Читать книгу The Lone Sheriff - Lynna Banning, Lynna Banning - Страница 12
ОглавлениеAt ten o’clock that night, Jericho crawled into his bed cold sober. He’d be up and bushy-tailed at dawn, and by seven o’clock he’d be on the train to Portland with forty thousand dollars in gold from Wells Fargo stashed in the mail car. Miners from all over Oregon and even Idaho brought their diggings to the Smoke River Bank, trusting they would safely ship it to the vault in Portland. And Jericho would be on board that train to make sure their diggings stayed safe.
Alone.
He hated to lie. It was one of the things he’d sworn he’d never do. Lying made him less of the man he’d wanted to be ever since he was twelve years old and on the run from the Sisters of Hope. Back then, he’d resolved he would always face up to the truth.
He lay on his narrow cot behind the sheriff’s office and tried not to flinch at the deception he’d laid for Mrs. Detective, telling her the train departed at eight o’clock when it actually departed at seven. First, he’d stopped in at the hotel and found that Mrs. O’Donnell had left a wake-up reminder at the desk. He’d suspected as much; she was the type who planned all her moves ahead. In exchange for agreeing not to arrest the hotel manager’s seventeen-year-old son for peeking in sixteen-year-old Lavonne Cargill’s bedroom window, the manager obligingly tore up Mrs. O’Donnell’s wake-up reminder note.
Next. He’d visited the mercantile for some painkiller. A skinny kid he’d never seen before lounged against the cash register, studying Jericho’s sling. “For yer arm, huh?”
“Yeah. Not too much laudanum—makes me drowsy. Where’s Mr. Ness?”
“Home, I guess. I’m his cousin from Idaho. Name’s Orion.”
Jericho nodded. He didn’t look much like Carl. “Been here long?”
“’Bout two weeks. Stopped here on my way to strike it rich.”
“Gold mining?”
“Nah. Selling Red Eye to the miners up in Idaho.” He scrabbled on the shelf behind the counter and produced a small bottle of dark liquid. “This stuff is mostly alcohol. How much of it do you want?”
“All of it.” He needed to start exercising his stiff wrist and limbering up his gun hand, and he knew it would hurt some.
The kid wrapped up the bottle and Jericho stuffed it into the inside pocket of his deerskin vest. Funny the way Orion handled the bottle—with his pinkie in the air like a lady lifting a teacup.
The last thing Jericho did before crawling onto his cot that night was slip off his sling and stretch his arm out straight. Made his wrist hurt like hell, but he managed eight stretches in a row.
* * *
Before first light, he rolled off the cot, downed a cup of Sandy’s gritty, cold coffee, and grabbed his gun belt. His deputy slept in the concrete-block jail in whatever cell was vacant. Jericho felt fine leaving the kid in charge; the jail was empty.
On his way to the train station he studied the second-floor windows of the hotel; dark as the inside of a barrel. He felt a stab of guilt, but he squashed it down and smiled instead. Mrs. Detective would sleep right on past train time. Kinda mean to trick her, but he knew he couldn’t tolerate sitting next to her for six hours.
And, he admitted, there was more to it than that. He couldn’t stand to see a woman get hurt, especially not one he felt responsible for. The Tucker gang could be vicious.
The train was already puffing smoke out the stack as he swung himself aboard and entered the passenger car.
What the—
Maddie O’Donnell sat in the first seat, smiling at him like a self-satisfied fox with a chicken in its belly.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
She patted the faded red velvet cushion next to her with a gloved hand. “We settled all that yesterday, Sheriff. There is no need to go through it again.”
He couldn’t help staring at her. She wore a different hat, yellow ribbons with flowers and a veil rucked up on top. A crisp yellow ruffled skirt boiled around her ankles and a lacy yellow shirtwaist was tucked into as trim a waist as he’d ever seen. She looked like one of those daffodils that poked up each spring in the orphanage garden.
Her outfit looked brand-new. He wondered if her underclothes were new as well. He forced his gaze away.
The train lurched forward and Jericho grabbed onto the upholstered seat back. Maddie swept her skirt aside to make room for the sheriff beside her. He did not sit down for the longest time, just stood swaying in the aisle, staring at her. What on earth was he looking at? Oh, of course—her new hat. True, it was too gaudy, but it added to her disguise. Besides, once Mrs. Forester, the dressmaker, had warmed to the idea of the flowers, it was hard to stop her. The woman had grumbled at being roused at such an early hour, but Maddie had purchased enough clothing to make it well worth her while.
