A letter to Belle and Gabe? No, it was a letter to a bank in Missouri, and it directed the bank to take two hundred dollars from Bret’s account and put it in a separate one in her name.
“They’ll need a sample of your signature to set up your account,” he said.
She didn’t have the slate, but there were papers in slots under the counter. She reached for one and wrote on the back.
“Even if I should have half that reward, you know you have spent most of it on me by now.”
“You had forty dollars to start with.”
“Not after you bought Brownie back.”
“I didn’t exactly buy her back.”
“You bought a saddle and bridle.”
His eyes bored into her. She wiped a clammy hand on her trousers, fighting the urge to just do what he wanted.
“We’ll settle up at the end of the year.”
“You say that, but you don’t keep track.”
He shrugged. “You keep track if you want to. If something happens to me, you need to be able to get that money. You don’t have to go to the bank where the account is, you know. You can write a draft and take it to a bank wherever you are. It will take a while, but they’ll give you the money. Here I’ll show you.” He pulled one of the papers from its slot.
Her clammy hands turned to ice.
“Nothing will happen to you.”
“Probably not. I’ve been doing this since the war, and I’m still here, but just in case. Sign it.” He tapped his finger on the paper.
She signed the letter, and she didn’t argue when he gave her a gold double eagle and told her to keep it handy.
As they rode out of town, she fingered the coin in her pocket, watching the material of Bret’s shirt pull taut over his shoulders and the play of muscles along the length of his back when he bent forward to slap some pest off Jasper’s neck. His profile was clear in the bright summer sunlight when he glanced over at Packie. Harsh, strong.
She huffed out a short breath, caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Imagining anything happening to him was like imagining the prairie opening up before them, swallowing them and the horses with a great crushing roar. What he did was dangerous. Yet somehow it never
seemed
dangerous because faced with Bret’s icy eyes men like Zachary and Marshal Dauber faded away. Maybe she made her bed close to Bret’s when he had a prisoner in custody, but that was caution, not fear.
She took her hand out of her pocket. He had been through four bloody years of war. He had been hunting men for six years since then, and he was fine. Nothing was going to happen to him.
S
URPRISES CAME ALONG
now and then, but for the most part Hassie found Bret’s way of hunting men followed a comforting pattern. Search for a trail, follow it, take a man prisoner, transport him to wherever necessary to collect the reward.
In a small town in Central Kansas, one of the surprises ran up to Bret on the street. “Is it true?” the girl gasped. “Is it true you’re a bounty hunter?”
Bret nodded warily.
Petite and pretty in a washed out blonde sort of way, the girl never glanced at Hassie. “Then you go after Johnny Rankin. He talked about Colorado all the time. He was always talking about his friends in Fort Collins, Colorado!”
She held out a small square of paper until Bret took it, whirled, and ran away faster than she’d come. Bret unfolded the paper carefully. The poster had been opened and folded so often it was worn through along some of the creases. Hassie moved close, reading at the same time as Bret, enjoying the closeness as much as satisfying her curiosity.
Another thief. A three hundred dollar thief who had stolen thousands in jewels from the daughter of a man wealthy enough and angry enough to post a reward. At six feet and a hundred and sixty pounds, Rankin would be as tall as Bret. Would he be noticeably thinner?
Reading her thoughts again, Bret said, “If whoever put this out is right, he’s on the scrawny side. Army put me at one eighty when I was younger than this.”
Twenty-five, curly blond hair, blue eyes, thin.
“Strange to have a girl run up and hand him over like that,” Bret said. “From the look of her dress, she never owned jewelry worth stealing, and the address on this poster is a town north of here.”
Hassie agreed about both the jewelry and the dress, which had looked like a twin of the one Hassie had been wearing the day she first saw Bret.
“A different girl, and Hell hath no fury,”
she wrote.
Bret folded the poster and pocketed it. “I expect you’re right. I better wire and make sure he’s still on the loose before we start a wild goose chase. Fort Collins is a ways.”
In fact Fort Collins lay far enough west to invoke another surprise. Two days later when they reached a town with a depot, Bret bought tickets on the Kansas Pacific Railway.
