Lynna Banning Page 17

  Ben gave the pump handle two vicious strokes and stuck his head under the water to cool off. Why was he dredging all this up again? He shook the water out of his hair, rubbed his wet hands over his face and blotted his cheeks against his sleeve. He had to get his mind off women.

  The memory of Jessamyn Whittaker, her chestnut hair tumbled about her shoulders, her soft mouth lifted to his, would fade with a good supper and some ranch talk with Carleton and Ella.

  He couldn’t wait to ride into the mountains again. Tracking always distracted him from other things weighing on his heart. If he was on the trail, he wouldn’t have to see her, wouldn’t ache to kiss her again.

  With a last swipe at his hair, he clapped his hat back on and strode toward the porch.

  So tired she could barely stand, Jessamyn pulled the last sheet of newsprint off the press and held it up. Jeremiah released the lever arm and moved to read over her shoulder.

  “Looks mighty fine, Miss Jessamyn,” the stocky man remarked. Nodding his head, he scanned down the page, his broad forehead creasing into a frown. “Gonna rile up some folks, though. But I expect you know that And surely does look mighty fine.”

  Jessamyn’s heart swelled with pride. Despite her exhaustion, her pulse quickened as she examined the still-damp copy of her first issue. The print was sharp and clear, none of the headlines were tombstoned, and the stories beneath were broken into readable paragraphs. The articles ranged from local doings to statewide and national events reported by the wire service and delivered on horseback from Steamboat Landing.

  Papa would applaud her debut effort. All during this long night, the second in as many days she had labored at the newspaper office, Jessamyn had felt her father’s spirit hovering near, guiding and encouraging her. She could almost hear his voice in her ear. “That’s my Jess!”

  Her hand shook so violently the paper rattled. “We did it, Jeremiah.” She looked up at the deputy beside her. “Just think, by breakfast time we’ll have fifty copies ready to deliver.”

  “You did it, Miss Jessamyn. I jes’ helped out a bit here’n there.”

  Jessamyn shook her head. Jeremiah had sneaked over from the sheriffs office last night after Ben had retired, and stayed until the sun rose, helping her lock up the frames of finished type and pulling the heavy press lever for her when her arm gave out.

  “I couldn’t have done it without your help, Jeremiah. You’re a good friend.”

  The deputy’s toothy grin flashed. “We’re not out of the woods yet, Miss Jessamyn. You don’t have fifty copies— only got thirty-eight. We used the last of the paper a while back.”

  Jessamyn’s heart sank. “No more newsprint? But my order at Frieder’s isn’t in yet!”

  Merciful heavens, what would she do now? She massaged her temples with her fingertips. Think! she ordered her tired brain. She was out of newsprint and twelve copies short. She gave a little moan of despair.

  “Aw, Miss Jessamyn, please don’ cry. I can’t stand it when a lady cries. Lordy, when Miss Lorena—”

  Jeremiah caught himself and stopped short.

  Jessamyn’s gaze locked with the sober-faced deputy’s. “Jeremiah, tell me. Who is Miss Lorena?”

  Jeremiah ran a blunt forefinger around the inside of his shirt collar. “Miss Lorena was…well, uh, she was Ben’s lady, back in Carolina. And, well, seein’ as how Ben and me and Lorena, we grew up together, I sorta liked to imagine she was my lady, too.”

  “You were in love with her, weren’t you?” Jessamyn remarked, her voice soft.

  The deputy’s eyelids closed momentarily. “Yes’m. But I never spoke out to her. Didn’t have the right. I was just the overseer’s son, and we were mighty poor folk. I couldn’a bought her pretty dresses and fine horses like she’d expect from a man. And Ben…well, Ben was more what Miss Lorena wanted. So I never said nothin’.”

  “And Ben never knew, did he?”

  “No, ma’am.” The deputy tapped his well-developed chest. “It’s been locked in here for these twenty years.”

  A silence dropped over the room. For a moment Jessamyn’s newspaper problems seemed insignificant compared with the lifelong ache in a man’s heart for something he couldn’t have. Lord knew she’d felt a similar longing for her father all those years he’d been gone.

  “I am sorry, Jeremiah. Truly I am.”

