A Hero in the Making Page 3

  After Salali’s last drunken binge, he’d begged Nate to keep him from succumbing to his vices again.

  Evidently he’d forgotten that now, however, for he said, “That saloon got poker? Faro? Why don’t I go make us a stake gambling while you see your sweetheart? I won’t drink, I promise. Or maybe just one whiskey, just to wet my whistle. What d’ya say, Nate-boy?”

  It was a familiar wheedle, and one Nate had resolved to ignore forever more. When Salali gambled, he drank then lost every penny in his pockets. Then he’d lie around in a drunken stupor for the next day, and wake up cranky as a wet rattlesnake.

  Sorrowful and repentant after his last binge, he’d agreed to let Nate hold on to their money after a show, so Nate resolved to stick to his guns and do just that. The money was safe in its secret hiding place on the wagon. Even if it meant neither he nor his employer had anything more to eat today than the last of the buffalo jerky, he wasn’t going to let Salali get close to temptation. If they went to town, Salali would have to agree to go into the café via the back entrance, not through the saloon. He figured the medicine-show man wouldn’t agree, but Nate would have liked to see Ella Justiss again, even for a brief time.

  “I can’t let you do that, compadre,” Nate said firmly. “You told me not to let you gamble away the profits, or drink liquor, and I’m sticking to that.” He tried to ignore the way Salali’s eyes glared at him in thwarted anger. “If you won’t agree to only visit the café, we’ll stay right here. I’m just doing what you asked me to do, remember?”

  Salali yawned widely, as if he didn’t care one way or the other. “Think I’ll take me a siesta,” he muttered.

  Maybe he’d change his mind about supper when he woke up, Nate thought. “Think I’ll take a nap, too,” he said, but he was talking to empty air. The medicine-show man was already snoring.

  His employer had once admitted to him while drunk that his lately adopted surname, Salali, meant “Squirrel” in the Cherokee tongue, not “Generous Heart.” But there was nothing of the industrious planning-for-winter rodent or of generosity in Robert Salali, and Nate had to wonder why the chief had given it to him—and what he’d really done for the Indian. He didn’t believe for a minute that story of Salali killing a bear—the man was much too indolent. As Nate spread his blanket under the wagon to take advantage of the shade, he wondered what the Cherokee word for “lazy” was.

  Someday soon, he and Salali would have to part ways, he thought, settling himself on his blanket and listening to his employer snore. Their arrangement wasn’t working. At the speed they were meandering through Texas, it would take years for Nate to reach Iowa, and the business opportunity in San Francisco that had been promised to him would have vanished.

  * * *

  It was evening when Nate awoke. He saw that Salali was already stirring around, his turban back in place, his clothes brushed. Hope rose in Nate that his employer had seen the sense of what he’d said, and decided to accompany him to supper—if it wasn’t already too late, he thought, wondering what time the petite pretty woman closed her establishment.

  “You going to Ella’s café with me?” Nate asked. “I’ll bet it’ll be the best supper we’ve had in a long time.” He stepped up to the cabinet on the side of the wagon and used the comb and mirror that he kept there to spruce up a little. Maybe he ought to give himself a quick shave, he thought, after glancing at his beard-shadowed face, and pulled out his razor and a bowl, which he’d fill with water from the burbling creek just a few feet away.

  “No,” Salali said, a challenging note in his voice. “I’m going to go play faro and drink as much whiskey as I please, and don’t think you’re going to tell me different.”

  Nate shrugged, trying to tamp down the anger that boiled within him. There was no arguing with Salali when he got this way, but he didn’t have to make it easy. Surely if he remained firm, his employer would thank him one day. “I don’t know how you’re going to do that,” he said, taking the bowl and striding toward the creek. “You don’t know where the money we made today is, and I’m not about to tell you.”

  He heard Salali following him, and figured he was going to try to wheedle him into changing his mind. He never saw the other man raise his arm, but a second later, he felt a crushing blow to the back of his head and felt himself falling. The fading light of dusk went black.

