Cutting off the livery stable owner’s attempt at conversation with curt orders for Jasper’s care, Bret left the horse there and headed for the hotel, eager to see Hassie again. Mostly eager.
Unless her usual easygoing attitude had reasserted itself in the time he’d been gone, he was going to have an uphill battle convincing Hassie they should buy the best of the three properties available—the one only ten miles from his parents’ farm.
First he’d soften her up with a long night of love-making. Then he’d talk her around to his way of looking at it. After all, he wasn’t condemning her to a lifetime of misery. Once they moved in, she’d be humming and dancing before the first week passed.
He was halfway across the lobby when the clerk called his name.
“Mr. Sterling, wait.”
Not wanting to deal with anything that would delay his reunion, Bret barely turned his head. “I’ll talk to you after I see my wife.”
“But she’s not here. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
Bret pivoted on his good leg. “So where is she? Dining room?” It was an odd time of day for anyone to be eating. “Shopping?”
“No, she’s.... Just a moment.”
The clerk fled, and Bret’s heart accelerated. Hurt? Sick? Why the hell couldn’t the man just say?
The hotel owner followed the clerk out to the desk, wringing her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but what could I do? She never said a word. She just disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
The woman flinched at his tone. “Well, not disappeared really. She left these.” She pulled two envelopes out of a desk drawer and offered them.
“You said you’d keep an eye on her.”
“I did! You didn’t expect me to lock her in the room or follow her around when she went out, did you?”
Bret stared at the envelopes, one with his name on it, the other with Caroline’s. Ripping open his, he read:
I’m sorry. I love you, but you wouldn’t listen, and I will not stay in Missouri.
“She gave you these?”
“No, she left them in the room.”
Bret reversed course back to the livery as fast as he could go. The stable man was still rubbing Jasper down when Bret got there.
“I tried to tell you, but you hurried off too fast. Mrs. Sterling came by here last week, wanted that horse of hers saddled up and the packhorse too. I told her you wanted me to sell the packhorse and the rig, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Paid me every penny due and took them away.”
“You just let her take those horses out of here?”
“Well they’re your horses, aren’t they? And she’s your wife. Sure I let her have them.”
“And she rode away with them.”
“Naw, she was dressed up too fine for riding. Looked right smart she did and led them away. I heard she took the train.”
Took the train? How the hell could she take a train?
Bret headed for the railroad station, his cane tapping furiously on the wooden walk.
“Sure, I remember,” the ticket agent said. “Hard to forget a pretty lady like that who writes instead of talks. Last Thursday maybe, or Wednesday. Bought a ticket to Kansas City and paid for two horses and the dog in a stock car.”
“She can’t have.”
“Well, she did.”
“How did she pay for all that?”
“Yankee greenbacks.”
Bret bit back a curse. “When’s the next train to Kansas City?”
“Tomorrow morning. If it’s on schedule, it pulls out at 11:37.”
“There has to be something sooner than that.”
“Well, there isn’t, and by the time you ride a horse to someplace else with something else that leaves earlier, you’ll be a day behind, not ahead.”
Bret bought a ticket to Kansas City on the morning train, and after a moment’s consideration, paid to transport Jasper too.
Pocketing the ticket, he walked back through town at his best speed, reaching the bank minutes before the three o’clock closing time. Each of the young tellers he saw had handled deposits for him in recent years, but he didn’t know either.
“I need to speak to the person who handled a withdrawal for my wife last week,” Bret said.
“I did that,” the taller, older teller said. “Jason, will you lock up? I’ll talk to Mr. Sterling.”
Bret moved into the small room Simon Fenton indicated, shook the man’s hand impatiently, and refused to sit. “Inman isn’t here?” he asked, referring to his father’s great friend, the bank’s owner and president.
“Mr. and Mrs. Inman are visiting family in Alabama,” Fenton said. “While they’re gone, I’m in charge. Are you here to tell me I shouldn’t have let your wife have her money?”
No, and now that it was put like that, Bret couldn’t say why he was here except to verify what he already knew had to be true. “No, it’s her money. She earned it and can do anything she wants with it, but I thought she might have mentioned what she wanted it for.”
