A Grave for Lassiter (16 page)

He had found Roma stumbling along a prairie road. She was swollen in various places from a beating with a horse whip. Angrily she showed them her wounds. Her gypsy family had betrothed her to a man she didn't like. When she refused him, her brother beat her and she ran away.

“Only a few more days and we'll be in Bluegate,” Roma called happily to Rex. But he was asleep, the book he had been reading in his lap.

She calculated the days in her mind. They would arrive on the twenty-first of the month. At times when she first joined the company, as Doc liked to refer to it, and things had gone badly, she would comfort Doc or Rex in her tent. She failed to see anything wicked about bringing pleasure to another human being. But after meeting Lassiter, everything changed. For the first time in her young life she knew love. Doc and Rex understood and left her alone.

Her black eyes glowed as she contemplated her reunion with Lassiter. By now he had probably settled the business he had come back to finish. He had never told her very much, but a lot of it she had learned from his ravings when he was so ill from his wound.

Doc and Rex would have to go on without her. She and Lassiter would probably live out their lives in Bluegate. She liked the sound of it. She was a very contented young woman. She hummed a Romany song as she drove the team.

Chapter Sixteen

The moment Lassiter and the wagons rolled into Aspen City after the long haul down the mountain from the Bitterroot Mine, he saw a familiar figure waving a hand and smiling broadly. Lassiter gave Vance Vanderson a spare nod.

“The best news I ever heard in my life was that you're alive, not dead,”Vanderson enthused.

Lassiter looked down at the proferred hand, then into the hazel eyes that seemed bright with sincerity. “The last time I remember seeing you, you were running for your life to the back of a mine tunnel.”

“And I was yelling every step of the way for you to follow and we'd make a stand.”

“You did that?” Lassiter asked mildly.

“Sure I did. I thought you were behind me all the time.”

Lassiter gave him a hard smile, then saw Melody hurrying from the office to join them. For her sake, he shook Vanderson's hand.

“I was off trying to earn money enough to help keep Melody going,” Vanderson said. “Melody, tell Lassiter how much I brought home to you.”

Melody smoothed her dress as to give herself time to think, then said, “It was around five hundred dollars.” Lassiter was unimpressed. He wondered where the man had gotten his hands on that much money. Not by the sweat of his brow, he would bet.

Later he got Melody aside and gave her the bank draft. She was surprised at the amount.

Dad Hornbeck prepared roast venison for the evening meal. Melody and her husband were invited to eat with the crew. They crowded into the room adjoining the barn and sat on benches at two long tables.

Melody sat at the head of the table where Lassiter was eating. She wanted to know all about the long trip. However, Lassiter minimized the night attack by the Farrell men and his later encounter with Art Blackshear at Montclair. But Bert Oliver wasn't satisfied to leave it at that. The garrulous southerner told it all. Lassiter wanted to kick him under the table, but was sitting too far away. He didn't want Melody to start worrying.

While Oliver was talking, Lassiter noticed that Vanderson squirmed in his seat. Probably out of boredom.

When the meal was finished, Vanderson spoke solemnly to Lassiter, saying how he intended to cooperate. “You just name what you want done and I'll do it.”

“I'll remember.” Lassiter's smile was for Melody's benefit. Despite their success with the Bitterroot business, he sensed she was unhappy. She seemed ill at ease and dark shadows were noticeable under her gray eyes. All because her goddamn wayward husband had decided to come home.

Finally Vanderson walked around the table to stand next to Melody's chair. “If you boys'll excuse us, I think my wife and I will retire now.” He reached down to take Melody by an elbow. He drew her up from the chair. “Come, my dear,” he urged.

She complimented Hornbeck on the supper he had cooked for them, but the old man only shrugged. He seemed embarrassed by her obvious distress.

Lassiter felt sorry for her, too. Vanderson was making such a show of taking her to bed. Wearing a confident smile, his eyes bright with triumph, as if to say, “You boys don't have what I've got.”

Melody was white-faced.

