Dutchman and the Devil : The Lost Story (9781456612887) (15 page)

“How exciting,” Julia murmured.

“Not at first, but it became so,” Weiser said, looking down at Julia, who was hanging on his every word. “Even though I didn’t know much about poker, I could see there was some cheating going on. My partner, who wasn’t very brave, saw it too and whispered we should get out of there. But I wanted to stay and see what happened.” He paused for a sip of lemonade.

“Don’t stop,” Julia said breathlessly.

“As it turned out,” Weiser continued, “we couldn’t of left if we wanted to because right then one of the poker players jumped to his feet and accused the dealer of cheating.”

“Oh, my God!” Julia exclaimed.

“And before anyone else could move, the dealer whipped out a pistol from under the table and shot his accuser.”

“No.” Julia put her hand to her mouth.

Weiser reached over and patted her shoulder reassuringly, “But the man wasn’t dead.”

Julia had been holding her breath. She let it out with a soft, “Phew.”

Weiser smiled at her womanly soft heart, and continued. “In the resulting confusion, the crooked dealer jumped on a horse and rode away, chased by the men he had tried to cheat, while Waltz and I stayed with the wounded man and took care of him.”

“How kind you are,” Julia said.

“But that’s not the end of the story,” Weiser said. “Our wounded man was Don Miguel Peralta, who owned land in Mexico and California and Arizona. Don Miguel was so grateful for our help, he rewarded us with a gold mine in the Superstition Mountains.”

“And that’s where you go to get your gold?” Julia whispered.

“It is,” Weiser whispered back, reaching out and putting his hand on her breast, “but you mustn’t tell a soul, my dear. Cross your lovely little heart.”

“I promise,” Julia sighed, lying back on the grassy riverbank and pulling him down beside her.

That evening, after Julia went home, Weiser sat in the rocking chair in front of his house, contemplating the ash of his Cuban cigar. A splendid reddish yellow moon rose on his left and cast its light on his small vegetable patch, but he was too absorbed in his uncertainty about Julia to notice the moon’s beauty.

Before Julia’d come into his life, Weiser’s experiences with women had been one-night stands, and love was just a four letter word. Moreover, in his pre-Julia world, everyone was out for something — usually money — and no one but a fool would help another human being simply out of the so-called goodness of his heart.

“So what was she after?” Weiser asked himself.

The reply came automatically: “She’s after my gold.”

But what was she willing to do to get it? So far, her demands — requests, actually — had been modest. And the sex she gave in return was like nothing he’d experienced before. He certainly didn’t want to give that up!

Well, he didn’t have to do anything about Julia right away, but he did need to replenish his funds. He looked up at the sky, saw only a few scattered clouds, and decided to go back to his mine the next day.

He was followed by a pair of prospectors who had come down from Utah with high hopes of following the Dutchman to his elusive but increasingly famous mine. In what was now an established practice for him, Weiser dispatched these would-be thieves as soon as they reached the Superstition Mountains before proceeding to the haven of his Bradshaw Mountains mine.

Unknown to Weiser, his temporary absence, as brief as it was, left Julia open to the charms of Charlie Smith, the traveling salesman who had swept her off her feet on his earlier visit to Phoenix and then abandoned her. Charlie was down in Tucson, sipping a beer after a hard afternoon with the wife of a customer, when a buddy of his came in and sparked his interest in his old flame. Plunking his briefcase on the bar, the newcomer ordered a beer for himself, then turned to Charlie and said, “Ain’t you the fella who was bangin’ the Thomas woman who owns a bakery up in Phoenix?”

“That’s ancient history,” Charlie replied.

“Well, you might think about adding a new chapter,” the first salesman said with a lascivious leer.

Charlie tilted his chair and ran his hand through his dark curly hair. “Why would I want to do that?” he asked.

“Well, buddy, I hear she’s sharing her buns with the Dutchman,” the first salesman chuckled. “Seems he gave her enough gold to pay off her mortgage. An’ on top of that, folks up there seem to think she knows where his fortune is!”

The next day Charlie was back in Phoenix, renting a room above Matt’s Saloon and seeing Julia on the sly. With the Dutchman out of her bedroom for a few nights, it left an opening that Charlie knew how to fill. And it wasn’t long before he got her thinking about her future. “How long are you gonna fool around with that geezer?” he whispered as he fondled her breasts. “As long as it takes to get his gold?”

