from the stockade at Fort Reno. Then again, there wouldn’t be a run if he had his druthers. Which he didn’t.
Sol focused his attention on the men congregating around him, and promptly sold a half-dozen horses. When the group dispersed, he looked up to see his local contact, Captain Grant Holbrook, sitting atop his horse, staring off into space.
Sol followed the captain’s gaze to two women surrounded by four cowboys. Then three more men joined the crowd and another two. The scene reminded Sol of honeybees buzzing around a hive.
“Must be nice to attract so much attention,” he said with a chuckle. “If women flocked to me the way men flock to those two ladies, I’d be a happy man.”
“What?” Holbrook jerked to attention, then glanced sideways at Sol.
“I said those women must be something special.”
“Those two?” Grant snorted. “They can fend off their hordes of admirers by themselves for all I care.”
Sol raised a brow, then scrutinized his friend, who was two years his junior. “Am I missing something here?”
“Not unless you like sharp-tongued shrews who delight in the attention they receive from men anxious to acquire a fiancée before the run,” he muttered sourly. “One is a mite worse than the other, however.”
Sol assessed the two women. “Which one? The blonde or brunette?”
“Brunette. I’ve met more agreeable rattlesnakes.” He shook himself loose from his meandering thoughts, then noticed the fine quality of horseflesh Sol had brought with him to town. “Where do you keep gathering such good stock for your cover, Tremain? Last week you arrived with a dozen exceptional mares and geldings to sell, and you left with a pocketful of money.”
“My Cheyenne cousins trained these horses,” he confided. “I make sure they receive top dollar for these animals, which are well adapted to this terrain. I’m making double damn sure the tribe profits from this offensive encroachment on their property.”
Grant nodded somberly. “Another treaty discarded for the sake of white expansion. Sometimes I’m ashamed to be white.” He glanced curiously at Sol. “How many acres did the Cheyenne and Arapaho lose this time?”
“Over six hundred thousand.” Sol scowled resentfully when he thought of how the tribes had been forced to take their land allotments and relinquish the rest of their reservation to the government for settlement. “Not counting their land in Colorado and Kansas the government confiscated years ago.”
“And I’m stuck in the middle of this, just like you are,” Grant mumbled in frustration. “It’s hell trying to protect the tribes and their allotments before the white mob descends to claim the surplus land.”
The captain expelled an agitated breath. “I’m holding more than a dozen Sooners in the stockade because they sneaked in to set up camps along the creeks on the wrong side of the starting line, and refused to leave. With your help, I’ve flushed out nearly a hundred early birds, but I don’t have enough soldiers to patrol the area to keep those blasted Sooners honest.” He snorted and said, “Now there’s a contradiction in terms if I ever heard one.”
“I’ll continue to do what I can to help,” Sol promised. “I carry my special trader’s license to prove I can cross the territory as I please. If I see more illegal squatters, I’ll contact you. I can also question my tribe about the location of other whites illegally encroaching on their land.”
“Good,” Grant said. “I’ll run off as many as I can, and you do the same.”
“If I flash my marshal’s badge it won’t be easy to gain trust and gather evidence of fraud among these would-be settlers,” Sol reminded him. “But I can alert you to their location so you can take a patrol of soldiers to rout the squatters out.”
“I appreciate whatever help you can give, Marsh—I mean Tremain.”
Sol eyed him warningly. “The last thing I need is a careless slip of the tongue alerting folks that I’m in law enforcement.”
When half a dozen men leaning negligently against the supporting posts of the porch outside the Saddle Burr Saloon noticed their conversation, Sol reached into his vest pocket to retrieve his special trader’s license.
“We’re drawing attention,” he told the military commander quietly. “Look over my license thoroughly, then nod your head. I want those men to think you’re checking the authenticity of my credentials.”
Grant took the license and studied it closely. “They look like hired guns to me,” he murmured, his head bent in supposed concentration. “Is that what you’re thinking?”
“That’d be my guess,” Sol agreed. “I want to know what scheme is about to play out, who the gunmen are working for and why they chose this particular area to make the run.”
“We’ll have to confine our future conversations to out-of-the-way sites to avoid suspicion,” Grant said, returning the license with a clipped nod.
Sol tucked away the paper. “We’ll meet tonight at seven o’clock at Shallow Springs, south of the garrison. Find out what you can about those men without contacting them directly.”
Grant inclined his head in an authoritative manner for the benefit of the suspicious-looking group watching. Then he flicked his hand to shoo Sol on his way.
With a mock salute, Sol led his string of horses down the middle of the street—and drew the attention of the other crowd of men, who were fawning over the two women Grant had pointed out earlier.
From the corner of his eye, Sol surveyed the group outside the saloon, while pretending to assess the two women. Until the shapely blonde turned her head toward him, and sunlight gleamed on her thick, curly hair. The lustrous strands seemed a fascinating combination of sunbeams and moonbeams, and when she tilted her face up to him, Sol forgot all about the hired guns outside the saloon. Luminous eyes the color of forget-me-nots locked with his, and the jolt of awareness that sizzled through his body shocked the hell out of him.
According to Grant, this alluring blonde was the more tolerable companion. Holbrook insisted the stunning brunette was the devil’s sister, or at the very least a first cousin. Sol spared the fetching dark-haired woman a cursory glance, then his gaze settled on the blonde again as he halted his string of horses in the middle of the street.
“Anyone interested in prize horseflesh to make the land run?” he called loudly. “Only a half-dozen left today. Get one while you can!”
Four of the fawning admirers hurried over to examine the horses at close range. The other men continued to hover around the women like puppies on the trail of fresh milk—until the objects of their rapt attention pivoted toward Eugene’s Café of Fine Foods. Sol smiled appreciatively as he studied both women’s backsides, encased in formfitting breeches and shirts that accentuated their curvaceous physiques to advantage. As if they didn’t already stand out in a crowd because of their bewitching facial features, he mused.
Sol didn’t consider himself a connoisseur of women, and he had no time for lasting attachments. Still, he could easily understand why men salivated over the brunette and blonde—who looked to be about twenty-three, give or take a year. The brunette, he guessed, was a year or two younger.
“Keep
