Her Montana Man (2 page)

“I have a job now. And my own room at the hotel,” she said, her voice louder than he’d expected,

though a slight tremble betrayed her nervousness. “I’m content to stay right here.”

Baslow’s thunderous expression darkened even more noticeably.

A few citizens had gathered on the boardwalk across the street and were watching the goings-on with

interest. Wouldn’t be the first time a fight had erupted in front of his place, Jonas thought, his blood

pounding with keen awareness, and it wouldn’t be the last. He had never minded a good fight to clear the

air.

“You choosing a life of whoring over comin’ with me?” Baslow bit out between clenched teeth.

Jonas kept his mouth shut. He’d already told the man there weren’t any sporting women at his place,

and everyone in town knew it. This was Maddie’s chance to speak her piece.

“That’s what I felt like when I was with you,” she said, coming straight to the heart of the matter. “I

don’t want to live that way anymore. I’m not your wife.” Her voice and demeanor showed renewed

strength in her decision. “Nobody hits me,” she declared. “And I get a fair wage for a day’s work. I can

take care of myself just fine.”

Baslow headed toward Maddie. “I don’t know who fed you that hogwash,” he said, “but you belong to

me, and you’ll do as I say.”

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She backed away.

Jonas met him before he could reach the shade of the boardwalk. “Remember the brother’s war,

Baslow? It’s against the law to keep slaves.”

They stood three feet apart. Baslow’s right eye twitched with anger. Jonas’s palms tingled.

“Get outta my way, mister, before you regret it.”

“Can’t do that. Maddie’s my employee, and I take care of my people.”

Baslow lunged toward Jonas. Jonas dodged his first attempt to reach him, spinning with hands locked

together to land a blow on the back of the man’s neck.

Caught off guard, Baslow fell to his hands and knees in the dirt, losing his hat. Slowly, he shook his

head, and then scrambled to his feet to come after Jonas. The fight was on.

The growing crowd pushed forward for a better look.

Energized now, Jonas raised both fists and bent his knees in readiness. Baslow faced him and they

squared off, circling in avid concentration. The man’s eyes bored into Jonas’s with contempt. Jonas

studied his stance, his movements, waited to see how he hit. Faster than Jonas anticipated, Baslow

landed a blow to Jonas’s shoulder that forced him to catch his balance and got him mad. He retaliated

with a quick right that landed on the man’s jaw with a crack and drew a grunt from his opponent and a

murmur from the crowd.

Jonas didn’t feel the hits that came next, though he knew one landed against his ribs and another at his

temple. Adrenaline lent him strength and numbed the pain. In the minutes that followed he used the

reprieve to his advantage, skillfully finding opportunities to put down punches.

Half-a-dozen solid hits later Baslow’s lip was bleeding. He had a cut over his left eye, and he was

breathing hard. Jonas watched for and found an opportunity, hit his eye again, then positioned all his

muscle into landing a blow to his gut.

The man moaned and doubled over, dropping to his knees in the dirt. He glared up at Jonas, one eye

red from streaming blood. “You got no right to keep Madeline.”

“You’re finally right,” Jonas answered. “Nobody’s got a right to hold her. She’s free to leave, she’s free

to stay.” He turned to Maddie, who’d been watching with both hands clasped under her chin. “You want

to go?”

She shook her head and released a pent-up breath. “No.”

“You sure? ’Cause we don’t want any misunderstandin’s. You’re free to leave any time you want.”

“I want to stay.”

“There you have it.” Jonas’s knuckles were stinging now. “Need any more convincing?”

Marshal Haglar parted the crowd and made his way to stand on the brick street a few feet away. He

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took in both men’s appearances. “What in blazes is goin’ on here?”

Maddie immediately ran forward to explain what had taken place. When she’d finished, the marshal

turned to the spectators. “That how it happened? Anyone see the whole thing?”

