Loe raamatut: «Of Men And Angels»

Chapter One

Western Colorado Plateau

June 1885

The rain hit without warning.

The mules balked as a flash of lightning cut through the sky, and the driver spurred them with a crack of his whip. “Haul your sorry butts outta here, or you’re gonna be swimming in that goddamn river!”

That wasn’t what Alexandra Merritt wanted to hear.

After a week on a crowded train from Philadelphia and another three weeks in a dirty Leadville hotel, she was almost home. She had given up waiting for repairs to the Denver Rio Grande train tracks and booked passage to Grand Junction on the worn-out stagecoach being used to deliver the U.S. mail.

Waiting another month had been unthinkable. Like a clock that needed winding, her father’s heart could stop without warning. She couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing him again. With the letters they had exchanged over the past ten years, a bridge had been built. William Merritt knew her better than she knew herself. She hadn’t thought twice about leaving her post as president of the Philadelphia Children’s League, or postponing her marriage to Thomas Hunnicutt. She had to get home.

Thunder boomed across the plain, and the stagecoach lurched like a staggering beast. Sitting across from her on the lumpy seat, Charlotte Smith stirred from an exhausted sleep. “What’s happening?”

Alex pulled back the leather flap covering the window. Cool air and the heavy scent of mud rolled into the coach. Charlotte had been as eager as she to get to her destination, and her reason was just as urgent. Alex’s fellow passenger was close to nine months pregnant and eager to reach her sister before the baby came.

“It’s raining,” Alex answered, raising her voice over a staccato burst of hail. “I think the driver’s worried about the road.”

“The road!”

Below them, a streambed writhed with the muddy runoff. Alex could see the water rising, slashing at the sides of the gorge. A shriveled juniper tore loose in the flood, and a man-size boulder tumbled after it.

“Hold up, you beasts!” the driver shouted. The coach skidded but didn’t stop. Gravity flung Alex against the seat just as the driver pounded on the roof.

“Mrs. Smith! Miss Merritt! Hang on!”

The stage lurched as if it had been tipped by an unseen hand. Charlotte screamed. Alex pulled the woman into her arms, but she couldn’t keep her grip. They were bouncing like stones, and the next thing she knew she was weightless, floating in the air like a bird, until the coach hit rushing water with a splash, throwing her against the door with a bone-crunching lurch.

Pain shot through her shoulder. Thunder ricocheted like a rifle shot, and the wheels spun with the rushing water. The mules screamed and kicked in a worthless effort to wrench themselves free. Water seeped through the wooden seams of the coach. It soaked her shoes and pooled at her ankles. Her white blouse was torn at the elbow, and the cool air stung the strawberry scrape on her arm.

Charlotte grabbed her stomach with both hands.

“Help us!” Alex screamed, pushing at the door over her head. “Smitty! Hank!” There was no answer, so she climbed through the opening and sat with her feet in the door well, hanging on to the frame for balance as waves of brown water pounded the brittle wood.

By a stroke of luck, the coach was wedged against a huge rock and a slab of mud. The torrent whipped through the wheels and raced down the gorge, ripping at boulders and exposing tree roots, taking what it wanted. The mud wall melted like chocolate in the sun, and the coach scraped along the bottom of the streambed, moving in inches that threatened to become feet.

“Charlotte, we’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to hurry.”

Bracing her feet against the door frame, she grabbed Charlotte’s arm and pulled. The coach lurched and slid a foot closer to the wall of the ravine. A juniper branch scratched her face with prickly green needles and Alex grabbed it, pulling to test it with her weight. The trunk was just a foot away. The makeshift rope would have to do.

“Charlotte, grab that branch. Now!”

Sheer terror yanked Charlotte out the door and into the vee of the trunk. Alex hoisted her skirts and followed. It was like climbing a tree as a child except the water had been doing its work, and the coach had slipped farther downstream.

Grabbing the branch with both hands, she clamped it between her knees and shimmied toward the relative safety of the trunk. Rough bark scraped her thighs and soft palms. The weight of her sopping skirt pulled her down, but she kept a firm grip on the bark, sliding to the trunk in inches until she reached Charlotte.

The water was ebbing, and the coach was twenty feet away. By some miracle, Charlotte was still wearing a coy red hat with a bobbing feather. From her perch Alex looked for the drivers, but she didn’t see either of the gray-bearded men. Two of the mules were still screaming with pain. The other two had drowned.

