Much Ado About Miners Page 2

  “Mrs. Gardner.” Kade imagined the man tipping his hat.

  “No, sir.” Iris Gardner speaking again. “I chased them out with the pistol. A passerby was, um, hurt.”

  That would be him. The lady banker had tried to blow his head off. Kade remembered everything.

  “Good, good.” Must be the banker talking, Kade reckoned. “About the money, I mean. I’m glad you’re all right, Miss Gardner. My son will be coming in on the stage in an hour, and he isn’t convinced a lady should be working in a bank as it is. Of course he’ll escort you to the masked ball next Saturday night.”

  “She’ll be ready,” Iris’s mother said, although it sounded more like an order than a simple response to a social discussion. And why were they talking about a dance when the lady had just shot two men?

  It sounded like Mr. Hewett and Mrs. Gardner were matchmaking. Kade hoped it didn’t work out, even though he had no reason for it. His mind must still be jumbled.

  “You have your costume made?” the banker asked.

  “Yes, I started working on it a couple months ago, and it’s been finished since before Daisy’s wedding.”

  “Daisy? Oh, yes. Daisy, your sister. Who’d she marry?”

  “Cole Richards.”

  “Ah, yes, the last man you shot. Treacherous business for a woman, and I have to say I’m sorry to have brought you into such danger.”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Hewett! I enjoy my job at the bank, and I’ve never been hurt or even seriously threatened.”

  “I call being held at gunpoint ‘seriously threatened,’ and I can’t have it. Bad for business, and I won’t have you in danger. You’re fired.”

  “Fired?”

  “Due to the extraordinary circumstances, I’ll pay you the wages you’re owed, and two more months besides, just to give you time to look for another position. Or maybe Edward will marry you. Either way, I can’t have you working at the bank any longer.”

  “Fired?”

  “You heard. Look your best at the masquerade ball.”

  On the banker’s way out, the sheriff called, “Stop by and tell Doc Mabry that the stranger’s come to. Not talking much, though, and holding real still.”

  “Sheriff,” Mrs. Gardner said in a way Kade knew that an order from mother had to be forthcoming. “My daughter simply can’t perform her ablutions here in a cell with this stranger. Please let her out and I’ll have her back in an hour. My word on it. And I’ll bring a fresh shirt for this fellow, too.”

  After a long pause, Kade heard the jangle of keys. “Go out the back way. I don’t want everyone thinking I’m soft just because she’s a lady.” Metal clanged and hinges squeaked, sending another dart of hot pain through Kade’s head.

  “Wilfred, escort the ladies to Miss Gardner’s room,” the sheriff ordered. “Stand outside the boardinghouse until she’s cleaned up, then bring her back.”

  “Now, that there’s why I’m a deputy! Escorting two pretty ladies.”

  “Without anyone seeing you,” the sheriff added.

  “Aw, dang.”

  Wilfred’s protest was in a fine jest. Kade reckoned the deputy would be a fun man to know under better circumstances. The pounding in his head hadn’t faded at all. Maybe some water or other liquid libation would help.

  After the cell door opened, then a pause and people walking around, things got a lot quieter.

  “How long, sheriff?” Kade asked without opening his eyes.

  “How long what?”

  “Since she shot me.”

  “Fifteen or twenty minutes. I want you to stay quiet until Doc gets back. He won’t want you to have any sort of strain, including talking.”

  Kade had a lot more questions gnawing at him. Was this Vivvie his sister? He was sure of it. And Iris Gardner? He’d only seen the top of her head and her bosom, but she’d grown into quite a woman. Little Iris was mischievous, but she wouldn’t hurt a flea.

  Maybe he should’ve been a flea.

  * * *

  An hour later, Kade worked on keeping his eyes open and tried to focus on the cracked ceiling boards. Moving his eyes still made him a might queasy but not nearly as much. He’d always been a quick healer. After several minutes, another man entered the sheriff’s office.

  “Your patient is awake and waiting.” The sheriff opened the cell door. He was a lot shorter than his voice indicated, and slight, too, but had that air about him that let men know he meant business.

