Gambler's Magic Read online

  Joy had never read a novel. Her mother said novels were works of the devil, and Joy, who had never considered doubting her forceful mother, felt compelled to agree. Having nothing upon which to form an opinion by herself, she wondered about her mother’s judgment now—and then reminded herself how easy it was to stray from the straight-and-narrow path.

  The devil can make the most evil of things appear harmless, and don’t you ever forget it, Joy Hardesty.

  Yes, Mother.

  She set the book down, determined to ignore it. Her mother would have burned it, and Joy supposed she should do likewise. Yet she couldn’t quite make herself destroy someone else’s property. Which only went to demonstrate another point of moral frailty in her character.

  The watch was quite lovely and looked old. Its silver case was engraved with twining rose vines, and the initials EJP had been etched on the back. Joy smiled as she picked it up, intending to wind it. She could do this one small thing for Mr. Perry, if she could do nothing else. As she touched the stem, she was surprised to hear a tiny click, and the back of the watch opened up. She must have pressed a hidden catch.

  “Oh!” A curl of fine brown hair fell out of the watch case and landed in her lap.

  In a fright borne of long experience, she glanced at Mr. Perry, hoping he hadn’t seen what, to Joy, amounted to a terrible indiscretion if not an outright sin on her part. Then she sighed, annoyed with herself. How silly she was, to be sure. The poor man was unconscious. There was no way he’d even know she’d opened his watch case, much less be able to chide her for doing it.

  She shook her head, dismayed that her first reaction to an accident was fear for her own hide. She should have had a care for Mr. Perry’s property before ever thinking about her own culpability. Well, she’d always been incompetent; her every action merely emphasized the truth.

  Still, she wondered about that lock of hair as she replaced it in the watch case. Her heart was strangely touched to think that this man, this hardened reprobate, should carry such a token of affection around with him. Who had given him the single tress? His mother? A sister or a sweetheart?

  It was difficult for Joy to imagine a man like Elijah Perry as a member of a family, yet he must have been once. Was the person who’d given him that lock of hair still living? Did she await word from him? Was she dead? Was this a souvenir of a remembered and well-loved person from Mr. Perry’s innocent past? If, of course, he’d ever been innocent. Joy had always assumed people were innocent until ruined, but she allowed to herself that she was no judge, the circles in which she’d traveled until now having been fairly circumscribed.

  She shook her head, feeling unaccountably tender, finished winding Mr. Perry’s watch, and set it back on the table. Her gaze fell on the folded paper as she did so.

  “I wonder if this is something you intended to post,” she murmured as she picked it up and turned it over.

  “Miss Virginia Gladstone. In Baltimore, Maryland.” She glanced from the addressed letter to Elijah Perry, frowning. “It looks to me as though you had intended to send this to Miss Gladstone. You’ve even affixed one of those new-fangled postage stamps to it.”

  Oh, dear, this presented yet another problem. Joy hated having to make decisions on her own. She wasn’t used to it. She’d never had to make so many decisions all by herself in her life. Tapping her cheek with the letter, she pondered her options. It did not occur to her to read the letter’s contents.

  “I wonder if Miss Virginia Gladstone is the one who gave you that lock of hair.”

  The notion appealed to Joy, although she didn’t know why it should. “Perhaps she’s waiting for you to return to her in Maryland. Maybe she’s your sweetheart.” She could imagine Mr. Perry having a sweetheart because, although he wasn’t exactly young, he was very attractive. He didn’t look like the romantical sort, but that only intensified the incongruity of his having a sweetheart and, therefore, the appeal of the notion.

  “If she is a sweetheart, or a family member, I expect she’d like to know you’ve suffered a serious injury.” Of course, that meant Joy would have to do the telling, since Mr. Perry was in no condition to do so.

  “Oh, dear. Such a letter will require great diplomacy in the writing.” She couldn’t imagine a sister or sweetheart taking comfort from knowing Mr. Perry had been shot all to goodness.

