A Western Christmas Homecoming

An expression crossed his face she couldn’t identify. “It’s not just a death, is it?” she said.

His face changed again.

“Is it?” she pursued.

“No, Alice, it’s not. It was a murder. I told you that.”

“Who did it? Do you know? Have they caught him?”

He released a breath and gulped down some coffee. “Nobody has been arrested yet. And no, we don’t know who did it.”

“Why not?”

He hesitated. “Alice, there’s something else I need to tell you.”

“I thought so,” she said. “Your voice gets quiet when you’re hiding something.”

He turned toward her, surprise written all over him. “Well, I... That is...”

She had to smile. “You know, Marshal Logan, people think of a librarian as someone with her nose always buried in a book. Actually, librarians are quite observant.”

“Obviously,” he murmured.

“So I ask you again. What took you almost three weeks to notify me? And why not just send me a telegram?”

“I...wanted to tell you in person.”

“What else is it you need to tell me, Marshal? And who is ‘we’?”

“You sure you want to talk about this so soon after you got the news?”

She bit her lip. “Yes, I am quite sure. Tell me.”

He jolted out of the swing and moved to lean against the porch railing. “‘We’ is the sheriff of Owyhee County, Idaho, and me. And the Pinkerton Agency in Colorado. As for what else I need to tell you, it’s this. The sheriff is stumped. He sent for a US Marshal, and that marshal happens to work for Pinkerton.”

“Why did you really come to see me, Marshal? It wasn’t just to tell me about Dottie, was it?” When he said nothing, she went on.

“Why is Dottie’s death of interest to a US Marshal and the Pinkerton Agency? Exactly why are you here, Marshal Logan?”

Rand stood and began to stack the empty pie plates on the tray. “No, it wasn’t just to tell you about your sister. We... That is, I need your help.”

“I thought so,” she breathed.

“It’s like this, Alice. Your sister lived in this little town that’s mostly a tent community of Idaho miners, and they’re tighter than ticks about sharing any information with outsiders.”

“I would be an outsider,” she pointed out quietly.

“You would be, yes. But we... I...think you might be able to succeed where the sheriff has failed.”

“Why?”

“Because...” He looked everywhere except at her. “Because you’re a woman,” he said at last.

“I see.”

“I tried to talk Pinkerton out of even mentioning it to you. I knew you’d need time to get over the shock, time to grieve. I wired the sheriff in Idaho that I wasn’t going to ask you because it wouldn’t be fair. That you wouldn’t want to do it no matter what.”

Alice took a deep breath. “Right now I would do anything to catch my sister’s murderer.”

Rand stared at her, a proper, delicate-looking girl whose face was still white with shock. My God, a woman could be tougher than he’d ever imagined. Suddenly he didn’t want to go any further with this. She wasn’t ready. She might even get hurt.

Then she surprised him again. “What is ‘it’?” she asked.

Oh, hell, here it comes. She wouldn’t even speak to him after he’d asked what he’d come four hundred miles to ask, much less sit in a porch swing with him. He opened his mouth, then shut it again.

“Marshal?” She looked up at him, and all at once he noticed how blue her eyes were, how downright pretty she was.

“Marshal, what is it you need me for? You might as well spit it out before I lose interest,” she said with a soft laugh.

He resumed his place on the swing beside her. “Okay, Alice, here it is. Silver City miners are suspicious of strangers and they’re tight-lipped about everything, especially a killing. But they might open up to a woman. Someone who could work undercover.”

“Work undercover as what?”

“We figure they wouldn’t be suspicious of a, well, of a saloon girl.”

He waited for her cry of outrage. It didn’t come. Instead, she sat motionless beside him, her eyes searching his face.

“A saloon girl,” she echoed. “Do I look like a saloon girl to you?”

“Definitely not,” he said quickly.

“A saloon girl who would wear a low-necked gown and fishnet stockings?”

“Yeah, I reckon so. I know it’s a real far-fetched idea. Pinkerton came up with it as a last-ditch—”

“I’ll do it,” she said calmly.

He almost choked. “What? Alice, are you serious?”

She bit her lip. “Believe me, I have never been more serious in my life.”

“Miss Montgomery... Alice, I have to warn you it could be dangerous. It’s a long, hard trip just getting to Silver City, and a mining camp is a really rough place for a...” He swallowed. “For a librarian.” Unbelievably, he heard himself trying to talk her out of it.

