Lawman Read online

  None of that was unusual. But the lengths of jade green, blue, and yellow fabric woven decoratively between the fence ribs like ladies’ hair ribbons were. The borders of flowers painted above the doorways were. So were the potted cacti arranged along the archways of the Spanish-style zaguán that connected the main stage station with the outbuilding behind it.

  Most of all, so were the pennants. From holders beside the rough planked doorways, the bright-colored flags snapped in the sunrise breeze, surprising as jewels on a mule.

  Definitely a woman’s touch.

  Gabriel lowered his spyglass and slid it shut, smiling in spite of himself. Beauty was hard to come by in the Territory—hard to come by in life. It had been too long since he’d admired anything for its form, instead of its substance. Instead of the facts it hid or revealed.

  The pursuit of truth could do that to a man, he figured. Especially a man who lived in the world of hunter and hunted, lost and found. For a minute, those painted flowers and flourishes held his imagination like nothing had in longer than he could remember.

  Then Tom McMarlin crawled up beside him from the other end of the ridge, and Gabriel’s mind snapped back to the task at hand.

  Tracking his quarry.

  “Doesn’t look too damned prosperous, does it?” McMarlin muttered, parting a portion of the creosote barrier to squint toward the station. “If old man Kearney really did nab that loot, I’d say he’s already pulled foot from here and hied out for greener pastures.”

  “Maybe.” Gabriel rolled onto his back and slugged some water from his canteen. He wished it was coffee. Almost a week spent reading reconnaissance reports on the train between Chicago and Tucson had prepared him for the case—but not for the dew-damp, cold, rocky soil he’d spent sunrise on. Beneath his traveling clothes, he felt chilled to the bone.

  Frowning, he wiped his mouth and screwed on the canteen cap. “But as usual, McMarlin, you’re only seeing the outside.”

  “What the hell else am I supposed to see? We’re on the blasted outside.” He scratched a match into flame and lit a cheroot, blowing a plume of smoke toward the station. “And that place looks one step away from dilapidation, geegaws or no.”

  “It’s old. Not falling apart.” Gabriel handed over the spyglass. “See how the whitewash looks thicker in spots? It’s been redone, year after year. The roofs look solid. The grounds are cleared so the stage gets through faster—it doesn’t stay that way without work.”

  McMarlin grunted and snapped the glass shut. “So? It ain’t like their stables don’t stink.”

  “Actually, they don’t. Not like they would without so many hands keeping things mucked out. And all those men aren’t working for free.”

  “No, they’re working for a crook.”

  “Alleged crook.”

  “Alleged, my ass, you damned stickler,” McMarlin said, grinning around a mouthful of cigar. “You think Joseph Kearney is as guilty as I do, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  Gabriel grinned back at him. After years of working Pinkerton cases together, Tom McMarlin was like an older brother to him—and knew him about as well.

  “Maybe. Point is, this place is more prosperous than it looks. More prosperous than you thought at first sight.” He sat up and stuffed his canteen and spyglass into his worn saddlebag. Then he passed his hand over his face and looked at McMarlin again. “You’re not looking deep enough on this case—or I wouldn’t have to be here.”

  McMarlin grimaced, grinding his cheroot into the rocks. He left the stub where it lay. “Is that what Pinkerton told you?”

  “It’s what I know.”

  A simple stagecoach robbery like this one should have been solved within days. McMarlin should’ve already had wanted posters up and a solid mark on his suspect’s trail. Hell, he should’ve had the damned knuck in custody already. Instead, Gabriel suspected he’d spent half his assignment time whoring in Tucson and the rest of it with a bottle of whiskey in hand.

  McMarlin belly crawled back down the ridge side opposite the stage station. “You don’t know your head from a horse’s behind. No matter what old man Pinkerton thinks.”

  Gabriel almost smiled. Truth be told, part of him wanted to shuck the damned ‘no-fail’ reputation Allan Pinkerton had bestowed on him after his first few successful cases. Winter brings in the right man at the right time. What started as praise had become an obligation, one harder to uphold for the thirty-two year old man he’d become than the cocky, twenty year old kid who’d earned it.

