Heart of the West (50 page)

"But I can't see!" Charlie shouted. "I want to see!"

"I think he is like some wild, magnificent animal."

This remark came out of Miss Luly Maine, the town's new schoolteacher. Her eyes were riveted not on the shirtless miner pounding a steel drill into a granite block and racing against the clock, but on Drew Scully, who still had all his clothes on. Indeed, he was all slicked up in the most garish brown plaid suit Hannah had ever laid eyes on. He was waiting, with his brother, for a turn at the double-jack drill contest with its twenty-dollar prize.

Miss Luly Maine was seventeen. She had glossy chestnut hair, lake-blue eyes, and the top of her head came no higher than the middle of a man's chest. Hannah had often wondered how such a little thing handled a classroom full of rowdy boys not much smaller and younger than she. But then schoolmarming was one of the few respectable occupations a spinster could pursue out West. And most folk, Hannah being one of them, figured a gal took it up and came out here for the sole purpose of hooking herself a man.

For a while a betting book had been kept in the Best in the West on how long a sweet little morsel like Miss Luly Maine would remain in the single state in a place where men outnumbered women twenty to one. But when a month passed, then three, and then nine months passed, and twenty-seven proposals had been tendered and refused, folk began to suspect Miss Luly Maine was one of those unnatural females who married themselves to a career.

Right now, though, Hannah would have bet every penny in her account at the Miner's Union Bank that the little school-marm had begun to hear wedding bells after all. She was looking at Drew Scully as if she were imagining the shape of the flesh beneath his shirt, imagining how it would feel beneath her hands.

Hannah whipped her fan through the air with such force the brim of her white leghorn straw hat lifted a good two inches. "Ain't it just like a man," she said, "to spend his holiday away from hammering a drill into a rock hammering a drill into a rock. I reckon they always got to be measuring themselves one against the other, men do. To see which one is the toughest."

"Oh, but I think it is
so
exciting," Luly said on a sigh. Her eyes were still on Drew Scully and they'd turned all misty. "An exhibition of skill and courage."

An exhibition of muscle and chest hair, and of men's damned foolish ways, more like, thought Hannah. She closed her fan with a loud snap.

Behind them the air popped with the noisy explosion of a giant cracker, but most people in the crowd were too intent on the contest to notice. The miners worked in teams of two, trading places every three minutes. One would swing the hammer, and with every stroke his partner, who was holding the drill upright, would raise and turn it slightly to keep it from sticking in the hole and costing them precious seconds. A slow-running hose attached to a barrel poured water into the hole to flush it out. The team that drilled the deepest hole in the granite slab in fifteen minutes won the contest and received the prize, a double-eagle gold piece.

A man with a big nickel-plated watch cupped in his hand shouted, "Time!" and the miner with the hammer followed through with his last stroke. The ringing echo of steel on steel faded into the noise of popping firecrackers and the brassy din of the band. The timekeeper flushed out the hole with the hose and measured its depth. "Twenty-two inches," he announced.

The crowd applauded politely. Twenty-two inches wouldn't be winning any prizes. Thus far the best measurement stood at just under twenty-seven inches.

As the Scully brothers prepared for their turn at the granite block, Hannah maneuvered herself so that she was between Clementine and Miss Luly Maine. In her white sateen dress garlanded with red and blue ribbons, the little schoolteacher looked as pretty and snappy as the flags flying from the pine poles that encircled the meadow. Pretty and dainty and so very, very young. Beside her Hannah felt as old and hard and used up as a sodbuster's hobnailed boots.

The girl went all stiff as a fence post as she cast a sideways glance at Hannah, and Hannah smiled to herself. Miss Luly Maine didn't know quite what to make of her. She was a saloonkeeper, a true daughter of Eve, the kind of fast and loose woman the reverend back home had probably warned Miss Luly Maine against. But she was also a friend of Clementine McQueen, who was eminently respectable, of course, a rancher's wife, president of the Ladies Social Club, and the daughter of a prominent Boston family. As a result the young schoolteacher couldn't make up her mind from one minute to the next whether to snub Hannah Yorke or invite her over for tea and gingersnaps.

"Do you know Mr. Drew Scully?" Hannah asked casually.

The girl's cheeks turned berry red, and a shy smile softened her mouth. "We haven't been formally introduced, naturally, but I've seen him some. Around town. He smiled at me and tipped his hat."

