Outlaw’s Bride (21 page)

“Come in, Mr. Marshall.”

“Grandpa Corwin! What are you doing here?”

“I gotta have a reason to visit my granddaughter?” the old man asked.

“Of course not,” Patch said, shooting a quick glance at Ethan to see what he thought of her grandfather’s invasion. Ethan leaned back against the counter beside the pump, frankly relieved because the old man’s appearance had staved off a fight he hadn’t looked forward to refereeing.

Patch gestured her grandfather inside. “Come in, Grandpa Corwin. Sit down. I don’t even have the coffeepot on the stove.” She settled her grandfather at the table, whisking away the cage with the dead mouse in it and putting it on the window-sill.

Leah sat glaring as Patch hurried around, stirring up the ashes in the stove to make sure it was hot, filling the coffeepot with water from the pump, grinding up coffee beans, and finally putting the coffeepot on the stove to boil. The whole time, Patch was filling in her grandfather on the mysterious deaths of both the cat and the mouse.

Ethan was surprised to hear that Max was dead, too. “It’s strange that both animals died the same night. Do you have any idea what killed Max?”

“No. There wasn’t a mark on him.”

“Same as the cat,” Ethan murmured to himself. He had kept to himself his suspicions that someone
might have purposely poisoned the cat. It looked now like the mouse might have died of poison as well. However, while the cat had been roaming free outside, the mouse had been in a cage the whole time. So what could have killed both animals?

Corwin Marshall had examined both the cat and the mouse while Patch was bustling around. He sat back down at the table and pronounced, “Most likely poison killed the cat. Probably something it ate. You got any bait out for coyotes?” he asked Ethan.

“Nothing close to the house,” Ethan said.

“Your theory might explain what happened to the cat, but what about Max?” Patch said.

“You keep that mouse in a cage all the time?” the old man asked.

“Unless I was holding him.”

“What did you feed him last night?”

“Just some milk.”

“Milk tainted, maybe?”

“I don’t think so,” Patch said. “At least, Nell didn’t complain about it. But she only drank a swallow or two.”

Ethan uncrossed his legs and stood with his hands on his hips. “We fed the same milk to the cat.”

“Milk might’ve been bad,” Corwin suggested. “Could’ve been what killed them both.”

“I’ve never heard of sour milk killing anything,” Ethan said.

“Maybe it was tainted with poison,” the old man said.

“How is that possible?” Patch asked.

“Cow maybe ate something with poison in it—strychnine, arsenic, lead—and it came through in the milk,” Corwin explained.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Ethan scoffed.

“Doesn’t happen often, but it happens,” Corwin insisted.

Ethan stared at Patch with dawning horror. “Ma’s been drinking that milk!
Ma’s been drinking poisoned milk!
”

“What’s that you’re saying?” Corwin asked.

Patch exchanged a glance with Ethan across the room. She could see the wheels turning in his head. “I told you Nell has been ill,” Patch explained to her grandfather. “If what you say is true, maybe something in the milk she’s been drinking is what’s been making her so sick.”

“What are Nell’s symptoms?” Corwin asked.

“Fatigue, nausea, headaches, palpitations—lots of aches and pains,” Patch recited.

“That would fit with arsenic poisoning,” Corwin said.

Ethan’s brow furrowed. “What I don’t understand is why we aren’t sick, and why there aren’t a lot of other sick folk in town. I mean, if the milk is tainted, wouldn’t everyone who drank it get sick?”

“Stands to reason,” Corwin said.

“I don’t drink milk,” Leah volunteered.

“Neither do I,” Ethan said. “That would explain why we aren’t suffering any symptoms. What about you, Patch?”

“I think I’ve had one glass of milk in the time I’ve been here. No more than that.”

Ethan turned back to the old man. “How much poison would it take to make a person really sick?”

“Depends on the person. Depends on how much and what kind of poison. Where did you get the tainted milk?”

“Gilley delivers milk every couple of days,” Ethan said. “What I still don’t understand is why no one else in town has gotten sick.”

Corwin pulled his pipe from his pocket and slipped it between his teeth. “Maybe the poison was put in the milk after it was bottled. Maybe someone has been delivering poisoned milk only to your house.”

Ethan shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Who would want to poison my mother?”

