Lady in Disguise

Though the secret behind Uley Kirland’s cap and mining togs is unsuspected in 1880s Tin Cup, Colorado, she longs to shed the clothing of deception…especially when handsome stranger Aaron Brown awakens her heart. But while Uley dreams of being fitted for a wedding gown, the man she loves is being fitted for a hangman’s noose, and she’s the inadvertent cause of his troubles. The truth will set him free, and Uley will do whatever it takes to save Aaron’s life—even risk her own.

Praise for Deborah Bedford

“Blessing is a delightful historical romance

from the pen of the talented Deborah Bedford. Come meet the colorful characters

of Tin Cup, Colorado, and lose yourself

in the sweet love story of Uley and Aaron.

You’ll be glad you did.”

—Bestselling author Robin Lee Hatcher

“Deborah Bedford breathes the breath of life into her characters, giving them the power to

walk right off the page into our hearts.”

—Christy Award-winning author

Hannah Alexander

“You’ll LOVE Deborah Bedford’s Blessing! Wonderful writing, a unique cast of characters

and a lively story altogether emphasize a

deep truth: Man judges on outward appearance,

but God searches the heart.”

—Lyn Cote

DEBORAH BEDFORD

enjoyed a successful career as a mainstream novelist before heeding the call to set aside other priorities in her life and write books that would glorify God. She is now the author of several bestselling titles, including The Penny and Any Minute, which she co-wrote with Joyce Meyer, as well as His Other Wife, A Rose by the Door and Remember Me. Blessing is one of her favorite books because it is one of Bedford’s few historical novels, and is set in Tin Cup, Colorado, a secluded mountain town not far from where her grandparents spent their honeymoon in the late 1920s.

Since working with Joyce Meyer, Bedford has traveled to several areas in Mexico, as well as several squatters’ camps near Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, to participate in medical missions. She divides her time between her home in Jackson Hole and her position as a multi-trauma nurse in Colorado. She and her husband, Jack, have two children, Jeff and Avery.

Blessing

Deborah Bedford

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Lord, I have heard of your fame;

I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord.

Renew them in our day, in our time make them known...

The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.

—Habakkuk 3:2–19

To my adventurous, beautiful daughter, Avery.

Tin Cup is the place where I learned that I didn’t have to be in the mountains to be happy, but that wherever I went, the mountains could be inside me.

And now look at you and what you are doing!

You are going to touch young people’s lives in ways you’ve never imagined. I am awestruck by

your spirit, and so proud of you. Mom

Contents

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

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Excerpt

Chapter One

Gunnison County, Colorado—1882

“I don’t want this town to be called Virginia City anymore!” Alex Parent hollered, banging his cup on the podium. “Every town this side of the Mississippi is called Virginia City. The confounded postal service is dropping off mail from back home everywhere else but here.”

All 103 people in the audience agreed with him at the top of their lungs.

“You’re right, Parent,” someone bellowed. “There’s a Virginia City in Nevada and another one in Alder Gulch, Montana, and another one...”

“So...we aren’t Virginia City anymore,” Parent hollered at them as he pounded the podium. “Who are we gonna be? We’ve got to discuss this and make a motion and get it down in the town records right.”

For a minute, nobody said anything.

One hand rose in the crowd. The hand belonged to Uley, a youngster who’d come from Ohio four years before to work in the Gold Cup Mine.

“Yep, Uley? What is it, son?”

“I think,” Uley said, in a timid voice that, if anyone had thought about it, sounded a touch too high-pitched for a boy of his age, “we ought to select a name that tells people something about this place. Remember last month, when that fellow from New York got off the stage on Alpine Pass? While the driver stopped to change horses?”

Of course everyone remembered. They’d been talking about it in town for weeks.

“The fellow went to the spring to get a drink,” Uley said, telling the story over again, just in case somebody hadn’t heard it. “But he wouldn’t drink out of that rusty tin cup they keep up there. So, George Willis pulled out his Winchester and shot off that fellow’s derby, then made him drink six cups of water.”

Hollis Andersen took up the story. “And when the newcomer tried to get back on the stage, Willis said, ‘You’re too good to drink out of a cup that was good enough for hundreds of thirsty men. That cup’s been sitting on that rock for five years, and you’re the first skunk to pick it up, refuse to drink out of it and throw it into the bushes. If I ever see you in these parts God made for men—and not your kind—I’ll shoot lower and put a hole in that thick head of yours. Savvy?’”

Everybody in the place started hooting.

Parent banged his cup against the podium again to quiet the roaring crowd. His efforts came too late. People were laughing, clapping each other on the back. “Silence,” Parent shouted. “Silence!”

Silence did not come. Somewhere in the back, somebody bellowed, “It’s got to be Tin Cup! Tin Cup! Tin Cup!”

Every man in the meeting room took up the cry. “Tin Cup! Tin Cup! Tin Cup!”

Parent knew he had to preserve parliamentary procedure. “I move we name this town Tin Cup! Do I hear a second? We have to have a second!”

“I second it!” Uley’s hand lifted above the crowd. “Tin Cup is perfect!”

“All in favor.” Parent did his best to count hands, but that proved impossible. “All against.”

In the end, he found it easier to tabulate the nays and subtract them from the number attending the meeting. It worked out—on paper—as one hundred votes cast in favor and three votes opposed.

And so, this town would change its name. When the paperwork was completed, the officers of Virginia City would sell their rights and seal to the new town for the price of two hundred and fifty dollars. “Tin Cup, Colorado, it is—one hundred to three,” Parent shouted.

Hats flew in celebration. Stetsons. Wool caps. Bowlers. Even a beret or two. Every hat flew except one. Uley’s. Despite the excitement, Uley stood still, hands propped on hips, hat very much in place.

Uley wanted to throw her woolen hat into the air. She wanted to let all her curls underneath tumble out and give away her secret. But she was stuck. Stuck like a pine marten gets stuck when it climbs down somebody’s chimney and ends up in somebody’s wood stove.

“You going up to Frenchy’s?” somebody asked her pa.

Samuel Kirkland glanced at Uley sideways, the way a mule glances when it’s unsure of its footing. “Don’t think so, Amos. Uley and I’ve got to get home. Tomorrow’s going to start early.”

“Aw, Sam,” Amos said. “It’ll start early for everybody. Come on over and keep the celebration going.”

Uley said nothing. A Christian young lady did not enter a place like Frenchy’s, a man’s place, without having her reputation sorely tainted. But what did it matter, anyway? With the deception she was playing on the whole town, she had no right to be counting anyone else’s sins. As long as she and Sam lived in Tin Cup, nobody would know her as a genteel young lady. Things had already gone too far for that.

“Come on, Sam,” Amos urged her pa. “It’ll be hard work in the mines tomorrow. Tonight let’s cut loose.”

Uley could tell by the way he glanced at her again that her pa wanted to go.

“You should come, too, Uley.” Amos clapped her on the back. “They’re gonna start a poker game up there at ten. It’s about time a young fella like you learned to hold his own in a gambling den.”

“No thanks, Amos.”

The raucous crowd funneled through the doorway, then fanned out onto the street, heading toward Frenchy’s, the most popular of the town’s twenty saloons. That was certainly a subject a Christian lady shouldn’t know about, she thought, somewhat grimly, as she watched her pa get swept up in the throng. Gambling dens and saloons.

Uley walked toward the little house where she and her father made their home. The cob-worked cabin on Willow Street suited them much better than the crude shanties most of the miners had pieced together in the hills. She knew her pa had purchased the pretty little place in town because he wanted to do right by her.

“Hey, Uley!” Marshal Harris Olney called out as he passed by. “Why aren’t you over at Frenchy’s with the rest of them?”

She thought before she spoke, and consciously pitched her voice lower. “That’s not a place I enjoy going.”

“Wish everybody else thought that way, too.” Harris shook his head jovially. “I’ll be up all night.”

Uley figured the marshal probably never got a decent night’s rest. People worked hard all day long in the mines, and at night, when you’d think they’d be exhausted and ready to sleep, they came out to carouse in saloons that never closed, celebrating a few nuggets of gold—which were usually gone by sunup. Oh, Father. It seems as if nothing I could ever do would change this place.

As she hurried up the street, Uley heard a slight sound to her left. The sound wasn’t much, just a pebble skipping across the dirt. She glanced up, couldn’t see into the shadows. Something about being here alone this time of night with everybody else down at Frenchy’s made her adrenaline flow.

Just suppose she’d come upon a mountain lion.

Just suppose she’d come upon somebody up to no good.

Just suppose.

Uley didn’t miss a stride. As she rounded the next corner, she spied a stranger standing at the edge of the darkness.

“Hello,” she said to him, an unreasonable fear knotting her stomach.

He nodded without answering. As she passed him, all she caught was a glimpse—a black leather vest, legs long as a stallion’s, a dark felt Stetson, a glint of moonlight reflecting in his eyes and in his hands.

A glint of metal.

Uley stopped three paces past him. The stranger was holding a gun. She turned to see him step out into the pale moonglow to take his aim.

This man, all black leather and legs, with a shadow for a face, was going to shoot the marshal in the back!

Uley didn’t take time to think. She didn’t take time to cry for help. She sprinted toward the man, mud muffling her long strides. She took a racing leap and sprang at him.

She hit him full tilt and heard his breath rush out of his lungs. The gun pinwheeled out of his hands. He grunted as he went down.

She fell on top of him and pinned him. She clamped her arms firmly about his neck, not about to let him go.

He tried to throw her off. She clung to him like the mountain lion she’d been afraid of moments before, her attention riveted to his neck, the only part of him small enough to hang on to.

For the first time in her life Uley offered thanks for her muscles, which were honed to do the same job as any man’s. She fought for breath. “He’s tryin’ to shoot Olney! Somebody get over here!”

She heard feet pounding in her direction. Thank You, Father. Oh, thank You, thank You, thank You.

The man beneath her cursed again and said, “Now I’m going to get tried for murdering Harris Olney, and I didn’t even get to kill him.”

“You hold still.” She glared down at him. “You don’t say anything.” She realized he was staring up at her now the way a man might stare at someone dead. His eyes got as big around as silver dollars.

He gasped, “You’re a lady.”

Holding him down did not frighten her, but this did. He’d found her out. Uley let go of his neck, grabbed her head and, sure enough, the cap had flown away. Her hair hung in sodden, muddy ribbons around her neck.

She looked alternately from the man beneath her to the woolen cap lying upside down in the mud.

Every fellow in Tin Cup would arrive within seconds.

Uley made a fast decision. She figured the stranger would get away, but she had to get her hat on. She leaped off of him, grabbed her hat and shoved the muddy tendrils beneath it.

The stranger lay in the precise spot he’d landed. “You’re just a girl!”

His words made her mad. Here she sat in the muck, a full-grown woman, strong enough to take him down, nineteen years old, well into marriageable age. How dare he call her just a girl?

She locked her arms around his neck again.

She couldn’t think of anything worse than this, having someone find her out after all the work she’d done in the Gold Cup Mine. Just now, the only thing more humiliating than being a woman would be having them all find out she was one. “You don’t tell anybody, you hear me?” She waggled a tiny, clenched fist at him. “You don’t tell anybody, or I’ll give you what’s coming myself.”

The horde of men from Frenchy’s flocked toward them. The stranger didn’t move his glinting eyes from her own. “Okay. Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

By early morning, it was all over the new town of Tin Cup that Uley Kirkland, one of the most spry young fellows in Tin Cup, had apprehended a man trying to murder the marshal. Everyone talked of a hanging. They couldn’t hang the scoundrel, though, until Judge J. M. Murphy came back from visiting his daughter in Denver.

All day, fellows clapped Uley on the back and talked about a trial. Others deemed the stranger should just be shot. After all, sidearms had kept the law in the valley for a long time before Harris Olney ever wore his star.

