She Returns From War (6 page)

Another laugh. "Sounds like you got yourself mixed in with the wrong church. Ain't no priest in his right mind would tell a pretty thing like you to come down where pretty things wither and rot if they ain't trampled on first. Maybe he was aiming to make a warning out of your tale when it's through."

"His name," Victoria said after a pause, "was Father Baez."

For the first time, the woman's face grew still. In the silence that followed, Victoria smiled to herself. This woman was Cora Oglesby; no doubt about it. What's more, she'd taken the huntress off-guard.

Cora swallowed. "Well, ain't that interesting."

"It is," Victoria replied.

"Who might you be looking for?"

The young woman leaned forward slightly. "A woman he once knew. Something of a bounty hunter, I understand."

A few of the men around her laughed, but Cora's face was stone. "What makes him think she's here?"

"Such a woman would truly be a rarity," Victoria said. "There aren't too many like her, even here in the American West. Really, I might have just as easily found my way here without his help."

"It would have gone better for you if you had," Cora said. "I don't expect your woman takes kindly to being hunted. If she's got that big a reputation, mayhap she'd set on you just for having the gall to track her down."

Victoria tried to snuff out the spark of fear that Cora's words had ignited. "That would be quite impolite of her. It isn't as though I've come this far just for a chance to kill her."

Cora nodded. "There's a smart girl." She set her cards face down on the table. "I'm out this round, boys. Gonna have me a chat with our new friend. Just holler at Eli if your throats start getting dry."

Her chair skidded backward as she stood to her feet. Cora Oglesby was not tall, perhaps only an inch or two taller than Victoria. Buckskin trousers and a faded flannel shirt hung from her frame, accented by a bandana tied around her neck. Her boots thumped across the floor, and she motioned for Victoria to follow her. Steeling her nerves, Victoria trailed Cora through a door in the rear wall of the saloon.

"Hold the door a minute," Cora said. The old huntress pulled a book of matches from her shirt pocket. Striking one against the wall, she lit a lamp hanging from the ceiling. Yellow light filled the room, illuminating stacks of wooden crates and barrels. Turning back to her visitor, Cora nodded. Victoria pulled the door closed, muffling the voices of the saloon's patrons.

"Now, then." Cora folded her arms and leaned against a stack of crates. This close, Victoria could see a line of thin white scars on the other woman's cheek. "I ain't the type to toss around words when they don't need tossing. You mind telling me why you saw fit to pester poor old Father Baez just so you could get your mitts on me?"

"I have a favor to ask of you," Victoria said. She paused, waiting for the woman's harsh laugh, but it never came.

"You going to come out with it, or can I get back to my game?"

The young woman took a deep breath. "I need your help hunting a group of creatures."

"Awful long way to come just to find a big game hunter," Cora said. "Ain't you English folk got enough of your own hunters? Why bother me about it?"

"Big game hunters couldn't help me with these sorts of creatures," Victoria replied.

Cora raised an eyebrow. "What are you getting at?"

"I'm told you are skilled at killing beasts of a...supernatural nature."

"Father Baez tell you that?"

"No," Victoria said. "I first heard your name from a friend of my father's. He is a scholar at Oxford-"

Before she could finish, Cora's lips pulled back in a grin. Unlike her earlier laughter, this smile seemed born of fondness. "Well, I'll be damned. Your daddy was a friend of old King George?"

"King George?" Victoria's brow furrowed. "I'm afraid I don't follow."

"That's what I called him," Cora said. "Easier on the tongue and all. Ain't nobody got the time to spit out all of James Townsend. Besides, he sure carried himself like he was royalty, so I thought it fit."

Despite her apprehension, Victoria felt herself smile. "I suppose he could give that impression. I don't know him well, but he is a very well-educated man. He identified the creatures I spoke of and suggested I seek you out to assist me in subduing them."

"Did he, now?" Cora leaned back. "We did have ourselves a time back in Leadville. Shot up a whole mess of vampires and a wendigo besides. Even old King George stuck himself a few suckers with that cross of his. Never did kill a one of them, though."

"He didn't?" Victoria asked. "He told me he had firsthand experience in such dealings."

"In a way, I guess that's true," Cora said. "Like I said, he was there for a lot of the scrapes we got into, both in town and up at the mine, but I had to do most of the work my own self. You Brits ain't worth half a shake when doing needs done."

Victoria squared her shoulders at the older woman. "I'll thank you not to judge all of my countrymen by the actions of one."

"You're welcome, then," Cora said, "but that don't change the facts none."

Victoria pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. She wasn't sure if this woman was being deliberately obtuse or if she just wasn't that bright. Most likely both. It was time to try a different approach. "I'm not disputing the fact that you are more than capable. Had I thought James could have helped me himself, I wouldn't have traveled these long miles to seek you out." Only half a lie.

"Good to know George ain't taken leave of his sense." Cora shifted her weight toward the door. "We done now?"

"Will you help me?"

Cora's smile exposed the gap between her front teeth. "And here I thought Brits was at least good for their brains. Ain't you figured it out yet?"

Victoria hesitated. She heard the answer in Cora's tone, but she had to ask. "What?"

"My hunting days are over."

For a moment, Victoria could only stand there blinking. Cora watched her, the smile never leaving her face. Victoria knew she had to say something, something that would change this old woman's mind before it was too late. The silence hung between them as the sounds of the saloon filtered through the door, voices and laughter and the meandering melody of the piano. Victoria's mouth felt full of cotton.

Cora's boots thumped against the floorboards. She stepped over to the door and reached out her hand to open it. Victoria moved without thinking, grabbing her wrist. "Wait."

The hunter's brown eyes snapped up. "Take your pretty little hands off me," Cora said, her tone flat.

Victoria's grip tightened. "Help me."

