But wait. This was the New Orleans paper. Would anyone in Garber get the New Orleans paper? The clock struck ten, chiming for each hour, while he stared at Betsy. Then with that quick-draw movement he’d practiced for so many years, he snatched the Fort Worth paper off the rack. Betsy dove for it, too, but she was no match for him. He held the paper over his head and out of her reach. The paper crackled as he paged through it. He did a double take before his mouth set in grim lines.
“What do you know? Another article by E. M. Buckahee. Would you happen to know this woman? Isn’t Betsy short for Elizabeth?”
He didn’t hear her answer because he was too sickened by the next lines he read:
She cried into her pillow every night, bemoaning the stolen future she’d planned for herself and the dashing deputy who’d stolen her heart. Little did she know that a lady of her steady temperament could never hold him. She could only be grateful for the time they’d had together.
He was going to be ill. “What . . . what is this?” The paper crumpled in his fist. “Is this what you think of me?”
“No, not at all.” Her face blanched. “That’s not you. It’s just a character I made up.”
“A character that has my job, my description, and most of my name? Did you not think of the consequences? This ran in the Fort Worth paper. Do you not understand?”
From the puzzlement on her face, she didn’t, but the situation was becoming only too clear to him.
“I told them not to print it in Texas, but it was too late,” she said. “And I stopped writing them once I got to know you.”
“You stopped?”
He wanted to believe her, but then he saw something—evidence—he couldn’t ignore. How he wished he could turn his back and leave—just walk away and save what shreds of friendship might remain, but he had to know the truth.
“Betsy”—his voice lowered with dangerous control—“there’s an envelope on your desk. It’s got a stamp. It’s got an address. I can’t read the address from here, but would you mind if I looked at it?”
Tears filled her eyes before splashing down her cheek. “Don’t, please,” she said finally.
His arms dropped. “I actually felt bad asking you to stay behind. I didn’t want to hurt you, but you had your own agenda, didn’t you? You needed me so you could twist everything around and make me look like a fool.” He shook his head. “I should’ve known not to trust a woman. Didn’t I say that when I first arrived?”
But he had trusted her, and look at the trouble it’d brought him.
“I thought you were different,” he said as he stormed outside, a gust of cold air blasting through his coat and chilling his heart.
Chapter 34
“He knows. He knows all about the articles.” Betsy laid the tray of type down in front of her. The individual type blocks blurred before her gritty eyes. “When I started this, he was just a stranger.”
Her brother might not be the most sympathetic soul, but she didn’t deserve sympathy. She needed someone to listen as she told them how sorry she’d treated Joel. She wanted someone who would agree that she’d made a mess of things and help her figure out how to earn Joel’s forgiveness.
Josiah hopped up to sit on the high table. His boots swung in the air like he was splashing in the swimming hole back home. “How’d you keep this under your lid? Getting published all over the country, and you don’t tell your own brother? I bet you were about to bust.”
“I would’ve told you, but I thought I’d keep it a secret until Deputy Puckett left town—then we’d all have a good laugh about it. But Joel didn’t laugh.”
Josiah grinned that annoying big-brother-knows-everything smile. “And somewhere along the way Deputy Puckett became Joel to you. Kinda hard to explain to a friend why you’d be using their story to make money, especially when they specifically made you promise not to publish anything about them.”
“And he acted like I’d gotten him into trouble somehow, as if my article had hurt him.”
“But he didn’t say how?” Josiah asked.
“Just that there were consequences. That’s all.” But her statement couldn’t adequately describe how disappointed he’d looked, or how sorry she felt.
“Boy howdy, Betsy. Won’t Ma chew you out over this one? And Pa won’t know what to think.”
Her parents would read the articles? Betsy dropped her head into her hands. Ma would not approve. Not the way Betsy had carried on about the deputy.
“I can’t face Pa,” she said. “He and Scott came by and got Uncle Fred just a bit ago, and I stayed scarce. I don’t know what they came to town for, but I hope he doesn’t hear. He’ll probably make me go back to the farm.”
“Now that you mention it, when I rode in just now I thought I saw Pa’s horse down at the jailhouse.” Josiah shrugged. “I just figured he was arranging a shotgun wedding, seeing how his daughter has publicly humiliated herself over the new deputy.”
Had she not possessed her great store of maturity, she would’ve thrown the composing tray at her brother, enjoying each stinging metal block that pelted him. Shotgun wedding? It’d take a shotgun to force Joel anywhere near her again. Tears started stinging her eyes again.
“Buck up, Betsy,” Josiah said. “So he’s mad at you. What’s it matter? After this mess with Sheriff Taney, he’ll probably have to pack his bags and head back to Texas anyway. Who cares what he thinks?”
But what her brother meant as comfort only stung more.