The Outlaw's Kiss (an Old West Romance) (Wild West Brides) (17 page)

“There’s an idea,” he said. “But I don’t know
about all this. What if the deal with Mr. Swearengen ends up being a raw one?”

I thought for a moment. “It could, yes. I really
don’t believe it will, though. I can’t think of any particular reason for him
to try and defraud either me or Mr. Clark. If he was going to do that, why not
try and get ours? It’s much richer.”

“How would he know, though?”

“He watches,” I said. “That’s all he does. He
knows every single bit of business in Deadwood, inside and out.”

Just as father began mulling over the idea I’d
just given him, noon struck, and with it, Davis Clark’s daily visit, right on
time.

“How-do, neighbor?” A smiling, but very tired
looking man came up the dirt path between the two claims. He and father built it
to connect their plots, ostensibly as a safety measure, but really it was
because they wanted to have easy access to one another when boredom settled in.

Father waved, but his strained face didn’t change.
“Well enough. I think we’ve found the tail of the vein running underneath here.
The only problem is that I don’t have the slightest idea what to do now, if I’m
being honest. Mr. Star set me up with those two miners, and they’re hard at
work, but I haven’t a clue what I’m doing.”

“Hey now,” Mr. Clark sat down on a stump beside
father. “Any rate, you’ve been doing fine so far. What’s got you down, Jeffrey?
Nothing a fine, fat ham sandwich won’t cure, I hope?” He handed something
wrapped in paper to my father. “My apologies, Miss Clara, if I’d known you were
to be here, I would have brought more. I get them from the inn of a morning.
That Nettie can make a sandwich as good as she can a pot of greens.”

“Oh that’s all right, Mr. Clark,” I said. “I’ve
brought something of my own. And now seems a good time to eat it. If you need
me, I’ll be under my tree, though I may take a stroll to stretch my legs. So
long in that creek has got me cold and stiff.” I pointed to my favorite spot –
an old, smooth-trunked pine in the distance with a spot that fit my back just
perfectly.

Father took off his hat and slid his hand over his
sweat-slicked hair, shaking the moisture off when he was through. He only
acknowledged me when I was halfway to my tree, with an absent-minded wave. I
sat and ate, pretending to flip through my journal. Two or three chunks of
biscuit were enough to satisfy the tiny shred of an appetite I had.

Mr. Clark and father were seated and laughing,
which it seemed they both needed. I trusted the seed I put in his mind about
acquiring the claim sprouted already, but I knew it would take time to fruit.
In the meantime, I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for magic to happen.
Eli’s fate – and our destiny – rested in my hands, and even as scared as I was,
there was no possibility of my leaving that to chance.

*

N
ot long after I settled in to the brush that kept
me hidden and safe from both the dirt trail along the outside edge of all the
claims, and the creek where Eustace Rawls stood panning, my decision to scout a
place to sit and watch paid off.

Pulling out my journal and pencil, I realized that
I’d gotten so secreted away that without a great deal of effort, movement
proved impossible. Luckily, I’d chosen a good place to get entrenched.

As it happened, Mr. Swearengen was right. People
just love to talk.

“Well, Captain,” Eustace said. “How long you
reckon it’ll take to talk that fella out of his claim?”

I noted that even with their apparent brazenness,
Eustace and Captain Ernie skillfully avoided mentioning any names. Just like
Gretchen told me –
“The ones who ain’t there is just as important as the
ones that is.”

“The one over thataway?” Ernie grunted, pointing
toward Mr. Clark’s claim. He shrugged.

“No, no, the other one. Clark’s claim is good, but
not as rich as the other one up the way.”

“What other one?” Ernie said. “Oh yeah, him.”

Up the way
could mean a million different
things. Of course, I knew exactly what they meant. My pencil darted across page
after page. I jotted down all the little tidbits they spilled, one after
another, no matter how inane or vulgar. Unfortunately, there was a lot more
crass vulgarity than there was anything of note for quite some time.

Mr. Rawls revealed his prurient interest in a
particular prostitute called Leslie in Mr. Swearengen’s den of iniquity. The
Captain agreed with a grunt and another shrug. I learned that Rawls left a
string of wives across the country, one in every place he stopped to work a
mine; except Deadwood, of course. According to him, the only women in Deadwood outside
of two he named simply weren’t worth his time to court. That made me snort a
bit.

