Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles (Cash Laramie & Gideon Miles Series) (8 page)

He figured she couldn't have made much. She dumped the rest of the flowers and water on the ground and began singing as she twirled the bucket and sauntered off toward home.

Cash collected his pinto at the livery and followed Melanie from a distance. The girl seemed in no particular hurry, skipping stones along the creek and chasing fireflies before finally arriving after dark.

Cash had inquired around town about Clem and Flossy Stewart. They had traveled from Northern California where he had worked as a lumberjack and Flossy cooked for a construction outfit. The man still listed his profession as a lumberjack but seemed to spend most of his time gambling in town.

Cash tied his pinto alongside the Stewart's horse and made his way to the house. By the time he was outside the window, he heard Clem's booming voice.

"
THIS IS IT?
"

"Uncle Clem, there was nobody in town."

"Don't give me that, you probably bought candy."

"No, Uncle Clem!"

Flesh smacking flesh pounded in Cash's ears. He bolted for the front door and barged in, finding Melanie backed in a corner with her uncle's hand preparing another strike. Aunt Flossy jumped from her chair, startled, as Cash caught Clem's arm, spinning him around and delivering knuckles to the man's face.

With Clem Stewart caught off guard, Cash slammed him with another belt to the mouth, folding a tooth over and propelling the man a few steps back. Clem regained his footing, muttering obscenities, as Cash lunged forward with his next round. The former lumberjack, ready this time, stepped sideways simultaneously slamming his right fist against the lawman's square jaw, knocking Cash off balance.

Melanie and Flossy hid behind the wooden dinner table. The little girl's already damp cheeks began to streak in a rain of tears.

Flossy shouted to her husband as he let a series of jabs fly, "Clem, for God sakes, he's a marshal!"

Cash threw another punch, but the overpowering giant absorbed the hit to his abdomen and lashed back with several powerhouse blows to Cash's face and upper chest driving the lawman to the floor. Clem Stewart stomped his boot into the lawman's stomach, and Cash rolled to his side, letting out a chest-full of air.

"Clem, stop!" Flossy pleaded.

Clem grasped the fireplace poker and readied it but Cash had yanked his Colt free, his iron aimed at his opponent.

"One swing," Cash said as blood trickled from his mouth. "One more reason is all I need."

Clem stepped back tossing the metal rod aside, cautiously passed in front of Cash, and sat at the table. He stared at his rival, rubbing his jaw. "Gov'ment man, I suggest you get the hell out of here if you know what's good for you.

Keeping the Peacemaker trained on Clem, Cash stood and then holstered his gun. He spat blood sideways on the floor, looking to Melanie and her aunt. "If you want to leave, I can assure your safety in Cheyenne."

"Marshal, please, listen to my husband."

"How about you, little lady?" Cash asked Melanie, big tears in her eyes.

The sadness hung heavy. She tried to speak but mumbled, "Why is everybody hurting everybody?"

Cash reached out and offered his hand. "Wouldn't you like to visit with Miss Lenora again?"

She went to take it, and then spotted her uncle's glare. "I best stay put."

Cash lowered his arm and turned, knees buckling. He reached for the corner of the table to steady himself. He looked past Clem, who was jingling a loose tooth, and saw his Stetson lying near the door. He lumbered over and picked it up.

"Stewart, I don't want to see another mark on that child," Cash said adjusting the hat brim.

Clem yanked the tooth from his mouth and flung it toward the fire. "Or what? You coming back for more?" he snarled as Cash turned and stormed out of the house.

The next afternoon, Cash Laramie watched as Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Devon Penn signed his name to a series of legal documents on his desk. Penn's sausage fingers danced like a ballerina from a lifetime of paperwork. Cash sat across the desk in the Windsor armchair and knew Penn was upset or he would have been yelling already. To some, that may have seemed contradictory but Cash had worked for Penn long enough and knew the man's moods.

Penn straightened the papers into a neat pile. "So, we now enter the homes of local citizens and interfere with law-abiding folks?"

"That little girl has been abused."

"Maybe you don't understand what a rhetorical question is."

"I know perfectly well what it means."

