Cole followed Myrtle into what appeared to be a warehouse containing thousands of bolts of cloth. “Don’t panic,” Myrtle warned. “I’m not going to look at everything.”
“You couldn’t,” Cole responded. “We’re only going to be here for a few more hours.” Cole noticed he was the only man in the building. He took that as a bad sign.
“You don’t have to look at anything until I ask,” Myrtle said. “You can spend your time thinking up more tricks for Drew.”
He spent his time being irritated.
He didn’t feel that he was doing a good job on this assignment. He was supposed to insinuate himself into Drew’s inner circle, but he couldn’t do that when he couldn’t even find her. If three people could disappear from under his nose, he obviously wasn’t qualified for this job. It was no consolation that no one else knew where to find them. Nobody else had any reason to keep an eye on their movements. He did, and he’d failed.
His captain wouldn’t be pleased.
Then there was the personal side. There shouldn’t have been a personal side, but it was useless to pretend there wasn’t. It wasn’t like he’d fallen in love or become infatuated, but he had developed a strong liking for Drew. He was ashamed to admit it was rapidly turning into a powerful physical attraction. It was a very inconvenient way to feel about a woman he was supposed to spy on.
It affected his judgment. It made him want to see everything Drew did in the best possible light, thus causing his inner feelings to be at variance with his duty. It was a very uncomfortable and unnerving situation. It had never happened to him before. He didn’t like it.
“You’d never know it from the way she talks, but she has a wonderful eye for color,” Myrtle was saying. She showed him two pieces of cloth that seemed identical to him. “I can’t decide which is the best match.”
“Either one looks fine to me,” Cole said.
Myrtle laughed comfortably. “But you’re a man. Everybody knows men are practically imbeciles when it comes to judging color.”
It wasn’t his strongest point, but Cole resented the imbecile remark. “If it doesn’t match, I’m sure they’ll let you exchange it.”
Myrtle’s frown indicated she wasn’t certain. “I don’t think we’ll have time to return it before we leave town.” She put the bolts back. “I think I’ll wait for Drew. I’m sure St. Louis will have a wider selection.”
“I can’t see how,” Cole said, remembering the confusion of hundreds of shades of blue and purple.
They were doing two shows in Millville. As soon as they could get everything torn down after the show and loaded on the train, they would leave for Wilton Springs. They usually had only one show in a town before moving on to the next engagement, but later in the month they were scheduled to spend four days in Memphis. Cole wasn’t happy about that. His family lived in Memphis. He wasn’t worried about having to visit his mother. He always did that. He was concerned someone in the show might discover he was a member of one of the wealthiest families in the city.
That wouldn’t help him in his work.
“Do you always depend on Drew to do things like help you match material?” Cole asked Myrtle.
“No, but she likes to help. She’s taken a real interest in us regulars, especially those of us who have been here for years.”
“How so?”
“She’s advising us on how to invest our money so we’ll have something when we retire. Most of us had just ignored it. But Drew made us realize that’s stupid. She’s made us start putting money aside.”
Cole stopped in his tracks. “Do you mean she makes you give her your money?”
“No.” Myrtle chuckled. “Though I think she would have if we hadn’t agreed to her scheme.”
“What scheme?”
“Each week she marches us down to a bank and helps us deposit our money.”
They were approaching the local bank. Cole felt as if a cold hand had suddenly closed around his heart. “Does she know anything about your accounts?”
“Of course. She has all our records. We’re not very good at things like that.”
Cole had a sinking feeling. He could see all these trusting old people depositing their money year after year, handing over their records to Drew. But when they went to get their money, they’d find their accounts had been emptied long ago.
And their friend Drew Townsend would have disappeared.
“Have you ever deposited any money in this bank?” Cole said, indicating the building in front of them.
“I think so, but I don’t remember.”
“Let’s go inside and find out.” If Myrtle had an account, he had to know if the money was still there.
“I don’t remember my account number.”
“It’s okay. All you need is your name.”
They entered the building together.
“There’s Drew,” Myrtle exclaimed. “She can help me pick out the material on our way back.”
Seated in the middle of the lobby, like a spider surveying her prey, Drew watched everything going on around her with an eagle eye.
“What’s she doing here?” Cole asked.
“Now I know I don’t have any money in this bank,” Myrtle said. “Drew always checks out every bank before she lets us use it. She says you can’t tell about the honesty of a bank until you’ve observed the customers that come through its doors.”
Cole had a different explanation for Drew’s presence. A robber could never decide how best to rob a bank until she’d spent several hours observing its operation.
Chapter Eight
Drew wasn’t happy that her reaction on seeing Cole enter the bank with Myrtle was to smile up at him. She hadn’t been expecting him, or she’d never have let her feelings betray her. She’d been having trouble with her response to him ever since Earl talked her into jumping into his arms. She’d never been in a man’s embrace before, so she had nothing to compare it to, but she didn’t think she ought to be thinking about him so often. Or wondering if it would feel the same when … if she jumped into his arms again.