She said nothing, just looked at him with a tired smile.

“Alice, I...”

She pushed the swing into motion. “When do we leave?”

Rand could scarcely believe his ears. Never in a hundred years did he think a woman like Alice would agree to such a scheme. He guessed he had a lot to learn about librarians. “Tomorrow.”

“I have one question for you,” she said. “I won’t go alone. Will you be with me?”

“Yeah, I’ll be with you.”

“Do you promise?”

He blinked. “Well, sure, Alice. You can count on that.”

She nodded and pushed the swing again. “Then it’s settled. I will be ready in the morning.”

He managed not to let his mouth fall open. After a long minute he risked his final question. “Now I have something else to ask you.”

She sent him an expectant look and waited.

Rand watched her face and crossed his fingers.

“Can you sing?”

Chapter Four

Rand spent a sleepless night at the Smoke River hotel, and after a breakfast of steak and eggs he made his way to the livery stable. He chose a gentle mare for Alice, certain that no librarian would be an experienced rider, and at eight o’clock he walked over to Alice’s boardinghouse and got an unexpected shock.

Alice was seated in the porch swing, waiting for him. “Good morning, Marshal,” she called.

He climbed the steps and stood before her. Once more he found himself surprised by Alice Montgomery. Not only was she obviously wide-awake, she was dressed in traveling clothes and a small tapestry bag sat at her feet.

“Before we leave, I must visit the dressmaker.”

“The dressmaker? Alice, I don’t think—”

She sent him a smile that dried up his words. Yesterday Sheriff Rivera said he thought highly of Miss Alice. Rand had figured it was a man’s admiration for a pretty girl, but now he was beginning to wonder.

“If I understand your need of me, Marshal, I will need a...how shall I put it...a ‘saloon girl’ outfit. Something sinfully silky with an extremely revealing neckline. And fishnet stockings.”

Rand bit back a laugh. This girl was no ordinary librarian. In fact, he was beginning to realize that Alice Montgomery was not ordinary in any way.

Sarah Rose stepped out onto the porch. “Marshal, have you had breakfast?”

“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Rose.”

Alice stood up. “Mark has a dozen more questions for you, Marshal. While he keeps you busy with the answers, I am going to the dressmaker’s.”

“Come on in, Marshal Logan,” Sarah invited. “Mark can entertain you while he eats his breakfast.” She disappeared into the house.

At the doorway, Rand turned to watch Alice make her way down the porch steps and start up the shady, tree-lined street. She was wearing something he’d never seen before, a sort of cutoff skirt that was split up the middle. Blue denim, if he wasn’t mistaken, with what looked like one of young Mark’s red plaid shirts. And polished leather riding boots.

Inside the boardinghouse, he joined the residents in the dining room, and while they ate flapjacks and bacon he consumed two cups of Sarah’s excellent coffee. Mark peppered him with more questions about his life as a US Marshal, and that helped to keep his mind off Alice and what was coming. She’d looked calm and determined this morning. He wondered if she was feeling a bit apprehensive on the inside, but if she was, it sure didn’t show.

At the end of the meal, Rooney invited him out to the front porch and sat him down in the swing. “Marshal Logan, I want you to know something. Alice is real special to Sarah and me, and I don’t think her sashayin’ off with you is a good idea. I told her I don’t want her settin’ off on this harebrained scheme of yours, and she—you know what she said?”

Rand shook his head.

“It’s the first time she’s ever talked back to me in all the years I’ve knowed her,” Rooney continued. “She said to mind my own business! That it was her sister and her life. Kinda hurt my feelin’s.”

“Mr. Cloudman, there’s a big part of me that doesn’t want to take Alice to a scruffy mining camp in Idaho. But I’m a United States Marshal, and those are my orders.”

“Yeah, I get that, Rand. Shore am glad it ain’t me walkin’ into a mess like you told me about. I’m gettin’ too old.”

“Sometimes I get to feeling too old, too,” Rand admitted. “I get tired of folks misbehaving and wish I could find some pretty little place and forget all about the law and justice and all that other stuff I swore to uphold.”

“Our Alice,” Rooney said with a catch in his voice, “she’s a whole lot more’n just a librarian, Rand. And you better not forget it, you hear?”

