Desperate Hearts (14 page)

Mitch traded with her, grinning. “I just want you to get a feel of how different guns can be. A rifle will kick pretty good. A shotgun would probably knock a woman your size on your—” He hesitated. “It would probably knock you down.” He reloaded his revolver and put it back into its holster. “You’ll feel a big difference when you shoot that little derringer, but at least you will have some protection, which makes me feel
better.”

“As long as it doesn’t kick. My shoulder hurts
again.”

“It won’t kick. At first you might still want to use both hands, though. Let’s walk up closer. You need to practice with that thing at a closer range or you’re just wasting your time and ammunition.” He led her much closer to the rocks. “Do you remember what Swede showed us? That little gun doesn’t have a revolving chamber like mine does. The firing pin rotates every time you pull back the hammer, so it hits on each of the four chambers. Those bullets are .32 rimfire. They won’t do as much damage as my .44s, but they’ll serve the purpose if a man is close enough. Go ahead and get a feel of how it
fires.”

Elizabeth held the small pistol out and pulled back the hammer, then pulled the trigger, very pleased with how much easier it was to shoot than Mitch’s revolver. “This I can handle,” she told
Mitch.

More wagons and men on horses rode back and forth along the nearby road while for another half hour or so Elizabeth practiced loading and shooting the derringer. Each time she finished shooting it, she had to wait a few minutes for the barrel to cool off before she could remove it and reload. Mitch finally had her load it one last time and put it into her
handbag.

“You are now armed and probably dangerous,” he told her. “Be careful with that
thing.”

“Yes, sir. And thank you for showing me how to use
it.”

“Yeah, well, just don’t use it on
me.”

“Make sure you don’t give me
cause
to use it,” she
quipped.

Mitch chuckled and led her back to the buggy, then pulled a thin cheroot from his vest pocket and stopped to strike a match against his boot heel. He lit the cheroot and drew on the smoke, then took Elizabeth’s arm and helped her climb back into the buggy. “We’ll visit a couple of homes now, if you can call them homes. From here on you’ll see tents, houses made of trees and brush, sod houses, log houses, you name it. For the next ten or twelve miles all sorts of so-called homes are scattered everywhere along the creek.” He walked around and climbed in beside her, picking up the reins. “You need water for placer mining, so pretty much every place there is mining, there is also a river or a creek. Farther up in the mountains some men even live in little caves. You won’t find many women out here, Elizabeth. I only know of two close enough to visit and get back to Alder in one day, and only one of them has a child, a boy about six. The others are a lot farther up the gulch. It’s impossible for them to come all the way into Alder for school, and you’d have to make circuit trips like a preacher to reach all of them where they live, and that would be very unwise…and in winter that, too, would be
impossible.”

Elizabeth frowned. “So you’re saying I probably won’t be able to do any
teaching?”

“There are a few kids in Alder,” Mitch answered with a shrug. “So you still might be able to do some teaching. Just don’t ever try coming up here alone. That gun won’t do you much good if you’re taken by surprise and there’s no time to reach into that handbag.” Mitch turned the buggy in order to head farther into the gulch. But he suddenly pulled the horse to a halt again when he spotted riders heading toward them from the direction of
Alder.

“Damn!” he swore, slamming on the brake again. “Get out of the
buggy!”

Alarmed, Elizabeth looked in the direction Mitch was watching. “What’s
wrong?”

“Those riders coming toward us—they’re from Hugh Wiley’s ranch. Do like I said. Get out of the buggy and stay down on the other side of
it.”

Elizabeth pulled her gun from her
handbag.

“No!” Mitch told her. “Keep that thing hidden and just stay out of the way. That little pistol won’t be much good in this
situation.”

Her heart pounding, Elizabeth climbed down and moved behind the buggy, wondering if violence and danger was all anyone knew in this country. In spite of what Mitch told her, she slipped her pistol into a pocket in her skirt so it would be easier to reach if necessary. “How do you know they even mean any harm?” she called to
Mitch.

“Because I’ve been doing this long enough to know, that’s all. Wiley’s brother and his wife are still damn unhappy about that hanging.” Mitch climbed down from the buggy, reaching inside on the floor to take hold of his repeating rifle. “Good thing I spotted them before they could ride up behind us,” he told Elizabeth. “I have no doubt they meant to get the drop on me.” He cocked the rifle as four men and one woman drew
closer.

