Christmas for Ransom

by Tanya Hanson

  Promise me you’ll learn to read and write. I regret you giving up all your school time tending me after I took sick. Promise me you’ll get it done.

  Hell, he wasn’t one to back down in the face of a challenge. While the sagebrush burned in its circle of stones and Gitts skinned a jackrabbit, Canyon reckoned he might ease his mind and cleanse his soul by keeping the hardest part of her promise. Seems a man who could bankrupt the great Stony Brook ranch could at least learn to read and write at the ripe old age of twenty-five.

  “Ahab says we’re off to New Mexico at sunup. Wasn’t hard at all unloading those Stony ponies.” Gitts guffawed at his little rhyme and elbowed his bulging pocket. “Should be there in time for Christmas. Maybe it’s warmer there.”

  An idea slipped into Canyon’s head and wouldn’t get out. Christmas. Ahab Perkins had never minded a man taking time now and again for family or a sweetheart back home. It was the perfect ruse.

  He stood right up, swaying a bit from the whiskey. If he rode hard, he could get to Pleasure Stakes before night came for good. A town with a name like that should have plenty of hot baths and good meals, a plentiful saloon, and well, bountiful whores to tend his need until he started the serious matter of reading and writing.

  In the battered metal of his flask, he caught a hazy reflection and winked. He knew right well his whiskey-colored eyes could bring a woman to her knees, and more female fingers than he could count had wound themselves in his ripe-wheat hair to draw his face close during the act of love.

  Truth to tell, his take from the Stony Brook robbery had filled his pockets with plenty of cash to satisfy all his appetites for days to come. With surely enough left over to hire some sort of tutor. He nodded at his brilliant plans. Too many nights lately he’d shivered in drafty line shacks, stuffed between two feedbags for warmth and praying for summertime.

  All the while seeing the face of the old lady from the Stony mingling with memories of his gram-maw. He was downright weary of tossing and turning to bad dreams each night. He cussed out loud.

  “Hell.”

  Gitts looked at him in surprise, and he shrugged so as not to have to talk. Well, after finding his pleasures at the Stakes, he’d hire a tutor to get Gram-maw’s promise done. He reckoned he owed her that much. Learning might take a bit of time, though. When he was a kid, school days had never seemed to end. Losing his job wasn’t a worry. Ahab would hold his place; Canyon had proven his worth.

  “I think I’ll take off for a piece. Got kin in the Panhandle,” he said the lie slow but reckoned Gitts would believe him even if he claimed he was off to sundance with the Sioux.

  “Kin?” Gitts’ eyes took on a faraway look. “Kinfolk? Why, that’s a nice thought. Good for you.” He turned to the meat crisping over the fire. “Me, I had a mama once. She named me ‘Royal.’ Said my daddy treated her like a queen for giving him a son.”

  “You from Texas?”

  Rolly shrugged. “Never had a home. Daddy left us, and Mama died. Wrangled for a while in Desolation. Had a woman once or twice. But the wanderlust caught me. Found Ahab and ya’ll in Tulsa. Otherwise, I got nobody. Nobody at all.”

  Grief grabbed Canyon’s shoulders. Neither did he, unless he counted those three mounds in Fish Creek, Missouri, outside the Baptist church. The gram-maw he’d loved and the ma and pa he’d never gotten to know. He ground his teeth in a new shame. No headstones yet after all these years, and him with money in his pocket.

  “Distant kin,” he said, shutting off yesterday and looking ahead. “You let Ahab know, won’t you? I’ll catch up with ya’ll down the road.”

  That would be easy. The Perkins gang had eluded the law since Missouri, but Canyon could find them in his sleep. Smell ’em, too.

  “Sure enough,” Gitts said, holding out a piece of meat. “Here’s some good roasted jackbunny to get you on your way.”

  Chewing and swallowing like it was his last meal, Canyon tossed the bone into nearby mesquite. He left a shred of meat on it, reckoning it a good meal for a coyote since Ahab didn’t allow dogs. Something Canyon had wanted since his earliest days. Then he took a length of flannel and wrapped it snug around his neck, pulled on his gloves and saluted his pal.

  “Vaya con Dios, Canyon,” Gitts said.

