Wolver's Gold (The Wolvers) (11 page)

“Must have been a slip of the tongue, son.”

The boy’s mother smiled and winked.

“Now, who’s this schoolteacher?” he asked quickly when the pair moved on.

“Mr. John Washington is our school
master. He came a little over a year ago. I’ve seen him several times, of course, but met him only once. He is quite handsome.” Her hand went to the shepherd’s head as it nudged her skirts for attention. “He likes me.”

“
The dog or the schoolteacher?” he asked with a grin and then frowned. “A schoolteacher and pictures on a screen.” He shook his head. “I didn’t like school the first time around. Damned if I’ll volunteer for a second. Are you going?”

Rachel shrugged.
“Probably not. It’s your choice, of course, but other than drinking and playing cards at the saloon, it’s what passes for a social life in Gold Gulch.” She smiled and shook her finger at him, scolding him like a pup. “And the first page of your new copybook will be titled ‘Words I Must Not Say.’ I’ll write the title myself.”

McCall
rolled his eyes and then widened them as something caught his attention. “Who the hell is that and why is she waving at us?”

“Yoo-hoo, Sheriff McCall,” a woman’s musical voice rang out over those of the tourists who were beginning to fill the streets.

Rachel followed McCall's gaze to the tiny woman plowing through the sparse crowd, looking much like the figurehead of a ship plowing through the waves. Bosom forward, bustle behind, she steered her prow in McCall's direction, waving her hand and calling. Heads turned to watch the hourglass figure draped in blue silk topped with a shoulder wide hat festooned with flowers and ribbon navigate the sea of tourists. Their brightly colored tee shirts, sundresses and straw sun hats turned drab next to her vibrant and elaborate apparel.

Her toffee colored hair was a confection of spun sugar artfully arranged to draw attention to her long neck. The three curls draped over her shoulder pointed to the modest vee of her gown. That vee showed just a hint of the rounded breasts within; enough to make the display enticing as opposed to blatant. The ruffled trim drew the eye downward to an unnaturally tiny waist
.

“Whoever she is, she’s certainly easy on the eyes.”

“Mind your manners,” she whispered. “That’s the Mate.”

“Well, shit. I was hoping to put that off
until later, but then again…”

Rachel slapped his arm.
Her wolf growled a little, not at the slap, but at the way McCall watched with appreciative eyes, the woman sailing toward them.

"How do you do, Sheriff McCall.
I was hoping I'd run into you."

McCall was already lifting his new hat.
"And I you, Ma'am. I was looking forward to it. And now, after meeting you, I regret not doing it sooner.”

Which wa
s a big, fat lie, Rachel fumed. Until she told him, the smarmy devil didn’t even know who the woman was.

What she
was, was beautiful. Her face was an oval of perfection. Bright blue eyes sparkled beneath finely arched brows. A straight, patrician nose directed attention to lush pink lips that framed a smile of even, white teeth. And, at that moment, Rachel hated her.

“I’ve been dying to meet you, too.” The Mate smiled and held out her hand. “Lenora Hoffman.”

“My Pleasure, ma’am. Challenger McCall.”

“And Rachel Kincaid,” the Mate turned to her.
“How lovely to see you out and about. Tell me, what do you think of our new sheriff?” She slipped her hand around his forearm as if she were the one out walking with him.

Rachel
had a surprising urge to say, “I think you should keep your hands to yourself, that’s what” but caught herself and chose instead to say, “I’ve only just met him myself, Ma’am. I haven’t formed an opinion.”

“Ah, Rachel,”
the Mate laughed, “You’ve never been very good at pretending.”

Rachel
blushed, and then suddenly felt the Mate’s touch in her mind, sending warmth and amusement. The touch was feather light and would normally have brought a smile, but it had been so long since Rachel felt it, so long since any of them felt it, that the whisper of calm and kindness brought tears to her eyes.

While an Alpha's job was to see to the wellbeing of the pack as a whole, the Mate's job was to see to the wellbeing of the individual wolvers who made up that whole.
The Mate could share her feelings with them if she chose and she could feel their emotions as well. A wise Alpha would choose a wise woman to be his Mate.

