by Jodi Thomas
“What is it?” Wolf whispered, sensing trouble.
“Someone’s in my store.” She could see the shadows of several men moving around inside the tiny space.
Wolf slowly released her hand and pulled his jacket back to clear the path of his Colts if needed. “What about the old man I saw with you?”
“Ephraim? He turns down the lamps at sundown and goes to bed. He’s never up this late.”
Wolf met her stare in the lamplight. “Would I be wasting my breath asking you to stay here?”
“You would.” She appreciated the fact that he made no attempt to order her.
“Stay behind me, then, Molly? It’s probably nothing, but just in case there’s trouble, I’d like to have your word.”
She thought of arguing but reconsidered. “It may be some of the businessmen who swore I’d be gone by now. Maybe they only want to talk again. They’ve stopped by a few times to inform me my space is needed for more important businesses.”
Wolf slipped his revolver from its cradle. “Then they should have come during business hours.”
She nodded, knowing he was right. She hadn’t told even Ephraim about the veiled threats. She’d noticed open hatred in a few eyes when she’d promised to clear the town of opium dens at the first town meeting she’d attended.
Wolf walked across the street, staying well within the shadows. He took one quick glance into the window and let the tension ease.
“It’s all right,” he said as he slipped his Colt back in place. “They’re rangers.”
Slowly, Molly moved past him and opened the door to her store. Rangers lined the counters.
“What’s going on?” Wolf asked as he followed Molly inside.
“Shhhh!” Josh Weston ordered in none too soft a tone. “We finally got her asleep.”
As Molly twisted the light higher, a chorus of groans sounded. All eyes turned toward one of the counters, where a bundle began to squirm.
“What is it?” Wolf neared.
“It’s yours, Captain. The judge said so.”
Before Wolf could ask more, the bundle began to cry. A tiny girl with golden ringlets sat up, rubbing her eyes. She was dressed in a tailored wool navy coat with stockings to match. She was so small, she looked more doll than human.
“This isn’t mine.” Wolf took a step backward.
Josh shrugged, as if feeling sorry for his captain. “Judge said you’re the one who brought in her uncles, so she’s your problem.”
“Uncles?” Wolf mumbled as a ranger helped the tiny thing to the floor. He was surprised she was old enough to stand.
“Francis and Carrell Digger,” Josh replied. “It seems her folks died back in Savannah, and the only kin she has are two uncles. Someone must have thought Francis or Carrell was a female to have sent her all this way. Her ticket was for one direction. No one wants her back.”
“Yeah, Captain,” another ranger offered. “Her uncles hang tomorrow, so she’s all yours.”
Wolf looked like he’d just been handed his own death warrant. “What am I going to do with her?”
The little princess walked straight over to the huge captain and kicked him hard in the shin. “Feed me,” she ordered, rearing her foot back for another blow. “Feed me, now!”
Molly pulled Wolf out of harm’s way. “Maybe you’d better stand behind me, Captain.”
THREE
WOLF STARED AT THE TINY CHILD DANCING AROUND the Ranger office and frowned. This wasn’t the way he’d planned to end the first evening he’d ever spent with his Molly.
If possible, the years had made Molly Donivan more beautiful than he remembered. Yet there was something new about her. An untouchable air. A hardness as clear as ice around the lovely woman. An invisible razor edge that warned anyone not to step too close.
Her sharp mind was another matter. It drew him to her. She made him believe he might have a full conversation with a lady for the first time in his life. She made him feel comfortable.
He thought he’d get to know the Molly who had drifted through his mind for eight years. He would gain her trust and maybe her respect, then explain who he really was. Maybe he’d ask if she remembered him and their shared kiss. Maybe he’d see if she was willing to start again. He could leave out enough details that she’d say yes. Or maybe he’d be better off lying. He told himself all day that he would think of something before the evening ended.
But that was all before this delivery now dancing in front of him. “What’s your name?” he growled at the child.
“Callie Ann Digger,” she answered as if singing a song. “But you can call me Princess.”
