“Right.”
“Muh’Weda,” she put her hand on his arm as he started to walk away. “If I’m not there when you get back, don’t come looking for me. I’ll handle any trouble I find on my own, understand.”
“I do, but I don’t desert my friends, Kiera, and you should know that by now.”
“You’re right.” She nodded. “You do what you have to.”
“Same goes.” He gave a nod of his head and moved toward the sergeant.
Kiera headed for the mercantile. Once within reach of the crowd, most of whom had their backs to her, she tapped the nearest man, on the shoulder. A miner from the look of his pack and clothing, he turned his head. She gave him her most brilliant smile. “Excuse me, sir, but I need to get into the mercantile.”
“Why sure thing, little lady.” He issued a gap-toothed grin then shifted, waving his arms. “Fellas make way, this little thing needs to use the steps.”
Kiera choked back a laugh, she was 5’ 9” in her stocking feet, and the miner couldn’t have been more than 5’ 3” with his boots on.
His size didn’t seem to matter, the mass of men parted with murmurs of “Sorry ma’am; ‘scuse us; beg pardon, miss.”
She continued to smile and nodded acknowledgement of their apologies as she mounted the stairs and moved between the groups of men.
Behind her, one of the men spoke. “Wonder if the Wildcat really looks like that.”
Startled, she paused in the doorway of the mercantile and looked over her shoulder. Through the sea of male heads and faces she caught sight of the announcement nailed to the porch post.
Huge lettering announced, “Wanted Dead or Alive, the Wildcat aka Kiera Whitson, for Murder, Horse Stealing and Other Crimes, Reward $2,000.00.” They’d gotten her name half wrong, but how had they gotten any part of her name? Beneath the lettering was an illustration.
“Don’t think anyone knows for sure what she rightly looks like, but that drawing’s gotta be close or they wouldn’t put it up for us t’ look at.”
Kiera couldn’t see the drawing clearly, and pushing her way through that crowd to get a closer look would garner too much attention. She tugged down the brim of her slouch hat and continued into the dim interior of the mercantile. With luck the crowd would thin by the time she left, and she’d be able to get a good look at the drawing.
Inside, Kiera marched past two men with their backs to the room then straight to the clerk manning the counter. “I’m expecting a package of silver nitrate. Do you have it?”
The clerk bent, searched beneath the counter and lifted a mid-size parcel onto the counter. “This it?”
Kiera examined the shipping information. “Yes. Thank you very much. What’s the charge?”
Behind her the two men spoke quietly to each other.
“That’ll be one double eagle.”
“Twenty dollars? That’s robbery.” She didn’t have ten dollars let alone twenty. With an inward sigh she knew she had no options.
“Nope, it’s a delivery surcharge the shipping company tacked on ‘cause of all the robberies in the territory. They had to hire extra men to protect the freight wagons, so prices went up to pay for the guards.”
Reaching into the pouch attached to her belt, she extracted an earring. “This is really valuable. I’ll trade it to you for the package.”
“Ain’t got no use for one ear-bob.”
“But that’s a genuine ruby.” She shook the dangling gem at him. “Worth much more than a double eagle.”
“Ain’t got no use for rubies neither. Now if you had a pair of earbobs. Mebbe I’d be innerested.”
“Very well. I need that silver nitrate.” She extracted the matching earring and laid it on the counter. Kiera would have paid with gold, but she didn’t dare for fear of starting another rush. She hated giving up the earrings. They were the last of the few items she’d taken with her from home—the last reminder of her sisters and mother. Lord she missed her family. However, she couldn’t afford to be sentimental right now. Later she’d think about her sisters and mourn the loss of this small connection.
The clerk gave over her package with one hand and scooped up the jewelry with the other.
Kiera didn’t waste time thanking him but turned to leave the mercantile as quickly as possible. A collision with a blue flannel and black leather wall stopped her short.
A pair of large hands reached out and steadied her before the wall stepped away to become a long-legged, tall, well-muscled man. A man who annoyed her no end by sticking firmly in her mind day and night for close to five weeks.
