Love on the Line Read Free

woman, but the widow herself answered him.
    “Neither, sir. I’m overcome with gratitude. When Mr. Comer found out I was on my way to my childhood home after burying Henry and losing everything, he gave me this.” She opened a gloved hand to reveal a handful of gold coins.
    “He took my gun,” a man farther down shouted, “but then he emptied it and gave it right back.”
    “He signed my dime novel.” A boy with a bow tie and short pants held up his pulp fiction pamphlet. Georgie had seen him reading it earlier on the train. Its cover held a colorful illustration of a masked man with kindly eyes. Thick block letters across the top read, The Legend of FRANK COMER.
    Ranger Landrum moved his attention back to the widow. “That money belongs to the Texas & Pacific, ma’am. I’m going to have to ask you to turn it over.”
    The widow pulled back, then narrowed her eyes, loosened her collar, and dropped the coins right down her bodice.
    Landrum took a step forward. “You oughtn’t have done that, ma’am.”
    Readjusting her collar, she held the Ranger’s gaze. “I’m rather fatigued, sir. If you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll return to my seat on the train.”
    The woman sailed past him, daring him to stop her, her skirts swishing with each step.
    Georgie bit her cheeks. Any cooperation Landrum might have received had vanished the moment he challenged the widow. And she had a feeling he knew it.
    His fierce gaze moved to the boy with the dime novel.
    “No!” the little fellow screamed, throwing himself into his mother’s arms.
    Swooping him up and hugging him tight, she followed the same path as the widow. The rest of the passengers did the same, all giving a wide berth to Texas Ranger Lucious Landrum.

Chapter Two

    “A telephone salesman?” Lucious stared at his captain, aghast. “You want me to go undercover as a telephone salesman ?”
    “And repairman.” Captain Heywood didn’t even look up from his desk, his pen skating across the paper in front of him.
    “You must be joking.”
    “Do I look like I’m joking?”
    The wooden blinds in the dusty office of Ranger headquarters were tightly closed against the noon sun, but the captain still wore his silver-gray Stetson. Lucious didn’t need to see beneath its brim, though, to know the man wasn’t joking. He’d heard that tone of voice many times before.
    “Sir, I think going undercover is a mistake. My reputation as a Ranger will help flush Comer out.”
    “Like it did last time, and the time before that, and the time before that?” The scratching of the captain’s pen competed with the clicking of the overhead fan.
    “Yes, with all due respect. Just like that.”
    The pen stopped. The brim of the Stetson slowly lifted. “If you’ll recall, Landrum, all those campaigns were unsuccessful.”
    “Not at flushing him out, sir. Only at apprehending him.”
    Skin weathered from years on the trail was as much a badge of the job as the five-pointed star on the captain’s lapel. “And apprehending him is the result we’re after.”
    “Which I plan to do. I will do. But he could rob a dozen more trains in the time it would take me to discover his whereabouts were I to go undercover. If you’d let me have a company of men, we could go into Washington County, flush him out, and then I’d have him.”
    Heywood returned his pen to its holder and leaned back in a wooden chair almost as old as he was. Its springs creaked in protest. “That’s what you said last time.”
    “I brought in six of his men.”
    “None of whom are talking.”
    “We found out Comer’s laying low. We found out he and his men own land in Washington County. That they’re holing up in their farmsteads and splitting their time between farming and thieving.”
    “We already suspected that.”
    “And now it’s confirmed.”
    “You got nothing from the train passengers.”
    Lucious tightened his jaw. “They protect him, sir. They believe the newspapers and he plays on