Gabriel's Lady. Ana Seymour
Driscoll said with a sneer.
Morgan dropped his hands and tried to move around the three men. Before he could take a second step, the man with the gunbelt had cleared leather. Slowly he pulled back the hammer of the big gun, cocked it and pointed it at Morgan’s chest.
Morgan froze in place. A rivulet of sweat made its way along his temple. Driscoll was still smiling. Chairs scraped and the piano music across the room slowed, then stopped altogether.
A man at one of the gaming tables rose to his feet and sauntered toward the group at the bar. “What seems to be the problem here, Driscoll?” Gabe Hatch asked in an even voice.
The smile dropped off Driscoll’s face as he turned toward the newcomer. “Go on back to your game, Hatch. This is a private matter.”
Gabe ignored him and kept on coming, stopping just behind the cowboy with the drawn gun. His hands were at his sides, fingers slightly spread.
“Mr. Jones is a friend of mine, gentlemen,” Gabe said. “And he’s new in town. I wouldn’t want to see him get into any kind of trouble.”
The man with the Peacemaker still tucked in his belt said, “Your friend thinks he’s too good to have a drink with Big Jim here.”
“I told you to stay out of it, Hatch,” Driscoll said, turning around to face Gabe.
“And I told you that Morgan’s a friend of mine.” He had no visible weapon, but he flexed his fingers and had the look of a man ready to take action.
He and Driscoll locked gazes for a tense moment. Finally the saloon owner shrugged and said, “Tell your friend he’d better be more sociable the next time he comes around here.” He gave a curt nod to the man holding the gun, who immediately uncocked it and slipped it back into its holster. Then he pushed past Gabe and walked away.
Gabe gripped Morgan’s shoulder. The big man was shaken by the encounter, and Gabe didn’t blame him. Deuce Connors had gotten his nickname from those two sidearms of his, and he handled them as slickly as anyone in Deadwood. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Parker’s not around. He must be over at Mattie’s.”
Connors and the other gunman kept their eyes on them as they walked toward the door. “Friendly town,” Morgan said dryly when they were out on the street.
“Yeah, well, most of the people are all right. Driscoll’s just gotten too swelled for his britches. He’s got the biggest saloon in town and owns most of those rentals up there.” He pointed up the canyon wall to a section of tin-roofed shacks built practically on top of each other. “Charges sky-high rents for miserable huts that a pig would think twice about sleeping in. But there are so many danged fools arriving every day determined to strike it rich that he can set any price he wants.”
Morgan spat into the dust as if trying to rid himself of the taste of Big Jim Driscoll. “He won’t have my patronage again, that’s for darn sure.”
Gabe started down the street. “I’ll walk with you to Mattie’s,” he said. “I wouldn’t choose the Lucky Horseshoe myself except that it has the richest games in town. If you want to talk real money, you’ve got to be a customer of Big Jim.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes. Then Gabe asked, “Why are you looking for Parker?”
“His sister wants him. It seems she’s determined to make a happy home for him up there at the mine. She’s over at the store right now buying soap and brooms and what all. Says she’s going to clean things up.”
Gabe chuckled. “Well, now, that should be interesting.”
* * *
By the time an evasive Parker and an even more evasive Morgan had joined Amelia at the general store, she had finished making her purchases. She stood impatiently, surrounded by bundles and feeling a little self-conscious. The storekeeper didn’t seem to mind having a strange woman planted in the middle of his store, tapping her foot and looking around restlessly.
Parker had refused to offer much in the way of an explanation for the delay, though he claimed to be pleased that she had found a project with which to occupy herself and agreed to return to the cabin with them. All in all, the trip to town had brought back Amelia’s headache, and she decided to postpone her cleaning venture until the next day.
It proved to be a wise decision, since she awoke the next morning with a clear head and a renewed determination to make the best of her stay in the West. Even the weather seemed resolved to put on its best face. It was a brilliant, cloudless day. The stream sparkled like liquid diamonds and the valley beyond looked green and inviting. Amelia thought for a moment of taking a short ride across the meadow before she started her work, but firmly pushed the idea away. Her first task was to do laundry, and since she had never in her life washed so much as a handkerchief, she figured she’d better get an early start.
Parker was on his best behavior, evidently as determined as she that their six weeks would be pleasant. He agreed without fuss that Morgan should stop working on the mine long enough to help her fill the washtub they had cut from a barrel and haul water up to the new copper boiler she’d purchased in town.
Once she had her system set up, Amelia told Morgan that he could go back to helping Parker. She would handle things from here on. What could be that difficult about boiling and rinsing clothes?
Feeling a touch of that independence Parker had boasted about, she prepared the first batch. She remembered that Meggie, the Irishwoman who came in once a week to supervise the laundry at the Prescott household, always put the light-colored things together, particularly the more delicate…unmentionables. As she started to choose items from the pile that Parker had gathered for her the previous evening, it dampened her enthusiasm a bit to discover that it wasn’t only Parker’s house that hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. But she persisted and added some things of Morgan’s and her own until the boiler was chock-full. She ladled out a spoonful of soap. She had no idea how much to use nor how long the things should boil, but it didn’t seem that such considerations should matter. After all, she had been the star pupil at Miss Longworth’s Female Academy four years running. How hard could it be to do a little laundry?
Gabe gave his horse free rein across the last flat stretch of meadow. Yesterday he had resisted the urge to walk with Parker and Morgan to see Amelia. Her refusal to dine with him had made it fairly clear that she was not interested in cultivating their acquaintance. But this morning he’d found himself mounting up to ride out to the mine with absolutely no excuse whatsoever except the beauty of one of the last hot days of summer. Amelia Prescott might not want to see him, but she’d left him with a bur under his saddle that had to get combed out…or at least scratched a bit.
Parker and Morgan were upstream at the far end of the digs, so Gabe hitched his horse, untied a paperwrapped package from the back of his saddle and headed for the little cabin. The paper contained a slab of salt pork. Not the most romantic of offerings, but he knew the state of Parker’s larder and figured that by now the lad’s Eastern visitors could be getting pretty hungry. They weren’t used to living on scrawny rabbits and scavenged wild vegetables like the more veteran miners up and down the Black Hills.
He couldn’t hear any noise from inside the cabin. Perhaps Amelia was upriver with her brother. Tentatively he pushed open the door and looked inside. He couldn’t decide whether the scene that met his eyes was comical or tragic. Amelia sat next to a large tub with her legs stuck straight out in front of her. The dirt floor underneath her had turned into a giant mud puddle that had splattered her light blue dress with polka dots of mud. She was surrounded by soaked, muddy articles of clothing. The water in the tub was black. A copper boiler lay on its side by the fire, more clothes tumbling out of it onto the ground. Amelia held one item in her hands and was viewing it with an expression of mourning.
She turned when the door opened. “Oh, fine,” she said. “Now my day is complete.”
“You’re glad to see me, I take it,” Gabe answered. The comical was winning out over the tragic, but