Just This Once

by Jill Gregory

  When it was over, nearly half an hour later, the Golden Pistol was in shambles. Downstairs, at least. The saloon women, who had retreated upstairs, were watching from the railing, shaking their heads in dismay.

  “Men. Why do they have to fight all the time?” Rose’s lips curled in disgust.

  “I think that tall stranger is hurt,” Josie muttered, watching with glum fascination as Sheriff Mills managed to snap handcuffs on the man she had robbed this afternoon. He was unconscious now, she saw, her stomach clenching. Blood ran down his handsome face from a cut above his temple.

  “I want to press charges against this man, Sheriff. I want him locked up until he’s agreed to pay for all the damages incurred here tonight.” Stickley fairly jumped from one foot to the other as the sheriff and his deputy, who had come running from the cafe when he’d heard the sounds of the fray, carried the big gunslinger toward the broken saloon doors.

  “He’s going straight to jail right now,” Mills grunted, paying no heed to the blood on the stranger’s face or his ashen color. “Damned bastard. Lucky if I don’t throw away the key.”

  The doors creaked weakly shut behind them, and no one noticed the small balding man in the tidy black suit who quietly emerged from behind the bar, dusted himself off, and slipped out after them.

  Josie scurried back to her room, much disturbed. She was trying hard not to feel sorry about the stranger, but without much success. She’d heard someone say that the fight had started when he couldn’t pay up what he’d lost tonight at cards.

  Horrible qualms of guilt assailed her. But the stranger could take care of himself, she thought as she locked herself in her room once more and threw a final few belongings in her valise. Judging from the way he’d used his fists, he was more than capable of taking care of himself—it had taken someone hitting him over the head with a bottle from behind to finally bring him down.

  But she found herself hoping he wasn’t seriously hurt.

  Don’t worry about him, worry about yourself, she scolded, steeling herself against emotions that tended to run away from her. There had been no sign of Snake or any member of his gang in the Golden Pistol tonight, and she drew some small comfort from the fact that they were probably holed up in Maizey’s Brothel two streets over. It was a place more to their liking, she thought darkly, suppressing a shudder.

  I’ll never have to see them again, she told herself as she unbuttoned her gingham. She already had the train schedule—now all she had to do was purchase her ticket as soon as the office opened in the morning, and get on board the train.

  Josie folded the gingham gown—the best gown she owned, the one she’d worn for her wedding to Snake—and tucked it into the valise atop her dancing girl costume, a chemise, and a white cotton nightgown. Then she pulled on jeans and a flannel shirt, and a big oversize buckskin vest. When she left this room at first light, she’d have her hair tucked under a hat and a cigar between her lips, and she’d do her damnedest to look like a boy. In case she ran into Snake, she had to make sure he wouldn’t recognize his runaway wife.

  The last items she tucked into the sturdy straw valise were the most important ones—the letter fragment and the dainty little silk handbag that belonged to a girl she’d never met. And the small woolen pouch containing the two treasures that gave Josephine Cooper Barker the shivers whenever she drew them out, looked at them, touched them.

  There was a possibility that she really might discover who she was this time. She had clues now—solid ones. The ring belonging to that poor young Englishwoman who’d been unlucky enough to have been held up by Snake Barker and his gang exactly matched the brooch that had been pinned to her swaddling clothes.

  If they were from the same set... if they were family jewels...

  Perhaps this Alicia Denby was a relative, or whoever had given her the ring was a relative.

  She’d never forget that night in the hideout cabin when she’d first seen the ring. The moment Snake had dumped all the loot from the stagecoach holdup onto the wooden table that hot, windless night, she’d gone still as a statue. She’d stared transfixed past the pile of greenbacks and coins, the pocket watches and fobs, the lady’s handbag and garnet earrings and bracelet and the ivory comb and the scrap of paper lying atop a crushed lace handkerchief. She’d reached out trembling fingers to lift the exquisite pearl-and-opal ring, cradling it in her palm.

  It was lovely. Four small creamy pearls nestled around a shimmering opal, set within heavy gleaming gold. Her hand had tingled as she’d held it, for the ring seemed to pulse with heat and warmth.

