Lynna Banning (2 page)

J
essamyn ran one gloved finger over the black iron printing press in the center of the room and breathed out a sigh of satisfaction.

After her meticulous inspection of the
Wildwood Times
office, her fingers fairly itched to dust off the Washington handpress, grab up a type stick, and start composing her first issue. But before she wrote one single word she had to sweep the cobwebs out of the corners and give the grimy plank floor a good scrubbing. Papa may have been a firstrate newspaper editor, but his housekeeping left much to be desired.

Ignoring the sheriff, who still lounged casually against the front wall, she cast a glance at the dirty windowpanes and groaned aloud.
Mama, you should have gone with Papa when he went out West!
Her mother would have been too frail to work the long hours putting an edition to bed, but she could have cooked and cleaned for him, at least until she died. Maybe Papa would have lived longer if he’d kept regular hours and eaten nourishing food.

Jessamyn understood how physically demanding it was to publish a weekly newspaper. Lord knows she’d seen her father gray with fatigue often enough when she was a child. But Papa had loved his work.

And he had loved Mama, too. But not enough. At least,
not enough to resist the lure of establishing his own newspaper in the West. “Got printer’s ink in my veins,” Thaddeus Whittaker had said each morning before breakfast. Mama had preferred the cobble streets of Boston over the dusty roads of Oregon.

She sighed. Papa’s zeal had more than rubbed off on her. By the time she was ten, she could set type faster and more accurately than he could. When her father left for Oregon, Jessamyn decided she would also become a newspaper editor. Like Papa. He had encouraged her through all the years of learning and struggle; in some indefinable way she had felt close to him, following in his footsteps, even though he was thousands of miles away.

How Mama had scrimped to send her to Miss Bennett’s Young Ladies’ Academy and then to Hazelmount Women’s College. After she graduated she took a job as the only woman reporter on the
Boston Herald.
Then, just a month ago, his last letter had arrived.

Come to Oregon, Jess,
Papa had written.
I need you here.

She hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. She’d waited a lifetime to hear those words. She was twenty-six years old and unmarried. A journalist, inspired and nurtured by her father. And an acknowledged spinster. What on earth did she have to lose? Besides, her papa needed her. A siren’s call could not have pulled her more strongly.

The day after she’d purchased her train ticket, a second letter had come. This time it was from a Dr. Rufus Bartel. Her father was dead.

She glanced down to find her hands gripping the press lever. A thread of pain encircled her heart.
Oh, Papa. Papa! I’m here now. I’ll run your newspaper. I’ll make it the best newspaper in Oregon.
She shut her eyes tight.

A low cough behind her made her jump.

“Seems to me, Miss Whittaker, you ought to nail down some lodgings for tonight.”

Jessamyn gasped. She’d forgotten all about Mr. Kearney.
“Nail…what? Oh, you mean register at the hotel. I will, after I’m finished here.”

“The good hotel fills up fast on Saturday,” Ben offered.

“Then I’ll stay at the other one.”

“I don’t think so, ma’am,” he said in a quiet voice.

Turning her full attention on the man at her elbow, she folded her arms across her midsection. “Why not?”

“The only women who frequent that place are fancy ladies.”

“Fancy ladies?”

Ben hesitated. “That’s what we call ‘em out here. Calico queens. That or—” he hesitated a split second “—soiled doves.”

Jessamyn blinked. “Doves? Oh, you mean wh—”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ben said quickly. “So, you’d better hustle your bu…uh…baggage over to Dixon House, on the other side of the street.” He gestured over his shoulder with his left thumb.

“Other side of the street,” she echoed. Her voice trailed off as she studied the man who stood before her. Blue denim trousers outlined slim hips and the longest legs she’d ever seen. A fringed buckskin vest hung loose over a crisp dark blue canvas shirt with silvery buttons that marched up the expanse of his chest and ended at the closed collar.

Her gaze flicked down to the polished black boots and the jingly spurs, then moved back to his broad shoulders. Slowly her brain registered something she hadn’t noticed before. A purple scar ran from beneath one ear across his throat and disappeared inside his shirt collar.

She caught her breath. “You were wounded in the war, weren’t you?” she blurted without thinking. “The War of the Rebellion, I mean.”

The question hung in the lengthening silence.

The fine mouth tightened. “We call it the War Between the States. Yes, ma’am. Now, about your baggage—”

“The War Between… Oh!” Of course. He must be a
Southerner! Her reporter’s curiosity battled with Miss Bennett’s lessons on propriety. Curiosity won.

