Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (31 page)

      
“A falling out between the Central Pacific directors in the offing,” Cain mused. “Do you think Powell is involved in the theft? It isn't like him to be careless—or to chance messing with Huntington or Hopkins.”

      
Jubal's brow wrinkled. “Aye, it isna’, but I plan to look into it further. No matter who's behind it, it can work to the Union Pacific's benefit. Meanwhile, you just keep the crews working in spite of the wrath of winter storms and raiding renegades.”

      
“Anything else you want me to handle?” Cain asked sardonically.

      
Jubal laughed and placed one hamlike hand on Cain's back. “For now, go home to yer wife, laddie. It's late and I know she has yer dinner waiting.”

* * * *

      
“You're positive, Dr. Milborne?” Roxanna's eyes glowed with joy. She had been so frightened the past week that she was coming down with some terrible malady. Last night she'd actually fallen asleep while waiting for Cain to come home for dinner. But now she understood why.

      
“Yes, you are most certainly in a family way, Mrs. Cain. I should say the child is due in the spring.” He hesitated for a second, then stated, “I wouldn't think it wise to remain with the work train, especially over the winter months. I understand there'll be no permanent camp this year and we're headed into mountainous country.”

      
Roxanna shook her head. “No, Dr. Milborne, I want to be with my husband. Our railcar is very comfortable. I'm certain I'll be fine.”

      
Milborne took one look at her determined expression and knew further argument was useless. Cain had been away far more than he had been with his wife over the months of their highly irregular marriage. He wondered if old Jubal might decide to send his granddaughter to safety in Denver when he learned of her delicate condition, but decided it prudent not to mention that possibility.

      
On her walk back to the car, Roxanna was wrapped in a euphoric haze, thinking of a small black-haired child, a miniature version of Cain. He would want a son, of course. All men did. Or would he? The thought struck without warning. They had never talked about children. In truth she had never given it much thought because after the horror of Vicksburg, she had come to believe she might be barren. A child, a gift of love from her husband, was something so beautiful, precious, unimaginable that soiled and unworthy Roxanna had never dared to hope for it. But now a miracle had been granted her.

      
She desperately wanted to build a family with Cain, to surround him with unconditional love, to make up for the bitter loneliness of his earlier life. He had never spoken of love, making her reticent to confess how desperately she had come to need those words, for she loved him with her whole heart. Each time he lay with her she tried to tell him with her body what she could not say. She hoped from the hunger with which he took her that he was coming to love her, but sensed at times that he was angry with himself for wanting her so. Certainly he did desire her. She had tried to tell herself that it was enough. Would she lose even that when she began to grow fat and shapeless carrying his child? He was gone too much anyway on Union Pacific business. There could be other women in the camps...

      
“No,” she murmured resolutely to herself, hurrying across the muddy ground, stepping over puddles glassy with a fine film of ice in the twilight chill. The other specter haunting her relentlessly was exposure of her identity. If Cain wanted Alexa Hunt's children, would he want Roxanna Fallon's—once he knew the whole ugly truth about who she was and what she had done...what had been done to her? Would he see this baby as her way of binding him to her when her deceit was revealed? And surely it would sooner or later be revealed.

      
Perhaps if Isobel is desperate enough for more money...
No, she let the thought fade, knowing she was only deluding herself. The woman's sick hatred would never allow that. The blackmail was only another means of toying with her.

      
“I'll have to tell Cain the truth. Now. Tonight,” she vowed.
Before your courage deserts you,
an inner voice murmured. If he accepted her as Roxanna, then she would tell him about the baby. And Jubal. How would he take the shocking news? She pushed the thought aside, concentrating on working up her courage to tell her husband first.

      
Here and there workers she had helped at the infirmary called out greetings. She returned their hellos absently, intent on reaching the car. Cain might already be waiting for her. Should she tell him at once?

      
Yes, she would. Climbing up the stairs to their railcar, she pushed open the door and stepped breathlessly into the parlor. Taking a deep breath, she called out, “Cain? Are you home?”

      
Receiving no answer, she flung her cape across the settee and headed for the bedroom to freshen up. Li Chen would be here soon with their supper. Then she saw the envelope propped up on the dining table. Her husband's bold, careless scrawl was unmistakable. With a sinking heart she tore it open and read.

Alexa,

I've gone to check on the grading crew to the west. I'll be gone for a week or so.

Cain

      
No apologies, no real explanation of why he had to do everything on this accursed railroad! All her resolve began to ebb as anger and disappointment brought tears brimming over. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, blinking at the harshly scrawled message. He could not even close it with “love”! She sank down onto a chair and lay her head on the table, suddenly too weary to do more.

* * * *

NEAR THE UTAH-WYOMING BORDER

      
Huge chunks of granite, some weighing more than one hundred pounds, flew through the air like the eruption of a giant volcano. Smoke billowed out and the reverberations of the roaring blast almost deafened the two men lying on the ground.

      
‘‘Damn, sure and that was a close one,” Patrick Finny said, dusting himself off, checking his person for injuries from the explosion.

      
‘Too close,” Cain said, still crouched behind the shelter of the boulder where he had thrown himself when the unexpected blasting began.

      
“Those Mormon graders have a right sour outlook. What else might they be doin' to us just because the Union Pacific lordships are slow payin' their wages?” Finny groused, starting to rise to his feet.

      
Cain grabbed him by his shirttail and pulled him back just before another blast shook the ground beneath their feet.

      
Finny tumbled down beside his benefactor and groaned. “Sure and every bone in me bloody body is broke. What the divil's wrong with those fellows? This isn't the section of rock they're supposed to cut.”

