Broken Vows (5 page)

      
Rory looked across the chipped rim of his cup, his dark blue eyes studying the seared, grizzled black face of his friend. “You serious about going back to England and starting a fight club?”

      
“Yes, but I thought you said you'd never live by Sassenachs.”

      
“I won't. Not that it's much better here. ‘No Irish need apply’ isn't just a slogan in London—it's even more commonplace on the East Coast. I thought coming west would make a difference.” He set down his mug and stared into the silty grounds at its bottom. “But that was when I still dreamed of finding my brothers.”

      
“There's plenty opportunity out 'ere for a bright bloke like yerself—bloody 'ell, even bein' Irish, you ain't black. Look at John Mackay, Jim Fair, Billie O'Brien 'n Jimmy Flood—all of 'em Irishmen 'n all of 'em Comstock millionaires.”

      
“I'll never set foot in a mine. Not after how Ryan died.”

      
“Well then, 'ow 'bout startin' trainin' for yer next fight?”

      
“What if I don't want to fight anymore, January?”

      
The older man nodded and swallowed his coffee. “Umm, I been wonderin' 'ow long it'd take you ta figger out you didn't want that pretty face ta end up lookin' like mine. What made up your mind?”

      
The vision of Rebekah Sinclair flashed before his eyes, her soft cool hand brushing his bruised cheek with concern and tenderness in her emerald eyes. Aloud he said, “I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired of waking up like I did this morning, beat up and hung-over. I train and practice for weeks, win a big purse and then...” He gestured with one bruised hand. “I blow it all on a few nights' carousing. There has to be something better, more lasting...some way to drown the pain.”

      
January studied his young friend intently, recalling the two young ladies on the roof in Wellsville the other day. One of them had almost gotten Rory's head taken off, she distracted him so much. “Sounds to me like yer talkin' 'bout a woman—not these 'ere gold-camp lightskirts neither.”

      
Rory shrugged dismissively. “Maybe there is. Hell, I don't know, January. Right now it seems impossible. It probably is...she wouldn't like a brawler to come calling. I was thinking of trying some safe, regular job.” He looked at the dubious expression on January's face. “Doesn't sound like me, I know.”

      
“A bloody female can do most anything to a bloke. Change 'is whole bleedin' life.”

* * * *

      
As he rode into Wellsville, Rory remembered how different it had looked only a few days ago when he and January had approached the sleepy little cow town from the opposite direction, headed straight to the row of saloons and bordellos. The deadfall side of town looked like a thousand other places he had seen over the past years, filled with cheap shanties and gaudy gin mills, teeming with the roughest and lowest dregs of humanity. The sour smells of beer, sweat, and stale perfume mingled together, as hard-eyed men and even harder-eyed whores welcomed the amusement of a good fight.

      
This time he headed down the main street. Aspens and shaggy pines shaded businesses which lined the streets. A general mercantile stood two stories high next to a prosperous modiste's shop. Farther down was a newspaper office—this one, unlike the defunct
Self-Cocker,
bore the lofty title The
Wellsville Truth
. Wryly, he wondered if truth in Wellsville was somehow different than elsewhere in Nevada. Across the street sat a bank, the local Wells Fargo office, and a livery stable. He could see the steeples of several churches scattered among the prosperous businesses and wondered which one belonged to Rebekah's father.

      
“Not the side of the tracks where we're usually welcome, is it, Lobsterback?” Rory asked his bay, giving the big red stallion's neck an affectionate pat. He had purchased the dark red horse in Denver; and no matter how much he gambled or drank, he had never given up the splendid beast. The bay was a sharp contrast to the far less flashy brown gelding January had ridden.

      
He would miss his old friend and mentor. January had found him when he had been down and out, a hungry runaway from an orphanage in New York. He'd given Rory's life the purpose and discipline of the boxing art. Of course, January's discipline and training had seldom curbed his pupil's excesses after they had won a big prize. But that was all behind him now. January was off to start a new life in London, where being a man of color would not prevent his owning a fight club. Rory would make a life here in Nevada, no matter the stigma of being Irish. After all, January was right about there being Irish millionaires aplenty on the Comstock.

