Explaining Herself (24 page)

She didn't understand. There
wasn't
a worst.

"Would you rather..." But whatever he meant to say, he gave up. He shut his eyes, tight, and clearly just gave up. "Never mind."

"Never mind what? Ross, you aren't making sense."

He lowered his head, looked down at the ground for a long moment. When he lifted his lashes, slanted his gaze back up, his eyes
—those dusky green eyes— looked wounded again. "Go home, Victoria. Just... go home to your brother and be happy. Please."

She knew she was missing something. That worried her. But the sun was starting to set, and she hadn't brought Duchess with her, and she was too frustrated with him to know what else to ask. "Good evening, then, Mr. Laramie. I'll see you later."

But he didn't promise any such thing. Confused, Victoria pushed herself off and pedaled away from him.

She on her bicycle, returning to her family's modernized home in her turn-of-the-century town.

He standing in the cemetery with all the. dead people.

When Victoria rode off on her two-wheeled contraption, she looked as if she were flying. Flying away from him. Laramie knew he should feel relieved. Less complications this way. She would never be the wiser.

Instead, he felt hollow. Empty. Beaten.

He loved her. Somehow he'd gone and fallen in love with her, and now he had nothing. He no longer had the vengeance that had carried him for so long,
because he would not hurt Victoria that way. And he could not have her, because
—well, because he would not hurt her that way, either. He was a rustler, a liar, a killer who wished her brother dead. He was a man who did not keep promises.

Clearly, he had no more business in Sheridan.

Laramie mounted Blackie from sheer habit. He'd almost reached the Red Light Saloon before he even knew that was where he'd headed. He didn't like saloons. But as with so much else in his life, it was someplace that would accept him. And it was where Lonny Logan would seek him out.

Laramie didn't know where he would go or what he would do, but he knew better than to alienate a Logan.

Bad companions were better than none at all.

The saloon was too damned full for sunset. He noticed a skinny whore looking him over, and he felt disgust.

Disgust that he could make up for nothing
—and he'd taken this long to figure it out. Disgust that he could never sit in a parlor with Victoria Garrison, but he could easily take a whore upstairs and do anything he wanted with her. Disgust that while so many men headed home from a day's honest work to a meal prepared by a mother, or a wife, or a sister, he got a shot glass of rye and a pickled egg from the jar on the counter. Disgust that despite being exiled into this world of lawbreakers and bad men, he would never live up to his potential as an outlaw any better than he'd lived up to his potential as a cowboy.

Laramie wanted what he could not have. He had what he did not want. And he probably wasn't any different from half the men here.

That disgusted him most of all.

An hour later, he was nursing his second drink at the farthest table from the front when Lonny Logan
finally pushed through the swinging doors, fully armed.

Laramie was fully armed, too. Firearms restrictions weren't tightly enforced on the edge of town.

Lonny approached the table, close enough that Laramie could hear the chink of his spurs over the guffaws and arguments and shrill laughter. Laramie waited.

When Lonny dropped into a scarred chair, signaling the barmaid for a drink, Laramie wasn't even sure he felt relief. So Lonny didn't mean to kill him for doing business at the jail. So what? It didn't give him anyplace to go, anything to do.

It sure as hell didn't win him Victoria.

Laramie finished his drink in one gulp, raising a hand to indicate he wanted another. Maybe the problem was he wasn't drunk. Maybe that would help.

'You hunting bounties now?" challenged Lonny.

It wasn't just conversation. Laramie knew the train robbers on sight, and he could find their hideouts
— Brown's Hole in Colorado, the nearby Hole-in-the-Wall, even the snaking trail into Robber's Roost, down in Utah.

He would never turn bounty hunter and live.

So he told the truth. "Range detective."

He stared into his empty shot glass for a moment, remembering how Victoria had always said that
—
range detective!
Then Lonny snorted, and he lifted his gaze.

The youngest Logan was grinning. "You?"

Range detective!
Like he was the governor, or Santa Claus or something. Not for the first time, he wished Victoria's innocent world was his real one . . . but as her father had said on hiring him, this wasn't a frontier anymore. A man couldn't just leave his past behind and start over.

Especially not a man who'd jumped parole years before.

"Was,
" he clarified.

"Hell." Lonny paid for both drinks when they came, and Laramie let him. 'You sure you want to give it up? I reckon you'd be good at it, considerin' how many strays you've moved yourself."

"I'm done." Laramie took another sip of rye.

It still tasted bad.

"Well, Harve will be glad to hear that," decided Lonny, tasting his own drink more enthusiastically. "He's got plans for you."

Laramie wasn't impressed. Harvey Logan was the meanest of the Wild Bunch. Some folks thought he was the leader of that gang, but Laramie never had. Only other Logans followed Harvey.

"Where's
—" He almost said Butch, but the manhunt was on, and not all the bad men in the Red Light Saloon were necessarily lawbreakers. "—Lowe? Still at the WS?"

Lonny looked pensive. "The law caught Mac, you know."

For the Folsom robbery? Laramie didn't know.

"Lincoln County, they got him.
Lowe
talked your old boss, French, into putting up money for bond, but it turns out train robbery's a cap-i-tal offense in New Mexico. Besides, looks like they'll throw in murder."

Laramie lifted an eyebrow.

"Some of the folks what went after them got themselves shot up," Lonny explained. "And one of 'em was a sheriff. Lowe's kind of busy right now."

Laramie once thought a fellow had to want something, and bad, to risk his neck outlawing. Only that had kept him straight. All he'd ever wanted couldn't be bought. Vengeance. Victoria. "Not interested."