  * * *

  Ella had just dressed and was heading out the back steps of the boardinghouse the next morning with a basket full of eggs to scramble and a covered dish of bacon to fry for her café’s breakfast offering when she saw Detwiler trudging across the street toward her, looking as if he’d lost his last friend. His normally hound dog–droopy features were saggier than usual, and his eyes red-rimmed, as if he’d just been weeping.

  Unease gripped her. While not of an overly cheerful nature, he was normally an even-tempered man. She hurried forward, alarm clenching her insides. “George, what’s wrong?”

  “They wrecked the place, Miss Ella, that d— ’scuse me, Miss Ella, them awful snake-oil salesmen.”

  Ella froze. “W-wrecked it? What are you saying?”

  “Tore it up. Ever’thing inside is all smashed, ’cludin’ your café. Sheriff noticed a broken front window, and found it all smashed up inside. He came out to the house and notified me, and I just came from seein’ the damage. I’m ruined, Miss Ella. We’re both ruined.”

  Ella felt a coldness wash over her despite the early warmth of the morning. She set the covered dish down on the doorstep, afraid her trembling hands would drop it in the next second. What Detwiler was saying didn’t make sense.

  “You’re saying they wrecked it, but the sheriff didn’t find it till this morning? How do you know both of those men did it?” And why am I already trying to protect them? she wondered, even as she began to run down the alley past the hotel toward the saloon. No, this couldn’t have happened. Not my café!

  Detwiler followed her. “That medicine-show man, the one in the outlandish clothes, came into the saloon last night, set down at the faro table and proceeded to get booze-blind drunk. He got mad when he lost his money an’ I told him he had to leave. He told me he was gonna lay a Cherokee curse on me, mumbled some a’ that foreign gibberish an’ left.”

  “He left? So why do you think he and the other man did the damage? Was the other man with him when he was gambling?” She looked behind her, and saw Detwiler shake his head.

  “Nope, I didn’t see that other fella, but it had to have been both of ’em. Wait’ll you see it, Miss Ella. That Salali character couldn’t’ve done that much by hisself.”

  They’d emerged onto Main Street, and Ella picked up her skirt hem and ran the rest of the way.

  From outside the batwing doors, nothing looked amiss, but inside it was another story.

  Everything had been destroyed. Chairs and tables were splintered and lay on their sides at odd angles. The huge mirror behind the bar bore a crazy quilt of cracks radiating out from a hole in the middle. The painting of a scantily clad reclining woman that hung above it had been gashed so that the canvas now hung in pathetic strips from the gilt frame. The once-magnificent mahogany bar had deep scrapes furrowing it, as if someone had gouged it with a Bowie knife. The two girls who served whiskey in the saloon huddled along the side of the bar, their faces a study in misery, their garish-colored costumes pathetic in this scene of destruction. In the middle of the floor lay the feather of a golden eagle—just like the one that had been stuck in Robert Salali’s turban.

  All this Ella took in at a horrified glance as she dashed to the back door of the saloon and into her café. She hoped desperately that George had been exaggerating about her café, at least. Maybe the drunken medicine-show man had only broken into the pie safe and found the half loaf of bread and the cookies she’d had left from yesterday.

  But George hadn’t overstated the s
ituation at all. The pecan countertop was cracked in half, and the three tables and half a dozen chairs lay in splintered pieces, as if a mad bull had been let loose in this small room. Her crockery lay in shards. The empty pie safe gaped open, its decorative tinwork door hanging by one hinge.

  “Why?” It was a cry ripped from her heart. How could the Lord have allowed this to happen, knowing how hard she’d worked to achieve this much, all on her own, and how much more she wanted to accomplish? How could she go on now? Her pitiful savings couldn’t replace what she had lost.

  “I’m sorry about this, Miss Ella,” Detwiler said behind her.

  She whirled around, even as stinging tears began to cascade down her cheeks. “What about those women out there?” she demanded, pointing an accusatory arm at the saloon behind Detwiler. “Wouldn’t they have heard something going on from upstairs and gone to get the sheriff?”