“Beg pardon, ma’am.” Marshal Evrett Quinn spoke with deep, slightly raspy tones that caused every nerve in her body to cry out for attention.
Scared spitless that he would recognize her, despite changes to her appearance, Kiera looked up into honey brown eyes wide set under a broad brow. His narrow nose sat between angled cheekbones shadowed with a day’s growth of beard. A square jaw framed a generous mouth that wore such a beguiling grin that Kiera tilted her head in fascination.
Nothing about his expression or demeanor indicated he associated her red hair and practical feminine riding clothes with a blonde desperado in buckskins.
He bent, broke that mesmerizing gaze and plucked his black Stetson from the floor. He must have dropped it when she bumped into him.
“No pardon me, please. I should pay closer attention to where I’m going.” She sounded breathless and felt slightly dizzy. What in the world is wrong with me? I wasn’t moving that fast.
“Let’s agree that we should both be a bit more careful,” he suggested.
“By all means.”
He was staring at her again.
Kiera forced herself to look away.
“Ahem. We should finish making our purchases.”
Kiera blinked. The voice came from the man just to the right of the marshal, the same man who’d been with Quinn at the canyon.
The marshal shook his head and gestured with his hat to the other man. “If you’ll excuse me, my friend here insists on leaving.”
“By all means.”
The men stepped aside to let her pass.
Kiera left the building but paused on the porch to catch her breath. Something was definitely wrong with her. She wasn’t normally clumsy or short-winded. She stared out at nothing for a moment. She wanted to run, but instead moved with slow deliberation. Best not to attract attention. She became aware of a fluttering sound and turned to see the sides of the wanted poster flapping against the breeze.
The porch had cleared, save for the man in the black bowler, who leaned against the far rail, smoking a cigar.
Ignoring him, she stepped forward to study the image that supposedly displayed herself in all her horse-stealing, murderous glory.
Kiera shook her head. Guns blazed in the hands of the snaggle-toothed, snarling woman who stared out from the full body portrait. Shaggy hair straggled from underneath a battered ten-gallon. Round eyes, thin lips, and a flat nose completed the face. Overly generous breasts bloomed above a caricature of a waist and hips that any dancehall queen would be proud to own. Crossed gun belts decorated those hips, and holsters hung low against each thigh over sturdy denims, while snakeskin boots with pointy edged rowels on the spurs completed the illustrator’s idea of a hard-riding, female desperado. A brief sentence told observers that the Wildcat had yellow hair and pea green eyes. Anyone with information was requested to contact the Laramie Ledger or the Office of the U.S. Marshal, Wyoming Territory.
No wonder I can walk around an army outpost without anyone taking a second glance. She ran her tongue over her straight even teeth, gave brief thought to her own rail thin frame, her eyes that some said were almond shaped and lake green, and then her formerly white-blonde locks. The color was now a bright, hennaed red, a distasteful concession to disguise. She kept her hair trimmed, clean, and usually pinned neatly beneath her long-brimmed slouch hat, a replacement for the flat crowned dove gray Stetson s
acrificed in the canyon gun battle. Without a hat, her formerly blonde locks shone like a beacon. Since Marshal Quinn had a good look at her in the canyon, she decided that remaining blonde was entirely too dangerous. No she looked nothing like the image in the wanted poster. Worse or better, depending on how you thought about it or when you saw her.
Caution caused her to alter her appearance in other ways as well. When entering white settlements, she worked hard not to look like herself, dressing in split skirts and shirtwaists and behaving with a modest, even shy, demeanor. Temporarily she gave up the buckskins and the forthright approach to life that she preferred when with her Shoshone friends.
Kiera squared her shoulders.
“No woman could be that ugly,” she said to the air.
“The Wildcat is,” averred the man in the bowler, stepping closer. He was a skinny man of medium height with a slight paunch. Sparse strands of black hair emerged from beneath his hat.
Kiera stared at him not quite certain how to respond.
He removed his bowler, holding it against his chest and bowed.