      
As he reined in before Jenson's Livery Stable, Rory had no grandiose schemes in mind to become fabulously rich. The wants of a Presbyterian minister's daughter should be simple enough. But would she want a man like Rory Madigan to come courting? He'd see soon enough, but not until he had a steady job. Dismounting, Rory headed through the wide-open double door of the mammoth livery, leading his bay. The sound of an argument echoed from out back, where another set of doors stood ajar, leading into a large series of corrals.

      
“If I told y'all once, I told y'all a dozen times, Herrick, no tearin' up the mouth on a good piece of horseflesh. You're fired.” The angry bass voice belonged to a big, heavy-set man with the jowly face of a bulldog. Rory recognized him from the first boxing match across town.

      
“Yew cain't break wild horses with sugar treats 'n sweet talk. Yer a fool, Jenson,” the lanky, hard-faced cowboy said with a distinct Appalachian twang. He threw down the Spanish bit he had been holding and stalked off furiously, leaving Jenson trying to calm a pinto mare that rolled her eyes and backed away from him.

      
Rory tied Lobsterback to a stall inside, then approached the livery owner. “I might be able to help,” he offered.

      
Jenson squinted suspiciously at the tall, black-haired man. “Say, ain't you the feller who boxed Cy Wharton's ears the other day? Heard tell y'all beat him again in Virginia City.”

      
Rory reached out and gently touched the pinto's neck, stroking it slowly as he spoke. “Yes, I'm Rory Madigan, formerly the Kilkenny Kid.” The horse quieted a bit and Jenson stood back, letting the Irishman continue soothing the mare as he watched. Rory spoke low Gaelic love words in her ear and blew his breath into her muzzle. As she calmed, he very carefully pulled back her lips and examined the bleeding mouth. “Your handler would only break the spirit of a horse treating it this way.”

      
“That's what I figgered, but hell, it's hard to find a good man. All the fellers young enough to work stock is either green tenderfeet that don't know come'ere from sic’em ‘bout horses, or else they got gold fever and head fer the mines.”

      
He watched Madigan soothing the mare, then asked, “Y'all quittin' boxin'?”

      
“Aye. I'm sick of getting beaten bloody, even if I do win the fight—sort of like this girl here. I don't want to end up scarred and mean either.”

      
“Heard that rematch with Wharton was some fight. Wish I could’ve seen it. Bet ole Cal Slocum was fit to be tied.”

      
Rory grinned. “Let's just say he was surprised at the way the fight ended. Wharton would've been too—if he'd been conscious.”

      
“Y'all seem to know horses. That big stallion of yourn is a prime piece of horseflesh,” Jenson said, looking at Rory's horse standing with his ears pricked toward the mare in the corral.

      
“My father was head stableman for an English earl in Galway. I grew up around fine racehorses. The gypsies moving through the countryside taught me a few tricks, too. That man you just fired was wrong. You can gentle a horse with sweet talk—provided it's Romany or Gaelic,” Rory added with a grin.

      
“Y'all want a job, Madigan? I need a man to work the horses I buy. I run a string of racers, too. Could use someone to help with the training and lend a hand at the track. I'll pay ten dollars a week—more if y'all prove yourself. I know it ain't miner's wages—”

      
“That doesn't matter. I'll never dig in a mine,” Rory said abruptly. “Mr Jenson, you just hired yourself a horse handler.”

Chapter Three

      
Amos Wells sat in his opulently appointed office, which was filled with maroon leather and blue-velvet furniture. Racks of antlers and the stuffed heads of a mountain ram and a snarling puma attested to his skill as a sportsman and hunter. He leaned back in the big swivel chair behind his mahogany desk and considered the gilt-framed photograph in his hand, brooding at the narrow, unsmiling face of the woman in it.

      
Heloise's thin lips pursed and her narrow eyes glared back at him as if she were ready to launch into another of her weeping tirades. Cold, unnatural woman. He was glad she was dead. Now that his year of mourning was over, he could get on with the business at hand and find a more suitable replacement for her. He had been young and foolish when he wed her, and truth be told, greedy. Her father had settled a sizable dowry on him for taking his spinster daughter in marriage.

