This Gun for Hire (37 page)

“And you can pick him off.”

“Maybe, but we have to get him to go for it first.” Still crouching, he inched around to look back at the way he’d come. “And there she is. Good girl.”

Calico followed his gaze and saw Ann picking her way across the rough, rutted ground to reach them. “Quill! Tell her to get back and take cover.”

He was already waving Ann to move out of the open when Calico spoke. Ann found relative safety behind rubble and rock.

“I thought you told her to stay put,” said Calico. “What is she doing? And why does she have the lantern? It only calls attention to her.”

“She’s safe, and she’s not coming any closer. I’m going to her.” Before Calico could try to stop him, he was up and running. Whit fired at him, missed, and Calico returned fire that put Whit back in his hidey-hole. Quill was a little winded but unharmed when he reached Ann. “I did not expect you to walk out in the open that way. Calico wants a piece of me almost as much as Whit.”

“I didn’t know,” Ann said helplessly.

“Hey. It’s all right.” He took the lantern. “Whit’s behind that pile of snow and rock. He knows you’re around, so you keep your head down no matter what happens. No matter what. Understand?”

Ann nodded.

“Good.” Quill leaned in, kissed her lightly on the forehead, and said, “Lucky Boone Abbot.” Then he was gone.

“What was the purpose of that?” asked Calico when Quill got back.

Quill set the lantern between them. He reached inside his jacket and produced two sticks of dynamite. “This was the purpose of that. I took these from Ann’s pockets, but I needed a way to light them. Since neither of us carries matches, it had to be the lantern. Ann got it for me.”

“She went back in there?” Calico shook her head, smiling faintly. “Ann Stonechurch has spine. I think even she will know that now.” She pointed to the dynamite. “I take it you have a plan for that.”

“I do.”

“We’re going to blow the bridge?”

“No. We’re going to blow his cover.”

Calico grinned. “Even better.”

“You want to throw? I think we’re going to discover that you did well with the axe.”

“All right.” She opened the lantern so Quill could light the fuse.

“We don’t want the fuse to go out so you’ll have to let it
get a good burn before you pitch the stick. Aim closer to the rock, not the snow mound. If he sees it coming, he should run. If he doesn’t see it coming, it should punch enough rock to make him run. Ready?”

Calico looked over the water cannon to judge distance and the best target for her throw. When she dropped back down, she nodded. “Ready.”

Quill lit the fuse, gave her the stick, and removed his gun as he looked around the side of the block. It was hard not to hold his breath as he waited for her to throw. He could have sworn he heard her whisper, “Fire in the hole,” and then he saw the stick somersaulting through the air, covering the distance in an elegant arc, the tip of the fuse like a firefly against the dim, dawning sky.

Calico’s aim was true, but she had held the stick a little too long, and it exploded just before it reached its target. Whit popped up from behind the snow mound like a prairie gopher, but he was not ready to run yet. Quill quickly lit the second stick and gave it to Calico. “Again,” he said. “But don’t hold it as long.”

Calico counted to three, stood up, and let it fly. There was no doubt it was going to reach its target. Whit must have realized it, too, because he was up again and hobbling as fast as he could to the bridge. Rock and snow exploded in his wake. Quill had to wait for the blizzard of debris to settle to get a clear shot, and he waited another moment to gauge the rhythm of Whit’s ungainly gait, and finally he waited to ease out a breath and steady his hand.

He fired.

Nick Whitfield flopped sideways over the rail of the bridge and hung there like wet
laundry.

From her comfortable corner position on the parlor sofa, Calico stared at the fire while Quill added logs. He stayed there until the flames licked greedily at the new wood, and then he returned to the sofa. In the short time he had been gone, she had decided to treat the sofa as if it were a chaise and was now stretched languidly across the gold damask cushion.

“Head or feet?” he asked as his eyes grazed the length of her. “I have absolutely no preference. Either end has appeal.”