      
“You know that and I know that, but they don't seem to,” Cain replied, studying the lay of the land. They had walked out from the camp and climbed this rocky hill to check the course through the draw where the grade was to be cut. The survey called for the blasting hundreds of yards to the south of them. Just as he ruminated on that mystery, another blast erupted, but this time it was much farther distant, where they expected it to be.

      
“Glory to the blessed Mither and all her saints, they finally got it right.”

      
“Don't leap up too quickly. There could still be another blast rigged to go off close by,” Cain cautioned. “I'm going to circle back through that brush.” He motioned to the left. “You go around the other direction, and for God's sake keep low and look for signs of a charge.”

      
“Sure and I can be smellin' it, the way that stuff stinks,” Finny said, spitting a wad of brown tobacco juice from his mouth, which smelled little better than the acrid burn of blasting oil.

      
They set out down the hill, gingerly picking their way, listening and sniffing the air as they went. When using patent blasting oil to cut the grade, workers normally dug a deep narrow channel into the large rock surface, then placed the explosive inside and lit a fuse—a long slow-burning fuse.

      
No hiss of a fuse, no pungent stink of oil. They reached the bottom of the hill and rejoined forces. “I didn't see any sign of a blast being set. Did you?” Cain asked Finny.

      
The Irishman shook his head. “Just a couple of holes in the good mither earth the size of an Englishman's greed.”

      
“Almost as if someone deliberately threw vials of oil directly at us.”

      
“You're meanin' they wanted to kill us?” Finny replied nervously, glancing around him. They were out in the open now where it would be difficult to get close enough to repeat the trick. The camp could be seen in the distance. Several of the graders were running in their direction, yelling.

      
The grading camp was run in such a slipshod fashion that the supervisor could not even account for whether or not any of his men had set charges on the wrong hill. Nor did he keep good enough records to verify the theft of any blasting oil. Cain detected whiskey fumes on his breath and that of several of the others. He fired the lot of them and sent Finny back to inform Jubal that they would need a new supervisor and half a dozen blasters on the forward grading crew. Then he rallied the rest of the men and put them back to work. He kept a close count on the cases of blasting oil.

* * * *

      
The week dragged interminably as Roxanna waited for Cain to return. She struggled to hold fast to her vow, but the passage of each day made it more difficult. Sleep eluded her in spite of the exhaustion Dr. Milborne had explained was normal in the first months of pregnancy. She hated lying alone in the big empty bed, aching to feel the warm reassuring presence of her husband's big powerful body spooned around hers.

      
Please, God, don’t let me lose him!
Roxanna lay huddled on her side with one hand protectively over her abdomen. She had just awakened from another nightmare in which Isobel told Cain that his wife was a harlot, a spy and an infamous stage actress. Something had awakened her, thank goodness.

      
Then she heard the sound again—the faint squeaking noise of a window being raised—the rusty one in the storage compartment of their railcar. Someone was climbing inside!

      
Everyone knew she slept alone in the railcar while Cain was away, but who would accost Jubal's granddaughter, no matter her tarnished reputation? And only a madman would risk Cain's rage. Silently she slipped from the bed, trembling with terror. A thin shaft of moonlight sliced across the room. Using it to gain her bearings, she moved carefully to the dressing chest in the corner and slipped open the bottom drawer. Where was her Sharps pepperbox? She had concealed it beneath her lingerie, where Cain would not find it and ask embarrassing questions.

      
The footsteps were slow and stealthy as the intruder worked his way through the dark crowded storage room to her bedroom door. She clawed through filmy silk garments in the drawer. At last her fingers seized upon cold metal. Was it loaded? She could not remember, nor was there time to check, for the door swung open with a sudden swish and a squat burly silhouette stepped into the room. Peering at the empty bed, he muttered a curse and turned to scan the rest of the large room.

      
Knowing that she had nowhere to run, Roxanna huddled motionless in the corner, clutching the gun in both hands. His eyes were already accustomed to the dark and she was wearing a white nightrail. Little chance he would miss her. He did not.

      
“A light sleeper, eh?” he muttered. Moonlight danced on the steel blade clutched in his left hand when he moved toward her.

      
“I have a gun. Stay back,” Roxanna managed to say in spite of the fear squeezing her throat closed.

      
The intruder laughed, low and ugly. “You got some nerve, honey,” he said, undeterred.

      
Roxanna fired point-blank. The small pistol's sharp report was followed by a bellowed oath as her assailant was knocked backward but not off his feet by the .32-caliber bullet. She quickly cocked it to fire again, but the figure lurched into the shadows. She heard the clatter of his knife hitting the floor as he yanked open the parlor door. She fired again, but was instantly sure she had missed. Then he was out the door.

      
She heard the sound of footsteps pounding across the muddy earth along the work cars. By the time she reached the window and looked outside, he had vanished in the darkness. She stood with her back against the wall, clutching the pistol as she shivered in the aftermath of pure terror. In moments Li Chen dashed across the tracks, with Jubal close behind. The whole camp would soon be awakened. Roxanna sat down on the edge of her bed, trembling with the sudden overwhelming need for a bath.

      
By morning word spread that someone had broken into the railcar of MacKenzie's granddaughter, intent on dishonoring her. Jubal posted a five-thousand-dollar reward dead or alive for a large thick-set man with a bullet wound somewhere on his upper body. The whole camp was searched and every man on the work crew summoned for a roll call. Whoever her attacker was, he was not on the Union Pacific payroll.

      
Jubal stormed furiously about the sort of lowlife scum who would attempt to rape a sleeping woman in the sanctity of her own bed. He posted two guards on the railcar until Cain's return. Everyone believed the attacker was motivated by the scandal over Alexa Hunt's Indian captivity and subsequent marriage to a breed gunman.