Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (12 page)

   
Samuel quickly untied the blanket and wrapped her in it. As she stood shivering, he climbed back down the hill and led Gypsy Lady up.

   
Olivia was relieved that her mount seemed unharmed. “Oh, Gypsy, you good girl. Thank heaven you’re all right,” she exclaimed as she knelt to examine the mare’s forelegs.

   
Samuel looked across the meadow to where a group of people approached them. Upon seeing Olivia’s long red hair, several of the men exclaimed in anger and a loud buzzing spread through the crowd as its mood grew more ugly. Lyman Simms, the track proprietor, had a black scowl creasing his forehead so deeply it looked as if he had been hit with an ax. A tight-lipped Emory Wescott drove his phaeton just behind, followed by several highly scandalized Creole gentlemen, including one race participant, who until that last turn, had been soundly outridden by a slip of a girl. The only ones who looked happy to see Samuel and Olivia were the smiling Quinns. Santiago must have won.

   
“Just what the hell is going on here, Miss Olivia?” Simms asked, although he could plainly see for himself.

   
“Looks like Ollie is a lady,” one Kaintuck said with a raucous laugh, to which his companion jibed, “Dressed in britches, she shore ain’t no lady.”

   
“After such an affront, Monsieur Wescott and his jockey should be banned from all future horse racing in Louisiana Territory,” Georges Jadot said spitefully.

   
Several other men chorused agreement, but Simms’s voice rose above the cacophony. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it for myself,” he said, turning red-faced away from Olivia, who struggled to hold the blanket around her shoulders. “You know I ought to bar you from racing here again, Emory.”

   
“Now, Lyman, the girl’s a natural jockey. You’ve seen her ride dozens of times in the past years and she’s never lost a race.”

   
“She’s a female. It ain’t fittin’ and I will not have it on my track,” Simms said stubbornly.

   
“The hell with what’s fitting. Can’t you gentlemen see the lady’s half-frozen?” Samuel interrupted angrily.

   
“Yes, certainly, certainly,” Wescott replied. “I shall see to my ward, Colonel. As to our wager, I’d like the opportunity to make you an offer for the mare.”

   
“Uncle Emory, you bet Gypsy Lady!” Olivia exclaimed, horrified.

   
“If you hadn’t lost, I’d still have Gypsy, and I would’ve won that splendid blue roan,” Wescott said testily, then turned unctuously back to Shelby. “About the mare—”

   
“I’ll be at Quinn’s warehouse tomorrow. We can settle up there,” Samuel replied, wanting nothing more than to get out of the wind and into some clean, dry clothes. Olivia looked as if she could use the same, but the stubborn little chit had stomped over to the mare and swung up into the saddle as nimbly as a stableboy. She looked down at her guardian, still furious over the bet, then shifted her gaze to Samuel and smiled as if daring him to challenge her right to the horse. He turned away from Wescott and walked over to her. Even muddy she was delectable. “Get home and into a hot bath, urchin,” he whispered.

   
“You could use one, too,” she said with a husky laugh. “Now we’re almost even. I saved your life. Maybe you saved mine—if I still don’t take lung fever and die.”

   
Samuel stood watching her ride away, bemused. He did not see the calculating look in Emory Wescott’ s eyes. Elise Quinn did and it troubled her.

* * * *

   
“Emory was sure the big loser today,” Santiago said as they strolled into the front parlor of their new house, flushed with his success at the race. Although nowhere as grand as the Chouteaus’ home, it was tightly constructed of stone with two-foot-thick walls to hold the merciless summer sun at bay, two-stories high with six bedrooms to accommodate their growing family and frequent visitors.

   
“I really wanted to get my hands on that bastard who rode the dun. He could’ve killed Olivia,” Samuel said.

   
“He knew better than to stick around after everyone found out that boy he rode into the sink pond was really Wescott’s ward,” Elise said, chewing on her bottom lip pensively.

   
“What would make a responsible man risk his reputation by allowing a woman to race his horses?” Santiago asked.

   
“What respectable woman would agree to do it?” Samuel countered.

   
“She’s certainly proven herself capable in past races,” Elise responded, feeling the need to defend her sex against male prejudices. “We women aren’t the frail helpless creatures you men would like us to be,” she added sweetly. “Remember it was you, dear husband, who gave me my first lesson in riding astride.”

   
“Not in men’s clothes,” Santiago replied.

   
“Not at first, but I wore them, anyway,” she countered.

   
Quinn sighed and Shelby laughed, both knowing it was useless to argue further. With a nod of her head, Elise swept from the room, headed upstairs to check on the children. A rap on the front door brought Santiago to his feet. He opened it to one of Postmaster Easton’s young riders, Nathaniel Everett.

   
The boy nodded politely and swallowed, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “Mr. Easton thought you’d want to have this as soon as possible, Colonel,” the boy said, holding up a black-edged envelope for Samuel.

   
A strange sense of foreboding gripped him as he felt the weight of heavy velum paper in his hands. As he slowly tore open the envelope, Santiago thanked the messenger and saw him out the door.

   
The words on the page danced before Samuel’s eyes as he read the terse message from Worthington Soames with disbelief and a disquieting elation:

Dear Samuel,

It is my tragic duty to inform you that your wife is dead. Leticia and Richard were enroute to the Miller plantation when the boat on which they were traveling ran aground and sank in the swollen spring current...

   
Samuel scanned the rest of the letter, fastening on the senator’s signature at the bottom of the page.
He must be prostrate with grief.

   
But you are not,
some demon of conscience taunted, for along with the thought about his father-in-law came another one, utterly unbidden—Olivia St. Etienne returning his passionate embrace in Chouteau’s garden.

