sorry, Mr. Wilcox, but the hotel is full up. Seems that woman with a passel of kids that got off the 11:10 is Mick Wagner’s mail-order bride.”
An involuntary shiver raced over Carter’s shoulders.
“Seems it took up the hotel’s last three rooms just to find enough sleeping room for all of them. They’ll be there for a couple days, too. Walt Smith went to tell Mick she’s—or they’ve—arrived, but it’ll take him three days to ride out there and back.”
“Thanks, J.T.,” Wilcox said, closing the door. When he turned, he shrugged.
“How many kids did that woman have?” Carter hadn’t meant to say that aloud.
Wilcox laughed. “I couldn’t count them all, not with the way they were running around like heathens.” He shrugged again. “I didn’t know Mick ordered a bride.”
Carter’s tongue stayed put, but sympathy did cross his mind. Had to. Any man had to feel sorry for another one getting in that position. A wife and a passel of kids. All at once.
“There is a boardinghouse on the east edge of town, but the widow Reins runs it, and she’s as nosy as a coon.”
“That’s all right,” Carter said. “I’ll find a place to bed down for the night.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“By then I’ll have a job at the mercantile. It’ll come with room and board.”
Wilcox let out a cynical laugh. “Thorson’s Mercantile?”
Carter didn’t nod, but did let a tiny grin emit.
“You Pinkerton men must be brave,” Wilcox said. “Or crazy.”
Carter held his opinion on that, too.
By noon the next day he was back at the mercantile, buying another one of those cinnamon rolls. Molly Thorson wasn’t any more pleasant today than she’d been yesterday, but the rolls were just as good. Leastwise it smelled that way, he’d yet to buy and eat one.
“What do you want?” she demanded while glaring up at him from where she stood behind the counter unpacking another crate.
Nothing to do with you, he almost snapped in return. She looked about as friendly as a thunderstorm, and that was before taking in account her ugly gray dress. But a white apron covered up most of the dull color, and he had a job to do. “I’m working my way to Montana,” he said.
Her snarled “So?” was quickly followed with “Oh, good grief.”
He’d never heard that reaction to the territory. Yet Montana had nothing to do with her response.
“It’s broken.” She was growling again and holding up a fancy teacup. “Mrs. Rudolf ordered a set of six cups and saucers,” she said, turning that nasty glare on him again. “My best sale all month, and one is broken. She’s going to be furious. Her garden party is this weekend.”
Her eyes were the palest blue he’d ever seen—not even the sky held that shade—but it was how she was blinking a massive set of eyelashes, as if not wanting to cry, that made his throat get thick. He hadn’t thought of the orphanages from his childhood in years, yet he was right back there. Seeing the faces of all those unwanted little souls. “You still have five,” Carter said.
“What good will that do?”
He didn’t know. It had been all he could think to say. She’d gone from snippy to sappy as fast as an alley man flips a coin. That thought—alley men, thieves really—sent his mind in another direction.
That’s how he’d become a Pinkerton agent. Allan Pinkerton himself had learned that Carter had gained access to the den of several alley thieves, and had hired him as an inside informant. It had been shortly after he’d arrived in Chicago, still just a kid really, and he’d thought joining those thieves might be his only way of making money. He had a lot to thank Allan for. Whether the man knew it or not, he’d nipped Carter’s thieving days in the bud. Changed his whole outlook. If not for Allan, Carter might have been walking on the other side of the law, and it was best he never forgot that.
Carter spun on one heel, but hadn’t made it more than a yard away from the counter when a gasp had him turning around. Those faded blue eyes were locked on the doorway and he twisted slowly, curling one hand around the handle of his gun, not sure what he’d see.
The tension gripping his spine dissolved. It was nothing more than a woman, one who might outweigh Sampson, but a woman no less. He let his gaze wander back to Molly Thorson, where it stuck. She’d gone pale and the hand over her mouth had him wondering if she was going to chuck her lunch all over that crate of dishes. He’d seen that look back at the orphanages, too, after kids had eaten some of the slop forced on them.
Growing whiter than her apron, she whirled around and shot through the open doorway the sister and the little Indian girl had used yesterday. He waited a moment, but when no one reappeared, Carter glanced back toward the open doorway. The big woman was about to barrel over the threshold and instinct told him this was Mrs. Rudolf, the owner of a broken cup.
A Pinkerton man was an actor, could hop from one character to the next just by changing his hat. Carter did that—removed his hat and his gun belt, put them both on a shelf on the backside of the counter and was gingerly setting pink-and-gold cups upon matching saucers when the woman arrived, eyeing him critically over the rim of her round glasses.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Rudolf,” he said with all the pleasantry of a store clerk.
Her frown left indents on her face the size of those he’d seen in the dried-out ground down in Arizona.
“Carter Buchanan.” He gave a nod over one shoulder. “I’m helping out the Thorson sisters.” Drawing the woman’s attention to the cups, he continued, “Got some mighty fancy cups here.”
The deep wrinkles on her forehead softened as she picked up a cup. “Oh, my, they are absolutely beautiful, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they are. I’ve never seen anything like them.” He wasn’t lying. There’d never been a reason for him to take much interest in teacups. Wouldn’t be now if one of the Thorson sisters would step through that doorway.
“I was getting worried they wouldn’t arrive in time for my party,” Mrs. Rudolf said, still gazing at the cup as if it was gold instead of just painted that way. “They were supposed to be in last week, you know.”
No, he didn’t know that, but he could imagine how displeased this woman was going to be when she learned one of her treasured cups was broken. Therefore he said, “I know. Miss Thorson is very upset over that, and she’s even more disturbed by how carelessly her order was handled. Tore off for the back room just moments ago.” Though he doubted it, he added, “Probably to pen her correspondence.”
“What correspondence?”
“To the freight company, over the shoddy way they treat merchandise. The way they treated you.” He refrained from specifically naming the railroad, having to balance things as carefully as a beam scale weighing gold dust.
“Me?”
“Yes,
