Chasing Rainbows (16 page)

As though reading her thoughts, Jake turned back to her and gestured toward the fire. “Why don’t we warm up while we wait?” he suggested.

They moved to the stove, only to be pointedly ignored by the group of miners who had already established themselves before its warmth. Although the men were clearly aware of their presence, they hunched closer to the stove, their backs to Annie and Jake. Undeterred by their lack of welcome, Jake said pleasantly, “I’m sure you men wouldn’t mind sharing that fire for just a few minutes.”

Stony silence greeted his words.

“Never mind, mister,” she said, resigning herself to a long, cold wait for the innkeeper. “It doesn’t matter.”

Jake shrugged, his features perfectly composed. “Maybe I’ll ask just one more time.” Before she could guess his intention, he lifted his cartridge belt, removed a fistful of bullets, and tossed them over the men’s heads and into the open flames.

All hell broke loose in the tiny belly of the stove. The bullets exploded in a cacophony of sparks and sound. They ricocheted against the inside of the cast-iron stove, buzzing and swarming like a fiery nest of angry hornets. Completely taken by surprise, the miners abandoned their chairs with a flurry of heated exclamations and dove for cover.

The bedlam finally quieted, leaving five vacant chairs in front of the fire — and five dazed and angry miners peering up from the floor.

Jake contentedly surveyed the room as the men rose stiffly to their feet. “The next time a lady enters a room,” he instructed patiently, like a teacher speaking to a group of dull students, “you stand and offer her a chair.”

Annie flushed with embarrassment as all eyes in the room swung disbelievingly to her. The miners looked her up and down, obviously taking in her oversize flannels and denim, her rough work boots, and the rain-soaked felt hat that covered her hair.

“Hell,” one of the miners said, “how were we supposed to know that she was a gal?”

Jake shrugged. “That’s your problem, friend, not mine.” He reached into his pocket and fished out a silver eagle, tossing it their way. “If you want to warm yourselves up, try the saloon. First round’s on me.” The men eagerly accepted the offer and scurried out.

Clearly satisfied, Jake turned next to Annie. With a dramatic flourish, he doffed his hat and held out a chair. “After you, darlin’. Never let it be said that there aren’t any gentlemen left in the West.”

Annie searched his face, feeling more flustered than ever. He looked absolutely serious, holding out the chair for her with the same stiff formality that men used for ladies at fancy tea dances. It was typical that in her case five disreputable miners had literally had to have been knocked out of their seats in order to make the chair available. But that did nothing to lessen her pleasure at the gesture. Looking into Jake’s eyes, she felt an odd stirring within her stomach as an emotion that fell somewhere between tension and warmth seemed to grip her and spread through her limbs.

Recalling Winston’s Guide, she tilted her chin and moved toward the chair, trying to appear as graceful as possible. A proper lady never looks behind her but feels the chair against the back of her knees and bends smoothly to sit. As she followed the instructions as she had so painstakingly memorized, a thought suddenly occurred to her.

She glanced over her shoulder and sent Jake a stern frown. “You ain’t gonna pull that chair out from under me when I try to sit down, are you?”

His brows shot skyward at the suggestion. A mischievous twinkle filled his eyes and a slight grin curved his lips. “You have my word as a gentleman.”

“Hmmph.” All things considered, it wasn’t much of a promise, but it would have to do, she supposed.

Jake seated her smoothly, then grabbed a chair for himself. Although the fire was meager, the warmth helped, and soon Annie had banished the chill that had plagued her earlier. Jake hooked his boot around a chair and scraped it across the floor to prop up his feet. Annie followed suit, making herself comfortable as well. Cat jumped up in her lap and curled herself in a tight ball, purring. They sat in companionable silence, enjoying the warmth of the stove.

After a few minutes, she asked, “You know the sheriff here?”

“Maybe. If it’s the same Walter Pogue I’m thinking of, then, yes, I know him.”

“He throw you in jail for cheating at cards?”

Unoffended, Jake smiled and shook his head. “We fought in the war together.”

That caught her interest. “North or South?”

“South.”

“Why?”

“I was born in Louisiana,” he answered, as if that explained everything. In a way, she supposed it did.