“It ain’t like that, Charlie,” Julia protested. “It ain’t just the money. I know I can count on him to take care of me. And you ain’t making any offers, are you?”

Charlie roared with laughter.

Julia pushed Charlie aside and sat up. “I ain’t kidding, Charlie,” she said. “His money is only part of the deal. That old man’s treats me like I was a lady that’s worth protecting, which is more than I can say about you!”

“Whoa there, Ma’am,” Charlie said, reaching up and gently touching Julia’s elbow. “I may not have his money, but I have something else I know you need.” When she didn’t pull away, he continued, “What I was thinking is there might be a way you could have both the old man’s money and me in your bed.”

After a moment, Julia grinned and pulled Charlie to her. And as she lay in his arms, she couldn’t help imagine herself and Charlie at the fancy new hotel over at Coronado, hobnobbing with the rich and famous. No more getting up at dawn to make bread and strudel, she thought as Charlie kissed her eyelids and softly stroked her loins. Raising his head for a moment, Charlie saw her expression and knew he’d hit the jackpot this time.

The day after Weiser returned from his mine, he settled into his usual seat at the poker table in the saloon for a hand, and noticed a couple of men at the bar look his way and snicker. He half rose to go ask them what the joke was, but decided to let it go until he finished the hand he was playing. But they obviously knew something he didn’t.

Later that afternoon, as Weiser was upstairs at the bakery waiting for Julia’s customers to pay for their strudel and go home, he found one of Charlie’s shirts stuffed into a drawer in her bedroom. He left it there and told himself it must be one her husband had left behind, but he couldn’t help but suspect there was something fishy about keeping clothing that belonged to a man who’d been gone for over a year. He wanted desperately to believe Julia was innocent, but images of her in the arms of another man began to insinuate themselves into his imagination.

But even his imagination couldn’t do justice to the actual goings on. Julia was not only falling head over heels for Charlie, she was quickly losing most if not all of her interest in Weiser. If there was any glimmer of light left in her love for him, it was colored gold.

Nonetheless, a couple of months later, as Weiser was feeling more and more neglected by Julia, she suddenly shocked him with what seemed like an act of extraordinary kindness and courage.

After a dry summer, unusually heavy rains melted snow at the Salt River’s source in the mountains and sent floodwater rushing toward Phoenix, further threatening Weiser’s utopia. Concerned for the welfare of his chickens, he decided to leave the comfort of Julia’s bakery and go check on them. “Julia won’t mind if I borrow her horse,” he thought, as he laced up his leather work boots, buttoned up his warm woolen jacket, pulled his wide-brimmed hat down over his ears, and sloshed across the street to the livery stable. John Lutgerdner, who owned the stable, told Weiser he was out of his mind to go to his farm in this weather, what with the river about to overflow its banks. “Them chickens can fend for themselves,” Lutgerdner told Weiser.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Weiser replied. “Them chickens ain’t smart enough to come in from the rain by themselves.”

Sure enough, Weiser found his silly chickens huddled under a tree as the floodwater crept toward them. He looked around and the only high place he could think of to put them was his roof. Propping a ladder against his house, he began picking the chickens up one by one and carrying them up the ladder.

He hadn’t got far when he had a better idea. “These hens’ll cooperate a darn sight quicker if I put my rooster on the chimney,” he said to himself. But even with the rooster up there, cock-a-doodle-doing his little heart out, it was a good couple of hours before the birds were all safely off the rapidly disappearing ground.

And Julia’s horse was gone. In his concern for the chickens, Weiser had forgotten to tie his horse to the hitching post beside his house.

Seeking dry clothing, Weiser went into his house, but the damp sweater he’d carelessly thrown on his bed the last time he was here wasn’t much improvement over what he already had on. Exhausted from his efforts to save the chickens, and losing the body heat he’d generated climbing up and down the ladder, Weiser huddled on his bed and dozed off.

He was awakened by the moaning of the wind. Or was it something else? He began to hear words, and the moans became the voice of his dead partner. “You can’t get away with it.”

In spite of himself, Weiser shrank back and whispered, “I only did what I had to. Ain’t nothing wrong with taking my share of the gold.”

The ghostly visitor moved his head slowly from side to side and sighed. It sounded unsettlingly like, “Murderr, murderrr...,” as it faded away.

