Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Author Note

Copyright

A tiny arrow of unrest lodged in her belly

Jessamyn plunked her cup down on the desk so hard the coffee sloshed over the edge. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ben Kearney amble down the street in his lazy, loose-jointed gait.

Something ballooned in her chest when she watched him move. He reminded her of a big cat, a tiger she’d seen photographed once in a magazine. She imagined its hunting prowess, the taut, coiled strength ready to be unleashed in an instant. Ben’s movements had that same animal grace and economy of motion. It was frightening in some way.

Without a break in his slow, easy stride, the sheriff mounted the board walkway and disappeared into his office. Jessamyn stared after him. Something about Ben Kearney’s languid, controlled body sent shivers sliding up her backbone….

Dear Reader,

Lynna Banning made her debut as an author in our 1996 March Madness promotion with Western Rose. This month she returns with Wildwood, her exciting new Western about a young woman who puts herself smack in the middle of the investigation of her father’s murder, despite opposition from the local sheriff, who would rather she butt out and let him do his job. We hope you enjoy it.

In Tempting Kate, longtime Harlequin Historicals author’ Deborah Simmons returns to the Regency era for her heartwarming tale of a haughty marquis who falls in love with the penniless daughter of a local earl, after she shoots him by mistake. We are also delighted with the chance this month to introduce our readers to a new Western series from award-winning author Theresa Michaels. The trilogy opens with The Merry Widows-Mary, the tender story of a marriageshy widow who opens her heart to a lonely widower and his little girl.

The Bride Thief by Susan Paul, writing as Susan Spencer Paul, is the third book of the author’s medieval BRIDE TRILOGY, featuring the youngest Baldwin brother, Justin, a delightful rogue whom his brothers have decided needs a wife to save him from his wayward ways.

Whatever your tastes in reading, we hope you’ll keep a lookout for all four books, wherever Harlequin Historicals are sold.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Wildwood
Lynna Banning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LYNNA BANNING

has combined a lifelong love of history and literature into a satisfying new career as a writer. Born in Oregon, she has lived in Northern California most of her life, graduating from Scripps College and embarking on her career as an editor and technical writer and later as a high school English teacher.

An amateur pianist and harpsichordist, Lynna performs on psaltery and recorders with two Renaissance ensembles and teaches music in her spare time. Currently she is learning to play the harp.

She enjoys hearing from her readers. You may write to her directly at P.O. Box 324, Felton, CA 95018.

For Mom

With special thanks to Jean Banning Strickland and to fellow writers Suzanne Barrett, Janice Bennett, Ginny Coleman, Dore Corder, Bonnie Hamre and Terrel Hoffman.

Chapter One

Wildwood Valley, Oregon

1868

Benning Kearney speared one bite of the inch-thick steak he ate every morning with three fried eggs and black coffee, raised a forkful of meat to his mouth and halted.

Through the restaurant’s front window he watched the seven-o’clock stage rattle to a stop in front of the Dixon House hotel across the street. The coach door swung open, revealing a young woman in a black traveling dress and mourning bonnet. She extended one small black shoe toward the ground. At least, her foot looked young. Hard to tell her age under that ridiculous hat

The shoe retreated to the coach step. The other foot descended, and then it, too, withdrew.

Benning chewed his steak thoughtfully and watched to see what would happen next. Both feet now primly touched each other on the iron stagecoach step. Then—

Suddenly she leaped onto the ground and jumped up and down twice, like a frisky colt. He swallowed a lumpy mouthful. Goddamn crazy woman. Benning gulped down a swig of hot coffee and laughed out loud. He’d seen few travelers that excited about the western frontier.

Eyeing her through the glass panes, he resumed his breakfast. She looked a bit skinny, her waist no thicker than a wasp’s. Probably had a temper to match, from the display of unbridled enthusiasm he’d just witnessed. The stylishly cut dress was Eastern, but that hat—nobody wore swishy feathers like that out here except the fancy ladies at the Red Fox, and this was no fancy lady. Quite the contrary. She looked like a Bible-thumping Good Woman if ever he’d seen one. He grimaced and gulped another mouthful of coffee.

The stage moved away, and in its wake Benning counted three shiny black humpbacked trunks stacked along the board sidewalk. Looked as if this one had come to stay a while.

Ben forked an unbroken egg yolk onto a square of toast and leisurely loaded it into his mouth, his attention on the street outside.

The woman pivoted, putting her back to him. The movement was so sudden her dark skirt swirled about her ankles, revealing a ruffled white petticoat underneath. Dainty, laced-up shoes, slim ankles. And a bustle bouncing enticingly on her backside.

She tramped onto the sidewalk and bent to peer into the barbershop window, one hand shading her eyes against the hot June sunshine. The bustle rose to attention, then bobbed as she straightened and moved next door to Zed Marsh’s undertaking service.

What in hell would she want with an undertaker? He watched the bustle twitch as he absently slid his fork under the egg white.

Or the barber, for that matter? The pile of dark hair beneath that hat looked unusually neat.

The bustle fluttered as she moved on to the newspaper office. This time she didn’t bother to look in the window. She pulled something out of her bag and bent over the door.

Benning stopped chewing. She jiggled the key in the lock, withdrew it, then thrust it in again.

Now, just a darn minute, lady! Nobody tried to sashay into Thad Whittaker’s office without so much as a by-yourleave, even if Thad was dead. Not as long as he was sheriff, anyway.

Benning gulped the last of his coffee and stood up. He’d just mosey on over and see what Miss Bounce-Bottom was up to. He dropped two coins on the table, ‘retrieved his hat from the rack in the corner and ambled out onto the board walkway.

Out of habit he scanned one side of the street, then the other before he headed for the door of the Wildwood Times office. He took his time crossing the wide, wheel-rutted street. Moving so deliberately the metal rowels on his spurs made no sound, he approached the wooden boardwalk at an angle.

Her back was toward him as she dipped and again peered through the newspaper office window. Straightening, she dropped the key back into her reticule and scrubbed her gloved fist over the dust-smudged glass. Once more she peeked through the smeary circle. With a sigh, she spit on the dark material and rubbed the dampened glove into a lozenge-shaped clear space on the pane. Bending at the waist, she squinted again through the glass.

Ben watched the saucy bustle ride up and down on her backside. She danced from one foot to the other like a bumblebee sizing up a honeysuckle vine, then wiped her glove across the glass once more.

“Merciful heavens,” she muttered just loud enough for Ben to overhear. “A veritable pigsty!”

She jerked open her black bag, withdrew the key and again jammed it in the door lock. The bustle bounced as she rattled the knob.

Fascinated, Ben stood stock-still, one boot poised over the walkway. She snatched the key out, stared at it for a long moment, then once more shoved it into the lock. The bustle danced gracefully on her hips, but the door refused to budge.

“Lord have mercy!” she swore under her breath. She drew back a tiny foot and gave the oak door two swift kicks.

The noise jolted Ben to life. Without a sound he stepped one boot onto the boards. When she whacked the door again, he brought up his other foot and started forward.

She was hunched over the lock, poking about with a hairpin, when he came up behind her.

“Best not pick it, ma’am. Unlawful entry.”

She jerked upright as if branded with a hot poker. “Oh!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Heavens, where did you come from?”

“Across the street. I saw you get off the morning stage.”

She stared at him, her mouth rounded into an O. “And you sneaked right over here to spy on me.” She propped her hands on her hips and stared up at him. “Men!” she huffed.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’m the sheriff here.”

Eyes the color of Spanish moss flared into his, then narrowed to a bone-penetrating look. “I’m Jessamyn Whittaker. I own the Wildwood Times.”

“Ben Kearney. Like hell you do.”

She blinked. “I beg your pardon? I most certainly—”

“Prove it,” Ben drawled. “Thad Whittaker left no surviving family.”

“The only time Thad Whittaker stuck to the truth was when he was setting type! The rest of the time, I assure you, my father’s forte was stories so fantastical it would put Fenimore Cooper to shame.”

“Yes, ma’am. Still, would Thad lie about his family?”

“Especially about his family,” the young woman snapped. Her voice softened unexpectedly. “He didn’t lie, exactly. He just…tended to forget about us.”

Unconvinced, Ben nodded. It would be hard to forget someone like Jessamyn Whittaker. Of course, Thad had lived in Wildwood Valley for almost fifteen years, long before a daughter would have grown up enough to wear a bustle. Maybe old Thad never even knew he had a daughter.

Ben leaned against the hitching rail, crossing one long leg over the other. “Can you prove you’re Thad’s daughter?” he repeated.

Jessamyn blew her breath out so fast the ostrich feather in her hat swayed. “Look, Mr…. Klooney, I haven’t jounced my way across this godforsaken desert for the last six days to be put off by a busybody claiming to be a law officer. You have no badge. And where’s your gun? If you’re the sheriff, I’ll eat my—”

Ben straightened. “Kearney,” he corrected. “Badge is on the desk in my office. Never carry a rifle, just a revolver. That’s back in my office, too. Next to,” he added with quiet emphasis, “the jail. And from the looks of it, that fancy hat of yours is going to make mighty fuzzy eating.”

Jessamyn bit her lip and studied his face. Abruptly she dived into her handbag and pulled out a crumpled letter. Standing on tiptoe, she thrust it under his nose.

Ben snagged the envelope with one thumb and forefinger. “Miss Jessamyn Whittaker,” he read aloud. “Care of the Boston Herald.”

He scanned the contents, refolded the letter and handed it back. “Give me the key.”

Her eyes widened. After a slight hesitation, she opened her handbag and plopped the key into his outstretched palm.

“Lock sticks,” Ben offered. “Trick is to lift up on it.” He inserted the metal implement into the lock, brought one knee up to the knob and pushed upward.

The door scraped open. Before he could draw breath, Jessamyn Whittaker brushed past him, her bustle dancing a quadrille.

Ben swallowed. Next to those soft graygreen eyes, that backside was the prettiest sight he’d seen since—

Instinctively, he squashed the thought. Those eyes of hers were unsettling. Something about them made him sick for home, hungry for the smell of plantation tobacco and jasmine vines in bloom over the arbor. Suddenly he ached for all the things he’d tried to forget for the past four years. Things he’d lost.

She had no right to be here nosing about Thad’s office as if she owned it. Not only that, she’d come from Boston. She was a Northerner! A Yankee. No Yankee had a right to have eyes that color.

The woman moved about the room, blowing dust off the scarred oak desk, opening cabinets, even inspecting the plank floor beneath her feet. Her mouth made continuous tsk-tsking sounds.

What the hell was she looking for? The last newspaper Thad had printed was a month old now, run off just a few hours before he died. Did she know her father had been shot? Worse, had she come out to the valley to meddle in his investigation of Thad’s death?

Probably. She looked like a real busybody.

Thad had never mentioned a daughter. Ben knew the older man’s wife had died during the war—sometime between Shiloh and Vicksburg. After Ben’s internment at Rock Island.

An involuntary shudder moved up his spine. Outside of Jeremiah, Thad was the only human being Ben had ever told about the horrors of the Union prison in Illinois. The older man had listened, nodding and sucking on his pipe, until Ben’s voice had faded and only the crackle of their campfire remained. Then Thad had hoisted his stocky form off the log he’d been straddling, squeezed Ben’s shoulder and trudged off into the woods.

“Sometimes a man’s gotta talk” was all he’d said.

Now Ben watched Thad Whittaker’s daughter move to the open doorway of the Wildwood Times office. Turning her back to him, she peered out at the street and propped her hands on her gently curving hips.

His breath caught.

And sometimes a man’s got to keep his attention on the business at hand.

He’d have to find a way to get Miss Busy Bustle out of his hair and back to Boston where she belonged. He nodded to himself. Shouldn’t be too difficult. She looked as out of place in this dusty town as a silk bow on a steer’s tail.

Jessamyn positioned herself in the doorway of her father’s newspaper office and studied the dirt trail that passed for Wild wood Valley’s main street. I’m here, Papa, just as you wanted Her heart swelled with a mixture of joy and regret.

Something told her Wildwood Valley wouldn’t be as enthusiastic about her arrival as her father would have been. Her throat closed. But here she was, as he had asked, and here she intended to stay.

She gazed at the ramshackle buildings on either side of the street and her heart sank. A dilapidated hotel and restaurant, a saloon—no, two saloons, one across the street from the other—Frieder’s Mercantile, Addie Rice, Seamstress, the sheriffs office and three other weathered structures with painted signs that were no longer legible.

That was all? No church? No library? Not even a doctor’s office?

Her father had exaggerated. This wasn’t a town, as she had pictured it—whitewashed buildings and neat picket fences. This was nothing but a motley collection of graying clapboard shacks plunked down in the middle of nowhere.

