Shotgun Bride (16 page)

K
ade knocked resolutely at the door of Mamie Sussex’s rooming house first thing the next morning, knowing full well that he was bound to run into a bride or two. Since he couldn’t avoid them forever, much as he’d like to do just that, he might as well just tough it out, attend to his business, and get on with things.

Mamie herself answered, a blowsy woman with a conversely innocent face. She had a wealth of dark red hair, like her tribe of kids, and more freckles than there were stars in the desert sky. She was decently dressed, but the flush in her cheeks made Kade wonder if the man who’d smacked Harry in the face, leaving a bruise, was still somewhere around.

“Marshal McKettrick. What a surprise.” And not a good one, by the hunted look in her eyes. She put Kade in mind of a field mouse cornered by a pack of cats.

The realization struck him that she thought he’d come to arrest her, and he hastened to reassure her. He took off his hat. “I understand my brides have been staying here. I came to bring the accounts up-to-date.”

Mamie was a pretty woman when she smiled; he saw the evidence of it now, though she was still tentative. “I don’t understand,” she said, stepping back to admit him. “I thought that gold piece you sent with Harry was for the ladies’ expenses.”

He tried not to look too closely at the poor surroundings. The place was clean enough, but the walls were thin, with old newspapers nailed up for insulation, and from the chill, the fire had been out for a while. The plank floor had no rugs, and the furniture was battered, probably scavenged from abandoned cabins and alongside the trail, where overloaded sojourners were wont to discard things. “It was a gift,” he said. “The boy’s been a lot of help.”

A little girl wandered in, red-haired like the rest of the outfit, wearing shabby bloomers and a camisole that probably belonged to her mother. She hugged a grubby cloth doll and surveyed Kade with considerable reservation.

“Run along, Hortense,” Mamie said hastily.

The child obeyed, but not graciously. According to Harry, the family had six kids; there was no telling what kind of mischief the rest of them were up to.

“I could brew up some coffee, if you’d like,” Mamie said, trying to please and plainly uncertain how to go about it. He suspected she knew only one way to deal with a man and was at a loss when something else was called for.

Kade shook his head. “No, thanks.” He sat when she gestured toward one of the mismatched chairs. He cast an anxious look toward the stairs. “The brides around?”

Mamie shook her head. “They’re over at the church.” She sat down on the edge of another chair. “There’s a prayer meeting.” She, too, looked worriedly in the direction of the stairway, but for a whole different reason, of course.

“I guess it must be hard, tending all these children on your own,” he said, to let her know, once again, that he wasn’t there to make trouble. Clearly, she’d had more than her share of that already. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat for his wallet. “If you’ll just give me a figure for the brides’ room and board…”

She named a modest sum, but when Kade tried to hand it to her, a clattering came from upstairs, and she pulled back as quickly as if she’d been burned. Her gaze flew to the ceiling.

“He’ll take it away, if he gets wind that there’s money in the house,” she whispered.

Kade stood, folded the currency between her hands. “You come and tell me if he does,” he said quietly, watching as she hid what must have seemed like a fortune to her under the cushion of her chair. “And Mrs. Sussex?”

She looked up at him, baffled, then recognized her own name. Waited tensely.

“Somebody gave Harry a shiner,” Kade said. “He spent the night at the jailhouse, on one of the cots. I don’t know for sure who it was that hit him—he wouldn’t tell me—but I feel a need to make myself clear on this matter. If that happens again, I’ll be back to deal with it directly.”

Mamie put a hand to her throat, nodded. Pain and shame flickered in her eyes. “I try to keep them out from underfoot,” she said in a meek whisper.

“I’d suggest you make a stronger effort.” Kade didn’t know what he’d do if the occasion actually arose since, to his consternation, it wasn’t against the law to beat a child or a woman, any more than a dog or a mule. Kade found that situation wholly objectionable, and he made up his mind then and there to do whatever he had to, to change things.

