The Vigilante's Bride (18 page)

He’d never held her like this, and never at night. She made a satisfied little sound and inched closer to him. He composed his face and concentrated on keeping his emotions in check.

She knew what he was, what he had been. She was a lady. Under other circumstances, she wouldn’t have let him get within a mile of her. But the attraction between them got around that. He held her tighter.

Miles away, the horizon flickered with silent bursts of lightning.

“Looks like Jupiter was right about the rain,” she said.

“True, except
that
one is someone else’s storm. The last thing we need tonight is to get soaked.”

The owl shrieked again. This time, Emily yawned. “I feel better just knowing you’re here. I’m so tired, I’m falling asleep sitting up.”

He relaxed his hold on her as she moved toward her bedroll.

He debated with himself about kissing her good night.

No. Definitely not.

Kissing her wasn’t a good idea. He was still churned up inside, and the way he felt tonight, it wouldn’t end with just a kiss.

He pushed to his feet. “Go to sleep. I’m going to check things out up there.”

CHAPTER
15

The clock on the Billings depot said nine fifteen the next morning when Emily and Luke rattled across the railroad tracks into town. Except for a sweeper pushing a broom and a cowboy asleep on a luggage wagon, the train station was deserted.

Nicknamed
Magic City
, Billings had sprung out of the prairie almost overnight when the Northern Pacific came through on its way west.

The city was only two years old, but you’d never know it, Emily thought. Workmen were everywhere. Hammers pounded and saws whined, building more hotels, shops, and saloons. There were fortunes to be made here, and cowboys, gold prospectors, cattlemen, and settlers flooded in by train, steamboat, and wagon.

It was rough and noisy, with a saloon every thirty feet, a place where cowboys unwound and relaxed – or wound up and hoo-rawed – after a long cattle drive to the railroad. The streets of Billings, unlike those in Helena, the territorial capital, ran straight as an arrow. In Helena, the streets twisted back on themselves, snakelike curves laid out deliberately to cut down on the gunfights.

Billings struggled for respectability, realizing its prosperity was tied directly to the success of the big ranches. To ensure this, the town and the Northern Pacific jointly appointed a yardmaster to oversee the honest shipment of cattle.

Emily wrinkled her nose as they passed the stockyards. A line of cattle cars stood empty on a nearby siding, doors open. Only a few steers milled in the muddy lot.

“A few hours ago,” Luke said, “that stockyard was a cloud of stinking dust, bawling cattle, cussing yard hands, and hooves running up the ramps to the cars.”

She shook her head. “Sounds awful, and you just love it.”

Laughing, he reached over and patted her hand. “It’s my business.”

Luke drove the wagon to Stuncard’s Livery, where the horses would be unhitched and fed and watered. After he’d seen to the animals, he led her across the street, smiling down at her on his arm. A little thrum of pleasure skipped through her. He’d been doing that a lot this morning.

She looked nice, and she knew it. Instead of the boy denims she’d worn yesterday, today she’d changed into a rosy pink dress she’d made last week especially for this trip to the land office. Her hair was held back with ribbon that matched the dress.

A guest came out of the Headquarters Hotel and tipped his hat at her. Luke gave him a curt nod and hurried her on by. Every time she stopped to look in a store window, he kept looking over his shoulder for Haldane.

When a screen door slammed, Luke shoved Emily against the wall of the building alongside. He spun around into a half crouch in front of her, his gun out and up and in his hand. Across the street, two ladies in big hats dropped their packages and ran squealing into a store. Emily hustled him into a café behind them to get him off the street and calm him down.

He slouched into a chair in a corner at the back of the café, red-faced. She went to the counter and ordered coffee for both of them.

“What’s the matter with you? You’re scaring everyone to death, including me,” she said, putting the cups on the table.

“Just jumpy, I guess. I wish we hadn’t come. I’m afraid something else is going to happen.” His eyes softened in a slow smile for her.