This wasn't always easy since most Mates
started out as fully human. Only through bonding with the Alpha did they become wolver, and it wasn't like any human woman would do. A woman who had the potential to become an Alpha's Mate was special and rare. The Gold Gulch pack had always taken pride in their Mates. They’d taken pride in this one, too, until eighteen months ago when she cut them off. They felt nothing from her and she recognized nothing from them. Like losing your inner wolf, losing touch with the Mate was like losing part of yourself. Without the Mate, wolvers lost part of their connection with the pack. To have her back…

The Mate went on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “I wanted to be sur
e to invite you to the Lantern Show, Sheriff McCall. I’d really like you to meet John Washington. I think you’ll like him. And it will give you the chance to meet other likeminded members of the pack.”

“
Miss Kincaid and I were just speaking of it, Ma’am. She’s agreed to hold my hand and introduce me to my new schoolmates,” he said with a straight face.

The Mate stared into his eyes for a moment, probing, and he stared right back.
She blinked and laughed.

“Unlike our Mi
ss Kincaid here, Sheriff McCall, I think you pretend very well.” She nodded to him as if acknowledging something and turned to Rachel with a tinkling laugh. “Be careful, Rachel. He’s a sly one. My advice is to listen to your wolf. I’ll see you both at the Lantern Show.” With a wave of her fingers, The Mate went sailing off again.

Rachel’s heart was pounding with unfamiliar emotion. Listen to her wolf? The ridiculous animal was turning somersaults and howling with glee.
“Stop it. Stop it!” she shouted silently, but her wolf had been silent too long and it appeared to have forgotten its entire vocabulary except for one word.

“Mate, mate, mate, mate, mate.
Mate!”

No, no, no, no, no. No! She’d spent almost half her life avoiding just this situation and she wasn’t going to fall for it now. She was no cub in the first bloom of adulthood with no defense against the primal call to mate. She didn’t care if he teased her and made her laugh. It didn’t matter if he thought she was cute. It was of no consequence that those beautiful gray eyes looking into hers could melt her heart. Listen to her wolf? No! Better the old adage; “Let not your wolf lead your human.”

She must tighten her stays and steady her course. She had not wavered in fifteen years. She would not waver now.

“You don’t go to church, do you, Mr. McCall?” Rachel asked when the Mate was far enough away not to overhear.

“Not since I was ten and too big for my grandmother to wrestle to the ground. Why?”

“Because it is obvious you have not heard enough sermons on
the subject of prevarication.”

“I really need a notebook,” he sighed. “No, no! A copybook! See? I can learn, Miss Kincaid.
” He grinned at her like a mischievous boy. “I just need a teacher and don’t say I need Mr. Washington, because I don’t swing that way. I need you to teach me, Miss Kincaid. Who else would put up with me and what the hell is prevarawhatsits?”

“Prevarication, Mr. McCall.
Telling lies.” Rachel started back toward the hotel, leaving him standing behind her. “I was looking forward to meeting you,” she mimicked in her version of his deep voice. “I regret not meeting you sooner. Miss Kincaid and I were just speaking of it. She’s agreed to hold my hand.”

He was suddenly in front of her, blocking her path.
She moved to her left. He stepped to his right. She stepped to the right. He moved to the left.

“
You’d better stop. People will think we’re dancing in the street.” He laughed at her scowl, grabbed her hand, held it over her head and walked around her, making her turn with him.

“Stop it!” she hissed. “What will people think?”

“That Miss Rachel Kincaid has the good sense to dance with the best looking guy in town?” He pulled her to a log bench meant for tourists to take their rest, and sat her down beside him.

“
I would have no sense at all if I were to dance with you,” she laughed, unable to hold her frown. “You hold too high an opinion of yourself, Mr. McCall.”

Rachel told herself she
ought to rise and go, but Mr. McCall was still holding her hand against the rough bench, discreetly hidden by her skirt. There was nothing she could do without creating another scene, one that might be noticed. He wasn’t holding it tightly, but how could she know what he’d do if she tried to pull away? Better to stay where her hand was warm and comfortable.

“If I don’t
have a high opinion of myself, Miss Kincaid, who will?”

When he released her, Rachel felt the loss.
Her hand wanted to follow his, but she folded it demurely with the other in her lap. “Have you no family to think well of you, then? No friends or acquaintances?”

Laying her packages at his feet,
McCall spread his legs a little and leaned forward, elbows on thighs. His hands hung loose between his knees as he stared down the street. From a few feet away, a passerby might think he was watching the newly arrived tourists unloading from the wagons that carried them from the parking lot. They wouldn’t see the sad and faraway look in his eyes that Rachel saw.

