Lauri Robinson – A Western Christmas Homecoming: Christmas Day Wedding Bells / Snowbound in Big Springs / Christmas with the Outlaw (страница 9)
She was silent. He stepped Sinbad forward. “Come on,
By the time Rand indicated where they would camp for the night and drew rein, Alice had managed to stop shaking.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
He sent her a curious but admiring look. “Whatever were you thinking to spin such an outlandish tale?”
“You started it,” she pointed out. “You invented George...what was his name? Oliver? And the town of Broken Toe. Where did that come from?”
“I sure as heck don’t know,” he confessed. He couldn’t seem to stop looking at her. “But you came up with the part about the wife and the expensive wedding and the frying pan.”
“Maybe
“We have to decide some things about Silver City,” he said. He pared dry twig shavings with his pocketknife and arranged leaves and small branches over them. “I don’t want to make up our story on the fly.”
“Very well. I am a saloon girl and you are...?”
“Your bodyguard. George Winston Oliver. Pick a name for yourself, Alice.”
“Martha.”
“Nah, too grandmotherly.”
“Suzannah, then.”
“Too Southern. You don’t sound Southern. You sound Northern. Yankee-refined.”
“What about—?”
“Lolly,” he supplied. “Lolly...Maguire. If you’re Irish you’ll be forgiven for a bit of blarney if you make a mistake.”
“Lolly,” she murmured. “Rand, I have never set foot in a saloon. What does a saloon girl do, exactly?”
He tramped twice around the fire pit, stopping to extract a tin of corn and another of beans from his saddlebag. Using his jackknife, he jimmied the beans open and set the can on a flat rock near the fire. Then he sat back on his heels and looked up at her to answer the question.
“A saloon girl dances with the patrons. Gets them to buy her drinks. Flirts. Maybe she sings a bit.”
“Sings? Sings what? The only songs I know are hymns.”
He laughed. “Then it looks like I’m gonna have to teach you some bawdy songs.”
That piqued her interest. “What would be the lyrics to a bawdy song?”
But she wasn’t ashamed. She was curious. In fact, she felt a bit daring, venturing to delve into the mysteries of the seamy side of life like the girls down at Sally’s, the ones Verena Forester sewed fancy dresses for.
“Are you going to share a bawdy song with me?” she asked.
Rand busied himself spooning corn and beans into a blackened kettle and set it near the fire. “A bawdy song,” he murmured. “Let me think.” After a long pause, he turned toward her.
“Here’s one. ‘A pretty girl from Abilene, tall with hair of red, she waltzed a gent and talked so sweet, he forgot his wife, took her to—’”
He broke off. “Well, you can guess the rest.”
Alice’s cheeks felt hot. Songs with words like those certainly did
She stared at him. “Where on earth did you learn a song like that?”
“In a saloon,” he said drily. He busied himself stirring the corn and bean mixture in the pot, then dumped a handful of coffee beans in the small wooden mill and rattled the handle around and around. Alice thought his cheeks looked a bit pink, but it was getting dark so she couldn’t be sure.
She did wonder about him, though.
“Have you spent a lot of time in saloons?” she asked.
“Nope.” He set the coffeepot over the fire and spooned some of the corn and bean mixture onto a tin plate and handed it to her.
“You mean you just made up that song?”
“Sure. Kinda like you coming up with that wild tale about your mama’s frying pan and the Boise City sheriff.”
“And tomorrow I will have to pretend to be Lolly Maguire, a saloon girl.”
“Yeah,” Rand said. He shot her a glance. “Think you can manage it?”
Oh, my, Alice thought. What would someone called Lolly Maguire say to a man? Especially one in a saloon?
“I will try,” she said. “I might turn out to be such a convincing Lolly Maguire you may be quite smitten!”
Instantly she dropped the spoon onto her tin plate with a clank.
Rand gave her a long look and without a word poured a mug of coffee and set it on the ground near her elbow.
“Smitten, huh? Alice,” he said with a chuckle, “it’s the miners you’re supposed to charm, not me.”
When they reached Silver City they reined up on the hill overlooking the canvas structures and flimsy-looking buildings of the town spread below them. “It’s a mining camp, like I told you,” Rand said. “Looks kinda impermanent.”
“It looks like a sea of gray canvas.” Alice pointed to a large green-gray canvas structure with a white-painted wooden cross over the entrance. “Even the church is a tent!”
Rand turned to her. “Are you ready for this?”
“Yes, I am ready.” Her heart thumped under her plaid shirt as she followed Rand’s bay, guiding her mare down to Silver City. The narrow road into what passed for a town was oozy with thick mud that squished under their horses’ hooves.
They picked their way down the tent-clogged street until they reached the two-story red-painted Excelsior Hotel, which, thank God, was made of wood. But red? Such a bold color for a hotel!
Next door to the hotel was another wooden building, the Golden Nugget saloon. That seemed strange in a town named for its silver mine. There must be other wooden buildings, but all she could see were tents and more tents. Big ones. Little ones. Some more ragged than others.
Oh, poor Dottie. Could her sister really have been happy here in this temporary-looking place?
The desk clerk at the hotel, a bent gray-haired man with thick spectacles and a wrinkled shirt that had once been white, flipped open the register and stood poised with his pen.
“Name?” he said in a weary voice.
“George Oliver.”
“This your wife, Mr. Oliver?”
Rand turned to her. “This is Miss Lolly Maguire.”
“Separate rooms, then,” the clerk muttered.
Rand laid his hand across the register. “One room. Miss Maguire is a well-known entertainer, and I work as her bodyguard. Where she goes, I go.”
The clerk’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows waggled. “Even to her hotel room?”
“
“I go,” the clerk finished. “Oh, well.” He sighed. “It’s not the first time two crazy people came through town.”
“We’re not going ‘through’ town. Miss Maguire is staying. As am I.”