Explaining Herself Read online

  "Pleased to meet you, Ross Laramie," said Miss Garrison brightly. Unsure how to answer her, he just nodded. They shouldn't be here together, but since she blocked the door, he wasn't sure how to get out. . . unless it was to dive through one of the bunkhouse's six windows.

  Stalling, he strapped on his gunbelt. Normally he would check his rounds, but it seemed unnecessarily threatening in front of a lady.

  "Welcome to the Circle-T," she went on cheerfully. "I've already guessed that Papa hired you. Is it because of the rustlers?"

  Laramie squinted at her. She knew about the rustlers?

  "I saw the steer," she explained, while he slid a knife into his boot. "At first I couldn't understand why you and Papa would pen it, since it looks fine—not sick, anyway. Then I noticed the brand. I think it's a brand. It almost looks like the steer had a Circle-T and doesn't anymore, although how a person would erase a brand I have no idea. I'd think a rustler would just put a new brand over the old one. Though really, what design would fit over a Circle-T? If it were just a bar, that would be one thing, though I guess that's why not many ranchers use just a bar. But a T is uneven already, and when you put it in a circle ..." She shook her head. "But this isn't even that. It's like it's erased. That's what I can't figure out."

  Laramie wasn't staring at the gentle flare of the lady's skirt anymore, or even other, less proper curves. He found himself watching her mouth. He'd never heard so many words come so quickly out of one mouth.

  She widened her pretty gray eyes, and he guessed she'd meant that last to be a question. His brain lurched back into motion like a spurred horse.

  "Blotted," he offered.

  She blinked. "Pardon?"

  Laramie swallowed. Now she wanted an explanation—about changing brands? He should have said nothing at all. But she cocked her head and looked so interested . . .

  "Brand 'em through a piece of wool blanket," he explained. "Wet one. Blots over the old brand."

  "Really?" She considered that. "It's not particularly convincing, is it?"

  It was when he did it. Likely this rustler got interrupted, or distracted. Nobody who regularly botched a job like the one on that steer could be doing enough damage that Jacob Garrison would hire himself a range detective.

  Laramie wouldn't have said all that even if he could, though. Neither did he offer that any brand could be changed by a man skilled enough with a running iron, who was hungry enough for easy cash. Heck, he could think of three possible counterfeits for Circle-T right off. But it was better that people not know the extent of his education on the topic.

  "I should leave," he said, pushing his belongings into the chest at the foot of the bare bunk, hoping she would head out first. Not that he really needed this job. But he preferred to stay in one piece until he did what he'd come to do—and Jacob Garrison didn't seem the type to tolerate a man philandering with his daughters.

  "Don't forget the salves," she offered. Drawing a mason jar of what looked like soup from the pail beside her, she then offered die pail to him.

  Laramie risked stepping closer to her, long enough to take the pail and add it to his chest of belongings, then shut the lid. It was a rare ranch hand who would poke into another man's things. Short-lived, too.

  "Got to head out to work, huh?" she asked, stepping outside. But she waited for him, holding the door open. "What is it you're doing for Papa, anyhow?"

  He picked up his rifle. "Working."

  She narrowed her eyes at his cryptic answer, though with apparent good humor. "Well, I hope you enjoy it here. It's probably pretty different from Texas."

  He stopped beside her and narrowed his eyes down at her. Texas'? She was wrong—but disarmingly close.

  She smiled delightedly up at him, as if he'd greeted her announcement with praise instead of suspicion. 'You've got a Texas saddle," she explained. "Not that you couldn't have bought it off someone, but your hat has a Mexican look to it, too. And your spurs. Definitely Spanish."

  It occurred to Laramie that Victoria Garrison saw a lot more than she should. The pretty little lady might prove dangerous, and not just to his composure.

  It didn't help that he could smell her, she stood so close. She smelled as clean and warm as she looked, like cinnamon and Chinese-laundry soap. Maybe this was why men made such a fuss about women. Since it was usually about whores, Laramie had never fully understood the draw. Money bought little more than a brief pleasure that hardly seemed worth the smell, sweat, and embarrassment. Now, standing this close to a neat, shiny-haired lady who'd even smiled at him, he wondered if some fellows pretended that instead of a whore, they were with ...

