Wicked Wyoming Nights (43 page)

Eliza saw Cord across the street and made the unusual gesture of crossing the churned-up mud to speak to him. His eyes seemed to retreat into the back of his head when he saw her coming, but he stopped and waited. As she stood next to him with all her self-imposed barriers gone, it was almost impossible not to reach out and touch him, to stand within the circle of his arms. But even though her heart and mind were in considerable confusion, her tongue uttered the mundane, unexceptional words of condolence.

“Iris told me about your mother,” she said in an unsteady voice. “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am.” His look seemed to harden, and he retreated further from her.

“I know it must be difficult,” she hurried on, losing someone who was so important to you.”

“She wasn’t much of a woman,” Cord lashed out harshly. “I doubt she was a comfort to anyone.” Two customers came up to the bank, signaling their need for his attention. “Keep your sympathy for the man she deserted this time.” He tugged the brim of his hat as a sign of dismissal and walked inside the bank.

Eliza was almost too overcome to retrace her steps, and then she could barely restrain herself from running for the privacy of her own room. Terrible, wracking sobs welled up inside her; she hurried past two people who spoke to her, knowing if she stopped to say even one word she would burst into tears right there in the street. She made it to the saloon, but the tears wouldn’t be restrained any longer, and Lucy and Iris came running up the stairs behind her.

“You go on back to what you were doing,” Lucy ordered Iris peremptorily. “You can bet Mr. Cord is at the bottom of this, and if I find you had anything to do with it, you’d better pack your bags and get out of town. If I get my hands on you, there won’t be enough left to feed a scrawny buzzard.” She didn’t wait for a reply, but hurried to Eliza’s room, where she found her crying with huge, gusty sobs.

Lucy rocked Eliza in her arms while she poured out a story that made Lucy long to give Cord a piece of her mind and put Iris on a steamer bound for the Orient.

“Now you dry your eyes and listen to me,” she scolded when Eliza grew calmer. “You are going to have to make up your mind what you want. You can’t go changing it every week and expect people to put up with it. If you want to sing, you’re going to have to forget Mr. Cord and everybody else in this town because you won’t ever be coming back here. For when you get married, and a gal as pretty and sweet as you will surely get married, your husband isn’t going to want to come out here and go riding about a dusty plain while you go sightseeing for old times’ sake. He’ll like it even less when he finds out one of the sights you’re seeing is an old beau. I don’t know of many men who can be put next to Mr. Cord without being made to look downright mangy.

“And if it is Mr. Cord you’ve set your heart on, then you’d better stop acting like a shameful tease and tell him. You can’t turn your back on him and expect him to hang around for more of the same. Not even shiftless men—and I’ve seen enough of
them
to know what they’re like—put up with that kind of treatment. There’s too many females, and not all of them decent, just busting their stays to do for Cord what you won’t. Now let me wash your face, for you don’t dare go anywhere with tear stains all over it, and you can tell me what you intend to do.”

Eliza submitted to Lucy’s ministrations, but it didn’t seem to clear her mind. “Three months ago I thought I knew what I wanted. Now I’m so confused I don’t know.”

“Then stay right here until you figure it out. I’ve had enough of your acting first one way and then another. It’s got so people don’t know what to expect from you next, and if you don’t settle down soon, they’re liable not to keep on caring.” Eliza started to speak, but Lucy cut her off.

“Save your words for them that matters.” She gave Eliza a swift hug. “I’m your friend no matter what, so put your mind to work on your other problem. Figure that one out, and everything else will take care of itself.”

Eliza was only half listening to Croley and her uncle. She disliked the fact Croley had started taking his lunch in their rooms, even inviting Iris to join them at times, but Ira enjoyed the company and encouraged them to continue. Eliza retreated to her room as often as she dared, even on days when Iris was present, but she couldn’t do it all the time. Besides, the short time she had to put up with them was nothing compared to Ira’s black moods, which sometimes lasted for weeks. Iris and Lucy both thought there was something wrong with him, but whenever they mentioned it, Croley dismissed it as female foolishness. Eliza
knew
something was wrong with him, but he wouldn’t listen to anything she said.

