Loe raamatut: «The Bachelors of Aspen Valley»

Chapter One

February 21, 1874 Utah Territory

Gideon Gault sensed trouble. Something strange was happening in Aspen Valley, something...unsettling. A thread of agitation ran through the community surrounding the Batchwell Bottoms Silver Mine. It bubbled beneath the surface, filling him with anxiety—even though, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why.

Pausing at the entrance to the mine, he planted his hands on his hips and squinted against the sun. For the hundredth time that day, he allowed his gaze to sweep over the street beyond.

“Problems?”

Glancing over his shoulder, Gideon acknowledged Charles Wanlass, the mine’s blasting foreman, and recent newlywed.

“I don’t know. Do things feel...odd...to you?”

Charles smiled. “Odd? In what way?”

“I don’t know. I just...”

Charles’s grin grew even broader, and Gideon grimaced. The man grinned a whole lot these days. Ever since Charles had married and adopted twin babes, Gideon’s friend existed in a perpetual bubble of happiness that was beginning to grate on Gideon’s nerves. Especially since Gideon seemed to be surrounded by miners who were afflicted with the same brand of besottedness.

“There’s something going on,” Gideon groused, trying again to explain the fact that, each day, he grew a little more skittish, a little more suspicious. He woke up with the sensation that something was off-kilter with Aspen Valley and went to bed sure that he’d missed something important.

But what?

“Maybe it’s the good weather that has you out of sorts,” Charles offered. His tone was a little too tongue-in-cheek for Gideon’s liking.

No, it wasn’t the weather. After months of snow, bitter cold and whipping winds, the valley had begun to enjoy a temporary thaw. For weeks, they’d basked in unseasonably bright sunshine. Seemingly overnight, the man-high drifts of ice that had once been pushed up against the buildings had melted to dirty mounds, while the thoroughfares grew thick with mud. Deep puddles made it hazardous to stand too close to the street since the passing wagons threw dirt and grime in every direction. And crossing the road...well, if a man didn’t want to lose his boots, he needed to use the wooden boards that had been laid down to provide a temporary bridge from the Miners’ Hall to the cook shack.

But all that was normal for Aspen Valley in the spring.

So, what had him feeling so antsy?

Gideon knew why the other men were restless. They lived in dread of the moment when the pass cleared and the fifty mail-order brides who’d been stranded at Bachelor Bottoms for the winter were forced to leave the valley.

Gideon couldn’t wait for that day. He’d finally have the women out of his hair, his unit of Pinkertons guarding the silver rather than the ladies’ dormitory, and his life back to normal.

“Maybe you’re just grumpy,” Charles said.

The man had the all-out gall to laugh and Gideon scowled. “Very funny.”

“You could drop by the house for something to eat. Willow was planning to bake today. She’d love to fatten you up.”

Tempting as that thought might be, Gideon shook his head. The last thing he needed was to follow Charles home right after the man’s shift. Although Charles and Willow tended to be reserved in public, Gideon knew they’d be goo-goo-eyed in their own row house. In his present mood, that was more than Gideon could handle.

“Maybe later. Right now, I need to get to the bottom of this.”

Jamming his hat on his head, he rested his hand loosely on his sidearm and strode to the boardwalk. Once there, he sauntered in the direction of the cook shack. Maybe Charles was right. Maybe he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten that morning, and he was feeling peckish. This late in the day, he probably wouldn’t find any hot food, but he could grab some biscuits and cold ham and make himself a sandwich. That and a glass of milk ought to chase the restlessness out of his system and help him think clearly.

Ahead of him, he could see a pair of miners heading toward the Pinkerton offices and he grimaced. Hopefully, they’d keep walking.

Please let them keep walking.

If the men stepped into the Pinkerton building, Gideon would have to forgo the cook shack and head into the office to see what they wanted. His guards were already stretched too thin with their current duties. And if the miners sought the Pinkertons out, it was usually to ask for help in settling a minor dispute.

