by Jo Goodman
“More coals in the stove, please.”
“You could pull up a blanket.”
“I do not think that is a good idea. Not when you find my modesty fetching. I don’t think I could be fetched right now.”
Morgan gave her a sideways look, but since she couldn’t see him, his suspicious peek was lost on her. Grunting softly, he rolled out of bed and padded to the cast-iron stove. He added coals to the belly of the stove and then went to the bathing room to wash up. When he returned, Jane was lying on her side, her head propped up on an elbow. She had a sheet draped over one shoulder and across her torso. One of her long legs was exposed from thigh to toe. Modestly covered, she looked like a goddess.
Careful not to disturb the arrangement of Jane’s sheet, Morgan climbed into bed and drew the blankets on his side up to his chest. He had just settled comfortably into the mattress when Jane touched him on the corner of his mouth with her fingertip. Since it was the corner with the crescent moon scar, he knew what she was finally going to ask.
“Fishing,” he said.
“Fishing? I’m not—” She smiled and lightly tapped the scar with her fingernail. “I see. You were answering the question I hadn’t asked. How very prescient.”
“Prescient. There’s one I haven’t heard before.”
“It means—”
“I got it now.”
“Tell me about fishing.”
“There’s not much to tell. Gideon and Jack were fooling around by the lake, snapping their rods and casting long and wide. One of them, and I swear I don’t remember who, snagged me with his line. Hook caught me in the mouth because I was yelling at them to watch what they were doing. Zetta Lee stitched it up, and Ham whupped them both with his belt. I was crying, carrying on, begging him not to do it. I think he figured out what I was really trying to tell him because after Zetta Lee finished her stitch work, he whupped me, too.”
“And that put you back in your brothers’ good graces?”
“Sure did. For a time.”
Jane chuckled quietly. “Fishing.” She leaned over and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Most of the time it gives your smile a wry twist.”
“And the times that it doesn’t?”
“It gives your smile youth.”
That made him grin. He drew her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.
Jane repeated the question she had asked him earlier. “Are you satisfied with how things turned out today?”
Morgan did not make the question less important than it was with a flippant answer. “Yes,” he said. “I’m satisfied. Going to see Cobb was the right thing to do.”
“I feel better knowing that he will be watching for Gideon’s return, and when we get back to Morning Star you’ll tell the others what they can expect.”
“They know most of it. And Jem’s already had a knock-down-drag-out with three of the men running with Gideon.”
“But now you have remarkable likenesses of all of them except for Jack, and you will know him immediately. I think it was good of Marshal Bridger to make sketches for us to take back.”
“It was.”
Jane slipped her hand under the covers and rested it on Morgan’s chest, just above his heart. “How did you come by the money to buy Morning Star?”
“Did you put your hand there because it’s comforting or because you think my heartbeat might tell you if I’m lying?”
“Because it’s comforting, although the other sounds as if it might have some merit. Are you going to lie to me, Morgan? And by lie, I mean evade the truth, omit the truth, turn the truth on its head, or otherwise prevaricate.”
“I rustled cattle and saddle horses. That is about as straight as I can say it.”
Jane’s lips puffed as she blew out a breath. “I tried to imagine what you might say and how I would feel about it before I asked.”
“How are you doing with that?”
“My conscience is pinching me.”
“Like your boots were.”
“Yes, about like that.”
“Maybe this will help some. I stole the cattle and horses from Zetta Lee.”
“You did?”
“Uh-huh. It was a spell after I got out before I could go up to Lander. I wasn’t even sure that she would still have the place, and I wasn’t going there to see her anyway. I wanted to pay my respects to Ham, see his grave again, and more or less apologize for what became of that legacy he was so keen to have.
“I had been thinking on the problem of what I was going to do when I got out. Mrs. Sterling had written to me about the old Burdick place, and I had some ideas about what I could do with a spread like that. No money, though. I had to work for a rancher in Uinta County until I had enough to buy one of his old saddle horses. I left for Lander that same day.