Rand nodded.

“Keep her safe if you can,” the older man said.

“You can count on that, Mr. Cloudman. If anything happens to Alice, you’ll know that I’m already dead.”

Rooney snorted. “Well, hell, mister, that’s what I’m afraid of!”

Dressmaker Verena Forester gasped, and the bolt of blue gingham in her arms tumbled onto the floor. “You want a what? Say that again, Alice?”

“I want a fancy dress like a saloon girl wears. You know, with lots of ruffles and a really low neckline. Red, maybe. With sequins.”

The dressmaker stared at her. “I suppose you’ve got some harebrained reason, Alice, but I don’t guess you’re going to tell me what it is.”

“I’m taking a job. I’ll be working undercover for the Pinkerton Agency, and I need a disguise.”

Verena’s mouth sagged open. “Pinkerton! Whatever for? You have a perfectly respectable job here in Smoke River as our librarian.”

But she no longer had her sister. Alice had spent most of last night mulling over what was worth doing in life. She did have a respectable job as the librarian. She had a perfectly respectable life in a perfectly respectable town. Maybe that was the problem.

Maybe she could ease the ache in her chest by helping to catch her sister’s killer.

“Do you have any satin, Verena? Red satin?”

The dressmaker pointed at a bolt of fabric halfway up a tall display shelf. “Scandalous color. When do you need this creation?”

“This morning.”

Verena gave a strangled cry. “Today? Why, I can’t cobble up a dress in that length of time. It takes real effort to sew on a lot of ruffles and sequins. That’ll take some doing. And besides, it’s gonna be Christmas pretty soon, and every woman in Smoke River’s wantin’ something new.”

Alice smiled at her. “Oh. Well, Verena, I can always go over to the mercantile and buy a ready-made dress.”

“Huh!” the dressmaker scoffed. “Carl Ness wouldn’t have such a shameless garment in his store. Nobody in town wears such things.”

“Except for the girls down at Sally’s,” Alice said calmly.

“Sally’s! How do you know about—?” The dressmaker recovered quickly. “The girls at Sally’s order custom-made gowns, and they give a body plenty of time to sew them.”

“Verena, please. Could you try? I am pressed for time.”

The dressmaker suddenly noticed the distress in Alice’s eyes and wilted like an unwatered houseplant. “All right, I’ll do it. Red satin and ruffles...it will be so outrageous you’ll be embarrassed to be seen in it.”

“Oh, I do hope so,” Alice murmured. “I need to be as un-librarian-like as possible.”

Verena rolled her eyes. “Give me until noon.” Then she shooed Alice out of the shop.

Alice went from the dressmaker’s to Ness’s Mercantile, where she bought a bottle of cologne, a boy’s wide-brimmed black Stetson, a lethal-looking six-inch hatpin, a gaudy pink satin garter, and a derringer pistol and a box of cartridges. Then she stopped at the sheriff’s office and talked Sandy, the deputy, into showing her how to load and fire the pistol.

Keeping busy helped ease the pain in her chest, but she finally ran out of errands. When she returned to Rose Cottage, Rooney and Marshal Logan were sitting on the porch swing and Mark was perched at their feet. Apparently he still hadn’t run out of questions because he posed another one as she came up the front walk.

“How come you don’t have a fancy uniform like a colonel or somethin’?”

Rand laughed. “Because it’s easier to sneak up on a criminal if you don’t look conspicuous.”

Even Rooney laughed at that.

“What’s ’spicuous?”

“Conspicuous is what a man wears when he wants to get noticed, maybe by a girl he’s interested in.”

Mark shot him a curious look. “Are you interested in a girl?”

“Nope.” At least he wasn’t before he laid eyes on Alice Montgomery. Now he wasn’t so sure. In fact, at the sight of her in that swingy blue skirt and the boy’s shirt that revealed she was very obviously not a boy, he felt a tug of awareness he hadn’t felt in years.

“Before we leave,” Alice announced, “I have some parcels to pick up at the mercantile and the dressmaker’s.”

“Whadja buy, Alice?” Mark inquired. “Any caramel drops?”

Alice smiled at him. “No caramel drops, I’m afraid. I bought a dress. Some smelly cologne. A hat like yours. And a pink garter.” She saw no need to mention the derringer.

