Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (2 page)

      
“Men of your class can afford to do as they damn well please, it seems to me, but then I'm hardly in a position to know. I do know only a fool would marry a female he'd never set eyes on. What if she's so ugly she has to sneak up on a mirror, Larry?” Cain asked, with a smile that did not reach his eyes.

      
Andrew let out a sharp bark of laughter. “I would never have taken you for a romantic, Cain. It matters nothing what the girl looks like. She's from a good family, gently reared in St. Louis. A man can always find his pleasures outside of marriage.”

      
Cain countered insolently, “You should know.”

      
Powell snorted derisively, then stroked his jaw and assessed Cain with those unnerving blue eyes, eyes that had often reduced foes to quivering jelly. “You're hardly qualified to judge my morals. After all, I've never committed fratricide. You killed your redskin brother just to avenge that old fool Sterling, even though you knew he wouldn't have wanted you to do it. I wonder what other abominations you'd be willing to commit if the price was right.”

      
Lawrence paled, then flushed to the roots of his hair. “Father, please, this isn't amusing.”

      
“Amusing,” Andrew mocked. ‘“No, I suppose it would frighten rather than amuse you. Why the hell can't you have the balls this half-breed does, dammit?” he asked savagely.

      
Lawrence stood stiffly beside the large mahogany desk with his lips compressed in a thin line, his expression one of helpless misery. “What would you have me do, become a gunman?”

      
“You'd probably shoot your own foot off,” the older man replied in disgust.

      
“I didn't come here for this.” Cain looked at Lawrence with genuine pity.

      
“What did bring you storming in, then?” Andrew countered. “I expected you'd be at the summit tunnel with your precious Chinese.”

      
“That's where I just came from. It's starting to snow again higher up and Strobridge's going to use that goddamned patent blasting oil. Said you'd told him to go ahead.”

      
“I did. We're months behind trying to dig through solid granite. Black powder by the carload won't get the job done. The nitroglycerin oil will.”

      
“With tons of snow massed above the workers, it'll start avalanches. I've already lost seventeen men this month.”

      
“Not men. Coolies.” Andrew shrugged dismissively. “Just because that fool Sterling taught you to jabber their singsong doesn't mean you have to bleed for them. I'm bringing up another thousand from San Francisco next week.”

      
“So they're expendable...just like redskins.”

      
“And breeds,” the older man dared him, his pulse humming at the leap of fire he saw in Cain's black eyes.

      
“With a few differences, Powell. I'm not three thousand miles from home, defenseless in a frozen land—I also speak English. Enoch saw to that, too. You've forced them to work like slaves building this railroad, but I'll be damned if I act as Judas goat while any more of them are blown to kingdom come. We can go around the summit tunnel and let it wait till spring for the blasting.”

      
‘‘No.” There was flat finality in the older man's voice. “We get it done now.”

      
Lawrence stepped out of the way, backing quietly into the corner as his father and Cain moved closer together, eyes locked. The tension between them was palpable. He looked from the half-breed's swarthy face to Andrew's, seeing both men in profile, tall, slim and straight, with rugged jaws and burning deep-set eyes, fierce as eagles. He waited to see how Cain would respond to the older man's challenge.

      
“I quit.”

      
Powell laughed sharply. “You rode all the way from Nebraska to San Francisco, practically begged me for a job—any job—with the Central Pacific.”

      
“Begged? You know better. I've shot men for you as easily as I shot meat for the laborers. This is different. This is where I draw the line.”

      
“You want a raise?” Powell drawled. His eyebrows lifted measuringly.

      
“You couldn't afford my price,” Cain replied, turning away.

      
As he strode across the carpet, Powell shouted after him, “You've worked all your life to be a white man, but you're still nothing but a dirty breed outside that door. Your price! Who'll hire you for anything more than a surveyor's guide or meat hunter?”

      
Cain paused with his hand on the heavy brass doorknob. “Jubal MacKenzie will hire me. I'm going to work for your competition and before I'm done, I'll drive you out of business.”

