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Amelia felt the pressure of her headache behind her eyes. She did not want to argue with Parker tonight, but she felt compelled to ask, “So after a few months in the West you now think it’s perfectly all right to drink spirits and consort with loose women?”
Gabe was watching the exchange without amusement. He could see the hurt in Amelia’s eyes. But he could also understand Parker’s chafing under her scrutiny. A young man who had just discovered the wide world did not want to be cross-examined like an errant schoolboy.
“Your sister’s right, Parker. It’s too late for more socializing. I’ve overstayed my welcome. How about if I invite you all to supper tomorrow?” He gave a little bow in Amelia’s direction. “At the Willard Hotel, not the Lucky Horseshoe.”
But Parker’s attention stayed focused on his sister. “If you’ve come out here to light into me like one of Mother’s holier-than-thou reformer friends, you might as well just get right back on the stagecoach east.”
Drums sounded in the back of Amelia’s ears. “Parker Prescott! How can you say such a thing after I’ve come all this way—”
“I didn’t ask you to come—”
“With our father practically at death’s door all for worry over you?”
“Since when has Father worried over me?”
“He worries about both of us. He loves us…”
“Father never worries about anything but his noble causes and his beloved bank!”
“Stop it!” Morgan’s deep voice interrupted. Amelia and Parker stopped talking, but continued to glare at one another.
Morgan walked slowly across the room. As he had done all their lives when he wanted to make a point, he spoke very slowly and his Welsh inflection became more noticeable. “I’m too old to be a referee to fighting children. And these old bones are too weary to stand here and listen to you two caterwauling all night long.”
Parker’s expression remained hard, but Amelia looked contrite. “You probably didn’t get any more sleep than I did last night, Morgan,” she said. “Let’s call it a day and see what kind of sleeping arrangements we can figure out.”
Parker’s lips were set in that way Amelia knew so well. He said stiffly, “You’ll take the bed in here, Amelia. Morgan can sleep out in the lean-to. I’ll join him there when I get back.”
“Back from where?”
“Back from Mattie’s!” he shouted. He turned sharply on his boot heel and stalked out the door, ripping his hat from the peg along the way.
Amelia watched him go in disbelief. She had known that there would be unpleasant moments as she persuaded Parker that he had to return with her to New York, but she hadn’t imagined a raw shouting match their first evening together. Her head throbbed and she felt a little sick to her stomach. She turned her anger on their guest. “I suppose he’s trying to live up to you, Mr. Hatch. All those exploits you make sound so attractive.”
Gabe gave her a sympathetic smile. “How old’s your brother, Miss Prescott?”
Amelia rubbed her sore eyes. “Twenty-two.”
“Well, there you have it. Any lad worth his salt is going to be out trying to get a taste of life at twenty-two.”
Amelia sighed and stretched her neck. Morgan bent over her. “You got one of your headaches, Missy? You need to get to bed.”
Amelia nodded tiredly as Gabe said, “You need fresh air more than you do sleep.”
Amelia looked puzzled. “Believe me,” Gabe continued. “There was a period in my life when I became an expert on headaches—both causin’ them and curin’ them. You need to clear all this smoke out of your head before you settle down to sleep.” He gestured toward the fire, which they’d kept burning all night in deference to the approach of autumn chill.
Gabe reached carefully around Morgan’s big shoulder and took Amelia’s arm. “Come on. Just walk outside a few minutes.”
Too tired to protest, she let him lead her out the door as Morgan watched with a doubtful expression.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were my brother’s partner?” she asked as he slowly led the way down to the log bridge.
“I thought it was Parker’s place to explain the situation to you.”
“Well, it would have been more…gentlemanly to tell me that you knew who I was.”
“Yes, ma’am. It would.”
“So you owe me an apology.”
They reached the bridge. “The problem is that being a gentleman doesn’t happen to be one of my favorite occupations.”
“Favorite occupations such as drinking?”
Gabe leaned his arms on the log railing. “Well, no. You’ve been misled on that account, Miss Prescott. Drinking’s not exactly a favorite, either.”
The cool air, just barely scented with pine, did feel good inside her nostrils. Amelia took a deep breath. Beneath them the rush of water sounded comforting, like an odd lullaby. Gradually other night sounds seeped into her consciousness. The insects that had bothered her so out on the trail were nowhere around, though she heard their rhythmic chirping out in the woods. And from just across the river there was an eerie hooting sound.
“Is that a real owl?” she asked in amazement. Owls had always been something out of a children’s storybook. She’d never seen one or even heard one back in New York.
Gabe laughed. “That’s a real one, all right. A lusty hoot owl, calling out for a mate. Not too much different from your brother.”
They had reached the middle of the bridge, and Amelia looked down at the water. She had the feeling that Gabriel Hatch was flirting with her by making such improper comments, but it was not a kind of flirting with which she was familiar.
“Back home Parker would never have dreamed of going to a place like Mrs. Smith’s.”
“Oh, he dreamed it, all right. All young men do. It just wasn’t the kind of dream you share with your family.”
Amelia shook her head. The water underneath her danced along in a moonlit ballet. “I’m starting to feel that New York is very, very far away,” she said softly.