The child was too young or too crazy to have sense enough to be afraid of him. After she’d kicked him a few times back in the drugstore, she’d decided he was harmless. Molly offered to keep her for the night, but Callie Ann cried and fought like a wild creature, insisting on going with Wolf.
He couldn’t very well take her to Granny Gravy’s, where he usually rented a room. Only men stayed in the boardinghouse and most tried not to eat more than one meal a day there even though Granny offered three for the price. She served sausage-flavored gravy for breakfast, chicken-flavored gravy for lunch, and whatever was left over for supper. She loved renting to rangers because they were never around and if they failed to return in three months, her house rules stated, she got to keep all gear left in the room.
“I don’t like kids,” he mumbled, wishing he’d had somewhere else to bring her besides the office. “And little girls are my least favorite creatures on this earth.”
She stopped twirling and stared at him as if she’d suddenly forgotten how to understand English. But she still remembered how to speak it. “Can I have another cookie?”
Wolf grumbled and opened his jar of prize cookies Noma made for him. He’d been feeding them to the little princess for an hour. She looked no closer to settling down and going to bed than she had when she’d insisted he carry her from Molly’s store.
“You promise to go to sleep?”
“If I eat one more cookie.” She smiled a cherubic smile, as she had the other times, and he knew she lied, but he handed her the jar anyway.
She took two more cookies. “Did you really shoot my uncles?”
“Only one of them.”
Wolf thought she might be upset by the news, but she just shrugged her tiny shoulders.
“I told the sheriff back home that Grandma always said they were worthless, but he sent me here anyway. He said kin is kin even if they’re no-account and how bad could two men named Carrell and Francis be.”
“Aren’t you afraid of me?” Wolf decided maybe she wasn’t a child at all but one of those pixies the gypsies say haunt the deep woods. She looked three, but she’d told Molly she was almost six.
“I might have been. You’re the biggest man I remember ever seeing,” she answered. “But Uncle Orson told me not to be.”
He let out a long breath and smiled. “Finally, we’re getting somewhere. You have another uncle?”
“Uh-huh.” She crawled up in his lap and whispered, “But he’s not like the others.”
Wolf settled her in the bend of his arm. “He’s not? Why not?” Anything was bound to be better than the two Diggers he knew about.
She leaned her curls against his chest and yawned. “I can’t say, but you can ask him.”
Wolf relaxed; maybe his problems weren’t near as deep as he thought. All he needed to do was contact her uncle Orson and send her in the right direction. Hopefully Orson wasn’t an outlaw. Maybe he’d be a married man ready to take on another mouth to feed. “Where does Uncle Orson live, child?”
“With me,” she answered, her eyes half closed. “Sometimes he sleeps in the barn when my grandma yells she doesn’t want to hear his name one more time. But he doesn’t like the barn. The cows keep him awake.”
“Where is he now?” Wolf needed to get the information before she fell asleep. At daybreak he could send off a telegram.
&
nbsp; “He’s sitting over by the door. Has been since we came in. Said he wouldn’t walk another step.” She rubbed her eyes. “But he’s too tired to talk anymore, so don’t ask him any questions tonight.”
Wolf caught himself looking at the empty chair by the door before he countered. “But…” It was no use, the child was asleep.
Carefully he carried her to the wide parson’s bench beneath the windows and covered her with his wool coat. “I’ll find out tomorrow,” he said as he tucked her in. “Good night, Princess.”
Just after dawn, Wolf shifted in his chair. His foot fell off the desk, rocking him forward. The thud of his boot against the hardwood brought him wide awake.
For a moment, he thought the child last night had been part of a dream. When the bundle by the window moved, he knew the dream was true.
The thought of trying to get the Diggers out of jail to take on their charge crossed his mind. But even if they weren’t guilty of more murders than he could count, neither of them was fit to raise a child. When they weren’t robbing stages, they drank. Carrell once bragged about killing a prostitute for overcharging him. Francis claimed they got Carrell’s money back by selling the hooker’s kid down in Mexico. Wolf wouldn’t put it past the brothers to sell Callie Ann if they thought she’d bring a few dollars.