Elizabeth studied the approaching riders, the four men ranging widely in ages and sizes, all needing shaves. She recognized one of them as Bobby Spence, Hugh Wiley’s friend who’d threatened Mitch the day Hugh Wiley and Jake Snyder were first brought into town. All four men were well armed, and Elizabeth was terrified for Mitch. He couldn’t possibly take all of them, could he? The woman with them wore a man’s cotton pants that fit her because she was as big as a man herself. There was nothing soft or pretty about her. Her dark hair hung in an uncombed mess beneath a wide-brimmed hat, and Elizabeth had no doubt it was Trudy Wiley. The way Mitch had described her, she was likely as adept with a gun as the men who rode with
her.

Mitch cocked his rifle. “Don’t say a word,” he told Elizabeth without turning around. “They don’t give a damn about you. They’re here for me.” He raised the rifle. “That’s close enough, Trudy,” he yelled
out.

The woman reined her horse to a halt and put up her hand, signaling those with her to stop. She lowered her hand. “We ain’t here to kill you, Mitch Brady—not right
now.”

“What do you want, then?”

“Just to warn you. I want you to worry, you bastard. I want you to have to keep lookin’ behind
you.”

“Trudy, your husband dug his own grave when he attacked that stagecoach and killed those men. I’m not responsible for that. You know that out here a man pays for his
crimes.”

“Yes, and you vigilantes make sure even some
innocent
men
die.”

One of Wiley’s men went for his gun. Elizabeth jumped when Mitch’s rifle boomed and the man’s gun and its holster went flying right off his gun belt. As it tore through the gun belt, the bullet also ripped through the man’s hand, and the force of it made him lose his balance. He cried out and fell from his horse, then rolled to his knees, shaking and holding his wrist, staring at his bloody hand. The whole thing took a mere half second, and in the other half second Mitch had cocked his rifle again and aimed it steadily at the rest of
them.

“Anybody else want to even
think
about going for his gun? He’ll get the same thing. That includes you, Trudy.”

“Mitch Brady wouldn’t shoot a woman,” Trudy
sneered.

“Don’t bet on it, Trudy.”

“You can’t get all of us, Brady, and you’re riskin’ that little lady hiding behind the buggy getting killed, too,” another man
answered.

“Seems to me Hugh Wiley and those who ride with him like hiding behind a woman’s skirts,” Mitch answered. “Hugh tried attacking this woman when he robbed the stage, and then he tried to use her for cover when he got out of jail. It didn’t work either time, so if you think having this lady along can slow me down, think again. Do you want to end up like Hugh did? Or that friend of yours on the ground? You start shooting and vigilantes will hunt you down to the last man…and woman, if need be. All of you had better pick that man up and ride out of
here.”

Elizabeth noticed two riders in the distance riding hard toward them. Were they more of Trudy Wiley’s
men?

“Killin’ you might be worth a hanging,” Trudy told Mitch. “You vigilantes think you can just run your own courts and make your own judgments and hang men at random. You stole my husband from
me.”

“He made sure of his own death when he robbed that stage. You know damn well he deserved to
hang.”

“He was my
husband.”

“And I once considered him a friend until he decided to take the easy way of making money. I’m sorry you lost nearly all your cattle last winter, Trudy, but that’s no excuse to kill for
money.”

The other two riders came closer, and Trudy and her men turned to see who it was. “Bastards!” Trudy spouted once she recognized
them.

“You got a problem here, Mitch?” one of the riders
asked.

Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief. They apparently knew Mitch and were here to
help.

“You might say that,” Mitch
answered.

“We was in Alder to see you when a couple of miners from the gulch rode up and told us they’d seen Wiley’s men ridin’ out toward the gulch—said you’d come out this way with the lady there. We figured we’d best come and see what this bunch was up
to.”

Mitch had still not lowered his rifle. “I have to say I’m glad to see you, Hal,” he
answered.

The two well-armed men moved their horses closer and faced Trudy Wiley and the men with her. “You’d best be on your way,” the one called Hal told them. “It doesn’t take much to get hung in these parts, so if you don’t want to feel a rope around your necks, ride
off.”

