The man behind Peter, who had sleepily contemplated the dirt, craned his head around. “He is? Well, I know who I’ll be voting for, too.”
And Peter had just taken another vote from her. Ginny narrowed her eyes as she considered glaring at him. Lifting her chin airily underneath her straw hat, she decided he really wasn’t worth the effort of a glare.
“If it’s any consolation, Mr. Clinton won’t let me touch a ballot either. Haven’t been a resident of Gilman for six months.”
Ginny turned. Cal stood behind her, leaning up against the north side of the schoolhouse.
Peter raised his hand in greeting, but Cal looked at her. A star already hung on his leather vest, those coveted revolvers still hanging low on his hips, his skilled trigger finger resting on the gun belt.
Unfortunately, she had to admit Cal would make an excellent sheriff. She extended her hand. “May the best man win.” Or woman.
He looked at her with a puzzled expression. “You mean in the election?”
“Of course.” Though he had the advantage of formal training, she knew the town of Gilman better, which should give her the upper hand. Then what would happen to Cal? She chewed the corner of her lip as she eyed him. If he went back to Houston, she’d miss him—a little. Not too much. But who else could she sharpen her marksmen skills against? She needed to learn more about the Texas Rangers. The papers never printed Rangers’ tactics, just their arrest records.
Pushing her straw hat back to dangle by the ribbons around her neck, she looked up at him. His eyes were so blue. She wasn’t looking at his lips. She never thought about how they’d felt against hers. Never. “What will you do if you lose?”
“I’m a Texas Ranger.” He rested his hand on his gun belt, but he looked distracted, not smug, as he said the words.
Still, she straightened to her full height. “And they never lose?”
“Not really.” As if paying no attention to the audacity of his words, he shifted his searching gaze back and forth across her face.
The nerve of the man! “Good day, Mr. Westwood.” She gave her most prim head nod and turned on her heel away from the oppressive ballot box and patriarchal election.
Though inexplicably, instead of acting properly rebuffed, he let his gaze follow her as she walked away.
Not that she sneaked a glance at him over her shoulder; she was just re-positioning her hat.
~*~
At three o’clock in the afternoon Cal walked into the sheriff’s office. One last meeting as gang division member posing as sheriff’s assistant. He would turn in his temporary badge and talk to Sheriff Thompson. He moved into what had been his office for the last weeks. The desk sat starkly bare. No papers, no case progress reports, no telegrams from Houston. According to the desk, his time here had never existed. One train ticket and he could make the town tell the story of the desk.
He picked up the black leather bag in the corner, which had traveled with him ever since he’d gotten his first star, and walked back to Sheriff Thompson’s office. The door creaked at his touch. “Sheriff Thompson?”
Elbows on his desk, the sheriff looked at him for a full minute.
Cal caught himself trying to avoid the man’s stare as he took a seat.
The sheriff took a deep breath and let it out. “I counted up the votes and you carried the election almost unanimously. Will you take the position?”
No words of nicety about their time together, or rather useless departing comments congratulating him on the gang’s capture. He appreciated this fact about his interactions with Sheriff Thompson.
Would he take the position? Cal drummed his fingers against the handle of his bag.
Sheriff Thompson kept his gaze on him. The man had green eyes, the same shade as Ginny’s.
The bag itself, filled with seized gang paperwork and the official record of Bloody Joe’s capture, made the case for Houston. With the Silverman gang’s capture on his record, he would have a promotion in store when he stepped off that southern-bound train.
The slip of paper stuffed into the side pocket of that bag, which read quantity one, sold and had Peter’s General Store printed on the letterhead on top, argued a different side all together. Cal nodded slowly. “All right. But not for forever. Just to keep the town safe for a while.”
Sheriff Thompson shifted in his seat. “You got restless feet?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Cal studied the groove pattern in the floor and wondered what Ginny would say this afternoon. Did she still think about Peter Foote? What had possessed him to buy that ring knowing nothing about her affections? Because he loved Ginny Thompson, that’s why. He slapped his hand on his revolver. And he wasn’t leaving Gilman, blast it, until she felt the same way.