As Uley worked alongside her pa at the Gold Cup, she found herself wishing somebody would shoot the murderer and end this entire contemptible affair.

If the stranger died, her secret would die with him.

But then, she reasoned, that wasn’t quite true. She wouldn’t be dead. She would still have to live with it.

Oh, Father, wishing somebody dead is not what I should be thinking, either. What a vile sinner I am!

Around lunchtime, word filtered out that the stranger, Aaron Brown, was registered up at the Grand Central Hotel. When Uley first heard his name, she and her pa were working side by side as timbermen in shaft eleven. Uley knew this work almost as well as her father knew it, how to square off the lumber with a broadax, how to chink the fittings so that the joints stayed watertight in the shaft. “Don’t you go worrying about Aaron Brown,” Sam told her. “You did a good job last night. I’m proud of you. That criminal will be dead before we get our next paycheck.”

But what if Aaron Brown talked before then? What if he sat on the back of his horse right before they hanged him and shouted, “Uley Kirkland is a girl! Uley Kirkland, who has cut timber right alongside you and who you’ve invited to play poker in gambling dens and who you’ve talked to about all sorts of private fellow things, the one who tries to talk to you sometimes about the Lord and His ways, is a girl!”

How can you live one part of your life hanging on to the truth when the other part of your life is a lie?

They would likely hang her, too, right beside him.

Uley’d certainly fooled these men. If they knew who she really was, they’d get all tongue-tied and red in the face and flustered. She and her pa had only deceived them for propriety’s sake, a necessary little white lie so she could come West and they could stay together. Uley had not known that a small deception could carry such a heavy weight.

All day long, she could only think of a man in jail named Aaron Brown. All day long, she could only think that he knew her secret.

By the time she’d finished her day’s work, she figured she knew what she had to do with him. As soon as the four-thirty whistle sounded, she headed to town. She walked right into the jailhouse and sat down.

When Harris Olney saw her, he about pumped her arm off. “Uley Kirkland,” he said, grinning. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be six feet under today. Thank you, son.”

“You’re welcome, Marshal.” Uley paused. It was time for her to save herself. “I came by wondering if you’d do me a favor.”

“Anything I can do for you, I’ll do it. You’re a fine young man, Uley. I’ll always do you favors. I’d especially like to see you happy today. What is it?”

“I’d like to see the prisoner.”

Harris furrowed his brows, sending deep creases alongside his nose. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

For one brief moment, Uley faltered. “It...it was dark outside. I really didn’t get a good look at him. I thought I’d just like to see who I tackled by the light of day.”

Harris thought about it a minute. “Well.” She could see him hesitating. Of course, she would be the one to testify in court and convict him. “Odd request, it is. But I did promise you a favor.” Harris hoisted an iron key ring off a peg. Then he led her through a door and pointed to one of the cells. “He’s right over there. You stay as long as you want. Holler at me if he gets ugly.”

She saw the stranger sitting on the stained blue ticking of his cot, his knees spread wide, his feet planted firm. His muddy brown Stetson lay upside down beside him.

He didn’t see her coming. He’d buried his face in his hands.

“Hello.”

He lifted his head and gawked up at her, eyes wide with surprise. In the daylight, she saw they were blue.

“I came to see how you were doing.”

“I’m doing dandy.” He didn’t stand up. “Just dandy.”

“Looks like it.”

Aaron Brown appeared younger than she’d thought last night. She figured him to be somewhere in his thirties. He didn’t look as mean now, either. He just looked sad.

A shock of chocolate-brown hair hung down over his forehead like an arrowhead. He plopped his elbows against his knees and let his clasped hands hang down between them. “You ever going to get tired of looking at me like I’m some kind of animal caught in a trap?”

She shook her head. “No.” He wasn’t really bad to look at. If he hadn’t been the sort of person to creep into town and go after the strong arm of the law, she might have given him a second glance. She amended that thought. Even though he was that sort of person, she gave him a second glance.

“So you’re Uley Kirkland,” he said softly. “Miss Uley Kirkland.”

“That is correct.”

Imagine it. He knew she was a woman, and he treated her like one. If a murderer could be respectful, then Aaron Brown was. It wasn’t the way he spoke to her, exactly, but the way he kept his eyes on her. She’d never before seen anyone peruse her with such respect, such open amazement. But then, she’d never before taken a flying leap at anyone, either.

She remembered why she’d come. She leaned closer to the bars to take care of the task at hand. “Judge Murphy’s due back from Denver next Tuesday,” she told him. “You’ll be off this world by Wednesday morning.”

“I’m painfully aware of that.”

She leaned in even closer. “Since you will be gone off this world then, and it is absolutely no concern of yours, Mr. Brown, you must promise me you’ll tell no one about the horrible fact you discovered last night.”

He knew exactly what she was talking about. “When you lost your hat.”

“Yes.”

“Good grief,” he said, sounding mildly exasperated. “Here I am fixing to hang for murder, and all you’re thinking about is covering your own hide.”

“Yes.”

“And I didn’t even get the chance to go after Olney.”

“You would have, if not for me.”

He cradled his banged-up brown Stetson in his palm as if he’d just tipped it to her. “Now, you don’t know that, do you, ma’am?”

It was the most amazing thing, conversing with him. For the first time in four years, she didn’t have to pretend. “You never would have gotten out of this valley alive.”

“However I had to go,” he said, “I did figure on taking Harris Olney with me.”

She shook her finger at him. “You must promise me, Mr. Brown.”

When he rose from the cot, she examined his frame. He was lanky and fairly thin. She’d known from grappling with him how he’d tower over her. He reached through the bars and gripped her wrists. “Your secret is safe with me, Miss Kirkland. I will face eternity next Wednesday with your secret well hidden within my bosom. I will die happy to be the only one knowing that the person who apprehended me and upended me in the dirt was a mere slip of a girl.”

She didn’t know how she felt about promises from somebody who’d pulled a gun to go after a man. But she’d learned enough about the male species to know they’d risk losing everything before they’d risk losing face in front of others. She turned to the other matter at hand. “I am not a slip of a girl,” she said. “I am a woman, Mr. Brown. A full nineteen years of age.”

“Oh,” he said, taken aback at last. Even so, he didn’t release her wrists. “I do see what you mean.”

When he eyed her again, she saw him taking into account the nubby sweater she wore, and her woolen knickers, covered with mud from working the mine. She saw him surveying the shock of dusty red-brown curls poking out beneath her apple hat. “You are the most unusual woman of nineteen years I have ever seen.”

“I’ll thank you to let go of me,” she said, her green eyes remaining level on his own.

He dropped his hold. “Why are you deceiving everyone, Miss Kirkland? And how are you hiding it so well?”

She wasn’t about to let him lead her onto this subject. “I came for your solemn vow, Mr. Brown.”

“You received that last night when you threatened me with your fist.”

“Very well,” she said, smiling a bit. “We understand each other. Good day, Mr. Brown.”

Chapter Two

Well past moonrise, well after Uley’s pa had drawn the curtains and extinguished the oil lamps, Uley removed the dirty woolen cap, dusted it off against her leg and began to pull the pins from her hair. Her hair fell in huge rolls against her shoulders and down her back.

Uley slipped open the top bureau drawer and extracted the beautiful silver brush that had once belonged to her mother. She began to count brush strokes as she worked the tangles from the strands. Five...six...seven...

So Aaron Brown wanted to know how she did such a good job of hiding her womanhood, did he?

Thirteen...fourteen...fifteen...sixteen...

She supposed that was about the most embarrassing thing of all—that she could hide it so well. Her own body rebelled against her. She was small, just like her ma, her waist barely nipping in. She supposed she’d look more womanly if she had any earthly idea as to how to don a corset.

Thirty-one...thirty-two...thirty-three...

Her mother’s name had been Sarah, one of the prettiest names Uley had ever heard. It sounded the same way she remembered her mother, patient and gracious, always ready to break into a song. One of Uley’s only memories was hanging clothes on the line out back of the Ohio house, running through the wet, billowing sheets with her arms outflung while her ma hummed “What Friend We Have in Jesus” through the wooden pins she held between her teeth. It wasn’t easy for a girl to get along in the world without a ma. There were so many questions to be asked that could not be answered by anyone except for a mother. About that first warm stirring in your bosom when a handsome young gentleman let his eyes linger. The proper way to thread the laces through a corset. The only place she might seek answers to these feminine mysteries now was from the hurdy-gurdy girls at Santa Fe Moll’s place. Occasionally Uley passed one of them in the streets, Irish Ann or Tin Can Laura and Big Minnie and Wishbone Mabel. Oh, Uley heard the fellows in the mines talking about these girls, all right!

She took her frustration out on both hairbrush and hair.

Seventy-nine...eighty...eighty-one...

The only other Tin Cup woman Uley knew was Kate Fischer. Aunt Kate, a slave before the Civil War, had escaped her master, leaving a husband and a child behind. Now she ran Aunt Kate’s Hotel and Boardinghouse. Her customers made their own change, because Kate Fischer didn’t know how to count money or weigh gold. She always dressed in simple calico, with a white apron billowing out over her massive chest like a ship’s sail.

Ninety-seven...ninety-eight...ninety-nine...one hundred.

Uley stood and slipped the silver hairbrush back into the bureau drawer. She examined herself in the moonlight that filtered through the curtains. Even in the muted glow, she saw glimmers of color in her hair.

For one brief moment, she let herself dream. She pretended she wore petticoats that swished around her ankles, that her hair remained loose, swinging free. She allowed herself to imagine what it would feel like to get gussied up, strap on delicate undergarments, pinch her cheeks till they were pink. She’d walk right into that jailhouse and say, “See, Mr. Brown? I am not a slip of a girl. I am a woman.”

She braided her hair, slipped wearily beneath the handworked quilt and hugged her pillow in frustration. Although she tried to reason that she’d made this choice for a selfless reason, deep inside she knew that hadn’t been the case. Five years ago, her father had given her what she wanted, a chance to come with him to the rich goldfields of Colorado, instead of staying in Ohio with her aunt and her prissy cousins. When Aunt Delilah had warned her things might become difficult, Uley hadn’t understood her reasoning. She’d been so innocent at fourteen, so sure of herself, so certain the charade wouldn’t have to continue for long.

She hadn’t bothered to pray about it the way Reverend Henderson said. She’d been perfectly willing to take this adventure into her own hands. She bunched the pillow tight against her face and stared up at the pine planks above her. Lord, would my life have been different if I had asked You? Hadn’t it been worth everything, she wondered, to stay in Tin Cup with her pa?

* * *

It was interesting, Aaron decided as he lay on his cot and examined the patterns in the fresh pine overhead, what a man thought about all night long when he knew he was going on to eternity. He wasn’t thinking of pearly gates and golden streets. His main thought, as he lay there seeing pictures in the pine knots, was to write Beth a letter so that she’d know his fate. He was thinking it was a shame he had to die for Beth to find out that she’d been right.

At three in the morning, he stood and banged on the metal bars of his cell. “Marshal!” he shouted. “Marshal! I need to write a letter!”

The man who answered his call was an elderly gentleman Aaron had never seen before. “You hush that racket. You’re going to wake the dead.”

“I’m going to be the dead,” Aaron said. “This is about the last chance to make noise I’ve got. I need to write a letter.”

The old guy shook his head. “Can’t help you. Marshal left me in charge here. Don’t have any paper for you to write on, and I can’t leave. How do I know you’re not trying to escape?”

“I can’t very well escape,” Aaron said dryly. “I’m in a jail cell.”

“You’re the first one we’ve ever had locked up in here. I’m not about to let you get away.”