Brownie didn’t load into a stock car on the train any better than she had onto the ferry. This time Hassie did stay put while Bret blindfolded the horse and other men shoved, shouted, and beat Brownie’s rump with their hats until she scrambled up the ramp and into the car.
Gunner was easier. Bret ignored the dog’s attempt at escape, picked him up, and carried him into the stock car. Hassie wished she could ride with them rather than in a passenger car where people would stare at her in her trousers, but Bret didn’t have to carry her onto the train or tie her in place. His hand on her arm was enough.
B
RET HALF-EXPECTED
H
ASSIE
to come running when he and the railroad men forced her reluctant horse into the stock car. The eyes he had to concede were something beyond bluish gray glimmered under a film of extra tears when he finally finished with the dog and joined her beside the tracks. He wanted to run his thumbs along her lower lashes and catch the tears. Instead he took her by the elbow and guided her toward a passenger car.
The car was battered, dirty, and hot. Hassie ought to save her wide-eyed, smiling wonder for her first sight of the luxury of a private car. Someday he’d show her one, find a way to get her a ride on one.
Bret caught that line of thought up short, closed his eyes, and pulled down his hat. At least the modern miracle of the steam engine would get them to Colorado fast.
What could Johnny Rankin have done to that girl to make her so determined to see him caught and sent to prison? Probably squired her around for a while and then left her.
Bret shoved his hat back, straightened in the seat, and stared out the window as if what he saw was interesting, not a monotonous view of flat prairie all the way to the horizon. Modern miracle or not, if he couldn’t control his own thoughts better than this, it was going to be one hell of a long ride to Colorado.
A day later, Bret left Hassie behind a locked hotel room door and began the search for Rankin. Fort Collins was no city, but it was big enough locating Rankin would have been hard if the man made any effort to hide. Young and brash, Rankin wasn’t that smart.
Bret found the jewel thief bragging about his exploits at a faro table in a saloon. The only problem would be if Bret fell asleep at the bar waiting for Rankin to leave the table and walk out where he could be taken into custody without a sympathetic audience.
The dealer finally shut down the game as the first traces of dawn lightened the sky outside. Rankin stumbled into the street, half-drunk and fully pleased with his winnings and the attention of the woman steering him along the sidewalk. Bret moved in and slipped handcuffs on Rankin before he or his lady friend knew what was happening.
Getting Rankin away from the snarling, spitting woman was a challenge. When she kicked him in the shin, Bret stopped treating her like a lady, dumped her in a water trough, and dragged his prisoner away while she was still standing there, dripping and screeching.
Rankin protested in a slurred drawl. “You’re makin’ a mistake. You’ve got no call to arrest me. I never broke a law in my life except maybe spittin’ on a sidewalk here and there.”
“That’s strange because there’s a Kansas warrant out for you for robbery. So I’m taking you back, and you can argue what you did or didn’t do back there.”
“Kansas! Why I’ve hardly spent time there. I passed through, of course, on the way here. I have friends here who invited me to stay with them. Good friends.”
Rankin was sobering up fast, and the last words carried less wronged indignation and more threat. Bret ignored it all. He’d been threatened by men who were better at it. Keeping one hand on Rankin and one on his gun, Bret guided his prisoner down the street to the town marshal’s office.
Chairs sat on the walk there. Bret shoved Rankin into one and sank down beside him. No use waking anyone up this early. The marshal would show up soon and for a few dollars would store Rankin in a cell. Bret needed sleep, a bath, food. Tomorrow would be soon enough to start back toward Denver and a train east.
When he arrived back at the jail the next day, Bret realized he was going to earn every penny of his three hundred dollars in aggravation. Two men about Rankin’s age sat drinking coffee with the marshal—and Rankin. A washed up, clean-shaven Rankin whose suit showed no signs of drunken revelry.
“Is this a jail or a hotel for wanted men?” Bret asked, fighting to keep his voice level.
“It’s hard to believe Johnny here is wanted except by every woman west of the Mississippi,” the marshal said with a grin.
“It’s all a misunderstanding,” one of the others said belligerently. “Johnny explained it to us.”
