Explaining Herself Page 17

  Good girls did not do that.

  As if she read his mind, she said, "Any woman could make a mistake if she were in love. That doesn't make it right, but it's not.. ."

  Not wrong? What did that leave?

  Of course, Julie had once been strong-willed too, at least before . . . Before. She'd believed she would marry the man whose name and face he had yet to discover. The man she'd met in secret—perhaps in the same way he and Victoria had met in secret.

  The idea only hardened his hatred against that unknown rancher. "A person might think the best of a loved one, but that doesn't make her—him—right."

  Victoria shook her head, unwilling to believe it.

  "There were not many men who could have done this," Laramie insisted, glancing from Victoria to Julie’s grave and back, even now searching for an answer to fit her view of the world. "Not the Wards, or the deputy; neither of them was rich, and she said— How old is Alden Wright?"

  "I don't think he's any older than you," she admitted.

  Far too young. "Well, I doubt it was your father."

  "Don't even say things like that in jest, Ross Laramie! Of course it wasn't Papa. And Colonel Wright is even older than him. So it had to be Hayden Nelson."

  As if older men would not offer a great deal for a young lady's companionship. "It wasn't Hayden Nelson."

  "He's the only choice left."

  "Nelson had no family in the area to have threatened her." Laramie flexed his hands, scowled at the tin can with its crumbling roses. He disliked Victoria's idea that the man he wanted would leave roses on his sister's grave. "And he left town years ago."

  "Oh." She looked at the roses too. "These can't be any older than late spring, early summer."

  Which left the one person she would not see.

  "That's everyone the newspaper listed as being on the posse, Ross," she insisted. "And if he wasn't in the posse, he could have been anybody. The Garrisons and the Wrights weren't the only successful ranchers in Sheridan."

  Laramie took a deep breath and stood, torn. It seemed so clear to him. He did not want to be the one who did this, who said this, to Victoria. And yet here, before Poppa and Phil—no, Filip and Julije—he could not leave it. Not again. He'd avoided his vow for too long already. "Perhaps he had a relative on the posse," he prompted, desperate.

  Victoria considered it, then shrugged. "I don't believe the Wards had any relations in town. And the deputy's name isn't familiar."

  Laramie turned to escape toward that large tomb, toward where she'd left her bicycle. He did not want to hurt her, but he had to know. God help him—he needed her to at least consider it, so that he could finally know for sure.

  Whether he could do anything about it or not.

  When she followed him, a whisper of petticoats and a whiff of cinnamon, he simply said it. "Thaddeas."

  Victoria stopped, blinked at him. "What}"

  "Victoria, it was Thaddeas." The heir to the Circle-T, a fancy college student, must have seduced Julije, used her to send a posse after the rustlers. He'd destroyed Ross's world—then gone on to become a respected lawyer while Julije and their baby rotted in the earth.

  Once again, Laramie had fallen victim to his world's cruel irony. It was Thaddeas Garrison who deserved to die.

  And Laramie had fallen in love with the man's sister.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Victoria said, "My brother?"

  Ross looked disgusted by the question, which made her angry—though his accusation might explain that, too. She pushed him, flat against his chest. "My brother?"

  He did not budge. "Who else?"

  "Anyone!" Clearly, he did not know Thaddeas. Despite Mama's gentling influence, Thad was pure Garrison—proper, stern, just. Papa's son from a previous marriage, Thad had lived with an aunt until Vic's parents married. Mama once said that part of him was still ten years old, desperate to justify his inclusion in the family.

  She hadn't said it to Victoria, of course, or known Vic was listening, but she'd said it.

  Thaddeas would never do anything so terrible!

  Ross seemed convinced, though. "He was here after

  the Die-Up," he reminded her. "He's got money. Your folks paid for lawyers, for tombstones."

  Now she pushed him with both hands, so he stepped out of her way. She stalked past him and got her bicycle.

  "Come on," she told him, starting to wheel her bicycle toward the gate, where his horse waited.

  He didn't move, except to watch her. "Come where?"

  "We'll go to my house and straighten this out."

