Explaining Herself (20 page)

Victoria blinked up at him, stunned by his insight. Of course! Why else would well-behaved Kitty do something so strict
l
y forbidden as to climb into the stallion's corral, unless she thought she had no choice?

She felt embarrassed that she hadn't figured it out herself. "She wanted to save it."

"And in appreciation, it tried to kill her."

Critters that get trapped turn mean.
His description of the stallion had given her chills. Now
—she didn't know why—she got chills again.
They hurt so bad inside that they don't know anything else but to hurt other critters.

"And you saved her," she reminded him.

"Pembroke's the one who killed it."

But she wouldn't let him duck that. "And you're the one who heard it first. You're the one who shot it the fastest
—you kept it from hurting her more. You saved her."

When Ross closed his eyes, as if fighting something,
it looked strangely as though he were praying. His words came out low and tight. "I am fast for a reason."

That made her look at his gun, solid against his dark thigh
—and suddenly it wasn't there anymore.

Vic blinked,
startled
. In one smooth movement of his hand and his hips, Ross had skimmed the weapon from its holster and pointed it toward a tree behind the house. In another flex of his arm and flick of his wrist, he dropped it neatly back into the holster, as if he'd never moved.

"Golly," she breathed.

"I am fast," he repeated bitterly, "for a reason."

"I haven't seen anything that fast since Mr. Cody came to lunch. But Papa told him to put his piece away." Buffalo Bill had done so, too. Her parents felt strongly about using weapons as tools, not entertainment.

Ross scowled at her reaction. "That wasn't fast." He lifted his foot onto a nearby stump, long enough to tie strings from his holster around the inside of his thigh. Then he stood again. "This is faster."

This time he didn't move his hips. She didn't even see the gun go from holster to hand
—one moment he was standing still, the next moment he was aiming at the woodshed.

Then he rolled it back into its holster.

Then
—like magic—it was back in his hand.

"This part," he told her evenly, spinning the pistol backward, then forward over his hand, then finally into the holster, "is just show. Because I've had time to practice."

"Like Buffalo Bill," she told him.

"Like a man who is too familiar with guns," he corrected her. "This is why I cannot court you."

What? "Because you know guns?"

"Because nice men don't generally know guns this well." As if to prove his point, he drew the revolver
again, popped its cylinder, and dropped the bullets into his palm, one-two-three-four-five. They clinked together like hard candy. "Nice men don't have the leisure to learn this."

Then he pocketed the bullets and really started to play
—fast draws, backward draws, tossing and twirling the revolver from hand to hand. Every now and then he stopped and pointed the weapon toward something—a tree, a stump, a boulder. Never at her. Never once at a living thing.

He
was
a good man. Maybe he just didn't realize it. "Lawmen know guns," she reminded him.

His cheek went tight, his ghost smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. "A badge doesn't make a man good."

"And a gun doesn't make a man bad."

He shook his head, fed the bullets back into the revolver, and returned it to its holster. Then he reached under his thigh and undid the strings. He looked sulky, as if his show hadn't accomplished what he'd meant it to.

Victoria decided that a little courage was in order. "So you're some kind of gunslinger," she accepted, low. "That's probably a good thing for a range detective. And maybe ... maybe it's a good thing that you don't want to court me, too. But I meant what I said. You've become a good friend, to my family and to me. So if something's wrong, if you've got some kind of trouble, I want to help."

'You don't just want to help," he accused, bitter and resigned at the same time. "You want to understand."

And he was right. So she nodded.

Ross closed his eyes, his lashes sooty on his high cheeks, and again he looked as if he were praying. He looked like he was praying hard. And when he opened his eyes, he looked as if God hadn't answered.

He nodded as if a decision had been made
—even if it was, somehow, one that would damn him.

"Maybe you can help me, at that."

Chapter Fourteen

His best chance at controlling how much she learned was to tell her himself. To tell her some part of it, anyway, and to pray that she never learned the rest.

