Chapter 4
Emily’s dress had gotten dirty from her falling on the floor of the train car not once, but twice. She brushed it off as best she could and then found her hat. It had been trampled on in the confusion, and she wasn’t sure she could ever get it clean and back in its proper shape. She grimaced in disappointment at that, then sighed and went to see how Mrs. Pierce was doing.
Even though she was concerned about the elderly woman, she couldn’t get the man who had saved her from being kidnapped by that outlaw out of her mind. She’d gotten just one good look at him, and that only for a couple of seconds, but his rugged features seemed to be imprinted on her brain anyway.
He was a Texas Ranger, she thought. She had recognized the distinctive badge he wore.
And he had called the blue-eyed outlaw by name: Galloway. Clearly, they knew each other.
Mrs. Pierce had come to and was sitting up now, with several female passengers gathered around to comfort her. Emily saw that her help wasn’t needed after all.
She put a hand on the back of a nearby seat to brace herself as the train began to slow rather abruptly.
The door at the back of the car had swung shut. It opened now and the Ranger came through it, followed by the conductor. He was tall and muscular enough that he seemed to loom like a mountain. His gaze fell on Emily and he came toward her.
“Are you all right, miss?” he asked. His voice had a harsh rumble to it.
Emily swallowed and nodded. She said, “Yes, I...I think I’m fine, thanks to you. A little disheveled, maybe—”
“You look fine to me,” he said.
For some reason those simple words caused an unexpected warmth to spring up inside her. There was no reason why she should care what this stranger thought of her looks, she told herself.
She tried not to think about that as she asked, “Did you catch that awful bandit?”
The Ranger blew out an exasperated breath and said, “No, he and the rest of his gang got away, except for the two I—”
He stopped short in his reply. He didn’t have to finish it for Emily to know what he meant. He must have killed two of the outlaws.
Despite the relatively sheltered life she’d led, she knew that violent death wasn’t uncommon out here on the frontier. There were still plenty of lawless man around, and death followed in their wake as inevitably as night followed day.
The train had continued to slow while they were talking. Now it shuddered to a complete stop. The Ranger lifted a hand and touched a finger to the broad brim of his hat, nodded to Emily, and said, “Take care of yourself, miss.”
He and the conductor moved on past her, headed for the front of the train to talk to the engineer, more than likely. As Emily watched his broad back vanish through the door at the front of the car, she thought about how nice it would be for him to take care of her.
He had already saved her from an unknown fate that she probably wouldn’t have liked, she reminded herself. And he was a Ranger. He had outlaws to catch. He didn’t have time to worry about her.
Still, it was nice to ponder.
* * *
Nick had had the conductor signal the engineer to stop the train. He didn’t plan to ride all the way on into Buffalo Flats. Instead he would recover his horse—he knew the sorrel would be following the train—and try to pick up the trail of Clay Galloway and his gang.
He was glad he had run into that young woman again. That gave him a chance to make sure she hadn’t been hurt during the ruckus. It was a relief to know that she was all right.
He muttered under his breath as he thought about how he had told her she looked fine. That was true in more ways than one, and he wasn’t sure how she had taken it.
He wasn’t even sure how he had meant it.
Along with the conductor, Nick dropped to the ground at the front of the first passenger car and walked beside the express car, the gravel of the roadbed crunching under their feet. The conductor called through the door, “Open up in there, Tom!”
“Is that you, Bert?” the messenger replied, his voice muffled by the thick door.
“Yeah, it’s me. Everything’s fine.”
“How do I know some owlhoot ain’t holdin’ a gun to your head and makin’ you say that?”
The conductor sighed and said, “Buzzard Gap.” He looked over at Nick. “That’s the signal that everything’s really all right.”
“I figured as much,” the Ranger said. “You change it every run?”
“Yep.”
“Smart,” Nick said with a nod. He watched as the express car door rolled back once the man inside had undogged the latches. The messenger wore a relieved expression that got worried again when he saw Nick’s Ranger badge.
