Betina Krahn (34 page)

“They’re not for sale a-at a-any price.” The stationman finally smacked into the wall at his back and apparently decided to make a stand. “Regulations is regulations. Great Falls may be just a speck on the Chicago Milwaukee and St. Paul map, but we run tight an’ proper. We go strictly by th’ regulations.”

Halt was suddenly nose to nose with the Stationmaster.

“You know we have permission to tie into CM and SP track,” he declared. “Ol’ Jim Hill himself okayed it.”

“Well, he ain’t okayed me selling ye any of our tools!” The little man finally found his sticking point and brought his chin up.

Diamond dragged Halt back by the sleeve and insisted they leave before something unpleasant occurred. Reluctantly, he complied. They tried the livery stable, the implement dealer, and—on the off chance—even the general store. No one carried hammers of the weight or configuration they needed.

“We ain’t got time for this,” Halt said, taking off his hat and banging it against his thigh, releasing a small cloud of dust. “We got to make track. If we don’t get the rail laid b’fore snowfall, we’ll lose our land grants for sure.”

Diamond saw the worry in Halt’s face and realized it lay always just beneath that genial layer of Irish glibness and glad-handing. If only there was something she could do to—

“Wait—Hill gave you permission to connect onto his track, right?”

“For a price,” Halt said. “He knows the MCM spurrin’ off his line will be good for ’is business, too. That’s why he allowed it in the first pl—”

“So, if he approved the track, why wouldn’t he approve the sale of a bit of equipment? Or the use of it until we could get some from St. Paul or Milwaukee? The stationmaster would have to follow his orders, right?”

“Yeah … the little weasel.”

A huge smile-bloomed. “Where’s your telegraph office?”

Soon she was standing in front of the telegraph operator’s window finishing the wording of a two-part telegram intended for James J. Hill in St. Paul. Finally satisfied with the wording, she handed it over to the operator.

“How long before we could expect a reply?” she asked.
When told it might be several hours to an entire day, she turned to Halt and smiled ruefully. “While we wait, I need to find a laundry and something to eat.”

The Lonesome Dove was one of those mergers of canvas and wood construction that served as buffer between the respectability of the permanent town and the fly-by-night elements in the tents. Halt assured her that despite its location, it served the best food in town, and he proved to be a good judge.

As they finished their ham steaks, mashed potatoes, and scalloped corn, Silky Sutherland entered, wearing a sunflower-yellow dress and hat large enough to save three people from sunstroke. She went from table to table, greeting every diner, working her way across the tent toward Halt and Diamond.

“Well, well … if it isn’t my favorite Irishman and the Diamond Lady. I hope Lou’s feedin’ you right.” She turned toward the back where a fellow with a towel for an apron was trundling dishes of steaming food out from the kitchens. “Hey, Lou—bring me and my friends here some coffee and cobbler.” Then she pulled up a chair and sat herself down with them.

“Don’t mind me sayin’ so, Finnegan, but you don’t look so good.” She grinned and gave his hand, on the tabletop, a suggestive stroke. “You ought to come sleep a few nights in a proper bed.”

He chuckled. “Whoever said yer beds were proper? A few nights in one o’ them and I’d be six feet under. What I need is sleep.”

Diamond was jolted to realize that he did look worn. Dark circles were growing under his eyes and the lines in his face seemed to have been etched significantly deeper in the last three days.

Silky looked a bit disappointed and resettled herself on the chair, fluffing some of her yellow ruffles. “Well, I suppose
I could provide that, too … over at my boardin’ house.” Then she turned to Diamond. “You, on the other hand, Diamond Lady, look fresh as a daisy. McQuaid must be doing right by you.”

“Actually, he’s”—she caught sight of Halt’s frown and softened her answer—“not sleeping very well, either.”

“He always did sleep with one eye open … or so I’m told.” Silky looked her square in the eye. “Never had the privilege of seein’ it firsthand.”

Diamond’s face flushed with heat. She was both appalled and disarmed by Silky’s tacit declaration that she hadn’t slept with Bear. Never in her life had she met anyone as brassy, bold, and outrageously plainspoken as Silky Sutherland. In Baltimore she would never have met such a woman, much less shared a table with her. But here, in the untamed, unpredictable West …

“Ye wouldn’t ’appen to know where we could pick up some spike mauls and gauge bars?” Halt was asking when she came out of her shock. He explained to Diamond: “Silky’s something of a businesswoman. Got ’er fingers in nearly ever’ pie in Great Falls.”