In the bedroom she turned on him. “Did you have to make such a spectacle out of us retiring for the night?”

“What in the world is wrong with that. I'm sure they all know what husband and wife do behind closed doors.”

“Why couldn't you have waited until they left the room?”

“Maybe I just wanted to let them know that you belong to me. They should keep their hands off.”

“I belong to
nobody
.”

Her vehemence surprised him. So he decided to back off. “I didn't mean you actually belong to me. . . .” “Vance, I feel that you're up to something. I don't know what it is, but I assume I'll find out soon.”

“How can you even think such a thing?”

“Probably trying to figure some way to steal Northguard out from under me.”

“My God, I'm only trying to be nice, to make up for those horrible weeks I was away from you.”

As she stared at him she wondered at her unstable mind, the day she had impulsively agreed to marry him. That day he had slipped into the big house in Bluegate, before Farrell had taken it over, apparently concerned solely with her welfare. He had just learned, so he claimed, that her late Uncle Josh borrowed heavily from Kane Farrell and that the note was suddenly due.

“Yes, I know,” she had replied sadly.

“I understand you're going to move your freight line to Aspen City.” That was when he came close and took her hands. On that morning it seemed that his was the only comforting presence, and this following the horror of a meeting with Farrell. There had been shouting and tears.

“Where else can I go but Aspen City?” she asked Vance.

“I'll help you move. Together we'll make a success out of the company and Mr. Kane Farrell be damned.”

“Together?”

“It's a rather backhanded way of asking you to marry me.”

It startled rather than filled her with joy. He seemed a decent young man. And who else did she have? Lassiter dead and Uncle Herm apparently rooted permanently down in Rimrock.

Who else could she turn to but Vance Vanderson? She felt strongly that Farrell wouldn't back off after taking the grand house, the stable, and the warehouse her Uncle Josh had built. No, he would harrass her every step of the way. Although she had made brave talk, following Lassiter's death, that she could run the company herself, others told her differently so often that she had begun to believe it.

She had written Uncle Herm time and again at the hospital in Rimrock and had received only a few garbled sentences in return. Finally, she wrote to the doctor who replied that Herman Falconer, having lost a leg, was drinking himself into an early grave because of it. And no, there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Impulsively and desperately, she had whispered, “I'll marry you, Vance.”

When he hooked a forefinger under her chin to force her to meet his lips, she almost backed away. The pressure of his lips sent no rockets roaring through her, did not make her tremble and her heart soar. It was just . . . nothing.

Now, standing with the backs of her knees against the bed, she knew that marrying him had been a terrible mistake. In the first place, she instinctively knew he didn't love her. And she certainly didn't love him.

As he removed his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair, she could see that he planned a repetition of recent nights.

“You're not sleeping here tonight.” She saw him stiffen and squint at her.

“My dear, I thought we removed the last obstacle to our happiness here in this room. I enjoyed myself and assumed you did also.”

“Sleep in the lean-to with the men.”

“I'd be the laughingstock of the town. My own wife throwing me out of our bedroom.”

Under his steady gaze and that small smile under the mustache, she felt her defenses start to crumble. But she straightened her shoulders, determined not to give in to him. “I might as well tell you now as later. I want a . . .

“Divorce,” he finished for her. Which she confirmed with a vigorous nod of her head, no longer able to trust her voice.

“It's Lassiter who put that idea into your head.”

“Not at all,” she responded quickly. Too quickly, she wondered, for his eyes had taken on a strange glow.

Slinging his coat under an arm, he stalked to the door. He looked back at her there beside the bed, face pale and hands clenched at her sides.

“I don't want to hear you ever mention divorce again,” he said in a flat voice. “In the first place, no judge would give you one. Besides, I'd never let you drag me into court. We'll forget about tonight so you can collect yourself and realize your obligations. But tomorrow night I'll expect you to be a wife to me. And we'll have no more of this nonsense.”

But she was stubborn and refused to bend. Move slowly, he cautioned himself, for there was the possibility that if he pushed it she might run to Lassiter for protection. That prospect chilled him. Eventually, he knew, if he handled it right, he could wear her down.

