down the hall, roaring for Helga, bouncing from one side of the wall to the other. He passed the room where Helga cringed against Anton, then raced on down the hall. Anton pressed his ear to the door listening for his footsteps going down the stairs, but he didn’t hear them. Instead he heard a door slam.

Helga raised her head. “Where did he go?” she whispered fearfully.

“I don’t know, unless he went down the backstairs. I’ll go look. Lock yourself in here. You’ll be all right.”

“Anton! Don’t go!”

“You’ll be all right, honey.” He kissed her cheek. “I’ve got to find out where he went. Stay here until I come back for you.”

Anton let himself out and waited to hear Helga turn the key in the lock. He hurried down the stairs. The clerk and his helper were waiting.

“God! He was like a madman!” the clerk whispered in an awed voice. “He was roaring like a bull. Where did he go?”

“If he didn’t come down this way, he had to go into another room.”

“All the rooms are locked.” The clerk scratched his head. “The door at the end of the hall wasn’t—”

“Gawdamighty!” A skinny boy in overalls came running into the lobby. “Mister! Mister! Somebody come outta that top back door and went over the rail to the rocks. I betcha if he ain’t dead, he’s near it!”

Anton and the clerk hurried to the back of the hotel where the floodwaters had undermined the building. Justin Rowe lay sprawled facedown on the rocks, his head smashed against a jagged stone.

“Jesus!” The clerk bent over him. “He’s dead as a doornail. He must have come charging out of that door like a bull and fallen right through the rail.”

Anton looked up as a piece of the broken railing fell to the ground. He looked back down at what had once been Justin Rowe and felt not an ounce of pity for the broken man who lay on the rocks.

Twenty-six

A few days after Lee Longstreet had been whipped in the town square, the two drifters he had befriended, Cullen McCall and Sporty Howard, drew their pay and left town. As soon as he was able to ride, Lee left Trinity in the middle of the night and joined them in a cabin on the mountain above the town. But things were not going as Lee Longstreet had planned.

“I’ll have no part in setting fire to that town,” Cullen McCall said angrily. “I told you I would help steal the coal oil, but that was all.”

“Are you sure we can get into the shed where the freighter stored the stuff?”

“I loosened the boards on the back side. All you have to do is lift them off. Any fool should be able to do that.”

“That Ashland’s a mean son of a bitch.” Shorty threw his knife at a paper he had nailed on the wall and went to retrieve it.

“He is that, and Rowe’s twice as mean if you get him riled, or mess with somethin’ that’s his. If he catches you burnin’ down his town, you’ll wish you were dead. He’ll beat the shit out of you, then hang you for the buzzards to pick out your eyes. I’ve seen his kind before. He’s one mean son of a bitch.”

Cullen watched Longstreet carefully shuffle the playing cards. He had not said a word about what had happened in the town square, but Cullen knew he was eaten up with hate for the man who had whipped him.

“Shee . . . it! You’re gettin’ soft, Cullen.” Sporty Howard flipped his knife into the wall again. “We get a chance to make some real money and you turn yellow-belly. Fifty dollars for a few hours’ work ain’t to be sneezed at. Hell! I been bustin’ my arse for two dollars a day.”

“Sometimes I think that all you’ve got between your ears is shit, Sporty. I’m not stupid enough to do another man’s dirty work for a lousy fifty dollars and risk gettin’ my neck stretched. If you’re that stupid, go ahead and team up with Longstreet. I’m headin’ for Bannack. But first I want my five dollars for gettin’ in the shed and loosenin’ the boards.”

Lee watched the anger rise in Sporty Howard. The sneer in Cullen’s voice, as well as his words, cut him deep. Lee took coins from his pocket.

“It’s your decision, McCall. Stay or leave, it’s up to you.” He stacked the coins neatly on the table. “I’ll play you for them, double or nothing.”

“No, thanks.” Cullen picked up the coins and shoved them in his pocket. He got up from the table and started for the door. He looked over his shoulder. “Comin’, Sporty?”

“Naw. I reckon I’ll stay this time.”

“So long, then.”

“So long.”

Lee stared into Sporty’s eyes. Sporty looked at Cullen, then down at the knife. When his eyes met Lee’s again, the man nodded. Without hesitating Sporty drew back his arm. With a flick of his wrist the blade flew toward Cullen’s back. It hit him just beneath his left shoulder and sank to the hilt. Cullen grunted once and fell.

“I was gettin’ tired of his bellyachin’, anyhow,” Sporty said as he pulled the knife from Cullen’s back and wiped it on his shirt. “He was always wantin’ to go back to Laramie and see his pa. Hell! His old man warn’t nothin’ but a drunk.” He turned the dead man over and went through his pockets. “Guess his money’s mine.”

“I guess it is,” Lee said slowly and shuffled the cards again. “I’ll take his gun.”

“I guess I got me a new trailin’ partner, huh, Longstreet?”

“I guess you have.”

“Let’s get our little fire goin, so we can get the hell outta here.”

“We’ve got planning to do.”

“Yeah.” Sporty looked down at the man who had trailed with him off and on for five years as if he were looking at a stranger. “First I’ll drag old Cullen out. He warn’t so bad . . . at times.”

Mrs. Longstreet sought out Rowe to tell him that her husband had left sometime during the night. For the first time in her life she was on her own without someone to tell her what to do and when to do it. But during the days when she had nursed her ungrateful husband, she had come to the conclusion that she would beg, plead, get down on her knees if necessary in order to break free of him and have a decent place for her children to live.

Rowe sensed her anxiety and, wanting to save her from having to ask, he asked her if she and her children would stay and run the hotel. He told her that later when the stage came through, a larger hotel would be built and the present one might as well be turned into a boardinghouse now. He told her to fix up a dining room and to buy what supplies she needed from Elias to begin serving meals.

During the days that followed, Rowe and Katy noticed that Vera had begun to take on a new air of confidence. She walked to the mercantile with a basket on her arm and greeted those she met with a smile. The biggest change was in Agnes and Taylor. Agnes offered a smile when Rowe teased her; Taylor, anxious to earn money for the family, readily accepted any small job. Katy had taken a liking to the boy and he for her. She had lent him a slate and discovered that he was very bright and eager to learn.

Things seemed to be working out very well for Vera Longstreet and her children.

It was the middle of the afternoon when Rowe, standing on the porch of the hotel talking to Vera, saw a black-topped buggy pulled by a buckskin horse round the bend and come down the street. Bareheaded as usual, he shaded his eyes with his hand and watched the buggy approach. The man was Anton, but the woman . . . My God, it was Helga Rowe, his sister-in-law! Rowe went down the steps and waited. He was not surprised to see Anton coming into town in what was obviously a buggy rented in Bannack, but he was certainly surprised to see Helga with him.

As Anton reined the horse, Rowe stepped out to fasten the lead rope to the hitching rail. Then, with a smile of welcome on his dark face, he went to the side of the buggy to offer his hand to his sister-in-law.

“Welcome to Trinity, Helga.”

“Is that all you can say?” Anton shook his head in disbelief. “Couldn’t you have said something like, ‘My God! What the hell are you doing here?’ You act like you were expecting us.” Anton wound the reins about the brake handle and climbed down.

Rowe lifted Helga while grinning at his friend. “What did you expect me to do, Anton? I know you well enough to know you’ll tell me in your own good time why you’re here. In the meanwhile, I’m enjoying seeing Helga again.”