Cactus Flower (35 page)

      
“I
have an even better idea.” Without so much as a warning, he left his
chair, took Patsy’s hand, and knelt before her. Her eyes opened so
wide, Eulalie feared they might pop out of her head. “If you will
do me the honor of becoming my wife, Patsy, you can come with me to
the fort and be protected by the entire First Cavalry of the United
States Army.”

      
Patsy
gasped.

      
So
did Eulalie.

      
The
Taggart men goggled. Nick said, “I’ll be damned,” in an awed sort
of voice.

      
Her
face flushing a becoming pink, Patsy said, “Lieutenant! I … I don’t
know what to say.”

      
Fuller
fumbled in the breast pocket of his uniform. Eulalie had noticed something
lumpy residing there, but she’d had no idea it was a little jewelry
box until Fuller withdrew it, opened it, and showed Patsy a plain gold
band with one tiny diamond set in it. “It’s not expensive, Patsy.
It’s nowhere near good enough for you, but … well … I’ve thought
about this for weeks now, and … well, curse it, I love you, and I
want to marry you.”

      
Fuller’s
face was as red as Patsy’s by the end of his speech.

      
Eulalie
pressed a hand to her cheek, and felt tears sting her eyes.

      
Patsy
swallowed, hesitated for a moment, and said, “Well, then … yes.
I will marry you.” And she threw herself into Fuller’s arms.

      
Eulalie
had to grab her handkerchief from her pocket and wipe her eyes with
it. She was so pleased, she didn’t know what to say.

      
However,
Patsy and Gabriel’s engagement didn’t solve the problem of Gilbert
Blankenship, and well Eulalie knew it. After swallowing her tears and
taking a deep breath, she said, “I think that’s wonderful, and I’m
sure you’ll be very happy together. But that still leaves the time
between now and when you get married and go to live at the fort. So,
until that happy event occurs, I suggest we do as Nick suggested and
all walk to the Opera House together. Then, when we get there, Nick
can escort me to my dressing room, and Patsy can stay with Junius—and
Lieutenant Fuller when he’s there.” She glanced around at her companions.
“Is that all right with one and all?”

      
They
agreed that it was. So Eulalie and Patsy cleared the table and washed
the dishes—because men didn’t do things like that, Eulalie thought
darkly—and they all set out for the Opera House.

      
As
they’d expected, Gilbert Blankenship was there, smiling blandly at
anyone who came near his table, which was closer to the stage than usual,
a circumstance Eulalie didn’t like, but couldn’t do much about.
She did notice that the sheriff was nearby, though, and that made her
feel better. She knew Nick had talked to Wallace about Blankenship and,
although there was nothing of a preemptive nature that Wallace could
do about him, at least he was aware of the potential danger.

      
“They
ought to pass a law,” she grumbled as she and Nick climbed the stairs
to her dressing room. “Men ought not to be allowed to harass women
as that man has harassed Patsy.”

      
“Sounds
like you have a point, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

      
“I
don’t suppose there’s anything
to
do. As long as women are
treated as second-class citizens with no rights, we’re simply stuck
with the way things are. It’s terribly unfair.”

      
Nick
said, “Hmm.”

      
Eulalie
suspected he didn’t dare say more for fear she’d snap at him. And
she might. Ever since Gilbert Blankenship showed up in Rio Peñasco,
her temper had been short. But, curse it, she had every right to a short
temper. And, curse it, she was also correct about women being treated
unfairly by the laws of the land. Which were enacted by men. Curse them,
as well.

      
The
show that night went without a hitch. Eulalie was ever so glad to see
that Junius and Fuller kept Patsy between them during the entire performance.
She was less glad to see Gilbert Blankenship smiling at her throughout
her act. She wished she could just shoot the devil herself and be done
with it, but she knew she’d only get herself arrested if she did anything
so dramatic.

      
She
hated most men because of Blankenship. Except for Nick Taggart, whom
she couldn’t help but love. And she hated that, too.