Annie knew little about the War Between the States. She’d followed it as best she could in the Denver City papers, but the battles had all taken place in cities she’d never heard of, places with confusing names like Chattanooga, Chickamauga, and Chancellorsville. The battles of Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Antietam had all been written up in the papers as well, but the death tolls were simply too large for her to comprehend. Hundreds of thousands of men charging each other with rifles, cannons, and guns. Tens of thousands dying in one day, in one place. So much blood that the nearby rivers ran red for weeks.

She shuddered, trying to picture Jake in the middle of all that. But try as she might, she couldn’t see him as a soldier, dressed in butternut and obeying orders, dodging bullets and cannon fire. It didn’t fit anything she knew about him, or thought she knew about him. “How’d you do?” she asked.

Jake arched a dark brow, a small smile playing about his lips. “We lost.”

“I’m sure nobody blames you for that,” she blurted out, feeling a strange and sudden urge to comfort him.

He looked momentarily startled, then he grinned. “Not for the entire war, no.”

“So what was it like?”

“The war?” he asked. At her nod, he thought for a long moment. “As close to hell as I ever want to get. Fleas and mud, blood and dysentery, everywhere. Sweltering heat in the summer, icy cold in the winter. Long months of unending tedium and boredom, punctuated by occasional bursts of sheer terror. And the food, hell, that had to be the worst food I ever ate in my life” — he paused, smiling as he finished — “and there was never enough of it.”

“Where did you fight?”

“Virginia and the Carolinas, generally. I was cavalry, and we spent most of the war in our saddles.”

“Why is it that every Southerner I meet claims to have ridden in the cavalry?”

Jake’s smile took on a contented glow. “Because we were the best, darlin’. We were the best.”

Annie studied him in thoughtful silence, realizing how little she truly knew about Jake Moran. Up until that very moment, all she had known about him — all she had thought there was to know — was that he was a gambler, that he was good with his gun, and that maybe he drank too much. Now that those small truths had been expanded, she found herself strangely eager to learn more. “What was the South like before the war?” she asked.

Jake frowned while he thought. “Rich and lush, coarse and ugly.”

“Which one?”

“All of them.” He shook his head, sighing. “The South was like a temptress, darlin’, one that was full of false promises. Like a beautiful woman that a man eagerly strips bare, only to find her body dirty and bruised beneath the silk and satin of her magnificent gown.”

“Are you talking about slavery?”

“I suppose. It should have been abolished years ago.”

“But you still fought for the South? I don’t understand.”

“You ever read the Constitution, darlin’? The men who wrote that gave powers to the states so that men could rule themselves; so that men could run their own governments, their own homes. The people in the South are good, moral people — the same as people in the West, the North, or anywhere else. Given time, they would have come to their own decision to outlaw slavery. But the fundamental question was to allow each state the right to come to that decision on its own terms.”

Annie listened but couldn’t quite accept his reasoning. “It seems to me that we oughta stay together, that folks can’t be running out of the Union just because one state doesn’t like what the other states are telling them to do.”

Jake nodded. “Preserving the Union versus states rights. That little argument is exactly why we fought the war.” He touched his fingers to the brim of his hat. “Congratulations, darlin’, you won.”

There was a weary bitterness to his tone that she hadn’t heard before. She wanted to ask more, but the front door swung open behind them before she had a chance. A man who Annie presumed to be Sam, the owner, stepped inside. He was short and stocky, his features fixed in an expression of sour belligerence. A tall, thin woman dressed in a worn black gown followed him. Her face looked haughty and grim, as though life was constantly failing to meet her impeccable standards. They came to a dead stop in the middle of the room as they spotted Jake and Annie comfortably stretched out before the stove. The owner looked them over and let out a weary sigh while his wife’s mouth tightened in an expression that was even more pinched and disapproving.

“You two will want a room, I suppose,” the innkeeper stated despondently, as though that were tragic news.

Annie couldn’t entirely blame them for their reaction. With their sodden, mud-caked clothing, she and Jake looked like a couple of stray mutts who had been left out in the rain for too long.

Jake stood. “Two rooms,” he said.

The innkeeper had to tilt his head back to meet his eyes. Jake’s presence once again commanded authority, despite his ratty attire.

“You want them by the week or by the day?” the innkeeper demanded.

“The day,” Jake answered.