"Then shut your goddamn mouth and listen. Judge Hickey will let matters slide if you take a few weeks off. He likes your record and figures a suspension will appease the sheriff whose jurisdiction you shit all over when you entered that house." Penn leaned forward, clasping his hands together. "You understand me, Marshal Laramie?"

Cash nodded.

"Then you are excused."

Cash stood and walked to the door. "When the town's people don't protect their children, then they're not fit to govern."

Penn lurched out of his chair, standing, but held his tongue as Cash closed the door with a bang.

"So that's it," Lenora said taking a sip of bourbon. She sat next to Cash on his balcony overlooking Cheyenne's Main Street.

Cash poured himself another glass and freshened up Lenora's drink.

"Yeah, it seems like a house is a man's castle, and short of murder, he can do whatever the hell he wants even if that means battering a child to a cinder."

"How much of this do you think goes on?"

"A lot more than I care to think about." Cash grasped Lenora's hand in his.

"I saw her earlier today with a black eye," Lenora said. "It's amazing she can still smile and hold on to some innocence."

"But it's fading fast, and I probably only made matters worse for her."

She squeezed his hand. "You did what you thought was right—you did all you could."

"I know you mean well, Nora, but whenever I hear that phrase, '
You did all you could
,' it rubs me the wrong way. Did I do all I could? That little girl is still out there being beaten, and Lord knows what worse things are happening to her. So, did I really do all I can?"

They sat in silence, finishing their drinks, while heavy gray clouds rolled in over the foothills.

"Go see what's taking your uncle so long," Aunt Flossy said. The little girl obediently rose from the wooden floor leaving her dolly to manage on her own. She opened the door to pitch blackness and raced back to retrieve her toy.

"Hurry up, girl! Tell him I need that water and dinner is waiting."

Melanie brushed past her frowning aunt and into the night.
There's nothing in the dark that isn't there in the light
, she tried to assure herself, but she figured it was just a lie told by her uncle.

It was her chore to pump water, but, this evening, Uncle Clem decided to do it himself while going out for a smoke.

Or so he said. He liked talking to that neighbor, Miss Emma, who Aunt Flossy hated and had spoken some very unflattering words about her.

Melanie darted to the big oak between the house and the pump, making it before the door slammed shut. She waited for her eyes to adjust as far-off foul language poured out from her aunt about letting bugs in. Melanie knew that would elicit a lecture when she returned but that was better than the monsters she imagined lurking ahead of her.

"Uncle Clem?" she whispered.

Silence.

"
Uncle Clem?
" she repeated a little louder. This situation had happened before with Miss Emma and Uncle Clem. The noise of her calling had brought out Aunt Flossy and the two women took to name calling. Later that night, Uncle Clem had beat Melanie hard, told her not to scream. She had muffled her cries into her pillow as he thrashed her.

She shuddered at the memory and now, in the dark, brooded over what to do.

A rustling shook her thoughts, and she cowered against the tree. It sounded like something being dragged.

"Clem?" Another voice in the darkness. A woman's. Miss Emma's—or "that whore" as Aunt Flossy called her.

Melanie could make out Miss Emma's slinky figure creeping along the old barn separating their properties. Then, another stirring caught her eyes. A shift in the darkness as something moved away. Melanie wondered if Uncle Clem was circling around to play a trick on Miss Emma.

Apparently, Miss Emma thought so too as she scolded, "Clem, stop joking around."

Maybe she should warn them that Aunt Flossy was looking for Uncle Clem. Or maybe just wander back to Aunt Flossy and tell her she hadn't found him. But that would make her aunt mad.

"I see you, Clem Stewart." Miss Emma dashed to the pump, stopping short. "What are you doing laying on the ground?" She edged forward. "C'mon we don't have time. I just wanted to tell you to meet me later. Clem?" She tapped the bottom of his boot with her toe of her shoe.

"
Clem!
"

Melanie jumped at Miss Emma's screams that brought the night to life. Even neighbors from across the creek responded. Aunt Flossy bounded past Melanie, who had crept forward to get a better look at Clem's prone figure. His tongue hung to the side and a thick rope scored his neck. Flossy screeched and hurtled herself at Emma, both tumbled backward in a clump of hair, arms, and scratching fingers.

