The Duchess of Ophir Creek Read online

  Beyond the creek and through a fringe of woods, they came upon a second town, smaller and poorer than Bannock City. Shabby tents and makeshift shelters were set closely together, as if for mutual protection. Here and there steaming containers swung over economical fires, tended by squatting men who all looked alike in their loose black garments and round, brimless hats. Silas wondered how a person managed to navigate among the shelters, so crowded together were they.

  Before he could enter the clearing, Soomey stopped him. "You wait here. This China people place. I get food, then we go." The boy disappeared into one of the tents, carrying the buckets. A few minutes later he reappeared, arms clutching an angular bundle. He was followed by a shouting, gesturing Chinese man. Soomey turned and faced him, yelling back.

  The man grabbed Soomey's shoulder.

  Silas tensed.

  Tao Ni, silent until now, caught at his coattail and chattered at him. The only words Silas understood were "Li Ching."

  Soomey pulled a lacquered box from the bundle and threw it at Li Ching's feet. He spat a short phrase and shook his head violently.

  Li Ching snatched at the bundle.

  The boy jumped back out of reach. He yelled some more and stamped his foot.

  Li Ching shrugged.

  Soomey looked toward Silas. "You give him two bits, Boss. Then we go."

  "Two bits? What for?"

  "I spill food, must pay. Or work one day for Li Ching."

  Silas dug in his pocket and pulled out a coin, paying no attention to its denomination. He tossed it to the Chinese man. "You got everything?" he said to Soomey.

  The boy nodded. "You give him too much, Boss."

  "Never mind. Let's go." He ignored the smiling, bowing Celestial. With a hand on Tao Ni's shoulder, he pushed the boy toward the path to town. The cloth under his fingers was wet and slimy. Looking closer, Silas saw how blue Tao Ni's lips were. He glanced back at Soomey, whose clothes were even wetter.

  Damn! Both children were half frozen.

  He ran them back to the livery stable, figuring that the exercise would warm them as well as a fire. Once there he opened his bedroll and handed Soomey the warm Hudson's Bay blanket. "I'll be back in an hour or so," he said. "You wrap up and get warm."

  Seeing mutiny in Soomey's face, he knelt and dug into his saddlebag. "Here," he said, handing them each a strip of dried meat. "This'll tide you over 'til supper."

  The boy opened his mouth to refuse. Silas silenced him with a gesture. "If you're not waiting when I get back, I'll figure you don't want to work for me."

  Narrowed black eyes stared back at him, as if Soomey were wondering just how far to push. Once again Silas wondered how big a mistake he was making. "I'll be back before long," he repeated.

  Soomey watched Boss out of sight, then she told Tao Ni, "You wait here. I will return before he does."

  "Where are you going?" His words were blurred by the food in his mouth.

  "To watch his back, as he hired me to," she said. Biting off one stringy chunk of the dried meat, she held out the rest. "Eat. I am not hungry." She untangled herself from the blanket and tucked it closely around Tao Ni.

  The afternoon was only a little bit cold, and her clothing would dry soon.

  Chapter Two

  So far the few wooden buildings in town stood along a single street, with tents serving as dining halls and boarding houses. But the bank already had a concrete-and-cobble vault and two guards at its door.

  There were three saloons in the first two hundred yards of the street, one lawyer's office in a building little larger than a ship's cabin, and a well-built wooden structure with lacy curtains fluttering at one upstairs window. Silas imagined that, come nightfall, the front door would stand open and feminine laughter would lure the lonely miners inside.

  So this is Tilly's!

  A bell jingled as he entered. The small foyer looked like a hotel's, complete with register. He leaned on the counter, waiting. After a few moments, a small but voluptuous woman came through the curtained doorway opposite him.

  She was past her prime, but still beautiful. She looked respectable, too, except for the ornate scarlet-and-yellow gown. Her smile was welcoming. "What'll it be?"

  "Information, for now." Silas smiled. He'd been too busy to bother with women these past few months. Coming in here reminded him just how long it had been.

