“Hannah.” She turned at once when she heard her name called, but not quick enough to fire before the bullet struck her in her breastbone. One dying attempt to raise her weapon again brought a second shot that struck her in her forehead, and she slumped to the floor.
Terrified, Sophie ran to the safety of Will’s arms, and this was where Ruth and one of her boarders found her, her face buried against his chest. “Sophie!” Ruth screamed and ran to her daughter.
“She’s all right, just scared,” Will said, and released her to her mother’s arms.
Behind him, one of Ruth’s boarders, Ron Sample, stood dumbfounded, staring at the body lying on the porch, a shotgun in his hands. “Lord a-mercy,” he exclaimed. “We heard the shots, so I grabbed my shotgun and come a-runnin’. Who is that?”
“Her name’s Hannah Cheney,” Will said. “And she wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t such a damn fool.” He thought of the contrite woman who had emerged from Jim Little Eagle’s smokehouse, the picture of remorse, a victim of her evil father. And I swallowed it, he scolded himself. She almost got her revenge and he nearly lost the one person he cherished most, only realizing that fact at this moment. “You take Sophie inside,” he said to Ruth. “It’s all over now, there ain’t nobody else to worry about.” He turned to Ron. “Gimme a hand and we’ll carry the body offa the porch. I’ll get Ed Kittridge to pick it up.” He paused to casually kick a small, smooth pebble off the porch, never giving a thought to how it happened to have landed there.
“It’s a lucky thing you were here when she showed up,” Ron said as he propped his shotgun against the porch railing and prepared to grab Hannah’s heels.
“Yeah, lucky,” Will agreed. It was luck, he thought, for the only reason he was there was because of a kiss on his cheek. He had not gotten far up the street when he convinced himself that her kiss was more than a casual impulse, so he stopped and turned around. Maybe he was wrong, and the kiss was nothing more than Sophie being Sophie, and he’d best forget about it, and go on to the Morning Glory. I need to know for sure, he had thought, because he was going to go crazy wondering all the time. It’s time I got my nerve up to ask her. Resolved to do just that, he started back to the house. When he had seen the dark figure approaching the porch, he wasn’t sure why, but he knew it was Hannah Cheney. And from that realization, there had been no time for any conscious thought. His natural reflexes took over.
* * *
He walked to Ed Kittridge’s place of business and rode back to pick Hannah up with him in his wagon. “I’m glad to see you back in town,” Ed quipped. “My business picks up when you’re in town.” Will didn’t particularly appreciate Ed’s attempt at humor. He had no desire for the reputation. After Ed took the body away, Will went into the kitchen to find something to take the place of that supper he had never gotten around to.
He found Ruth and Margaret seated at the table, finishing the coffee and discussing the events of the evening. They invited him to join them. When he said he could really use something to go with the coffee, Ruth fixed him a plate of biscuits and ham, left over from supper. He asked about Sophie, and Ruth said she had sent her up to her room, that she was still upset after the harrowing encounter with Hannah Cheney. “She’ll be all right tomorrow. Don’t worry about her.” She hesitated for a moment, watching him intently before adding, “You know Sophie.” When he got up to leave, she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Thank you, Will. Thank you for saving my daughter’s life.” He nodded solemnly in response, again at a loss for the proper thing to say.
* * *
Ruth was right, Sophie was her usual spirited self the next morning, bright and cheerful when she saw Will at breakfast. Afterward, when he started to leave for the courthouse, she stopped him at the door. “I guess I was too terrified to know what was happening last night, but I want to thank you for being there.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Glad I was there.” He thought about the reason he had happened to return to the house last night and decided this was not the time to discuss it. Maybe there would never be a proper time.
“Where are you off to now?” Sophie asked.
“The courthouse,” he answered. “I’ve gotta go see my boss. He’s been complainin’ that I don’t check in with him regular enough.”
“Then you’ll be back here again?”
“I reckon,” he said.
She smiled, thinking they were involved in a cat and mouse game, but she knew in her heart that he was fated to be with her. He just had to work up his nerve to tell her he felt the same. Many things that had happened during the terrible confrontation with Hannah Cheney the night before were vague in her memory. But the one moment she distinctly remembered was when she was protected in his embrace. She was at home there. “Don’t be late for supper,” she said, playfully dismissing him.
“I won’t” he said with a laugh.
Purposefully overhearing in the parlor, Ruth Bennett shook her head, exasperated, knowing there was nothing she could do to prevent her daughter from traveling the same road she had taken. What the hell, she thought. A short time with Will Tanner might be a lot better than a lifetime with a man like Garth Pearson. The thought brought memories back, both bitter and sweet, yet none that she could ever wish to have missed. And the image of Deputy Marshal Fletcher Pride came to her mind, bold and robust, like a wild mustang, filling the room with his presence. Will might be a little more quiet than that, but she knew that this gentle mountain lion was what her daughter needed. Lord help her. She smiled then. I might as well get used to it.