* * * *

HANNIBAL, MISSOURI, 1867

      
A loud whistle blast from the
Mississippi Belle
echoed across the cobbled stones of the levee as Roxanna Fallon slipped quietly down the back stairs with a raggedy carpetbag clutched in each hand. She was grateful for the noise from the departing riverboat, which covered the faint squeak of Mrs. Priddy's dilapidated steps. Her heart beat so loudly she was certain the old harridan could hear it at the opposite end of the seedy brick boardinghouse.

      
Lord above, she was glad to be quit of the musty smell of the riverfront, the greasy stale food and hard lumpy mattress inhabited by a whole community of bedbugs. But she hated losing the job with the repertory company. She had received the part of Desdemona in
Othello
and they were contracted for performances between St. Louis and New Orleans on the
Belle
. But the boat had left without her and she had no money to pay the rent.

      
No use thinking about what can't be changed,
she reminded herself grimly for what seemed to be the hundredth time in the past four years. Just as she neared the end of the narrow darkened hallway, a meaty fist seized her arm, spinning her around. Hepsabah Priddy's sallow round face hung over her like a malevolent moon. Acrid garlic breath from last evening's mulligan stew enveloped her as the landlady hissed, ‘Thought you'd steal off like the sneaky spy you are, didja? I know all about you. No wonder Capt'n Guarrard fired you from his troupe. You're not even good enough to be one of them hussy stage actresses!”

      
“I'll send you the money when I have it. Since Isobel Darby's seen to it I'll never work in Hannibal again, I've no choice but to leave,” Roxanna replied bitterly.

      
“Mrs. Darby's a respectable Southern lady. You ain't gonna say a word agin' her. Now, either you give me my week's rent or I drag you by that white hair of yourn down to the sheriff's office.”

      
The hold on Roxanna's arm tightened painfully. All she had left to her name were the clothes in her bags and a few pieces of her mother's jewelry that had been in the Fallon family for generations. As it was, she would probably have to sell the scarab bracelet for passage downriver to St. Louis. Perhaps in a city that large she could lose herself so Isobel couldn't find her.

      
“I have only my clothing, not a dollar to my name, Mrs. Priddy. Unless I find work you'll never get your money.”

      
Hepsabah rubbed her free hand across her nose and let out a snort of derision. “You think I'm stupid? You ain't never goin' ta pay me noways. Least I can do for the Cause is see a Yankee spy like you ends up behind bars where she belongs!”

      
The landlady was tall and so wide she didn't have any sideways, but she was slow and clumsy. Raising the portmanteau with her theater clothes and last good pair of boots in it, Roxanna swung it hard as she could at the fat woman's head. The blow caught her in the temple and she staggered back, releasing Roxanna, who lunged away and darted down the hallway and out the front door.

      
The cool damp air felt clammy on the young woman's sweaty face as she ran toward the river. She could hear the old landlady's screeches fading as she put more distance between them. Clutching her two valises tightly, she slipped behind a trellis covered with dense honeysuckle vines. She took gulping breaths and at last her heartbeat returned to normal and the stitch in her side relented.

      
“Think, Roxy, think,” she muttered aloud. Was there any other boat departing for downriver today? Hannibal was a sleepy little river town without much traffic. The
Memphis Queen
had pulled in to take on supplies yesterday. Perhaps it might be leaving this morning. But how to get around the sheriff? Surely Mrs. Priddy would have him waiting to search for her felonious boarder. A tight smile touched Roxanna’ s lips as she knelt down in the shelter of the honeysuckle arbor and began to root through her bags. An hour later, Althea Goodman, an elderly widow, crippled with arthritis, limped up the gangplank of the
Queen
, past the watching sheriff, with a heartrending tale for the boat's captain.