Carefully, she unpinned the creation, ripped off all but three daisies, and resettled it atop her pinned-up hair. She secured it with her longest hatpin; it was also the sharpest of her collection. In a pinch, it made an effective weapon.
“Why do you not sit down, Sheriff? I promise not to talk.”
He frowned down at her. “Don’t want to muss up your skirt, Mrs. O’Donnell.”
“You won’t. It’s made of seersucker. Wonderful fabric for traveling on an assignment—it never wrinkles, no matter what I do.”
The train picked up speed and swung around a sharp curve, and the sheriff edged onto the seat as far away from her as he could get.
Maddie huffed out a breath. “You do not like me much, do you?”
His eyes—a dark, inky blue—flicked to hers for an instant, then dropped to the boots he’d stretched out and crossed in front of him. “Not much, no.”
She pursed her lips. “Tell me something, Sheriff.”
He did not answer.
“Why are you so unfriendly?”
The sheriff gave an almost imperceptible jerk, and then he turned those eyes on her. Now they looked angry. Almost feral.
After a long silence he started talking, his voice so low she could hardly hear him. “Don’t really like most people.”
“But whyever not? What has happened to make you so...well, surly?”
“I watched a friend die in my place,” he gritted. “After that, I didn’t like being close to anyone.”
Maddie blinked. “Who was he?”
He looked past her, out the train window, and she watched his gaze grow unfocused.
“She.”
“She? Your...?” Maddie hesitated. He was so rough around the edges she doubted he’d ever been married. A lover, perhaps? She was keen to know, but it would be highly improper to ask. She said nothing, just noted the tightness around his mouth.
“She, uh, died for something I did.”
“Why, that is perfectly awful! How old were you then?”
He shrugged. “’Bout ten, I guess. I never knew for sure what my age was.”
Maddie’s throat felt so raw she could scarcely speak. She closed her eyes. How he must have hated himself. She would not be surprised if he still did. She shut her mouth tight. What could she say to ease a scar like that? Nothing.
He recrossed his legs. “Heard enough?”
“More than enough,” she breathed. It explained everything, his brusque manner, his hard exterior, the unreachable part of himself he kept shuttered.
He slipped the sling off his arm, flexed his wrist, and waggled each of his fingers individually. Some of them, she noticed, seemed reluctant to move.
“Does that hurt?”
“Hell, yes, it hurts.”
“Then why—”
“Because I’m gonna need a steady gun hand and a trigger finger that works, that’s why.”
Go ahead, she thought. Grumble and roar all you want. She was not going to let herself be intimidated by him.
He said nothing for the next hour, just worked his wrist and his fingers back and forth, his lips thinned over his teeth. Perspiration stood out on the part of his forehead she could see; his black hair straggled over the rest.
The uniformed conductor stuck his head into the car. “Next stop Riverton,” he yelled.
Two passengers boarded, an old man, bent nearly double and a young woman, probably his daughter, who held on to one of his scrawny arms. She settled him four seats behind.
The sheriff gave them a quick once-over, then reattached his sling and pulled a small bottle from inside his vest.
“Pain medicine,” he said to no one in particular.
“What you drink is your business, Sheriff.”
He gave her a long, unblinking look. “Damn right.”
Maddie laughed out loud, then clapped her hand over her mouth. Jericho swigged a mouthful from the bottle, corked it and stowed it in his vest pocket.
“Now, Mrs. O’Donnell, What about you?”
“Me! What about me?”
The ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “What happened to you that makes you so sure of yourself and so stubborn?”
“N-nothing. It just comes naturally. My upbringing, I suppose.”
“Ladyfied and spoiled, I’d guess.”
Maddie bit her lip. “Well, let’s just say rich and protected. Actually, overprotected. My mother was English, very high society. My father was Irish and very well-off. A banker.”
“Figures,” Jericho muttered.
“I married young to get away from them, really. He was also a banker. After a while—a very short while—I realized my husband was only interested in my money and he only wanted a wife for a showpiece. So I became just that—a china doll with pretty dresses. It didn’t take long before I wanted a real life.”
He snorted. “What the hell is a ‘real life’?”
She thought for a long minute. “I am not sure exactly. Someone who loves me for myself. Real friends, not society matrons. At least I know what it is not—finishing schools and servants and a closet full of expensive clothes.”
He took care not to look at her, staring again out the window at the passing wheat fields. “Seems to me, Mrs. O’Donnell, that you’re gonna feel kinda lost out here in the West. Ought to be back in the big city, where you belong.”
She turned toward him. “I suppose I do feel lost, in a way. The West is so...well, big. Things—towns—are so far apart.”
