Territory (37 page)

“News is news. Don’t forget your notebook.”

She had no choice; she pinned her hat on and swept out the door Fox held for her.

Outside, Fox offered his arm and she laid her hand lightly on it. It felt warm through her glove, but that might be a product of her embarrassment.

“I’m going to skin Harry when I get back to the office,” she said, “and it’ll be all your fault.”

“You notice that I didn’t ask you to have dinner with me. I decided it was bad luck.”

“Remarkable restraint on your part.”

“Thank you. Are you rebuilding your house yet?”

She blushed again. “I feel silly saying this …”

“Are you selling?”

“John Fitzhenry made me a ridiculously good offer. They’re moving the store to Sixth and Fremont, and my little lot is now an ‘ideal location for mercantile ventures.’ So says Mr. Fitzhenry.”

“Good. Why do you feel silly?”

Mildred looked at the toes of her boots as they appeared and disappeared at her skirt hem. “We … went to so much trouble that night.”

“If we hadn’t, you might not have the lot to sell. Will you stay in Tombstone?”

Something in his tone—a kind of weight—made her look into his face. All she saw was polite interest. “I’m the
Nugget’s
celebrated lady reporter. How can I leave, after tasting fame?”

He laughed, as she’d meant him to. But he added, “You mean that, a little.”

“What if I do?”

“You want to be famous?”

“I think fame would be dreadful. No, I enjoy writing for the paper. I took pride in being a good typesetter, and in being able to support myself. But this—” Mildred shrugged. “I do it for its own sake.”

“Will you buy another lot?”

“There’s a house I like at the corner of Third and Fremont. Not so much in the middle of things. The owner hasn’t positively decided to sell, though.”

“Here we are,” said Fox. They stood before a yellow and white storefront with two plate-glass windows showing red velvet half curtains on brass rods. The gilded lettering on the glass declared,
Fresh Candy, Ice Cream, Coffee,
and
Lunches.
She could smell the new paint, the burnt sugar and roasting coffee.

In a moment she would be sitting across a table from Jesse Fox, trying to make conversation face-to-face. The thought made her freeze like a rabbit.

“Is your heart set on ice cream?” she asked.

He stopped at the door. “The ice cream was mostly bait.”

“What were you fishing for?”

“Idle talk with present company.”

Mildred looked down the street. “In that case, could we stroll a bit? It’s a lovely day ….” Easier to walk and talk, surely, chinking the awkward pauses with mentions of weather or scenery.

Fox put out his elbow again. “It is, isn’t it?”

And of course, she promptly couldn’t think of a thing to say.

He saved her by taking up where he’d left off. “Are you comfortable in the meantime? Without your own place, I mean.”

Mildred nodded. “Miss Gilchrist was so pleased about renting a room to a writer that she subscribed to the
Nugget.”
And to
Gallagher’s,
but Mildred wasn’t going to mention that. “There’s something to be said for moving house when one hasn’t anything to move.”

“Good Lord. That’s a little too much making the best of things for me.”

“I regret the photographs and letters, mostly. At that first view of the wreckage, I felt as if I’d lost my whole life.”

“You couldn’t salvage anything?”

“I had the dress I stood up in. And my savings in the bank, thank goodness.”

“I see you spent it on adornment.”

“Nonsense. Someone had ordered this and hadn’t paid, so I got it cheap.” She’d never bought a dress with her own money before. She wouldn’t have bought this one if she hadn’t been forced to it, but she felt astonishing pride in the striped silk twill with tiers of pleated ruffles, the square neck filled in with a lace chemisette. She shrugged again. “I won’t say it wasn’t a nuisance.”

“So much for your stoic façade. Are you telling me you didn’t lose books?” Fox asked as they waited for a wagon to pass.

“Twenty-three. Hardly a library.” Recalling them made her heart sink. The manuscript of “The Spectre of Spaniard’s Mine” was safe; she’d lent it to Allie to read days before. But Keats and Dickens and their companions were gone.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Fox said. “I’ve been traveling horseback for years, and even I have two books.”

Mildred imagined him riding alone through the Sierras, hunched against the weather, with his books in his saddlebags. “Which two?”

“Emerson’s
Nature—
”

“Really?”

“What’s wrong with Emerson?”

“He’s very … serious.”

“Oh, so am I.”

“What’s the other?”

He smiled down at the sidewalk.
“Twelfth Night.”

“Aha! Shakespeare, and a comedy! Your favorite?”

