Big Sky Eyes (29 page)

For the past twenty days aboard the coach they’d sped day
and night with only brief stops to change the mules, freshen up, eat a few
bites and walk around. Just days ago they left the greenery and cool mountain
streams of the Mormon stronghold of Salt Lake. They had been told that the
stretch between Utah and the Sierra Nevada Mountains would be long and
strenuous, but she had not been prepared for heat that made her toes slick,
thirst that wilted her throat and dryness of air that sliced through each
lungful of breath.

The road began to slope and curve, sweeping wide around a
hill encrusted with sagebrush before the ground finally melted away from them.
She gasped at the unfolding view. The mountains, whose highest peaks had only
been visible above the mellow jut of desert floor before, now spread into the
lowest point of a valley in strokes of deep lavender and bristlecone blue.
Millions of diamond-points glistened off of the surface waters of a lake at the
bottom while a verdant roll of emerald growth sped away from it to huddle in
the ankles of the mountains.

“Is this it?” she asked on the back end of a deep breath.

“What?” came her father’s reply.

“California,” she managed.

Argyle Cameron, nearly three times his daughter’s age,
leaned his gray head out of the coach windows to take in the view. Though he
appraised the scene with awe and praise, he shook his head at her ignorance.

“This is not California,” he admonished. “California is on
the
other
side of the Sierras where
the endless stretch of ocean can be seen from any one point.”

Lila rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Well, California
or not, this is a bit of Eden after miles of nothing but sand and sun. I’ll
wager that our mules would consider that lake a far greater salvation than the
entire expanse of the sea.”

Other guests in the coach began leaning toward the windows
for a glimpse of greenery in the otherwise cracked earth of the dry desert, but
before they could send their prayers of thanksgiving to the heavens, the coach
veered away from the view and disappeared once again into the sandy hills near
Mt. Davidson. Lila had just practiced a harsh swallow of imaginary water down
her throat when the crack of a gunshot split the air. Fearful faces glanced
from one another.

“Was that what I think it was?” she asked her father, but he
didn’t have time to answer.

 
More shots came in
quick succession, one blasting into the side of the carriage near Lila. Slivers
of wood splintered off of the windows with a metallic zing and flew inside,
slicing her cheeks. She held her hands up to protect her face as more bullets
ripped at the transport. She yelped in protest as her father grabbed her valise
and threw it out of the window so he could push her head down onto her lap.
About that time she saw her first dead body in the form of the coach driver
fall beneath the rattling wheels.

The other women in the coach cowered near their knees while
the men inside covered them and drew their pistols to fire out of the windows.
Lila knew that her father never carried a gun. He was a healer who did his best
to save lives, not take them. His shrunken elderly frame was the only shelter
she had from the whizzing bullets, and wooden debris. The thought of her
remaining parent dying, defenseless, in a barren desert woke
an
anger
in her and she bristled instantly.

They had braved miles of Indian
territory
with their scalps intact. Now that they were nearing the end of their travels
some renegade mountain men planned to slow their progress for the last
twenty-five pounds of property they owned? She would not tolerate it. Without care
or concern she pushed her father off of her, lifted her skirts and pulled a
derringer pistol from her boot and aimed it out of the window. Her father
stared at the gun, no bigger than her palm and his mouth fell into a full, wide
circle of shock.

“Where did you get that?!”

“Ft. Kearny,” she answered swiftly before turning her
attention to the approaching threat.
 
A
quick survey showed four riders, their faces mostly hidden behind bandana masks
swarming toward them with pistols braced in each hand. When the first bandit
drew near enough, she pulled the trigger. Through the mottled screams of
fearful women he fell from his saddle and bounced off of the spinning wheels.

As shots continued to ring out the other three bandits wove
in and out of view and Lila saw the coach’s conductor, the last man controlling
the horses, fall to the ground. She knew then that they were racing at a
breakneck pace without a driver. What was worse? There were only three guns,
including hers, firing back at the bandits.

A younger man inside the coach stood as much as the space
allowed and promptly removed his coat, as if the thought of scrambling out to
take hold of the reins was too dirty a job for his good attire. As soon as he
tossed open the door he was shot back into his seat with a spurt of blood
spraying from his shoulder. Lila’s father scrambled over six dovetailed laps to
care for the wound as they were all jostled and tossed about.
   

She had been so engrossed in the injury that she missed the
approach of another bandit until he clutched onto the wooden railing beside
her. He jumped from his horse and plastered himself against the door and she
recoiled against her seat with a shriek. Sunlight glinted off of a shiny onyx
ring on his little finger as he reached in, grasping for her throat, but his
fist closed around the open side of her collar instead. She raised the
derringer again.