  "I'm not going there."

  "Of course you are. You think my brother seduced some poor immigrant girl, and it's not true. He'll tell you so."

  "He'll lie," he warned her.

  She stopped and turned on him again. "So now he's not just a scoundrel, but a liar?"

  Ross stood there, smoldering at her, but she could tell he didn't really see who she was, what kind of family she came from. He didn't even believe it existed.

  "Ross, my parents paid to move lots of graves to the new cemetery. It was the right thing to do. I'm sure that's why my mother hired your friend's lawyer. She supports all sorts of causes—the orphanage, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Ladies' Aid. If you come home with me, I can show you her desk, some of the letters she's received from organizations like that."

  He looked dangerous again—and very alone. "No."

  "Are you afraid for Thaddeas to see us together?" Heaven forbid anyone think they were courting! "I'll go home first, then, and you can visit later."

  Ross shook his head. "No."

  "Then I'll ask him and tell you what I find out."

  Ross shifted his weight, flexed his hands with uncertainty, then faced her full on again, mouth set. "If he did tell you the truth, would you want to know?"

  "Of course I would, because the truth is that he didn't do anything."

  "No." He squinted—or winced. "No, Victoria. If that weren't the truth. Would you still want to know the worst?"

  She didn't understand. There wasn't a worst.

  "Would you rather..." But whatever he meant to say, he gave up. He shut his eyes, tight, and clearly just gave up. "Never mind."

  "Never mind what? Ross, you aren't making sense."

  He lowered his head, looked down at the ground for a long moment. When he lifted his lashes, slanted his gaze back up, his eyes—those dusky green eyes— looked wounded again. "Go home, Victoria. Just... go home to your brother and be happy. Please."

  She knew she was missing something. That worried her. But the sun was starting to set, and she hadn't brought Duchess with her, and she was too frustrated with him to know what else to ask. "Good evening, then, Mr. Laramie. I'll see you later."

  But he didn't promise any such thing. Confused, Victoria pushed herself off and pedaled away from him.

  She on her bicycle, returning to her family's modernized home in her turn-of-the-century town.

  He standing in the cemetery with all the. dead people.

  When Victoria rode off on her two-wheeled contraption, she looked as if she were flying. Flying away from him. Laramie knew he should feel relieved. Less complications this way. She would never be the wiser.

  Instead, he felt hollow. Empty. Beaten.

  He loved her. Somehow he'd gone and fallen in love with her, and now he had nothing. He no longer had the vengeance that had carried him for so long, because he would not hurt Victoria that way. And he could not have her, because—well, because he would not hurt her that way, either. He was a rustler, a liar, a killer who wished her brother dead. He was a man who did not keep promises.

  Clearly, he had no more business in Sheridan.

  Laramie mounted Blackie from sheer habit. He'd almost reached the Red Light Saloon before he even knew that was where he'd headed. He didn't like saloons. But as with so much else in his life, it was someplace that would accept him. And it was where Lonny Logan would
seek him out.

  Laramie didn't know where he would go or what he would do, but he knew better than to alienate a Logan.

  Bad companions were better than none at all.

  The saloon was too damned full for sunset. He noticed a skinny whore looking him over, and he felt disgust.

  Disgust that he could make up for nothing—and he'd taken this long to figure it out. Disgust that he could never sit in a parlor with Victoria Garrison, but he could easily take a whore upstairs and do anything he wanted with her. Disgust that while so many men headed home from a day's honest work to a meal prepared by a mother, or a wife, or a sister, he got a shot glass of rye and a pickled egg from the jar on the counter. Disgust that despite being exiled into this world of lawbreakers and bad men, he would never live up to his potential as an outlaw any better than he'd lived up to his potential as a cowboy.

  Laramie wanted what he could not have. He had what he did not want. And he probably wasn't any different from half the men here.

  That disgusted him most of all.

  An hour later, he was nursing his second drink at the farthest table from the front when Lonny Logan finally pushed through the swinging doors, fully armed.