“No,
Hamlet’s
my favorite.” He shot her a quick, embarrassed look. “I told you I was serious. But the sort of day that can be brightened by
Hamlet
doesn’t give you time to read.”

“Tragedy lifts you out of yourself. Someone else’s, anyway.”

“Yes, but Maria making fun of Sir Andrew makes me laugh.”

“I read it aloud to my younger sisters. They said it was very pretty, but that no one would really have taken Viola for a boy.”

“They did if Shakespeare said they did,” Fox declared.

“I hope you aren’t that trusting with every author.” Mildred contemplated anyone getting their notions of human nature from “Stampede at Midnight” and quaked with guilt.

“I assume they’re trustworthy until proven otherwise.”

“How,” Mildred asked, feeling like a spy, “do they prove they’re not?”

Fox looked up at the sky, or possibly the roof peak of Dr. Goodfellow’s house. Mildred was startled; not only had she not needed weather or scenery, she’d entirely missed when they’d turned onto Toughnut Street. “Notable recent examples,” Fox declared, “include horses that gallop through the night without pause, heroines who regularly faint when startled, and heroes who simultaneously and accurately fire a rifle in one hand and a revolver in the other.”

She resolved that in “The Spectre of Spaniard’s Mine,” Regina wouldn’t faint at all, whatever her provocation. “I’m afraid I have an adversarial relationship with authors. I open a book thinking,
‘Try
to impress me.’ ”

Fox chuckled. “But you do like fiction.”

Mildred clasped her hands hard on the chain of her purse, which enabled her to say, “Oh, yes,” in an almost-level voice.

A breeze tried to lift Fox’s hat, and he grabbed the brim.

“Walking’s dusty work. What would you say to ice cream?” said Mildred.

If she’d meant to record the opening of Earl and Banning’s, she should have paid it more mind. She knew they ordered ice cream and coffee, but neither held its own against the distraction of talking with Jesse Fox. He didn’t flirt, not really, or salt his observations with compliments. It wasn’t that he spoke to her as he might to a man; Harry did that, and it was refreshing, but it wasn’t this. David had treated her like an intelligent being, but not an equal; the gap in their ages and experience made that seem just.

She couldn’t explain it, quite; but she could enjoy it.

While Fox drank his coffee, Mildred noticed new skin on his knuckles, and no scabs. He healed fast, it seemed. He saw her gaze, and his eyebrows lifted. She felt as if she’d been caught prying, and to soften it asked, “Who was the Chinese boy who came to find you the day of the fire?”

“Chu? He was Chow Lung’s servant.”

“He seems to have taken possession of you.”

Fox sighed. “That almost sums it up. Though, strictly speaking, he’s Sam’s
servant, not mine. My horse,” he added, when Mildred tilted her head and frowned.

“He seems young to be working.”

“Apparently not,” Fox said, in a discouraging tone. “I have no idea how old he is. Ten? Twelve? He says he doesn’t know.”

“When did you decide to hire a servant?”

“Never, but you see how that turned out.”

Mildred laughed. “So not a houseboy, but a stableboy.”

“And since I don’t have either a house or a stable, that’s pretty ridiculous. Do you know anyone who might hire him and be decent to him?”

Perhaps this was the real reason he’d come to the
Nugget
office. “Why can’t he stay where he is?”

His gaze dropped to the cup in his hands, and his face had iron in it. “It’s not a good idea.”

She could ask him what he was thinking, and he might tell her. She chose not to ask.

He sipped his coffee and looked across the cup at her, and became ordinary again. “I think the coffee’s good. Don’t you?”

“They’ll get a daisy of a mention in the
Nugget,
unless someone robs a stagecoach tonight and there’s no room. Have you noticed that news is entirely relative?”

The bell over the shop door rang. Fox raised his head and frowned, though his back was to the street. Mildred looked toward the door.

It was Wyatt Earp, with Sadie Marcus on his arm. At least, she’d been on his arm, and would be again as soon as Earp followed her through the door he held. Miss Marcus’s eyes were downcast, and a little smile curled the corners of her mouth. Her dress was apple-green, embroidered with flowers and birds in the Oriental style. It was just the sort of dress Earp’s wife ought to own and didn’t.

Mildred thought of shy, pretty Mattie Earp, who always struggled to please everyone, and felt her hackles rise. Did Sadie Marcus know about a wife at home? Of course she did—Mildred had mentioned her at the theater. And if Sadie had forgotten, Earp wasn’t reminding her.