No, she amended. In the middle of Wildwood Valley. Oregon, she thought with a shudder. Rampaging Indians. Drunken cowboys. Worn-out women with sun-scorched, leathery skin. Lord help her, she’d left a position on a thriving newspaper in Boston for this?

Yes, she had. She hadn’t lurched in stuffy railroad cars and bone-rattling stagecoaches all the way from Boston to quail at the last minute. She’d come because Papa had needed her, and she wouldn’t retreat unless she failed to accomplish what she’d come out here to do.

“And that,” she said aloud with a determined stomp of her small, leather-shod foot, “a Whittaker never did.” She was her father’s daughter. In her entire twenty-six years of life she’d never failed at anything she set her mind to.

She drew in a double-deep breath of the warm, dusty summer air and straightened her spine. Well, then, she’d better see what was in store for her before she grew one minute older. God had no love for sluggards.

Jessamyn turned to face the open front door of the Wildwood Times office and prepared to embrace her future.

Chapter Two

Jessamyn ran one gloved finger over the black iron printing press in the center of the room and breathed out a sigh of satisfaction.

After her meticulous inspection of the Wildwood Times office, her fingers fairly itched to dust off the Washington handpress, grab up a type stick, and start composing her first issue. But before she wrote one single word she had to sweep the cobwebs out of the corners and give the grimy plank floor a good scrubbing. Papa may have been a firstrate newspaper editor, but his housekeeping left much to be desired.

Ignoring the sheriff, who still lounged casually against the front wall, she cast a glance at the dirty windowpanes and groaned aloud. Mama, you should have gone with Papa when he went out West! Her mother would have been too frail to work the long hours putting an edition to bed, but she could have cooked and cleaned for him, at least until she died. Maybe Papa would have lived longer if he’d kept regular hours and eaten nourishing food.

Jessamyn understood how physically demanding it was to publish a weekly newspaper. Lord knows she’d seen her father gray with fatigue often enough when she was a child. But Papa had loved his work.

And he had loved Mama, too. But not enough. At least, not enough to resist the lure of establishing his own newspaper in the West. “Got printer’s ink in my veins,” Thaddeus Whittaker had said each morning before breakfast. Mama had preferred the cobble streets of Boston over the dusty roads of Oregon.

She sighed. Papa’s zeal had more than rubbed off on her. By the time she was ten, she could set type faster and more accurately than he could. When her father left for Oregon, Jessamyn decided she would also become a newspaper editor. Like Papa. He had encouraged her through all the years of learning and struggle; in some indefinable way she had felt close to him, following in his footsteps, even though he was thousands of miles away.

How Mama had scrimped to send her to Miss Bennett’s Young Ladies’ Academy and then to Hazelmount Women’s College. After she graduated she took a job as the only woman reporter on the Boston Herald. Then, just a month ago, his last letter had arrived.

Come to Oregon, Jess, Papa had written. I need you here.

She hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. She’d waited a lifetime to hear those words. She was twenty-six years old and unmarried. A journalist, inspired and nurtured by her father. And an acknowledged spinster. What on earth did she have to lose? Besides, her papa needed her. A siren’s call could not have pulled her more strongly.

The day after she’d purchased her train ticket, a second letter had come. This time it was from a Dr. Rufus Bartel. Her father was dead.

She glanced down to find her hands gripping the press lever. A thread of pain encircled her heart. Oh, Papa. Papa! I’m here now. I’ll run your newspaper. I’ll make it the best newspaper in Oregon. She shut her eyes tight.

A low cough behind her made her jump.

“Seems to me, Miss Whittaker, you ought to nail down some lodgings for tonight.”

Jessamyn gasped. She’d forgotten all about Mr. Kearney. “Nail…what? Oh, you mean register at the hotel. I will, after I’m finished here.”

“The good hotel fills up fast on Saturday,” Ben offered.

“Then I’ll stay at the other one.”

“I don’t think so, ma’am,” he said in a quiet voice.

Turning her full attention on the man at her elbow, she folded her arms across her midsection. “Why not?”

“The only women who frequent that place are fancy ladies.”

“Fancy ladies?”

Ben hesitated. “That’s what we call ‘em out here. Calico queens. That or—” he hesitated a split second “—soiled doves.”

Jessamyn blinked. “Doves? Oh, you mean wh—”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ben said quickly. “So, you’d better hustle your bu…uh…baggage over to Dixon House, on the other side of the street.” He gestured over his shoulder with his left thumb.

“Other side of the street,” she echoed. Her voice trailed off as she studied the man who stood before her. Blue denim trousers outlined slim hips and the longest legs she’d ever seen. A fringed buckskin vest hung loose over a crisp dark blue canvas shirt with silvery buttons that marched up the expanse of his chest and ended at the closed collar.

Her gaze flicked down to the polished black boots and the jingly spurs, then moved back to his broad shoulders. Slowly her brain registered something she hadn’t noticed before. A purple scar ran from beneath one ear across his throat and disappeared inside his shirt collar.

She caught her breath. “You were wounded in the war, weren’t you?” she blurted without thinking. “The War of the Rebellion, I mean.”

The question hung in the lengthening silence.

The fine mouth tightened. “We call it the War Between the States. Yes, ma’am. Now, about your baggage—”

“The War Between… Oh!” Of course. He must be a Southerner! Her reporter’s curiosity battled with Miss Bennett’s lessons on propriety. Curiosity won.

“Mr. Kearney, would you tell me about your battle experiences? As a reporter, I mean?”

His entire body stiffened, then visibly relaxed, limb by limb, as if given orders to do so. “Won’t be time between now and the morning stage, Miss Whittaker,” he said, his voice low and rough.

“Morning stage?”

“Seven o’clock. I’ll ask Tom at the hotel to load up your trunks for you. That way you can enjoy your breakfast before you—”

“Mr. Kearney, I most certainly did not come all the way out here just to pay a ten-minute call and go back to Boston in the morning. I came to Wildwood Valley because my father asked me to.”

“Your father is dead, Miss Whittaker.”

Jessamyn’s heart squeezed. “I know. He left me sole owner of the—”

“Thad Whittaker was shot in the back.”

“Wildwood Ti—What did you say?”

“Your father was shot to death. Doc Bartel said he’d write you.”

Jessamyn felt the floor tilt under her buttoned shoes. “He did write. He just didn’t tell me… Shot? You mean with a gun? Oh, my Lord!”

Ben swore under his breath.

Jessamyn clenched her jaw tight for a moment before she could trust herself to speak.

“Who would do such a thing?”

“Don’t know yet. So you see, ma’am, you’d best—”

She drew herself up to her full height and fisted her hands on her hips. The top of her head came just to his chin. “Do you honestly think I could leave? Especially now that I know my father was… Are you sure he was shot?”

“I’m sure. Happened right in front of my office. So you see—”

Jessamyn bristled. “Oh, I see, all right, Mr. Kearney. You think I’m going to turn tail and run, is that it? Just because my father…”

Her voice broke. She struggled to take deep, even breaths. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Kearney. Papa…my father wanted me to come out here. I know he’d want me to run his newspaper. Surely you don’t think for one minute I’m going to let him down?”

Ben sighed. “Give it up, ma’am. The living don’t owe the dead a thing.” He growled the words into an uneasy silence.

“Give up?” Jessamyn heard her voice rise to an unladylike pitch. “Give up?” she repeated in a lower tone. “A Whittaker, Mr. Kearney, never gives up. Never!”

Shaking, she clenched and unclenched her hands, then wrapped both arms tightly across her chest.

“God almighty,” Ben swore. “You sound just like him! Stubborn as a mule.”

Jessamyn flinched.. “Stubborn? Because I want to stay and finish something my father started? You haven’t begun to see ‘stubborn’ yet, Mr. Kearney.”

Ben raised one dark eyebrow. “Yep, just like him,” he said softly.

Jessamyn flashed a look at him, opened her mouth to reply and stopped short. The sheriff’s smoky blue eyes shone with tears.

“Thad was a good man, Miss Whittaker,” Ben said in a quiet voice. “And a good friend. But he was so damned in love with Goliath there—” he gestured at the iron printing press “—he figured he was Moses on the mountain.”

“You mean he was a good newspaper editor,” Jessamyn translated. Good heavens, couldn’t they speak the king’s English out here? She had to interpret practically everything the man said.

“The best,” Ben grumbled. “That’s what got him killed.”

Jessamyn gasped. “Oh! Do you really think that?”

“Wish I didn’t,” Ben muttered. “Sure as hell wish I didn’t.”

“Well, Mr. Kearney, if you are the sheriff, as you say, what are you doing about my father’s murder?”

Ben sighed.. “Everything I can think of, Miss Whittaker. Every damn thing I can think of. And I don’t need some nosy newspaper lady in my way.”

“I won’t be,” she snapped.

Ben sent her a steady look. “I don’t want you thinking you have any say about my methods, either.”

“I wasn’t,” she retorted.

“And,” Ben continued, pronouncing each syllable with deliberate emphasis, “I’ll brook no comments from you, or your newspaper, until my investigation’s over.”

“I wouldn’t think of it!” she lied.

“May take months,” Ben warned.

She met his hard-eyed gaze with one of her own. Sheriff Ben whatever his name was—Kearney—gave orders like an army officer. “You have my word as a Whittaker.”

“That,” Ben muttered, “is just what I’m afraid of.”

The door marked Sheriffs Office banged open, and Ben strode past the cluttered desk to the inner door leading to his private quarters. He twisted the knob and pushed the door inward.

“Jeremiah?” Leaving the door ajar, Ben turned toward his desk. A stack of unopened mail sat on top of his logbook. Curled up beside it lounged a ball of marbled blackand-white fur. He scratched the cat’s underchin, then reached past the animal to rescue the coffee cup teetering near the edge of the desktop.

“Jeremiah!”

A square, bearded face appeared in the doorway. “I’m right here, Colonel. What you need’n?”

“Whiskey,” Ben growled.

“Doc Bartel says—”

Ben yanked open the top desk drawer and rummaged through the contents. “Rufus Bartel is a fussy old coot with an excess of irrelevant medical training.”

Jeremiah nodded, his soft brown eyes twinkling. “Yessir, Colonel, that he is. Irrelevant.”

“Nosy old sawbones,” Ben grumbled. His fingers closed over a small brown bottle.

“Yessir, he surely is.” Jeremiah moved forward, his stocky frame quiet as a cat’s. “That doesn’t make the doctor wrong, though.” He snatched the bottle from Ben’s lips. “Truth is, Ben, you quit drinkin’ heavy. Thing is, you gotta stay quit.”

Ben snorted. “Jeremiah, I don’t pay you to nursemammy me.” He sucked in a lungful of air as Jeremiah slipped the bottle into his back pocket.

“No, Colonel. You don’t pay me a-tall, and I reckon you remember why.”

Ben remembered. Both in the field and when imprisoned at Rock Island, he and Jeremiah had saved each other’s lives so many times the two men were like blood brothers. Half of Ben’s salary was paid to his faithful friend, along with considerable admiration and respect.

Jeremiah was more than Ben’s deputy. The solidly built man was the only surviving family Ben had left outside of his younger brother. In fact, he felt closer to Jeremiah than he did to Carleton. After the war, when he and Jeremiah had come West, the two had made a pact. Half of whatever one had belonged to the other—whether food, horseflesh, whiskey, or cash money. They drew the line only at women.

“I need a drink,” Ben ventured.

Jeremiah grinned, revealing a mouthful of uneven white teeth. “Talked to her, didja?” He nodded his head knowingly. “Thought so. Beats me how a woman can do that to a man inside of ten minutes jes’ by talkin’, but happens all the time.”

“Jeremiah?”

“Colonel?”

“Bring two glasses.”

Jeremiah executed a quick about-face and moved toward the doorway. “Damn troublous creatures, women.”

Ben leaned his forehead onto his hands. Yes, damned troublous.

He didn’t want Jessamyn Whittaker out here, poking about just like Thaddeus had, interfering with his job. A Yankee lady from Boston? She probably hadn’t the sense God gave a bird’s nest. She’d hamstring his progress just as surely as if she hobbled his horse. Thaddeus had been a constant fly in the ointment for years, and nothing Ben had said could deter him. “I got a good nose for news” was all the editor would say.

That the crusty old man had had. Ben could see in a minute that his daughter was just like him. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He had to decide what to do about her, and fast. A starchy Yankee with soft green eyes was the last thing he needed right now.

Jessamyn plopped the boar-bristle scrub brush into the pail of soapy water and sat back on her heels. She’d scrubbed everything in sight, including the plank floor, until it was clean enough to squeak. The rough oak boards had been so caked with filth she’d scoured them twice with lye soap.

Next she planned to visit Frieder’s Mercantile to purchase the kerosene she needed to clean the iron printing press and order some other supplies as well—printer’s ink and more newsprint. She’d found her father’s storage cabinets almost empty.