Nor should she have started comparing him to other men and deciding he was more handsome, more charming, stronger… well, that was exactly the problem. She shouldn’t have been thinking any of that. Zeke was bigger and stronger, but there was no question that Cole was more handsome. Maybe she ought to send for Will. No other man seemed particularly handsome when Will was around.
“I wish you hadn’t come to town without telling me,” Myrtle said as she approached Drew. “I have to buy more fabric, and you know how I depend on your eye for color.”
Drew forced herself to shift her gaze from Cole to Myrtle. Cole’s expression confused her. He looked as though he had an unpleasant duty to perform and was going to do it no matter how much he disliked it. She didn’t understand why he should direct such a look at her. Everything had gone unusually well recently. The audience response had been so good Earl was planning to make her name bigger on the next posters.
She still wouldn’t let Cole catch her, but she’d promised Earl she’d think about it. She even let Cole talk her into a new trick, though it was so easy she hardly considered it a trick. He would pretend to start to juggle six balls, and she’d shatter them as he threw them up. It was a good thing she never missed. He wasn’t a juggler.
Drew focused her attention on Myrtle. “Let me see what you bought. Did Cole help you pick it out?”
She peeped at him to see his response, but his scowl remained unchanged.
“I decided to wait for you,” Myrtle said. “Cole tried to help, poor man, but you know how men are when it comes to judging colors. Except for Earl, I’ve never known one who could tell violet from lavender, magenta, or lilac.”
“I didn’t know there were that many colors of purple,” Cole said. “And she tells me there are even more.”
“Shades,” Myrtle corrected. “See what I mean?” she said to Drew.
“I’m surprised you got him. inside the s
tore,” Drew said, hoping to ease Cole’s heavy frown. “Most men would have headed straight for a saloon.”
“I don’t deny I felt the urge,” Cole said, his expression only slightly less forbidding, “but I had to buy some candles and clay balls. You shot up my entire supply.”
“I had no idea it was so hard to find clay balls,” Myrtle said. “Cole had to order some made.”
Drew couldn’t stop wondering why Cole would go to so much trouble for her act. He’d be off doing something else in a few weeks. Maybe some drifters were like that, entering wholeheartedly into one thing until they got bored and looked for something else. The more she thought about it, the more he puzzled her. He didn’t behave like the drifting kind of man. He’d attacked the problem of making her act more entertaining with a single-mindedness that reminded her of the Randolphs and their determination to become the richest family in Texas.
“Myrtle tells me you’re casing out the bank,” Cole said.
“I’m studying it, if that’s what you mean,” Drew said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m always looking for ways to get more interest on my money.”
“You can get that information from an interview with the bank manager.”
“I already have, but I like to see for myself what the customers look like. If I see a lot of sour-faced businessmen and frowning farmers, I know it’s not a good place.”
“Drew always decides where to put our money,” Myrtle said. “She hasn’t made a mistake yet.”
“Every bank has its own personality,” Drew explained. “You can see it in the people who work for the bank, and in the customers. I wouldn’t trust my money to any bank that didn’t have a friendly and open personality.”
Drew got the feeling Cole thought she was nuts, or lying. She could understand why he would be skeptical of her method of choosing a bank—men rarely understood why the feel of a thing was so important to a woman—but she didn’t understand why he’d think she was lying.
She told herself not to worry about it. She didn’t know Cole very well. She couldn’t be certain of the meaning of his expressions. There was no point in trying to figure out what he was determined to keep hidden. Nor could she figure out why she should want to. He would be gone in a few weeks. Then it wouldn’t matter.
She got to her feet. “I’m done here.”
“Is it a good bank?” Myrtle asked.
“I don’t think so. I’ll wait until we reach the next town. Let’s see what kind of bank they have there.”
“Why don’t you keep your money in one bank?” Cole asked.
“I don’t want it all in one place. If one bank fails, and quite a few failed last year, I won’t lose all my money.”
“None of our banks failed,” Myrtle said. “We did what Drew said, and all our money is safe.”
That didn’t appear to make Cole happy. He was definitely out of sorts, something she’d never seen before.
“I’m ready to go back if you are,” she said.
She and Myrtle left the bank. She thought Cole meant to stay, but he came out before they’d gone very far.
Drew didn’t like towns. She never went into one unless she felt it was necessary. The walkways were always crowded with people, the streets with wagons, the air with noise, smells of bread and meat, unwashed bodies, and horse manure. People brushed against her in passing without making an attempt to move out of her path. In Texas that would have been cause for taking offense. In a crowded town it was just the way things were.
“I wish I had a horse,” she said, speaking her thoughts aloud.
“What would you do with a horse?” Cole asked.
“Get out of this town in two minutes instead of fifteen or twenty.”
“I’m glad you don’t,” Myrtle said. “I wouldn’t want to be left behind.”
“I’d take you with me.”
“Not on a horse, you wouldn’t,” Myrtle said, laughing and shuddering at the same time. “I’m afraid of them. I don’t know how you let Cole talk you into riding one.”