“Yeah, that spooks a lot of Easterners.”
“But I do not feel lost when I am on an assignment for Mr. Pinkerton. Then I know exactly who I am. It makes me feel...worthwhile.”
She pulled a ball of pink cotton thread from her travel bag and began to crochet. Her fingers shook the tiniest bit.
Jericho leaned back and closed his eyes. Nothing more worth saying, or asking, he figured. He must have dozed for hours and suddenly the train screeched to a stop. A glance through the window told him they were not in a train station; they were out in the middle of nowhere.
Hell’s bells, here it came.
Left-handed, Jericho dragged his Colt out of the holster, thumbed back the hammer and started for the mail car. A swish of petticoats at his heels told him Maddie was right behind him.
“Stay here,” he yelled over his shoulder.
“Try and make me!”
Damn fool woman. She’d get herself killed and he’d kick himself to hell and back. He wished he’d never laid eyes on her.
In the mail car, the white-faced clerk stood frozen, hands in the air, while a man with a bandanna covering the lower half of his face held a revolver on him with one hand and, with the other, hurled a canvas Wells Fargo bag through the open side door.
Maddie darted off to Jericho’s right, clutching a revolver.
“Get down!” he shouted. The young mail clerk dropped to the floor but Maddie went into a crouch and leveled her weapon at the robber.
“Hands up!” Her ordinarily genteel voice cut like cold steel.
The man straightened in surprise, then turned his gun toward the voice. Jericho sent a bullet zinging off the silver handle and the gun skidded across the floor in front of Maddie. She stopped it with her small black shoe and kicked it into a corner.
Three men on horseback waited outside the car. Maddie swung her pistol toward the opening and fired, winging one man. Another outlaw pointed his weapon at her but Jericho’s shot spun it out of his hand.
The mounted robbers began peppering the wall behind them with gunfire while the man inside ducked and began shoving more canvas bags out onto the ground.
A tall rider with a paunch walked his horse up to the car and took careful aim at Jericho, but before he could squeeze the trigger Maddie fired a shot that neatly spun his weapon out of his hand. Where had she learned to shoot like that?
Fat Man reined away. Maddie sent another bullet through his flapping black coattail.
The man inside skedaddled after the canvas bags, shoved one more off the car and then tumbled out onto the ground after it. He dove under his waiting horse. Jericho itched to shoot him, but with his left-handed aim off, he figured he’d kill the horse before he nailed the outlaw.
The three others hefted the canvas sacks behind their saddles, mounted and thundered off in a cloud of gray dust. The last man scrambled onto his horse and pounded after them.
Jericho raised his revolver to pick him off, but he was out of range.
Maddie put a shot through his hat, but he twisted in the saddle and fired back at her. She yelped.
The bullet tore through the sleeve of her shirtwaist, burning a path above her elbow. It felt like something scraping her skin with a white-hot knife.
Then there was nothing but dust, the audible prayers of the crouching mail clerk, the chuff of the train engine, and Jericho yelling at her.
“Dammit, Maddie, you’d think you’d be smart enough to stay out of the line of fire!” He leaped over the clerk and grabbed her arm. Right where it hurt.
She gritted her teeth. “If you do not let me go, Sheriff, I am going to shoot you, too!”
He snatched his hand away and stepped back, eyes narrowed. “Are you hurt?”
She lifted her arm and pointed to the black-rimmed hole in the sleeve. “Bullet burn.”
He opened his mouth again. She was sure he was going to yell at her some more, but she interrupted. “Sheriff,” she enunciated quietly.
“What?”
“Shut up.”
He looked dumbfounded. “What?”
“Be quiet. I am not seriously injured and I see that you are unharmed, as well.” She began to gather up the disordered mail bags.
“Hell,” Jericho muttered. “You’re not even shook up.”
She pocketed her pistol. “Stop complaining and help me.”
He looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “How come you’re not shakin’ or cryin’ or something?”
Maddie straightened, gripping one corner of a heavy canvas bag. “Why should I be?”
Jericho shook his head. “How much do you figure they got away with?”
Maddie cocked her head. “How much?” She found she liked teasing him. It made his eyes even darker blue, and the way he was staring at her now caused a little flip-flop inside her chest.
“How much?” she repeated. “Well, to the best of my calculation—did I tell you I was a whiz at mathematics at school? Let’s see now...”
He planted himself within spitting distance and propped his good hand on his hip. “I’m waiting, dammit.”
“The amount of money—” she smiled into his glowering face “—is exactly zero.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me, zero. Nothing. Nada. Rien. Those Wells Fargo bags are decoys. The bank manager and I decided they would be filled with rocks, not gold.”