  “You just keep dogging my steps, McMarlin.” Grinning, he snatched up the discarded cigar stub—evidence they didn’t need to leave behind of their presence there—and then followed his partner belly first down the slope. “Maybe someday you’ll get a legend of your own.”

  McMarlin snorted, bending to brush the dust from his fancy suit pants. Then he straightened and adjusted his tie. “I already got me a legend, with them painted ladies down on Maiden Lane. That’s all the reputation I want, boy-o.”

  “Keep on like you are, then,” Gabriel said, hefting his saddle bag over his shoulder for the trek to the arroyo bank where he’d picketed his horse. He scanned the ridge one last time to make sure their presence there wouldn’t be detected later. “That’s the only reputation you’ll have.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  Damn. “Nothing.”

  He turned toward the valley behind them, where a hazy strip of green showed the location of the arroyo, and started walking. McMarlin’s hand stopped him within two steps.

  “S’there something I ought to know, boy-o?”

  Gabriel looked at him, seeing for the first time in a long time the differences between them. McMarlin was getting on in years. Gray lightened his sandy, close-clipped hair and beard, and the paunch beneath his expensive suit only showed how little field work he did these days. Typically, he’d dressed like a banker, armed himself like an outlaw…and gotten so comfortable in his place with the agency, he’d forgotten it could all vanish in an instant.

  William Pinkerton, head agent in Chicago, was close as kicking to giving McMarlin some enforced time off. The letter proving it was in Gabriel’s saddlebag, wrapped in oilcloth along with the rest of the papers documenting the road agent they’d been hired to bring in. Officially, McMarlin was free to leave, and Gabriel was the head man on the case.

  But standing beneath an Arizona Territory sun with the man who’d taught him all he knew about bringing in Pinkerton’s most-wanted, the last thing he wanted to do was tell him that.

  “Dammit, McMarlin, I can’t stand here jawing all morning,” Gabriel said instead. “It’s a half hour past sunup already.”

  “You still figuring on finding Kearney at the station?”

  He jerked his head toward the cluster of buildings behind them, and Gabriel’s gaze followed the motion. A stagecoach rattled in as they watched, spewing dust in its wake, and was quickly met by several of the station hands. Their Spanish-accented speech drifted toward the ridge, but the words were too faint to make out.

  “I always start at the beginning. And that’s it.” He glanced at McMarlin. “You got a better idea?”

  “Hell, yes,” he answered with a good-natured grin, pulling a flask from his coat pocket. “Me and Old Orchard here’ll watch your back while you’re gone. Better head out, boy-o.”

  “Don’t get too cozy,” Gabriel said, going to retrieve his horse. “This won’t take long.”

  The chase was on.

  How two people had become so perfectly cantankerous in exactly the same ways, Megan couldn’t imagine. But somehow, Jedediah and Mrs. Webster had managed it.

  So far, she’d been forced to haggle with them over the selling price of their mercantile store, the precise boundaries specified in the alleyway rights, and the disposition of the dry goods and supplies already in inventory. Mrs. Webster clearly meant to second-guess every accord Megan had reached with her husband in their earlier meetings—this, in a vo
ice so shrill, her teeth ached from listening to it after the first few minutes.

  If this was what was meant by wedded bliss, Megan had never been plumb-happier to be a spinster.

  Sighing as she listened to the Websters recite their latest demand, she reached for one of the cinnamon-sugar covered buñuelos from the basketful Addie had prepared. A glance from Mrs. Webster halted her hand halfway there.

  A lady didn’t gobble up the refreshments meant for her guests, Megan reminded herself, and raised the basket toward them, instead. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some buñuelos? Our station cook makes the best in the Territory.”

  “No, thank you,” Mrs. Webster said, glancing meaningfully at the snug fit of Megan’s new dress. “Although we can certainly see that you approve of such…rustic fare, my dear.”

  Megan felt her face heat. Before she could say anything, Jedediah spoke up, too.