“I have stationery and writing supplies with my belongings at the Grand Central Hotel. If you could just send someone, Mr.—”

“Pearsall. Ben Pearsall. Can’t do it. Ain’t anybody around to send. You’ll have to find somebody to get your stuff and post it for you tomorrow. The mail only comes in and out on Mondays and Thursdays.”

Aaron sat down on the creaky cot, defeated once more. Things sure hadn’t gone his way these past few days. He didn’t know anybody in town who he’d trust to go through his room and retrieve his belongings.

Ben Pearsall pulled up a stool and straddled it, apparently pleased to have somebody to talk to in the wee hours of the morning. “You know, you’re crazy,” he told Aaron. “The reason everybody turned out at the election down at Pettengill’s Drug Store and voted for Olney for marshal was because he told them he wouldn’t arrest anybody. Olney’s said all along the marshal’s duty is to give the town the appearance of law and order. The mayor told him the day he got his star that the first person he arrested would be his last. And that’s you, Mr. Brown. Olney didn’t have much of a choice, since he was the one you were holding a gun on.”

Aaron looked sour. “I guess not. I guess me and Uley Kirkland didn’t leave him much of a choice at all.”

“Uley Kirkland,” Ben said. “Now there’s a fine young man for you. But I can’t figure out why that kid ain’t started growin’ whiskers yet. You ever seen Uley’s skin close up? It’s as soft as a baby’s. ’Course, I imagine Uley would slug me senseless if he ever heard me say that.”

“Yeah,” Aaron said, unconsciously rubbing his elbow. She’d jumped on him like a wildcat and knocked him to the ground, and parts of his body were still smarting from it. “I reckon Uley would.”

Pearsall scooted the stool backward. “Got to get back up front. Wouldn’t want anybody to think I was talking all night to a criminal.” He tipped his hat. “Been nice conversing with you, Brown.”

Aaron sat down hard on his cot. Why didn’t Uley grow whiskers, indeed! It would be easier for a dog to turn into a horse than it would be for Uley Kirkland to grow whiskers. And, as he thought of her, he realized who could go through his belongings and retrieve his stationery from the Grand Central. Beth would have her letter, after all!

Aaron knew he probably couldn’t trust Uley. He also knew he could make her do his bidding. He knew the word for it. A bad, dark word. Blackmail. But just now he didn’t have any other options. “Pearsall!” he hollered, banging on the bars again. “Get in here, will you? I know who I can send to get my things.”

* * *

Uley received his message just after she arrived at the Gold Cup. “Uley! Uley Kirkland!” Charlie Hastings came shouting into shaft eleven, wagging a lantern back and forth, sending waves of light sweeping along the walls. “Old Ben Pearsall’s here with a note from the marshal. Olney wants you to get down to the jail for something.”

Uley groaned. There had been times during the past two days when she’d wished she’d just kept walking and let Aaron Brown go after Harris Olney. She was fast becoming a celebrity in Tin Cup, and it didn’t suit her one bit.

She left the mine astraddle her bay gelding. She gave the horse his head, letting the animal pick his way down the rocks on the steep hill while she fumed. When she got to town, she looped the horse’s bridle over the hitching rail and marched into Olney’s office. “What do you want with me, Harris?”

Olney waved toward the back. “I don’t want anything, Uley. Prisoner sent for you. I wouldn’t have called you out of the mine, but he says he’s got to see you today. Go on back.”

She stomped on through, and there sat Aaron Brown, all alone behind the bars, his head bowed as if in prayer. “I’m going to lose three dollars today because you won’t let me get in a decent day’s work,” she said.

He lifted his head, and his blue eyes were like deep, sparkling water. She figured he probably hadn’t slept all night. He looked awful. If she weren’t feeling so put-upon, she might even have been sad for him this morning. “You’re the only person I know in this place, Uley. I need somebody to help me.”

“I’m not likely to help you. I’m the one who saw you pull the gun on Olney. I’m the chief witness against you.”

“I’m not looking for a lifelong buddy,” he said tersely. “I’m just looking for an acquaintance who’ll go up to the Grand Central and bring me some stationery. I’ve got to write a letter to one person before they string me up. Old Ben Pearsall told me the mail goes out today.”

“This is why you called me down from the mine?” She was torn between being furious with him and feeling halfway important because he’d needed her. This was his dying request, after all. Maybe it was an important letter. Maybe it was a letter to the governor to confess his crime.

“Yeah. I tried to get Pearsall to go, but he wouldn’t do it. You’re my only hope, Uley. Will you go?”

She eyed him. “I don’t know.” He stood there, grasping the bars with both hands. They were big hands and, looking at him, she wondered how she’d gotten him to the ground.

“Why?” he asked.

His robin’s-egg-blue eyes seemed twice as blue with his face so dirty.

She didn’t know exactly why it happened. Maybe it was because Aaron Brown knew she was a female. Maybe it was because she’d considered her femininity so much during these past days. Whatever the reason, she felt herself blush, felt a spreading burst of heat fan her face the way flame spreads in a forest. “I don’t think it would be right, Mr. Brown. Me going through your personal things.”

“Uley Kirkland!” He hit the bars with his open hand. “Don’t you go all prim and proper on me now. You’re the one who pounced on me out of nowhere and left me sprawled in the dirt. You’re the one that’s got every poor depraved male in this town thinking you’re one of them.”

“You hush up, Mr. Brown.” Her face turned even redder. “You mustn’t say that.”

“Oh, mustn’t I?”

“No.”

He took a deep breath. “You leave me no choice. I’ve got to blackmail you, Miss Uley Kirkland. I’ll tell them all. I’ll tell every single one of them that you’ve had them duped.”

Uley grabbed the bars with both hands. “You wouldn’t do such a thing.”

He brought his nose level with hers. “I might. Because I’m desperate enough to do anything.”

“I would never forgive you.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m gonna be dead on Wednesday. Doesn’t matter one bit how long you hold a grudge. I won’t be around to enjoy it.”

She saw he had her backed up into a corner. “You promised me. You’re a liar.”

“That isn’t the worst of my sins, if you’ll recall. But you’re right. I’ll confess—” he added the rest for emphasis “—ma’am.”

“Hush up,” she said, lowering her voice. “Somebody might hear you.”

“Does that mean you’ll do it?”

They stared at each other, the silence ticking away between them.

Aaron didn’t let up. Desperation ruled him now. “Get down there, Uley. The stage leaves for St. Elmo in two hours.”

She collected her wits. She had no choice but to do his bidding. With head held high, she sauntered out to the front office, where Harris and George Willis had their heads together, discussing the pretty Tin Can Laura, the hurdy-gurdy girl who kept her money stashed in a tin can. Uley walked up Grand Avenue to the Grand Central to tell D. J. Mawherter exactly what she wanted.

The hotel proprietor didn’t even hesitate before he handed her the key. “You tell Harris Olney somebody’s got to be responsible for that criminal’s room,” he hollered as she started up the stairs. “You tell Harris to bring that man down here to settle up before they hang him Wednesday. I can’t get any gold out of a dead man.”

She hurried up the steps to the second floor, thinking, If he dies, I’ll be halfway responsible for it.

No, she argued with herself. Aaron Brown is responsible for it. One hundred percent totally responsible for his choices. Just the way I’m responsible for mine.

She found the room, unlocked the door and stepped inside. In a tiny room with pine walls and no plaster stood an iron bed, a rickety bureau that looked as if someone who should have known better had tried to build it, and a washbasin. Mr. Aaron Brown’s satchel waited in the corner. She heaved it up and began to unfasten it, feeling more and more uneasy and curious as his private items began to tumble out onto the quilt.

He owned a beautiful black suit and a bolo tie made of leather and elkhorn. He owned two stiff-as-a-board starched shirts and several pairs of woolen socks. And—oh, goodness—he possessed white drawers just like her pa’s.

Purposefully she started digging in another area of the satchel.

She found what he’d sent her for, a box of blue stationery and a quill pen and a little bottle of ink, all tied up in a linen square. She pulled those items out and put everything else back in place. She folded his writing utensils into the cloth to carry them.

There.

That had been easy enough.

She was almost out the door by the time she saw his other belongings atop the bureau.

He owned a bottle of bay-rum aftershave. She pulled the cork and sniffed it. The scent, keen and exotic, pleased her. She found it difficult imagining anybody as dirty as Aaron Brown ever cleaning up and shaving and splashing on something that smelled this good.

He also owned a pocket watch and a Bible. She wondered, as she picked up the Bible and flipped it open, whether he was an Old Testament Christian or a New Testament one. Probably Old Testament, she decided. After all, that was where it said “An eye for an eye.” He was in jail, waiting to hang. She figured he probably hadn’t been listening in Sunday school when his teacher had brought up the Ten Commandments.

Uley set the Bible down and picked up the watch. She guessed, just from handling the timepiece, that it wasn’t worth much. Feeling only slightly guilty, she clicked it open. To my beloved son Aaron, the inscription read. May your heart always know when it’s time to come home.

She arranged everything on the bureau just as it had been when she arrived, thinking of her own ma and missing her beyond measure. How wonderful it would be, she decided, to know you had a mother...someone to go home to...no matter how old you were. For a moment, thinking of Mr. Aaron Brown and the awful fate awaiting him, she felt sadness. Rather, she felt sadness for his mother. She imagined hanging was a tragic thing when it happened to the baby you’d once cradled in your arms.

She gathered the belongings Aaron had requested and closed the door behind her. She walked back down Grand Avenue. Now that she’d seen the suit and the bay rum and the watch, she felt as if she knew him somewhat better. She didn’t stop to wonder at any of it. All her discoveries really proved was that attempted murderers read the Bible and smelled good and had mamas at home who loved them, too.

* * *

Aaron thought he’d go crazy waiting for Uley to get back to the jailhouse. He’d never heard anything so good as the sound of her soft voice in the front office. Harris and Uley came back to his cell together. “Here’s your writing supplies,” the marshal said, eyeing him. “You aren’t going to use that quill pen for a getaway weapon, are you?”

“No, sir,” Aaron answered with mock respect. “I’m gonna write a letter, Marshal. Do you have any problem with that?”

The marshal didn’t answer that question. He changed the subject instead. “Mawherter says you’ve got to settle up down at the Grand Central. I’ll take you up there next Tuesday so you can pay him.”

“That’s real kind.”

It became increasingly clear the marshal wasn’t of a mind to leave them, so Uley made the only comment she could think of. “You’ve got a nice suit, Mr. Brown. You want me to make sure the undertaker buries you in it?”

“Doesn’t matter to me any,” he told her, clearly wanting to be free of both of them so that he could begin his last correspondence. “Doesn’t matter what clothes I’m wearing. I won’t be around to see it.”

* * *

Harris Olney waited until Uley left the jailhouse before he went storming back into Aaron’s presence. “You’d better start thinking before you get innocents like Uley Kirkland involved in this,” he growled.

“I have a letter to write,” Aaron stated calmly. “Uley was the only person I could convince to go down to the Grand Central and get my things.”

Harris scowled at his prisoner. “I know you’re writing Elizabeth.”

“I surely am.”

“I knew it, Brown!” Harris said. “I’ll be glad when Judge Murphy comes over Alpine Pass and I can stop looking at your dirty hide. What’re you going to tell Beth?”

“The bad news. That I’m going on to eternity and I’m not taking you with me.”

Harris stomped out, and Aaron could hear him in the office, slamming drawers and cussing until, finally, the room grew quiet. Aaron Brown stood behind the bars, waiting. He knew what was coming next.

Harris returned. “No need to involve that kid Kirkland in this anymore,” he said. “I can post that letter for you on the afternoon supply wagon.”

Aaron stood there and laughed at him. “Sure you will. You’ll post it right into the rubbish bin. Uley’s going to do it. I’m going to make sure this letter stays safe from you.”

