Territory Read Online Free

stove at her back. She glanced over her shoulder.
    He hadn’t moved. He was looking at her partly set page, his head tilted at a near-painful angle. Or perhaps he was reading Harry’s copy.
    What kind of temptation would twenty-five thousand dollars be to an out-at-the-elbows drifter? How dirty would a man get, waiting in the washes for a stagecoach to make its run, riding all night to avoid the posse? And what if a robber
were
brazen enough to come into town after the attempt, clever enough to realize that sensible people would expect him to be anywhere else?
    She took a paper from the stack and came back to him. “Five cents.”
    He dropped the nickel into her palm. It seemed to burn her skin, but she closed her fingers over it anyway. “I’m new to town,” he said. “My name’s Jesse Fox.”
    Mildred ignored the hint. “I hope you have a pleasant stay.”
    “Meaning, you don’t expect I’ll be here long.”
    “I try not to show a rude interest in other people’s business.”
    His eyebrows went up in mock surprise. “But this is a newspaper office.”
    Wary as she was, she had to laugh at his wounded look. “Oh, are you news, then?”
    Fox shook his head. “I’d hoped for a mention in the social column, at least. ‘Newly arrived in our fair camp is Mr. Jesse Fox, late of Durango, Colorado.’ ”
    “ ‘Who has come for the benefits of our salubrious climate’?” She found herself remembering people who hadn’t found the place healthful—Bud Philpot being the latest. Fox’s brown eyes, clear as running water, met hers. She felt as if he were seeing all the way to the back of her skull.
“Will
you be here long?” she added quickly.
    “I thought that wasn’t your business?”
    “You can’t expect to be reported on if you won’t say much.” Talking to him made Mildred nervous, but
not
talking was worse.
    “Are you a reporter, Miss …”
    “No.”
    He looked down at the paper in his hands, then up again at Mildred. “I can find out your name, you know.”
    It didn’t sound like a threat, but Mildred tensed, even so. “Then I needn’t make you a gift of it,” she said, in the voice that had warned off bankers’ sons in a dozen Philadelphia ballrooms.
    Either he was richer than a banker’s son, or he had some more effective source of impudence. He grinned at her. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t put you to the trouble.”
    The back door banged closed, and Mildred looked around to see Harry coming past the press into the front room. She heard the pressmen, as well;two sets of boots on the wood floor, two hoarse voices, the steel-and-cast-iron racket of setting up the press.
    Harry gave Fox an unreadable stare. “Mrs. Benjamin taking care of you?” he asked mildly.
    Fox blinked at Harry; then he caught Mildred’s eye and lifted his eyebrows. Mildred clenched her hands together in front of her and glared at him.
    “She’s been a great help.” Fox bowed his head gravely to Mildred. “Good day, Mrs. Benjamin.” And he tucked his paper under his threadbare elbow and left.
    “Who was that?” asked Harry.
    “His name is Jesse Fox, he’s just passing through, he’s lived in Durango, and yesterday’s newspaper was good enough for him.”
    Harry sighed. “I don’t know why papers don’t hire more pretty young lady reporters. People will tell ’em anything.”
    “Like it or not. So you’ve never seen him before?”
    “Not that I recollect. But there are people in the world I haven’t met. Isn’t that column set yet?”
    With Fox gone, the sun shining in the window, and Harry’s dry voice in her ears, she felt foolish. The robbers would be fifty miles away by now.
    “Did he say if he was putting up somewhere?” Harry asked.
    “If … No, he didn’t.”
    “Hm.” Harry moved papers on his desk until he unearthed his humidor. He took out a cigar and nipped the end off. “Might be a good thing to know.”
    “So he worried you, too!”
    “Millie, never talk yourself out of your