Authors: Lydia
“I’m sorry,” Donovan said. “Truly sorry.” He picked up his knife, made several attempts to cut the rubbery steak and finally abandoned the effort as hopeless.
“An’ thee, me ‘andsome. Thee’ve a wife? Or a sweetheart?”
For some absurd reason, the picture that flashed through Donovan’s mind was of Sarah, standing in the lamplight of the cabin, disheveled and glowing as she cradled Varina’s newborn son. He held the image for an instant, then blinked it determinedly away.
“No,” he said. “No wife. No sweetheart.”
“Pity.” Jamie forked up more potatoes. “’Tis a woman’s sweetness that makes life truly worth the trials.”
“Tell me more about the smelter.” Donovan forced a change of subject. “Where does the ore come from?”
“Gregory Gulch, mostly. “Tis close by an’ not far to ‘aul the rock. But mind ‘ee, the smelter’s of a goodly size. ‘Twas built to ‘andle ore from all these parts, once there be enough miners what can blast ‘ard rock. ‘Tis a dangerous job. A mon’s got t’ know what ‘e’s doin’, or ‘e gets blown sky-’igh.”
“And you?” Donovan asked. “I take it you know good ore when you find it.”
“Aye, that I do. Worked enough of it. Truth be, when I come over ‘ere, ‘twas with the ‘ope of findin’ me own claim an’ workin’ it. ‘Ad too many years of bein’ a company mon.”
“But hard-rock mining’s not like placer. From what I know of it, there’s no way a man can work hard rock alone. It takes capital and a crew of men to work a strike.”
“True, me son. But find thee a good claim, and the rest follows like magic!” The wiry Cornishman took a bite of inedible steak, chewing with relish. “There be always them what’s got money to invest, and them what’s got strong backs and a need for the wages.”
Jamie bent to eating in earnest. Donovan, however, had given up on his meal. He leaned back in his chair to survey
the crowded dining room, with its vermilion walls, giltpainted moldings and motley clientele. Through a long, open archway, he could see into the smoke-hazed bar, where the town’s rougher element was lined up for glasses of cheap Tennessee lightning.
He was giving the drinkers a cursory glance when one of them, a hulk of a man in a grease-stained canvas coat, turned toward a companion. The move gave Donovan a full view of his flat-nosed profile.
Another ghost.
Donovan blinked, certain his eyes were deceiving him. But there was no mistaking Corporal Simeon Dooley, a brawler and troublemaker from the start, who’d served in Donovan’s Virginia regiment. The strange thing was, he had seen Dooley fall at Antietam, with a hole in his chest that would have dispatched a buffalo bull. Donovan had assumed he was dead. Now, here he was, drinking and laughing at a bar in Central City, Colorado Territory.
First Lydia Taggart. Now Dooley.
Donovan toyed briefly with the idea of calling out to him. But no, he’d never gotten along with the man. As a soldier, the big corporal had been surly, insubordinate, lazy and constantly picking fights. From the looks of him, he did not appear to have changed.
Shrugging Dooley out of his thoughts, Donovan turned back to Jamie Trenoweth, who was wiping his plate with a hunk of sourdough biscuit.
“When’s your next day off?” he asked the Cornishman.
“I get Sundays. But the boss ‘e’s good to let me take other days when I ask ahead.”
“Think about paying a visit to Miner’s Gulch,” Donovan said. “There’s something there I’d like to show you.”
Betsy Mae’s newborn girl was little more than matchstick bones—a small, scrawny stick of a thing with a gnomish face and a mop of light brown hair. But she
squalled lustily against Sarah’s damp shoulder, her rosebud mouth groping for nourishment.
Sarah stole a few more seconds to cuddle her close, savoring her kittenlike smallness, her tiny, clutching hands and her wonderful new-baby smell. Then, with a sigh, she turned back to the exhausted Betsy Mae.
“There’s not much to this young lady. But what there is seems healthy, and she’s certainly got good, strong lungs. Are you up to feeding her?”