“Clem Salter, reporter, managing editor, and owner of the Laramie Ledger, at your service ma’am. Matter of fact, I’m the only person alive who knows what the Wildcat looks like. She don’t take kindly to pictures and such, nor folks who can identify her.”
At his patent lie, Kiera felt her brows lift, so she widened her eyes. Better to appear more curious than suspicious. “Really? Does she look just like that picture? She’s so ugly; must be what made her so mean.”
The man replaced his hat and nodded. “Mean and dangerous. She’s known to have killed at least three men, prob’ly more.”
Behind him, Marshal Quinn and his companion filled the doorway into the mercantile.
“Is she a gunslinger then?” Kiera encouraged the liar, giving him every opportunity to brag in the hope that he’d spill useful information.
“Naw, she’s a coward. All her victims were shot in the back.”
Kiera let her jaw drop. She wanted to break the man’s nose for that insult. She tried not to fight, but when forced, she fought fair. “How vile. Are you trying to catch her?”
Bowler man nodded, slipped his thumbs inside his weskit and rock on his heels. “I will arrest her. Within a month—mebbe less—Wyoming Territory will be a much safer place.”
“Why’s that?”
“‘Cause, I got a posse that’s gonna get the Wildcat where she lives. We’re gonna clean out her entire nest of thieves and cutthroats.”
“Won’t that be dangerous?”
The two other men moved from the doorway out onto the porch, stopping at the rail to stare out at the camp, apparently uninterested in the reporter’s pursuit of a criminal.
“‘Course it’ll be dangerous. But I’ll succeed because unlike all the other men hunting for the Wildcat, I’ve studied the woman’s movements and behavior. I’ll draw my net so tight; she’ll never get past me.”
Kiera had to wonder what exactly he’d studied. She’d never been to Laramie. On the few occasions when she’d fired a pistol in practice, her shots had fallen so far wide of the mark that Muh’Weda had shaken his head in disgust. He’d taken the pistol away from her, saying she couldn’t hit a buffalo if it was standing on top of her. If she’d murdered anyone, it hadn’t been by shooting them in the back. She might have planned and executed a few shady escapades—love, or what passed for it to a naïve young woman, could lead that woman to do many foolish things. She disagreed that returning horses to their original owners was the same as horse stealing, and she left the firearms to those with more experience and better aim. As to murder, well, the less said the better, but if caught, she might honestly be unable to plead completely innocent, and contrary to the implications of the poster, honesty was important to her.
“Er, how many men are hunting the Wildcat?”
“Oh, seven or eight. Among ‘em are a US Marshal, a couple bounty hunters, and one reporter—that’s me,” he said and puffed out his scrawny chest. “Also, a squad of soldiers from Fort Sanders, and that don’t include my posse.”
“So many all for one woman.”
“One woman who’s killed and robbed for too long. Dang female’s left a trail of destruction from here to San Francisco.”
“I’ll sleep much better, knowing you’re on the job. Will you be leaving soon?” She fluttered her lashes at him. His type would see the silly move as flattery.
“Soon’s the rest of my men arrive. Should be any day now.”
“Dear me, I certainly don’t want to risk encountering this desperado. Which direction did you say you’d be tracking her?”
“Didn’t say. But if I was you, I’d not head east from here. Heard the Wildcat’s got it in for some ranchers and railroad men outta Rawlins.”
“Oh what a blessing, sir.” She fanned herself, imitating relief. “Our ranch is straight southeast of here, and I’ll be heading back immediately. My mother-in-law is coming to visit. I only came up to Camp Brown for extra supplies.”
He cast a distracted glance beyond her, squinting as if his eyesight were bad. “You go south for a day or so ‘fore you cut east, you prob’ly won’t have no trouble ma’am. There’s one of my boys now. If you’ll excuse me.”
“By all means, sir. Thank you for your kind advice and good luck. We need more heroes like you willing to risk life and limb to keep the territory safe.”
He doffed his bowler and moved past her down the steps, striding across the dirt to the opposite side of the camp.
