A Western Christmas Homecoming. Lynna Banning

around to the keyboard and placed his fingers on the yellowed keys. He looked to be Chinese, Rand thought. Short and compact, with jet-black hair and very white hands. He rippled out a cascade of notes, and Alice turned to face the patrons.

      The piano sounded a chord and she began to recite. “‘’T’was Robin of Locksley and Little John, in Sherwood Forest hiding...’”

      She’d added an Irish lilt to the words; it sounded like poetry spoken out loud.

      Another rippling chord, followed by a pause.

      “‘When King John came riding through the thick green woods...’”

      More chords. Patrons began shushing their companions as Alice’s voice rose. Rand gulped down a swallow of his beer.

      “‘...and spied a gleam of silver there...’”

      By now the entire saloon full of miners sat as if spellbound. Even Rand listened, scarcely breathing. Where had this come from? he wondered. Was it something she had memorized? Or was she making it up as she went along?

      Her voice rose and fell like dusky smoke, with a slight Irish lilt. “‘All soft among the greenwood trees...’”

      Mouths hung open and drinks were forgotten as the men listened with rapt attention. And, Rand knew, every one of them looked at Alice, swaying provocatively at the piano, with hungry eyes.

      As the poem wound on and on, she began to move about the room, stopping at each table to smile at her goggle-eyed listeners. She ended up back at the piano, and when she brought her recitation to a close, she briefly touched Samson’s shoulder. Instantly he began pounding out a waltz.

      Alice sashayed up to a paunchy miner and held out her arms in invitation. When he lurched to his feet, Rand gulped two more quick swallows of beer and dropped his hand to the Colt at his hip.

      Alice and the miner whirled around and around the smoke-filled saloon while Rand gritted his teeth. And then he noticed that the miner was talking a mile a minute, and Alice was nodding her head and listening.

      Chester, he said his name was. He smelled rank, but Alice pasted on a smile and asked another question in as sultry a voice as she could manage.

      “Oh, sure, Miss Lolly. I know ever’body in town almost. Been a miner at the Lady Luck for thirty years. Not much ever gets by ol’ Chester.”

      “Thirty years! Why, how very interesting. Tell me more.”

      Gradually she brought the conversation around to Coleman’s Assay Office, and then to her sister.

      “Yep, I knowed Miss Dorothy. She was a real fine lady, she was. Always had a kind word when we came in with our diggins’. I was real sorry when she died.”

      “Oh? How did she die?”

      “Don’t rightly know, Miss Lolly. Sheriff hushed it right up, and three days later we was buryin’ her out behind the stamp mill. She always liked the Lady Luck mine. Said it was makin’ her and ever’body else here in Silver City rich.”

      For the rest of the night Alice danced and questioned and filed away information while Rand nursed his beer and Lefty the bartender wiped down the counter and poured out shots of bourbon and rye. Finally he clanged a cowbell he pulled from behind the bar.

      “Closing time, gents. Drink up, pay up, and go home and sleep it off.”

      Alice appeared at Rand’s elbow, reached for his beer glass, downed a big swallow and made a face. “Oh, my, that tastes perfectly awful!”

      “You prefer whiskey?” he inquired with a grin.

      “I prefer plain water or lemonade, but my throat is parched from talking. And, oh, my goodness, Ra—Um... George,” she whispered. “I learned some very interesting things tonight.”

      He rescued his beer glass and shook his head at her. “Later,” he murmured. He took her arm and steered her out into the chilly night air, then guided her along the board sidewalk to the Excelsior Hotel and up the staircase to Room Seven. Only when the door was locked and carefully bolted behind them did he turn to her.

      “What did you learn tonight, Alice?”

      She draped her red shawl on the armoire door handle and walked to the window. “I learned that Jim, Dorothy’s husband, died from a gunshot wound, too. That was two years ago. And after Dottie was widowed, all the men in town swarmed around her like honeybees.”

      She focused her gaze on the street below, where two unkempt-looking men lurched down the street after a well-dressed gentleman riding a horse.

      “You know,” she said in a puzzled tone, “since we arrived in this town I have seen only four women, and two of those were hotel maids. I find that very strange.”

      Rand frowned. “Why is that strange?”

      “Well, it does explain why the men at the Golden Nugget are so eager to talk to me. They must be starved for female companionship.”

      Rand suppressed a groan. “The men at the Golden Nugget talk to you because you’re damned good-looking,” he blurted out. “And every single one of them would like to do more than just talk!”

      She turned from the window with an odd expression in her eyes. “Oh, I hardly think—”

      “Alice.”

      “Yes, Rand?”

      “You are a very beautiful woman. And it’s not because of that silky red dress with all the sparkles and that low neckline that shows your—uh...that low neckline. You are probably the most enticing female they’ve ever seen.”

      “Oh, I never thought of that.”

      He rolled his eyes. “How can you be unaware of how attractive you are?”

      She said nothing for so long he wondered if she was insulted by what he’d said.

      “Alice?”

      She turned back to the window. “When Dottie and I were growing up, she was always the pretty one. I was the smart one, more interested in books than dresses or ribbons or how to curl my hair.”

      “What did your mother tell you? Or your father?”

      She bit her lip and studied the carpet. “Mama and Papa were both killed when we were little. Dottie was three, I was seven. Papa’s sister brought us to Smoke River to live, and then she disappeared.”

      “You mean your aunt abandoned you?”

      “Yes, I suppose so. One day she just wasn’t there anymore. Dottie and I used to make up stories about what happened to Aunt Frances, about how she was really a famous opera singer and had to return to Paris for a concert, or that she was really a Russian princess in disguise and had traveled to Smoke River incognito. Dottie believed everything. I didn’t really believe the stories we made up, but I couldn’t stand to hear my sister cry at night, so I went on making them up.”

      Rand coughed to clear his throat. “How did you end up at the boardinghouse with Sarah and Rooney?”

      Alice gave a little half laugh. “Sarah and Rooney found us, really. When I started to go to school, the teacher found out that Dottie and I were living in old Mr. Cooper’s bunkhouse, out on his ranch. Nobody had lived there for years, so after Aunt Frances left we just sort of moved in. When Sarah heard about it she drove out in a wagon and got us and brought us back to Rose Cottage. They adopted us, really. Later, when Dottie grew up and married Jim Coleman, Rooney was best man.”

      Rand made a mental note of that, then asked another question, this time about Dorothy’s husband, Jim Coleman.

      “Dottie was married when she turned sixteen. Jim had an assay business in Idaho, so they moved away to Silver City.”

      “And you