Wolver's Gold (The Wolvers) (2 page)

Chapter 1

"Now, Rachel," Papa began as he always did, "We've discussed this before and I've given you my answer. You're a clever girl and I'm sure you'll find a way. Now
don't forget to take off that apron and roll down your sleeves before you come to breakfast. I won't have our guests thinking you're the maid." He took his cup of coffee and headed for their private dining room.

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she
was
the maid, and the cook, and the dishwasher, laundress, and bookkeeper and if she didn't find some respite from it all, she might change her name to Lizzie Borden! But when it came to her father, what was on the tip of her tongue rarely fell off. Papa was Papa, and a wolver couldn't change the color of his tail.

When
Josephus Kincaid sat in one of the high backed chairs over at the Tonsorium for his weekly trim and shave, he saw a Gentleman looking back at him from the wood framed mirror. He saw himself as the proprietor of the Gold Gulch Hotel and not the landlord of a rooming house.

So,
pouring the beaten eggs into the heavy pan coated with a fine film of bacon grease, Rachel had no choice but to answer him the way she always did. The only sign of her mounting dissatisfaction was the sigh before she spoke.

"Yes, Papa, I'll do my best
."

Lately, it had begun to feel like her best was never good enough.
She wondered how the other women did it, but didn't have the time to find out.

Papa
had no idea what it took to run this place, because most of it involved woman's work, something few men wanted to hear about, never mind learn. His job was to act as host to the daily tourists who stopped by to partake of the hotel's Luncheon in the public dining room or Afternoon Tea in the parlor. He charmed the customers while they ate and he explained the niceties of living in the late 1800s. He also spent an hour or two every Monday sitting at the front desk, going over the account book Rachel kept, checking for errors in addition and subtraction, which he never found, and complaining bitterly about expenditures. He refused to hire more help, saying there was none to be had.

He didn't seem to realize that while their six
permanent 'guests' paid for their rooming privileges, those fees weren't one hundred percent profit. Guests had to be fed two meals a day and wolvers ate an expensive diet of meat, meat, and more meat. Their bedding and towels had to be washed, and their rooms and bathrooms cleaned. He'd refused to raise Rachel's housekeeping allowance and she'd been forced to pinch her pennies so tightly, President Lincoln, whose head was embossed on each of those copper coins, was beginning to squeak.

She'd done everything she could.
She'd bought a brood of chicks and put them in a pen on the other side of the tall board fence out back where no one would see. The eggs were a help, but she'd need twice as many chickens to meet the daily demands and the only reason the venture was profitable was because her labor was free.

She'd started cutting back a little on meat and adding a few more vegetables to the pot. Not enough to be noticeable, she hoped, and a guest had yet to complain. She'd thought about rai
sing her own pork, but for that she'd need a freezer and Papa refused to petition the Alpha for the purchase, saying he couldn't ask for something they didn't need.

"Your mother never complained," was another of his excuses.

He was right. Mama didn't complain, but Rachel often thought that if she had, her mother might still be with them today. If she hadn't had to deal with the constant drudgery of keeping the hotel, if she'd had more time to recover between miscarriages, if she hadn't had to care for a mate and cub…"

"
Them eggs and that pan are already dead. Stabbin' at 'em with that fork ain't doin' you a bit of good."

"Oh!" The
fork went clattering to the floor as Rachel clutched her chest. "Bertie! You frightened me half to death. I didn't hear you come in."

Bertie, the only hired help Rachel was allowed to have, hung her shawl
and bonnet on the peg from which she took her apron. "I'm not surprised seeing how you was beratin’ them eggs. I gather Mr. Kincaid said no."

Rachel picked up the fork from the floor and took the slightly b
rowned eggs from pan to platter. "A resounding no to both my housekeeping money and a raise for you. He did, however, ask if I'd thought of selling some of my eggs to Mr. Samuel over at the General Store."

"Hmph. Bet he didn't offer to give up the
three dozen he eats every week to do it, though, did he? Cheap bas…"

"Bertie!"

"Well, he is," the older woman argued as she poured the coffee into the china pot used at the table.

"You know I don't like such language."

"I don't like a lot of things, but it seems I got to put up with them. Roll them sleeves down and take your apron off. I won't have our guests thinking you're the maid."

Rachel almost laughed at the older woman's repetition of Papa's words.
A tiny terror with a face like a prune and the disposition of a rattle snake, Bertie had only two soft spots in her heart; one for her mate, Victor, an Outlaw Gang Member who regularly got shot in the saloon or during bank robberies, and the other for Rachel. Her dislike of Josephus Kincaid wasn't based on the opinions he held, which were the same as most men in the pack. Her resentment stemmed from the burden she felt those opinions placed on Rachel.

"I love you,
Bertie." Rachel smiled as she bent to kiss the woman's weathered cheek. She didn't know what she’d do without Bertie, who'd been a tower of strength disguised as a cook from as far back as Rachel could remember.

Bertie hand
ed her the coffee pot and the platter of eggs. "Love don't put food on the table. Now git, before it all turns cold. I'm right behind you with the rest of it."

"I hear the new sheriff's coming today," Mr. Coogan said during a lull in the breakfast conversation. Like the other permanent guests, he'd been living in the hotel for about six months, from the time Rachel's father had finally conceded and given her permission to advertise. He was the only guest she didn't like.

He winked at Rachel as if his words contained some shared secret and she felt her jaw tighten.
She hated it when he did that, mostly because she couldn't respond. No one else noticed and she would sound like a whining cub complaining about a littermate 'looking at me'. He made suggestive comments as well, comments that had grown bolder during recent months and worse, he'd taken to 'accidently' brushing up against her parts that shouldn't be brushed against. He always made sure Rachel was alone with no one else around to hear or see
.