Jonas couldn’t remember if anyone had been there during the initial exchange of words. He scanned the

faces nearby. People had an aversion to getting involved, especially when a dangerous-looking fellow like

Baslow glared at them as though daring someone to speak against him.

The marshal eyed the crowd, and one after another, the bystanders glanced at the person beside them

and then away. Jonas figured his reputation and position on the town council would have enough sway.

He wasn’t a troublemaker, but he never ran from a fight, either. He didn’t want to put Warren Haglar in a

bad position, and the indifference of the locals irritated him.

Townspeople turned as movement caught their attention, and Jonas looked, too. From the opposite

boardwalk, a slender woman in a blue-and-white gingham dress and a straw hat held the hem of her

skirts above her shoes and stepped down onto the paving bricks. She walked to within four feet of the

law officer. An unexpected tremor stabbed at Jonas’s belly.

“I saw the entire incident, Marshal,” she said. “I saw that man ride up and shout for Mrs. Holmes.”

Of course.
Jonas’s three o’clock obsession.
She’d been on the boardwalk the whole time. Eliza Jane

Sutherland was rather tall for a woman, and on the rare occasion that she’d been without a hat, he’d seen

that her hair was black and glossy in the sunlight. Jonas had never heard her speak more than a one-or

two-word greeting, so now her magnificent silky voice, more than the words she spoke, caught and held

his attention.

“Mr. Black came out of his establishment and suggested that he—” she pointed to the scowling stranger

“—leave.” Her bright amber gaze moved to Jonas.

Something in his chest throbbed at the direct look, something ragged and weighty, something more

alarming than facing a dozen angry men in the street.

The marshal asked her several questions and she replied directly. Jonas couldn’t take his eyes from her.

Every afternoon, rain or shine, Eliza Jane walked to the small tea shop that was a red brick storefront

nestled on the corner beside Earl Mobley’s tailor shop on the opposite side of the street. Once inside,

she seated herself at a table before the front window, where Bonnie Jacobson brought her a china cup

and a pot of tea. Most days Jonas observed her ritual from just inside the door of the saloon where she

couldn’t see him, but occasionally he found a reason to run an errand to the hardware store across the

street in time for her arrival.

Once or twice he’d paused on the boardwalk as she passed and tipped his hat. As soon as she’d raised

those amber eyes, his heart thudded in his chest and he’d chastised himself. Nothing and no one

intimidated Jonas Black.

Apparently the marshal had no problem accepting the true story now that Eliza Jane had verified it,

because he turned to Baslow. “Time you moved on.”

Baslow shot Maddie a look of seething rage. “You ain’t seen the last of me, woman. Don’t think your

friends can protect you forever.”

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“Anything happens to Miss Holmes, and we’ll know who to look for,” the marshal told him. “I’ll be

wiring the county seat to let ’em know about this disturbance.”

Baslow located his hat where it lay in the street. He snatched it up, whacked it against his thigh and

settled it on his head before walking toward his horse and untying it. From the clumsy way he mounted,

Jonas suspected he was masking a couple of cracked ribs.

Marshal Haglar watched as the man turned his mount away and galloped out of town. “Stay out of sight,

but follow him a ways to make sure he’s headed home,” he told one of the young men who had a horse

tethered across the street.

Once Baslow was out of sight and the man he’d sent was tailing him, the marshal approached Maddie.

“Thank you, Marshal,” she said.

“I had the easy part,” he replied. “Looks like Jonas got the worst of it.”

Maddie looked Jonas over, but after noting the onlookers, a tinge of embarrassment stained her cheeks.

“Sorry,” she said low enough that only Jonas and the marshal could hear.

“You handled it perfectly,” Jonas told her. “You had a crowd of witnesses while Frank was bullyin’ you,

and when you stood up for yourself, you gained the respect of each one. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

He could tell the moment when it no longer mattered that she’d been humiliated on a public street.

