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Uley didn’t miss a stride. As she rounded the next corner, she spied a stranger standing at the edge of the darkness.
“Hello,” she said to him, an unreasonable fear knotting her stomach.
He nodded without answering. As she passed him, all she caught was a glimpse—a black leather vest, legs long as a stallion’s, a dark felt Stetson, a glint of moonlight reflecting in his eyes and in his hands.
A glint of metal.
Uley stopped three paces past him. The stranger was holding a gun. She turned to see him step out into the pale moonglow to take his aim.
This man, all black leather and legs, with a shadow for a face, was going to shoot the marshal in the back!
Uley didn’t take time to think. She didn’t take time to cry for help. She sprinted toward the man, mud muffling her long strides. She took a racing leap and sprang at him.
She hit him full tilt and heard his breath rush out of his lungs. The gun pinwheeled out of his hands. He grunted as he went down.
She fell on top of him and pinned him. She clamped her arms firmly about his neck, not about to let him go.
He tried to throw her off. She clung to him like the mountain lion she’d been afraid of moments before, her attention riveted to his neck, the only part of him small enough to hang on to.
For the first time in her life Uley offered thanks for her muscles, which were honed to do the same job as any man’s. She fought for breath. “He’s tryin’ to shoot Olney! Somebody get over here!”
She heard feet pounding in her direction. Thank You, Father. Oh, thank You, thank You, thank You.
The man beneath her cursed again and said, “Now I’m going to get tried for murdering Harris Olney, and I didn’t even get to kill him.”
“You hold still.” She glared down at him. “You don’t say anything.” She realized he was staring up at her now the way a man might stare at someone dead. His eyes got as big around as silver dollars.
He gasped, “You’re a lady.”
Holding him down did not frighten her, but this did. He’d found her out. Uley let go of his neck, grabbed her head and, sure enough, the cap had flown away. Her hair hung in sodden, muddy ribbons around her neck.
She looked alternately from the man beneath her to the woolen cap lying upside down in the mud.
Every fellow in Tin Cup would arrive within seconds.
Uley made a fast decision. She figured the stranger would get away, but she had to get her hat on. She leaped off of him, grabbed her hat and shoved the muddy tendrils beneath it.
The stranger lay in the precise spot he’d landed. “You’re just a girl!”
His words made her mad. Here she sat in the muck, a full-grown woman, strong enough to take him down, nineteen years old, well into marriageable age. How dare he call her just a girl?
She locked her arms around his neck again.
She couldn’t think of anything worse than this, having someone find her out after all the work she’d done in the Gold Cup Mine. Just now, the only thing more humiliating than being a woman would be having them all find out she was one. “You don’t tell anybody, you hear me?” She waggled a tiny, clenched fist at him. “You don’t tell anybody, or I’ll give you what’s coming myself.”
The horde of men from Frenchy’s flocked toward them. The stranger didn’t move his glinting eyes from her own. “Okay. Yes, ma’am.”
* * *
By early morning, it was all over the new town of Tin Cup that Uley Kirkland, one of the most spry young fellows in Tin Cup, had apprehended a man trying to murder the marshal. Everyone talked of a hanging. They couldn’t hang the scoundrel, though, until Judge J. M. Murphy came back from visiting his daughter in Denver.
All day, fellows clapped Uley on the back and talked about a trial. Others deemed the stranger should just be shot. After all, sidearms had kept the law in the valley for a long time before Harris Olney ever wore his star.
As Uley worked alongside her pa at the Gold Cup, she found herself wishing somebody would shoot the murderer and end this entire contemptible affair.
If the stranger died, her secret would die with him.
But then, she reasoned, that wasn’t quite true. She wouldn’t be dead. She would still have to live with it.
Oh, Father, wishing somebody dead is not what I should be thinking, either. What a vile sinner I am!
Around lunchtime, word filtered out that the stranger, Aaron Brown, was registered up at the Grand Central Hotel. When Uley first heard his name, she and her pa were working side by side as timbermen in shaft eleven. Uley knew this work almost as well as her father knew it, how to square off the lumber with a broadax, how to chink the fittings so that the joints stayed watertight in the shaft. “Don’t you go worrying about Aaron Brown,” Sam told her. “You did a good job last night. I’m proud of you. That criminal will be dead before we get our next paycheck.”
But what if Aaron Brown talked before then? What if he sat on the back of his horse right before they hanged him and shouted, “Uley Kirkland is a girl! Uley Kirkland, who has cut timber right alongside you and who you’ve invited to play poker in gambling dens and who you’ve talked to about all sorts of private fellow things, the one who tries to talk to you sometimes about the Lord and His ways, is a girl!”
How can you live one part of your life hanging on to the truth when the other part of your life is a lie?
They would likely hang her, too, right beside him.
Uley’d certainly fooled these men. If they knew who she really was, they’d get all tongue-tied and red in the face and flustered. She and her pa had only deceived them for propriety’s sake, a necessary little white lie so she could come West and they could stay together. Uley had not known that a small deception could carry such a heavy weight.