“What kind of a hold do you have over Uley, anyway?” the marshal asked. “How are you getting that kid to take such good care of you?”

Aaron couldn’t help grinning. He wouldn’t breathe a word to Olney. He’d promised her, after all. “Guess Uley just feels responsible for what’s going to happen to me come Wednesday morning.” He sat down, pen in hand, and started scribbling, and Harris finally left him alone.

“My dearest, dearest Beth,” Aaron wrote, beginning his letter. He didn’t have much time, but even so, he paused for a moment. He found joy in finally placing his words upon paper. He rolled the pen between his fingers and then dipped it again into the ink. Ah, he thought. Indeed the pen is mightier than the sword.

He began to write again.

I hope this letter reaches you posthaste. It is difficult to write, little one. You see, your Aaron is bound for the promised land, and very soon. I fear that Harris Olney has won out over us at last.

I know your tearful advice was given in love; however, I could not heed your wise words. You know what I came here to do. I did not succeed. I did succeed in placing myself in a good deal of trouble. I was thwarted in my efforts to capture Olney by a do-gooder who jumped upon me when my six-shooter was pointed directly at Olney’s back. (Yes, believe it, even out here in the lawless gold country, a few do-gooders have found their way.) The only law and order in this place is Harris Olney himself, and a faceless judge who is due to come back and convict me on Tuesday. My demise is scheduled for Wednesday.

I love you, dear heart. I write this so that you may have an answer to the questions you would have entertained when I did not return. Will there be a potluck supper next Wednesday night? Please have everyone at church pray for me that evening at services, even though I will already be gone.

Dear heart, break this gently to Mama.

Thank you for being such a precious and gentle spirit.

All my love,

Aaron

He stopped writing and gazed out the window at the sky. As the hours passed, he found it harder and harder to believe an angel of mercy would come to Tin Cup and snatch him out of his jail cell.

He turned away from the window.

He reread the letter, folded it and slipped it inside the fancy blue envelope he knew Elizabeth would recognize in the stack of mail just as soon as it came off the stage at Fort Collins.

With a flourish, he addressed it to her: Elizabeth Calderwood, Flying S Ranch, Fort Collins, Colorado.

Chapter Three

Uley was so mad right now, she wanted to spit in the dirt. All morning long she’d let her head grow bigger by the minute, thinking Aaron Brown was writing some important correspondence about his crime to the governor of Colorado—only to find out he had been wasting his time doing this instead.

The letter was addressed in the neatest handwriting she’d ever seen from a man, all perfectly drawn, without so much as one blot: Elizabeth Calderwood, Flying S Ranch, Fort Collins, Colorado.

She wanted to just spit in the dirt.

Uley decided Aaron Brown would go to his grave next week getting everything he could from her. Uley had heard the marshal offer, in as gentlemanly a way as possible, to post the letter so that Uley wouldn’t be put out of any more time. But Mr. Aaron Brown would have none of it. He’d made her promise, right there in front of the marshal, that she would deliver it herself and wait to see it safely out of town.

So here she stood, mad enough to hurt something, watching for the supply wagon to head out over Alpine Pass.

Elizabeth Calderwood. Uley didn’t know why it irked her so that he had taken up her whole day, said it was something important, then posted a letter that must be a gushing goodbye letter to some girl he’d been sparking back home. She thought about the aftershave and the handsome black suit and figured some girl would probably fall for him if she knew him all gussied up and smelling good. Too bad Miss Elizabeth Calderwood couldn’t see him now, all stinking and mean down in that jail, and being held for murder. Uley bet seeing him like that would take the stars out of any woman’s eyes.

“Yah!” Lester McClain hollered at the mules as he shook the reins and urged his freight team forward.

“Any snow up there?” somebody called to him as he pulled out of town, headed for the road that disappeared into the pine trees.

“Nope,” Lester shouted back. “Those drifts at the top are almost gone. The pass is clear all the way to St. Elmo.”

Uley watched as the horses tugged the wagon loaded with freight and passengers up Washington Avenue...toward the first bend in the road...up into the lush green stand of lodgepole pines that stood sentry at the edge of town.

There.

His ridiculous gush letter was gone and on its way.

Aaron Brown was none of her concern anymore.

* * *

But four days later, just after Lester McClain arrived back in across the 12,154-foot pass with a bag of incoming mail, the sky above Tin Cup turned gray as pewter and the wind started howling down through the gold hills like something alive. By three that afternoon, when snowflakes as big around as tea cozies started falling, everybody figured they were in for one of those late-spring storms that everybody talked about, the kind that caught everybody unawares, the kind of storm that killed things.

Aaron Brown stood at the window in the Tin Cup town jail, looking out at the snowflakes, thinking this was the last snowfall he would ever see. What part of this is Your purpose, Lord? What’s the point of teaching me humility if I’m not going to be around to be humble? And then for some reason, his mind traveled to Miss Uley Kirkland.

What would it be like, he wondered, to pretend you were a person of a different gender? Why, he wondered, would she do it? Perhaps she concealed some horrible disfigurement somewhere, although Aaron couldn’t imagine where it might be. She looked perfect to him, at least when he overlooked the fact that she was wearing a man’s work pants. She was small, but she was brave, as stout-hearted as anything else that survived in this harsh territory.

She had certainly bested him.

Aaron felt, just then, as if he’d come a far, far piece from home.

* * *

Upstairs, above Ongewach’s Saloon on Washington Avenue, Santa Fe Moll gave her girls their nightly talking-to.

“Moll,” Wishbone Mabel said, “look at it snowing outside. Nobody’s going to come looking for entertainment tonight. Nobody’s going to be able to find this place tonight.”

“Won’t do,” Moll said, narrowing her eyebrows and shaking her head at all of them, “when miners start showing up and you’re all sitting around like you ain’t expecting anybody to be here because of the snow. There you are in calico, that will never do. You must look good, be clean, and smell sweet, just like true ladies. Now get going and get into them silk dresses!”

As they all groaned and moved in the direction of their rooms, Tin Can Laura scanned the place. “Where’s Joe? I don’t see him.”

“He’s probably downstairs in the kitchen, looking for scraps,” Mabel answered. “He always goes down there this time of night.”

Laura gathered her skirts and took the steps running. “Hey, Joe! Hey, kitty! Come on up here!”

Joe, who was due to have kittens just about any day, was the only living thing in the world Laura loved. A saloon patron had given her the calico cat for Christmas back when she’d been a Pitkin girl. Because of Joe, Laura stayed welcome wherever she wanted to go. The mama cat always proved an excellent mouser.

“Snow’s coming heavier,” Cook said as Laura got downstairs. “I’m betting people outside can’t even see where they’re going.”

“One thing’s for certain,” Charles Ongewach commented. “No freight wagon will be coming in over Alpine Pass tomorrow. And wouldn’t you know, McClain was supposed to bring over my new piano. I’ve been lookin’ forward to it ever since that old miner Scheer danced on mine with his hobnailed boots.”

“Judge Murphy won’t make it in, either,” Cook said. “Aaron Brown’s hanging is going to have to wait.”

Laura came up beside them. “Either of you seen Joe? It’s almost time to open up, and I’ve got to lock her in my room.”

“Sure have,” Cook said. “She came down here meowing to get out before the storm started. I let her out the door and ain’t seen her since.”

Laura grabbed her shawl off a hook by the door and draped it across her shoulders. “I’ve got to find her.”

Charles Ongewach donned his coat, too. “Here. Take a rope, Laura. Tie yourself to the building, or you won’t find your way back. I’m right behind you.”

Charles stayed close to the side of the building, feeling his way along the rough-hewn logs until he rounded the corner, calling for the cat at the top of his lungs. Laura started straight out across Washington Avenue, or what she thought was Washington Avenue, with the rope knotted around her waist. In the shelter of the saloon, the gale had seemed overrated. But when Laura reached the street, the icy whorl hit her full in the face. The wind whipped around her, sucking away her breath. Snow pelted her face. Within moments, the shawl covering her head was weighted with ice that clung like molten glass.

Laura struggled on. “Kitty. Joe! Here, kitty.”

As she reached the middle of the street, horses loomed up beside her. At the same time, she heard the doleful cry of a cat. “Joe!” She tried to rush forward, but the rope stopped her. She released the shawl and fumbled with the knot at her bodice. “Joe!”

The knot fell away.

She dropped the rope and rushed toward the sound.

Laura found Joe howling in the middle of the avenue, her stubby fur coated with thin ice. “Joe...” She scooped the frightened animal into her arms and turned toward Ongewach’s.

The snow came stinging from every direction.

She couldn’t see more than six inches in front of her face.

“Charles?” Her words died away in the fierce bray of the wind. Joe struggled against her, clawing at her inside the shawl.

The rope couldn’t be more than five steps in this direction.

She took the steps. But the rope wasn’t there.

She turned once, remembering the horses that had just passed along the street. “Help,” she screamed against the wind. “I cain’t find my way.”

Uley and Sam, on their way home from the mine, kept their horses moving flank to flank, the huge animals snorting over and over again as their nostrils filled with snow. Uley thought she heard someone calling but she couldn’t be sure.

“Don’t think we should stop,” Sam leaned into his horse’s neck for warmth. “No human would be out on this road. You must’ve heard an animal.”

Uley hollered above the wind. “We’re on this road.”

“Guess you’re right.”

“Which way?”

“Don’t disorient your horse,” Sam said. “Rein him in and back him straight up beside me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Very slowly, the horses backed up, obeying the commands of their riders, until Sam felt a hand on his leg. The sound had grown louder now, a young girl crying. “I cain’t find my way. Came out here to fetch this foolish cat.”

She appeared behind and to the left of them, materializing like a vision in the swirling snow. “You one of those girls from Moll’s place?” Sam hollered. But it didn’t really matter who she was. They couldn’t leave her out here to freeze.

She nodded.

“Come on up.”

Sam reached a hand down for her and pulled her across his saddle. She sat sideways in front of him, her frozen skirt in icy folds against the horse’s neck.

“You two taking me back? I’ve got to be dressed in silk and smelling nice in half an hour.”

“We’re not taking you back,” Sam said. “The horses know where we are. I’m not doing anything to confuse them. You’ll have to get back later.”

“But I’ll be missing a whole night’s wages.” She glowered at Uley across the front of the horse, still clutching the cat in her shawl.

She looked like a lost cat herself, scraggly and frozen, not the sort of girl Uley would ever have associated with if she had stayed in Ohio. She and her pa shouldn’t talk to a hurdy-gurdy woman. But Jesus would have spoken to a girl like her, Uley thought, wanting to show her how much He cared about her.

Sam and Uley rode without speaking the rest of the way. When they finally tethered their mounts outside the little cabin on Willow Street, Uley thought coming home had never felt so good. They went inside, and Sam lit the lamps while Uley started a fire in the cookstove. “Here,” Uley said while Sam went back outside to unsaddle the horses. “I’ll heat you up some water, and you can get a bath in there. If you don’t mind a pair of knickers and a fellow’s shirt, I can get you some dry clothes, too.” Looking at the girl, she decided they were just about the same size.

“I never wore a fella’s clothes before. Don’t know if I should.”

“They’ll be dry and warm.” Uley shot her a little smile and filled the kettle. “That’s all that matters, you know. What’s your name?”

“Laura.”

“You got a last name?”

“Nope. Just Laura.”

Uley stopped short. She knew Laura. She knew every detail about her. She felt the horrible burning of a blush again as she asked the question. “You’re Tin Can Laura, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” the girl answered. “That’s me.” She studied Uley’s red face, not without some discomfort of her own. “You’re awful young to know about hurdy-gurdy girls.”

“Everybody in Tin Cup knows about hurdy-gurdy girls.”

“I figure so.”