Tucking a wayward strand of hair into the loose bun coiled on top of her head, she scrambled to her feet and swatted the dust off her work apron. The hem of her blue poplin skirt and the two starched petticoats underneath were gray with cobwebby dirt. Jessamyn seized the garments in both hands and switched them vigorously from side to side.

Clouds of dust puffed up from the folds of material, making her eyes water and her nose itch. If Miss Bennett could see her now, she’d have apoplexy!

She studied her red, water-puckered hands. At this moment Boston and the refinements of civilization seemed as distant as the moon. Her bed at the Dixon House hotel the previous night had been uncomfortable, the mattress so thin the metal springs had pressed into her back. Sleepless, she’d tossed and turned, thinking of Papa, of all the years he’d praised her talent for writing, remembering how bereft she’d felt between his newsy, heartfelt letters.

She also thought about the Wildwood Times. She would do anything to please her father, especially now that he was gone. Running his newspaper would keep him close to her.

Jessamyn sighed. Her back and shoulders were as stiff as her whalebone corset stays, and her knees ached from hours spent kneeling on the floor. She would much rather set type than do housework, but the place simply had to be cleaned. She couldn’t stand walking on a surface that crunched under her shoes. Grabbing her skirt, she gave it one last, vicious shake.

“Miss Whittaker?” A man’s low voice spoke behind her.

Jessamyn gave a little gasp and spun toward the sound.

Ben Kearney leaned against the door frame, one shiny black boot crossed casually over the other. “Sorry to startle you.”

With one finger he shoved his hat back on his head. “Opened my mail this morning. I received a letter from an attorney in Portland regarding your father’s will. There’s something you should know.”

Unaccountably, Jessamyn’s heart fluttered, whether because of his soft-spoken words or the steady blue-gray eyes that bored into hers, she didn’t know. She did know Sheriff Ben Kearney was a most disturbing man! Even with jingly spurs on his boots, he moved as quietly as a shadow, and his speech was terse to the point of rudeness. No “Good morning” or other social pleasantry, just a few succinct words growled from under his dark mustache.

“Well, Mr. Kearney, what is it I should know? And don’t tramp dirt in onto my clean floor, please. I spent all morning scrubbing fifteen years’ worth of pipe dottle, tobacco juice and God knows what else off those boards.”

The sheriff’s dark eyebrows arched. His mouth tightened into a thin line, then he cracked his lips and slipped out a few words.

“Thad owned a house.”

Jessamyn blinked. A house? Her father owned a house in Wildwood Valley?

“I thought my father lived here, at the shop?” She gestured toward the back of the office where she’d found a cot, the bedclothes still tumbled, and a washstand and basin next to the small wood stove.

Ben nodded. “He did. But he’d bought a house. Took the mortgage over from Mrs. Boult when her husband died. Let her live there as a kind of housekeeper so she wouldn’t have to leave. The place is yours now. Big white two-story house. Quarter mile past the livery stable.”

“Mine? But what about Mrs. Boult?”

“She’s expecting you. She knows you can’t live at the newspaper office, since you’re a lady.”

Jessamyn’s stomach flipped over. A house! A house all her own! A house Papa had bought, that Papa had—Good heavens, she hoped it wasn’t the same shambles as the Wildwood Times office! She couldn’t face another scrub bucket for at least a month.

“I’ll just sponge off my face and get my reticule.”

Ben watched her disappear in a swish of skirt ruffles. Before he’d drawn three breaths, she was back. No bustle today, he noted. Just a long, dark blue skirt that flared over her hips, topped by a high-necked cream-colored waist, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

She removed her white work apron—once starched stiff enough to stand up by itself he could tell, but now crumpled and dirt streaked—and hurriedly rolled down one blouse sleeve. She had the other sleeve down and buttoned at her narrow wrist before the door clicked shut behind them.

Ben’s gut tightened. He hadn’t exactly planned to escort Jessamyn Whittaker to call on Widow Boult, but the longer he looked at the delicately feminine creature at his side, the better he liked the idea. Besides, keeping a close watch on the Wildwood Times editor was only prudent. If she was anything like Thad Whittaker, the minute he took his eyes off her, she’d be rooting around where she had no business to be.

Except for her figure and that ruffly parasol she’d snapped open against the hot afternoon sunshine, she was the spitting image of Thad—same dark hair, same mossy green eyes. Same chattery, back-talking tongue.

Troublous. Just as Jeremiah said.

He glanced at Jessamyn’s face, shaded under the circle of black silk. Same…no, it wasn’t. True, her chin was slightly pointed, like Thad’s, but her mouth was rosy and full. God almighty, he groaned inwardly. Even if she was a Yankee, her lips looked soft enough to…

Ben stepped hard off the end of the boardwalk, his spurs ringing. Odd thing about parasols, he thought. He hadn’t seen one for years. General Denton’s wife had one, back in Dakota Territory. The sight of it always made him homesick. Now the picture Jessamyn Whittaker made under the shadow of her frilly sun umbrella drove the breath out of his lungs. A lump the size of a musket ball formed in his throat.

Damnation, but he was lonely.

But not for any Lincoln-loving Yankee!

“Miz Boult, Jessamyn Whittaker.” Ben stepped aside as Jessamyn extended her hand toward the buxom woman who filled the doorway.

Mrs. Boult folded her two hands around the younger woman’s fingers. “Howdy.” She gripped Jessamyn’s hand tight, her callused palms warm and strong. Then she peered over Jessamyn’s shoulder at the sheriff, and the warm expression in the older woman’s snapping blue eyes turned wary.

“You again!” she huffed.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

Jessamyn thought his voice held a hint of laughter, but his tanned face showed no emotion.

“Get along with you, Ben,” Mrs. Boult ordered. “Miz Whittaker and I have some visitin’ to do.”

Ben tipped his black Stetson, quirked one eyebrow at Jessamyn and strode off down the street, his spurs chinking with each footstep.

“Pesky man,” Mrs. Boult huffed. “Can’t draw a breath in peace lately with him around. Nice-lookin’ man, just won’t stop askin’ questions. He’s been like a hibernatin’ grizzly bear ever since Thad Whittaker—Oh! Sorry, my dear. I plumb forgot that’s why you’re here. Come in, come in!” She drew Jessamyn over the threshold of the neat frame house.

“This here’s the front parlor. Set a spell while I rustle up some coffee.”

Jessamyn opened her mouth to offer help, but the elderly woman bustled out of the room. “Won’t be a minute,” she called from somewhere down the hallway.

A green velvet sofa beckoned under the lace-curtained front window. Jessamyn settled herself on the cushions and let her gaze wander over the room. A pair of wing-back chairs upholstered in a swirly forest green velvet flanked the sofa. A hand-knit, teal blue shawl had been tossed over the back of one. A Brussels carpet covered all but the outer edges of the polished hardwood floor.

Stretching her feet toward a low tapestry-covered ottoman in front of the sofa, Jessamyn breathed in the faint scent of lemon oil and baking bread. What a comfortable house, so quiet and blessedly cool after the pounding summer sun outside. She noticed the window shades had been drawn, evidently to keep out the midday heat.

This wondrous haven of peace actually belonged to her? She could hardly believe it. In all her life she’d never lived in anything other than the house where her mother took in lodgers or—after Mama died—a rented room in Mrs. Dennan’s boardinghouse. And now…

She squeezed her eyes tight shut, then popped her lids open. No, it wasn’t a dream. All this belonged to her? Not the furnishings, of course—those would be Mrs. Boult’s— but the walls, the roof, the silence! Just think! Here, in Papa’s house—her house—she would never again worry about paying for lodging. Jessamyn snuggled herself deeper into the sofa cushion. Boston it was certainly not, but they’d have to pry her loose with a crowbar to get her to leave now.

“Here we are, my dear.” Mrs. Boult swept into the room and set an enamelware tray of coffee, fresh sliced bread and thick purple jam on the square oak side table. Jessamyn’s stomach rumbled. She’d skipped breakfast at the hotel, then worked right through lunch. “Oh, Mrs. Boult, that smells simply wonderful! May I?”

She reached for a small plate, loaded it with two slices of the fragrant bread and added a generous dollop of jam. She settled the plate in her lap. Miss Bennett would not approve, she knew. But Miss Bennett had never scrubbed floors all morning.

Mrs. Boult handed Jessamyn a steaming mug of coffee. “Call me Cora, my dear. Ever since my Frank died, I’ve not felt comfortable about the ‘Mrs.’ tacked onto my name. My full name’s Cordella, but just Cora will do fine.”

Jessamyn took a swallow from the mug to wash down the first bite of bread and jam. “Then please, do call me Jessamyn.”

Cora bobbed her silver-gray head in agreement. “Now, Miss Jessamyn, when were you wantin’ to move in?”

Jessamyn choked on her coffee. “But where will you go?”

Cora chuckled. “I got a sister over in Deer Creek been wantin’ me to keep house for her. Might do that. Then again, I might—”

“Would you stay and keep house for me?” Jessamyn heard herself ask. “As you did for my father?”

The older woman set her mug down on the table and folded her weathered hands in her lap. “Difference is, Miss Jessamyn, that I didn’t exactly keep house for your pa. More like I kept his house in order, but he really lived down at the news office. Don’t know how he managed, but he did. Truth is, Thad Whittaker paid off my mortgage, bless his heart, but he never took possession. Said he was content to buy the place so’s his daughter would have it someday.”

Jessamyn’s heart gave an erratic thump.. “Did he say that? Really? He did it for…for me?”

Cora nodded. “I figure you’ll want to move in soon as you can.”

“Yes,” Jessamyn said quietly. “I do. I’ve never had a place of my own. But you see, Cora, I’m a working woman, a newspaper editor now.” She shot a quick look at the older woman’s face. “I won’t have time to cook and clean and put up jam and beat the rugs in the spring.”

“True, I can cook,” Cora ventured.

“Oh, I can see that—your bread is delicious!” Jessamyn held her breath.

“Come summer,” the older woman continued, “I usually can tomatoes and beans from the garden out back and make my jams and jellies—that’s huckleberry you’re eatin’ right now. Then in the fall, when the apples and pears come on… Oh, I couldn’t, Miss Jessamyn. You won’t want a stranger in your house.”

“Cora,” Jessamyn said firmly, “you’re not a stranger. You’re my first friend here in Wildwood Valley. I want you to stay. I want to make a success of Papa’s—I mean, of my newspaper.”

Oh, heavens! The import of what she’d just said hit her square in the solar plexus. She was now the sole editor and publisher of the Wildwood Times. She alone was responsible for gathering, sifting, writing and disseminating all the Douglas County news to the Wildwood Valley readers. She would be the voice of their conscience, the voice of truth.

She quailed at the realization. This was much more responsibility than just setting type and cranking the press lever. Those things she could do with ease. She had worked alongside her father in his Boston print shop ever since she could remember, had first learned the alphabet by running her fingers over the raised letters in the type trays.

But this—operating the newspaper in Wildwood Valley, being the only other publisher in all of Douglas County besides the Umpqua Ensign in Scottsburg—this would take more than mechanical know-how and long hours of work. Taking on the job of editor of the Wildwood Times would require insight and courage, moral fortitude and stamina, and—

And Cora Boult. Jessamyn rose and clasped both of the older woman’s work-worn hands in her own. “Please stay, Cora,” she whispered. “I’m all alone out here, and I’m going to need help.”

“Oh, child,” Cora Boult said on a sigh. “I never could resist a young’un with a problem.” She freed one hand and dabbed at her eyes with a corner of her apron. “Besides…” She sniffed in a quick breath. “I don’t get along too good with my sister in Deer Creek.”

Jessamyn laughed with relief. She could do it! With her father’s training and Cora’s help, the Wildwood Times could be the best newspaper in Douglas County.

“All them bedrooms upstairs are empty, Miss Jessamyn. Frank and me, we always planned on havin’ a family, but…” Her voice faltered. The plump widow spun on her sensible, high-laced shoes and started for the doorway. “Why don’t we go up and pick out the one you like best? The biggest one has yellow-striped wallpaper. The one next to it has blue and white flowers, and the one down at the end of the hall…”

Her voice faded from Jessamyn’s consciousness as she followed the older woman up the steep, narrow stairs to the second floor. Her brain whirled with ideas. She’d spend her days at the newspaper office, running down stories and doing interviews. At night she’d sit at her father’s battered oak desk and write her features and weekly editorials. And when she finished she’d come back here, to the home her father had bought for her.

Papa would be pleased. Somehow she knew this was what he would have wanted. It was what she had longed for all her young years—sharing her life with him. It hurt that he was gone. But if it was the last thing she did, she’d make him proud of her.

A shiver raced up her spine. Her first story, she decided, would be a feature on Sheriff Ben Kearney and his investigation of her father’s death.