* * * * *

      
And
so their waiting game commenced. August had rolled over and died, and
September had come to the territory, as it had to everywhere else in
the world. However, in the territory, there didn’t seem to be much
difference between summer and autumn, Eulalie noticed. Patsy and Gabriel
Fuller had to wait until the circuit judge rolled around before they
could be married, a circumstance neither appreciated. The judge was
expected any week now, but the wait was hard on everyone.

      
“Back
East, the nights would be getting a little nippy by this time, wouldn’t
they?” she asked Patsy one evening as they were getting ready to trek
to the Opera House.

      
“You
never know. I guess these are what they call the dog days of summer
back East,” Patsy murmured. “It might still be warm there. I suppose
someone will write when the leaves start to turn.”

      
Eulalie
heaved a sigh. “The fall leaves are so beautiful.”

      
“Yes,
they are.”

      
“I
wonder if the leaves will turn here.”

      
“I
don’t suppose anyone will know until more trees are planted,” Patsy
observed.

      
“True.”
There were some advantages to living out here in the middle of nowhere,
but now that Gilbert Blankenship had come to town, Eulalie was hard-pressed
to recall any of them. “Nick tells me there are aspen trees in the
nearby mountains that turn yellow in the autumn.”

      
“Hmm.”

      
Patsy
didn’t seem to mind the inconveniences of the territory. She’d told
Eulalie all about her grand passion for Gabriel Fuller, and Eulalie
was happy for her, even as her own heart hurt because she didn’t have
a grand passion of her own.

      
Well,
she
did
have one, but it wasn’t reciprocated, which made it
not at all worthwhile. In point of fact, the realization that Nick didn’t
love her as she loved him made her very sad, although she tried her
best to disguise the unhappy truth. It wasn’t Patsy’s fault that
she’d found true and abiding love and Eulalie hadn’t. Eulalie had
once had Edward, hadn’t she?

      
Still
and all, she couldn’t help but wish Nick loved her as she loved him.
However, as her uncle Harry used to say, although he invariably credited
the bard for the sentiment, “If wishes were horses, all men would
ride.”

      
Every
time she thought of that old saw, she detested it more.

* * * * *

      
For
the tenth night in a row, with time out for Sunday, when Eulalie didn’t
work, Nick and Junius clustered around Patsy Gibb. Gabriel Fuller had
joined them this evening, too. Now Patsy was seated demurely on a chair
in the very back of the Rio Peñasco Opera House. Nick was getting sick
of this nonsense. If there were any justice in the world, he could just
shoot Gilbert Blankenship dead and get it over with. The world would
be a better place for it, and so would Eulalie and Patsy Gibb.

      
He
couldn’t do that, however, because if he did,
he
was the one
who’d get arrested and locked up—and for a worse charge than breaking
and entering and aggravated battery, too. For doing the good deed of
ridding the world of a cowardly bastard who stalked women and tried
to kill them,
he
, Nick Taggart, would be charged and probably
convicted of murder. Nick had got it straight from Sheriff Wallace himself,
and he knew that Wallace wasn’t a man to joke around about stuff like
that. In actual fact, Nick had yet to see a single vestige of humor
in Rio Peñasco’s sheriff, who was remarkably dull for so young a
man.

      
Nevertheless,
every night as he stood guard over Patsy in the Opera House and watched
Gilbert Blankenship like a hawk, his fingers itched either to shoot
the man or wrap themselves around Blankenship’s throat and squeeze
until the bastard choked to death. It didn’t help his overall state
of mental health that the woman he loved—God save him—pranced around
half naked on the stage in front of Blankenship and every other slavering,
lust-crazed man in town. She was so damned good at what she did, Nick
was surprised nobody in the audience had grabbed her and made her his
wife long ere this. He suspected this was because Eulalie had heretofore
been bent upon protecting Patsy. He feared that as soon as Patsy and
Fuller married, Eulalie, too, would be taken away from him. The thought
made his belly clench and his heart hurt.

      
Damned
bodily organs. They never misbehaved like this before he met Eulalie.

