A Wanted Man (18 page)

“Listen to me, Gideon,” Jack reasoned, still bleeding from the nose like the proverbial stuck pig. “This is a small town. If you put me in that jail, folks are going to notice, and that will cause Rowdy problems you can’t even begin to imagine.”

“There’s a back door,” Gideon said. He wrenched said back door open and hurled Payton through it. “Let folks talk all they want. And whatever these ‘problems’ are, I figure Rowdy can handle them.”

Before Payton recovered his balance, Gideon was on him again, shuffling him into the cell, slamming the door, turning the key in the lock.

Stunned, Payton stared at his youngest son—his
favorite
—from between bars with rust spotting them wherever the grimy white paint was peeling off. He’d outrun U.S. Marshals and rangers, Pinkertons and railroad agents, and now he’d been thrown into the hoosegow by a sixteen-year-old boy.

If it hadn’t been so damn tragic, Payton would have laughed out loud.

“You let me out of here, you ungrateful little whelp! I’m going to kick your ass from here to Sunday breakfast!”

Gideon found a rag and shoved it through the bars. “If you could,” he said, “you’d have done it out there in the lean-to.”

Pardner, who had witnessed the whole sorry episode, suddenly gave a little woof and dashed for the front door, jumping up and pawing at it.

“I guess Rowdy’s back,” Gideon said.

“Shit,” Payton said. He jammed the rag against his bloody nose, winced at the pain and sank down onto the only piece of furniture in that cell. “That’s all I need.”

The door opened, and Rowdy came in. Stopped to make a fuss over the damn dog.

“I arrested Pa,” Gideon said, taking a stubborn stance and folding his arms. Maybe he and Rowdy would get into it; the spectacle would be some consolation to Payton, if not much.

“I can see that,” Rowdy replied evenly. He took off his hat, hung it on a peg, then shed his coat, too. He’d put in a hard night, from the looks of him, but Payton didn’t much care. He had his own problems to worry about. “Make some coffee, will you, Deputy?” Rowdy added.

Gideon nodded, grabbed the coffeepot and hurried outside to get water.

“What happened to your face?” Rowdy asked idly. Gideon had left the cell key lying on Rowdy’s desk, and Rowdy looked right at it. Made no move to use it, though.

Hope sprang up in Payton’s heart, just the same. “Gideon sucker punched me,” he said. “Let me out of here. I’ll just leave, and there’ll be no trouble. You have my word on that.”

“You know how I value your word,” Rowdy said dryly.

Gideon came back in with the coffeepot, his face as white as last night’s snowfall. “There’s a dead man tied to one of those horses out front,” he said.

“Just make the coffee,” Rowdy replied wearily.

I
T WAS ALONG
toward evening when Rowdy came.

Lark, sitting in the rocking chair close by the cookstove, with a quilt-bundled Lydia sleeping in her lap, knew it was him by the way he knocked.

Mrs. Porter had gone to bed, worn-out from the long night just past and the wearying day that followed. Mai Lee was off somewhere, probably helping Hon Sing with saloon duties neglected during the crisis with Lydia.

“Come in,” Lark called.

Rowdy opened the door and stepped over the threshold, Pardner with him. And Lark saw the grim tidings in his face, even before he voiced them.

“How is she?” he asked, nodding to indicate Lydia, as he hung up his hat.

“Weak,” Lark said, “but she’ll recover, thanks to Hon Sing.”

Rowdy took off his gloves, stuffed them into a pocket in his coat, shed the garment, and laid it over the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

“What about you, Lark?” he asked, very quietly, stopping at a little distance and watching her with eyes that would see right through any lie she told. “You look pretty done in yourself. Have you had anything to eat? Slept a little, maybe?”

She managed a thin smile, shook her head. Waited.

“Well,” he said philosophically, “neither have I.”

“Rowdy,” Lark said.

“No,” he sighed, gazing down at Lydia’s still, sleeping form. “The doctor didn’t make it home.”

Lark closed her eyes, held Lydia a little more tightly. “Where is the—where is he now?”

“At the undertaker’s,” Rowdy answered. “I took him to his house first, but Mrs. Fairmont didn’t want him laid out there.” He sighed again. “I reckon I can’t blame her.”

“You’ve gathered, I suppose, that Mabel Fairmont isn’t the most dedicated mother?” Lark’s eyes burned. What was Lydia going to do? Was there a family somewhere—grandparents, perhaps, or aunts and uncles? Anyone who might take her in?

“I gathered that much, all right,” Rowdy said.

Pardner, sitting as close to Lark’s chair as he could without being in her lap, gazed mournfully at Lydia. Nuzzled her cheek with his snout.

Lydia stirred, smiled a little, tried to stroke the dog’s head. Murmured a greeting.

