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  Published by The Hartwood Publishing Group, LLC,

  Hartwood Publishing, Phoenix, Arizona

  www.hartwoodpublishing.com

  Dance Hall Road

  Copyright © 2014 by Dorothy A. Bell

  Hartwood Digital Release: July 2017

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Dance Hall Road by Dorothy A. Bell

  Buck Hoyt runs a whore house in the back end of nowhere. Scruffy and cantankerous, he hauls in the whores in the spring and sends them packing in the fall. In winter, Buck, a dedicated recluse, reads, writes, and grows his hair.

  But this winter, Petra Yurvasi and her newborn son impose on his solitude. Now shaved and shorn, Buck’s only purpose is to please and protect his woman and her child. Can he keep them safe from the evil brothers who want her silenced forever? If they face the evil together, they have a chance.

  Chapter One

  1871, Baker County, Oregon

  Borne upon the wings of the racing wind, a high-pitched shriek screamed up the side of the canyon walls. Buck Hoyt loosened the leather thong on the scabbard holding his rifle and brought the weapon up to lie across his thighs. He muttered a curse. Ike, his horse, pivoted her big gray ears back and forth.

  “Could be elk, might be a little early for their rut. It sure feels like winter today. Where there’s elk, Ike, you and I both know wolves and mountain lions will follow.”

  He’d left Baker City the day before, ignoring the gaudy coral-pink and brassy dawn that, like a pennant, warned of a change in the weather. Waiting around town for the weather to improve held no appeal. From now on, the weather wasn’t likely to change for the better.

  As foretold, today the temperature had dropped, the clouds heavy and lead-gray, the cold settling in his bones. All morning the wind howled, picking up dust off the summer-dried prairie floor, mixing it with a swirl of powder-dry ice crystals. The crystals burned his eyes and the dust bit his exposed cheeks. His three packhorses, loaded down with his winter stores, continued to shy and sidle, fighting against the elements. Reefing on the towline, Buck kept them moving.

  With his head bowed against the wind, the dust and ice collecting in his scruffy beard and thick mustache, he figured he had to be close to home, maybe two or three more miles to go. Unable to see, he thought it a damned miracle he’d found the dry wash through the canyon, but Ike, the big-boned, dapple-gray mare under his butt had her nose headed for a dry barn and fresh hay. Letting the reins go slack between his fingers, he let her pick the trail down the wash.

  The siren’s wail ebbed and faded, ricocheting off the sides of the canyon—Buck couldn’t zero in on it. “Damn it, Ike, that sounds human. Only a damn fool would be out in weather like this.” Ike snorted, tossing her head, her breath sending a white plume of vapor into the air. “Could be a mountain lion, they sound like that.”

  At Hoyt’s Hot Spring and Whorehouse, Buck catered to the nomadic sheepherders, love-starved miners and, now and then, the maverick males from the passing wagon trains. Around this time every year, when business dropped off, he headed into Baker City to replenish his supplies and return the whores to civilization before winter set in. Most would think it lonely out here on Dance Hall Road, but Buck liked it that way—he hoarded his winter solitude as closely as a miser hoards his gold.

  A sharp scream rent the air, followed by a keening wail. “You’re gonna think I’m crazy as a spooked cat, Ike, but that sounded like a woman.” The sound came again, whistled through his veins, chilling his blood. He broke out in a cold sweat.

  Ike nickered and rolled her eyes, fidgeting, throwing her head. The scream triggered Buck’s fertile imagination, bringing forth visions of the demons and banshees he’d read about in the Greek myths and Gaelic folklore he favored as his winter reading material. “Christ-a-mighty, doesn’t sound like any animal I ever heard before.”

  The keening stopped, but that made it worse. Now the continuous howl of the wind carried with it the ominous possibility and the very imminent threat of something otherworldly, and unavoidable—damn it all to hell—ahead of him, on the trail.

  “Up, Ike, you cantankerous old she-devil,” he ordered, kicking at the mare’s flanks with the heels of his boots and jerking on the packhorse towline.