  Her mother would have boldly but kindly told Miss Virginia Gladstone in Baltimore, Maryland, that Mr. Perry’s sinful life had finally caught up with him and that he’d been shot while gambling, which is no more than he deserved, although the Lord might deem it advisable to spare him. Even though she knew her mother was right—her mother was always right—Joy couldn’t make herself be quite that brutally honest.

  No. What she would do was enclose Mr. Perry’s letter to Miss Gladstone in with a letter of her own, briefly stating that Mr. Perry had met with an accident, that he was currently being nursed by Joy in Rio Hondo, New Mexico Territory, and that Joy would keep Miss Gladstone informed of his progress. Yes. That should do it without worrying Miss Gladstone too much.

  After another comprehensive check of her patient’s condition, Joy decided there was nothing more she could do for him at the moment. She sailed out of the room and into Mr. McMurdo’s parlor, settled herself at his desk, and set about writing a letter to a stranger in Baltimore, Maryland, about another stranger in Mr. McMurdo’s back room.

  Chapter Four

  Elijah wondered if he’d gone to hell. His body burned with what seemed like unholy fire, and every joint, muscle, and tendon hurt, from his feet to his head. If this wasn’t hell, Elijah hoped he’d die soon and get it over with. If it was hell, Elijah was sorry he hadn’t believed in the devil sooner and spared himself this torment.

  “Please don’t wiggle, Mr. Perry. I know this hurts, but it can’t be helped.”

  That voice didn’t sound like a demon’s. It didn’t sound any too friendly, but . . .

  “Aaaagh! Dammit, that hurts!”

  “If you please, Mr. Perry, do try not to swear. I’m attempting to help you.”

  Oh, yeah. He remembered now. Cricking one eye open, Elijah discerned Miss Joy Hardesty, incongruously named would-be missionary and employee of Mr. Alexander McMurdo, proprietor of the wagon yard and mercantile establishment in which Elijah’d been shot.

  She did something else to his chest that sent a shock of pain through him, and he groaned, squeezed his eyes tightly together, and tried not to cry. Since he thought it would be prudent not to rile her, he bit down on his tongue and didn’t swear out loud again. Damn, that hurt.

  At least he was alive. Elijah tested the knowledge and discovered it didn’t thrill him. Frowning, he tried to recall why that should be. Ah, yes. He remembered that now, too. He was bored to flinders with life and everything in it. For good reason.

  “Damn!” Making a tremendous effort, he pried his eyes open again and looked up at Joy, who frowned down at him in disapproval. No surprise there. “Sorry, ma’am. That hurts.”

  “I’m sure it does.”

  How in the name of mercy did she do that? he wondered. Talk without moving her lips. It sure made her look mean. He already knew she didn’t like him and, he surmised, she didn’t want to be helping him. But, dammit, he was a wounded man and in pain. It occurred to him to wonder why she was helping him, but he didn’t dwell on the incongruity of her actions because his brain wasn’t working right.

  Instead of reflecting upon imponderables, he closed his eyes against the grim picture of Joy working him over and tried to remember what had happened. There had been a card game—which didn’t seem right, somehow.

  Oh, that’s right. They’d set it up in McMurdo’s mercantile; that’s why it didn’t seem right. Why had they done that? Elijah couldn’t drum up an answer, although something made him think Mac had fostered the game. That didn’t seem right, either, so he stopped trying to muddle it out. There would be time for such discoveries later.

  He moved on.
/>   All right, they’d been playing poker. Somebody had cheated, somebody else had objected, and he—fool that he was—had tried to intervene before anyone got hurt. It went without saying that, for his efforts, he’d been the one who got hurt. Hell, when would he learn to mind his own business?

  He cleared his throat. “How long have I been out, ma’am?”

  “This is the third day since the—accident.”

  Diplomatic little prune, wasn’t she? He tried to look around the room, but found his body didn’t want to move. The least little twitch sent shafts of pain spearing him in every direction.

  “Stop moving! Jerusalem, how do you expect me to change this bandage if you won’t lie still, Mr. Perry?”

  He moaned and shut his eyes again, too weak to answer. Her voice pierced him, and most unpleasantly. He managed to mumble, “Sorry.”

  Whatever she was doing to his chest was about to kill him. He wondered if the bullet had broken a rib, but was too weak to ask.