That made her smile. “Then feet, please, and if you will remove my shoes, I will love you past forever.”

“Done.”

Calico drew her feet up and let him do the rest. Watching him deftly unfasten the tiny buttons on her black kid boots without benefit of a buttonhook was a sight to behold. She actually sighed. “You are very good at that.”

He glanced sideways at her, one eyebrow arched in a significant manner. “I am motivated. The idea of being loved past forever is persuasive.” Quill turned his attention back to his task, slipped the buttons free on her right shoe, and
removed it. The dull thud it made when he dropped it on the rug did not drown out Calico’s soft moan of pleasure. He gave her foot a gentle squeeze, patted it, and then directed his attention to the other shoe.

“Boone Abbot’s gone?” asked Calico.

“I showed him out before I came here. Ann went to her room. I suspect that right now she is leaning out her window and Mr. Abbot is standing below it with stars in his eyes. I promised myself I would not intrude.”

“How tolerant of you.”

“She is not my daughter, and it is not, thank God, Romeo and Juliet being staged out there. Ramsey did himself proud by not holding Joshua Abbot’s participation in the sabotage against Boone. No Montagues and Capulets here.” He removed the second shoe and dropped it beside the first. “Stockings? On or off?”

“Off.”

Quill reached under Calico’s skirt and petticoats, unfastened her suspenders, and began rolling the stockings one at a time over her knees and down her calves. When he looked over at her, he saw she had dropped her head back and closed her eyes. He added the stockings to the shoes and garters and began to consider what else she might allow him to put there.

“Feet, please.”

Chuckling, he applied his thumbs to her right foot. She arched her neck and shivered. “Feels good, does it?”

“Mm.” She opened one eye and looked at him. “Did you hear from Ramsey today? You never said.”

“There was a telegram. He only confirmed that he would be returning tomorrow.”

“With or without Beatrice?”

“He didn’t say.”

Calico closed her eye. “I think that’s telling, don’t you?”

“I was trying not to speculate, which is why I didn’t say anything earlier.”

“But you do think it’s telling.”

Quill gave her foot a good squeeze. She yelped, laughed,
and tried to get her foot out of his grip but did not try very hard. When she settled back again, he relaxed his hold and continued the massage. “I think it means he found the asylum as satisfactory as he could hope for and that he will be leaving her behind as planned.”

Calico nodded. “I wonder if she can comprehend the tolerance that Ramsey’s shown her? The only reason she is not facing trial is because he would not have any part of it.” She fell silent, thoughtful, and finally said, “Maybe that is for the best. I hope it is. I want something good for Ann. I think she is making peace with her father’s decision to commit Beatrice.”

“Ann had a part in that whether she realizes it or not. I would never say as much to her, but when Ramsey refused to ask her to testify against her aunt, there was really nothing left for him to do. Can you imagine Beatrice Stonechurch living the remainder of her life outside of a cell or a locked ward? There would be no peace for Ramsey or Ann. No peace for this town.”

“I know. I’ve thought of that, too. She believed everyone betrayed her and her husband’s memory. She turned on every miner who fell in with her.”

“She baited them with promises and kept them hooked with the memory of her husband. Cavanaugh. Joshua Abbot. And to learn that two of the men in the circle that night were Mr. Birden and Mr. Neeley-Brown? I had to admire the net she cast and how she passed information to them through their wives.”

“She was . . .
is
 . . . cunning. And deeply sad. Her grief, that bottomless, abiding grief, allowed her to justify unspeakable things.”

Quill abandoned Calico’s right foot and took up the left. He was rewarded by her heartfelt sigh. “Do you ever wonder if she murdered her husband?”

Calico’s head snapped up. She stared at him. “You, too?”

He nodded. “It was what we overheard her say about blowing up the Number 3 mine, that it should have been her husband’s tomb. It started me thinking that given what he
suffered, it would have been understandable if she wished he had died there. He might have thought the same thing. He might have encouraged her.”

