Ginny was still standing. He breathed again. The gang members lay flat on their stomachs as Peter bound them. Cal’s jaw sagged.
Silas still held a pistol, but no other imminent danger to life and limb was visible. Cal pushed through the trees into the clearing to Ginny. “You’re safe.”
“Of course I’m safe. Did you see how many gang members I defeated? All right, we defeated. Still, I pulled the first gun. I don’t think they could have done it better in a crime novel.” Her voice bobbed up and down like a schoolgirl in its excitement. Then, wiping her hands off against each other, she tucked her gun into the pocket of her dress.
The pounding in Cal’s heart gradually slowed as he surveyed the campsite for any unforeseen issues. Site secure. Ginny safe.
But whoever had been sent out to shoot Sheriff Thompson was likely headed back by now and would have heard the other gunshots.
“Let’s go free Uncle Zak.” She spent one moment rubbing at a grease stain on her cheek then drew her pistol up.
She didn’t know? His eyes grew somber. “I’m afraid it’s too late.”
“Too late?” She tilted her chin up, accenting the red of her pert lips.
“Didn’t you hear the shot?”
Her face didn’t go white; she just looked disgruntled. “I heard lots of shots. I assumed it was you.”
“No.” He gave her one moment to grieve, but he couldn’t risk the free gang member aiding the rest. “I’ll go get them. You stay here.”
“No! I have to see Uncle Zak!”
Reality, though cold, had to be said. “He’s dead.”
The wind blew across her face and her nose squinted up. “Maybe he survived the shot.”
Survived? As much as he’d like to believe that, it just wasn’t credible. The Silverman gang wasn’t known for sloppy executions.
“I’m going to find out.” Both hands on her pistol, she plunged forward, a dissatisfied wrinkle in her furrowed brow.
Leaving Peter to guard the prisoners and Silas’s shifting gun, Cal set out after her. Leaves crackled underfoot as they traced the path to where the shot had come from. Ahead, elderberry bushes blocked the view to an open space.
Pistol out, he prepared to spread the branches with his hand. “This won’t be a sight fit for women.”
“He can’t be dead.” She clenched her jaw shut around the words as she leveled her pistol too.
He burst through the trees. The gang member crouched at the edge of the clearing, his back against a tree, his eyes lolled up in death. Cal searched for the sheriff. Toward the north of the clearing, the man lay, spread out on the ground under an oak tree. Widow Sullivan stood over him, a smoking pistol in her hand.
The leaves of the elderberry bush hung limply as the breeze died to an air as lifeless as the body under the tree beyond. Ginny’s face sagged. “I can’t believe…he’s…dead…”
Her words hung like icicles across window ledges on a winter morning. He had no words of comfort, only the hope that justice would be served to the gang and its allies.
~*~
Shoving aside the elderberry branches, Cal stepped forward. “Widow Sullivan, you’re under arrest for the murder of Sheriff Thompson.”
“You horrible widow woman! I should have shot you when I first found out about the plum preserves.” Ginny burst out from the parallel elderberry bush.
With a grunt, Sheriff Thompson picked himself up from the ground. “I’m actually quite alive. Wait, Ginny?”
“Uncle Zak!” Ginny tore out of the woods toward him. Throwing both arms around his neck, she covered his face with tears.
Cal watched her. He’d never quite understood that part about women. Tears were utterly useless and time-consuming. Though if Ginny ever threw her arms around him the way she’d just done with her uncle, he didn’t suppose he’d mind the tears much.
A horrified expression spread across the sheriff’s face. “I thought you were safe in Gilman.” Embracing her back, he glanced at Widow Sullivan.
“I didn’t want to worry you,” the widow said in a small voice, her head tucked close to the black neck of her dress.
The sheriff swung his gaze to Cal. “What kind of no account lawman endangers a woman’s life by allowing her in his posse? You should have kept my niece safe in Gilman.”
“In Gilman? When you were out here needing rescuing? I don’t think so.” Ginny planted a kiss on her uncle’s cheek and then drew back with a smile.
