Wanton Angel (9 page)

She didn’t bother to say good-bye when Menelda turned and hurried out of the store.

Almost simultaneously Webb Hutcheson appeared, handsome in his neat broadcloth suit, his round-brimmed hat and manly mustache. He removed the hat and glanced at the window, taking note of Menelda’s swift leave-taking, then turning his attention back to Bonnie.

“I hear I missed a major battle in front of the Brass Eagle yesterday afternoon.”

“Some newspaper man you are, Webb Hutcheson,” Bonnie answered, pretending to be busy aligning bottles of laudanum and vegetable tonic on a shelf.

All the same she knew that Webb was very near, probably leaning against the other side of the counter. “I’ve also heard that your husband is in town.”

Bonnie stiffened and then went purposefully on arranging and rearranging. “My
former
husband,” she corrected.

Webb gave a patient sigh. If there was one hallmark of the man’s character, it was patience. “Aren’t you going to write down whatever it was Menelda Sneeder just bought on credit?”

The senseless moving and clinking of bottles stopped abruptly; Bonnie’s shoulders stooped and she lowered her head slightly. “I’ll thank you not to meddle in my business, Mr. Hutcheson. Menelda needed that medicine and she didn’t have money to pay for it.”

“Of course,” Webb replied evenly, “just yesterday she was ready to chop you to bits with a hatchet.”

Bonnie whirled to face Webb then, her eyes full of tears. “She might have had the money if her husband hadn’t danced with me.”

Webb, who had indeed been leaning against the counter, straightened and backed away a step. “We’ve had this conversation before, Bonnie. I have sympathy for you, but you know I can’t tell you that dancing the hurdy-gurdy is right.”

Rose was fond of Webb, who paid her proper court on almost every occasion, and she began to bounce in her highchair, plump arms extended. Her chortling laugh deepened Bonnie’s guilt, for she couldn’t help thinking of Menelda’s little girl. Zoë was sickly, and she needed the medicine her father couldn’t afford because he spent so much at the Brass Eagle every night, when his shift at the smelter was over.

Webb laughed at Rose’s antics and deftly freed her from her chair, lifting her high above his head. Shrieking with delight, she spread her chubby arms out like the wings of a bird and, fate being what it is, Eli walked in at exactly that moment.

His golden eyes darkened to deep amber as he watched,
and Bonnie saw his jaw tighten, but before Eli could speak, Rose Marie surprised everyone by whooping, “Papa! Papa!”

Instantly the strain in Eli’s face was gone, replaced by a blinding grin. “Hello, princess,” he said, holding out his arms.

Webb surrendered the child without speaking, and the stricken look in his blue eyes compounded Bonnie’s miseries. He’d made it clear enough that he hoped to marry Bonnie and raise Rose Marie as his own, and this sudden encounter with Eli was an understandable shock to him.

After a moment of struggle, Bonnie found her voice and introduced the two men to each other. Webb nodded, offering a hand, and Eli took it, shifting Rose Marie into the curve of his left arm.

Reminded of Kiley, and Eli’s easy way with him, Bonnie ached. She had forgotten how children took to this man.

As soon as it was politely possible, Webb made an excuse and left the store.

Despite the child’s protests, Eli put Rose back into her highchair. She’d taken his hat during the process and he allowed her to keep it, chuckling when she put it on and virtually disappeared inside, but his face was solemn when he turned his attention to Bonnie.

“I presume it’s Mr. Hutcheson’s main aim in life to—take you away from all this?”

Bonnie tried to ascertain Eli’s mood and failed. His words had not been barbed, as far as she could tell, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t follow that remark with one designed to cut. “I would not say that marrying me is Mr. Hutcheson’s ‘main aim in life.’ Publishing his newspaper keeps him quite busy.”

Eli leaned against the counter, just as Webb had done, and while there was no threat in his manner or bearing, Bonnie retreated a step.

“Are you going to marry Hutcheson, Bonnie?”

The shelf containing the bottled medicines and tonics was pressing hard against Bonnie’s back. She met his question with one of her own. “Why should you care whether I marry Webb or not?”

Eli did not move, and yet Bonnie sensed a change inside
him, a quickening. “I have the best reason in the world—this little girl. Your decisions—and so far they’ve been something less than conventional—affect Rose.”