“I knew it,” the messenger said. “Somebody tried to hold up the dang train, didn’t they?”
The engineer had hopped down from the cab and was coming to join them, too. The four men held a brief meeting beside the tracks.
“It was Clay Galloway’s bunch,” Nick told the others. “He grew up around here, still has friends and family in the area. This is the closest to home he’s tried to pull a holdup.”
“He’s been getting away with it, hasn’t he?” the conductor said. “That’s probably made him think that he can’t be caught.”
“He’s wrong about that,” Nick said. “I’ve got a hunch he has a hideout somewhere not far from Buffalo Flats—and one way or another, I’m going to find it.”
The other three men looked doubtful, but Nick meant what he said. He had been given the job of running the Galloway gang to ground, and he would do whatever it took to accomplish that.
He looked back along the tracks and saw his sorrel in the distance, trotting toward them. The horse was well-trained and had been a mighty good trail companion to Nick for several years. He put a couple of fingers in his mouth, let out a shrill whistle, and the sorrel broke into a faster pace.
“When you get into Buffalo Flats,” he told the train crew, “I’d be obliged if one of you would tell the undertaker there are a couple of bodies back up the line that need to be tended to. It may be a pretty ugly chore.”
“We’ll handle that,” the conductor promised. “I’ll let the sheriff know what happened, too. Where will you be, Ranger?”
“Trying to pick up Galloway’s trail.”
The sorrel came up to Nick and bumped his shoulder with its nose. He patted the horse and swung up into the saddle.
As he rode back along the train, he found himself looking through the windows of the last passenger car. He was trying to catch a glimpse of that pretty, dark-haired gal who had taken his breath away for a moment, he realized.
He didn’t see her, though, and that was probably a good thing.
The last thing a man in his line of work needed to do was fill his head with thoughts of a woman, no matter how good-looking she was.
That was a good way to wind up dead in a hurry.
Chapter 5
The train was only a few minutes behind schedule reaching Buffalo Flats. Emily said goodbye to Mrs. Pierce, who acted as if it were somehow Emily’s fault the train had almost been robbed, because that was the sort of thing that happened to young, unmarried women traveling alone.
She waited on the station platform while a porter unloaded her bags, then asked the man, “Do you know where Mrs. Agatha Stirling lives?”
The middle-aged man frowned and scratched his head, then said, “I know an Aggie Stirling. Got to be the same person, don’t you reckon?”
“I suppose,” Emily said. She had met her aunt only a few times, when Agatha had visited her sister Lila, Emily’s mother, on the Pitchfork Ranch. During those visits she hadn’t seemed like the sort of person who would be called Aggie, but anything was possible.
The porter told Emily where to find the house belonging to Aggie Stirling, then said, “You want me to put these bags in the buckboard and take ’em down there?”
“That would be wonderful,” Emily said with
a smile.
“You can ride, too,” the porter said. “You can tell me all about the train robbery. Folks’re already talkin’ about it.”
“Of course,” Emily said, although she wasn’t looking forward to reliving those terrifying few minutes. Just thinking about them made fear start to creep into her mind again.
She called up an image of the big Ranger, though, and the fear retreated. Calmness spread through Emily...followed by that unaccustomed warmth she had experienced earlier.
As she rode through the streets of Buffalo Flats, listening to the porter’s chatter, she saw that the place had the look of a settled town now, rather than the rude buffalo hunting camp it had once been. There were a few brick buildings along the main street, the houses on the side streets looked substantial and comfortable, and there were even some carefully tended and watered cottonwood trees that had grown to a decent size, something of a rarity in mostly dry West Texas.
The porter brought the buckboard to a stop in front of one of those comfortable-looking houses. While he was getting the bags from the back, Emily went up a stone walk to the porch steps. She knew her aunt had an injured leg and probably couldn’t get around very well, so she didn’t knock.