Enough of joyful reunions. “Hands behind your back, Mrs. Sullivan.” Cal took hold of the woman’s arms and twisted his belt around her wrists.
Strangely, something like a grimace crossed the sheriff’s face. “She saved my life. Killed the gang member who planned to shoot me. She does deserve some mercy for that, doesn’t she?”
Cal grunted.
“Where’s the rest of the gang?” Sheriff Thompson asked, his pensive gaze still lingering on the widow.
Turning, Cal took his pistol back out of his gun belt. “Taken care of. Just leaving now to collect them for the trip to Denver’s jail, if you’re all right here?”
“Perfectly all right.” Sheriff Thompson pulled himself to his feet.
Ginny grabbed his coat jacket. “You should have seen me, Uncle Zak. I distracted the whole gang. Then we took our guns back and got the drop on them and—”
“Honey.”
“Yes?” Her green eyes were beautiful as she looked up at her uncle.
“Maybe you should go with Cal, get the prisoners taken care of.” Sheriff Thompson spared a moment to caress her head in a fatherly sort of way.
Squirming under the touch, she stepped back and used both hands to get the disturbed hairs back in efficient order. “Love to, but are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
“Don’t worry. No bullet wounds. Unlike that lawman over there.” The sheriff winked at her as he jerked his chin up to the red seeping from Cal’s shoulder.
Ginny’s gaze jerked over. She wrinkled her brow. “You’re absolutely right, Uncle Zak.”
A smile crept across Cal’s face. She cared?
Ginny ran to him in a flurry of calico and petticoats. “Now if you’re not able to complete the transfer of the gang, I would be more than happy to ride to Denver for you with the gang.”
His smile grew weak around the edges. “I’m fine.” Cal held the elderberry branch back for Ginny.
*
As she disappeared out of eyeshot, the sheriff dropped down to the spot where Cal had bound Widow Sullivan.
A low groan escaped her lips. “What now?” The tear stains on her cheeks smudged her rouge. The depths of her blue eyes looked weary. “Federal penitentiary?”
Sheriff Thompson didn’t take his eyes off her. “What’s your real name, Widow Sullivan?”
“Renee Jamison.”
“Renee…” Sheriff Thompson drew the word out. “That’s a pretty name.”
Cal brought his eyebrows down. R. J., like the initials on the handbag in Mr. Clinton’s office.
“Why do you even want to know?” Widow Sullivan’s face went stiff as she directed a harsh gaze at the sheriff.
“You did save my life. And I can’t work on getting you a pardon without your real name.”
“You would do that for me?” Widow Sullivan’s blue eyes grew big, her lips drooping.
“Yep.”
Pine branches snapped as Cal broke the odd tête-à-tête. “The prisoners are ready to move. Are you feeling well enough to bring her over here with the rest?”
Sheriff Thompson hastily moved forward. His bad leg dragged behind. “Just fine.”
“You want her rounded up the same as the others or in a separate cell?”
“Separate would be good.” He turned and gently took hold of Renee’s arm. Trembling, she used his strength to get herself up off the ground despite the awkward ties that bound her hands.
Cal waited.
Sheriff Thompson pulled back a bristly bough, held it, and motioned her forward.
He shrugged. “Maybe I like being nice to you.”
“You said law men weren’t allowed to consort with convicts, or ex-convicts either, I suppose.”
“Actually, I think I’m going to retire.” Raising his head and voice, he spoke above the underbrush that separated him from Cal and the rest of the posse. “You hear that? I’m retiring. Accepting notices of application for the sheriff election as of Monday morning.”
19
The gang taken safely to the Denver marshal, paperwork signed to get the Gilman posse equal shares of the reward money, and all the paperwork on Cal’s desk filed. Yes, life was in pretty good order these days.
“Ginny.” Cal swung open his office door, but her desk was already empty for the day, her pen and ruler neatly tucked into a brown notebook. A frown crossed his face.
He moved to her desk and laid one hand on the notebook. Did the notebook hold only public case matters, or when she grew bored at this desk did she ever record private feelings? Did any of her private feelings ever involve him? He moved one finger to nudge open a page.