“Here, give her over.” Betsy Mae held out her arms with a weary smile. “I can’t believe she’s really here, after the time we had. I don’t know what we’d have done without you, Sarah.”
Sarah handed over the tiny mite with a twinge of separation pain that had become all too familiar. Babies were so precious. But they were never hers to keep.
Betsy Mae opened her nightgown and offered one swollen breast to the wriggling infant. With knowing skill, she let her nipple tease the silky lips. Instinctively the tiny mouth clamped on and began to suck. The small, bundled body quivered contentedly as the warm nourishment began to flow.
Sarah sagged against the rough log wall, her clothes still wet from last night’s rain. Only now that her hands were empty did she realize how tired she was. And how cold. Fatigue lay like ice in her marrow, so heavy and draining that she could barely stand. She had to get home, she realized dimly. She had to get out of her soaked clothes and into a warm bed.
A deep snore rose from a bedroll on the floor, where Myles and his son had fallen into slumber after the birth. The baby’s noisy little sucks were the only other sound in the cabin.
“You look all done in, Sarah,” Betsy Mae said softly. “Go on home and get some rest. We’ll be fine here. I can wake Myles if I need anything.”
Sarah nodded, lacking even the strength to speak. Her cloak had washed away in the flood, and this poor family had no wrap to lend her. She could only hope the rain had stopped and the creek had gone down.
She slipped out of the door and found her mule under the lean-to, munching a wisp of hay. Marshaling her strength, Sarah crawled into the saddle, gave the beast his head and collapsed over the sturdy neck. She could doze a little now. For all his mulish ways, Nebuchadnezzar could always be trusted to find the path home.
The sky was leaden with morning clouds. The rain had stopped, but the newly leafed aspens drooped with moisture that drenched Sarah’s hair and clothes as they brushed past. The droplets fell like ice on her fevered skin. She was too tired to think, too tired to care.
An abrupt lurch and the sound of a running creek told her they were crossing the ford. Sarah clung to the mule’s neck, her feet dragging listlessly in the ripples. If she fell, she knew she would drown. She did not have the strength to swim.
The mule plunged up the opposite bank and headed for the main road. The next thing Sarah remembered, they were standing outside the stable, with the hungry beast nickering to be led to his stall.
Exhausted as she was, Sarah forced herself to remove the saddle and bridle, rub down the mule and give him a bucket of oats to munch. Nebuchadnezzar had saved her life in last night’s flood. It was the least she could do for him.
That accomplished, she staggered out of the stable. The sky was the color of unpolished pewter, pale in the east where the sun would soon be up. The birds had already awakened. Their songs, which Sarah usually loved, screeched a menacing cacophony in her ears. Her skin burned like fire in the morning chill.
The stairway to her rooms loomed above her like the side of a mountain. Seizing the rail, she dragged herself upward.
The earth seemed to be spinning below. She could not look down.
At last she gained the door. Somehow she got it unlocked, got it open and locked again behind her. Reeling across the classroom like a drunkard, she reached the bedroom.
A black cloud seemed to swirl around her, closing in as her fingers fumbled for the top button of her shirtwaist. Head spinning, she tugged helplessly at the wet fabric. One button popped its thread and bounced to the floor.
That was the last thing Sarah remembered as she spun forward into darkness.
W
altzing couples whirled in a ghostly ballroom, their faces concealed by exquisite masks fashioned of jewels, fur and feathers. The music was dark and sensual. Its passionate rhythm pulsed like a heartbeat through Sarah’s veins as she dipped and spun.
Donovan’s hand cradled the small of her back. From behind a golden lion’s mask, his eyes blazed their emerald fire into hers, their tender heat all but melting the clothes from her body.
She was a bird in his arms, her mask a bird’s, its vibrant colors echoing the purple, magenta and crimson plumes that adorned her gown. Her skirt swirled and floated as they moved together in a world all their own, the other dancers no more than a rainbow blur around them.
Where her hand lay on his shoulder, she could feel the heat of his body. She could feel the desire that tightened his muscles at her touch, and she burned for him. Achingly, wantonly, in a way, she supposed, that no decent woman should want a man, Sarah wanted Donovan Cole.