Turning to see how well the tree was rooted, Alex saw what had happened. A slab of mud had wiped out the road, and the hillside had collapsed into the watery torrents. It was a stupid place for a road, she thought. A stupid place to be.

“How are you doing?” she said, reaching for Charlotte’s blue-veined hand. The pregnant woman looked like a very fat sparrow. Until a few days ago, they had been strangers, but the boredom of travel had made them acquaintances if not friends.

Charlotte moaned and clutched Alex’s fingers as she doubled over, squeezing back her tears.

Alex rubbed her shoulders. “It’s going to be all right. You’ve just had a scare.”

“I hurt.”

“Where?”

“My middle. The baby’s kicking.”

Dear God, no. Not now. Not yet.

Alex knew about orphans and babies, but she had only witnessed one birth in her life. It hadn’t been easy, and her cousin had nearly died.

“Maybe it will stop,” she said. “We’ve both had a shock.”

The rain lessened to a drizzle, and the water ebbed as quickly as it had risen. Where had the storm come from? It had been so sudden, uncontrollable and devouring. Dampness chilled the air. The women had goose bumps, and night was coming fast.

The third mule had died, and the fourth was on its side, heaving with exhaustion. The stream had thinned to a ribbon, leaving puddles that looked like dirty mirrors.

“Charlotte, I’m going down to look around.”

“No, stay with me!”

“I’ll only be a minute.” Alex squeezed her hand and slid out of the tree. Mud oozed over her high-buttoned shoes as she sloshed to the coach. As if nothing had happened, their trunks were still lashed to the baggage rack, and she thought about the silly shoes she had packed. She needed sturdy boots and walking clothes. She needed help. Maybe even a miracle, but she’d settle for what she could find.

Standing on a rock, she peered through the window and saw the ruined contents of her food basket floating in a foot of water. Holding back an ache of worry, she walked to the driver’s boot and opened the small door. Water gushed down her skirt, but she found a wad of men’s clothing, a knife, a pistol and a box of bullets. Could she possibly hunt for food? The thought was laughable, but she took everything, and in a second compartment she found two canteens of water and a sack of apples. They would have to last until help came.

Help…but when would that be? Surely someone would come looking for them when the stage didn’t make it to Grand Junction, yet delays were common.

“Alex! I need you now.” Charlotte’s voice cut through her thoughts, and she turned back to the tree just in time to see the woman’s face go white with pain.

Setting the meager supplies on a rock, Alex stretched her arms upward as if to catch the woman if she fell. “Let me help you down,” she said gently.

Charlotte’s belly was huge. Her eyes widened with fright and, choking back a sob, she said the one thing Alexandra Merritt was afraid to hear.

“My water just broke.”

The last thing Jackson Jacob Malone wanted to hear was singing, especially a woman singing in a high, sweet voice that reminded him of angels he didn’t believe in. The words drifted to him from the bottom of a rocky gorge, and he wondered if he was still drunk. The singing was bad enough, but as the trail dipped and curled, he recognized the words. She was singing a hymn, and for a moment he thought he’d died and gone to hell.

Two seconds later a scream burst out of the ravine, and Jake heard the devil himself in that cry. It tore through his head like a bullet burning flesh. A bead of sweat broke across his brow and he wiped it away.

“Hang on, Charlotte! Hang on for the baby!”

The angel’s voice reminded him of sleigh bells on a winter morning. Hopeful and bright, they defied the cold even as it settled into a man’s bones, and he wondered if the angel had ever shivered in the dark. Somehow he doubted it, and he was sure when she started singing again, even louder than before.

“Oh, come, let us worship and bow down,

Let us kneel before the Lord, our God, our maker…”

The noonday sun stung his skin and cast shadows through the sage. His jaw throbbed just below his ear, as if the pain in his bruised eyes had leaked down the side of his face. He clenched his teeth against the misery of it. He didn’t want reminders of his brother’s fist slamming into him, the mess he’d left in Flat Rock, and especially not the melancholy hope of a woman singing in the desert.

“Oh, no! It’s starting again!”

“Breathe easy, Charlotte. Easy…”

“I can’t!”

A moan rose from the gorge and snaked around him.

“Try to pant,” the angel crooned. “Like this…hhhhh…hhhhh…hhhhh…”

It was the sound of sex, of life being formed, of need and desperation, and he recalled the pleasured cry of the last woman he’d bedded. He didn’t know her name, but he remembered her breasts, the taste of her, and he felt himself going soft inside. He had to get away from Charlotte and the angel before he did something stupid. Grimacing, he nudged his horse into a faster walk.