  “They weren’t here,” he told her. “They’ve got a room over on Lee Street,” he said. “They don’t always sleep here, unless...”

  Ella knew what he wasn’t saying, and appreciated his discretion. But now she couldn’t think of what to do. She felt frozen in place.

  “Sheriff Bishop’s gone to get his deputy,” he told her. “Somebody saw them two swindlers campin’ t’other side a’ the creek yesterday. Bishop’s going out there with the deputy to see if they’re still there.”

  “Well, I’m going with them,” she said as fury swamped the grief and fear within her. “And when I see that—that scoundrel Bohannan, I’m gonna punch him right in the nose. The medicine man, too.”

  Chapter Three

  A horsefly buzzing around Nate Bohannan’s left ear woke him. Instantly he regretted returning to awareness, for it felt like an anvil had been dropped on his head and was still bouncing on it. Opening a cautious eye, he saw that it was early morning, and he was lying in the open meadow. Strange. He usually slept under the wagon. The ground at his fingertips dropped away, and he heard a gurgling splash below. Gingerly, he raised himself up on his elbows, and was rewarded with rocketing pain that left him retching onto the grass beside him.

  Once the spasm passed, he felt a tad better and was able to cast a bleary look around him. Had Salali been attacked, too? Was his partner lying somewhere nearby, beaten insensible or worse?

  He was alone in the meadow. The horses and the medicine wagon were gone. There was no sign of Salali. Where was he?

  Then he caught sight of the tin bowl that he used for shaving, lying in the grass a few feet to his right, next to the skillet. It all came back to him then. He’d been about to fill the bowl with water and shave before walking into town to eat at the café, and the two of them had been arguing about Salali’s intention to drink and gamble. And then...blackness.

  He felt a wave of dizziness as realization hit him. Salali had hit him over the head—probably with the skillet—and taken everything, including the contents of his back pockets, his banjo, the horses and the wagon. And the money concealed in the wagon. He had vanished, leaving Nate Bohannan with only the clothes on his back and a tin bowl.

  He let a curse fly then. What in the name of blazes was he going to do now?

  Had Salali fled in the direction of his hideout, where he kept the ingredients to make the elixir? If so, he must be counting on Nate not having the wherewithal to follow in time to catch up with him there, for Nate knew where it was—just two or three days’ ride to the southeast, a makeshift hut hidden atop a limestone hill. Nate guessed he’d probably left right after he’d knocked Nate unconscious, and if that was so, maybe someone in Simpson Creek had seen him, and the direction he was heading.

  The one thing Salali hadn’t remembered to do was to relieve Nate of his gold pocket watch—probably because when he fell, he’d sprawled face-first on the ground, on top of it. The weight of it still rested reassuringly in his breast pocket. It was all he had to purchase a horse and saddle, but perhaps there was a way to avoid selling it. It was worth way more than the price of a horse and saddle, after all, and it was his only inheritance from his father. He might not want to be like him, but the old man had loved him.

  Maybe he could arrange to borrow a horse and revenge himself against that thieving charlatan. Just how he’d pay Salali back when he caught up with him, he hadn’t yet decided, but he’d have plenty of time to cogitate on it while he pursued him.

  Now that he’d made his decision, time was of the essence. He levered himself to his feet, swaying slightly, feeling the earth beneath his feet tilt as if he was on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. Nausea still churned his stomach, and he blinked to clear his vision. He turned toward the bridge that lay across the creek.

  And saw four very angry-looking people heading straight for him.

  He blinked again, sure his headache was making him hallucinate, for one of them was Miss Ella, the proprietress of that café. Why was she making a beeline for him, her hands doubled into fists and thunder in her dark eyes?

  The other three were men, and the only one he recognized was the stocky saloonkeeper he’d met yesterday. Judging by the tin stars on their shirts, the remaining men were lawmen. Sweet mercy, what had Salali done?

  “I’m Sheriff Bishop, and this is my deputy, Luis Menendez. You Nate Bohannan?” asked the older of the two lawmen, his tone hard as granite.

