Home by Morning (15 page)

“If she behaves, and stops talking about Miss Prudence, and learns to braid her own hair, I will think about it.”

“Big bother fo' jist one dog.”

Thomas opened the front door and led
Katse'e
inside. High wooden walls. Tiny windows. Tables, chairs, and all the clutter white people thought they needed.

Lillie sniffed the air. “I smell muffins.”

“Oh,” Winnie Abraham said with a start, coming through a doorway on the other side of the big rock fireplace. “Didn't hear you come in. Curtis! They're here!”

“Hold your water,” Curtis yelled back. A moment later he came through the door with a load of firewood. “Hidey,” he called, stomping snow off his boots.

“They nice,” Lillian whispered.

“You will be nice, as well,” Thomas whispered back.

“Hi,” Lillian said in a loud voice. “It me, Lillie Redstone. Who you?”

Wiping her hands on her apron, the black woman came forward. “Pleased to meet you, Lillie. I'm Winnie, and that man you heard is my husband, Curtis.”

Katse'e
held up her doll. “This here Miss Minty. She not allowed to say nothin' 'bout Miss Pru, so she don't talk much. But she sho' 'nuff like muffins.”

Thomas wondered if anyone would notice if he pitched a tipi under the trees.

T
he next morning, Thomas was helping
Katse'e
count the steps down to the first floor when someone pounded on the front door. Several voices muttered to one another, then one called out, “Thomas, you in there?”

Katse'e
froze halfway down the stairs, one hand splayed on the wall, the other clutching her doll. “Who that?”

“Sounds like Joe Bill. You met him last night. Curtis, see what he wants.”

By the time Curtis crossed to open the door, Thomas and Lillian had reached the bottom of the stairs. “Fifteen,” Thomas said. “Can you remember that,
Katse'e
?” He needed to put up a sturdy railing so she would have something to hold on to when he was not there.

Children rushed into the room. Joe Bill, the troublemaker; his younger, quieter brother, Lucas; Rayford Jessup's English son, Jamie; R.D., the oldest Brodie boy; and Brin, the smallest and youngest of the tribe, and the only girl.

“Oh, Lawd,” Winnie muttered, over by the stove. “They found us.”

“Guess what, Thomas?” Brin shouted, trailing after her brothers. “Mrs. Rylander's having her baby. I wanted to see but Ma said it was a lady thing and made us come here. But I'm a lady, ain't I? So why can't I see?”

“You're not a lady yet,” Joe Bill told her. “Ladies wear dresses.”

“Dresses are stupid.”

“Got anything to eat?” At fourteen, almost as tall as his father and with an appetite to match, R.D. headed straight for the kitchen end of the large open room.

“How long you children gonna be here?” Curtis asked.

“Till the baby comes. Here, Ma said to bring you this.” Joe Bill thrust something furry into Lillian's face.

Katse'e
let out a high-pitched scream, tried to bat it away with her doll, and stumbled back into the stairs.

Joe Bill blinked at her in surprise. “What's wrong with her? It's only a kitten.”

“And how would she know that, Joe Bill?” Thomas shoved him and his kitten aside, so he could make certain Lillian had not hurt herself when she fell into the stairs.

“If someone put a hairy, squirmy thing in my face in the dark,” Jamie Jessup said in his crisp English accent, “I would scream like a banshee as well.”

“What's a banshee?” Joe Bill asked.

“A wailing spirit that warns when someone is about to die.”

“We don't have those around here. You take it.” Handing the kitten to Jamie, he followed his brothers and sister into the cooking area. “Winnie, you got any muffins?”

“You are safe,
Katse'e
,” Thomas told his daughter. “He forgot you could not see the cat.”

“He still here?”

“The cat or Joe Bill?”

“Joe Bill. I wanna kick his fanny.”

“I'm sorry he frightened you, Lillie.” Jamie sat beside her on the bottom step. “I don't think he meant to. And it's a lovely kitten.”

“Fo' true? What it look like?”

“It's orangey-yellow for the most part, with three white paws and a little white stripe down the middle of its head. And it's ever so soft. Would you like to hold it?”

Lillian took the kitten. After feeling it from head to thin, twitching tail, she held it to her cheek. “It a boy or girl?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Then how we know what to name it?”

“How about Harriet? You could shorten it to Harry if it turns out to be a boy.”

“It hairy, sho 'nuff. But soft.”

Taking that as a signal that all was well, Thomas went over to the table to grab at least one muffin before the Brodies finished them off. “Where is your father?” he asked R.D.

“Having breakfast with Mr. Rylander and Rafe Jessup.”