“Miss Jessamyn?” Cora’s voice rang from somewhere ahead of her. “This here’s what I call the Yellow Room.”

The housekeeper’s muffled summons jerked her to attention. “Coming, Cora,” she called out.

Smoothing her skirt, Jessamyn moved toward the open bedroom door at the end of the hallway, her mind already composing her first headline.

Chapter Three

The door of Frieder’s Mercantile swung open with a jingle. The bell mounted on the timber frame above Jessamyn’s head hiccuped a second welcome as she closed the wood portal. She paused on the threshold to gaze at the welter of supplies—yard goods, laces, curry combs and bristle brushes, boxed cigars, tobacco canisters, denim shirts and trousers, axes, shovels, even a crosscut saw. The shelves of merchandise reached all the way to the ceiling. Surely they stocked kerosene?

She inhaled a lungful of the heady air. Sacks of flour and sugar and dried beans lined the walls. A pickle barrel sat next to two wooden chairs flanking the black iron stove. Behind it she glimpsed a glass case with brightly colored penny candies displayed in oversize jars. The store smelled of coffee and sassafras and tobacco.

A pinafore-clad child of five or six with worn, dusty shoes that looked two sizes too big stretched one hand toward the glass case. “Want a candy,” she wailed as her mother tugged her toward the door.

“Hush, Alice. Not today. You had too many last week.” The woman nodded at Jessamyn as she swept past.

“How do you do,” Jessamyn called. “I’m Jessamyn Whittaker, the new editor of the Wildwood Times.”

The woman turned. A sharp-nosed, tanned face looked out from under a green checked sunbonnet. Jessamyn sent her warmest smile and waited.

“Hello, Miss Whittaker.” The woman extended a thin, work-worn hand. “Ella Kearney’s my name. This is my daughter, Alice. Come away from that case, Alice, and say hello to the lady.”

“’Lo,” the child whispered, still eyeing the fat glass jars in the candy display. “D’you like ginger drops?”

“Why, yes, I suppose I do.”

“Mr. Frieder has lots and lots of—”

“Come along, Alice. I’ve got bread rising.”

“Mrs. Kearney, wait! I don’t mean to pry, but is your husband Ben Kearney, the sheriff?”

“No. Ben’s a fine man, but I’m married to his brother, Carl. We live on the Double K, the Kearney brothers’ spread, about four miles north of town. Cattle ranch. Some horses, but mostly beeves. Ben lives in town.”

“I see.” An irrepressible bubble of curiosity rose in Jessamyn’s chest. Ben Kearney evidently preferred life as a lawman rather than a rancher. She wondered why. And, she wondered with an odd flicker of interest, was he not married? Her experience as a newspaper reporter told her to file this question away for later reference.

Ella Kearney yanked her daughter toward the door. “Good morning to you, Miss Whittaker.”

The bell jangled as the pair stepped out onto the board sidewalk. Alice cast a wistful backward glance at the candy case just as the door swung shut.

A broad, smiling man appeared behind the counter, good will beaming from his shiny face. “What can I do for you, ma’am? Maybe like some ginger drops? Young Miss Alice is usually my best customer, but this afternoon her mama too busy.”

“I’m Jessamyn Whittaker, and I need some kerosene to clean the printing press at the newspaper office.”

“Ah! You are the Miss Whittaker who comes from the East? I am Otto Frieder. My wife, Anna-Marie, is in the back. You wait.” He disappeared, then emerged from behind a curtained doorway with a plump, dimpled woman of about thirty in tow. “Anna-Marie,” he said with obvious pride.

The woman extended both hands past her distended abdomen and squeezed Jessamyn’s fingers. “We are so happy you come to Wildwood Valley.”

“I—Thank you, Mrs. Frieder.”

“We are much sorry about your father.”

“Thank you again.”

Anna-Marie immediately curved her palms over her belly. “Baby comes in just a few weeks,” she said with a shy smile. “Our first.”

Jessamyn looked into the round blue eyes of the woman facing her. How happy she looked. How eager for life. In just a few years the storekeeper’s wife would have three or four young ones hanging on to her skirts, and then she would look exhausted. Worn out, like Mama.

“About the kerosene, Mr. Frieder.”

“Ah, yes.” Otto turned toward the back of the store where oak barrels lined one wall. “Kerosene…kerosene,” he muttered. “Cigars…cartridges…nails…no kerosene. We just run out. Shipment is again late.”

“I will also need newsprint and ink for the paper.”

Otto sighed. “That I must order from Chicago—will take two, maybe three weeks.”

“Three weeks!”

“Maybe four, even. Come by train to Omaha, then by wagon over the mountains.”

Four weeks! Jessamyn groaned. That was a whole month! How could she publish a newspaper without ink and newsprint? If she was frugal, her father’s supply might last for one edition, but it would have to be a very short press run.

“I’m sorry, Miss Whittaker. Your papa, he was always running out of supplies. ‘Otto,’ he would say to me. ‘I need more ink, more newsprint.’ He kept on printing his paper, though. I never could figure how he did it.”

Anna-Marie made sympathetic clucking sounds.

Jessamyn’s spirits plummeted. Getting out her first issue would be more of a challenge than she’d thought.

Otto patted her hand. “I will get your supplies for you. There is else you need?”

“What? Oh, no, thank you, Mr. Frieder.” She tried to keep her disappointment from showing in her voice. No ink. No newsprint. No kerosene. How had her father managed?

Otto gestured to his wife. Anna-Marie made her way to the candy case, dug a tin scoop into a fat glass jar and poured the contents into a small brown paper sack. She handed it over the countertop. “No charge,” the young woman whispered.

Jessamyn smiled her thanks at the couple. Her mind churning, she left the store, snapped opened her parasol and stepped out into the late-afternoon sun. Deep in thought, she popped a candy into her mouth.

What would she do now? Papa had managed some way, but how? Jessamyn sucked on the gingery-tasting sweet and racked her brain. She was a Whittaker, she reminded herself. Like Papa. She wasn’t beaten yet. After all, a Whittaker never gave up.

But how could she clean the press? With her tongue she turned the gingery-tasting sweet over and over as she thought about the problem facing her.

First she’d need a substitute for kerosene. She rolled the candy drop around inside her mouth with the tip of her tongue. The sharp flavor surprised her, hot and sweet like spices and pepper mixed up together. It made her mouth burn. Her lips felt warm and sticky, as if she’d been sipping…

“Spirits!” she blurted aloud. She could clean the press with alcohol!

Where, she wondered as she marched along the board walkway, could she get alcohol?

Across the street the plunking of a tinny piano drifted out the open front door of Charlie’s Red Fox Saloon. Jessamyn halted midstride.

A saloon served alcohol, didn’t it?

She set her uplifted shoe down with a resounding thump and stepped off the walk into the street. With one hand she hitched her skirt up out of the dust and with the other tilted the parasol against the slanting sunlight. Head up, shoulders squared, she headed straight for the Red Fox.

The piano player’s spirited rendition of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” broke off the instant Jessamyn stepped past the swinging doors.

“Goshamighty,” a hushed male voice spoke into the silence. “A lady!”

Jessamyn lowered her parasol and gazed about the dim room. The place reeked of cigar smoke. The pungent scent of beer and strong spirits reminded her of the brewery a block from the Boston Herald office.

She moved with care among the rough wooden tables clustered with card players and cowhands with tanned faces and sweat-stained hats. Ignoring the hostile faces turning in her direction, she advanced to the polished oak bar.

The bartender, a pudgy, red-faced man with a soiled towel tucked in his belt, regarded her in silence for a full minute. Finally he signaled the piano player to resume and stepped toward her. He swiped the grimy cloth across the counter.

“Don’t allow women in here, miss.”

Jessamyn quailed at his tone. Summoning her courage, she straightened her back and spoke over the noise of the piano. “Oh, yes, you do. The sheriff told me about your fancy ladies-—that is the term? They are women, are they not?”

The bartender coughed. “Well, ma’am,” he began in a strangled voice, “women, maybe, but not—”

Jessamyn looked him straight in the eye. “Then just think of me as a customer. Not as a woman.”

“Kinda hard to do, seein’ as how you’re all fit out with them ladyfied duds.”

What did he say? Oh, he meant her clothes. Good heavens, didn’t anyone out here speak understandable English? Working to keep her voice calm, she replied, “Then shall I remove them?”

The man’s eyes popped. “No indeed, ma’am! I got enough trouble with Sheriff Kearney as it is. Now you just git along outta here. This ain’t no place—”

“Hold up there, Charlie,” a gentle, slightly raspy voice interrupted.

Jessamyn turned to face a stocky, muscular-looking man with limp, sun-lightened brown hair and skin tanned to the color of coffee diluted with a dollop of cream. Keen brown eyes looked steadily into hers from under the drooping brim of a shapeless brown felt hat.

“You refusin’ service to the lady?”

“Shore am, Jeremiah. An’ no deputy’s gonna tell me differ’nt.”

The deputy lifted the shotgun he carried. “Well, now,” he said without raising his voice. “Law says it’s illegal to steal horses.” He clunked the gun down onto the bar top. “Also illegal to serve rotgut whiskey or—” he cast an eye about the room, glanced from the stairs to the bartender and back again “—run a sportin’ house.”

He leaned both arms on the bar and laced his blunt fingers together. Jessamyn watched the back of one hand graze his gun stock.

“Dammit to hell, Jeremiah. Why don’t you mind yer own business.” The bartender slapped down his rag and swore again under his breath.

“Law is my business, Charlie. Now, I suggest you give the lady what she asked for.”

“Oh, hell’s bells. First it’s serve that Indian-loving sheriff, then it’s serve his Johnny Reb of a deputy and now it’s serve the lady. Dammit, back in Abilene—”

Jeremiah unlaced his fingers.

Charlie snatched up the bar rag. “Okay, Jeremiah. Okay.” He glanced at Jessamyn. “Just tell me what you want, ma’am, and then git.”

“I’d like a bottle of alcohol. Whiskey, I mean.”

Charlie’s thinning eyebrows rose. “Gawd, ma’am, a whole bottle?”

“Maybe two bottles. Big ones.”

The bartender gave her an odd look, dipped behind the counter, then straightened with a single quart of Child’s Whiskey in his meaty hand. “One bottle. Should last a little lady like you more’n a year. Mebbe two.”

“She said two bottles,” Jeremiah said quietly.

“Two! What in hell does she need two quarts of my best—”

“Isn’t none of our business,” Jeremiah interjected.

“It’s for my press,” Jessamyn blurted. She looked from Jeremiah’s placid, square face to Charlie’s round, florid one. “The printing press at the Wildwood Times office.”

“Huh!” The bartender spat onto the floor behind him. “Last time I looked, printin’ presses drank ink, not whiskey. Ain’t that so, Jeremiah?”

Jeremiah turned his chocolaty gaze on Jessamyn. After a long moment’s perusal, during which Jessamyn felt her cheeks flame and her nerve begin to fail, the man’s face creased into a wide grin.

“Whatever she wants is all right by me. Wouldn’t put nuthin’ past a lady who can write them elegant newspaper words. Make it two bottles, Charlie.”

Charlie clunked another quart of Child’s onto the counter.

“Thank you,” Jessamyn breathed. She sent the sheriff’s deputy a look of gratitude.

Jeremiah nodded, grabbed both bottles by the necks and reached for his gun.

“Hold up! I ain’t been paid yet.”

Jessamyn turned toward the bar. “How much do I owe—”

“Put it on my tab, Charlie.”

“Your tab! You nickel-nurser, since when do you have credit around here?”

“I guess maybe since right now. I kinda like the idea. ‘Sides,” the deputy breathed as he started toward the door, “the war’s over now. Reb money’s good as anybody else’s.”

He nodded a good-night and pushed through the swinging doors. Jessamyn had to skip across the floor to catch up with him.

“Thank you,” she panted. “I’ll repay you, of course. I’m Jessamyn Whittaker, Mr….?” She paused expectantly.

“Jeremiah, ma’am.”

“Jeremiah what?”

“Hull. But jes’ Jeremiah’ll do. Never had much need for a last name.”

Jessamyn pricked up her ears. “Why was that, Jeremiah?” Her reporter instincts told her his answer might be interesting, maybe even newsworthy.

Jeremiah shrugged. “Well, I kinda belonged to the plantation, you might say.”

Jessamyn blinked. “Belonged? You mean you were—”

“Oh, no, ma’am. Not a slave. My daddy was the overseer for Mr. Kearney. All of us—my mother and my brother and my sisters—we grew up on the Kearney plantation. When the war broke out, Mr. Ben, the colonel, joined his regiment. I joined up with him. We rode out the gate together, and I never looked back on that dogtrot house I was raised in ‘ceptin’ once.”

Jessamyn stared at him.