Gabe fought back an impulse to put an arm around her. In fact, he realized with surprise, he wanted to do more than that. Last night at the campsite he had been ready to dismiss her as a snobbish Eastern prude who was not worth more of his attention. But once he’d left her at the stagecoach this morning, he’d been unable to get her out of his mind. Instead of heading for the game at the Lucky Horseshoe, he’d found himself riding out to Parker’s place. And staying all evening. And now he was standing with her in the cool night air, thinking about young men’s fancies and hoot owls and imagining how it would feel to wrap her up in his arms.
Amelia had been at first anxious, then furious when she awoke the next morning to hear from Morgan that Parker had not returned home. Morgan tried to tell her, as Gabe had the night before, that it was not such a strange thing for a young man to spend the night away from his home. “Like some sort of tomcat, you mean,” Amelia had snapped. And Morgan had looked embarrassed and headed down to the river to fetch water.
Parker had shown up midmorning, whistling and ready to charm his sister into forgetting their quarrel. He apologized profusely for leaving her on her first night and called himself a scalawag and several other creative names that had Amelia laughing in spite of herself.
By lunchtime they were friends again. They sat on the banks of the little Pronghorn River and ate cold boiled potatoes and hard rolls. “I must say I’m not much impressed with the cuisine here in your fabulous West,” Amelia said.
Parker reached for the jug of cider to wash down his dry lunch. “I just haven’t had much time for figuring out things like cooking.”
“You don’t even have a stove.”
“Every ounce of dust I find goes right back into the mine.” He indicated all the mysterious equipment that surrounded them. “I’ve bought all this just from working the river with my own two hands and a washpan. Now with a sluice and a Long Tom and a cradle, pretty soon I’ll be taking out twenty-five dollars a day or more. And if I find a vein in those cliffs over there, why, the sky’s the limit. Twenty-five dollars will be my tip to the shoeshine boys back on Park Avenue.”
A glow came into his eyes when he started to talk about his mine. It made Amelia uncomfortable. It was going to be harder to talk Parker into returning home than she had anticipated.
“Couldn’t you come home for a couple of years, just to help Father get used to the idea that he can’t run everything at the bank anymore? Then you could come back out here.”
Parker looked at her as if she were crazy. “A couple of years? This could be gone by then. Look at California—the richest strike in history, they called it, and now it’s mostly played out. I’m just damn lucky I was able to stake claim to this place. There aren’t too many more prime spots left. Before long they’ll all be taken.”
Amelia decided to ignore the strong language. In view of the obvious nature of Parker’s disappearance last night, she decided that swearing was the least deleterious of Parker’s new activities.
“He could die, Parker. That bank is his life, and he’s simply not willing to turn over the reins to anyone else but you.”
“He’s not willing to turn them over to me, either, sis.”
“At least you could try.”
Parker tore at a tuft of grass and threw it violently into the river. “We’ve been warned about Father’s heart condition for years now, Amelia. How come it suddenly gets so especially grave just when I’m trying to make a new life for myself?”
Amelia put her hand on her brother’s knee. “We owe them, Parker. They’re our parents, and they’ve always taken care of us.”
Parker was silent, continuing to pull up blades of grass. Finally Amelia said, “Couldn’t your partner run the mine for a while? What’s his stake in this, anyway? You say you bought this equipment yourself. What has he put into it?”
Parker flopped backward on the grass and closed his eyes. “It was sort of a…mistake.”
“What does that mean?”
He winced and peered up at her through one half-open eye. “You’ll find out sometime, I guess. I lost half the mine to Gabe in a poker game.”
“A poker game!”
“When I first came out I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, and I was hardly panning out enough to eat on, so I thought I’d try my luck with the cards. It worked out pretty well—for a while.”
Amelia turned around and sat back on her knees facing him. “I knew that that Gabriel Hatch was the one who had gotten you into trouble.”
Parker opened his eyes. “It was my decision. Gabe had nothing to do with it. Besides, the pot I lost was worth more than my entire mine, but he refused to take more than half.”
“How generous of him! He refuses to steal more than half the property of an innocent boy who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“I knew perfectly well what I was doing, sis. In fact, you might be surprised to know that I was getting pretty good at the tables.”
“Good enough to lose half your mine.”
“Just forget it, all right? It’s my business, not yours.” He rolled to his feet. “I have to get to work.”
Amelia watched as he crossed the bridge over to the long wooden trough that ran along the gravel bank of the river. He set his wide-brimmed hat back on his head and bent over to pick up a shovel.
So they had quarreled once again. Parker had changed in the few months they had been separated, and Amelia felt a stab of grief. She wanted her brother back. She wanted her family living all together harmoniously in their comfortable house in New York. But she had the sick feeling that those days were gone forever.
She stood and walked slowly up to the cabin. She felt the need to blame someone for the change in Parker, and the likely candidate was Gabriel Hatch. But when she tried to generate some anger against the attractive gambler, she found herself remembering how he’d helped cure her headache last night, how he’d tried to console her about Parker. Most of all she found herself remembering that when she’d stood next to him on the bridge in the moonlight, her heart had inexplicably started beating as wildly as the wings of a trapped bird.
