The Coyote Tracker Read online

  Josiah being concerned about his image, or what the public thought, was like a coyote giving up hunting and becoming a domesticated dog. It was an impossible act, and any wild creature could never be considered trustworthy anyway. What other people thought had never mattered to Josiah, and there had been few consequences of that attitude out on the trail alone or with the company of a few men. But that had all changed somehow once he moved to Austin.

  “You’re not in this alone, Pearl.” Josiah had lowered his voice, too.

  “I know. But my burdens are not something you should have to consider. My family’s financial troubles are not yours to carry—or assume. You have your own problems.”

  “My troubles are not what I’m concerned about at the moment,” Josiah said, cupping her face in his hands, the consciousness of the city falling away from his worry. “I don’t want to be anywhere but here with you, and I will shoulder what comes from that with a deep sense of good fortune. I’m happy you’re in my life, Pearl. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the way I do.”

  “I know.” Pearl nodded. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”

  Josiah had made sure that Pearl was mostly aware of his past, of his life before he moved to Austin from East Texas, of being married to Lily. Pearl also knew the sadness of the time with Lily, the loss Josiah had endured when his three daughters died from the flu, and Lily, too, leaving him to raise a newborn son with the help of a Mexican wet nurse who had come to Austin with him.

  Josiah knew, too, of Pearl’s past.

  Neither of them was without scars. Pearl had been married before, to a man much like her father and Josiah, a veteran of the War Between the States who came home a different man, then went on to be a lawman, of sorts, whether with the State Police or locally. Her husband had been killed by a stray bullet outside a saloon about the same time Josiah’s wife had died. They both had been alone for the same length of time, their grief and longing similar, but different. Josiah had loved his wife, while Pearl had told Josiah that her marriage was more of a way to appease her mother; she liked the man but was unsure if it was love she felt, and it was in Pearl’s demeanor at the time to make her mother happy, regardless of her own feelings.

  “The last thing you need to worry about is disappointing me,” Josiah said. He was tempted to kiss her, but that would have crossed too many boundaries in the public eye—and his own.

  One of the problems they faced was finding time alone. Since they were not teenagers, and had been married previously, they both understood the needs of a man and a woman and had previously found the right time and place to be intimate, to make love, before this day, though only once.

  Now there were social requirements. Requirements of the boardinghouse Pearl had no choice but to live in and the restrictions in the small house that Josiah shared with his son, Lyle.

  Neither Lyle nor Ofelia, the wet nurse and caretaker who had come with Josiah from Seerville, would understand the presence of a woman staying overnight and sharing his bed. And Josiah would not expect such a thing of Pearl. Not now, if ever, until their life had taken a more formal path. Courting Pearl openly was the first step on that path, and it seemed like they were getting off to a rocky start.

  They had chosen a difficult time to make their relationship public, but neither of them was foolish enough to ignore the reality of the situation they had put themselves in.

  “You know I want to kiss you right now, don’t you?” Josiah asked.

  Pearl looked Josiah directly in the eye, her face wanting and vulnerable at the same time.

  He shivered at her beauty, even though she was distraught. There was no way a man like him should be courting a woman like Pearl, as far as he was concerned. His good fortune was not lost on him for one minute.

  “Please don’t,” Pearl finally said.

  Josiah smiled knowingly and was not the least bit offended. “I should take you home.” He stood up, her hand in his hand.

  Pearl hesitated. “I’m sorry. I have ruined the day you planned.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, there’ll be plenty more days to come. You didn’t ruin anything.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am,” Josiah answered, helping Pearl to her feet, “absolutely sure. Now, let’s get you back to Miss Angle’s.”

  CHAPTER 3

  It was like Josiah and Pearl walked through a curtain of silence as soon as they turned the corner off Congress Avenue.

  The boardwalk was full of people who had all come to a full stop, and it was eerily quiet for such a large gathering. Most of the crowd had dropped their heads at the first sign of the funeral procession, even though it was a small one, bearing very little importance or status, from the looks of it.

  Stuffed near the back of the onlookers, pressed against a building, Pearl eased her hand into Josiah’s. He flinched at first, then welcomed her touch, the warmth of an offer of comfort, and her need of it, too.

  The coffin was made of simple, fresh-cut pine, carried on the shoulders of four hulking men, their unemotional eyes boring straight ahead, dressed like they had just stopped the day’s work in a livery or roofing a new building, to make the journey to the cemetery. Their boots were muddy, their sleeves rolled up, and their shirts were sweat-stained. Hats shielded their eyes from the sun, and their guns were in open sight, holstered on their hips.

  Josiah didn’t recognize any of the men and found it odd that the procession had stopped everyone in his or her tracks—until he looked beyond the coffin and saw that Blanche Dumont was leading a small pack of mourners.

  A sighting of Blanche Dumont was rare, though not entirely unheard of. She was, in less gentle terms, a keeper of whores, a madam. She ran a house of soiled doves in the First Ward, not far off the trail that led tired and excited cowboys alike into town in search of a good time. The cowboys were looking for a chance to blow off steam and to part with any hard-earned money in their pockets.