“You’re awful young to be one.” Uley thought, Why, with all the stories I’ve heard about her, she’s no more than a young girl like me.

Joe clamored to be let out of the shawl. “You think it’d be okay if I let my cat out?”

“Sure.”

The two of them sat on the floor together while the water in the kettle warmed, watching Joe stalk across the floor as if Laura had just put her through the most demeaning ordeal a cat could ever undergo.

“He’s a nice cat,” Uley said.

“A nice cat that’s gonna have kittens any day.”

They looked at each other and, for some reason, started laughing. “What a crazy thing,” Uley said, almost giggling and giving herself away. “A cat named Joe who’s gonna have babies.”

“You want one of them?” Laura asked. “Moll wants me to sell ’em. She says I could get twenty-five bucks apiece for them, because everybody needs mousers.”

Uley shook her head. “I’d love one. But I sure don’t have money like that.”

“I’d give you one. Since you and your pa picked me up and got me warm. I’d tell Moll it was a thank-you present. She’ll make me give her half the money, anyway. She always does.”

Uley’s eyes widened. “For the work you do?”

“Yeah.”

The kettle was making tinny noises on the stove and Uley knew the water was ready to boil. She stood up to pour it into the deep tin tub in the corner.

“Are you Uley Kirkland?” Laura asked.

“Sure am.”

“Thought that’s who you were. I’ve heard all about you at Ongewach’s, how you jumped on that man that was trying to kill the marshal last week.”

“You have?”

“Yep. Everybody in town knows you. They all say it’s amazing, because you’re such a little thing, without so much as peach fuzz on your chin, jumping on a murderer and getting him down.”

“Is that so?”

“They say you’re just about too good for your britches, never coming into Frenchy’s or Ongewach’s, always talking to them about committing their lives to Jesus and such.”

“Your water’s ready. Come get your bath.”

“That Aaron Brown, he’s one amazing fellow. He was up at Ongewach’s the night before he tried to do the shooting, playing cards and all dressed up and smellin’ good. I’ve got to tell you, it’s too bad he done what he done. He was the best-looking, best-smelling man we’ve had in that place for the longest time.”

It irked Uley, having everybody always talking about Aaron Brown. “Well, he’s sure not smelling very good now.”

“Nope. I bet not.”

Uley hung up two quilts so that Laura could have some privacy. She grabbed some of her own things out of a drawer. “Put these on when you get done. That way you won’t catch your death.”

Laura’s eyes met hers. “Thanks, Uley. I’ve never had anybody take care of me, not since I was little and my mama did it.”

Uley turned away, feigning propriety. She didn’t want Laura to see her face just then. She didn’t have a ma to take care of her, either. “Did your mama die?”

“Yeah,” Laura answered as Uley heard her sinking into the warm tub. “She did. Did yours?”

“She died coming out here.”

“This is real hard country for womenfolk,” Laura said. “That’s why there ain’t any real fine ladies in this town. This is real hard country for ladies.”

* * *

Aaron Brown had never been so glad to see a wet spring snowstorm in all his days. It seemed as if somebody up there was on his side, after all. The snow fell and fell, and by the end of the second day, Olney came in and regretfully told him what he’d figured out already. It would be another week or two before the pass opened and the hanging judge came back into town.

That was sure fine news to Aaron.

Word of the storm and what had happened all over town filtered in, even into the jailhouse. Charles Ongewach had gotten frostbite on his nose trying to find one of Moll’s girls in the blizzard. The mines had closed for two days. Jason Farley had never made it back to his cabin. Everybody figured he’d frozen to death looking for new calves. The county would send out a search party for his body as soon as the snow started to melt. Wasn’t any sense doing it before then.

Uley stopped by to see Aaron once, eight days after the storm, toting a bucket of hot beef pies. “Thought I’d just come by to see you,” she said after Olney let her in. She wasn’t exactly sure why she’d come. She just kept thinking how Laura had talked about him looking good. She decided she’d just go back to make sure he hadn’t gotten any ideas about sharing her secret with anyone. And she felt sorry for him, sitting in jail all cooped up and waiting for Judge Murphy to come. “I brought you some pasties.”

The pasties smelled like heaven to Aaron. “Did you make these?”

“Yeah.”

They stood and looked at each other through the bars. He smiled at her, showing his gratitude, and Uley decided she could forget how he’d blackmailed her so he could send that letter. He didn’t look nearly as good as Laura made him out to be, but his eyes were just as blue as the sky on a June day. Uley looked at his eyes the longest time. She decided she liked them.

“What are you staring at now?” But he was staring at her, too.

“You’d better eat those before they get cold.”

He sat down and obliged her, hoping that, if she saw how eagerly he ate, she might come visit and bring food again. “Don’t know why you did this,” he said. “Nobody’s ever brought me food in jail before.”

“You ever been in jail before? Or is this your first time?” She guessed he wasn’t a hardened criminal. Hardened criminals didn’t carry watches from their mothers and bay rum and Bibles.

“Nope. Never until now.” He decided to make conversation with her between chomps. “I’ve heard all sorts of stories in here this week.”

“Yeah. That weather took everybody by surprise.”

“It’s too bad about Jason Farley.”

“They’re gonna bury him up on the Catholic hill. As soon as it thaws and they find his body, that is.” The Tin Cup cemetery had three hills for burying—the Catholic hill, the Protestant hill and Boot Hill.

“You figure I could talk them into burying me on the Protestant hill?” he asked her. The question seemed to come from nowhere, but he’d been thinking about it all night long. “I used to go to church.”

But Uley shook her head. “Nope. It’ll be Boot Hill for you, Aaron Brown. Although they probably wish they could bury you on the Protestant hill. There’s lots more room there. Boot Hill is running over.”

He laid the remainder of the pasty on the cloth napkin. He wasn’t too hungry anymore, come to think about it.

Uley realized she was staring at him. She lowered her gaze to the ground.

Her unconsciously ladylike action made him think of one other story he’d heard this week. “So you and your father rescued Tin Can Laura out in the snowstorm.”

Uley raised her eyes to his again, and this time she was smiling. “She was out looking for her cat. Joe just had kittens yesterday. Laura’s going to give me one. There’s a gray one I’m going to name Storm. I’ve already been over there to pick it out.”

Aaron couldn’t help grinning. So that was where the rumors had come from. When he started laughing, it came out as a belly laugh, pure and simple. “Everybody in town’s saying you’re sweet on her, Uley. Everybody’s saying that’s why you finally set foot into Moll’s place.”

“What?” She gripped the bars, evidently not totally understanding what he was saying. When she finally figured it out, her face turned as pink as the roses he remembered from back home.

He liked it when she blushed. He hated to admit it, even to himself, that was why he’d told her the sordid story in the first place. He’d known what it would do. He’d known she would look all embarrassed and soft and vulnerable, despite her woolen pants and the funny little hat she wore to cover all that hair. He enjoyed exposing her femininity. He liked knowing a secret no one else did.

“Mr. Brown,” she said, sounding every bit the schoolmarm. “You mustn’t let them say that.”

“I don’t have any influence on what they say,” he reminded her. “I’m locked up here in the jailhouse. I just hear everything.”

“If you hear anything else like that,” she said, “don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to know.” She shoved the napkin inside the bucket she’d used to carry the pasties and she turned to depart.

He stood behind the bars, just grinning at her, just grinning at everything. Despite his bleak future, Aaron decided it felt good to have a true young lady to tease, something to occupy his time and amuse him, as he whiled away his last days.

* * *

Uley didn’t know why she bothered being nice to Aaron Brown. The man was a scoundrel, a known criminal bent on having fun with his secret at her expense. A proper man didn’t tell a proper woman such stories. But then, she thought, correcting herself, she wasn’t exactly a proper woman. For one minute, and one minute only, she let herself picture Mr. Aaron Brown. She pictured his twinkling blue eyes as he’d asked her about Laura. She pictured the way his smile had turned up more on one side than on the other as he teased her. This was his appeal, certainly. He was the only person in Tin Cup, Colorado—besides her father—who treated her like what she really was. He was decidedly irksome. And handsome. But not decidedly handsome. Even so, she figured, he would clean up real nice for his funeral.

Just as Uley reached her bay gelding, a shout rose from out in the street. “Supply wagon’s coming in! They’ve got the pass open!”

It seemed as if everywhere Uley looked, she saw people racing up Grand Avenue to meet the wagon. Here it came, winding its way down through the lodgepole pines, its wheels clattering over the rocks in the road. Nine days had gone by since the wagon had last brought supplies and mail from the outside world. Uley ran, too, wanting to see everything coming in from St. Elmo. As the team pulled to a halt in front of the town hall, she heard a murmur pass through the crowd. “Murphy’s on that wagon. We’ll have a trial tomorrow, for sure.”

Judge Murphy. She’d forgotten all about Judge Murphy. Her stomach felt as if it had dipped down to her toes. Tomorrow would come Aaron Brown’s trial. The next day would come his hanging.

Uley wondered if she should run back and tell him. But she halted where she stood. The muttering and swearing in the streets stopped. Instead, every man surrounding the wagon started whispering.

“Well, I’ll be...”

“What on earth is that?”

“Don’t believe it. Just plum don’t believe it.”

The first thing Uley saw coming out of the wagon was a skirt the same color as Aaron Brown’s eyes, all fluffed out and as big around as a tepee. The next thing she saw was an extended arm, the hand covered by a delicate white-laced glove.

Every man in the street took his hat off. Every one, that is except Uley, of course.

“Well, I’ll be,” somebody whispered next to her. “I ain’t seen a gal like that since I left Nebraska.”

The woman alighted, holding her skirts just high enough to keep them from dragging in the slush. She looked just like a picture from Uley’s one tattered, hidden copy of Gordon’s, which her Aunt Delilah had mailed to her from Ohio. The woman’s skin glowed as white and smooth as a porcelain pitcher. Her thick golden ringlets clenched together like a fistful of cattails and gathered in a blue bow high on the back of her head. As McClain lowered her bandbox to the ground, at least twenty men moved forward to help her.

What would it be like to wear a dress like that? Uley thought. It made her waist look so tiny, Uley didn’t know how she could even take air into her lungs. Great folds of cloth hung in full loops against the small of her back.

“Hello,” the woman said, in a light, melodic voice, tilting her head like a little bird at the group of men standing mesmerized in the mud. She was so pretty she even took Uley’s breath away. “My name is Elizabeth Calderwood. Could one of you gentlemen direct me to a lawyer’s office? I’ve come to hire someone to defend Mr. Aaron Brown.”

Chapter Four

So this was Elizabeth Calderwood—in the flesh! So this was the gal who’d gotten the blue, perfectly penned goodbye letter Mr. Aaron Brown had been so desperate to get out of Tin Cup!

Uley stood right smack in the middle of the road, one hand clenched around her horses’ reins, watching the men of Tin Cup compete over the new arrival the way a hungry dog would over a bone. Charlie Hastings took it upon himself to step forward and direct Miss Calderwood up Washington Avenue toward the Pacific Hotel. There she went, her skirts dipping back and forth like a chiming school bell, her head held high, with all those yellow curls hanging down her back like bedsprings.

If Elizabeth Calderwood knew she was leading a parade up the street, she took no notice of it. Every man there, every single one of them, followed her.

Elizabeth Calderwood stepped into the Pacific Hotel and, as the little front room filled with awestruck men, made her way to the desk. Pacific Hotel, the handcarved sign read. Frank Emerson, Proprietor. First-Class in Every Respect.

“I’d like to pay for a room for two weeks, Mr. Emerson,” she said in a voice so light and high she might have been singing.

She could have paid for a room for two years, so many men pulled gold pouches out of their pockets to help.

