Jackson's Woman

by Judi Lind

  “I ... think so.” Obviously, he expected her to know his housing situation.

  If she wanted to gain his trust she had to tread carefully, build on his belief that she was Verity. For she sensed he was willing to go to extreme measures to help the young fugitive.

  To deflect his curiosity at her apparent memory lapse, she released the steadying influence of his arm and tested her legs. A bit wobbly but she could walk under her own steam—if Mr. Long Legs didn’t keep up too fast a pace.

  With Jericho’s arm hovering near her waist, they traversed the few hundred feet to the back door of the Copper Penny with little problem. Holding her out of sight with his forearm, he opened the squeaky door and peeked inside. “Come on.” He cocked his head. Taking her hand, he led the way inside.

  Although he took her upstairs by way of a narrow back staimase, so that Vera didn’t get a glimpse of the saloon itself, she was startled by the echoing silence of the cavernous building. “Where is everybody?” she instinctively whispered.

  “Charlie’s out front cleaning. I imagine most of the girls are still asleep.”

  Girls? Vera’s step faltered. She’d somehow assumed the Copper Penny merely catered to the drinking and gambling needs of the miners; she’d never imagined that Jericho serviced their carnal needs as well. Glancing over her shoulder, she assessed him with a more discerning eye. Although his black garb was frosted with trail dust and thick red mud, the fabric was finely woven. The jacquard vest was brocaded with golden threads.

  Was her fate tied to the Wild West version of a pimp? Did Jericho Jackson run a bawdy house? Alarm and...disappointment shuddered through her. If her fears turned out to be founded, Vera knew she’d have to relinquish Jericho’s dubious protection. Even if a lynch mob was the alternative, she couldn’t take refuge with a man who made a living off the degradation of women.

  When they reached the second-floor landing, Jericho motioned for Vera to stay on the staircase while he eased into the hall. A moment later, he waggled a beckoning finger and she joined him.

  They were at the end of a long hallway. The area was more like a gallery than the hallways of modern hotels. A half-dozen doors marched along one wall while a spindled railing on the opposite side guarded unwary guests from falling to the saloon floor below.

  Edging to the railing, Vera glanced down. The barroom was almost stereotypical in its Old West atmosphere. A polished wooden bar dominated the room. Three green baize-topped tables stood against the wall opposite the bar and about a dozen battered wooden tables were scattered between, mismatched chairs neatly set beneath them. Instead of swinging louvered doors at the entrance, a pair of copper-faced doors, with frosted glass panes near the top, were closed against street traffic.

  Jericho pointed to a second hallway, intersecting with the first. “Come on, this way.”

  Said the spider to the fly, Vera thought, wondering if he had plans to recruit her into his harem of soiled doves. Then, knowing she had no choice—at least for the moment, she followed him into the dim, cavelike darkness.

  VERA PATTED her stomach and leaned back in the chair, surveying the meager remains of the huge breakfast she’d just devoured. Steak, served with three eggs, a mound of fried potatoes, and warm, homemade bread slathered with fresh butter. No wonder photos of old west women portrayed them as...flashy, she thought. A couple more meals of these gargantuan proportions and she’d have to trade her jeans for that heavy spread draping Jericho’s bed.

  Moving to the narrow window overlooking the street, she fingered aside the lace curtains and studied the now bustling roadway. Reminiscent of a scene from an early John Wayne movie, the eerily familiar tableau played out before her disbelieving eyes. Suspendered men loaded buckboards with feed sacks and rough bales of hay, and calico-dressed women dragged recalcitrant youngsters along the uneven wooden sidewalk, while tethered horses patiently swiped flies with their wiry tails.

  Vera felt as though she’d fallen asleep reading Hansel and Gretel and awakened to find the evil witch stuffing her into the oven. Dream and fantasy had conquered reality.

  A light tap on the door heralded Jericho’s return

  His dark head peeked around the half-open door. “How was the grub?”

  Despite herself, Vera rolled her eyes and smiled. “The best meal T’ve had in...in decades.”

  His dark brows dipped slightly, then he shrugged and smiled back. A rather nice smile, she thought Too bad he didn’t use it more often.