  Canyon couldn’t help a snort as he mounted Nitro. “So long, Gitts. I doubt the good Lord wants to go anywhere with me.”

  ****

  The moon rose in full bloom as the lights from Pleasure Stakes came into view. Nitro blew out white puffs in the cold, and Canyon’s need for a warm bed with a woman in it tightened between his legs.

  “You’ll get some fine rest in a warm stall tonight.” Canyon patted the sabino’s neck, surprised at the low rumble in his voice. Hell, he must have picked up a catarrh from the chill air during the ride. “Just half-mile more to a real livery stable.” More and more he liked the unusual tone. “Too bad, pal, I got you gelded. You might like some female companionship same as me.”

  Dusk was as dark as it could get when he pulled into the town. He could see just fine in the light from lanterns hung here and there on lamp posts, and he couldn’t help a burst of hoarse laughter. Pleasure Stakes was a fancy hopeful name for a left-over hide town with growing pains and a railroad getting built around the edges. Construction workers apparently lived in a village of tents and shanties on the outskirts where blazing campfires warmed up the place. Lamps on doorposts and through windows displayed a dozen false front shops on both sides of the dusty street, and wooden houses of the regular residents in alleys behind.

  As he searched for a glitterhouse, his gaze caught the porch of Miss Letha May’s Boardinghouse and a beautiful woman walking up to it. His breath deepened, and he slowed Nitro to get a better view. A gust of wind blew down the hood of a deep blue burnoose, and her face, backlit by a window, shone like a Madonna. But a woman was more than her face. He damned the cloak that hid from his view what he hoped lingered under it: a slender white neck and bosoms full enough to satisfy a man. Tight waist and bountiful hips. But hell, that face made up for any defect.

  Then shame flooded and his breath caught.

  This woman was no whore. She was entering a boardinghouse, not a glitterhouse. A boardinghouse was a place for unmarried gals. Respectable unmarried gals. Those with spouses kept houses. And those unrespectable, well, they were the kind whose company he normally kept. He’d never had a civilized spinster before. Although he’d never had trouble getting his manly needs met whenever he passed through a town, he was here to get educated. He could try and act decent for once. Meet up with this spinster, give her a bow and kiss her hand. Court her.

  Woo her into his bed with charm not money. His crotch twitched just thinking about such a challenge. More of a challenge than heisting a herd of fancy horses. And Jack Ransom, who was leaving Canyon behind, was ever one to accept any challenge dropped in his path.

  Deciding to let a room at Miss Letha’s, he scoped each side of the main street for what he needed. A bathhouse. A change of clothes at the mercantile. Raucous shouts and cusses rang through the town, the upshot of railroad men free to spend their salaries after another day’s toil from dawn to dark. As a result, the lights in the trading post still glimmered in hopes of late-coming customers.

  Hell, woman or not, Nitro came first. Always. His horse was comrade as well as transport. It would never be said Canyon Jack Ransom didn’t tend his horse proper. He headed toward Chavez Livery to settle his horse as cozy as he planned to be on a long winter’s night.

  ****

  Eager for a hot supper and a Pennsylvania fireplace, Eliza Willows headed up the boardinghouse steps after locking up the schoolhouse tight. Satisfaction rained on her. She’d stayed late to finish grading her pupils’ Christmas poems. Seems she had taught them something, after all. The pageant tomorrow night would feature a stellar rhyme from every single one of the seventeen children. Little Grace Carter’s would command the starring role.

  As Eliza reached for the
door knob, guilt assailed her. Firewalker. For yet another day, she hadn’t gotten her gelding exercised. Firewalker was the last thing Pa left behind to remind her of him, and she loved the paint with her whole heart. Suddenly the simple act of turning a latch almost brought her to her knees. That dagnabbed broken rib. After a stagecoach ride from Frying Pan that had been hell on wheels, she reckoned she’d healed up some since Thanksgiving.

  Tonight though, the cold night air attacked her person nearly as bad as that evil outlaw. More than her aches and pains, anger flared at the outrage of decent folk getting their horses pilfered. Right under their noses.