  “Like that one, eh?” Snake had chuckled, and snatched it from her. “Well, don’t go gettin’ attached to it, Jo. I’m going to sell it. It’s probably worth damn near as much as all the cash we took off those folks today. You should have seen that pretty little English gal it belonged to—she stripped off her earrings and bracelet without so much as a whimper, but begged me to let her keep this. As if I’d let something so purty and so downright valuable slip through my fingers because of a few little tears.”

  “Maybe it was special to her.” Josie had moistened her lips and fixed him with a wary stare. “You didn’t hurt her, did you, Snake?”

  Behind her, Spooner and Noah had burst into guffaws. “No need to come to that,” Noah had told her, twirling the reddish brown ends of his mustache. “Soon as Deck stuck his gun in that old geezer’s ribs and threatened to shoot, that gal couldn’t hand the ring over fast enough.”

  Deck, Snake’s cousin, tall and wiry with hair nearly as fair as Snake’s, had snickered. “I wished you’d’a let me bring her along, too. Hell, you got yourself a fine-lookin’ woman, Snake. The rest of us ain’t got nothin.”

  “You’d have brung her along, and that old geezer grandpop of hers would’ve had the law hunt us down like dogs.” Snake had snatched up the gold pieces on the table and begun fingering them greedily, then had tossed one to Deck, Noah, and Spooner in turn. “With these, boys, you can buy yourselves a fancy woman when we go to town. Have a little fun.”

  “What... did she look like?” Josie had asked, trying to sound casual, her gaze still fixed on the ring Snake had set down among the coins.

  “Who?” Sifting through the rest of the loot, Snake pursed his mouth in concentration as he judged each item’s value.

  “The English girl.”

  He’d shrugged, already ripping bills out of a handsome leather wallet. “Like she’d break if ya squeezed her. Hair yellow as a daffodil. Pale and skinny. Hey, why so many questions?”

  He’d reached out one lanky, corded arm and smacked her on the bottom. “Go fix supper. I’ve got a hankerin’ for fried chicken and peach pie. Hurry it up, me and the boys are near starved.”

  Now, in her room above the Golden Pistol, Josie reached for the folded scrap of paper and reread the letter that had been in Alicia Denby’s handbag, the letter Josie had read in secret later that night.

  Dear Miss Denby

  We regret to inform you that our records regarding the matter you inquired about are sadly incomplete. We are unable to discover any information about the individual you are interested in, but you may wish to make further inquiries at the Margaret Mapleson Foundling Home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Due to severe overcrowding, many of the orphaned children left in our care were sent there in the months following the close of the War.

  The rest of the letter had been torn away. But reading it, Josie had felt a chill. Miss Denby had been looking for an orphan, an orphan born during the war. And Miss Denby possessed a ring that appeared remarkably similar to Josie’s own precious brooch. The brooch that no one knew about, not Snake, not Pop Watson, not Rose or Penny from the saloon, no one.

  What if she discovered she was related in some way to this Miss Denby? Of course, Miss Denby was blond, and she had brown hair, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be some sort of relation, a cousin, perhaps, or possibly...

  Possibly even a sister.

  A sister.
<
br />   No. Josie shook her head, blocking this line of thought. It was silly to get her hopes up. When she was a child and had been taken into her first series of homes, she’d always gotten her hopes up, always thought optimistically that she would find a home and a family, not just a farm to work on, and supper to serve, and other people’s socks and hems to darn and animals to feed. But a home. Hugs and warm words, a pat on the shoulder, shared sorrows and joys. It hadn’t happened.

  Pop Watson was the closest she’d come—and he’d been a former snake oil salesman, carnival barker, and pickpocket who’d married the hard-faced Montana widow who’d written to the Children’s Society Orphanage seeking a boy to help her run her small ranch at the foot of the Beartooth Mountains.

