LOUISA STEPPED OUT of the hotel and cast her gaze across the street, at the Smokehouse Saloon before which three ranch horses stood, noses to the hitch rail. Distractedly, she watched a farm wagon with six sullen kids of all ages riding in the box, and gave a thoughtful sigh.
She, Prophet, and Zeke McIlroy had been holed up in Greenburg for three days now, and they’d seen no sign of Duvall. While Zeke had been keeping in close contact with the town’s sheriff and the local telegrapher, the deputy hadn’t heard any news about Duvall, either.
His home office had ordered him back to Yankton, Dakota Territory, but the deputy had no intention of returning until Duvall was out of commission. He’d decided to tell his boss that for one reason or another he’d never received the telegram. It was a believable lie. Communication was problematic on the frontier, rarely reliable. But even if his job was on the line, McIlroy was determined to see the hunt for Duvall through to its conclusion.
To that end, he, Prophet, and Louisa had decided to remain in Greenburg until they heard something of Duvall’s whereabouts. They could ride circles around the West and get nothing for their trouble but saddle sores and exhausted mounts.
It was the right decision, Louisa knew, but the inactivity was driving her crazy. That’s why she stepped off the boardwalk now and crossed the street. Before the Smokehouse, she paused to read the hand-printed placard in the window: Serving Girl Wanted, Apply Inside.
Louisa had never worked in a tavern before. In fact, she’d never had any kind of job before. But she had to do something, and she needed money. Also, by working in a saloon she might possibly overhear news of Duvall. Greenburg lay on a prominent cattle trail, and salesmen and cattlemen from all across the territory stopped here on their way to other places.
What’s more, if Duvall was still in this region—and Louisa sensed he was—he might stop to refresh himself in Greenburg. If so, the town’s main saloon would attract him like a magnet. And then Louisa would drill a forty-five slug through that devil’s skull without batting an eye.
But first she’d shoot his knees, and then his elbows, and then...
She wagged her head, not wanting to get ahead of herself—she didn’t even have the job yet—and pushed through the Smokehouse’s batwings.
She let her eyes rove the saloon’s dark interior, where three cowboys played a lazy game of cards back near the piano. The smell of fresh sawdust lay heavy in the air, covering the smell of stale beer and the tobacco the cowboys smoked. The bartender was slicing cheese onto a large tin plate beside another plate heaped with smoked sandwich meat.
“Hello, there, missy. If you’re lookin’ for your daddy, I haven’t seen him.” The bartender smiled at the cowboys, who had turned to regard Louisa with interest. They chuckled at the barman’s joke.
“I’m not looking for my father,” Louisa said, stepping up to the bar. “I’m here to apply for the job you advertised in the window.”
The bartender, a stocky man with a hoarse voice and gray muttonchops, stopped slicing the cheese and took Louisa’s measure with a discerning frown, looking her up and down.
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen,” she lied. She didn’t know if there was any certain age she needed to be, but she decided to add a couple years, just in case.
The barman ran his eyes over her body and pursed his lips. Apparently deciding she was telling the truth, he said, “Well, you can’t wear that,” gesturing to indicate the poncho and black, bullet-crowned hat.
“Does that mean I have the job?”
“Well, no one else has applied for it. You’ll do, but, like I said—”
“I know, I know, I can’t wear the poncho. What exactly do I need to wear? I’ve never done this sort of thing before.”
The barman sent a smirk toward the cowboys, who were still listening to the conversation as they played cards.
“What do you boys think this gal should wear to sling drinks in my joint?”
“As little as possible,” one of the cowboys replied as he slapped a card onto the felt. He grinned; the others snickered.
“I think she’d look good in something pink,” another man said.
“And low cut,” added another.
“And she’ll have to have a very short skirt, or by god, we’ll take our business over to the Raging Lion. By god, when I go to a saloon, I expect to see some skin on the girl serving the strychnine.”
“Hey, I don’t serve any of that crap in here, Collie!” the barman snapped with offense. “Don’t you dare say I do.”
The cowboys elbowed each other and laughed. “Collie’s just tryin’ to get your goat, Ford,” said the nicest-looking one of the three. He wore trail garb but it wasn’t as ratty or dusty as what the other two wore. His hat was a crisp, clay-colored Stetson with silver conchos tooled into the band. His eyes bespoke more intelligence and character than what you’d normally find in a thirty-a-month trail waddy. “He’s just bored an’ waitin’ for roundup, like the rest of us.”
He cast his handsome face at Louisa. “Say, what’s your name, miss?”
