He narrowed an eye at her and assumed a teasing scowl. “Pardon me, but you and whose army intend to stop me? You can’t go around in dresses without fronts.”
She glanced worriedly over her shoulder. “Shhh. Someone will hear.”
He lowered his voice. “Give me any argument, and I’ll shout it to the rooftops.”
She sniffed again and worked one hand from around his neck to dry her cheeks. “What I really want most, I’m afraid you can’t buy, Luke.” Fresh tears filled her eyes. “The sisters were my friends. And now I’ve lost them.”
“Nonsense. I’ll iron that out, you’ll see. Soon you’ll be back with the children, telling them stories. Now stop this crying. You’re going to make your pretty eyes all red.”
She sniffed and swiped, then fluttered her lashes. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a bawling baby. It just hurt my feelings, that’s all.”
Despite her attempts to brighten, there were still shadows of sadness in her eyes when she looked back up at him. He drew his handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at her face. Her eyelashes clung together in long, black spikes, making it appear as if someone had drawn stars around her eyes.
“Better?” she asked as he returned the handkerchief to his pocket.
“Perfect,” he whispered, and meant it, though he was setting himself to the task of straightening her hair even as he spoke.
When all the necessary repairs to her appearance had been done, Luke tucked her hand over the crook of his arm and led her from his office. Brummel glanced up from his desk to nod farewell, careful this time to keep his eyes where they belonged.
As they exited the brick office building onto the cobblestone sidewalk, Luke heard a familiar bark and glanced up to see Lycodomes at the opposite side of the busy street. At the sight of Cassandra, the huge dog gave a joyful woof! and bounded forward.
He was heading directly into the path of an oncoming wagon.
FOURTEEN
For an instant that seemed years long, Luke couldn’t react while details were imprinted on his brain like hot iron on leather. Lycodomes, legs churning, tongue lolling, his soulful brown eyes fixed on his mistress as he bounded happily toward her. Horses’ hooves flashing. A heart-stopping blur of gold and white fur, tumbling and going down under those dangerous, thrashing feet. The wagon wheel spokes spiraling in a dizzying circle. Cassandra screaming. Then an awful, bone-shattering crunch and the dull whump of flesh being sandwiched between iron wheels and stone.
Luke found his legs then and broke into a run, hearing Cassandra’s heartbroken shrieks behind him and the dog’s pathetic cries ahead of him as he shoved through the crowd of people that had already started to form. Shopkeepers in white aprons, women out to do their marketing in walking suits and flowery little hats with veils, children too young to attend school. The colors of their garments swam together in a blur that made Luke feel as if he were plunging through a garishly bright rainbow.
The horses, panicked by all the noise, began to rear, whinnying and striking the air with their hooves. At the edges of his benumbed mind, Luke knew it would be only a matter of seconds before the animals bolted if the driver couldn’t get them under control.
When Luke finally reached the wagon, he found Lycodomes lying crumpled behind one of the wheels, his right back leg badly mangled. Blood seemed to be everywhere. Knowing that the driver of the wagon would not be able to hold his team much longer, Luke grabbed the dog by its front shoulders and dragged him away from the treacherous wheels, knowing even as he did that it was a wasted effort.
“Lye-Lye!” Cassandra cried. “Oh, Lye-Lye!”
Luke caught Cassandra just as she would have dropped to her knees beside her pet. Clamping a hand over the back of her head, he spun her toward him and pressed her face against his chest. Struggling for calm, which had always come easily to him in a crisis, he glanced around, feeling, for the first time in his life, like a panicked fox searching for a bolt-hole. He didn’t want to deal with this. Jesus. Why did it have to be Cassandra’s dog? Why not some homeless mongrel nobody cared about?
A man in the crowd said, “You’ll have to put him down, Taggart. With the leg busted up like that, there’s nothing else to do.”
Luke felt the jolt that ran through Cassandra. “Easy, honey,” he soothed, tightening his arms around her trembling body. Holding her fast, he gazed over the top of her dark head at Lycodomes, his emotions in a tangle and his gut knotted. The way he saw it, he had two choices. He could do the dirty work himself, or he could take the coward’s way out and let someone else take care of it.