Overcome by his situation, Weiser sank back on his pillow, closed his eyes, and sobbed.

Ten minutes later, he opened his eyes and saw a feeble ray of late afternoon light on the foot of his bed. “At least it’s stopped raining,” he thought. Looking down, his optimism faded as he saw the water in his house had not gone down. On the bright side, if there was one, neither had it risen, as far as he could tell.

The sun disappeared and the rain resumed. Weiser sat up, put one foot on the floor, and it splashed. He put his head in his hands, closed his eyes, and tried to summon the comforting image of Julia. She’ll find me, he told himself, but doubt nibbled at his confidence, asking, “Will she figure out where I am? And will she care?”

Meanwhile, Julia’s horse had returned to the livery stable without Weiser. Concerned that his original prediction for disaster was correct, John Lutgerdner, the blacksmith, hurried to Julia’s bakery. “I told him he was crazy to go out there, what with the river rising,” Lutgerdner said. “But I wouldn’t want him to catch his death of cold on account of helping his chickens.” He paused, then said, “If you like, Missus Thomas, I’ll help you look for him.”

Julia’s last customers had gone home an hour ago. She pulled on her waterproof mackintosh, locked the door to the bakery, and followed Lutgerdner back to the stable. In a matter of minutes, he had a horse hitched to his buggy and they were on their way.

The rain, which had let up for a few minutes, began again in earnest. Water flowed across a low place in the road, causing the horse to hesitate. Lutgerdner handed his reins to Julia and climbed out of the buggy. Putting his hand on his horse’s bridle, he spoke gently to the nervous beast and led him through the water to higher ground beyond the puddle.

While his rescuers struggled to reach Weiser, steady rain made the afternoon darker. Weiser drifted in and out of sleep, afraid his ghostly visitor might return.

Having safely gotten past the deepest of the puddles, Julia and Lutgerdner reached Weiser’s farm, but saw no light in his window. Was this miserable trip all for nothing? But where else could the man be? Unbidden, the image of him being helplessly washed downriver passed through Julia’s mind. Maybe she cared for him more than she’d imagined.

“Come on,” she said to Lutgerdner, “he must be inside the house.”

Now it was Lutgerdner who hesitated. “I think the house is starting to melt,” he said nervously.

“All the more reason to hurry,” Julia replied, jumping down from the buggy and landing in mud up to the ankles of her high-button shoes.

Lutgerdner lent her a hand and they waded to Weiser’s door. It was unlocked, but swollen shut.

Huddled on his bed and shaking with cold, Weiser thought he heard Julia call, “Jacob, are you in there?” Afraid he was hearing things, but hoping she was real, he tried to reply. All that came from his mouth was a whisper.

Nonetheless, Julia heard him. “He’s in there!” she cried out.

Just then, a corner of the roof made a harsh, high-pitched sound as it settled slightly, signaling impending collapse.

Lutgerdner was a big, strong man accustomed to lifting heavy loads. “Come on,” Julia urged him, “put your shoulder to it. We’ve got to get him out.”

Lutgerdner backed off a little, then really leaned into it. The door didn’t budge. He tried again. Still no shift. But it finally yielded, albeit just a fraction of an inch, on his third attempt, and a moment later they were inside.

The roof creaked again, louder this time. There was no time for conversation, as Lutgerdner picked Weiser up and carried him to the buggy and placed him on the seat. As he did so, the tortured adobe sighed and collapsed into a heap of mud, with only a chimney rising to indicate this had once been a man’s home.

Julia and Lutgerdner started home with Weiser propped between them. Weiser was shaking uncontrollably, his usually tanned face was deathly pale, and his lips and ears were turning blue. “What if he dies?” Julia thought. “What will I do if he dies?” She’d been counting on his gold to secure her future. “He can’t die now,” she thought. She turned to Lutgerdner, urging him to go faster.

“Can’t do it, Ma’am,” Lutgerdner replied. He turned his head to look at her briefly and continued, “I’m doing the best I can. We’ll be lucky to get home without having to make a detour.”

As it turned out, they were able to make it across the low spot and reach Julia’s bakery without further incident. Without having to be asked, Lutgerdner carried Weiser inside. And he helped Julia set up a cot for Weiser in her storeroom, strip Weiser of his saturated clothing, and help him into his temporary bed.