"What can I get you, mister?"
The question came from a woman in an ap.r.o.n who"d come up on the other side of the counter. Luke had already noticed the lunch special chalked on a board hanging on the wall behind the counter-steak, potatoes, turnip greens, cornbread, and peach cobbler, all for fifty cents-and he was about to order that along with a cup of coffee when he glanced up, took a good look at the woman standing before him, and couldn"t find words for a second.
The sight of an angel smiling at him would do that to a man.
CHAPTER 25.
The woman"s blond hair was pulled up in a neat bun to keep it out of her way as she worked in the cafe. Her eyes were blue and set in a lovely, slightly heart-shaped face that was a little flushed at the moment, probably from going in and out of the hot kitchen on the other side of the swinging door behind the counter. The ap.r.o.n was tied over a blue dress that matched her eyes and flattered her mature, attractive figure. Luke put her age around thirty.
He finally remembered that she had just asked him a question. He found his voice and said, "I"ll have the lunch special, please, ma"am."
He had noticed a wedding ring on her left hand. It wasn"t surprising that a woman who looked like her was married. She"d probably had plenty of eager suitors from which to choose a husband.
"Coffee?"
"Yes, and keep it coming."
"I had a feeling you were going to say that." Still smiling, she took a cup off a shelf, set it in front of Luke, and filled it from a pot that had been sitting on a potbellied stove behind the counter. Wisps of steam curled up from the black brew. "You take it with anything in it?"
"Not this time." He didn"t want anything to dilute the coffee"s bracing effect. He picked up the cup, sipped the hot, potent liquid, closed his eyes for a second, and sighed in sheer satisfaction.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that the woman seemed to be trying not to laugh at him. He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow quizzically at her.
"It"s just that I haven"t seen very many men who looked like they"d been transported to a state of pure rapture by a sip of coffee," she explained.
"I"m not sure many men have ever wanted a cup of coffee as much as I do right now," Luke told her.
"Well, go ahead and enjoy it. I"ll put your order in for you. Shouldn"t take but a few minutes to get it ready. My cook is very efficient."
"I met her husband down at the livery stable when I rode into town. He sang her praises, as you might expect."
"Silas? He"s a good man. And thank goodness I have Tillie here to help me out, otherwise I"d never be able to keep up." She turned and went through the swinging door to relay his order.
When she came back a moment later she took the coffeepot and went along the counter, freshening the cups of the men seated there. Then she went around the room to the tables and did the same.
Luke sipped his coffee and watched the way she moved. She had an ease and grace that was very pleasing to the eye.
He wasn"t the only man in the room watching her. The stocky hombre sitting beside him grunted and said, "Mighty easy to look at, ain"t she?"
"I didn"t mean to stare," Luke said.
"Oh, h.e.l.l, it"s hard not to when a gal"s as good-lookin" as Georgia Walton. To tell the truth, a lot of these fellas would eat lunch here every day even if the food wasn"t any good. Luckily, Tillie Grant is as good a cook as you"ll find in the whole territory." He stuck out his hand. "I"m Ben McGill."
"Luke Jensen," Luke introduced himself as he shook hands with McGill.
"You must"ve just gotten here, Luke. I don"t recall seein" you around town before now."
"Just rode in a little while ago," Luke agreed.
"What brings you to Pine City?"
Luke was saved from having to answer that by the arrival of his food, which was heaped on a big platter Georgia Walton brought out of the kitchen and set in front of him.
McGill grinned and waved a hand for him to go ahead. "We can talk later. I wouldn"t keep a man from enjoyin" a meal like that."
Luke dug in, forcing himself to eat at a deliberate pace rather than wolfing down the vittles like he wanted to. The food was excellent, as he"d been told it would be, and he wanted to savor every bite of it.
After he had eaten about half the meal, washing it down with coffee, he said to McGill, who was lingering over a cup of his own, "Ever get any steamboats coming up the river?"
"Steamboats?" McGill repeated. "Here? Shoot, I don"t think I"ve seen a steamboat in this part of the territory since I"ve been here. And that"s a good thing, because I own the freight line that runs between here and Sheridan. If there was regular riverboat service, I"d probably be out of business. There are still some up on the Yellowstone, I think, and farther north on the Missouri, but not in these parts."