Amelia knelt on the stone hearth of Parker’s big fireplace and stirred a pot of stew that Morgan had helped her fashion from a squirrel he had caught that afternoon. The concoction smelled gamey to her, but she was hungry enough to be willing to give it a try.
She had utterly refused to consider going to town to dine with Gabriel Hatch at the Willard Hotel. Morgan had reminded her of the invitation just after Parker had confessed the manner in which Hatch had obtained half the mine. Though Morgan felt it would be rude to turn the man down, Amelia had decided that, considering the strange feelings the gambler had engendered in her, the less she had to do with him, the better.
The door opened and Parker’s lanky frame filled the doorway. They hadn’t spoken since their quarrel at lunch. “I have a proposition,” he said.
His voice sounded hesitant, but hopeful. She looked up.
“I know I can make the mine work, Amelia. And I’ve just got to be able to give it a try.”
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Her shoulders sagged, and she went back to stirring the stew.
“Don’t turn away, sis. Listen to me. As I said, I’ve a proposition. If I had Morgan to help me, I could really get this thing going. Give me six weeks—six weeks—to make the mine profitable. At the end of six weeks if I haven’t either found my lode or built up our panning to at least twenty-five dollars a day, I’ll go back home with you.”
His face had that expression of satisfaction he’d always shown when he’d beaten her at a game of chess or two-handed whist. “And what if you do strike it rich, as you say, by the end of six weeks?” she asked.
He hunched down next to her, his eyes gleaming. “Then you and Morgan go on back to New York by yourselves. I’ll send Mother and Father my love, and before long I’ll send them enough money for that tour of Europe they’ve put off their entire lives. Father can’t very well work at the bank if he’s on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.”
Amelia considered her brother’s words. She didn’t believe there was any way he would be able to make the mine work in just six weeks, even with Morgan’s help. It would mean a delay in their return, but perhaps this bargain would be a way to accomplish her mission without more fighting. “You’d need to ask Morgan if he’d be willing,” she said.
Parker grinned. “I already did. He says he’ll go along with whatever you decide.”
Amelia gripped the handle of the stew pot with the makeshift apron she had fashioned that morning from one of her petticoats. “This is ready to eat,” she said, standing.
Parker pulled out the flap of his shirt and used it to take the pot from her and carry it to the table he had built from two flour barrels and some planking. “So what do you say?” he persisted.
Six weeks. Six weeks of a wooden bed and squirrel stew and…
“I’d want you to stay away from that Mr. Hatch,” she said. “I still think that he’s responsible for getting you into trouble.”
Parker seemed to sense her capitulation. He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I haven’t gotten into any trouble. At least, not any I can’t handle. But as to Gabe, he has as much right to be around here as I do. He owns half the place.”
Amelia felt the strange flutter in her chest again. She looked up at her brother. “So Gabriel Hatch is part of the deal?”
Parker gave a firm nod. “He’s part of the deal.”
Chapter Four (#ulink_ab3948b3-e287-5f3e-ac7b-0d842078c341)
It had been a discouraging day. The stew of the previous evening had not set well with her, and Amelia’s stomach had rolled all morning. She had gotten on Parker’s nerves again with her hovering presence. All she had wanted was to understand the workings of the mysterious equipment he had installed at his mine, but he had grown defensive at her questioning. By midafternoon he was fully out of sorts and had taken off again for an unspecified destination “in town.”
Amelia sat on the hard cot and looked disconsolately around at the single room that would be her home for the next six weeks. There were two windows chopped in the logs, but they were covered by oil paper, so it was impossible to see outside. Besides the cot, the crude table and four barrel chairs, there was the cane rocker, a set of cupboards built up the wall and a large wood bin. That was the extent of the furniture. Amelia closed her eyes and pictured the elegant Prescott parlor back home with her mother’s prize Biedermeier furniture. Independence certainly had its price, she thought wryly. But when tears began to prickle behind her eyelids, she gave herself a shake and stood. One of Caroline Prescott’s favorite phrases was, “Never underestimate the power of the human spirit.” Surely her mother’s daughter could not let herself be daunted by an unasked-for stint of pioneering.
She brushed her hands together resolutely. The room was sparse and crude, but it didn’t have to be dirty. Her first order of business would be to give this place a good, thorough cleaning. She marched across the room and flung open the door to call to Morgan, who was at the river’s edge sifting a cradleful of sludge.
“Does my brother have any cleaning supplies in the lean-to?” she called.
Morgan laughed. “Cleaning supplies?”
“Brushes, brooms, buckets, soap.”
With no apparent effort, the Welshman pulled on a thick rope and hoisted the heavy cradle into an idle position. Then he came over to her. “I don’t think so, Missy. What do you want those things for?”
“To clean, of course. If this is to be our home for the next few weeks, the least I can do is try to make things a little more livable.”
Morgan peered into the tiny cabin with a doubtful expression. “It would be quite a task, if you ask me.”
“Well, it would give me something to do. Obviously Parker doesn’t want me hanging over him while he’s mining. So I’ve decided that I’ll just take over the housework and the cooking.”
