Laurie Grant - Maggie And The Maverick

Garrick straightened, and taking his cane from where it leaned against the press, approached the woman who stood at his counter. He saw her eyes fasten on the cane and then fly back to his face. He saw the color heighten as she realized he’d caught her staring.

He was used to that reaction from women. “I’m Garrick Devlin,” he said, his voice cool. Then he added, with a deliberate lack of courtesy, “Who’re you?”

She blinked at his tone, and her smile faded, but her eyes were steady. He saw her straighten her backbone as if preparing to fend off a blow. “I’m M. L. Harper, your new pressman. I’m sorry to have arrived later than I told you to expect me, but the roads between this town and Austin are a river of mud, as I’m sure you can imagine.” Her voice trailed off for a moment, then began again. “But in any case, I’m here now and eager to go to work, if you’ll just show me where to put my bag? Ah, I see you have a Washington handpress! It’s not the latest in presses, but I have had vast experience using it.”

Her words went on, but he was still focusing on the first thing she’d said. “You aren’t M. L. Harper. You’re a female.”

The smile returned to her face, this time with a teasing quality. “I don’t like to argue with a new employer, but I am M. L. Harper—that’s Margaret Louise Harper, sir. And I assure you that while I am indeed female, I have had the experience I wrote you about. I was an only child, and my father, frustrated at not having a son to pass on his newspapering knowledge to, trained me in every aspect of journalistic endeavor—pressman, compositor and writer of editorials. I can do much more than the paper folding and coloring in of prints that are all a woman usually is allowed to do on a newspaper. Look, Mr. Devlin,” she said, holding up her long, slender fingers. “My hands are small, which makes them more nimble than a man’s. I can set more ems a minute than any man.”

“The hell you say,” Garrick retorted bluntly, not having any idea what an em was, and for the moment, not caring. He was too furious at the realization that he’d been tricked—and by a female again.

She raised an expressive eyebrow at his rough language, but he was damned if he’d apologize—not when she’d lied to him as she had.

“Indeed I have. Most recently I served as my father’s righthand reporter in Austin—”

“You’ve worked on the Democratic Statesman?” he demanded. “I don’t believe it.”

“No,” she said evenly, “for Freedom’s Voice.”

He let his lip curl with all the contempt he felt. “Oh, that carpetbagger paper. I should’ve known.”

“In our circle, the Statesman was known as ‘that rebel rag,’ sir,” she retorted sweetly. “Nevertheless, as a journalist I respect newspapers of any political persuasion, as our country was founded on freedom of the press, isn’t that so? And you did send for me to help you with yours.”

“I didn’t send for a Yankee, or a woman,” he growled between clenched teeth. “And you’re both.” He could feel the throbbing in his leg rise to a pain-filled crescendo. “You lied to me, and I don’t like being lied to,” he told her. “So you can just take the stage on back to Austin, Miz Harper. I don’t like your kind, descending on Texas like a plague of locusts.”

“Is it just my geographic origin you object to, or my sex, too? Would you let me work for you if I came in drawling and fluttering like a Southern woman? ‘Please, suh, may ah work for y’all?’“ the woman mocked in an exaggerated Southern falsetto.

He could feel the rage flooding his system, rage that this lying female should dare to mock him! “Miz Harper,” he said, allowing his own natural drawl to pour out like acidtinged honey, “Southern ladies stay at home and mind their own business, so I just can’t picture that happening. The fact that you’re not home tending your knitting tells me that either the Yankees have different standards for ladylike behavior or you’re no lady. Why else would you have left your cozy place with your father? And yes, there’re two things I won’t stomach in any employee of mine, Miz Harper—bein’ a Yankee and bein’ a female. So you can just tote that carpetbag on out of here. I lost my leg to your kind, and I won’t tolerate you here, do you understand?”

He saw her blink back the tears his tirade had caused, and for a moment he felt ashamed. Then he saw her chin rise defiantly.

“In your inexperience, Mr. Devlin, you don’t know that most men in my line of work have an unfortunate tendency to drink on the job, and get the urge to go on to the next job as soon as you’ve learned to depend on them. My reasons for leaving my father’s newspaper are none of your concern, sir. Suffice it to say that I have reached my majority and am free to look out for my own interests. You said you needed someone to help you operate the Washington there,” she said, nodding toward the machine in back of him. “I can do that. You obviously do not know how to do so yourself. Do you want to cling to your hidebound ideas, sir, or do you want to run a newspaper?”

He had to admire her for standing her ground. She hadn’t said anything about his nasty insinuation that she could not possibly be a lady—she’d just coolly reasserted her abilities. Nevertheless, he wasn’t going to have a Yankee carpetbagger woman running his press!

Just then their duel of words was interrupted by the breathless arrival of Hank Sweeney, the telegraph operator, who’d obviously run clear down the street from the telegraph office past the bathhouse. “Read this, Devlin! This is just in off the wire from Austin!” he said, slamming a piece of paper down on the counter between Garrick and the Yankee woman.

“’Radical Republicans chooses E. J. Davis as candidate for governor.’“ Garrick read Sweeney’s transcription of the dots and dashes aloud. “’Their ally General Reynolds has ear of President Grant.’ Why, this is a disgrace! No respectable man in Texas would vote for this scalawag—yet he’s as good as elected since he’s got that Yankee general on his side!”

“Wouldn’t you like to print that news, Mr. Devlin?” challenged the Yankee woman behind him. “Can’t you just picture it as a banner headline of the first edition of the Gillespie Springs Gazette? You’ve got other stories ready, haven’t you?” she said, pointing toward the pile of papers filled with his scrawling script. “Say the word, Mr. Devlin, and that edition can be done by morning—maybe sooner! I won’t sleep until the press has run off the story. Do you want to stand on your pride, and watch me walk away, or do you want to be the editor of a real working newspaper today?”

Hellfire, but she had him there, and she knew it, damn her knowing green eyes. If he told her to leave now, it might be weeks before he managed to hire a man knowledgeable in the operation of a printing press. By that time Davis’s candidacy would be worse than old news, and how many more exciting stories would remain unreported? The town council had also been eager for him to start operation so they could publicize their community far and wide.

“How many others have you told, Sweeney?” he asked the telegraph operator, turning away from Margaret Harper.

“Why, no one, Mr. Devlin,” the man answered, his face earnest.

“See? Your paper’s inaugural issue would sell like hot cakes,” Margaret Harper said in her pushy way. “Why not give me a chance, Mr. Devlin? Let me put out this first edition for you, and you’ll see how well I can work. If you don’t think I’m as good as I say I am, I’ll take the next stage out of Gillespie Springs with no hard feelings, I promise. Please, Mr. Devlin?”