  Nate nodded, the motion sending waves of vertigo surging over him again. “What’s this about, Sheriff?” he asked, keeping his gaze averted from Ella.

  “Did you and that partner of yours willfully destroy the inside of the Simpson Creek Saloon, along with Miss Ella’s café in the back of it?”

  Nate closed his eyes, feeling his desire for revenge against the medicine-show man multiply tenfold. Not only had Salali robbed him blind, but by the sound of things, he’d gone on a tear in town, too.

  Bishop must have taken his closed eyes as an admission of guilt, for the next thing Nate knew, the deputy had taken advantage of it to swoop behind him, grab his forearms and clamp a set of come-alongs around his wrists. His eyes flew open. “No,” he breathed. “I didn’t... And he’s n-not my partner. We had a deal—”

  “You’re under arrest,” Bishop said, his eyes as cold as if he’d just condemned Nate to hang. “Come with us peaceably now, or I’ll let Miss Ella slug you in the nose as she’s been threatening to do. Destroying the saloon’s bad enough, but what kind of man wrecks a lady’s business?”

  Nate let himself look at Ella then—anything to escape the implacable, hawk-eyed stare of the sheriff, and the equally accusing gaze of his deputy. But looking into the wrath-mixed-with-hurt eyes of Ella Justiss was worse, for tears flooded down her cheeks. Even though he hadn’t done what he was charged with, he felt lower than a snake’s belly just for having been associated with the scoundrel that had done the damage.

  “I didn’t do it, Sheriff,” he said. “I’ve been robbed, too. Salali laid me out with a frying pan last evening and took everything I had—the wagon, the horses, the profits—and skedaddled. I only just came to, as a matter of fact.” He felt guilty not mentioning the pocket watch, but if he was able to talk his way out of the charges, he was going to need it.

  “You expect us to believe that?” Bishop demanded.

  Dizzy again, Nate closed his eyes. “It’s the truth. The last thing I remember before being hit over the head was arguing with Salali about going into town. I wanted to go have some supper at Miss Ella’s café, since I’d had a sandwich there before the show and it was mighty tasty.” He darted a glance at Miss Ella then, hoping to find some softening in her eyes, but there was none. “Salali wanted to go drink and gamble at the saloon. I didn’t want him to because whiskey and my employer don’t mix well—”

  Without warning, the deputy’s fingers roughly probed the back of Nate’s head, sending fresh waves of sickening pain piercing through his skull.

&nbs
p; “There is a lump back here, Sheriff,” the deputy confirmed in a Spanish-accented voice.

  “Let me see...”

  That was the last thing Nate heard before he passed out again.

  * * *

  When Nate woke, he was lying on a straw-tick mattress facing the bars of a jail cell. From inside. He groaned. Surely locking up a man when he was insensible was against the law somehow.

  “You gonna live?” a woman’s scorn-laced voice inquired.

  A dark skirt and small, laced-up boots hovered into his line of sight. When his gaze traveled upward, he recognized Miss Ella staring down at him through the bars.

  “I’m not sure,” he said honestly, still feeling the pounding in his head, but it had diminished, somehow, as if the hammer pounding the anvil was only hitting the end of the anvil, rather than right in the middle.

  “Humph. Mighty convenient, I’d say, passing out like that.”

  He stared at her, his headache and her disbelief making him even testier than he might otherwise be under the circumstances. “For the sheriff, maybe. Why would you care? I’m behind bars anyway, aren’t I?”

  She ignored that. “Dr. Walker says as long as you woke up, you aren’t gonna die. Oh, yes, Sheriff Bishop had the doctor check your noggin all right and proper. You’re awake, so I guess you’ll survive.”

  Having to put up with the lash of Ella Justiss’s tongue, along with the pain in his head, was surely more than any man ought to have to bear. “Where’s the sheriff? I want to talk to him,” he said.

  “You’ll just have to wait. The sheriff and his deputy went to see if they could catch up with that snake-oil-selling fraud and I agreed to sit with you—since I don’t have a café to run, thanks to your friend.”