Orchids in Moonlight (3 page)

"Well, I guess so," Jaime replied uncertainly.

"Would you be willing to do just about anything to get there?"

"I haven't really thought about it, but I probably would."

Ella's lips curved in a mysterious smile. "Even to get married? Hannah and I have decided that's what we're going to do. Miners and other men out there are desperate to find wives willing to settle so far from home, so women are being recruited for marriage. Me and Hannah have both lived here in Missouri all our lives, and the idea of new territory, new experiences sounds so exciting we can't resist. So we've decided to sign up and join a wagon train and head out there.

"Besides," she added with a touch of sadness in her voice. "It doesn't matter who we marry now, because I'll never love anybody but Billy, and Hannah feels the same about Loland."

Jaime said doubtfully, "Well, I can understand how you both feel, but I'm not sure I could do it."

"Come on," Ella urged, "I thought you were willing to do anything to get to California."

"But marriage? To someone I don't love? A stranger?"

"It wouldn't be for long. You could just slip away and go find your father. Do you even know where to start looking?"

"I know where he mailed his last letter from, and I know the name of the man he was going to do business with. He said the man was rich and prominent, so I don't guess I'd have any trouble finding him. But..." She fell silent for a moment, then shook her head. "I couldn't do that. I couldn't marry a man, take his money, let him pay my way out there, and then leave him. It wouldn't be right."

"Listen, those men have so much gold they can afford it, but can
you
afford
not
to? Can you afford to stay here and waste your whole life slaving for those two old women?"

"But to deliberately swindle somebody, Ella? It's not right."

"Oh, you can make sure he gets his money's worth by the time you get out there. It's no more than what he'd pay for a harlot, probably. Believe me, there's no reason to feel guilty about it. I'll bet it happens all the time."

"Wait a minute," Jaime said. "I thought the marriage took place in California, that the men out there send for wives to meet them there. What's this about him getting his money's worth
before I
get out there? I'm confused."

"Listen, this is different. I heard just last night there's a man right here in Kansas City who's come all the way from the goldfields to find himself a wife. His name is Austin, and he's staying at Dewar's Hotel, near the river."

She rushed to explain. "To be honest, I thought about going to see him myself. I swear, I've got to get out of here and start a new life somewhere else, before I go crazy. Too many things remind me of Billy and all the dreams we had. But Hannah and I vowed to stay together and try to marry brothers or mining partners, so we can live close to each other. I wasn't about to abandon her and go see that man at the hotel.

"But
you
can do it, Jaime." Ella suddenly exploded with her enthusiasm. "Go see him and tell him you'll marry him. What if it is sort of like being a prostitute? If it gets you to California so you can find your father, what difference does it make? You can forget it ever happened, pretend you were never married. Who's to know?"

Jaime gave a bitter laugh. "What makes you think he'd have me?"

"You're pretty, despite those drab clothes your aunt makes you wear. As for me and Hannah, our future husbands won't see us till we get there, and then they're stuck with us. Besides, we're also getting a pig in the poke, as the saying goes, 'cause we don't know what they look like either."

With an impish grin, Ella pulled a strand of Jaime's hair from her tightly wound bun and declared, "Look. It's even the color of gold. I think it's an omen. I think you were meant to go to California."

Jaime shivered. "I don't know. It's scary."

"With you in a fancy dress and your hair fixed nice and some color on your cheeks, that man will jump at the chance to marry you."

Jaime was starting to feel sick to her stomach. "But I don't think I could stand having a man touch me if I didn't love him."

Ella couldn't resist laughing. "You wouldn't even know how a man touches a woman if Hannah hadn't told you about her and Loland. And it didn't sound so terrible. Not to me, anyway."

"It was different for you. You were in love with Billy. You wouldn't have cared what he did to you."

Ella released her hands and placed them on her shoulders. "Listen to me. When you go to bed with him, just close your eyes and pretend it's not happening. Six months from now, you'll be in California with your father, and you won't ever have to look back. Go see Mr. Austin. Tonight."

Things were happening too fast. Jaime did not feel she could make such an important decision so quickly.

Ella sensed her thoughts. "There's not much time. There's only one more wagon train leaving Independence this spring."

Jaime didn't speak.

"Me and Hannah are going, if they'll let us sign on as brides for California. We're going to see about it tomorrow."

Jaime knew she meant it.

And she also knew there was no one she could turn to once they left.

Chapter 2

Cord Austin downed the last of his whiskey. Leaning back in his chair, he yawned and stretched his muscular arms skyward. His fringed buckskin shirt strained across a broad, rock-hard chest.

Sitting opposite, swallowed within a blue haze of smoke, Pete Rowland also tossed down his drink. Beads of perspiration stood out on his furrowed brow as he gestured impatiently and snapped, "Well, get on with it, Austin."

Cord looked at his stack of poker chips, which had grown steadily through the night. Pete had lost his stake and for the past hour had been running up quite a debt. Cord knew a man didn't like to quit when he was losing, but the way things were going, Pete's luck wasn't likely to change, and it was nearly two in the morning.

Cord was holding a flush, ace high, and figured Pete was betting on three of a kind. He decided to go easy on him. "I'll stand."

