Dance Hall Road Read online

Startled, Petra shook her head, causing the sloshing noise in her head to slap against the wall of her skull like a breaker wave against a rock cliff.

  He couldn’t have known what she’d been thinking. Had she said he had nice handwriting aloud? She suspected Mr. Hoyt of taking advantage of her infirmity, teasing her, using her deafness to have a bit of sport at her expense. But she couldn’t think about it now. Unable to sleep, she had all night long to worry about her deafness.

  He kept writing, They taught me to read, write, and do sums in my head before I was six.

  Confused, Petra asked the question that formed in her mind, “You had teachers…more than one?”

  Yep, six lovely, big-hearted teachers, and my mother.

  Surely, he was teasing her; his eyes, they twinkled. Forgetting, she shook her head again, and this time a sharp stab of pain jabbed her above her right eyebrow. “Six? I don’t understand.”

  She couldn’t waste any more of her energy on trying to unravel Mr. Hoyt’s riddles. “You wanted to speak to me, why?”

  He shrugged his big shoulders, looking slightly disappointed she didn’t want to play his game. After giving her a long, hard look he wrote, Seems something exciting happened up at one of the Sumpter mines.

  “The man in the wagon, he told you?”

  Writing quickly, Smiley Cummings, he delivers mail between Baker City and Halfway. I’m out of his way, but he brings it out if he’s got something for me.

  Petra nodded her head very carefully, relieved the motion had little effect on her senses. She hated to ask and dreaded the answer, but she had to know, “And this excitement was…?”

  He gave her a cold smile. One that didn’t touch his silver eyes, his teeth barely visible behind his mustache. Seems the Lucky Laski Brothers mine had an explosion, he wrote.

  Feeling lightheaded, Petra gripped the edge of the bar. “Are they alive?”

  He nodded, then wrote, They’re in bad shape. It took several days to dig them out. Word is they struck a rich vein. Smiley said they might live to enjoy it. By the look on your face, my guess is you know the Laski boys. What I don’t know is, if you were in that mine when it exploded, how the hell did you escape and they didn’t?

  With the walls closing in on her, and the air in the room growing thin, Petra fought to remember to breathe. Feeling sick to her stomach, she gathered up her courage. Right at the base of her skull she could feel a searing heat like a branding iron pressing into her flesh, forcing her to confess. “They had me caged out of sight, just inside the opening. I would’ve been crushed if I hadn’t been inside the cage. Debris slammed into the cage…tipped it over…left the bottom open. I crawled out through a lot of dust…smoke. I hid in the back of a freight wagon. All the people ran, but no one saw me. No one looked for me. Everyone must’ve thought I’d gone home to Missoula. Doubt anyone knew, or even cared, what had happened to me.”

  Eyes narrowed, looking down at her over his nose, he glared at her and she worried he didn’t believe her. She could hardly believe it had happened herself. She’d lived through a nightmare, her life turned upside down.

  Out of breath and drenched in sweat, a wave of guilt washed over her. She couldn’t tell him everything; much better, safer, if he didn’t know the full truth.

  Moving her lips, she intentionally formed her thoughts aloud. “It would be ironic if the explosion revealed a rich vein of gold after all the horrible things they’ve done to make everyone believe they’d already struck the mother-lode.”

  She brought her gaze up to lock with Mr. Hoyt’s penetrating stare and felt a surge of hope sweep through her. “They’ve been salting the mine for months. That’s why they had to keep me hidden. I knew what they were doing, but if they’ve really found gold, then they won’t care about me anymore. They might forget all about me.” Trembling, feeling giddy and lightheaded, Petra wanted to weep.

  You think they won’t try to find you if they have their gold? Mr. Hoyt wrote the question with a sneer on his lips, the steely glint in his eyes telling her she was a fool.

  “Why would they? They only kept me around because I knew…I knew what they were doing.” There were so many words in her head. Carefully she picked through them, hoping she could make herself understood. “They were afraid I would talk. I kept their mine in operation with my inheritance. With me locked up in the cage, they took over my home. They don’t need me now, they have everything. I don’t have any more to give.”

