August 1875
Theodora Gamble’s time was running out.
That wasn’t true for everyone in Wishbone, Arizona. Certainly not for the two towheaded and barefoot lads who strolled lackadaisically ahead of her on the narrow board sidewalk that fronted the two dozen buildings strutting proudly alongside the main street of Wishbone. Those two were in the midst of a carefree day of mischief and adventure. Certainly it was not true for the three men in city clothes who wobbled out of the First Strike Saloon headed for Penrod’s Mercantile. They were new enough in the Arizona Territory to stare at a woman dressed in doeskin trousers, boots and spurs. The trio nevertheless lifted their hats as they would to any pretty lady. For those three, time was only beginning. They would be outfitting for an ambitious run at prospecting in the ore-filled hills above Wishbone.
From the open door of the mercantile store, Milt Penrod’s merry whistle lilted out like the sweet song of a morning bird. He sounded like a man who felt he had all the time in the world. Theodora Gamble, palms hot, throat filled with a lump, wished she could share his optimism. For her, the thump of her leather boot heels against the bone-dry boards of the sidewalk sounded like the ticking away of a clock.
Her father had hauled in the boards which now echoed the mocking sound of passing time. All the way from California, across the hot, treeless desert, so that Wishbone could have the civilized look of wooden storefronts and the luxury of sidewalks for its citizens.
Without Theodor Gamble’s stage line and his initiative, Wishbone would be like any other of the dozens of settlements in the territory, filled with plain, squat adobe huts and dusty canvas tents. Without Theodor Gamble...She felt a tightening of the lump in her throat. Theodor Gamble was dead some three months now. Gone with no warning. A hemorrhage somewhere in his head the doctor had said. Nothing would have stopped it. Just as nothing would stop the demise of all her father had left in her hands unless she could stop what was already set in motion.
Deep in thought, she spun into the doorway of Penrod’s. She nodded to Milt as she threaded past barrels of briny pickles, a mound of flour in muslin sacks, a brigade of shovels and picks, and the three newest prospectors in town. From the narrow room at the back of the store, the one Milt let out for an office to any who had a need, she detected the pungent aroma of pipe tobacco and heard the reverberation of male voices.
She hesitated a moment, listening until she identified the unexpected one. Another step brought her flush with the open door. Unnoticed by the men inside she waited beyond the threshold until her eyes confirmed what her ears had told her. Cabe Northrop, whom she had expected to see alone, stood with his back to the door, clouding the room with smoke as he puffed his briar pipe. Northrop had once been a division supervisor for Wells Fargo but now was a special liaison between the heads of the company and the contract lines in Arizona. The man Northrop had been conversing with, a man half his size, a man who should not have been present, sat by the open window. That second man was Parrish Adams.
“What in all of hell is he doing here?” she asked, striding in like she owned the place. Behind her, the door—which she had given a forceful shove—banged shut, punctuating her query.
A square, scarred table, a few chairs, nearly took up the whole of the room. Northrop, nearly wide as the table, took up most of the rest of it. His bulk turned slowly toward her. Equally slowly he pulled the gnawed bit of the pipe from his mouth and frowned. His face was broad like the rest of him, and made to look more so by the flaxen mutton-chop whiskers lining his cheeks. “I asked him,” he said, solemn-faced. “He’s got an interest in this, Teddy.”
“Not in my end of it.”
“That’s what I’m here to decide,” Northrop retorted, florid skin brightening.
With his eyes as icy as her voice had been, Teddy removed her hat and slung it onto a wall peg as she simultaneously hooked the toe of her dust-covered boot under the low rung of a three-legged stool and dragged it from its resting place against the white washed wall. Teddy Gamble—arms crossed, spine ramrod straight—perched on the rough round of wood that formed its top. Adams, his back to the opposite wall, acknowledged her with a small tip of his head.
Northrop planted his stocky legs wide apart. He allowed her a moment to settle herself as he racked the shank of his pipe on the edge of a tin coffee mug atop the table. The deep-set eyes, usually laughing, usually friendly, bored into her with a threatening look. “Don’t go getting too big for your britches, Teddy. You got my letter. You know what this is about.”
The letter. Teddy felt the telltale weight of it in the pocket over her heart. The letter warned that Wells Fargo was considering withdrawing the contract her father had won—that would spell the end of the Gamble Stage Line, should that happen.
Her chin snapped up and her cool voice gave no hint of her rising anxiety. “And in my reply I told you that contract stands as agreed.”
“We made that contract with your father.”
“You made that contract with the Gamble Line, my company,” Teddy insisted. She didn’t bother to mention that she only owned half. Her half ran the company and Cabe knew it well enough. He knew too that the wording of the freight contract negotiated by her father between the Gamble Stage Line and Wells Fargo clearly bound both parties regardless of who held ownership of the Gamble Line. Unless she failed to fulfill the terms of that contract, Wells Fargo had no legal right to terminate it. She had told Cabe exactly that, in her letter of reply. “A five-year contract with four to run,” she hurried on. “And the option to renew. You know that, Cabe. You signed it yourself, you and my father on the kitchen table in his house.”