“Miss Whittaker, if you’ll just tell me where you want this whiskey…”

“Oh, yes, the whiskey!” She tore her gaze from Jeremiah’s no longer smiling face and stepped up onto the boardwalk in front of the newspaper office. “In here, please.” She bent to insert the key.

The lock stuck. She jiggled it three or four times before Jeremiah leaned his shotgun against the wall and stepped forward. He gripped the knob with his square fingers.

“Gotta lift up, Miss Jessamyn. Sometimes that lock gets the crotchets.” He gave a little nudge and the door swung inward.

Jessamyn set her parasol on the battered desk, turned and lifted the whiskey out of Jeremiah’s hands.

“I am in your debt, Jeremiah.”

“It’s gettin’ on toward suppertime. You gonna clean that press now?”

“I am. I live with Mrs. Boult. She’ll keep my supper waiting.”

“Mind if I stay and…help out? It’ll be full dark before you finish. I’ll just step over to the sheriff’s office an’ bring a coal lamp to see by.”

Jessamyn regarded the sheriff’s deputy with interest. Was he intrigued by the workings of the printing press? Or was he tactfully offering to stand guard over her?

Maybe both.

Part of her rebelled at the assumption that she needed protection. But another, larger part of her liked the fact that he was interested enough in the Wildwood Times to give up his evening and help her clean the press. Anyone who liked newspaper publishing was a potential friend. Jeremiah was a kindred spirit.

“Jeremiah, I’d be honored. Why don’t you stop by Mrs. Boult’s and ask her to pack up some supper and bring it over to the office? Tell her I said to include two plates. You will join me, won’t you?”

Without waiting for his answer, Jessamyn donned her work apron and rolled up her sleeves.

Chapter Four

Ben reined in the gelding on a hilltop so green with lush spring vetch it glowed like an emerald in the afternoon light. Land out here in the West wasn’t manicured as it had been in Carolina, at least the way he remembered it before Sheridan marched his marauding troops through. But this Oregon country was beautiful nonetheless. The late-day sun washed luminous fingers of light against the rolling greengold hills. His throat swelled into an ache.

Land, and the crops that could be grown on it, was more precious than gold. And the price more costly. All through history, lives had been laid down for possession of bits of earth. Sometimes he wondered if land—if anything—was worth fighting for. A war took everything a man had, sucked his spirit dry.

He gazed down at the farms and ranches spread over the wide valley below. From his vantage point, Ben picked out the southernmost pasture of the seven-thousand-acre Kearney spread—the one he’d bought after the war. After he’d gone home to North Carolina and found what that Yankee bastard Sheridan had done to the plantation and the life he’d known before.

After that he’d had no stomach for the North’s version of Reconstruction. There was nothing to do then but come out West and start over. He’d worked hard to build a new life.

When his brother, Carleton, later followed him to Oregon, Ben had turned the ranch over to him and his new bride and taken the position General Van Dyke at Fort. Umpqua had offered—Indian agent for the Klamath River tribes.

Carleton had been just old enough to join the militia when the war ended. He was inexperienced as a cattleman, but he learned fast. And Carl had a good wife to help him. His brother, Ben reasoned, would make a success of the ranch. He nodded approvingly at the fenced field of rye below him. Instead of cutting it for hay, in late summer Carl would turn his herd into the enclosure.

As usual, his sister-in-law had invited him to supper this Sunday. Ben’s gut wrenched. Suddenly the last thing he wanted to do was ride down off this hill and join his brother’s family. One evening of watching Ella, her face flushed from the heat of the woodstove in the stifling kitchen as she fussed and puttered around Carl, left Ben restless all the next week. The woman adored his younger brother. And it was just as obvious Ella was the most important thing in Carl’s life.

The most important thing in Ben’s hardworking, solitary life was Wildwood Valley. He knew his presence as sheriff made a difference to the ranchers and townspeople. If nothing else, his reputation as a marksman served as a deterrent to the drifters and unsavory riffraff that occasionally rode into town.

He’d been a good Indian agent, too. But by damn, sometimes he wanted something else, something he couldn’t even name. He wanted it so much it almost suffocated him.

He pulled on the gelding’s reins and turned the horse back toward town. A cold pit of despair yawned in his belly. It was going to be, as Jeremiah often remarked, another two-glass night.

He got as far as Carl’s south pasture on his way to the road when he glimpsed a tiny figure in a blue pinafore skimming over the grass toward him.

“Uncle Ben!”

Ben reined in the dark horse alongside the fence.

“Uncle Ben! Please, can I open the gate for you? Daddy says I’m too little, but I’m not! I can reach way up high. Please?”

Ben shook his head. “Not this time, honey. Tell your mama I’ve got some business in town.” He pulled a bag of penny candy out of his vest pocket and stretched his arm over the fence. “No need to tell her about these, though, is there?”

The child grinned and shook her head. Ben tipped his hat and headed toward the town road.

Jessamyn unbolted the press lever arm and lifted the platen cylinder away from the roller. “Well, would you just look at that,” she murmured. “Clean as a new penny.”

Except for a film of surface dust on the exterior of the black-painted casing, the press was immaculate, the joints and connections free of old grease and dirt. The moving parts had been polished to a shine.

She had to smile. Papa always insisted on keeping his press in perfect working order. Cleanliness, he joked, was right up there next to banner headlines. He wiped his equipment down after every press run.

Still, she wanted to run her hands over every inch of the imposing piece of machinery. The press belonged to her now. It was her responsibility to see to its maintenance. Resolutely she smoothed her starched white work apron and reached for the whiskey bottle and a clean rag.

Jeremiah kept her company while she worked over the huge machine, and then Cora arrived, their supper swinging in a wicker basket over one ample arm. “Here y’are, Miss Jessamyn. There’s plenty here, and more at the house iffen you want it.”

“Thank you, Cora. Will you stay and have some with us?”

The older woman shook her head. “I like my chicken hot, thanky. Mine’s warming in the oven, waitin’ for some pan gravy to go with it. Since you’ve got Jeremiah watchin’ over you, I’ll just go along to my supper.”

She bobbed her gray bun and headed toward the door. “Front door’s unlocked. Jes’ walk on in when you finish—” her china blue eyes took in the disassembled press “—whatever it is you’re doin’. Night, Jessamyn.”

Jeremiah politely held the door for her, and Cora bustled off down the board sidewalk, her solid footsteps reverberating against the pine planking.

Jessamyn corked the half-empty bottle of Child’s and wiped her hands on her apron. “Let’s have supper. I’m starving!”

The deputy declined her offer of a chair at her father’s desk. He ate his fried chicken and potato salad standing up, periodically checking up and down the street through the now-sparkling front window. “Mr. Ben’s gone out to the ranch for supper. I got to keep my eye peeled for any trouble in town.”

“Trouble?” Jessamyn spoke over a mouthful of flavorful potato salad. “What kind of trouble?”

“Just Saturday-night kinda trouble, Miss Jessamyn. Ranch hands in town for a little fun, maybe drink too much and bust up somebody’s head. But this here’s Sunday— won’t likely be any shootin’. That’s why the sheriff rides out Sundays to visit his kin.”

“His younger brother and his wife, is that right?” Jessamyn said. “I met his wife at the mercantile this morning.”

“Yes’m. Mr. Carleton and Miss Ella. An’ Miss Alice. There’s a fine-lookin’ child, ‘cept for her eyes.”

Jessamyn glanced up. “What about her eyes? They looked perfectly normal to me.”

Jeremiah hesitated. “Got her daddy’s eyes. Kinda hard and shifty-like sometimes. Got her momma’s nose and mouth, though. Guess she’ll be all right when she grows up some.”

Jessamyn laughed out loud. “Jeremiah, maybe you just don’t like children?”

“Mr. Ben grew up fine, he did,” Jeremiah countered. “Handsomest man I ever did see, even when we was young’uns. His eyes were different from Mr. Carleton’s, even then. ‘Course, they’re sadder now, since the war an’ all.”

Jessamyn came to instant attention. She needed some background on Ben Kearney for the newspaper article she planned to write. Here, standing before her, was a walking, talking firsthand source.

“What about the war, Jeremiah? Tell me about it—about you and the sheriff, I mean. About your experiences.” She bit into her second drumstick and waited as Jeremiah cleared his throat.

The town lay dark and quiet by the time Ben rode in past the livery stable. Crickets sang, their strident voices carrying over the occasional cry of a coyote. Heat rose from the dusty roadbed, the rich smell of honeysuckle and tobacco smoke drifting on the warm night air.

Ben slowed the horse to a walk. Nights like these made his groin ache. He wanted to yell or break something to ease the tension curling inside.

He needed a woman.

He’d settle for whiskey.

The Dixon House hotel and Charlie’s Red Fox glowed like Mississippi paddle-wheelers. The sheriffs office was dark. Jeremiah must be out keeping an eye on things.

He dismounted, tossed the reins over the hitching rail and pushed open the door to his office. Touching a match to the lamp wick, he watched the pool of golden light settle over the cat lazing on his desk. “Move over, Shiloh.” He lifted the boneless animal off the clutter of papers.

More mail. Maybe something that would provide a clue’ to Thad Whittaker’s murder.

And maybe not. So far, he’d run into nothing but dead ends. It shouldn’t be that difficult to figure out who wanted the outspoken editor of the Wildwood Times silenced, but with each batch of new communications, Ben’s investigation turned into a bigger ball of snakes. A corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs administrator, shady railroad investors trying to outmaneuver each other, cattle rustled from valley ranches, Indians mad enough to smoke a war pipe. Ben ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. The war’s end hadn’t brought peace to the West. Far from it.

He scratched the cat under its chin until a throaty purr rumbled, then turned his rangy frame toward the open doorway. Maybe he’d leave the mail until morning and drop by the hotel for a steak and some of Rita’s baked beans.

Across the street, light glowed inside the newspaper office. He focused on the paned front window opposite him. Then again, maybe he’d just see what Miss Starched Petticoat was up to at this hour.

He lifted his Colt from the hook behind the door, strapped the revolver low on his hip and headed for the Wildwood Times’.

Jeremiah drew in a long breath and blew it out through pursed lips. “Can’t tell you all of it ‘bout the war, Miss Jessamyn. ‘Twouldn’t be fittin’. But some of it I can.” He cocked his head to one side. “Yes’m, some of it I surely can tell you.”

Jessamyn stopped chewing and listened.

“Mr. Ben and me, we went to war together, like I said. I was his aide-de-camp. Mostly I just do for him like his manservant always done in Carolina—wash his shirts, shine up his boots, be sure he takes time to eat. He was awful busy in the war—had near two regiments to command after the other colonel got himself killed. Mr. Ben got his horse shot out from under him twice at Shiloh. Madder’n a hen caught in the creek, he was.” Jeremiah grinned at the memory.

Jessamyn resisted the impulse to reach into the desk drawer for her pencil and writing pad. Rather than interrupt Jeremiah, she’d commit the important parts to memory.

“How did he get that scar on his neck?” she prompted.

The deputy’s grin faded. “He doesn’t like to talk about it much. He took a minié ball. Tore into his chest and mangled him pretty bad up to about here.” He tapped his throat with a chicken bone.

“The surgeon didn’t fix it quite right, and it festered. Woulda been all right cept’n he was captured at Vicksburg and sent to a Northern prison. They had to cut it open to drain it and then sew him up again.”

Horrified, Jessamyn stared at the deputy. “You mean it was a Yankee doctor who—”

Jeremiah nodded. “Fought like a son of a—Oh, ‘scuse me, Miss Jessamyn. Weren’t any use, though. I saw it had to be done. Otherwise, it’d have the gangrene in it.”

Jessamyn’s appetite vanished. “Oh, how awful.”

“Yes’m, it was.”

“You were there, Jeremiah? But why? Surely you could have gone back to your home on the plantation?”

“I stayed,” Jeremiah replied quietly. “The colonel, he tried to get me to leave him when he saw the Yankee boys comin’ over the hill at Vicksburg. I wouldn’t budge, though. So, in the end they took us both.”

“Oh, Jeremiah! How courageous that was!”

The deputy flushed under his tan. “’Tweren’t no such thing, Miss Jessamyn. Ben and me been friends from the cradle, you might say. We grew up together, fishin’ and ridin’—even some schoolin’ afore his pappy sent him off to the academy. Besides, I promised Miss Lorena I’d watch out for him. A body couldn’t refuse Miss Lorena nothin’, so I stuck with him.”

“Miss Lorena?” The question slipped out before Jessamyn could stop herself.

“Good thing, too,” Jeremiah continued, purposely ignoring her query. “After the surgeon cut Ben’s chest open, he like to bled to death till I poulticed him like my momma taught me.”

Jessamyn found her hand shaking so violently she couldn’t hold her fork steady. She laid it down on the desk. “No wonder he’s so brusque,” she said half to herself. “He must hate all Northerners.”