“A gun,” Luke said softly when he met the gaze of a nearby shopkeeper. “Get me a gun, please, so I can put him out of his misery.”
“No!” Cassandra struggled against his embrace and finally wrested her face free. “No! You can’t! Please, Luke, no!”
“I’ve got a revolver right here,” said a brawny miner with saddened blue eyes and a beard the color of cinnamon, as he stepped forward out of the crowd. “The chambers are all full.” He glanced down at the dog, who was whining pathetically with pain. “Want me to do it, Mr. Taggart, sir? It might come easier for me, not knowin’ the dog and all.”
Luke handed Cassandra into the keeping of Mr. Wilson, owner of the dry goods store, who had just shouldered his way through the throng. Then he turned to the miner and held out a hand for the weapon. “No, I’ll do it. He deserves that much, having a friend do it.”
A friend? Luke’s stomach lurched. Some friend he’d been, plotting the dog’s disappearance. Maybe there was a God, after all…a cruel trickster who manipulated events to teach people a lesson. Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. How many times had he heard that saying? And ignored it.
What a fool he’d been. He’d wanted Lycodomes out of his house…and he was getting his wish.
The portly driver of the wagon had finally managed to calm the frantic team, which was now standing nervously in the traces. Tying off the reins and setting the brake, the teamster jumped down from the wagon and turned to Luke. “Damn, I’m sorry about this. He ran right out in front of me. I tried to stop, but there wasn’t time.”
“These things happen,” someone said. “I saw it. There was no way you could have stopped, man, so don’t be blaming yourself.”
These things happen. The words hung in Luke’s brain. As he closed his hand around the cold butt of the revolver, Cassandra broke away from Mr. Wilson and dropped to her knees beside her dog. With a sob, she lifted Lycodomes’s head onto her lap. Knowing what he had to do, Luke stood over her, his jaw clenched. He gave her a moment to say her good-byes before he finally spoke.
“Cassandra,” he said gently. “Sweetheart, he’s in pain. The sooner we end it, the better for him.”
She lifted tear-filled eyes to his, and guilt sliced through him.
“Please, Luke, please,” she said, each word shuddering from her slender throat on the crest of a sob. “We have to try to save him. We can’t just shoot him without even trying.”
“Sweetheart, he’s hurting bad, real bad. It wouldn’t be a kindness to wait any longer to put him out of his misery.”
The miner who’d lent Luke the gun stepped forward and grasped Cassandra gently by the shoulders. “Come, lass. You come along with old Mike, eh?”
As the miner drew Cassandra to her feet, she kept her gaze fixed on Luke. The pain in her eyes made him feel physically sick. This wasn’t the kind of hurt that would pass in an hour or so. She loved that stinking dog. Not lightly. Not offhandedly. But with all her heart.
Love was a word Luke had grown to despise, for with its utterance had come the most nightmarish experience of his life, an experience he had shelved in the darkest recesses of his mind, the memories of which he couldn’t face, not even in the stark light of day.
And yet…looking at Cassandra’s stricken face, he could no longer deny that love did exist. At least for some.
With remarkable gentleness for so large a man,
the miner led Cassandra away so she wouldn’t witness what was about to happen. Luke gazed after her a moment to be sure she wasn’t going to twist free again and run back. Then, feeling defeated, he returned his attention to Lycodomes.
His hand tightening around the butt of the pistol, he knelt beside the dog and pressed the barrel against the animal’s temple. Almost as if he understood Luke’s intent, Lycodomes whined and nudged Luke’s knee, his liquid brown eyes filled with silent pleading.
Luke tightened his finger over the trigger. This had to be done. All he had to do was pull the goddamned trigger.
His arm began to tremble; then his hand started to shake. He strained to draw back on the firing mechanism, but for the life of him, he couldn’t do it. Not with those soulful brown eyes staring up at him.
“Dammit, Lycodomes,” he whispered. “Don’t look at me like that.”
The dog continued to implore him. It was absurd, of course, but Luke could almost believe the animal was trying to communicate with him. Don’t shoot me. Please, don’t shoot me.