“No, but thank you, gentlemen.” She waved them away, holding aloft one tiny gloved hand and acting as if she attracted this much attention each day of her life. “I’m perfectly able to pay my own expenses.”

Five men volunteered to carry her one trunk up the stairs to the room Emerson assigned her. The remainder of the throng milled about in the tiny lobby, waiting for her to descend the stairs.

When she did, she flounced out into the street again. Everyone else clomped right along behind her. She marched past the sign reading J. C. Theobald, The Cobbler, and into the building marked Otto Violet, Attorney-at-Law and Notary Public, Tin Cup, Colorado. Twenty minutes later, she emerged. She opened the lace parasol she carried and twirled it high over her head, striding purposefully toward the Grand Central Hotel. Mawherter’s eyes about popped out of his head when he saw what came prancing in through his front door. “Good day, sir,” she said. “I’m here to pay off Mr. Brown’s bill.”

“The name’s Mawherter. D. J. Mawherter. At—at your service, ma’am.”

“I’d like to have Mr. Brown’s belongings. May I send someone up to get them?”

“Yes, certainly.” The way Mawherter leaped to assist her, you would have thought the Queen of England had entered his front lobby.

She deposited a fair amount of money on his ink blotter, and he swept it away. This time, seven men accompanied her to bring down Aaron Brown’s one trunk and one satchel.

Elizabeth Calderwood certainly had no qualms about going through his personal things, Uley thought, remembering with renewed consternation the bay rum...the Bible...the unmentionables that she should never have caught a glimpse of.

Elizabeth directed the men toward the Pacific Hotel. “Place them in my room, please. I’m certain Mr. Brown will have need of these items later.”

“You’re staying at the Pacific?” Mawherter asked her, goggle-eyed. He sucked in his breath and raised himself to his full height. Uley couldn’t help thinking he looked like a rooster about to flap his wings. “We cannot have a fine lady such as yourself staying anywhere else except right here. I’ll gladly give you a discount....”

Elizabeth smiled graciously. “I’m already quite comfortable at the Pacific, Mr. Mawherter.”

Her business clearly settled, Elizabeth Calderwood turned and asked directions to the jailhouse.

Everybody answered at once.

Surprisingly enough, Elizabeth Calderwood seemed to have a fine head atop her shoulders. She sorted through all their mumbling and ended up going exactly the right way.

“That gal’s about the prettiest gal I’ve ever seen,” Charlie Hastings whispered.

“Seeing a woman like that is enough to make you clean up every once in a while, isn’t it?” Dave McNalley joined in.

Uley had never dreamed grown men could act this way. As Elizabeth Calderwood proceeded toward the jailhouse, she hung back, wondering what it would feel like to get so much attention. The attention she’d gotten after she’d jumped on Aaron Brown and sent him flying was one thing. This was more than mere respect. This was awe. She figured it would be nice to have men—a man—look at her that way. She figured it would be nice to walk with petticoats swishing against her ankles like stream water. She figured it would be nice to have her hair bounce free at the nape of her neck and have curls encircled with ribbons.

She wondered what it would feel like to peer into a store window at all the fineries that a genuine lady expected, and to admit to yourself and to everybody around you that you would enjoy having such things.

It had been bad enough thinking of Aaron Brown inside that jail, knowing he was fully aware of her secret. Now, here came Elizabeth Calderwood prancing into town, making her think of any number of feminine practices! As Uley left behind the gaggle of men proceeding along the streets, she wondered what it might feel like to love a man who was going to die by hanging. Uley didn’t figure that was anything she’d ever have to know.

* * *

“Just look at you, Aaron Brown,” Elizabeth said, her nose stuck between two iron bars, her hands reaching to a place on either side of his face. “I’ve never seen anybody who needed to see a bucket of bathwater so badly.”

He grimaced. “It’s true. If I’d known you were coming out here, I’d have put on my best Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. Best not touch me with your gloves, Beth. I’ll get them dirty.”

“Who cares.” She laughed and encased his grimy cheeks with all her fingers. “I’ve come two hundred and fifty miles in a supply wagon and you’re worried about me getting my gloves dirty? I thought I might never see you alive again. Just let me keep looking at your face.”

He sighed, a long, forlorn chuff of air. “Here I am, still waiting to hang. You’ve got at least one more day to look at my face all you want to.”

“I might even have longer than that, Aaron. I’ve hired a lawyer for your defense.” She saw his horrified expression and went right on talking. She wasn’t going to give him the chance to holler at her for spending all that money. “I’ve also taken care of your charges down at the Grand Central Hotel.”

“Please, Beth, I’m perfectly capable of defending myself.”

“Of course you are,” she said emphatically, at last drawing her hands away from him. “That’s why you wrote me a letter to explain why you were already dead.”

He opened his mouth here, then clamped it shut again. She did offer a good argument.

“No,” she said, seeing his response. “We aren’t going to do it your way. You’re worth so much more to me than that.”

“I didn’t want you coming here. That isn’t the reason I wrote.”

Tears gathered in her eyes. It was the first time in two weeks she’d let herself cry about this. She’d been afraid after she got his letter that she’d start bawling like a mama cow and she’d never be able to stop. “I never would have made it in time if not for that spring snowstorm.”

“I figure,” he said quietly, “that storm was the answer to a prayer for some folks.”

“An answer to a great many of them. How on earth did you get a letter posted so quickly?”

Aaron smiled at her through the bars, once more thinking of Uley. “I found someone who would help me.”

“So you said.”

“A youngster. Uley.” It was all he was going to say to her. He’d promised Uley never to reveal her secret. With all she’d done, she’d earned his vow. And by the solid ground under his feet, he would keep it with Beth, too. He heard someone coming toward them. “That’ll be Olney,” he told Beth.

He didn’t have time to say anything else. The marshal himself came in and gripped Elizabeth’s arm.

“Harris,” she said.

Eyes on eyes. Cold on cold. Like steel locked up against steel.

“Beth,” Olney said. “I tried to keep you from getting involved in this.”

“Aren’t you going to welcome me to Tin Cup, Harris?”

“Don’t reckon I will. I’m not real glad to see you.”

“Didn’t figure you would be.”

“Why did you let him follow me all the way out here? You’re the one with the cool head on your shoulders.”

“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, Harris. It isn’t a woman’s place to stand in the way.” Remembering the matter at hand, Beth untied the strings of her reticule. “Now tell me the amount of his bail so we can get paid up.”

Aaron stood behind her, looking at Olney over one of her delicate chintz-clad shoulders. Harris looked back and forth between the matching sets of eyes, both stubborn, both just as blue and clear as the water running down Willow Creek.

“You’re a stubborn woman, Elizabeth.”

“You did set bail, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did,” he said. “I just didn’t figure on anybody being around to meet it.”

“You’d best give me the figure, Harris.”

He stuck out his palm. “I just raised it to five hundred dollars.”

“All right, then,” she said boldly, handing him the bills. “Here it is.”

Aaron raked his fingers through his hair. “You shouldn’t be walking around with that much money. Anyone might have robbed you.” Fully half the people around here were no-good or bandits, come here to Tin Cup to chase the elusive promise of gold. They’d just as soon get money jumping someone in the streets as digging holes in the mountains.

Elizabeth laughed at him. “There are thirty men out in front of the jailhouse waiting to escort me to my next destination. I don’t suppose it would be safe for any one of them to ‘jump on me,’ Aaron. There would be twenty-nine others waiting to bring the one to justice. Now, Harris, I suggest you bring the key and unlock Aaron so that we may be on our way.”

Olney grudgingly obliged. “If it was up to me,” he grumbled, “I wouldn’t be letting you out, Brown.”

Elizabeth held out one gloved palm. “I’d like a receipt for my bail money, Harris.”

“We don’t have anything as fancy as receipts.”

“I would like a guarantee on my money. When Aaron shows up for his trial, I want every cent of it back.”

“Women! We don’t have any paper.” Elizabeth pulled two sheets of onionskin paper from her purse and handed them to Olney. The marshal hung the keys back on the peg, dipped his pen in the inkwell and began to scribble.

I, Aaron—a blotch—Brown, do solemnly swear to be at the Tin Cup Town Hall for the trial—another blotch—murdering Marshal Harris Olney by shooting him in the back.

“How can you write something about me murdering you? You’re standing right in front of me wording the thing.”

“Well, I’ve got to make you sign something now that I’ve turned you loose. Got to make sure you’ll come back for the trial.”

“Here.” Aaron reached for a second sheet of paper. “I’ll write it.”

“You go right ahead.” Harris dipped the pen and handed it to him.

I, Aaron Brown, do solemnly swear to appear at the Tin Cup Town Hall on the scheduled date at the scheduled hour to attend a trial in the court of law...

“Confound it.” Harris spit a wad of tobacco into the brass spittoon in the corner. “That’s enough already. Sign your name to it and be done.”

“Very well.” Aaron brandished the pen.

“Don’t forget about my receipt,” Elizabeth reminded the marshal, handing him another sheet of paper.

“I do hereby—blotch—acknowledge receipt of $500 for the bail of Aaron Brown. The money—blotch—be returned to Elizabeth Calderwood when Aaron Brown arrives to attend his trial. Signed on this day, April 25th, in the—blotch—year of 1882. Marshal Harris Olney.”

“Thank you, Marshal,” Elizabeth said, retrieving it victoriously and waving it so that the ink would dry. “We’ll see you on the day of the trial.”

“The trial is two days from now, Beth. We’ll expect Aaron there at nine on Thursday morning. I figure the hanging will be Friday.”

“We’ll see, Harris. We’ll see.”

“Beth.” Aaron touched her delicate, straight back with one of his grimy hands. “We’d best be leaving.”

Together, they marched out into the street where Elizabeth’s thirty-some-odd admirers were still waiting with profound patience.

“Show’s over, gentlemen.” Aaron kept his hand on the buttons at her waist. “The lady’s with me.”

“She won’t be with you very long, Brown,” Lesser Levy shouted. “Better enjoy the lady’s company until Friday. After that, it’ll be somebody else’s turn.”

“Ignore them,” Aaron whispered to her, pulling her closer.

“I have been.”

“Wish Olney had given me my gun back.”

“I can certainly see why he didn’t.”

“Where do you have us?”

“I’ve moved you to the Pacific Hotel. Thought it might be quieter over there.”

“I’m surprised Frank Emerson would let me stay there, being suspected of murder and all.”

“He doesn’t know you’ll be there, Aaron. I booked my room first. The way everyone acted when I came into town, I figured it would be a fair trade for Mr. Emerson. Figured they’d do anything to house a lady. If he gives me a fight when you book your room, I’ll just tell him I’d just as soon stay down at the Grand Central.”

Aaron had to smile at her. So Elizabeth wasn’t above concocting a bit of blackmail on her own.

They walked up the street toward Otto Violet’s law office, their heads together as they whispered, the hem of Beth’s sky-blue skirt flipping in the breeze, Aaron’s hand planted firmly against the small of her back, his fingers splayed against the fabric.

* * *

Uley rode behind them, astraddle one of the Gold Cup’s mules. She stopped Old Croppy dead in the middle of Washington Avenue. She felt something horrible down deep in her stomach, a grinding...as if she hadn’t had enough to eat...as if her belly wanted to consume itself. It wasn’t bad enough watching everyone following Elizabeth Calderwood all over Tin Cup. Now that Aaron Brown was out of jail, she’d have to watch the two of them sashaying along the streets, so happy to be together they might as well be at a barn dance instead of planning a defense at a trial.

Well, she’d just pretend she didn’t care. She didn’t care that Elizabeth Calderwood was the prettiest thing on two legs. She didn’t care that Aaron Brown walked along with his hand on Elizabeth Calderwood’s back as if he owned the whole town.

The problem was, she’d enjoyed having Aaron Brown all to herself, locked up behind bars, where she could talk to him.