"We need a shooter," said Lonny.

Laramie didn't have to make an effort to look bored as he reverted to instinct, eyeing the crowd, wishing he weren't there. If he ever
did take
up train robbing,

it would be with a leader who tried to make your bail, not Harvey Logan.

Now, if Lowe lost his right-hand man to the state of New Mexico, and needed help, that might prove more tempting. Maybe instead of wanting anything, an outlaw just needed to lose that last thing of importance in his life.

Laramie took another sip of rye
—and then he felt it. An awareness, almost like a hum.
Something was wrong.

"Well, you know where to find us," said Lonny.

Laramie slid his left hand casually down to his thigh. His palm cuddled up against the smooth butt of his Colt. He continued looking bored.

"Alone," Lonny added. "We wouldn't want to
—"

But then his instincts caught up to Laramie's. His eyes widened. He rolled toward the floor while Laramie stood.

Laramie drew and aimed at the glimpse of danger he saw reflected in the measly bar mirror. He squeezed his trigger in that grain of a second between looking down someone else's barrel and keeping anything from shooting out of it.

His Colt bucked in his hand with the blast, because double-actions pulled. Women screamed, men shouted, and everyone seemed to be ducking for cover. That's how he finally, clearly saw the man who was trying to shoot him.

The man who tried lifting his gun again, even now.

Laramie fired a second time, while recognition struck him so sharply, he thought he'd been hit.

Harry Smith, staring down at his chest, looked confused too.

The young, soft-spoken rustler he'd captured this morning stumbled back against the bar. Laramie stepped forward, aiming for the boy's freckled face
this time to make the rustler drop his weapon, survival instincts overriding anything else.

Harry Smith"?

To his shuddering relief, the pistol slid from Smith's hand to the sawdust floor. Laramie stepped close enough to kick the damn thing out of reach, then grabbed Smith's shoulder and looked into his face. The kid was so pale that his freckles seemed obscenely dark. His eyes swam with tears.

Laramie recognized the stench of blood, saw blood spattered across the bar behind the man
—the boy— he'd shot, saw two bloody holes through the rustler's shirt front. He stared, confused, into the kid's wet, glazing eyes.

Why?
He wanted to ask that, at that moment, more than he'd wanted almost anything in his life.
Why
did you try to kill me?

Why
did you make me kill you?

But words never had come easily, especially not that one. And Harry Smith's body slumped to the blood-spattered, sawdust floor before the kid could have answered.

Folks began talking, lifting their heads again, and all Laramie heard amid the words that began to surround him was the single, repeated word "fast."

Hooray for him.

Then he heard one other noise
—Lonny Logan's whistle. Laramie spun, followed Lonny's aim—the stairway above where they'd been sitting—and dropped to one knee as a burst of blue flame blasted from the bar's shadows. He heard the mirror behind where he'd been standing shatter. He shot back.

The second rustler
—to tell by his hat—also fell.

At that, Laramie turned, pistol raised and ready, eyeing the rest of the stunned bar. He didn't understand the first attempt, much less the second, but
there wouldn't be a third attempt on his life. Not tonight.

Not until he heard the drawled words from the doorway.

"Put the gun down and raise your hands, sonny boy."

Victoria knew she was in trouble when she turned the corner onto Elizabeth Street
—Thaddeas stood on the sidewalk in front of their in-town house, in the dregs of a cloudy twilight, with Duchess beside him. Suddenly, all thoughts of walking with Ross, arguing with Ross—kissing with Ross—faded behind a more immediate situation.

She was late for supper.

Her brother resembled Papa at times like these
— arms folded, eyes narrowed, head tilted with suspicion. When she coasted to a stop beside him, he sounded like Papa too. "Get in the house, please." Except for the please.

Then he turned and headed inside without even waiting for her excuse.

The kitchen table was set with a cold meal, as befit the late-summer weather. Thaddeas held out her chair, and waited until she sat before asking, "Where were you?"

"I rode to the cemetery," she told him, helping herself to a tomato. "I'm researching a story I'd like to write for the newspaper."

All of which was completely true. She could imagine no better punishment for the man who had abandoned Julije Lauranovic
—a man who certainly was
not
Thaddeas—than to be exposed at last.

Her brother sat down too. "It's threatening rain, and you know better than to stay out this late. When the folks are away, I'm in charge of you."

Which was its own interesting topic. "Why?"

"Why?" He had the grace to look amused by that.

"I'm out of school," she reminded him, pouring them both some water. "I have a job. Neither of us is married. Why are you still in charge of me?"

"Because I'm older. And because I'm
—" He stopped, and his eyes narrowed again. "Oh no you don't."

She tried to look innocent.

"I warned Mother about reading all those speeches to you girls," he said. "This is not about suffrage, Victoria Garrison, it's about common decency. And safety."

She leaned over the table and kissed his cheek. "I'm sorry I worried you."

He scowled at her. "You
did
worry me."

"Then I'm sorry." And she sat again.

Thad turned his scowl to his plate. "Apology accepted, but don't do it again. And if you'll be out after dark
—"

"I wasn't out after dark," she reminded him.

"
—take Duchess," he finished firmly. 'You promised."

She smiled her sweetest smile. "I understand."

Thaddeas narrowed his eyes, having fallen for that dodge once too often, but to give him more would be to agree that he had the right to demand it of her. So, as casually as she could, she changed the topic. "Thad, may I ask you something?"