  Blanche strived for a higher paying clientele instead of the ragtag cowpunchers who had limited finances. Instead, she catered to the likes of property owners and the well-to-do, and possibly, if scuttlebutt were to be believed, politicians, bankers, and ranch owners. Her girls were clean, well dressed, and forced to educate themselves at least an hour a day. Josiah had no idea if any of the rumors about Blanche and her house were true—he’d only seen her once himself and had never had reason to do business with her or venture inside her place of business.

  Dressed in solid black from head to toe, Blanche was properly attired with a bustle and all of the accoutrements of fine and expensive women’s wear; the only skin exposed for all to see, and the sun to touch, was that of her face. And it was shaded by an overly large brimmed hat and a parasol held at just the right angle to confront the bright light of the day at its most direct touch. Still, there was no way the bright afternoon sun could hide her striking eyes that looked red from grief but were redder in an odd, permanent way, focused fully ahead on the simple coffin, showing little emotion or recognition of the crowd and their stares at all. There was no sign on Blanche Dumont’s statue-like face of shedding one single tear.

  It was, after all, the woman’s skin, more so than her occupation, that drew the stares from the crowd and had stopped them all cold in their tracks. It wasn’t as if she were the only woman in Austin whose trade was whoring . . . but she was the only albino woman in Austin, at least that Josiah knew of.

  Blanche Dumont’s skin was white as snow and just as fragile as an errant flake falling from the sky in South Texas, sure to melt before it hit the ground. She was a freak of nature, an oddity of certain beauty if one got close enough to see it. And she was a bearer of strong will, good business sense, and the ability, as it was told, to keep a secret when it was required. In her business, that was most likely a daily occurrence, and a requirement of lasting concern.

>   She usually wore gold-rimmed glasses with soft green lenses to protect her sensitive eyes, but not today. The glasses were nowhere to be seen. It looked like she wanted to see the world clearly, and she didn’t care if the world saw her or not. Each step Blanche Dumont took forward was measured and direct. She almost looked like she was floating, a wraith with a ghostly face appearing in the midst of daylight, unconcerned about the realm of the living or any danger she might encounter.

  Josiah had no way to judge the woman’s state of emotion, having nothing to compare it to, but if he had to guess, he would say that Blanche Dumont was angry, maybe even enraged. Her hands were balled up into tight fists, and she never let her sight leave the coffin.

  Someone coughed, and the press of men, women, and children on the boardwalk brought a variety of smells to Josiah’s nose; most were unpleasant but no worse than riding behind a thousand longhorns. He wasn’t concerned about himself, but with Pearl and her comfort. He looked for a quick exit, but it was too late to flee, too late to backtrack and ease out the way they had come. Even more of a crowd had piled up behind them, effectively pinning them to the spot they presently stood in.

  It was only a matter of luck that Josiah could see into the street at all. He was a head taller than those in front of him, and he could crane his neck just right to catch a passing look at Blanche Dumont’s profile.

  At that moment, she flinched and turned her head, as if something she did not like, or feared, had caught her attention.

  It looked like she was staring directly at Josiah. They made eye contact, and at that moment, the keeper of soiled doves slowed her pace.

  Blanche Dumont’s chest heaved forward, and she arched her back straighter than it already it was, then suddenly broke away from the other mourners, three young women all dressed similarly to her, only without parasols and extra big black hats.

  Those women looked hot and sweaty, uncomfortable in the sun, and with the stares of what must have felt like the whole city gazing at them.

  Josiah took a deep breath, then relaxed when Blanche Dumont broke eye contact with him and veered back about ten feet. It was not him she was interested in, after all.

  He stood up on his tiptoes, just able to see a man he recognized standing at the edge of the street—and the object of Blanche’s destination.

  The man was Rory Farnsworth.

  Everyone standing next to the sheriff pushed away in a wave, leaving him to face the pale, enraged madam on his own.

  To his credit, the sheriff didn’t flinch. He stood firmly planted, waiting for whatever was coming.

  Surely, he and Blanche Dumont were not strangers, at least not as unconnected as she and Josiah were. The sheriff had to know of her activities and source of income as much as any other man in Austin.

  Blanche Dumont walked up to Rory Farnsworth without saying a word and stopped firmly within two feet of him. With no warning, or change of expression, she spit in his face.

  The sheriff had obviously not expected such a vile act, as the spit struck him with the speed of a bullet just below his right nostril.

  A look of horror crossed his face as he twisted back, angling away from Blanche, reaching for a handkerchief from his back pocket. He was not fast enough. The woman spit at him again, her face arched like a pure white snake’s, spewing venom just before it clamped down on its intended victim. Her tongue was every bit as red as her eyes.

  The second volley of anger and hate smacked Rory Farnsworth upside the head, just at his temple. He protested with a loud retort that was not quite a scream but a throaty, nonvocal protest of disgust and surprise.

  The crowd gasped and drew backward, farther away from the pair, leaving them exposed and visible to almost everyone.

