Nan Ryan (49 page)

She had to get away. Now. Before he awakened. In her mind’s eye she saw the two long blue rail tickets resting in the silver bowl downstairs in the corridor. She would take one and tear the other up. Then she’d slip silently from the darkened house, hurry up the mountainside, and pray that Black Star was in his stable.

The stallion knew her now. She’d be able to keep him quiet while she bridled and saddled him. She would ride him into Virginia City and hold him there until the sun came up. Then she would turn him loose, send him home. By then it would be too late for Star to get into town before the train’s 7:00
A.M
. departure for San Francisco.

Slipping her bare feet into the worn leather shoes she’d been wearing on the night Star kidnapped her from the show train, Diane had everything worked out in her mind and was ready to leave.

She was confident that if she could make the westbound train before he caught up with her, Star would not pursue her. Why should he? His revenge was complete. He had no further use for her.

Diane quietly crossed to the open bedroom. She hurried anxiously out into the dim corridor, took a few steps, and stopped.

Her chest aching with pain, her eyes swimming with unshed tears, Diane turned and went back inside the big bedroom. She crossed directly to where the dark, sleeping Star lay sprawled out naked in the moonlight.

Clasping her hand over her mouth to stifle a choking sob, Diane took one last, long look at the lover in whose bed she would never again wake up.

Part Three

Chapter 45

Time was running out.

If a staggering sum of money could not be raised before the looming November 1 deadline, the impounded equipment of
Colonel Buck Buchannan’s Wild West Show
would belong to the man who had bought off all the creditors and consolidated all the debts: Pawnee Bill.

Unless a miracle occurred, the show would not open come next spring.

Diane Buchannan didn’t believe in miracles. She did believe in fighting to the bitter end to save the financially troubled show. She had not yet given up. She refused to admit defeat until any and all possible sources had been exhausted.

So on another dark, rainy October morning in a long string of dark, rainy October mornings, Diane awakened in the Oakland boardinghouse. Groggy with sleep, she painfully recalled the golden mornings she’d opened her eyes to the bright Nevada sunshine wrapped in Star’s strong arms.

Diane drew the thin blanket up to her chin. She gritted her teeth against the never-ending ache of loneliness and despair. Four weeks had passed since she’d left him. Now her days, her nights, her weeks were filled with agonies of a kind she’d never expected to experience in this life.

Her first thought each morning was of Star.

Her last thought each night was of Star.

She loved him still. Loved him despite his cruel betrayal. Would love him until she drew her last breath. Loved him enough that she stubbornly refused to press kidnapping charges. Loved him so much she had kept his true identity hidden, refused to tell anyone. The secret would go with her to the grave, along with her hopeless, undying love.

Diane squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head on the thin pillow, vainly attempting to banish her dark, handsome tormenter. Reminding herself one more agonizing time that she meant absolutely nothing to Ben Star. If she had, he would have come for her.

Admittedly she had halfway expected him. Had foolishly hoped he would show up and tell her there’d been a terrible misunderstanding. He loved her, couldn’t live without her.

But he hadn’t come. Wasn’t coming.

Ben Star had tricked her, used her, made her pay with a most humiliating form of revenge. He had made love to her. He had led her to believe that he was in love with her. He had gained her complete trust.

And coldly plotted each time she had apprised him of her grandfather’s sad financial state. Again and again she had stupidly told Ben Star that it would break the Colonel’s heart if he lost his beloved wild west show to Pawnee Bill. She had to stop thinking of her foolish mistakes. She had to stop thinking of Star. She was where she belonged —with those who loved her.

Diane thought back to the day she had safely arrived in San Francisco. Fondly she recalled the emotional reunion with the Colonel and Granny Buchannan. Their outpouring of love and happiness had been a balm for her aching heart.

And later that evening she’d visited Ancient Eyes at the hospital. His sick black eyes had brightened at the sight of her. She’d squeezed his hand, knowing instinctively that the secret they shared would remain forever between the two of them.

Diane’s eyes opened fully on the gloom of her dismal boardinghouse room with its faded yellow and white wallpaper, cracked ceiling, and white iron bedstead.

She sat up and swung her legs to the floor. With the greatest effort of will she forced her mind back to the business at hand. And that business was saving the Colonel’s show from Pawnee Bill’s clutches!

Dressed and smiling bravely, Diane knocked on her grandparents’ door an hour later. Ruth Buchannan let her in, inclining her white head toward the solitary figure slumped in a chair before the room’s one window. The aging woman lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

Diane nodded, squared her own slender shoulders, and crossed to her grandfather. He had not yet dressed. He wore a nightshirt and a faded flannel robe. His long white hair had not been brushed. There was a look of deep sadness on his weathered face.

“What’s with you, lazybones?” Diane touched his shoulder, leaned down, and pressed a kiss to his tousled white hair. “Time’s wasting, Colonel. We need to get across the bay and see if we can—”

“What for?” The Colonel’s lifeless blue eyes briefly lifted, touched her, then lowered once more to stare out the window. “I know when I’m beat.”

