Page 43 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

I parked near the offices of the Sherman Independence, but didn’t go inside immediately.

I’d like to say that I remembered that this was the day, the hour before deadline for the next edition of the paper.

What actually happened was that as I drove past, I glanced in the two big windows of the century-plus-old building and caught a tenor of activity that I recognized as the last throes of deadline.

After accessing messages and voice mail to find nothing I wanted or needed to deal with, I checked in with Audrey.

Orson had left and she had no need for me — I was going to get a complex about that, right after I stopped enjoying it.

As I pulled up Irene’s manuscript on my phone, I thought about the notes she left.

Each of these passing references to historical elements would require considerable research, with many more details than Mrs. P had given me.

Each phrase represented a lot more work for the author.

Along with her notes about the relationships, especially between Maggie and Ransom.

Easy to write They’re wary of each other, but making small, halting progress at getting to know each other.

But to show that, to build scenes . . . I had a new appreciation for writers.

I hoped Kit would have insights for me soon.

* * * *

Maggie stared at the frame that rested in a nest of cloths whose edges dripped from her palm.

The outer cloths had been stained with sweat and blood.

His sweat. His blood. The innermost cloth, the one that touched the frame, was as soft and clean as the finest of the linens she delivered with pride.

The frame was silver, hardly tarnished. A finely wrought twisting that curved into so delicate an oval, meeting at the bottom in a fine spray of branches and at the top in a more elaborate bouquet of roses, tied with a silver ribbon.

She was a coward.

It wasn’t the frame that mattered. Not even the cloths, though they told what care had gone into protecting this remembrance from the hardships his body had endured.

It was the picture.

Maggie drew in a quick breath. The young woman was beautiful. As delicate, as finely crafted as the frame. A dark-haired beauty with luminous skin and wide eyes. A smile touched her mouth. But even that didn’t mask the air of privilege and certainty in the woman’s face.

The lady’s face, Maggie corrected herself. For this, most surely was a proper lady. A lady an officer could be proud of. A proper lady from North Carolina.

That’s where Peter said their home was, when he talked and talked to her and she listened, thinking that for all he’d seen of war, he still held a part of boy in him.

She liked when he talked like that. His voice changed, got softer.

He talked about his family, especially his older brother Thomas, who’d died in the war. Now and then, he’d let something slip about Ransom. It had to be a secret that Ransom was his uncle. She didn’t understand why, but no one would ever know it from her.

Always Peter’s talking came back to North Carolina.

The place of their memories. The place they belonged.

Notes: She’s wondering about Ransom’s past as she grows more fond of him and more appreciative of what he’s done for her. Asks Peter in roundabout way . . .

Asks doctor . . . Doctor thinks she’s asking about how to have no children, which he interprets as her being afraid of sex.

He talks with Ransom. Really awkward . .

. A husband’s right, but with her circumstances, and particularly not knowing what went on with the Indians .

. . Ransom suspects the dead husband might have been at least as difficult for Maggie.

He recommits in his own mind to no physical lovemaking, though he’s drawn more and more to her.

Notes: Ransom to boy . . . making him strengthen his shorter leg . . . great in saddle . . . both grunting . . . sweat . . . trying to make the boy not think about the pain.

Ransom says something. Boy responds.

“What if I should return to my people, half my people, and raid against your people. Against you.”

“If you go back to your raiding and you kill me after all the work I’ve put into you, I’ll kill you.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed, as if sensing a trap. “But you would be dead.”

Ransom met his look. “Why so I would be, under ordinary circumstances. But I’d make an exception in your case and come back to finish you.”

The boy’s stare continued, unblinking and Ransom returned it, unyielding.

“I will not kill you, then, to save my own life.”

Ransom nodded, accepting that decision. “Seems the wisest path.”

How it started, he never knew — with him or the boy — but there they were grinning at each other, and pretty soon, laughing. Laughing until their sides hurt.

. . . Maggie comes in. Astonished to find them laughing . . .

(Notes: Scene fragment from when Maggie asks Ransom about the picture she found.)

“You married me to punish this lady?”

“No. I married you because you needed a husband. It’s the only way— If you hadn’t needed a way forward, I wouldn’t have done that to you, tying you to me.”

“Why?”

“Coming out here, being in this army — I turned my back on my home, on my people. I wasn’t the man I had been. I was nothing. Can you understand that?”

He had married her to punish himself. It was what she had most feared.

“You did not turn your back on Peter.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “No. No, I didn’t.”