His eyes went even darker. “You mean this whole exercise was just a farce?”
Maddie straightened her skirt. “You could call it that, I suppose.”
“Then what the hell did we risk our lives for?”
“For observation.” She dropped the canvas bag in her hand, which landed with a clunk, and fished her notebook out of her pocket. Not her Pistol Pocket, he noted, but the Observation Notebook Pocket.
Jericho waited while she circled the pencil around like a branding iron. Part of him wanted to laugh. Another part of him wanted to wring her neck. He’d be damned if he’d risk getting shot for some damn decoys!
“Well,” she began, a note of relish in her voice. “We got a good look at the robbers, didn’t we? There are five of them.”
“We already knew that.”
“One of them,” she continued, “is lame. His leg is stiff.”
“And?”
“And one of them wore a bandanna from Carl Ness’s mercantile. I recognized the pattern and the color, a sort of pinky-red. Did you notice?”
Jericho said nothing. He had to admit she had sharp eyes and a keen mind. Her “observations” were valuable.
Dammit, anyway.
The trembling mail clerk slid the railcar door shut. The train tooted once and jerked forward. Maddie stumbled and bumped his injured wrist. He sucked in a breath. Hurt like blazes.
With his good hand he holstered his Colt and turned back to the passenger car. “Better let me take a look at your bullet burn,” he said as they made their way down the aisle.
She plopped down into her seat, pressing her lips together. “No, thank you. The bullet just skimmed my arm. I’m sure the skin is not broken.”
He settled beside her with an exasperated sigh. “Yeah? Show me.”
“No.”
He reached for her wrist. Before she could stop him he’d unbuttoned her sleeve and pushed it up above her elbow.
“Hurt?”
“Yes,” she said tightly.
He ran his gaze over her slim upper arm, noting the angry red crease above her elbow. From his inside vest pocket he grabbed the bottle of painkiller.
“What is that?” she said.
“Painkiller. Alcohol, mostly.”
She rolled her eyes. He uncorked the bottle with his teeth, lifted her elbow away from her body and dribbled the dark liquid over the abrasion. Her breath hissed in and she moaned softly.
Jericho closed his eyes for an instant. He hated hearing a female in pain. “Sorry.”
“It is quite all right,” she said, rolling her sleeve down. She poked her forefinger through the bullet hole and sighed. “Another visit to the dressmaker, I suppose.”
“Maddie, maybe you ought to see a doctor when we get to Portland.”
She shook her head. “What is that you poured over it?”
He recorked the bottle. “I told you, painkiller. For my wrist.”
She gave him a lopsided smile that made his insides weak. “We are a pair, are we not?” she said, her voice just a tad shaky. “A one-armed sheriff and a Pinkerton detective with a bullet burn.”
“Yeah,” he said drily. “We’re a team, all right. Listen, Maddie, tomorrow I think you should go back to Chicago.”
“No, you don’t, Jericho. Whether you admit it or not, you need me. This is my job—apprehending lawbreakers. I’m your right arm, so to speak, so you’re stuck with me.”
He felt more than “stuck” with her. He felt bowled over. Something told him his lady detective wasn’t going to back down and go home to Chicago anytime soon. Torn between worry over her safety and his need to see this job through, his insides were in an uproar.
With a sidelong glance at her, he settled back to think about how he could keep her alive while he did what he had to do, apprehend the Tucker gang. The townspeople always wanted him to get up a posse, but Jericho preferred working alone. Always had and always would. He did what any sheriff worth his salt had to do, and he’d never wanted to get anyone else involved.
And he sure as hell didn’t want to get a lady detective mixed up in a manhunt, even if she could shoot straight. She had to go back to Chicago.
She picked up her crocheting again and worked a row of stitches before she said anything more. “Do you suppose there might be an opera or a play of some kind in Portland?”
“Might be. You miss the city, huh?”
“Yes,” she said. “To be honest, I enjoy cultural things.”
“Bet you feel like a fish out of water on this assignment.”
“Oh, no. I am not that easily discouraged. This fish likes doing something worthwhile, Sheriff. Catching train robbers is worthwhile.”
Jericho nodded. He felt the same way, when he thought about it. He had a job to do. But he’d been on his own since he was a kid, and that’s how he liked it. Wasn’t responsible for anybody’s skin but his own. Every time Sandy begged to come along on a manhunt, Jericho neatly evaded the issue.
He liked Sandy. Maybe that was the problem. He was beginning to like Maddie, too, and that was an even bigger problem.