“Popularity,” Drew said, jokingly. “I couldn’t resist the opportunity to draw bigger crowds and make more money. It’ll mean I can have my ranch sooner.”
Myrtle didn’t like that. “But that means you’ll leave us.”
“Not for long. You’ll be coming to live with me in a few years.”
Myrtle’s doubtful look told Drew she had more work to do in convincing the show people that living on a Texas ranch was a desirable way to spend their retirement.
“It’s her!”
The shrill voice from the crowd riveted Drew’s attention. She looked around to see who the unseen person could be talking about.
Barely a second later a woman burst from the crowd and strode straight up to Drew. “You’re Drew Townsend,” she announced. “I saw you in the Wild West Show last night.”
Drew had rarely been recognized on the street, and never in such an attention-getting manner. People all around stopped to stare.
“She’s a sharpshooter,” the woman announced. “She shot all kinds of things last night and never once missed. She’s better than any man.”
Drew wanted to turn and melt into the crowd, but when she started to back up, Cole put his hand in the small of her back.
“Let her rave about you,” he hissed. “It’ll earn you more good publicity than a dozen newspaper articles.”
“I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it,” the woman said. “My husband read that article about you in the newspaper. He said it couldn’t be true. That’s the only reason we went.” She laughed happily. “He was so furious he hardly said a word all the way home. How did you learn to shoot like that?”
“I don’t know,” Drew said, miserably uncomfortable at being the object of all this attention.
“You can’t teach that kind of talent,” Cole said. “It’s God-given.”
The woman beamed at Drew. “She’s sure a godsend to the women of this town. Now the men can’t say women can’t handle a gun as well as they can. I hope you’re going to perform again tonight. Both my sisters are taking their husbands. They didn’t believe me when I told them what you did. I hope you’re not going to miss tonight.”
“I’ll do my best.” Drew couldn’t understand why she felt so uncomfortable talking to this woman. She didn’t like talking to strangers, but she could do it. At least she used to be able to, before Cole came into her life. A lot of things were different now.
“Miss Townsend never misses,” Cole said.
The woman appeared to notice Cole for the first time. Her eyes got a little wider, and her smile grew more pronounced. “You’re the man who held up those bull’s-eyes, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You’re lucky to have a wife like her.”
Shock at the thought of being married to Cole fled when Drew saw the expression on his face. She supposed to a man like him marriage was worse than a prison sentence.
“We’re not married,” Drew said.
Now it was the woman’s turn to look embarrassed. “I’m terribly sorry. My husband says I always talk before I think.”
“Don’t give it another thought,” Cole said, flashing his considerable charm now that he’d recovered from his surprise. “Lots of people who work together in shows like this are married.”
“Like my husband and me,” Myrtle said. “We’ve been on the circuit for nearly fifty years.”
“I’m sure you’d make a very handsome couple if you were married,” the woman said to Drew. “Well, I’d best be going before I put my foot in it again. Remember, don’t miss a single shot tonight. After what I said to my Joe, he’ll never let me forget it.”
Much to Drew’s relief, she hurried away. But Drew’s reprieve was short. She was recognized twice more before they reached the outskirts of the town.
“I’ll never go near another reporter as long as I live,” she declared when the open field where the show was set
up came into view. “I can’t even take a walk without people recognizing me.”
“I think that’s rather nice,” Myrtle said. “No one’s ever recognized me. Well, not in a very long time.”
“Of course she’ll talk to every reporter who wants a story,” Cole said to Myrtle. “And she’ll smile like she’s having the time of her life at the photo session this afternoon.”
Drew rounded on Cole. “I didn’t give you permission to arrange another one.”
“Earl did. He’s going to pose with you. He even offered to pay for having new costumes made.”
“Earl must intend to make you a really big star,” Myrtle said. “He’s never paid for costumes for anybody else.”
Angry rebellion boiled inside Drew. Once more Cole had railroaded her into something she didn’t want to do. But she didn’t mean to give in to him this time. She’d talk to Earl. She’d have him cancel the photographers.
“This will be wonderful for everybody in the show,” Myrtle said, beaming with happiness. “If we start drawing bigger audiences, Earl will have to raise our salaries. Wait until I tell everybody.”
“Myrtle, don’t—”
Myrtle waved and hurried on ahead.
“Now see what you’ve done,” Drew said, turning on Cole.
“What?”
“You’ve forced me to let those men take more photographs. I don’t want pictures of me plastered up and down the Mississippi. I don’t want any new dresses. I don’t want to be the star. But now I have to, because everybody is depending on me to increase their salaries. Why couldn’t you have stayed in the stands and kept on thinking you were better than I am?”
“I thought you wanted people to appreciate your skill.”
“I do, but—”
“They can’t if they don’t come see you, and they won’t if nobody mentions your name or tells them what a fantastic marksman you are. We usually stay in a town just one night. We’re gone before the people who came to the show can tell the people who didn’t come to the show about you. This way the news can go on ahead of you, start people anticipating you, wanting to see you.”
Drew (The Cowboys) Page 10