Love on the Line - Deeanne Gist [49]
He looked up. Brownsville was over four hundred miles from here. Surely he’d have gotten wind of it if Comer had traveled all that way. “Does it say anything else?”
“They’re calling in the Rangers.”
“Does it mention which one?”
She snorted. “Lucious Landrum.”
He hesitated. Headquarters must have given out misinformation. They did that occasionally. Rumor that he was on his way often caused a gang of culprits to panic and flee, thus making them easy to track. Comer wasn’t one to panic, but if he were still in Washington County, he’d gain a false sense of security from thinking his pursuer had been sent to the southern tip of Texas.
He forced his attention back to the wire. “Read the whole thing.”
“That’s all it says. ‘Diamonds valued at twelve to fifteen hundred dollars were taken in a Brownsville, Texas, burglary. Captain Cecil Heywood of the Texas Rangers intimated Ranger Lucious Landrum, a man of nerve, would be in pursuit.’” She scoffed. “ ‘Man of nerve.’ Those aren’t the words I’d have used to describe him.”
He stalled again but kept his head down. “You’ve met him?”
“He interrupted the robbery of a train I was on.”
Slowly straightening, he gave up all pretense. “You were robbed on a train?”
Her face lit. “Yes. By Frank Comer himself. He knew I had money, too, but he let me keep it. He actually gave some coins to a widow and a poor boy. It was terribly exciting.”
She must have been on that train from Dallas. He tried to recall seeing her but couldn’t. “You got a pretty good look at Comer, then?”
“I did, though a neckerchief and hat covered everything but his eyes.” She looked out the window, her face softening. “They were blue. Not a subtle blue, like robins’ eggs, but a vibrant blue, like the feathers of a blue jay.”
His eyes were blue, too. He wondered if she’d noticed. Stuffing down his irritation, he shifted his weight onto one foot. “So what happened?”
“Hm?” She turned to him, then shook herself. “Oh, that ridiculous Lucious Landrum came charging in on his horse, barking orders, shooting his gun, and scaring everyone half to death.”
“Yet you wouldn’t describe him as a ‘man of nerve’?”
Her lips thinned. “He was pompous, arrogant, abrupt, and even tried to take that poor widow’s coins from her. Can you imagine?”
He hadn’t been taking money away from the woman. It wasn’t ever hers to begin with. It belonged to the Texas & Pacific. She had, in essence, robbed the railroad same as Comer.
Georgie propped a fist on her waist. “So here’s a bandit giving money to the widows and poor, while a lawman tries to take it away.” She rolled her eyes. “And the Rangers wonder why no one will help them. They’re nothing but a bunch of idiots, if you ask me.”
A thousand justifications stacked up in his throat, not the least of which was the Rangers kept her and every other Texan safe. Folks normally revered them. Held them in awe. But Comer had muddied folks’ perceptions.
Instead of voicing his thoughts, he lowered his attention to the switchboard. Picking up the two wires, he touched them together. A sizzling sound but no sparks.
“Did you know he named his pistols?” she asked.
He felt his jaw begin to tick and immediately forced himself to relax. “I think I’ve read that before.”
“Well, I just read it recently. As if having a boy pistol and a girl pistol wasn’t bad enough, he goes and names them. Odysseus and Penelope.” She laughed. A full-throated, from-the-belly laugh. “But what can you expect from somebody named Lucious?”
Over his four years as a Ranger, he’d traveled seventy-four thousand miles, made two hundred scouts, and one hundred eighty-two arrests. He’d endured cold, hunger, and fatigue without a murmur. He’d been said to have the eyes of a fox, the ears of a wolf, and the ability to follow scent like a hound. Yet this tiny bit of fluff could throw him off-kilter like no other.
He counted to ten. “What’s wrong with the name Lucious?”
She looked at him, incredulous. “What’s wrong with Lucious? It’s . . . it’s . . . I don’t know . . . silly, don’t you think? Sounds like luscious.”
He was named after