“Cal, is that you?” The sheriff’s voice came from the back office next to the jail cell. Turning, Cal walked through the back office door.
Inside, Sheriff Thompson sat at his desk, flipping through multiple sheets of paper. When he entered, the man pushed them aside against the empty pie plate that a few flaky crumbs of pastry dough still clung to, another reminder of Ginny. “Just looking at some notices of application.” He patted his hand on the stack.
“You’re really retiring?” Cal’s gaze traveled the office that had become familiar in the few short weeks since he’d come. The gang assignment over, he’d be leaving soon. It seemed unreal.
Sheriff Thompson nodded. “I’ve got the letters right here. The election is in two days.”
Cal nodded and picked up a dead moth that had perished between the cracks of the floorboards.
“I didn’t see a letter from you.”
The moth found its final resting place just outside the open office window, beneath a lilac bush. All in all, not a shabby funeral site for an insect. Then Cal turned to the sheriff and agreed with a silent nod. He’d be back in Houston by the end of this month at the latest. Far, far away from Gilman. The thought made him irrationally unsettled.
The smell of lilacs brushed through the office, carried in on the breeze, as Sheriff Thompson leaned over his desk. “I don’t need a notice of application to know you’re the best we could get for this job.”
Cal met the man’s gaze. “I’m a Texas Ranger. That’s not a post many leave.”
“Will you think about it?”
Such a simple question; such a hard answer. Cal roved his gaze around the room again, taking in the nicks on the pine floor, the bit of rust just under the jail cell lock, the walls, bare except for one daguerreotype of a small girl, maybe Ginny, by the sheriff’s desk. On one hand, he was moving forward in Houston, just got a promotion three months ago. Mrs. Clinton, inane Temperance League fights, and a town drunk who expected pillows in his jai, that wasn’t moving forward.
On the other hand, he’d never seen a town rally together as when Sheriff Thompson was kidnapped and, for a few brief hours, Gilman had felt more like home than anything he’d experienced in ten years.
Could he handle being stuck in a tiny town like Gilman? Then again, if Mr. Clinton’s mine had as much silver as Bloody Joe predicted, the threat of gang violence hadn’t ended. Gilman needed a decent lawman to keep it safe, and he highly doubted if any of those Gilman applicants in the stack were up to the job. Then there was Ginny.
Was she spending as much time thinking about him as he was about her?
“Think about it?” Sheriff Thompson repeated. A curious expression on his face, his gaze followed Cal’s wandering one.
“All right, I’ll think about it.”
Shoving the other notices of application away, the sheriff smiled.
“If there isn’t anything else, I’m heading back for the day.”
“See you at home, Westwood,” the sheriff’s voice trailed him as he hurried out the door. He only had a limited number of minutes before the work day ended to catch Ginny alone, and he intended to use them.
~*~
The Thompson front door swung open at Cal’s hand. He only had to follow the aroma to find Ginny.
Heat rose from the kitchen stove, sending up puffs of smoke and a delicious browning-pastry-crusts smell. In the doorway, he paused, one hand on the doorframe. “So.”
An apple peel slithered through Ginny’s fingers as she slid her knife around an apple. “So?” She looked up with a smile.
“This is it, I guess. Gang captured, peace restored, I’ll be heading back to Houston.” He leaned more heavily on his raised hand.
“Oh.” The peeled apple landed with a plop in a bowl of other naked fruit and she grabbed a second one.
Was it his imagination or had her smile faded somewhat? Was she maybe thinking of missing him?
More calmly than he felt, he stepped into the aroma-laden kitchen. He picked off a bit of perfectly brown crust that had half fallen off and made the casual remark, “It’s been good working with you.”
Uncovering a floury pan, she whipped out a folded pie crust, pressed it into a pie plate, and then turned to him. “The same to you. The way you led the posse and overpowered the sentries was truly impressive. I’m sorry I was so awful to you at first. You acted like a true gentleman the entire time.”
The pie crust almost choked him as he swallowed the piping hot pastry in one gulp. “You ever think of coming out Houston’s way?”