Diane exchanged worried glances with her grandmother, swallowed hard, and went down on her knees beside her grandfather’s chair. Pretending a confidence she didn’t actually feel, she laid her hand on his wrinkling, age-spotted one and said, “Such nonsense. I refuse to listen to this kind of talk! There’s still two days, for heaven’s sake, and we’ve not yet been to every banking institution in San Francisco, so—”

She went on and on about how today their luck could change, told him he couldn’t give up, they were not yet defeated. Diane talked and talked, being her most persuasive. But it didn’t work. She couldn’t reach him. She sighed and fell silent.

“No. It’s no use, Diane,” said the Colonel. “You’re arguing with a Buchannan.”

“That’s nothing,” she said. “So are you!”

The Colonel finally looked into her snapping violet eyes, laughed, and surrendered. “You got me there, child.” He shook his white head, still smiling. “Give me half an hour?”

Diane shot to her feet.

“Exactly thirty minutes and no longer.” She smiled warmly as the aged man rose from his chair. Pointing a finger in his face, she warned, “And no more defeatist talk, Colonel. I’m not wasting my precious time with a big, overgrown whiner.”

She kissed his cheek and was gone.

The dogged pair spent the long, rainy day in San Francisco vainly attempting to find operating capital. They’d been turned down by Crocker and Leland Stanford and the Lick family and Senator George Hearst and all the other powerful moneyed empires and institutions in the city. Desperate, they now went from one small firm to the next.

Heads were shaken at their outlandish proposals. Doors were slammed in their hopeful faces. The purse strings of San Francisco’s teeming financial district were pulled tightly shut against Colonel Buck Buchannan’s outstretched hand.

At day’s end Diane and the Colonel wearily climbed the hill to the Embarcadero, boarded the ferry in the drizzling rain, and wordlessly crossed the bay back to Oakland.

Inside the dim corridor of the boardinghouse Diane touched her grandfather’s shoulder, smiled, and said, “Same time tomorrow, Colonel? I thought we’d try—I— we—” Diane stopped speaking.

The Colonel had started to cry, the tears tumbling out of his pale blue eyes. He sagged against the wall and bowed his weary white head.

Diane had never seen her grandfather cry. She was at a complete loss. This couldn’t be. This fearless, legendary old plainsman couldn’t be weeping like a frightened child. This big white-haired man who had always been the one she’d turned to, the one all the others turned to as well. The one who unfailingly made everything all right for them all. He couldn’t be helpless and afraid.

But he was.

Diane dropped her intrepid pose, put her arms around her grandfather’s neck, and hugged him consolingly.

“I’m sorry, Colonel,” she said softly, her heart aching for him, “I’m so sorry.”

Nodding and patting her back, Colonel Buck Buchannan promptly composed himself. Diane stepped out of his arms as he reached for his handkerchief and dried his eyes.

As if nothing had happened, he said, “Ruth’ll be worrying. Let’s get on upstairs.”

Diane stayed where she was. “You go on, Colonel. Think I’ll take a walk before supper.”

“It’s still raining.”

“I know.”

He nodded understandingly, exhaled, and slowly climbed the stairs, his lame leg obviously aching from the constant dampness and from walking the streets of San Francisco.

Diane bit her lip, turned, and hurried back outdoors. She stood for a moment on the front steps, deciding in which direction she would walk.

It made no difference. She had no destination. She was fresh out of plans. Where she went was of absolutely no consequence. Either to herself or to anyone else.

Diane slowly descended the wooden steps and turned right. She strolled unhurriedly down the wet board sidewalk. She carried no umbrella; she didn’t particularly care if she got wet. She turned her face up to the misting rain, feeling the needles of water sting her face. It felt strangely good.

Fifteen minutes later she was soaked to the skin, her heavy black hair plastered to her head, the long ends clinging damply to her neck and collar. She stood before the huge warehouse where, under lock and key, all the solid assets of
Colonel Buck Buchannan’s Wild West Show
were housed.

Rain dripped from the eaves of the big wooden structure. Slow-moving droplets slipped down the rough plank siding. The building looked as if it were weeping.

Diane worked the combination lock and let herself inside the silent warehouse. Blinking in the darkness, she took down a kerosene lantern from a peg beside the door, lit it, and pulled the door closed behind her.

Holding the lantern high, she made her way through the stored props and equipment. Stacks of movable wooden seats. A large, folded tent. Coils of rope, rotting from age. The Colonel’s many trophies: the glass-encased medals, dozens of rifles and guns and saddles.

One saddle was missing.

The silver-embossed saddle presented to the Colonel by the queen of England had been sold weeks ago along with other sentimental valuables to pay the boarding-house bill.

Diane moved on, walking between a mirrored animal coach and the big bell wagon. The chuck wagon was there. The fancy buggy in which Texas Kate rode into the arena. The tribal costumes of the troupe Indians.

Diane abruptly stopped.

On the floor directly in front of her, its colors faded by the sun, lay a large poster advertising the show. Diane reached for it, lifted it up into the lamplight.

Splashed atop the colored poster in bold black letters: “Beauty and the Beast.” Beneath the lettering an artist’s drawing depicting a naked savage with flowing black hair and wild dark eyes straining against imprisoning chains.

Diane looked pained at the memory. The lamp wavered in her hand. Shadows rippled over the faded poster, giving the eerie appearance of the chained savage moving. Diane’s chin began to quiver. Her eyes smarted. Heart pounding painfully, she stared at the likeness of the chained savage.

Her tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks as she read the bold black lettering across the bottom of the poster.

“
THE REDMAN OF THE ROCKIES
.”