  Jeremiah started as if roused from a dream. “Oh, I’m not so heart-laden I can’t appreciate a fine-lookin’ woman. Sorta like hair of the dog, you might say—it’s good for a man.”

  Jessamyn studied the solid, square-faced man before her. If she wasn’t mistaken, her sharp eyes had already identified the deputy’s choice. The look in Jeremiah’s soft brown eyes that day Walks Dancing had ridden into town told her the deputy might be well on the road to recovery.

  Jeremiah cleared his throat. “Now, then, ‘bout your paper supply. Your pappy ever smoke ceegars?” he inquired in his soft drawl.

  “Cigars?” She stared at him. Jeremiah’s shift in subject matter pulled her attention back to the newspaper. “Are you suggesting that smoking a cigar will help me think what to do?” She choked down a bubble of laughter at the thought.

  “No, ma’am, surely not. But ceegars come packed in big boxes, and those boxes are wrapped in fine big sheets of paper. Kinda tan colored, but we could iron out the creases and—”

  “Jeremiah, you’re a genius!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the deputy said modestly. “I’ll just go rouse up Mr. Frieder and see what kind of ceegars he’s got in stock.”

  Jessamyn watched the stocky man march through the doorway, her mind racing ahead of him. An iron! She’d need an iron. And a fire in the stove to heat it on. She could smooth the wrapping paper out on the desk.

  Before she could dash over to beg the use of Cora’s sadiron, Jeremiah was back, a roll of wide wrapping paper in one hand and a small flatiron in the other.

  “This here’s my special pressin’ tool. Works just fine on Mr. Ben’s shirts, so I figured—”

  He broke off as Jessamyn gave him a swift hug. “Jeremiah, you’re not only a genius, you’re a newspaperwoman’s gift from heaven!”

  Jeremiah’s grin flashed again. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Jessamyn swore a blush tinged the deputy’s tanned cheeks. “Come on, Jeremiah. Another hour and our paper will hit the street, as they say in Boston. Oh, isn’t it exciting?”

  Jeremiah’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Yes, ma’am.” If she only knew. He’d almost choked when he’d heard old Mrs. Henson’s rooster crow at five this morning and realized he’d been at the news office all night. Then he’d had to rouse Otto Frieder and his wife out of a sound sleep to rustle up the cigar-box wrapping paper. Otto had sworn a blue streak all the way to the mercantile front door.

  “Yes’m, Miss Jessamyn, it surely is exciting.”

  Jessamyn flitted away to the back room with the nickelplated iron in her hand. Jeremiah spread the roll of wrapping paper out on the desk.

  At half past six that Tuesday morning, fifty neatly folded copies of the Wildwood Times, editor J. Whittaker, were completed. They had printed the final four copies on squares of clean muslin sheets that Cora had reluctantly agreed to cut up as the deadline approached.

  Jessamyn flew up one side of the street and down the other, delivering her papers. She left copies on the Dixon House hotel desk, on the table just inside the door of Charlie’s Red Fox Saloon, at Frieder’s Mercantile and the barbershop. She would hand-deliver the paid subscriptions later this morning, after some breakfast.

  Jessamyn watched her helper and mainstay through the endless, exhausting night sprint across the street and disappear into the sheriff’s office. Feeling enormously pleased, she pulled the front door shut, locked it, then headed for the two-story white house and the soft bed in the yellow-papered room at the end of the upstairs hallway.

  It was a good issue, she thought with pride. A good beginning. She could almost hear her father’s voice. “Well done, daught
er!”

  She hoped Ben wouldn’t be too angry when he read the story about him on the front page. She drew in a tentative breath and held it. Closing her eyes, she fought down a tremor of alarm, remembering Jeremiah’s frown when he’d scanned her lead article.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The sheriff’s office door banged open, then slammed shut. “Ben!” a furious voice bellowed. “Ben Kearney, where the hell are you?”

  “Putting on my pants,” Ben said quietly as he emerged from the sleeping quarters. He cinched his belt up, moved to meet the short, wiry man dancing a jittery path toward him.

  “What are you doing up so early, Jack? I thought railroad barons lived a life of luxury.”

  “Luxury!” Jack Larsen sputtered. “Don’t you know what’s happening? They’re talking about changing the railroad route to the coast. Hell, if they do that, I’ll be flat broke in a week!”