With the back of my hand, pressed on my lips I
managed to regain my composure. I tried to imagine what sort of woman would
relent and allow the creature in front of me to have her hand, but for fear of
laughing, I forced myself to stop.

Eustace Rawls, as it happens, prefers his eggs to
be cooked half-boiled, though I thought perhaps that was a veiled lewd comment.
And then, I began drawing a doodle of an egg that quickly became a fanciful
picture of Eli. Once his face was finished, I went on to draw his arms.

The two moppet-heads kept right on chattering
away, still completely ignorant of my presence. After a particularly foul joke,
Mr. Rawls made a honking sound, followed by some kind of rude gesture and I let
my thoughts float back to Eli.

Eli would never honk, or make a rude gesture.

I rounded out the arms on my little sketch, making
them a bit more muscular then dotted the line of Eli’s jaw with some stubble. I
liked him both ways – clean shaven and with a few days growth – though I wasn’t
sure which I preferred, if either.

Even with my fanciful sketching, I made sure to
keep my ears on Rawls and the Captain, which soon paid off.

“And then if he still don’t sell the claim, we’ll
just kidnap him.” Eustace tossed that tidbit out without a care in his voice, snapping
me out of my silly fantasy. “I don’t see what the problem is. Ain’t like he’s
gonna hold out that long anyway. Men like him don’t take even a good beating to
convince to do things they don’t wanna do.”

“What about his daughter?” Ernie asked.

Furiously, I wrote down every word that passed
either of their lips. Kidnapping, claim selling, a daughter, it was all right
there; all laid out in front of me. Except for that obnoxious habit criminals
like those two have of never using names. They knew better.

But self-control with the tongue was not a trait
either man possessed. Rawls quickly resumed with a guffaw. “Kidnap her? Why?
That’d just make him madder’n an angry hornet. And worse than that, Eli’s loose
and God-knows-where. That’d cause more problems on top of the rest.”

Finally, a name, though it doesn’t mean much.
Still, I wrote ‘Eli’, conveniently right above the portrait I’d draw of the two
of us. Then I added a little flourish, and a flower.

“What’s he got to do with anything?” The Captain
asked in a halting, out-of-breath way. “Who cares about him?”

“Have you somehow missed everything that’s been
going on? They’re all buddies, them three. Maybe more in the case of the
daughter, and if we were to kidnap Clara, he’d surely go after her. The father,
he might assume the old man can take care of himself. And anyway, you
thick-skulled idiot, if we kidnap the father, he’ll just pay his own way out.
We need a claim, not a ransom.”

The two of them seemed to fall into a kind of lull
for a time. Neither man spoke, but it didn’t matter. I had what I needed. Not
everything of course, but I could hardly expect them to freely admit to one
another that they were responsible for Eli’s capture, and were actually the
one’s behind Itan’s raid.

For that, I knew, I’d need Mr. Swearengen. Still,
with what I had in my journal, I stood a chance even if his help fell through
as father seemed to fear. I wasn’t worried, but it was nonetheless good to have
a backup plan.

Quickly, I looped the leather strap around my
journal and pushed myself free of the bushes. Much to my pleasure, it went off
without a hitch. No twigs broken, no unwanted visitors happening by at the
worst possible moments – everything went perfectly to plan.

*

T
wo hours passed by the time I returned to the
claim with a rather strange looking grin on my face. Mr. Clark and my father
had long since finished their food, and were right in the middle of a serious
discussion.

“No, Davis, I’m not saying your claim is
worthless, what I’m saying is –”

“Well you’d be right if you were,” Mr. Clark cut
father off. “Or close to it anyway. The deeper they dig, the less they find.
That’s not exactly what you want to find.”

“Davis, listen here.” Father stood and put his
hands on his hips. He meant business. Or he meant to give Mr. Clark an
ultimatum that he would either eat his peas or get a swatting. I covered my
mouth to keep my dignity intact. “That isn’t what I’m saying at all. What I
propose is that I have a claim here that I can’t possibly hope to manage. I
trust exactly two people in this camp – the present company, and Sol Star. Mr.
Star’s already said he’s not got the stomach for managing a claim in the
owner’s absence, and so it falls to you.”