At least Fenton didn’t ask how a man could not know what his wife wanted such a sum for, but then maybe he knew Hassie had left town. Fenton swiveled to one of the cabinets behind him, riffled through the contents of a lower drawer and pulled out a file. Opening it, he removed several sheets of paper and handed them to Bret.
One in ink, the rest in pencil, not one of them giving a hint what she intended to do with the money. Without thinking, Bret said, “She only took two thousand?”
“Two thousand in a bank draft. Three hundred in cash.”
“That’s not even half of what was in the account.”
“I know.” Fenton swallowed visibly, looking very young. “There’s something else. I guess if I’m going to lose my position here, I may as well lose it for several transgressions and not just one.”
“I’ve no intention of trying to have you dismissed. I told you it’s her money. You did the right thing.”
“Thank you. Your father and brother didn’t think I did the right thing two days earlier when I refused to let them withdraw from your account. In fact they’re very angry. Your father wired Mr. Inman, and I made everyone angrier when I said a wire wouldn’t be enough, I needed something with a signature.” Fenton pulled an envelope from a pile of papers on the desk. “They were back yesterday, and I had to inform them the necessary instructions from Mr. Inman hadn’t arrived yet. This seems to have been lost among other papers.”
Bret moved to one of the chairs in front of the desk and sank down. “It’s unopened.”
“Once I find it and open it, I’m obliged to do what it says.”
“What do they want you to do?”
“Take the mortgage payment currently due from your account and transfer the balance to the farm account.”
Bret didn’t want to believe Will had talked his father into outright theft, but obviously he had.
“What about my wife’s account?”
“No one mentioned it. You never directed us to change it to her married name, and we never did.”
Caroline’s unsuitable young man was a clerk. Bret eyed Fenton thoughtfully. “Do you know my sister?”
Fenton dropped his eyes to the desk and toyed with a pen. “I have that privilege. We attend the same church.”
Which explained some things. Even so.... I owe you, Mr. Fenton, Bret thought. Offering you money would be too much like a bribe, but I owe you.
Reaching a decision, Bret said, “As you’ve probably guessed, my wife and I are moving, and we’ll be banking nearer our new home. Can you do what’s necessary to close both our accounts now, or do I need to come back in the morning?”
“Now would be prudent,” Fenton said. “I’ll get the necessary forms.”
Bret ran a hand over his face and sighed. “How much is the mortgage payment?”
Fenton turned back to the cabinet, pulled another package of documents out, and found the right one. “Three hundred fifty-eight dollars and thirty-five cents.”
“I’ll pay that, follow my wife’s example and take three hundred cash, and the balance in a draft.”
No flicker of expression indicated whether Fenton thought he was a fool or not, and Bret appreciated the neutrality. “While you do your part, if you’d let me have paper, pen, and ink, I need to write a letter.”
Fenton set the requested items out on the desk and left the room. Bret thought a moment, wrote, and turned his letter face down when he finished.
After signing the forms Fenton presented, Bret folded the bank draft and cash in his pockets, turned his letter face up, and pushed it across the desk.
Fenton’s color rose as he read. “I’d like to believe I deserve this,” he said when he’d finished. “I don’t believe I’ve ever read such a glowing recommendation.”
“That’s why I put my friend’s address at the bottom. If anyone worries you held a gun to my head and wants to verify with me further, Gabe will know where to find me. You shouldn’t lose this position for what you did, but if you do, you won’t have trouble finding something better. You’ll end up owning a bank of your own in a few years.”
“A few decades maybe,” Fenton said with more realism.
They left the bank together, Bret turning back toward the hotel, Fenton going the other way.
“Take good care of her,” Bret muttered as he walked away.
In the hotel room, Bret sank down on the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands. If Fenton was indeed Caroline’s secret lover, he wouldn’t have much trouble taking better care of her than Bret had managed with Hassie.
In the face of her angry, stubborn declarations that she would not live in Missouri, how had he convinced himself she would? Yes, she was the woman who made light of her trials with Cyrus Petty and approached a menial job as a maid happily.