“And he might not have. I would not be too quick to look for a reason to excuse her behavior.”

“Not excuse. Understand.”

“That’s fair,” she said. “It’s odd, but if she admitted to poisoning Leonard Stonechurch, I’m not certain I would believe her. I suspect she did it, but to hear her say it would make me doubt. Her hate for Ramsey is so abiding that I can imagine her confessing simply to wound him. And it would. Profoundly.”

“He’s always thought it should have been him in the tunnel.”

“So did she.” Calico slipped an embroidered pillow behind the small of her back as she sat up straight. “I never suspected that she was the one who shot at Ramsey when you were gone from Stonechurch. I thought she would have persuaded one of the miners to do it.”

“I thought the same until she spoke so confidently about that antique revolver being loaded. If she had killed Ramsey then, it would have been by accident, not design. She had no idea how to handle that gun. She was still trying to scare him away. What is hard to believe is that she ever thought that would work.”

“I think it was for Ann’s sake that she tried that tack.”

“I don’t know. Ann’s accidents? That was Beatrice. She was present both times. She used Ann to scare Ramsey. It worked, but she couldn’t anticipate that he would hire protection. Beatrice supported Ann’s desire to stay in Stonechurch because it gave her leverage. Hell, it was probably Beatrice who suggested that Ann advance her education right here. And finally, she left Ann in Whit’s care. Nothing she did was for Ann’s sake.”

Calico said nothing. It was as they had talked about earlier. Beatrice’s desperation explained things but did not excuse them. “Quill?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you have regrets about Nick Whitfield? It’s been a week. You haven’t said a word.” Calico felt the pressure of his fingers on her foot ease and then disappear altogether. He shrugged. She said, “That is no answer.”

“No, but I thought it would be telling.”

She smiled a shade ruefully. “You do wish you had been able to take him alive, don’t you? I wondered. I thought it was probably true, but when you didn’t say anything, I didn’t trust myself to know.”

“You have good instincts about me. You can trust them.”

“There are things I would rather hear from you, whether I think I know them or not. It’s important.”

“All right, then, yes, I regret the way it ended, but not because I think I did anything wrong or even that I could have done anything differently. I shot to wound him because I wanted him to face a judge and a jury and eventually a noose. That would have been justice for the deputies he murdered, for the women he hurt, for Mrs. Fry and her girls, for the attempt on your life. Throwing himself off that footbridge when we were ready to apprehend him was just cowardly. Frankly? It pissed me off.”

Calico remembered the moment clearly enough: Whit slumped over the rail, blood blossoming darkly near his shoulder where Quill had shot him, and his right foot dangling awkwardly inches above the bridge as if he could not bear to put weight on it again. Calico supposed the pickaxe had been responsible for that injury, but she would never know with certainty. When Whit had raised his head and turned it in their direction, she thought at first it was to watch their approach, but then his eyes slid past her, past Quill, and focused on something behind them. Calico had looked over her shoulder and followed the direction of his gaze.

Ann was no longer behind her rocky cover. She was standing in the open, and Whit’s focus was entirely on her.

Calico had said nothing to Quill about what she had seen or thought in those last moments before Whit somersaulted over the rail, so she told him now, along with the conclusion she had drawn from what Whit had done.

“I don’t think he was trying to get away from us, not precisely. I think he wanted to be with her more. Not Ann. His sister. When we were at Mrs. Fry’s, Chick and Amos talked about the photograph of her that he carried around. Even they thought his affection for her was unnatural. I think Ann looked like her, at least superficially. The dark hair, the small frame. Her youth. That’s what he liked. It’s why I had to wear a black wig when I met him. And remember that Ann told us later that he called out another name when he was chasing her? I think Nick Whitfield was more deeply disturbed at his core than Beatrice Stonechurch. He was malevolent. She was dying inside.”

After a while, Quill said, “You’re probably right about all of it.” He resumed massaging her foot. “And you know what?”

“What?” she asked, tempering her smile because she knew what was coming.