All day long, she could only think of a man in jail named Aaron Brown. All day long, she could only think that he knew her secret.
By the time she’d finished her day’s work, she figured she knew what she had to do with him. As soon as the four-thirty whistle sounded, she headed to town. She walked right into the jailhouse and sat down.
When Harris Olney saw her, he about pumped her arm off. “Uley Kirkland,” he said, grinning. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be six feet under today. Thank you, son.”
“You’re welcome, Marshal.” Uley paused. It was time for her to save herself. “I came by wondering if you’d do me a favor.”
“Anything I can do for you, I’ll do it. You’re a fine young man, Uley. I’ll always do you favors. I’d especially like to see you happy today. What is it?”
“I’d like to see the prisoner.”
Harris furrowed his brows, sending deep creases alongside his nose. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”
For one brief moment, Uley faltered. “It...it was dark outside. I really didn’t get a good look at him. I thought I’d just like to see who I tackled by the light of day.”
Harris thought about it a minute. “Well.” She could see him hesitating. Of course, she would be the one to testify in court and convict him. “Odd request, it is. But I did promise you a favor.” Harris hoisted an iron key ring off a peg. Then he led her through a door and pointed to one of the cells. “He’s right over there. You stay as long as you want. Holler at me if he gets ugly.”
She saw the stranger sitting on the stained blue ticking of his cot, his knees spread wide, his feet planted firm. His muddy brown Stetson lay upside down beside him.
He didn’t see her coming. He’d buried his face in his hands.
“Hello.”
He lifted his head and gawked up at her, eyes wide with surprise. In the daylight, she saw they were blue.
“I came to see how you were doing.”
“I’m doing dandy.” He didn’t stand up. “Just dandy.”
“Looks like it.”
Aaron Brown appeared younger than she’d thought last night. She figured him to be somewhere in his thirties. He didn’t look as mean now, either. He just looked sad.
A shock of chocolate-brown hair hung down over his forehead like an arrowhead. He plopped his elbows against his knees and let his clasped hands hang down between them. “You ever going to get tired of looking at me like I’m some kind of animal caught in a trap?”
She shook her head. “No.” He wasn’t really bad to look at. If he hadn’t been the sort of person to creep into town and go after the strong arm of the law, she might have given him a second glance. She amended that thought. Even though he was that sort of person, she gave him a second glance.
“So you’re Uley Kirkland,” he said softly. “Miss Uley Kirkland.”
“That is correct.”
Imagine it. He knew she was a woman, and he treated her like one. If a murderer could be respectful, then Aaron Brown was. It wasn’t the way he spoke to her, exactly, but the way he kept his eyes on her. She’d never before seen anyone peruse her with such respect, such open amazement. But then, she’d never before taken a flying leap at anyone, either.
She remembered why she’d come. She leaned closer to the bars to take care of the task at hand. “Judge Murphy’s due back from Denver next Tuesday,” she told him. “You’ll be off this world by Wednesday morning.”
“I’m painfully aware of that.”
She leaned in even closer. “Since you will be gone off this world then, and it is absolutely no concern of yours, Mr. Brown, you must promise me you’ll tell no one about the horrible fact you discovered last night.”
He knew exactly what she was talking about. “When you lost your hat.”
“Yes.”
“Good grief,” he said, sounding mildly exasperated. “Here I am fixing to hang for murder, and all you’re thinking about is covering your own hide.”
“Yes.”
“And I didn’t even get the chance to go after Olney.”
“You would have, if not for me.”
He cradled his banged-up brown Stetson in his palm as if he’d just tipped it to her. “Now, you don’t know that, do you, ma’am?”
It was the most amazing thing, conversing with him. For the first time in four years, she didn’t have to pretend. “You never would have gotten out of this valley alive.”
“However I had to go,” he said, “I did figure on taking Harris Olney with me.”
She shook her finger at him. “You must promise me, Mr. Brown.”
When he rose from the cot, she examined his frame. He was lanky and fairly thin. She’d known from grappling with him how he’d tower over her. He reached through the bars and gripped her wrists. “Your secret is safe with me, Miss Kirkland. I will face eternity next Wednesday with your secret well hidden within my bosom. I will die happy to be the only one knowing that the person who apprehended me and upended me in the dirt was a mere slip of a girl.”
She didn’t know how she felt about promises from somebody who’d pulled a gun to go after a man. But she’d learned enough about the male species to know they’d risk losing everything before they’d risk losing face in front of others. She turned to the other matter at hand. “I am not a slip of a girl,” she said. “I am a woman, Mr. Brown. A full nineteen years of age.”
“Oh,” he said, taken aback at last. Even so, he didn’t release her wrists. “I do see what you mean.”
When he eyed her again, she saw him taking into account the nubby sweater she wore, and her woolen knickers, covered with mud from working the mine. She saw him surveying the shock of dusty red-brown curls poking out beneath her apple hat. “You are the most unusual woman of nineteen years I have ever seen.”