Uley figured she was jealous. Only problem was, she couldn’t figure out exactly what she was jealous about.

She’d come to town to buy supplies for Carl Hord and Captain Hall up at the Gold Cup. They wouldn’t take kindly to her being gone this long. She knew she had to start up Old Croppy and ride him right by those two lovebirds on the street.

She kicked the mule once, and he bolted forward. She sat as straight as a new nail on his back, her knees locked around his bloated stomach, her hat pulled low over eyes that didn’t look anywhere except straight down her nose.

The old mule walked right past Elizabeth and Aaron, his hooves sinking into the mud from the melted snow. Uley adjusted the seat of her britches in the saddle, knowing full well that she was covered with mud and mine dust. Would Aaron Brown stop her? Would he offer a kind word? Assuredly not. But still, for some absurd reason, her heart pounded as hard as a miner’s hammer.

Old Croppy threw his head back, exposed most of his green teeth and brayed.

She’d give anything if Hall and Hord hadn’t asked her to come back into town just now.

Just as she expected, Aaron Brown gave her no sign of recognition. She stopped the mule in front of Campbell, Stahl & Company and climbed off. She didn’t have to worry about looping the reins over the hitching rail. There wasn’t much of anything that would make Old Croppy move. She knew he’d be standing in exactly the same position, right where she left him, when she came out of the supply store.

Out of the corner of one eye, she saw Elizabeth Calderwood and Aaron Brown strolling toward her. She didn’t dare glance that way. She kept her eyes straight ahead, shooting in exactly the same direction as her hat brim.

Men!

She decided right then it was easier to just be one than it was to try to figure one out.

* * *

The first thing Aaron wanted to do when he saw Uley riding by on that mule was holler at her and run to her out in the street. But he couldn’t very well say the things he wanted to say with Beth standing at his side. He’d made Uley Kirkland a promise, after all.

He didn’t like keeping secrets.

He made a vow, right then and there, that he’d go after Uley just as soon as he got time to himself. He needed to offer his thanks when they were alone and bars didn’t separate them. She’d posted the letter that had brought Elizabeth to his aid. He wanted her to know he didn’t take lightly the things she’d been willing to do. Doesn’t matter whether I blackmailed her or not, he thought.

All the while Beth chattered to him, outlining the plans for his defense, Aaron kept his eyes on Uley, watching as she swung one leg over that dilapidated excuse for a mule and tramped into Campbell, Stahl & Company. Now that he knew that a young woman was hidden beneath those nubby breeches and that shapeless sweater and all that mud, he could easily see her womanly features. Uley wasn’t all blustery and big around the middle like the fellows in this camp. When he watched her walk away, she looked all small and round and full of punch—like a fawn that leaped out of nowhere, turned its tail and bounded off into the forest. A gal, no doubt about it.

Every soul walking along the street tipped a hat and spoke to Elizabeth.

No one paid any attention to Uley, whatsoever.

It made for slow going. At this rate, they’d be lucky if they walked two blocks before Otto Violet’s office closed at sundown. Aaron wondered how much of a turmoil Uley would create if she stepped out wearing skirts one morning? Skirts...on top of the silhouette he’d seen as she’d alighted from the pack mule.

It was quite a thing for a gentleman to ponder—if you could call somebody on trial for murder a gentleman. Aaron decided right then and there that he’d like to see Uley Kirkland wearing yellow muslin. Yes, yellow it would be. The color would look just perfect with that red-honey hair of hers.

Hair he’d only really seen once.

Hair he’d been dreaming of, he realized.

Before he and Elizabeth were able to move even a few yards up the street, here came Uley again, tramping out of the supply store, her miner’s boots covered with dirt, her arms full of trowels and buckets and little orange boxes of square-headed nails. She started shoving things into the leather packs on the mule’s back, shifting the weight around, pausing once or twice to eye the load and make sure it wasn’t listing to one side.

She took up the rope and began working on the diamond hitch, working the hemp around and across and over so that the leather pouches wouldn’t slip sideways. She got up almost underneath that animal and started tying knots. When she did, she glanced up, and before he could look away, she caught him staring at her, as unable to draw his eyes away from hers as a moth was unable to draw its wings from molasses.

Goodness, he should say something. But what?

Hey, Uley. You’re doing a fine job of packing that mule.

Nope. He could do nothing with Elizabeth still beside him. Elizabeth, who was nodding her head every which way, as if she were a queen acknowledging her subjects.

He placed his hand on Beth’s elbow and did the only thing he knew to do. He met Uley’s gaze again. He grinned. And he winked at her.

Aaron wasn’t used to winking at women. Just as soon as he did it, he felt himself go red in the face.

She sure didn’t wink back. She glared out at him from between the mule’s legs, her gray-green eyes pinpointing him. She looked like a wolverine that was just about to attack.

He figured he’d been crazy to picture her in a dress. With Elizabeth beside him, there did seem to be a big difference between a lady in a dress and a mud-covered young girl who didn’t want anyone to see who she really was.

Father, came the prayer from his heart. You look upon hearts and not on the outsides. Would that You didn’t know the hatred for Olney that’s in my heart. Even in the middle of my punishment for it, I cannot make it go away.

Chapter Five

“I don’t care what I told you earlier, Miss Calderwood.” Otto Violet stared across the desk at both of them, little round spectacles perched precariously on a monstrous nose that looked as if it might pitch them off at any second. He pointed to the dusty red book on his desk. “I cannot find any defense in my law records for you, Mr. Brown. You have committed an actionable offense, and I believe you should be punished for it.”

“But I’ve given you a retainer,” Elizabeth reminded him.

“That you have,” he said. “So now I’m giving it back.” He slid the money she’d given him just this morning across the desk at her. “I won’t defend Mr. Brown. You went after our town marshal, sir. That is a case of public hanging, to be certain.” He thumped the book for good measure and sent whorls of dust into the air. “I’ve been thinking of it all day. I don’t like to lose cases. It mars my reputation. Therefore, I will not take this case at all.”

“But you promised.” Beth hadn’t touched the money on his desk.

“I don’t want you to worry yourself with this any longer. Come on.” Aaron squeezed her shoulders. “We’ve other lawyers in this town to choose from. I’d rather argue on my own behalf than trust someone with my life who doesn’t trust me.”

She gathered the money into her reticule, and together they returned to the street. But Violet’s refusal to represent them had been a blow to her. “There are only two others to choose from.” She dabbed at her eyes with a perfectly folded linen handkerchief. “And of the three, Otto Violet is the best.”

“I wonder,” Aaron said speculatively, “if Harris Olney is passing his own money around in this town.”

For all intents and purposes, Aaron might have been a different man when he and Elizabeth marched into Seth Wood’s esteemed law office an hour later. He’d had his first bath in three weeks. He’d shaved, too. And he’d splashed himself with bay rum and had put on his very best Sunday suit. He hoped the physical improvements would make him look more defendable.

He held the door open for Beth as the bell tinkled sharply to announce their arrival. And, strange as it might seem, Seth Wood was sitting at his desk looking as if he’d been waiting for their arrival.

“Ain’t no use you two coming in here,” he said brusquely. “I ain’t gonna represent you, neither.”

“You all been meeting and discussing my case?” Aaron growled. “Seems like everybody’s decided not to get involved with this at once.”

“We’ve decided we won’t be crazy, that’s all.”

“Has Harris Olney been sniffing around offering to pay you money if you’ll turn me down?”

“That’s no business of yours, Brown. You know that.”

“I know what’s fair,” Aaron said. “I’m entitled to a fair trial with a jury of my peers. Doesn’t look like I’m gonna get that.” He pointed a finger right between Seth Wood’s eyes. “My blood will be on your hands, Wood.”

“Nope,” the lawyer said stiffly. “You’ve brought the blood on yourself.”

By the end of their meeting with Wood, Aaron was as mad as a bear. “Beth, there’s no use you traipsing around all day at my side. You’re going to wear yourself out and not be any good to anybody tomorrow.”

“I thought I could help.”

“Well, I don’t see that your presence is doing anybody any good.” He didn’t mean to be unkind to her. It was just that he was as frustrated as he’d ever been in his life. And he figured that, at this rate, he wouldn’t have a life very long.

How he hated to see Olney win.

“Aaron.”

“I’m takin’ you back to the Pacific Hotel. You’ve helped me by coming, Beth. If nothing else, you got me free to walk the streets for two last days before I go on to glory. At this point, I’m appreciating every extra minute I get.” He had only one more chance at a lawyer. He wasn’t placing too much hope in that one, either. He figured Harris had made a point to get to all of them before he did.

He delivered Beth to the hotel and saw her safely to her room. Then he went to visit John Kincaid, the third and last lawyer to set up business in Tin Cup.

“Now look,” he said to Kincaid when he stomped in the door and saw the man sitting with feet crossed atop his desk, just waiting for him to walk in like all the others. “I don’t like this cat-and-mouse game.”

“Neither do I,” Kincaid said, swinging his boots to the floor.

“I guess I just went and got my hopes up,” Aaron went on. “Last week, I thought I was hanging for sure. This week, I start to see possibilities. Next thing I know, those possibilities are slipping away. I’m not a trapped animal, Kincaid. I don’t take kindly to being pounced on and played with.”

Kincaid rose slowly and went to stare out the front window of his office. “Never was too fond of Harris Olney myself.”

“You’re saying you’re not gonna take his money to tell me no.”

“I’m saying I’ll decide the merits of taking your case on my own, Mr. Brown. Whoever represents you Thursday is going to have a tough go of it. Everyone’s hungry for your hanging. And everyone’s hungry for a hero. Unfortunately, you gave them one when you got tromped on by Uley Kirkland.”

“Are you saying everybody wants to hang me just for Uley’s sake?”

“It would seem a proper show of respect for what that kid did.”

“I suppose I’m in trouble.”

“You tell me something,” Kincaid said. “You tell me if you were planning on pulling that trigger.”

“Would it make any difference if I told you that I wasn’t?”

“It might make a lot of difference. It might make a lot of difference in how I look at you.”

“Okay, I wasn’t.”

“You telling the truth?”

Aaron was at the point of growling again. “I generally tell the truth, Kincaid.”

“So why were you holding a gun on the marshal’s back, Brown?”

“Because I didn’t want the marshal to shoot me first.”

“You’d be willing to tell me the whole story?”

Aaron hesitated for an instant, thinking of Elizabeth and all the things he wasn’t certain he should say. But he had no other choice now. His plan had backfired on him. And Elizabeth had already proven how much she was willing to risk by making the treacherous journey across the Continental Divide.

“I’d be willing to tell you the whole story.”

“I don’t like Olney’s money, either,” John Kincaid admitted now. “Though I find his gold dust a whole lot more tasteful than I find him. Looks like I won’t be bending to bribes.” John Kincaid pulled out a red law book that looked exactly like the ones Otto Violet and Seth Wood had been thumping earlier. “Let’s get down to business. We’ve got thirty-six hours to come up with a way to keep you from swinging high.”

* * *

Just as Uley was clearing the cobalt-blue tin plates from the table that night, a timid rap came at the front door.

Samuel rose from the table and opened it. There stood Tin Can Laura in the dark, all dressed in red silk, with a huge matching plume on her head and enough kohl on her eyes that Uley almost didn’t recognize her.

“Hello.” She cast her eyes toward the smooth-swept dirt floor. “Gotta get back to Santa Fe Moll’s. But Storm here’s been tellin’ me he wanted to come to his new place and move in. What with spring coming and all the moles coming out, you’ll be needin’ him to do his duties purty soon. Knew you wouldn’t wanta be seen with me in the broad daylight, so I figured I’d better do this tonight.”

Uley’s heart lifted when she saw her new friend.