“Quick and clean,” Mr. Wilson urged from somewhere behind Luke. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to do it. The poor thing’s suffering.”
Luke swallowed and tightened his finger on the trigger again. We have to try to save him. We can’t just shoot him without even trying.
“You want me to do it?” Wilson asked.
Luke relaxed his hold on the gun, knowing even as he did that every man in the crowd was going to think him a spineless coward. He didn’t care. Chances were, the dog couldn’t be saved, and Luke had never been a man to play against bad odds. But this wasn’t a goddamned poker game where the only thing at stake was a pile of money, either.
The revolver dangling in his lax hold, Luke assessed Lycodomes’s injuries more closely. He knew next to nothing about dogs, but he’d seen plenty of men get hurt when he’d been working in the mining tunnels. Small cave-ins. Toppling ore carts. Wet nitro on men’s boots, detonated by sparks from pickaxes glancing off stone. More times than he could count, Luke had helped carry another miner from a tunnel, convinced with every step that the man’s injuries were so severe, he couldn’t possibly survive, only to see the fellow return to work a few weeks later. Sometimes injuries looked worse than they actually were.
He pushed decisively to his feet and handed the revolver to Wilson. “I need someone to help me carry him,” he said as he peeled off his jacket.
“Carry him?” Wilson repeated. “If you don’t have the heart to do it, Mr. Taggart, step aside and I’ll finish him for you.”
Luke shot the shopkeeper a searing glare as he spread his jacket on the ground beside Lycodomes. “I need a volunteer. He’s busted up too bad for me to carry him myself.”
The miner who had led Cassandra away shouldered a path back through the crowd. “I’ll help you.”
“It’s cruel, if you ask me,” some woman said. “Better to put the poor thing out of its misery.”
Luke saw Cassandra pushing through the crowd behind the miner. When her gaze found Luke’s, adoration blazed in her eyes, making his heart catch. In that moment, Luke knew he’d made the right decision. If there was no hope for the dog, so be it. But before he made that call, he had to know for sure.
Shaking his head, Mr. Wilson handed the miner’s gun back to him. “If you ask me, you’re just prolonging the inevitable, Taggart. Nothing short of a miracle will save that dog, and you know it.”
“I’m not asking,” Luke bit out. “Just move back out of our way, please. We need some room here.”
After shoving the revolver into its holster, the stocky miner crouched down beside the dog. “He’s liable to bite when we try to lift him, Mr. Taggart.”
Luke hunkered near Lycodomes’s head. “I’ll take the biting end, just in case. It’s going to hurt like hell when you touch his hindquarters. Be as careful as you can.”
The miner nodded. “Once we get him onto the jacket, I think we can lift him without jostling him too much.”
Luke slipped one arm under Lycodomes’s shoulders, using his other hand to support the dog’s head. The position brought Luke’s face within easy snapping distance of the animal’s teeth. He envisioned himself with half a nose or a badly scarred cheek, then shoved the thought away. Lycodomes wouldn’t bite him. Why Luke believed that, he wasn’t sure, but he would have bet his last dollar on it.
Lycodomes whined pitifully as Luke and the miner lifted him between them. “I’m sorry, boy,” Luke whispered. “Hold tight.”
Relief washed over Luke when the dog was finally positioned on the coat. At least that much was over. Cassandra dropped to her knees beside Luke. With a trembling hand, she lightly stroked her dog’s muzzle.
“I’m here, Lye-Lye. It’s going to be all right. You’ll see.”
Looking down at her, Luke realized she truly believed he was going to work some kind of miracle and save her dog. What was worse, Luke wished with all his heart he could. He couldn’t bear to see her cry.
There was no veterinarian in Black Jack, so Luke directed the miner to head for the doctor’s office up the street. The sidewalk was narrow, so Cassandra walked in the gutter along the curb to stay abreast of them, her skirt gathered in her hands to keep the hem from trailing in the water. Her worried gaze seldom strayed from Lycodomes, which resulted in her stumbling more than once, when she encountered drainage grates.
“I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be wading through that muck,” Luke told her once. “Why don’t you just walk behind us?”
