THE IMPERIAL ENGINEER by Judith B. Glad Read Free Book Online Page A

tinder-dry." He swallowed.
    "One night there was a storm. Thunder and lightning. Wind. No rain. I don't know
how many fires the lightning started. It seemed like hundreds, all around us. We were
trapped. It was like Dante's vision of Hell. My father put me under an overturned sluice
box and caved a bank over it. I was all but buried."
    Looking down at his hands, he rubbed his thumbs across his fingertips. "I heard
the screams, felt the heat as the fire burned over where I lay. After a while I heard nothing
more. Then the rain began. When water began seeping under the sluice box, I started
digging."
    Again that rubbing of his fingertips, and now Lulu remembered she'd seen him do
it many times, whenever he was upset.
    "I dug until my fingers were bloody, but I got out before I drowned. I was the only
living thing in that canyon.
    "No. Not the only living thing. The vultures were there, too."
    She wanted to take him into her arms and soothe him, comfort him. But they were
standing on First Avenue in broad daylight. So she only touched his cheek briefly. "How
long before Soomey found you? How did you live?"
    "She thinks it must have been a couple of weeks later. I don't know. I ate berries
and what food I could scrounge from the burned tents, until the smell got too terrible to
live with. Then I went looking for other people. I had been lurking around the edges of the
next camp, five miles or so downstream, for a couple of days when she found me." His
chuckle sounded strained. "They only shot at me once."
    She could only shake her head in wonder. "You were what, eight?"
    "Silas thinks I was barely seven. As near as we can determine, from my poor
memories of the trip over and records from the gold camps in that area." Clearing his
throat, he smiled, a poor attempt, but an attempt nonetheless. "Look, that's enough old
history. May I buy you dinner? The Nevada Chop House puts on a great Sunday
spread."
    Oh, dear, I must put a stop to this. She opened the gold watch pinned to
her jacket. "I have a few minutes. Come inside, please."
    Once he was seated in her rocking chair, she perched on the arm of the settee. "I
wasn't going to bring this up again, but you're giving me no choice.
    "Just because we were...friends once, Tao Ni...Tony, doesn't mean you have to
watch over me now. I've been on my own for a long time, and can take care of myself quite
well. You embarrassed me on the Fourth, and you damaged my credit with people here in
town. Now many of them see me as a silly woman who needs a man to rescue her from the
consequences of her outrageous behavior."
    She held up a hand when he would have interrupted. "Let me say this, please.
When people look at me, I want them to see that when they give me the vote, I'm going to
use the privilege responsibly and intelligently. I represent every woman in America, Tony,
and it's important that I'm perceived as competent and courageous. When you carried me
off the platform, you were showing I was neither.
    "I've been jeered at before. I've been harassed, shouted down, physically removed
from a stage, plastered with rotten fruit, and struck by thrown bottles, stones, and even a
shoe. But never--"
    Her fists were clenched as she leaned forward and held his gaze. "Tony, I have never been humiliated the way I was that day. I told you not to worry, that it
wasn't important, but it was! You diminished my stature, made me seem weak and
feminine. I will not...cannot tolerate that. The goals I work toward, equal rights for all
Americans and universal suffrage, are too important to be undermined because you have
chivalrous instincts.
    "So go away, Tony. Stay away. Let me live my life the way I choose. Find
yourself a woman who wants to be taken care of.
    "I don't."
    For a moment she wavered in her resolve, when she saw the boy she'd loved
peering through the eyes of the man. Only for a moment. This was best for both of
them.
    It was. It really was.
    * * * *
    Lulu answered the door, wishing she'd said no