The Outlaw's Kiss (an Old West Romance) (Wild West Brides) (23 page)

“Clara!” Eli shouted, elbowing a bearded man in
the mouth and charging to my side. “Get out of here, you have to –”

“No time, Eli,” I shouted over the noise. “We have
to get them, the Captain and Rawls!” I raised the shackles to show him, hoping
he’d take my meaning. “Itan’s coming from the south, not long!”

He nodded, ducking another wild punch and then
shoved me backwards into Mr. Star. “Rawls crawled away,” he said, pointing,
“that way!”

“What about Ernie?” Mr. Star asked. “Oh, never mind.”
The huge, square-headed man roared and spun around in a circle, catching Seth
off guard with a brutal punch that sent him reeling backwards and then to the
ground.

Sure enough, a pair of feet stuck out from
underneath a wagon parked just off the road.

“You go get him,” Eli shouted. “I’ll handle this
ogre!”

Miraculously, Mr. Star and I were able to wrestle
back through the crowd with little effort, but as soon as we did, Rawls noticed
us coming, scrambled out from his hiding place and broke into a run.

“Stop!” Mr. Star shouted. Rawls chose not to
attend his request. “Stop, Rawls or I shoot!” He leveled his revolver, using
his arm as a steady surface. Turning to me, he winked. “Watch this.”

The gunshot echoed off the buildings, and aside
from a few pained grunts, all the other noise stopped.

“You shot me!” Rawls blubbered. “Sol Star shot me
in the back! He killed me! I’m killed! He’s murdered me!”

“Just a warning shot,” Mr. Star replied. “But I
did wing your cheek a bit. Hands behind your back, Rawls, you’re coming with
us.” Then, turning to me, he said, “Make sure to clamp those shackles enough to
hurt some.”

I slid the metal bracelets around his wrists and
turned the key, tightening them until he squealed. Then I twisted it just a bit
more.

“All right, Clara, enough torture, we need to go.”
Mr. Star turned and grabbed the chain between Rawls’s hands, dragging him
toward the jail as Rawls sputtered and spewed every curse I’ve ever heard, and
a number I’d not.

We wormed through the tightening crowd all the way
to the other side. I looked into the center, to my horror, I saw Captain Ernie,
with his shirt halfway torn off, looming over Eli, who scooted backwards,
trying to regain his footing.

“Go!” I called to Mr. Star, “get him to the jail,
hurry!”

“Where are you going, Clara?”

There was no time to listen or to respond. I
darted toward my Eli like a woman possessed. Even though the crowd had
constricted, in my fury, I managed to shove through. The surviving one of
father’s hired miners pushed in alongside me, and cold-cocked the man holding
him.

“Ollie? Remind me to give you a raise,” Father
said, slapping the broad-backed man on the shoulder before turning and planting
a kick in the ribs of his captor and then yanking Mr. Clark free.

Both of them stumbled and fell, but were safe for
the moment with Ollie guarding them.

Relief was still a distant thought. The thunder
rumbling the ground had gotten so close that the dust cloud on the horizon was
visible from the street. Not long, I knew, not long at all, before Itan
appeared.

“I’m gonna gouge your eyes out!” Captain Ernie
roared in his thick, awful voice as he stooped down and plucked Eli off the
ground. In his huge, meaty hands, Eli’s head looked about the size of a
grapefruit. The last thing I saw before wildness took me was thumbs on Eli’s
eyes.

“No!” I shouted, losing myself and charging
forward, mud sucking at my feet. I dove and swung, heavy, iron shackles
clutched in my hands.

The metal crunched against the big man’s head, who
grunted in surprise, then turned and looked at me. His mouth hung open, and the
instant before he fell in a heap, he dropped Eli into the mud.

Eli stared for a moment, open-mouthed and gasping.
He pushed himself to his feet then helped Seth to his. “Hell of a swing,” he
grinned. “Give me those, you get to the jail.” He shoved me away. “Go before
this crowd swallows us whole!”

I clutched father’s hand and dragged him along.
Mr. Clark was behind us, still shaken but unhurt. We shoved through the crowd
and rejoined Mr. Star just in time for the first of Itan’s braves to sweep
through the center of town, immediately scattering the crowd.

