Page 7 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
Virgil couldn’t help feeling he was doing something worse. If Marigold Davis was the lady she claimed to be, he’d inadvertently pulled her even farther from civilization to an even harder life. The conflicts over Kansas becoming a state were nothing compared to miners disputing rights to a gulch. He’d heard three gunshots just in the time he’d been arguing with her in the alley.
“Virgil Gardner!” she shouted. “Are you stealing the only things I have left?”
Her voice sounded so far behind him, he halted and pivoted to see she hadn’t even crossed the creek yet.
“Keep up,” he ordered.
“Myfeethurt.” Her hands were in fists as she stalked across. When she got close enough, he saw her eyes were shiny with frustration. “These shoes are too small and your legs are too long.”
“My legs are exactly as long as they need to be to get me where I want to go.” He looked at her shoes, which were square-toed slippers, once a bright green silk with a curly-cue bow on top, now caked in mud and stressing their seams. “Those are completely useless. We only have boots for men here, you know. Your feet are too small for them.”
She raised a brow. “My feet are exactly—”
“Save it.” He bit the inside of his cheek. How could one woman make him so irritated and so amused at the same time? “It’s already going to take us longer than it should to get to the trading post.” He jerked his head in a new direction and shortened his stride.
“Is that a mercantile?” She fell into a hurried step beside him. “Because I don’t have any money.”
He had already deduced that from her crushed blue jacket and limp green skirt over those silly bloomers. Her straw hat was dented, and her hair was falling down from beneath it. Her cheeks were pocked with pink bites, and her pointed chin was an indication of her personality.
She wasn’t as pretty as her sister’s portrait, but he could see the resemblance. And she wasn’t plain, either. There was elegance to her fine bone structure and curiosity in her whiskey-colored eyes.
Each time he met her gaze, he felt a little drunk. The effect had been especially powerful when he’d mentioned sex. What had even happened then? He wasn’t happy that she’d taken advantage of his sincere offer to Pearl. He had meant his remark about marital relations to be dismissive. Like a wordless shove that let her know who she was playing with.
But something had happened while they’d been glaring at one another. The air in his lungs had thinned and lust had rung his cock like a bell. Not the regular horniness that clung to him like a plague, either. He didn’t trust the cathouse not to give him the clap and had grown used to fucking his hand while he’d been married and separated from his wife. He wished for a woman every time. Any woman. But the desire prickling in him now was more personal than that nameless itch, which irked the hell out of him.
“It’s a literal post,” she said with bemusement as they arrived at the dead tree in a clearing where people had been rendezvousing since long before furs and gold fever had drawn white men to the area. Virgil meandered through the groups of trappers, tribal families, and wagon traders until he found an Arapahoe woman with rawhide and leather at hand.
“Moccasins?” he requested, nodding at Marigold.
Every tribe had their own word for their particular style of shoe, but fur traders had been using that one since they had first mapped this land, and it was the only one Virgil knew. He showed her one of his company’s promissory notes, and she nodded that she would accept it.
“It won’t take long.” Virgil left Marigold for her fitting and wandered to shoot the shit with a handful of local businessmen picking over a wagonful of tools and pans abandoned by prospectors who’d lost heart and gone home.
“Ed, Woodrow, P.J.” Virgil nodded in greeting but ignored the tools. He had more in Quail’s Creek than hands that could use them.
“Virgil. You’ll want this.” Ed offered him a printed notice about a convention to be held August first regarding the formation of local government.
Ed loved his pamphlets and bureaucracy. He had led the charge this spring on talking the Auraria Town Company into joining the City of Denver—which was still called St. Charles on its charter papers.
“What’s news from your camp? P.J. says we won’t have anyone left to stand for election, let alone a population to govern if this keeps up.” Ed cocked his dismayed brow at the tools.
“Newspapers back east are writing that Pike’s Peak is a bust.” P.J. threw exasperated hands in the air. “Everyone’s leaving. No one will come back.”
“Areyouleaving?” Virgil asked.
“No,” P.J. said dourly. “But I’m losing my customers.”
“For liquor and tobacco?” Virgil doubted it. “The ones who think mining gold is like picking daisies don’t stick around.” He deliberately sidestepped reporting on his company’s yields. “But there are plenty of us hardheaded enough to stay and break our backs. We don’t want anyone coming along and stealing what we manage to chip out for ourselves, either. We need law.”
“We have laws. We’re part of Kansas Territory. If we become a state, we’ll have more taxes,” Woodrow argued. He was a judge appointed by the governor, so he had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
“That’s why I say we’re better off as Jefferson Territory.” Ed tapped the paper Virgil still held. “My editorial explains why we should let the feds pay for us to govern ourselves. I’d appreciate your vote on that, Virgil.”
Every time Virgil came to town, the two sides of this “state versus territory” argument seemed to have dug in deeper. At least in January, they’d all been on the same page. A delegate had even been sent to Washington, but the slavery debate had forced a delay on any legislation regarding new territories.
Now they were fighting over whether to become a coat or a jacket, and Virgil just wanted to keep the peace without using his pistol.
“Who isthat?” P.J. stood taller, sucking in his gut.
