Her Colorado Man (16 page)

S
o Wes explained what he’d done after finding John James’s letters.

Mariah’s aunt Ina got up. “Then you two aren’t actually even
married?”

“We got married the morning before we found out what had happened to Hildy,” Wes told her. “I love Mariah and John James, and I intend to be here for them.”

“What does my father think of all this?” Ina asked, referring to Louis.

Mariah explained his part in it. Wes told them about the old man’s confusion regarding Wes, and how he hadn’t thought it wise to add this problem to his challenged thinking.

“I agree it’s better not to tell him,” Clara said. “But there are others who need to know about this so Philo can be dealt with. His crime isn’t only against my Hildy now.”

“A meeting is in order,” Mariah decided. “But only Marc and Uncle Patrick and Papa,” she said.

“Not everyone needs to know,” Clara insisted quickly. “We have to protect John James. Philo is too dangerous.”

Amazed and more than relieved that Hildy and her mother weren’t holding her silent fear against her and that they were thinking of John James’s welfare, Mariah accepted hugs from her aunts.

“I’ll arrange something right away.” Wes held Mariah briefly, kissed her and headed out.

By that evening, those who’d needed to know had been told. Mariah’s father had been shocked, and he’d apologized to her for not protecting her.

“One of the many things I’ve come to see through this,” she told him, “is that we need to stop blaming ourselves and put the responsibility squarely where it belongs. We are the ones wronged, Hildy and I—the whole family, and Philo is the one responsible.”

“It’s hard not to look at where I might have failed in all this,” Friederick said. “But you’re right.”

He seemed to think things over for another moment, glancing once at Wes. “So Wesley is who and what he says he is. All those stories are true and he’s on the level—except that you never laid eyes on him before your grandfather’s birthday party.”

“Exactly so,” she answered.

“I don’t think John James needs to know this,” Friederick said.

“All I can do is hope and pray the information stays with us and he never learns the truth.”

“That’s what I want, too,” Friederick said. “It’s our priority to protect him.”

Mariah reached for Wes’s hand and he squeezed hers reassuringly. The burden she’d carried for so long could no longer weigh her down now that she had people to help her carry it. She knew a sense of freedom she hadn’t experienced since she’d been a young girl. The situation wasn’t over, but she was no longer alone with it.

Glad to be on an even footing with Friederick, Marc and Patrick, Wes joined them in perusing the gaming halls and saloons that evening. It was a relief that they knew the truth about him.

They had developed a pattern. So that they didn’t stand out, only one went into the establishment while the others waited outside. After a thorough search of the place, that person returned and another entered to ask the bartender and other employees if they’d seen anyone matching Philo’s description.

Wes and Friederick stood in the shadows outside a noisy saloon in a disreputable area of town. Patrick waited across the street and Marc exited the building and they gathered to hear the first good news they’d had.

“The barkeep told me there was a ruckus upstairs last night. One of their girls was hurt. The description sounded like Philo. Hard to be sure without her account.”

“We need to find the girl and ask her,” Friederick said. “If he was upstairs with her, she most likely saw his scar.” He looked to Wes. “He got burned a couple years back when a boiler exploded. He has scars on his shoulder and chest.”

“I’ll go ask her whereabouts,” Wes offered.

Inside, pungent smoke hung in the humid air. Stale sweat and cheap whiskey added to the acrid smell. Sand and grit crunched under the soles of his boots on the pitted wooden floor. The piano player pounded out a tinny melody in which every other measure offended the ear with a sour note.

Nobody was listening anyway. Men of all shapes and sizes played poker, most of them squinting through the haze of cigar smoke. Here and there, women in cheap bright-colored dresses sat on customers’ laps or lounged against the bar.

One such female approached Wes. “Haven’t seen you around here before, cowboy.” She rested a finger on the front of his shirt. “Want to buy me a drink?”

He took a bill from his pocket and handed it to her. “Don’t have time for a drink, ma’am. But I’d appreciate some information.”

She looked at the money, smiled up at him and tucked it between her powdered breasts. “Anything you need, honey.”

