Chapter One
Colorado, September 1889
The audience was filled with men who were used to talking at a roar and singing with a howl. But they were very still now, and as respectful as if they were in church, although they looked a great deal happier than if that had been the case. Still, they only shifted in their seats; the only sound they made was when they moved their legs and accidentally set their spurs to jingling, that—and a few occasional coughing spasms, common this time of year, and commoner still among men who chewed and smoked tobacco as much as they did. But even those unavoidable outbursts were hastily subdued. They didn’t want to miss a word.
Thompson’s Palace was filled to capacity. Eight-hundred-some-odd souls: miners, ranchers, hands, townsfolk, cowboys, drifters, as well as some of their ladies—and many more of that sex that had never thought of themselves as such in all their lives—leaned forward to hear everything going forth on stage in front of them. Because the troupe that was appearing tonight was straight—as the handbills proclaimed—from New York, London, and Chicago, and the soprano on stage was getting ready to sing. Even the dullest among them knew that, because not only had she stopped talking to the villain of the piece, but she’d turned to the audience clutching a rose to her ample breast, and the orchestra had begun to play something slow and sorrowful. Most everyone recognized the song the moment she began to recite its lengthy preamble. There was a collective sigh from the audience, and a wave of tilted-brimmed Stetsons dipped in contented head shaking. The song had nothing to do with the plot, of course, popular tunes never did. But “A Rose From My Mother’s Grave” was a great favorite.
Audiences were always drab, compared to what was set before them. But this audience, composed of roughly clad men who had never cleaned up much higher than tidy, and whose female companions were either dressed as plainly as themselves, or done up in strident primary colors that were swallowed and sunk to black in the darkened theater, looked as though they were another speciesaltogether from the brilliantly glittering actors before them. The gaslight footlights and spotlights glowed, and even when they flickered, they glanced off the set, striking up the golds and reds in the painted drop behind it, enhancing the set almost as much as they did the painted face of the soprano.
They sat in silence and listened, but as the song went on, the silence began to be broken by muffled sniffling, and then by occasional muted sobs. A man was never ashamed to be moved by sentiment, after all, and this was a song about dead mothers, broken promises, and yesterdays never to be reclaimed, and it struck a common chord in all of them. One tall, lean, hard-eyed wrangler near to the stage had begun to listen with a cynical smile that was nearly a sneer on his handsome face. But by the time the soprano really got her back into it, and was hitting the highest registers as she quaveringly described the way the roses were being flung upon the grave itself, it could be seen, even in the dim light, that his face was drowned with flowing tears.
An older man sitting next to the wrangler put out a hard-palmed, calloused hand to give the wide, shaking shoulders an awkward pat.
“Take ‘er easy, friend,” he murmured through his own tear-drenched mustache, “hit’s only a song she’s singin’, after all.”
“Oh, I know,” the cowboy finally managed to say, under cover of the wild applause that had broken out at the end of the song. “Butdamnedif it don’t get me every time,” he sighed, wiping his bright blue eyes with the back of his buckskin sleeve as he cleared his throat. “Still,” he said more cheerfully, “that ain’t nothing. You ought to see me during the last act ofHamlet. Never fails. I swear I bawl like a baby—funny, it’s not so much Ophelia’s death that moves me, or Gertrude’s, and not Claudius’s, of course, but when Laertes falls to the floor beside Hamlet— well, all I can say is that by the time Fortinbras comes in, I’m lost…gone…ah…” He paused, blinking at the old ranch hand’s wide-eyed stare.
“Shore,” the old man said, edging away to the farthest reaches of his own seat. “Uh-huh,” he said, before he made a great show of pointedly turning himself and all his attention away to the stage again.
The tall wrangler cleared his throat, and fell still. Then he pulled his hat lower over his eyes, shifted in his seat, and stared at the stage as well, but with suchintensity an observer might think he thought he was about to see the story of his own life presented there.
Well, so he’d forgot again. Gray Dylan thought with a mixture of annoyance and amusement at the situation and himself as he peered out from under his hat brim and pretended to pay attention to the soprano’s next offering. He noted, from the corner of his eye, how the old fellow next to him put up a shoulder and drew himself up in his seat like a maiden who’d been propositioned. But the song had genuinely moved him, and the old man’s sympathy had taken him off guard and unlocked his lip—damn, he thought ruefully, how could he have forgotten that out here, a man might weep at a sad song as easily as at a sad story, and more power to him, but a show of a little bit of learning went a long way to alienating his fellowman? It should have been bone bred in him, he thought in disgust. His pleasure in the night fled, and he decided to leave, too, just as soon as the soprano took her bows. But after she did, a comedian in an absurd bonnet came waltzing out on the stage, prancing to the rousing strains of “Where Did You Get That Hat?” Gray sank back into his seat and forgot himself, as did the rest of the audience. Because soon everyone was joining in the chorus—if they weren’t laughing too hard to do so. And that, he thought, when the comedian was done and he gave him his deserved applause, and the old fellow next to him forgot himself enough to exchange pleased grins with turn as he did, too, was the magic of the theater, and the reason he was here.
He remembered that other reason when the chorus girls, all in spangles and smiles, tights and scanty excuses for skirts, came out to dance and sing the finale.