The hand he’d so recently held crept up and out to his shoulder in a gentle touch of sympathy. The touch startled him out of his reverie. The faraway look was replaced with a grin
, but the sadness remained in his eyes.

“
I do indeed, have family, Miss Kincaid, but I doubt they think any better of me than you do and my few friends are far away.”

Her resolution to terminate her acquaintance with Mr. McCall was lost
the moment those eyes looked into hers. “Not all your friends are far away and you shall make new ones here in Gold Gulch.”

“Is that an offer, Miss Kincaid?
”

“I suppose it is,” Rachel said, surprised at how good she felt, “But if we are to
explore this friendship, there will be no dancing in the streets.”

A shout of “No, Maudie, no!
Have you gone daft?” followed by the distinctive sound of a shotgun blast, had them both running across the street from where the shot sounded. A flock of birds, startled by the blast, swarmed up into the sky.

Tourists turned with interest, expecting a gunfight or bank robbery. None were scheduled so early in the day.

Chapter 10

“Oh God, Maudie, look at the mess you’ve made. They’ll fine you for sure.”

Eustace approached the woman, who was sitting in the dirt against the wall of the tiny house, legs splayed and skirts tangled about her legs. She had the shotgun to her shoulder, ready to fire another round.

“I don’t care,” the
stocky woman shrieked. Her face was sweaty and tendrils of hair clung to her cheeks. “I’m sick of it. Do you hear? Sick of it! If they come back, I’ll blast them again.”

Evidence of who ‘they’ were was scattered all over the tiny yard. Blood and feathers clung to the sheets and clothing that filled row after row of lines strung
between the high fences that surrounded all but the alley gate.

Seeing no danger to man or wolver,
McCall holstered the gun he’d drawn in his sprint across the street. He glanced back to Rachel who was straightening the skirt she’d hiked to her knees to run.

“Nice legs,” he said with an admiring grin.
And then seeing her warning frown, “Okay, give me a clue here. What’s this all about?” He stooped to eye level with the woman.

It was Eustace who answered. “Somebody woke the wrong passenger, that’s what.”

McCall raised his eyebrows at Rachel. “Copybook?”

“Angered the wrong person.”
She turned to the small crowd gathering at the gate leading to the yard. “Will someone please fetch Mrs. Hoffman?”

“No need.”
Barnabas Holt pushed his way into the yard. “Do your duty, Sheriff.” He sneered the word as if the position were beneath him and turned to Rachel. “Go home, Rachel. You’re not needed here, either.”

Ignoring the woman still holding the gun, McCall whirled and grabbed the Second by the throat, slamming him against the wall of the house.
Power swelled. Everyone watching froze; the wolvers understanding, the tourists thinking it was the excitement of the show.

“
Miss Kincaid is a lady. You are not her father, her mate, her lover, or her friend. Which gives you no right to call her anything but Miss Kincaid. I play by the rules of baseball, Mr. Holt. Three strikes you’re out and you’ve got two.” McCall let Holt go and stepped back.

“
Move along, now. Show’s over,” he said to the crowd, tapping the badge on his chest. “Everything’s under control and there’s nothing left to see.”

He smiled at the round of applause from the small audience, half of whom were wolvers, Rachel noted.

“Eustace?” he called to the man, “Why don’t you take these fine folks over to the hotel porch and tell them a tale that’ll curl their hair. Offer them a glass of lemonade on me. Tell Mrs. Mullins I’ll settle up later.”

“Isn’t his acting wonderful?” one tourist was heard to remark. “
He looked so angry, it almost seemed real.”

“
Wouldn’t mind that sheriff parking his boots under my bed. I can tell you that,” her companion giggled, “I hope those birds weren’t real, though.”

“Oh, no
, ma’am,” Eustace assured her. “It’s all for show. Why don’t you follow me I’ll bet I can get Mrs. Mullins to throw in some cookies with that lemonade and have I got a whopper to tell…”

With the dog at her side,
Rachel was already kneeling beside the miscreant, Maudie, who’d laid the gun aside and was now crying with shame at what she had done.