  The wind subsided as they moved out of the canyon and drew closer to the bottom of the wash. Too quiet now, Buck urged Ike down the gravel bed, the sounds of the stones beneath the horse’s hooves echoing up the canyon walls. They’d gone about twenty feet when a long, drawn-out, unnatural yowl jerked Buck around in the saddle, bringing him up to stand in the stirrups. The piercing cry tore the fabric of the air. It didn’t sound like a wolf, or a coyote. He knew of no wild thing that could make such a noise.

  The packhorses reared, their eyes rolling back in their heads, showing nothing but white. “That critter, whatever it is, is damn close. I can’t see anything moving up there.” He wanted to let go of the cursed packhorses and take up his rifle, but if he did, he could lose his supplies.

  Gently rubbing Ike’s neck with his gloved hand, his voice low, Buck uttered a hollow threat. “You better keep moving, you bag’a glue. You quit on me now and I’ll strip your hide and hang it up on my wall. No, I’ll walk on it every damn day. That is, if I don’t get et by whatever the hell is out here.” The hair on the back of his neck stood straight up, his clear, sharp, gray eyes scanned the rugged terrain, for what, Buck didn’t know.

  Having to squint through the dust, he could see a cottonwood tree in the distance. “Smell that, Ike. I smell the hot spring. That’s sulfur in the air, girl. If you could get us to the spring, I’d feel safer. I could tie off these stubborn, knot-for-brains packhorses and make a stand.”

  Then the eerie wailing started up, and for Buck, the sound more unsettling than the screams. He searched the sheer, rocky cliffs to either side of the trail—finding nothing but boulders, scree and scrub brush. Squinting, concentrating, he bent down to Ike’s right ear. “That came from up there on the right.”

  Ike stopped in the dry creek bed, her big head bowed, ears pulled back, her black tail flicking back and forth and up and down. Her hooves scraped at the sharp rocks beneath, and she shook her head when Buck kicked her flanks.

  Cussing a blue-streak, he dismounted, tied off the tow line to his saddle pommel, and then dropped Ike’s reins to the ground. With deliberation he slid his rifle back in the scabbard attached to his saddle and pulled his Colt out of its holster, checked it to be sure he had a bullet in the chamber, then cocked the hammer, ready to fire at will.

  Before starting up the side of the canyon, he grabbed Ike by her flicking ear. “You stand still. If this is a cat, I’m gonna let him have you as an appetizer, you ugly old bag of oats.”

  Muttering curses under his breath, Buck started his assent, heading up at an angle. Lose scree slid beneath his feet. For every two strides forward, he s
lid back half a step. He made for a big boulder, not more than twenty yards away, where he could take cover. Snow, big fluffy flakes, started to drift down, gentle flakes, quiet flakes, floating around him like feathers from a pillow.

  Half-crawling, he made his way up to a big granite boulder while shale and gravel slid down the steep slope beneath his feet and all around him. Winded, he stopped to catch his breath and managed to glance over his shoulder, down to where Ike and the packhorses stood quietly, looking for all the world as if they’d gone to sleep. “I gotta be out’a my fuckin’ mind.”

  At the sound of a soft mew of distress, Buck turned his attention back to the boulder. Right there, right there behind the boulder, he’d find the source of all the screaming and wailing—he’d bet his horse on it.

  On his belly, he hugged the ground, the fingers of his free hand working like a garden rake. Clawing at the gravel, he pulled his way to the other side of the great granite rock. There, squatting with her back to the boulder, a woman sat. Her thick mane of dirty, dusty, matted hair veiled her face, neck and shoulders. Inching closer, he got to his knees, then to his feet, causing a small slide of rock to slither past him to trickle down the canyon wall. Her eyes closed tight, the woman raised her head and let forth a scream of agony.

  Now, Buck considered himself a pragmatist. By definition, according to his much-prized dictionary, he did his best to approach problems and affairs in a practical way. To survive out here, a body had to stay alert, fit and have good sense. Always keeping in mind that, as a businessman, he also needed to mind his own business and not stick his nose in where it wasn’t welcome.