“Go!” Eli waved me forward. “Go! Clara, go!” He
had the Captain by the wrists, bound and helpless. Seth followed, and I was in
front of the whole lot.

My feet pounded the dirt, one after another, one
step, then the next. Every muscle in my body at once cried out in soreness or
relief or pain or ecstasy, but when I felt the wood of the jail’s doorstep, I
finally felt that possibly, our safety might actually be coming.

Itan’s twenty braves crashed into the horde in the
town center just as the confused, angry, excited prospectors’ excitement
reached the tip of its crescendo.

The outside door of the jail was slammed shut, and
at the same time, Eli and Seth shoved Rawls and Ernie in a cell. The bars
closed with a surprisingly soft clank, and with the turn of a key, we all took
a heavy, relieved breath.

“Eli!” A voice – Itan’s – boomed from outside.
“Eli! Clara!”

Eli looked at me and grabbed my hand. “We need to
go,” he said. “And I don’t think we’re going to get a better ticket out of
here.”

I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to leave
everything like this, all so suddenly. There were the clothes, and the friends
we’d made.

“Clara,” he said softly, squeezing. “We can walk
out of this building right now, get on a horse and live our lives the way we
want.”

I looked at father with his split lip. “All the
things,” I said. “What about the house?”

“They’re just things, Clara,” he squeezed my
shoulder. “We’ll get more things. You and Eli, you have a chance at something
that I once had a chance at. Take it.” There were tears in his eyes when he
turned to Mr. Clark.

“Mind holding down the fort until things blow over
and I can get back? I wouldn’t mind helping you run the mine, learning about
it, things like that.”

“Happy to, Jeffrey. Be happy to.”

“Eli! Clara!
Iche!
Hurry!”

Eli urged me out, his palm on my back. “We gotta
go, it’s now or never.”

I turned to Seth, then to Mr. Star. “Thank you
both,” I said. “For everything.”

Then I grabbed Eli’s hand and squeezed it tight. I
said nothing, just pulled him toward the door.

“
Thehan wanchinyanke sni!
” Itan said as we
emerged. He handed the reins of a mottled brown to Eli, and offered his hand to
father, who took it with a slightly confused look on his face.

“Come up,” Itan said, urging him. “We go to
Yankton, or close.”

Eli swung up onto the horse, and helped me up onto
his lap, just like the first time we rode. Just like the time we fell in love.

As Deadwood disappeared behind us, I squinted back
through the cloud of dust. I’ll swear until the end of my days, that Al
Swearengen’s door was just then swinging shut. I couldn’t help but wave, hoping
that someone – anyone – noticed.

October 20, 1878

Yankton, Dakota Territory

––––––––

“T
his is really happening, isn’t it, father?”

My father looked smaller than I remembered as he
stood below my stool, watching with fascination as the single tailor in Yankton
made the final adjustments to my lacy-sleeved gown.

He smiled possibly the biggest smile I’d ever seen
on his face. “I do believe it is, unless somehow we’ve all had a tremendous
hallucination.”

I laughed right along with him.

“Suck in, Miss James! No time for laughing!” Ella,
the tailor, snapped, which made father laugh even harder. I tried very hard to
keep my composure, but my whole body shook. “Oh, fine then, get it all out at
once and let me get back to work. These dressings on such a short notice are so
difficult.” She tisked loudly, but had a bit of a grin.

“It’s just all so fast,” I said. “To be honest,
when Eli proposed back in Deadwood, I thought he was joking. It just seemed
crazy. But now, it feels different.”

“Right, you mean?” Father said. “I know. As soon
as Itan let us off, I knew the look in Eli’s eye. Same one I had before I
battered your mother with proposals until she finally relented.”

I shook my head, not able to stop smiling.
“Father, I know you two colluded. He had mother’s ring! How else could he have
gotten it?” I extended my fingers in front of my face, admiring the sparkling
stones.

“A nice ring, for sure,” Ella remarked, apparently
as entranced as I was.

Father shrugged. “Picked my pocket? Of
course
we colluded, Clara. Eli’s a proper gentleman. He had to ask me for your hand
before he went to you. It’s just the way of things.”

“To think, I found an old-fashioned gentleman such
as that all the way out here on the edge of civilization. Remember when you
called it that?” I straightened myself and did my best to speak without letting
my belly bulge or contract when Ella went back to work.