“You do not go to the ranch today?”

“Me and Pa and my brothers are going tomorrow. Ma and Brin and Whit are staying to help Mrs. Rylander.”

“I still don't think it's fair!” Brin spoke with such force, bits of muffin flew from her mouth. “I'm not a little kid anymore. I'm almost nine. And I seen calves and foals and puppies and kitties being born. So why not a real baby?”

With a look of sympathy to Curtis and Winnie, Thomas left.

But when he reached the hotel, the dining room was empty. Yancey, at a desk in the lobby, told him the men had gone into the Red Eye Saloon next door. “Too much hooting and hollering.”

Thomas knew many women died bringing their
me'esevoto
into the world. He hoped that would not be so with Lucinda Rylander. Despite her managing ways, he admired her spirit. She had endured much in her short life, but had not let it harden her heart. “The birth does not go well?”

“Hell if I know.” The old man dropped his voice to a whisper. “It's that old biddy, Mrs. Throckmorton. Been ordering everybody around like she was General Ulysses hisself. I was you, I'd make a run for it before she sees you.”

Sound advice. Thomas had started for the door when Edwina Brodie stuck her head out of the Rylander rooms in the long hall behind Yancey.

“Get Tait!”

“She dead?” Yancey called back.

“Lord, no, you nitwit! He has a daughter. Go get him!” She disappeared back into the birthing room.

“I will tell him.” Thomas thought for a moment, then said to the old man, “If he does not come soon, stick your head in
and tell him his daughter is here.” Smiling, Thomas went through the door behind the desk that led into the saloon.

The Red Eye usually did not open until the middle of the day. But it shared a door with the hotel lobby, and although Lucinda Ryland had put a stout lock on it, her husband knew where she kept the key. Whenever he and his friends felt the need to escape their wives or families, they ducked into the deserted saloon and pulled out the bottle of whisky the Scotsman had brought from his homeland. After his dark time of drunkenness, Thomas shunned alcohol, although he had once tasted the brew the other men seemed to enjoy. It smelled like buffalo piss and kerosene, and tasted at least that bad, although he had never tried either.

Tait Rylander, Declan Brodie, Rayford Jessup, and Ethan Hardesty were all sitting around their usual table in a back corner.

“Grab a ginger beer and pull up a chair,” Declan Brodie called.

“I cannot stay long.” Thomas went over and rested his hand on Tait Rylander's shoulder. “Your woman is strong. She will bear you a strong daughter.”

“Daughter?” The new father reared back to stare at him through red-shot eyes. “How do you know it will be a daughter?”

Thomas shrugged. “I am Cheyenne. I know these things.”

Brodie laughed. “Bunkum. You're as full of crap as a spring heifer.”

“You doubt me?” Thomas pulled a coin from his pocket and slapped it on the table. “I say it is a girl. I am also sure you will hear of her coming very soon, but I will not bet on that.”

“Hell you say!” Brodie dropped a coin on the table. “It's a boy and won't arrive until tonight.”

“I'm in.” Rayford Jessup put down his money, followed by Ethan Hardesty.

Tait Rylander shook his head. “Doesn't seem right to bet on my own child.”

“That is wise, even for a white man.”

The door swung open. “You better come quick, boss,” Yancey called to Rylander. “Your daughter's here.”

Tait Rylander shot from his chair. “And my wife?”

“Doing fine, from what I hear.”

With a shaking hand, Rylander tossed the door key onto the table, told them to lock up when they left, then fled into the lobby.

Thomas scooped up his winnings.

“You knew,” Brodie accused.

“Yes. And when I told you I knew, you called it bunkum.”

“He's got you there,” Rayford Jessup said.

“Still cheating.”

“Maybe. But you make it so easy.”

Several coins richer, Thomas left the saloon and went down to the sheriff's office. A man stood outside, one foot on the bench as he studied the wanted posters stuck to the wall above it. Thomas recognized him as Buster Quinn, the ex–Pinkerton detective who had come to Heartbreak Creek last spring. He had since gone to work as chief of security for the Denver & Santa Fe Railroad, as well as the Rylanders' Pueblo Pacific Bridge Line that ran through the canyon.

Thomas stopped beside him to unlock the office door.

“Morning, Redstone. Heard you were the new sheriff. Good choice. Not that Chick didn't do the job as best he could, but with that leg he didn't ride out much.”

Once inside, Thomas motioned Quinn to the chair in front of the desk, hung the key on a hook, then set a fire in the small coal stove. “What did Chick miss?”

“Probably not much.”