She was also the woman who had resisted the hotel owners in Werver so violently she’d left them visibly bruised. She’d gotten away from a brothel enforcer. Preferred following a bounty hunter into the unknown to marrying a safe, if stodgy, homesteader. Blown the head off a killer and hauled her useless husband’s carcass to the nearest doctor. For that matter, Will had looked worse for wear by the time Bret got there.
He’d chosen to see only what he wanted to see because he wanted what he wanted, and he damned well deserved the sick fear eating at him now. She took a train to Kansas City by herself with two horses and the dog.
She wasn’t going back to the Petty farm as she’d threatened, so what was she thinking? Where
was
she going? She had enough money to keep her for a long time if no one stole it from her. Or killed her for fun.
Gunner was some protection, but he wasn’t invincible. The gun wouldn’t help much when she couldn’t shoot it with her eyes open. At the thought, he rose and searched the room. Nothing left but his things. At least she’d had the sense to take her gun.
He dropped back on the bed, this time noticing the crackle of stiff paper in his trouser pocket. Hassie’s note to him was crumpled. He smoothed it out and read it again. The damning words on it hadn’t changed, didn’t give any clues. The envelope for Caroline was thicker. Had she written Caroline a real letter, told of plans?
Caroline’s note was as short as his:
Add this to your stake. Marry him soon and be happy.
The extra thickness came from the hundred dollars enclosed with the note. Bret stared at it a long time before adding another hundred and folding everything back in the envelope.
In the morning he’d add his name below Hassie’s, put it all in a fresh envelope, and address it to Caroline in care of Gabe’s parents. Trying to find someone he trusted to hand deliver it would use up some of too many hours before 11:37, and if that failed, he’d gamble on the mail.
Bret finally blew out the lamp and forced himself to lie down. He lay awake for a long time imagining all the things that could happen to a woman traveling alone—robbery, rape, murder. Even without violence some slick talker like Johnny Rankin could take the money and leave her penniless in the middle of nowhere. If she tried to travel on horseback—and she shouldn’t even be on horseback in her condition—the weather could kill her. He envisioned her riding through blinding snow, falling, freezing, her body covered by drifts, never to be found.
Worn out by the endless stream of disasters he could conjure up, he fell into troubled sleep. And the nightmare came.
The stink of gun powder, blood, and death filled his nostrils. Cannon roared, men and horses screamed. Drenched in sweat, coated with mud and blood, he charged forward as ordered. Men fell ahead of him and to each side.
The Rebel soldier rose behind the stone wall. Bret fired and screamed his own scream as Albert fell. Another figure rose. He fired again, saw the blossom of blood, saw her face. Not Mary, Hassie.
He screamed again, flailed, hit the floor and barely made it to the washbasin before vomiting up everything in his stomach.
“Damned dog,” he cursed. “Damned dog, damned fool woman. Damn me.” His stomach heaved again. When it stopped, he dressed and waited for dawn.
I
T TOOK THE
better part of a day, but Bret finally found a ticket agent in Kansas City who remembered Hassie.
“Sure I remember. Poor lady had laryngitis and had to write things out. Bought a ticket to Denver. Might have remembered her anyway, not many ladies travel with two horses and a dog.”
Denver. Of course she’d want to get back to Colorado, to Dearfield where she’d made friends, but she couldn’t go there by herself, not this time of year, not any time of year. If she found somewhere in Denver to stay, maybe she could eventually find a safe way to Dearfield, but the railroad ended a good two-day ride from the town. The stage line came from the north, and Hassie would never abandon Brownie and Packie to take a stage they couldn’t keep up with.
Picturing someone trying to load Gunner into or on top of a stagecoach gave Bret a second of grim amusement.
Freighters. The thought of Hassie alone with some hulking freighter who hadn’t been near a woman in years had Bret fingering his gun. She wasn’t foolish. The two of them had ridden from Dearfield to the nearest train station in December. She knew how long, lonely, and cold that trip would be. And how dangerous. She wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t.
No ticket agent in Denver admitted to remembering Hassie, but one of the yard men remembered Gunner. “The poor lady had to climb in the stock car and tie that dog up herself. Nobody else wanted any part of that mean bugger.”