She was about to go looking for him when he opened the door. His gaze swept over her, but all she got was his usual “Let’s go.”
She didn’t mind that either. Degan’s helping her instead of jailing her changed everything. She had to be careful now not to do anything that would make him reconsider taking her back to Texas. So she didn’t complain that he was late, that her belly was growling, that he’d barely glanced at her or mentioned how pretty she looked in the new clothes, which were his idea. He might be helping her now, but one thing hadn’t changed at all. He could still be damn annoying.
The little hotel they were staying in didn’t have a restaurant, but one was across the street. They waited for two covered wagons to roll past them and then for a cowboy leading a cow to the butcher to pass. Bozeman was prosperous and appeared to be growing. Max saw a newspaper office down the street and even a library. Well, at least the sign above the drugstore indicated that one could be found upstairs. She hadn’t seen that very often, a town with an actual library.
The restaurant was crowded. For the first time, Max noticed that people were looking at her as well as Degan. He’d buttoned his jacket, which hid his gun from view, so that could have been why. No corner tables were available. Max knew that was where he preferred to sit so he could keep his back to a wall. If he minded that they were seated in the middle of the room, he didn’t show it.
He was back to wanting conversation with his meal, didn’t even wait for the food to arrive to ask, “How big is your hometown?”
“Not as big and crowded as Butte, but bigger than this one and more spread out. Bingham Hills was founded back in the forties with just one long main street. It’s got over a dozen streets now, five saloons, three stables, two hotels, and a handful of boardinghouses. Carl Bingham took great pride in guiding its expansion. Heck, he even built houses for the tradesmen who wanted more’n a few rooms above their shops to live in. One more reason why that town loves him so much.”
“You need to stop thinking the man is alive, Max.”
“I know, but I still can’t believe he died from that gunshot wound.”
Degan made a sound of frustration. “You need to assume he’s dead, either by your brother’s hand or someone else finished him off and blamed it on you because you fled. There’s no other logical reason for your poster to have been distributed across the West.”
“Course there is, because they want—”
“Listen to me. Posters are based on facts. The bank robbery might have been a misunderstanding, but you still walked out of the bank with more than your own money. Someone thought Bingham was dead—or about to die—in order to get the US marshal system to send that poster out with both charges on it. His son would want revenge, wouldn’t he?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Let me finish. If he’s not dead, your town would know it, other people visiting would know it, and any other lawmen in the area would know it, so your poster would have been canceled at least within the first year. But it wasn’t.”
“Unless it wasn’t distributed in Texas.”
The look she got was so quelling she mashed her lips together. She knew she was deluding herself with wishful thinking now, simply because she needed to be right. The alternative was a hanging, and not even Degan would be able to stand against an entire town that would want to see her pay for killing their beloved founder.
Degan obviously hadn’t considered that because he continued, “For the time being we’re assuming he’s dead. We won’t know exactly how it happened until we get there. Now, if what you’ve said is true about what led up to the shooting, there needs to be a reason why the Binghams were so hell-bent on making you a member of their family—and went to such extremes to accomplish it.”
Max shrugged. “I just figured they wanted some good-looking babies, since neither Bingham has much in the way of looks.”
“That could have been accomplished in any number of ways that didn’t have to involve you. Unless one of them was in love with you?”
She snorted. “If they were, they’ve got a fine way of showing it, putting a target on my back.”
“Your wanted poster doesn’t say ‘dead or alive.’ ”
“It doesn’t say ‘alive,’ either.”
They fell silent when the food arrived. They were both trying the chef’s recommended fish cakes, three large patties that filled their plates, fried golden with two different sauces, and glazed carrots on the side.
But as soon as the waiter left, Degan asked, “What else do you have that the Binghams could have wanted?”
“The clothes on my back?” His eyes actually narrowed a little. She chuckled this time. “I don’t own anything that a rich family like the Binghams would want.”
“You have property standing in the way of the town’s expansion, if what you said about the town’s approaching your farm is true. Or are there other directions in which the town could be developed?”
She frowned. “There are still other ways to go.”
“That are being used?”
“Yeah, I suppose they are. With hills on the back side and lots of flat land on the other side, Carl was mostly making use of the flat land. But there’s a quarry to the east he probably didn’t want to get close to, and the woods—actually, the only clear flat land is in our direction.”
“So your family’s farm is in the way of Carl Bingham’s goal to turn his town into a city.”
She grinned. “That ambition is a bit grandiose even for him, although there was talk before I left that he was planning on putting in a railroad spur line to connect Bingham Hills with the Texas and Pacific Railroad at Fort Worth or Abilene. If they manage to do that, yeah, the population of the town could end up doubling pretty quick.”
“It might not have been something Bingham originally planned on, but if he’s as rich as you say, he would be able to pay any price your family named for the land. Did he offer to buy your farm?”
“It’s not mine to sell.”