      
By nightfall Roxanna was on her way to St. Louis. The only river city below Iowa that held Northern sympathies, St. Louis was large and prosperous, a good place to assume a new identity so Isobel Darby could not find her. Of course, it would not be easy. She would have to do far more than simply change her name. The unique color of her hair and eyes presented a problem, as did her options for earning a living. She had become an actress out of necessity, and made an adequate living at it—until her enemy's paid detectives tracked her down each time she started over. Then Mrs. Darby would follow with her tearful lies about the shameless harlot of a Yankee spy who had murdered a Confederate war hero. War hero! Isobel was the one who should have become an actress.

      
Maybe St. Louis would be different. At least she was familiar with the city, having gone to finishing school there before the war. Before the war... How different her life had been back then. She had a home, social position, creature comforts—and most of all the love of her family. Mama doted on her elder brother Rexford, but she had been the center of her papa's world, the little urchin who followed him about like a puppy.

      
That had been how she learned about his work on the Underground Railroad. Late one evening when he had not come home, she'd sneaked out of her bedroom by climbing down the sycamore tree outside the window and went in search of him. She'd found him helping three terrified black men climb into a root cellar beneath their barn. He'd sworn the ten-year-old Roxy to secrecy and from that day onward his causes had become her own. Who would ever suspect a taffy-haired child of hiding runaway slaves in the wagon she took across the ferry into Illinois?

      
During the years she attended school in St. Louis, she chafed with eagerness for every holiday and summer recess so that she could return to help with her father's work. But those years of camaraderie and adventure had ended one brutal and bloody night in 1861 when a dozen masked bushwhackers had ridden into their front yard with torches blazing. Jerome Fallon had faced them bravely. As long as she lived, Roxanna would never forget her brother holding her back as she screamed and struggled to break free while the night riders tied Papa to a horse and rode away with him.

      
The next day the sheriff brought his lifeless body back to the family. Her childhood had ended that night. Mama grieved herself to death and Rexford joined the Union army. To avenge her beloved Papa, Roxanna learned to fight in the only way a woman could. She became a spy.

      
No sense letting her mind trespass into that abyss. Roxanna forced her thoughts away from the painful memories and considered her old friend Alexa. Alexandra Hunt was from a prominent St. Louis family, a timid, plain young woman, shy and unsure of herself. The brash outgoing Roxanna had pitied her. When they were assigned to be roommates by the headmistress of the finishing school, she had striven to bring the younger girl out of her shell. Although she had little success with that, an unlikely friendship had sprung up, which had endured through the years.

      
But Roxanna had not heard from Alexa for nearly a year. Perhaps she was married by now or had moved away. Far more likely she had simply lost touch with Roxanna because the theater was such a gypsy life that Alexa' s letters could not be forwarded.
Please be at home, Alexa. I need a safe place to stay until I can find work.
The thought that her friend might be afraid to harbor an infamous-spy-turned-actress hovered in the back of Roxanna’s mind, but she refused to consider it. No use borrowing trouble. Enough came directly on its own.

      
Her fears proved groundless. No sooner had the little German maid scurried off to tell her mistress that Miss Roxanna Fallon had come for a visit than Roxanna found herself ushered into the private chambers of Alexa's elegant Lafayette Square house. “Roxanna, it's been ages,” Alexa said, beckoning her friend to approach the bed.

      
Alexa had always been pale and ethereal, but now she looked wraith-thin, her eyes dull and her once pale silvery hair lusterless. Roxanna was shocked at the changes a few years had wrought as she crossed the room and took Alexa's bony hand in hers. It was cold as ice. “You've been ill,” she said as a wracking cough seized her friend.

      
When she recovered her breath, Alexa shook her head. “Just a touch of the influenza, my doctor says. It was you I was worried about when my last letters to St. Paul and Davenport were returned.”

      
Roxanna shrugged. “It's my work. Traveling repertory companies seldom stay more than a few weeks in one place.” She did not want to mention Isobel Darby's malevolent pursuit, which had cost her every job and every move. “I should have written you more often.”