Glancing to make sure they were alone, Laramie headed toward a sheltering brace of quaking aspen, not far behind the house. Victoria paused only to whistle boyishly for the dog, then followed. So did Duchess, loping around the corner of the house to join them.

"It's night," she explained needlessly. "I promised."

And unlike him, she kept her promises.

Laramie reminded himself that, in all likelihood, the man he hunted was no Garrison. He could still avenge Julie, and Victoria could still help him
—if only he could manage the words. He watched her wrap her arms around a tree trunk and pillow her cheek against it. Even in the shadows of mountain dusk, he could see the shine in her eyes, the curve of
her face. She
wanted
to help, and she was beautiful.

"I made a promise too," he confessed over the whispering of the leaves. "Long ago. And I need . . ."

But the words wouldn't squeeze out of him, not even for her. He looked down, discouraged.

"What kind of promise?" prompted Victoria
—but how could he answer? /
promised to kill someone.

She considered him, worrying her lower lip. Then she tried, "To whom did you make the promise?"

Which gave him an idea. "A boy," he responded
— not honestly enough to face her while he spoke the words, but far mo
re honestl
y than he'd feared.

"From around here?"

"Once. He was . .. sent to Texas."

"Which is where you met him," she guessed. And he did lose track of the boy he'd been, sometime between jail and Texas, while turning into the man he'd become. So maybe they'd met.

"Well. . ." Victoria leaned back, hanging from the tree trunk, as if stretching into so enjoyable an activity as asking questions. "Does he have a name?"

"A foreign one," admitted Ross, low. "Lauranovic."

"Lor-ah-no-vitch," she repeated carefully, and it startled him to hear the name out loud. His family had been the Laurences for so long, before the lynchings. They'd only become Lauranovic again when they became outcasts.

He nodded and made himself speak what he hoped, tonight, would be the worst. "Folks say they were rustlers."

She straightened. "The rustlers Papa mentioned today?"

Laramie nodded, startled by how quickly she'd pieced that toget
h
er, afraid she would suddenly guess the rest.
YOU are a Lauranovic, Ross-alias-Laramie! YOU are a rustler!

"But
—" Victoria cocked her head. "He was just a boy?"

He sank carefully into a low, cowboy crouch and picked up a twig to poke at the ground between his boots. "He was twelve when his father and brother were lynched."

"Lynched!"

'Your father kept the posse from hanging him too." Yet another reason to spare Jacob Garrison. 'Your mother hired the lawyer who got him sent to Texas instead of to prison."

"Which is where you met him," she finished mistakenly, clearly absorbing all this. "Oh my."

Laramie crouched there and said nothing. He expected the worst when Victoria bent down beside him. Cowboys could hold that easy crouch for an hour at a time. Ladies, from sheer modesty, weren't so good at it. She didn't try; she just swept her skirts aside and kneeled in the dirt.

Now he couldn't look away without being rude.

"It wasn't a regular ranch, was it?" she asked solemnly. "If he was sent there instead of prison, it must have been some kind of. . ."

"A boy's ranch," he admitted, knowing she would grasp the judicial overtones of that euphemism. It had been one of the earlier models for what were called reform schools.

"That's why you haven't told anybody about your connection to him," she guessed
—and he realized his mistake. Even trying to hide his delinquent childhood, he'd somehow confessed it to her! And yet...

He felt confused to see nothing but sympathy in Victoria's shadowed gaze. Concerned sympathy. For once, Victoria Garrison did not ask something.

She did not ask why he'd been at a boys' ranch. He felt certain she wanted to know. That was how Victoria gauged trust, after all. Intimacy.
Secrets.

But she also respected his privacy. So all she asked was "What did you promise him? This rustler boy?"

At that moment, he thought her the finest woman he'd ever met
—a woman whose eyes he dared not meet for this part. "His older sister pointed the lynch mob to them," he admitted, keeping his voice desperately even. "She was in love with a local rancher, and confessed her father's hideout. That rancher betrayed them all. Then he abandoned her, and she hanged herself."