But when the curtains closed on the last encore, the lights in the theater came up, and the audience, dazed by reality, blinked and remembered they had to look for a way out, he glanced down at himself. Then he remembered that he’d only had time to wash the dust off his face from the trail before he’d come here tonight. Even if he’d cleaned himself up as best as he could, he still wore leather and cotton, buckskin and denim, not wool and silk. There was no way he could pay a visit backstage the way he was dressed. And no point to it. Timing was everything in the theater, even for a member of its appreciative audience. Just as the best seats were taken by the time the curtains parted to show the performance, admittances to the best after-theater shows were quickly arranged soon after those curtains closed. He knew that by the time he could get back to his hotel, change, and comeback again, the best girls would be taken. He sighed. When the last bows were being taken, he’d thought he’d seen a wink in his direction sent from a particular pair of painted, sparkling eyes. But even so, he guessed he’d sleep alone tonight.
It wasn’t until he rose and stretched his long body that he realized, with surprise, that it ached with weariness. And so he supposed, as he waited to move on out of the narrow aisle, that he didn’t mind missing his favorite after-theater treat tonight, after all. It had been a long day, and he’d been on the move since sunup. He’d have been asleep long since if he hadn’t spied the posters for tonight’s variety show as he’d ridden into town at sundown. The idea of seeing a show, as ever, had enticed him. The performances, as always, had given him the illusion of energy. But he really was beyond tired now. And so, the wry smile he wore as he waited to leave was only partially due to the taste of sour grapes.
He nodded to a few familiar faces in the small lobby of the music hall, and stepped out of the crowd and into a cool evening. Once on the street, he paused to send a rueful glance back to the stage door that he saw being opened to admit a few well-dressed gents from out of the cluster of men that waited there. He shrugged and began to stroll back to his hotel. Only to stop abruptly when he heard his name called.
“Hey, mister,” the boy who’d chased after him said. “You Mr. Dylan? Well,” he said as Gray nodded slowly, his hand at his hip, because being suddenly called out in the street, even in a big town like this, even by a boy, was not always a welcome interruption in this part of the country, “then Miss Joy says how come you didn’t come back to say hello like she ‘spected you to? She seen you at the door, and then seen you leavin’, and she’s said as how I should run and catch up and tell you she’s awaitin’…By ginger!” he cried, catching the coin he was tossed. “This is mor’n I got for puttin’ up all them posters! Thanks, mister!”
Pandering oughtn’t to pay more than hard work, Gray thought bemusedly, a bit shamed at the lesson he’d just taught the boy. He was still thinking it when the guard at the stage door let him in at the mention of his name, while a few dozen other fellows were left clamoring for entry. The coin he slipped the man was worth more than the one he’d flipped to the boy, and though the smile it was greeted with was not as wide, the coin disappeared just as fast.
He touched his hand to his hat, as he paused at the opened door to the crowded roomful of shockingly half-dressed girls, his quick glance netting him a deliciouslybewildering display of pink flesh, sequins, and dark tights, along with the scents of competing perfumes and the glimpse of so many different smiles, shapes, and colors of hair and lips and…
“She’s next door. Cowboy,” the woman nearest to the door answered after she quickly looked him up, priced him, and turned him down, all with a regretful smile, and all in a moment, as a practiced member of the chorus had to learn to do.
“Well, but the last time we met, you shared a dressing room just like that one,” he explained when he turned and saw the small, voluptuous titian-haired woman standing in the doorway of her dressing room next door, watching him with a slight frown on her lovely painted face.
“Umm,” she said thoughtfully, trying to remember if that was so, and deciding it might well be, for though she’d never forgotten him, he’d a way of making her forget her circumstances every time they met. She relented, put up her cheek for him to kiss, and deciding to challenge him just for the fun of it, murmured sweetly, “Yes? Was that in Denver? Or Leadville?”
He touched her proffered, powdered cheek with his lips, and grinned down at her before he took her into his arms and took her lips at the same moment as answer, because he didn’t remember, or care to. Or need to. Because it was a long moment before she heard some of the girls from the adjoining room giggling and remembered where they were, even as she forgot all her anger at him. She stepped back from his embrace, and pulled him into her room, closing the door behind them. He took off his hat and held it in front of him, as though he were bashful and contrite, not just because the room was so small there was nowhere else he could put it.
“Your own room! You’re going places, Joy,” he said admiringly, letting his glance rove over the tiny room as though it were a palatial suite he was viewing. And then he stood and gazed down at her with such appreciation it was almost as sweet as applause to her.
She looked away from where he stood, his fair hair glowing in the lamplight, his lean face showing clear and clearly sensual appraisal. “But…your clothes, Gray,” she said slowly, to pay him back for almost making her forget that she knewhe could act as well as she could. “What has happened, my dear?” she asked. “Are you coming down in the world?”
It almost didn’t matter if he was when he looked at her that way. He grinned, causing two lines to appear in the tanned cheek to the left of his quirked smile, and one to the right of it.
“Aw, honey, it’s so sweet of you to care. But it’s only that I rode into town today with some cattle. There’s a man I want to see about a bull—improving the breed, dull stuff to you, I know—and by the time I’d got them settled, and myself as well, there was no time to change and still see the performance. But I didn’t want to miss you,” he said, staring down at her lips.
“But…I’m not mentioned on the bill. Gray,” she said softly, clutching her dressing gown closed at the neck, turning aside as though she were hurt and not just trying to show him her left profile, her best side.
“And I wasn’t with ‘Henderson’s Touring Revue’ when we last met, either,” she added with a little broken catch to her voice to cover the slight gasp she gave as she felt his large, warm hand come to rest lightly on her shoulder.
“Didn’t you think I’d ask?” he murmured, letting his lips brush the charming profile she showed him.