  Ben looked the man in the eye. “I warned you to wait Only a fool would rush out and buy up all that property on sheer speculation.”

  “Ben, it was a sure thing.” The man’s impeccably groomed mustache twitched with fury. “I had Senator Tiel eating out of my hand. If it wasn’t for that goddamned newspaper—”

  “Thad Whittaker’s dead, Jack. You know that.”

  Larsen’s small black eyes narrowed. “Yeah, well, the newspaper isn’t. You seen it?”

  “Seen what? The paper? No, not yet. I know Jess—the editor’s been working on it. Last I heard she hadn’t gone to press. Nobody’s seen a printed copy yet.”

  “Like hell.” Larsen withdrew a rumpled page from inside his vest and slapped it down on Ben’s desk. “Read that!”

  Ben studied the words printed on the odd-colored paper. A faint design showed through the typeset copy—a huge, floppy petaled flower with the word Havana beneath it. Disregarding it, he scanned the articles. Activities of Mrs. Ellis’s church quilting society. A formal birth announcement for Henry Winchester and Lyle Coulter Bartel, Rufus and Lizzie’s twins. Ah, there! At the top of the last column.

  “Legislature Reassesses Railway Route,” Ben read out loud.

  Jack Larsen rocked back on the heels of his black leather boots. “It’s all over town. I got the last copy over at Charlie’s saloon.”

  Ben eyed the man before him. “What’s all over town?”

  Larsen snapped his jaw shut, then cracked his thin lips just enough to speak. “Senator Tiel thinks the original route—my route—is unsafe. Rock slides or some damn thing. Hell, Ben, another article like this one could ruin me!”

  Ben nodded. If he was going to get any breakfast this morning, he’d better smooth Jack’s ruffled feathers. Otherwise, the irate investor would talk his ear off all morning complaining about unfair news coverage and biased editorials, shooting off his mouth before he thought things through.

  “Write a rebuttal, Jack. Maybe a letter to the editor making your views known. If you’re convincing enough, you might even change the senator’s mind. And coherent enough,” he added as an afterthought. Jack Larsen was always going off half-cocked and doing something crazy. The attribute annoyed Ben. He’d watched Thad Whittaker punch holes in Jack’s outrageous accusations for years; it was like popping a hatpin into an overinflated balloon.

  “Talk to Jeremiah when you’ve calmed down,” Ben advised. “My deputy’s good with words.”

  “Yeah, Ben, maybe I’ll just do that.” The tightness in the railroad man’s voice eased. “I’ll just do that As my daddy used to say, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” His narrow, pinched face lit up with a secret smile. “Or an editor.”

  Ben hustled Jack out the front door ahead of him.. The last thing he saw as he made his way to the Dixon House dining room for his breakfast was Jack Larsen’s blackjacketed backside disappearing into the Red Fox Saloon.

  Ben frowned. Not only was the man a damn fool, he was not trustworthy. Not for one minute did he believe the investor had Senator Tiel eating out of his hand. More likely that was some puffery designed to mollify Larsen’s coinvestors. Now the railroad investor was mad as a hornet because his lie had been exposed. When he went back up into the mountains tomorrow, he’d ask Jeremiah to keep an eye on Larsen.

  At Dixon House Ben hung up his gun and ordered coffee and the usual steak and fried eggs, then slid into a chair at one of the unoccupied tables. A copy of the Wildwood Times lay on the next table. Ben picked it up, opened it to the front page.

  “Goddammit to hell!” His fist crashed onto the wood surface.

  Ben ran one hand through his hair as he scanned the front page. There before him, in bold black type, was exactly the information he needed to keep quiet—the link between cattle rustling and providing guns to the Indians. God almighty! The minute whoever was responsible read this, he’d know the sheriff was on to the scheme.

  Ben gritted his teeth. The first thing an outlaw would do would be to go underground. Disappear. Damnation! He’d lost the only advantage he ever had—surprise.

  “Jessamyn,” Ben muttered. “You damned little fool.” She’d forced his hand. Now he’d have to saddle up this very morning to get the drop on his quarry before the news spread.

  Ben gulped the scalding coffee, grabbed his pistol off the hook and moved toward the door.