  Kade didn’t need a doctor probing and pawing him. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I think so, too, but you’ll need to stay quiet for a few days,” the other man said. “I’ll give you a checkup just the same.”

  That would suit Kade just dandy. A soft bed, a jug of corn whiskey, and a half-naked saloon girl might help, too—if she did all the work and he didn’t have to move his head.

  “No charges against me?”

  “Haven’t talked to the judge yet,” the sheriff said. “Have to get Miss Gardner’s story first. Now you be still and let Doc Mabry work on you.”

  The doctor rolled up his sleeves. “Let’s redress that wound and then I want to do a few tests.”

  Kade put up with the doc’s fussing only because he was too tired not to. Doc unwound the bandage, poured something that stung like hell in the wound, dabbed at it until Kade was ready to strangle him, then finally rewrapped his head.

  “Keep the bandage on for a couple days so the wound doesn’t get dirt in it.”

  “All right.” Kade reckoned the more he agreed, the sooner Doc would leave.

  The doctor held up three fingers. “How many fingers?”

  “Three.”

  “Good. Now fix your eyes on my pen and follow it.” He waved the quill pen around a bit and, finally satisfied, he put it back in his bag. “Still have a headache?”

  “Not much.” He had a helluva headache, but the doctor didn’t need to know that.

  “I want you to rest for two days at least.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Doc picked up his bag. “Sheriff, I need to talk with you outside about another matter.”

  Saved by the devil.

  The sheriff followed Doc out the door.

  Speaking of the devil, his partner Phineas gimped in. “Dammit all, Kade. What sort of mess have you gotten yourself into this time?”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Hell-fire, you’re the talk of the town—the Silver Slipper, anyway. They was all wondering who the gunman is. Seems more’n a few of ’em noticed you packin’ iron.” He opened his buckskin pouch and dug out a bottle. “I snuck you some snakebite medicine.”

  Kade pushed himself up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The dynamite exploding in his head made him sit still a minute, and the nausea came back full force. “She shot me in the head.”

  “Should’ve aimed lower if she wanted to do some damage.”

  “I’m not sure she aimed at all.”

  “Looks like she tried to scalp you.”

  “Give me some of that snake juice.”

  Phineas uncorked the bottle and handed it through the bars to Kade, who took a short pull. His stomach protested—his head couldn’t feel any worse.

  “You’ve got to get me out of this mess. I saw some hard cases robbing a bank—they made their escape and I got off a shot. Winged one. Then I went in to see if everyone inside was all right, and that’s when Miss Gardner tried to blow my head off.”

  “And now they think you tried to rob the bank.”

  “More’n likely.”

  “In the words of Shakespeare, ‘How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.’ The Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene 1.” Phineas Stratford, a grizzled old forty-niner whose aching bones had forced him into a softer business, loved Shakespeare, gold, and women—not necessarily in that order.

  “Did you get a reply from the Bonnet Consortium?”

  “They agreed to meet. The lawyer’s here in Silver so I
’ll nose around at the Silver Slipper—see what we’re dealing with. Still ain’t seen Mr. Bonnet and I’ve some news you won’t cotton to.”

  “Can’t be much worse than getting shot in the head.”

  “The train our men were on derailed. I got a wire from Nat. Says some were hurt and what’s left of ’em won’t be here for two weeks at best.”

  “Damn.”

  “But I got it took care of. I sent a message that Bonnet Consortium has to provide the crew, and we’d train them.”

  “You what?”

  “It was either that, or turn down the job.”

  “Can’t do that.” Bram’s cryptic wire inferred that Kade’s father couldn’t meet payroll at the mine much longer. This job, escorting Bonnet Consortium’s bullion shipment, was his one chance to prove he was equal to his brother, although Kade hadn’t planned on getting shot or losing his crew to start off.

  Lady Luck was nowhere to be found in Silver City.

  * * *

  Iris trembled all over—whether from excitement or anxiety, she couldn’t be sure. Her mother had hustled her up to the second-floor room in Mrs. Brouster’s boardinghouse, right past the owner herself. The only woman Iris knew who was bossier than Mrs. Brouster was Hazel Gardner. With Vivvie as her mother’s ally, Mrs. Brouster didn’t have a chance. Mama had ordered up a bath and extra towels. Vivvie sent down for toast and milk.

