Mae held it to her breast. "I love it. Thank you."
Kate stood and gathered her things. At the door, she gave Mae a long hug. "I want to meet this doctor of yours sometime. Maybe you can bring her by the ranch."
"It's not like that, Kate. Besides, I don't think the town's doctor is going to want to be seen out riding with me."
"It seems to me that a woman brave enough to fight for what she believes in wouldn't put much stock in the opinions of foolish people."
"You think highly of people, Kate. You're young still."
"What's her name?" Kate asked, ignoring Mae's dark mood.
"Vance. Vance Phelps."
"I like the way that sounds. Good night, Mae."
"Good night." Mae carefully closed the door. Vance Phelps. She liked the way it sounded, too.
v "Well," Clarissa Mason said as she lifted a biscuit from the tray Martha Beecher extended. "Rose and I came in on the stage late last week with the town's new doctor."
Kate looked up from her sewing, alert to the censure in Clarissa's voice.
"Really?" Martha said, trying to hide her eager curiosity.
"Oh yes," Rose interjected before her mother could continue.
"She's quite intriguing. She wa--"
"Hardly intriguing," Clarissa said sharply. "Impertinent and inappropriate would be more the word for it. Dressed like a man, for heaven's sakes. And who's to say she's even a doctor."
"Dr. Melbourne apparently believes her to be," Kate said reasonably, although her temper put an edge to her tone that had her mother giving her a frown.
"Well whatever she is, she would do well to behave like a proper lady." Clarissa cast a scathing glance Kate's way. "Some excuses can be made for our own, I suppose. But not for outsiders."
Kate rose and set her sewing aside. "Excuse me. Would anyone else like more tea?"
A few of the women in the sewing circle murmured, but most stared from Clarissa to Kate with rapt attention. Kate hurried from the room before she said something she knew she would eventually regret.
Creating a scene in her mother's parlor would do no one any good.
"You shouldn't pay any attention to that old biddy," Millie, the town marshal's new wife and one of Kate's closest friends, whispered.
Kate turned from the icebox with a pitcher of tea in her hand and fury in her eyes. "How dare she attack Jessie in front of me? If it weren't for my mother, I'd--I'd..." She slammed the tea down on the kitchen table. "That's just the problem. I know there's nothing I could say that would make any difference to her. And strangling her is probably out of the question."
Millie smiled and put her arm around Kate's shoulders. "The way to get back at her is to show her that her opinion doesn't matter. And to anyone with half a brain, it doesn't."
"I don't understand why my mother even cares what people like that think."
"It's hard to be alone, especially out here."
"She's not alone. She has my father and she has me."
"Yes, and now you've got Jessie and your father...well, he's a wonderful man." Millie smiled. "But he is a man. Being as you don't have one, you probably don't realize how little they understand us."
Kate laughed. "You're right."
"Does Jessie understand you?" Millie asked shyly. "Seeing's how her and you are together and all."
"Yes, I think so. At least as well as I understand her." Kate took down two glasses and poured tea. Millie was the only one of her friends--aside from Mae--who ever acknowledged what Jessie was to her. She gave her an affectionate glance and set down the pitcher.
"Which means not always. But when she doesn't, she tries."
"Can't ask for much more."
"No. I wouldn't ask for anything more."
"I've seen the new doctor. Have you?"
Kate shook her head. "No, not yet. I understand she's...solitary."
"I've heard she frequents the saloon at night."
"Really? I dearly wish I could. The conversation would certainly be more to my liking."
"Well, I think she looks very mysterious, and I can't wait to actually meet her."
"Yes, I'm looking forward to that, too." Kate considered that she hadn't spent any time with her father at the newspaper office of late, and today seemed like the perfect opportunity.
CHAPTER NINE
"I can set the type while you block out the advertisements," Kate said to her father as she joined him at the print table in the rear of the single room that served as the office and production area for the New Hope Chronicle.
"You'll get ink on your hands and it's the devil to get out," Martin Beecher said mildly. "And your mother will likely take me to task for it."