This day was going from bad to worse.

“Good morning, Mr. Gault.”

Gideon turned at the soft call, his hand leaving his revolver and lifting to his hat when he saw Stefania Nicos and Marie Rousseau, two of the mail-order brides who often volunteered to help prepare the morning meal.

“Miss Nicos. Miss Rousseau.”

The women shared a secret, inscrutable glance.

Where were their guards?

He turned back to call to the miners and ask them to alert his office that he needed one of his men, only to discover that they were nowhere in sight. That meant Gideon would have to escort the ladies safely home.

“Miss Nicos, I—”

The women had disappeared as well.

What on earth?

He glanced down the nearby alley. Nothing. Checked inside the door to the company laundry.

Nothing.

Where had they gone?

He hooked his thumbs into his belt and surveyed the street from one end of Aspen Valley to the other. Not even a stray dog roamed the boardwalk. It was as if the inhabitants of Bachelor Bottoms were being plucked out of thin air, and the mining community was gradually becoming a ghost town. There were no stray workers, no women, no wagons, no horses. If not for the dripping of the melting icicles, Gideon could have believed he’d been dropped into a painted backdrop for a melodrama.

Which only added to his uneasiness.

Gideon resumed his walk, his gaze restlessly scanning back and forth. Maybe it was time to get a team of men together and sweep the area. He wasn’t sure what he was going to tell his men to look for, but he’d think of something.

Sighing heavily, he gave up on the thought of a sandwich for now, passed the cook shack and headed to the three-story frame building that housed the Pinkerton office and their barracks. Opening the door, he called out, “Dobbs! We’ve got a pair of runners! Miss Nicos and Miss Rousseau are on the loose.”

Except for the echo of his own voice, there was no response.

Gideon had a unit of thirty men who’d been hired by the mine to guard the silver ore and provide security for the shipments being sent to Denver. But, since December, Ezra Batchwell had insisted that the Pinkertons spend their time hovering over the mail-order brides “for their own protection.”

Gideon snorted. In his opinion, the fifty-odd women who’d been marooned here when their train had been pushed down the mountain by an avalanche didn’t need any protection whatsoever. It would have been easier to guard the miners. In the past few weeks, the women had been testing their boundaries even more than usual—a result, no doubt, of the fact that Ezra Batchwell had broken his leg and had been confined to his home. Without his bullish insistence that the ladies be kept at bay, the brides seemed determined to challenge the willingness of Gideon’s men to corral them.

To be honest, the Pinkertons hadn’t tried that hard to rein them in. With the warmer weather, everyone in the valley knew it was only a matter of weeks before the women would be forced to leave. When that moment came, Aspen Valley would return to an all-male population. Even worse, they would lose the joy that the brides had brought with their fine cooking, bright smiles and effervescent personalities.

But that was the way things worked at the Batchwell Bottoms Silver Mine.

“Dobbs! Winslow!”

Nothing.

The chance for a sandwich seemed to be getting further and further out of reach.

Gideon stepped outside. Once again, the hairs at the back of his neck prickled. The roads, the boardwalks, were empty.

He knew that production had stepped up in the mine since a new tunnel had been blasted. Crews were larger, shifts longer. As soon as the canyon had cleared enough for repair crews, the railway lines would be restored and then the ore they’d amassed the past few months would be shipped out of the camp.

But that didn’t explain why there was no one around today.

A trio of miners exited the Hall, relieving Gideon’s misgivings slightly. Maybe things weren’t quite as strange as he—

“Mr. Gault.”

He stiffened. Without turning, he recognized the voice of Miss Lydia Tomlinson, one of the marooned women. As a self-professed suffragist, she’d become the unofficial leader of the ladies in the past few months. In Gideon’s opinion, the woman meant trouble with a capital T. She had a way of putting...ideas in the other brides’ heads. And since she didn’t have much regard for authority, she could be a handful.