“Just dumb girl stuff,” Mark muttered. “No caramels?”

“No caramels.”

Rand rose and offered the seat next to Rooney on the swing.

“A pink garter, huh?” Rooney muttered. “Just what are ya thinkin’ of doin’ with a pink garter?”

She grinned and slid closer to him. “Rooney, I don’t think I should explain in front of Mark.”

Rand, however, very much wanted to hear the explanation.

Rooney draped his arm around Alice’s shoulders. “Honey-girl, I don’t mind tellin’ ya that I don’t like this idea one bit. Not one bit.”

Alice sent him a smile. “I know, Rooney. You’ve been saying that since six o’clock this morning.”

Mark hunched his thin frame closer to her knees and gazed up at her. “Golly, Alice, it sounds real neat, ’specially if Rooney doesn’t like it. Kin I come along?”

At noon, Rand picked up Alice’s travel bag and walked her over to the livery stable, then to the mercantile and the dressmaker to pick up her parcels. The dressmaker package was bulky, and Rand noticed a sprinkling of tiny sparkly circles escaping from one corner where the twine tie had slipped off-center. Saloon girl sequins, he gathered. Red ones. Another niggle of apprehension crawled up his spine.

They loaded the saddlebags on his bay gelding and her chestnut mare and then on their way out of town they stopped at Rose Cottage.

The porch was empty. Alice dismounted and went inside, and after a long ten minutes she came out red-eyed and stiff-lipped, climbed back on her mare and reined away without a word.

They rode side by side in silence until the town dwindled off into the occasional house and wide meadows of yellow dandelions and lavender desert parsley. The air smelled of pine trees and smoke.

They followed the slow-moving river bordered by cottonwoods and gray-green willows, and when the river split, they followed the branch flowing north and headed for the hazy purple mountains looming in the distance. The sun overhead was hot, even for October.

Alice hadn’t said a single word since leaving town, and Rand was starting to wonder why. He slowed his bay until she caught up.

“Alice, are you all right?”

“Yes. At least I think so. I had to leave the key to the library with Sarah. This is the first time since the library was built six years ago that I won’t be there in the morning to open it up. It feels strange.”

Rand did a quick calculation. If her sister Dorothy was the “little” sister at twenty, that meant Alice was probably around twenty-two. Had she been in Smoke River all her life?

“You been a librarian a long time?”

“Ever since I turned eighteen. It’s all I ever wanted to do, be around books.”

Aha. That would make her maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. Before he could ask, she volunteered a piece of information about herself he hadn’t expected.

“I am a spinster, Marshal. I have nothing in my life but my library, so I have nothing to lose by going with you to a mining camp in Idaho to find my sister’s killer.”

“Forgive me for saying so, but that’s not smart thinking. I’m a lot older than you, and I figure I’ve got a helluva lot to lose.”

“How much older?”

“I’m thirty-four.”

“What will you lose if you don’t live through this trip?”

Rand blinked. She sure kept surprising him with her questions.

“You mean besides my life?” he said drily. “Well...” He waved an arm at the field of white clover and dogbane they were riding through. “I’d miss seeing meadows like this one. And I’d miss the smell of woodsmoke and mint. And roses. By the way, what kind of scent did you buy at the mercantile?”

She gave a soft laugh. “Why, I don’t even know! I didn’t smell it. I just picked out a pretty-shaped bottle.”

“Not very ‘saloon girlie’ of you, Miss Montgomery.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t. I’m going to need some practice in the ‘saloon girl’ area.”

Rand kept his face impassive. Was it possible she was unaware of how attractive she was? Nah. No girl as pretty as Alice would be blind to her effect on the male population. But her remark made him wonder.

Something else puzzled him, too. She hadn’t asked one question about the journey to Silver City, how many miles away it was. How many days of travel it would take. And nights.

Maybe she didn’t care. But if that was true, he wondered why didn’t she care?

“Alice, do you know anything about Idaho?”

“Oh, yes. When Dottie first married Jim, her husband, and went away to Silver City, I read all about Idaho. I learned about mining camps and silver assaying. The library has lots of information on such subjects.”

He chuckled. “Then you probably know more than I do. I’ve never set foot in Idaho Territory.”

She turned toward him, a surprised look on her face. He couldn’t see her eyes under that black Stetson she wore, but her lips rounded into a soft, raspberry-tinted O. “You mean you’ve never been where we are going?”

