Drinking the whiskey had been a pretty good idea, she decided as she felt her nervousness fading, replaced by a calm numbness that felt almost natural. Liking the feel, if not the taste of the liquor itself, she set the first glass in front of a stunned Mel, and plucked up the second. This drink slid down nice and easy, hardly burning her throat at all as the liquor gathered in a warm pool in her stomach.
She slammed the empty glass on the table with a little more force than was necessary, as her fingers fumbled in her pocket. A silver coin was procured and duly tossed on the surprised barmaid’s tray.
“Next round’s on me, fellas,” she announced, her voice louder and huskier than normal. “Hope y’all enjoy it.”
With that, she spun on her heel to face the rest of the tavern. Squinting, she continued her examination of the amused, ragged faces, ignoring the guffaws of laughter that erupted around her. Pursing her lips, she noted that only a few of the men fit the description of the one she was looking for, and gut instinct told her that not a one of them was Drake Frazier.
Scowling in frustration, Hope headed for the bar. Few of the patrons had taken seats there, and she carefully placed herself far away from the ones who had. She settled on the only stool that looked seatworthy. The wooden seat was hard on the posterior and offered no back on which to recline. Still, she perched on its edge in the most graceful way a woman could possibly sit on a barstool. She kept her back to the portly barkeep who was eying her intently as he swabbed down the counter with a dirty scrap of rag.
Except for the ribald jokes tossed at the fellows whose gold now lined her pocket, the majority of attention was still focused on Hope. Good, she thought. It would make her chore that much easier.
With slow deliberation, she pulled the two gold nuggets from her pocket. The smile that played on her full, sensuous lips was enough to jolt more than one poor soul into sudden sobriety.
“I'm looking for a man by the name of Drake Frazier,” Hope said, pausing long enough for her gaze to scan the crowd, and her honey-sweet words to sink into the men’s alcohol-dulled senses. “I don’t suppose any a you, um, kind gentlemen can help me?”
“Depends on what you want ‘im for, sweet thing,” a voice called out from the back. Hope focused her eyes on a tall, lanky fellow who could not possibly be the man she was looking for.
“That, sir, is my business,” she replied with a coy little smile.
A soft murmur spread through the crowd as she gave them a chance to weigh her words. All the while her fingers played with the two pieces of gold, careful to hold them conspicuously, so all the patrons ha
d an ample view. One at a time, she dropped the nuggets into her lap, then picked them up again, rubbing them together before repeating the process. When no one burst forth with the information she sought, the crowd instead drifting back into conversation, she held one of the nuggets up to the lamplight. Her expression was a mask of feigned ignorance as she pretended to examine its quality. She wasn’t surprised to find the room had fallen silent again.
“What’d you say the guy’s name was?” another voice asked.
She glanced at the speaker, a young boy with a crop of sandy brown hair, and smiled. “Frazier,” she repeated. “Drake Frazier. Have you seen him?”
The boy shrugged, eying the gold that was nestled snugly in her lap. Or was it the lap he was eying, Hope wondered? “I might’ve.” He scratched a smooth, round chin that had yet to sprout its first whisker. “The name sounds a mite familiar, but I can’t rightly say where I heard it b’fore.”
“Hmmm,” she sighed thoughtfully, shifting her gaze from the boy to the men behind him. Absently, she noticed that the table where the first two men had sat—the ones who’d grudgingly parted with their gold—was now occupied by three new faces. There wasn’t a sight of the two idiots to be had in the smoke-filled saloon.
“Pity,” she said with a wistful smile. “And here I was thinkin’ I might part with one of these perty little things if’n it’d lead me to my Drake.”
Again she held one of the nuggets up to the light. This time, she knew with a certainty that she had captured the attention of every eye in the place, and that all were examining the chunk of gold right along with her.
Lowering the nugget back to her lap, she puckered her lips and asked the room in general, “Don’t suppose any of you know what these are worth...?”
The sheer gullibility of the question went undisputed, and not only because she was a woman. It was common knowledge the woman’s family had been in Thirsty Gulch little better than a week, and settled down in the Simpsons’ old cabin for even less. How could any of these prospectors guess the vast number of camps the Bennetts had traveled though before settling down in this one? For all they knew, Hope Bennett was a simpering female straight off a boat from San Francisco. Besides, only a few women knew much about staking claims, working a cradle, or assessing a nugget’s value. By most of these miners’ standards, she was ripe pickin’s.
She watched as one of the men disengaged himself from the crowd and stepped up to the bar. He was of medium height and build, with jet black hair that was painstakingly swept back from his face. His beady eyes shimmered with greed as they flickered between Hope and the gold in her palm.
She had a feeling she had just found the man who would lead her to Drake Frazier.
“Why don’t you let me take a look at those, sweet thing?” he asked, extending a hand that was too soft and smooth ever to have seen the long end of a shovel. “I make my living doing this.”
“You mean you’re a bona fide assayer?” she gasped, with false delight. Hope turned the full effect of her velvet brown gaze on him in what she prayed resembled admiration. She didn’t trust this man for a minute. He had the look and smell of a weasel of the worst sort. Still, she was careful to keep her suspicion from showing, in either her eyes or her expression, as she placed the piece of gold in his hand. “Well, sir?” she asked with forced eagerness, as he held it up to the light. “Is this my lucky day? Did I strike it rich?”
The man sent her an annoyed glance as he turned the nugget this way and that, rubbing his fingers over the coarse surface, even going so far as to take a sniff of it. One of the most difficult things Hope had ever done in her life was to hide her amusement at that maneuver. Sniffing gold! she thought. Her father and Old Joe would certainly get a week’s worth of chuckles when she told them about it later.
Sending a quick glance over the rest of the room, she was glad to see that most of the men had gone back to their business of drinking, gambling, and raising holy hell. She watched as a giggling, brassy redhead was pulled into a drunken miner’s lap. Even the piano player had struck up another chord. Relieved, she turned her gaze back to her companion.
Shaking his head, the man sent her a helpless look as he handed her back the gold. “Sorry, ma’am, but they ain’t worth much.”
“No?” she sighed, her features melting into sadness as she let her shoulders slump forward. Keeping up her thickened, down-home accent was not as difficult as she would have thought. “No, huh?” she pouted, slapping a palm on her lap. “Dern it all! And here I thought for sure this was gonna be my lucky day.” Another sigh, this one heavy and dejected. “Oh well, Drake’n I weren’t never meant to be t’gether, nohow. Paw told me so, but I didn’t b’lieve him.” She smiled sweetly at the weasel, adding a touch of sadness to her forlorn gaze. “Guess I shoulda listened, huh?”
Taking the gold, she slipped it back in her pocket and began to slide off the barstool. As she suspected, the weasel had no intention of letting her go so easily.
“Now, hold your horses there, sweet thing,” the man said smoothly as he put a restraining hand on her arm. “I didn’t say the gold was totally worthless.”