  Emmie Lou Dunner had been none too pleased when she’d had to settle for fourteen-year-old, small-for-her-age Josie when all the boys were taken. But things had gotten better for Josie at the Scarred Tree Ranch after Pop had come to live there two years later. Unlike long-nosed Emmie Lou, Pop treated her as if she were a member of the family. He told her jokes, complimented her cooking, even helped her with the endless chores Miz Dunner demanded of her each day in exchange for room and board. When Miz Dunner went out alone on occasion to visit a neighbor or buy supplies in town, Pop taught Josie how to pick pockets and how to cheat at cards. Pop Watson had loved her in his rough, rapscallion way, Josie was sure of it.

  But after Miz Dunner died that winter, Pop had let the ranch go. He’d started spending nights in town drinking and gambling, not stumbling home until dawn.

  When he’d met up with Snake Barker while playing poker at a hole-in-the-wall saloon on the edge of town, it hadn’t taken much persuasion for him to join the younger man’s outlaw gang. Then everything had changed. Over the next two or three years, he’d go off for months at a time, leaving Josie to fend for herself at the lonely, failing ranch.

  She managed as best she could, and when Pop came home, he always had money. Josie didn’t like knowing how he’d come by it, but she couldn’t change Pop. He’d take the wagon to town and fill it to the brim with groceries that would last her for months. He’d bring her home licorice sticks and hair ribbons, just as he had when she was fourteen. And he told her stories about how he was saving his money and one day he’d buy Josie the most beautiful pink dress she ever did see.

  He never bought her that dress. But he brought Snake Barker home for supper one night, let him and the boys lay low at the ranch, and it was then that Snake took one look at her and decided he wanted Josie Cooper to be his wife.

  And when she balked at the advances of the swaggering young outlaw leader, despite his scruffy blond good looks and the crude compliments he paid her, Snake made it clear that Pop Watson was older now and expendable, that he couldn’t ride as hard or shoot as straight as he had only a year or two ago, and if Jo refused to marry Snake, Pop was going to die.

  But, Josie thought with a shudder, that was all behind her now. Snake was behind her now. She had escaped him, fleeing with the stolen loot and Miss Denby’s ring, and the letter, and now, as she stared down at the pouch and ran a finger over the folded scrap of paper, she closed her eyes and turned her thoughts to the future.

  England, she whispered to herself. I’ve searched so long, so hard. But now, at last, maybe I’ll find out who I am. Maybe I’ll find the answers—once I get to England.

  Five

  Ethan sprawled on the jail cot with closed eyes and a pounding head. Blinding red lights pierced the darkness beneath his eyelids, and his throat felt as if he’d swallowed a bucket of sand. He doubted he could move if called upon to do so—he doubted he could even open his eyes.

  He wanted to dive down into the depths of unconsciousness and stay there, dark and hidden and quiet. But the pain hammered between his temples, his stomach fought the urge to heave, and he gave a low moan of disgust at his inability to pass out again.

  “You awake, Savage?”

  He ignored the rough voice snapping at him. Who the hell was it? Who the hell cared?

  “Savage! Wake up, you damned son of a gun. Someone here wants to talk to you—though I’m damned if I know why.”

  When he heard the next voice, memory flooded back, unwelcome as a vulture.

  “My lord, this seems an appropriate time to continue our discussion,” Lucas Latherby said in his dry, distinct way.

  “Go to hell,” Ethan managed to rasp out, then groaned at the effort of speaking.

  “Very well. If you truly wish me to leave you in this cell, I shall. But according to Sheriff Mills here, and Mr. Stickley, who owns the saloon you destroyed tonight, you will be here for a very long time. Unless, of course, you avail yourself of my aid.”

  Ethan ignored him. He was concentrating on opening his eyes. His eyelids felt as if they’d been scratched by shards of glass. He felt something warm and sticky on his face and brought his hand up slowly. Blood. His own blood.

  Who the hell cares?

  But the next moment, he became more fully aware of his surroundings and his stomach lurched at the sight of the cell bars.

  “Let me outta here.”

  “Humph. When hell freezes over,” the sheriff growled.

  With an effort, Ethan sat up, suppressing a groan of pain and dizziness. Sheriff Mills scowled at him from outside the bars, his thumbs hooked in his pockets. Owlishly, Lucas Latherby peered through his spectacles, studying Ethan with intent absorption.

  Mills looked vexed beyond words. Latherby wore an expression of sympathy, and implacable patience.