  "Well, now, not many fellows come looking for that. Sure we can't accommodate you otherwise?" Her voice was deep, rich, like ruby port, and held more than a hint of a Southern accent.

  "Maybe later. Right now I'm looking for word from an Emmet Lachlan. Fellow down at the stable said here would be the likely place to get a message."

  In a few weeks there would be a central location for mail and shipments, but in a town this new, most businesses were apt to come and go. If the strike was a good one, shopkeepers might decide they'd get rich faster in the gold fields. A whorehouse was likely to stay put, at least until the gold played out.

  "Who's the message for?"

  "Me. Silas Dewitt."

  She lifted a wooden box from under the counter and sifted through its contents. "Smith. Lots of them in places like this. Ambrose. Walters. Holmes. Dewitt." She held the folded paper out to him. "That'll be a dollar."

  Silas paid her with one of his smaller gold coins. "Keep the change. Appreciate the favor." One thing he'd learned long since was that madams and bartenders were good people to have on your side. He unfolded the letter.

  Silas,

  Emmet broke his leg last week, so he can't come to help you. Buff wants to come down there. I'm doing my best to convince Emmet otherwise. Buff's too young and too thirsty for adventure. William's helping us get in the last of the

  Here she'd scratched out a word, and Silas was pretty sure he knew what it was.

  ...cache without Emmet's help. If you can't, don't worry. He should be up and around by spring. That'll have to be soon enough.

  Love,

  Hattie

  Damn! Hattie and Emmet are having more troubles than enough. He'd better get that cache located. The sooner he did, the sooner they could move to a town and start taking life a little easier.

  Closing the letter, he stuck it into a back pocket. "You Tilly?"

  "I sure am." Her smile was inviting. "And I've got the best whorehouse between the Salmon River and San Francisco. Sure you ain't interested?"

  "Interested, but there's something else I have to do first." Tilly was all woman. And she smelled good. Again he leaned on the counter, making himself comfortable. "You been here long?"

  "A couple of weeks," Tilly said. "We were in a tent the first few days, until the men got tired of having walls so thin they could almost see through them." Her smile invited Silas's understanding. "It didn't take them long to raise this roof. They had plenty of cause."

  She moved the curtain behind her and gestured.

  Silas craned his neck until he could see inside the parlor. "Nice place," he said, looking at the rough board walls on which hung artfully draped, colorful shawls and silk flowers. Two upholstered settees and an assortment of chairs filled the room. All the lamps had fancy fringed shades. He wondered how they'd brought the piano up the trail.

  "I've got five girls working here, and we keep real busy," Tilly told him, pulling the door shut again. "I rent rooms, too, if you're looking for a place to sleep. The girls are extra, of course, but they'll give you a discount if you rent by the week."

  "I'll remember that. I may be looking for something better than a tent if the weather turns off cold any time soon." A thought struck him. "Have you got a safe?"

  "With all the dust that comes in here? I surely do, a good, big one, too heavy to cart away easily."

  He nodded in understanding. There was probably as much gold dust going through Tilly's hands in a week as through the banker's. Or close, anyhow. "I wonder if you'd have room in it for this." He pulled out his pocketbook and showed her. "I'm camping until I can get a cabin bui
lt, and I don't want to risk it getting wet." Not to mention having someone riffling it. There was information in his papers he would need if he stayed here long.

  "Why, the safe's not so packed that I can't find a corner in there to put it. How long will you want me to keep it?" Tilly said, leaning on the counter so that her forearms pushed her round, white breasts nearly out of her bodice.

  Silas swallowed. He was getting more interested all the time. "I'm not sure..." He cleared his throat. "Probably a couple of months. I figure my business here won't take any longer than that."

  "Come on back." Tilly again swept the red velvet curtain aside. "To my office."

  He followed, noticing the rug as he did so. It was a rich purple in a complex pattern of the sort common in the Middle East. He hadn't seen one like that for a while, not since that cargo of Turkish goods he'd delivered to Macao back in '57.

  Silas saw his pocketbook safely stowed. He offered Tilly another coin for the service, but she refused.