“Does Ginny know that?”
Cal’s gaze shot up and he tried not to let the sheriff know his heart had skipped a beat. “What about Ginny?”
“Does she know you’re restless? Not necessarily the best quality in a husband. Also, are you planning on asking me before you use that ring from the general store? No guarantees she’ll say yes, mind you, no matter what my answer.”
Heat seeped up from Cal’s neck, past his ears, to his hairline. Gilman was much too small of a town. “Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. I mean I could if you really wanted me to.”
“It is considered necessary in all of polite society.”
Cal shifted his boots on the floor. “Yeah, but I thought the chances of her saying yes were much slimmer than yours.”
A slow grin rose to Sheriff Thompson’s face. “Well, I guess you have my Ginny figured right.” Shoving his chair back, the sheriff stood. “Tell me what she says.” He went over to the cabinet and began shifting his files out of the office. Strangely enough, those files were no longer his.
Cal squeezed the butt of his revolver. The way he saw it, that was a yes from Sheriff Thompson. Now all he had to do was talk to Ginny.
20
Ginny stood in the kitchen laboring over a baked summer squash dish with fried onions and bread crumbs.
“Hi, honey.” Uncle Zak walked in the door, uncharacteristically late.
She’d finished secretarial work hours ago, and now all that was left to do was wait for the last ballots to be cast.
Grabbing two worn towels, she opened the oven door and leaned over to check the squash dish. A glorious smell rose from the perfectly browned top of the casserole. “Where’s, Cal?” She stood up, summer squash in hand.
“I sent him back to the boarding house. The Silverman gang’s safely behind bars, so there’s really no more need for an extra gun in the house.”
She set the squash down on the cast iron stove top. “Oh.”
For some reason, she felt…well, definitely not happy. After she won the election, she’d probably never see Cal again. Never argue in the sheriff’s office again, play chess at the dining room table, or feel his arms close around her waist as his lips moved against hers.
Not that she’d miss that! No, the next man she would kiss was Peter Foote on their wedding day. But Cal was very good with Fluffy. The cat hadn’t screamed for a week after that Irish ballad. Maybe nightmares were good for Fluffy. That’s why she’d miss Cal—for her valiant watch-cat’s sake.
Setting down the towels, Ginny took a spatula to the beef slabs on the griddle.
Uncle Zak rested a hand on the stove top. “The election results are in.”
Her spatula hit the ground with a clatter. “So soon!” Usually Mr. Clinton waited until nightfall to tally votes.
She had a lot to do to get ready for the sheriff’s office. For one, she needed a gun belt. She’d also like to practice on that mounted shooting Cal taught her. And she really needed more information on gangs and big city law enforcement. Maybe Cal still had some books from his academy she could borrow. Of course, Gilman was just a small town, but with the silver mine, crime would only become more prevalent and the sheriff’s office an even more necessary force.
She should r
eally have some deputies. Rounding up a posse from volunteers hadn’t worked so well this last time. Half the posse couldn’t even shoot straight. What she needed were regular deputies who trained for their job. Wait a minute. This was becoming quite a list. It could take months, and she had a detective agency to build, too.
Picking up the spatula off the floor, she cleaned it on the back of a tea towel. Oh well, she could do work on the job as sheriff. Easier to direct a moving cart or however that saying went. If she won…
She clenched the dish towel and her heart pounded as she gazed at Uncle Zak.
“Who—?” She gulped. This was the position she’d desired for as long as she could remember. One more moment decided the dream. “Who won?”
“That’s the great thing.” Uncle Zak smiled at her.
She held her breath. She couldn’t help it, no matter how unlawman-like the action might be.
