Granny pounded the air with her left fist while her right hand stroked Eliza’s bruised face. “That horrible creature. You’ll recuperate here at the ranch. You’ll stay inside until this heals. A lady can’t be seen this way. Although I suppose I could cut some of the veiling from my weeds for your bonnet. It could swag over your cheek and hide…”
“What kind of man punches a girl?” Job asked in horror.
“Likely he didn’t know what she was,” Jethro replied. “Dressed in a man’s duds like she is. She ain’t that small, neither.”
He meant no disrespect, Eliza knew. She was tall for a female and her late father, middle-size, making them about the same height. The clothes she wore now were his. And Granny nagged again.
“Why are you dressed like that?”
“I wanted an evening ride.”
“I thought you…” Granny’s lips pursed, prim. “I thought you excused yourself from the table to play the parlor piano.”
“I never said it. You assumed. Besides, I knew you’d disapprove.”
“You’re completely right, girl. In the dark? In the cold? And without proper riding gear and side saddle.”
“The moon will rise soon.” Atop her pain, Eliza groaned anew. It was the same old argument. Granny had raised her and wanted better for her only heir. Fancy schools in New England had tried to make Eliza into a lady, with Granny hoping and praying for marriage into a rich and proper Eastern family. That Eliza had returned to her beloved Texas with a teaching certificate and no ring on her finger had been nothing less than a declaration of war.
At least the school at Pleasure Stakes was some fifty miles away, making visits possible but infrequent. There Eliza had freedom, a horse of her own. A split skirt, no side saddle. There she could ride astride with folks too busy with their own kids and livestock to care. And she earned enough money to be beholden to no one.
Still, Stony Brook was home, her father’s legacy, and she’d die for it. Getting their horses back was a priority.
“I ride well as any man, Granny,” she said in the tone she used to discipline misbehaving pupils. “I know you don’t approve of me, but it’s an argument we will never resolve. And I know I’ll feel just fine in the morning. I’m going to join the hunt for the monster who stole our horses.”
Jethro nodded eagerly. “I know we can find some good horseflesh at the livery in Frying Pan and make chase.”
“Whatever are you talking about, Eliza?” As if her knees had worn out, Granny sank suddenly into a wing chair nearby. “You won’t join any manhunt. You’ll recline here at home and heal those wounds. Hunting down horse thieves is a job for the Rangers. Not a girl. I forbid it.”
Eliza came to quick life at the challenge. Although pain ripped her chest, she sat tall. “I’m no girl, Granny. I’m a woman grown. It’s time you accepted it. And as such, I’ll be getting to Frying Pan in the morning. With Jethro and the rest. You and I don’t see eye to eye on most things, but I want the best for Stony Brook, same as you. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
She tightened her fists as she remembered one last detail. “Why, I heard his voice. He cussed at me. I’ll remember it until Doomsday. I’ll spot him soon as he opens his mouth.”
Chapter Two
“I have lost my touch,” Canyon moaned into his flask. Although it wasn’t quite suppertime, he had it almost empty already. The whiskey and campfire tried to warm his bones. December was colder than last time around, making his wrist throb with pain these three weeks since he’d tangled with the pitchfork. Hell, light snow had fallen this morning. Hadn’t lasted but an hour, but none of that was the worst of his mess. His instincts were all shot to hell, a very bad circumstance for a horse thief.
“There was somebody in the shadows, Gitts. At Stony Brook. I should have known. I should have felt something.”
“Bound to happen, Canyon. Sooner or later. But you leveled him,” Gitts encouraged with a burp. “You did good.”
Crazy. Just then the flowery scent from the barn flashed in his nose again even over the burning brush and his unbathed comrade.
But that wasn’t all. He couldn’t get the old lady out of his head, not for one single minute. Such remorse had never distressed him before. Not ever. He’d downright taken from her something he shouldn’t, and it wracked him deep down. Had never mattered before, not one single time, but he couldn’t keep his own gram-maw out of his head.
Promise me you’ll live a righteous life, Jacky
.
Night after night, trying to sleep, he heard the words. Heard them in the hoof beats of his horse.
Sonofabitch. Riled, he tossed a rock a hundred feet or more into the twilight. Hell, he’d never been able to imagine himself pulling wheat from hardscrabble soil or wrangling longhorns or worse, tying himself down with a wife and young’uns. All things that defined a righteous life in his gram-maw’s world. But her words in his head wouldn’t shut up.
