Sanborn scratched his head, grinning. “Reckon I can. I take it you’re throwing in your lot with Miss Lemmons. Smart lady. She can teach you a thing or two I’ve heard.”
“Already has, sir. Cattle aren’t everything. I’ve developed an interest in mutton of late.”
“I’m hope you know what you’re doing, McCord.”
“Yes, sir, I do most certainly know. The way I figure it, sheep aren’t anything more than fluffy cows, except maybe a little squattier. The Panhandle has room for both and I aim to prove it. Might want to pass along the word to members of the Cattle Raisers Association that the Mutton Madam has gotten reinforcements.”
Amanda watched Sanborn’s confident stride up Main Street. Men projected confidence in different ways she was learning. Sometimes that boldness sneaked inside quiet comments that a body could overlook unless they paid close attention.
Had Payton, a dyed-in-the-wool cowboy, spared no thought to what he’d just done? He’d quit a job that defined who he was. And for what? The line in the sand wouldn’t come cheap.
“Did you mean that stuff you said about sheep?”
“Always mean what I say and say what I mean. I love you. I intend to spend the rest of my life making sure you never forget it. My word is my bond.”
Joe Long and some of the crew from the Frying Pan rode into town and tied up in front of the hotel. Her stomach sank.
Payton stiffened, tightening his fist. “Hell and be damned! I don’t know what they have up their sleeve, but they’d better have their fighting clothes on because I’m not going to stand for any more damn meddling. Sam hell! That’s it.”
One thing for sure, her future husband knew when to cuss and when to draw lines no one dared cross. A bright man, Payton McCord.
She smothered a laugh and stood on tiptoe. “Quit wasting all that energy on them and kiss me.”
No Time for Love by Phyliss Miranda
Chapter 1
Quinten Corbett plucked his watch from his apron pocket and studied the hour. Damnation, maybe time didn’t matter to some folks, but to Quin the world revolved around deadlines…professional and personal.
“Monk,” he barked across the cramped office filled with printing equipment and tables to his old ink-jockey friend. “Where in the blue blazes is the new apprentice? Did they ship him from Boston to Amarillo by wagon train?”
Receiving no response, Quin snapped his watch cover closed. Leaning forward, he returned an extra uppercase typeface to its slot in the tray. He shoved the top drawer into place, and proofread the headlines:
Pleased with the copy, he stood. Stretching to his full six-foot-plus height, he removed his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes.
The monotonous tap-tap-tap of news droned across the wires as James “Monk” Humphrey feverishly translated a Morse coded message. Oblivious to Quin’s existence, the ink-spiller stayed focused on his work. The stoop- shouldered old-timer’s arthritic fingers scrawled out the final words. Waving a page of script, he eased from the stool and hobbled toward the editor.
Quin glanced over the paper that Monk stuffed in his hand, and shook his head in defeat. “This the best news you can get?”
“I only translate the messages, son, I don’t compose ’um.”
Snatching up his spectacles, Quin paced the small office, reading aloud: “The juicy watermelon, the odoriferous muskmelon, and warty, git-up-and-dust cucumbers are expected to be in abundance this summer. Men and things change, but every returning season finds the cucumber possessing unalterably the same old characteristics.” He flung the paper on the worktable and scooted the wastebasket out of the way with the toe of his Justin cowboy boot. “This is the nonsense I’m expected to use to come up with enough news for two papers a week?”
“I don’t make up the stuff, I jest transcribe it.” Monk returned to his perch, hunkered down, and prepared to receive the next transmission. “Besides, if it’s what the owners back East want, I’m guessing it’s what’ll be done.”
“And they think we can’t do it alone, so they send us some wet-behind-the-ears apprentice fresh out of Boston College.” Quin consulted his pocket watch again. “And where in the hell is that Renaulde character? I heard the train pull out an hour and forty-two minutes ago. Surely, he had enough sense to get off.”
Quin crammed a visor on dark, unruly hair. He jerked open the top drawer of typeface. “Odoriferous! Huh, I’ve never thought of a muskmelon as odoriferous, but then we don’t write the news. Huh, Monk?”
Exasperation rumbled in Quin’s chest, but he methodically filled the line bar with one typeface after another.
Memories of how the Boston publishing vultures gobbled up the newspaper when Monk was forced to sell it to pay taxes on the ranch churned through his mind. Frustration wedged in his craw. As the editor, he must work long hours. He would restock his once bountiful spread that sat abandoned north of town.
His gut coiled as thoughts turned to Monk, the only family Quin had ever known. He could hardly handle what the new owners had done to his friend when, after years of running the newspaper, they demoted him to a lowly clerk. All because the old guy refused to print an editorial straight from the president’s desk.
But more than anything, Quin fought the demons raging within him. Why couldn’t he come to grips with the fact that due to his own reckless behavior he was no longer a freehearted, spurring rancher?
“Hope the snot-nosed tenderfoot knows the difference between odoriferous muskmelons and warty cucumbers.” He wiped his brow, tucking his musing back into the recesses of his mind. “Monk, there are a few things I plan to get straight with this shave-tail before he gets the notion he’s runnin’ the place.”
Receiving only a response from the clinking telegraph, Quinten vented on. “This cub’s not a reporter, but an apprentice. And there’s one thing for sure, he better not come with that whiny Bostonian attitude that his family seems to have. You know the one I’m talkin’ about, Monk? The old coot who makes sure I pronounce Peabody
Morse code clattered in response.
“It’s probably best that he’s late,” Quin grumbled. “As it is, I’ll have to work all night getting this rag ready for Amarillo by morning. Don’t need to have him underfoot right now, anyway.”
