This Gun for Hire Read online

  “Are you tempted to give my hair a tug?” she asked.

  Finn blinked. “How’s that again, ma’am?”

  “I wondered if you were tempted to yank on my hair.”

  He ducked his head, cheeks flushing, and hurried to the stove. “Uh, no. No, ma’am.” Finn used the sleeve of his shirt like a mitt to open the stove door and tossed half a scoop of coals inside. “Wasn’t tempted at all.”

  Tru watched Finn poke at the fire and warm himself in front of the stove long enough to provide an explanation for his rosy cheeks. “I just wondered,” she said. “After all, my hair is the same color as Priscilla’s.”

  Finn turned his backside to the stove and stared at her. “I sure hope you’ll pardon me for setting you straight, Miss Morrow, but you ever hear tell of a man named Rumple Sticks?”

  “Rumpelstiltskin?”

  “That’s the fellow. You know of him?”

  “I believe I’ve heard of him.”

  “That’s good because I couldn’t explain it all. Rabbit’s better with stories than I am. Well, anyway, I can see you want me to get on with it. It’s like this: Priscilla’s got hair that puts me in mind of the straw that Mr. Stiltskin wanted for his spinning wheel, and your hair is what Mr. Stiltskin spun it into. So you see, one color’s not at all like the other. Yellow. Gold. I got some idea there’s a big difference.” Finn rocked back on his heels. “Besides, you got your hair lassoed so tight to your head that it would be hard to know what thread to pull.”

  Now it was Tru who blinked and blushed. “How old are you again, Finn?”

  “Ten. Or I will be soon enough.”

  “So you’re nine. Maybe you shouldn’t be in such a hurry to grow up.”

  Finn moved away from the stove and shut the door. “That’s what everyone says. Even Rabbit. He’s eleven and thinks he can say things like that now. Sort of like he’s wise. He’s not.”

  Tru knew better than to make any judgment on Rabbit’s wisdom. Finn was certain to carry the tale, and it did not take much provocation to start a war of words between the brothers. She’d seen them use elbows and fists like periods and exclamation points to punctuate their threats.

  “Sit down, Finn, and clean your slate. I trust that given sufficient contemplation you’ll arrive at what you need to write.”

  His shoulders slumped, and he jammed his hands in his pockets. “Suppose I will.”

  “You’ll read it to the class tomorrow morning, first thing after prayers.”

  He grimaced but slid into his seat without a word.

  “And perhaps at the end of the day, you will be so kind as to help me clean all the slates.” She reasoned that if she found small tasks for him to do, he might not choose getting into trouble in order to remain in her company. He would probably tire of that soon enough. This was her first encounter with a boy’s infatuation, and she had been slow to recognize it for what it was. Her sense was that it would pass quickly. She thought she might be a little sorry when it did.

  * * *

  Tru left the schoolhouse ten minutes after Finn shuffled out. He had done everything he could think of to draw out his time. She admired his creativity, was even a tad flattered by his motives, but was careful not to encourage either. She listened with half an ear when he prattled on about the most recent visitor to Bitter Springs and nodded at what she hoped were the proper intervals when he gave a full account of the birth of a foal in Mr. Ransom’s livery just that morning. He also added a rapid, if somewhat incoherent, story about the milliner’s daughter accepting Mr. Irvin’s proposal of marriage. Finn wasn’t clear if it was Millicent Garvin who was marrying the undertaker, or her younger sister Marianna, but there was definitely a wedding being planned because Mrs. Garvin was ordering catalogs and silk from Paris.

  Tru thought that even if she hadn’t been apprised of some of the town’s more interesting citizens when she interviewed for the teaching position, it would not have taken her long to identify Heather Collins, grandmother of Rabbit and Finn, as the one who invariably had her ear to the ground and her tongue positioned for wagging. While her husband was the station agent for Bitter Springs, and privy to all the comings and goings of the trains and travelers, he was still merely the human hub. Mrs. Collins, on the other hand, was the human hubbub.

  Tru had a suspicion that Finn’s ear was similarly pressed and his mouth similarly positioned.

  Pulling her scarf up so that it covered her mouth and the bottom half of her nose, Tru stepped out of the schoolhouse. Wind whipped at her skirts. She ignored the flare of her petticoats but surrendered to the shiver that rattled her teeth. She tucked her chin against her chest and watched her step on the uneven sidewalk as she bucked the wind.

  She would have been knocked to the ground if the same force that stopped her forward progress had not also stopped her downward plunge. In that first moment, she lost her breath. In the next, she recovered it.

  And promptly lost a little of it again when she met the direct, crystalline blue gaze of the man who was at once an obstruction and her protection.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said.

  Feeling rather foolish, Tru sought purchase on the ground with the toes of her boots. He immediately set her down.

  “Better?”

  “Yes.” Tru could feel her bonnet slipping backward. She made a grab for it, exposing her tightly coiled hair to the wind’s icy teeth, and set it properly on her head before it could blow away.

  Still watching her, he frowned. “Are you all right?”

  Tru realized that her scarf had muffled her answer. Rather than expose her face to the cold, she nodded.