“It still pisses me off that he got away.”

Calico’s response was more philosophical. “And I like to think his fall put him one hundred twenty feet closer to the gates of hell.”

He gave her foot a swift squeeze with both hands as he looked sideways and offered up a somewhat sheepish grin. “I should have said something to you about it sooner.”

“As long as you know it.” She wiggled her toes when he found a ticklish spot. “Do you think it’s too late for us to elope?”

“Elope? I thought you wanted a proper wedding.”

“I want a pretty proposal. The wedding ceremony scares me. You know, the judge who is coming to Stonechurch for Chick’s trial and to oversee the transfer of Beatrice’s share of the mining operation to Ann could just as easily marry us. There would be no fussing.”

“I was not aware there was fussing.”

“That’s because you have not been allowed to accompany Ann and me to the dress shops. That is Ann’s doing, not mine, because if I had my way, I would make you suffer.”

“Oh, I know you would. Why don’t you tell me about it? I promise I will suffer.”

“You are good to me, Quill.” Calico shared the awful details of being poked and pinched and pinned by not one dressmaker, but two. Ann, rather lawyer-like, had successfully argued that neither dressmaker was culpable for the choices made by their husbands, and that the nature of the competition between Mrs. Birden and Mrs. Neeley-Brown demanded that both women be involved in fashioning the gown. Calico found it was better to stand back while all three of the women pored over pattern books and discussed fabrics.

“And I am not allowed to tell you what was finally decided because they said it would be unlucky.”

“Do I look disappointed? I am trying to look disappointed.”

She snorted. “They measured and marked and hemmed and hawed. I am certain the Union and Central Pacific came to compromise more easily than these rivals.”

“Yes, but the railroads were merely joining a nation. How hard could that have been compared to choosing between velvet or striped silk? With laying track, you have your narrow and your standard gauges to consider, but with a gown, there is the stiffness of the flounces, the tightness of the bodice, the placement of the darts, the ribbons, the lace, the netting. It is—”

Laughing, she dug her toes into his thigh. “Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?”

“No, but then I am confident that neither do you.”

“True.”

“About the wedding, do you suppose you can screw your courage to the sticking place and meet me in church?”

“If it’s important to you, I can.”

“It’s important to me.” He paused, shrugged, and said, “And no one is more surprised to hear it than I am.”

Calico’s heart swelled, and she realized that she was dangerously close to tears. She gave him a watery smile when he regarded her oddly. Fanning one hand in front of
her face, she blinked rapidly and whispered, “I am so in love with you, Quill McKenna.”

He smiled then, and when Calico glowed in response, even he felt as if he’d swallowed the sun. He held out his hand to her. “Come here.”

She did, taking his hand and allowing him to pull her close. She shifted until she found her niche in the curve of his shoulder. He laid his lips against her temple, kissed her, and then moved his lips to her fiery hair and kissed her again.

“I’ve been thinking about that pretty proposal,” he said. “I have most of it worked out.”

“You do?”

“Hmm.”

“If you need someone to practice it on,” she said quietly, “I would not object to listening.”

“You understand it’s a work in progress.”

She nodded.

“I haven’t decided about kneeling. It seems—”

“I swear to God, Quill, I am going to get my gun.”

He chuckled, squeezed her shoulders. “And there you are, the woman who threatens me, challenges me, makes me laugh. Often all at once. I do not know how
not
to love you. You are clever, courageous. You humble me, and you lift me up. How can I not want you to be with me? I will take you in marriage if you will have me, but I will never leave you if you will not. You are as infuriating as you are interesting. You are never dull. I want to stand with you, and I want you to stand with me. You are my forever, Calico Nash.”

She turned her head, studied his face. Her eyes were luminous and the breath she took softly shuddered through her. “Is there a question, Quill? I think there is supposed to be a question.”

“I’m coming to that. But first, the caveat.”

She regarded him suspiciously. “Caveat?”