Louisa wasn’t ready for the question. She didn’t normally talk to strange men unless there was something in it for her. She was about to ignore him and get on with her business with the bartender, whom she assumed was also the owner.
But something made her look again at the handsome young drover in the crisp Stetson, with a red neckerchief knotted around his neck. She realized he probably wasn’t much older than she; maybe a couple years was all. His face was clean-shaven, and he looked like he took a bath once in a while.
“Louisa,” she found herself saying.
“Louisa what?”
“Bonaventure.”
She turned to the barman and was about to speak when the nice-looking cowboy said, “What brings you to Green-burg, Miss Bonaventure?”
Louisa turned to him again, vaguely annoyed but for some reason feeling compelled to answer his question. She decided to do so with a lie, however, as the truth was a little more than most civilized folks could handle. And, despite the company the young man kept, he did look civilized.
“I’m just... passing through,” she said haltingly, her mind suddenly too sluggish to come up with a detailed fib.
“Well, why would a pretty girl like you, just passin’ through, want a job in a little nowhere saloon like this?” Before the barman could object, the cowboy added placatingly, “No offense, Ford! For bein’ out in the middle of nowhere, you still serve the best whiskey and free eats in the territory”
“Harumph,” the barman growled, crossing his stubby arms over his vest.
“I need the money,” Louisa told the cowboy. “And I saw the placard in the window there, so I thought I’d give it a try.” Turning finally to the barman, she asked, “What do you pay, Mr....”
“Fargo. Ford Fargo. You get paid in the tips you receive from boys like these.” He flicked a hand to indicate the drovers. “So, if you’re sportin’ a nice figure under all those clothes, and you appear to be, you should make out just fine. If not... well, in this business it don’t pay to be hit with the ugly stick, and I mean that literal.” He snorted a laugh.
“Yeah, like that last girl you had workin’,” the tallest drover said, his back to the bar and sucking a quirley. “That girl pret’ near starved to death before she finally got savvy and applied over at the mercantile for an hourly wage.”
He chuckled, as did the others. “Blackjack,” the handsome one called.
This started a mild argument, and Louisa looked at the barman. “I don’t intend to dress like a hussy,” she intoned. “But I do need the money, so I don’t mind wearing a dress a tad less conservative than what I would normally wear. Where, if you please, can I find one?”
The handsome young cowboy cleared his throat meaningfully as he stuffed a wad of winnings into his pocket and rose from his chair. He strode to Louisa and offered his arm with gentlemanly flair. “Allow me the honor of introducing you to Mrs. Lonigan at the Ladies’ Fashion Emporium.”
Louisa looked at the cowboy skeptically. His smile and demeanor, with his clear green eyes and dimpled chin, were so engaging that she found herself reaching for his arm. “I guess ... as long as you are a gentleman,” she said.
“Oh, my mother raised me to be a right and proper gentleman indeed,” he assured her, flashing a toothy smile and ignoring the hoots and chortles of his friends.
The two other waddies laughed and hooted them through the batwings and onto the boardwalk. “Miss, you can start this afternoon at four!” the barman called after them.
“Right this way, Miss Bonaventure,” the cowboy said, directing Louisa left along the boardwalk and tipping his hat at two passing matrons in bonnets and long dresses, who smiled at him affably, indicating to Louisa that he had a sound reputation.
“I told you my name,” she said, still not sure why she was allowing this young man as much latitude as she was. “What’s yours? And as soon as you’ve told me that, you can tell me why you’re being so friendly. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the help, being unfamiliar with the town, but you can understand how a young lady can’t be too careful.”
“Name’s Riley Nugent,” the young man said. “My father is Thomas Nugent, owner and operator of the Sweetwater Ranch just over them western hills, about twenty miles. Me and the two other men I’m with—Collie and TJ—we’re waitin’ on a string of horses Pa bought from a horseman east of here. We’re not sure what day the man and his horses are due to arrive, so Pa sent me and the other two to town to wait him out. This is our second day. I ’spect he’ll be here tomorrow or the day after. If not, Collie and TJ aren’t gonna have enough money for a cup of soup by the time we head home.”
The young man chuckled, but it was not a cunning chuckle. It was an affable chuckle, with no real mockery in it.
“A gambling man, are you?” Louisa said.
“Oh, now and then, when my old man’s not around,” Riley Nugent admitted. “He won’t put up with it—neither him nor Ma. But Pa sent me out to the bunkhouse when I turned sixteen, to live and work with the range riders, to turn me into the men they are. Well, I reckon it worked. Maybe a little less than he would’ve liked in some ways, maybe a little more than he would have liked in others.”
