The Lone Sheriff. Lynna Banning

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СКАЧАТЬ gripping one corner of a heavy canvas bag. “Why should I be?”

      Jericho shook his head. “How much do you figure they got away with?”

      Maddie cocked her head. “How much?” She found she liked teasing him. It made his eyes even darker blue, and the way he was staring at her now caused a little flip-flop inside her chest.

      “How much?” she repeated. “Well, to the best of my calculation—did I tell you I was a whiz at mathematics at school? Let’s see now...”

      He planted himself within spitting distance and propped his good hand on his hip. “I’m waiting, dammit.”

      “The amount of money—” she smiled into his glowering face “—is exactly zero.”

      “Huh?”

      “You heard me, zero. Nothing. Nada. Rien. Those Wells Fargo bags are decoys. The bank manager and I decided they would be filled with rocks, not gold.”

      His eyes went even darker. “You mean this whole exercise was just a farce?”

      Maddie straightened her skirt. “You could call it that, I suppose.”

      “Then what the hell did we risk our lives for?”

      “For observation.” She dropped the canvas bag in her hand, which landed with a clunk, and fished her notebook out of her pocket. Not her Pistol Pocket, he noted, but the Observation Notebook Pocket.

      Jericho waited while she circled the pencil around like a branding iron. Part of him wanted to laugh. Another part of him wanted to wring her neck. He’d be damned if he’d risk getting shot for some damn decoys!

      “Well,” she began, a note of relish in her voice. “We got a good look at the robbers, didn’t we? There are five of them.”

      “We already knew that.”

      “One of them,” she continued, “is lame. His leg is stiff.”

      “And?”

      “And one of them wore a bandanna from Carl Ness’s mercantile. I recognized the pattern and the color, a sort of pinky-red. Did you notice?”

      Jericho said nothing. He had to admit she had sharp eyes and a keen mind. Her “observations” were valuable.

      Dammit, anyway.

      The trembling mail clerk slid the railcar door shut. The train tooted once and jerked forward. Maddie stumbled and bumped his injured wrist. He sucked in a breath. Hurt like blazes.

      With his good hand he holstered his Colt and turned back to the passenger car. “Better let me take a look at your bullet burn,” he said as they made their way down the aisle.

      She plopped down into her seat, pressing her lips together. “No, thank you. The bullet just skimmed my arm. I’m sure the skin is not broken.”

      He settled beside her with an exasperated sigh. “Yeah? Show me.”

      “No.”

      He reached for her wrist. Before she could stop him he’d unbuttoned her sleeve and pushed it up above her elbow.

      “Hurt?”

      “Yes,” she said tightly.

      He ran his gaze over her slim upper arm, noting the angry red crease above her elbow. From his inside vest pocket he grabbed the bottle of painkiller.

      “What is that?” she said.

      “Painkiller. Alcohol, mostly.”

      She rolled her eyes. He uncorked the bottle with his teeth, lifted her elbow away from her body and dribbled the dark liquid over the abrasion. Her breath hissed in and she moaned softly.

      Jericho closed his eyes for an instant. He hated hearing a female in pain. “Sorry.”

      “It is quite all right,” she said, rolling her sleeve down. She poked her forefinger through the bullet hole and sighed. “Another visit to the dressmaker, I suppose.”

      “Maddie, maybe you ought to see a doctor when we get to Portland.”

      She shook her head. “What is that you poured over it?”

      He recorked the bottle. “I told you, painkiller. For my wrist.”

      She gave him a lopsided smile that made his insides weak. “We are a pair, are we not?” she said, her voice just a tad shaky. “A one-armed sheriff and a Pinkerton detective with a bullet burn.”

      “Yeah,” he said drily. “We’re a team, all right. Listen, Maddie, tomorrow I think you should go back to Chicago.”

      “No, you don’t, Jericho. Whether you admit it or not, you need me. This is my job—apprehending lawbreakers. I’m your right arm, so to speak, so you’re stuck with me.”

      He felt more than “stuck” with her. He felt bowled over. Something told him his lady detective wasn’t going to back down and go home to Chicago anytime soon. Torn between worry over her safety and his need to see this job through, his insides were in an uproar.

      With a sidelong glance at her, he settled back to think about how he could keep her alive while he did what he had to do, apprehend the Tucker gang. The townspeople always wanted him to get up a posse, but Jericho preferred working alone. Always had and always would. He did what any sheriff worth his salt had to do, and he’d never wanted to get anyone else involved.

      And he sure as hell didn’t want to get a lady detective mixed up in a manhunt, even if she could shoot straight. She had to go back to Chicago.

      She picked up her crocheting again and worked a row of stitches before she said anything more. “Do you suppose there might be an opera or a play of some kind in Portland?”

      “Might be. You miss the city, huh?”

      “Yes,” she said. “To be honest, I enjoy cultural things.”

      “Bet you feel like a fish out of water on this assignment.”

      “Oh, no. I am not that easily discouraged. This fish likes doing something worthwhile, Sheriff. Catching train robbers is worthwhile.”

      Jericho nodded. He felt the same way, when he thought about it. He had a job to do. But he’d been on his own since he was a kid, and that’s how he liked it. Wasn’t responsible for anybody’s skin but his own. Every time Sandy begged to come along on a manhunt, Jericho neatly evaded the issue.

      He liked Sandy. Maybe that was the problem. He was beginning to like Maddie, too, and that was an even bigger problem.

       Chapter Five

      To calm her nerves Maddie paced up and down the passenger car aisle until Jericho glared at her. She would never admit to the sheriff how shaken she felt after her encounter СКАЧАТЬ