Instead she opened the front door, stuck her head in, and called, “Aunt Agatha? Don’t be alarmed. It’s me, your niece, Emily. I’ve come to help you.”
Some heavy thumping surprised her. A heavyset figure came up the hall toward the front door. A voice that was gravelly but still recognizably female said, “Hell’s bells, girl! What are you doing here?”
“Aunt...Agatha?”
“Folks around here know me as Aggie.” The older woman stopped and leaned on the cane that had been thumping on the floor. “Did Lila send you?”
“Yes, she...she got your letter about how you’d been injured—”
“Injured! I’ve got the damn gout so bad I couldn’t get around for a few days, that’s all. I told Lila I didn’t need anything, let alone somebody gallivantin’ all the way out here to help me. Lord have mercy! Look at you, girl. You’re all grown up.”
Now that Emily’s eyes had adjusted better to the relative dimness inside the house, she could see her aunt. Agatha was short—not even topping five feet—and in a dark blue dress seemed almost as wide as she was tall. Her graying red hair was pulled into a knot at the back of her head.
She frowned and said, “Why are you starin’ at me?”
“I’m sorry,” Emily said automatically. “I don’t mean to be rude. You just...you don’t seem much like the person who visited us at the ranch.”
Agatha took one hand off the cane and waved it in dismissal. “Shoot, I can act civilized when I want to,” she said. “For Lila’s sake, you know. You might not think it now, but when we were both little, she was a bit of a priss. Marrying big ol’ rough-as-a-cob Grady Savage was the best thing she ever could’ve done. It knocked some of the starch out of her. Still, I’m in the habit of behavin’ myself around her.” She turned away and went on, “Well, don’t just stand there. Come on in. You’ve come all this way. We might as well have ourselves a nice visit. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”
Emily wasn’t sure she wanted to stay. This revelation about her aunt had knocked her for a loop.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t get here a while earlier,” Agatha went on as she led Emily into a nicely appointed parlor. “I had a, uh, gentleman caller, if you know what I mean, and you might’ve really been shocked.”
Emily wasn’t sure what was worse: this particular moment—or having an outlaw try to kidnap her.
* * *
There wouldn’t be an eastbound train coming through Buffalo Flats until the next day, so Emily supposed she would stay the night, anyway. Her aunt insisted that she was recovering from the attack of gout and didn’t need any help.
“I’m used to taking care of myself, you know,” Agatha said over supper that night. “Have been ever since Harley died. That’d be your Uncle Harley. I’m not sure you ever met him.”
“No,” Emily said, “I don’t think I did.”
“He was quite a fella. Ran the Buffalo Queen Saloon until he dropped dead one day. Then I took it over. Seemed fittin’, since it was named after me and all.”
“You’re...the Buffalo Queen?” Emily asked.
“Yep. I used to hunt the shaggy critters right there alongside the men.”
“And then you...you ran a saloon.”
“Yeah, and made it more profitable than Harley ever did, too. He was a hell of a man but didn’t always have the best head for business.”
Emily looked around and said, “You have a very nice home.”
“Of course I do. You didn’t think I was gonna live upstairs over a smelly saloon, did you? I had my fill of roughin’ it back in the old days.” With what Emily was coming to realize was a characteristic abruptness, Agatha changed the subject. “Tell me about that train robbery.”
Emily spent the next few minutes doing that, and her aunt listened intently. When Emily was finished, Agatha said, “Sounds like both of those fellas made an impression on you.”
“Both?”
“The one who tried to carry you off with him—and the one who stopped him.”
Emily shook her head and said, “No, that’s not possible. That first man was an outlaw. A thief. Probably even a killer.”
“But you said he was sort of polite at times, and a nice enough smile and a twinkle in the eyes can make a woman overlook some of a man’s flaws.”
“Not this woman,” Emily declared. “And certainly not that man.”