  Laramie was fully armed, too. Firearms restrictions weren't tightly enforced on the edge of town.

  Lonny approached the table, close enough that Laramie could hear the chink of his spurs over the guffaws and arguments and shrill laughter. Laramie waited.

  When Lonny dropped into a scarred chair, signaling the barmaid for a drink, Laramie wasn't even sure he felt relief. So Lonny didn't mean to kill him for doing business at the jail. So what? It didn't give him anyplace to go, anything to do.

  It sure as hell didn't win him Victoria.

  Laramie finished his drink in one gulp, raising a hand to indicate he wanted another. Maybe the problem was he wasn't drunk. Maybe that would help.

  'You hunting bounties now?" challenged Lonny.

  It wasn't just conversation. Laramie knew the train robbers on sight, and he could find their hideouts— Brown's Hole in Colorado, the nearby Hole-in-the-Wall, even the snaking trail into Robber's Roost, down in Utah.

  He would never turn bounty hunter and live.

  So he told the truth. "Range detective."

  He stared into his empty shot glass for a moment, remembering how Victoria had always said that—range detective! Then Lonny snorted, and he lifted his gaze.

  The youngest Logan was grinning. "You?"

  Range detective! Like he was the governor, or Santa Claus or something. Not for the first time, he wished Victoria's innocent world was his real one . . . but as her father had said on hiring him, this wasn't a frontier anymore. A man couldn't just leave his past behind and start over.

  Especially not a man who'd jumped parole years before.

  "Was," he clarified.

  "Hell." Lonny paid for both drinks when they came, and Laramie let him. 'You sure you want to give it up? I reckon you'd be good at it, considerin' how many strays you've moved yourself."

  "I'm done." Laramie took another sip of rye.

  It still tasted bad.

  "Well, Harve will be glad to hear that," decided Lonny, tasting his own drink more enthusiastically. "He's got plans for you."

  Laramie wasn't impressed. Harvey Logan was the meanest of the Wild Bunch. Some folks thought he was the leader of that gang, but Laramie never had. Only other Logans followed Harvey.

  "Where's—" He almost said Butch, but the manhunt was on, and not all the bad men in the Red Light Saloon were necessarily lawbreakers. "—Lowe? Still at the WS?"

  Lonny looked pensive. "The law caught Mac, you know."

  For the Folsom robbery? Laramie didn't know.

  "Lincoln County, they got him. Lowe talked your old boss, French, into putting up money for bond, but it turns out train robbery's a cap-i-tal offense in New Mexico. Besides, looks like they'll throw in murder."

  Laramie lifted an eyebrow.

  "Some of the folks what went after them got themselves shot up," Lonny explained. "And one of 'em was a sheriff. Lowe's kind of busy right now."

  Laramie once thought a fellow had to want something, and bad, to risk his neck outlawing. Only that had kept him straight. All he'd ever wanted couldn't be bought. Vengeance. Victoria. "Not interested."

  "We need a shooter," said Lonny.

  Laramie didn't have to make an effort to look bored as he reverted to instinct, eyeing the crowd, wishing he weren't there. If he ever did take up train robbing,

  it would be with a leader who tried to make your bail, not Harvey Logan.

  Now, if Lowe lost his right-hand man to the state of New Mexico, and needed help, that might prove more tempting. Maybe instead of wanting anything, an outlaw just needed to lose that last thing of importance in his life.

  Laramie took another sip of rye—and then he felt it. An awareness, almost like a hum. Something was wrong.

  "Well, you know where to find us," said Lonny.

  Laramie slid his left hand casually down to his thigh. His palm cuddled up against the smooth butt of his Colt. He continued looking bored.

  "Alone," Lonny added. "We wouldn't want to—"

  But then his instincts caught up to Laramie's. His eyes widened. He rolled toward the floor while Laramie stood.

  Laramie drew and aimed at the glimpse of danger he saw reflected in the measly bar mirror. He squeezed his trigger in that grain of a second between looking down someone else's barrel and keeping anything from shooting out of it.