  Mumbling and whispers washed up and down the boardwalk, like a wave, pushing the news of the woman’s action in every direction. “She spit him in the face, she spit him in the face . . .”

  A slight smile rippled across Blanche Dumont’s stark white face, and with that, she spun around and walked calmly back to the band of mourners, who had kept pace with the coffin.

  “You’ll regret that, Blanche Dumont! Mark my word, I’ll not soon forget this,” Rory Farnsworth shouted, wiping his face dry as quickly as he could.

  Blanche Dumont did not flinch, did not act as if she heard Rory Farnsworth’s threat—but everybody else did, loud and clear.

  Farnsworth’s face suddenly lost all of its color, almost matching the hue of Blanche Dumont’s skin. A look of embarrassment washed over the sheriff as he stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket.

  He cowered slightly, acted like he was going to say something else then decided better of it, and eased backward into the crowd, quickly disappearing from Josiah’s sight.

  “What was that about?” Pearl asked. “I couldn’t see a thing.”

  “I’m not sure,” Josiah answered, able to move forward now as the crowd broke apart, going back to the shops, saloons, and offices that they had been drawn out of. “It has nothing to do with us, just something with the sheriff.”

  “I never trusted that man,” Pearl said softly, under her breath.

  Josiah said nothing. He didn’t acknowledge Pearl’s pronouncement, but he was surprised by it.

  With her arm hooked in his, he headed toward the boardinghouse, looking quickly over his shoulder, catching a fleeting glimpse of Blanche Dumont and the funeral procession turning a corner and stepping solemnly toward the cemetery.

  Josiah found the whole encounter between Rory Farnsworth and Blanche Dumont a little confusing. Something had obviously happened between the two of them. Something extremely powerful for Blanche to show herself in poor light in front of the crowd, but the message was loud and clear: The sheriff was beneath her, and she was displeased with him in a bad way.

  He repeated to himself silently what he had said to Pearl: It has nothing to do with us.

  But something told him, considering his earlier confrontation with the sheriff, that that just might not be entirely true.

  CHAPTER 4

  The rules at Miss Amelia Angle’s Home for Girls were extremely strict. The fact that Josiah and Pearl were allowed to walk the streets, her arm in his arm, touching in any way, unchaperoned, was only due to Pearl’s advanced age and status as a widow. Given her family’s rapid fall from grace, her prospects of attracting a suitor of any worth had been judged by Miss Amelia Angle as poor to impossible.

  The reality that a man, any man, had showed an interest in courting Pearl was seen by most of the women and girls in the house as a near miracle, regardless of her beauty or how she carried herself.

  Josiah was aware of all of this only because Pearl had told him . . . in a soft kind of way, educating him in the ways and rules of courting and the power of a group of women’s whispers.

  The house was three storeys tall, built in the style of a lot of recently constructed homes: high peaks, gingerbread lattice tacked to the eaves, a red brick turret on the ground rising up past the second-floor parlor with its grand piano, and a long wraparound porch, the woodwork just as fancy as the lattice.

  A black wrought iron fence bordered the yard, which measured about a quarter of the block that it sat on. Other houses of like build up and down the street matched Miss Amelia’s, though two blocks away was a host of saloons and houses, much like Blanche Dumont’s, that catered to the cowboys wandering into town off the trail or getting ready to leave. The debauchery and rowdiness might as well have been a world away, though. There was no sign of it on the genteel street.

  The trees in the yard were well pruned, and urns filled with blooming spring flowers dotted the house’s long porch. Smaller urns lined the steps that led up to the double front doors.

  The air surrounding the house always smelled like it had been touched with a hint of toilet water, a fancy fragra
nce that was not quite identifiable to the uneducated, such as Josiah. The fragrance was not quite natural to him, forced by human intervention, unlike the fresh smell of country air.

  Josiah and Pearl stopped at the gate. A sign on it said: “NO SUITORS AFTER 5 P.M.”

  “I could entertain you in the parlor with some tea. We still have time,” Pearl said. Her voice was wistful, tinted with regret. She had slipped her arm out of Josiah’s about a half a block from Miss Amelia’s. There was no explanation needed. Josiah knew Pearl wanted to avoid judgment and disdain as often as possible. Her reaction to the treatment she’d received in the mercantile was proof enough of that for him.

  Josiah shook his head no. “I think it’s best if I go home.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Not really.”

  Josiah exhaled and looked away from Pearl’s disappointed face as quickly as possible. “I’m not sure I can be as proper as I need to be, as I should be.”

  A sly look flashed in Pearl’s summer sky blue eyes. “Are you suggesting we need to be improper?”

  Josiah’s face flushed then. “No, I’m just not . . .”

  “. . . comfortable?”

  He nodded.

  Pearl stepped forward, lowered her head, and whispered, “I’d rather be improper.”

  Josiah smiled and drew in a deep breath of relief. Her fragrance was more familiar now, distinguishable from the surrounding air, and it left him wanting her even more than he had the second before. “We’ve rushed into that need, maybe quicker than we should have.”

  Disappointment crossed Pearl’s face and settled there, not promising to leave any time soon. “I can’t wait much longer.”