“Eateries.” Silky rolled her gaze to indicate the tent around them, then began to enumerate her other enterprises. “A boardin’ house, th’ dry-goods store, the barbershop, Mrs. Goodbody’s baths, most o’ the livery stable, part o’ the bank, the only hotel in town, and half o’ the Sweetwater.” Taking Diamond’s astonishment for confusion, she explained: “That’s th’ Sweetwater Saloon. Got a six-foot mirror … brought all the way from Chicago. I can provide you a lot o’ things, Finnegan”—Silky waggled her artificially darkened eyebrows—“but hammers ain’t one of ’em.”

“Hammers?” came a male voice from several feet away. They all looked up and there stood Lionel Beecher wearing
a freshly pressed suit and a smirk. “Did I hear someone say they needed
hammers
?”

Silky clamped her hand on Halt’s wrist, keeping it on the table. “You did. Wouldn’t happen to know anybody who’s got a few extra to sell?”

“That depends. Who’s buying?” The light in Beecher’s eyes said that he already knew the answer.

“I am,” Diamond declared, stepping in to defuse the rising tension.

“Well, well, Mrs. McQuaid, you do surprise me. I would think a lady of your quality and refinement wouldn’t concern herself with such things.”

“Mrs. McQuaid is no less th’ lady for also bein’ somethin’ of a businesswoman,” Halt said in warning tones. “She ‘as a reputation for makin’ sound investments.”

“Hearing that, I’m doubly surprised to find her interested in the Montana Central and Mountain,” Beecher said smoothly, settling his gaze on Diamond while keeping Halt in his peripheral view. “Such a risky venture—out there on the high plains, unprotected from the elements, subject to all sorts of
misadventure
.”

“I don’t believe you answered Miss Sutherland,” Diamond said with ladylike imperative. “Do you have hammers and railroad tools for sale?”

“I might be able to find some, given time and the proper … 
motivation
.”

The way his gaze slid over Diamond made it clear to her that he might prove amenable to a more personal appeal from her. She understood that look, that veiled insinuation; she had seen it a thousand times from men who wanted something from her. Her reaction split instantly into two parts. Externally, she raised her head and rose coolly from her chair, drawing Halt and Silky up with her. Internally, she was wrapping her fingers around the neck of an effigy of him and squeezing for all she was worth.

“The possibility of reasonable profit is all the motivation a true gentleman requires in business,” she declared in imperial Wingate tones. “I shall save you whatever effort you might have expended in searching, Mr. Beecher.” Her words and icy smile were the social equivalent of frostbite. “I doubt any tool you could come up with would meet my needs.”

Beecher went rigid.

“Oh, Lionel, don’t take it so hard,” Silky said, bursting into a wicked laugh. “Someday you’ll find a woman who appreciates your … 
tool
!” Her raucous reaction caused everyone in the restaurant to turn and stare at Beecher’s frozen face.

Beecher turned on his heel and stalked out, but not before shooting a malicious look at Halt and Diamond. It was a moment before Diamond sorted through the exchange and realized what Silky had made of what she had said. The sense of it penetrated Halt’s indignation and he hooted a laugh. Diamond bit her lip, her eyes widening at the snickers and guffaws around them. An expanding bubble of tension rose up through her chest and exploded. Her anxiety poured out in clear, purging laughter.

“You’re a wicked woman, you are,” Silky Sutherland said, taking her by the hands. “I knew I was gonna like you the minute I laid eyes on ye!” As they resumed their seats and were served coffee and cobbler, she continued to chuckle. “That’s the best laugh I had in three days. Eat up. It’s on me!”

Late that night, the wagon rumbled back along those twin ribbons of steel that now glinted like silver in the moonlight. Halt drove while Diamond watched for signs of trouble; a loaded rifle lay ready on the seat between them. But the endless dark canopy overhead and
the sea of prairie around them were all they saw, and the rustle of windblown grass, the cry of nighthawks overhead, and the occasional howl of a coyote in the distance were all they heard. Slowly, carefully, they inched toward the MCM’s camp, and as fatigue threatened to overcome them, they spotted the dark outline of the train and the dim yellow glow of lanterns just over the next rise.

The smoke from dying campfires rose and thinned into the distance. The men sat around them in the early evening, smoking and whittling and listening to one of the men play a mouth harp. As they headed into the dormitory cars and their bunks, they usually left one or two men to watch the fires as they burned down. That evening, with the theft of their tools fresh on everyone’s mind, Bear had charged the fire tenders with an official sentry duty and arranged a rotation of shifts.