Promise me you’ll learn to read and write. I regret you giving up all your school time tending me after I took sick. Promise me you’ll get it done
.
Hell, he wasn’t one to back down in the face of a challenge. While the sagebrush burned in its circle of stones and Gitts skinned a jackrabbit, Canyon reckoned he might ease his mind and cleanse his soul by keeping the hardest part of her promise. Seems a man who could bankrupt the great Stony Brook ranch could at least learn to read and write at the ripe old age of twenty-five.
“Ahab says we’re off to New Mexico at sunup. Wasn’t hard at all unloading those Stony ponies.” Gitts guffawed at his little rhyme and elbowed his bulging pocket. “Should be there in time for Christmas. Maybe it’s warmer there.”
An idea slipped into Canyon’s head and wouldn’t get out. Christmas. Ahab Perkins had never minded a man taking time now and again for family or a sweetheart back home. It was the perfect ruse.
He stood right up, swaying a bit from the whiskey. If he rode hard, he could get to Pleasure Stakes before night came for good. A town with a name like that should have plenty of hot baths and good meals, a plentiful saloon, and well, bountiful whores to tend his need until he started the serious matter of reading and writing.
In the battered metal of his flask, he caught a hazy reflection and winked. He knew right well his whiskey-colored eyes could bring a woman to her knees, and more female fingers than he could count had wound themselves in his ripe-wheat hair to draw his face close during the act of love.
Truth to tell, his take from the Stony Brook robbery had filled his pockets with plenty of cash to satisfy all his appetites for days to come. With surely enough left over to hire some sort of tutor. He nodded at his brilliant plans. Too many nights lately he’d shivered in drafty line shacks, stuffed between two feedbags for warmth and praying for summertime.
All the while seeing the face of the old lady from the Stony mingling with memories of his gram-maw. He was downright weary of tossing and turning to bad dreams each night. He cussed out loud.
“Hell.”
Gitts looked at him in surprise, and he shrugged so as not to have to talk. Well, after finding his pleasures at the Stakes, he’d hire a tutor to get Gram-maw’s promise done. He reckoned he owed her that much. Learning might take a bit of time, though. When he was a kid, school days had never seemed to end. Losing his job wasn’t a worry. Ahab would hold his place; Canyon had proven his worth.
“I think I’ll take off for a piece. Got kin in the Panhandle,” he said the lie slow but reckoned Gitts would believe him even if he claimed he was off to sundance with the Sioux.
“Kin?” Gitts’ eyes took on a faraway look. “Kinfolk? Why, that’s a nice thought. Good for you.” He turned to the meat crisping over the fire. “Me, I had a mama once. She named me ‘Royal.’ Said my daddy treated her like a queen for giving him a son.”
“You from Texas?”
Rolly shrugged. “Never had a home. Daddy left us, and Mama died. Wrangled for a while in Desolation. Had a woman once or twice. But the wanderlust caught me. Found Ahab and ya’ll in Tulsa. Otherwise, I got nobody. Nobody at all.”
Grief grabbed Canyon’s shoulders. Neither did he, unless he counted those three mounds in Fish Creek, Missouri, outside the Baptist church. The gram-maw he’d loved and the ma and pa he’d never gotten to know. He ground his teeth in a new shame. No headstones yet after all these years, and him with money in his pocket.
“Distant kin,” he said, shutting off yesterday and looking ahead. “You let Ahab know, won’t you? I’ll catch up with ya’ll down the road.”
That would be easy. The Perkins gang had eluded the law since Missouri, but Canyon could find them in his sleep. Smell ’em, too.
“Sure enough,” Gitts said, holding out a piece of meat. “Here’s some good roasted jackbunny to get you on your way.”
Chewing and swallowing like it was his last meal, Canyon tossed the bone into nearby mesquite. He left a shred of meat on it, reckoning it a good meal for a coyote since Ahab didn’t allow dogs. Something Canyon had wanted since his earliest days. Then he took a length of flannel and wrapped it snug around his neck, pulled on his gloves and saluted his pal.
“
Vaya con Dios
, Canyon,” Gitts said.
Canyon couldn’t help a snort as he mounted Nitro. “So long, Gitts. I doubt the good Lord wants to go anywhere with me.”