Northrop’s wide mouth remained tightly closed as he glanced down at the bowl of his pipe and saw that it had gone out. A minute passed as he pulled a match from a wooden box on the table and struck it on the grainy surface of the office wall. He relit the warm dottle in the pipe.
“Your father was unstoppable, Teddy,” he said between slow puffs and draws. “The man didn’t live who could back him down.” Falling silent again he worked the pipe until it glowed red from the rim and spewed out a plume of white lint. Through the feathery drifts he again leveled his eyes at her. “But you’re not Theodor Gamble, Teddy.”
“No. Nobody is,” she admitted, shrugging off the bruising impact of his words and the indignation of having to defend herself in front of Parrish Adams. That alone was enough to scorch the hide off a rattler. “But he taught me well,” came her measured words. “And he believed in me.” She paused and drew a long breath to help hold onto her weakening control. “ ‘Keep the Gamble Line running, Teddy.’ ” Her eyes locked with Northrop’s. “Those were his last words to me and I aim to do what he wanted.”
The look of anger on Northrop’s face broke as he hung his head. Teddy hoped she had touched a nerve, one that would sway him her way. Shortly before her father had died he’d invested every cent available to him in new stock and equipment for the Gamble Line. If she lost the line she lost the ranch, too, everything her father had built and been proud of. Legal rights there were, but she had no financial resources left to fight a company like Wells Fargo, should they set themselves against her. The only resource she did have was the memory of the once-strong bond of friendship between Cabe Northrop and her father. She couldn’t afford to let Northrop forget about it.
She needed time. She would use anything she had to buy time, even sentiment. Sentiment might not carry her forever but it could secure her a grace period. Given more time, she could prove that the Gamble Line was as dependable as ever. She could fulfill the contract she had and dare Wells Fargo to refuse her another when it was out. Her muscles tensed as tight as stone, damning the luck that had put her in this spot. Teddy wished for the thousandth time that she hadn’t been born female. Had she been Theodor Gamble’s son instead of his daughter, Cabe Northrop wouldn’t be standing there doubting what she could do. He would know.
Unfortunately, she had been born female and he did doubt. She saw the unmistakable signs. In spite of what he’d felt for her father, in spite of his fondness for her, he doubted Teddy Gamble. Skepticism, like a thick swirling cloud of dust, could obscure even the strongest conviction or commitment. Skepticism newly born was what she saw emerging in the deep-set eyes of Cabe Northrop.
She did not flinch before it even though, hidden behind her mask of self-assurance, her emotions whipped and whirled like the troubled winds of an impending storm. All she cared about, all that defined her as Theodora Gamble, all that held her life together hinged on what would be said next. She had pleaded her case as well as could be done in her answering letter—demanded what was rightfully her due, might better state the truth—and now the outcome rode on the decision of one man.
“Be damned.” Northrop looked at Teddy, then looked away and began a harried pacing in the cramped room.
Teddy said nothing.
She could only half-blame Cabe for doubting her or for calling her down as he had a few minutes before. He wasn’t the only one worried about the troubles that for the past three months had pursued her like a vengeful shadow. Whatever could go wrong had—twice over. She shared her father’s name, she shared his dreams. No, she wasn’t the indomitable Theodor Gamble as Cabe had so sharply pointed out. Not by a long shot. If she were, trouble or not, no agent of Wells Fargo, not even William Fargo himself, would have spoken to her as Cabe had.
Teddy sighed and, while Northrop shuffled the length of the room solemnly deliberating, cautiously allowed her gaze to settle on the immobile face of Parrish Adams. Throughout her exchange with Northrop he’d kept quiet, though somehow, by a slight move or marginal shifting of his weight, never letting her forget that he witnessed her humiliation. No more than eight feet from her, he rested, as if ensconced on a throne, in a newly made chair of horn and hide.
The distorted squares of light that spread from the uncovered window did not fall fully upon him but she could tell that he sat erect, arms casually linked over his chest. Eventually he moved a degree to the right, meeting her stare head-on. His face, like hers, was little more than a mask over feelings that must have been as intense as her own.
He was sizing her up anew, she guessed. She could imagine the legions of tenebrous thoughts at play in that deep, shrewd mind, but he was working hard at showing nothing that would reveal the nature of them or give away any emotion concerning what he’d witnessed.
He did not, however, successfully hide everything from her. A gleam from his eyes shone out in the dimness of the room and a twitch, quickly stilled, at one corner of his mouth hinted a brooding pleasure at her dilemma.
Teddy fumed within as the meaning of the gesture registered with her. She knew why he was there. What she didn’t know was how successful he’d been in undermining her position with Northrop.
She was about to find out. A heavy sigh emanated from the portly Northrop, forewarning that he had come to a conclusion on the business at hand.