  Stopping to breathe, she realized she was quaking like a sapling in a gale. Pulling her shoulders back, she willed herself to stop. “I told them months ago I wouldn’t tell anyone what I knew. I wanted out. I wanted to get as far away from them as possible. I wanted to get my child away from them. If I were to show up now, with Gabriel, we’d be in the way.”

  To herself she reasoned, Surely, now the Laski brothers won’t care if I’m alive or dead. It doesn’t matter anymore what I’ve witnessed, what I know. Does it?

  Mr. Hoyt put his big head to one side and wrote, You might get in their way, all right, but what about your son? Do you think Kurt will forget about his child?

  Again, without giving it a second thought she opened her mouth to speak aloud and hoped it would come out in words, not guttural ramblings, “Kurt doesn’t know I’ve had the baby. He doesn’t know if either of us is alive, does he? No, the gold would be more important.” In her head, her words sounded more like a question, rather than a statement of fact. What Mr. Hoyt wrote next took her completely off guard.

  I’ve met Beau Laski. I had a run-in with him. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d let little details slide, if you get my meaning. I don’t think gold would make him forget.

  And if his brother Kurt is anything like him, and if somebody had something he wanted, or something on him that might eventually turn back on him and bite him in the ass, he’d have to go after what he thought belonged to him and make damn certain someone couldn’t talk ever again.

  Petra’s temper flared, her fear providing fuel, and she fought against her urge to scream. “They don’t want me. Kurt doesn’t want me. He can keep his gold. Gabriel is my son. I’ll never let him take Gabriel…never. I’m no threat to the Laski brothers. I’ve told them over and over all I want is to forget I ever knew either of them. I want to forget everything. I don’t want to have anything more to do with them…ever.”

  Petra began to tremble so fiercely, she thought she might shatter into a thousand pieces and pass out. Mr. Hoyt scribbled on the paper and held it up before her nose, bringing her heart to a full stop.

  Kurt, the other twin? He’s the father?

  With him looking at her over the top edge of the writing tablet, his eyes narrowed and his lips curled in disgust, Petra’s cheeks grew hot with shame. Unable to look away, she replied, “Yes.”

  The brothers, they’re a lot alike?

  She nodded, “Like peas in a pod as far as looks. Kurt is…he’s boyish, charming, and a little shorter. Beau is the businessman…the thinker, the conniver.”

  Just then, Petra realized something wasn’t right. Mr. Hoyt knew Beau, how? “When did you meet Beau?”

  He hesitated, his eyes shifting, she suspected he had to deliberate on how to answer. His pencil hovered for a second over the paper before he wrote.

  Peering over his arm, she read, He came here a few months back. I had to kick him out. He was drunk.

  Petra looked around her, and it finally came to her what this place was. “Is this a saloon?”

  He grinned and shrugged his big shoulders before he scribbled out, You could say that.

  She asked herself, Why anyone would build a saloon way out here? “You never have any customers.” Forgetting the consequences, she shook her head, and the room tilted, then righted itself. She squeezed her eyes shut. This man didn’t make sense. Everything about Mr. Hoyt seemed at odds: his tidiness, his bushy, hairy aspect, his solitude.

  It didn’t matter, not really. He wasn’t telling her the whole truth
. Petra sensed it. But it didn’t matter; she wasn’t being completely honest either. “Beau might come back?”

  Mr. Hoyt became excited, angry, his lips moved, he was talking, probably yelling. He closed his eyes, she watched him pull in a big breath through his nose, his shoulders going up, his chest expanding, when he opened his eyes, he let his breath out, his shoulders relaxing. His warm breath brushed her cheek before he wrote down what he’d said, You damn right he’ll be back. He’ll be back to even the score. I don’t know exactly when he’ll be back, maybe not ‘till spring, but I know he’s coming back. He didn’t like being bested. He won’t forget. When he comes, I expect him to go for my throat. Hell, he’ll probably just shoot me and be done with it.

  Now Mr. Hoyt started writing so fast his penmanship deteriorated into a scrawl. Petra read it through, then blinked a few times before reading it again, this time reading between the lines. “So you think he’ll come back here. But he won’t be looking for me here. He’ll be here because of you.” She stopped to let the ramifications of the situation sink in and took a steadying breath.