  Closing the door behind him, he thrust his fists onto his narrow hips. “’Fraid I have some bad news. There’s been an accident at the mine—six miners are trapped.”

  Vera frowned, sorry for the endangered workers but wondering what this could have to do with her.

  As if reading her confusion, he continued, “Doc Greavy’ll be going from the Nesbitts’ straight to the mine. He’ll stay ’til they dig those fellas out, in case anybody’s hurt.”

  “So he won’t be coming back to Jerome for a while,” she concluded, as comprehension filled her. “No problem, I’m feeling fine anyway.”

  Jericho didn’t reply but she knew from his dark scowl that he still believed she suffered from a head injury and needed medical attention.

  Leaning his hip against a sturdy oak sideboard, he said, “Every able-bodied man in town is headed out to the mine to help dig. Folks’ll notice if I’m not there.”

  Vera wondered if he meant his absence would raise suspicion as to her whereabouts or that his failure to help would hurt his business. Regardless of his motivation, she understood that he had to lend whatever help he could offer.

  In fact, maybe she should go along. Vera had received training in disaster response, and, unfortunately, had far too much experience assisting in injury accidents. She could help the townspeople while perhaps picking up information about Rafe Wilson’s murder.

  Nodding abruptly, she said, “We’d better get out to the mine then.”

  Jericho’s head reared back. “Whoa! You’re not going anywhere, sugar. You’ll be safe right here.”

  Vera felt her back stiffen. She wasn’t his “sugar,” nor was she about to take orders from this six-gun-toting Neanderthal. “I can help out there and I’m going.”

  “Is your brain completely addled? Those folks see you and they’re apt to string up a rope right on the spot. No, you’re not to set foot out of this room. You sabe?”

  Memories of her rookie year surged forth. The first woman in her patrol unit, she’d been subjected to untold macho comments and unfair orders she’d been obliged to follow. But she’d served her probation, proven herself. She wasn’t going to backtrack now.

  Feeling a heated flush high on her cheeks, she leaned forward. “I really wish you hadn’t said that. Get this straight, it’s my life on the line—not yours. I’m not going to sit back like a good little girl and wait for a bunch of ignorant cowhands to slip a noose around my neck. You sabe?”

  A long, tense pause ensued, then Jericho raised his hands, palms out, in resignation. “Don’t go gettin’ your knickers in a twist, sugar. You want to get your pretty little neck stretched, that’s your business. Course you’d be the first woman hanged in these parts. First this year, anyway.”

  Vera’s hand flew to her throat in an involuntary protective gesture. Perhaps Jericho had a point. It would be easier to clear herself if her toes weren’t dangling from a sturdy tree limb.

  Once, Vera had been “loaned” to the San Francisco PD for a sting operation. For three nights, she’d donned gaudy clothing and too much makeup, posing as a working girl plying her trade in one of the seedier areas of the vast city. After she’d gotten over the embarrassment of catcalls and whistles following her down the avenue, she’d found she actually enjoyed the covert operation and wished the CHP offered more opportunity for undercover work.

  Looked like she was going to get her wish. If ever a situation called for subterfuge and stealth, this was it Moving to the tall, gilt-edge mirror on the far wall,
she stared at her image for a long moment. Finally, she turned to Jericho. “Earlier, you said you had girls working here. Think I could borrow some of their clothing?”

  Jericho backed up, casting out those expressive hands like a sinner warding off a tempting offer from the devil. “Oh no you don’t. Hanging’s nothing compared to what your mother would do to me if I let you parade around town dressed like a saloon girl. No, siree. Absolutely not.”

  Obviously, he’d closed his mind to reason, and further argument would be to no avail. She had to remember that she was dealing with a man from the past, a man who didn’t meet women on an equal plane. If her college history studies had been accurate, men of Jericho’s time could only be persuaded through seduction and manipulation.

  Even though using her feminine wiles wasn’t in her usual arsenal of relationship tactics, she sensed it was the only method of persuasion that might be effective on the hardheaded Mr. Jackson.

  Vera drew in a deep breath and called upon the meager acting skills she’d learned during the undercover sting operation. Forcing a slightly seductive smile onto her lips, she cocked her head to the side, and slowly crossed the room to stand in front of him.

