A Claim of Her Own (12 page)

Flynn laid the newspaper aside and stood up. Crossing the hotel lobby, he took the stairs two at a time up to the second floor. Once in his room, he stared out over the city, wondering at his stupidity. He’d assumed that, wanting to get away as quickly as possible, Mattie would jump aboard the first train to roll out of Abilene. He’d spent weeks tracing her supposed eastern route, doubling back, stopping at every town along the way, checking every saloon, every dance hall, every gambling establishment. Even if the conductor or the ticket agent didn’t remember a brunette beauty with violet eyes, he still combed the town. Just to be sure. And now here he was in Kansas City. He’d spent time in places that made even
him
sick, and nothing. Not one trace of the thieving witch named Mattie O’Keefe.

He usually didn’t stop the hunt until so late at night that he dropped right off to sleep, and he hadn’t read a newspaper in days. But today . . . today he’d felt defeated and so out of sorts he’d paused long enough for a good cigar and a newspaper. And that’s when it hit him. Mattie O’Keefe hadn’t run away from
him
as much as she had run
to
her brother.

And where else would Dillon O’Keefe have headed than the rich gold fields in Dakota Territory? After all, their mother had raised her brats on fairy tales about the gold fields of California, where she’d hooked up with a young Jonas P. Flynn.

As he stared out the window, Jonas could imagine the O’Keefe siblings plotting against him: Dillon would leave Abilene, thereby lulling Jonas into thinking he’d finally succeeded in running him off. Mattie would stay for a while, charming Jonas into a sense of false security. And all the while she was just waiting to rob him and run. Jonas swore under his breath. He should have killed Dillon O’Keefe when he had the chance. And when he finally caught up with them, maybe he’d kill them both—just as soon as he got his money back.

A man in his position couldn’t let one of the girls get away with stealing. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he couldn’t kill Mattie. At least not until after he’d dragged her back to Abilene and made an example of her. The minute she’d left, a couple of the other girls had started looking at him with a certain glint in their eye. Especially the redhead. Maybe Flo was stealing from him, too. He hadn’t been able to prove it before leaving to chase Mattie down, but once the chase was over, once Flo saw what happened to girls who crossed Jonas Flynn—
that
, Jonas vowed, would be the end of
that.

Mattie O’Keefe had been trouble for as long as he’d known her. He’d let her get away with things another girl would have been sacked or beaten for.
“My voice is for sale,”
she’d said.
“My body isn’t.”
The minx. As if she were something special. Jonas closed his eyes, and there she was in his imagination, her perfect hair tumbling over silken ivory shoulders . . . and those eyes . . . she was the tantalizing prize he couldn’t have . . . hadn’t had . . . yet. . . . And the way she danced just out of his reach had fueled his longing until at times he felt half mad with desire.

For a while he’d been content just to listen to her sing, to watch her sit at the high-priced table and deal cards and rake in the money for him. For a while it had been enough knowing that as far as anyone else was concerned, Mattie O’Keefe was the property of Jonas P. Flynn, and that after the other fools who’d slobbered all over her throughout the evening staggered out the door, Mattie came upstairs to his room. As far as anyone else knew, the door that connected his quarters with her room was always open.

Eventually, Jonas told himself, things would go according to his will. After all, in spite of his age, in spite of the loss of a hand and the need for a prosthetic hook, Jonas P. Flynn possessed the ultimate aphrodisiacs: money and power. And he had time. He’d let her sashay about and promote his business. He’d even created a false account to show her how much money she was earning. But that was all over now.

He’d been patient . . . so patient. And yet Mattie had remained unwilling to accept the realities of life: that what she earned on paper didn’t become
real
until she took that last step into his bed. And when he’d finally made it clear to her naïve brain, she’d actually believed she could say no.

Remembering the final scene between the two of them, he grimaced and swiped an open palm across his perspiring forehead. Turning away from the window, he crossed to the mirror hanging above the bureau and fingered the angry red line running along the ridge of his left cheekbone. He looked down at the ring she’d left behind—the ring he wore on his little finger as a reminder. He snorted. The ring was nothing. What mattered was his reputation. Half the girls in the place had heard them fighting. He could still imagine them with ears pressed to their doors, listening. If he let Mattie get away with this, every girl in the place would think she could talk back and choose what she would and would not do. A man couldn’t run a business that way.

Standing back from the mirror, Jonas admired the neatly trimmed gray beard, the impeccably tailored vest, the posture that said,
THIS
is a man of substance. A respectable businessman.
Well, he was about to make certain that never changed. Packing quickly, he descended to the hotel lobby and checked out. At the train station a helpful ticket agent explained the route to the gold fields of Dakota. North to Omaha, then west to a place called Sidney, Nebraska.

“Now, I don’t know about how a gentleman gets north from Sidney,” the ticket agent said. “Of course there’s all kinds of freight being moved, but as for passengers—I know there was talk of a stage line, but whether it’s in service yet, I have no idea. I suppose a man in a hurry with the means to do so would just buy a good horse and head north. But with all the Indian trouble, I don’t know as that’s advisable.”