“You think you’re something, McCall, just because I know better than to raise a ruckus in front of the tourists, but the tourists aren’t always here. You’ll learn,” Holt threatened
. His fists were clenched at his side and his face was red with embarrassment and anger.

“
I’ve learned. You’re a bully, Holt. The kind who does his bullying best when he thinks his victims can’t or won’t fight back. Now make yourself useful or make yourself scarce.” McCall turned his back on the Second. “Here, let me help you up ma’am.”

“Why you…”
Holt snarled.

“That’s enough, Mr. Holt. Go torment someone else. Looks like Maudie’s had enough for one morning. We wouldn’t want her mistaking you for a bird.”
Lenora Hoffman nodded graciously. “Run along now and report the incident to the Mayor.”

The Mate glided across the yard, lifting her skirts daintily away from the bloody debris.
She laid her white gloved hand against the sweaty woman’s dirty cheek. “Poor Maudie’s at her wit’s end.”

Rachel was shocked when the washerwoman pulled her head away from the Mate
’s hand as her anger returned.

“It wouldn’t have happened if you’d done your job. Where have you been? Why have you left us?”

“Because I couldn’t add my burden to yours,” the Mate told her without a hint of rancor at the woman’s disrespect. “I couldn’t find the strength to fight your battles anymore. But I’m back now and I’m not alone anymore, and neither are you.” She glanced up at McCall and smiled, “We have a champion. We have several, if the truth be known.”

Maudie looked from McCall to Rachel. “I’m sorry I kicked up such a row.”

“She means…” Rachel started to say.

“I got that one.” McCall laughed. “I gather the birds are a regular problem?”

“Every dad-burned morning they roost on my lines and deposit their dropping on my wash,” Maudie huffed. “I got a schedule to keep. The men want their clothes on time. I can wash ‘em faster than I can dry ‘em and the Alpha says no machines during visiting hours, so I got no choice. Second says dry ‘em at night, but I got three pups to get off to school and rounds to make. When am I supposed to sleep? I’m about ready to ask the Alpha for my release, but I heard tell he ain’t granting any and I can’t let my cubs grow up rogue. Don’t know who’d take me anyway.” Her shoulders sagged in defeat. “Are you going to arrest me?”

“
Not this time. Sounds to me like you’ve got good cause to blow off a little steam,” McCall commiserated, his voice gentle and friendly. “But how about next time you bang a pot with a spoon instead of scaring me half to death. Or…” He looked over to where dog was sniffing through feathers, “How about putting my dog to work. He’ll keep the birds off your lines and he can use the exercise. You’re getting fat,” he said to the dog.

Dog wagged his tail.

McCall started to remove the soiled wash from the line. “This is getting to be a habit,” he chuckled to Rachel as she came to help.

“No, please, Sheriff. That’s woman’s work and not for the likes of you.” Maudie scurried over and tried to take his place.

“If I can pull a trigger, I can pull a clothes peg.”

“And he’s very good at hanging, too,” Rachel told
the washerwoman with a conspiratorial smile. “Table cloths, that is. I don’t know about the other.”

“
Did you say hanging? Nobody said anything about that being part of my job description. Please tell me you don’t do hangings.” McCall looked to the Mate, who’d joined them at the line, for confirmation.

“
Indeed we do,” she laughed. “Once a year and it’s the Sheriff’s job to pull the lever, though the Mayor does all the talking. It’s a great crowd pleaser. Business doubles on Hanging Day.”

While McCall carried the basket to the house, the women continued to remove the soiled wash.

“You use the washer and dryer today,” the Mate ordered, “I’ll answer to the Alpha.”

Poor Maudie looked like she could cry with relief.

“Do you like baseball, Mr. McCall, or was that just a w
ay of making a point?” Rachel asked as they walked together back to the hotel.

“I love it. I haven’t played in years. Why? Are you a fan, Miss
Kincaid?” The way he said it made Rachel bristle.

“We used to play it in the schoolyard. I’ll have you know I was quite good at it, once upon a time. Then I became a young lady and Papa made me stop.
Some of the men used to play on Sunday afternoons. They had uniforms and everything. The tourists loved it. I don’t know why they stopped.” She shrugged. Sometimes it felt like all the fun stopped once she became a young lady. “I was a good rock thrower, too.”

McCall sputtered a laugh. “Rock throwing? Is that
some obscure Victorian past time?”

“It is not. Didn’t you ever throw rocks as a child?”