  “Hell, Mills, I’ll pay Stickley for the damages. Open the damned cell door.”

  “You don’t got one red cent to your name, Savage. That’s what started all this, remember? You lost at cards to Jake Coombs and then tried to leave without paying. You’re lucky that cowboy didn’t shoot you down for trying to welch on your debt.”

  “Wasn’t trying to welch. Was trying to find... her...”

  “Who, my lord?” Latherby asked when his voice trailed off.

  “The girl. The one who took my wallet earlier. I got it back, she must’ve stolen it again.” A sudden thought made him feel gingerly at his shirt and blood-spattered vest, his fingers skimming lightly over bruised ribs. “Damn. That little bitch got my pocket watch, too.” Fury sent him surging to his feet. For a moment, the world swayed perilously, and he gripped at the bars for support. Dimly he realized he was still drunk. The effects of all the liquor he’d imbibed would probably be with him well into the next day.

  When the dizziness ebbed, he glowered at Latherby. “Find her! She’s got my money and my pocket watch! Go, man, start searching for her—”

  “I’m not in a position to do that, sir. I am employed to represent the interests of the Earl of Stonecliff. Based on our last conversation, you are not that person—nor have you any interest in becoming him.”

  “Damn your weasely face, Latherby. You, Mills! Go find that girl. She was medium height, slenderly built—skinny as a chicken if that helps, with brown hair, curly hair—hell, I don’t remember the color of her eyes but—”

  “Savage, you’re loco if you think I’m going to hunt up some mystery woman in the middle of the night. Now listen here. You’re the one who tore up Stickley’s place, and you’re the one who’s going to rot in jail for it. Now, my missus is waitin’ for me at home, and I’m leaving the deputy here in charge.”

  He turned to Latherby. “You’ve got to leave. It’s after midnight, and I’m locking up.”

  “Latherby! You bail me the hell out of here right now or I’ll wring your scrawny neck.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. I have only been granted authority to be of service to the Earl of Stonecliff. I can hardly use funds which, upon your refusal to accept the title, will be due to your cousin.”

  “Winthrop!” Ethan had a vision of his foppish, mincing cousin with the greedy pond-blue eyes. Oliver Winthrop was forever licking the boots of Hugh and his father, running to them with tales
of Ethan’s exploits. It had been Winthrop who’d first told them about Molly.

  Ethan’s fingers clenched around the bars and he shook them mightily. “That worm doesn’t deserve to get his oily hands on Stonecliff!”

  “If you refuse to accept the terms of your father’s will, then he is next in the line of succession.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the line of succession!” The bars rattled beneath his furious grip, but remained intact. Ethan’s eyes blazed with rage and frustration such as he hadn’t known in a long, long time. Sweat streamed down his brow and temples, sheening his bruised face. His head ached, he hurt like hell, he wanted out!

  Ethan Savage hated being locked up. It made him sick to his stomach. And he was sick enough as it was, considering all the rotgut he’d consumed. As he glanced at the small, contemptuous eyes of Sheriff Mills and the mild, apologetic ones of the solicitor, and then at the four-foot cell in which he found himself confined, rage and desperation surged within him. They mounted as Latherby gave a slight shrug and turned, starting toward the door after the hunch-shouldered sheriff.

  “Latherby!”

  “I regret, sir, that I am not empowered to help you.”

  “Mills!”

  “Sleep it off, you young jackass!”

  Ethan felt the pounding in his head increase. These four walls... they were closing in. He needed out... he needed a drink....

  “Latherby—you slimy sniveling son of a bitch—I’ll do it. I’ll meet the damned terms of the will. Get back here or I swear when I get out of here I’ll plug you so full of holes you’ll—”

  Instantly, Latherby spun about and hurried to the cell door. “I am delighted, sir, that you—”

  “Yeah. Sure. Just settle the hell up with Mills and get me out of here.”

  “Sheriff...”

  “Hold on, now. This ain’t how we usually do things.” The sheriff held a hand up, his tone testy. “For one thing, it’s got to cost at least two hundred dollars or more to fix up the Golden Pistol, and there’s a fine to pay for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct—and fighting, and destroying property.”