“He can explain it again to the court back in Kansas,” Bret said. “I get paid whether they believe him or not.”
The smaller of Rankin’s friends jumped to his feet. “You’re not taking Johnny anywhere, bounty hunter. Girls like him. It’s nobody’s business but his what some female gave him for his—services.”
Bret stiff-armed the man in the chest, thumping him right back down into the chair he’d just left. The marshal restrained the fellow with hands on his shoulders. Before any of the others could react, Bret yanked Rankin up and cuffed him.
“Get in my way, and you’ll get hurt,” he said when the second friend took a few steps toward him. Bret shoved Rankin out the door, hoping the marshal could keep the others from doing anything stupid.
Out on the sidewalk, Bret paused a moment to be sure no one was charging after him and recognized worse trouble out here than inside.
Hassie sat on Brownie staring at Rankin, her lips slightly parted, expression arrested. Bret glanced at Rankin again, this time taking in the blond curls, clear blue eyes, tailored black suit, and friendly smile. Something hot and ugly stabbed right through Bret. His hands curled to fists.
Just one or two smashing blows and all those boyish good looks would disappear until long after they reached Kansas. Sure and then she’d probably weep over the damned thief and insist on holding a handkerchief to his bloody nose.
The extra horse Bret had bought that morning stood patiently at the hitch rail. He pushed Rankin toward it. “Get on.”
Oh, yes, he was going to earn every penny of this reward at least twice over.
S
HE COULDN’T STOP
looking at him. Hassie had never seen such a handsome man, would never have believed such a boyish, almost angelic face could also be masculine. And he was friendly, polite, and his attitude toward her didn’t change when he found out about her voice.
By the time they were on the train again, Hassie was more than half-angry at Bret. He was treating Johnny Rankin like a dangerous outlaw. Johnny had explained how the girl in Kansas befriended him and gave him a little of the jewelry she never wore anyway. She wanted him to sell it and use it for a good start in Colorado. He had sold it. His friends were holding the money for him, and he would pay that girl back if she’d changed her mind.
Bret didn’t have to sit there with that disbelieving, cynical expression on his face. Whether it was a misunderstanding or whether Johnny really was lying, it wasn’t as if he was a murderer, or even a stagecoach robber. He was a nice young man who had made a mistake.
They unloaded the horses and Gunner at the same Kansas depot where they’d started this trip, having traveled hundreds of miles in so short a time Hassie still had trouble believing it. Bret showed no interest in stopping in the town for so much as a meal, and he drove Johnny Rankin ahead of him the same way he did every prisoner. Johnny managed to throw Hassie one wistful glance over his shoulder.
For the first time, resentment over always bringing up the rear spread through Hassie. Brownie wasn’t that slow any more. If Bret didn’t work so hard at keeping his distance, he wouldn’t mind her riding beside him. He’d talk to her now and then. If he weren’t so set in his ways and hard-minded, he’d let her ride beside Johnny, who wouldn’t mind talking to her.
When they stopped midday, her expectation proved true. Johnny did talk to her in that honey-smooth drawl. He was from Alabama, he said, laughing. He told her stories of places he’d been, and he didn’t just chatter on either. She had to write her own words large on the slate for him to read over the distance Bret had set between them, but he nodded at her comments and questions, paid attention to them.
That night when they bedded down, Hassie didn’t make her bed close to Bret. There was no need, and she didn’t want to.
B
Y THE END
of the second day traveling on horseback again, Bret had given serious consideration to shaking Hassie until whatever sense she had rattled back out of wherever she had misplaced it. He rejected the idea, but imagining it gave him considerable satisfaction. Of course, he could just order her to stay away from Rankin, but he could also imagine the resentment that would cause, and if she started holding her stomach again....
In Rankin’s case, the solution Bret toyed with was shooting the lying, womanizing bastard right between the eyes and leaving him for the buzzards. That thought brought even more satisfaction until he went on to imagine Hassie cutting a lock of golden hair and putting it in that locket she wore around her neck, sobbing, wearing a black bandana around her arm in mourning until it rotted off in tatters.