  His body felt more than tight, and he had to get away from this particular lady, now!

  He wasn't clean. He wasn't decent. And there was still the chance he might have to kill her father.

  "Stay away from me, Miss Garrison," he warned, and her upturned eyes widened. He noticed again just how small she seemed beside him, the top of her head barely reaching his breastbone, and yet how curvy she was. He didn't like that she looked scared of him, even if it would keep her away.

  But he didn't like a lot of things. "Please."

  "Oh." She blinked, regaining her composure so quickly that it unnerved him. He was armed, and a stranger ... and a killer. She should probably be at least a little scared. "I'll try. My apologies for intruding. Here."

  He suddenly found a jar of soup in his left hand.

  "Good day, Mr. Laramie," said Miss Garrison, and— glancing both ways as if to make sure nobody had seen her here—she strode away, her skirt swinging with her enthusiasm.

  She took her soap-and-cinnamon smell with her.

  Laramie felt unnerved—and strangely relieved that she'd not called him Ross.

  Chapter Two

  "Then he said to stay away from him," complained Victoria three days later, typesetting at the Sheridan Herald. Her friend Evangeline Taylor, reading Vic's editor's story, passed over metal type from a partitioned case. Vic slid the letters into an open-sided composing stick, holding them in place with her thumb. Whenever she finished a line of type, she transferred it into the press's chase, or frame. "Flat out. Except for the please."

  And after I brought him soup.

  Evangeline glanced nervously toward the newspaper's owner and editor, Mr. L. E. Day, clacking away on his typewriting machine across the room. He often allowed Evangeline to help, as long as she used the back door. He said it gave Victoria someone to talk to who wasn't him. Evangeline took that to mean he did not like his and Victoria's conversations, but slim, pale Evangeline worried too much.

  "He was fascinating, though," Vic remembered. "Not Mr. Day—he can't hear us anyway. Mr. Laramie." Even without the wounds, which she hadn't mentioned, the man would have intrigued her. Something about his taut stillness put her in mind of the air before a storm.

  Evangeline turned her silent concern to Victoria.

  "Not that kind of fascinating," insisted Vic with a laugh, pausing to make sure a he wasn't near before she continued adding on letters to form the word Robbers.

  Not that Ross Laramie wasn't handsome, in his tall, black-haired, dangerous way. His face had seemed to be all angles, from the sweep of his eyebrows to his sharp nose and long jaw. His mouth had looked hard, set. And his hooded eyes . . . Well, if eyes were the window to one's soul, Victoria wasn't sure she should open those windows. She had a feeling they led to a haunted place.

  But Laramie certainly didn't make her smile or blush, or anything else Evangeline should worry about. Vic knew better than to go sweet on a stranger, much less one who could buckle on a heavy gunbelt without once looking at it—like it was part of him.

  Very low, lest Mr. Day hear over his typewriting, Evangeline said, "He doesn't sound very proper." And she handed Victoria a three-em spacer and a lowercase 5.

  Proper? Victoria remembered Mr. Laramie's bandages and how she'd managed to catch sight of them. She wished she hadn't turned away in such quick mortification.
How many chances would she have to see a man's naked chest? "He's proper enough for Papa to hire. I just wish I knew for sure what he's hired on as. He seems to stay separate from the other hands."

  Evangeline's eyes widened. "You've been watching him?"

  "No more than I have anybody else. Practically. Anyway, I still think he's a range detective."

  "Like that awful Idaho Johnson?"

  "He couldn't be a bad man. Papa wouldn't hire one." Victoria finished typesetting the line, confirmed with a glance that Mr. Day wanted it separate from further text, then slid in a piece of wood furniture. At Evangeline's look she repeated, "I said, I'm not that kind of fascinated." She paused. "Although really, I think after Mariah and Laurel, I could probably take up with an outlaw and Papa wouldn't be surprised."

  Her father had not wholly approved of her older sisters' choices in husbands.

  "He would still mind," insisted Evangeline solemnly.

  Vic sighed. "I suppose he would." Running a finger along the type, with its reversed lettering, she frowned, then read it.