“I’m looking for a tall man, about my height, but he has a lot of muscle. Big chest. Reddish hair and burn scars on his shoulder and chest.”

Recognition flickered in lackluster brown eyes outlined with black kohl. “Why are you lookin’ for him?”

“He’s been known to rough up women pretty badly. His wife is in the hospital right now.”

Her hesitancy disappeared. “You out to catch him for it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She straightened her shoulders and raised her chin a notch. “Ain’t nobody called me ma’am in a long time.”

He was wondering if he needed to produce more money, when she volunteered, “Sounds like the fella what was in here last night and the night before. Last night he hit Delores. I think he did more than that, but ain’t any lawman gonna go after a man for pokin’ a whore.”

“He’ll meet justice square on if I find him,” Wes told her.

She glanced around. Nobody paid any attention to their conversation. “She didn’t come to work tonight. She’s next door. Room twelve. Second floor.”

Wes thanked her and exited into the night air, where he drew an unsullied breath. Light spilled from the broad windows and doorway of the saloon, leaving nearby doorways and the entrance to the alley in shadows.

He found the other men waiting in the darkness around the corner of the saloon.

“The girl who got beat up is in there.” Wes nodded to the brothel only a few feet away. “Delores.”

“Let’s two of us stay out here and two go in,” Friederick said.

They agreed that was a wise plan. Before they’d decided who was going in, a man on horseback rode up and slid to the ground, looping the reins around the hitching post.

Marc gestured for them to follow him farther into the shadows. “That’s Philo.”

Wes turned and recognized the big man’s burly form as he approached the front door of the bordello. Every instinct went on alert. He heard nothing else the men beside him said.

“Philo!” he moved out of the shadows and into the street.

Philo spun on his heel. Wes knew the moment the man recognized him. But Philo didn’t make any effort to run. He stepped off the boardwalk and faced Wes. “Now why is Mariah’s new play toy following me?”

“You can’t get rid of me,” Wes replied.

“You got a bone to pick, Mr. Storyteller?”

“Got some bones to break is more like it.”

Philo laughed. “There’s no law against a man having a little fun in the big city.”

“There are moral laws against a man beating his wife until she’s nearly dead,” Wes replied.

Philo scoffed. “Tend to your own business.”

The other men stepped into the light. Philo’s surprise was evident in the way he glanced behind him and then toward his horse, but he squared his shoulders. “Brought the whole family, did you?”

“You’re going to answer for what you did to Hildy,”
Patrick told him. “You’re not getting away with any more bullying.”

“I don’t know what she told you, but she’s a stupid little b—”

Marc started forward, but his father and uncle stopped him.

“What about Mariah?” Wes asked. “I suppose she was lying, too.”

“Whatever she said, it’s a lie. She came on to me like one of these two-bit whores.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

Now blind with rage, Wes charged forward, lunging his shoulder into Philo’s belly and knocking the wind out of him. Philo staggered backward, wheezing, then straightened.

Wes went after him again, knuckles cracking against his jaw in a burst of white-hot fury.

Philo rallied his defenses, drew back and landed a punch to the chest that sent Wes flying onto his backside in the dirt. Though winded, he sucked in a breath and jumped up faster than lightning before going after the man with both fists.

Philo was broader and more muscled, but Wes had not only the stamina borne of trudging hundreds of miles in a frozen wilderness, but the advantage of righteous determination.

Wes didn’t see the punch coming that sent pain rocketing through his jaw and set red stars spinning in his vision. He stood with his hands on his thighs and shook
his head to clear it. Through the haze, he squinted to bring Philo back into focus. With a roar that would have frightened a grizzly into turning the other way, he charged at the man who’d made so many lives a living hell.

One of the others could have stepped in and overpowered Philo, but almost as though an unspoken treaty held them where they stood, they offered Wes the time and space he needed to avenge a wrong.

Philo captured him in a burly hold, pinning his arms, crushing air from his lungs. Using one leg, Wes drew back and kicked his opponent’s foot out from under him, and together they struck the wooden step of the boardwalk.