Wolf shook his head. He didn’t even want to let the Digger brothers know they had a relative in town. Somehow they’d use the knowledge for their own purposes.
He glanced at the clock. In thirty minutes, they were due to hang.
A mass of blond curls poked out from beneath his coat. Round blue eyes blinked away sleep.
“Morning,” he said, thinking she was cute as a shiny new button, but whoever taught the kid to talk pumped the churn a few too many times. “Are you hungry?”
She nodded and slid down from the bench. “But I have to go to the privy first, then wash up and comb my hair.”
“Can you do that by yourself?”
She shook her head.
“Well, who usually helps?”
“Grandma.” Callie Ann looked like she was about to cry. “But they put her in a box and planted it in the ground. The next morning the sheriff talked a couple into taking me on a train to a big city. I can’t remember what their names were.”
Wolf stood and motioned for her to lead the way out the door. “And…?” he encouraged as they walked along the street.
Callie Ann thought for a minute. “And…when we got to a city, they walked with me to the stage place. They asked a woman named Mrs. Murphy to ride beside me to Austin since she was going the same way. She did, too. Even gave me apples and bread stuffed with butter and honey whenever I told her I was hungry.”
She hurried ahead of him. “I didn’t talk to her much, though. Uncle Orson told me not to. He said she was Sunday honest.”
“Uncle Orson?” Wolf tried to piece together what she’d said about the man last night. “Where did you say he was?”
“I didn’t.” She peeked behind Wolf. “But he’s following us. You can’t see him because he’s in the shadows now. He doesn’t like to walk in the sun.”
They reached the door to Molly’s store. Wolf tried the knob then pounded. By the time Molly answered, Callie Ann was doing a one-legged dance beside him.
Molly’s gaze met his for a moment, then lowered to the child.
“I…We…” He had no idea how to ask for her help in such a matter. He had no one else to turn to.
Molly took Callie Ann’s hand and smiled down at her. “I understand. Come along, child.”
Just before they disappeared upstairs, Molly glanced back at him and winked.
He grumbled as if finding the child a great bother, but grinned once Molly was out of sight. He couldn’t help but wonder if the woman always woke up competing with the sun. She was so beautiful he didn’t understand why there weren’t suitors sleeping on her doorstep every night just to see her at dawn.
Following his nose to the coffeepot in the kitchen, Wolf stepped behind the curtain. The bony old man Molly referred to as Ephraim sat at a table for two. He was so slim his clothes hung on him like a scarecrow’s. He held his head in his long spider-thin hands with blue veins as wide as his fingers.
“Mornin’.” Wolf saw no sign he’d surprised the man and wondered if anything had in years.
“Welcome. Want a cup?” Ephraim stood one joint at a time.
“Thanks.” Wolf glanced at the kitchen chair and doubted it would hold his weight. “Sorry to bust in on you this early.”
“I’ve spent my life in the service of the Donivans. Callers have always been welcome at any hour. Or at least they have been until recently. We’ve been having a few late at night that I’d like to wallop with my cane.”
The ranger waited. He knew the old man had something he needed to say. Ephraim seemed to chew on the words before he spoke.
A shaky hand poured coffee. When Ephraim returned to his chair, he looked up at Wolf with eyes as clear as fresh water.
“She won’t tell you rangers, or anyone else, but Molly’s in trouble. Bad trouble, and for the life of me I can’t figure where it’s coming from.”
Wolf cradled the cup and listened. The old man didn’t strike him as one given to idle gossip. He wouldn’t be speaking out of turn if he didn’t consider it necessary.
“I asked around about you, Captain.” Ephraim lowered his voice. “You’re respected in this town. Talked about like a legend for the good you’ve done since you’ve been in Texas.”
Wolf took a sip. “What’s the problem?”