  “Neither of the brothers will be looking for me here, in a…a saloon out in the wilderness. If they suspect I’m still breathing, they’ll look for me on the main road. They’ll look for me in Missoula. My Aunt Jean is in Missoula. They’ll think I tried to get home to my aunt.”

  Mr. Hoyt nodded. That’s how I figure it. I’d say you’d be safer right here, at least until spring. By then, you and the boy will be good and strong and rested up, and the weather will sure as hell be better. I’ll take you wherever you want to go, come spring.

  Chapter Six

  Buck got up and started a fire in his cookstove, like always. But then, after lighting the stove in the saloon, Gabriel started to trumpet in the new day with his lusty cry, and Buck stood there listening to the sounds of Petra padding around in the rooms above. The old place had taken on the feel and warmth of a real home—more than a place to eat, sleep and exist, and wait out the winter.

  Buck imagined Petra sitting up there in her room, her coffee-brown hair all tousled from sleep, her cheeks rosy. Standing at the foot of the stairs, he could hear her voice softly cooing, soothing her son as she tended to his needs. Her voice lured him up the stairs. Four steps up, he stopped and abruptly turned around to slink back to his room, muttering to himself, calling himself a damn fool for thinking Petra would welcome his company.

  When he pulled back the curtain to his room, he looked at it through new eyes. The room felt stark, bland colors, wood hues of brown, gray and more brown, the only relief from the dullness, his black and silver-plated cookstove. With his eyes closed, he envisioned how the room would be with Petra sitting on his bed nursing the baby, her shirt open, exposing the porcelain white skin of her breasts and shoulders, her legs crossed Indian style, feet bare.

  She didn’t enter his room anymore without an invitation. She waited for him by the woodstove in the saloon whenever he went outside. Buck found it annoying. It should’ve suited him right down to the ground, but it didn’t.

  Going to his cookstove for another cup of coffee, he admitted it would be nice to come in from the cold barn and find Petra in his room. Her coffee tasted better; a lot of things were better because Petra had made it or because he shared it with her. He wondered how it would be if she cooked breakfast for him every morning. Would she wait for him to come back from the barn? Would she sit in the rocking chair reading a book to the baby? Or, even better, forget breakfast; she’d wait for him in his bed, half-asleep, arms outstretched to welcome him back under the covers.

  As usual, when his wayward thoughts began to drift into forbidden realms, Buck grabbed his coat and hat and headed outside to take in some crisp mountain air. Once in the barn, shivering in the cold, he lectured himself on the foolishness of indulging in provocative fantasies.

  He’d tacked a broken piece of mirror up on a stall post in the barn. He made himself look into the eyes of his reflection. There, he saw the truth. “You know you’re a chicken-shit coward. I think you have strong feelings for the woman. I think you’re scared of those feelings. I think facing the Laski brothers doesn’t scare you half as much as facing the certain rejection and utter repugnance you would receive if you foolishly made any amorous overtures toward the woman in that house.

  “Shut the hell up,” he told the face in the mirror. “Any healthy male alone with an attractive woman, stuck in the same house for days on end with her, is gonna manufacture improbable lusty scenarios. It’s a matter of logistics and chemistry. Of course, I want to get in her drawers. It’s the ambition of every man to want to plant their root deep inside every available, half-way decent looking female.

  “Petra Yurvasi is just another woman. Admittedly, a damn fine looking woman,” he said with a nod, conceding the point to his reflection. “But I’ve lived around women most of my life, plenty of them more beautiful than the Yurvasi woman. I never had any complaints. Women like me, my hairy face and all.”

  He pulled back from the mirror to gather up the supplies he’d brought out to the barn with him. On the bottom side of a wooden bucket, he set out his razor, a pan of water, his soap mug and brush, he talked to himself, “In my experience, to increase the odds of a successful conquest, all I have to do is pretty myself up a bit.”

