CHAPTER 8

Mr. Bane?”

Griffin finished fastening the gate to the corral before turning around. He knew who called his name, and he was in no hurry to face Vashti “George” Edwards.

He swung around. “Yeah?”

“Welcome home,” she said.

She stood in the back door of the livery, wearing one of those short, shiny dresses that made him feel as though he should look elsewhere. He shot a glance toward the haystack where his nephew had sprawled the moment he climbed stiffly from his saddle. Justin sat up, eyeing Vashti like a cougar watching a plump little prairie dog. Marty leaned on his shovel just inside the dim stable, ogling her, too. Griffin scowled at him, and Marty turned and ambled farther into the barn.

“Can I help you?” Griff yanked his hat off and shot another glance at Justin, who by this time had scrambled to his feet and brushed compulsively at the straw on his clothes.

“I thought you and your nephew would be hungry after your trip, so I brought you a couple of Augie’s sweet buns.”

Griffin wanted to chase her off, but his belly had been growling for the last two hours, and he’d tasted Augie’s sticky, cinnamon-shot buns before. They were not to be turned away lightly.

“That’s nice of you.”

Justin edged closer.

Griffin cleared his throat. He hadn’t considered the way a fifteen-year-old boy would look at Vashti and some of the other girls in town. How in the world was he supposed to steer the boy right when the kid didn’t want to be steered?

“Uh … this is Justin Frye, my nephew. Justin, that’s Miss Edwards, one of my employees.”

Justin snatched his hat off and held it over his heart. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, miss.”

There, now. He could be polite if he took a notion to. But if he’d quit staring at her ankles, Griffin would be happier.

Vashti folded back the napkin that covered the basket. “Would you like these now, or should I leave them inside?”

“Uh … reckon we ought to wash first.” Griffin thrust his hand out and collared Justin, who already had reached toward the basket. “There’s a basin and a bucket of water around the corner. Come on.”

He marched Justin around the side of the livery, where a battered tin basin sat on an upended barrel. A bucket of water stood on the ground beside it, and he tipped it up, pouring the basin half full.

“Be my guest.”

Justin eyed him with one cocked eyebrow, then plunged his hands into the water. He took them out and accepted the grayish towel Griffin held out to him.

Griffin sloshed his hands through the water and dried them. Maybe Vashti had left the basket and disappeared while they were gone.

“Come on.”

“Does she really work for you?” The boy grinned at him.

Griffin felt a knot in his stomach just behind his belt buckle. What was Justin thinking? Nothing good, from the look on his face.

“She sells tickets at the stage office.” Griffin marched past him and around the corner. Vashti still stood there with the basket. Marty was forking straw around inside the barn, pretending to be busy but waiting and watching.

“It was mighty nice of you to bring that,” Griff said.

“No trouble.” She handed him the basket. “I didn’t think to put in extra for Mr. Hoffstead.”

“Who, Marty?” Griffin peeked into the basket and saw four plump, odiferous buns oozing cinnamon and sugar icing. Men like Marty would kill for something less tempting. “Guess he can have one.”

“Miss Edwards, you ought to join us,” Justin said with a charming smile Griffin had never seen before on his face.

“Thank you, but those are for you fellows.” Vashti smiled back at the boy and cast a tentative glance Griffin’s way. “I … uh … had a couple of things I hoped I could talk over with you, Mr. Bane.”

He tried not to scowl when she’d just done something nice, but it seemed Vashti always had a reason beneath the obvious for doing what she did. “I need to get Justin settled at the Fennel House. Maybe you can meet me at my office later?”

“Of course. In an hour?”

“That’s fine.” Griffin lifted out one of the sugary buns and offered the basket to Justin. Marty stood in the barn doorway, practically drooling. “Come on, Marty. Can’t have you starving while we’re eating high on the hog.”

Vashti laughed as Marty came out of the shadows. “I’ll see you later, then.”

Justin’s gaze followed her every step until she’d walked through the stable and out the front door.