A few days later he felt the need to get away and rode into Bluegate. At Shanagan's he found Farrell talking to the saloon owner. Shanagan moved away when Vanderson came to stand next to Farrell. There were only a few other customers at the opposite end of the bar. Vanderson felt uncomfortable because Farrell hadn't spoken or offered him a drink, but just kept staring sideways out of those green eyes.

“You must enjoy horseback riding,” Farrell finally said in a nasty voice.

Vanderson gave him a blank look.

“You must enjoy it to make the long ride in today when you're coming in at the end of the week.”

Farrell pointed at the large calender on the backbar with a big circle around the twenty-first of the month. Suddenly Vanderson remembered. He was supposed to bring Melody in on the twentieth.

“I'll be here, so don't worry about it,”Vanderson said with a tense smile. Actually, he had forgotten all about Farrell's grand plan to use Melody as bait for Lassiter.

With a shot of the splendid Colonel's Choice warming his stomach, reality began to loom coldly in Vanderson's mind. Would Melody in her present mood come to town with him?

“Trouble with the wife?” Farrell asked after studying him.

“Hell, no. What made you ask that?”

“You've got that look that all married men seem to get periodically.”

Vanderson voiced the possibility that Melody might ignore all entreaties to get her to town. He was laying the groundwork, just in case. Then he saw that the face under the dark red hair had twisted in a fury.

“She's to be at my place on the twentieth.”

“Yes, I understand, but . . .”

“Just what seems to be your problem with the lady?” Farrell asked in icy tones.

Vanderson was so keyed up that the invitation to unload his grief was too tempting to resist. Among his many complaints against Melody was that she was about as responsive as a lump of coal.

“Vance, you're a bigger damn fool that I thought,” Farrell cut in.

Vanderson felt himself redden. “I'm doing my best, damn it!”

“I guess I didn't make myself clear the other day about those forgeries . . .”

Vanderson was alarmed. He looked past Farrell's big shoulder to he other drinkers down the bar. “Not so loud,”Vanderson hissed.

“Loud? I'll shout it. If you don't start acting like a man.” Farrell leaned an elbow on the varnished barlip. “I'm surprised you'd let a puff of blond hair get the upper hand.”

“She's not easy to handle . . .”

“Double your belt and use it on her backside. You'd be surprised how little touches like that can get a woman thinking your way in a big hurry.”

“I suppose.”

“And when you bring her to town, make sure she's in a good mood. With everything else on my mind, I have no time for a surly female.”

Farrell got a pen, ink, and sheet of paper from Shanagan and then wrote a note, neatly printing each letter. Vanderson looked over his shoulder. What he read, caused his heartbeat to quicken.

“But Lassiter will be gone on the twentieth.”

“This will bring him back.” Farrell folded the note and slipped it into Vanderson's shirt pocket.

When Vanderson had left the saloon, Farrell called Shanagan over. “How're the tickets going?”

“Great.”

“I want the place jammed.”

“There'll be well over a thousand on hand, Farrell.”

“As long as the two of us are going to hang around and grow rich in this lump of mud known as Bluegate, how about calling me Kane?”

“You call me Tex.”

“You don't talk like a Texican.”

“So many sheriffs down there was lookin' for me,” Shanagan said with a straight face, “I figured to borrow the name.”

Farrell laughed. Before it was over, they would do a lot of business together, he was sure. Such as selling tickets at five dollars each, a small fortune for some, for the privilege of witnessing a spectacle. And in the exchange of money for a ticket, a promise was elicited not to discuss what was planned in the Farrell Freight Lines warehouse on the twenty-first of the month.

Chapter Seventeen

Upon his return from Bitterroot, Lassiter's main problem was keeping the crew intact until the next shipment for the mining company arrived by rail at Montclair. But he was finally forced to lay off some of the men. However, he managed to keep five wagons busy with short hauls of supplies to mines and isolated villages.