  Worst of all, the Rangers had found not one single trace of Granny’s prized Morgans. By the time silly Tubby and his crew had hobbled into Frying Pan, the trail had already gone cold. Since then, Eliza’s gut had ached with revenge, every hour of every day. She pressed her hands to her burning belly, and gritted her teeth to calm down.

  Least she could do before supper was get to Firewalker’s side at the livery and grant him a nuzzle and an apple. God-willing, she’d manage a ride tomorrow, come hell or high water. Even if it meant starting the pageant an hour later and tightening a corset around her ribs.

  Deep down she grinned. Even thinking the word “hell” had her doomed to perdition in Granny’s eyes, and she’d just done it twice. Her heart twisted in confusion. She loathed Granny while loving the old woman with her whole heart. She longed for her life of freedom in Pleasure Stakes yet longed for justice for the Stony Brook at the same time, longed to be there to see it done.

  Ah. Too much to think on as she trudged to the livery. Big Ben Chavez had yet to lock up for the night, eager as his pocketbook was for any and all latecomers. In truth, his eyes lit up like a Christmas candle in anticipation of the tip she was bound to leave him.

  “Here to see ’Walker?” the blacksmith asked as she found the stall. “My boy Benjie got him rode today in your behalf.”

  “Thanks to both of you.” Eliza handed the blacksmith two bits for his son, hoping he didn’t think her neglectful of her fine mount. “I just can’t believe how busy the schoolroom keeps me these days.”

  “You need help with your pageant tomorrow night?” Ben asked kindly, and she knew he meant it.

  She shook her head, and the hood of her burnoose fell to her back. “Thanks, but no. All set. Beth Ellison’s decided to loan us her newborn for the nativity display.”

  “But isn’t it a niña? A girl?”

  “Yes indeed. But in swaddling clothes, who can tell?” They both laughed. “Colonel Sam Bastion of the railroad construction crew has constructed a most sturdy manger. He has assured us both of its safety. Ben?” Eliza reckoned this the right time for a parent consultation.

  “Si, Miz Eliza?” His big gnarled hand tightened over a hammer.

  “I’d really like it if Benjie returned to school. He has a fine brain.”

  The blacksmith sighed. “He’s no longer a small boy, senorita. He makes good money with Colonel Bastion.”

  Eliza’s spirits fell. The age of thirteen years wasn’t the time to make a grown-up decision. Children needed guidance, and Ben was a sensible man. She wanted to make the push for the boy’s education, but from the shadows emerged someone so tall, so broad, so silent she wondered if she’d entered a dream. Pinching herself, she lost interest in everything except seeing what the stranger looked like in the lantern light. Brawny stalwart men were nothing new in a railroad town or on the ranch, but she never minded a good view.

  Her breath caught so hard her sore rib tweaked. He was magnificent. The big-brimmed hat and flowing duster reckoned him a wrangler of some sort coming in from the range. Although he needed a bath and truly looked the worse for wear, she didn’t mind one single bit. The scruffy cheeks, the long rag-taggle coat, even the scent of masculine sweat were far more her style than the slick-haired dandies and overdressed fops she’d met at Boston cotillions.

  “This here’s Ransom,” Ben said helpfully.

  As he moved closer, the stranger removed his hat and tucked it under his arm with a polite half-nod. For a long luscious moment, eyes the color of manly liquor covered her with a mouth-watering gaze. Golden-brown hair touched the mountains of his shoulders like sunlight at dawn across the Guadalupe Mountains.

  Air left her lungs. A slow burn started at the top of her spine, simmering at her breasts and pounding with fire at her womanly notch. Her nipples ached for his firm lips, her flesh desperate for the days’ worth of roughness adorning cheekbones carved like crags and valleys. She had to hold her hand still to keep her fingers from caressing the deep etches of his face.

  Eliza couldn’t move as she stared up at him, aching and eager. Oh, she was no stranger to fine-looking cowpokes and no simpering virgin to boot. Twice, to spite Granny, she’d lain with a hearty, handsome ’hand from Desolation but found the first time dreadful. So dreadful truth to tell, she’d been persuaded to try again a month later after she hadn’t turned up with child. Again, not so good. So what had brought on this urgent longing for a man she didn’t know?

  Not knowing what else to do, she held out her hand, organizing her trembling lips. “How do you do, Mr. Ransom.”

