The Sheriff. Nan Ryan

McCloud. She didn’t like the conflicting emotions he aroused in her. She’d met him only tonight and yet he was keeping her awake. One minute she was seething with anger at him for his high-handed audacity, and the next she was squirming at the vivid recollection of being momentarily pressed against his lean, powerful body.

      Finally, after a couple of hours had passed, Kate was just about to fall asleep when a noise came from the back of the house. It was the same sound she had heard every night for the five nights she had been here! Her heart racing, Kate reached for her loaded revolver. She lit her lamp and crossed the room to the wide corridor.

      Cautioning herself to stay calm, but remembering the sheriff’s advice to “shoot first and ask questions later,” she crept down the long hall, not knowing if she would encounter a bear or a bandit. She was halfway to the back of the house when she saw something move in the shadows.

      She lifted the revolver and took aim.

      “I…I’ve got a gun,” she threatened. “I know how to use it!”

      Her eyes widened when she heard a distinctive hiss. Kate lifted the lamp high and saw, crouched against a wall, its back arched, a big fat calico cat, its golden eyes gleaming in the darkness. Relief flooding through her, Kate sank to her knees.

      “Here kitty, kitty,” she called, not really expecting the overweight feline to come to her. “So it was you,” she said in soft, low tones. “You’ve been making all the noise and I thought it was a bear. Come here, let’s be friends.”

      The cat made a low rattling sound in the back of its throat and stared at Kate with slitted golden eyes. It didn’t budge.

      She laughed softly. “You know, I wondered why there were no rats in this old house. From the looks of you, I’d say there’s not a rodent within a mile of the place. What do you say?”

      The rattling stopped. The calico finally meowed.

      “That’s better. Now come over here. Please. I’m all alone and I need a friend.”

      To Kate’s surprise, the cat padded slowly closer, stopping just beyond her reach. “I’m Kate, Cal. If this is your home, that’s fine with me. We can live here together. Okay?” Kate reached out and tried to touch the cat. It backed away.

      But when she’d sat there unmoving for a minute, the cat cautiously came closer. It reached her and, when she didn’t make a move to touch it, rubbed its furry side against her knees. Then it slowly walked around her, rubbing up against Kate as it went.

      When the cat was again facing her, Kate said, “I’m going back to bed now. You’re welcome to come sleep at the foot of my bed. It’s up to you.”

      She lifted the lamp and gun, rose to her feet, turned and walked away. She was disappointed to see that the cat hadn’t followed. Still, just knowing it was there made her feel less lonely and afraid.

      She lay back down, but sleep still would not come.

      Kate again got up.

      She left the lamp and gun where they were and went out onto the porch. She yanked up the tail of her long gown, sat down on the first step and tucked the fabric between her knees. She gazed up at the deep cobalt sky overhead. The heavens were brilliant with stars. They glittered like diamonds in the still, thin mountain air.

      She smiled when she felt something warm and furry press against her hip. She looked down at the big calico cat and knew she’d found a much needed companion. Very slowly, very carefully, she lifted a hand and laid two fingers lightly atop its head. When the cat looked up at her, she slipped her hand beneath its throat and began to gently stroke it. The cat purred contentedly and was soon catnapping.

      Neither the girl nor the cat were aware that someone was watching.

      When Travis had reached the clearing, he’d seen a lamp flickering inside the house. From afar, he’d watched as the light moved from the front room and down the hall to the back of the mansion. Minutes later it returned to the front and soon went out.

      The girl had, he supposed, gone to sleep.

      Travis had started to turn away. Then he hesitated, deciding to stay just a few more minutes.

      He’d moved closer to the mansion and took up a post beneath a towering pine at the edge of the yard, where he had an unobstructed view of the house and its surrounding grounds. He sat down and leaned back against the solid trunk.

      Less than ten minutes later the girl came out of the house dressed in her long nightgown. She stood on the porch for a couple of heartbeats while the night winds pressed the thin white garment against her tall, slender body, and her unbound hair whipped around her head.

      His eyes dry from not daring to blink, Travis stared at the vision in white and lost his breath entirely when she impetuously yanked the long skirt of her nightgown up around her thighs and sank down on the front step, shoving the fabric between her legs and pressing her knees together.

      Travis ground his teeth so hard his jaws ached.

      Damn her beautiful hide!

      All the warning in the world hadn’t made one bit of difference. He had a good mind to march up there and haul her back inside.

      Just then a big calico cat sauntered out of the house and over to her. Travis watched, disbelieving, as Kate stroked the cat’s raised throat.

      That cat had been left behind when Mrs. Colfax moved away. He’d seen the creature running wild through the woods. Apparently it had taken up residence in the empty mansion.

      The animal had turned feral years ago. Yet already this Boston blonde had made an obedient pet of it.

      Travis’s eyes narrowed.

      He stared at Miss VanNam, remembering how another golden-haired beauty had made a pet—and a fool—out of him.

      Silently he vowed that would never happen again.

      Nine

      As Sheriff McCloud had suspected, Kate VanNam’s presence in Fortune caused quite a stir. In mining regions, men would travel a great distance for a glance at a newly arrived female, since, aside from the girls working in the bordellos, very few unattached women lived in gold camps, and none were as young and as pretty as Kate VanNam. She was, fortunately, such a novelty that most of the hard-bitten miners treated her with awed respect. She represented their mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and sweethearts back home.

      But not all.

      There were a number of dirty, foul-mouthed curs who would have loved to get their hands on a genteel woman like Kate VanNam. Sheriff McCloud put the word out that if anyone trifled with her, he would have to answer to him. Still, Travis worried for her-safety. She was, he knew, too much of a temptation to the lonely miners.

      Travis enlisted the help of his deputy, Jiggs Gillespie.

      “I need a hand, Jiggs,” Travis said early one morning as the two were drinking coffee at the jail.

      “What can I do?” asked the always congenial Jiggs.

      Travis took a sip of the steaming black brew. “The young woman up at—”

      “Kate VanNam?”

      “Yes, Kate VanNam. Jiggs, she’s up there by herself in that run-down mansion. Jesus, there’s not even a front door and—”

      “Why don’t we take turns checking on her?” said Jiggs, anticipating Travis’s request.

      “You wouldn’t mind?”

      The skinny deputy smiled, rose to his feet and hitched up his trousers. “Lordy, no. It’s not like I have a wife and family to go home to at night.”

      “I’d be much obliged to you, Jiggs.” Travis frowned when he added, “God knows she’s a royal pain in the ass, but I don’t look for her to be staying long in Fortune.”