  “Did the fellow you shot have a manly form?” Vivvie’s eyes sparkled as she worked on teasing Iris into a better mood, as she had so often.

  Her mother snorted. “Iris Gardner, I don’t want to hear any talk of you marrying him.”

  “Mama!” Their tactic worked because Iris giggled for the first time since the incident. “Seriously, I did shoot an innocent man and the sheriff may very well charge me for it. I wouldn’t blame him, either. What an awful thing to do.”

  Vivvie patted Iris’s hand. “Don’t worry. I don’t think the man is mad at you. Just give him a little time. You don’t want to start off on the wrong foot with your husband-to-be.”

  “Quit dawdling and turn around, Iris,” her mother ordered. “Your gown is disgusting. Everything will be better once we get you cleaned up and smelling like a lady instead of a butcher shop.”

  “How flattering.”

  Vivvie flipped through Iris’s wardrobe. “Is this your costume? Titania?”

  “Uh-huh. What’s yours?”

  “Titania.” Both of them laughed. “But a little different. We’ll have to come up with some new lines for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  Iris took her first deep breath of the day as her mother released the last binding on her corset. “Or you could be Peaseblossom.”

  “Or you could be Peaseblossom.”

  Here they were, nattering on about a Shakespearean play while a man lay wounded in the jail. Shooting a man was a terrible thing, but at least she hadn’t taken his life. She shuddered.

  “Are you okay, dear?” her mother asked.

  Little did Hazel Gardner know that Iris had caught a good look at the stranger, and that one glance sent tingles where there shouldn’t have been any, certainly not for a respectable lady. He was handsome, what she saw of him. Even with part of his blurry face covered he reminded her of Vivvie’s brother, Kade—the very man who’d made her swear off men forever.

  “I could’ve killed a man today. Thank the lucky stars he’ll be all right.”

  “If you don’t mind, please don’t shoot the handsome ones.” Vivvie put Iris’s costume back in the wardrobe. “I haven’t given up hope, even if a suffragist doesn’t need a man. When I lost my Zach, it hit me that I’ll grow old alone—no husband to pet me when I’m sorrowful and no children to take care of me when I’m infirm.”

  Vivvie had been deeply in love and engaged to Zach, a studious assayer according to her telling, when the McKinnons lived in Virginia City. He’d been killed in the cross fire between some claim jumpers and the law. Vivvie had taken his death hard, and was only now coming out of deep mourning. All her family and friends had worried about her, and still did, even though she seemed to be coming around.

  “Maybe you’ll marry this one,” Hazel said as she bundled Iris’s clothes. “Get in the tub.” To Vivvie, she said, “Take these to the Chinese laundry, and on the way, stop by the hotel and have Cyrus send a shirt to the jail. Better make it an extra-large shirt, by the looks of that man.”

  “Did he have nice shoulders?” Vivvie raised her hands wide in mock measurement. “Good to sleep on?”

  “I’m a suffragist and I have no intention of getting married, ever,” Iris said. “And even if I did, shooting a man is no way to meet a future husband.” And of course if he was the only man she’d ever loved, Kade McKinnon, well, a man like that simply wasn’t husband material.

  “Worked for Daisy.”

  “Piffle!” Mama said. “The right to vote has nothing to do with selecting a husband. I don’t know why you have those combined in your mind. Edward would be a good match—he has money and is well-placed in society.”

  “Mama, Edward is polite to me—nothing more.” And never would be, but she’d never divulge his secret.

  “Not after you show some cleavage at the masquerade ball. I’ll alter your gown—that’s why I came a week early.”

  “Mama!”

  “And don’t go shooting him.”

  * * *

  Sheriff Sidney Adler sat in his desk chair and leaned back. “What brings you to our lovely city, McKinnon?”

  “You know me?” Kade sat on the cot, holding his hat in his hands. It wouldn’t fit on his head with the turban bandage. Doc had wrapped him up like one of those Egyptian mummies.