“Turn your head,” she said, clipping some lace.

“I do, I do. I also remember the first time you
saw your husband-to-be. You had a stupefied look on your face even back that
far.”

It was Ella’s turn to laugh at that one. “That’s
how you know you’ve a good match,” she said. “Love at first sight. People who
don’t believe in it just haven’t ever felt it, is what I think.”

Checking his watch, father let out a contented
sigh. “I’m glad we found you on such short notice. Two days is hardly enough
for most people to get a wedding gown together, Ella. Truly magnificent work.”

“I’m glad you have found me as well. The pile of
money you gave me is enough to drive the laziest to accomplish great things. Since
I’m not lazy,” She held off on congratulating herself further, but her smile
said everything her words did not.

And I had to agree, she had done truly amazing
work. My gown more than I imagined when Eli and I decided to get right down to
business so my father could see us married before he went back home to right
things with the bank. At first, we were just going to be married by Yankton’s
justice of the peace, but everything just sort of fell into order.

Since I first met Eli, no matter what happens, it
all seems to fall into place.

“I hope your bridegroom has calmed himself a bit.
Last I spoke with him, the poor fellow was so nervous he could hardly button
his collar.” Father chuckled. “It’s a good thing you had a suit for him, Ella,
I’d hate for my daughter and my new son-in-law to have been married in those
horrible clothes he was wearing.”

“Yes,” Ella nodded gravely. “It would have been a
tragedy. Red plaid isn’t something that should be worn inside a church.”

The church was another of those things that just
ended up working out for the best. There just happened to be a pastor traveling
through on his way to the Oregon territories where he planned to set up a
little church for some of the pioneers, and happily availed himself to us when
father asked.

“All done!” Ella announced. “You look stunning if
I do say so myself.”

She helped me off the stool and showed me to a
mirrored dressing screen. I couldn’t believe it. I never much imagined myself a
blushing bride in a white wedding dress, but there I was, looking back at my
perfectly arranged hair, beautifully fitted dress, and gloves that went above
my elbows. As I watched myself turn back and forth, a tear slipped out the
corner of my eye.

“Thank you so much, father,” I said, turning to
him. “I wouldn’t have any of this if it weren’t for you.”

“Nonsense,” he said. His voice was a little thick
too. “I’ll save my tears for the wedding, darling Clara, but without me, the
only difference is you would’ve had to find some other way to pay for the
dress. That’s all.” Father smoothed his mustache, which was even on both ends
for the first time since we left New York. He distracted himself by checking
his pocketwatch. “Ah, look at that, two o’clock on the nose. Suppose we better
get to the church! And I suppose that pastor better get a move on, because my
train leaves at four. Yours at half-past.”

“My train? Where am I going?”

Father smiled. “I promised I wouldn’t ruin the
surprise.”

He shuffled me out the front door, and Ella barely
managed to catch the short train on my gown before it hit the floor. She handed
it to father and waved as we went.

The church wasn’t elaborate, but it was all I
wanted. When father held the door open for me, I began to walk, in a daze, down
the aisle before Pastor Charles stopped me. He had a slight Southern accent,
and said he’d been born in Virginia, but had spent most of his life moving
around in service to the Lord.

“No, no!” He waved his hands. “You mustn’t come in
yet! You’re lucky that your fiancé has stepped out, or else you would have seen
him before the wedding began. Very bad luck indeed!” He had a round, red face,
and warm eyes that made me feel comfortable from the first time I heard his
voice.

Father hurried me out and stuck his head in the
door to wait for the signal. In a way I was a bit perplexed by all the to-do.
After all, it was just the three of us and Pastor Charles. But then again, it
felt nice to have at least a little bit of the ritual I’d always wondered if
I’d have.

“Okay,” my father said, and stuck his hand back
for me to take, his head still inside the church. “Come on, Clara, he’s ready!”

I took father’s hand and he gave me a squeeze,
holding the door. I closed my eyes, not really wanting to end the anticipation
until I had no choice. I stood still and took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet
pine scent of the church’s walls and pews and the woods around us. Father led
me down the aisle with one hand on my back, and the other as a resting place
for my hand. Finally, we stopped, and a different set of fingers curled around
me.