Shouts sounded, Wes only dimly aware of the crowd that had gathered. No one tried to stop the fight; instead, each time a punishing blow landed, shouts of encouragement and cheers volleyed in the dark street. It was probably no novelty to see a fistfight in this part of town. In fact it was most likely looked upon as recreation.

Spurred by the recent memories of his wife’s anguish, Wes determinedly grappled until he held the upper position. Grasping Philo by the shirtfront and an ear, he slammed his head against the step.

Philo lay stunned for a second, long enough for Wes to shove his fist into his face. He slammed his head against the wood again.

“Don’t kill him.” Marc bent to rest a cautioning hand on Wes’s arm. “Wes.”

Wes’s vision cleared and Philo’s face came into focus, his eyelid and lower lip bleeding.

“The law can handle it from here, son,” Friederick said from above him.

Wes placed a hand on the ground to steady himself and rose to his feet. His chest heaved painfully. Sweat stung his eyes. He backed away.

The front door of the nearest building flew open and slammed against the exterior wall. A short, generously proportioned woman came out of the opening, her wild black hair cascading over her shoulders like a cape of riotous curls. She tossed back the tresses, and along the side of her face dark bruising was visible in the light pouring from the saloon windows. She wore a red satin dressing gown she hadn’t bothered to close, and a tattered corset revealed her sizable breasts and thighs.

Laughter erupted from the men who’d poured from the saloon, but her expression showed no amusement.

“That’s the no good son of a bitch what worked me over last night!” she accused with venomous indignation.

The crowd hushed.

“Ain’t nobody treats Big Delores bad. Especially not a ugly ham face what
didn’t pay!”

That announcement elicited more snickers.

Philo had managed to get up on one knee, but was too unsteady to rise. His head lolled on his neck as though his spine was made of rubber. He swiped his sleeve across his bleeding face and planted a foot flat on the ground in an attempt to stand.

He never made it.

All laughter ended abruptly, alerting Wes.

He turned in time to see Delores raise her arm from the folds of red satin. She aimed the barrel of a pearl-handled Colt .45 without wavering, held the revolver steady and squeezed the trigger.

T
he sound volleyed off the buildings across the street.

Philo’s body jerked with the impact. He listed to the side and the crowd gasped.

Delores fired another shot. A dark stain widened across the front of Philo’s shirt, proof that another bullet had found its deadly mark.

Wes stood and watched as Philo landed in a motionless heap, one leg twisted beneath him, staring up at the night sky.

The acrid smell of gunpowder reached Wes’s nostrils.

The night stood in silence for one stunned moment. No piano music, no voices, not even a dog or a cricket interrupted the shocking silence.

And then all at once voices buzzed from both sides of the street, and behind Wes a commotion broke out. A stocky fellow wearing suspenders over a stained shirt ap
proached Philo where he lay. He pressed his fingers against Philo’s throat before straightening. “Fella’s dead.”

Patrick turned and walked deliberately away from the scene.

Marc glanced at Wes. Friederick squinted at Wes’s face. “You need some ice on that eye. Might need a couple stitches.”

Wes took his handkerchief from his pocket and blotted his eye. When he looked down at the cloth, it was stained bright red. “Let’s get a wagon for him first.”

No one slept that night. Clara and Ina stayed with Hildy. The others who knew what had happened gathered in Friederick and Henrietta’s room. Friederick took charge of making plans. They had to finish out their stay at the Exhibition in the next few days and then get back to running a brewery.

“Mariah, I think you and I should go home and get the plant back into normal production. We have new contracts to fulfill, and a couple of trips to make to work out the details with these new clients.

“The extra workers we brought in can help the rest of you pack up here and see that our equipment is shipped home.” He looked at Wes. “I need Mariah, but I think you should stay here.”

Wes met his wife’s concerned gaze. He’d already been thinking the same thing. Another week or two would give his face and eye time to heal.

“There would be a lot more explaining to do if the
children—if John James saw you like that,” her father continued. “They already have to learn that Philo met with an unfortunate accident.”