When Griffin entered the office, Vashti leaped up from the chair behind the desk. She moved away from it to the corner nearest the safe, suddenly aware that the boss was in the room and she’d been sitting in his place.

He stopped inside the door and looked her over. Perhaps he was waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light, but it seemed to her that they narrowed in a rather critical expression.

“All right, what do you want to talk about?”

Not ready for such an abrupt conversation, she said, “Your nephew seems like a nice young man.”

“Huh.” Griffin walked around the desk and sat down. “He’s all right, I guess.”

“Did you leave him at the boardinghouse?”

“Yes, the kid was tuckered out after riding all day. Probably sore, too. I don’t think he did a lot of riding back in Pennsylvania. He’ll probably sleep until suppertime.”

Vashti wondered how to ease around to the topic she wanted to discuss. “I believe his father died recently.”

“Yes.”

“My father’s dead, too. You know, taking care of a half-grown kid has its challenges.”

“What am I here for?”

She winced at his gruff tone and folded her hands before her. “I wished to speak to you about the Silver City run.”

“Oh. How was it?”

“Fine. Everything went fine.” He grunted.

“Bill Stout and I got along fine.”

“So everything was fine.”

“Yes. Absolutely. And I … well, I wanted to ask you about the clothing that Mrs. Adams gave me for the ride.”

“What about it? It fit you.”

She felt a flush climb up her neck. Why should it bother her that he’d noticed the fit of those boys’ trousers, when she’d dressed for years to draw men’s eyes to her figure? “Yes, but … am I to keep those things?”

He shrugged. “I don’t care. I’ll pay for them, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“It’s not. What I mean is”—she stepped over in front of the desk—“will I be making another run?”

“Oh.” His gaze slid away from her toward the door, the window, the lantern on the shelf—anything but her face. “Well, I don’t know. I wasn’t planning on it. On the other hand, sometimes it’s hard to come up with an extra messenger.”

“Or driver?”

He brought his fist down on the desktop with a whap that made her jump. “I told you—you can’t drive a stagecoach. You’re not good enough.”

She frowned but managed to keep down the anger building inside her. “I realize I have a lot to learn. An old hand like Bill could teach me a lot.”

“That so?”

“Yes, it’s so. And … well, to be honest, after making that ride up to Silver City, I know I couldn’t drive that route myself. Not yet. You’re right about that.”

“I am?” He scowled. “I mean, I know I am, but I’m surprised you’ll admit it.”

Vashti picked up the ticket book she’d left on the desk that afternoon. “As I said, I know I have a lot to learn.” She laid the book down and met his gaze head-on. “All I’m asking is the chance to get that knowledge.”

He watched her in silence. At last, he shifted in the chair and crossed his legs at the ankles. “I’m not going to let you practice on the stage teams.”

“Didn’t ask you to.”

“Humph.”

They stared at each other for half a minute. Vashti decided it might be a good idea to let him win, and she looked away.

“I also wished to know …“She gulped, suddenly losing confidence. Griffin was a very large man, and sometimes men like him had hair-trigger tempers. She didn’t want to vex him. Neither did she want to go back to the Spur & Saddle without her pay. “I wished to know when you would pay me for making the run.”

“I pay on Fridays.”

“Oh. All right. That’s it, then.”

“Fine.”

“Yes. Fine.”

“Bane, you in there?”

Vashti whirled toward the doorway. Ted Hire, the owner of the

Nugget Saloon, stood there, sweat beading on his forehead. Griffin stood. “What do you want, Ted?”

“There’s a boy over to my place—says he belongs to you.”

Griffin stalked into the Nugget with smoldering fire in his chest. Justin leaned on the bar, blinking dewy-eyed at Hannah Sue, the blonde Ted had hired a few months back. She wasn’t as young or as pretty as some of the saloon girls who had come through Fergus, but she wasn’t homely, either, and Griffin knew from experience that she listened well.