Despite an effort to remain cool and aloof, Bonnie felt a flush rise into her face. She kept her chin high, but there was a perceptible tremor in her voice when she replied, “Rose is always my first concern, Eli. Always.”

“Even when you’re dancing the hurdy-gurdy?”

The tremor that had begun in Bonnie’s voice spread into her very soul. “Yes, believe it or not, even then. It takes money to support a child.”

“Don’t use money as an excuse, Bonnie. The bank drafts Seth sent to you over the last two years added up to a considerable sum, and you returned them all. Furthermore, Genoa would do anything for you, but except for a few dollars here and there, you don’t allow her to help. Let’s be honest. The real issue here, dear heart, is your cussed Irish pride, and while it’s all very well to turn up your nose at McKutchen money and make your own way, I’ll be damned if I’ll let you drag my daughter through hell in the process!”

Rose, sensing the discord between the adults, gave a wail and floundered out from under Eli’s hat.

Katie, ever alert, came dashing down the stairs to collect her charge, crooning, “There, there—you’re just needing your lunch, now aren’t you?”

Rose was squalling by the time Katie lifted her out of the highchair and hurried back upstairs, without so much as a word or a glance for either Bonnie or Eli. They stood in silence for some seconds, then Eli retrieved his hat from the floor and slapped it against one thigh.

“I’ll repeat my question, Bonnie. Do you intend to marry Hutcheson or not?”

Bonnie did not love Webb—God help her, it was Eli McKutchen she cared for, even after all the heartache and all the time that had passed—but plenty of people married without that worthy emotion and lived happy lives. Liking and respecting Webb as she did, knowing that becoming his wife would solve many of her problems and give her a fresh start in the bargain, Bonnie was suddenly tempted. The risk of losing Rose to Eli would not be nearly so great if she
married a solid citizen like Webb, and she wouldn’t have to dance the hurdy-gurdy anymore. Wouldn’t have to serve as mayor or try to keep the mercantile going.

“I might marry Webb,” she said thoughtfully, speaking more to herself than to her former husband. “I just might.”

When Bonnie looked up, several pensive moments later, Eli was gone.

T
HE INNER CORE
of the smelter works was a place of noise and stifling heat. Grimy steam billowed from the quenching pots, accompanied by a loud sizzling sound that made a man’s insides quiver against the rounding of his rib cage, and the blast furnaces glowed red-hot. Men stooped with age and hard work bent over the conveyor belt leading from the dry crusher, sorting lead ore from plain rock, while boys hardly out of short pants tended dross pots full of molten lead, skimming away the waste that boiled to the top with long steel paddles.

I hate this place,
Eli thought, but he walked on, Seth scrambling along on his right side, Forbes Durrant keeping a more sedate pace at his left. Finally they entered a small, cluttered office, and the soul-shaking noise was muted by the closing of a heavy door.

Seth dragged a handkerchief from the pocket of his suitcoat and dabbed at his forehead and his neck, which was as usual encased in a high, rigid collar. “Great Zeus, this place is as near an approximation of hell as I’ve ever seen!”

Eli glanced at Forbes and silently agreed. The smelter not only looked like hell and felt like hell—in all probability, it had its own devil.

“The refinement of metal,” Forbes said, with a spreading
of his clean white hands, “is and always has been a nasty process. These men know that and, believe me, they’re glad of the work.”

Eli leaned back against the edge of the desk, which was all but buried in papers and ledger books, and folded his arms. In essence, what Forbes said was true, and except for the youth of some of the pot tenders, Eli had seen nothing to which he could take serious exception. Still he sensed something brewing, something hotter than the contents of the dross pots and furnaces. Genoa and Seth were right—there was going to be trouble.

“Those kids tending the pots—how old are they?”

Forbes shrugged. “Ten, twelve, fourteen maybe. Why?”

Eli exchanged a glance with Seth, who was still mopping his face and neck with his handkerchief, and fought to keep his temper. Between his most recent encounter with Bonnie and Durrant’s blithe attitude, his control was stretched thin as ice on a shallow puddle. “I want them out of here. They should be in school, not risking their lives skimming dross.”

Forbes looked affably indulgent. “Many of them are supporting sisters and brothers, Mr. McKutchen, as well as widowed mothers. Would you have me tell them to study arithmetic and spelling while their families starve?”

