Hell's Belle Read online

  HELL'S BELLE

  by

  Shannah Biondine

  Copyright © 2005 Shannah Biondine

  All Rights Reserved

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  CHAPTER 1

  Wadsworth, Nevada

  Spring 1870

  Someone coughed too loudly. Preacher Phillips raised an eyebrow in silent question and waited expectantly. Del Mitchell dropped his gaze to the folded note his wrangler handed him, and scanned the short message while a hundred inquisitive eyes bored into his back.

  She wasn't coming.

  He crushed the scrap of paper in his fist and glanced at his best man.

  Sandy cleared his throat and addressed the assembly inside the small church. "Folks, the bride's had a change of heart. There won't be a wedding today."

  "Well, hell! I say we all go over to Miz Minerva's and have ourselves a party to celebrate!" Jordan Zoyer shouted.

  Del spun on his heels and strode from the church, wanting nothing more than to be away from the church, his men, his town, his shame.

  She'd left him waiting at the altar. Standing there like the world's biggest fool. Hadn't bothered to send the stupid note to the church. Del had waited over half an hour before dispatching a man to see what had Betty Lee Lydecker so late.

  "Del, wait up!"

  Del heard Jordan shouting behind him. From the hoots and scuffling feet, they'd formed a procession along Church Street. Poor Phillips. What did it say about a preacher when the locals would fly out of his place of worship and head straight for Hell on Wheels? An exaggeration, Del thought, coined by the local prudes. Just because saloon and brothel owners got their supplies shipped by rail cars, like most other business owners, didn't seem fair to call that section of any boom town by that appellation.

  But Del supposed that at least in this case, it was fitting. Betty Lee had politely told him to take himself straight to hell in her note, and she always had detested the gaming and bawdy houses, particularly Miss Minerva's Pleasure Palace. Ever since the pissing incident, she'd forbidden Del to set foot in the establishment.

  So he'd gotten a little drunk and taken a dare. So he'd been lined up on the rooftop, letting loose into the wind, trying to see who could hit the petunias the tinker cultivated in boxes on his porch. Men had silly pissing contests. Everybody knew that. Harmless fun. Certainly wasn't intending to hit anyone.

  How was Del supposed to know Betty Lee's wrinkled old prune of an aunt would pick that very same evening to stop by Tinker Michaelson's, or that the wind would shift at just the wrong second?

  Del jerked off his string tie and kept marching toward Minerva's.

  Betty Lee never would have known he'd been the man to hit the old biddy's straw bonnet if Jordan Zoyer hadn't shot off his big mouth. But no, Jordy had to go shouting and cackling how hilarious it was, and congratulate Del on the best shot of the competition, even though he'd missed the flower box by at least eight feet.

  Betty Lee Lydecker and her aunt Martha had never let Del forget about that damned straw bonnet, even after he bought the old prude two others to replace the fool thing. Nice ones, too.

  He paused to shove the wildflowers he'd picked for Betty Lee through a knothole in a sagging picket fence as he left Church Street and headed for the disreputable part of town. Betty Lee didn't want him or his flowers. And because of her, he'd missed the weekly poker games at Miss Minerva's for over two months. Well, he wouldn't be missing any more of them.

  "Buck up, Del." Sandy Thayer, Del's foreman at the horse ranch, threw an arm around Del's shoulders. "She wasn't the right gal for you."

  Del snorted. "And you'd know who's right for somebody. You, who can't even tell when a woman's got her heart in her eyes."

  Sandy dropped the friendly arm. "I told you before, it doesn't matter. Won't work."

  "Guess I'll see right quick, huh? Not much in the mood to be celebrating, but it does satisfy a certain sense of justice. Drinking and carousing in the last place she'd ever have wanted me to go…on what should have been my wedding day. Perfect."

  Rumors around Wadsworth would later proclaim the horsemen had arrived en masse stark naked at Minerva's front door. That wasn't accurate. The only man showing his skin was the jilted bridegroom, and he still wore his socks, boots, and hat.