  "I don't charge friends for favors," she said, smiling suggestively, "and I have a feeling you and I are going to be good friends."

  When Boss went into the whorehouse, Soomey found a hiding place across the street and waited. Perhaps he was picking up a letter, she told herself.

  After she'd crouched beside the saloon wall for a while, she gradually began to feel as if she were being watched. Moving only her eyes, she looked up and down the street. A few miners were squelching through the puddle-filled ruts. An unhitched freight wagon stood empty in front of the general store.

  No one seemed to pay her any attention, but the feeling persisted. The back of her neck prickled.

  She wished Boss would reappear.

  But he was in there a long time.

  Too long.

  She was furious with him. He had told her he had business to transact in town, and all he had done was visit the whorehouse. When he emerged at last, she ducked behind the saloon and ran all the way to the stable.

  Anger still bubbled within her when Boss returned. She kept her eyes tightly closed, hoping he'd think her asleep, huddled with Tao Ni inside the thick blanket. Shivers shook her with distressing regularity, for she'd become chilled through while watching outside the whorehouse.

  "Wake up," he said, nudging her foot. "Time to go."

  With a great show of yawning, Soomey opened her eyes. "Go where?" She reluctantly crawled from under the blanket. It had been so warm. And her coat was still damp.

  "Damned if I know. We'll look for a campsite up in the hills."

  What a foolish man! He needed her far more than she needed him. "I know good place. We go there." Before he could argue, she had the blanket folded and was rolling it with the rest of his bedroll. "Not see from town."

  Saying nothing, Boss looked at her. His fingers absently scratched at his bearded cheek.

  Soomey stared back, hiding the residual anger, doing her best to look as if she had his welfare at heart. Had she not been told many times that she looked young and innocent?

  After a few moments, Boss nodded. "We'll give it a try tonight. Can you carry the bedroll?"

  Nodding, she picked it up. Boss had already slung his saddlebags over his shoulder and taken the gunnysack in one big hand. "I carry," Soomey said, reaching.

  "It's too heavy for you. Just show us the way." Without another word, he walked out of the stall, followed by Tao Ni.

  Soomey led them up a faint trail northeast of town. Walking in front of the others gave her an excuse not to speak. A good thing, for her tongue was already sore from having words bitten from its tip. The hot fire of her anger had died into a dull smolder of resentment by the time they reached the rocky outcrop of crumbling granite.

  "We sleep here," Soomey said. "Is safe place."

  Silas stared in disbelief. This was the only home these children had?

  Fallen pine branches had been dragged to partially roof an opening among enormous, rounded boulders, giving some shelter from the coming winter. A ragged canvas pack was pushed back against one wall and weighted with a sharp rock. Beside a circle of blackened cobbles lay a small pile of kindling.

  Soomey squatted next to the fire ring and opened the lacquered boxes. From one he took two lopsided wooden bowls. The other box held cooked rice, of which he put about a third into each of the bowls. One he handed to Tao Ni, another to Silas, along with chopsticks.

  "Eat." Soomey began devouring the rice left in the box as fast as the chopsticks could carry it to his mouth. Tao Ni followed suit.

  Silas watched. When Soomey picked up the last grain of rice, he held out his bowl and said, "Here, I'm not hungry."

  Again that suspicious, under-the-eyebrows stare. "You not want?"

  "I ate this morning." Soomey sat, unmoving. Silas offered the bowl to Tao Ni. The younger boy hesitated, then took it. "Go ahead," Silas told him. "It's all yours."

  After a quick nod from Soomey, Tao Ni dug into the rice.

  The silence was broken only by the faint scrape of chopsticks on wood for a long moment. Tao Ni ate as if it was the last meal he'd get. Silas had a feeling these boys had eaten little but rice for a long time.

  No wonder they look half-starved. Silas lowered himself to the cold ground and dug out his moccasins. The mud and rocks had played hell with the finish on his new boots.

  "Soomey?" he said.

  The boy met his eyes with a black, unrevealing stare.

  "You don't trust me much," Silas said, finally, "but you brought me here. Why?"