At the moment the man was taking off more than his hat; he was stripping off his suit jacket, vest, tie, and shirt as well. He stretched out the kinks in his arms, rolling his shoulders and flexing a bare chest strapped with muscle. Miss Luly Maine sighed, and Hannah almost sighed right along with her. It wasn't as if she wanted that boy for herself. Indeed, if anything this poor girl deserved her pity. The little schoolmarm had been bitten by the love bug bad, and now it probably seemed to her that she would go mad if she didn't scratch the itch.

Hannah knew all too well where such feelings could lead.

To a wax posy off a wedding cake now fading beneath a bell jar. To soul-rotting memories of a crib in the badlands of Dead-wood with the name Rosie burned above the door.

Jere Scully carefully selected the spot on the granite block where they would drill, although, since they'd drawn last place, all the best spots had already been taken. Drew Scully unrolled a canvas bundle and took up a newly sharpened bull prick. He glanced up and caught her looking at him. He cast a swift white grin her way, and she tossed a be-damned-to-you-mister glare right back at him. And he... why, he had the audacity to wink at her! As if she were some sweet young thing like Miss Luly Maine, who got all chest-fluttery and weak-kneed just because a handsome young man paid her a little attention, when all he was really after was a ride between her legs.

He held Hannah's gaze as he crouched on his heels, his britches pulling taut over his wide-spread thighs. He clasped the drill close around the head. His brother stood over him, hammer in the air. The timekeeper touched Jere on the shoulder, and he slammed the sledge down on the tiny head of the drill. The drill point bit deep into the block of granite with a reverberating clang, and Miss Luly Maine jumped and gasped as if she had taken the blow herself.

After three minutes the timer again touched Jere on the shoulder. He flung his hammer aside, crouched down, and grabbed the drill while Drew seized up his own hammer, sprang to his feet, and brought it down onto the drill head all without missing a beat.

"Put 'er down, boy!" someone bellowed.

Miss Luly Maine heaved another loud and fluttering sigh, and Hannah's jaw tightened. She was back to being irritated with the girl again, although she had to admit the sight of Drew Scully wielding a sixteen-pound sledge was a splendid one. He was not as big and brawny as his brother, his muscles tending more toward sleek leanness. But there was no denying their strength and power as they flexed and bulged beneath his sweat-slick skin. The platform trembled and the very air seemed to vibrate with the fierceness of his blows. The hammer rose and fell, rose and fell, pounding, pounding, pounding the drill head into the unforgiving, unyielding rock. The rhythm of the pounding hammer entered Hannah's blood, and a warm, heavy feeling spread over her. It was the rhythm of a brass bed's headboard banging against the wall, she thought, of a woman being taken again and again and again by a strong, lusty man until she wanted to scream from the agony and the pleasure of it.

The feeling became so intense that Hannah was relieved when the timekeeper touched Drew on the shoulder and once again the brothers changed places.

Jere tossed his head, flicking sweat out of his eyes, and grunted with exertion as he hefted the heavy sledge high in the air. Something or someone down by the river must have caught his attention, for his gaze flashed in that direction for just an instant, but that brief lapse in concentration was enough to affect his swing. The hammer came down without hesitation, but it didn't hit the drill head true. Instead, sixteen pounds of steel slid down the length of the bull prick with a loud scream and smashed into the hand that held it.

The hammer had immediately swung back on the upstroke and it hovered now in the air as Jere's eyes widened in horror. The crowd groaned and gasped, and Drew shuddered from the pain that must have burst suddenly upon his consciousness like an exploding giant cracker. But he flung up his head and shouted at his brother, "Bring it down, damn you! Bring it down!"

Jere brought the hammer down.

Thick red blood welled out of Drew's bruised and lacerated flesh, but he still gripped the drill, turning and lifting it as was necessary with each successive blow. Blood ran into the hole and was flushed out with the water. The puddles around the granite block turned a bright pink. A fierce pain squeezed Hannah's chest. She didn't realize she was holding her breath until the timekeeper, his face pale, touched Jere on the shoulder. It was Drew's turn to swing the hammer.