Even when Victoria gasped, he did not look at her.

"That's when folks learned she was with child," he finished, ugliness on top of ugliness. "And the boy
—"

"Lauranovic," she said, and again the name tickled down his spine like a ghost of memory
—or identity.

"He believed his family was innocent. He
—" Laramie swallowed. "He claimed that the Wards were rustling their cat
tl
e, and his father and brother only stole them back. His only purpose—hope—was ..."

How could he ask this of her?

But now that he'd told this much, how could he not?

"He had to know who betrayed them. Someone in Sheridan seduced, then abandoned his sister, destroyed their family, and he must
—he
needed
to know who."

"And you promised to help him find out?"

"I
—" How could he explain that part? "Yes."

Only when Victoria said nothing did he slide his gaze warily back toward her. She was fidgeting with a heart-shaped leaf in her lap, her dark brows drawn together in concentration. When she lifted her eyes, he wasn't prepared for the demand in them. "So that's what you've really been after, all along."

He stared, trapped. He hadn't thought of that.

"You didn't come
to Sheridan for work, even as a r
ange detective," she continued, piecing it together even as she spoke. 'You came here to uncover an old injustice."

For once, he could not hide behind ambiguity. He nodded, watched her shadowed face, and awaited the worst.

Instead, she nodded, then cocked her head again. "But you're a very
good
range detective."

Confused, Laramie sat back in the dirt. He doubted he could hold his balance if the conversation kept going like this. Every time he thought she would make an accusation, see his dark truths, she somehow managed to praise him instead. He was a good range detective?

Only Victoria. Only his sweet, hopeful Victoria.

"Only for the same reason I'm good with a gun," he warned her, his voice an uneven rasp.

"Well, I'm good at detecting other things," she assured him. "And if this happened some time ago
— when was it?"

"Eighteen eighty-eight."

"Well, then maybe folks won't be so touchy about discussing it with me," she continued easily.

He stared at her. She meant it? She would help?

"Or maybe folks won't remember it at all," he said.

She dismissed such pessimism with a wave of her hand. "A scandal like that? They'll remember.
Especially
the man who was to blame. Anyway, it never hurts to ask."

He almost smiled again. Almost. "Yes, Victoria," he insisted quietly. Using her first name felt intimate, stolen. "It
can
hurt. At the very least, it can hurt reputations."

And at the most, for the man he was after, it could hurt far, far more.

"Don't worry so much. I'll try to keep
people's
names out of it as much as possible. The past is past, right?"

He stared at her and thought,
The past is everything.

"I'll say I'm curious because of the rustling," she continued, warming to her ruse. "And really, Ross, since I'm curious about everything, people might not get suspicious at all. Once we find out who misused that poor immigrant girl, you can send word to the boy
—"

Then she paused, frowned. "I guess her brother's not a boy anymore, is he?"

Laramie said nothing. In the woods behind them, an owl hooted, coyotes called. The aspen leaves whispered warnings.

"Well, send word to your
friend
anyway. And you'll have kept your promise. All right?"

It wasn't all right. She didn't know what he meant to do with that information. His promise had not been simply to learn who misused Julije. His promise had been to avenge her. As desperately as he needed to do that, even now, he also knew that many people would think him wrong for it
—including, he suspected, Victoria Garrison.

If she discovered what he had not, finally found him the name he needed, he would have used her to help him commit murder. She might forgive him for spending time in a reform school, but she would never forgive him for that.

He wasn't sure he could, either.

Victoria didn't tell even her best friend everything she'd learned from Ross Laramie. Especially not what she'd learned
about
Ross Laramie.

She didn't mention that he'd spent time at a boy's ranch, because Evangeline would wonder why
—and Vic hated to admit that, like with his wounds, she hadn't asked. When Ross trusted her, wholly trusted
her, he would confess the rest on his own.