“Mr. Kearney, would you tell me about your battle experiences? As a reporter, I mean?”

His entire body stiffened, then visibly relaxed, limb by limb, as if given orders to do so. “Won’t be time between now and the morning stage, Miss Whittaker,” he said, his voice low and rough.

“Morning stage?”

“Seven o’clock. I’ll ask Tom at the hotel to load up your trunks for you. That way you can enjoy your breakfast before you—”

“Mr. Kearney, I most certainly did not come all the way out here just to pay a ten-minute call and go back to Boston in the morning. I came to Wildwood Valley because my father asked me to.”

“Your father is dead, Miss Whittaker.”

Jessamyn’s heart squeezed. “I know. He left me sole owner of the—”

“Thad Whittaker was shot in the back.”

“Wildwood Ti—What did you say?”

“Your father was shot to death. Doc Bartel said he’d write you.”

Jessamyn felt the floor tilt under her buttoned shoes. “He did write. He just didn’t tell me… Shot? You mean with a gun? Oh, my Lord!”

Ben swore under his breath.

Jessamyn clenched her jaw tight for a moment before she could trust herself to speak.

“Who would do such a thing?”

“Don’t know yet. So you see, ma’am, you’d best—”

She drew herself up to her full height and fisted her hands on her hips. The top of her head came just to his chin. “Do you honestly think I could leave? Especially now that I know my father was… Are you
sure
he was shot?”

“I’m sure. Happened right in front of my office. So you see—”

Jessamyn bristled. “Oh, I see, all right, Mr. Kearney. You think I’m going to turn tail and run, is that it? Just because my father…”

Her voice broke. She struggled to take deep, even breaths. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Kearney. Papa…my father wanted me to come out here. I know he’d want me to run his newspaper. Surely you don’t think for one minute I’m going to let him down?”

Ben sighed. “Give it up, ma’am. The living don’t owe the dead a thing.” He growled the words into an uneasy silence.

“Give up?” Jessamyn heard her voice rise to an unladylike pitch. “Give up?” she repeated in a lower tone. “A Whittaker, Mr. Kearney, never gives up. Never!”

Shaking, she clenched and unclenched her hands, then wrapped both arms tightly across her chest.

“God almighty,” Ben swore. “You sound just like him! Stubborn as a mule.”

Jessamyn flinched.. “Stubborn? Because I want to stay and finish something my father started? You haven’t begun to see ‘stubborn’ yet, Mr. Kearney.”

Ben raised one dark eyebrow. “Yep, just like him,” he said softly.

Jessamyn flashed a look at him, opened her mouth to reply and stopped short. The sheriff’s smoky blue eyes shone with tears.

“Thad was a good man, Miss Whittaker,” Ben said in a quiet voice. “And a good friend. But he was so damned in love with Goliath there—” he gestured at the iron printing press “—he figured he was Moses on the mountain.”

“You mean he was a good newspaper editor,” Jessamyn translated. Good heavens, couldn’t they speak the king’s English out here? She had to interpret practically everything the man said.

“The best,” Ben grumbled. “That’s what got him killed.”

Jessamyn gasped. “Oh! Do you really think that?”

“Wish I didn’t,” Ben muttered. “Sure as hell wish I didn’t.”

“Well, Mr. Kearney, if you are the sheriff, as you say, what are you doing about my father’s murder?”

Ben sighed.. “Everything I can think of, Miss Whittaker. Every damn thing I can think of. And I don’t need some nosy newspaper lady in my way.”

“I won’t be,” she snapped.

Ben sent her a steady look. “I don’t want you thinking you have any say about my methods, either.”

“I wasn’t,” she retorted.

“And,” Ben continued, pronouncing each syllable with deliberate emphasis, “I’ll brook no comments from you, or your newspaper, until my investigation’s over.”

“I wouldn’t think of it!” she lied.

“May take months,” Ben warned.

She met his hard-eyed gaze with one of her own. Sheriff Ben whatever his name was—Kearney—gave orders like an army officer. “You have my word as a Whittaker.”

“That,” Ben muttered, “is just what I’m afraid of.”

The door marked Sheriffs Office banged open, and Ben strode past the cluttered desk to the inner door leading to his private quarters. He twisted the knob and pushed the door inward.