The trail twisted around a boulder rimmed with goldenrod, then cut straight across a hard slope. A dry mud slide blocked the way, as if a huge hand had pushed the trail into the mountainside. Tugging his hat low, he nudged the bay with his knees. The horse shimmied nervously, sending ripples of apprehension through Jake’s thighs and up his spine.

The heat of the day pressed against him, and the stench of bad meat was unmistakable. His stomach nearly heaved, and he squinted into the gorge where pale green sage made a fence along the streambed. His gaze followed the trickle of water down the ravine to the graceful curve of a red stagecoach. The front wheel spun as if set in motion by an invisible hand, and someone had draped women’s clothing over the rocks and bushes.

The bay splayed his forelegs and balked.

“Whoa, boy,” Jake said softly.

He’d just won the horse in a card game, and the animal’s distrust was mutual. The bay was likely to buck, but Jake took a chance and nudged him forward until he had a wider view of the gorge. The women were nowhere in sight, but he saw three dead mules tangled in the harness. The fourth was lying on its side, braying like a forgotten pet. Sensing the presence of the bay, it raised its head and snorted before falling back against the sand.

“For He is our God,

And we are the people of his pasture,

And the shee-eeee-eeep of his hand…”

The singing was closer now, as resonant as a howling wind, and his stomach clenched. He wanted a drink. He wanted to block out the rotting mules, the women, the god-awful singing. Suffocated by dust and sweet sage, he dug his heels into the bay, bracing himself as the animal coiled and lurched over the slick of dry mud.

The crust collapsed beneath its hooves, and Jake fought for balance as the horse jerked its head and pedaled backward.

“Breathe, Charlotte! Don’t squish up your face. Breathe like me…hhhh…hhhh…hhhh…”

The voice was clearer now, and as the sagebrush thinned to a veil of green lace, Jake saw the angel. She was less than ten yards from him, on her knees in front of the other woman’s sprawled legs, splattered with blood and birth water. Her hair was the color of Arbuckle’s coffee, and it fell over her shoulders in a tangle. Her blouse was torn at the shoulder, and he could see a hot pink crescent where the sun had burned her skin.

Trails of sweat streaked her dusty face. The high collar of her blouse was loose and gaping, and he saw the curve of her breasts as she laid her hand on the birthing woman’s belly, leaned down and peered between her legs.

Pushing back the woman’s dark blue skirt, she said, “Don’t push, Charlotte.”

“I’ve got to!”

“It’s too soon. You’ll tear.”

Jake cringed. The woman moaned, and the mix of grunting and agony turned into a wail. Her pain was terrible to hear. The bearing down of her hips and the writhing of her belly was the most horrible thing he had ever seen.

“Breathe, Charlotte!”

But the birthing woman was beyond understanding. Instead of listening to the angel, she curled her spine, grabbed her knees and screamed. A bullet to the head would have been an act of kindness, and yet he couldn’t look away.

There was no singing now, only the blue skirt and streaks of bright red blood on the petticoat spread beneath her hips. His gaze traveled from her thighs to her belly, and then to her ashen face. He had never seen a baby being born but he’d seen a few men die, and Charlotte plainly needed more help than any man or woman could give.

Her face registered shock and stark fear. “My baby! Oh God, my baby!”

For a man who didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything, he was dangerously close to tears. He prodded the bay with his heels, but the animal refused to budge, giving an angry chuff that carried through the gorge.

The angel raised her face toward the blistering blue sky. Her eyes locked on him, and for one painful second she stared at him with fierce brown eyes.

“Go away! Go away, you son of a—” Her lips locked together, as if she had never spoken a curse word in her life. He nearly laughed at the stupidity of it. She needed help. If not now, then later when she had to get to a town.

Jake wasn’t enough of a gentleman to feel honor-bound to stay, but he was enough of a rebel to pick a fight. He held the bay at the top of the trail. At this point he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Alex! Help me—” Charlotte grabbed her bare knees and grunted like a crazed animal.

“It’s coming! The baby’s coming!” The angel touched Charlotte’s belly as a low cry poured from the woman’s throat. Weeping and laughing, she said, “I see the head. Push, Charlotte! Push.”

Jake held his breath.

“Charlotte! You can do it! Push!”