  Reaching up, she took the ends of his ribbon tie in her hands and straightened the bow, her fingertips lightly and deliberately brushing against the fine linen fabric of his shirt. “Now listen, Jericho, sugar, we need to talk about this.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and stood firm. “No ma’am, absolutely not. And that’s my final word on the subject.”

  Chapter Five

  Thirty minutes later, Vera demurely wrapped the hem of the bright red satin dress around her ankles and climbed onto the hard wooden bench seat of the buckboard wagon Jericho had rented from the livery stable. Since it was still early in the day, she’d abstained from donning the black-plumed hair decoration he’d fetched in favor of a heavy coating of pancake makeup and an ostentatious black beauty mark high on her cheekbone.

  In Vera’s opinion, she looked nothing like the faded photograph of Verity McBride, but did make a rather fetching dance hall floozie—if she could just ignore the rough texture of the mesh tights chafing her inner thighs. Still, she was confident that no one would mistake her for the outlaw girl.

  “How far to the mine?” she asked.

  “Not far enough. Your mama is gonna have my scalp if she gets wind of this. Heahh!” Jericho clicked his tongue and shook the reins, spurring the chestnut mare into action.

  With a vicious jerk, the wagon bucked along the narrow rutted path up the mountain. If Vera had thought traversing the primitive trail was difficult on horseback, she’d sadly underestimated the degree of discomfort while bouncing up and down on a rough-planed wooden bench.

  Twice she slipped her hand beneath her seat to yank out toothpick-size splinters that pierced her bottom. Certain that Jericho was encouraging the horse to move with more alacrity than he would normally employ, Vera glowered ferociously in his direction. If Jericho noted her discomfort, he gave no notice; instead, he continued to hum that tuneless tune he favored.

  Giving up, she braced herself as best she could and thought about what they might find once they reached the mine entrance. She recalled her own brief hours trapped below the earth’s surface and felt a strong empathy with the men who, if still alive, knew they might never again breathe fresh air into their oxygen-starved lungs.

  She realized with a start that their pace had slowed considerably. The rickety wagon crawled around a hairpin curve as the tired horse negotiated the nearly vertical path. Despite herself, Vera leaned closer to Jericho, wanting to distance herself from the sheer drop-off plunging endlessly down the rock-strewn mountain to her right.

  Keeping his attention tightly focused on the treacherous roadway, Jericho glanced briefly in her direction. “What’s got you so spooked? You generally race up these curves like a wild goat.”

  She leaned further into him, the solid heft of his upper arm offering tenuous comfort. “Just a little nervous today, I guess.”

  The path flattened slightly and Jericho leaned back, letting the trail-wise mare have her head once more. “Can’t say as I blame you. If this disguise doesn’t work, this might be your last morning as a free woman.”

  When she didn’t reply, he continued, “You never said how you happened to bushwhack ole’ Rafe in the first place.”

  Vera gasped. What was wrong with her? He’d mentioned before that Rafe Wilson had been ambushed, shot from behind. From reading Verity’s journal, Vera knew that the younger woman had hit her stepfather with a cast iron frying pan. There’d been no mention of a shooting.

  Slowly turning to Jericho, she spoke slowly, trying to quell her growing excitement. She didn’t want him to think she was about to succumb to the vapors again. “There must be some mistake. Rafe wasn’t shot I, uh, he was hit with a skillet In self-defense.”

  His black-eyed gaze drilled through her flimsy poise. “Hate to argue with you, sugar, but I saw the body myself. Rafe had a hole in his back nearly as big around as that bankroll he always carried in his hip pocket. I’d say he was picked off with a carbine from a safe distance.”

  Vera shook her head. “Don’t you see? Someone framed Verity, um. me. Obviously, after the altercation in the cabin someone else came along and shot Rafe.”

  At long last the rocky trail evened out and Jericho paused to give the hardworking steed a rest. Folding the leather reins across his lap, he assessed Vera. “Reckon you’d better tell your story now.”

  Eyes closed, she dredged up memory fragments from Verity’s journal and related what she knew of the altercation between Rafe and Verity.