Meanwhile, Rowdy went to the sink, rolled up his shirtsleeves and pumped water to wash his hands. That finished, he headed for the pantry and came out with a bowl of eggs and a loaf of bread.

“Supper,” he explained.

Supper. Lark was reminded of the plans she’d made with Maddie, to visit the O’Ballivan ranch on Friday. Though she had barely a hope of getting there, it made her feel a little better to imagine being a guest at Sam and Maddie’s table, speaking of pleasant things. After the meal was over, Maddie might even be persuaded to play the spinet.

Lark ached for music.

Rowdy cracked four eggs into a bowl, whipped them to a froth with a fork and set a skillet on the stove to heat. The lard he added smelled good as it melted.

“Do you think there’s more snow coming?” Lark asked with a note of dread in her voice, starting to come out of her stupor. For once she was too warm—the kitchen, kept hot because of Lydia, felt close and stuffy.

“I don’t know,” Rowdy said, slicing bread and then forking it into the bowl of beaten eggs. “The roads will be impassible for a while, though. No sign of a thaw, as far as I can tell.”

Lark studied him, intrigued. Had there been a hint of relief in his voice, when he’d spoken of the roads?

“The ground will be too hard for a—” she paused, looked down at Lydia, who was nodding off again “—burial.”

“Do you think she’d eat something?” Rowdy asked, again indicating the child.

Lark shook her head. “She can take broth, that’s all.”

Rowdy set the egg-coated slices of bread in the pan, one by one. They sizzled, and sent up an aroma that made Lark’s empty stomach grumble.

“Gideon told me you put in a rough night,” he said.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t around to help, Lark.”

“You had your hands full,” Lark replied. He’d never know, if she could help it, how desperately she’d longed for him, during those dark and endless hours of uncertainty.

He turned the frying bread—by then Lark’s mouth was watering—and then pushed the skillet to the back of the stove.

When he approached Lark, stood in front of her chair, looking down into her eyes, her heart skittered. Gently he took Lydia from her arms and, his every step closely supervised by Pardner, carried her into the adjoining room.

All Lark’s limbs had gone numb, sitting in the chair for so long, holding Lydia. She stood, and swayed slightly before regaining her equilibrium. Then she followed Rowdy.

He was tucking Lydia under the covers, quietly promising to build a fire on the nearby hearth right away.

The sight struck Lark to the heart.

One day Rowdy would make a fine father.

Lydia grabbed at his hand when he would have straightened and turned away.

“My papa?” she whispered. “Did he come home? You promised you’d find him if he didn’t come home—”

Lark held her breath.

Rowdy hesitated, indecision visible in the line of his shoulders and the set of his head. “I found him, honey,” he said sadly.

“He died, didn’t he?” Lydia asked, brave and small and clinging to Rowdy’s hand with both her own.

Rowdy didn’t answer right away. He was probably weighing his words, trying to find ones that would soften the blow, realizing there
were
none.

“Your papa’s gone,” he said. “I’m sorry about that, Lydia—sorrier than I can ever say.”

Lydia sighed, released his hands. “I need to sleep now,” she told Rowdy, as Lark watched through tear-blurred eyes. “Can Pardner get up on the bed with me?”

Rowdy’s voice was hoarse. “Sure he can,” he told her.

Pardner looked questioningly up at Rowdy.

“Take care of your little friend, here, will you, boy?” Rowdy asked.

At a gesture from Rowdy, Pardner bounded onto the mattress, huddled close against Lydia’s side, sighed contentedly and closed his eyes.

Lydia gave a little shudder, perhaps struggling to hold back tears of grief, flung a small arm across Pardner’s furry side and slept.

Lark meant to step back out of the doorway before Rowdy saw her, but she didn’t manage it. Her mind gave the order, but her befuddled body couldn’t seem to translate it into action.

Rowdy’s gaze collided with hers as he turned to start the fire he’d promised Lydia, and his blue eyes were bleak with sorrow.

“I’ll set the table,” she said.

“Thank you,” he replied.

The fried bread was lukewarm when they sat down to eat, Rowdy and Lark, alone in Mrs. Porter’s kitchen. Even so, with butter and a little raspberry jam, the stuff was delicious.

They said little, during the meal. Both of them were too tired to talk.

“Do you reckon I should have made something for Mrs. Porter?” Rowdy asked, later, while he was making coffee and Lark was clearing the table.

Lark shook her head. “She specifically said she didn’t want to be disturbed. Saturday is Mr. Porter’s birthday, and she plans to bake a rum cake. Evidently, the process is quite involved.”

Rowdy looked mystified. “Mr. Porter? I didn’t know there
was
a Mr. Porter.”

Lark stood very close to him and lowered her voice. “His things are all over the house, as though he’ll be back at any moment, and there’s the rum cake, but surely he must be, well, dead.”