Her cheeks warmed, and she looked down at her coffee cup. He wanted to kiss her. “Don’t look at me like that in public,” she whispered.

“How am I supposed to look at you?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

She looked over the cup at him. His mask of cool indifference didn’t fool her a bit. He wasn’t as tough as he pretended to be. He was as unsure of himself as she was in this relationship, seemed torn between wanting to stay and wanting to run away. He picked up his coffee cup and slid his free hand over hers on the table. She smiled. For now, at least, he’d decided to stay.

“The other day in the buggy, you said you loved me. Did you mean it?” Inside her chest, her heart waited for the answer.

With a long, deep sigh, he turned her hand over and worked his fingers through hers. “I meant it, but I didn’t mean to say it,” he said. “Not yet, anyway,” he added softly.

His face had gone soft, his lips somehow fuller. “We’re going to do this right, you and me. And we both need more time. You especially.” He paused. The café owner was wiping off a nearby table.

When the owner moved to the front of the store again, Emily turned to Luke. “More time for what?”

“To get used to living out here, for one thing.”

She gave a small huff. “To get used to
you
, you mean.”

“That too. Give yourself six months, maybe a year. You’re a little city girl. You know nothing about western men.”

She smiled. “I think you’re the one who needs time – to get used to
me
.”

He chuckled and sipped his coffee. “I’m already used to you.”

“Yes, but you don’t like me
that
way.”

He gave her a look she didn’t understand and let his breath out slowly. “I like you very much that way.” He pulled back and touched his thumb to her chin. “I thought you knew that, also, from the other day in the buggy.”

When she’d prayed for him.

Understanding washed over her. Luke didn’t say it – couldn’t say it yet – but he was just beginning to get things straight with God, and he didn’t want to mess it up.

Out in the street again, Luke stopped a workman carrying boards on his shoulder and asked where the land office was. The man pointed to a nondescript log building squeezed between the blacksmith and the saddlery. From the sawmill across the street came the shrieking whine of a ripsaw and the resinous smell of cut pine.

Luke and Emily spent two hours at a long mahogany counter with the land office’s big registration book opened out flat, painstakingly comparing the boundaries listed there with New Hope’s original deed signed by Monsieur Olivier.

Ed Watson, the registrar, tapped his finger on the deed. “As you can see, Mr. Sullivan, the deeds are identical, even to the note up here in the corner. I don’t speak French, so I don’t know what it says, but I reckon it just clarifies something in the deed.” Ed Watson pushed his small, round glasses up onto his forehead.

“It does,” Luke said. “When Olivier wrote this deed, there was no Yellowstone River. He called it what the Indians called it – E lk River. That’s what this note says.”

Ed Watson flipped his glasses back down and peered at the words again. “I don’t read French, sir.”

“Neither do I, but Miss McCarthy here does,” Luke said. “Emily, would you translate, please?”

When she finished, Watson whistled softly and shook his head. “That’s a fair-sized chunk of ground you’re talking about, Mr. Sullivan. I’ll have to talk to Helena about this. I don’t see a problem, mind you – this deed is good as gold, but it’ll take time to straighten out, verify the French, and get the proper name of the river put on it. It’s been eighty-some years since this deed was filed.”

Watson pointed to the chimney-shaped piece of land belonging to both New Hope and the Crows. “But this section here” – he shook his head – “now, that may be a problem. Montana Territory has nothing to do with that. It’s a federal matter, you see. Or was. You have to talk to Washington about that.”

Luke stiffened. “Washington? How long will that take?”

Ed Watson snorted in disgust. “May be easier just to deed it to the Crows yourselves.”

“Can we do that? Legally, I mean?”

“I’ll have to check. But it’s complicated. Once upon a time, the piece of land you’re talking about was French government land, then Olivier’s private land, then sold to the U.S. government, who ceded it to the Crows. Now, technically the Crows are a foreign nation, too, so it looks like you got three countries involved here. And our government made a mistake, you say, and gave a piece of New Hope land to the Crows?”