She'
d once complained about it to her father, but only once, and she hadn't been able to bring herself to repeat what the odious man had said.

"
A lady shouldn't remark upon such things and I'm sure you are mistaken, my dear. Mr. Jack Coogan is a gentleman," was Papa's reply, which in her father's world meant Jack Coogan paid his poker debts with alacrity. "It was probably only a little harmless flirting. You'd do well to smile and flirt a little in return. Mr. Coogan would make a fine mate."

Her father was
still trying to find her a mate. It had been a running argument for the past fifteen years, but about this one thing, Rachel held her ground and refused to give in. In the past, there’d been a string of eligible bachelors invited by her father to dine, but slowly the word had spread. Rachel Kincaid had no interest in finding a mate.

"I've heard he's
only been invited to interview for the position. He's not the new sheriff yet," she said just to be perverse and to quash any lingering hopes her father might have.

Ignoring her remark, her father asked, "Where will he be staying? Do you know?"

"I should think they'll give him Porter's house. It came with the position, I believe," Mr. Doughman said quietly.

He was a sweet, older man
with mutton chop whiskers who'd lost his mate two years before and moved to the hotel with the others last spring. Rachel secretly hoped he'd take an interest in Mrs. Hornmeyer, the widow who lived in genteel poverty in Room 6.

"I think it's awful to replace our dear Sheriff Porter before his
grave has had time to settle," said the widow. She shivered a little. "I shouldn't like to live in a house that had so recently seen death."

"You didn't mind living in your mate's house after he passed," Mr. Coogan stated
, a little meanly, Rachel thought.

"That was different." Mrs. Hornmeyer sniffed into her ever present handkerchief. "I would have welcomed dear Mr. Hornmeyer's ghost."

"Is he the one Sheriff Porter recommended?" Rachel asked when she saw Mr. Coogan's mouth open. "Or is he someone the Mayor found?" she went on, not because she cared, but because she wanted to head off any snide remarks about dear Mr. Hornmeyer leaving his mate penniless after almost sixty years together. There was a mean streak in Jack Coogan that had been there since he was a cub.

"Ah
now, Miss Kincaid, that's not something you need to worry about," Mr. McKinley said in his usual condescending manner. "You just leave those things to the folks who know best."

"I wasn't worried, Mr. McKinley, and I have every right to…"

"Rachel," her father warned, "It isn't your place to argue with Mr. McKinley."

The grandfather clock in the hall bonged the hour and Rachel
, smarting from her father's reprimand, stood, ready to begin her day.

"Well," she said, nodding her head to those still seated around the table, "That's our signal and we'd best be off. The tourists will be here before we know it."

Gold Gulch was a tourist attraction. If it weren't for the tourists in their modern shorts and sandals, a person would have thought they'd stepped back in time. Gold Gulch was an old Western town straight out of the late 1800s. With a wide dirt road running down the center bordered by wood plank sidewalks fronting each of the buildings that flanked the street, you could easily imagine ladies in long skirts wearing bonnets or fancy hats, cowpunchers in their chaps and spurs, bankers in pinstripes and high collars.

But you didn't have to imagine, because there they were,
walking among the tourists, going about their daily lives, stopping to chat, and then hurrying on their way. Make a purchase in the General Store, cash your check at the Bank, buy a hat or a parasol at the Ladies' Emporium. Gentlemen could purchase a suit or a hat at the haberdasher's or relax with a hot towel shave at a barber shop with the traditional striped pole out front.

The barbers were
always busy with two men in the chairs and more waiting and the sign in the window advertised the prices for a haircut or shave along with tooth pulling for one dollar and burials for five.

Down a short side street and set outside the hubbub of the town, stood a little white church complete with graveyard surrounded by a white picket fence.
Most tourists didn't realize the grave markers were real, nor did they fully understand that the people who lived here still lived in the past, shunning the modernity of the world outside.

There were about two dozen individual buildings, most clad in weathered wood with hand painted signs, though a few, like the bank, were built strong in solid brick. Some were two-story with outside stairs leading to the upper floor. Halfway down the street was the obligatory saloon with swinging doors that allowed the honkytonk piano to be heard outside.
Cowboys regularly rode up and tied their horses to the rail before going inside.

The place was a town within a town; real and unreal; a place where wolvers could live and work, yet remain hidden from the world. It should have been perfect.

Rachel began to gather dishes from the table and Mrs. Hornmeyer began to help. Mr. Kincaid stopped her. "No, no, my dear lady, you mustn't do that. You are our guest. Rachel will take care of it."

Mrs. Hornmeyer tittered bashfully. "It's quite all right, Mr. Kincaid, I do miss my little domesticities
and I'd like to help."

"I do hope you don't mind," she said
hesitantly to Rachel when the kitchen door closed behind them, "I feel so useless sometimes and it gets lonely sitting all by myself in my room. I'd be grateful for any little chores you might find for me to do."

Encouraged by a nod from Bertie, Rachel smiled. "Suppose," she suggested, "You wash and dry the breakfast dishes and I provide you with lunch." She knew there were days
when Mrs. Hornmeyer didn't eat lunch and thought it might be because she couldn't afford it.

"Oh! I didn't mean…"

"I know you didn't, but I think it only fair, don't you? Besides, Bertie and I sometimes tire of each other's company. It will be nice to have a new face at the kitchen table."

"I could keep the Ladies' Lounge tidy for you, too.
I never minded working in the Sweet Shoppe," she admitted wistfully, "But now that my son and his family have taken over, I feel like I'm in the way. His mate and I, well, we don't always see eye to eye."