Lisa Bingham - Accidental Sweetheart

He and his men were already shorthanded.

“What’s this business about a measles outbreak, Hannah?”

He didn’t bother to offer his comments to Greta. At the moment, her fierce expression warned him that she would remove him by force if she felt the measure necessary—and even though she was a good head smaller than he was, Gideon had an inkling that she could do it.

“I’m afraid we’ve had a rash of men coming down with the illness,” Hannah said.

“How on earth...” Gideon bit off his words when his tone filled with frustration—something he didn’t want the women to become privy to. If they knew how shorthanded the Pinkertons were becoming, no doubt they would use that information as part of their argument for allowing the women to remain in the valley for another month. Maybe two.

“I thought Jonah Ramsey was the only one affected—and he’s been off company property for nearly a fortnight.”

In truth, Gideon hadn’t thought that Jonah had contracted the measles at all. He’d suspected that it was Jonah’s way of lingering around the homestead for a few weeks as a makeshift honeymoon. But clearly, the man must have been ill—and now he’d somehow started a contagion.

“Are you sure these men actually have the measles?”

Hannah nodded. “Quite sure.”

“ Ja!”

“How can you be sure if the doctor hasn’t been to town to see them?”

Hannah folded her arms. “She told us what to look for and how to treat anyone showing the symptoms.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind my examining the men?”

Both Hannah and Greta took a step forward—and their expressions grew even fiercer.

“If you go in, you don’t come out,” Hannah warned, a hint of steel coating her words.

“Quarantine!” Greta barked at him again.

“If I could speak to my men—”

“You don’t go in. They don’t come out.”

Gideon opened his mouth to argue, but closed it again. If his own men had been this fierce in guarding the women all these months, Gideon probably wouldn’t be in the mess he was in today.

“I need a list of all the men affected. And I want to be kept updated at least twice a day.”

Hannah nodded, but Greta continued to glare at him in disapproval. Seeing no way around them, Gideon finally took a step backward and touched the brim of his hat.

“Good day to you, ladies.”

He continued down the boardwalk to the infirmary, wondering if he’d have more success there. But he was yards away when another pair of women stood—and judging by the way one of them brandished her knitting needles, he’d get no closer than a few paces. Funny, none of the women seemed to be contracting measles.

Realizing that it would be useless to tangle with the women now, he decided to come back later. After the female guards had changed.

Sighing, he stood indecisively with his hands on his hips, staring out at the quiet street, the growing puddles, and the dirty piles of snow that seemed to wither away with each moment that passed.

He had so much to do.

But for the life of him, he couldn’t seem to pull his thoughts into line. They kept zigzagging from his quarantined men, to upcoming shipments of silver ore, to the itchy sense that he was somehow being maneuvered around a chessboard by some unseen force.

And he didn’t like any of it.

The tightness began in his chest even as his hands unconsciously curved into tight fists.

He needed to get away.

Now.

He altered his course, heading to the livery. With each step, he moved a little more purposefully, until he was nearly jogging by the time he reached the sprawling building.

Smalls had left the double doors wide open to catch the fresh breeze, and the animals inside must have found the scents of spring intoxicating. Over the edges of the stalls, Gideon could see the animals moving restlessly, their ears twitching, nostrils flaring. Apparently, the humans in the valley weren’t the only ones who suffered from spring fever.

Smalls appeared from the end of the long corridor that led to another similar set of doors opposite. His silhouette hung there for a moment, distinctive and broad and somehow reassuring.

“Any chance I can take a rig for an hour or two?”

Smalls’s eyebrows rose at the unusual request, but he immediately changed his course, holding up a hand with one finger lifted to indicate that it would only take a moment to hitch up a horse and a piano box buggy.

As he waited, Gideon moved to the stall where his own gelding was boarded. As soon as Gideon stepped into view, the animal dropped his head over the gate so that Gideon could scratch his ears.

“Hey, boy.”

Gideon could feel the animal’s eagerness to be saddled and taken out into the sunshine.

“Sorry, but you don’t take too well to being in the traces. You know that.”

The horse nickered softly, seeming to object.

“Next time. I promise.”

Gideon couldn’t account for why he’d ordered a buggy instead. When the pressure started to build inside him, he needed the power of a full-fledged gallop to chase the ghosts away. But today...

Today, he didn’t know what he wanted. He only knew that he needed something...different.

He heard Smalls moving behind him and turned to help the man bring a gentle mare from a neighboring stall. After leading the animal to where the small buggy awaited behind the livery, Gideon helped to harness the horse. Then he settled inside and gathered the reins.

Once again, Smalls’s brows rose questioningly. Gideon didn’t need words to know that the gentle giant was asking where Gideon planned to go.

“I’m not sure yet,” Gideon murmured as if the question had been asked aloud. “I need to check the state of the river, take another look at the pass, maybe see how the Dovecote is faring after all this flooding.”

Smalls took a stub of a pencil and a stack of small cards from his pocket. After licking the tip of the pencil, he quickly wrote.

You feeling all right?

There were few people in the camp that knew the way Gideon sometimes struggled with the after-effects of the war. Willoughby had seen Gideon coming into the livery enough to know that sometimes, battle seemed only a heartbeat away and Gideon found himself needing to escape. “Soldier’s Heart” was the name some people used. Gideon would have thought “tormented” was a better term.

In either event, over the years, Smalls had seemed to instinctively know when Gideon needed to ride alone and when he’d needed a companion. On more than one occasion, Gideon had caught the man watching him from a distance, making sure that he didn’t become so immersed in his memories that he became a danger to himself.

“I’m fine, Willoughby. The weather’s getting to me, I think—same as it is everyone else. We’ve got the women we need to get out of the valley, then the ore.”

Smalls nodded, then bent to write again.

You take care of yourself.

Gideon nodded. “I intend to do that. We can’t afford for anyone else to catch this measles epidemic that’s sweeping through town.”

A grating chuckle caused Smalls’s shoulders to shake, even though Gideon didn’t quite catch the humor in anything he’d said.

The man stood back, offering a small salute.

Offering one last nod to his friend, Gideon slapped the reins on the horse’s rump and headed out into the mud and sunshine.

* * *

Lydia had barely reached the outskirts of town before she realized that she’d loaded her basket with far too many items. She still had quite a distance left to the Dovecote and her arms were already trembling. It wasn’t so much the foodstuffs that were making her muscles ache. It was the sugar sack that she’d packed with bullets. She should have known better than to bring them along.