Louisa stopped on the street corner and turned to him. “You answered only part of my question.”
Riley scratched his head. “What was the other part again?”
“Why are you being so friendly and helpful to me, a total stranger?”
“Well, because you’re pretty, of course!” He made the exclamation as though the question were the silliest he’d heard. “I have to tell you, Miss Bonaventure, you’re about the prettiest girl I’ve seen in this country in a long, long time.”
His penetrating smile disarmed her, and her face heated. She dropped her eyes to the boardwalk. “Thank you.”
“But that’s not the only reason,” Riley rushed to admit, the confidence in his voice flickering. “I mean, you just seem ... I don’t know, kind of alone and lost in a way. You just seemed like a person who could use a friend.”
Louisa measured him against the countless other men she had run into on the frontier, and her tally came up in young Riley’s favor. He seemed like a truly decent sort. And his voice had quickly lost its bravado, once he’d gotten away from his friends.
He returned her look with a sincere one of his own. “I’d like to apologize for the behavior of Collie and TJ—and myself, for that matter. They haven’t been to town in a while, and neither have I, and we do tend to entertain each other a bit in the Smokehouse. We’re harmless, though, I assure you.”
Louisa found herself smiling over a blush and returning her eyes once more to her shoes. “You’re forgiven. I appreciate the help. You’re right; I don’t know my way around here, and ...”
“Pardon for stickin’ my nose in,” Riley said, “but you don’t seem like the kind of girl who’d apply for a job in the Smokehouse or any other saloon.”
Louisa returned her eyes to his. “I appreciate your help, Mr. Riley,” she said softly, “but that’s all the questions I’d like to answer for one day. No offense.”
“None taken,” Riley said, holding out his hands appeasingly. He swung around and pointed to a store sitting catty-corner across the street. “That there is the Ladies’ Fashion Emporium, as you can tell by the sign. It might not look like much, but Mrs. Lonigan’s filled her shelves with all the latest Eastern fashions, or so Ma says, anyway.”
“Your mother shops there?” Louisa asked as she and Riley crossed the intersection.
“Whenever she can get away from the ranch.”
“You must come from a family of means, Riley Nugent.” Louisa’s voice was affably jeering.
“Oh, I s’pect we’re about the richest hereabouts, Miss Louisa,” the young man returned without irony. “It ain’t what it’s all cracked up to be, though. Plenty look up to us, but plenty more envy us, and you know what the man says about envy: ‘Pride, envy, and avarice spark hearts afire.’”
“Who said that?”
“I believe it was a guy named Dante.”
They were before the dress shop now. Louisa looked up at young Nugent’s face and said, “I thought you sounded more educated than you looked.”
Riley shrugged self-effacingly. “Pa has a whole library of books in his study, and since there’s nothing much else to do winters, I look through them now and then.” He opened the door and gestured for her to enter. “Shall we?”
Louisa looked at him, still shocked by the name Dante escaping the young drover’s lips. She, too, had read the works of Dante Alighieri, but she’d never expected to run into anyone else who had—especially out here.
With a thin, incredulous smile, warming to this young Riley more every minute, she stepped into the store and listened to the comforting sound of his boots clomping in behind her.
When they walked out a half hour later, Louisa carried a narrow, rectangular box in her arm. “And you’re sure,” she was asking Riley, “that it isn’t too revealing? I mean, like you said, it does have to reveal a little, or I might as well apply at the mercantile. But I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about me.”
Riley Nugent was flustered and tongue-tied. After all, he’d examined the several dresses the lovely Louisa had tried on, and he was certain the experience was one he’d remember on his deathbed. His ears were warm. His heart spun.
“No,” he said, swallowing, trying to steady himself. “It’s not near as revealing as the first two you tried on. I think ... I think it’s a good compromise.”
“Thank you so much for your help, Riley,” Louisa said, smiling warmly and clasping his wrist in her hand. “And thanks even more for buying this for me. I promise I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”
“I wish you’d just see it as a gift,” Riley complained.
“Never,” Louisa said, shaking her head. “But thanks again. Maybe I’ll see you around?”
“You certainly will, Miss Louisa,” he said, his eyes burning at her, his brain reeling. Then, realizing how presumptuous that must have sounded, he added, “I mean, I’ll probably be at the Smokehouse when you start at four. If the man and his horses don’t show up, that is.”
“I’ll see you then,” Louisa said. Turning, she headed for the bathhouse Riley had told her about.
Riley watched her march down the boardwalk, honey-blonde hair bouncing on her shoulders. He hoped against hope the horses he was waiting for didn’t show up for at least a month.