Melanie began to weep. She slumped to the ground, clutching her doll in one hand and gripping at the dirt with the other when her finger sliced on something sharp. She peered at the bloody object, and, as she tightened her grasp on it, she cried more.

Melanie and Aunt Flossy sat a few rows back from the judge's table when Marshal Laramie strode in with Miss Lenora at his side. Lenora took a seat in the front while Cash approached the judge, and then raised his right hand to be sworn in.

Not a muscle twitched as he testified about the run-in he'd had with Clem.

When the marshal finished his statement, the judge thanked him for shedding light on Clem Stewart's character and dismissed him.

As Cash and Lenora walked passed Melanie on their way out, he tipped his hat at the little girl and Lenora leaned in, giving Melanie a hug. Flossy rolled her eyes but remained silent.

Melanie sat on the floor playing with her doll as Aunt Flossy griped to a couple of neighbors about how the judge had found "insufficient evidence" for a trial. When the conversation turned to idle gossip, the girl's ears perked up.

"I know it was that fiancé of Emma's who did it after he caught her with Clem." Anger seared her words. She glared over at Melanie, realizing the girl had been listening in. "You little wretch, it's past your bedtime. Go ...
now!
"

Melanie picked up her doll and trudged off to her broom-closet of a room. Though the beatings and other violations at the hand of Uncle Clem were no more, the verbal abuse from Aunt Flossy continued, and Melanie didn't want to raise her aunt's ire this night.

In the quiet of her room, she took out her red Bible from the bottom dresser drawer, and then reached behind her clothes for the object she found on the evening her uncle was killed.

As Melanie finished the Lord's Prayer, she squeezed the Indian arrowhead tighter and thanked her savior.

Delilah Murphy had been hanging laundry on the line when she spotted two riders on horseback galloping down the hill toward her. She dropped her clothes back into the basket and walked briskly inside the house, grabbing the Winchester waiting behind the door. She knew it was already loaded, but checked none-the-less, and then took a deep lungful of air. She lifted her head, exhaling, and walked out onto the porch. Delilah stood behind a support beam with the rifle resting at a forty-five degree angle in the direction of the on-comers. She knew it couldn't be Uncle Charlie because he always rode in alone and it was too soon for him to be bringing supplies anyway.

Her muscles tensed, her teeth clenched as she squinted to get a better look at the men.

Sunlight glinted off the metal stars pinned to the men's vests.

Delilah sighed and placed the rifle against the porch railing. She straightened her tall, slender figure and toiled with the wisps of long blonde hair escaping from the braided bun pinned high on her head like a coronet. Delilah clasped her hands together to hold them steady from the shaking that hadn't yet ebbed.

"Hello, ma'am, my name is Cash Laramie and my partner here is Gideon Miles. You must be Mrs. Murphy?"

"Yes, but how did you—"

The square jaw, blue-eyed marshal smiled. "Oh, we came from Charlie Brewer's spread on the other side of the mountain. He mentioned you were here and asked if we could stop in to check on you."

Delilah smiled, "That's just like Uncle Charlie, always thinking of me. Can I get you men some jam and biscuits?"

The handsome black lawman to Cash's left leaned forward on the saddle horn. "No thank you, ma'am. It sure sounds appetizing, but we need to keep moving. We would be much obliged if we could get some water for us and our horses."

"Of course, I'll fetch a couple of buckets. The pump is to the side of the house."

Cash and Miles guided their steeds to the well while Delilah went back to the porch and snatched a pair of wooden pails from the other end.

As she rounded the corner of the house, Delilah overheard Cash talking to his partner, "She shouldn't be living out here alone."

Miles nodded, working the pump handle until water trickled then gushed forth. He cupped his hands under the stream, filling them with the life-sustaining liquid.

Delilah walked forward, pretending not to hear, and smiled as she held out both buckets for Cash. "Here you go."

While Cash filled the first, Miles withdrew a wanted poster from his saddlebag. He unfolded it in front of her. "Ma'am, have you seen this man?"

"Please, call me Delilah." She looked down at the placard and blurted, "An Indian."