“Nope. Does that make you uneasy?”

“Nope,” she shot back.

Rand laughed. He liked her quick humor. He liked a lot of things about Alice Montgomery.

But he didn’t plan to pay much attention to them. This was a damned dangerous mission, so he’d best keep his mind on the problem at hand.

Chapter Five

The campsite Rand chose for their first night was nestled in a grove of pine trees and protected by a half circle of large gray boulders. A shallow, gurgling stream meandered nearby.

After more than eight hours in the saddle, Alice’s derriere was numb and her thigh muscles felt hot and jumpy. Never in her life had she ridden a horse for more than an hour at a time; she never dreamed she could be this tired. She slid off the chestnut mare and had to grab on to the saddle to keep her legs from collapsing.

The marshal surveyed her from the fire pit he was digging. “You’ve had a long ride,” he remarked. “Want some of my liniment?”

When she nodded, he rummaged in his saddlebag and thrust a bottle of brown liquid into her hand. It smelled like the furniture polish Sarah used on the dining table at the boardinghouse. Maybe it was furniture polish.

She stumbled down to the stream, dropped her skirt and her under-drawers and sloshed some of the smelly stuff onto her aching backside. When she returned he had built a campfire and was digging a frying pan and some bacon out of his saddlebag.

“Hungry?” he asked without looking up.

“That is a rhetorical question, Marshal. Of course I am hungry.”

“And tired, too, I bet.”

“And crabby,” she admitted.

He didn’t answer, just sliced off some bacon and laid it in the pan. When the bacon was crisp he dumped in a can of chili beans, and that was supper. She wasn’t complaining. She was so tired and hungry she would eat anything, even a bear if it lumbered into camp. She shivered at the thought.

He dished up the mess into two tin plates and handed her a spoon, and for the next half hour they ate without talking. Whatever he called this concoction, it tasted wonderful! She gobbled it down, and when her plate was empty she unrolled her blankets and sat staring into the fire while Rand tramped off to the stream to wash the plates.

When he returned a mug of coffee appeared at her elbow.

“You sure don’t talk much,” he said, settling himself beside her.

“Neither do you,” she retorted.

“I guess that’s because I usually travel alone. I do talk to my horse sometimes, though.”

“And since I’m a librarian, I talk to my books.”

He laughed at that, and then answered the question she hadn’t asked yet. “Three days. It’ll take three days of riding to reach Silver City.”

“You mean I cannot bathe for three whole days? By then I will smell to high heaven!”

He bit back a smile. “Nah, you won’t. First of all, you’ve got a bottle of fancy-smelling stuff in your saddlebag. And second...” He paused to toss the dregs of his coffee into the fire. “There are lots of streams and rivers between here and Silver City where you can take a bath. As long as you don’t mind cold water,” he added with a grin.

“How do you know that, Marshal? About the rivers and streams, I mean?”

“Maps,” he said with a chuckle. “Books are full of ’em. I should think you’d know that, being a librarian.”

She studied him in the firelight. It was too dark to see his face, but his voice was full of laughter. Thank the Lord! There would be nothing worse than traveling for three days with a man who was dull in the head.

Suddenly she remembered why she was riding into the wilderness with the marshal and she sucked in her breath. Tears stung under her eyelids at the thought of her sister. Deliberately she turned her attention to something else.

Her traveling companion, Marshal Logan, for instance. He was a puzzle of a man in many ways. Well-mannered. Considerate. Knowledgeable. And obviously a dedicated lawman. And, she had discovered, he was a passable cook.

And yet she sensed a streak of something hard and unyielding in him; he was like a bar of iron wrapped in something soft, like velvet. She liked the way he listened to her, as if what she said mattered. But she was constantly aware of that core of inner toughness.

Something tu-whooed in a nearby pine tree and she jerked. “What was that?”

“Owl.”

She pointed at something rustling in the shrubbery behind them. “And that?”

“Don’t know. Probably something that’s more scared of us than we are of it.”

“That,” she said with a shudder, “is cold comfort. Do you think it’s something big, like a...mountain lion?”

“Nope. Probably the rabbit that owl is after. Alice, you’ve been cool and collected for the last ten hours. How come you’re so skittery all of a sudden?”