“Sure, but it was usually at somebody and I usually got in trouble for it.”

Rachel looked at him, unsure if he was kidding or not.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he laughed, “I don’t do it anymore. I told you. I can learn. Oh, good, Eustace snagged your packages.”

She’d forgotten all about them.

They stood at the edge of the group surrounding the omega as he finished his tale.

“Yes, sir, right up in them hills it was. Six good men
dead, and the bank burned to the ground with no sign of the gold. That’s why they built a new bank out of brick and fitted it out with a fancy vault. Two weeks later, Jake Brannigan and his gang were spotted in the hills outside of town. A posse of twelve men rode out under the full moon, my great granddaddy among ‘em, and tracked that devil down. All four of his men went down in a hail of bullets, but we only lost one; the poor banker. But Jake Brannigan, shot all to pieces, lived long enough to stand trial. He watched ‘em build the gallows for the hanging from that jail right over there and folks came from miles around to watch him swing.”

Eustace paused and looked around at the waiting faces. “You can watch him hang, too. Yes, sir, we’re gonna have ourselves a hanging. You be sure to mark your calendars, now. Stop on by, watch the trial of the outlaw, Jake Brannigan, the meanest snake you ever want to meet, and see him pay the wages of sin.
”

“What about the gold?” a man asked. “Did they get it back?”

“Legend has it there were fifty gold bars and only one was found. One of his gang had it hid in his saddlebag; a cheater of cheaters. Jake never said a word about where it was hid, even though they promised him prison instead of hangin’. Then, right before they dropped the door, he confessed.”

“It’s under the
last lode, Jake Brannigan told the crowd, and I’ll be laughing in hell while you try to find it.”

“Nobody knows what he meant by it and nobody’s ever found it. More than a few greenhorns have lost their lives looking for it,
I can tell you that.”

“Eustace sure knows how to spin a yarn,” McCall said when the group dispersed.

“It’s all true,” Rachel told him as she headed to the kitchen. She’d been gone much longer than she’d planned and needed to get to work if the Luncheon was to be ready in time. “Though I’m not sure about the fifty bars. The Bank and Land Office records were all burned and there’s nothing in the newspaper accounts that says anything about pack horses or mules. At well over four thousand ounces per bar, that many bars would weigh almost three quarters of a ton. Add to that five riders and tack and you’ve got another ton or more. Five sturdy horses couldn’t carry that much that far and certainly not at a run.”

When she realized he wasn’t beside her, she stopped and looked back
over her shoulder. McCall was staring at her.

“
Is something wrong, Mr. McCall?”

“No.” He drew the word out and his smile quirked up on one side of his mouth.
“It’s just that I don’t think I’ve ever met a girl who spent her free time calculating the tonnage of gold in a bank robbery that happened a century ago.”

“I’m a woman of many talents, Mr. McCall,” she laughed
and lowered her eyes.

“So I’m beginning to learn, Miss Kincaid.”
He tugged the brim of his hat as he said goodbye.

“You were flirting,” Bertie accused with a grin when Rachel entered the kitchen, unpinning and removing her new hat.

She laid her packages on the counter.
“I was not.”

“I’m a woman of many talents,” Bertie mimicked, batting her eyes in an outrageous parody. “If that ain’t flirting, I don’t know what is. First time I’ve ever seen you flirt with a feller. ‘Bout time you had some fun.”

“Shame on you for eavesdropping,” Rachel admonished, but they both knew she didn’t mean it.

Bertie waved her spoon in the air, banishing the comment. “Bah. You do it, too,” she said. “It’s the only way a body has any idea of what’s going on around here. You go get changed and then I want to hear about your morning. Eustace told me some of it, but I was too busy making more lemonade to listen,” she said as she poured the contents of her bowl into the pie crusts lined up on the wooden table.
“And tell that man of yours he owes us twenty one dollars.”

“Bertie!
I couldn’t do that.” His offer to pay for the lemonade was a clever gesture to move the crowd along. She couldn’t hold him to it.

“If you don’t, I will. Money’s in short supply around here. You know that better’n me.” She deftly rolled a flattened crust over her rolling pin and unrolled the perfect circle across one of her pies.
“Don’t know what that Morris Fillmore is spending it on, but he keeps taking more and more of it and it sure ain’t going in Victor’s pocket.”