“Jeremiah?” Leaving the door ajar, Ben turned toward his desk. A stack of unopened mail sat on top of his logbook. Curled up beside it lounged a ball of marbled blackand-white fur. He scratched the cat’s underchin, then reached past the animal to rescue the coffee cup teetering near the edge of the desktop.

“Jeremiah!”

A square, bearded face appeared in the doorway. “I’m right here, Colonel. What you need’n?”

“Whiskey,” Ben growled.

“Doc Bartel says—”

Ben yanked open the top desk drawer and rummaged
through the contents. “Rufus Bartel is a fussy old coot with an excess of irrelevant medical training.”

Jeremiah nodded, his soft brown eyes twinkling. “Yessir, Colonel, that he is. Irrelevant.”

“Nosy old sawbones,” Ben grumbled. His fingers closed over a small brown bottle.

“Yessir, he surely is.” Jeremiah moved forward, his stocky frame quiet as a cat’s. “That doesn’t make the doctor wrong, though.” He snatched the bottle from Ben’s lips. “Truth is, Ben, you quit drinkin’ heavy. Thing is, you gotta stay quit.”

Ben snorted. “Jeremiah, I don’t pay you to nursemammy me.” He sucked in a lungful of air as Jeremiah slipped the bottle into his back pocket.

“No, Colonel.
You
don’t pay me a-tall, and I reckon you remember why.”

Ben remembered. Both in the field and when imprisoned at Rock Island, he and Jeremiah had saved each other’s lives so many times the two men were like blood brothers. Half of Ben’s salary was paid to his faithful friend, along with considerable admiration and respect.

Jeremiah was more than Ben’s deputy. The solidly built man was the only surviving family Ben had left outside of his younger brother. In fact, he felt closer to Jeremiah than he did to Carleton. After the war, when he and Jeremiah had come West, the two had made a pact. Half of whatever one had belonged to the other—whether food, horseflesh, whiskey, or cash money. They drew the line only at women.

“I need a drink,” Ben ventured.

Jeremiah grinned, revealing a mouthful of uneven white teeth. “Talked to her, didja?” He nodded his head knowingly. “Thought so. Beats me how a woman can do that to a man inside of ten minutes jes’ by talkin’, but happens all the time.”

“Jeremiah?”

“Colonel?”

“Bring two glasses.”

Jeremiah executed a quick about-face and moved toward the doorway. “Damn troublous creatures, women.”

Ben leaned his forehead onto his hands. Yes, damned troublous.

He didn’t want Jessamyn Whittaker out here, poking about just like Thaddeus had, interfering with his job. A Yankee lady from Boston? She probably hadn’t the sense God gave a bird’s nest. She’d hamstring his progress just as surely as if she hobbled his horse. Thaddeus had been a constant fly in the ointment for years, and nothing Ben had said could deter him. “I got a good nose for news” was all the editor would say.

That the crusty old man had had. Ben could see in a minute that his daughter was just like him. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He had to decide what to do about her, and fast. A starchy Yankee with soft green eyes was the last thing he needed right now.

Jessamyn plopped the boar-bristle scrub brush into the pail of soapy water and sat back on her heels. She’d scrubbed everything in sight, including the plank floor, until it was clean enough to squeak. The rough oak boards had been so caked with filth she’d scoured them twice with lye soap.

Next she planned to visit Frieder’s Mercantile to purchase the kerosene she needed to clean the iron printing press and order some other supplies as well—printer’s ink and more newsprint. She’d found her father’s storage cabinets almost empty.

Tucking a wayward strand of hair into the loose bun coiled on top of her head, she scrambled to her feet and swatted the dust off her work apron. The hem of her blue poplin skirt and the two starched petticoats underneath were gray with cobwebby dirt. Jessamyn seized the garments in both hands and switched them vigorously from side to side.

Clouds of dust puffed up from the folds of material, making
her eyes water and her nose itch. If Miss Bennett could see her now, she’d have apoplexy!

She studied her red, water-puckered hands. At this moment Boston and the refinements of civilization seemed as distant as the moon. Her bed at the Dixon House hotel the previous night had been uncomfortable, the mattress so thin the metal springs had pressed into her back. Sleepless, she’d tossed and turned, thinking of Papa, of all the years he’d praised her talent for writing, remembering how bereft she’d felt between his newsy, heartfelt letters.

She also thought about the
Wildwood Times.
She would do anything to please her father, especially now that he was gone. Running his newspaper would keep him close to her.