Jere hesitated, but Drew was already back on his feet, with his own hammer in his fists. He raised the sledge in the air, and blood ran down his arm. He brought the hammer down, and blood sprayed in a fanlike arc, splattering those in the crowd closest to the platform. Again and again he pounded at the drill, although each blow must have sent pain flashing like fire up his arm. Hannah stared, so tense her whole body quivered, as the sweat and blood ran in slow rivulets down his chest, over the ridges of muscle, following the arrow of hair that disappeared into his britches.

Once again the brothers changed places, and the last three minutes seemed to crawl by. Hard white lines bracketed Drew Scully's mouth, and a glazed look had come over his eyes. Hannah dug her nails deep into her palm as if she could take some of his pain onto herself.

"Fifteen minutes!" the timekeeper finally bellowed, and Hannah's pent-up breath left her in a thick rush. The crowd burst into a loud and spontaneous cheer at the sheer courage and strength of will that it had taken for the Scully brothers even to finish the contest.

The timekeeper flushed the bloody water out the hole and inserted the measuring rod. The crowd was silent now, holding its collective breath. "Twenty-eight and one-quarter inches!" he shouted, and the air exploded with loud whoops and even some gunfire.

"Luly's gone to fetch the doctor."

Hannah's gaze jerked around to Clementine, her cheeks flushing as if she'd been caught doing something wicked. Clementine's own face was as pale as the granite dust that coated the platform, but wet, red drops speckled her forehead and her smooth golden hair. Hannah realized that she too must be splattered with Drew Scully's blood.

"Mama, that man's bleeding," Charlie announced.

Clementine turned her head and pressed a trembling mouth to the boy's cheek. "Yes, he is. Let us go down to the river and see if we can spot some trout swimming in the shallows, shall we?"

The timekeeper had the Scully brothers on either side of him. He was all set to raise their hands in the air, proclaiming them the winners, when Drew sagged to his knees. His head lolled and his face turned white and waxy, as if the blood now pooling on the platform was the last he owned.

"Give way!" Hannah heard someone shout. "Here comes the doctor."

Dr. Kit Corbett was as tall and skinny as a snake on stilts and ugly to boot. But he was young and he wasn't a drunk, two attributes that were hard to find in doctors out in western Montana. He was new to Rainbow Springs, but he wasn't new to double-jack drilling contests. He didn't even blink at the sight of the blood-splattered wood and granite. "You might have had the sense not to finish it" was all he said as he leaped agilely onto the platform and knelt beside Drew, opening his black bag.

The schoolmarm, who had escorted the doctor this far, did not climb the platform after him. She stood back in indecision, her teeth sunk into her lower lip. Hannah reckoned a sweet young thing like Miss Luly Maine was too shy and innocent and well brought up to approach a man she had yet to be formally introduced to, even if he was on his last breath.

Hannah Yorke had also been well brought up, but sure as man needed woman, she was no innocent. And that crib in Deadwood had finished whatever shyness she had once possessed. She pushed through the men who were now wedged in front of her around the platform. Drew flung his head up, flicking his sweat-wet hair back out of his eyes, and their gazes met with the force of a sledge slamming into rock.

He looked so hurt and vulnerable on his knees like that, cradling his injured hand. She wanted to do something to him. Smack him, maybe, for being such a fool. Or cradle his head against her breast and comfort him with sweet words and gentle kisses, which showed that she was the bigger fool.

Instead she said in a voice as tart as vinegar, "I reckon if you were able to grip a hammer, your hand ain't busted."

He flashed a cocky grin at her. "You're some fine comfort, Mrs. Yorke."

"And you are some fool, Mr. Drew Scully."

"A fool who's twenty dollars richer, though."

His brother put a bucket of beer into his good hand, and Drew swigged it down. The doctor was flexing his bruised and bleeding fingers, trying to determine if any were broken. Drew swore and pulled his hand free of the man's rough treatment. "Go on with you, you bleeding sawbones. I've been hurt worse."

What a boy he was, Hannah thought, chock full of brag and fight. From the hindsight of thirty-three years of rough and tough living, she saw Drew Scully's youth hanging out all over him, as obvious as his ready-made three-dollar suit. Yet something about him intrigued her... It was the pure, unadulterated guts of him. Courage came easily to some men, because they so rarely knew fear. But Drew Scully, she suspected with the innate sense of a fellow sufferer, was intimate with fear. He knew fear as she knew men—he knew the stink of it and the taste of it and the way it ate at your pride and slowly, like water dripping on rock year after year, corroded your soul.