Jonas bought the ticket to Sidney. One way. As the train rolled out of the station and headed north along the Missouri, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He hated Kansas City. Give him Abilene any day. Abilene, where he’d built a small but lucrative kingdom, where justice was cheap and women knew their place.
Except
for Mattie O’Keefe.
Jonas smiled. That was about to change.

Mattie waded into the creek and, crouching down, sunk the pan of gravel into the frigid water. Before she could attempt any kind of move like Tom had demonstrated, the strong current in the creek caught the pan, flipped it over, and threatened to wash it away. She stumbled around, rescued the pan, and then lost her balance, nearly falling flat in the middle of the creek.

“You!” someone shouted. “What d’ you think yer doin’! Is it a dead man’s gold yer after!” Swearing and hollering, redheaded Finn McKay came stomping toward her. When Mattie looked up at him he stopped in mid-obscenity. Again he said, “You!” only this time the tone was surprise laced with wonder. “You were mindin’ the store for Tom.”

Mattie nodded. “Yes, but most of his goods have already been sold and he’s hired that preacher to help him with the building. He decided he could manage without me, so here I am.” She tugged on the brim of her hat. “I don’t know what I’m doing yet, but from your reaction I must at least
look
like a miner now.”

Finn shook his head. “Well, now, I wouldn’t say so. Yer not like any miner
I’ve
ever seen. ’Tis more like as if an angel has come t’ live among us.”

“Trust me,” Mattie protested. “I am about the furthest thing from an angel you will ever meet.”

Fergus McKay was next to show up, belching and scratching his backside as he climbed out of his tent hollering all the while about a terrible headache and that cheating card dealer at the Green Front. Dressed only in a set of filthy long johns—the back door dangling open—Fergus walked up beside his brother. Mattie had trouble not laughing aloud when Fergus recognized her and, with a quick reach behind, closed the gaping flap and with a “beggin’ yer pardon, miss,” backed his way across the claim toward the tent. He bumped into the rocker on his way, stumbled, and nearly fell. In the process he lost hold of his “back door” and Mattie was witness to something she hoped wouldn’t haunt her dreams.

“I thought you was a claim-jumper,” Finn sputtered.

“Well, I’m grateful to know you’ve been keeping an eye out.”

“We can be a foul bunch of bandits, but those of us who’ve been here since the first tend to watch out fer each other.”

“I may be new to the gulch, but I’ll certainly do my part to keep an eye on your claim when I’m up here.”

“It’s true then—you intend to work it . . . with your own lovely hands?”

“I do, although at the moment the claim is working me. How long does it take to get the hang of panning? Tom made it look so easy.”

“It depends,” Finn said. “I never could do much with a pan.” He looked back toward the tent. “If Fergus don’t die of embarrassment first, he might could give you a lesson or two.”

“You’ve got your own claim to work,” Mattie said. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“It’s not imposin’,” Fergus called as he ducked back into view. He was dressed this time, and as he fastened the last button on a ragged flannel shirt, he said, “I’ll do it for the gold in the first pan.”

“There might not be any.”

“Well, now, that’s just a chance I’ll have to take.”

It was late in the afternoon before Mattie finally managed to create a crescent shape of fine sand and gravel in her gold pan. True to his word, Fergus had crouched down beside her and patiently shown her the very same things Tom had demonstrated. He was willing to stay as long as she wanted, but after filtering through two pans and finding a respectable-sized flake of gold with which to thank him, Mattie said she was a slow learner and would do better without her teacher watching her every move.

Fergus retreated back to the McKay claim and Mattie breathed a sigh of relief. He was a nice enough fellow and not a bad teacher, but he needed a bath. Taking a deep breath of fresh air, she went back to work and by the end of the day had added a dozen tiny flecks of gold to her hand-carved dust-catcher.

Freddie arrived just at sunset. Mattie watched carefully as he built a fire, grateful she didn’t have to reveal how little she knew about cooking and campfires. She’d managed to hide her ignorance from Swede by tending to Eva on the trail, but she’d need to know about such things if she was going to survive up here on the gulch.

With two dressed rabbits, an onion, and a few pinches of seasonings he said were “one of Mor’s secrets and he couldn’t tell,” Freddie cooked a succulent stew. Later, as she settled down for her first night on the claim, Mattie wondered how long she could make the stew last . . . and how often she could count on Freddie’s cooking.

Tom English was right. Panning for gold was backbreaking work. The water was frigid and the air was cold. Mattie’s hands were chapped, her entire body was sore, and her feet would likely never be warm again. She probably wasn’t going to get rich, either. It was going to be a while before she could pan with any efficiency at all. In her first week of mining full time, she had added only seven flakes of gold to the dozen specks collected on her first day. And yet, on days when the sky was blue and the gulch was relatively quiet, when the rest of the miners were either sleeping off their whiskey or going on a binge in town, when birds swooped across the gulch and the creek sang, Mattie rejoiced in being a free woman.