  His Colt bucked in his hand with the blast, because double-actions pulled. Women screamed, men shouted, and everyone seemed to be ducking for cover. That's how he finally, clearly saw the man who was trying to shoot him.

  The man who tried lifting his gun again, even now.

  Laramie fired a second time, while recognition struck him so sharply, he thought he'd been hit.

  Harry Smith, staring down at his chest, looked confused too.

  The young, soft-spoken rustler he'd captured this morning stumbled back against the bar. Laramie stepped forward, aiming for the boy's freckled face this time to make the rustler drop his weapon, survival instincts overriding anything else.

  Harry Smith"?

  To his shuddering relief, the pistol slid from Smith's hand to the sawdust floor. Laramie stepped close enough to kick the damn thing out of reach, then grabbed Smith's shoulder and looked into his face. The kid was so pale that his freckles seemed obscenely dark. His eyes swam with tears.

  Laramie recognized the stench of blood, saw blood spattered across the bar behind the man—the boy— he'd shot, saw two bloody holes through the rustler's shirt front. He stared, confused, into the kid's wet, glazing eyes.

  Why? He wanted to ask that, at that moment, more than he'd wanted almost anything in his life. Why did you try to kill me?

  Why did you make me kill you?

  But words never had come easily, especially not that one. And Harry Smith's body slumped to the blood-spattered, sawdust floor before the kid could have answered.

  Folks began talking, lifting their heads again, and all Laramie heard amid the words that began to surround him was the single, repeated word "fast."

  Hooray for him.

  Then he heard one other noise—Lonny Logan's whistle. Laramie spun, followed Lonny's aim—the stairway above where they'd been sitting—and dropped to one knee as a burst of blue flame blasted from the bar's shadows. He heard the mirror behind where he'd been standing shatter. He shot back.

  The second rustler—to tell by his hat—also fell.

  At that, Laramie turned, pistol raised and ready, eyeing the rest of the stunned bar. He didn't understand the first attempt, much less the second, but there wouldn't be a third attempt on his life. Not tonight.

  Not until he heard the drawled words from the doorway.

  "Put the gun down and raise your hands, sonny boy."

  Victoria knew she was in trouble when she turned the corner onto Elizabet
h Street—Thaddeas stood on the sidewalk in front of their in-town house, in the dregs of a cloudy twilight, with Duchess beside him. Suddenly, all thoughts of walking with Ross, arguing with Ross—kissing with Ross—faded behind a more immediate situation.

  She was late for supper.

  Her brother resembled Papa at times like these— arms folded, eyes narrowed, head tilted with suspicion. When she coasted to a stop beside him, he sounded like Papa too. "Get in the house, please." Except for the please.

  Then he turned and headed inside without even waiting for her excuse.

  The kitchen table was set with a cold meal, as befit the late-summer weather. Thaddeas held out her chair, and waited until she sat before asking, "Where were you?"

  "I rode to the cemetery," she told him, helping herself to a tomato. "I'm researching a story I'd like to write for the newspaper."

  All of which was completely true. She could imagine no better punishment for the man who had abandoned Julije Lauranovic—a man who certainly was not Thaddeas—than to be exposed at last.

  Her brother sat down too. "It's threatening rain, and you know better than to stay out this late. When the folks are away, I'm in charge of you."

  Which was its own interesting topic. "Why?"

  "Why?" He had the grace to look amused by that.

  "I'm out of school," she reminded him, pouring them both some water. "I have a job. Neither of us is married. Why are you still in charge of me?"

  "Because I'm older. And because I'm—" He stopped, and his eyes narrowed again. "Oh no you don't."

  She tried to look innocent.

  "I warned Mother about reading all those speeches to you girls," he said. "This is not about suffrage, Victoria Garrison, it's about common decency. And safety."

  She leaned over the table and kissed his cheek. "I'm sorry I worried you."

  He scowled at her. "You did worry me."

  "Then I'm sorry." And she sat again.

  Thad turned his scowl to his plate. "Apology accepted, but don't do it again. And if you'll be out after dark—"

  "I wasn't out after dark," she reminded him.