“Oh, no, ma’am,” Jeremiah offered with a chuckle. “Not just Northerners. Part of him hates most everybody, ‘cept your pappy—Mr. Whittaker—and me. And sometimes I think he even—”

Something in the man’s raspy voice struck a nerve. Sometimes, she supposed, the sheriff acted as if he even hated his faithful companion, Jeremiah. A resonant chord of understanding tolled in her heart. She knew from her own experience how devastating it was to be abandoned. She also knew how healing it could be to find a friend.

She had nothing in common with Sheriff Ben Kearney. He was a rich Southern plantation owner, she a poor Northern working girl. Ben Kearney was a man of few words, a loner, unfathomable and unyielding as an iron strongbox. Jessamyn relished every waking moment of watching the fascinating parade of people that made up day-to-day life.

No, sir, she had nothing in common with Sheriff Ben Kearney. But she shared an unspoken bond with thoughtful, soft-spoken Jeremiah. Then and there she resolved she would be the deputy’s friend.

“Come on, Jeremiah,” Jessamyn announced. “Let’s have some of Cora’s applesauce cake, then get back to work!”

She unwrapped the square of cinnamon-scented cake, cut it in two pieces with the paring knife Cora had provided, and handed one to Jeremiah. Just as she opened her mouth to take a bite, the door banged open.

Sheriff Ben Kearney leaned his tall form against the door frame, the rowels on his spurs chinging. With slow, deliberate motions he pushed his hat up off his forehead and crossed one black boot over the other.

“Evening,” he said, his voice lazy.

The look in his hard gray-blue eyes sent Jessamyn’s heart skittering into her throat.

“Smells like a Carolina stump whiskey still in here,” the sheriff remarked, his voice ominously soft.

Jessamyn bristled. “We were—I was cleaning my printing press, Sheriff.”

“With whiskey?”

“Yes, with whiskey. The mercantile had no kerosene. Your deputy here—” She glanced toward Jeremiah and gasped. The solidly built man had vanished out the back door.

“Jeremiah came to my aid at the Red Fox,” she finished lamely.

Ben’s dark eyebrows rose. “The Red Fox,” he echoed. “A saloon is no place for a woman. Miss Whittaker. I thought I made that clear yesterday.” Flinty blue eyes bored into hers as he waited, arms folded across his chest, for her response.

“You did. But, you see, without kerosene, I had no choice but—”

“You had a choice,” the sheriff said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “A choice that didn’t involve my deputy in your difficulties. No doubt Jeremiah ‘came to your aid,’ as you naively put it, because he’s an intelligent man and he saw that your presence at the Red Fox spelled trouble. In the future—”

“Now, just one minute, Sheriff,” Jessamyn interrupted. “You don’t own this town. You’ve no right to come barging in here and tell me how to live my life!”

“I’ve got the right,” Ben said. His tone hardened. “You’re a damn menace traipsing into a saloon in your petticoats and lace. When you Yankees mess with things you know nothing about, mistakes come easy. It’s a wonder you didn’t start a hell-fired hullabaloo.”

A heated silence fell. Jessamyn felt her cheeks flame. She rose to her feet, twitched her apron into place with short, jerky movements and turned her back on the man lounging in her doorway.

“Excuse me, Sheriff. I have work to do.” She snatched up her rag and the bottle of Child’s.

A hand closed like an iron band about her upper arm. “Put that down and listen to me.” He gave her a little shake and pulled her about to face him. The whiskey sloshed back and forth in the container.

Jessamyn sucked in a breath.

His mouth thinned into a fine, straight line with no hint of a smile. “Put that down,” he repeated. “Now.”

His voice, Jessamyn thought irrationally, became oddly quiet when he was angry. The timbre of it sent a current of unease dancing up her spine.

She lowered the bottle to the floor, dipping her knees to settle it with care on the plank surface. “Take your hands off me,” she said evenly, keeping her eyes on his.

A flicker of pain surfaced in the smoky depths of his gaze, masked at once by a careful shuttering. Jessamyn cringed at the unfathomable expression in his eyes.

He lifted his hands, dropped them to his sides. For a long minute their gazes locked.

Across the street the piano plunked out a ragged snatch of “The Blue Tail Fly.” A moth batted against the windowpane, and the slow tick-tock-tick of her father’s clock on the wall contrasted with her heart’s erratic beating beneath the starched white waist.

Ben breathed in, out, in again, the air pulling raggedly through his nostrils. Jessamyn blanched at the carefully expressionless face of the man before her. It was plain as day he was furious at her. She had challenged his professional judgment as sheriff.

When, she moaned inwardly, will I ever learn to keep my mouth shut? What was he thinking? Worse, what was he going to do?

At last his low, quiet voice broke the stillness.

“Let me explain something about life out here in the West, Miss Whittaker.” He held her attention riveted to his face by the sheer force of his steady blue eyes and menacing tone. He enunciated his words in quiet, deliberate syllables, with no outward rancor, yet Jessamyn sensed a volcano of fury just beneath the surface. His demeanor frightened her.

“We live by a code here in Wildwood Valley,” he continued. “Any lady who is a lady stays at home in the evening. She doesn’t come into town after dark unless it’s to attend a dance or a social, and even then she doesn’t go about alone.”

His voice dropped even lower. “And she certainly does not work, alone, late at night, smelling of whiskey and—” he sniffed the air “—some flowery-smelling perfume, even if she owns the whole building! Now, go—”

“I wasn’t alone!” Jessamyn blurted. “Jeremiah was here, helping—”

“Of course he was, you damn fool. Jeremiah’s a good man. He wasn’t going to leave you to your own devices here at night, all by yourself. He did what any deputy worth half his salt would do—he stood guard over a rattlepated woman who doesn’t know which end of the horse to mount.”

Stung, Jessamyn raised her chin and straightened her spine. “This ‘rattlepated woman,’ as you so quaintly put it, is now the owner and publisher of the Wildwood Times. As such, I expect to work late, and alone, many nights. That’s what printing a newspaper requires—hard days gathering information and long nights writing stories and setting type. As a taxpaying citizen—” she bit her tongue at the exaggeration “—I expect support, not criticism. So, if you have nothing constructive to offer, Sheriff Kearney, I will bid you good-night.”

Ben sighed. Arguing wasn’t going to solve the problem. Someone as stubborn as Thad Whittaker’s daughter would have to be shown. God almighty, he’d give his right arm if she’d just climb back on the morning stage and go back to Boston where she belonged.

Ben took a step forward and studied her. To think Jeremiah had wasted an entire evening with this prickly, overstarched Northerner. He must be ready to chew nails by now. His deputy had hit the truth for sure; women were definitely troublous creatures.

He shook his head. “Troublous” didn’t half describe Jessamyn Whittaker. He’d have to find Jeremiah and buy him a drink at the Red Fox. Inflicting this bullheaded Yankee lady on anyone, even for a few hours, was sure to raise a thirst.

“Miss Whittaker, pack up your things,” Ben ordered softly. “I’ll see you home.”

“Thank you, but I’d prefer—”

“Now,” he added in a rough whisper. He snagged the Child’s bottle off the floor, set it on the cabinet against the wall. Folding up the handles of the wicker picnic basket, he lifted it from the desk and bent to blow out the lamp.

“Best take off your apron and get your shawl.” He puffed once, and the room was enveloped in inky blackness.

Oh, my, Jessamyn thought. She’d gone too far. She needed the sheriff’s help, not just to operate the newspaper, but to find her father’s murderer. Much as she disliked Ben Kearney, she couldn’t afford to make an enemy of him. Not yet, anyway. Not until he’d arrested her father’s killer.

In the dark she untied her apron with fumbling fingers, felt around on the desk chair for her blue paisley shawl.

Without a word, Ben moved to her side. He made no sound, but she sensed him draw near in the pitch-black room, felt the warmth radiate from his body. She breathed in his scent, heavy with horses and tobacco smoke. The faint smell of mint lingered on his breath.

Jessamyn choked back a nervous hiccup. She must smell of—what was it he’d said?—stump whiskey and flowery perfume? Without thinking, she reached out to steady herself. Her fingers closed over his bare forearm.

He swore under his breath. His voice was so raw Jessamyn jumped.

“I—I’m sorry,” she blurted. “It’s so dark in here I can’t see.”

“Wait a minute, then. Your eyes will adjust.”

My eyes, Jessamyn thought, will never adjust to the picture presented by an angry Ben Kearney. How could a man be so fine-looking and so unnerving at the same time?

“Maybe you’re thinking you’d be better off back in Boston,” he said close to her ear.

“I was not!”

His hand touched her elbow. “The floorboards are uneven. Don’t stumble.”

“I won’t,” she breathed. Acutely aware of his warm fingers on her skin, she took a tentative step forward. Pulling her shawl tight about her shoulders, Jessamyn let him guide her to the doorway.

“And, Miss Whittaker,” he murmured at the threshold, “I trust you won’t come here alone at night again?”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” she lied.

The door opened on a street bathed in silvery moonlight. Jessamyn stalked out onto the boardwalk and gazed down the street at the painted sign above Charlie’s Red Fox Saloon. Laughter drifted on the warm night air, punctuated by the metallic sounds of the piano and a man’s clear tenor singing an Irish ballad. Ladies who weren’t ladies—soiled doves, the sheriff called them—were probably drinking spirits and dancing with the ranch hands.

Jessamyn sighed. Ladies who were ladies weren’t supposed to have that kind of fun.

She studied the spill of golden light through the saloon’s swinging entrance door. She’d risked everything, coming out West. She’d left her position at the Boston Herald, abandoned her comfortable, refined life in the East.

Had it been worth it?

The answer came in an instant. Yes! Every single, frightening, fascinating moment of her first day—and night—in Wildwood Valley had been worth it. After what she had experienced so far, she thought with a little catch of excitement in her chest, just being alive in this rough, dusty town was going to be exhilarating. And fun.

Tomorrow she’d ignore the sheriff and his silly warnings and put her next plan into action. She could hardly wait.

Chapter Five

“Jes’ like yer pa,” Cora sniffed as she bustled out the news office door. “Rather fuss over that newspaper than eat proper.”

Nodding her agreement, Jessamyn bit into the ham sandwich the housekeeper had brought over for her lunch. She massaged her stiff neck muscles and continued her study of the morgue of old Wildwood Times editions her father had meticulously collected. Just a few more issues to skim and she’d be caught up.

So far, she’d found nothing extraordinary. Ohio Ratifies 14th Constitutional Amendment. Nebraska Admitted to Union. Impeachment Resolution Again Introduced in Washington.

In Douglas County Frieder’s Mercantile’s shipment from Chicago was again delayed by a blizzard. Rancher Silas Appleby reported twenty head of cattle missing; Klamath River Indians were suspected. Lizzie Bartel, the doctor’s wife, delivered her second set of twins in five years, on Valentine’s Day. Coos Bay wagon road was surveyed as a possible railroad route to the coast..

Jessamyn shook her head. Still nothing out of the ordinary for an Oregon frontier town—except perhaps having two sets of twins in one family. Mrs. Bartel would be far too busy to receive callers now; Jessamyn would tender her congratulations to the doctor, whose office she’d finally discovered just three doors down the street. Next to the undertaker, she noted. How convenient.

As soon as she could, she intended to visit all the townspeople, introduce herself and solicit ads for the newspaper. Then she’d sell each of them a yearly subscription for a dollar.

She swallowed the last of her sandwich and closed the cabinet drawer. Now, to plan her first issue. She munched on a crisp Red June apple as she laid out the first page in her mind. This afternoon she’d make the rounds, gathering the local Wildwood Valley news. Tomorrow she’d hire a buggy and drive over to Little River where the express riders brought the mail and wire service bulletins up from Steamboat Landing. And then…

Then she would dip her pen into a fresh bottle of ink and start her feature story on Ben Kearney and her father’s murder. Surely the sheriff wouldn’t object to her choice of topic? After all, it was news. She drew in a deep breath and stretched her arms over her head.

She allowed a slow smile to settle across her mouth as an idea began to take shape. Inept the sheriff was certainly not, judging from the battlefield heroism described by his deputy. But his lackadaisical attitude seemed to fit right in to the town’s don’t-upset-the-ship philosophy. A mercantile with no kerosene, cracked and peeling paint on the undertaker’s and barbershop storefronts, saloons that stayed open all night long and on Sundays. Wildwood Valley could surely use some improvement.

To get things started, she’d light a fire under Sheriff Kearney. Why hadn’t he found her father’s killer yet? What was he waiting for? Surely he should be busy gathering evidence or clues or something? She exhaled in satisfaction. She’d give the good sheriff a roasting he’d never forget.

Already composing the lead sentence in her mind, Jessamyn attacked a second sandwich. Good ideas made her ravenous! As she chewed, she glanced idly out the front window.