  God, he was thirsty. He didn’t mention it, because he didn’t want her to shriek at him again. Damn, his head hurt. Everything hurt. Hoping he might get softer treatment from another source, after he’d rested up from his earlier attempt to move, he opened his eyes once more and croaked, “Where’s Mac?”

  Was it his imagination, or did her lips prune up even more than they’d already been pruned? His vision wasn’t the best, and he couldn’t be sure. She didn’t sound happy, however, when she said, “He had to go away for awhile. He left me in charge of you.”

  Glory. Mac must loathe him for causing trouble in his mercantile if he’d left him in the care of Miss Joy, Hates Everybody, Hardesty, the pickled spinster. He sighed heavily and decided there was no justice in life. Or maybe there was, and this was it. What a discouraging thought.

  Very carefully, using the politest words he could think of under the circumstances, when he could hardly think at all, he said, “May I please have a drink of water, ma’am?”

  Speaking such a long sentence exhausted him, and he would have collapsed if he hadn’t already been collapsed. His eyes closed, his head swam, and he subsided into a semiconscious wash of misery. His body felt like one enormous bleeding wound.

  How long he hovered between wakefulness and sleep, he didn’t know. He had a feeling Joy had quit torturing him, although his chest still hurt like the devil. He wondered if she enjoyed hurting people and decided she probably did. She looked like the kind who would. After what seemed like hours, he felt a small hand touch his head. He cranked his eyelids up over eyes that felt like somebody’d thrown grit in them.

  “Here, Mr. Perry. I brought you some nice, fresh, cold water. Perhaps this will make you feel more the thing.”

  The gentleness of her voice surprised him. He managed to slur a whispery, “Thanks.”

  She lifted his head—an activity that sent unspeakable anguish through his poor wounded body—and he drank deeply of the water. She was right. It was fresh and cold and slid down his throat like heavenly nectar. He drank the contents of the tin cup greedily, dripping water onto his chin. He was too weak to wipe it away and felt foolish and unmanly when Joy gently mopped him up. Almost too exhausted to speak after having done so energetic a thing as drink water, he whispered, “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She bustled off, and Elijah sank into sleep. He wasn’t sure how long she’d been gone when he sensed her at his side again. When he lifted an eyelid, he guessed she’d only been gone a minute or two, because she looked exactly the same.

  “I know you’re in great pain, Mr. Perry.”

  That was an understatement if he’d ever heard one. He didn’t even try to indicate his agreement, but only blinked up at her. She reminded him of a drill sergeant, the way she stood so rigid and straight. Only the drill sergeants Elijah’d known didn’t fold their hands in front of them that way. Nuns did, if he recalled correctly. The ones he’d known were mean and seemed to enjoy torturing people, too. Maybe she was a nun in disguise.

  “Mr. McMurdo left some laudanum, but I didn’t want to administer it to you without asking if you’d like to take it first. The teachers at the nursing school in Boston said that some people react poorly to laudanum. I’m sure it would ease your pain, if you can tolerate it. Would you like me to mix you some laudanum and water?”

  Laudanum. Thank God. “Yes, please,” he whispered. Mary Ellen Loveless, the whore dearer to Elijah’s heart than any other female of his present acquaintance, had been addicted to laudanum before Elijah’d helped her dry out. Elijah wasn’t about to scorn the drug on Mary Ellen’s account. If it would ease his pain, he’d take it.

  “All right. I’ll stir some up for you.”

  He heard her counting drops, and could picture her intense concentration in his mind’s eye. Her forehead would be wrinkled, her lips pinched, and her visage grim.

  Not a cheerful specimen of womanhood, Joy Hardesty, whatever her name. He wondered if there was any joy in her at all, and decided there most likely wasn’t. His conclusion gave rise to the speculation as to whether she’d been a morose, fretful baby, or if she’d had the ebullience of childhood whipped out of her. The thought occurred to him that perhaps her parents had meant her name as a cynical irony. He realized he was even weaker than he’d thought when the notion made him sad.