“That’s a question worth pondering,” Corwin said. “Patch said your ma’s been sick since before you got out of prison. Maybe she was supposed to die before you got out. With your ma gone, maybe someone would already have bought this place, put Leah in a home somewhere. Then you’d have no reason to stick around. Who wants you gone from here?”

“Trahern.” Ethan spat the name.

Patch’s voice was hushed when she said, “Didn’t your father die of an illness similar to the one your mother is suffering from?”

Ethan’s eyes narrowed as he considered the question. “So whoever is poisoning my mother also
poisoned
my father?”

Corwin nodded. “It fits.”

“Pa didn’t drink milk,” Ethan said flatly.

“But he had a glass of whiskey every evening,” Leah said. “Gilley delivered a bottle of whiskey from town every other month.”

“Leah, go get that whiskey of Pa’s in the parlor,” Ethan said.

Leah came running back a moment later with the half-filled bottle.

“Was Pa drinking this when he died?” Ethan asked.

Leah nodded. “He said the whiskey eased the pain.”

Ethan held the bottle up to the light. It didn’t look any different. He frowned. “Frank and I each had a glass of this the other night. Afterward, I didn’t feel sick.”

“Probably not enough arsenic in one glass to make you sick,” Corwin said. “But after a while, a glass a day every day, and pretty soon you’re getting too much arsenic for your body to get rid of it all. You get sick. Eventually, you die.”

Ethan shook his head, unable to absorb the monstrous truth—if it was the truth. “I can’t believe it. My father
murdered
! My mother—God, if this is true …” Ethan balled his hands into fists. He felt a terrifying violence building inside him. It had been possible to accept his father’s untimely death, because he had believed it to be an act of God. But if their suppositions about poison were true, someone, some man, had shortened Alex Hawk’s life.

Ethan felt strangely breathless as he asked
Corwin. “If Ma is being poisoned, would she get well if she stopped drinking the tainted milk?”

“If it’s not too late,” Corwin said. “If she hasn’t taken too much poison already. You could try having her fast and drink lots of water. The effects of the poison would slowly disappear once the poison was gone.”

Ethan closed his eyes, afraid to let anyone in the room see the powerful emotions he felt. His mother might not die. She might get well. No wonder old Doc Carter hadn’t figured out what was wrong with her. Who would have suspected poison?

“It’s not too late,” he said fiercely. “I won’t let it be too late!”

Without Ethan being quite sure how it happened, Patch was in his arms, and he was hugging her tight. Then he grabbed Leah and lifted her into the air and swung her around until she shrieked with laughter. There was a lightness to Ethan’s step and a joy in Leah’s eyes that had previously been missing. They had been given hope of a reprieve. Maybe Nell Hawk wasn’t going to die just yet.

Patch wanted to tell Nell what they had discovered. Ethan had other thoughts.

“I’d rather wait,” he said.

“For what?” Patch asked.

“To see if she gets well. We’re just guessing about all this. That the milk was poisoned. That it’s the milk that’s made Ma sick. I can send samples of both the whiskey and milk to a chemist in
San Antonio to be tested for arsenic, but that will take time. What if it isn’t the milk?”

Ethan paused. He met Patch’s blue eyes and said in a raw voice. “Or what if we didn’t catch the poison in time? I couldn’t bear to give her hope and then—”

“How will you explain asking her to fast? How am I going to get all that water down her throat without telling her why I’m asking her to drink it?” Patch demanded.

“I’ll tell her I wrote a letter to a doctor in San Antonio. That he recommended this treatment,” Ethan said.

Patch thought Ethan was being foolish not telling his mother the truth, but she had already figured out that he had difficulty dealing with his mother’s illness. “All right, Ethan. We’ll try it your way.”

They all agreed it wouldn’t hurt Nell to get a visit from Corwin Marshall. Patch was surprised at the pleasure in Nell’s eyes when she realized who had come to see her. She seemed almost flustered. She reached a frail hand up to check her hair, and her pale face flushed.

“What are you doing here, you old coot?” Nell asked.

“Came to see how you’re doing, Nellie.”

To Patch’s astonishment, Nell laughed like a schoolgirl.

“Hasn’t been anyone called me Nellie in more years than I can count,” Nell said.