“When I got there, I did what I set out to do. Ham’s gravesite needed a bit of tending, so I did that, too, then I looked around at what had become of Welling & Sons, and the only thing I decided that would keep me from putting my hands on Zetta Lee was to steal her cattle.”
“Welling & Sons,” Jane repeated quietly.
“Ham’s brand was a complicated thing. He had it forged when Essie was carrying their first child. He told me once that he started using it right after that baby was put in the ground because he was so sure there’d be another.”
“Poor Essie.”
“That’s what I thought, but Ham figured he was just being optimistic.”
“What was the brand?”
“A W with an interlacing S.”
Jane used her index finger to trace the letters above Morgan’s heart.
“Ham was always fussing about it come branding time. If you didn’t place the brand just right, especially if you got it upside down, it looked like—”
Jane smacked him on the chest, not hard, but hard enough to get his attention. “Morning Star,” she said. “It would look exactly like your brand at Morning Star.” She traced it again, this time with an M and the S twining through it like ivy. “It is your brand.”
“I’ll be darned.” He caught her hand before she slapped him on the chest again. “You have violent tendencies, ma’am.”
Jane was not contrite. “If that is true, you should stop nurturing them. I thought you named your ranch Morning Star because it speaks to what is on the horizon. It is hopeful and grand and—”
“Romantic?”
She sighed softly, nodding. “Yes, romantic. Now I learn that it was merely practical.”
“I don’t know. It’s a little romantic. I could have named my place Morgan’s Sanctuary or Mostly Stolen. Those are practical.”
Jane laughed in spite of herself. “If those were the other choices, then you did well.” She sobered some, inching closer. “How was it that you were never caught? You are the one who told me the law deals harshly with cattle thieves. More harshly, it seems, than they do with bank robbers.”
“Caught? I don’t think Zetta Lee knew that any of her cattle were missing until spring. By then I was long gone. She did not have enough hands at the ranch to ride the property, and fences had not been repaired in a long time. The only man I recognized still working for her was old Hatch Crookshank.”
“The one who taught you to gentle horses.”
Trust Jane to remember, he thought. “Yes. The same. He was Ham’s friend as much as his best hired hand. Zetta Lee would have done well to trust him, but she never warmed to anything he had to say. The state of the ranch spoke to that, and it made what I was doing about as easy as buttering toast.
“Beef prices were good then. I drove small herds southwest across the open range to the station at Kemmerer, not far from the territory line. No one knew me there. Ham had never registered his brand because the station inspectors at Rock Springs knew him when he started out. I registered his brand as mine but made sure the inspectors understood the proper orientation for the iron. I sold the cattle to start, got enough for a stake in a rolling poker game on the
Union Pacific, and tripled what I had. I went back for more cattle and did it all over again. When I returned the third time, I already had an agreement with the syndicate to purchase the ranch and money down on the contract. I took fewer cows that time because I had no intention of selling at market. That’s also when I stole some of the horses.”
“And you escorted your spoils to Morning Star.”
“Escorted? I suppose that’s accurate. They were real cooperative; it didn’t feel like much of a drive. There was some good stock left from when the Burdicks owned the ranch. The eastern speculators hadn’t done right by the land or the cattle, but there wasn’t anything that could not be repaired over time. I didn’t need Zetta Lee’s cattle or her horses. I took them mostly for—”
“Revenge?” asked Jane.
“I was going to say I took them mostly for sentimental reasons, but I won’t argue with revenge.”
Jane’s soft laughter tickled her lips. “All right.” She traced her initials on his chest.
“Branding me?”
“I am, yes.” She tapped him again. “What happened to the money from the robberies?”
“Split and spent. Zetta Lee got most of it. She considered that fair since she did the planning. There wasn’t one of us who trusted banks, but no one thought that Ham’s safe was a good place to put money either.”