Kate smiled and gently shouldered her father aside. Ever since she'd been a little girl she'd accompanied him when he went to work, although in those days it had been to the college where he'd taught.
Since coming to New Hope, and especially now that she no longer lived at home, she didn't have nearly as much opportunity, and she missed their quiet camaraderie. "Anything I can't get out, I'll take care to hide. Let me see the copy."
More because he enjoyed her company than because he needed the help, Martin conceded and handed her the list of transactions he'd received that afternoon from the land claims office.
"Goodness, this is quite a list," Kate remarked.
"More and more homesteaders are arriving every day. Before long, Montana will be well settled and ready for statehood."
"The town certainly seems to be growing." As she spoke, Kate swiftly and efficiently set the type, letter by letter, into the preset frame.
"Jessie said there were dozens of wagon trains moving West through Fort Laramie when last she was there."
"We're going to need some kind of law out on the range soon,"
Martin commented absently as he adjusted the layout of the notices and ads. "The town marshals can't be expected to chase across the entire territory after outlaws and cattle rustlers, and the army's got more than enough to do protecting the railroads and wagon trains from marauders."
"Cattle rustlers." Kate said the words slowly, realizing with an uneasy jitter in her stomach that she had no idea just how big the Rising Star was. Between the long winter and the months spent recovering from her sickness, she'd never been able to make the journey to see it that Jessie had promised long ago. But she knew from listening to Jessie speak of her land that it spread over many days' worth of travel.
And that a great deal of it was remote mountain terrain. "I wouldn't imagine that's a very big problem around here, is it? I mean, perhaps a cow or two now and then for food or a horse to--"
"Oh no," Martin said. "According to all the reports that we've been getting from across the territories, gangs of rustlers are stealing hundreds of head of livestock."
"But surely not out here, so far from the rail centers."
"Apparently they're driving them hundreds of miles to markets in Colorado. Even as far south as Texas." Martin slid the finished plate into the hand press. "I'm surprised you haven't heard about it before this. What with the Rising Star being one of the biggest outfits in this part of the territory."
Kate had a feeling that she knew why she hadn't heard of this trouble before, and hoped she was wrong. Tomorrow Jessie would be back. Tomorrow she would have her answer. Stacking the single sheets as they slid from the press, she said, "I'll help you take the early editions around."
"I'll only be taking them a few places, my dear. You'll be more comfortable waiting here."
"I'll be bored is what I'll be. Give me the ones for the Golden Nugget. It's just down the street."
"Oh no," Martin said with a laugh. "If your mother ever heard--"
"I'll take them in the back. No one will see me, and even if they do, there isn't a soul who would know Mother to tell her."
"Kate, really. I know that you have an acquaintance--"
"I've a friend there, and this won't be my first visit. I'll be quite all right." Kate kissed her father's cheek. "I know you like to talk to Silas at the hotel in the evenings. You can come for me when you're done."
"If you promise to take care, I'll walk you there and be back shortly."
"I won't go anywhere I'm not safe."
v "Evenin', Doc," Frank said and poured a shot of whiskey without being asked. He slid it across the counter to Vance. "Late day or early night?"
"Just got back into town. Been riding all day." Vance smiled wryly.
It hadn't taken more than a few weeks for the town's bartender to learn her schedule. She should probably take that as a sign that the whiskey was still winning. Nevertheless, she tossed back the drink and poured another from the bottle Frank had put down nearby. "Things are a lot farther apart out here than I'm used to."
Frank laughed. "I imagine so, if you're used to city living."
"Not for some time, but even farm country in the East is more populated. It took me most of the day to check on the three families Caleb wanted me to see."
"You making those calls by yourself?" Frank asked cautiously.
Vance stiffened. "That's right."
"Ever shot anyone with that sidearm you're carrying?" Frank leaned across the bar and kept his voice low.
"Would you ask me that if I were a man?"
Frank appeared unperturbed. "Might. If I thought you were a tenderfoot fixing to get himself killed."
"I'm not either one of those things," Vance replied evenly. "And I'm a dead shot."
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