Wicked Wyoming Nights (37 page)

“Oh!” she exclaimed, reaching quickly for her robe. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

That’s okay. I was just practicing some changes in my act. I can think better in the morning.” She walked over to the bar. “It’s thirsty work. Want a beer?”

“I’d better not. I came to see Miss Smallwood.”

Iris took a pull from the mug and gave Cord a measured look over the rim. “You seen her since the Christmas party?”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

“Not exactly, but you’d better sit down.” She pulled a chair off one of the tables and motioned Cord to do the same.

“Still mad at me?”

“More than that. She moved Lucy in with her and gave orders to be told the minute you walked on the premises. She intends to run out the back if you force your way in. Of course, Croley or Ira may shoot you first.”

“I think I’ll have some whiskey,” Cord decided. Iris handed him a bottle and he downed three glasses without pause.

“You believe in laying a thirst good and proper, don’t you?” inquired Iris in admiration.

“Do you know why she doesn’t want to see me?”

“Eliza doesn’t confide in me, but I do know the mere mention of your name causes her to start shaking.” Iris watched him closely. “She’s told everybody her engagement is off.”

“Yeah. She told me too.”

“I got the impression she told you a good deal more. I was up when she got in that morning, and she didn’t stop crying for hours.”

“Did she tell you everything that happened?”

“No, but I heard enough.”

“She absolutely won’t see me?”

“No.”

Cord downed another drink. “So how did you come to be in Wyoming?” he asked abruptly. “From your accent, I would guess you grew up in Indiana.”

“Westphalia. How did you know?”

“I come from Sandborn, just down the road.”

“Well, I’ll be. Do you know the Bradleys?”

“Heard of them.”

“They’re cousins, my mother’s family. Is your family still in Sandborn?”

“Guess so.”

“Trouble, huh?” asked Iris, undaunted by Cord’s unencouraging replies.

“Not especially. My dad died young. My ma left home a couple of times soon after, then one time she just never came back. My grandfather raised me. I left town the day I buried him.”

“Ever been back?”

Cord shook his head.

“Do you hear anything of your mother?”

“She’s not one for writing.”

“My folks write all the time. I’ll ask them about her.”

“Don’t bother. She wouldn’t know me if she met me on the street.” He took another drink.

“You’d better go easy on that stuff. It can get to be a habit, and not a good one.”

Cord looked at the bottle. “Seems everything I like is bad for me. It’s enough to make a man wonder if he’s marked for life.”

“It’s probably not the time to mention it, but there are other fish in the sea,” Iris said giving his hand a pat. “And some of us aren’t too bad.”

“You swimming in that sea?”

“Sure. All women need a husband, and I’m always on the lookout for a good man, especially one who’s as rich and good looking as you. It doesn’t make sense to take dog food and let prime beef go begging.”

“Can’t be anything prime about me,” Cord said, tossing down another tumbler. “I’ve been turned down twice.”

“Then the third time will be lucky” Iris said, finishing her beer and rising from her chair. “If you feel like talking, or just want some company, you’re welcome to drop in.”

Cord’s eyebrows went up.

“No, not here,” she said with a hearty chuckle. “My little girl is staying with the Culpeppers. I visit her every afternoon. Weekends too, if I can.”

“It’s not often a man gets an invitation like that, even with a kid to make things look proper.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Iris said with a provocative laugh. “I won’t let you one step past the front porch. A girl can’t be too careful of her reputation, especially in a town like this.”

“You’re an idiot” Ella informed Cord with biting emphasis. “A handsome, hulking fool to have lost Eliza for the sake of a few cows, and little ones at that. Or don’t you think she’s worth a couple dozen calves?”

“I’d trade my whole ranch for Eliza,” Cord stated simply, “but I won’t let anybody rob me.”

“I always knew men were blind, stupid, and obstinate, but I never met anybody who carried it to the extremes you do. There must have been a thousand ways to keep Ira from coming near your steers without dragging Eliza out of her bed and forcing her to see with her own eyes that her uncle is a low-down thief and a liar to boot. No girl is going to run into your arms after that, even if her uncle is a worse piece of cow dung than Ira.”

Cord started to speak, but Ella cut him off. “And if that wasn’t enough, you had to drag her along while you pulled one of your vigilante acts on a man too drunk to defend himself. And you threw in the pregnant wife and child just to make sure she couldn’t possibly have any sympathy for you. I’m sure she just loved sitting there while you discussed Ira’s crimes in front of her only real friends. I hope you at least had the good sense not to mention him by name.”

“Sam wouldn’t believe me, and I made Eliza tell him what she saw.”

The man’s a lunatic!” Ella raved, throwing her hands in the air to emphasize the point. “You have an absolute genius for doing the one thing out of a thousand guaranteed to drive that girl from you. You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t shoot you herself. As for marrying you, would you bed down with a rattlesnake after it had bitten you twice?”

“I’m not sure she’s the kind of girl I thought she was,” Cord said stiffly.

“Hogwash!” Ella said with regal disdain. “Look me in the eye, Cord Stedman, and tell me you don’t love her.”

Cord looked directly at Ella but said nothing.

“I knew you couldn’t do it! You’re just as crazy about her as ever. But since you’ve practically branded the girl a criminal—”

“I
never
said she had anything to do with it.”

“You might as well have. When you proved her uncle a scalawag, you tarred her with the same brush.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Frankly, neither do I,” Ella admitted, “but it’s got something to do with a dratted vow she made to her dead aunt. Myself, I’d tell Ira to get off and good riddance, but I know Eliza. She was reed upset when you had her uncle arrested and the trial made her good and mad, but she’d have gotten over that if you hadn’t had to go and
show
her that her uncle was a thief. That put the bar on the door for sure. Now she can’t look you in the face without coming smack up against her uncle’s guilt.”