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They risked their lives to make a home
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After a two-year drought, the Kerrigan ranch is dry
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But when four angry gunmen show up, ready to
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divining rod to figure out that these unsatisfied
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CHAPTER 1
Behind the stately façade of Kate Kerrigan’s four-pillared mansion lay a household in turmoil.
The cook and the scullery maid, a rather unintelligent girl, the parlor maids, the butler, and two punchers who happened to be passing the house when the tumult began were all summoned to Kate’s bedroom where her personal maid was trying to calm her distraught mistress.
The maid stepped to the window and her hands parted, pinched forefinger and thumbs two feet apart, and studied something against the light that would have been invisible to the casual observer.
“Well?” Kate said. “Is it as we feared?”
The maid shook her head. “I’m sure I don’t know, ma’am.”
“You don’t know! Why I have a good mind to box your ears, you silly girl. It’s as obvious as . . . well, as the picture on the wall over there.” Kate nodded in the direct
ion of a framed portrait of an elderly gent with a walrus mustache. Hiram Clay was the president of the local cattlemen’s association and a man powerful enough to be courted. He’d given Kate the portrait as a gift and had begged her to keep it in her bedroom so that he could be close to her “ere fair face touches pillow and you drift into the sweetest dreams of your ever devoted Hiram.”
Kate thought the picture hideous in the extreme and had vowed to get rid of it just as soon as a new association president was elected. But now, apart from using Hiram as a test of the maid’s vision, the portrait was far from her mind.
Anxious people crowded into the bedroom where Kate’s breakfast lay untouched, her coffee untasted. As each one examined the long hair in the window’s morning light, Kate asked the same question. “Well?”—“Well? ”—“Well?”
And each time, fearful of losing their positions, the answer from cook, maids, and butler was always the same. “Ma’am, I can’t really tell.”—“I can’t see without my glasses.”—“It could be, but I’m not at all sure.”
Finally, Willie Haynes the puncher, a tough little cuss who’d ridden for Charlie Goodnight back in the early days and was anything but the soul of discretion, stared at the hair, screwed up his face, and then said, “Yup, seen it right off. It’s as gray as a badger’s ass, boss.”
Kate was taken aback by Haynes’s bluntness and after a few moments of stunned silence her icy voice matched her chilly demeanor. “Thank you, Willie, you can go now. You can all go. I want to be alone.”
Haynes nodded and said, “Any time you need my opinion on a thing Miz Kerrigan you only have to ask.” As his fellow punchers tried unsuccessfully to steer Willie toward the door, the little cowboy added, “An’ I’m right sorry about the gray hair, boss, and how you’re all undone by it an’ all, but cheer up, you got plenty of red ones left.”
Kate’s smile could have turned a Louisiana swamp water pond to ice. “Thank you. And thank you all,” she said. “Now I’m sure you have work that needs attending to.”
The bedroom cleared rapidly as people beat a hasty retreat and Kate sat on the edge of the bed and studied the shoulders of her yellow silk robe for other treacherously ashen turncoats. There were none. She glanced at her breakfast tray, but was much too upset to eat. Well . . . perhaps she’d feel better after a piece of toast.
Kate nibbled on a corner of the triangle of toast and her gaze fell on the chafing dish in the middle of the silver tray. No, she was too distressed to eat a bite, not even a crumb. But then, there was no harm in lifting the cover to take a look. She owed it to Jazmin, her wonderful cook, to at least see what she had prepared. Hmm . . . a nice plump pork sausage, slightly scorched the way she liked it, crispy bacon, and a sunny-faced egg.
Well, perhaps just a bite or two. After all, she mustn’t disappoint Jazmin.
* * *
The chafing dish was empty but for a morsel of bacon when Kate’s butler, old Moses Rice tapped on the door and stepped into the bedroom.
“Gennel’man to see you, Miz Kate,” he said.
Kate felt slightly full, as if she’d eaten too much. “Who is he, Moses? If he’s a drummer tell him he must talk with Mr. Cobb.”
“Ma’am the gent says he’ll only talk with you,” Moses said. His wrinkled face took on a look of wonder. “He says he’s a prince.”
“Prince indeed?” Kate said. “Prince of what?”
“Of the plains, ma’am.” Moses scratched the gray wool on the side of his head, remembering. “He said for me to tell you his name is William Frederick Cody, Prince of the Plains, and showman ex . . . extra . . .”
“Extraordinaire,” Kate said.
Moses’s face lit up and his smile flashed. “That was it, Miz Kate. Do you know the gennel’man?”
“I’ve heard of him. Show him into the parlor and offer him coffee. Tell Mr. Cody I’ll join him directly.”
As her lady’s maid helped her change into a rococo, a pleated day dress of white cotton with a built-in corset that laced up the front, Kate tried to recall what she knew of William F. Cody, Buffalo Bill as she’d heard him called. He’d been an army scout and Indian fighter and now had his own Wild West show that contained picaresque elements of frontier life. Bill’s show had crossed the ocean to perform for old Queen Victoria or was he about to do that? No, she couldn’t remember which. One thing was certain, Mr. Cody had become a very famous man and it was said that he cut a dash with the ladies.