Gideon mentally prepared himself, knowing that any conversation with Miss Tomlinson would prove to be an intellectual skirmish. She could talk a mule into surrendering his left hind leg if she had a mind to do so—and the mule would give it up willingly.

He leaned in to the Pinkerton office one more time—as if by some miracle, one of his men would appear and relieve him of the need to match wits with Lydia. But there would be no such deliverance. Instead, he was forced to step outside.

Automatically, his gaze swept the boardwalk, looking for the miners who’d come out of the hall—but there was no sign of them.

He was losing his ever-loving mind.

In the meantime, Miss Tomlinson scrutinized him from the tip of his hat to his dusty boots, then regarded Gideon as if he were slightly daft.

Sighing, he touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “And how are you this lovely morning, Miss Tomlinson?”

One of her brows lifted. Clearly, she’d caught the thread of resignation in his tone.

“Quite well, Mr. Gault. Nevertheless, I wondered if you and I could have a word.”

Gideon seriously doubted such a thing was possible. Lydia Tomlinson didn’t exchange a word. She talked and talked and talked. To be fair, she was an intelligent creature with a good head on her shoulders. But she could be so bossy.

“About?” he asked cautiously.

Her eyes narrowed. “You needn’t look like I’m proposing to escort you to a firing squad.”

Apparently, she could read minds as well.

Gideon purposely relaxed the line of his shoulders and tried his best to make his hands hang loose at his sides.

“There was no such stuff in my thoughts.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Her lips thinned. “I wish to discuss a matter of business with you.”

Gideon couldn’t imagine what kind of “business” the two of them might share. But he supposed that since Ezra Batchwell was unavailable, and Jonah Ramsey had been quarantined at home with measles, Gideon was probably the next company man on her list with whom she intended to argue.

“What can I do for you?”

She shifted, her gaze roaming the streets around them. For a moment, sunlight slipped over her cheeks and highlighted the delicate curve of her jaw. She really was a pretty woman—tall, slim, with honey-colored hair. If she weren’t so...snippy...

“I would rather divulge the subject inside. Away from prying eyes.”

One last time, Gideon allowed his gaze to roam Main Street, from the mine opening to the slopes of the Uinta mountains in the distance. Near as Gideon could tell, there wasn’t a soul in town who could “pry.” But there was no use arguing the point.

He held the door wide. “After you, Miss Tomlinson.”

“You may call me Lydia, Mr. Gault.”

Gideon was pretty sure that if he used Lydia’s Christian name, his own mother would roll over in her grave. Clotilde Gault had been a stickler for proper social customs and morés, and an unmarried gentleman did not take such liberties with an unmarried woman—even if she did spout on about the emancipation of women and the equality of the sexes.

“How can I help you, Miss Tomlinson?”

Her lips pursed, ever so slightly, but thankfully, she didn’t press him into dispensing with the formalities.

“The ladies have been discussing the rapid melting of the snow.”

She paused, clearly waiting for a reaction, so he offered a noncommittal, “Oh?”

“By our reckoning, it seems as if most of the drifts have wasted into nothing. If this continues, we’re worried that the standing puddles around the Dovecote will soon flood into the house.”

So, she did have a logical reason for her visit.

“Jonah Ramsey and I have been keeping our eye on the water levels—or we were until he took sick. If necessary, he’s given orders to dig a series of drainage ditches to the river. But at this point, such efforts would probably be premature. Here in the high Uinta mountain range, spring can be unpredictable. These high temperatures could give way to a Utah blizzard at a moment’s notice. I’ve seen the weather change from freezing cold to blazing heat, to snow, hail and rain, all within a single afternoon.”

Lydia looked skeptical, but she didn’t push the point. Instead, she said, “The women would be more than happy to help dig should the need arise. I know with the new tunnel that manpower has been spread thin.”

Gideon’s mouth opened, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of anything to say. Somehow, he couldn’t bring to mind the image of Lydia or the other girls slogging through the mud with pickaxes and shovels, fashioning a trench that would stretch the hundred feet from the Dovecote to the Aspen River.