“It wasn’t left to your father?”
“It would’ve been, but he died before Grandpa did, so it went to Gran. And she’ll leave it to Johnny.”
“Did Bingham try to buy it from your grandmother?”
“If he did, she never mentioned it to us. But she’s lived in that house more’n half her life. It’s home. She wouldn’t sell it.”
“Even if she was offered a fortune?”
Max shook her head. “You can’t put a price on something you love.”
He said no more about it, but he’d definitely opened a can of worms in her mind. She’d thought she was the main focus of the Binghams’ interest, her personally. But if it had been about the farm all along, what had made Carl think that having her in his family would give him control of the farm? Why would a man everyone else in town loved and respected turn ruthless over a piece of land? He’d even been prepared to rape her to get that ring on her finger. But for that property to come to him through marriage to her, the rest of her family would have to be dead. Oh, dear Lord, Max thought, had the Binghams hurt Gran and Johnny? She tried to calm herself and think clearly. No, if the Binghams were capable of murder, they would have taken action before she’d left Texas.
Max sighed. Degan had given her too much to think about. She’d been so pleased that he was willing to help her, but now she had to wonder if it might get him killed. She knew he could take on outlaws and gunfighters, but how could he take on a whole town? They were still a long way from Texas, so she wasn’t going to mention that now.
Back in their room, she saw immediately that a big, puffy quilt had been delivered and placed on the bed. She supposed it would do for a mattress.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” Max said.
“It’s a big bed. You can wrap yourself in that quilt so we can share it. If you don’t want me to touch you, you only have to say so.”
She supposed that would work, but she clarified, “No touching will be necessary. That quilt w
ill keep me warm. Thank you for thinking of it.”
He looked as if he might say something else, but he left the room instead so she could prepare for bed. She removed her pretty new clothes and put on her heavy shirt and pants to sleep in. She probably didn’t need them with the quilt, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She got into bed and wrapped the quilt around her. This was much better than the floor, but she hoped she wouldn’t be too hot now.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
MAX AWOKE TO FIND a shirtless Degan propped up on an elbow in bed, gazing at her. She took in the sight of his wide, bare chest—maybe a little too long.
“Have you changed your mind about touching?”
Her eyes rose to his. It would be so easy to say yes, but she couldn’t shake her resolve. What had happened the other night couldn’t be repeated. Yet she didn’t answer him soon enough. He leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers. She raised her hand to push him back, but the moment she touched his bare skin, she ran her fingers over it instead. His kiss deepened. She groaned at how hard it was to resist this man! But she had to.
Gathering her last speck of will, she rolled away from him and right out of bed, then nearly tripped over the quilt on the floor. No wonder he’d thought that she’d changed her mind. She must have been so warm she’d thrown off that quilt in the middle of the night.
She heard him get out of bed, too. Then the door opened. “Next time I’m getting you a cot.”
She winced as he closed the door behind him, but it was better this way. No strings that he might misconstrue, no jeopardizing his help, no getting so attached that she couldn’t walk away in the end—when he did.
The train ride to Dakota was uneventful, but at least the train didn’t get robbed. It was pretty funny to consider that bad luck, but Degan sure did. Max merely enjoyed her first train ride. It was thrilling, moving that fast.
She still hadn’t told Degan that his helping her in Texas might not be a good idea. For him. He would likely disagree, so she should probably just take off on him and make her own way home to face whatever awaited her there. Now that Degan seemed to trust her to a degree, he wouldn’t be expecting it. But she was still with him. Each time she’d had an opportunity to slip away before they got to the train station in Billings, she hadn’t taken it. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she enjoyed traveling with him. Maybe because Degan might already have a plan to negate her fears and she ought to find out about that first. It was his profession, after all, to solve problems. And maybe she didn’t ask him if he had a plan because she just wasn’t ready to see the last of him yet. Probably because she knew she had time. But there had been no more chances to escape once they’d boarded the train in Billings, what with their horses loaded in the livestock car. The horses would remain there until Degan reached his final destination.
That location hadn’t been determined yet, though Degan was leaning toward a town in the center of the territory. He was questioning every railroad employee on the train and at the stations they stopped at. He had found out that only the westbound trains that carried the railroad’s payroll were being hit, which was why the train she and Degan were riding hadn’t been robbed and likely wouldn’t be. One employee had agreed to show him where along the tracks the last robbery had occurred, but that wasn’t going to help much in locating where the Nolan gang were hiding. Soldiers, railroad detectives, and other US marshals had been searching for these outlaws for months, and no one had come close to finding them yet, not even when there had been fresh tracks for them to follow.
“You need a tracker,” Max pointed out when they finally disembarked from the train at Bismarck, on the east bank of the Missouri in the Dakota Territory.
Degan led them to the animal cars to wait for the horses to be unloaded. “A hunter who doesn’t track?”