A sorrel horse stepped daintily into view, an Indian girl perched on top, her back straight, her buckskin dress encrusted with shells and feathers arranged in an intricate design. The pride in her carriage riveted Jessamyn’s attention.

Townspeople stared, but the girl looked neither left nor right. Purposefully, she stepped the horse forward. As she drew closer, Jessamyn glimpsed a clear view of her face and gasped out loud.

The girl was beautiful! Straight black hair fell in a single shining braid down her back, and her slim, elegant body moved sinuously with the mare’s gait, almost as if she were dancing atop the horse. Fascinated, Jessamyn watched her come to a halt in front of the sheriffs office.

The girl swung her leg over the horse’s neck and slid to the ground, dropping the reins where the animal stood.

And then she took a single step. She positioned one small, moccasined foot and then, crablike, hauled her body forward, her hip twisting in an awkward, lurching rhythm.

Jessamyn’s heart caught. She was crippled! And she looked so young—no more than eighteen or twenty, her skin an unblemished, warm bronze, her face serene. The girl took another step, and another, laboriously working her way past the horse toward the board walkway at the edge of the street.

Two women crossing the street pulled their skirts aside in apparent distaste. The Indian girl paid no attention. When she reached the bottom step of the sidewalk the sheriff’s door opened, and Jeremiah emerged. Grasping her elbow with one giant hand, he half lifted her up the step onto the walkway.

Wide-eyed, Jessamyn watched the sheriff’s office door swing shut. Hoping for another glimpse of her, she waited by the window, nibbling the remains of her sandwich crusts.

Fifteen minutes dragged by. Jessamyn stepped away to refill her cup, then settled herself at the window again. She sipped the dark brew, her gaze swinging back and forth between the dingy office door across the street and her father’s wall clock.

All at once Jeremiah surged out of the sheriff’s office, followed by Ben Kearney with the Indian girl in his arms. Jessamyn lowered her cup. What in the world was he doing?

She peered out the window. Ben strode toward the sorrel as Jeremiah retrieved the reins and held the animal steady. She noticed that the deputy never took his eyes off the girl’s face.

With no apparent effort, the sheriff swung her up and settled her on the saddle blanket, then lifted the reins from his deputy’s hands and laid them across her palms. Removing his hat, he tipped his face up toward her. His lips moved.

The girl nodded, made a sign and nudged the horse forward. Ben raised his hand. She looked back, hesitated an instant and then smiled. She called out something, kicked the mare and stepped her horse on down the street. Jeremiah stared after her.

Who was she? Jessamyn burned to know. And what did she want with the sheriff? Or was it the other way around— one of them wanted something of her? From the way she smiled at them, Jessamyn would guess one of them could have just about anything he asked for. But which one?

A tiny arrow of unrest lodged in her belly. Was this girl the reason Ben Kearney seemed different from the other men in town? Could it be that the sheriff was courting an Indian girl? Worse, was he so preoccupied he’d forgotten about finding Thad Whittaker’s killer?

Well! She’d just see about that! Jessamyn plunked her cup down on the desk so hard the coffee sloshed over the edge. Hurriedly, she blotted it up with one corner of her work apron. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ben Kearney amble down the street in his lazy, loose-jointed gait.

Something ballooned in her chest as she watched him move. He reminded her of a big cat, a tiger she’d seen photographed once in a scientific magazine. She imagined its hunting prowess, the taut coiled strength ready to be unleashed in an instant. Ben’s movements had that same animal grace and economy of motion. It was frightening in some way.

Without a break in his slow, easy stride, the sheriff mounted the board walkway and disappeared into his office.

Jessamyn stared after him. Something about that languid, controlled body sent shivers sliding up her backbone.

Ben rubbed his hand over his eyes. His lids felt grainy, and a dull ache pounded at the base of his skull. All night he’d lain awake on the narrow bed in the back room, thinking about Thad Whittaker, trying to tie together the bits of information he’d uncovered. Nothing fit. It was like trying to work a puzzle with the key piece missing.

It hadn’t been a random shooting, that much he knew for certain. It had been too deliberate, too obvious. If his hunch was right, Thad had known something. The editor’s death was intended to not only silence the newspaper but serve as a warning of some sort. But a warning about what?

He’d have to search the Wildwood Times office again, sift through Thad’s private papers—every edition of the newspaper, every letter, even his account ledger. Maybe this time he’d find something he’d overlooked before, something that would tie things together.

He’d start tonight, after Jessamyn retired to Mrs. Boult’s for the evening. He’d let himself into the newspaper office and spend whatever time it took searching for that elusive nugget of information. At sunup tomorrow he’d do what Walks Dancing had asked—start for the mountains and Black Eagle’s hidden camp.

He wondered what the old chief wanted that was so important he’d send his daughter into town alone. Black Eagle wouldn’t risk sending one of his few remaining braves. The townspeople were convinced it was the Indians who were stealing cattle from valley ranchers, and feelings ran high. An Indian wouldn’t last ten minutes in town before he or Jeremiah would have to break up a lynching party.

Ben propped his boots on the desk, tipped his chair back on two legs. He closed his eyes, drew in another lungful of the warm June air and thought again about Thad Whittaker.

And Thad Whittaker’s daughter. Even without her bustle, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and a smudge of grease on her nose, Jessamyn was still something to look at. Her backside rounded invitingly below the slim waist, and even when she held her spine straight as a Yankee ramrod, the curves of her top half filled out that ruffly blouse just right. He imagined the tips of her breasts brushing against the frothy white lace. He’d like to lay his hand there, feel her heart beating against his palm.

Sweat trickled under his hatband. He pushed it back with his forefinger just as the door burst open and Silas Appleby strode inside.

“Morning, Si.”

“Goddammit, Ben, it’s happened again! Twenty head just disappeared overnight.”

Ben’s chair thunked down on all four legs. “No trail?”

“Not a trace.” The tall, sunburned rancher swatted his dusty felt hat against his thigh so hard the silver conchas around the crown jingled. “Gotta be Indians, Ben. They’re holed up somewhere. Starving, I hear. I wouldn’t care if they took one or even two beeves now and again. Hell’s red feathers, I’d let ‘em have ‘em with my blessing. But twenty head? All told, I’ve lost more’n sixty cows in just the last two months.”

“Ranches on the east side of the river have been hit, too, Si. My brother Carleton’s lost over forty head. But I don’t think it’s Indians. At least, not Black Eagle’s band.”

“You don’t,” the rancher echoed, his tone indicating disbelief.

“I don’t.”

“Well, then, who the hell…”

Ben ground his boot heel into the plank floor. “Silas, when I find out, I’ll let you know. Until then, I’d suggest your boys spend their free time doing more night riding around your spread than poker playing in town.”

The tall man gave Ben an assessing look. “I’ve known you a long time, Ben. You never was one to sniff too long up the wrong tree, so I’ll have to trust you on this one. But I’m tellin’ you—”

“Save it, Si. We’ve been through it all before. Ranchers think Indians are responsible for everything that goes wrong. Indians think the same about the white man. You mind your herd and let me do my job. One of these days, whoever is stealing your cattle will make a mistake—leave a trail, a footprint, something I can go on. I’ll get him in the end. I always do.”

“Yeah,” the tall man grumbled. “You do. But waitin’ is costing me money!”

Ben raised his eyebrows. “And it’s costing me sleep at night There’s an old Indian saying, Si. ‘When in doubt, do nothing—the situation could get worse.’ Come fall, I’ll have this wound up and then you can get rich and I can get rested.”

Silas chuckled. Clapping his hat on an unruly shock of sandy hair, he turned toward the door. “I’ll buy you a drink if you pull it off by September, Ben. I’ll even stake you to a round of poker.”

Ben grinned. “Five-card stud and Child’s Premium. New shipment should be in by September.”

The door closed on Si Appleby’s laughter.

Ben struck his desk with his fist. Damn! If he found evidence of just one fresh beef carcass at Black Eagle’s camp, he’d skin the old fox alive. He swore again. The cat sleeping on top of his logbook cracked one eye open, stretched and offered an elaborate yawn. Before he knew it, the animal curled up in his lap.

The door bumped open a second time, and Jessamyn Whittaker marched into the room. A lacy white blouse that looked crisp enough to stand up by itself bloomed from the waistband of her swirling indigo blue skirt.

“Sheriff Kearney?” Her voice sounded as if it, too, had been starched.

“Miss Whittaker?”

She whipped open a notebook, pulled a pencil from behind one ear and leaned over his desk. “As the new editor of the Wildwood Times, Sheriff, I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may?”

Ben narrowed his eyes. The last thing he needed this morning was a grilling by a nosy Yankee newspaper reporter.

Jessamyn poised her pencil over the pad. “Who was that Indian girl?”

Ben stroked the purring animal in his lap. “Her name is Walks Dancing.”

She scribbled in her notebook. “What is the significance of her visit this afternoon?”

Ben frowned. “Depends. Significance to whom—you? Me? The town? Herself? Just what do you want to know?”

Jessamyn tightened her lips in exasperation. Couldn’t the man answer a simple question? “I mean, where did she come from?”

Ben plopped his hat onto the clutter on his desk and ran his hand through his hair. “She’s a Modoc. The Klamath chief adopted her as his daughter some years back. Black Eagle can’t risk exposing his braves—they’d be captured and sent to the reservation with the others. So he sent Walks Dancing into town with a message.”

“What message?” Jessamyn said, her words clipped.

“None of your business,” Ben returned. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“How was she crippled?” Jessamyn interrupted. “From birth?”

Ben expelled a long breath. “She was crippled because she’s a Modoc. The Klamath and the Modoc tribes have been enemies for generations. Walks Dancing made the mistake of falling in love with the wrong man—a Klamath brave. She left her tribe and went with him. Her people found them the next spring. They killed him. Then they broke both her legs by running their horses over her and left her to die. She didn’t. Black Eagle adopted her.”

Jessamyn felt the blood drain from her upper torso. Suddenly dizzy, she dropped the pad and grabbed for the edge of Ben’s desk. “How horrible.”

“Sorry you asked?”

“Yes,” she murmured. “I mean, no! How else am I going to find out what’s happening?”

“Know what my father used to tell me? ‘Keep your eyes and ears open—”’ He leaned toward her and lowered his voice “’—and your mouth shut’” He looked as if he especially relished the last part.

Jessamyn winced. His barb hit home. Very well, she’d do things his way. “Just one more question, Sheriff.” She mustered as steady a tone as she could manage. “What are you finding out about my father’s murderer?”

Ben studied her for what seemed an endless minute. “Damn little that’s for publication.”

“But what are you doing?” she persisted.

Goaded by her tone, Ben answered without thinking. “I’m going to talk to Black Eagle.”

Jessamyn gasped. “About my father?”

“Maybe. Don’t know yet.”

“Where does this Black Eagle live?”

Again Ben studied her. “In the mountains. Two days’ ride.” He stood, upending the cat, and scooped her notebook up from the floor. “Now, why don’t you go on down and talk to Mrs. Frieder—find out when her baby’s coming.” He thrust the paper pad into her hand.

“The Frieder baby’s due in July,” Jessamyn retorted. “I’ll go with you to see Black Eagle.”

“Like hell you will.”

“But you said… How can I keep my eyes and ears open if I’m not there? No good reporter relies on hearsay.”

“Can you ride?” His voice rang with impatience.

“A horse, you mean? N-not really, but I’m sure I could learn.”

Ben chuckled. “Not damn likely. Not by sunup tomorrow.”

Jessamyn straightened to her full height and looked Ben Kearney straight in the eye. “Try me.”

She’d never been on a horse before in her life, but she’d never admit that to Ben. She was a Whittaker. If she had to fly to the moon to get her story, she wouldn’t give up until she felt the green cheese under her feet.

“I challenge you, Sheriff. I challenge you to try me! Today. This very minute.”

Ben resisted the urge to laugh out loud at her naive suggestion. Learn to ride in one afternoon? Impossible. She was so green she didn’t even know it was impossible.

“Mr. Kearney, did you hear me? I said—”

“I heard you,” he said, his voice quiet. On the other hand, he reasoned, maybe it would shut her up for a while. If she tried it, found how difficult it would be for a greenhorn to master a horse, he’d be rid of her. For a few days, anyway.

The idea had definite appeal. The more he considered it, the more sense it made.

“Miss Whittaker, meet me at the livery stable in ten minutes. And better stop by the mercantile on your way. Get yourself a shirt and some denims and a pair of boots. Otherwise, you’re gonna get corral dust all over those fancy starched petticoats of yours.”

Without another word, he grabbed his hat and strolled out the door, leaving it open behind him. When he reached the planked sidewalk he began to whistle.

Bet my money on a bobtail nag…oh, doo dah day.