  “You’ve made sure your name is known in at least three states and two territories. Plus, your family moved to Dewey a while back, so I’ve been expecting you. I’ll tell you directly, gunmen aren’t welcome here.”

  Kade rubbed the bandage wrapped around his head. “Yeah, well, I just got to town. Walked right into a bank robbery and a crazy woman tried to blow my head off. Lovely city, all right.”

  “I’ve sent a man over to investigate. Miss Gardner shot one robber last month—he ended up marrying her sister. Good fellow, and turned out to be a heckuva lawman. Don’t know who’d be man enough to tame Iris, though.”

  “You know the family well?”

  “Well enough. Funny story, actually.” He got up to refill his coffee mug. “I’ll tell it to you another time.”

  “I had nothing to do with the robbery.”

  “I know that. I put you in jail so the felons responsible won’t think I’m on their trail, but I’ve got men after them right now.” He poured himself a cup of coffee, then held the pot up and turned to Kade. “Want some?”

  Kade shook his head, and the explosions inside made him regret it.

  “You see any of the robbers?”

  “I got a good look at two of them. Don’t know ’em. Didn’t see the face of the man she shot. But one fellow I did recognize—just can’t put a name to him yet. It’ll come to me.”

  Adler stepped back to the desk, grabbed a pile of papers, and shoved them through the bars. “Might take a look through the posters and see if any of them are suspect.”

  Kade took the pile and looked at two or three. “What fool would hire a woman to work in a bank?”

  “That would be the manager’s doing. Hewett’s trying to get his son to marry her.”

  “Did the Gardner family come from Virginia City?”

  “Oreana, but she’s friends with your sister.” The sheriff chuckled. “My bet is that Vivvie’ll give her hell.”

  “So that is my sister.”

  “Yep. I didn’t say so to Miss Gardner, not knowing that you’re McKinnon for sure.”

  “Iris.”

  “Yep, those two are best friends and I hear tell they have some business going on, but that’s for them to say.”

  “I knew Miss Gardner back in Virginia City. She and my sister ran a
round together, and you have no idea what nuisances they were.” He’d left a year after Iris’s family had moved to Idaho Territory, but the whole time they lived in Virginia City, the little hoyden trailed him like a Ute after a wounded deer. She was a pretty girl, blonde and smiley. Kade wondered why the banker’s son hadn’t snapped her up, but a little part of him was happy he hadn’t.

  “You sound more like you’re speaking of fond memories rather than complaining about a couple of pests.”

  “Brats, more like it. Smart ones—the worst kind.” He paged through a few more posters. “They’re four years younger than me. A seventeen-year-old boy with ants in his pants who thinks he’s quite the man has no time for thirteen-year-old giggly girls.”

  He recognized several men who were wanted in other jurisdictions, but none of them were the robbers he’d seen that day. He fanned through the papers one final time and handed them back. “Sorry.”

  The sheriff placed the posters back in the file. “If you think of that fourth fellow’s name, let me know.” He unhooked the keys and opened the cell door. “Go out the back way and keep off the streets for a while. I don’t want anyone seeing you for another couple hours.”

  Kade stood and put on his hat out of habit, only he couldn’t get it to sit right. “I’ll do that.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “Don’t know yet. Probably the War Eagle Hotel. It’s closest and I don’t much feel like going far.”

  “Have the clerk send word to me when you rent your room. By the way,” Adler said, “Iris is a nice girl from a respectable family.” Kade heard the warning in the sheriff’s statement.

  “I’m more inclined to pay for my women. They don’t try to hogtie you or shoot you in the head.”

  Chapter 2

  After his release from jail, Kade hadn’t felt good enough to bother to hunt for Phineas, opting instead for more sleep and less movement. He stayed the night at the War Eagle Hotel and slept until noon the next day, when Doc came by to change his bandages. At least the smaller bandage allowed him to wear his hat.

  When he finally did meet up with his partner, the afternoon shadows stretched halfway across the narrow dirt street. The old man had a twinkle in his eye and a grin on his face.