Trudy’s men looked at her as though asking what she wanted them to do. Trudy squinted her eyes, glaring at Hal. “We’ll leave. We didn’t come here to kill nobody just yet. You boys, on the other hand, don’t seem to need much excuse to
kill.”

“Your man went for his gun, and when it’s five against one, I don’t take chances,” Mitch told her. “Pick that man up and get
going.”

Mitch still had not lowered the
rifle.

“Your time is comin’, Mitch Brady,” Trudy told
him.

“If it does, there will be another hanging in Alder, maybe more than
one.”

“Sure. You vigilantes wouldn’t think nothin’ of hangin’ a woman. Even so, I’d go down knowin’ you’re
dead.”

“Whatever suits
you.”

The other two vigilantes sat with guns drawn. “Pick that man up and get out of here before we hang you just for your threats,” Hal warned. “There’s an innocent woman here and you took a chance on her getting hurt. Get the hell out of
here!”

One of Trudy’s men dismounted and helped the injured man to his horse. The injured one cursed a blue streak as he managed to remount. The second man also mounted up and they turned to
leave.

Trudy backed her horse. “Have a pleasant day,” she sneered at Mitch. “And if you’re sweet on that dainty little woman with you, you’d better marry her soon, because you don’t have much time left to bed her.” She turned her horse. “Come on, boys.”

All five rode off and Mitch lowered his rifle. A shaken Elizabeth, embarrassed and angry over Trudy’s last remark, put her pistol back into her handbag. She came from behind the buggy, not sure what to do or
say.

“You two were almost too late,” Mitch told the men who’d come to their
rescue.

The one called Hal grinned. “I have a feeling you would have found a way to get out from under that bunch,” he told Mitch. “We didn’t ride out here to save your hide. We were just worried about that pretty little lady with
you.”

Mitch grinned, and Elizabeth was surprised that all three men could brush off coming so near to death as though it was an everyday
experience.

“The lady’s name is Elizabeth Wainright,” Mitch told them, extending a hand to urge Elizabeth to come stand beside him. “She’s new in Alder. I brought her out here to teach her how to use a
gun.”

“Good idea,” Hal
answered.

“I reckon’ she’ll be needin’ her own gun in a place like this,” the second man remarked, studying Elizabeth. “What on earth brings you to a hellhole like Alder?” he asked. “Surely you don’t intend to try to mine the
creek.”

“Now, David, you know anybody who comes here has a right to privacy,” Mitch reminded the man before Elizabeth could answer. He turned to her then. “The nosy one there is David Meeks. The other one is Hal Wallace. Both of these men have wives in Virginia City. In fact, Hal has a small ranch just south of
there.”

Elizabeth nodded. Both men were a bit older than Mitch. They were clean-shaven but looked as though they needed baths and a change of clothes. She turned to Mitch. “Vigilantes?”

Mitch nodded. “Good men, both of
them.”

Hal winked. “Ma’am, we thought maybe you’d need more protection from Mitch here than from Trudy and her
bunch.”

“We were at the hanging last week,” David told Elizabeth. “I’d heard about you but never got to meet you.” He grinned. “It figures Mitch would end up bein’ your escort. He’s a real ladies’ man, Mitch
is.”

“And you like to stir up trouble,” Mitch answered. “You’re quite the ladies’ man yourself when your wife isn’t
around.”

“Whooee!” Hal shouted. All three men laughed. Elizabeth frowned, wondering how much of that was true…especially about Mitch Brady. And something about the other two made her uncomfortable. They were armed as though going to war, and she couldn’t dismiss the stories Ma Kelly had told her about vigilantes, let alone what she’d read. The power they held in these parts made her shiver. She’d seen the ruthless side of Mitch, and she remembered Ma’s warning that certain vigilantes stretched the law a bit too far, hanging men who barely had a chance to prove their innocence. Ma claimed Mitch wasn’t that way, but Elizabeth had seen his violent side. Was he worse when he was with men like Hal and David? Were they the type who were a bit too eager to hang a man? They’d already hinted at doing just that to Trudy Wiley’s men, just for threatening Mitch. Were they also capable of hanging a woman? Mitch even said he’d shoot her if he had
to.

Ruthless or not, she couldn’t help being grateful these two men had come along when they did. “Thank you for coming out to help,” she told
them.