  When she finished her recital, Jericho didn’t respond immediately. For a long, thoughtful moment, he lowered his gaze, staring at his rock hard hands still holding the reins. He looked up, pinning her with his eyes and quietly asked, “When did this happen?”

  Did he want a date? The day of the week? Without refreshing her memory with the journal, Vera couldn’t recall such specific details. “It was almost dark when—”

  “At night? You say you whacked Rafe at night?”

  “Yes, that’s right. It was cold, started snowing later.”

  “That would have been Tuesday night. Snow stopped around midnight. Your brother showed up looking for me Wednesday morning. Found you in the mine late that afternoon. But something’s wrong with this yarn...when we rode out to the cabin we found Rafe’s body in the snow. He hadn’t laid there all night ’cause there wasn’t any snow on top of him. He’d been shot that morning. Wasn’t even stiff yet.”

  Excited, Vera grabbed his arm. “Don’t you see? That proves Verity, er, I couldn’t have done it! How could I have shot Rafe in the back, then raced to the Balbriggan mine fast enough to fall down a mine shaft before you arrived a couple hours later?”

  Jericho’s head tossed slowly from side to side. “There was plenty of time to hotfoot it to the Balbriggan while your brother moseyed into town for help.”

  “But I didn’t shoot him! Why can’t you believe me?”

  Jericho slowly tipped her chin upward and searched her pleading eyes. After a moment, he shook his head. “Reckon as how I do believe you, Ver, but I don’t see how that’s going to help much. Lots of folks ’round these parts didn’t cotton much to Rafe Wilson, but, hell, nobody cared enough about him to shoot the sorry bastard.”

  Clinging to the touch of warmth in his dark gaze, she stated the obvious. “Somebody did.”

  Despite hits UNDERLYING concern that someone might recognize the fugitive beneath her disguise, Jericho was nonetheless relieved when they rolled to a stop a hundred yards from the mine opening.

  As sole owner of the Copper Penny saloon, Jericho had become accustomed to dealing with women and had developed an easy familiarity with the half-dozen women he employed. Hardly a week went by when he didn’t have to referee some petty squabble, or wipe away tears from hurt feelings. While he made no claims to understanding t
he fair sex, he generally felt comfortable with women and could in time figure out what was going on under the surface.

  Not so with Vera, as Verity now preferred to be called. She was as hard to figure out as a campaigning politician. And about as evasive. By turns she was vulnerable, strong, weepy, serene, smart as hell, addle-brained, and hot tempered as a Mexican chili pepper.

  She kept him off-kilter and mad as a bee-stung viper most of the time. Yet she was more softly feminine, more downright alluring than any woman he’d ever known. Every time Vera came near enough to touch, Jericho felt a little jiggle in his heart and a tightening in his drawers. The woman was maddening.

  Now, however, wasn’t the time to dwell on Vera McBride, or her curious effect on him. He’d no sooner pulled the buckboard to the side of the trail when he was surrounded by a flurry of miners.

  “Jackson, good to see you. Don’t suppose you brought any samples from the bar?” Tug McMillan thumbed his broken suspender strap which he’d fastened to his trousers with a rusty safety pin.

  “Not unless you count the fixins’ for a pot of strong coffee,” Jericho replied, holding aloft a huge blue graniteware coffeepot.

  Jess Wiggins, a tall, powerfully built miner who always bullied his way to the center of attention, reminding Jericho of an aggressive bull elk, slid up to the wagon. “See you brought entertainment at least. Don’t reckon I know this purty little thing.”

  Unaccountably irritated, Jericho snapped, “She’s not here for your entertainment.”

  Wiggins reached into his pocket and held up a few coins. “Hey, Jackson, I don’t expect something for nuthin’. I’m willing to pay for this purty gal’s favors.”

  Catching a glimpse of Vera’s repulsed face, Jericho slapped aside the man’s hands, ignoring the tinkle of silver coins falling to the ground. “You know I don’t rent out my girls, Wiggins. They’re paid to serve drinks and deal cards. No more.”

  Wiggins bent over to retrieve his money. “One of these days you’re going to get too high-and-mighty for your own good, Jackson.”