  “No mister, ma’am. Ransom’ll do.”

  “Here’s Miz Eliza,” Ben said. “Our schoolmarm.”

  Eliza silently thanked Ben for letting Ransom know she was unattached. Married women didn’t teach school.

  Slowly he removed his gloves and pocketed them, his gaze never leaving her face. In spite of the cold, heat rushed down from her head to weaken her knees. When their fingers met, her toes exploded. “Where are you from, Ransom?” she managed.

  “Sweetcream,” he said without hesitation, his voice low, mysterious, barely hearable. She liked it.

  “Why, I’ve got kin there. Luetta Lodge.”

  He stiffened at her words, from the cold most likely, and put his hat back on. “Good night now, Miz Eliza.”

  The way he said her name, slow, low…why, she’d not be able to sleep well tonight.

  If at all.

  Some of it might be jitters due to the pageant, but more was the skittering up and down her spine brought on by his gaze wafting over her like a velvet hand. Her breasts tingled as she imagined his fingers caressing them.

  He tipped his hat. From the outdoors look of him, he was likely a wrangler or a drover. Maybe a bounty hunter. No. The strong chin bespoke the law. She reckoned him a Marshal or a Ranger. Someday soon she’d know for sure.

  “‘Night, Ransom.”

  ****

  Outside, Ransom kicked a hitching post, full of too many sensations to feel any single one. Just hearing her say his name almost brought him to his knees. The woman from the boardinghouse steps whom he’d wanted to meet, bowing and kissing her hand, had instead beheld him before her looking and smelling just like what he was, a rank filthy outlaw.

  Up close, he’d just about drowned in her blueberry eyes. Damned if she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and the schoolteacher to boot. His heart still pittered in his chest, cock twitching down below. Then his blood pounded, and it had nothing to do with desire. Or his learnin’.

  Sweetcream? She had kin there? Was he itching to get his neck stretched? Hell and damnation both.

  Heck and tarnation. Lust fled as Canyon Jack Ransom left the stables. If he was becoming respectable, he needed to watch his mouth and his brain before letting cusses fly like snowflakes on the wind. Learn new vocabulary to impress the ’marm he intended to hire to tutor him, and improve up his manners to charm her. Truth to tell, she’d just now seen him at his worst.

  As he hustled to the trading post for new duds, he damned himself again. Well, darned. Sweatcream? It had been easy on a moment’s notice to call up the sound of a town he’d admired while traversing along its outskirts before Thanksgiving, but Ahab had taught him better than that. You needed a plan in your head well before nosy folks got to you. Incognito meant you never got recognized anyplace, an
ywhere, in any way. Left no hints that could trip you up. Ransom should have recalled these Lone Star folk knew everybody for five hundred miles or more in every which way.

  He needed to find some other fake place to be from, and fast, a whole new story to tell if he intended to stick around Pleasure Stakes. And after devouring Eliza with his eyes back there, he intended to do just that whether she took him on as pupil or not. His real name, he didn’t mind using now. Every wanted poster he’d seen for years simply said Canyon and after he’d shaved off his bushy moustache last month, the likenesses bore no similarity to him.

  But his christened name only reminded him of his gram-maw and the pickle he’d gotten himself into because of her. His heart smacked hard in his rib-box with grief this time. He’d not only let her down, but he missed her.

  Heck and tarnation. Cold wind crawled up his sleeves. A gold eagle flashing in his palm, he dashed into the trading post just as the proprietor hung up the closed sign.

  “‘Course Miss Letha May’s got room at the boardinghouse,” the old man said when Ransom inquired.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m sweet on her.”

  Sweet on her. For some tomfool reason, Ransom liked the silly words.

  “She sweet on you back?” he asked.

  “Yep. Tells me everything.”

  So he’d know about Eliza, if she was attached. Ransom ached to ask but held his tongue, remembering the warning he’d just given himself. Tonight, he’d keep his flask empty and his brain clear. He’d concoct a sensible background for himself inside the boundaries of a decent boardinghouse.

  He laughed out loud.

  He’d been itching for a harlot and a bordello for weeks and weeks and now found himself hankering after a schoolmarm in a boardinghouse built for regular folks.