The Sheriff (Historical Romance) (6 page)

“D
on’t shoot!” shouted a strapping, ruddy-faced man in dirty overalls, raising his big hands in the air.

“I surrender!” called another, pretending to be frightened.

“Take me prisoner, please!” pleaded a grinning young boy as he fell to his knees on the sidewalk and offered up his wrists.

Everyone guffawed and whistled.

The teasing was directed at Kate.

And she could thank Doc Ledet.

The miners had learned from the physician that the pretty newcomer had boldly stepped into an alley, fired her big Colt in the air and threatened Kelton and Spears.

Now when Kate went to check on Chang Li, the miners clowned with her as she walked down the street. Unconcerned with their childish ribbing, she
headed directly to Dr. Ledet’s office two doors past the Eldorado Hotel.

“Dr. Ledet?” Kate called softly as she stepped into the front office. “Are you here, Doctor?”

The physician came through the back room’s curtained door and placed a finger to his lips. Kate nodded in understanding.

In low tones, the doctor said, “Chang Li is resting. He awakened earlier this afternoon and ate a little broth. He told me the whole story of how you saved his life.”

Kate narrowed her eyes. “And you promptly informed the rest of Fortune.”

Looking sheepish, Doc Ledet said, “I might have mentioned it to a couple of people.” When she didn’t scold him, he smiled, offered her a chair and said, “Some of the miners are saying maybe Marshal Mc-Cloud should deputize you.”

At the mention of the marshal, Kate frowned, but made no comment. She sat down and carefully spread her billowing skirts around her feet. “Doctor, why were those men beating Chang Li? What had he done to deserve such brutality?”

“He did nothing to provoke them,” the doctor said, stepping behind the desk and dropping wearily into his high-backed chair. “Coolies are hated and reviled because they will work harder and longer for less, and that brings wages down.”

The doctor knew a great deal about Chang Li, as
he did about everyone in Fortune. And he was more than happy to share the information. Kate listened attentively.

“Chang Li has been in Fortune for three years while his family is back in China. He’s longing for a better life, hoping to make enough money in California to bring his wife and children here one day.

“He lives alone in the tent city at the southern edge of town.”

“Those two bullies must be properly punished,” Kate replied. “They should stand trial. Chang Li must testify against them and—”

The doctor interrupted. “Kate, Chang Li can’t testify. And even if he could, no one would believe his word against theirs.”

“But why? Surely…”

“The Foreign Miners License Tax Law of 1850 prohibits Indians and Chinamen from testifying in court.”

“That’s unfair.”

“It’s the law,” said Doc Ledet.

Kate sighed wearily. “It’s getting late, Doctor. I’d better go.”

“Yes, you shouldn’t be out on the streets after dark,” he stated, rising from his chair. “The sheriff wouldn’t like it.”

Kate frowned. “I don’t give a fig what the sheriff would like.”

“Now, now, you don’t want to get crossways with Marshal McCloud.”

Kate bit her tongue, but did not reply. She rose and moved toward the door, then stopped and turned back. “Dr. Ledet, have you ever heard the expression ‘seeing the elephant’?”

He chuckled. “Where’d you hear it?”

“Sheriff McCloud accused me of that.”

“Child, it’s a well-known term that best characterizes the forty-niners and the gold rush.”

“It makes no sense.”

“Yes, it does. When gold was found in these mountains, people planning to come out West announced they were ‘going to see the elephant.’ Those who turned back claimed they had seen the ‘elephant’s tracks’ or the ‘elephant’s tail’ and swore they’d seen more than enough of the animal.” Eyes twinkling, he rubbed his chin, warming to the story, one he’d told many times before.

“But what does seeing an elephant have to do with hunting for gold?” she asked.

“It’s a phrase that arose from the time circus parades first featured the giant elephants. A farmer, so the story goes, hearing that the circus was in town, loaded his wagon with vegetables for the market. He had never seen an elephant and very much wished to do so. On the way to town, he encountered the circus parade, which was led by the elephant.

“The farmer was thrilled to death. But his horses were terrified, so they bolted, overturned the wagon
and ruined all the vegetables. ‘I don’t give a hang,’ the farmer said, ‘for I have seen the elephant!’”

Dr. Ledet laughed then, a deep belly laugh that brought tears to his eyes and caused his face to grow beet-red.