  Robbers Still at Large.

  Sitting there in her leather printer's apron, she shivered. She loved that feeling, as if in the midst of a pile of confusing puzzle pieces she'd suddenly glimpsed a hint, just a little color or shape, of something that might make sense. "May I see that story for a moment?"

  Evangeline gave her the typewritten sheet, and Victoria quickly skimmed Mr. Day's article. This seemed to be the summer for train robbery; just the previous week, the Colorado Southern had been held up in New Mexico. But the outlaws Mr. Day referenced had robbed the Union Pacific Overland Flyer more than a month earlier, right here in Wyoming. Despite the biggest manhunt in Wyoming history, no suspects had been captured.

  If the famous Miss Nellie Bly lived in Wyoming— and if the lady reporter hadn't given up her writing career to marry—this was the sort of mystery at which she would have excelled. The writer had gotten herself locked up in an insane asylum to expose the horror within its walls. She'd traveled around the world, beating a fictional eighty-day record. Victoria could only imagine to what lengths Miss Bly would have gone to uncover train robbers.

  Greater lengths than Vic herself ever would.

  Still, there could be nothing dangerous about a little investigation from the safety of the Sheridan Herald.

  "Mr. Day?" she called. "Do you have a description of the bandits suspected in the Wilcox robbery?"

  Her employer didn't stop typing on his marvelous machine. "The June twenty-fifth New York Herald published pictures."

  Wyoming's bandits were even big news in New York City?

  "You don't think . .. ," whispered Evangeline, while Victoria went to shelves stacked high with various newspapers from the previous month.

  "No!" But Vic still relished the excitement of digging until she found the right one. "Papa wouldn't hire a train robber. I just want to—"

  Make sure Papa wouldn't hire a train robber?

  "—to know more," she finished, turning pages. New York City certainly did put out larger papers than Sheridan, Wyoming, did! "Here."

  And she read the descriptions of the suspected outlaws, a "wild bunch from Brown's Park," including Flat-Nosed George Curry, the Roberts brothers, the Sundance Kid, and—

  "Buck Cassidy?" That didn't sound quite right.

  "They must have gotten it wrong," murmured Evangeline.

  The newspaper had printed drawings of several of the outlaws, based on prison photographs. Victoria felt more relieved than maybe she should have that none of the pictures or descriptions matched Mr. Laramie: The only man described as "tall" was the Sundance Kid, and he was apparently fair-haired. In fact, many of the bad men seemed to have a history of horse theft or rustling.

  As an enemy of cattle rustlers, didn't that make Ross Laramie the opposite of these desperadoes?

  "Customer," called Mr. Day. Since he supplemented the newspaper's income by doing printing jobs, another of Victoria's responsibilities was that of a shop girl.

  She looked up as the door opened and actually gasped.

  It was Laramie himself!

  He stood there, almost too tall for the door, and surveyed the room. His clothes were dark for this time of year. He was not wearing a gunbelt, but then, carrying firearms was illegal within the city limits. Victoria noticed a slight bulge on his lower leg, under his dungarees, which made her think he was still wearing his boot knife. He looked contained, in control... until his hooded gaze, sliding across the room, tripped over her.

  He didn't know I would be here, she thought.

  Only belatedly, with pressed lips and a ducked head, did he take off his hat. His hair wasn't wet this time, but it was still very black.

  "May we help you?" called Mr. Day, glancing in confusion toward Victoria. As her boss's words drew Laramie's attention, Victoria took action.

  "Move that paper," she hissed to Evangeline.

  "What?"

  "The one about the R-O-B-B—" Victoria stopped spelling to smile innocently when Ross Laramie's gaze darted back to her. Luckily, she heard the sound of a newspaper being rapidly folded behind her.

  Not that she thought Laramie was in any way involved.

  The man blinked, as if momentarily disoriented by her smile. Then he swung his attention back to Mr. Day. "You keep old papers?"

  "Ours, or other folks'?" Mr. Day grinned. Then, maybe because of Laramie's expression, his smile weakened. "We've got everything from '86 on. Why do you ask?"