“The marshal wasn’t able to get an account from any of the witnesses,” Patrick said. “Seems everybody turns a blind eye to the goings-on in that part of town, and no one even asked Friederick or me if we saw what happened. Wes was at the doctor’s by the time the marshal arrived that night.”

“Apparently getting shot in front of a whorehouse is a pretty common happening,” Marc commented wryly.

Clara raised an eyebrow in her son’s direction.

“Well?” He shrugged.

“We didn’t see any need to fill in the law,” Patrick said. “It wouldn’t have made a difference in the outcome. Except…” He glanced from person to person. “Do any of you take issue with that woman not being called to some sort of justice for shooting him? I don’t think the law would look too kindly on her.”

None of them spoke up.

Mariah didn’t care who the woman was or what she did. She’d suffered Philo’s abuse. If he hadn’t been stopped, he would have gone on hurting women. Her thoughts traveled to his parents, though. “What about the Ulrichs?” she asked. “They deserve to know the truth about his death, don’t they?”

Patrick nodded. “A couple of us will talk to them when we take his body home. I’m pretty sure they won’t want the details of his death to become public.”

“Will you tell them about Hildy, too?”

“I’ll leave that up to her,” her uncle answered.

And so it came about that Wes kissed Mariah goodbye at the train station the next day. She pressed her hand against the window glass as the passenger car pulled away from the depot. Wes grew smaller and smaller as the train chugged away from Denver.

Being separated from him was as painful, and yet different, than being apart from her son. She felt as though she was going to be incomplete until Wes had finished in Denver and headed home.

Home. The big house outside Ruby Creek had come to be their home. Her grandfather had suggested a move before, but for the first time, she let herself think about his suggestion of getting their own place. Only now a move wouldn’t be so that no one saw them sleeping separately. Now a house would be a place where they could have a honeymoon of sorts and make it their own home.

The idea took on more merit the longer she considered it. Mariah wasn’t used to inactivity or to not having John James with her. She’d been missing him terribly, though she was grateful he’d been staying safely away from all that had transpired.

The rocking motion of the train lulled her into sleepiness, and she dozed off and on. Sleep hadn’t come easily for quite some time. A tumble of thoughts still whirled in her head, with disturbing images and snips of conversation rousing her every so often. Every time
an image of Philo arose in her head, she got a tight, panicky feeling and roused awake.

Philo was dead, of course. She’d heard the accounts from the men who were right there when he’d been shot. But she hadn’t seen him die, nor had she seen his body, so there was still an unreality to the fact. Her mind wouldn’t release images of Philo’s cruelty to Hildy. And now that the memories had been released, tormenting images from that night years ago came into focus as clearly as if they’d just happened.

She’d made Wes tell her what had happened in front of the bordello at least half a dozen times. She’d even wanted to go talk to the woman who’d shot him, but Wes had discouraged her. What good would it do? None, she’d agreed.

She’d never laid eyes on the woman. She had no idea what kind of a life had led her to where she’d been the first time Philo crossed her path. Certainly she wasn’t working in that place by choice.

Mariah opened her eyes and sat up. Beside her, her mother rested with her eyes closed. Instinctively she reached over and groped for Mariah’s hand. “You’re not sleeping well?”

“No.”

Henrietta gently squeezed her fingers. “I knew something changed the year that Hildy got married. If only I’d known. I wish I could have helped you. This was a terrible thing for a mother to learn after the fact. I feel that I’ve let you down.”

“We all have something to live with, Mama. But I know how useless it is to blame yourself for things you can’t control.”

“Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean I can’t see people,” her mother said. “I sensed something about Philo, but I never understood the reason for my unease with him. I should have known Hildy was hiding something. She always spent as much time with me as she did at her own place, so I knew she wasn’t happy. I just didn’t know the extent of what the poor girl was going through.”

Mariah patted her hand and described some of the landscape to her mother. “There are moose on a flat spot of land with a ridge overhead. Three of them. Two have big antlers. Oh, and there’s a young one that just stepped from behind some bushes.”

“What does the sky look like?”

“It’s clear today. I can’t see a cloud anywhere. Mama, why do you think women become prostitutes?”

“Maybe because they don’t have other choices.”