  Soomey shrugged. "Miners not like China boy, want to hurt. You different. You save me, Tao Ni."

  Silas knew that many of the Chinese who had come to American shores in the past fifteen years or so were contract labor, bound to unscrupulous masters for periods varying from five to ten years, little better than slaves. Did the labor contractors take children so young as these? Soomey looked to be in his early teens, Tao Ni no more than half that age.

  "How'd you get here, to Bannock City?"

  "Come with Li Ching, other China boy. Pay Li Ching many dolla' bring us this place."

  "Is Tao Ni your brother?"

  At the mention of his name, Tao Ni shrank back against the rock. Soomey said something to him, but he looked only slightly less apprehensive.

  "We stop in one gold camp. Big fire. Tao Ni master die, other China boy die. Tao Ni run, hide. Soomey catch, bring 'long me." He shrugged again. "Tao Ni stay with Soomey. Work hard."

  "You paid a labor contractor to bring you to Idaho Territory so you could glean the gold fields?"

  "No. Pay to take to Portland. Sunnabitch cheat. Bring here. No work but dig. Dig, dig, dig, all day long. Soomey want go Portland, catch work cook, clean for rich people. Save money. You pay two dolla' six bits a week, pretty soon Soomey, Tao Ni go Portland."

  "You've got it all thought out, haven't you?" Silas did his best not to show his amusement, as well as his admiration. There weren't any flies on Soomey, that was for sure. "But you're working for me now."

  "Soomey work you," he agreed. "Look. Listen. No dig."

  "No dig," Silas agreed, thinking that any digging to be done would be by him. What he had to unearth wasn't to be trusted to anyone else.

  * * * *

  Boss pulled more dried meat from his saddlebags and handed it around after their rice bowls were empty. Tao Ni refused it. Although it tasted like salty leather to Soomey, she accepted the hard strip. She had eaten worse.

  She studied Boss as she chewed. He was not a tall man, but his shoulders were wide and his big hands work-hardened. Both his short coat and the billed cap he wore were dark blue wool. He had the look of a seafaring man, yet he walked the land as if his feet knew its feel.

  She didn't trust him much, no more than she trusted any man. Still, as long as he was doing what she said, rather than the other way around, she was content. Americans were such fools.

  He would not last long here in the gold camp, this soft-spoken man. He was too gentle, too mild. This after
noon he had succeeded in breaking up the mob only because they had grown tired of their play. A truly angry crowd would chew him up and spit him in the mud.

  Still, he could be useful. Today's experience had shown that she alone could not care for Tao Ni. Nor would any of the other Chinese laborers accept responsibility for the boy. He was too young, too small. Useless.

  Just as she was useless to them, except as a female body, available for relieving a man's needs. Li Ching had protected her so far, but only because she had paid him. If one who desired her offered him more, would not she once again become a commodity?

  Soomey would die before she allowed that to happen again.

  His voice interrupted her thoughts. "So what do we do now? You got any ideas on how to find a decent place for us to sleep?"

  "We sleep here," she told him again, wondering if all men only heard what they chose to hear. "This place quiet. No see fire from down there." She gestured toward the valley where each day more miners came. Soon, perhaps before winter settled in, even this would be a dangerous place to live.

  He looked at the thick branches she'd dragged to form a partial roof, so low even she could not stand upright, shook his head. Soomey bristled. She and Tao Ni had worked hard to build their refuge.

  "Good thing it's not raining," was all he said as he stood. He stepped out of the circle of firelight and walked away. Soomey felt unaccountably forsaken. He will be back, she assured herself. His saddlebags are here.

  He was, in a short while. He carried pine branches which he dropped beside Tao Ni, who was already asleep, curled up in their ragged blanket on the bare soil. "Make a bed," he ordered. "I'll fetch more." And he was gone again.

  Why had she not thought of this? The branches would insulate them from the cold ground. She went to work.

  That night she and Tao Ni slept warmer and more soundly than they had for weeks. Just knowing that someone else was keeping vigilance made a great difference.