  An hour after the drinking started, Jordan whispered in Minerva's ear that poor old Del was in need of a special evening. The kind a man never forgot. She looked to Sandy Thayer for affirmation, or so he claimed. But Del noticed the madam looked at Sandy Thayer every chance she got. The woman's eyes always followed him, yet Sandy swore a looker like Minerva Vance never could be content beside his hearth, darning socks the rest of her life. So he pretended not to notice how she mooned after him. Del had scoffed at the man's pride, but he wasn't scoffing today.

  Nope, today Del's bare butt warmed one of the oak chairs in Minerva's poker parlor while he made jokes about having nothing up his sleeves and generally got drunk as the proverbial skunk. On some level, he was aware that Jordy's whispering had gotten louder. Now he made very vocal, boisterous suggestions that had most of his wranglers chortling with glee. Glasses were raised in bawdy toasts so many times, Del gave up and ordered himself a full bottle of rye.

  And then someone…he could never be sure who it was…started talking about exactly what had been in that goddamned note.

  "Aw, honey, it don't make no difference." This was offered by Cinnamon, the skinniest of Minerva's girls. The boys said what she lacked in substance she more than made up for in agility. Del wouldn't know. Even though Betty Lee had carried on, bawling and sniffling, insisting he was known to have lain with every harlot in the place. His denials—carefully worded—fell on deaf ears. So he avoided Minerva's once he and Betty Lee had set a date.

  Cinnamon's bangle bracelets clanked next to Del's ear, and he got a good whiff of stale perspiration under all her talcum powder and perfume. Maybe there was something to that agility talk, after all.

  "That's right, Delancy," Betsy concurred. She sidled up close to Del, a wicked smile in her eyes. "Her loss is every other gal's gain. There's more than a couple gals hankerin' for a man the likes of you."

  Betsy had long, dark, unruly curls everywhere and knew some delicious tricks with them. Del felt a niggling little itch at the remembrance of having one wrapped in a particularly sensitive location. Betsy was all lips, hair and nice breasts.

  The next thing he knew, Betsy was in his lap and Del was fondling those nice breasts, putting on a real show for everyone gathered around the poker table. He'd just murmured in her ear that they ought to go upstairs when one of the Keating brothers announced to the whole establishment that Del Mitchell had been thrown over for a blackleg named Dan Collier.

  Rory Keating knew because he'd carried Miss Betty Lee's bags to the train platform, and who should be waiting for her, all smooth good looks and fancy duds, but the card sharp who'd come into town some weeks earlier. "They was headin' for the Barbary Coast, I heard him say," Rory volunteered. "Promised her he'd get them a room in a glittering hotel and champagne to drink. Said he knew some hotel owner."

  Del dumped Betsy off his lap and got unsteadily to his feet. "That's real useles
s information, Keating. What the hell makes you think anyone here gives a crap what that trollop does or where she goes?"

  A smarter fellow would have known he'd already said too much, but Keatings never featured brains over brawn. "Sor-ree! Just figured folks was wonderin' why you and the boys are here, 'stead of over to the church and all. I mean, everybody in town knows you was getting hitched today. S'posed to, I mean. Until Miss Betty left last night with that other fella."

  Yeah, she'd left town, all right. Del's wrangler had whispered that Aunt Martha had been the one to come to the door and hand him the note. Then she'd announced none of Delancy Mitchell's hands were welcome on her property, and slammed her front door in his face.

  Sandy stepped between Del and Keating. "Rory, why don't you and Cinnamon have yourselves a dance? Minnie, how come your piano player's not setting our toes bumping in our boots?"

  Minerva just shook her head. Minerva had brassy copper curls piled up so high, it was always a wonder she could even walk without them tumbling loose, cascading like a Sierra avalanche. When she shook her head, folks held their breaths and stared, waiting.

  "Now every soul in this fool town knows Del Mitchell was fixing to take that Lydecker gal to wife. Why, I never did know, since she was a prudish snob that never would have made a man like him happy. But it don't matter. She's gone and he's not going to mope about it. Are you, Del?"

  He hesitated, trying to sort out the drunk feelings from the ones he'd still have sober. Every eye in the place was locked on him, and he knew they all waited for him to somehow salvage his pride. But when he looked down inside himself, there was a muddle beyond just that. He was sore as hell, and did feel cheated and betrayed. But he was also kind of…relieved, he'd guess it was. Like maybe it hadn't been such a wonderful idea to wake up beside Betty Lee every morning of his life, anyhow.