Probably Justin was filling her full of tales of how mean his uncle had treated him, while Hannah Sue poured him a drink of—what?—out of a clear bottle.

In three steps, he stood beside Justin and clamped his huge hand over Hannah Sue’s on the bottle. “What have we got here?”

Hannah Sue’s eyes widened, and she jerked her chin up. Her startled expression slid into a smile. “Well, hi, Griff. I was just making the acquaintance of your nephew. Justin here tells me he arrived in town this afternoon with you. Come all the way from Pennsylvanie, he says.”

As she talked, Griffin yanked the bottle away from her so he could read the label. Sarsaparilla.

He set it down on the bar with a sigh and turned to Justin. “This ain’t no place for a kid.”

Justin straightened and thrust his shoulders back. “I ain’t no kid. I’m a man now. My ma said so.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. She wouldn’t have sent me all this way by myself if I was a kid.”

“That right?” Griffin glared down at him. Justin was nearly a foot shorter than him and weighed about a third as much—hardly more than a sack of feed. “Tell you what, boy: If you were a real man, you’d have stayed home and taken care of your mama and the other kids, instead of worrying her sick.”

Justin’s jaw clenched. “Miss Hannah Sue knows I’m ready to take a man’s place in the world, don’t you, ma’am?” He looked at the bar girl, innocent appeal spilling out of his big brown eyes.

“Well now, Justin, I think you could do that, I surely do.” Hannah Sue’s honeyed drawl soothed the boy a little, and his face relaxed. “But you’ve got to understand that no matter how mature you are, you have to be a certain age to come into the Nugget. Mr. Hire knows that, and he also knows that if we served you liquor, the sheriff could lock him up and close down his business.”

“Even in the West? I thought it was different here.”

“Not so different as you might think,” Ted said from behind Griffin. “Especially when we’ve got a sheriff who takes the law seriously.”

“That’s right,” Hannah Sue said. “So he went to get your uncle. Now, he could have gone for the sheriff and got you tossed out and your uncle charged with child neglect or some such tomfoolery, but he’s a nice man. So instead of getting you and Mr. Bane in trouble, he just fetched your uncle, and it’s up to you to play the man’s part. Go on home, and don’t come back here until you’re older.”

Justin’s frown had returned. He looked down at the glass on the bar. “But you poured me a drink.”

“Honey, that ain’t whiskey. Go ahead and drink it if you want. On the house. Then you go on home with Uncle Griff and behave yourself. In a couple of years, I’ll see you back in here.” She winked at Justin, a little more provocatively than Griff thought seemly, but then, nothing about the Nugget was seemly. “Go on, now.”

Justin picked up the glass and sniffed it. He set it down with a thud that slopped sarsaparilla over the edge. His shoulders slumped, and he turned toward the door without another word, shrinking back as he passed Griffin.

“Thanks, Hannah Sue,” Griffin said. He knew she and Ted had both stretched it a little about the law. Most folks wouldn’t have cared whether or not a fifteen-year-old boy was served liquor in a frontier town. But in Fergus, people had ideas about decency and helping friends, and he figured they’d done it for him as much as for Justin.

“No trouble,” Hannah Sue said.

Griffin fished in his pocket and found a lone dime. He handed it to her and nodded at Ted. “Thank you, too. If he comes here again …”

“He won’t.”

Griff allowed that was probably true. He followed Justin out into the thin autumn sunshine. The chill of winter danced in the breeze, and a drink wouldn’t have been unwelcome. But with the boy around …

Yes, with the boy around, Griffin was going to have to consider his habits carefully.

Justin waited at the bottom of the steps with his hands shoved into his pants pockets.

“Where’s your coat?”

“Over to the boardinghouse.” Justin’s eyes still had the sullen cast. “Come on. Let’s go get it.”

“Where are we going after that?”

“You’re coming with me to the smithy.”

Justin’s eyes were slits of brown. “Can’t I just stay in my room?”

“Like you did last time I put you there? Come on, I’ve got four mules to shoe.”