“That’ll be eighty cents a night for a room, in advance, twenty cents extra for a bath.”

“Fine. Two rooms, and a bath for both of us. The water will be hot, I assume?”

“Two cents extra a bucket for hot. How many buckets you want?”

“None,” Annie answered immediately.

“Five each,” Jake replied.

To Annie’s surprise, the owner didn’t wrangle over the price of towels and soap but simply passed them over. His wife looked Annie up and down, then leaned over and whispered something in her husband’s ear. Sam’s eyes narrowed as his gaze shot toward Cat. “If you’re planning on bringing that mangy beast upstairs, you had better think again. We run a dignified establishment here and don’t allow no—”

“The cat stays,” Jake interrupted firmly. He reached for their saddlebags and tossed them over his shoulder. “Fetch someone over from the stables,” he instructed Sam. “I want our horses brushed, fed, and bedded down for the night.” He pulled out a five-dollar bill and set it on the counter. “That ought to cover everything.”

Annie opened her mouth to protest the exorbitant fee, but the owner snatched up the bill and pocketed it before she could utter a word.

“Your rooms are upstairs, first two doors on the left,” he said with a greedy smile, pushing the keys across the counter.

Jake picked up the keys and tipped his hat. “Pleasure doing business with you, Sam.”

Annie followed him upstairs, wondering if the man had ever found himself in a situation he couldn’t handle. Whether Jake was aware of it or not, he exuded an air of steely-eyed confidence and natural assurance that worked to his advantage as much as his build and the set of revolvers strapped to his hips. Annie had recognized it the first time she had set eyes on him in Sheriff Cayne’s office, and clearly it was just as apparent to everyone else around them. Not once had she seen that cool determination of his fail, whether he was facing down a gang of deadly bandits, a cheating opponent across a poker table, or a surly innkeeper.

She took her key from Jake and opened the door to her room. It was just as spartan as she expected it to be, equipped with nothing but the basics. A narrow bed, a pitcher and basin, a chest of drawers with a looking glass, bare floors, and limp muslin curtains completed the space. A smoky kerosene lamp cast melancholy shadows across the room. Annie plopped down on the bed, noting as she did that the mattress was lumpy and emitted a peculiar pungent yet musty odor. She wrinkled her nose and studied the walls as she waited for her hot water. A cheap print of Jesus looking infinitely sad stared back at her, the room’s only adornment.

Through the wall that separated their rooms, she heard Jake moving around. She recognized the sound of his boots as they scraped the floor. Then came the sound of something soft — his jacket? — being tossed across a dresser. A heavier object — his guns? — immediately followed. The bed springs groaned as he sat down. He was probably undressing, she guessed. She imagined him tugging off his boots, his coat, his shirt, his pants…

She sprang to her feet, evoking a howl of protest from Cat as the animal was dumped unceremoniously on the floor. The walls were too damned thin, Annie noted crossly, blaming her errant thoughts on the hotel’s shoddy construction. She paced restlessly around the room, randomly picking up objects and setting them back down, doing anything she could to distract herself.

Within minutes, she heard a knock next door and the sound of buckets being dragged into Jake’s room. The hot water for his bath, she surmised. She heard the sound of water splashing into a tub, followed by the deep, authoritative ring of his voice as he gave instructions to the men who carried the buckets.

Next came a sharp rap at her door. Annie raced to open it, gladly welcoming the distraction. The innkeeper and a young assistant gave her a curt nod in greeting and began lugging in buckets of hot water. They filled the tub and left.

Sam reappeared seconds later, a heavy clay dish in his hands. “Where do you want it?” he asked gruffly.

“That depends.” She looked at the dish. “What is it?”

“Cream. The fella next door said I was to bring it for your pet.”

Annie bit back a smile and gestured to a corner of the room. “I reckon right there ought be just fine.”

Sam set it down where she instructed, then left the room. Annie watched Cat greedily slurp up the cream, touched by Jake’s thoughtfulness. Her eyes went next to the steaming tub of water that was waiting for her. She moved eagerly toward it, unable to remember the last time she’d had a real, honest-to-goodness, all-over bath. Setting her towel and soap on a stool beside the tub, she immediately stripped and sank into its luxurious warmth. She scrubbed and soaked, letting out a blissful sigh of pure contentment.