She smiled up at him, her chin tilting coquettishly. His lips moved in response beneath the mask, forming words without sound.
I love you, Lydia,
they said.
The sentiment knifed through her with the pain of cold steel, but Sarah kept her silence, kept her smile. The mask was Lydia. For as long as she wore it, Donovan was hers.
The music faded; the dancers melted into mist. She and Donovan were alone under the open stars. Flinging aside his own golden mask, he swept her into his arms. His searing kiss sent wet-hot waves rippling downward through her body. She moaned in a frenzy of yearning. Her fingers raked his hair as she pulled his head down to the pulsing cleft between her breasts.
He doesn’t love you,
a voice cried out inside her head.
It’s the mask he loves, you fool, only the
mask….
But the warning turned to smoke in the heat of Sarah’s desire. She trembled as he arched her backward onto a bed of fragrant, scarlet blossoms. Their clothes fell away as if by magic—all but the glorious feathered mask. A furtive touch reassured her it was still in place.
Donovan leaned above her, his nakedness beautiful in the starlight. Sarah touched him in wonder. Her fingers reached up to brush the virile tangle of hair that spread between his nipples; they traced its downward trail along his hard, flat belly to where it curled luxuriantly around the marbled shaft of his manhood. He moaned as she stroked him, guiding him gently toward the aching center of her need.
It would happen now, she told herself. Donovan would love her, and the mask would no longer matter.
He tensed, poised to thrust, then hesitated. His hand moved swiftly to sweep the mask from her face. She cried out as he stared down at her. Her dismayed eyes saw his expression harden, saw him draw back…
Sarah awoke with a start.
She was lying fully dressed across the foot of her bed, her damp clothes clammy against her fevered skin. She struggled to sit up, only to collapse dizzily onto the coverlet. She was ill, she realized. As ill as she had ever been in her healthy, young life.
She remembered staggering home in the early light of dawn. Now, through her window, the sky was a deep indigo, the color of evening. Sarah groaned as the clock in the
schoolroom struck eight. Unbelievably she had slept for nearly fourteen hours in her water-soaked clothes.
Gritting her teeth against the dizziness, she pushed herself to a sitting position once more. Her throat was raw. Her chest felt as if it had been encased in tight iron bands. She had to get up, she realized foggily. She had to get some hot liquids into her body. She had to get out of her wet clothes and into her dry, warm bed.
Gripping a bedpost, she swung herself to her feet. The room swam around her as she inched along the wall. If she could get far enough to light the stove, she would use the water in the kettle to make some good, hot tea.
She had rounded the doorway into the classroom when her ears caught shouts from the street below. The windowpanes flickered red, reflecting flame from somewhere outside.
Fire. Sarah’s heart contracted in sudden dread. Even after rain, a blaze could make swift work of the old wooden structures that sprawled up and down Miner’s Gulch. Forgetting how sick she was, she reeled across the room to a front window, parted the curtains and peered down at the street.
She had expected to see a burning building, with the townspeople forming up to pass buckets from the creek. What she saw instead was a single bonfire, piled high with scrap wood, blazing squarely in front of the store.
A dark premonition stole over Sarah as she noticed the three men clustered tensely around the flames, orange light dancing on their soot-blackened faces. If they were trying to disguise themselves, it was a pathetic attempt. Even from the window, she had no trouble recognizing any of them. MacIntyre, the one-armed livery stable owner stood close to the blaze, using a long stick to stir something in a big iron pot. And the spidery figure next to him—that would be Pete Ainsworth, who spent most of his time drinking at Smitty’s. A little farther off, the squat man holding what looked like two pillows would be—
Dear heaven.
Sarah staggered back from the window, knees buckling as the realization hit her.
Feathers. Tar and feathers. Meant for her.
Her heart slammed into a panic-stricken gallop, pumping adrenaline through her fever-racked body. A quick look out her bedroom window confirmed that she had no hope of getting away. Three more men stood at the foot of the stairway, cutting off her escape.