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Miss Tomlinson. I’m sure that the mining company could gather a crew should we need it.”

She nodded, then lapsed into silence. Her gaze roamed the room, taking in the utilitarian office.

Unlike many of the other buildings in town, this one had not fallen under the women’s purview. While the cook shack, the Meeting House, and even the Miners’ Hall had been scrubbed and polished until they gleamed, this space was clearly run by men. Mud streaked the floors and the desks were littered with papers, logbooks and coffee mugs. The only nod to neatness was the rifles lined up on a rack against the far wall.

For some reason, the untidiness caused a warmth to steal up Gideon’s neck. Judging by the way Miss Tomlinson invariably dressed to perfection in frilly dresses with nipped-in waists, he’d bet she was a stickler for orderliness. Today, she looked especially fine in a red gingham dress with black braid trim.

“Was there something else, Miss Tomlinson?”

Rather than speaking, she moved restlessly around the room. Despite the warmth of the day, she wore delicate kid gloves the exact shade of crimson as the capelet that graced her shoulders.

Where did a woman find red leather gloves?

As she moved, Gideon felt compelled to shift to face her—until he had the sensation of becoming a sunflower tracking the orbit of the sun.

“I suppose that leads me to my main question,” she said, regarding him from beneath her lashes.

The look she offered him didn’t seem very...businesslike.

Gideon couldn’t help folding his arms across his chest. He instantly regretted the movement, wondering if she would interpret it as a defensive gesture.

Once again, he felt a prickling sensation. His instincts told him that Miss Tomlinson was up to something.

But what?

Gideon’s men had already relaxed their guard substantially since Batchwell’s accident. Short of allowing the ladies to wander all over town at will, what more could she want of him?

“Have you sent anyone to check the pass?”

Of all the questions he might have suspected she’d ask, that was the last one that would have popped into his mind. Even so, Gideon hesitated.

“Not yet. I’d planned on riding up that way later this afternoon.”

“Excellent. When should I meet you at the livery?”

It took a full second for her query to sink into his brain.

She wanted to go with him.

Not knowing how best to respond, Gideon stalled.

“Meet me?”

“Since the condition of the pass will determine the fate of the women, I think it’s only logical that I accompany you.”

He held out a hand. “Oh, no. No, no, no. This isn’t a jaunty buggy ride in the countryside, Miss Tomlinson. Despite the fact that the roads have become clear in the valley, up by the canyon, the slopes will be treacherous at best. The debris field left from the avalanche will be unstable and full of the rocks and broken tree limbs that were brought down from the higher elevations. If we can get into the canyon at all, we’ll be headed into terrain kept in shade most of the day. That could mean encountering ice and even the threat of another avalanche.”

Lydia’s eyes seemed to snap, even though she maintained her neutral expression.

“Do you take me for a fool, Mr. Gault?”

How was he supposed to answer that question without getting himself into trouble?

“No, ma’am.”

He mentally grimaced when his tone emerged with a hint of a question.

Again, her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t remark on his inflection. Instead, she said, “I wasn’t proposing a buggy ride at all, Mr. Gault. I am fully aware of the hazards and consequences of the weather—which is why I intended to meet you at the livery. I’m certain that Mr. Smalls could be persuaded to loan me a mount. Rest assured, I’m a qualified rider.”

“We don’t have sidesaddles here at Bachelor Bottoms,” Gideon said with what he hoped was a negligent shrug. Inwardly, he congratulated himself on his quick thinking. There was no way that Miss Fancy Pants could get on a horse with all those ruffles and gathers and lace unless she used one.

Unfortunately, the moment she scowled, he realized that he’d managed to irritate her even further.

“I didn’t think that you would, Mr. Gault.”

“And you can’t be going anywhere in...that.” He made a vague gesture to the frilliness of her attire. “You’d freeze to death the minute we hit the shady patches.”

“What time, Mr. Gault?”