Was he joking? He had to be. She snorted. “I can track game, but I’ve never tried to track people.”
“It doesn’t matter. A tracker would only be useful right after a robbery. What I need is a scout, or at least someone very familiar with this territory who can suggest places where a group of men might hole up.”
“Have you been through here before?”
“Almost.”
She peered at him. “Almost?”
“I had to choose which direction to go in when I left home. I’d heard the railroad had gotten pretty far up here. But winter was approaching so I decided to forgo a northern route. And then I decided to forgo trains altogether and just head West.”
“It’s hard to imagine you as a greenhorn.”
“Then don’t.”
She laughed. “But you were, weren’t you?” He didn’t answer. Of course he wouldn’t. “Did you leave home with the palomino?”
“No. I had a Thoroughbred racer, but he went lame about halfway through Kansas, stranding me on a road between towns—until an old woman came along driving a wagon that looked older than she was. Adelaide Miller, the most cantankerous woman I’ve ever come across. Bossy, argumentative, and set in her ways, as different from the women I knew in Chicago as night is from day. It took a while to get used to her.”
“Rescued by an old woman. I’ll never tell,” she teased.
He ignored that. “She took me home with her, promising to take me to town in a week or two when she had to go back there again. Nothing I said or offered would get her to change her mind about that time schedule. It ended up being a month. I figured out pretty quick that she just wanted things done around her place that a man could do easier than she could. At least she was a good cook.”
Max chuckled over that point’s being important to him. “She lived alone?”
He nodded as a railroad employee handed the reins to his horse to him. She was still waiting for hers. “She raised pigs and a few cows. And had several vegetable gardens. It was a big homestead out in the middle of nowhere, no neighbors in sight, some twenty miles from the nearest town. Her husband had farmed it before he died.”
“Don’t tell me she had you plowing fields. I’d never believe it.”
“No, she only planted vegetable and flower gardens after he was gone. What she could handle on her own. But she wanted some painting done, repairing, fixing, hauling.”
As interesting as Max found his tale, simply because he so rarely opened up like this, she began to wonder why he was telling her—until he added, “Learning to shoot.”
“She wanted you to teach her?”
“No, she castigated me for not carrying a gun and browbeat me into learning how to use one. She gave me her husband’s Colt to practice with and wouldn’t let up until I hit everything I aimed at.”
Max started laughing and couldn’t stop. An old woman had taught the fastest gun in the West how to shoot? He walked away from her. She grabbed her reins and hurried after him.
“Wait up. You have to admit that’s funny, so don’t get mad at me for laughing.”
“Adelaide did me a favor. It wasn’t long before I needed that gun, before I even got out of Kansas. But you pegged it right. I came West a greenhorn. I just didn’t stay one for very long.”
She was incredulous that he’d told her this. She had a feeling he’d never shared that story with anyone else. Why her? Max couldn’t help smiling. Was she growing on him? The same way he was growing on her? That was an interesting thought.
“So are we heading out now?”
“One of the station attendants suggested that the Nolan gang might be hiding in the Dakota Badlands.”
She frowned. “Then maybe we should just let them rot there. You know areas like that are next to impossible to travel through.”
“I didn’t say we were going there.”
“Good, because it’s no place to live for any length of time. I got close enough to Wyoming’s Badlands to know I didn’t want to travel through them. Sinking sand, steep crags, no greenery to speak of. I doubt the Badlands here are any different. And the gang has been robbing this line in the warmer months for over a y
ear now, eight robberies in all. They aren’t going to camp out for that long, certainly not over the winter.”
“I know all that, and that Nolan’s gang only targets the trains coming west loaded to the brim with new settlers, or the ones bringing in the railroad’s payroll. But the Badlands suggestion was just one man’s opinion, and since that area is back in the western part of Dakota, which we’ve already passed, we’ll only backtrack as a last resort. Besides, I’m inclined to believe the gang is more centrally located. It’s a big territory, after all, and the robberies have occurred up and down the line.”
“I enjoyed riding the train.” She grinned. “We could just board one of the trains carrying a payroll and wait for the gang to rob us like you were hoping they would.”
“That hope was based on my impatience, and it didn’t take into account the possibility that innocent people could get hurt. I’d rather find them myself.”
“You do realize that they could be hiding in plain sight like I tried to do. They could even be living here in Bismarck and just acting like normal folks. Who would know?”
“Someone here will. This is the biggest train hub in the territory. Information about what’s on the trains from the east comes through here in advance. Someone here is feeding that information to Willie Nolan.”
“So you do have a plan?”
“Of sorts.”
He didn’t elaborate. Actually, she was amazed he’d said as much as he did. But then he added, “The first item on the agenda is a bath and a good night’s sleep. If I get lucky and find the gang’s inside man, we might wrap this up quickly. If not, I want to scout out the outskirts of Bismarck tomorrow.”