Ephraim nodded as if understanding Wolf’s modesty. Any man who was old enough to have fought in the war had memories and regrets enough to keep him from getting too proud. “She’s a fighter, just like her father. Some folks can see a wrong and walk right past it. Others got to stop and try to fix it. She’s like that, Molly, always wanting the world to be a better place and taking on the job of improving it like it was her calling.
“Her father was the same. I remember when the first battle of the war was over, he watched the wounded try to walk and crawl back to Washington because all the ambulance wagons the army hired took off at the first shots. He fired up like an avenging angel, donating his own buggy to use as transport and demanding at gunpoint others able to walk do the same.” Ephraim laughed. “He made some gentlefolks mighty mad, but he saved many a life that day.”
Wolf fought his impatience. He’d also been at that battle, only on the other side. The South claimed victory, but when the fighting was over and there was one doctor per thousand men, it was hard to see the win. He’d heard the North hadn’t been any more prepared. Wounded wandered the streets of Washington waiting for room in the hospitals.
If Molly was in trouble today, though, he needed answers. “How’s trouble finding her?”
Ephraim swallowed his coffee hard, as if it were only grounds. “We hadn’t been here a week when she started fighting the opium trade on the back streets. I told her there was nothing we could do about it. Folks got a right to sleep in them beds if they want. There’s no more law against it than against drinking. Half the men who came back from the war have been trying to drown their memories in alcohol.”
“She needs to stay away from the back streets.” Wolf hated to think of Molly walking in front of some of the shacks where opium was sold.
“I told her that. But—”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, bringing the discussion to a halt. Wolf walked back into the store as Molly and Callie Ann reached ground level. The child let go of Molly’s hand and ran to the door. Opened it. Then closed it back.
When she turned to Wolf, she was clean-faced, and fighting mad. Tiny fists rested on her hips. “You left him outside!” She stormed at Wolf. “Don’t do that again.”
The ranger frowned and glanced at Molly. Molly shrugged.
“I left who outside, Princess?” He tried to sound calm before the child’s anger.
“Uncle Orson!
He doesn’t like to be left outside.”
Wolf raised one bushy eyebrow. He refused to look around the room for the invisible uncle.
Molly winked at him. “The captain is sorry,” she said to Callie Ann. “May we meet your uncle?”
“Oh, no. He never meets anyone this early.” Callie Ann looked bothered that Molly would even ask such a thing. “He would like a chair.”
Molly stared at Wolf. “Well, Captain? Get Uncle Orson a chair.”
Wolf opened his mouth to argue that he’d be damned if he’d get a chair for a transparent man, but Molly’s eyes warned him to tread carefully.
“There’s one in the kitchen,” Wolf mumbled. “He can talk to Ephraim while he sits.”
Callie Ann opened the curtain wide. After a moment, she passed through.
He looked at Molly. “I not only got stuck with a kid who wants me to call her Princess, she’s got an invisible relative.” He tried his best to whisper.
Molly slapped both hands across her mouth to keep her merriment inside. She motioned with her head toward the door.
Wolf held it open for her. He couldn’t help but grin as she ran outside, unable to keep quiet any longer. Her laughter filled the early morning air.
He couldn’t take his gaze off her as she held her sides. She was even more beautiful than she’d been yesterday. Her hair pulled free of a single night braid that reached her waist. Honey-brown strands curled around her cheeks in warm wisps. The white of her nightgown peeked above her robe at her throat. And her eyes. Wolf couldn’t stop staring. Her eyes danced with glee.
“I’m sorry,” she said with no remorse. “I shouldn’t be laughing at your predicament. But, don’t you see, the child is all alone in this world. She needs Uncle Orson.”
Wolf shook his head. “I don’t see how encouraging her in make-believe can help her.”
“But surely it can’t hurt. Oh, Captain, play along with her, at least until you get her settled.”
Wolf stared at Molly. He was not a man who figured he would ever be talked into anything in his life. Black was black, and white was white. The real world had no room for fantasy.