  He belched and looked Minnie square in the eye. "Nope, I'm sure as hell not sulking over the likes of prissy Betty Lee."

  "I dare you to prove it," Jordy said.

  Minerva's piano man hit a discordant note. Poker chips rolled, forgotten, to the floor. Glasses were lowered to the bar. The barkeep paused in mid-pour. Suddenly everyone focused on Jordan Zoyer, who grinned like a cat with a full bowl of heavy cream and held out a bottle of something dark and thick.

  "I gave Minnie here a week's pay. Now, if you take my dare, this whole town won't look back at today as the day Del Mitchell got stood up at the altar. No, sir!"

  A low murmur of approval rippled across the saloon.

  Jordy played to his avid audience. "Today will become a day of legend. A day we'll be talking about for years to come. No exaggeration, Delancy. All you got to do is go up to Cinnamon's room with her, Betsy, and this chocolate syrup. I dare you to let both them gals cover you in chocolate sauce, then lick you clean."

  Del spoke without thinking. "Only if somebody—maybe Harly here—draws a picture of Betty Lee Lydecker on my belly first."

  Minerva laughed so hard then, Del couldn't see how either her pile of curls or whalebones withstood the jiggling. Betsy rolled her eyes and licked her rouged lips. Cinnamon offered a catlike flirtation at the bottom of the stairs, and the men started placing bets on which gal would obliterate the likeness of Betty Lee even as Harly Wilson hollered for a pen and inkwell.

  Word spread across town like wildfire. Farmers left their plows. Nearly half its crew abandoned the railroad cars under repair in the maintenance shop. Slim Johnston closed his barber shop early. The other saloons and bordellos in Wadsworth's "virgin alley" sat woefully empty that night, as men crowded into Minerva's to place wagers and hopefully get a gander of the big doings upstairs.

  Minerva kept the drink flowing, the card tables full, the roulette wheel spinning. Tonight she was taking bets of a different sort. Forget red and black. This particular evening the gents were betting brown or white, representing chocolate or whipped cream. Winners were declared by a house dealer standing sentinel outside the door of the "bridal boudoir." Whatever color most of Del's body was slathered in when the little ball dropped paid terrific odds.

  As did bets on how the infamous Mitchell carousal would ultimately end. Some had their money on the fallen angels getting ill from too much chocolate and cream. Some bet Del lacked the stamina to outlast a pair of soiled doves. And one or two bet the longest odds of all—that Del Mitchell would concede defeat and back down from the dare that had started the whole mess.

  Those wagering Del would pass out went home richest. Sandy Thayer noted men had taken to mapping out the tiles on the floor and calculating distances from the bed to the balcony, down the outer stairs to the privy. Sandy didn't bother to point out that Minerva had wisely provided a chamber pot.

  By noon the following day, it was all over.

  Del had been driven home in a buckboard, thrown in the largest horse trough, and scrubbed clean by his pal Zoyer. As often as the foreman found himself tempted to give that no-account wrangler the heave-ho and get him off the ranch completely, he never bothered trying. Del owned the place, and all the town residents knew he'd been friends with Jordan Zoyer since they were both kids shooting fish from a footbridge over the Truckee.

  Wouldn't serve any purpose to fire Zoyer's ass. He'd just turn up again. The foreman before Thayer warned him. "Those two are thick like brothers. Much as Del gets aggravated with Jordy's laziness and penchant for troublemaking, next thing you know, he's up to mischief right alongside his pal. Expect Mitchell would jump off his barn roof into a pair of pants hung on the wash line and set on fire, if Jordan Zoyer dared him to. Don't make a lick of sense, but that's the way it is."

  Sandy shook his head ruefully as he regarded his boss splayed across his bedstead, buck naked and dead to the world. Del Mitchell hadn't moved a muscle in ten hours, falling down drunk and exhausted as he'd been from the latest mischief Jordan had concocted. A fellow like Sandy Thayer couldn't begin to dream up the sort of nonsense that involved goo and two whores on a Saturday night. He reckoned he just had a dull imagination—unlike Zoyer.