      
Amos had used the money to invest in his first banking and mining ventures. Within a decade, he had become a rich man, moving on from California to Colorado to the Comstock. Now, he owned controlling interest in three banks, two railroads, and half a dozen mines; and he had built a mansion on his huge ranch, the Flying W. He was putting down roots in Nevada. The political climate suited him. A handful of millionaires, mostly California bankers and Nevada mine owners, controlled the silver state. He had spent years cultivating those who were useful and making his own connections in the state legislature.

      
Amos Wells planned to be the next United States Senator from Nevada, but there was one complication. He needed a wife, someone beautiful to fire his blood and turn the heads of jaded politicians and cynical silver kings, yet someone young and malleable with an even disposition who would do his bidding without shrewish whining. Heloise had always had a high opinion of herself and her family's blue blood. She had made him feel that he was unworthy of her from the first day of their sham marriage.

      
Stroking the point of his carefully manicured Vandyke beard, he smiled faintly as he slid the old photo into a bottom desk drawer and closed it, considering how to approach his courtship of Rebekah Sinclair. Dinner last Sunday had gone well. Her parents were both favorably impressed with him, especially since he had volunteered to pay for a new pipe organ for the church, a luxury which heretofore only the Episcopalians of Wellsville could afford. Rebekah herself had been pleasant in a quiet, unassuming way. She was quite young, but that only meant she would stand in awe of him. Indeed, she had said little during the course of the meal, leaving the conversation to the men while she assisted her mother in serving the superb meal.

      
Rebekah had been raised in genteel poverty, doing without fancy clothes or servants to cook and clean for her. He knew every young girl's silly head was turned by a bit of silk and lace. Wait until she saw his twenty-room home on the Flying W and the elegant brick city house he was going to purchase in Carson City once his election as a Nevada senator had been voted by the legislators. Never would his wife have to bake her own bread or redden her hands by scrubbing dishes. Nor would he allow her to grow plump and dowdy like her mother.

      
Just then a light tapping on the door of his office interrupted his ruminations. Henry Snead entered at Wells' command and took a seat across from him. Snead was a big man with the sort of craggy blunt features and wavy light brown hair many women found pleasing. He always had a ready smile, which accentuated his heavy handlebar mustache and straight white teeth.

      
“Glad you could get away from the Flying W for the day, Henry. You've been working too hard. Surely, your bride doesn't like to see you gone so much of the time,” Amos said, measuring Snead's reaction.

      
“There's no problem with Leah,” Henry replied with a wave of one meaty hand. “She's tickled to death with that fancy new stove I just bought her—and with the two Chinks I hired to help fetch and carry for her around the place. The spring roundup went really well, and we should get top dollar for those prime steers when we sell the beef this fall. I figure to invest my share of the profits in your latest mining stock deal.”

      
“You want to branch out, eh?” Amos said, a sly smile hovering on his lips.

      
“I don't plan on running stock the rest of my life.” Henry's smile gleamed like a tooth powder advertisement in a mail-order catalogue. “But I do appreciate the opportunities you've given me, Mr. Wells.”

      
Amos nodded in approval. “You'll go far with me, Henry. Far indeed. Mr. Bascomb was commenting on your acumen just the other day.”

      
Snead's eyes lit up. Hiram Bascomb was the president of the Greater Sacramento Trust Bank and a major stockholder in several of Wells'
 
mining operations.

      
“Yes, indeed, stick with me, my boy, and soon you'll be buying that pretty blond bride of yours jewels and furs. Tell me, Henry, how well do you know your sister-in-law, Rebekah? Are she and your wife close?”

      
Henry was not surprised at the sudden shift in the conversation. “Rebekah is a sweet girl,” he said noncommittally. He'd heard a rumor that Amos Wells had asked Reverend Sinclair's permission to court the girl. “She's like her pa, I expect, concerned with Christian charity.” He was not about to burst Amos' bubble by telling him Leah thought her younger sister a hopeless hoyden without a spark of propriety. “Miss Rebekah is headstrong and high spirited, but she'll make some man a fine wife.”