Wouldn't he?

She didn't tell Evangeline that Ross was a faster draw than Buffalo Bill Cody, since Evangeline already thought of Ross as dangerous. Evangeline had to be wrong there, too. Ross had saved Kitty's life. He'd held Victoria, quiet and strong, when she'd desperately needed holding. After they'd separated on the trail, he'd caught up with her just as he'd promised to, and later that night he'd even recounted what little he'd seen of the
rustle
rs he'd followed.

Ross was a good man. She knew it,
felt
it, even if she couldn't prove it.

So Victoria summoned unusual reserve in what to reveal to Evangeline about Ross Laramie. And even there, her friend did not approve.

"Where were your folks when he told you all this?" asked Evangeline as they both sat in the back of the
Herald
office during Victoria's noon break, flipping through newspapers from 1888. Mr. Day had gone up stairs to take his meal with his wife; that usually meant a long lunch.

Together, die girls had gotten as far as October and found nothing about a lynching. The continued lack of proof made Victoria uncomfortable, but, well, maybe Ross or his friend had been mistaken about the year. Or maybe the lynchings had happened in December.

He hadn't lied to her.

"My parents were upstairs with K
itty. Stuart had gone home by th
en. Collier was on the porch with Laurel, and Thaddeas was in the parlor with Mariah and the others."

Evangeline did not look up, but her thin, pale brows drew together. "And you were behind the house together?"

Oh. Now Vic knew why she'd asked. "Duchess was
there. And we sat under some trees and talked, is all." They'd done nothing more
that
night, at least. No matter how solid Ross's hand had felt when he'd helped her to her feet afterward, the barest flicker of his eyes revealing that he was still healing from. .. from what? No matter how tall and warm he'd felt beside her before he let her go. And then the thirsty way he'd stared at her, his head tucked as if to better see her eyes ...

Well, they'd done no more than that at the Lorelei. He
had
refused to court her, after all. And she
did
have a father, brother, and brother-in-law dangerously close.

Evangeline said nothing, just turned pages.

"You're starting to remind me of Audra," teased Vic.

"Audra's a proper young lady." Evangeline said that as a compliment, almost wistful.

"Or of Thaddeas," added Victoria. "Overprotective. You know, you should come to dinner with us while I'm staying in town." Papa was running his ranch from the Lorelei for at least a week, while Mama tended Kitty. Victoria, because of her job, had temporarily moved into their in-town house with her older brother until her parents returned to their own ranch. "I only wish you could spend the night. The house seems very empty without my parents or my sisters there."

Evangeline stopped turning pages, and Victoria saw her friend's cheeks had color now, anyway. Spend the night with Victoria and Thaddeas and
nobody else?

"But I don't suppose that would be proper," Vic added.

"No," said her friend in a small, choked voice.

Victoria put aside one newspaper and picked up yet another one. November 1888. She tried to ignore her rising uncertainty. Ross would not have lied to her. And surely something as dramatic as a lynching and a suicide would make the newspaper!

She just had to keep looking. "I told you Ross went after the rustlers when they shot at us, didn't I?"

'Yes," said Evangeline.

"He said he just has to watch for them now." And she believed him.

Evangeline nodded and reached for another paper. As she moved it, Vic saw the headline of the issue beneath it and let out a squeal of excitement. "Look!"

It said,
RUSTLERS
LYNCHED!

She snatched the paper to her breast. Ross was telling the truth. Of course, she'd
known
he was telling the truth
—he was a good man. But still, after the quick draws and the boys' ranch and the refusal to court her, she couldn't deny her relief at having his story confirmed.

"Oh," said Evangeline softly. "Goodness."

"Here, I'll read it and you take notes." She cleared her throat. " 'The foothills outside of town became a place of death Thursday night

But her reading soon slowed, and her voice thickened the worse the story got. Lynchings were wrong, especially in a township that had law. These lynchings, of a man and his older son, seemed even worse. Would the posse really have hanged the twelve-year-old, too?