Kate frowned. “Perhaps a metaphor.”

“Kate, Kate,” he continued, wiping his eyes, “don’t you see? For gold rushers, the elephant symbolized the high cost of their endeavor—the myriad possibilities for misfortune along the way or once they got out here. But, like the farmer’s circus elephant, it’s an unequaled experience, the grand adventure of a lifetime.”

“It’s the journey, not the destination.”

“You’ve got it, my girl.”

“Well, I hate to admit it, but the sheriff was right. I have come to ‘see the elephant.’” She smiled then, and added, “And should I never find my gold, I will have had the grand adventure of a lifetime!”

When Chang Li was able to leave Dr. Ledet’s office, less than seventy-two hours after Kate had taken him there badly injured, he told her that he would repay her the only way he knew how. He would work for her.

Kate was delighted. She explained that she had looked for—with no success—men to help her work the Cavalry Blue Mine.

“I understand the going rate for miners is $3.00 a day,” she said. “Is that satisfactory?”

“Most satisfactory,” he said, happily bobbing his head and setting his plaited queue to dancing. “I help Missy find her gold!”

That same afternoon, while Kate waited just outside, Chang Li quit his job in Mrs. Reno’s laundry, where for the past year he had been slaving twelve hours a day, seven days a week for a pittance.

“You know anything about working a mine?” Kate asked when he came out of the laundry.

“Know plenty,” he said as they fell into step on the sidewalk. “I work mine while you look for placer.”

“No. The placer is gone,” Kate stated.

“Not know that for sure. Stream that run across your property changes with every rain. You have good batea?”

“Batea?” Her eyebrows lifted.

“Is pan with…grooves…corrugations in bottom. You will need good one to wash the gravel.”

“I’ll get one. What else will we need?”

“Pick and shovel and sturdy bucket for me to work inside the mine,” he said. “Later we get lumber and build good rocker, handle more volume that way.”

“All right. Let’s go on over to Barton’s and pick out the tools we’ll need to get started,” Kate said. “Can you be at my house bright and early in the morning?”

“I be there at sunup!” he promised.

J
ust as promised, a smiling Chang Li showed up just as the sun was beginning to rise.

Within the hour he and Kate stood barefooted in the clear, sparkling stream that ran past her house. Chang Li had his loose white trousers rolled up, and Kate ignored the fact that the hem of her long skirt was saturated and sticking to her ankles.

She didn’t care. She was eager to learn all that she could from her willing teacher. Patiently Chang Li instructed her in the fine art of placer mining. She quickly caught on and delighted in dipping the large pan into the shallow water, then swishing it slowly around to wash the gravel in hopes of seeing the unmistakable flash of gold.

Panning for the precious metal was hard physical labor. By noon Kate’s back was breaking and her
arms felt as if they would fall off. But she didn’t complain.

At her insistence, Chang Li spent the entire day with her in the shallow stream, teaching her to identify and wash the grains that might yield specks of gold.

“That’s enough for today, Chang Li,” an exhausted Kate finally said late that afternoon as the sun was westering behind the tallest mountain peaks. “I’m dead tired and you must be as well. Go home now.”

The little man nodded and said, “I be back tomorrow. Go on up mountain to Cavalry Brue Mine while Missy pan down here.”

“Yes, I believe I can handle it now, thanks to you.”

From that day on the unlikely pair worked as a team. Kate panned in the stream and Chang Li hacked at the rock inside the Cavalry Blue. The loyal Chinaman quickly became her trusted right hand.

Kate had become the talk of the town.

The single men in Fortune wanted to court her, and the married men wished they were single so they could court her.

Only one man in Fortune showed no interest in courting Kate.

Sheriff Travis McCloud.

Kate’s presence was nothing but a headache for Travis. He heard about the invitations she received daily from would-be beaux, and was relieved when
she declined. He hoped she had enough sense to continue saying no to all the amorous young fools.

Travis had also heard that Kate had employed Chang Li and that together they were working her worthless claim. He was certain she would now quickly tire of the futile project and get out of his town.

Nevertheless, Travis loaded a small cart with a saw, a hammer and nails, lumber and a newly purchased heavy wooden door. He’d do his duty and make sure she was safe until she left. He hitched the loaded cart to a strong-backed burro and led the struggling animal up to Kate’s place.