“I’ll thank you to let go of me,” she said, her green eyes remaining level on his own.
He dropped his hold. “Why are you deceiving everyone, Miss Kirkland? And how are you hiding it so well?”
She wasn’t about to let him lead her onto this subject. “I came for your solemn vow, Mr. Brown.”
“You received that last night when you threatened me with your fist.”
“Very well,” she said, smiling a bit. “We understand each other. Good day, Mr. Brown.”
Chapter Two
Well past moonrise, well after Uley’s pa had drawn the curtains and extinguished the oil lamps, Uley removed the dirty woolen cap, dusted it off against her leg and began to pull the pins from her hair. Her hair fell in huge rolls against her shoulders and down her back.
Uley slipped open the top bureau drawer and extracted the beautiful silver brush that had once belonged to her mother. She began to count brush strokes as she worked the tangles from the strands. Five...six...seven...
So Aaron Brown wanted to know how she did such a good job of hiding her womanhood, did he?
Thirteen...fourteen...fifteen...sixteen...
She supposed that was about the most embarrassing thing of all—that she could hide it so well. Her own body rebelled against her. She was small, just like her ma, her waist barely nipping in. She supposed she’d look more womanly if she had any earthly idea as to how to don a corset.
Thirty-one...thirty-two...thirty-three...
Her mother’s name had been Sarah, one of the prettiest names Uley had ever heard. It sounded the same way she remembered her mother, patient and gracious, always ready to break into a song. One of Uley’s only memories was hanging clothes on the line out back of the Ohio house, running through the wet, billowing sheets with her arms outflung while her ma hummed “What Friend We Have in Jesus” through the wooden pins she held between her teeth. It wasn’t easy for a girl to get along in the world without a ma. There were so many questions to be asked that could not be answered by anyone except for a mother. About that first warm stirring in your bosom when a handsome young gentleman let his eyes linger. The proper way to thread the laces through a corset. The only place she might seek answers to these feminine mysteries now was from the hurdy-gurdy girls at Santa Fe Moll’s place. Occasionally Uley passed one of them in the streets, Irish Ann or Tin Can Laura and Big Minnie and Wishbone Mabel. Oh, Uley heard the fellows in the mines talking about these girls, all right!
She took her frustration out on both hairbrush and hair.
Seventy-nine...eighty...eighty-one...
The only other Tin Cup woman Uley knew was Kate Fischer. Aunt Kate, a slave before the Civil War, had escaped her master, leaving a husband and a child behind. Now she ran Aunt Kate’s Hotel and Boardinghouse. Her customers made their own change, because Kate Fischer didn’t know how to count money or weigh gold. She always dressed in simple calico, with a white apron billowing out over her massive chest like a ship’s sail.
Ninety-seven...ninety-eight...ninety-nine...one hundred.
Uley stood and slipped the silver hairbrush back into the bureau drawer. She examined herself in the moonlight that filtered through the curtains. Even in the muted glow, she saw glimmers of color in her hair.
For one brief moment, she let herself dream. She pretended she wore petticoats that swished around her ankles, that her hair remained loose, swinging free. She allowed herself to imagine what it would feel like to get gussied up, strap on delicate undergarments, pinch her cheeks till they were pink. She’d walk right into that jailhouse and say, “See, Mr. Brown? I am not a slip of a girl. I am a woman.”
She braided her hair, slipped wearily beneath the handworked quilt and hugged her pillow in frustration. Although she tried to reason that she’d made this choice for a selfless reason, deep inside she knew that hadn’t been the case. Five years ago, her father had given her what she wanted, a chance to come with him to the rich goldfields of Colorado, instead of staying in Ohio with her aunt and her prissy cousins. When Aunt Delilah had warned her things might become difficult, Uley hadn’t understood her reasoning. She’d been so innocent at fourteen, so sure of herself, so certain the charade wouldn’t have to continue for long.
She hadn’t bothered to pray about it the way Reverend Henderson said. She’d been perfectly willing to take this adventure into her own hands. She bunched the pillow tight against her face and stared up at the pine planks above her. Lord, would my life have been different if I had asked You? Hadn’t it been worth everything, she wondered, to stay in Tin Cup with her pa?
* * *
It was interesting, Aaron decided as he lay on his cot and examined the patterns in the fresh pine overhead, what a man thought about all night long when he knew he was going on to eternity. He wasn’t thinking of pearly gates and golden streets. His main thought, as he lay there seeing pictures in the pine knots, was to write Beth a letter so that she’d know his fate. He was thinking it was a shame he had to die for Beth to find out that she’d been right.
At three in the morning, he stood and banged on the metal bars of his cell. “Marshal!” he shouted. “Marshal! I need to write a letter!”
The man who answered his call was an elderly gentleman Aaron had never seen before. “You hush that racket. You’re going to wake the dead.”