“Not with you around, certainly.”
“I believe that factored in their opinion.”
“So?”
“So everyone had a hidey-hole. Mine was an old stump I hollowed out about a hundred yards due north of where Ham was buried. Yes, I spent some time looking for it when I was up there. Found the stump, but there was nothing inside. Before I looked, I told myself I wouldn’t take the money, or if I did, I’d return it to someone, maybe Mr. Cumberland at the Rock Springs bank. Since there wasn’t any money, I can tell myself that I would have resisted the temptation to keep it, but I think I know better.”
“What happened to it?”
He shrugged. “My best guess is that Zetta Lee found it after the trial. She probably knew where it was all along. Same for Gideon’s and Jack’s.”
“Don’t you think your brothers might have gone back to Lander to get what they left behind?”
“They might have. Or they might not have seen the sense in it, knowing Zetta Lee the way they did.”
“Where did she keep her money?”
“I don’t know. Probably close. If something was important to her, she didn’t like to let it out of her sight.”
It was the same if someone was important, Jane thought. She did not say it. Morgan was probably thinking it as well. “Her bedroom, then. In her mattress. Perhaps under the floorboards under the bed.”
“Maybe there was a false bottom in the trunk where she stored extra linens.”
“Hah! You could not resist reminding me, could you?”
“Apparently not.”
Jane injected some starch into her tone. “You must be very pleased to know you can get your hands on my money anytime you like. I have to present my savings book. You merely have to present yourself.”
He chuckled. “I have money there as well. And Cattleman’s Trust holds my mortgage. I have more to lose if Mr. Webb opens his safe than if he keeps it closed. And you heard me tell Bridger, given enough time, that 1884 Barkley and Benjamin he keeps in his office is probably not that difficult to get into.”
She feigned a disapproving sigh. “It is distressing that you know the kind of safe he has.”
“Again. My money is there.”
“Still, you know the year that safe was made, and you were in jail when it was manufactured.”
Morgan said modestly, “I did some reading.”
“You did some reading,” Jane repeated, shaking her head. “It is no wonder that Cobb Bridger walked in your footprints every time you came to town.” She poked him in the chest. “And don’t pretend you did not enjoy that just a little.”
Chapter Fourteen
The thaw Gideon Welling had been waiting for finally arrived in the middle of February. He did not move his men out immediately, not when the trails and roads were muddy enough to trap a horse. Instead, he bet on a freeze to follow, and when it arrived bearing biting winds and no snow, when ground was hard and easy to cover quickly, he judged it was time to leave Rawlins.
No one objected. Marcie was pretty sure he had contracted the pox from one of the whores. Dix didn’t have much to show for all the nights he spent playing poker. Avery Butterfield was tired of drunks trying to pick a fight with him just because he was the biggest man in the saloon and they figured—hell, he didn’t know what they figured. He was the biggest man in the saloon, for God’s sake.
They got their ten-dollar horses and forty-dollar saddles from the livery, mounted up, and set out for the Morning Star ranch.
• • •
“Hey, Marshal Bridger.”
Cobb was about to step inside his office when he heard the greeting. He backed up and turned to face the street. “Hey, Rabbit.” He put up a hand to greet Finn as well. The boys were riding in the buckboard they used to take visitors to the Pennyroyal, but this afternoon they were alone in the wagon. “Where are you off to?”
Finn, who held the reins, brought the wagon to a halt when it was abreast of Cobb. He pulled down his red woolen scarf so he could be understood. “We’re going out to Morning Star.”
Cobb’s eyebrows puckered as he frowned.
Rabbit said, “He’s talkin’ about Mr. Longstreet’s ranch. Sounds a heap better than callin’ it the old Burdick place.”
Realizing the boys had misinterpreted the reason for his look, Cobb nodded. “It does sound better,” he agreed. “So why you are going out there, and do your granny and pap know?”