  “Rita?” His voice rang in the empty dining room.

  The waitress poked her head out from the kitchen.

  “Cancel that steak, will you?”

  Miss Whittaker, if I live through this, I’m gonna tan your backside so hard you’ll stand up for a week.

  Ben strode through the door into the hot June sunshine and headed for the sheriff’s office. He had to let Jeremiah know he was going back up into the mountains.

  Jessamyn rolled over in her narrow bed and pulled the sheet over her head, trying to shut out the morning light that flooded the upstairs room. No use. Exhausted as she was, she was too keyed-up to sleep any longer. She had to hear firsthand the townspeople’s reaction to her first issue.

  She sat up, easing her pantalet-covered legs off the edge of the bed. She had to know Ben’s reaction, too.

  She splashed cool water from the washstand basin onto her face, scrubbed her teeth with baking soda. She wouldn’t bother with her corset, she decided. She was in too much of a hurry to take the trouble to snap herself into it and cinch up the laces. Hurriedly she pulled two crisp, starched petticoats on and tied them at the waist over her chemise.

  Twisting her hair into a loose bun, she jammed seven wire hairpins in as fast as her fingers would move, then buttoned up her shoes and grabbed her parasol. She was down the stairs and out the door in a twinkling. Cora didn’t even look up from the kettle of fragrant strawberry jam bubbling on the stove.

  The morning air smelled of dust and Cora’s prize damask rose blooming in the side garden. Jessamyn flew past the livery stable and up the street toward her office.

  Dr. Bartel tipped his hat and smiled his thanks for the birth announcement. Then Addie Rice hailed her. Could the seamstress place another ad for dressmaking and one for millinery in next week’s issue?

  In front of the mercantile, a beaming Anna-Marie Frieder waddled out the front door with a small paper sack of ginger drops. “You write about our baby, too, when it comes next month?”

  Of course she would, Jessamyn assured her. Birth announcements and obituaries were the staples of the news business, along with political advertisements. How glad she was this was an election year—her coffers would be running over by voting day in the fall. Already some senator from Portland had written to inquire about her rates.

  Her brain hummed. Next week’s issue would include the church choir director’s plea for men’s voices and an editorial on sprucing up the buildings along the main street in time for the Fourth of July.

  But just think, she had readers! Already supporters flocked to subscribe. Silas Appleby had ridden in from his ranch just yesterday to offer a year’s payment in advance. He’d gazed with interest at her frenzie
d activity at the composing table and gallantly invited her to supper. She’d declined, but even so, the sandy-haired rancher had insisted on paying for his subscription then and there.

  Oh, it was wonderful, all of it. She knew why Papa had loved it so. A newspaper was an important contribution to a community, an economic and cultural asset to the county. The process—and the heady sense of connectedness she gained—were as intoxicating as fine brandy.

  Just as she reached the door of the Wildwood Times, Sheriff Ben Kearney appeared on the opposite side of the street. He pivoted, spoke over his shoulder to his deputy and lifted a saddlebag onto his shoulder.

  Ben was going away? So soon after…

  He caught sight of her and stopped still for an instant, then started across the street toward her. Jessamyn swallowed as his long legs brought him closer and closer. His angular face looked grim, his well-formed lips compressed into a hard line, his stride unrelenting. Watching his loose-jointed gait, the long, powerful legs flexing in her direction, she felt mesmerized by the sheer animal magnetism of the man.

  Blood surged into her face. Dizzy, she wrenched her attention away, jiggling the key in the front door lock. His footsteps echoed on the board sidewalk behind her.

  “Lift it up,” Ben breathed at her back. He reached around her, maneuvered the sticking door open. “Now, lock it behind us. I want to talk to you.”

  Unsteady, Jessamyn swung the door wide. Her heart pounded erratically. Ben swept her through the opening and kicked the door shut with his boot. Then he turned the key, locking them inside.

  “No one can get in,” Jessamyn ventured.

  “Exactly.”

  “What about my subscribers?” She made a half turn away from him to peer out the front-window. “Some of them might want to pay—”

  “Later.” Ben dropped his heavy saddlebag where he stood and took two steps forward. Grasping her shoulders, he spun her to face him.

  “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Jessamyn stiffened. “Publishing my newspaper, that’s what.”