“Surely some arrangements could be made for the unfortunates,” Seth suggested fitfully, flushed and obviously in need of fresh air. “Why, if one of those nippers were to fall into that molten metal, gentlemen, the responsibility would be our own!”

Eli shuddered at the picture that rose in his mind, but Forbes simply smiled, again with that damnable indulgence. “There are always risks,” he insisted. “These boys have hungry mouths to feed and they don’t expect to be mollycoddled, nor do they need special treatment—”

“I want them away from the dross pots and the furnaces,” Eli interrupted, his voice low and even, yet clearly audible despite the din pounding at the very walls of that cramped little office. “Let them sweep up or carry messages or whatever, at the same wages, but keep them away from the hot ore.”

Forbes opened his mouth to argue, had second thoughts, and closed it again.

There was plenty more Eli wanted to say to Forbes Durrant, but most of it could wait. “Mr. Callahan here will be wanting to review the company records,” he began, when the door of the office burst open.

A lanky, soot-blackened figure filled the chasm, the glow of the furnaces providing an eerie backdrop. “Mr. Durrant,” the man croaked, “there’s been an accident—a bad one—”

“Where?” Eli demanded.

The worker’s eyeballs were startlingly white in the mask of filth that covered his face. “Out by the tracks—rails gave way on one of the ore cars. Mike Farley’s been crushed under the rocks—”

“Has anybody sent for the doc?” Forbes snapped, pushing the workman aside to bolt through the door.

As Eli passed by the dross pots on the way to the smelter’s private railroad spur, he reached out and caught one adolescent worker by the shirt collar, forcing the boy to drop his skimming paddle and stumble along ahead, wide-eyed.

Outside, in air so much cleaner and cooler that it was like a restorative tonic, Eli released the boy with a brusque “Wait here,” and sprinted toward the train tracks, where a crowd of muttering men were gathered.

The wooden rails of a cattle car had splintered and a pile of rock destined for the dry crusher had cascaded out onto the ground, burying at least one man under its weight.

Eli pushed his way through the workmen, forgetting Forbes and Seth, and helped clear away the last huge chunks of rock. They needn’t have hurried, for Mike Farley was dead.

Eli straightened, wanting to bellow a protest to the skies. One of the other men gathered Farley’s crushed, bloody corpse into his arms and wept in furious despair. “My boy! Oh, God, my boy!”

Seth materialized at Eli’s side, looking worried and not a little ill. “Why would anyone haul rock in a railed car?” he fretted. “Steel would certainly be called for, since wood couldn’t be expected to hold—”

The sense of Seth’s remark brought Eli out of shock. He assessed the car with one lethal sweep of his eyes and then strode toward Forbes, catching the man’s shirt in both
hands and flinging him backward into the crushed slag covering the ground.

The boy entered the store nervously, just as Bonnie was about to close for the day, the filth that marked him as a smelter worker still covering his face and the clothes he was rapidly outgrowing.

Bonnie smiled, reaching back to untie the strings of her storekeeper’s apron. Whatever this young man’s business was, it couldn’t take long. “May I help you?”

“M-Mr. McKutchen sent me here. He—he done whomped Mr. Durrant good, right in the smelter yard—Mike Farley’s been mashed up fine as cornmeal—I ain’t supposed to tend pot no more, Mr. McKutchen says, so I came here to sort spuds and such—”

Bonnie’s smile was long gone, and she held up both hands. “Wait—you’re not making sense. Slow down and speak clearly.”

“Mike Farley’s dead. ’Bout a ton of rock fell on him out by the tracks. I was told to come here and work for the same wages as I was gettin’ at the smelter—”

Just then Katie rushed in, returning from her every-other-day trip to the library, her arms loaded with books. “Ma’am, it’s dreadful—there was an accident at the smelter and a man was killed! It was Susan Farley’s husband and now she’s having her baby too early!”

Bonnie was already reaching for a shawl. She remembered Susan Farley, a shy, slender blonde who lived in a Patch Town shanty. Whenever Mrs. Farley came into the store, she looked hungrily at the yard goods and the pretty threads but bought single potatoes or onions. With a pang Bonnie recalled the most extravagant purchase Susan had ever made: a penny’s worth of candy lemons.

“I’m going down to the Farley place to see if there is anything I can do,” she said to Katie. “Please look after Rose, and be sure to lock the store carefully before you get to reading.”