“What for?” Grabbing a spice jar, she sent its contents sprinkling over the apples with a shake of her lovely wrist.
Not the best question to ask. Unless he wanted to drop on one knee and propose on the spot. A ludicrous idea. Or was it? “To see the town.”
A puff of wind flapped through the curtains above the sink and blew her hair out of place. She reached one floury hand up to smooth it and smudged a dab across her right temple. “What’s to see in Texas? Isn’t it all cacti and flat plains of dust?”
Jerking opened the oven door, she sniffed, and then removed the top pie tin. With her elbow, she pushed the plate of pastry snails toward him. “You can have these instead of my pies.”
She clearly wasn’t getting the hint. Taking a snail between two fingers, he took a bite of the delicious cinnamon, sugar, and butter flavor. “There’s the Texas Ranger training grounds for one.”
One hand on the counter behind, a position that highlighted her figure more than she was likely aware, she leaned back and tilted her head up to him. “You’ve been to their training grounds? I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“Yeah, it’s where I trained.”
She dropped the pie plate. The tin clanged against the floorboards, pastry bouncing, as her floury hands came up. “You’re not—you couldn’t be!”
The corners of his mouth twisted up. “Don’t think I shoot straight enough for a Ranger?”
She stared at him, pink lips spreading apart as her chin dropped.
“I can show you the badge if it’d help.”
“Did you put an application in for town sheriff here?” Strangely, her voice held a tinge of desperation.
Why that question now? Was she asking because she wanted him to apply or because she still hated the idea?
“I thought about it.” There. That was a perfect, open-ended statement just begging for a revealing response from her.
“Really?” She froze, tea towel in her hands.
The stove burst into smoke. The oven door jiggled as the sound of popping, burning, and blasting filled the air.
“No!” Ginny rushed to the oven door. Flames leaped up at the sudden burst of oxygen. A spark hit a wisp of her hair and she smacked wildly at it with her tea towel.
<
br /> He stepped forward.
“Need help cleaning up, honey?” Sheriff Thompson stood in the kitchen doorway, a bundle of papers in hand.
And that was the end of that conversation. With a scowl, Cal knelt by the oven door and turned to the task of fire extinguishing.
~*~
Pressing her elbows down on the scratched finish of the dining room table, Ginny chewed the tip of her pen.
“What are you doing?” From across the table, Cherry lined up more quilting pieces that should have been Ginny’s responsibility. The fabric polygons spread around her like water ripples, engulfing the table, and spilling out onto the floor beyond. After Cherry finished this quilt, they’d only have thirty-four more to piece.
Flicking away a sage-green rectangle that had invaded her writing space, Ginny looked up from her stack of papers. “Do you think ‘key facilitator in Silverman gang round up’ sounds better or ‘influential leader contributing to the capture of Silverman gang.’”
Cherry gasped through the indigos, blues, and cattle-sized carpet bag from Mrs. Clinton that sat in front of her. “You’re not applying to enter the sheriff election, are you?”
“Polishing my notice of application as we speak.” Ginny dug the pen back into the ink. Should she include that time she found the Smith’s cow when she was ten, or was that going back too far? Cal had mentioned applying. If there was even a small chance she was competing against a Texas Ranger, she needed to list every accomplishment she had.
A Texas Ranger…She twirled the pen between her thumb and ring finger. How long had he been one? Just to achieve that post took incredible determination and natural ability. He must have done it all. Halted stage coach robberies, tracked down wanted men, been in gunfights.
When she’d almost died up there at the hands of the Silverman gang, she’d realized how truly awful she’d acted toward him. Though she’d compared herself to Rahab bravely lying to the King of Jericho, Cal was a hero, not a villain. She never should have lied to him, or manipulated matters to get him in trouble with Mrs. Clinton, or attempted to run him out of town.
Her behavior had been ill-befitting to any good Christian, let alone a woman intent upon pursuing a career in law enforcement. She should have been upholding the law, not subverting it. Never again would she let her actions sink so low. No, after she became sheriff of Gilman, she’d hold herself to a much higher standard.
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