****
The moon rose in full bloom as the lights from Pleasure Stakes came into view. Nitro blew out white puffs in the cold, and Canyon’s need for a warm bed with a woman in it tightened between his legs.
“You’ll get some fine rest in a warm stall tonight.” Canyon patted the sabino’s neck, surprised at the low rumble in his voice. Hell, he must have picked up a catarrh from the chill air during the ride. “Just half-mile more to a real livery stable.” More and more he liked the unusual tone. “Too bad, pal, I got you gelded. You might like some female companionship same as me.”
Dusk was as dark as it could get when he pulled into the town. He could see just fine in the light from lanterns hung here and there on lamp posts, and he couldn’t help a burst of hoarse laughter. Pleasure Stakes was a fancy hopeful name for a left-over hide town with growing pains and a railroad getting built around the edges. Construction workers apparently lived in a village of tents and shanties on the outskirts where blazing campfires warmed up the place. Lamps on doorposts and through windows displayed a dozen false front shops on both sides of the dusty street, and wooden houses of the regular residents in alleys behind.
As he searched for a glitterhouse, his gaze caught the porch of Miss Letha May’s Boardinghouse and a beautiful woman walking up to it. His breath deepened, and he slowed Nitro to get a better view. A gust of wind blew down the hood of a deep blue burnoose, and her face, backlit by a window, shone like a Madonna. But a woman was more than her face. He damned the cloak that hid from his view what he hoped lingered under it: a slender white neck and bosoms full enough to satisfy a man. Tight waist and bountiful hips. But hell, that face made up for any defect.
Then shame flooded and his breath caught.
This woman was no whore. She was entering a boardinghouse, not a glitterhouse. A boardinghouse was a place for unmarried gals. Respectable unmarried gals. Those with spouses kept houses. And those unrespectable, well, they were the kind whose company he normally kept. He’d never had a civilized spinster before. Although he’d never had trouble getting his manly needs met whenever he passed through a town, he was here to get educated. He could try and act decent for once. Meet up with this spinster, give her a bow and kiss her hand. Court her.
Woo her into his bed with charm not money. His crotch twitched just thinking about such a challenge. More of a challenge than heisting a herd of fancy horses. And Jack Ransom, who was leaving Canyon behind, was ever one to accept any challenge dropped in his path.
Deciding to let a room at Miss Letha’s, he scoped each side of the main street for what he needed. A bathhouse. A change of clothes at the mercantile. Raucous shouts and cusses rang through the town, the upshot of railroad men free to spend their salaries after another day’s toil from dawn to dark. As a result, the lights in the trading post still glimmered in hopes of late-coming customers.
Hell, woman or not, Nitro came first. Always. His horse was comrade as well as transport. It would never be said Canyon Jack Ransom didn’t tend his horse proper. He headed toward Chavez Livery to settle his horse as cozy as he planned to be on a long winter’s night.
****
Eager for a hot supper and a Pennsylvania fireplace, Eliza Willows headed up the boardinghouse steps after locking up the schoolhouse tight. Satisfaction rained on her. She’d stayed late to finish grading her pupils’ Christmas poems. Seems she had taught them something, after all. The pageant tomorrow night would feature a stellar rhyme from every single one of the seventeen children. Little Grace Carter’s would command the starring role.
As Eliza reached for the door knob, guilt assailed her. Firewalker. For yet another day, she hadn’t gotten her gelding exercised. Firewalker was the last thing Pa left behind to remind her of him, and she loved the paint with her whole heart. Suddenly the simple act of turning a latch almost brought her to her knees. That dagnabbed broken rib. After a stagecoach ride from Frying Pan that had been hell on wheels, she reckoned she’d healed up some since Thanksgiving.
Tonight though, the cold night air attacked her person nearly as bad as that evil outlaw. More than her aches and pains, anger flared at the outrage of decent folk getting their horses pilfered. Right under their noses.
Worst of all, the Rangers had found not one single trace of Granny’s prized Morgans. By the time silly Tubby and his crew had hobbled into Frying Pan, the trail had already gone cold. Since then, Eliza’s gut had ached with revenge, every hour of every day. She pressed her hands to her burning belly, and gritted her teeth to calm down.
Least she could do before supper was get to Firewalker’s side at the livery and grant him a nuzzle and an apple. God-willing, she’d manage a ride tomorrow, come hell or high water. Even if it meant starting the pageant an hour later and tightening a corset around her ribs.