Unlike the most dramatic dime novel, it had really happened, right here in Sheridan.

Just like Ross said it had.

"Look," she noted, touching the paper toward the bottom. "Part of it's missing. It says, 'The twelve-year-old outlaw, for
—' and then it's rubbed out until it starts, 'named Drazen Lauranovic' "

"That's a funny name," said Evangeline.

After looking at the back of the page, where she saw no reason for the deliberate smudge, Vic shrugged and continued reading until she neared the end.

" 'The head rustler, Mr. Lauranovic, is also survived by a widow and one daughter.'

"The daughter must be Julie," she decided. "The one who got herself into trouble with a rancher."

"How does Mr. Laramie know it was a rancher?"

"I'm sure he has his reasons," insisted Victoria. But she found herself wishing she knew what those were. "I'll ask him, the next time I see him."

Whenever that would be. Papa refused to let her live alone at the Circle-T, so she had to choose between town, with Thaddeas
—and her job—or staying at Laurel and Collier's ranch, with the recovering Kitty. Either choice
r
ea
ll
y kept her away from Ross. And she
missed
him.

They'd spent a whole, long day together
—him comforting her, protecting her, telling her his secrets, sneaking through the brush wi
th
her in pursuit of bad men. She would have thought that would sate her desire to spend time with a person. Instead, it whet her appetite for more.

Even if they
weren 't
courting.

'Your mother wrote an editorial," noted Evangeline, looking in another newspaper. Victoria made do with the distraction. She was doing this for Ross, after all.

And maybe for the poor immigrant girl who had been so ill-treated. Maybe for die service of truth.

Helping Ross Laramie was just an added benefit.

Before Mr. Day came down from his long lunch, Vic and Evangeline read about Boris Ward's death, and the trial of young Drazen, and the Chicago lawyer whom Mama had hired to defend him. They read Victoria's mo
th
er's editorials, and Vic wished she'd managed to ask her parents about all this before leaving with Thaddeas. At the time, Kitty had been the only thing on their minds.

This weekend, she would ask.

They'd just found
the paper that told about Julie
Lauranovic's shocking death when they heard Mr. Day coming down the outside stairs.

"I'd better go," said Evangeline, standing. "I don't want to wear out my welcome."

"Oh." Vic made herself look up from this latest headline
—
RUSTLER'S DAUGHTER SUICIDE!—
which was no mean feat. "All right. Will you come by tomorrow?"

"You don't work tomorrow." Evangeline edged toward the back door. She felt it was better for business if nobody thought the newspaper was employing her.

"Then come by the house. I can show you the camera I ordered." When Evangeline shook her head and almost panicked, Victoria sighed with impatience. 'You've come by the house hundreds of times!"

"When your mother is there. Not
—" But whatever Evangeline meant to say, she stopped. "Victoria?"

The look in Evangeline's eyes silenced Vic's answer. Instead of asking
what,
she followed her friend's gaze past the printing press itself and out the front window.

Three cowboys were riding slowly down the street, drawing the attention of most of the passersby. One of them, on a buckskin, was Jacob Garrison, Victoria's father. One, on a black mustang, was Ross Laramie, looking as dark and dangerous as ever.

And the third, riding between them, had his hands tied together and hitched to his saddle horn. Papa held the man's reins like a lead rope. Ross seemed to have the man's gun, unless he'd taken to carrying an extra gunbelt over his shoulder.

"Oh my," said Victoria, stepping closer to the window to watch them pass in the direction of the sheriff's office.

They'd caught themselves a rustler.

Chapter Fifteen

Capturing the young rustler had been easy. It was delivering him to the sheriff that was hell.

It wasn't just because Laramie thought the sheriff was a son of a bitch, either. No, what had him on edge as he sat tall in his saddle, head defiantly up, was that he'd spent too many years trying not to be ridden into towns in just this way. He felt like he was on the wrong horse. He felt like a fraud.