“I’m fine, Luke. Honestly.”
Luke could tell by her pallor that she was too upset to be thinking clearly, but he refrained from arguing with her. Carrying the dog between them, it was slow going for the two men. They had to walk sideways, and with every step, it became more difficult to keep a good grip on the jacket.
“He’s a heavy one,” the miner said with a grunt as they crossed an alleyway and stepped up onto the next curb. “A hundred and twenty pounds, if he weighs an ounce, I’ll wager.”
Luke had to agree. His jacket was barely large enough to serve as a litter. To Lycodomes’s credit, he didn’t so much as snarl, even though the jostling had to be causing him a great deal of pain.
Doctor Mosley’s practice was located a block north. By the time they reached the brown clapboard building, Luke’s arms were beginning to cramp, and he noticed that the miner wasn’t faring much better. The man’s face had turned florid, and he was heaving for breath. Cassandra ran ahead of them to open the door, a bell overhead jangling loudly to herald their arrival. The smell of disinfectant and ether assailed Luke’s nostrils as he and the other man maneuvered the huge dog through the doorway.
Luke scanned the dim interior of the waiting area with one sweeping glance. Three metal-framed chairs with sagging leather cushions took up one wall; a battered bookcase stood opposite them, with a collection of paintings—all garish and poorly done—arranged haphazardly around it. Luke nodded toward a door adjacent to the bookcase.
“Through there, I think.”
Cassandra scurried around them to open the door. Just as she reached for the knob, the portal swung open and Doctor Mosley stepped out. A plump, bald little man with a shining pate, spectacles that flashed like mirrors, and a tidily trimmed gray beard, he looked like a fat penguin in the black trousers and vest he wore over a crisply starched white shirt.
Upon spying the bleeding, badly injured dog, the doctor hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and rocked back on his heels, peering up at Luke as if he were a lunatic. “You can turn right around and go back out the way you came in, Taggart. I don’t treat animals.”
Luke glanced at Cassandra. “Honey, you wait out here for a minute. All right?”
At her nod of agreement, Luke shouldered his way past the pompous little doctor, and the miner executed a clumsy sidestep to keep pace. The room they entered was dim, the only illumination being a few feeble rays of sunlight that came through a
high, two-foot-square window. Shelves filled with bottles of every conceivable color and size lined the walls. An examining table occupied center stage, its worn leather upholstery permanently depressed where countless patients had lain.
“Don’t you dare put that filthy dog on my table!” Mosley cried.
The doctor’s tone made Luke’s temper rise. Working in tandem with the miner, he gently laid his whining, bloody burden on the well-padded table, then turned to retrace his steps. After motioning the miner back out into the waiting room with Cassandra, he softly closed the door so she wouldn’t overhear what was said, then pivoted toward the doctor.
“Back off, Mosley.”
“Now wait just a minute—”
“Since we don’t have a vet in these parts yet, I’ll make it worth your trouble. Just name your price.”
Raising his eyebrows high above the rims of his spectacles, Mosley puckered his lips, which, surrounded by gray beard, reminded Luke of the south end of a northbound jackass. “I don’t treat dogs, Taggart.”
“You do now.”
Mosley sighed and shook his head. “You don’t understand. I know next to nothing about dogs. If I try to treat the poor thing, I may make matters worse instead of better.”
“He’s going to die if you don’t, dammit! Can’t you at least look at him? How does a thousand dollars strike you?”
Mosley’s eyes bugged behind the polished lenses of his spectacles. “A thousand dollars? Are you out of your ever-loving mind, Taggart? No dog is worth that.”
Luke didn’t need Mosley to tell him that, but the animal’s worth wasn’t the issue. “It’s my money,” he said softly.
The doctor sighed and rubbed his bearded chin, his gaze fixed on Lycodomes. “That girl out there must mean a lot to you, that’s all I can say. A thousand dollars?”
“That’s right. You save that dog, and it’s yours.”
“It’s your money,” Mosley said as he reluctantly approached the table.
After lighting the gas lamp suspended from the ceiling, he examined Lycodomes at length. When he finally looked at Luke again, the expression on his plump, bewhiskered face was solemn.