Mildred tried to keep her thoughts off her face. Maybe John Behan had asked Earp to entertain Miss Marcus while he attended to business. Maybe they were going to meet Behan now. And maybe Mildred would grow a third arm.

Earp’s chilly eyes stopped at their table, and Mildred caught a fleeting sharp scent, like a struck match. Then Earp smiled and crossed the room, Miss Marcus in tow. “Mr. Fox, isn’t it? And Mrs. Benjamin. How d’you do.”

Fox rose, smiling, too. “Miss Marcus.” Mildred wasn’t surprised when the woman tucked her chin and looked up at Fox through her eyelashes as he clasped her hand. “And Mr. Earp.”

Earp took Jesse’s hand in both of his, as one might greet a good friend. “Pleased, Mr. Fox, very pleased.”

Fox looked puzzled. And well he might; Mildred recalled the way Earp had greeted him at the theater. “And here I’d thought I hadn’t made a good impression.”

Earp shook his head. “I beg your pardon for that. I’m colder than I mean to be, sometimes.”

He hadn’t been cold; he’d been rude and quarrelsome. Jesse blinked, as if the sun had struck into his eyes.

“Have supper with me this evening,” Earp continued, “and we’ll call it square. Mrs. Benjamin, I’d be delighted if you’d consent to come.” Earp held out a hand to her.

It’s not right,
she thought, then wondered what she meant. But she laughed and gestured toward their empty dishes. “I’m afraid I’m too sticky to shake hands. What a shocking thing, when a grown woman can’t eat ice cream and stay tidy.”

Almost too quick to see, Earp’s face stiffened. But she had seen it. The smile that followed, wide and delighted, didn’t change that. “As long as you enjoy yourself.”

Miss Marcus frowned at him, and at her. Mildred was afraid to look at Jesse Fox.

Fox said, “Awfully kind of you, Mr. Earp, but I’m afraid I’m engaged tonight. Maybe another time.”

Mildred felt the tension go out of her. “I’m sorry, Mr. Earp; I’m busy tonight, as well.”

“How have you been, Mrs. Benjamin?” Miss Marcus asked. A flash of irritation on Earp’s face; for him, the conversation was over. “I heard you’d lost your house.”

“Yes, but Mr. Earp’s wife and sisters-in-law rallied to my cause. I don’t know what I would have done without their help.”

“That’s good to hear,” Earp said, biting the words off. Well, if his conscience troubled him, he knew what to do about it.

“I should get back to work,” Mildred announced. “So nice to see you again, Miss Marcus, Mr. Earp.” She stood and began to pull on her gloves, and Earp led Miss Marcus to a table. Fox offered Mildred his arm. His face above it was thoughtful.

“Well,” she said when they reached the street. “That was bracing.”

Fox eyed her curiously. “What was going on between you and Earp?”

“Nothing at all.”

“It was just something he ate that disagreed with him?”

“Did you see
me
disagree with him?”

“Yes, I did.” With a little shake of his head, he added, “Something like it, anyway.”

“Did you also see him making up to you?”

“No.” Fox wrinkled his nose and looked vaguely up, as if working to remember. “I did see Miss Marcus making up to me.”

“Not like that! It sounds suspicious-minded of me, but I wanted to ask him what he was selling.”

“Hmm. I must have been in Cochise County long enough to vote.”

“Maybe that’s all it was. It will all come out eventually. Tombstone’s like that. But didn’t you think it was odd?”

“Mrs. Benjamin—”

“I thought I told you once to call me Mildred.”

“You did, but that was …”

“In more trying times? I expect they’ll come again, and it will save effort if I don’t have to repeat myself when they do.”

“Mildred, then.” He looked ridiculously pleased. “Mildred, will you go to the Fourth of July ball with me?”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“No,” he said, wary, “I’m asking you to the ball.”

She realized belatedly that he had, indeed, asked her to the ball. “Did you overhear me talking to Harry?”

Fox stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “How in heaven’s name did you ever end up married? Pretend we’re still talking about Shakespeare. Just answer.”

“Shakespeare doesn’t require a motive.” It wasn’t quite what she meant, but she was too flustered to do better.

Fox took a long breath and let it out. “All right. I’m a single gentleman. I’m still new in town. I know very few single ladies. I’m fond of dancing, and haven’t had a chance to do it in a while. If you’d be so kind as to accept my escort to the Fourth of July ball, I’d be grateful. There. Motive.” He crossed his arms over his chest and waited. Mildred was reminded of a cigar-store Indian, except that they never looked out of temper.