“Mysterious,” Rowdy said, with a grin. “Like you.”

Lark ignored that, too tired to engage in another battle of wits. And a part of her—the foolish, reckless, and very lonely part—would have liked to tell Rowdy Rhodes all her secrets and then demand to know his in return.

“You’d better go, Rowdy. I appreciate all you’ve done, but you’re about to fall over.”

A grin quirked the corner of his mouth. Then he cleared his throat eloquently. “I believe I’d like to have some of this coffee before I go,” he said. “If you don’t mind, that is.”

Lark couldn’t help reflecting on what a good thing it would have been to lie down next to Rowdy and sleep in his arms. But even if convention had permitted a schoolmarm such a wanton luxury—which it certainly didn’t—Lydia and Pardner were occupying the only bed on the first floor. There was, quite simply, no place to commit that particular sin with any grace.

Rowdy curved a finger under Lark’s chin, lifted and placed a soft, brief kiss on her mouth. She wondered if he’d somehow known what she was thinking, and the possibility, remote as it was, made her blush.

“Maybe I’ll go after all,” he said. “Get some rest.”

She wanted to plead with him to stay, and shamelessly, too, but she knew that wouldn’t be wise. So she nodded and permitted herself the indulgence of laying both her hands against his strong chest, just for a moment.

He smoothed her hair, which was tumbling from its pins and badly in need of brushing. She probably looked like a madwoman, just escaped from some asylum.

“Good night, Miss Morgan,” he said, without the mocking lilt he usually employed when he addressed her thus.

“Will you be leaving Pardner with us?” she asked.

Something like pain moved in his eyes, gone so quickly that it might never have been there at all. “Best not,” he said. “You’ll want to stay close to Lydia tonight, and there won’t be room for all three of you in that bed.”

She nodded again, and Rowdy gave a low whistle.

Pardner padded in from the next room, yawning.

Moments later he and Rowdy were gone.

Lark left the dishes for Mai Lee to wash when she returned, went into the bedroom she’d coveted with an unholy yearning, added wood to the fire Rowdy had built earlier, and pensively stripped to her bloomers and camisole.

Turning back the covers carefully, she crawled into bed beside Lydia, shut her eyes and tumbled into an instant and profound sleep.

“M
AYBE THAT
C
HINAMAN
could stick a bunch of those needles in Pa, so his nose would stop hurting,” Gideon speculated the next morning, as he and Rowdy and Pardner approached the back door of the jailhouse, where the old man had spent the night. “I shouldn’t have hit him so hard.”

Rowdy smiled. “I wouldn’t mind sticking a few needles in his hide myself,” he said, thinking of the good set of clothes his pa had stolen from him and then ruined by bleeding all over them. Then there was the horse Pappy had almost helped himself to and the money pouch. “As for the sucker-punch, he had that coming.”

For a lot more reasons than horse thieving, Rowdy thought.

They went inside.

Pa was ready with a list of complaints.

The fire had gone out.

He was hungry.

He had to piss like a racehorse.

Rowdy picked up the cell key and let his father out of jail.

“Your face,” he remarked, taking in Pa’s bruised cheek and swollen nose, “looks like somebody stomped on it.”

Pa pushed past Rowdy, tossing Gideon an accusing glare, and made for the back door, probably heading for the outhouse.

“What if he steals your horse and runs away?” Gideon asked, looking worried as he opened the stove, bent on getting a fire going.

Rowdy grinned. “I’ll send my deputy after him,” he said.

Gideon flushed. “I know I’m not
really
a deputy,” he told Rowdy. “You just said that because you didn’t want me chasing after Pa on my own.”

“You caught a man in the act of committing a crime and detained him,” Rowdy said. “That makes you a deputy.”

“I shouldn’t have hit him,” Gideon repeated.

“Maybe not,” Rowdy answered. “But, the way you tell it, he meant to lead a horse over you, since you were blocking his way out of the lean-to. Short of shooting the old coot, I don’t see what else you could have done.”

“He said I’d never make an outlaw. That I don’t have the stomach for it.”

“That’s a
good
thing, Gideon.”

“I guess I didn’t really think about what it meant, being an outlaw. Folks always chasing you, and a lot of hard riding and sleeping on the ground—”

“That and more,” Rowdy said, taking up the coffeepot and heading for the door.

The weather was a little warmer, though the snow was still deep.

He’d just pumped water into the coffeepot when he scanned the street and saw Sam O’Ballivan riding toward him from one direction and Mabel Fairmont picking her way along on foot from the other.

He could deal with Mrs. Fairmont.

He’d hoped for a little more time—and for his pa to be long gone—before he had to face O’Ballivan, though.

He could just imagine the conversation they were about to have.

There’s been another train robbery,
Sam would say.