“Time somebody did.” Corwin sat down in the rocker beside Nell’s bed and settled back with his
pipe between his teeth. The two talked like old friends, which, Patch discovered, they were. Patch finally had to make Corwin leave so Nell could get a little rest. He promised when he left the house to come visit again soon.

Patch realized that she had found the perfect means of getting her grandfather to end his self-imposed isolation in that dreary boardinghouse room. She would keep him so busy visiting Nell and doing chores around the Double Diamond that pretty soon he wouldn’t realize how much time he was spending there.

During the next few hours there was a flurry of activity. The cat and the mouse had to be buried, with appropriate requiems for each. Their deaths were solemnized because they had not been in vain. Leah had to feed the kittens. The sugar water didn’t seem to fill them up, and they cried constantly from hunger.

“We’ll have to get some milk for them,” Patch said.

Leah’s eyes looked frightened. “How will we know if it’s poisoned or not?”

Ethan’s mouth tightened grimly. “I’ll go into town myself and get some. And have a talk with Gilley Stephenson.”

Patch grabbed Ethan’s arm, fearing he would shoot Gilley first and ask questions later. “Gilley only delivered the milk, Ethan. Someone else might have put the poison in it.”

“I won’t kill him,” Ethan promised. “What I want are some answers.”

Patch didn’t want Ethan to go alone, but he reminded
her that his mother and Leah both needed her attention. Patch reluctantly nodded her acquiescence.

Less than a minute after Ethan left the house, she had second thoughts. Patch left Leah in the kitchen and followed Ethan out to the barn. She found him saddling up his horse.

Patch stood at the end of the stall and waited for Ethan to notice her. With instincts honed by years as prey for lawmen and outlaws alike, it only took a second. He spun around, crouched with his gun in his hand. When he saw who it was, his face clouded with anger. He shoved his Colt back in his holster and stalked toward her.

Patch stood her ground.

“What are you doing out here, Patch?”

Ethan put his hands on Patch’s shoulders, intending to turn her around and send her back inside. Before he could stop her, she had pressed herself against him and wrapped her arms tight around his waist.

“Promise me you’ll be careful, Ethan.”

His arms slid naturally around her. “I’m always careful,” he murmured in her ear.

She looked up at him. “It’ll be more dangerous now. Once you confront Gilley, whoever has been poisoning your mother will know he’s been discovered.”

“Is there any doubt who’s responsible?” Ethan retorted. “Trahern owns the hotel where Gilley works. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trahern threatened to fire Gilley if Gilley didn’t do what he
asked. Not that anything excuses what Gilley’s done.”

“Maybe Gilley didn’t know the milk was poisoned. Maybe Trahern had someone else poison it without telling Gilley about it.” Patch stopped. There was no getting around the obvious. Trahern was to blame. Trahern was the one who wanted to ruin Ethan’s life.

“Just be careful,” she pleaded. “If Trahern knows you’ve discovered his plot, he’ll try something else to get rid of you and your family. Maybe something more direct. More deadly.”

Ethan toyed with a stray tendril of hair beside Patch’s ear. “Trahern can’t try any harder to kill me than he already has. And he won’t get another chance to attack my family.”

“Let the law—”

“Trahern owns the law in this town! Don’t try and stop me, Patch. I intend to make Jefferson Trahern pay for what he’s done to my mother. And for killing my father.”

Ethan’s voice was ruthless, and Patch could see that the years of running, the years of fighting for his life, had made him a dangerous man. “Just don’t rush into anything,” she begged. “At least give the sheriff a chance to do his job. And come back to me. There’s so much we haven’t done together. So much I want us to do together.”

Her hands slid up his back and, for the first time, down over his buttocks. Because she was pressed close to him, she felt his instantaneous reaction. She turned her face up to his, inviting his kiss.

Patch watched the struggle Ethan waged against his desire. His green eyes blazed with fury and frustration and leaping flames of passion. His arms slowly tightened around her as he pulled her tight against him.

“Damn you, Patch. Damn you for tempting me like Delilah. Daring me to touch what I crave like water in the desert. Begging me to take what I need. I’m just a man, not a saint. And I want you.”

Then he was kissing her, his tongue in her mouth, his hands tracing the shape of her body, as though he were a blind man feeling his way in a new world. She was wearing a shirtwaist with buttons that came free—tore free—as he forced his hand into her bodice. Then he was holding her breast in his hand. Flesh against flesh.