(Notes: There’s been an action out on patrol. Ransom nearly killed, along with others. He and Brand cooperate to get all the soldiers out alive . . . Return to post . . . they’re drinking together, just the two of them . . .)

“If I asked a clerk I know in Washington to check the rolls of the Confederate army under a last name of Ransom, what rank would he find?” Brand asked slowly.

Ransom met the cold gray eyes pinning him.

“Lieutenant Colonel.”

He’d warned Peter so strongly never to reveal his true identity, counting it fortunate that Flora’s children had called him Uncle Ransom to separate him from another relative.

And now he’d revealed the secret.

One of Brand’s brows twitched.

Ransom gave him a dry smile. “Don’t be too impressed. With all the dyin’, there were plenty of chances for advancement for a man with a knack for surviving.”

Brand waved that off. “Takes more than that . . . And if you were captured, when, in ’63?”

“December the eleventh.”

Brand nodded, acknowledging that the exact date would be engraved on Ransom’s memory. “Hadn’t been all that much time for surviving to get you promoted.” He clearly didn’t expect an answer, because he added, “So you told officials you were a private.”

“No.” He’d started the truth, might as well finish it.

He closed his eyes, then opened them again, not wanting to see the memories.

“After they started offering these enlistments, one of my men died. We none of us were doing too good, and the guards didn’t care to look real close.

He was buried as a lieutenant colonel. Not that it got Thomas any honors. ”

Brand gave him a considering look. “That was Peter’s older brother?”

He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that the quiet officer was so damned good at listening.

“Yes. He was twenty. And when he died, they shoveled him into a grave as a twenty-nine-year-old without a blink. They treated us like animals.”

Brand’s eyes seemed to go opaque. “I had friends who died in Andersonville.”

This time Ransom gave the nod of acknowledgement.

Suffering didn’t know sides.

“They’re both your kin — this Thomas and Peter?”

“My sister’s boys. Flora took over when our Ma died. I wasn’t even a year yet, I don’t remember any other mother.”

“And you promised her you’d get them home safe.”

Ransom looked off to the distance. “Haven’t done much of a job of it.”

“You’ve kept one alive.”

“So far.”

“His coughing’s less. His lungs seem to be clearing.”

Ransom allowed himself a small shake of the head. “Do you keep an eye on everything?”

“I try.” The stern line of his mouth eased a little, and his voice came dry. “It’s the way you stay alive out here, Colonel Ransom.”

It sounded strange — but good — to hear his rank and name together the right way. Perhaps especially because it came from a man whose respect was hard-won.

“I’m trying to learn that. But you’d best not call me that. We left Colonel Ransom buried back at Camp Douglas.”

“You’re right.”

Ransom had no fear the major would give him away — not with a slip, anyway — although from the thoughtful look in Brand’s gray eyes it was clear something else occupied him for the moment.

Then Major Brand’s mouth curved up, and the ice in his eyes started to warm. Damned if the Marble Major didn’t grin.

“Sir?”

The grin eased away, though the humor remained as a memory in those stark eyes. “You outrank me.”

“Not in this army.”

“No.” His face unreadable, Brand said nothing more for a moment. And Ransom knew his future was being decided. He could take what was coming for him. He hoped to God, it wouldn’t take down Peter, too.

Or Maggie.

Oh, God, what would become of Maggie? Brand had to know—.

“Sir—”

“In this army, Ransom, you’re better off remaining a corporal.”

The major looked back at him, and Ransom had to repress the urge to shake his hand. But there could be no such gesture between a major — even one intent on resigning — and a corporal — even a false one.

“Yes. You’re right.” He drew up to give a salute. “Major Brand. Sir.”

The mouth under that down-turned mustache eased. “No need for such formality. At least not for the moment.”

A lifted brow indicated Brand understood how important it would be to maintain the formality before others if Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Fletcher Ransom, CSA, was to safely remain Corporal Ransom Fletcher of the U.S. Volunteers, in order to keep a watch over his young nephew and his new wife.

“I have a bottle of quite decent whiskey I was hoping you would join me in.”

Now it was Ransom’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “An officer drinking with a corporal? There’s not a place on post such a sight wouldn’t raise the dickens.”

“Not on post. And not in the public rooms of the hotel. But the proprietor owes his scalp to Jim Bridger, and for friends of Jim’s he has a special room in back, where a man — major, lieutenant colonel, or corporal — can be, shall we say, a private man.”

Ransom decided that, in addition to being a dangerous enemy, the Yankee major might be a good friend to have.