Luke nodded. He was glad to hear what McGill had just told him. It meant that the arrival of a riverboat in Pine City would be something out of the ordinary. It would cause a commotion and alert Luke to the fact that McCluskey and the others had arrived.
In the meantime, he could finish his food. He was just wiping up the last of the juices on his plate with the final bite of cornbread when Georgia came over and asked, "How was it?"
"I"m tempted to say it was better than anything I"ve ever had in San Francisco or Denver," Luke replied.
She laughed. It was a very pleasant sound, sort of like a clear mountain stream dancing over rocks.
"You don"t have to go that far," she told him. "We"ll just say it was very good."
"And that would be the truth. My name is Jensen, by the way. Luke Jensen."
"I"m Georgia Walton." She offered her hand in a forthright manner.
Luke didn"t mention that Ben McGill had already told him her name. He reached over the counter and shook hands with her. "It"s an honor and a pleasure."
"Will you be staying in Pine City for long, Mr. Jensen? Or is there a chance you plan to settle down here?"
"I won"t be settling down," Luke said. And I"ll be here only as long as it takes to round up McCluskey and the rest of that gang, he thought.
Worry was starting to gnaw at him, though. He would be outnumbered more than ten to one. How was he going to capture or kill that many men? If he wound up with quite a few prisoners, what would he do with them? He couldn"t put them on horses and take them all the way to Cheyenne. It would be too risky. They were bound to try to escape.
McGill had mentioned that he owned a freight line. That meant he had wagons available to him. Luke wondered if he could recruit some drivers and guards from among the men of Pine City and offer them a share of the reward if they helped him transport the outlaws. That would cut down on the amount he"d collect himself, but it might be his best chance.
He was getting ahead of himself, he thought. First came the matter of dealing with the gang, and doing it in such a way that some of the innocent citizens of the settlement weren"t hurt. He needed to go see what sort of welcome he could prepare for the riverboat and its pa.s.sengers.
He slid a silver dollar across the counter to Georgia and stood up.
"The lunch special is only four bits," she objected.
"And easily worth twice that." He wished again that he had his hat, so he could tip it to her. He settled for smiling and lifting a hand in a vague gesture of farewell.
Ben McGill strolled out of the cafe with him. As they paused on the boardwalk, McGill said, "You know, you never did say what brings you to Pine City."
"Business." Luke wasn"t curt about it, but his tone didn"t invite further discussion, either.
McGill didn"t take the hint. "Well, if you"re looking for a good place to invest, Pine City fits the bill. The town"s not going to do anything except grow and prosper. I"d be glad to show you around if you"d like."
Luke started to decline the offer, then decided it might not hurt to have a guide. He didn"t know how long it was going to take for the riverboat to get there, but it was bound to show up before the afternoon was over. "All right. I"d appreciate that."
As they walked along the street, McGill pointed out the various businesses with the ebullient air of a true civic booster. The freight company he owned was one of them, and from the looks of the big, st.u.r.dy barn and warehouse next to the office, the enterprise was thriving.
Luke was more interested in the general store. As they pa.s.sed it, he asked McGill, "Do you know if they sell dynamite in there?"
"Sure. Some folks use it for blasting out stumps, and there are some miners up in the hills, putting in shafts. None of them have struck it rich yet, but you never know." McGill paused and frowned a little. "Do you have a need for dynamite, Luke?"
"I might," Luke replied, noting that McGill seemed to consider them on a first-name basis. He didn"t offer any explanation for the question.
They pa.s.sed the marshal"s office, according to the sign on the wall of a frame building. The sign also indicated that the local lawman was named Gideon Kent.
"You"ve got a marshal here," Luke commented. That was good to know. He might have to call on the badge-toter for a.s.sistance before the day was over.
"Sure do. A fine one. You were sitting beside him at the cafe a while ago."
Luke frowned as he looked over at McGill. "I was sitting next to you, and on the other side of me was a scrawny young fella who looked like a store clerk."
"That"s Marshal Kent," McGill said. "Don"t let his looks fool you. He"s a lot tougher than you"d think he is."
Luke didn"t think the man had looked tough at all, so that wouldn"t take much. He wasn"t sure how much help he could count on from Kent.