Resignation was clear on Mr. Clark’s face. The
sort of resignation that comes when one realizes an opportunity but is afraid
to take it out of an inexplicable fear. “Thirty percent,” he said.

“What was that?”

“I said” he paused to take a breath. “Thirty
percent, Jeffrey. Pay me that, and pay me expenses, and I’ll do it. I’ll go
along with this fool’s errand. I’ll sell my damn claim to Al and manage yours.”

A twinkle glinted in father’s eye. “Ten.”

“Now come on, Jefferson, this is ridiculous! I
have ten years of experience running claims and you’ve none! Thirty percent!”

“Well now I want to say seven because you’re being
so loud,” Father replied.

“Okay, okay, twenty-five. That’s as low as I’ll
go. Twenty five percent of gross earnings. No salary, but you pay my room and
board while I’m managing the claim.”

Both men had lusty looks on their faces. It
occurred to me that this is what both of them loved – haggling, the fight; the
war for a deal.

Father sucked on his mustache. “Ten percent,
expenses, and when Clara and I leave, I’ll buy that house Swearengen’s loaning
us and give it to you.”

Mr. Clark closed his eyes to slits. “All that, and
twenty percent of gross.”

“Ha!” Father snorted a laugh. “At first I thought
you’d be a tough sell. Now I realize you’re the worst haggler for ten-thousand
miles. I bought the damned thing! I’m not giving you twenty percent of the
take!”

“Well then, we’re at an impasse.” Davis Clark
crossed his arms in front of his chest and puffed out his cheeks. “Fifteen?”

“Ah now he’s talking,” father said with a grin.
“Twelve.”

“Twelve? And all the amenities? I don’t want your
house though, on account of having got my own. So throw in a stagecoach that I
can take on holiday.”

Father slapped his thigh, laughing loudly. “A
holiday coach? Okay, all right, fine. You want a wagon you get one. Twelve
percent gross, expenses, and a damn stagecoach.”

Mr. Clark had a worried look on his face. “I don’t
know, Jeff, it sounds good but I’m still not sure.”

“Tell you what. You think about it. You’re not
going to get a better deal. Think about it and let me know.”

“Yeah, all right,” he said. “But for now, I gotta
get back. Those miners of mine aren’t gonna work on their own, that’s for sure.
Obliged, Miss Clara,” he said as he walked past and tipped his hat.

I sat down beside father, who was still reclined
on his stump.

“What do you think?” I asked him. “Will he go for
it?”

“I think,” he said, taking a bite of an apple.
“That we will have to see.”

October 7, 1878 - Noon

Deadwood, Dakota Territory

––––––––

F
all settled in, along with cooler weather and
intermittent ice on the roads which meant fresh food came slower, or sometimes
not at all, from the farms in Yankton and further east. I roasted the last of
the potatoes, mashed them, buttered them, and fried them into crunchy cakes. It
was a recipe I learned from my nanny when I was a little girl. Whenever I was
scared, or felt young, helpless or vulnerable, potato cakes made me feel
better.

As Eli tore into his fifth cake, I was just
finishing my first. I watched in open-mouthed wonder as he shoveled it in.

“This is just delicious, Clara, I thought rich
women didn’t cook.” His voice came out around a mouthful of potato. “Clara? You
all right? Quiet today.”

Eli’s voice shook me out of my trance. “Oh, sorry,
yes. I was just thinking about this claim problem. Davis Clark is trying to
work out a deal with father, but I don’t know if he’ll go for it. And then
there was those two ruffians and their threats, I-”

“Enough,” he said. “You have done everything you
can. Worrying yourself isn’t going to help. All’s gonna do is give you a
dyspeptic stomach. Worry gives you the burps.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “I’m sorry, what?
The burps?”

He nodded. “Doc in town told me about it.” Eli
swallowed another bite. “He says when people get upset over things, it
manifests in their bodies. Says you can make yourself sick worrying too much,
and the first sign of it is that you start burping. Out of the normal times
that one would burp, I mean.”

“When would that be?” I asked softly.

I smiled as Eli grabbed yet another pancake – the
pan was down to four now, from twelve – and dug in. His face, even with a
slight bit of white potato fluff on his chin, was just beautiful. Merely by
being present, he gave me such a sense of security and comfort that I could
hardly imagine feeling more soothed in the womb.