So why his visit to the Kerrigan ranch? Perhaps he was passing and decided to stop and pay his respects.
Kate checked herself in the full-length mirror and was pleased to see that her hair fell over her shoulders in thick ringlets of burnished red, not a traitorous gray in sight.
“How do I look, Flossie?” she said.
“Like a princess from a fairy tale,” the maid said.
“Then I’m fit to meet the prince,” Kate said. “Very well, I’ll see Mr. Cody now.”
Flossie, remembering the affair of the hair, nodded and said, “You look very young and lovely, ma’am.”
“Then let us hope that Mr. Cody appreciates the efforts we’ve made on his behalf,” Kate said.
“Oh, any fine gentleman would, ma’am,” Flossie said. And then worried for a moment that she’d spoken out of turn, she whispered, “If you don’t mind me saying so.”
But Kate, moving with all the grace of a Celtic queen, was already opening the bedroom door and didn’t hear.
CHAPTER 2
When Kate Kerrigan stepped into the parlor a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing gloriously beaded white buckskins rose to his feet. A large red bandana draped loosely around his neck and in his hands he held a plumed, high-crowned hat with a prodigiously wide brim. He wore polished, thigh-high black boots and around his hips, as Kate noticed at once, hung a silver-studded gun belt and in the holsters a pair of ivory handled Colts.
“Mr. Cody, I presume,” Kate said, offering her hand.
Buffalo Bill made a leg and bowed with a sweeping gesture of his feathered hat that was worthy of either Athos, Porthos, or Aramis and for sheer elegance and grace that probably out-courtiered all three.
Bill kissed Kate’s hand and when he straightened, he said, “Your obedient servant, madam.” Then, in an overly dramatic display, he raised his hat as though shielding his eyes from the sun. “By all that’s holy, Mrs. Kerrigan, I’m blinded by the dazzling beauty of your person.” Bill adopted a heroic pose, threw back his head and declaimed, “Thus did King Menelaus of Sparta stand in astonished awe when he first beheld fair Helen on the massy ramparts of Troy.”
Kate, well used to compliments from men, was nonetheless impressed by the frontiersman’s rhetoric and knowledge of the classics. “You are very gallante, sir,” she said. “Please resume your seat.”
She was uncomfortably aware that Buffalo Bill Cody was a fine-looking man with a rampant masculinity that even Frank Cobb, her rugged segundo, would have trouble matching.
Kate sat and said, “Have you . . .” She had trouble finding her voice, coughed, and tried again, “Have you had coffee, Mr. Cody?”
“My dear lady . . . may I call you Gloriana?” Bill said.
“No. Kate will do just fine.”
“Then Kate it is.”
Bill placed his hand on his heart as though he was about to impart a secret of the most private kind, as indeed he was. “Kate, it has been my lot since boyhood to enjoy but one daily cup of the sable brew that sharpens the wits and invigorates the body. But after the cup that cheers, I feel drawn to partake in . . . what shall we call it? Ah yes, stronger stuff.”
“How remiss of me, Mr. Cody,” Kate said, rising. “Would bonded bourbon be more to your liking?”
“Not a drop, dear lady.” Bill made one of his heroic gestures, his right hand extended, warding off temptation. “Not so much as a taste.”
Kate moved to sit again, and Bill exclaimed in some haste, “But . . .”
“Yes?” Kate said.
/> “I could not but notice the exquisite slenderness of your hands, dear lady,” Bill said. “I think three fingers of bourbon from you would be a small enough portion of the viper that resides in the bottle.”
Kate smiled, moved to the drinks tray, and poured Bill a generous glass of Old Crow. After she’d settled in her chair again and Bill had begged her indulgence to smoke a cigar, they made small talk until he’d finished his second bourbon and the cigar had burned down almost two-thirds of the way. Then Kate said, “As much as I enjoy your company and your dashing tales of derring-do on the plains, Mr. Cody, I suspect that your visit to my ranch is not entirely a social call.”
“And indeed it is not, dear lady,” Bill said. “You have gone right to the heart of the matter. Indeed, your arrow has sped unerringly to the bull’s-eye. In short, I am here to humbly beg a boon.”
Now Kate was slightly wary. “What is the nature of this favor, Mr. Cody?”
Bill leaned forward in his chair and his long, silvery hair tumbled over his shoulders. “Let me precede my request by stating that that our fair land is in winter’s frosty grip, torn by tempests, blasted by blizzards, snowbound, icebound, and, worst of all, homebound. In short, the weather up north is rotten and folks are staying home.”
“So I’ve been told, Mr. Cody,” Kate said. “A traveling lightning rod salesman assured me that the extent and severity of the snowstorms are most singular and the government had declared them potentially a disaster of the greatest moment.”
“The drummer spoke the unvarnished truth, dear lady,” Bill said. “Everywhere is as cold as a banker’s heart and I am reliably informed that in Kansas boiling water freezes so fast the ice is still warm.”
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