  But Sandy had to give the no-account cowpuncher credit for one thing. After all the wild carousing and carrying on at Minerva's, Del Mitchell truly wasn't pining after the faithless Betty Lee Lydecker. He might not even remember her when he finally came around.

  A couple of men had wagered on that, too.

  CHAPTER 2

  Western Wyoming

  Late Spring 1870

  "Give the conductor your satchel, Twila," Fletcher Bell commanded impatiently.

  "I really prefer to keep it with me, Uncle," Twila argued. "A lady has certain items she needs conveniently at hand during a train excursion. I've learned that much and more on this odyssey."

  "Huh," her uncle grunted as he waved his son Lucius up the steps ahead of him. "I'd no notion when we left Omaha it would take so long or be so infernally dusty."

  Twila couldn't disagree with the last observation. She no longer owned a stitch of traveling clothes not coated with dust and ash, owing to the constant flow of cinders and smoke from the locomotive engines. On the other hand, she guessed part of Fletcher Bell's comment was meant as a rebuke. They'd missed a connection and had to remain in one station overnight, which Fletcher maintained was due to Twila's "perpetual dawdling."

  She sighed, taking a seat across the aisle from her relations. She'd always been aware of Uncle Fletcher's dislike. She wasn't particularly fond of him, either. Never had been. They'd barely been acquainted before "the Shameful and Horrible Tragedy," as Fletcher ever-after would call it. Twila was attending a girl's boarding school when her parents drowned at sea. She vividly recalled the day the headmistress summoned Twila, saying her uncle had come.

  To tell her of the tragedy, and that she was going home with him.

  That had been some four years ago, when Aunt Lavinia was still alive. Lavinia seemed to regard Twila as the daughter she'd never had, rather than a constant living reminder that Twila's father, Fletcher's brother Nathan, was too soon in
his grave.

  Nathan and Fletcher had been close as youngsters, but inevitably made their own separate ways in the world. Twila could remember the occasional family gathering with the Fletcher branch of the Bells, but such occasions had been infrequent. Fletcher married Lavinia and settled in Omaha; Nathan and his wife clung to the Atlantic coastline.

  Fletcher had just about come to terms with his grief over the loss of his brother and being named Twila's legal guardian when his own wife took ill. Lavinia faded quickly and died within a few months after being diagnosed with ravaging cancer. Now there was only Cousin Lucius, who, at two years older than Twila, should have been out making his own way in the world. Yet he appeared content to remain under his papa's wing. Twila actually shuddered, thinking how alike they were.

  Somehow Fletcher's answer to all the loss and grief was to pull up stakes and head West.

  Worldly soul Nathan had often spoken of the far shores of their great nation, of gold strikes, wagon trains, and untamed wilderness. Nathan kept up on news from a distance, scouring several newspapers and talking to a variety of men claiming to have firsthand knowledge of Easterners who braved the challenges and had gone Westward-ho. Such stories were just amusing entertainment to Twila, who never dreamed her Uncle Fletcher would hear them very differently. As a businessman hears opportunities for great profits.

  Fletcher had always been a storekeeper, and one thing the Western tales emphasized was the need for Eastern goods and merchandise on the untamed frontier. With the completion of the the transcontinental railroad in '69, more people traveled West than ever before. Some declined to stay and returned to the East.

  Fletcher intended to make money on folks going either direction. He would open a general store in Wadsworth, Nevada.

  The name alone made Lucius howl with laughter the first time his father suggested it. A fancy, noble-sounding name for a bunch of shacks in the middle of nowhere. But he sobered when Fletcher recited details and figures: the site was a primary supply and railhead for crews and roundhouse of the Central Pacific line. Some of the Chinese laborers still encamped nearby, prospectors passed through, and all factors pointed to a thriving Western outpost. Situated on the banks of the Truckee River along the transcontinental line, Wadsworth was the last supply station as travelers headed East into the Nevada desert region. Along with the town newly christened Reno, it was also one of the final locations where pioneers heading West to California and Oregon could stock up before ascending into the Sierra mountains.