“Laura. Get in here,” she said. “Have a piece of huckleberry pie. I was just fixing to cut it open.” It suddenly seemed so important to her, treating Laura to sweets, making her feel welcome, letting her know that this was a place she could visit.

“Nope. Can’t do it. Moll will have my hide when she finds out I left the parlor. But Storm’s been caterwaulin’ something awful. He don’t like being locked up in my room anymore. It bothers the customers, having a cat howling next door.”

“Here.” Uley took Storm out of Laura’s skirt and pitched him unceremoniously on the bed. Then she grabbed her coat. “If you’re so set on not staying, then I’ll walk you back.”

“There’s no need of it.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll do it, anyway.”

“I heard,” Laura said as they marched along through the slush, “that there’s a real lady in town.”

“Yep. She came in on the supply wagon today.”

“Everybody over at Ongewach’s is talking about her. They say she’s got eyes like cornflowers and hair like sunbeams and a waist no bigger around than a willow tree.”

“That’s what they say, all right. Everybody’s talking about her everywhere you go.”

“Wish somebody would talk about me like that,” Laura said longingly.

Uley sighed. It was a deep, hollow sigh that reached down to her very soul.

* * *

The Gold Cup Mine, owned by Captain Hall and Carl Hord of the Bald Mountain Mining Company, was the first of the fifty-six mines in the valley to call off operations on Thursday. All the miners wanted to be at the Tin Cup Town Hall, supporting Uley Kirkland as the kid testified against the man who’d tried to murder the marshal.

Hord announced the Gold Cup’s schedule at 9:20 on Wednesday morning. An hour later, others were announcing the plan, as well. The Spotted Tail would be closed. The Little Fred would be closed. So would the Ontario, the Jimmy Mack and the Anna Parallel.

“Can’t believe the Bullion King won’t be open tomorrow,” Sam said as they all worked underground on Wednesday trying to get things ready so that they could leave for two days. “Doc Gillette doesn’t even like to come out of his mine when somebody’s dying. Remember when Pete Wiley caught his beard on fire? He had to wait four hours before Doc Gillette would come up out of the Bullion King and treat his burns.”

“Well,” Charlie Sparks said, “that just goes to show you how thankful everyone in this town is to Uley. This is one important trial around here.”

“Three cheers for Uley!” someone else joined in. “Hip-hip-hooray!”

Uley kept her eye on the timber, pegging it into the corner of the rocks with hammer blows so fierce they made the granite shiver. “I don’t like being the entertainment for the rest of this town. I’d just as soon I didn’t have to go down there tomorrow.” That was the understatement of the year. “Wish somebody else could go down there and testify in my place.”

“There isn’t anyone else can tell the jury what you saw, Uley,” her pa said.

She went after the pegs even harder. “I know that.”

On Wednesday afternoon, just when Uley thought all the hoopla was about to die down, Marshal Harris Olney himself came up shaft eleven wagging a lantern out in front of him. “Uley?” he shouted so loud that loose rocks fell off the ledges above them. “Is Uley Kirkland back here?”

Back here? Back here? Back here? The sound echoed all the way up the shaft.

“I’m standing right beneath your nose, Marshal. If you holler much louder than that, you’re going to make the whole shaft cave in.”

“I need you to come outside with me, Uley. You and me, we need to have a talk.”

“I don’t see as we have anything to talk about.”

“Oh, but we do.” Olney wrapped his arm around her shoulder and propelled Uley forward. “You saved my life, remember? I’m here to offer you compensation for all your trouble.”

“And what might that compensation be?”

“I’ll tell you when we reach daylight, son,” he said.

Then, at the mouth of shaft eleven, Olney began to lay out his plan.

“I know you are just as eager to do away with that foul murderer as I am, Uley. I know you have eyewitness testimony against Aaron Brown. I’m here to encourage you not to falter in any of it. I have a hefty reward waiting for you in my office for the day Aaron Brown is hanged.”

“I don’t need a reward, Marshal,” she said, feeling an odd twinge of guilt when she thought how Aaron’s hanging would absolve her of a problem, too. “I’ll just be glad to know that justice has been done.”

* * *

It was seven o’clock that night, and Uley was finishing up her father’s washing in the tub beside the warm wood stove, when there came a sharp knock at the cabin door. Uley straightened, leaving one last flannel shirt in the water to soak, and poked all the tendrils of hair up beneath her hat.

Sam opened the door and stuck his head out into the darkness. “Hello?”

Aaron stood on the rickety porch, his Stetson brim crumpled in his fists. “I’d like to see Uley, if I may.”

Samuel cocked his head, not quite knowing if he should let the man in or coax him off the porch with his shotgun. “Why on earth would you want to see Uley on the eve of your trial?”

“If you don’t mind, sir. It’s a matter of great importance. I need some private time with her, sir.”

When Aaron said “her,” Samuel’s eyes grew as big around as the twelve-and-a-half-bit pieces everybody used for exchange down at Frenchy’s.

“Yes,” Aaron said, still wringing his hat. “I know about Uley. Didn’t mean to find out, sir, I can assure you.”

Uley stood right behind Sam in the doorway.

Clouds hid the moon and the lacy formations of stars that hung over Tin Cup when the night stayed clear. It was as dark outside as a cast-iron kettle.

“Please, Uley,” Aaron said. “Come on out. Just for a minute.”

Uley stepped around her father awkwardly, knowing that he, too, was uncertain how to deal with this. Her entire life, she’d never had a gentleman caller.

Which was understandable, seeing as how everybody in this town thought she was one herself.

“Pa,” Uley said finally, saving them all. “No one knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. If Aaron Brown wants to say something to me, this might very well be his last chance to say it.”

Sam looked up at the empty night sky, as if he were expecting to find an answer there.

“It won’t take too long,” Aaron said, jumping on the opportunity. “She’s right. It might be something I’ll never get another chance to say.”

Uley was uncertain as to how she felt about standing out on a dark stoop with a man who’d pulled a gun on the marshal. But she’d already proven once that she could handle Aaron Brown if he gave her trouble.

Sam turned to the man on the porch. “I warn you, I’ll be waitin’ right inside this door, with my shotgun cocked and loaded.”

“Yes, sir,” Aaron said. “That was what I was expectin’.”

Uley tromped out onto the boards and pulled the door closed behind her.

When the door shut, they couldn’t even see each other, it was so black.

Aaron knew right where she was standing. He could hear her breathing.

Uley knew right where he was standing. She could smell his bay rum.

“Well, I must say,” she told him finally. “You smell a mite nicer than you did the last time I caught a whiff of you.”

“It’s amazing what a washtub will do for a man.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m surprised you were able to leave Elizabeth Calderwood long enough to come out here.”

“Elizabeth’s fine without me,” he said. “She’s safely inside her room at the Pacific Hotel. There are so many men on the lookout for her, she can’t make a move without having a good dozen of them following down the street after her. They’re looking after her like bees protect their queen.”

“So I’ve noticed.” Through the window, Uley could see her father lifting his gun off the rack and wiping down the barrel. “You’d best get on with what you came to say,” she said. “It doesn’t look like he’s going to give you much time.”

At precisely that moment, the moon moved out from behind a cloud and Uley saw his face.

“You make a habit,” she asked out of the blue, “of winking at every girl you see beneath a mule?”

He looked straight up at the night sky and guffawed.

“I was protecting our secret, Uley,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Well,” she said, crossing her arms, “I don’t think that was a very good way of protecting it.”

He stopped fiddling with his hat. He decided just to put it back on his head and go back to the hotel. “Forget it, Uley,” he told her. “I wasn’t winking at you, anyway. I was winking at the mule.”

* * *

Alex Parent rang the Tin Cup town bell in the belfry of the town hall at precisely nine on Thursday morning.

Cher-bong. Cher-bong. Of course, there wasn’t any reason to ring it. Some two hundred men were already jostling for position inside.

Miners and ranchers had been arriving from all over Taylor Park since just after seven. Another wagonload of men had just gotten in over Cumberland Pass from Pitkin. Judge Murphy had sent for them to come. He figured there wasn’t anybody in the town of Tin Cup unbiased enough to give Mr. Brown a fair trial. Those Pitkin miners were the closest thing he was likely to find to a jury in Gunnison County.

The bell echoed off Gold Hill over to Siegel Mountain and American Mountain and back again. Cher-bong. Cher-bong. Cher-bong.

Those who hadn’t been able to find seats were jammed inside the back foyer, standing on tiptoe and boot heels. The men around Uley were all craning their necks to see Elizabeth. Elizabeth Calderwood hadn’t been in town forty-eight hours and the news of her arrival had already traveled as far as Pitkin and St. Elmo. That was almost faster than a good horse could run.

Judge J. M. Murphy sat behind the bench, a massive table of lodgepole planks made by the Beckley brothers, the only two men in town who took the time away from mining to build furniture, houses and coffins. Murphy banged his cup on the wood and did his best to call everyone to order. “Let the record show that I call to order this court on April 27, 1882, the trial of Gunnison County, Colorado, and Marshal Harris John Olney versus defendant Mr. Aaron Talephas Brown.”

Uley about fell out of her tumbledown pine chair. Talephas. Next time he talked to her about winking at mules, she was going to call him Talephas. That ought to put him in his place.

That is, if he lived long enough.

Murphy continued with his speech. “Seth Wood will represent Gunnison County and Marshal Harris Olney in this matter. John Kincaid will represent the accused.”

Commotion broke out in the room.

Murphy pounded the table with the cup again, making little C-shaped dents in the pine planks. “Quiet! Or we won’t go on! Seth,” he hollered over the din, “come on up here and start your case.”

Seth Wood approached the bench and whispered to Murphy while the talking died down. As soon as everyone could hear him, he started calling witnesses.

Carl Hansen came forward, put his hand on the Bible and was sworn in. He sat down beside Murphy and told all about how he’d been on his way to Frenchy’s when somebody hollered, “Uley’s got a man down over there!” He told how he’d run to help Uley and had found the accused—here he pointed at Aaron Talephas Brown—lying beneath Uley in the dirt.

“Thank you, Mr. Hansen,” Seth Wood said. “Next witness, John West.”

West walked to the front and told the same tale.

During the morning hours, Seth called at least a dozen men to the bench. Each one of those dozen men told the judge and jury the exact same story. At about eleven-thirty, Seth Wood stepped up beside Judge Murphy and looked right at Uley.

Everybody knew it was time for the lawyer to call his key witness.

“Uley Kirkland. Will you approach the bench, please?”

She hadn’t figured on being this nervous. She felt like a marionette as she went to stand beside Seth Wood, a marionette with someone waiting to drop the strings.

Judge Murphy held out the biggest, blackest Bible Uley had ever seen. “Repeat after me,” he said somberly. “I, your name...”

“I, Uley Kirkland...”

“Do solemnly swear...”

“Do solemnly swear...”

“To tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth...”

Uley figured everyone in the room saw her swallow. This was one time in her life when being a gal stood her in good stead. She didn’t have a protruding Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. To get her out of this mess, she uttered a silent prayer. I promise I’ll do my best to get it right, God.

Out loud she said, “To tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth...”

“So help me God.”

“So help me God.”

From the front of the room, she could see everyone in town. She could see her father on the third row, sitting with his hands clenched between his knees. She could see Elizabeth Calderwood with her hair all done up in a bun and her neck as long and graceful as a trumpeter swan’s. She could see Harris Olney just below her, his marshal’s star gleaming. And she could see Aaron Brown.

Aaron Brown. Today, when it seemed the whole world was against him, she felt some regret that she hadn’t been kinder to him last night. Then again, she found she was afraid to meet his eyes. Just suppose he winked at her again—here in the courtroom! It would totally unnerve her. Here. Where she needed to be quick-thinking and smart.

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