* * *

“Mr. Freider,” Jessamyn said when she could catch her breath. “I need a shirt—one of those plaid ones on the shelf will do—a pair of denims and some boots. Small ones.”

Otto Frieder’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “For yourself?”

At her nod, the storekeeper’s eyes popped. “Miss Jessamyn, what you going to do?”

Jessamyn took a deep breath and hoped her voice would sound reasonably steady. “Learn to ride a horse.”

Otto stared at her. “Anna-Marie!” he shouted. “Come quick! Miss Jessamyn needs—”

Anna-Marie’s rotund figure appeared beside her husband’s. Obviously she’d been listening from behind the curtained doorway. Jessamyn gave her as much of a smile as she could manage.

“For you, I think maybe small-size shirt, like for older boy. Trousers…” Anna-Marie turned away and pulled a garment off the shelf. “These. And will need a belt. Men are not built so…” With her hands she traced a shape in the air. “So…in and out.”

Jessamyn unfolded the blue denim jeans, fingered the metal buttons that closed the front. They looked complicated. How did men ever…?

Instantly she banished the thought. Heavens, whatever would Miss Bennett say about the direction in which her mind wandered?

“Come.” Anna-Marie beckoned. “You try on. Otto,” she called into the adjoining room, “find some boots for tiny feet. And, please, a belt.”

The shirt—a man’s size, since smaller, boys’ sizes were not in stock—hung off Jessamyn’s shoulders and drooped past her wrists. At least it buttoned decently over her chest

Cinched up with the wide black leather belt Otto handed through the curtain, the jeans hugged her bottom and thighs. The boots he thrust after the belt scrunched her toes together, but the storekeeper insisted the leather would soften and stretch with use.

“Too loose, will make blisters,” he admonished. “These just right.”

Jessamyn took a tentative step and winced. Just right? Maybe for someone who was used to such contraptions. Had she gotten them reversed—the left boot on the right foot? She glanced down. Her boots looked like all the other boots she’d seen in town. She’d bet they didn’t feel like all the others, though. Or did people in Wildwood Valley simply smile through their daily suffering?

Otto beamed at her. “I put on your account, Miss Jessamyn. And will send your other clothes over to your home.”

“Thank you, Otto.”

“What now you do?”

Jessamyn smiled at the concern in his eyes. “I—I guess I’ll walk over to the livery stable.”

The storekeeper bobbed his head and headed for the front of the store. Taking a last look at Jessamyn, he disappeared out the door, the bell over the entrance jangling as the sound of his steps receded down the board walkway.

Anna-Marie lumbered to the candy counter and emptied a scoop of ginger drops into Jessamyn’s trembling hand. “For luck,” she whispered.

Jessamyn slipped the candy into her shirt pocket. On impulse, she hugged the bulky young woman. With all her heart, she wished she could trade places with Anna-Marie at that moment. She would gladly waddle about the mercantile with a swollen belly, even endure the pain of labor and childbirth, if only she wouldn’t have to climb up on a horse.

A cold sweat started between her shoulder blades. Horses terrified her. So frightened she could barely swallow, she spun on her heel and clumped out the door in boots that squeezed her toes like pincers.

After a half-block walk toward the stable, she knew why cowboys always rode horseback. They’d do almost anything to take the weight off their cramped feet! She worked at not limping.

The main street appeared to be deserted. Both the doctor’s and the undertaker’s offices had Closed signs in the front windows. Even the barbershop was empty, the door shut and bolted. How odd, she thought as she strode onward. It was Monday afternoon. Didn’t men usually visit the barber for haircuts and shaves before a night in town?

Oh, Lord, you don’t suppose…

A gangly boy of about ten raced past her. “Hey, mister,” he yelled. “That tenderfoot lady from back East’s gonna try to ride a horse! Everybody’s gonna watch—come on! You’re gonna miss it!”

Jessamyn groaned out loud. Word of mouth spread like wildfire in a town this size. How she longed for the anonymity of civilized, populated Boston.

A vision of the coming ordeal flashed into her mind. A crowd gathered—like the ancient Romans at the Colosseum—to watch a spectacle. Only this wasn’t Rome, it was the livery corral in Wildwood Valley, Oregon, and she was the spectacle! She wondered if Ben Kearney had spread the word about town just to make the challenge harder for her. Would he stoop so low?

He would, she decided. She recalled the satisfied grin on his lips when he sauntered out of the sheriff’s office in that maddening, unsettling walk of his. That snake! She’d lambaste him the first chance she got. She’d blister him with words he’d never forget. She’d—

She’d learn to ride a horse, that’s what she’d do! That would show him. She wasn’t going to let Ben Kearney have the last word. Even in jeans and torture-chamber boots, she was still a Whittaker.

And a Whittaker, she reminded herself with a little half sob of fear, never gave up.

Chapter Six

Ben eased his back against the split-rail fence around the stable corral and crossed one boot over the other. Satisfied with the private arrangement he’d made with liveryman and blacksmith Dan Gustafsen, he inhaled deeply.

He’d known Gus from his army days in Dakota Territory after the war. The big, quiet Norwegian had fought for the Union, but when hostilities had finally ceased, Gus had set politics aside. When Ben met him in Dakota, he found he could deal with him man-to-man. Both had been officers; both had been wounded. Gus wore a black patch over one eye.

“Pick a horse that’s not mean,” Ben had requested. “Just not too tired, if you take my meaning.” From the looks of the skittish bay dancing at the end of Gus’s rope, the stable owner had indeed taken Ben’s meaning. The horse was a beauty—sixteen, maybe even seventeen hands, a gelding with intelligent eyes and a precise, proud gait.

And, Ben could see at a glance, definitely not tired. He watched Gus pull the cinch tight, then give him a surreptitious nod. Even though he trusted Gus’s judgment, Ben’s gut tightened into a hard knot.

Townspeople began to gather along the perimeter of the fence. Ben nodded to Doc Bartel and the short, nervous undertaker, Zed Marsh, the physician’s constant companion. He tipped his hat to Addie Rice and, a few yards beyond the seamstress, acknowledged two of the girls from Charlie’s Red Fox Saloon. Addie must have closed her dressmaker’s shop to witness the fun. Ben surmised the girls from Charlie’s were losing money, too.

Silas Appleby heaved his rangy form onto the fence next to Ben and hooked his boot heels over the lower rail. “I hear that newspaper lady’s a looker,” he remarked. “Since I’m in town, I thought I’d just as well check out the rumors.”

“You’re practically a married man, Si,” Ben reminded him.

“Hell, Ben, can’t hurt to look!” Appleby jammed a cigarette between his lips and flicked a match against his thumbnail.

Otto Frieder picked his way through a gaggle of young boys in various sizes and shapes and settled on Ben’s other side. A frown worried his shiny forehead. “You think Miss Jessamyn be all right, Sheriff?”

Ben fought a momentary pang of guilt at Otto’s question. He trusted Gus’s horse savvy. Jessamyn wouldn’t get hurt—not seriously, anyway. Just enough to bruise her backside a bit and open her eyes to the fact that she wasn’t riding into the hills with him tomorrow. Or any other day, for that matter. From what he had observed, hearsay had always been plenty good for most newspaper editors. Why should she be any different?

Because she’s Thad Whittaker’s daughter, that’s why. Hearsay was never good enough for Thad; that was probably what got him killed.

“She’ll be all right, Otto,” Ben assured the stocky storekeeper. “I’d worry more about the horse if I were you. Miss Whittaker finds it difficult to take no for an answer.”

Silas chuckled. “Looks to me like that gelding might have the same trouble!”

Ben watched Gus turn away toward a commotion at the far end of the corral yard, then glance back to catch Ben’s gaze. The skin around the wrangler’s one good eye crinkled in amusement.

Jessamyn crawled through an opening in the fence and sidled stiff-legged toward Ben, her backside hugging the fence so closely he could have sworn she’d pick up splinters on her rear.

“Sheriff Kearney?” Her words came out in a throaty whisper. “Is—is that the horse?”

“It is. Ready to mount up?”

Jessamyn licked her lips. “Isn’t it awfully big?” She kept her gaze riveted on the animal in the center of the corral yard.

Ben shrugged. “Some are, some aren’t. This one’s about normal.” For some reason, an unexpected pang of sympathy stabbedinto his chest. She looked terrified.

“I want you to know, Mr. Kearney,” she said in that same breathy whisper, “that I am not f-frightened in the least.” Again she ran her tongue over her lips. “Not even a little b-bit.”

She poked her chin into the air and visibly straightened her spine. “But if I—or rather, when I live through this, you p-puffed-up, know-it-all snake in the grass, I’m going to make your life so m-miserable you’d wish you were back in that Union prison in Illinois!”

She stomped away toward Gus.

Silas guffawed. “Puffed up? Why, imagine that!” He slapped Ben on the shoulder. “’Makes you sound like one of Ella’s banty roosters. My, that little eastern lady has got some spit and vinegar!” Chuckling, he settled back to watch.

Spit and vinegar wasn’t all she had, Ben noted, watching Jessamyn’s jeans stretch tight over her derriere as she marched up to Gus. The wide black belt pulled the toolarge waistband snug around her middle, and the long sleeves of the red plaid shirt were folded back twice at the cuffs. She looked like a kid masquerading as her big brother.

A scared kid. A twinge wrenched his gut. Her bravado didn’t fool him for a second. He’d seen that same look on new recruits’ faces before their first battle. They fought— and died—because they were ordered to. Jessamyn didn’t have to do this, he told himself. She didn’t have to, but she wasn’t backing out In fact, at this moment she was about as unflinching as any soldier he’d ever commanded in the field. Her courage touched him in some way, as if a finger had been laid upon his heart.

Jessamyn looked up at the tall man holding the towering horse. He tipped his hat with his free hand and smiled down at her. “Daniel Gustafsen, ma’am. Everybody calls me Gus.”

“What’s the horse’s name?”

He hesitated. “Dancer Jack.”

Jessamyn nodded. “Gus, are all those people along the fence here to…to watch me try to—watch me ride this horse?”

Gus’s one blue eye softened. “Yes, ma’am, ‘fraid so. They all come out like grasshoppers on an August morning whenever a tenderfoot like yourself climbs up on a horse the first time. It’s kinda like entertainment for them. The Greenhorn Follies, they call it.”

“Entertainment!” She shut her eyes. She could almost hear the imagined roar of bloodthirsty Romans in her ears.

“Sure am sorry. Miss Whittaker, but it’s true. Things out here in the West aren’t civilized like they are back in the colony states.”

Or even in Rome, Jessamyn thought with a shudder. Still, she wasn’t beaten yet. “Gus, I’m going to ride that horse if it’s the last thing I do. I want you to tell me how.”

The wrangler nodded. “Now, Miss Jessamyn, just keep in mind you’re gonna get this horse to walk. He already knows how to run. First thing you do is talk to him, call him by name.”

Jessamyn moved toward the animal. “H-hello, Dancer Jack,” she breathed.

The horse tossed his head and moved a step away.

“Don’t be afraid, now. I’m not going to hurt you.” She edged forward. “What now, Gus?” she said softly.

“Now you touch him, all over. Let him smell you, get your scent.”

Jessamyn reached one hand toward the gelding’s moist black nose. “Dancer Jack,” she murmured. “It’s me, Jessamyn. Or maybe for you it’ll just be Jess.”

She ran her palm up the front of his face, then spread both hands along his jaw. “Good boy,” she said. “Good horse.” Under her fingers, the warm hide twitched.

The horse stood still. Jessamyn smiled at Gus, who gestured for her to continue.

She drew in a breath and laid her forehead against the gelding’s dark head. Please, please let this horse like me! she prayed. When the animal didn’t move away, she slowly smoothed her palm over the neck, then stepped to one side and rubbed its hard, warm shoulder and withers. Next she ran her hands down each leg. The horse’s limbs trembled as violently as Jessamyn’s did.

“You’re doin’ fine, ma’am. Just fine. Here’s his lead now. You hold him while I adjust the stirrups and go get a mounting block for you.”

Frozen, Jessamyn stood motionless as a statue until Gus returned with a portable wooden step. He took the rope from her, tossed the reins over the saddle horn. “Climb up on the step and put your left foot in the stirrup. Grab the saddle horn and swing your other leg up over his rump.”

Jessamyn stood on top of the block, raised her left foot until she thought she’d twist her thigh right out of the hip socket, and jammed her toe into the high stirrup. She reached for the saddle horn and pulled herself up to a nearstanding position. She clutched at the saddle for support and tried to swing her right leg over the horse.

She couldn’t get her leg high enough to clear the gelding’s backside. On her third attempt she slipped out of the stirrup, breathing hard. Behind her, she could hear the raucous laughter of the crowd.

“Try it again,” Gus urged. “This time, you give a little spring and I’ll boost you on up.”

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