Hal tipped his hat. “It was worth it just to get a look at you, ma’am. You take care now, and don’t trust Mitch any farther than you can throw him.” He and David Meeks both laughed as they rode
off.

“Don’t listen to those two,” Mitch commented. He turned and put his rifle back behind the buggy seat, then offered a hand to help Elizabeth climb back
up.

She hesitated. “How can you treat all that so lightly?” she asked, still
shaking.

“You do what I do long enough and you just get used to
it.”

“And you apparently have a lot of
enemies.”

“It comes with the job,” he answered, his hand still
out.

Elizabeth turned away, taking his hand and climbing back into the buggy. Mitch climbed up beside her and snapped the reins, heading toward the
gulch.

He waved and nodded to more riders and wagon drivers as they made their way deeper into the wide, rocky gulch. Elizabeth said nothing, trying to fathom how a man could be taking a pleasant buggy ride one minute and then find himself in a shoot-out the next—then go right back to the pleasant buggy ride afterward. She wanted to go back to town, shaken by the confrontation with Trudy and her men, but she didn’t want to seem weak and
childish.

They rounded a corner, and the vast, wide gulch opened before them, littered with sluices, all sorts of mining equipment, and ruggedly built homes—some made of logs, others out of sod or rocks, and some just tents. They were spread out all over the gulch for as far as the eye could see. It was like riding into a wide tunnel, with high rocky walls on either side that jutted into the sky as though forbidding anyone to try to get past
them.

“I can’t imagine living like some of these men are living,” she commented, overwhelmed.

“Men will put up with anything they have to in order to get rich,” Mitch answered. “From here on, the gulch is dotted with little towns and homes and mines all along the way, kind of like one big city that stretches for about twelve more miles. That’s what keeps us vigilantes busy—lots of thieving, fighting, and even murdering over gold, food, women, you name it. There’s a special code among miners and they don’t put up with much. They’ll hang a man faster and for less reason than my men and I
would.”

Elizabeth could do nothing but stare as they drove past cabins and tents and all sorts of crude shelters. Some were supply tents and makeshift saloons. Roughly dressed men with long hair and beards worked stooped over the stream with pans and sluices. She turned to look behind them. “Are you sure Trudy and her men won’t come back for
us?”

Mitch shook his head. “You can bet Hal and David are scouting around behind us, making sure that bunch goes back home. Don’t worry about
it.”

“But Trudy wants to kill
you.”

Mitch held his cigar at the corner of his mouth as he talked. “She’s not the only one. A lot of people talk big, Elizabeth, but they don’t follow through.” He slowed the buggy and took the cheroot from his lips, pointing.

“Those wooden troughs you see going way up into the mountains are flumes built to bring water down to keep it flowing through the sluices,” Mitch told her. “The miner shovels gravel into the sluice from the streambed and is able to wash away most of the dirt. Gold is heavier than dirt, so it is usually left behind—mostly tiny nuggets, sometimes bigger scads that can be worth four to five dollars, sometimes more. Some miners go higher up into the hillsides and the mountains in the distance and blow their way into them looking for heavier veins of
gold.”

Men dug ditches. Some were up higher, chipping away at the rock walls with picks. Another explosion even higher made the ground
shake.

“Some of these miners have four and five men working for them. Some find ways to pocket some of the nuggets and dust, which leads to trouble. Then there are the road agents, like Hugh Wiley, who decide to rob a payload headed for Virginia City, or rob one of the wagons coming out of here carrying
gold.”

Elizabeth struggled to concentrate on what he told her, still upset over the shooting. Mitch apparently thought nothing of wounding a man. She realized he’d done what he had to do, but it seemed so easy for
him.

The wild and noisy activity in the gulch helped steer her attention to things Mitch was showing her. “They’re tearing up the earth, destroying the natural beauty of this place,” she
observed.

“It’s like I told you, men will do anything to get rich. There used to be a lot of alder bushes and trees all along this creek, but most of them have been cut down for building cabins and burned for heating and cooking.” Mitch snapped the reins again and drove the buggy over a crude wooden bridge to the other side of the stream and toward a cabin made of wood slats. “The woman with a little boy that I told you about back in town lives up there in that cabin. We’ll go talk to her about
schooling.”

Men glanced at Elizabeth and whistled. Some stood up straight and just stared at her. A couple of them nodded to
Mitch.