The torture went on for a small eternity, until the baby squirted out of the womb and landed in the angel’s hands. Covered with blood and a waxy white cream, it seemed small and gray in the vastness of the plateau, and far too quiet to be alive. The angel reached into the baby’s rosebud mouth and cleared away the mucus. She held it upside down and slapped its bottom, and still there was no sound.

He saw panic in her eyes, but she choked it back and blew oh-so-gently into the baby’s mouth. He heard a cough, then mewling, and then a healthy wail. Tears spilled down her cheeks, and he blinked away his own.

“Alex…” The mother’s voice was weak.

“It’s a boy, Charlotte. He’s little but he’s perfect.” The angel set the baby on the mother’s belly. “We’ve got to get the afterbirth.”

From his vantage point on the trail, Jake saw the angel cut the cord with a knife. The afterbirth followed the baby, and fresh blood gushed from Charlotte’s womb. The angel’s eyes burned with fear. She reached for a cloth to stanch the bleeding, and in a minute it was soaked.

A cloud shifted. A dark shadow fell over the three of them. He saw Charlotte’s face relax. Her fingers stilled and her chest sank emptily against the sand. The only sign of life was the baby stirring on her belly, its mouth opening and closing like a blooming flower.

The angel pressed her hands to her cheeks and wept.

There wasn’t a thing Jake could have done to keep the woman alive, but he could dig her grave. Silently he climbed off the bay and led the horse into the ravine. The woman named Alex looked up at him.

“If you tend to the baby, I’ll see to the mother,” he said.

“Who are you?” Her voice was hoarse, and he could see every minute of the past twenty-four hours in her face. Something stirred in his gut, and an un-characteristic urge to be kind softened his eyes.

“My friends call me Jake.”

“I thought you were…” She shook her head. “I thought I imagined you.”

She looked as if she could still hear Charlotte’s moans, and he wondered if she would ever sing that hymn again. He looked at her eyes, red rimmed and inflamed with the dust and the sun, and somehow he knew she would sing it again this very day, just to make a point.

Brushing off her hands, she rose and smoothed her skirt. Jake tethered the bay to the stagecoach and inspected the mule writhing in the harness. If the animal could walk, perhaps the woman and baby could ride it.

“Whoa, boy,” he said, but the beast didn’t want anything to do with him. A broken foreleg told Jake all he had to know. He pulled his Colt .45 from its holster, cocked the hammer and put the animal out of its misery.

The angel gasped at the sudden blast. He expected her to be hysterical or sentimental about the animal, but she didn’t say a word and he had to admire her. She had been a fool to travel the Colorado Plateau alone, but she wasn’t softhearted about life.

Jake holstered the Colt and opened the driver’s boot. The mail was ruined, but the tools were in place and he took out the shovel. He wondered about the driver and man on shotgun, but the watermarks in the gorge made the facts plain. The two men had drowned in the flood.

Jabbing the shovel into the ground, Jake took a pair of leather gloves from his saddlebag and looked for a suitable grave site. He wasn’t about to bury Charlotte where a flash flood could steal the body, so with his black duster billowing behind him, he climbed over the cascade of rocks on the far side of the gorge.

The iron-rich plains stretched for a million miles, but just a few feet away he saw a sprig of desert paintbrush. It was the best he could do, and he started to dig. When the hole was deep, he collected rocks from the streambed and piled them nearby.

Two hours had passed when he wiped his hands on his pants and looked at the sky. The sun was lower now, as bright as orange fire, and above it, flat-bottomed clouds boiled into steamy gray peaks. Another storm was coming, he could smell it in the air.

He jabbed the shovel into the earth and strode down the rocky slope. The angel was holding the baby, crooning to it in that sweet voice of hers. It was bundled in something clean and white, and she had managed to dress the mother in a fashionable traveling suit.

Without a word, he brushed by the angel and scooped Charlotte into his arms, rocked back on his heels and rose to his full height.

He felt the angel’s gaze as he walked past her, and rocks skittered as she followed him. As gently as he could, he laid the dead woman to rest, picked up the shovel and replaced the dirt. He half expected the woman named Alex to pray or say a few words, but she settled for a mournful humming that made him think of birds in autumn and the wail of the wind.

Down in the valley, the valley so low,

Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.

One by one he piled jagged rocks on the loose earth. Alex didn’t flinch. The child mewled now and then, but her humming soothed him. It should have soothed Jake, too, but it didn’t. His head had started to pound, his back hurt, and his stomach was raw with bad whiskey.

A few hours ago he had been on his way to California, or maybe south to Mexico. He was alone by choice, and now he was stuck with a woman and a child. His life had taken a strange turn indeed.