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t watching where I was going,” he said.

  She nodded again and pointed to herself, hoping he understood she was offering the same explanation.

  “Are you certain you can walk? You didn’t twist an ankle?”

  The answer to the first required another nod. The answer to the second required a shake. It would be too confusing if she did both. Tru pulled the scarf just below her bottom lip. “Really, I’m fine.” Her moist breath was made visible by the cold air. She burrowed her mouth and nose into the warm wool again. When he continued to stare at her as though gauging the truth of her words, Tru took a step sideways. The wind slipped under her petticoats and her skirt fluttered wildly against his legs as she made to pass.

  “You’re Miss Morrow. The schoolteacher.”

  Tru stopped. She supposed that if he had any doubt about her identity, the simple act of pausing was sufficient to confirm it.

  “My name’s Bridger,” he said, touching the brim of his pearl gray Stetson with a gloved hand. “Cobb Bridger.”

  She sighed and tugged on her scarf again. “I know who you are, Mr. Bridger.”

  “You do?”

  She felt strangely pleased that she had surprised him. “I eliminated all the faces I know. Since I don’t know yours, that makes you new to town and therefore the gambler who has taken up lodgings at the Pennyroyal.”

  “I’m staying at the Pennyroyal.”

  “I don’t pass any judgment about gambling, Mr. Bridger. Or drinking for that matter.” The Pennyroyal was a hotel and saloon. “Your affairs are your own.” She thought she sounded a bit priggish for someone who professed to pass no judgment, but it was too late to make amends for it. “Excuse me, please.”

  He retreated a step and let her move out of his reach before he said, “I thought you’d be more curious.”

  If he’d put out a hand to block her path, he could not have stopped her with more ease. Tru turned her head and arched a single spun-gold eyebrow.

  “Don’t you wonder how I recognized you, Miss Morrow?”

  Tru yanked on her scarf. “I imagine you learned something about everyone in Bitter Springs in the same manner I did. You cannot get from the train station to the
hotel without the assistance of Rabbit and Finn Collins, and no personal detail is too small for them to miss about you or relate about others. As the young masters are both my pupils, I can suppose one or both pointed me out to you as you rode by or told you all of the six ways I’ve made their lives miserable by accepting the position to teach in Bitter Springs. You probably noticed my horns and cloven feet.”

  Almost immediately, Tru regretted calling attention to herself in that manner. Cobb Bridger’s scrutiny was thorough, though not particularly personal. He regarded her with a certain remoteness that was almost clinical, more akin to the dispassionate observation of a scientist. She was most definitely not flattered, but then neither, she realized, was she embarrassed.

  “What I noticed,” he said, returning his eyes to hers, “is that the color of your hair is as fine as Rumpelstiltskin could spin it.”

  Tru felt her jaw go slack. Gaping like a fish was unattractive, and she recovered quickly. Quite against her will, though, the dimple on the left side of her mouth appeared as a short laugh changed the shape of her lips. “Pardon me, Mr. Bridger, but this is the second time today that someone has made that rather odd comparison. I do have to ask myself whether you heard it first from Finn or whether he came by it from you.”

  “No doubt about it, Miss Morrow. That’s a puzzler.”

  Tru smiled again, this time appreciatively. Mr. Bridger had obviously decided to give nothing away. “So you and Finn have become fast friends.”

  “I don’t remember that he gave me a choice.”

  “No, I don’t suppose he did.” Her smile faltered, became earnest. “You’ll have a care with him, won’t you? He doesn’t know a stranger, and I understand from his grandmother that he’s drawn most particularly to gamblers.”

  “He asked me right off if I knew his father.”

  She nodded. “He believes his father is riding the rails playing high-stakes poker from one end of the country to the other. He might be. No one knows, but no one but Finn holds out any hope that one day he’ll turn up in Bitter Springs with his winnings in a wheelbarrow.”

  “I see.”

  Tru wasn’t sure what he saw. When he tilted his head, the brim of his hat cast a shadow over his eyes. She couldn’t tell whether he was being reflective or dismissive. “So you’ll have a care,” she repeated. “It would be a kindness if you did.”

  “You are certain of that?”

  His question seemed to suggest that she could be wrong. She felt herself bristling and responded with rather more sharpness than she intended. “It’s no burden to show kindness.”

  “What if kindness is merely a deceit? There’s a burden there, I think, and usually unfortunate consequences.”

  Tru shivered inside her coat. She tried to form a response, but her teeth chattered so violently that she would have bitten her tongue.

  “Perhaps we should agree to disagree,” he said. “Before you are chilled to the bone.”

  “T-too l-l-late.”

  “May I escort you home?”

  She shook her head.

  “As you wish.” He tapped his brim again. “Good day, Miss Morrow.”

  Tru thought she might have seen something like humor play about his mouth, but she couldn’t be sure. He did not strike her as a man who smiled as a matter of course but as one who offered it more judiciously and to far more devastating effect.

  Tru covered the lower half of her face again and turned away. She fought the temptation to glance over her shoulder to see if he was watching her. She had the sensation that he was. The most disturbing thing about that particular fancy was that she was warmed by it.

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