  “Now, now, Prudie,” he told his wife. “It’s not as though Miss Kearney needs to keep her figure to attract a husband—not at her advanced years.” He winked and gave the basket a little shove in Megan’s direction. “You go on ahead and indulge yourself.”

  The basket wobbled in her hand. She gritted her teeth and made herself smile calmly at them as she set it onto the scarred oak station desk.

  “As it happens, I’m only twenty-eight advanced years,” she informed them. And at least half of those years have been spent negotiating with you. It certainly felt like it. “Still young enough to appreciate the latest fashions—” Megan aimed an especially syrupy smile at Mrs. Webster. “—and old enough to understand what it really means to bind yourself to a spouse—” Another smile for Jedediah. “—forever.”

  The Websters sighed and looked at their feet, separately chagrined—but united in the way they both slumped in their seats on the other side of her father’s heavy stationmaster’s desk.

  Feeling a bit cheered, Megan sat straighter and picked up a pencil. “Now, about this provision for the living space behind the mercantile—” she began, going on to press for slightly improved terms than those she’d originally agreed on…plus the complimentary addition of some handsomely glazed Mexican pottery she’d admired in their mercantile.

  “I think you’ll agree,” she finished, “that such an…indication of goodwill is warranted here.”

  “I suppose,” Jedediah said doubtfully.

  “Very well,” Mrs. Webster snapped. “Your—your good nature warrant is, of course, an indication here. Do you take us for greenhorns, fresh from the train?”

  “Of course not.” Megan frowned thoughtfully at the much re-written purchase agreement on the desk, the document that would deed her Jedediah’s Tucson mercantile—soon to become her longed-for dressmaker’s shop. “But there is still the small matter of the abutment with Mr. Meyer’s establishment and its influence on the deed to be assessed. I’m sure—”

  A blurred motion in the office doorway caught her eye. Addie’s head appeared, vehemently shaking ‘no’ as she pantomimed reading a book. She licked her finger and turned a pretend page, then shook her head again.

  Doing her best to glare her away, Megan pulled the deed agreement closer and wrote in the addition of the pottery and the improved living space terms. “I—I’m sure we can easily come to terms with that, though,” she finished awkwardly.

  Shoot, Addie had done it to her again. She’d lost the direction of her thoughts regarding the abutment when she’d seen her warning. Now it was too late to let her original indignation carry her into further negotiations.

  Smiling smugly, Addie pantomimed closing a book and ducked out of the doorway. Megan frowned after her. Don’t talk like a book, indeed! How was she supposed to cope with people like the Websters, if all she could do was smile and curtsey and show off her bustle?

  It was ridiculous to behave as though she hadn’t a thought in her head beyond ribbons and recipes. If that was what it took to capture a husband, no wonder she’d never gotten herself one!

  Aside from living in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of station hands for company and a father who spent more time at the gambling table than the dinner table, she amended. If not for Addie and the much-thumbed copies of Godey’s brought to her by the Kearney stagecoach drivers from the Fort Lowell officers’ wives, she wouldn’t have had any feminine influences at all.

  Across the desk, the Websters put their heads together and whispered. She took advantage of the opportunity to review the deed agreement one last time, then cleared her throat.

  “It looks as though everything is in order,” she said when they looked up. “Shall we sign?”

  She plucked a fountain pen from its holder and held it toward Jedediah. He stared at it as though she’d suggested he eat it, rather than simply sign his name with it. Then, slowly, he leaned forward and reached for it.

  Mrs. Webster jabbed him with her elbow. With a sheepish expression, he lowered his hand again.

  “Ahh, we’ll need to view the reimbursement before signing, Miss Kearney.”

  “Reimbursement?”

  “The cash,” Mrs. Webster clarified.

  “I see.”

  She’d hoped to secure a cashier’s check with the money at the telegraph office in Tucson before completing their transaction. Having a record of the money that changed hands would be best. After all, the entire contents of her nest egg were at risk. But as difficult as this meeting had been to arrange, and as difficult as the Websters had been to deal with, all Megan wanted to do was get it over with. A signed, witnessed receipt would have to do.

