Rocky Mountain Marriage

“The best damned gambling house in the state, if you ask me.” The driver tipped his hat to her, then climbed atop the buckboard to depart.

“W-wait. Please.” She plucked her father’s letter from the small, leather-bound diary she always carried with her, and read the first shakily written paragraph again.

If you’re reading this, Dora, I’m dead. Seeing as you’re my only living kin, I’m leaving you the place. Lock, stock and barrel, it’s all yours.

She gazed out across the high-country pasture surrounding the opulent two-story ranch-house-turned-saloon. A few stray cattle grazed in the meadow below the original homestead. Nowhere were the herds she’d expected, or any evidence that her father had made his fortune in cattle.

Several outbuildings were visible behind the house: a barn, what looked like a bunkhouse, and a few small cabins nestled between naked stands of aspen and oak. It had been a ranch once, by the look of things.

“I guess you’ll be running the place now. Good luck to you, ma’am.” The driver snapped the reins and the horses sprang to life.

Running the place?

“Wait a moment. Please!” Dora ran after the buckboard. “You’re not just going to leave me here?”

“You want to go back to town?” The driver pulled the horses up short. “Before you even get a peek at the place?”

The sun had already dipped well below the snow-capped peaks in the distance. Spring columbine checkered the rolling grassland as far as the eye could see, but winter’s chill still frosted the air. Dora pulled her cloak tightly about her as she glanced back at the bustling business her father had never once mentioned in his letters to her.

Horses stood in a line, tied up at the long rail outside the saloon. Buggies and buckboards and other conveyances were parked along the side. A corral flanked the building, where other horses were feeding. Presumably they belonged to customers, regulars she believed the term was.

Soft light spilled from the entrance of the saloon and from windows draped in red velvet. Tinny piano music, men’s voices and coquettish laughter drifted out to meet her. Fascinated, Dora took a step toward the entrance, then paused to consider her predicament.

“Ma’am?” The driver fished a pocket watch out of his vest. “Got to get these horses back to town. Are you coming or staying?”

Not once in her twenty-five years had she ever been inside a saloon. God would strike her dead, her mother had been fond of saying when she was alive, if Dora so much as set foot in one.

“Last chance, ma’am.”

Last chance.

She heard the driver’s words, the snap of the reins, and the buckboard rattling back down the two-mile stretch of road to the mining town of Last Call, where her only hope of securing proper accommodations for the night was to be found.

But Dora was already on the steps, her gaze pinned to the swinging doors, her eyes wide with excitement, her stomach fluttering. Lock, stock and barrel, she thought as she tucked her father’s letter carefully away between the pages of her diary.

She placed a gloved hand on one of the swinging doors and pushed. A heartbeat later she stepped from her comfortable and orderly existence into a new world. By some miracle, God did not strike her dead after all.

The air was thick with cigar smoke and the foreign aromas of liquor and cheap perfume. Instinct compelled her to cover her mouth. The first thing she laid eyes on was a painting of a woman, a redhead without a stitch on, in a gilded frame above the bar.

“Oh, my.”

A stage draped in crimson velvet was positioned at the far end of the room. Mercifully, no one besides the piano player was performing. Men stood drinking, crowded together at the bar and huddled over card tables packed into what was once the parlor of the stately house. Brass spittoons were everywhere, though it was apparent no one paid them any mind.

“Disgusting.”

She felt warm all of a sudden—too warm—and realized men had stopped their drinking and gaming to look at her. In an attempt to avoid their stares, her gaze followed a spiral staircase leading upward from the end of the bar to the second floor.

A long balcony of dark pine showcased walls lined in flocked red paper against which lounged scantily clad women and overeager men. The house’s original bedrooms were on this floor. Dora didn’t want to think about what was going on inside those rooms.

The noise, the smells, the bright colors—all of it taken together was overwhelming. She felt light-headed, not herself at all. The last thing she saw before she fainted was a man. His whiskey-brown eyes drank her in as he flashed her the wickedest smile in three states.

“Ma’am? You all right?”

Someone was patting her hand. She felt a cool compress on her forehead, then flinched at the whiff of smelling salts. Her eyes flew open.

She tried to sit up, but firm hands pushed her back down again. She was lying on the… “Good Lord!” She was lying on the bar, stretched out like a corpse.

People crowded around her, offering assistance. She recognized the bartender by the linen towel wrapped, apron style, about his waist. He was a wiry, balding man with a thick black moustache and a face that was all concern.

“You fainted dead away when you saw it.”

“S-saw what?” Her head was still spinning. She thought he was talking about the man, the devilish-looking one with the smile.

“Wild Bill’s favorite whore.” The bartender glanced up at the painting, now directly above her on the wall. Dora didn’t need a second look. “No one’s ever had quite that reaction to her.”

“Oh, Jim, stop it! Can’t you see the poor thing’s confused? Must have taken the wrong road out of town, wandered in here by mistake.”

Dora turned to the woman who was patting her hand. She was about Dora’s mother’s age when she’d died, Dora guessed, but that was where the resemblance ended. Her mother had always dressed plainly, in dark colors, as did Dora, and wore no ornamentation of any kind.

In comparison, this woman looked like a peacock. She had brassy red hair and painted lips to match, and a dress of bright blue silk cut so low Dora thought the woman would pour right out of it each time she leaned over to smooth the compress on Dora’s head.

“I’m…sorry.” Again she tried to sit up. This time they helped her.

“Oh, don’t be sorry, honey,” the woman said. “It’s easy to lose your way if you’re not from around here. You a preacher’s wife?”

“A schoolteacher.”

“Told you,” the bartender said. “Pay up, ’Lila.”

To Dora’s shock, the woman pulled a bank note out of her cleavage and slapped it down on the bar. The bartender pocketed it, grinning.

She blinked her eyes, which were tearing from the cigar smoke. The music had stopped, and she realized everyone in the saloon was staring at her. Well, why wouldn’t they be? She must look a fright. Her hair had come loose and fell in mousy hanks around her face. She realized with a shock that her skirts were rucked up to her knees, revealing her bloomers. She quickly smoothed them down again.

“Here,” the bartender said, and handed her a full shot glass. “Drink this. It’ll clear your head.”

She accepted it without thinking.

“Go on, honey,” the woman said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly.” Fainting dead away in a saloon was one thing. Drinking whiskey in a saloon was quite another.

The crowd parted, and she found herself eye-to-eye with the devil incarnate, the man whose heated gaze and sinful smile were burned permanently into her memory. Growing up she’d heard plenty about men who frequented saloons. Never trust one, her mother had warned her, especially a gambler.

The man standing in front of her had been sitting when she’d first seen him, a perfect fan of cards in one hand, a glass of beer in the other, his feet propped up on a gaming table. Hell would freeze before she’d be taken in by such a character. He was different from the others, and that’s what worried her.

His three-piece suit looked as if it had been tailored back East. His hair, a rich brown that matched his eyes, fell nearly to his shoulders. That wasn’t uncommon for mountain men, but it was for city dwellers, and he was clean-shaven, which was unusual for both.

“Delilah’s right.” His voice was soothing, and put her instantly on her guard. “It’ll do you good. Drink it.”