Cora's other hand cracked across her face. The force of the blow knocked her backward into a crate. Cradling her stinging cheek, Victoria blinked back tears. She turned her head and looked at the other woman, accusation in her blue eyes.

Cora matched her gaze evenly. "I mean what I say," she said. "Don't you ever touch me, and I ain't helping you with no monster hunt. My hunting days is through."

"So you're a coward, then?" Victoria asked, rage overwhelming her sense. "You're just a drunken old fool who strikes other women who come to her begging for help." She stood to her full height, removing her hand from her face. Her cheek blazed bright red. "I came to you across countless miles, crossing an ocean and half a continent because I heard the stories of you. I heard the legends of your bravery and your heroism, and I believed them. I believed that I would find a holy warrior when I reached this place, a heroine who would help me avenge the deaths of my parents." Victoria's voice grew quieter as she spoke, her words sliding a stone lid over her hopes as her father's brothers had slid stone lids over her parents. "I suppose I was the fool, a naive girl still believing in fairy tales. If nothing else, I gained wisdom on this journey. A poor consolation, but with only cowards and old men left to me, I should be grateful to have learned it while I am still young."

The hunter listened to her tirade, her face blank. When Victoria finished, Cora took a deep breath and looked down at her boots. The white streak in her hair shone softly in the light. Victoria stood still, surprised at herself for what she had just said. Father Baez's warnings popped back into her head, and she swallowed. Her speech may very well get her shot by this woman. To die in the storeroom of an American saloon wasn't how she pictured her end, but maybe she should have seen it coming when she stepped off the train in this miserable little town.

"What's your name, girl?" Cora's voice was quiet.

"Victoria Dawes."

"Well, Victoria Dawes," she said, eyes glinting, "consider yourself lucky. Ain't nobody in this town gets to call me a coward to my face without getting themselves a right fine licking. What I gave you was a tender little kiss compared to what I've given some." Cora shifted her weight, leaning toward the young woman to drive her point home. "You try it again, it ain't going to matter none that you is a woman, fancy or otherwise. You ain't the first woman I've whipped, and you ain't going to be the last.

"Now, you're as green as any grease-licked city sprout could be, so that's why I'm letting you off so easy like. Not so easy as some would have, maybe, but a lot more easier than most others. This here is rough country, and the sooner you skedaddle on back to England, the better. You came out here looking for heroes. Well, there ain't no heroes. Not here, not anywhere. I reckon I'm the nicest old coot you're like to meet out here. Half the men in the other room would have taken your womanly charms without a second thought had they come across you in some back alley. The other half maybe ain't that bad, but they sure ain't above taking a fine lady's finery, neither. I'm plumb amazed you ain't had yourself a run-in with such folk yet."

"Father always said I was lucky," Victoria said with a small smile.

Cora nodded. "Your daddy sounds like he left the second part out, the part where he says you ain't all that bright. Ain't you fancy people got bodyguards and such to keep you from doing fool things? What got it into your head that you could just march on out here with nothing but your own self?"

Victoria raised her chin. "I am not a coward. My parents are dead, and I am the only one who cares to see them avenged."

"Revenge's a right fine thing," Cora said, "but all you're like to find out here is your own death. You got anyone cares enough back home to come hunt down the bastard that does you in?" Victoria shook her head. "Well, then, all the more reason to call off before that happens."

"Where am I to go?" Victoria asked. "Where can I turn now?"

"Turn back home," Cora said. "Surely there's somebody in that big fancy country of yours as could help you out."

"No," Victoria replied, her hands curling into fists. "Your friend's colleagues refuse to associate with women in such matters, and I don't know of anyone else who might help. Most wouldn't even believe the story if I told it to them."

Cora brushed her hands on her trousers. "Sounds to me like you is out of luck, then. Best get on with your life and make your parents happy that way."

"I can't. I refuse. I swore to them over their graves that I would avenge them. I can't very well return emptyhanded."

"Well, you ain't returning no other way unless you find yourself a hero someplace else."

Tears sprang again to Victoria's eyes, and she hated herself for them. "It would seem to be an empty hope, wouldn't it? If all American heroes are like you, I might have simply checked the corner pub in Oxford and spared myself the trouble."

"I reckon," Cora said, nodding. "Like I said, ain't no heroes nowhere. Just folk like you and folk like me."

"Why would James send me to you, then?" Victoria asked. "He certainly believes you to be a hero of sorts."

"George ain't too keen on certain things," Cora said. "Knows a fair bit about some such, but couldn't find his sense if somebody nailed it to his boot. Spent too much time with his nose in a book, like another sorry lump I could name." Her eyes softened for a moment, seeming to stare through the wall. Before Victoria could speak, Cora stirred herself, her eyes refocusing on her visitor. "You want heroes, young missie, you'd best stop by the local boneyard. The only heroes is the ones who don't make it back."

"What does that make you, then?"

"Just an old drunk," Cora said.

"And your combat prowess?"

"Luck and a quick draw."

Desperate, Victoria reached for her last option. "Surely even an old lucky drunk understands and respects the value of money."

Cora barked a laugh. "I reckon I do. Why else would I gotten myself such a fine establishment?"

"You're the proprietor?"

"You bet your pretty little parasol," Cora said. "The 
Print Shop
 keeps me well enough to drink away half her profits. The boys out there couldn't bluff to save their own mommas, so they give me some extra whether they plan to or not."

"I'm not talking about poker winnings," Victoria said. "My parents left me a great estate. All you need do is name your price, and it's yours."

Cora shook her head. "You just ain't getting me. I ain't interested in your money or your vengeance. My hunting days is done, and I aim to keep my bones sitting in this saloon until the good Lord sees fit to take me on up to kingdom come. My price is peace and quiet."