“Now, who do you know that can write?” he joked. He knew the answer. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what the letter said.
“Mama has decided to stay in San Antonio,” she said. “But she’s willing to come up here so we can star in a play or two together. She feels so left out of all our grand adventures.”
“The cyclorama won’t fit behind our stage. The area’s too small. And—”
“She’s thinking of changing her stage name again. Something French, perhaps. She decided Sandrine wasn’t for her. Colette? Marie Antoinette?”
“Catherine is nice,” Ike said. Lily still wasn’t listening.
“She had quite good news about Marshal Granger. He used the papers you gave him, well, the evidence that Gregorio sent to Marshal Yarrow, and tracked down all the illegal things Schofield was doing. Even if you hadn’t killed him in that exciting gun battle, he would have been convicted of fraud as well as gunrunning. She hinted the marshal was looking into other disreputable things, too, mostly dealing with Zachary and the Grand Palace. Schofield was the silent partner there, you remember.”
“I do.”
She twisted about on his lap. “It’s funny you chose those words. The marshal and Mama are getting hitched. Imagine that.”
“I reckon I have to, if she said so.”
“She’s asked me to sing at their wedding.”
“I know the owners of the Golden. They’re good people and will let you take the time off. If they don’t, I’ll talk real stern-like to them.”
“She’s willing to do the same for me.”
“Do the same? What do you mean?”
“Sing at my wedding. Our wedding.”
“We’re already business partners,” Ike said.
“We can be more. Think of a double wedding. It’d be the talk of San Antonio. Of Texas! There’d be—”
He silenced her by pulling her face down to his and kissing her. Things had worked out well for a deadbeat ne’er-do-well from Houston. He might even send Penrose the money he owed, but other expenses came first. Running the Golden. Traveling to San Antonio.
Getting married.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ralph Compton stood six foot eight without his boots. He worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist. His first novel, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was the USA Today bestselling author of the Trail of the Gunfighter series, the Border Empire series, the Sundown Riders series, and the Trail Drive series, among others.
Jackson Lowry is the western pen name for Robert E. Vardeman, author of more than three hundred novels. Nominated for multiple awards, Vardeman received the 2017 Western Fictioneers Lifetime Achievement Award. His Western titles include Sonora Noose, Great West Detective Agency, and the weird Western trilogy Punished. He was born in Texas and has lived in the wilds of New Mexico most of his life.