Margaret Brownley (4 page)

Her mind went back to her camera. If it was damaged, her career as a newspaper photographer might possibly be over before it had even begun.

With this thought came another. The man wasn’t really wild. Trotter had obviously lied to impress his friends or get attention. The Rocky Creek residents had lived in fear these last few weeks for no reason—that in itself was a story. All she needed was the stranger’s photograph and—oh dear, in all the confusion she hadn’t thought to ask his name. Or where he was from. She hadn’t asked him anything. What kind of newspaper reporter was she?

Just as suddenly as the stage had started, it stopped. She flew to the window and was surprised and relieved to see the stranded driver and passengers hurrying toward her.

Arranging her clothes as modestly as possible, she opened the door and stepped outside. Her mind was filled with questions as she looked for the stranger but he was nowhere in sight. Momentarily disappointed, she shrugged.

No matter. She failed to get the photograph she’d gone after, but she had something better. Wait until the newspaper editor heard about her encounter with the so-called wild man of Rocky Creek!

David Wolf crouched behind the bushes and watched. He had hoped to keep his arrival in Rocky Creek secret, but that was no longer possible. First he found that boy going through his belongings, now this encounter with Miss Fairbanks. Judging by the way the passengers and stagecoach driver kept looking around, remaining undetected just got that much tougher.

The stagecoach should have been long gone by now, but still it lingered. The crazy talkative woman still hadn’t run out of steam and she held the passengers and driver captive with her long tale. Never had he known anyone to talk so much or so fast. Or have sweeter lips.

She had looked so vulnerable, bare toes poking from beneath her hem, hair tousled, lips trembling. Rambling on and on nonstop. If she were a man, a slap on the face might have brought her out of her shock. But a woman . . . he could never strike a woman, not even under those circumstances. Still, he had to do something to bring her out of her alarming state. The kiss succeeded, or at least rendered her speechless.

He could justify his reasons for kissing her. What he couldn’t do was figure out why she had
let
him. Him of all people.
A half-breed
. Unless, of course, she was too frazzled to know what he was doing. It was the only thing that made sense.

“Go!” he muttered impatiently toward the crowd. There was no way he could leave his hiding place without being seen, but it wasn’t only his own predicament that worried him. The stage sitting in the middle of the road was at risk. Should the bandits return, the coach wouldn’t have a hare’s chance in a foxhole of escaping.

And still the woman talked. He couldn’t hear her from this distance but he could see her hands moving, could tell from the way the others leaned toward her that she had mesmerized them with her tale every bit as much as she had captivated him.

At long last, the driver ushered everyone inside the stage and took his place on the driver’s seat. He drove the stage in the direction of town, presumably to report the attempted holdup to the marshal.

Wolf watched until it was out of sight. What he would give to see the look on the marshal’s face when Miss Fairbanks explained her ordeal. The lawman better have a couple of hours to spare.

The thought made him chuckle. Of course, riding into Rocky Creek was a luxury he could ill afford. He’d learned long ago that the best way for him to ride into town, any town, was with a fast horse and a ready gun.

The last time he left Rocky Creek was not of his own accord and almost cost him his life. He wasn’t so foolish as to think things had changed. It was imperative that he keep his whereabouts secret until he had accomplished what he had set out to do. The town had taken something from him—and he intended to get it back.

Four

When photographing stampeding cattle, charging bulls, or blazing
gunfights, use the fastest shutter speed possible.

– M
ISS
G
ERTRUDE
H
ASSLEBRINK, 1878

L
ater that day Lucy sat dead center on the divan, feet together, eyes lowered, and tried for all the world to look appropriately remorseful if not altogether repentant.

Her father, Whitney Fairbanks, stood before her, hands clasped behind his back. A thin man who appeared taller than he actually was, he looked and acted older than his thirty-nine years. His hair was still black except for the white at his temples, and his craggy face reflected years spent as a peddler, traveling from town to town to sell his wares.

His traveling days had ended when Lucy’s mother died, leaving him alone to raise her and her brother. He took what little money he had managed to save and opened up Fairbanks General Merchandise—a store he dreamed of one day turning over to Caleb.

Now he stood in front of Lucy with that all-too-familiar look of disappointment she’d come to dread. News traveled fast in Rocky Creek, especially if her name was attached. So it was no surprise that news of her latest escapade had quickly reached her father.

Any concern he might have had for her safety seemed to evaporate as soon as he walked through the door of their small cabin and took in her disheveled appearance.

One look at his stern face told her she was in big trouble this time. Lord help her. She wished she’d had time to change before he saw her.

“Do you realize you could have been killed?”

She flinched at the tone of his voice. “Yes, Papa,” she said, holding her bodice together with one hand.

“Or seriously injured?”

“But I wasn’t,” she said in a rush of words. “I saved the stage from being robbed. You should be happy—”

“Happy? That my only daughter goes from one dangerous situation to the next? Every time I turn around you’re in trouble. Last week, you almost got yourself mauled photo-graphin’ a bobcat—”

She tightened her hold on the front of her waistcoat. “I know but—”

“And two weeks before that, you plumb near got trampled to death tryin’ to photograph a stampede—”

“Yes but—”

“Then you almost got yourself shot by Malone—”

“That wasn’t my fault,” she protested. “The man was beating his poor wife, and would have gotten away with it had I not taken a photograph and shown it to the marshal.”