Before she could pull the trigger, the echo of a far-off
shot reverberated through the coach and she felt the warm spray of blood across
her face and neck as the man’s body went limp and fell from view, taking a
large chunk of her collar and camisole with him. The rear wheels thumped over
his body, causing the coach to tilt dangerously toward the ground. She braced
herself with a tiny yelp, but the carriage soon slammed back down onto its
supports and continued to rattle away.

She wiped at the blood on her cheeks, smearing it onto the
sleeve of her dress and leaned out of the window to see where the shot had come
from. Another rider stood on the horizon, aiming a long-barreled rifle at the
remaining two bandits. Mauve clouds of desert powder shot into the air as his
aim was deflected into the brush. The two bandits finally broke away from the
coach and disappeared over a hill.

The lone gunman kicked his horse swiftly toward them and
their runaway horses. Spellbound, Lila watched as he maneuvered his mount
slightly ahead of them, and just as the horses raced past he leapt from his
saddle and landed in the leather rigging of the harnesses. She stretched out of
the window to see as he righted himself and hoisted up onto the wooden seat of
the wagon. Digging his heels into the boards, he yanked back with his full
might. They skidded to a halt and the air was at once full of relieved sighs
and grateful wails.

Lila collapsed back against the leather and shut her eyes
with a sigh. Adrenaline pulsed through every inch of her. Her eyes flew open as
the man pulled open the door. Stilted breath leapt up into her throat. Sunlight
washed over his golden hair, a thin mustache brushing against his upper lip.
His smile was wide and pure and produced two endearing dimples on either cheek.
He wore the crisp clothes of a gentleman. Round, bright bluebell eyes beamed
down at her and Lila felt
herself
tumbling into love.

Forgotten was the state of her dress. Soft, large waves of
brown hair fell from beneath her skewed hat to tumble over the exposed mound of
flesh swelling out of the frilly edge of her corset and she felt a blush work
its way up to her cheeks. He looked from the deep line of her cleavage to the
soft pout of her mouth.

“Are you all right, Miss?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you” she whispered. “That was so brave of you.”

“Indeed, sir,” her father echoed. “We are forever in your
debt.”

“Nonsense,” the man replied. “Since the hills have run rich
with gold and silver, every conman and criminal from Boston to San Francisco
has found a nesting place here. I was merely in the right place at the right
time.”

“But where is ‘here’?” Argyle asked.

“You are in between the Dayton and Carson stations, nearly
five miles from Virginia City, my good man.”

“Five miles?” her father echoed. “Good. We need to get this
man to a place where I can tend the wound properly.”

The rescuer peered into the carriage to see the blood-soaked
torso of the man and he nodded. “Is anyone else hurt beside the man and the
girl here?”

“I’m not hurt,” Lila corrected. “He only ripped my dress.”

He ran a finger over one of the slashes on her cheek and she
reached up, having forgotten they were there and that her face was full of the
bandit’s blood as well.

“It’s nothing,” she assured with chagrin. “The gentleman
there needs the help.”

“Well,” the rescuer replied, “I will drive you and your
party into Virginia City then.”

“We would be much obliged, sir,” Argyle admitted.

“It’s no trouble at all, I assure you,” their rescuer
supplied. “I am most willing to safeguard a party of such…lush treasures.” He
lifted Lila’s hand to his mouth and brushed his lips across her knuckles as he
spoke. “Please, call me David. David Gardner.”

“This is my daughter, Lila Cameron,” her father announced in
a tone that revealed his dislike for the man’s open ogling. “And I am Dr.
Argyle Cameron.”

“A doctor?
We need doctors at the
mines.” He spied the tiny pistol resting on her lap and picked it up with a
look of amusement on his face. “Does this thing actually work?”

“You can ask the man who took a bullet to his chest,” she
responded before sending a nod toward the direction they’d just traveled. “He’s
back there.”

David chuckled and pulled a handkerchief from his vest
pocket. His horse had returned and he used a canteen from the saddle to wet the
cloth.

“Here,” he said, handing it to Lila. “It will be easier to
clean the blood off of you while it’s still wet.” Lila nodded her thanks. She
swiped absently at her face while she watched David tie his horse to the back
of the coach before closing her door again. He smiled once, a rakish grin that
produced those fetching dimples and then climbed up into the driver’s seat.

She could hardly breathe as she resettled into her seat and
set the fan to its erratic flutter again, but there was no mistaking the
whirling sensations
come
to life in her belly and the
quaking of her hands. The entire ordeal was wreaking havoc on her senses.
The shots, the sights of dead men falling, the taking of a life,
the unforgettable view of David’s heroics.
Her heart could barely
contain its pounding and she didn’t know if it was the incident or the man that
was making her insides tremble.

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