He set the last rock on the grave with a thud and took off his gloves. Studying the angel’s profile, he said, “I’m done.”

She turned to him, and in her eyes he saw the haunted look of a person seeing time stop.

“I suppose you should say a few words,” she said.

His mouth twisted into a sneer, and he stared at her until she understood he had nothing to say. Bowing her head, she uttered a prayer that told him Charlotte was a stranger to her, this child an orphan, and the angel herself a woman who had more faith than common sense.

A determined amen came from her lips. The baby squirmed and, cocking her head as if the world had tilted on its axis, she looked at his face.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

He shrugged. Bruises were common in his life, like hangnails and stubbed toes. Bending down on one knee, he straightened a rock on the grave. “She had a bad time.”

The angel’s skirt swished near his face. He stood up and she sighed. “I’ve never seen someone die before.”

“I have.”

She gaped at him, and he felt like Clay Allison and Jesse James rolled into one. The corners of his mouth curled upward. He wasn’t in the same class as the James Brothers, but with his black duster, two black eyes and a three-day beard, any sensible woman would have crossed the street at the sight of him. He could have scared her even more with the truth. He’d shot a man, and depending on Henry Abbott’s stubbornness, Jake was either a free man or wanted for murder.

“Death isn’t a pretty sight,” he finally said.

She went pale. “My father is ill. I have to get to Grand Junction. Could you take us there?”

If he didn’t take her, the baby would die. Was there even a choice here?

There’s always a choice, Jake, and you’re making the wrong one. Lettie Abbott’s angry face rose up from the hot earth, shimmering with accusations, and he didn’t answer.

The angel was close to begging. “I have to get home as soon as I can. I know it’s out of your way, but I could pay you.”

He considered taking her up on the offer, but the stash in his saddlebags gave him a rare opportunity to be charitable.

“There’s no need,” he replied. “Can you ride?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t sat on a horse in ten years, Mr….?”

“Call me Jake.”

“I don’t know you well enough to use your given name.”

“You will soon enough.” With four dead mules and one horse, they’d be sharing a saddle and he’d be pressed up against her shapely backside for hours. With a lazy grin, he added, “Lady, you and I are going to be intimately acquainted before nightfall.”

Her eyes went wide, and beneath her thick lashes he saw dark circles of exhaustion, sheer terror and rage. Her loose hair caught the sun, and her eyes hardened into agate. “I doubt very seriously that’s going to happen.”

“Are you afraid of horses?”

She answered him with a glare and Jake eyed the bay, wondering how the animal would feel about the extra weight. From the corner of his eye, he saw her shift the baby and reach into her pocket, probably for a handkerchief to wipe away the day’s sweat. He pushed back his hat and blew out a hot breath as he turned to look at the angel.

“Do you think you can—”

A muddy Colt Peacemaker was aimed at his chest. Hell, she had hidden it in her pocket and he hadn’t noticed.

“Get out of here, or I swear I’ll shoot,” she said.

“Go right ahead. It’ll be a short trip to hell at this range.”

Her eyes flickered, and he knew she couldn’t possibly send a man to his death, let alone eternal damnation.

“Leave! Now!”

“I don’t want to.” The angel’s challenge pulled him in like a moth to a flame. “Lady, it’s just plain stupid to stay here. You might make it for a week or two, but Charlie there won’t.”

The baby was pressed to her breast, his head nestled at her throat. She looked up at Jake with frightened brown eyes and his common sense kicked in.

Lady, you and I are going to be intimately acquainted before nightfall.

His eyes settled on the angel’s face, and he wondered why on earth he had said something so stupid to a woman stranded in the desert.

The baby’s lips went crazy against her neck, and he knew why. The angel was beautiful. She radiated goodness, a kind of light that made his heart ache. He adjusted his hat so that she could see his face.

“I won’t hurt you, miss. You can call me Jake, or Jacob, or Jackson or even Mr. Malone if it makes you feel better.”

“Jacob…” Her voice went to a whisper, and she lowered the gun. “I’ve always hated that name.”

He felt insulted, but if the truth be told, he hated his name, too. Jake the rake, Jake the snake, Jake the fake. She seemed to like formalities, so he tipped his hat. “Jake Malone at your service. And you are?”

“Alexandra Merritt. Alex for short.”

A man’s name. It didn’t fit the dark-haired angel staring at him with those sweet brown eyes.

“Well, Miss Merritt, I don’t like your name, either.”