“Cal won and agreed to stay on as sheriff. The chance of getting someone with his experience and training on the salary Gilman pays is one in a hundred. I can’t say how thrilled I am that…”
Uncle Zak’s voice died out to the sound of the pounding of her own heart. She hadn’t won. Ginny swallowed hard. The squash sent a succulent smell wafting up as if to cheer her, but that really didn’t help. She hadn’t won. Strange how years of dreams could end in such a matter-of-fact way.
And Cal was staying? Since when had he wanted to stay? He’d told her he hated Gilman. Even Uncle Zak had said that Cal had better opportunities in Texas. Why, then?
The beef sizzled. On the counter, Fluffy leaned over her tea towel and licked the beef spatula. Tossing the spatula into the sink and grabbing a cooking fork from the counter, Ginny sunk it into the beef.
“How many votes did he win by?” Maybe if she’d worked harder or visited those houses last night, she’d have won.
“Almost unanimous. Just one dissenter.”
“Unanimous! Only one person voted for me?”
Uncle Zak scratched behind the back of his neck. “The dissenting vote actually went to a miner.”
“But I’ve been training at the sheriff’s office for years. And with your endorsement how could the townsfolk reject me.” Tears formed in Ginny’s eyes.
“I may have sort of endorsed Cal…” Uncle Zak rubbed one hand across the other, sweat glistening on his palms.
“Uncle Zak!”
He shifted his feet on the floorboards. “I told you it wasn’t a job for a woman, and Cal had the experience.”
Fine, Cal had stolen her job with her uncle’s help. Ginny crossed her arms across her chest, tugging her apron down. She didn’t much need that sheriff position anyhow. She had a detective agency, soon to be the finest detective agency in the state, with some of the keenest brains in the country just ready to be hired on. For its first credential, the agency could put down solving the Silverman gang case and arresting Bloody Joe.
The sheriff’s office had chased down empty mountains for gang members and harassed Mr. Clinton while her detective agency-in-the-making solved the plum preserves case and connected the key gang spy in town to the Silverman gang.
If the lawmen had listened to the detective agency first off, Widow Sullivan could have been behind bars on day one and forced, under harrowing duress, to confess the whereabouts of the gang hideout. Maybe it was just as well she hadn’t gotten the sheriff position.
The Gilman sheriff would serve well enough to round up town drunks and scare local cowhands into not disturbing the peace at night. But who wanted to be part of a second-rate team, when the real brains of the operation were solving crimes in the humble interior of back rooms?
That reminded her, she still hadn’t found an office for the detective agency.
“Are you feeling all right, Ginny? You’ve been standing with that fork in the beef for the last five minutes.” Uncle Zak touched her shoulder, a perplexed look on his face.
She nodded. “Quite fine.”
He squeezed her shoulders in a small hug. “That’s good. What do you think about Cal staying in town?”
Tilting her chin up, she gave him a calculating glance. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, nothing. I just thought that…”
If Uncle Zak wasn’t brave enough to come out and say exactly what was on his mind, she certainly wouldn’t help him. Even though she’d decided the detective agency would be more useful in solving crimes than the sheriff position, that didn’t mean she was forgiving Uncle Zak just yet.
Sure, Cal had some credentials she didn’t, but he was three or four years older. Probably at her age, he’d been much less qualified than her.
“I wondered if you cared for him at all.” Uncle Zak’s smile carried a hopeful edge to it.
“Cal?” Uncle Zak deserved a lofty stare, and she gave it to him as soon as the startled expression had slipped from her face. “After he stole the sheriff position from me with your help?”
Uncle Zak’s face fell and a twinge of guilt pinched her.
“I made your favorite dessert,” she said. Uncle Zak just nodded. He didn’t even smile. Now she really felt guilty. She plopped the mashed potatoes on two plates.
Yesterday there had been three plates. Between scooping squash next to the mashed potatoes, she pondered Uncle Zak’s question. Did she care for Cal Westwood?
~*~
Ring in pocket, check. Cal took a deep breath. Sheriff Thompson gone for the afternoon and not coming back to clean out his desk until tomorrow, as he’d made quite a note of telling Cal before leaving, check.