Her tone reminded him of Sister Grundy, his childhood Sunday School teacher. Miss Grundy’s voice had held the same thread of steel when Gideon had tried to bring a frog to church under the guise of “educating one of God’s creatures.”

He sighed and glanced at the clock over his desk. In the silence, the tick-tock of the timepiece seemed overly loud—and Miss Tomlinson’s toe tapping impatiently against the floor merely served as an accompaniment.

“How about one o’clock?”

The appointed time was less than an hour away—and by his standards, he doubted that any woman could get herself changed into suitable clothes and return to town. His sisters had never managed such a feat.

“Very well. One o’clock.”

With that, she strode past him in a wave of something that smelled like lemons and gardenias. In doing so, she managed to hook the door and pull it closed behind her with a resounding slam! that rattled the windows.

Gideon couldn’t help chuckling. Lydia Tomlinson might be a pain in the neck most days...

But she was like a firecracker with a faulty fuse. A body never knew what might set her off.

And oh, what fun it was to see what it took to get her to lose control.

* * *

Lydia marched down the boardwalk, a secret smile twitching at the corners of her lips. She really hadn’t meant to slam the door quite so hard...

But she’d needed to signal to her friends that Gideon Gault was no longer being distracted.

Within seconds, Stefania and Marie joined her, and the three of them walked down the boardwalk, heading out of town toward the Dovecote.

“Any progress?” Lydia asked.

“We were able to get five more men.”

Lydia shot a glance at the other girls, catching their barely submerged glee. “Five? How?”

“We threw a blanket over each of them and hauled them into the cook shack. From there, we explained the nature of our protest and how they could help.”

“And they all agreed to join our cause?”

“Klute Ingraham is still thinking about it. But Iona started plying him with pie, so I think his stomach will declare its allegiance soon enough. If that doesn’t work, Iona is prepared to mourn the fact that the stuffed ferrets he provided for decoration in the Dovecote need a new set of clothes for spring.”

Since Klute had a passion for taxidermy and dressing his creations in fanciful clothes, Lydia supposed that would keep him from comprehending the true nature of his situation. In essence, he was a prisoner to the mail-order brides. He and the other men they’d taken hostage would remain in their control until their demand was met: an end to the “no women” clause in the mine’s rule book.

“Well done! Where are you keeping this batch?”

“At the infirmary for now. Since Sumner has been forced to remain home with Jonah during his quarantine, we figured that no one would bother to look there.”

“And who do you have guarding them?”

“Greta and Hannah.”

Lydia laughed. Greta was a plump Bavarian woman who knew very little English. What words she knew, she offered in a big booming voice. Even if she bellowed her orders in German, she more than captured a man’s attention. Hannah was a sturdy farm girl from Ohio. The pair of them should be more than capable of guarding their captives.

“That brings our total to...”

“Thirty-seven!” Stefania offered proudly.

Lydia chuckled. “See what you can do this afternoon to bring that number even higher. I have an appointment to meet Mr. Gault to examine the pass. We should be gone at least an hour, but I’ll do my best to keep him out of the town proper for two.”

Marie and Stefania both offered her mock salutes. Then, they turned to retrace their steps so that they could relay their “orders” to the women who would lie in wait for the next batch of men who foolishly sought a meal, a haircut or a game of checkers in the company store.

Lydia knew that the ladies’ efforts wouldn’t remain undetected for much longer—she hadn’t thought that they would last this long. Indeed, she was surprised that the dip in the mine’s workforce hadn’t already become a problem. But with more and more snow disappearing every day, the brides had been desperate to find a way to get Ezra Batchwell and Phineas Bottoms to revise the company’s strict rules for employment.

In order to work at the prestigious and profitable Batchwell Bottoms Silver Mine, the men had to sign an oath that they would abstain from drinking, smoking, gambling and cussing. And most egregious of all, in her opinion, women were forbidden on company property. That meant that married men were forced to live apart from their wives and families. And if a man happened to fall in love once he came to the territories, he was in big trouble.