for a smug grin shot over his narrow jaw before he lurched into a buggy and drove his team out of town down Front Street.
It must be her land he had spoken of! Surely it was, since the place was said to be no less than paradise on earth. What other piece of ground could he have wanted?
With her heart flip-flopping in her chest, Emma rushed through the land-office doorway. She stomped toward the clerk lounging at his desk.
Drat, she hadn’t noticed that she had led the way with her shotgun until the boy dropped his broom. It clattered like scattered marbles on the floor.
The clerk choked on a swallow of something that he had raised to his lips in a ruby-colored glass. She was unlikely to win any favors from the man now.
“Was that my land he wanted?” She tried to sound like sweetness and light, but it was no good. She pointed the nose of the gun toward the floor. “It’s not actually loaded.”
A pair of relieved sighs whooshed through the office.
“Well, now, Miss Parker.” The land-office manager tipped back in his chair and folded his hands across his wide belly. “Unless you’ve turned twenty-one or become the head of a household since you came in this morning, I can’t give you that homestead.”
“Did the Englishman take it?”
“No, miss, he wanted another.”
“Praise be!” Emma spun about and fairly skipped out the door, her hope renewed. The expensive lace border on her dress caught Mr. Pendragon’s discarded cigarette ashes like the best of brooms. Her gown was getting grayer by the hour. Unless she found a man soon she’d be the dingiest bride to ever wed in Dodge.
She resumed her seat on the bench, fluffed her withered skirt and set her smile in place. In spite of the obstacles Dodge City had thrown in her way, she would catch a husband, and she would do it today.
Days didn’t come along much finer than this one. Matt Suede tugged his hat brim down to shade his eyes from the afternoon sun. His boot heels clicking on the boardwalk echoed up and down Front Street.
Town was quiet this time of day, with the morning’s business completed and the evening’s not yet begun, just the way it suited him, but something felt wrong.
He ought to pay attention to that niggling feeling. The smart thing would be to call off the bank robbery for today. Then again, it would be his last holdup and he’d like to get it over with.
A dust devil whirled down the middle of the street. A woman sitting on a bench outside the land office swung up her parasol, hiding from the gust until it passed by.
Matt slowed his pace. The lady was something to look at, as appealing as a prairie flower. She shook dust from her umbrella, then fluffed her skirt out on the bench.
Her hair had mostly come undone from the bun at her neck. Sunlight speckled gold threads in the curls that tumbled down her back.
When he had the time he’d have to remember her delicate womanhood and make up a song about her. He’d sing it to the beeves to soothe them at roundup some long dark night from now.
He might have approached her if his plans for the afternoon had been different, but he shouldn’t have slowed his pace as it was.
He’d passed by the marshal’s office and been relieved to see Dodge’s lawman asleep. His snorts and snores should have been reassuring, but the air was ripe with something being wrong.
Matt glanced up and down the street, ready to duck behind the building where his cousin and accomplice, Billy, waited with a getaway horse in a gully covered with brush. There was just enough space between overgrowth and sand to hide a man and a horse, but not for long.
He’d just made up his mind to sneak around back when Gray Derby Bart, the meanest drunk in Dodge, staggered up to the woman on the bench. She smiled at him politely, but she had no idea what she might be getting into just by that common act of friendliness.
Bart might be a small man but he was mean through and through, especially when it came to the gentler sex.
Matt quick-footed it past the bank. Billy could wait a few minutes. The woman could not.
The sky at sunrise wasn’t as pretty as her blue eyes. From the spark of interest glittering in Bart’s rheumy gaze, he must have thought the same, but not in any respectful way a man should look at a decent woman.
“Afternoon, ma’am … Bart?” Matt tipped his hat. The lady turned her smile away from Bart and let it shine on him. Chilly nights on the cow trail would be considerably warmer if he could remember her smile, just so.
“Good afternoon.” Her voice washed clean through him. It was the sweetest sound he’d heard in some time.
“I hope Bart here isn’t causing you any concern, miss.”
“My concern ain’t no concern of yours, Matthew Suede.” Bart’s lip curled up in one corner, like an old dog snapping for a fight. “Me and the lady were conducting some personal business.”
Sometimes when he was in his cups Bart imagined things. This sure would be one of those times, since this delicate woman would not be likely to have dealings with a scoundrel.
Matt dug into his pocket and withdrew a dollar bill. He pushed it into Bart’s fist. “Go on over to the Long Branch and give that business some further thought.”
Bart glanced at the money, then at the lady. Oddly enough, she didn’t seem pleased. Surely she couldn’t be sorry to be rid of Bart.
“I’ll be back shortly, sweet thing. You wait right here for me and we’ll finish what we were up to.” Bart closed one eye in a lewd wink. A dribble of spit leaked out the corner of his mouth when he leaned forward as though he thought to kiss the lady.
She snapped her umbrella up. Such a frilly weapon wouldn’t discourage that snake. The lady wouldn’t know not to make an enemy of Bart. Best to keep him pointed toward the saloon and let him drink his meanness into a stupor.
“Go on, now.” Matt stepped between the parasol and the drunk. He directed Bart down the steps much as he would herd a straying cow. “Bad luck to let good whiskey go waiting.”
“Don’t you move, sweet thing,” Bart called from halfway across the street.
From behind, a rustling of silk and lace told Matt that the woman had risen from the bench. He’d like to stay a while and bask in her gratitude for getting rid of Bart, but Billy was probably getting nervous by now.
If the day had been different he would have invited the lady for a steak at Del Monico’s. They could get acquainted in a proper way.
“Blast and tarnation!”
Startled, Matt spun about and found himself gazing down at the woman’s shifting bustle. Too soon she straightened, then whirled on him with a shotgun gripped in her small, lacy-gloved fists.
This rose had thorns all up and down her pretty stem.
“Why, you interfering do-gooder!” She must have seen him go wide-eyed, for she plunked her weapon, nose-first, onto