Pete's face lit up in a triumphant grin, confident, at last, he had a winning hand, since Cord had not previously failed to ante up when he held the better cards. "Well, I'm gonna raise you fifty."

Cord suppressed a groan. He didn't want to take any more of his money, but Pete was too stubborn to realize it. "Listen, you're already down to me nearly a thousand, Rowland. Call this hand, and let's quit."

Pete's grin changed to an angry grimace. "Hell, no. I ain't lettin' you do that. When it's my turn, I call if I want to, and we'll quit when I say. That's the code when a man is down. You got to give him a chance to win his money back."

The crowd of onlookers shifted uncomfortably. They knew little about Cord Austin, only that he had arrived in Kansas City a few days earlier and was said to be involved somehow with the next California-bound wagon train out of Independence. Some guessed he was a hired gun; others figured him to be a scout. Nobody knew for sure what his business was, but everyone agreed there was something about him that warned them to keep out of it. However, watching the marathon poker game between him and Pete had been too good to pass up, because Pete played for high stakes and seldom lost.

Cord's eyes narrowed. Instinctively, he knew Pete was the sort whose temper would get him killed one day—but not today, if Cord could avoid it. Long ago, he had promised himself when he sent a man to glory it would be for a more important reason than an argument over a card game.

With a resigned nod of assent, he flipped a few chips to the center of the table. "Call."

He fanned out his cards, exposing his hand.

Laughter exploded as everyone realized not only that Pete had lost another hand but this time Austin had tried to go easy on him, only Pete had been too dumb to know it.

Pete locked eyes with Cord. For one frozen instant, Pete was tempted to accuse him of cheating, but he knew Cord hadn't been and decided not to risk a gun-fight. Something told him the stranger's luck wasn't limited to cards. Finally, he conceded. "Well, looks like tonight's your night."

The sudden cloak of tension had silenced the laughter of the crowd, and they had begun to back away from the table. Now a few men exchanged relieved glances.

"You say I owe you a thousand?"

Cord nodded. "Any time in the next few days will be all right." He stood.

Pete held up a hand, the play of a mysterious smile on his lips. "Wait a minute. Maybe we can make a deal."

"Deals are what got you in debt," Cord reminded with a crooked grin.

Pete again bit back his rising temper. "I hear you just come from out west. I'll bet you're tired of ruttin' with squaws. How would you like to bed down with a real woman? Five hundred off my debt will give you the wildest night you ever had." He looked to the others to back him up. "Tell him, boys. Francie is the sweetest little piece of woman flesh in these parts. A real tiger. Worth every bit of five hundred, ain't she?"

One of them cracked, "Hell, ain't none of us ever been able to afford her, but if you say she's worth it, she probably is."

Pete winked. "She's worth it."

Cord shoved his chair under the table and said with finality, "I'm not interested."

He turned and walked out of the saloon and into the hotel lobby. The desk clerk was nowhere around, and he decided any messages could wait till morning. Heading for the stairs, he could feel Pete Rowland's angry glare following him.

Once in his room, he fired up the lantern, then stripped off the buckskin shirt. It was a warm night, and he opened the window wide before pouring himself one last drink from the bottle on the bedside table.

He had been too busy since arriving from California for pleasures of the flesh, but he didn't figure any woman was worth five hundred dollars.

Staring out on the shadowed, deserted street, Cord thought about the rough journey ahead. He was none too excited about herding a bunch of females all the way across the country, but he was being well paid for the trouble. Unmarried women were real scarce in California, and the man paying him kept his workmen happy by providing either wives or whores.

Wives.

Cord's soft chuckle broke the stillness of the night around him. He figured the only thing worse for a man than marriage itself was getting tied up legal to a woman he hadn't met or laid eyes on till their wedding day. The men he was delivering to, however, had different ideas. A firm-feeling woman they could touch in the night, hot cooked meals, a clean hut or cabin, and somebody to bear their children, that's all they cared about.

Love played no part in it.

Not that Cord gave a damn about love anyway. That's what had killed his father, leaving Cord an orphan, which led to his being abducted and raised by Apaches.

Bile rose in his throat at the memory.

Like so many others, Matthew Austin had taken his family and joined the mad rush to California to "see the elephant," which meant a man was heading for the goldfields. Cord was only six years old at the time, but every detail of that ill-fated journey was branded on his soul.

Because they never made it.

Halfway across Arizona, his mother had suddenly become ill and died. His father refused to continue, saying he was going to take her body back east for burial. The others in the wagon train went on without them.

Two weeks later, after following the trail in a drunken stupor borne of his sorrow, Matthew Austin went to sleep one night and just didn't wake up. Cord, alone and terrified, could do nothing but sit beside his parents' bodies and watch the vultures circling overhead.

He was near death himself when the Apaches found him. He could remember, with revulsion, how they had stripped his parents' bodies. Then, with him kicking and screaming, fighting hopelessly with all his might, they took him along with the wagon and horses.

Thus had begun his life with the Apaches.

But despite the bad memories, Cord knew he had come out of the experience a better man. During the war, he'd worked as a scout, due to his knowledge of wilderness survival, and there were several times he would have been killed except for what the Indians had taught him. But never, during those terrible years of his youth, did Cord ever forget he was white, and he dreamed of returning to his people.