  "Can ... ?" Laramie looked down at the plank floor, scowling. Victoria noticed that his left hand was working nervously. At least it wasn't his gun hand—was it? Although his head was down, his eyes slid back up. "Anyone read 'em?"

  "Yes, indeed! Miss Garrison?"

  Laramie's head swung toward her.

  "Yes?" Victoria quickly went to them, rolling more questions through her mind. Why would he want old papers? How old? What about?

  "Would you please assist this gentleman ..." Mr. Day hesitated. "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't catch your name."

  "Laramie," said Vic's father's new hand, his eyes narrow.

  Mr. Day raised his eyebrows. "Miss Garrison, perhaps I should assist in Mr. Laramie's search myself."

  Him? The first time she truly wanted to do assistant duties, and Mr. Day meant to take over? "Don't be silly, sir," she insisted, catching a startled Mr. Laramie by the hand. It was slim and hard and warm. "I'd be delighted to help him. He works for my father, you know."

  "He ... ?" Mr. Day looked from her to Laramie and back.

  "We're friends," insisted Vic, hoping it was true, and tugged gently on the stranger's hand. Her friend's hand, she corrected silently. "And you have that editorial to finish writing."

  She noticed peripherally how startled Evangeline looked. Mr. Laramie hid it better, but he seemed startled too. Still, he followed her toward the cabinets. She couldn't wait to see what he wanted to read.

  She was holding his hand.

  Until Victoria Garrison's small, warm, ink-smudged fingers captured his own, Laramie had mainly been thinking that he should have known better than to visit a newspaper office. Now he wasn't thinking at all.

  Why was a lady like her holding his hand? Why had she called him her friend?

  It took him a moment to see past her brown curls, pretty face, and clear gray eyes, to think past her touch and the smell of soap and cinnamon and ink, for him to understand. She was lying to get her way.

  He relaxed some. Suddenly Miss Garrison did not seem quite so removed. Laramie felt a strange tightness in his cheek and realized that he'd almost smiled.

  He also let her draw him toward the back of the room, nowhere near as reluctantly as he should. Then she asked, "What date are you looking for?"

  And he remembered that he should have known better.

  In trying to decide how to pursue his old vengeance, Laramie had thought, with something close to surprise, to attempt everyday routes of investigation first. Hearing anot
her cowboy read from a newspaper the other night had suggested to him one route. Back when the crimes first took place, he had not exactly been reading about the murders.

  He'd been sitting in jail for committing one of them.

  Still, if he'd known he would find Miss Garrison at the Sheridan Herald, he would never have taken the chance. She looked sweet in her oversized leather apron, a smudge of ink across her otherwise clean cheek. The strings that tied her heavy, stained smock played in the folds of today's pressed blue calico dress, just as he remembered. Over only a few days, he'd remembered that sight often.

  He'd forgotten to remember his questions.

  What date was he looking for? November 1888. But he wasn't about to say that, and in a flash of cleverness, he realized how he could keep his secret. "What year did the train come through?"

  Of all the growth that Sheridan had seen since his childhood, the train seemed the biggest.

  Miss Garrison paused, clearly disappointed. "The train?"

  He looked patiently down at her—if jail taught a man anything, it was patience—and found that he very much wanted to wipe away the smudge on her cheek. With his bare finger. He clenched his fist, the one not in her hand, instead.

  The other girl, tall and pale, cleared her throat. Laramie noticed her attention move meaningfully from their still-clasped hands back to Miss Victoria herself. He let go, too reluctantly. "I like trains," he explained.

  Was it his imagination, or did her eyes widen at that? She looked away quickly enough. "The railroad came through Sheridan seven years ago, Mr. Laramie, in 1892," she said, and turned to one of a whole set of cabinets that lined the back wall. "We'll find enough written about it to keep you reading all afternoon."

  He watched her open a drawer and made note of how the papers seemed to be organized. If that drawer was 1892, then one above it would likely be the drawer he wanted.

  "Don't—" he insisted when she lifted a third newspaper out of the drawer.

  She looked up at him, more flushed and bright-eyed than seemed necessary. He liked how she waited for him to frame his words. "Don't take them all out," he managed. "I can get more as I need them, yes?"