Travis parked the donkey cart on the south side of the house. He went around to the front and knocked loudly on the door frame. No one answered. He supposed she was up at the mine with her Chinese helper. Travis unloaded the cart and went to work.

He pried the ruined gold-plated hinges from the old frame and bolted in new ones. Then he hung the massive door and stood back to admire his handiwork. He tried the key in the lock and heard it click.

Nodding to himself, he shoved the key into the pocket of his snug trousers and went back out to the cart to unload some short pieces of lumber. He began nailing boards over broken glass panes in windows of the room where she slept, as a temporary barrier to intruders.

It was nearing three o’clock and the alpine sun was high and hot. Travis was soon perspiring.

He shrugged out of his leather vest as well as his white shirt.

Kate, panning for gold on that warm June afternoon, felt the hot sun beating down on her bare head, and scolded herself for forgetting her bonnet. Knowing her fair face would blister, she waded out of the stream and laid her batea on the bank.

She decided to run down to the mansion, grab a bonnet and come back.

She saw no need to put on her shoes or lower the skirts she had tied up around her thighs. Kate carefully picked her way down the mountainside and around the mansion to the overgrown front yard.

When she reached the front gate, she saw him.

Sheriff Travis McCloud.

His back was to her, and he was unaware of her presence.

At that moment he stripped off his white shirt and dropped it. Kate stood stock-still and stared, her lips parted, her heart racing. Feeling as if she were smothering, she watched the handsome, dark-haired lawman labor in the hot California sun, his smooth bronzed back gleaming with perspiration.

He bent from the waist, picked up a hammer and began working on a broken windowpane. The muscles in his long right arm bunched and strained as he
rhythmically swung the hammer. His shoulder blades slipped and slid beneath the smooth, glistening skin of his beautiful back.

Her throat dry, Kate forgot that she was barefoot and that her skirts were tied up high around her legs. She was, for the moment, mesmerized by the sight of the tall, lean, half-naked sheriff. Aware that she should let him knew she was there, yet reluctant to do so, she guiltily lowered her eyes to the snug black trousers that clung to his slim hips and long legs.

She wondered if all of his body was as bronzed and as magnificent as his bare shoulders and deeply clefted back.

She shivered at the thought.

Travis felt someone’s eyes on him.

He lowered the hammer and slowly turned around. He immediately saw her framed in the open front gate.

Kate did not make a sound.

She couldn’t.

She helplessly stared at the broad torso of this handsome man who possessed an almost animal-like masculinity. Kate had no doubt, as her eyes slipped down to where his belt was buckled just below his naval, that he was a highly virile male who’d had scores of conquests.

Travis was as silent as Kate.

He stood there with the hammer in his hand looking at her, appraising her, admiring her. Never had he
seen a woman more desirable than this young, willowy, barefooted vision in gingham. Her wide-set blue eyes were locked on him, and in their depths was unmistakable attraction. Her glorious golden hair was blazing in the sun. Teasing glimpses of her soft, rounded breasts were revealed in her half-unbuttoned bodice. Her pale, shapely thighs, appealingly exposed by the bunched-up dress, were almost his undoing.

Travis found himself longing to fall to his knees before her and kiss her exquisite thighs. The prospect made his belly tighten, but he quickly bit the inside of his cheek to regain his usual control.

He dropped the hammer, picked up his vest and shirt, slung them over his shoulder and walked slowly toward her. Kate held her breath, wondering what he was going to do.

She tensed and waited for him to reach her.

When he did, he stood gazing unblinkingly at her, then lowered his hand.

She anxiously looked down to see what he was doing. He slipped his fingers inside the pocket of his tight black trousers and produced a shiny brass key.

“Lock the front door,” he said, holding it up before her face. His dark, liquid eyes smoldered, his lean jaw ridged. “To everyone.”

Under his spell, swaying toward him, Kate said, “Even to you, Marshal?”

His eyes dilated. “Especially to me, Kate.”

“If you say so,” she breathlessly replied. She was
tempted to reach out and spread one hand across the sculptured muscles of his chest. She resisted.

“I say so.” Then he took her by surprise when, continuing to look directly into her eyes, he slowly reached out and yanked on her skirts, causing them to come untied and fall down around her ankles.

“Oh, my Lord!” she lamented, mortified. “I had forgotten about my skirts being—”

“Don’t forget again.”