Finn said, “You sure got a powerful interest in what folks are doin’.”
“Part of the job,” said Cobb. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his long coat to keep them warm. “And you haven’t answered the question.”
Rabbit jerked his thumb over his shoulder to point to the bed of the buckboard. “That crate is for Mr. Longstreet. Delivery all the way from Chicago. Probably something from one of those catalogs, but Finn and I are on our honor not to do any investigating.”
“Yeah,” said Finn. “We got the same powerful interest in folks that you do, Marshal, only we ain’t got the credentials to make it anything but nosy.”
“Is that right,” Cobb said wryly.
Finn either missed the edge of sarcasm or, more likely, chose to ignore it. He said, “Sure. That’s why Rabbit called out to you. We were goin’ to stop here anyway.”
Cobb turned his attention to Rabbit. “Oh?”
“We got to thinking that maybe there’s something you want us to do for you since we’re headed out there. You got a message for anyone? Maybe you want to send a pie or some cookies along. You know, just to be neighborly.”
“Uh-huh. Just to be neighborly.” He glanced back at the crate. “When did that come in?”
“I reckon about a week ago,” said Rabbit. “Pap held it thinkin’ someone from the ranch would be in and could take delivery, but no one’s shown up for a spell. That’s why it’s our job now.”
“Yeah,” said Finn. “And it’s not so far to the ranch house that we can’t get there and back before dark. Not that the dark bothers us. You know we do our best work at night.”
“I do know that.” Cobb was not warm to the idea of the boys going out to the ranch again, but he had no compelling reason to stop them. He had seen Morgan one time since he and Jane visited his office together, and Max Salter had been in town shortly after that. They had nothing to report. The ranch was quiet and there were no signs of anyone riding the outskirts of the property.
Then there was the crate. Cobb estimated it was three feet high, four feet wide, and another three feet deep. All kinds of things could fit into a box like that. It was tempting to look inside, but not even his credentials mad
e that right or legal. He let it go.
“All right,” he said. “I guess I could send you out there with something from Jenny’s bakery.”
“Is there a message?” Finn asked hopefully.
“Yes. Give my best to Mrs. Longstreet.”
“That’s it? You ain’t goin’ to make us deputies? Rabbit and me figure we could be transportin’ somethin’ of great significance.”
Rabbit added, “Could be there’s gold. Guns maybe. Bottles of good whiskey packed in excelsior. It’s heavy enough. We’ve been speculating.”
“I bet you have. All right. Both of you, raise your right hand. Your right hand, Finn. Good. From this point forward, you are my special deputies, charged with the safe transport of this box to Morning Star ranch. Your commission ends when you report back in. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Mrs. Longstreet’s real nice,” said Finn. “She could invite us to sit for a meal like she did the last time.”
“Fine. Eat. But when you get back here, find me. Go on. You know where the bakery is. I’ll meet you there.”
• • •
A sharp, bitter wind buffeted Jane as she removed sheets from the clothesline. She collected wooden pins in her mouth as she moved along. It was difficult to know if the sheets were dry or merely frozen. They were certainly stiff.
“Here,” Max Salter said. “Let me help you. I don’t even think you should be doing this.”
Jane blinked. Like an actor stepping out to address his audience, Max had parted two sheets to make his entrance. Jane plucked the pins from her mouth and dropped them into the pocket at the front of her apron. “Here, take these.” She thrust the crackling sheets into his hands and quickly went down the line, removing shirts, shifts, and a union suit.
“Why shouldn’t I be doing this?” she asked.
Max shifted his slight weight from side to side and shrugged.
“Careful, Max. Stay steady or you’ll be three sheets to the wind.”
He laughed. “That’s a good one, ma’am.”
Above her armload of clothes, Jane smiled humbly and tilted her head toward the house. “Inside. Now.” The wind whipped her dress so hard that the ruffled edge of her petticoats turned up. She hurried off without looking to see if Max was following her.