  The woman looked half-starved, her hands red with cold and streaked with blood. She wasn’t dressed for the weather, wearing nothing but a burlap sack for a shirt and a tattered old blanket for a skirt. He figured she couldn’t have much sense, or she wouldn’t be out here in this predicament in the first place. Besides, the baby, when it came, would probably die even if it did survive the birth. As to that, the woman might not survive the birth. Huddled there against the boulder, rocking on her haunches, crying and wailing, lost in a world of pain, she looked a pitiful sight. Buck didn’t think she even knew or cared she had an audience.

  He didn’t aspire to be a Good Samaritan, and he didn’t mind admitting it. He hadn’t experienced many kindnesses in his life, although he did feel empathy for animals of all kinds, but standing there staring down at the woman, he didn’t think himself qualified to act as a humanitarian. He found his inability to leave her to her fate inconvenient, as well as a curse, a weakness, a flaw in his character. The fact of the matter—he knew he wouldn’t sleep tonight if he turned and walked away—which the practical side of him said he should do. But the humanitarian in him said the woman wasn’t in any condition to survive on her own.

  The argument in his head continued—he didn’t relish the idea of taking on a crazy, half-starved Indian squaw and her sickly papoose. It’d be just his luck her kin would come looking for her and decide he had outlived his usefulness.

  Besides, he’d gotten free of women, taken them back to Baker City. He liked his solitude, wanted to be by himself for a few months. The sheepherders and miners would be back next spring, and until then Buck looked forward to a long winter, with time to read the books and periodicals he’d purchased in Baker City. Maybe he’d write a few stories of his own. In short, he intended to live life the way he wanted to, without interference or interruption.

  The woman howled in pain, sweat plastering her matted hair to her face and forehead. She strained, gritted her teeth, as a gush of blood covered her bare toes beneath her skirt, coloring the scree crimson.

  The scream of agony caused him to take a step back, which started an avalanche of good-sized rubble down the side of the canyon. When his feet lost their purchase, he realized too late he’d a loaded and cocked pistol in his hand. But the loud report and the smell of gun powder reminded him when a cloud of dust and snow rose up to fill his eyes and nose. Floating down a river of rubble like a log in a flume, he prayed he hadn’t killed or wounded the woman.

  He hadn’t heard a scream.

  That probably wasn’t good.

  Christ. What if I killed her?

  Tumbling, one eye open, the other full of grit, he took comfort in the fact that below him, Ike and the packhorses shied but didn’t run. Tears from the dust burning his eyes, running down his cheek, he did hear their protesting whinnies. By the time he stopped sliding, he’d gone several yards below the boulder. Face down in the gravel, pebbles in his nose, he laid there with the discharged pistol still in his grip.

  “Shit. Holy-hell.” Rolling on his side, he holstered his gun, then scrambled on his hands and knees back up the steep face of the canyon to the boulder.

  Sometimes the powers-that-be just had to pick a fella up and give him a good thump on the head to get his attention. Buck recognized this as one of those moments. The punishment for accidently killing an innocent woman, and probably her kid, would be severe. He’d have to put a bullet to his own head—he’d never be able to live with himself.

  To his utter amazement and relief, he crawled back up to the boulder and found the woman unscathed and seemingly unperturbed by the gunshot. She had her skirt pulled up to her white thighs, rocking back and forth. Cradling her newborn son in her arms, the babe covered in blood and afterbirth. The baby had started to squeal as the woman pushed out the afterbirth and gathered up the umbilical cord.

  Held spellbound, Buck watched as, with the baby in the lap of her skirt, the woman took two small sticks and placed them on either side of the cord, pinching them together. She began to wind a narrow strip of leather thong around and around the two twigs and across the umbilical cord. She used her teeth to tie the thong, then, with a small hunting knife, cut the baby’s cord.