While Thomas dumped water and ground beans into the blackened coffeepot, Quinn settled in, one ankle on the opposite thigh, his hat perched atop his bent knee. “The usual derelict miners, a few wanderers passing through, and a reclusive fellow folks get glimpses of now and then. Nothing troublesome yet, but it might help if you made your presence known. I helped Chick out when I could, but I'll be busy for a while.”

Leaving the coffee to boil, Thomas settled in the chair behind the desk. His desk now. Seemed odd, owning furniture. Another rope that tied him down. “Busy with what?”

“Railroad problems. I may need your help.”

Buster Quinn was a quiet man of middle years who listened more than he talked. Rylander had told them that Quinn
had left the New York Pinkertons when the thievery of the government under Boss Tweed had soured him. Incorruptible, Tait had called him. Not long after, Rylander had hired him to bring his wife's guardian, Mrs. Throckmorton, and her housekeeper, Mrs. Bradshaw, to Heartbreak Creek. Soon after he arrived, Quinn had taken the job of watching over the railroad, the same way Thomas would now be watching over the town. If a man with such experience asked for help, it must be serious. “What do you need?”

“Mostly keep an eye on the line running through the canyon.”

The coffee came to a boil. Thomas grabbed a handful of eggshells from a jar on the shelf beside the cups and dropped them in to settle the grounds, then moved the pot to the cooler side of the stove. “You expect trouble?”

“Maybe. Heard about that train robbery in Kansas a while back? Two bandits killed the express man when he wouldn't open the till, then roped the safe and dragged it off. Found it later shot to hell, but unopened. Nothing much worth stealing anyway. But now that we're moving payroll, I expect more attempts.”

Thomas poured coffee into one of the cups, set it on the desk before Quinn, then returned to his chair. He did not drink coffee, because it tasted like burned buffalo chips. But when he was Brodie's deputy he had learned to make it. And not very well, judging by the face Quinn made after he took a sip.

“You expect trouble in our canyon?” Thomas asked.

Quinn shoved the cup aside. “It would be the perfect place to ambush or derail a train.” When Thomas started to protest, Quinn raised a hand. “I'm aware that it's not part of your duties to watch over the railroad. But no one knows this country like you do. It would be a big help if you kept an eye on folks traveling through and took note of anybody up to no good. You'd do that anyway as sheriff, wouldn't you?”

“I would.” After the fire and murders last year, he would keep a close watch on his mountains, especially when workers came to begin work on the new hotel up in the canyon.

“All I want is for you to report what you find. I'll take it from there.”

“I will do as you ask.”

They spoke a while longer about changes in the town, strangers who had moved in, and the new daughter born to the Rylanders. As a detective, Buster Quinn had learned to study things with more than his eyes. For a white man, he was smart, and Thomas valued the older man's words.

“Overall, Heartbreak Creek is a pretty quiet town now that the mines have played out,” Quinn said. “If we watch each other's backs, we can keep it that way.” He rose and settled the hat on his head. “Hope you're planning to stay awhile.”

“I have a daughter now. She needs people around her.”

“Heard she was blind.”

Thomas nodded. “A fever when she was eight. She holds no bitterness about it, but I worry about her.” He walked Quinn toward the door.

“Had a blind uncle once. Used a stick and a dog,” Seeing Thomas's confusion, Quinn motioned with an imaginary stick. “Ran it back and forth along the ground in front of him so he'd know what was ahead. Got around pretty good. Might try it with your daughter.”

Thomas liked the idea. The more independent
Katse'e
could become, the easier it would be on both of them.

Quinn opened the door, then stopped when he saw a woman standing on the other side, fist raised to knock.

With a look of surprise, she stepped back, almost dropping the napkin-draped tray balanced on her hip.

“Let me help you with that, Mrs. Bradshaw.” Quinn stepped forward to take the tray from her hands. “Smells good.”

“It's just lunch.” The middle-aged woman swept a hand over her tightly pinned, gray-streaked hair. “Mrs. Rylander has the hotel send lunch to the sheriff's office each day.”

Quinn set the tray carefully onto the desk. “That's mighty nice of her.”

“Thank you—I mean, it wasn't my idea, but I'll tell her . . .” Her words trailed off. Her cheeks turned red.

Quinn shifted from one foot to the other and stared at the floor.

Ho
, Thomas thought, watching them.

“Did you hear about the new baby?” When she smiled, Mrs. Bradshaw was a fine-looking woman. It seemed Buster
Quinn agreed, because he smiled back . . . something he had not done with Thomas.

“I did. The sheriff here told me. She's hale and hearty?”

“Very much so.”

“Mrs. Rylander, too?”