Tar and feathers. She had seen the horror of it once, in Vicksburg, where townspeople had caught a traveling medicine drummer cheating his customers. His body had been stripped, slathered with blistering hot tar, then doused with a bag of feathers, after which the poor miscreant was carried out of town on a rail and left by the roadside. Sarah had seen him weeks later in another town, his skin hideously scabbed from burns, his hair, what was left of it, still matted with tar. She had never forgotten the sight.
Nerves screaming, she darted back and forth like a cornered mouse, searching for a place to hide. The bed, the wall, the floor—there was nowhere a grown woman could conceal herself. And she knew the men would be coming for her soon—as soon as the tar was melted.
The door! In a frenzied burst of activity, she began shoving benches across the floor to make a barricade. But it was no use. The heavy tread of boots on the stairway told her that her pathetic efforts were already too late.
Wood splintered as the door swung inward with a sickening crash. The three dark figures who lurched into the schoolroom reeked hellishly of smoke, tar and cheap whiskey. White-rimmed eyes glittered in their soot-smeared faces.
“Come on out, you goddamned Yankee bitch,” one of them snarled. “We know you’re in here, and we ain’t leavin’ without you!”
Paralyzed with terror, Sarah crouched beneath her desk as the big, dirty boots tromped closer. Her teeth chattered
with the chills that racked her fevered body. The room swam dizzyingly in her head, and she knew she was on the verge of fainting. Maybe it would be a mercy if she did.
One of the creatures stomped into her bedroom. Sarah could hear him rummaging through her things, snorting like an animal. “Hey, look a’ this! So this is what a Yankee spy wears under them fancy skirts. Lace britches!”
Chortling, the other two stampeded into the bedroom. As Sarah heard their lusty hoots, she suddenly realized the classroom was empty, its door dangling open on shattered hinges.
Reeling with fever, she slid out from under the desk and stumbled to her feet. She had seconds, at most, to make it outside. And what then? Could she reach the barn? The trees? Her friends above Smitty’s? Could she even manage her way down the stairs?
Sarah’s legs wobbled like a newborn calf’s. She staggered across the schoolroom, praying under her breath as the darkness swam around her. From her bedroom came the sound of slamming drawers and drunken laughter. Any second now, the three men would burst out and see her. Then she would truly be lost.
The door—she reached it and collapsed against the broken frame. She couldn’t stop. She had to keep moving, she lashed herself as she stumbled out into the cool night air.
The stairs fell away below her like the edge of a deep ravine. Clinging to the rail, she ventured one step downward, then two more…
“Thar she is, the lyin’ Yankee slut!”
The shout from behind her flung Sarah into a panic. She plunged down the next half-dozen steps. Then her out-ofcontrol legs tangled in her skirts, and she pitched forward, sliding headfirst to the mud-slicked bottom of the stairs.
They were on her like a pack of dogs. Rough hands clamped her arms and dragged her, gasping and clawing, across the muddy ground into the alley. Ahead in the street, Sarah could see the leaping flames of the bonfire. Gathering
her strength, she began to scream. Surely someone would hear her, someone would come-A blow from the flat of a big, sooty palm exploded in her head. Shocked into silence, Sarah sagged against the hands that gripped her limbs. A sob broke from her lips as the sickening realization hit her.
No one would fly to her rescue. No one would dare. Not even the women at Smitty’s, her staunch and courageous friends, would be foolish enough to defy this drunken, raging mob and turn its anger on themselves. She was alone in her peril. Utterly and completely alone.
Even Donovan…
“Yankee bitch!” It was MacIntyre who loomed above her now, his eyes glittering yellow in the firelight. “You owe me an arm, Yankee bitch! You owe Ainsworth a brother an’ O’Rourke a flour mill! You owe us all, an’ it’s time t’ pay!”
She moaned feebly as the men flung her to the ground. How many hidden eyes were watching? she wondered. How many eyes, from the saloon, from the store, from the shadowed porches? How many people stood in silent consent, waiting to see her punishment?