“No,” Luke interrupted. “The other way around – they gave Crow land to New Hope.”

“See what I mean?” Watson said. “And now you want to give something that belonged to the United States of America back to the Crow Nation – who already owns it – so it’s really not yours to give.” He shrugged his shoulders and turned his palms up. “May take another eighty years to straighten this one out.”

Off to one side, Emily was busily copying the French from their deed to two separate pieces of paper. She slid them across to the clerk. “Send one of these along to Helena. They’ll need to verify my translation, anyway.” Quietly, she added, “And file this with the one you have here. That way, at least you’ll have one full copy in case . . . in case something happens to our deed on the way home, I mean.”

“Well, that was one wasted morning,” Luke grumbled, and shut the door behind him.

Emily took his arm and let him lead her toward the hotel down the street for lunch.

“Look over there! Hey, Luke!” a voice called from across the street.

Luke snapped around, his face breaking into a huge grin. “Hey, boss!”

Three men in dusty work pants and Stetsons jumped into the street and headed across to Luke. Arms outstretched, they met Luke in the middle of the street, shaking hands, thumping backs, and laughing.

On the sidewalk again, Granville Stuart swept off his hat and bowed to Emily. “And who would this beautiful young lady be?”

Luke introduced her to his old boss and Will Lawson and Burt Miller, two of Stuart’s ranch hands from the big D-S ranch in Lewistown.

Nice men
, Emily thought. They seemed so normal, impressive even. Not at all like what she’d heard about them.

“What are you doing in Billings?” Stuart asked Luke.

Within minutes, Luke was explaining why they were there and what had happened to Jupiter yesterday. Stuart listened somber-faced and nodded. Emily’s gaze jumped between the two men. From what Luke had told her, Stuart was a powerful politician with a sharp legal mind. Luke valued his opinion.

President of the Territorial Council, Stuart was widely known and respected. Emily smiled to herself. Though Stuart was dignified and courteous, this day his face was dirty and he was wearing work clothes, dressed as roughly as his men.

“Excuse my appearance,” he said. “We got nine hundred head out this morning. The cattle train that left a while ago was taking our beef to Chicago. I’ll follow them up on the train tomorrow and finish some business there.”

“You drove them down here yourself, did you?” Luke asked with a grin.

“Me and the rest of the crew. They’re all around here someplace.” Stuart narrowed his eyes at Luke. “You see, when I lost my high-and-mighty ranch manager, I wound up having to do a lot of his work myself.”

And the nature of that “work” disturbed Emily. Luke was so gentle and easygoing with her, she almost couldn’t believe what they said he’d done with Stuart. And yet, when he took her to Repton, she’d seen for herself how certain men shrank away from him, their faces guarded. No one had proof of what Stuart’s committee had done – still was doing, some said – but just knowing Luke used to work for him was unsettling.

True or not, horse thieves and rustlers had cleared out of Montana Territory.

A glow of pride warmed Emily. “How did you two meet?” she asked.

Stuart’s eyes crinkled with laughter. “I won him in a card game.”

Emily cleared her throat quietly. “You what?”

“You heard right,” Stuart said. “He was a twenty-year-old trail boss at the Double A ranch, about fifty miles west of my place,” Stuart told her. “A trail boss that young? Unheard of.

“Six years ago, Angus Aberdeen, owner of the Double A, ran into me in a saloon in Helena, and we played poker together. Angus, as usual, put away a lot of bourbon, and when he does, he talks and he talks. Started bragging about his good eye for cattle, for picking horseflesh, and especially for hiring help. To hear Angus tell it, his Double A had the best crew in all Montana Territory.” Stuart chuckled. “Just about glowing with whiskey, he was, boasting about his crew and mentioning his young trail boss. I just wished he’d stop running his mouth and pay attention to the game. I was getting some really good hands that night.