Eliza hadn’t been able to get Cord out of her mind since he’d left her standing in front of his bank. Even when she was singing, she found her mind wandering back to the first few months after they met; it gave her songs a bittersweet quality the sentimental cowboys and soldiers found conducive to reminiscing about their own innocent youth. Since that encouraged them to drown their sorrows in even more drink, Croley did not tell her to change her material as he intended to at first.

She couldn’t make up her mind how to approach Cord; her natural inclination was to shrink from initiating contact, but Eliza knew she had to take the first step. The possibility he had completely gotten over his love for her was too grim to be considered and she pushed it from her mind, but like a homesick dog, it kept returning to the place that had given it birth. She considered going to his ranch, but she wanted this meeting to be on neutral ground. If she saw him in private he was liable to demand the reason for her rudeness, and she doubted she could control the interview after that. At least he was too much of a gentleman to cut her dead in the street.

She toyed with the idea of asking him to visit her in their rooms, but there was no assurance Ira wouldn’t walk in on them. Meeting him at Ella’s smacked of the clandestine. It occurred to her she might ask him to meet her in the land office. She still intended to give him the land even if he never spoke to her again. Keeping it for herself, or selling it to someone who would use it against him, was an underhanded trick and she had never been capable of that, not even in the days when she had been so angry she would have welcomed any calamity not of her making.

Her thoughts, and Croley’s conversation, were abruptly interrupted by the barman bursting into the room.

“An army of gunslingers has invaded Johnson County,” he disclosed between gasps. “They’re headed toward Buffalo to kill us all.” All three inhabitants of the room stared at him in unbelieving shock.

“The man’s drunk,” Lucy declared as she came rushing up the steps behind the barman. “I told you never to trust an ex-cowpoke with liquor.”

“I’m not drunk and I’m not lying either,” the man said, real fear unmistakable in his face. “I swear to God, there’s sixty or seventy of them, and they brought their horses and ammunition. In a railroad car too!”

“Then stop making up absurd stories and tell us what you’re talking about,” Croley ordered.

“And make sure you start at the beginning,” prompted Lucy.

“I’m not sure of everything. I heard the tale at the livery stable, and they were arguing over it even then. But one thing’s for certain: They killed Lem Poteet and Bucky Lloyd. Did it yesterday. They surrounded Lem’s place at dawn and poured lead into the building all day. They got Bucky early, but they didn’t get Lem until they set fire to the cabin and he made a run for it.”

“You sure?” Croley asked, his face utterly drained of color.

“Yeah. They’re headed toward Buffalo, and somebody said they have a list of people they’re going to kill in cold blood.”

“Who is
they?
” Eliza asked, hardly able to credit a word she heard.

“The Cattlemen’s Association. There’s been rumors around for a while they meant to do something, and this must be it. People are already packing up to get out of town.”

“I never stole anybody’s cows, and I’m not going anywhere,” Lucy announced.

“I’ve heard the same rumors,” Croley said. “And I also know there was a secret meeting at Burton’s bank last month. Just in case it is true and Ira and I have to go help fight, you start packing some things for Miss Smallwood, Lucy. She can stay with Ella Baylis until this is over.”

“But it can’t be true,” Eliza insisted, unbelieving. “What reason could anybody have to send gunslingers to kill us?”

“It was your boyfriend’s independent roundup that did it,” exclaimed Ira, springing to his feet. “I told you he was one of them from the start. His offer to lead the roundup was just a ruse to give them an excuse to come down here and kill anybody they wanted.”

“No,” cried Eliza, denying a fact too logical to be completely ignored. “Cord would never do anything like that.”

“How can you say that after what he did to me?” Ira said rounding on her.

“What he did to
you?
” exclaimed Eliza, groping for words. “Don’t you mean what you did to him?”