Maddie had just gained respect for herself. She caught her bottom lip with her teeth, but couldn’t hold

back a smile. She brought her palms to her blazing cheeks. “I shouldn’t be so pleased when you’re

standing there bleeding.”

He looked down at his knuckles, which had taken to throbbing like the very dickens.

The marshal tipped his hat. “Afternoon, Miss Holmes,” he said as though they’d just encountered each

other on the boardwalk.

“Marshal.”

Jonas searched the crowd and noted that Eliza Jane had returned to the other side of the street. She was

just entering the tea shop. Well, hell. He’d had the perfect reason to speak to her and had let it slip by.

Now he was going to have to go after her. His stomach lurched. Confused the tar out of him why that

thought was scarier than anything that had happened so far.

“Come in and put some ice on your hands,” Maddie suggested.

“I’ll be right there.” He gestured for her to go back to the Silver Star without him and crossed the street.

He needed to thank the witness for verifying his story.

couple of the men spoke to him, commenting on the incident. The last few remaining townsfolk headed

back to their jobs and errands.

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Jonas moved on, pausing outside the tearoom, his ink-stained and bleeding fingers on the door handle.

Scoffing at his uncharacteristic hesitation, he walked in, surprised to hear the delicate tinkle of a bell. It

rang again as he closed the door and glanced around. Silence and the scents of cinnamon and spices

engulfed him. He couldn’t imagine feeling more out of place.

Eliza Jane had taken a seat at her usual table by the window and removed her straw hat. Bonnie had just

set a fancy rose-patterned cup and saucer on the pristine white tablecloth. Eliza Jane watched him cross

the room toward her. His boot heels were glaringly loud on the wood floor. Her amber eyes held

surprise…and wariness.

“I wanted to thank you…for speaking up the way you did,” he said. She held his gaze, and he got that

funny feeling in his belly.

“I simply told the marshal what I’d seen.”

“A lot of people wouldn’t have done that with Baslow standing right there glarin’ at them.”

She shrugged. “I did it for the woman.”

Jonas nodded. “You did a good thing.”

Bonnie bustled from the back room with a cloth in her outstretched hand. He knew her from the town

council meetings, since she ran her own business and most often attended. “Put this on your cheek there,

Jonas. And come to the back and wash those hands.”

He accepted the wet cloth and touched it to his cheek where numbness had been replaced by a stinging

sensation. Some impression he must be making, standing there bleeding. Coming here probably hadn’t

been his wisest choice. “I’m not gonna bleed on your tablecloths, Bonnie. I’m not stayin’. I just wanted

to thank Miss Sutherland.”

“I wasn’t worried about the tablecloths, I was concerned about your face and hands.”

“I’m all right.”

“You want a cup of tea?”

“No, thanks.”

She glanced at Eliza and back at him. “All right then. I’ll bring your tea right out, Eliza Jane.”

Once they were alone again, she met Jonas’s gaze. “Is that woman, the one he was after, is she your…I

mean are you two…?”

Her blunt question surprised him. He shook his head. “Maddie works for me. She warned me about

Baslow, so I knew what to expect. Nobody has a right to push another person around just because

they’re bigger or stronger. The man had worse comin’ to him.”

Eliza studied the man standing in front of her with a new perspective. She’d seen him on the street a few

times, knew of him and his enterprises, but they’d never had occasion to speak. Her brother-in-law had

no use for Jonas Black, calling him a slave trader because he sold employment forms to itinerant workers

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seeking jobs. Silver Bend was a thoroughfare between the States and the British border, and scores of

men sought work with threshing crews, in logging camps and orchards, even mines.

She knew about hiring migrant workers. She’d worked in her father’s brickyard since she’d been old

enough to dig clay. Later she’d handled bookkeeping and accounts with enough skill to help buy railroad

and bank shares. She’d managed the finances until well after her father’s death—until her sister’s health

declined and Jenny Lee needed her more and more. Now she spent her days caring for her invalid sister