Mariah leaned her head back against the upholstered seat. “Last night I thought about what a different person I’d have been if I didn’t have a family. I couldn’t help questioning what it must be like to grow up without people who care about you.”

“Your Wes would know about that now, wouldn’t he?”

Mariah turned her head to look at her mother. “You know about his childhood?”

Henrietta’s lips curved up. “He talks to me.”

Mariah brought her mother’s fingers up to her face to feel her smile. “He thinks the world of you and Father.”

“He thinks the universe of you.”

“Yes, he does.” She thought a minute. “When we get home I’m going to send a telegram and wire money to Father. I want that woman to have another choice. He’ll take it for me.”

“It’s good to recognize how fortunate we are. If you’re moved to do this for that woman, then you should do it.”

Mariah closed her eyes. This time she slept for a few restful hours.

Mariah threw herself into seeing after John James’s needs and squaring away her duties at the brewery. Sleep was still a hard-to-come-by commodity. She missed Wes terribly and lay awake long into the dark hours each night.

News came to them that the Ulrichs had quietly buried Philo on their land. Mariah dreamed about him that night and woke in a cold sweat, a sick feeling in her stomach.

Friederick asked if she was up to traveling to the western part of the state. A hotel located at a hot springs had signed a contract, and he and Louis agreed that a personal visit would be good business and in their best interests.

Mariah approved and took John James with her. She appreciated time alone with him. Perhaps her father had even been thinking she needed this time with her son.

Walking along the main street in the picturesque town in the foothills, she felt like a different person. Not only was she dressed in a smart two-piece velvet-trimmed blue dress she’d never dreamed she would feel comfortable wearing, but she was truly, without deception, a married woman. She looked down at the ring on her left hand and a swift pang of loneliness swept over her. She missed him. She missed her husband.

A horse and rider passed, and John James turned to watch the man and his mount. Her son had lost his baby fat, and the curve of his cheek along with the way he squinted against the sunlight under the bill of his cap sharply reminded Mariah of the man she’d despised so intently.

The thought stabbed her with fear.

Why now? Why this way?

She looked away, and then back at John James, scrutinizing his features for a keener resemblance. He had her hair color and her blue eyes, didn’t he?

John James had always been her boy and her boy alone. Her mind had never allowed her to connect him in any way with the man she couldn’t bear to look at or think of. But the connection had been made the day she’d admitted to herself and to others that Philo was her son’s father. It had been so much easier to fool herself and to pretend he had an absent father.

Now the truth had been planted. The facts were alive and thriving. Her parents knew. Hildy knew. Wes knew. This person she treasured and adored, this little human
being she’d brought into the world, nurtured and protected…her boy had been fathered by a monster.

Panic fluttered in her chest. She pressed a hand against the front of her jacket and took a calming breath. Nothing had changed. He was still the same sweet, precious, innocent child he’d always been.

“I’m gonna ask Papa to teach me to ride a horse like that.”

Her eyes filled with tears. Wes was his father now. “He would love to teach you to ride.”

Something in her voice must have alerted him to her distress. He glanced up. “Why are you sad?”

“I’m not sad. I’m proud, thinking about what a fine man you’re going to grow up to be.”

“Just like Papa.”

“Yes,” she managed. “Just like him.”

But she couldn’t escape the nagging trepidation that threatened her peace of mind. Working at the brewery was often a tedious job. Having family members underfoot and beside you at work and at home could be smothering if a person wasn’t used to it. Wes had spent his life sailing from one glorious adventure to the next. She could hardly believe that what she had to offer would be a more stimulating and fulfilling existence.

Besides, he knew the whole truth about her now, the unvarnished truth about John James. After he’d had time to take it all in, would John James’s conception make a difference in how Wes perceived her?

Now that Mariah had stopped pretending, a myriad
of concerns kept her head reeling. She may be dressed differently but she was no longer projecting the image of a confident, proud and opinionated woman. Now she was plain, old, ordinary Mariah. The strength she’d prided herself on for so long had dissolved.

If Wes moved on now, she’d have nothing to fall back on.