“You two can keep chewing on this same old argument if you like, but I intend to find out what is going on,” Croley said, interrupting. “I want the saloon kept open, but keep the doors to the upstairs locked,” he said to the barman. “You ladies start packing. We may not have much time.”

“Do you think we’re really being invaded?” Eliza asked Lucy after the men had gone.

“If we are, it’s Mr. Blaine’s own hide he’s worrying about. If there is a list, he’s bound to know his name’s near the top.”

“Then you think there will be a fight?”

“I wouldn’t put anything past men as full of meanness as some I’ve seen here. If everybody did what they were supposed to do, there wouldn’t be any trouble. But I guess the Lord didn’t aim to put us down here with nothing to do, so he made people like Mr. Blaine and that nasty man I see him talking to sometimes.”

“Who’s that?”

“I don’t know his name, but it wouldn’t make any difference. They’re all the same. Now you and me had better get our packing done before those drunks downstairs start getting funny ideas.”

Chapter 32

Watching from the balcony above, Eliza saw Croley go to his office instead of his room on his return and she waited a moment, undecided as to whether to wait in her own room or go down and see what she could find out. Before she could make up her mind, Ira entered from the back of the saloon and made straight for Croley’s office. That decided the matter. Using great care not to make any sound, Eliza tiptoed down the stairs and along the hall. The door to Croley’s office was closed, but she was able to slip into the office next to it that Sam had used to do the saloon’s books before Croley fired him for going over to Cord.

“There’s no doubt Stedman’s with that gang of paid murderers,” Ira was saying, a fanatical light in his eyes. The sheriff said they were surrounded just before dawn at the Bar-T ranch house—one of the Association members. Not a one of them can get away.”

“They won’t be able to hold out long,” Croley added. “We captured their baggage, and the only ammunition they have is what they carried with them.”

“It should be gone already.”

“Naw. Those Texas gunfighters carry belts of the stuff over their shoulders. And there was enough dynamite in those wagons to blow up half of Buffalo.”

“Or enough to blow the whole Bar-T Ranch into Montana,” Ira said with a shout.

“Don’t get your hopes up. The sheriff has the wagons.”

“All we need is one. We can load it up with dynamite and send it careening into the house. There won’t be enough of those gunslingers left for the coyotes to find.”

Eliza was afraid her gasp of horror had betrayed her presence, but the next sentence sent her scurrying back to her room.

“Get your niece over to the Baylis woman. There’s a lot of men downstairs drinking themselves into a state fit to do anything. It’ll be best not to have a female about to give them any ideas.”

“What about Iris?”

“Let her take care of herself,” Croley said coldly. “You just make sure Eliza stays put. There’s going to be a lot of plans being made around here, plans she might not like, and I don’t want her telling that Baylis woman or Sam Haughton.”

“I’ll see she doesn’t say a word to anybody,” Ira promised.

If Ira hadn’t been so caught up in his own plans, he might have noticed Eliza was not acting like herself. That she meekly obeyed his rough command to follow him and not say a word to anybody should have been warning enough. Eliza’s mind was already feverishly at work trying to figure out how she could get to the Bar-T Ranch and warn Cord. He might not love her any more, or want to marry her, but warning him was only a small repayment for the times he had helped her.

No one was at the Baylis home, but they found both Ella and Ed at the store doing a brisk business in firearms and ammunition. “Another few hours and there won’t be a she’ll left in the place,” she told Ira. “They’ve already cleaned out the other stores.”

“Then you know why I want Eliza to stay with you,” he said, being as ingratiating as he could. “Croley and I are going out to the Bar-T Ranch, and I’d feel a lot better if I knew she was safe.”

“This is a lot of fuss and bother over nothing,” huffed Ella. “She’d be more comfortable, and just as safe, in her own room, but if you want her to stay with me, I’ll be happy to have her.” She took off her apron. “I can’t be gone from the store long, but I’ll see that you get settled.”