Agatha just shrugged a little.
“As for the Ranger,” Emily went on, “he was a lawman just doing his job.”
“You said he touched you.”
“He did,” Emily admitted.
“You know how the air feels just before a thunderstorm, when it’s all crackly like and it seems like something’s just bound to pop at any minute?”
“Yes, I suppose I do,” Emily said warily.
“Was that how it felt inside you when this Ranger took hold of you?”
Emily stared across the table at her aunt and said, “How in the world did you—Wait. No. Of course not. I was just shaken up by nearly being kidnapped, that’s all. I was just grateful to the man for his help.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s all it was,” Agatha said. “You didn’t feel like that when that owlhoot grabbed you, though, did you?”
“When Mr. Galloway grabbed me, I didn’t feel anything except scared.”
Agatha sat up straighter. “Galloway, you said?”
“That’s what the Ranger called him.”
“Clay Galloway?”
Emily shook her head and said, “I’m sure I don’t know what his first name is. We were never properly introduced. Do you actually know the man, Aunt Agatha?”
“I’ve seen him. I know plenty about him, that’s for sure. He grew up around here. He still had friends and relatives hereabouts, and it’s rumored some of them have been known to hide him out from the law. I’m surprised he’d try to hold up a train so close to Buffalo Flats. I guess he’s gotten away with enough things he’s starting to think he’s untouchable.”
“All I care about it that it’s all over. I hope that Ranger catches him.”
“That Ranger,” Agatha said slowly. “You say he knew Galloway’s name?”
“That’s right.”
“And he was a big fella, better’n six feet tall, with brown hair and shoulders like this?” Agatha held her hands a good distance apart.
“That’s right,” Emily said. “Do you know him, too?”
“That sounds like Nick Braddock, and I seem to recall hearing something about him joining the Rangers.” Agatha shook her head. “If you were stuck between Clay Galloway and Nick Braddock, you’re even luckier than we knew that you’re still alive.”
“You make them sound like mortal enemies or something.”
Agatha sa
id, “Honey, those two have wanted to kill each other ever since they were little kids!”
Chapter 6
It hadn’t started with a woman, but it had ended with one. Nobody really remembered what had caused the bad blood between Nick Braddock and Clay Galloway, but it had existed since both of them attended the little one-room schoolhouse on the outskirts of Buffalo Flats, Agatha explained.
“Those two had so many fistfights over the years it’s a wonder they never bashed each other’s head in,” she said. “Then when they got older, every time one of ’em got interested in a girl, the other one would steal her away. Nick didn’t like too many. He always took his courtin’ seriously. Clay, on the other hand, would chase after anything in a skirt.”
Based on what she had seen of the two men on the train, Emily had no trouble believing that.
“The only time it came down to gunplay, though,” Agatha went on, “was when Nick was engaged to Laura Parkhurst. A couple of weeks before they were supposed to get married, she broke off the engagement and told Nick she was leaving town with Clay Galloway. Nick buckled on a gun and went to find Clay. Each of them took a shot at the other, but luckily they missed. Sheriff Reynolds got there before anything else could happen and put a stop to it. Nick left town a couple of days later, and I don’t reckon he’s been back to Buffalo Flats since then.”
“What about the Parkhurst girl?” Emily asked. “Did she marry Galloway?”
“Shoot, no! He threw her over before that. Reckon he’d already gotten what he wanted from her, if you know what I mean.”
Emily knew, all right, and it made her despise Clay Galloway even more. Maybe her aunt was right about how some women were willing to overlook a man’s shortcomings if he was handsome enough, and Clay Galloway was certainly devastatingly handsome, but Emily would never feel that way.
“It wasn’t long after that Clay left town, too,” Agatha continued, “and I guess it was about then he started his career as an outlaw. But unlike Nick, he’s come back now and then.”
“If everyone knows he’s an outlaw, why doesn’t the sheriff arrest him?”
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