  Meeting his foolish smirk in the mirror, he added, “You do realize how idiotic that sounds, don’t you? You’re a cull, my friend—a worthless bounder through and through. No, you’re a randy rooster—standing here in front of your mirror, weighing the pros and cons of preening your pretty feathers to better entice the female of the species. You can pluck your feathers, my friend, but you’ll still be a fool, and a cull—a fact you can’t shed no matter how sharp the razor.

  “Who knows what I look like under this bush,” he answered back. “Hell, I might be irresistible.”

  Meeting his wide-open, speculative gaze, he burst out laughing. “Idiot, you’re a dreamer.”

  To himself, he admitted the chance of rejection did scare him; he had his pride, after all. What would he do if Petra got a yen for him? He ran a whorehouse and saloon. With no one around, she and the kid could stay for the winter, but come spring, he’d have to collect the whores. He didn’t think Petra would take to whoring, and besides, she had the boy to consider.

  With his hands braced against the stall wall, Buck grew sick to his stomach at the thought of Petra upstairs with one of his dirty, mangy customers. Just the very whiff of the fact Petra had allowed that Laski bastard to touch her set his ire to blazing hotter than a smithy’s forge.

  Shoving himself off the wall, Buck went on to rationalize that not for one minute would Petra condone living beneath a roof where prostitutes conducted their business, which left him at a stalemate.

  He flipped the mirror around so only the scratched silvered back showed. Muttering, he called himself all kinds of a soppy-headed, maggot-for-brains buffoon and abandoned his inclination to shave. The time wasn’t right, but soon, very soon, he vowed, he’d do it, by God.

  Scrubbing his hands on the front of his thighs, he decided he needed occupation. He had a couple of projects he’d been working on to keep his mind from wandering off into forbidden realms. But before he could get to them, he fed his animals.

  For a couple of months he’d had four rabbit skins draped over a stall rail near his workbench without much thought as to what he might eventually do with them, until recently. After Smiley had left, Buck started working them to blow off some steam. Now the hide had softened, and he fashioned the pelts into a pair of moccasin boots for Petra. With no shoes, all she had to wear were his wool socks. She had two pair now, but when she had to go outside, he figured her feet got wet and cold, now with snow on the ground. He had a few more stitches to make in the left boot, which wouldn’t take him long.

  The other project—a cradle for Gabriel. The kid needed a proper bed. Buck had sawed, shaped, shaved and sanded down an old feed trough, and yesterday he
’d rubbed the wood good with linseed oil, and the wood had taken on a dark, rich hue. For a cushion in the bottom of the cradle, he placed a cleaned and washed wooly sheep’s hide. Pleased with the results, he gave the cradle a little shove with the palm of his hand and smiled with satisfaction to see it rock gently back and forth.

  Unable to stop himself, he stood there, envisioning Petra at the stove baking pies, and he rocking little Gabriel in his cradle with his toe. A particularly domestic fantasy so disturbing it brought a lump to his throat.

  The old Buck Hoyt didn’t do things for other people—he expected everybody to take care of themselves. He took care of himself. In the past, he never gave much thought to how other people lived, never worried if they had a bed to sleep in, if they had food, warm clothes, but he insisted it wasn’t any big thing to make a cradle for a kid, no big thing at all. He had the time and the wood, and he liked working with hammer and saw; he’d made the cradle for his own entertainment.

  Grumbling, grousing to himself, he started for the house, the cradle under his arm and the boots in the cradle. Petra waited right where he thought she’d be, standing with her back to the stove, head down, hips swaying from side to side, talking to the baby.

  Before she spotted him, he slipped behind the curtain to his room and placed the cradle beside his rocking chair, then pulled the curtain back from the doorway. He had a few seconds to watch her before she looked his way, her eyes lighting up and her lips holding a smile for him.

  “Mr. Hoyt, I thought you were still outside.”

  Her voice, in the last few days, had grown stronger. He’d noticed that. She hardly stumbled over her words at all now. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to be able to hear yourself speak. But he thought Petra Yurvasi the bravest, most courageous woman he’d ever known for defiantly taking up the challenge.

  Petra started toward him, and he waved her into his room, guiding her over to the rocking chair. She obediently sat down, a smile on her face, a puzzled look in her beautiful eyes. He pointed down to the cradle beside the chair, then picked up the boots and handed them to her.