Lucky Bride

He’d promised himself to put them out of his head, but the rest of his body kept bringing up the subject. If he could just get the two younger ones alone, preferably the taller one, Susannah… He closed his eyes and pictured them, standing there in the dusty street. Her eyes had been the color of his mother’s prize china. Cornflower blue, it was called.

“I ain’t about to fish you outta there if you fall asleep, sonny.”

Parker jumped at the strident voice. He sat up with a slosh. A large woman had come in at the far end of the room carrying a load of towels. She was as tall as Parker and twice as wide. Parker looked down at the water in consternation. The last of the bubbles had gone over the side of the tub when he sat up, leaving him fully exposed to view.

“Don’t worry,” the woman said, following the direction of his gaze. “You ain’t got nothing in there I ain’t seen before.” She lowered the towels and craned her neck to peer at the water. “Though it don’t look too bad for a pilgrim like you.”

Parker felt his skin grow hotter than the temperature of the water. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, ma’am,” he said, masking his discomfiture.

“Maxine McClanahan,” she said, her voice booming. “Most folks just call me Max. I thought you’d need a towel.”

“Much obliged.” His embarrassment faded at the woman’s brisk manner. He met her steady gaze. Her hair was shot through with gray, but she was definitely not the grandmotherly type. She had a nononsense air about her. Max. It suited her.

He sat back and allowed her to finish her unabashed perusal of him. “Do you work here?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Own the place.”

Parker lifted his eyebrows in surprise, eliciting a chuckle from Max.

“So what, pilgrim? You don’t think a woman can own a respectable business? I thought you’d be a mite smarter than the usual drifters we get through here. The only time they feel comfortable givin’ money to a woman is when she’s lying on her back.” She gave a little huff and deposited the towels on the room’s only chair.

Parker grinned. “I’ll be happy to give you my money, ma’am. What was it you called me? A pilgrim?”

“Yup. A pilgrim. A tenderfoot,” she clarified.

“How’d you know I was a tenderfoot?”

She glanced at the jumbled heap of Parker’s things. “The clothes, for one. Ain’t a gent in Canyon City who’d wear a silk vest like that one. ‘Cept maybe Harvey Overstreet. And that’s ‘cause he’s been expectin’ to die for the past ten years and wants to look pretty in his coffin.”

“Back in Deadwood there were lots of men with vests like mine,” Parker protested.

“Deadwood’s a boomtown—gamblers and scalawags and fancy dreamers.” Her grimace left no doubt as to Max’s opinion of the quality of Deadwood menfolk. “Out here’s the real West. Honest-togoodness cowpokes who wouldn’t know a silk shirt from a burlap bag.”

“And who don’t like women in business,” Parker added.

Max put her hands on her ample hips. “That’s for darn sure. They’ve near run poor Molly Hanks out of the territory.”

“Molly Hanks?” Parker pushed himself farther out of the water and felt the sudden chill on his skin.

Max nodded. “After her pappy died, none of these pea-brained cowhands would work for her. They say a woman’s got no business running a ranch.”

“That particular woman looks like she could run just about anything,” Parker said under his breath.

“Molly’s a tough one,” Max agreed with another rumbling chuckle. “But if she don’t get some of them to change their minds by spring roundup, I’m afraid she ain’t got a sinner’s chance in heaven of making a go of it.”

Parker shivered. He looked over at the stack of towels, just out of reach. “Ah… would you like to hand me one of those?” he asked.

Max leaned her back against the wall and let a broad smile cross her face. “Come on, pilgrim. At my age there just ain’t that many pleasures left in this life, so I take ‘em where I can get ‘em. And from what I’ve seen so far, a nice long look at you would be pure pleasure.”

Trying not to feel self-conscious, Parker stood, letting the dirty water sluice down his lean body. His eyes met Max’s. She watched him with a brief flicker of a nearly forgotten hunger, then it was replaced by her sardonic humor. “Pure pleasure is right,” she said with a wink as he grabbed a towel and began to dry himself. She looked him up and down without selfconsciousness. “You can bathe here any time you want, pilgrim. Half price.”

Parker laughed. Canyon City was definitely proving to be much more enjoyable than he had suspected. “Is there work hereabouts?” he asked.

Max cocked her head. “Not this time of year, I wouldn’t think. Except out at the Lucky Stars, of course.”

“The Lucky Stars?”

“Hanks’s place. Ol’ man Hanks named it after his three girls. He always called them his lucky stars.”

“They didn’t have any brothers?”

“Nope. Just the three fillies. Sarah Hanks died on the last one and Charlie Hanks never got over it. Not ‘til the day he died.”

“So the three girls are running the ranch now?”

“Molly is. Can’t say as the other two are much help.”

Parker tied the towel around his waist. “Where might I find their outfit?”

Max pushed away from the wall and started to walk toward the door, a secret smile on her face. “You plannin’ to sign on out there?”

“I might give it a try.”

Max shook her head. “Head straight north out of town. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Parker said with a smile and a nod. “And thanks for the, ah…company.”

Max started out the door, her broad shoulders shaking with silent laughter. “Lord almighty,” he heard her say as she disappeared into the front room, “that’s all Miss Molly needs… a gol-danged pilgrim with the body of a prize stallion.”

He’d found the canyon. It wasn’t much of a canyon, but it sliced deep enough so that the horse he’d exchanged for Diamond tossed her head and looked reluctant to start down.

Parker dismounted and walked to the edge, looking for a path. A pilgrim, Max had called him. At the moment he was ready to add some epithets of his own to the description. When he left Canyon City he could have sworn he was heading due north, but he’d been riding a good portion of the afternoon and hadn’t seen the Lucky Stars ranch. Nor had he seen anything of the Hanks sisters. To make matters worse, the wind that had been brisk when he left town was now downright nasty. He hunched into his sheepskin jacket. Max hadn’t said anything about having to cross a canyon. Maybe he should turn back to town. If, indeed, he knew which way was back.

“What do you think?” he asked the swaybacked sorrel. The animal had been a sorry trade for Diamond, but the liveryman had insisted that Diamond might never heal up, in which case any trade was a good one. Parker didn’t know enough about horses to argue.

The animal looked at him reproachfully, as if to remind him that finding the right road was the rider’s responsibility, not the horse’s. He took another look into the canyon. The riverbed at the bottom was dry. There’d be no problem crossing. And the slope up the far side looked more gentle than the one he was standing on. If he could make it down, he should be all right.

“Ah, hell,” he said aloud. He grasped the horse’s reins firmly in one hand and started down the slippery side of the cliff, pulling the balky animal after him. Now that he was on his way, it didn’t look so formidable. And the wind cut a little less once he was within the shelter of the rocks. A few ominous white flakes whipped by him, but he ignored them and concentrated on his footing.

“Just one foot after the other,” he said under his breath. One tenderfoot after another, he silently corrected, remembering his encounter with Max. He grinned in spite of himself.

Chapter Two (#ulink_d303fc0a-73fb-5ff2-9bf6-5d6f0750535a)

“Papa must be a-rollin’ in his grave to see me like this,” Susannah said with disgust, tearing off the oversize gloves and looking at her chapped hands. “My skin’s going to be as tough as shoe leather.”

“People don’t roll in their graves,” Molly replied. “Once they’re dead, they’re dead.”

“Can’t we go back now, Molly? I’m half-froze.”