Maybe it wouldn"t come to that. He and McGill had reached the northern end of town, where the river flowed. A bridge constructed of thick wooden beams spanned the stream. The river came through a nearby cut in the hills, and Luke could tell that the current was swift by the way the water boiled around the piers supporting the bridge.
As he looked at the bridge, his brain instinctively began to form a plan. The bridge was too low for the riverboat to get past it. The outlaws would have to put in to sh.o.r.e before they reached it. But they would have to get close to the bridge before stopping, because the banks were too high and steep where the river emerged from the hills.
Luke needed to even the odds, and he didn"t see any better way to do it than with a little dynamite. He would have to talk to the local law first, though, since he couldn"t just go around setting off explosions.
"Thanks for the tour, Ben," he said as he turned back toward the marshal"s office.
"I didn"t really show you everything," McGill protested.
"I"ve seen what I need to see."
Luke strode off, leaving the freighter standing there with a perplexed frown on his face.
Luke hoped Marshal Kent was in his office. Again he had the nagging sense that he was running out of time. He shouldn"t have had that meal, he thought, but his hunger had been too great to ignore.
The lawman was at his desk when Luke opened the door of the marshal"s office and walked in. Kent had taken off his suit coat, but otherwise he looked like he had in the cafe. He raised his head from the papers he"d been studying and peered at Luke through rimless spectacles that perched on his sharp nose.
"You"re the man who sat next to me in the Widow Walton"s place," he said before Luke had a chance to speak. He pushed back his chair. "What do you want?"
Under other circ.u.mstances Luke would have taken an interest in the fact that evidently Georgia Walton wasn"t married anymore, despite the ring on her finger. As it was, he wondered briefly how long it had been since her husband died and if she was still in mourning.
But he said, "My name is Luke Jensen, Marshal. I"ve come here to warn you that a whole riverboat full of outlaws is heading for your town."
CHAPTER 26.
Marshal Kent looked at Luke as if the bounty hunter had suddenly grown two heads. After a moment he said, "That"s insane. There are no riverboats operating in this region."
"There"s one now," Luke said. "But there"s n.o.body on it except that gang of outlaws I mentioned. And the only cargo is a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars" worth of stolen gold bars."
Kent"s eyes widened behind the spectacles. "A hundred and . . . That"s a fortune!"
Luke nodded solemnly and explained. "They held up the train on the spur line from Rattlesnake Wells. The mine owners were shipping the gold to Cheyenne, and I guess somebody who knew about it sold them out."
"How did it wind up on a riverboat?"
Luke didn"t want to take the time to explain the whole thing in detail, but it looked like he might have to if he wanted to get any help from the marshal. He was about to launch into a brief recitation of the facts when the office door opened behind him.
Kent held up a hand for him to stop. "Mr. Harmon, you"d better come in here and listen to this. It sounds like trouble"s about to descend on Pine City."
"If that"s the case, I sure want to hear about it." The newcomer was a solidly built man in late middle age with a lined, weathered face tanned to the shade of old wood. Crisp white hair stuck out from under his black Stetson.
Kent went on. "This is . . . What did you say your name was?"
"Luke Jensen."
"Dave Harmon," the white-haired man said as he stuck out a big, work-roughened hand. "My spread"s the Leanin" H, not far from here."
Luke remembered Silas Grant at the livery stable mentioning Harmon to him. As he shook hands with the rancher, he said, "This is your town."
Harmon grunted. "Not really. I started it, but it"s the good folks of Pine City who have made the place what it is. I can"t take any credit for that. Now, what"s this about some trouble headed this way?"
With Harmon and Kent both listening intently, Luke explained how the gang had stopped the train and stolen the two strongboxes full of gold ingots. "I just happened to be on the train with a prisoner I was taking to Cheyenne," he concluded. "He escaped and threw in with that bunch."
He didn"t add that his old friend Derek Burroughs had gotten killed in the process. There didn"t seem to be any need to go into that.
"And you say they"re on their way here in a riverboat?" Kent asked.
"That"s right. That"s how they made their getaway from the place where they held up the train."
Harmon let out a harsh laugh. "No offense, Jensen, but that story sounds loco."
"Maybe it does, but it"s the truth. Every word of it," Luke insisted. "I plan to stop them."
"You said you were taking a prisoner to Cheyenne," Kent said. "Are you a lawman?"