  On the other hand, maybe she was one of those people who liked to see other people suffer. She sure stirred that concoction of hers with vigor. The spoon clanking against the tin cup as she whisked the mixture sounded like thunder to his tender ears.

  “All right, Mr. Perry. I’m sure you’ll find this an uncomfortable proposition, but I shall have to prop your head up again. I beg your pardon if I hurt you. I don’t mean to do so.”

  Maybe she wasn’t cold-blooded after all. At least her heart seemed to be in the right place in this instance. He managed another weak, “Thanks,” before the words were punched out of him by the agony of her lifting his head from the pillow. Sweet Lord, have mercy, if he survived this ordeal, Elijah swore he’d never complain again. He knew he was lying even as the vow crossed his mind.

  He got the medicine down, though. He only hoped it would stay down. The thought of being sick to his stomach on top of everything else held no appeal at all. Perspiration dripped from his body when the ordeal ended, and he sank back onto his pillow with relief. His eyes popped open when he felt a cool, damp cloth pressing against his head.

  “I’m only bathing your forehead, Mr. Perry.”

  Joy’s voice sounded strained. Elijah wondered if she hated hurting him as much as he hated being hurt. He didn’t have strength enough to ask. He was feeling more weary than he could ever remember feeling in his life. One thing troubled him so much, however, that he felt compelled to speak again.

  “Did anyone else get hurt when the shooting started, ma’am?”

  She transferred her gaze from her cloth to his face. Elijah realized she had truly fine eyes—big and brown and soft. They didn’t look like the eyes of a heartless woman; rather, they seemed to hold a world of doubt and trouble—unless it was his fevered imagination making him think so.

  “No, Mr. Perry. You were the only one. I fear Mr. Davis and Mr. Cooper both drew their firearms, and you were hit by bullets from both of their guns.”

  Elijah sighed. That figured. If it wasn’t just like him to try to bust up a gunfight and take bullets from both participants that had been meant for each other, he didn’t know what was.

  “Evidently there’s no such thing as a lawman in this place, either, so I fear both men got off Scot free.”

  That didn’t bother him; he was used to it. One other thing did, however.

  “How many times?” He was pretty sure he’d been shot more than once, but he couldn’t remember. And, since every square inch of him hurt, he couldn’t tell from the feel of things.

  “How many times were you shot?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mr. McMurdo had to draw two bullets out
of you. One from your leg and one from your upper arm. Another creased your skull. You were lucky in that the one that hit your chest didn’t break any ribs, and only scored a rather deep rut in your side between two of them.”

  Lucky, was he? Elijah was in no condition to argue, no matter how much he disagreed. Hell, from the pain in his chest, he knew that if he’d turned just a little bit to the side, the bullet might have penetrated his heart and put him out of his misery forever. His luck remained unrelenting, though, and he still lived. There was obviously no easy way out of this life; at least not for Elijah Perry.

  He felt just as empty as ever inside, and very gloomy, when he drifted off to sleep.

  # # #

  Joy was full of doubts when she handed her letter addressed to Miss Virginia Gladstone in Baltimore, Maryland, to the buckskin-clad freight-wagon driver. She’d never succumbed to an impulse in her life before now, and the fact that she’d done so this time frightened her.

  What if Elijah Perry hadn’t already posted his letter because he hadn’t wanted to? What if Miss Virginia Gladstone hated him and never wanted to hear from him again. What if—

  “Oh, dear.”

  She pressed a hand to her forehead as she watched the man slip her letter into his canvas mail sack. He tugged on the brim of his hat and cocked an eyebrow in inquiry.

  “Anything else you want posted, ma’am?”

  At least he was polite. Joy managed a small smile. “No, thank you.”

  She had acquaintances in Boston and Auburn, of course, but she didn’t have the heart to write to them. The idea of explaining this latest of her failures to the folks back home made her stomach cramp. They’d learn soon enough, as soon as she managed to earn her passage back east—or as soon as correspondence from Mr. Hezekiah P. Thrash reached them. The notion daunted her, and she decided not to think about it. She had enough to do, what with nursing Elijah Perry and running Mr. McMurdo’s mercantile establishment. Confessions and self-recriminations could wait.