Ginny inside the building, yes, he could see her through the doorway, her head bent over a stack of paperwork. It felt strange sitting at Sheriff Thompson’s desk inside the main office. As far as Cal had advanced in the gang division, it was a large enough operation he’d always had several men over him. He looked back to where Ginny sat.
The pugnacity to propose to the beautiful young woman who’d tried to get him thrown out of town, shed buckets of tears at the very thought of attending a picnic with him, and had thrown confections in his face? All right, maybe he needed a little more of that.
He gripped the lip of the desk. Then, one more deep breath and he walked into the entrance way. “Ginny?”
“Yes.” She looked up, not even putting down the pen she drew across the page.
He fiddled with the new star on his vest that Sheriff Thompson had given him just this morning. “I wanted to ask you a question.”
“Anything to do with you stealing that sheriff position out from under my nose?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Stealing?”
Folding her arms across her chest, she directed a lofty stare at him. “I’ve been preparing to be sheriff of Gilman for years. I would have won the election if you hadn’t come along with all your legal knowledge and Texas Ranger training.”
“But you’re a girl.” The second the words slipped out of his mouth, he knew it was the absolute wrong thing to say
“Are you stuck in some mindset from the sixth century? It’s the eighteen-hundreds. Women are moving up, doing things.” Not that any woman had become a sheriff yet, but towns ought to allow female sheriffs.
In other words, by taking this sheriff position, he’d just done the one thing least likely to incline her to listen favorably to his suit. It would have been better timed, and a heap easier to just go back to Houston. He could have proposed to Ginny and got a yay or a nay and still kept his coveted slot on the Houston detective force.
Now he’d be stuck in this town, not only dealing with Mrs. Clinton’s moods, but seeing Ginny every day and not having her. Maybe even have to watch her accept the vapid wooing of Peter Foote.
“…and so, I’m sure someday soon there will be a female sheriff in the West.” Ginny slapped her notebook to the next page and seized up a pen. “When it happens—”
No one said Cal Westwood went down without a fight. She could reject him all she wanted, but he at least demanded the opportunity for that.
“Save that monologue for later and—” He paused. One should be polite when asking a girl to spend the rest of her life with you. “Please save that monologue for later. I’ve something to ask you.”
Pen in hand, Ginny tipped her desk chair onto its back legs and leaned back. Her dress rode up with the motion, revealing the white of pantaloons and the delicate leather of her high-topped boots. “Shoot.”
Shoot? Cal wiped a sweaty hand on his already sweaty sleeve. If there was any shooting going on today it would probably be in his direction.
“Go on.” She twirled her pen between thumb and forefinger.
“Will you marry me, Ginny?”
Pen, paper, and a pack of notebooks three feet away hit the floor as her chair came crashing down to an upright position. “Marry? As in husband, wife, rings, and ’til death do us part?’” Her voice quavered.
Cal shifted his stance. “Yes.”
The uncertainty in her eyes disappeared, and she scooted her chair closer to the desk. Resting both elbows on the desktop, she plopped her chin on her hands and gazed at him through narrow eyelids. “Why should I marry you, Cal Westwood?”
His teeth cut his lip as they pressed down. “Because I love you?” He wasn’t sure that was the answer she was looking for.
Chin still in her hands, she shook her head, bobbing that pinned-up brown hair that he’d dearly like to see down. “Naw. Not a good enough reason. There’s a lot that goes into a marriage: merging of resources, combining domestic expectations, planning future goals, arranging the survival of the human race until the next generation. Why, you could lose the sheriff election next year and end up mucking horse stalls to make ends meet. One needs a pretty good reason to spend sixty years with a horse-stall mucker.”
She paused long enough for a breath, but not long enough for him to collect his scattering thoughts.
“Any other suggestions?”
“Uh…” This was worse than that Interrogation Techniques class where an ex-confederate sergeant had vented his states’ rights insecurities. “Because I’d be miserable without you?”
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