At the sound of their approach, the sentries sounded an alarm. Men poured out of the dormitories and moments later the wagon was swarmed by sleepy but grinning faces. “Wait’ll you see!” Halt called, heading the wagon straight for the heart of camp.

When they rumbled to a stop, Halt climbed back over the seat, seized one of their lanterns, and threw back a canvas tarp to reveal several wooden boxes filled with hammers, tongs, gauge bars and sundry other tools. A cheer went up that brought Bear running with his gun in his hand.

At the sight of them, he jammed the gun down in the waist of his trousers and climbed up on the wagon wheel to look at what they’d brought.

“Hang me, Finnegan—if you aren’t the best! I knew you’d find some somewhere!” he called, climbing aboard the wagon to inspect at closer range. His eyes glowed in the lantern light as he made a mental tally. “Where did you get them?”

“The CM and SP,” Halt said, beaming. “The stationman wouldn’t sell nothin’ to me, so yer wife … she telegraphed ol’ Jim Hill himself, in St. Paul. Told him who she was and what she needed, told him old John Garrett of the B and O was a dear friend … an’ asked him to author-ize the stationman to sell us tools from ’is roundhouse. By cracky, if he didn’ up an’ do it!”

Another cheer went up from the men and Bear turned slowly to Diamond, who was still standing on the front of the wagon, holding on to the back of the seat. In the moment he stared at her, the pleasure faded from his countenance, his jaw set, and his shoulders squared, betokening control being exerted inside him. Things got unnaturally quiet as the work crews watched him face his pretty wife and then watched him turn back to the tools with only a nod of acknowledgment.

Diamond watched through a haze of fatigued disbelief as Bear turned away. And she wasn’t the only one.

“Go on, lad,” Halt said, scowling. “Give ’er a proper bit o’ thanks. She earned it this day.”

Bear turned on Halt momentarily, warning him off with a glare, but then glanced at the men collected around the wagon, muttering, and apparently reconsidered. He turned slowly to her and seemed to grapple for words.

“I am even more in your debt than ever, Mrs. McQuaid,” he said thickly. “I promise, the Montana Central and Mountain will repay you … every penny.”

To the men watching it seemed an odd way for a man to thank his wife. But to Diamond, who knew from experience and from Halt’s words that Bear hated nothing more than to be in another’s debt, that statement was like a knife in the heart. She lifted her skirts and stepped over the side of the wagon, searching blindly for a foothold on the wheel. The men nearby rushed to help her down and she kept her head lowered as she thanked them and
headed for the car. By the time she reached the steps her tears were rolling freely.

“If ye aren’t the stupidest, pigheadedest man I ever saw!” Halt roared, a quarter of an hour later, as they stood in the moonlight some distance from the train. Halt had dragged him out there after the tools were unloaded and the men had drifted back to their bunks, hoping that no one else would hear what he had to say to his partner. “Why didn’ ye just go on an’ give ’er a belt in th’ mouth while ye were at it?”

“This is none of your business, Finnegan,” Bear said from between gritted teeth. “And if that’s all you dragged me out here for, I’m headin’ back.”

Halt grabbed him by the arm and found himself restraining both Bear and his own sudden urge to mayhem.

“Yer actin’ like a horse’s arse, Bear McQuaid. The woman rescues our work schedule an’ maybe our whole damn’ railroad … and all ye can say is ye’ll pay ’er back?” Halt brandished a fist. “If ye weren’t half a foot taller an’ fifteen years younger, I’d thrash you from here to Billings an’ back!”

With an oath of disgust, Halt released him and stalked off toward camp.

Standing there in the moonlight, with everything night-washed to shades of black and white, Bear saw his actions in stark relief and his face caught fire.

He had acted like an idiot. At the time, all he’d thought about was the humiliation of having his rich, heiress wife bail out his railroad in front of his entire crew. But the minute the words were out of his mouth he knew they were a mistake. Too cold. Too caustic. Too damned ungrateful.

She was trying to help, he knew … the same way she helped missionaries and inventors and fire victims. It was her nature. It was her chosen lot in life. And it was
also the surest way for her to dismiss him from her life. If she made him into just another of her charity cases, another investment in “progress,” he would lose her altogether. He had to build this railroad by himself and prove to her that he was different from Kenwood and Webster and Pierpont … that he wasn’t just a contribution or an investment or another need-driven hanger-on. He had to prove to her that he had some worth, some value of his own …