“What now?” Rolf asked as they drove away from the doctor’s office.
“Let’s keep going south until we find some warmer weather,” Teresa had almost begged.
Rolf thought that was a fine idea, and three blustery days later they drove into mile-high Prescott, in a lush, pine-forested valley fed by Granite Creek and surrounded on three sides by Granite Peak, Spruce Mountain, and Mount Tritle.
“Now this is handsome ranching country,” Rolf said as they neared the old mining town famed for its riches of gold, silver, copper, and lead.
“That must be Fort Whipple over there,” Carole said, pointing to a big log fort off in the distance.
“There’s some pretty big cattle ranches hereabouts too,” Rolf said, noting the thousands of cattle out on the winter range. “Ought to be plenty of work for a cowboy.”
“If you were a cowboy,” Teresa said. “Rolf, don’t you dare be thinking about going off to find some thirty- dollar-a-month job riding fence. We’re going to buy our own cattle ranch, remember?”
“Actually,” he said, “I don’t remember that agreement at all. We’ve no money to buy a ranch.”
“Yes, we do,” Carole said, looking at Teresa. “Don’t you think we’ve both figured out what you and Nathan have hidden in those heavy packs?”
Rolf tried to sound angry. “You mean you’ve been snooping around in Nathan’s stuff when I had my back turned?”
“Well, you snooped first!” Teresa said, looking annoyed and sliding over to the far side of the seat. “So don’t you start pointing fingers at Carole and me! We know you’re a couple of counterfeiters and we’re willing to overlook that fact because we love you fellas. But that don’t give you the right to play high and mighty.”
“She’s right,” Carole said, nose pointing to the sky. “We found your hidden money, paper, treasury department plates, ink, and everything. Anyone could see why you and Nathan have so much money. You’ve been printing it.”
“Not me!”
“Well, sure you have,” Teresa said. “But don’t worry, we’re going to get married soon and I’ll never tell.”
“Just like I’m marrying Nathan and I’d never tell on him either,” Carole said.
Rolf felt defensive. “Well, I’m real glad you’re marryin’ us, but I still didn’t print any damn hundred-dollar bills. I just sort of joined up with Nathan and was hoping he’d buy a ranch and give me honest work riding fence.”
“That’s it?” Teresa asked.
“Yes, that’s it,” Rolf answered them both. “And anyway, Nathan might not want to get married. No offense, Carole, but I think you ought to wait until he’s feeling better and can at least tell his own mind.”
Carole was offended. “For your information, he did ask me to marry him.”
“He did?”
“Sure! That night at the Paradise Hotel he said I was the best he’d ever had in bed and that he loved and wanted to marry me.”
“Well,” Rolf said, feeling much better, “if Nathan said that, then we’ll all get married together in Prescott and buy a cattle ranch.”
“And build two big houses and then raise big families.”
Rolf glanced back into the buckboard. “You think Nathan would want a family? That he can even still make a family?”
“Oh, sure,” Carole said, gently patting Nathan’s crotch. “He’s still working just fine down here.”
Rolf was appalled. “You … you did it with him since he got pistol-whipped by Clyde Zolliver?”
“We did it together three or four times already,” Carole said rather proudly. “It makes Nathan smile, so I know he still likes it.”
Rolf had to bite his tongue. He just wasn’t sure if a man should be asked to make love to a woman if he was not right in the mind. Still, if it made Nathan smile, then what could be the harm?
Prescott wasn’t as big as Flagstaff and it didn’t have a railroad, but the town had a more permanent and civilized appearance that Rolf appreciated. There were a couple of churches and a Masonic hall as well as a newspaper and a one-room schoolhouse. The sign on the outskirts of Prescott said that it was the territorial capital of Arizona and that it had been founded in 1836 by Joseph Reddeford Walker and his party of mountain men.
“Look,” Teresa said. “There’s even a marshal’s office and jail.”
“That’s not good,” Rolf said. “Not good at all.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” Teresa said. “But we’re not going to be sitting around town printing money. We’re going to be printing it on our cattle ranch.
“No, we’re not!” Rolf argued vehemently. “We’re going to raise cattle and make an honest living at ranching.”
“It’s hard work,” Carole warned. “I’ve had a lot of ranchers and cowboys, and they all were stove up with injuries from working too long and hard out in bad weather.”
“The weather will be a lot better here than it was where we came from,” Rolf said. “This far south, they don’t get such cold and blizzards.”
“Do we have enough of that phony money to buy a big ranch and build a couple of big cabins?” Teresa wanted to know.
“Yep,” Rolf said. “But could we talk about something else until we’re out of hearing range of this town?”