She watched him leave and approach a man in a creased hat, black flannel shirt and well-worn denims with a wicked looking six shooter in a holster hanging against his left thigh. After removing his saddle bags, the man in denims gave his horse over to a stable hand. Kiera noted the careful way the fellow manipulated the bags with only his right hand, leaving his left hand free to pull that pistol at any time. That, and the way his narrow-eyed gaze constantly shifted, keeping watch on all movement, fairly shouted GUNSLINGER!
Kiera shivered. That reporter, Salter, didn’t bother her one whit, but if the other men hunting her were like the denim man or Marshal Quinn, she was in serious trouble.
She waited until the two men walked away then hurried across to the stable.
• • •
She had her package securely stowed and both horses saddled when Muh’Weda came in through the building’s back door.
“Thank the Lord. I was beginning to worry about you.”
Muh’Weda took the reins of his horse from her. “Sorry you worried, but I got quite a bit of information from that sergeant then decided to take a look see around the camp.
Kiera nodded. “So you know about the wanted poster and all the people looking for me.”
“Yep, that’s worrisome, but we knew when we arrived that coming here was a risk.”
She told him about her encounters with Quinn and Salter. “Can’t tell exactly how much Mr. Salter really knows. He got so much wrong. May be all of it’s wrong. Quinn didn’t seem to recognize me. Looks like my disguise is holding.”
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t take Salter or his posse lightly. I saw that gunslinger he met up with. Of them all, that marshal worries me most.”
Kiera nodded. “Worries me a lot too. He won’t be as stupid as that reporter. The last time we ran up against Quinn, we were lucky because we were able to surprise him and his friend ran out of bullets. They won’t let that happen again.”
“You’re right. I’ve heard Evrett Quinn is good with a six-gun and better with a rifle. Learned tracking from the Lakota.”
“He’s too much trouble to have following us. Maybe we should split up for a while.”
“Now Kiera, we talked about this earlier.”
“I’m not asking you to desert me. Just listen, I let Salter think I was headed southeast. He may not have identified me with the Wildcat, but then he’s a liar and a braggart. Any of those men could figure it out, and the Wildcat’s known
to travel with a partner. They won’t be looking for a lone woman, especially one going home to prepare for a visit from her mother-in-law. So I head south like Salter advised, and you head west. When I’ve laid a solid trail south, I’ll cut back west and north and meet up with you at that spot near the Big Wind River where we usually camp for the night.”
“I’m thinking we should avoid any place we usually go.”
“You’re probably right. I’ll meet you at the Wind River campsite, and we can go on from there. Plenty of streams in the area, even if the drought has them down to a trickle, we can lose our trail easy.
“I still don’t like the idea of you riding off alone with so many men hunting you.”
“It’s only for a few hours, and I’ve been on my own before. I can take care of myself, thanks to you and your family teaching me how.”
He stared at her as she opened the stable doors wide enough to lead the horses out. “I can’t talk you out of this, can I?”
Kiera smiled. “Waste of breath.”
“Then be careful, Dabai’Waipi.” He used the name the Shoshone had given her, reminding her that she was precious to his entire family and respected by his people.
“You too, Muh’Weda. I’m not the only person taking a risk here.” She mounted her dapple-gray mare and kneed the horse into motion.
Muh’Weda nodded and took to the saddle of his paint pony. He watched her ride off, waiting to be certain no one followed, before he rode west.
• • •
Tossing the ruby earbobs in one hand, Ev settled his Stetson over his hair and watched the dust trail of the woman disappear to the south.
“Pretty woman,” remarked Boyd. “Some rancher’s a lucky man to have that in his bed. Seems vaguely familiar. You know her?”
Quinn shook his head, biting his tongue on the temper that flared over the gunman’s remarks. “I don’t know that woman, but I got the same feeling you did, and I’ve only once heard a voice like hers.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the worn photographs sent by express rider shortly after the robbery, fire, and murder at Big Si’s ranch. One image was of an elegant Boston blue blood. The dark serviceable dress obscured her figure, her expression was serious, but the beauty of that face was as undeniable as the gleam of light in the woman’s pale hair. The other picture showed a slim young man with a shock of white blonde hair.
Loving the Lawmen Page 71
