Dorchester shook his head. “No need to apologize, I feel the same way you do about it. So, I bought the cattle from Mrs. Hilliard.”
“You bought the herd while it is still up there?” Eddie asked.
“Right,” Dorchester said.
“So now you want that herd down here.”
“Right again,” Dorchester said.
“So, if you bought the herd, why don’t you just go up and get it in the broad daylight?”
“There is a question of who actually owns it,” Dorchester said. “I’m afraid that the Sweetwater Railroad Company believes they own the herd, and they probably have it guarded with orders to shoot anyone who attempts to take it.”
“Excuse me for sayin’ this, Mr. Dorchester, but that just don’t make a whole lot of sense, you buyin’ a herd that you ain’t even got yet.”
“Events may yet prove you right, Win,” Dorchester said. “But Mr. Hawke assured me it could be done, so I am putting my trust in him.”
“You still want to help me bring the herd down?” Hawke asked.
Win scratched his cheek and, after pausing for a moment, nodded in the affirmative. A broad smile spread across his face. “Always did want to try myself a little cattle rustling.”
“This isn’t exactly rustling,” Dorchester said.
“Yeah, I know. But it’s close enough. Count me in, Hawke.”
“Me too,” Eddie said.
“Thanks,” Hawke said.
“Hawke, could I speak to you for a moment? Outside?” Dorchester asked.
“Sure,” Hawke said.
“Hey, Cookie, you got ’ny coffee left?” Eddie asked, starting toward the kitchen. Win joined him as Hawke followed Dorchester out onto the front porch of the cook shack.
“Bailey McPherson is the Sweetwater Railroad,” Dorchester said when Hawke joined him outside. “I spoke to her today.”
“So she’s the one responsible for taking Hilliard’s and Miller’s land?”
“Yes. And 144,000 acres of Northumbria.”
“What?” Hawke gasped.
“That’s what she said today, and she has government papers to back her up. In addition to that, the land she is taking will leave the rest of Northumbria isolated from water. And not only Northumbria, but the entire valley. And without water, my ranch, and everyone else’s ranch—and farm in the entire valley—will be worthless.”
“Are you going to fight it?”
“Yes, of course I’m going to fight it,” Dorchester said. He took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair. “I just don’t know how to fight it.”
Chapter 18
UPSTAIRS IN HER ROOM AT THE GOLDEN CAGE, Lulu lit a candle. Then she poured some water from a pitcher into a basin and, taking the water with her, stepped around behind a screen.
Rob Dealey could hear the splash of water as Lulu began her ablutions. He looked at the bed. It was made, though somewhat crookedly.
Rob had come up to the Sweetwater Mountains with seven other men from the Northumbria. They had come, in the words of one of them, “bright eyed and bushy-tailed,” to make their fortune in found gold.
But none of them had found gold, and now there were only three of them left. Micah McGee and Billy Pearson had left first, saying they were going back down to Texas. Eddie Taylor and Win Woodruff were the next to leave, pulling up a couple of days ago. They were going to go back to the ranch and see if they could get their old jobs back.
Well, that was good for them, he thought. They probably could get their old jobs back. But Rob he knew that he couldn’t. He had been the foreman, and Dorchester told him on the day that he got paid out that he would not be able to return to his old job.
He was a fool to have left. As foreman, he was getting almost twice as much money as the others. And he had a position of respect. Now he grubbed around in the mud and the mire, searching for gold.
What a fool he was to have left, he thought again.
When Lulu stepped out from behind the screen a moment later, he was surprised to see that she was totally nude. And though he knew that most whores promised much more than they were able to deliver, in this case he was not disappointed. Lulu was all she promised and more. She was slender, except for the flare of her hips and the gentle rise of her relatively small but well-formed breasts. Without her clothes, she really did look like she was only nineteen. For a moment he felt a little uncomfortable with the idea of going to bed with a nineteen-year-old. He was thirty-two, considerably older than Lulu.
On the other hand, Lulu was a prostitute, and prostitutes were without history, therefore they were without age. There was no doubt in Rob’s mind but that Lulu was much older than he was in some areas. Especially when it came to sexual experience. For in truth, his own sexual experiences had been few and relatively far between.
“Honey, you don’t even have your clothes off yet,” Lulu said, the expression in her voice indicating that she was puzzled by that fact.
“What’s the hurry?” Rob replied. “We have all night, don’t we?”
Lulu laughed. “Yes, we do,” she agreed. “It’s just that most men are so—” Lulu stopped in mid-sentence. It was as if she were embarrassed to continue the statement about “most” men. “But that’s all right,” she said. “You’re different.”
“Does it bother you that I am different?”
“No. I like it that you’re different.”
Rob sat on the edge of the bed. “Will you help me take off my boots?” He held out his left leg.
Smiling at him, Lulu swung a long, naked limb over his leg, pivoting as she did, so that she wound up facing away from him. Rob found the image of her bare behind intensely erotic as she struggled with his boot.
As soon as his boots were off, Lulu removed his clothes. After he was naked, she leaned into him, pressing her bare breasts against his chest, grinding her pelvis against his and pushing him down onto the bed as she did.
They lay on the bed exploring each other’s bodies with their hands until, finally, Rob climbed on top. For the next few minutes there was only the sound of heavy breathing, a few groans of pleasure, and the symphony of creaking bedsprings.
Afterward they lay side by side, bathed in perspiration and coasting back down from their erotic high.
“Where are you going now?” Lulu asked.
“What do you mean, where am I going? I’m staying here all night.”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean after tonight. When you give up looking for gold, where will you go?”
“Are you that certain that I’m going to give up?”
“You should.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
“Because there is no gold here,” Lulu said.
“I know that’s what everyone is telling you,” Rob said, “and I don’t blame them. It’s frustrating as hell to bust your ass out there day after day after day and not come up with even the tiniest bit of color. I’m frustrated too, but I’m not ready to give up yet.”
“There is no gold,” Lulu said again.
Rob chuckled. “Are you trying to get rid of us so you and the other girls can go out and start digging where we left off?”
“No,” Lulu said. “Do you know Luke Rawlings and Percy Sheridan?”
“Sure,” Rob said. “Everyone in the camp knows them. They are the two who discovered gold up here in the first place.”
Lulu shook her head. “They didn’t discover it here, they put it here.”
“What do you mean, they put it here?”
“I think the word is called ‘seeded.’ They seeded several rocks with gold, then scattered them around.”
“Well now, why the hell would they do something like that? That doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s not like they are trying to sell off claims or anything.”