   
God above, what sort of monster am I that I feel relief and think of another woman when I learn that my own wife is dead?
But then the somber voice of reason reminded him that it was Tish’s relentless ambition that had killed his finer feelings for her just as she’d killed at least one child they’d created. Had he sunk to her level then, so cold and ruthless that he could see only his own advantage in another’s tragedy?

   
Feeling his brother-in-law’s hand on his shoulder, Samuel turned, breaking free of the melancholy self-examination as Santiago said, "Bad news, I take it." Quinn poured two shots of whiskey while Samuel reread the letter. He offered Shelby a glass and waited patiently.

   
“Yes and no.” He combed his fingers through his hair and cursed. “Which is a hell of a thing to say. Yes, it’s bad. Tish is dead. Drowned in a boating accident while she and Richard were enroute to the Miller plantation on the James River. Poor devil, he’s probably beside himself with grief because he wasn’t able to save her.”

   
Quinn watched Shelby down the whiskey in one clean gulp, then pour a refill. “She was a self-centered, destructive woman. I’ve known a number just like her. In fact, only luck favored me in escaping marriage to one. There’s no need for false grief.”

   
“It seems a bit callous to feel relieved, though, doesn’t it?” Samuel replied acerbically. “One of the first images that flashed into my mind when I read Tish was dead was of a red-haired hoyden.” He muttered an oath of self-loathing.

   
“Don’t punish yourself because you can’t mourn Tish and the end of a loveless marriage,” Santiago said.

   
Samuel, deep in thought, seemed not to hear him.

* * * *

   
Emory Wescott was pleased. Not inordinately, completely pleased, for he had lost a steady source of income from the girl’s racing, not to mention the embarrassment of having her unmasked. She was in disgrace now, a liability, certainly not to be welcomed in polite society. But he had a use for her that pleased him all the same. He leaned back in the seat of his town carriage enjoying the warm morning sunshine as he drove across Main Street toward Quinn’s big new warehouse.

   
That fool Pardee had been the cause of it all, but at least he had been officially disqualified in the race so Wescott need not pay him the substantial wager they had made. As to Gypsy Lady, well, after his offer, that lust besotted young fool Shelby might actually pay him for the mare! He chuckled in a self-congratulatory manner. It was really so beautifully simple. Losing the bet yesterday only gave, him the excuse to state his offer so precipitously without raising the canny spy’s suspicions.

   
The carriage pulled up in front of a large stone building and the stench of curing pelts wafted out the door. Pelts, especially prime beaver, were the currency of the Mississippi Valley, more widely used than coins or paper money, both of which were exceedingly rare in the wilderness. Much was settled by barter in the West. Emory Wescott thought of the barter in which he was about to engage and smiled.

Chapter Seven

   
Samuel squinted at the spidery writing in the ledger, columns and columns of lists, everything from fox furs to flints, raccoon skins to ribbons. Quinn’s clerks labored with incredible diligence, inventorying all the varied goods transferred in and out of the burgeoning warehouse. “Do you actually read and keep track of all the entries?” he asked Santiago as they strolled through the crowded outer office.

   
Quinn laughed. “Hardly, but I do spot-check for significant discrepancies.” They walked out of the clerks' room back into the cavernous brick warehouse. Passing by boxes, crates and barrels filled with Eastern goods and bales of peltries from the vastness of the West, Quinn opened another door and ushered Shelby into his private office, then closed the door.

   
Santiago picked up a sheaf of papers on the large oak desk, then took his seat behind it. After scanning them, he handed the documents to Shelby.

   
Samuel took the papers, then seated himself on a soft leather chair in the small but opulently furnished room. The walls were lined with books, mostly Spanish, some French, all expensively bound with cordovan leather and embossed in gold leaf, part of his inheritance from the Aranda estate. Samuel spoke both languages fluently and was impressed by the breadth of interest indicated by the selections. Santiago Quinn was a man of many parts.

   
“That is the partnership agreement I had drawn up,” Quinn said. “See if it suits you. I’ve already purchased shares in Manuel Lisa’s spring expedition up to the headwaters of the Missouri.”

   
Samuel looked up at Santiago. “Up the Missouri, you say? How soon? It would provide good cover for me if I went along with Lisa as an investor.”

   
Quinn grinned. “Actually he’s getting ready to leave any day now.”

   
Shelby asked, “Would he balk at my going along—in an unofficial capacity, of course?’’

   
Quinn nodded. “Manuel would love having an American officer along.”

   
“Good. How soon can we make the arrangements?”

   
“I’ll handle it. I have some other matters to discuss with Manuel anyway. You look over that agreement and sign it while I’m gone,” Santiago said, shoving back his chair. Just as he stood up, a discreet rap sounded on the door. “Come in, Labidoux,” he said, expecting his chief clerk. Emory Wescott stood in the doorway that Labidoux held open.

   
Quinn quirked one reddish eyebrow in surprise. “To what do I owe the honor of your visit, Mr. Wescott? Perhaps to propose a rematch?”

   
Wescott’ s face reddened slightly but he clamped down on the impulse to use his heavy silver-handled walking stick to cane the arrogant Spaniard. “No, as a matter of fact, I’ve come to see Colonel Shelby regarding my wager with him.”

   
Samuel had almost forgotten the fleet mare he’d won, although her rider had never been out of his thoughts. Quinn excused himself, allowing the two men the use of his office to settle their affairs.

   
“You mentioned yesterday that you’re going into the Santa Fe trade with your brother-in-law,” Wescott said as the two men shook hands.