Sarah gasped with pain as MacIntyre’s single, powerful hand locked into her hair and pulled, wrenching it loose from its remaining pins so that in one motion he held its unbound length in his fist.
A knife blade flashed before Sarah’s horrified eyes. Glancing toward it, MacIntyre nodded.
“Cut it!” he rasped.
Donovan had planned on arriving in Miner’s Gulch before sundown. However, he had taken extra time that morning to ride out to Black Hawk and see the new smelter. The delay had cost him a good two hours, but the time had been well spent. He had driven home bursting with plans-for Varina and her family, for the dying town, and maybe even for himself.
He was still in high spirits as he rounded the last mountain curve before the long, sloping descent into the gulch. Jamie Trenoweth had agreed to come up on his next day off to examine Varina’s claim. If the gold-bearing quartz was as rich as Donovan hoped, his sister would never be poor again.
The night was diamond clear, the air cool and fresh with the smell of wet earth. Above the peaks, the full moon lay like a ripe, golden peach. Donovan inhaled deeply, his weariness a pleasant weight in his bones. The rough bed in Varina’s loft would feel good tonight.
A faint whiff of smoke drifted on the air, teasing at Donovan’s nostrils. At first nothing unusual registered in his mind. There could always be campfires along the road or cook fires in the outlying cabins. On a cool spring evening, a passerby could expect a whiff of smoke here and there.
But no, he suddenly realized. This smoke had an odd scent about it, greasy, acrid and heavy, almost as if someone was melting…tar.
Sarah!
With a shout, he whacked the reins down hard on the rumps of the four big bays. The wagon lurched ahead, wooden frame groaning as it careened around the bend. Ahead lay the road that sloped downward to the foot of the gulch—two miles, maybe less, but it might as well be a hundred. The sickening odor of tar, growing stronger by the second, told him he could already be too late.
Frantic now, Donovan pressed the horses to a full gallop down the moonlit roadway. With one hand, he steadied the reins. With the other, he fumbled under the seat for the rifle.
Strands of Sarah’s silky brown hair littered the trampled mud around the fire. Bending at the knee, MacIntyre scooped up a handful of curls and tossed them into the
flames. “That was the easy part, girlie. Now you’re gonna see what we really do t’ Yankee whores in these parts!”
Faint with shock and fever, Sarah lay collapsed at his feet. There was no more need for the men to hold her. She was too weak to fight or escape.
Deliberately, MacIntyre turned his back on her to stir the pot of black tar that simmered on the coals. Its sickening heat swam in the air, almost making Sarah retch. People had died from tarrings, she recalled. Maybe they were the lucky ones. Maybe she would be fortunate enough to pass out before the pain got too bad, and never awaken again. “Tar’s ready,” MacIntyre announced. “Strip the bitch! We want t’ put this black honey where it’ll hurt the most!”
“No—” Sarah protested weakly as unfeeling hands tore away her skirt and shirtwaist, ripping them in the process. “Please, no—” She could feel them jerking away her petticoats, exposing her drawers. She writhed and twisted in a pitiful attempt to cover herself. “You’re decent men, not monsters. You’ve got wives and daughters. How can you—?”
MacIntyre’s hand struck her face in a jaw-wrenching slap. “Shut up, Yankee spy! We’re gonna—”
He stiffened at the sound of a rifle shot, and the clatter of a heavy wagon thundering up the street from the bottoms. One of the men dropped his grip on Sarah’s leg.
“Oh, hell,” he groaned, “it’s that damned Cole!”
Sarah heard a voice shouting something. Then her whole world went black.
Standing in the wagon box, Donovan leveled the rifle at the small cluster of men. “First one of you bastards makes a move, I’ll give it to him where it hurts!” he shouted.
Six blackened faces gazed up at him, eyes shifting uneasily under the fury of his glare. He’d underestimated MacIntyre and his cronies, Donovan reflected bitterly. They were cowards to a man, but with enough liquor in their
guts, they’d at least proven themselves capable of ganging up on a helpless female.