“Good morning, Mr. Pendragon.” Emma heard an adolescent voice greet the stiff-postured gentleman who had just stepped inside the land office. “Good day for a bank robbery.”
“There will be no holdup today, boy,” a cultured voice snapped. “I’ve taken precautions this time.”
A redheaded youth stepped outside with a broom gripped in his fists. He shoved it back and forth across the boardwalk with a swish and sway.
The boy paused in his sweeping to nod at her. “You sit there long enough, ma’am, and you’ll see The Ghost.”
Emma didn’t want to see a ghost—she wanted to see a willing man. Too bad this boy attacking the dust on the walk was so young.
What had to be Mr. Pendragon’s voice—sounding peeved—carried out of the land-office door. “There is no ghost, young sir! It’s merely a thief determined to get his neck stretched.”
The boy stopped sweeping and leaned against the broom handle. He gazed down the sidewalk, past the mercantile toward the bank.
“He’s a thief, all right,” he muttered to Emma. “The money’s always good and gone. But he’s no mortal bank robber—anyone will say so.”
“They will?” Emma asked, trying to ignore the sun slipping another notch toward the horizon.
“There’s a ghost and it’s a fact.” The boy resumed his sweeping, stirring up a swell of dust that settled on her eyelashes and tickled her nose.
“I expect even The Ghost is married,” Emma mumbled.
“Beg pardon, ma’am?”
“Never mind. What makes you so certain the bank will be robbed today?”
The boy sat down beside her on the bench. He lowered his voice to a confidential whisper.
“That fellow inside, Mr. Pendragon, got paid on a load of cattle he shipped east. Made a big deposit to the bank this morning.” He nodded toward the doorway of the land office. “The Ghost only robs Mr. Pendragon.”
“How considerate.” She tapped her toe on the boardwalk. Time was quickly becoming her enemy. “Mr. Pendragon sounds like an English gentleman.”
“He’s someone lordly. Got a huge spread outside of town. Each week he sends in one of his hands to take up homesteads on the deserted places all around. Before long, nobody will have a steer that doesn’t graze on Pendragon land.”
Emma’s heart dropped and spun around. A less purposeful woman might have felt a ladylike swoon coming on.
Lands! She needed a husband. If she didn’t get one quickly, Pendragon would snatch up her homestead!
Apparently finished with ghost tales, the boy got up and went back inside the land office.
Emma snatched her shotgun from her lap and tucked it under her skirt, leaving only a few inches of the barrel in view. Maybe that’s what was scaring the gents away. They wouldn’t know it was unloaded and that she had never fired more than a pebble at a rat in the henhouse. It wouldn’t be wise to let it go completely unseen in a half-settled cow town like Dodge, but surely she looked more sociable now.
After twenty minutes of smiling like the dickens and quietly cursing under her breath, Emma stood up to regain the circulation in her backside. She shook the dust from her parasol and brushed up a cloud of it from her skirt. Lord only knew what the palms of her frilly white gloves would look like when she was finished.
After what seemed an eternity, the Englishman strutted out of the land office and blew out a lungful of smoke. He flicked the butt of his cigarette on the sidewalk, then ground it out with his boot heel.
“You’ll make sure my man gets that piece of property?” he called back inside.
Emma didn’t hear the answer, but it must have been yes, for a smug grin shot over his narrow jaw before he lurched into a buggy and drove his team out of town down Front Street.
It must be her land he had spoken of! Surely it was, since the place was said to be no less than paradise on earth. What other piece of ground could he have wanted?
With her heart flip-flopping in her chest, Emma rushed through the land-office doorway. She stomped toward the clerk lounging at his desk.
Drat, she hadn’t noticed that she had led the way with her shotgun until the boy dropped his broom. It clattered like scattered marbles on the floor.
The clerk choked on a swallow of something that he had raised to his lips in a ruby-colored glass. She was unlikely to win any favors from the man now.
“Was that my land he wanted?” She tried to sound like sweetness and light,