“I never held her responsible for Ira.”

“You don’t have to. She’s done it herself.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me, you big oaf. Whose shoulder do you think she’s been crying on? It’s not that widow woman who sings and dances for her uncle. She’s got her eye on you herself. And that doesn’t leave much of anybody except Jessica Burton, and not even a sainted martyr could expect any sympathy from her.”

“All I wanted to do was prove I wasn’t lying.”

“And you had to do it within hours after I
told
you not to do anything or you’d wreck things entirely.”

“I didn’t plan it. It just happened.”

“Good generals never
let
things happen. They
make
them happen. And you know that because until you saw Ira with his rope around that steer, you were just about the best general I’d ever seen, with cows, with men, and with Eliza. But you let yourself get unraveled real bad. I don’t know if you’ll ever get Eliza back now.”

Cord stood staring in front of him for a long moment. “Then I guess there’s nothing I can do.”

“Maybe not, but getting drunk won’t help things.” Cord looked up inquiringly. “You don’t have to tell me you’ve been drinking. I can smell it. That’s a road that will lead to nothing but ruin. Time may heal this thing between you and Eliza or it may not, but if you give yourself over to drink she’ll never have you.”

Ella felt her heart go out to Cord. She had never been a romantic herself. She and Ed had lived together comfortably for thirty years, always talking through their differences and encountering few problems. Maybe now and then she had wondered what it would have been like to be madly in love, but after seeing what it had done to Cord and Eliza she was just as happy she had been passed over. She might never know the bliss of love that surmounted reason, but at least she would never suffer the agonies that were making two of her favorite people utterly miserable.

“You can’t wait much longer to get married, or you’ll be an old maid,” Ira said to Eliza through a mouthful of steak. “You might as well marry Croley.”

“Mr. Blaine?” Eliza repeated, her voice jumping an octave. “He never knows I’m around unless I’m singing.”

“Croley notices everything you do,” Ira said, putting anther fork load of food in his mouth. “He talks about you all the time. In fact, he’s gotten to be something of a bore.”

Eliza hardly knew what to say. She knew her uncle stood in awe of Croley. It would be comfortable for him to have her marry his business partner, but she didn’t like Croley, and now that she was certain he was responsible for Ira’s involvement with the rustlers, she didn’t trust him either.

Neither had mentioned what had happened that night, Eliza because she hated to think of being involved in such a shameful deed, and Ira because Croley, in a savage rage over the failure of his elaborately planned operation, had ordered him to keep his mouth shut.

“I don’t want to marry anybody. I think I’ll dedicate myself to teaching school.”

“You can marry Croley and teach all you want,” Ira said, still eating. “Croley is going to be a rich man.” Ira wiped his mouth and backed away from the table. “You could find yourself married to much worse.”

“No, I couldn’t,” exploded Eliza. “I will not marry a rustler, even if my uncle is one.” At last it was out, she had said it, and she felt as though a great weight was off her heart.

“You watch what you’re saying,” Ira growled.

“I saw you,” Eliza said, her eyes flashing angrily. “I was forced to watch you brand cows with a brand registered in my name.”

“Oh, well-”

“Do you know why I hide in this room day after day? It’s because I’m ashamed to appear in public knowing my only relative is a common thief. It makes me sick to my stomach just to think about it.”

“It didn’t make you so sick of Cord Stedman you didn’t go with him.”

“I will not be accused of duplicity, and especially not by you,” Eliza said furiously.

“Never mind. I believe you,” Ira said, backing down.

Ira had lost control of Eliza. She was so volatile he was afraid the slightest thing would cause her to refuse to sing at all. She’d insisted that someone watch the door, and the only time Cord had appeared she’d fled in the middle of her song and locked herself in her room.

“You still in love with Stedman?”

“You know I haven’t seen him since that night.”

“I thought you might still be pining over him. You sure do act lovesick.”

“I’m acting
mortified
,” Eliza practically shouted. “I’m ashamed to have been so mistaken in his character I would consider becoming engaged to him. I’m also chagrined to be the niece of a man of still fewer principles. I imagine people are saying Cord’s exactly the kind of husband for a silly, spineless fool like me.”

“Then marry Croley and put an end to this foolishness.”

“Marry the man who tried to rustle my previous fiancé’s cows? That ought to set tongues in Buffalo wagging for a good year. Let him marry Iris.”

“He doesn’t want her. He wants you.”

“Well, he can’t have me,” Eliza said defiantly. “I didn’t give up Cord to marry a rustier.” Try as she might Eliza could not keep the tears from her eyes.

“You are still in love with him,” Ira said triumphantly. “I knew it.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Eliza accused. “You never have. All you ever think of is how much money I can make. You don’t care a button whether I’m happy or miserable as long as the customers keep coming.”

“I’m trying to find you a husband.”

“Do you really think I could settle for Croley Blaine after Cord?” A sob caught in her throat. “Even Iris ignores Croley, but she can’t keep her hands off Cord.”

“Let Iris have him, but don’t you speak to him again.”

“You’ve forfeited the right to tell me what to do, ever again,” Eliza said. “You forced me to deny the only man I’ve ever loved, and all you can offer in his place is Croley Blaine.”

“I’ll have the bastard shot, then you won’t be able to pine after him,” Ira threatened.

“You do and you’ll never see me again.”

“And where do you think you’ll go?”

“If Cord were dead, it wouldn’t matter.”

Eliza sighed disconsolately and moved to another chair. She tried to concentrate on her needlework, but she kept making mistakes and having to pull it out. Finally she threw the embroidery frame from her and began to pace the room.