      
He
entertained the idea that perhaps Eulalie might be persuaded to marry
him, Nick Taggart. That notion lasted approximately thirty blissful
seconds before it popped in his face like a soap bubble.

      
Hell,
she’d never marry him. She was a lady from New York City and Chicago.
What would she want with a rough frontier blacksmith like him?

      
She
could do a lot worse, he told himself. And he was right. The unhappy
truth was that she could do a hell of a lot better, as well, and Nick
knew it.

      
Things
had come to a pretty pass when he, Nick Taggart, a man who knew better,
had allowed himself to fall head over heals in love with a woman so
far above him, he might as well be reaching for the moon and stars.
“Aw, hell,” he grumbled, and lifted his mug of sarsaparilla to his
lips and took another swig.

      
“What’s
the matter, Nick?” asked Junius, who remained his jolly self in spite
of the peril threatening the Gibb sisters. Junius never let himself
worry about anything. If crises arose, he dealt with them, but he didn’t
allow them to ruin his mood until necessity claimed his attention. Nick
wished he could cultivate Junius’s attitude.

      
“Nothin’.
Just getting sick of this waiting game, I reckon.”

      
Patsy,
who kept her right hand firmly ensconced in that of Gabriel Fuller during
these nightly vigils, patted Nick’s arm with her left—the one with
the ring on it. “I’m so sorry we’re putting you through this,
Nick. It’s unfair to all of you.”

      
“Not
your fault,” grunted Nick, feeling guilty. “It’s that fellow’s.”
He tilted his head toward Blankenship, whose table this evening was
even closer to the stage than it had been the night before. Nick wasn’t
sure if Blankenship’s position in the room meant anything to anyone
except himself, Eulalie, and the rest of their little group. He knew
for a fact that Blankenship made Eulalie as skittish as a newborn colt—and
he also knew that she took her foul mood out on Nick, who didn’t deserve
it. Still, none of this was her fault, either. Every ill that had recently
visited the Gibbs and the Taggarts and Fuller could be laid directly
at the feet of Gilbert Blankenship.

      
Which
brought him back to the problem of not being able to rid the world of
Blankenship, who was a louse and a menace and wasn’t an asset to anybody
or anything. Didn’t seem fair somehow.

      
So
he kept watching. He’d watch Eulalie for a while, then he’d turn
his attention to Blankenship. Then he’d watch Eulalie some more. It
was a stupid way to spend his nights, but there didn’t seem to be
any help for it. He absolutely hated feeling helpless.

      
On
a Thursday night in mid-September, the house lights went down, Griswold
Puckett played the opening chords of a bouncy melody called “The Sidewalks
of New York,” Eulalie started singing in her beautiful soprano voice,
Nick took a gulp of sarsaparilla, and Gilbert Blankenship rose to his
feet and calmly shot Eulalie Gibb.

      
Patsy
screamed. Junius bellowed. Gabriel Fuller leapt to his feet and whipped
his gun from its holster. Bedlam broke out in the Opera House.

      
Nick’s
heart stopped beating for a second, and then soared into his throat.
Without thinking, he raced to the stage, fairly throwing men out of
his way to get there. He didn’t even think about Patsy or Gilbert
Blankenship or anyone else. He only needed to get to Eulalie. Her scream
had ripped a hole in his heart, and he prayed as he’d never prayed
before, that the scream meant she still lived.

      
“Eulalie!”
he bellowed, thrusting Dooley Chivers aside. “
Eulalie
!”

      
She
lay as still as a stone where she had fallen. Since there was hardly
anything to her costume, Nick saw that the bullet had hit her leg. She
was bleeding like a stuck pig, but a leg wound probably wasn’t fatal.
Even as he grabbed his bandanna and wadded it up in order to press it
against the wound to stanch the bleeding, he thanked God for small favors.

      
“Doc!”
he called out, his thundering voice cutting through the hubbub like
a hot knife through butter. “
Doc
! Get the hell over here!”