  She worked silently and carefully, not once looking in Buck’s direction. He rose unsteadily, and very carefully, to his feet. Taking stock, he deliberated with himself. The snow, coming down hard now, almost obscured the distant cottonwood near the hot spring. He thought they might have an hour, maybe two, of daylight left. If they could get down out of the canyon, they might make it to his home on Dance Hall Road before dark.

  Clearly, at least in his mind, the fates, for some perverse reason, had chosen him, of all people, to deliver these wondering wayfarers from an agonizing death. The burden of this unexpected responsibility didn’t sit well upon Buck’s shoulders—he found it heavy work, and it stunk.

  Surrendering to the inevitable, he formulated a plan to make the best of the situation, and scrambled down to one of the packhorses. Cursing and muttering to himself, he untied the rope around the side bundle on one of the horses, and withdrew two woolen blankets.

  He marched up to Ike, talking to her as he fished around in his saddlebag, finding a pair of brand new woolen socks. “This is your fault. I could’ve kept right on goin’, but no, you had to dig in your hooves and pull your ears back like a stubborn mule. I don’t know why you had to go and stop. Now look what you’ve got me into, you miserable old hag,” he said in Ike’s ear before he scrambled back up to the boulder.

  Boiling mad, cursing and sputtering, he hunkered down in front of the woman. Her eyes flew open, and long black lashes moist with tears brushed her dirty cheeks. The color of those eyes startled him. They were blue, blue as lake water in summer. Her complexion, beneath all the grime, he suspected, would be porcelain white, as white as his mother’s fine bone china, not nut brown and weathered as he’d presumed. He’d expected to find an Indian woman; that would’ve made sense. Indian women often went off by themselves to give birth. But a white woman, no, never.

  Obviously terrified, she stared up at him, her beautiful orbs darting, flicking and flashing. She sat there shaking, her eyes blinking.

  He growled and thrust the blankets at her, hating her, hating himself, hating the whole damn mess. “Here.”

  She didn’t move. Ruthlessly, he snatched the howling ba
by from her to wrap him up tight in the other blanket before thrusting the socks at her. She sat there, looking stupid, and he groaned with foreboding—clearly, she was dumber than the boulder behind her.

  Looking up through the falling snow, he complained to the higher power in charge. “Now I’m saddled with a damn half-wit whore and a squealing brat. Why me? You know who I am. I’m a devoted sinner, and I like it. Putting their lives in my hands is like putting both of them on the road straight to Hades. And if this is some kind of test, I can tell you right now, I ain’t got a snowball’s-chance-in-hell of passin’. No sir. And this woman is gonna suffer because you had to go and try to teach me some kind of lesson. There ain’t no sense in it, and you’re wasting your time.”

  Bending down, Buck picked the woman up, with the baby in her arms, both wrapped in blankets. The woman had managed to get her feet into the socks—he thought that an accomplishment and snorted with disdain. The socks were too big for her, and they flopped up and down as he slid down the slope.

  He threw her up onto Ike’s back. He mounted, the woman, with the baby held to her bosom, struggled to stay upright. Once Buck had the reins and his passengers settled, Ike, without the slightest bit of encouragement, started down the creek bed, headed for home. As they rounded the spring, Buck began to think they might have a chance of making it home before dark.

  Chapter Two

  For the purposes of good advertising, Buck had applied the fancy name of Hoyt’s Hot Spring and Whorehouse to the two-story clapboard prairie house in the back end of nowhere he called home. In the fading light of day, his sad house looked mighty good as he rode into the yard. He’d built the place with his patrons in mind, with three small cribs, or bedrooms, upstairs, and a hallway wide enough to function as a sitting room or waiting area for eager customers.

  Ike wanted to go directly to the barn, but Buck, feeling mean just now, tied her and the packhorses to one of the porch posts. He found it a struggle to dismount without sending the woman to the ground in a heap. Ordering Ike to stand still, he slid off her rump. His feet had barely touched the ground before the woman, her baby still held fast to her bosom, tilted sideways off the horse and into his arms.