Maggie And The Maverick. Laurie Grant

but his wave was distracted as he snatched the paper, with its dots and dashes and the telegrapher’s transcription above it, from Sweeney. “Thanks, Sweeney. Remember to keep this quiet, will you?”

      “You bet, Mr. Devlin. Nice meeting you, Miss Harper,” said the telegrapher as he backed out the door.

      “Nice meeting you, too, Mr. Sweeney. Thank you for your quick work,” she added, and saw the man’s face light up as he exited.

      And then she was alone with Devlin.

      “Well, now you have two males in your thrall, my son and Sweeney,” commented Devlin sourly behind her. “Stop batting your eyelashes and take your bags on upstairs, if you’re still determined to room there. Change into something you won’t be afraid to get ink on, Miss Harper.”

      “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Devlin,” she retorted with some spirit. “But never mind—I promise never to bat my eyelashes in your direction. Give me five minutes to change my clothes and I’ll be back, ready to work,” she said. Picking up her two heavy carpetbags, she headed for the stairs. She hoped five minutes would be long enough to cool both their tempers so that they could get some work done!

      The room was small, and sparsely furnished with a bedstead, a chest of drawers, holding a washbasin and pitcher, and a table with a single, rickety-legged chair. A cloudy mirror hung above the chest. There was one window, which looked out over a back street lined with small houses, some of which were little more than rude shacks. Not exactly a scenic view, she thought. She would need to fashion some curtains for privacy at night. And no doubt the room, which was now delightfully airy with the spring breeze blowing through the open window, would be hot as Hades come summer, but at least it was hers alone.

      Latching the door behind her, Maggie set her bags down on the bed and pulled out her workday clothes, a skirt and waist of a navy blue so dark it looked black except in bright sunlight. It had been washed and re-dyed many times, but ink stains hardly showed on it. Then, staying away from the window, she stripped off her traveling clothes and hung them on pegs on the back of the door. There would be time later to arrange her garments in the chest of drawers.

      Some thoughtful soul—impossible to think it could have been Devlin—had put water into the pitcher, and she poured some onto a towel and used it to wash her face. Feeling refreshed, she combed out her hair and braided the fiery, curly strands.

      Garrick Devlin could hardly be more different from the kindly, middle-aged man she had imagined, Maggie thought as she coiled the braid at the nape of her neck with a few hairpins. She had been expecting someone like her father, she realized, someone with James Harper’s gentle mien if not his looks.

      She estimated Garrick Devlin to be anywhere from his mid-thirties to forty years of age, judging by the lines engraved around his eyes and mouth and the silver mixed into his dark hair. But his cynical, touchy disposition might make him seem older than he truly was. His face was a lean, hawkish one, with high cheekbones, a long, wellshaped nose and narrow eyes of that piercing blue that seemed an echo of the Texas skies. There was an impossibly arrogant set to his mouth that belied the weakness suggested by the cane he kept at his side.

      All told, it was a stubborn, disagreeable face, at least when he looked at her—and yet she had seen that face change when he talked to Johnny. She had seen that he could smile, and that his smile transformed the rest of his tense features, relaxing them and making him look years younger and much more approachable—even handsome! she was surprised to realize.

      Well, she had no further use for handsome, that was cer tain. All she hoped for was to be able to work with this difficult man to produce a newspaper they could both be proud of. She could teach him much, if he would let her. If only his stiff-necked pride didn’t get in the way! It wouldn’t be easy, since he despised what she was and everything she stood for, but she could at least try.

      Goodness, she’d better stop pondering over her employer and get back downstairs! It was surely more like ten or fifteen minutes since she’d come up here!

      “Took you long enough,” groused Devlin, barely glancing up as she reached the bottom of the stairs. He was hunched over the table, a stubby pencil grasped in his right hand, and as she approached, she saw that he’d already covered nearly a full page with his untidy scrawl. She saw him stop and glance at the telegraph transcription, and then his pencil began to race over the paper again.

      “I’m sorry, sir, I—”

      “Here,” he said, thrusting the now-filled sheet of paper at her. “You can start setting the type for this page.”

      The first thing she was going to have to learn how to do was read his writing, Maggie thought with dismay as she peered at the slanting scrawl. It was nothing like the neat copperplate of his letter to “M. L. Harper.” Had he gotten the local schoolmarm to write that letter for him?

      “What’s wrong?” he demanded, peering at her and letting the pencil fall with a soft clatter to the desk. “Are you disagreeing with my headline story already? I didn’t employ you to pass judgment on my opinions, Miss Harper, I pay you to run the press,” he growled.

      “No, Mr. Devlin,” she began, “that is, I don’t know if I disagree. I—I’m not used to your writing as yet. But just give me a minute or two, and let me study it. I’ll ask you if I can’t decipher a particular word,” she promised, evad ing the hand that would have snatched the paper back from her.

      Sure enough, once read in the light of the window, the individual letters began to sort themselves out and form into words and phrases, though it was particularly tough to tell one vowel from another, for they all appeared to be the same indistinct near-loop shape. Hopefully the arrangement of his flamboyantly slanted consonants would give her the clues she needed.

      She turned her attention to the California type cases, the trays of metal letters of various sizes and fonts. At least the standard nine-point type she’d need for the newspaper was arranged alphabetically, she discovered. When she had more time she would arrange it the way compositors traditionally did—capital letters alphabetically in cases on the right, and small-case letters on the left, with the most frequently used ones in the handiest spaces.

      She began setting up the rows of type that would become the opening lines of the infant newspaper: the masthead, with the large Gothic capitals proudly proclaiming the name of the paper as the Gillespie Springs Gazette; the motto Forever The Truth For Texas right underneath; and then the date April 4, 1869, followed by the words Premier Edition and Garrick Devlin, Editor And Owner.

      That portion completed, she laid out the very first headline: Radical Republicans Choose E. J. Davis As Their Gubernatorial Candidate, Former Union Brigadier General Is Certain Victor With General Reynolds As Ally.

      Afternoon drifted into evening as she painstakingly set in rows of metal and wood type the words Garrick Devlin was feverishly scribbling at his desk. Every so often he would hand her another page and ask her how she was coming, and if she thought she was going to be able to finish tonight. Naturally, she could not lay out the pages as fast as he could write, but she kept working, ignoring the ache in her back and the throbbing of her head.

      “Well, are you going to tell me we shall have to put off publication for another day?” Garrick Devlin inquired some time much later, coming to stand next to where she was working on the second page.

      Maggie looked up in surprise. “Why, no, sir,” she said, glancing at the watch she’d pinned to her bodice. Seven o’clock, and she was only half done! “No, I promised you this would be ready by morning, and it will be, even if I have to stay up all night, just as I said.”

      Was that approval that had flashed so briefly in those cold blue eyes? No, surely she had imagined it!

      “Well, Miss Harper, I am all done with the writing, and my stomach is growling.”

      “Go ahead, go have something to eat,” she said without looking up. “I’m not hungry after that big midday dinner,” she lied. And then, to her mortification, her own stomach