  “The funds aren’t a problem, are they?” Jedediah asked. “I know it’s not quite in a lady’s nature to deal with great sums of money.”

  Megan thought back on the years she’d been drawing wages as her father’s bookkeeper and part-time, uncertified station manager. What did that make her, if not a lady handling great sums of money? It was fortunate she and her father had kept her financial acumen to themselves—otherwise, folks might have expected her to start wearing britches, or something equally ridiculous.

  “Or perhaps you’d like to wait until your father can be present himself, to guide you?” Mrs. Webster suggested. “I’ve always taken my dear father’s advice, right down to the question of whom I’d marry.”

  That explained a great deal. Suppressing a shudder at the notion of enduring a similar fate, Megan opened the desk drawer to her left and withdrew a stack of leather-bound ledgers. Their familiar, earthy scent did much to reassure her. This was her element, she reminded herself, and her home. She wouldn’t allow mean-hearted people like the Websters to discourage her.

  Besides, all her dreams hinged on reaching an accord with them.

  “I’m afraid my father’s been called away on business,” she said. Called away to a Faro game, more likely. According to Addie, he’d ridden out for Tucson sometime before sunup, all afire about some ‘big opportunity’ he meant to surprise them with. “So he won’t be able to be here with us today.”

  “Oh, my. That’s such a shame.”

  Megan’s heart twisted. She’d never thought of it in precisely those terms before, but Mrs. Webster was right, after a fashion.

  If she waited long enough for Joseph Kearney to appear and formally sanction her dressmaker’s shop purchase, she’d not only be the spinster she already was—she’d be wrinkled and gray-haired, to boot. As much as she loved him, her father never seemed to be around when she needed him. Today was no exception…and that truly was a shame.

  Pride made her sit straighter. With as much composure as she could muster, Megan met Mrs. Webster’s gaze head-on. “Not such a shame, madam. I’ve enjoyed the freedom it’s allowed me.”

  Briskly, she plunked the ledgers onto the desktop and reached into the drawer again, feeling with her fingertips for the smooth glass canning jar that held her nest egg. The sooner they finished this, the better.

  Her fingertips met cool glass. Smiling, she pulled out the jar, keeping it below the desk so
she could count its contents in private. “I’ll just be a moment,” she told the Websters.

  “Take your time, Miss Kearney,” said Jedediah.

  “We want to be sure you count all those precious coppers correctly,” added Mrs. Webster with a smug, haughty expression—the same expression that greeted Megan in town, whenever she ventured to Tucson for fabric or lace or tinware.

  Now, as always, it hurt. Why could she never muster enough defenses against those cutting looks? No matter how hard she tried, they always managed to pierce her defenses somehow.

  One day those cutting looks wouldn’t bother her, Megan promised herself. One day, she’d rise above them.

  “You might even want to count twice,” Jedediah added.

  Sudden, unwanted tears of embarrassment and anger stung her eyes. She wished she’d negotiated even harder on that purchase agreement, wrangled even more favorable terms than the excellent ones she already had secured.

  Her hands trembled on the jar lid, sending it clattering to the floor. Wanting nothing more than to throw her carefully counted coins and precious rolled bills right at the Websters, Megan reached inside.

  And came up with nothing. Her nest egg savings had vanished. Disappeared…just as quickly as the Websters themselves would, when they learned the truth.

  Oh, papa, Megan thought as she stared at the empty jar in her hands. Whatever have you done this time?

  Chapter Two

  “Stop, Miss Megan!” Addie said, reaching over to wrestle a hairbrush and comb from Megan’s grasp before she could pack it. “This is the craziest notion I’ve heard since old Charlie took it into his head to rig parasols to the drivers’ seats on all the coaches.”

  “It’s not crazy, it’s necessary.” Megan packed her second-best dress atop the clothes already assembled in the opened satchel on her bed, then snatched back the hairbrush and comb, stuffed them inside, and snapped her luggage closed. “Who knows how much of that nest egg money papa’s already lost?”