Her father threw up his hands, looking suddenly tired. “I don’t know what to do with you. Your ma . . . she would never forgive me if she knew how I’ve failed.”

“You haven’t failed, Papa,” she said.

“You’re not married,” he said, as if that was the sole criteria for judging success or failure as a parent. “You’re twenty years old and don’t even have a beau.”

Her fingers tensed in her lap. Convinced that marriage would cure her wild ways, her father never missed a chance to harp on the subject. “That’s not your fault, Papa. I haven’t yet found anyone who . . . interests me.”

Her thoughts drifted back to the tall dark stranger, and her lips burned with the memory of his kiss. She didn’t even know his name or from where he came. Yet she knew the feel of his mouth on hers, the warmth of his arms, and the hard-muscled strength of his body.

“Lucy, are you listening to me? What’s wrong with your mouth?”

“What?”

“Your mouth. You’re rubbin’ it.”

“Oh-h.” She quickly pulled her fingertips away from her face, but there was nothing she could do about the sudden rush of heat to her cheeks. Why did the memory of the stranger’s kiss continue to hold her in its grip? “You were saying?”

“I asked why you don’t marry Jim Spencer. He’s a good man. He’d take care of you—if you’d let him.”

Lucy made a face. She couldn’t help it. Spencer was as old as the hills, and had already been married twice, both his wives having died in childbirth.

“Or Richard Crankshaw. He’s asked for your hand several times. He’s not gonna wait forever.”

Lucy shuddered. The way Mr. Crankshaw leered at her gave her the creeps.

She stared at her father in open defiance. “I have plans for my life. Big plans. They do not include marriage.”

In a softer voice, she beseeched him to understand. “Papa, I have a job with the newspaper.” Or at least the promise of a job. “I thought you would be proud of me. Even Jenny Armstrong has a job.” The marshal’s wife was about to open a Ladies Emporium on Main Street.

“You know how I feel about you traveling out of state. A woman alone.”

She’d talked about traveling to Chicago or New York in search of a job as a photographer but her father had been so appalled at the idea, she decided against it.

“No, no, Papa. A
local
job. Mr. Barnes said he would hire me if—”

“Barnes!” Her father’s face turned ashen. “You’re working for that . . . that . . .” He stepped back as if she had assaulted him physically.

She rose, her hand still clutching the front of her waistcoat. “Papa, don’t look at me like that. You know how important my photography is to me.” More than that, her job could provide a much-needed source of income. Her father’s store had seen a drop in business in recent years due, in part, to the increasing popularity of the Montgomery Ward mail-order catalog. A more serious problem was the end of the cattle boom. Few herds traveled through town anymore. Without the constant stream of cattle drovers, her father’s profits had plunged.

“There’s only one newspaper in town,” she said. “What would you have me do?”

“You can do what God meant women to do.”

She sighed. It seemed like every conversation with her father lately involved her lack of beaus or marriage prospects. “If I got married, I would have to give up the one thing I most want to do.”

He shook his head. “That’s not true. You could still take your photographs.”

“When would I have time?” she asked. “What wife has time to indulge in her own interests?”

“Your mother found time to paint,” he argued.

“But that’s only because you were away so much,” she countered. “My job at the newspaper requires me to be away from the house. Mama was able to work at home, after Caleb and I had gone to bed.”

Her father’s eyes clouded over as they tended to do every time they talked about her mother. “Why can’t you be an artist like her?”

He indicated the oil painting of a young woman holding a child that hung over the stone fireplace. One of her mother’s earliest works, it wasn’t as detailed as her later paintings. Yet her mother’s brush had deftly captured the woman’s dreams for her child, the hope for a better future.

Like her mother, Lucy felt compelled to capture the world around her and preserve moments in time that would never be repeated. The only difference was their choice of expression.

One of her mother’s better paintings was hidden away in the hall cupboard, and her father steadfastly refused to let Lucy hang it. He declined to give an explanation for his refusal and she continued to be mystified. It was, after all, just a landscape. She failed to see why it should affect her father so, except maybe it had something to do with the fact that it had been her mother’s last painting.

The look on his face as he stared at her mother’s painting filled her with apprehension. She understood the sadness, of course, the heartrending loss of a woman he loved to the depths of his soul, but not the other. Not the emotion that turned his face into granite whenever he gazed at the picture. That came from a part of her father she didn’t know, was afraid to know even as she ached to understand it.

“Papa,” she said softly, desperate to wipe that look from his face, though it meant having to endure his anger and disappointment in her. Anything was preferable to the dark bleakness.

He drew his gaze away from the painting. The expression she had come to dread disappeared.

“I
am
an artist,” she whispered. “Can’t you see?” Her father wasn’t alone in thinking photography was nothing more than a passing fancy. Few people considered it art and she was accustomed to critical comments, but none hurt as much as her father’s disregard for the thing that meant so much to her.

He shook his head and started for the door. “I have to get back to the store.”

“Papa!”