Meanwhile, he glanced at the ceiling, tempted to take the stairs two at a time, drag whatever no-good rascal he might find up there out into the street and give him his just comeuppance. It would serve more than one purpose: the bastard had it coming, and he’d be able to let off some of the steam that had been building since he’d locked horns with Holt over at the Bloody Basin. “You ever need help,” he added, “you come to me.”

“Nobody ever said that to me before,” she told him, and he believed her. He felt ashamed, partly because he knew he was a hypocrite—his right hand was still sore from punching Holt in the mouth and he still wanted a fight with everything in him—and partly because he’d never taken any notice of the suffering and everyday injustice that went on right there in Indian Rock, virtually under his nose. He’d been too caught up in his own concerns to see beyond them.

He nodded and headed for the door, and it didn’t seem like an accident that he met Harry on the front steps.

“Is he gone?” the boy asked.

“I think he’s still around,” Kade answered. “You’d better come back to the jail with me. I might need a deputy.”

Harry’s thin chest swelled under his too small shirt. They were walking along side by side when the boy spoke up again. Plainly, he’d been working up his nerve for a while. “Folks say you’re wanting a wife,” he blurted out. “My ma ain’t spoken for.”

Kade stopped, pushed his hat back, and faced the boy. He chose his words as carefully as any he’d ever uttered. “The truth is, I’m kind of taken with somebody else.” He’d been wrestling with the fact for a while now and still hadn’t made proper sense of it, but it was so and, if only for that reason, it wanted saying.

“Who?” Harry inquired. If Kade’s response was a disappointment, Harry seemed to recover from it quickly enough. Maybe he’d just had a lot of practice in that area.

Kade sighed. “Mandy,” he admitted to Harry, and to himself.

Harry’s face lit up. “You mean the lady who brought us the fried chicken last night? The one who beat you in that horse race?”

Kade laughed. Harry had obviously taken this revelation better than Kade had; he was still trying to sort it out in his own mind. “That’s the one.”

“She’s real pretty.”

Kade nodded. “That she is.” Then he hunkered down a little so he could look up into the kid’s face. “You and me, we’re always going to be partners. That all right with you?”

“I reckon it’s fine,” Harry allowed, swelling up again.

“Good,” Kade said, rising. He ruffled the boy’s hair with one hand. “That’s good.”

Old Billy had been keeping watch at the jail, and when Kade and Harry stepped through the door, he met them with an accounting of Gig Curry’s many sins. Since these wholesale atrocities had taken place in less than half an hour, and with no visible damage to the property, Kade wasn’t alarmed.

“I never been so insulted in all my days,” Billy complained, jabbing a finger in the direction of the cell where Curry was making his home these days. “He called me old.”

Kade struggled not to grin. “You don’t say. Did you call him ugly?”

“I didn’t think of that,” Old Billy confessed.

“How about stupid?”

“Didn’t think of that, either.”

Kade laid a hand on the blacksmith’s powerful shoulder. “Well, now, Billy, if you want to be in the jail-tending business, you’ll have to be a mite meaner.”

“I’d call him a coward,” Harry piped up, “if I was calling him anything.”

“I don’t have to take this!” Gig protested.

“Yes,” Kade replied, hanging up his hat, “you do.”

K
ade couldn’t get Mandy out of his mind, once he’d told Harry straight out, not to mention himself, that he had a soft spot for her. He’d kept the full extent of the damage private, though: fact was, the walls of the fort had fallen and he was occupied by enemy troops.

And
soft
wasn’t precisely the right word for what he felt, he reflected miserably as he sat behind his desk ten minutes later with his feet up, Rafe-style. It was too damn quiet in the jailhouse; he’d dispatched Harry on an errand, and Curry was taking himself a nap with snoring fit to rattle the bars of his cell.

Kade tried to herd his thoughts into some kind of sensible order. Why hadn’t he known right away that Mandy was different from every other woman who’d ever drawn breath? He figured it must have been the nun suit that threw him in the beginning, though if he was honest with himself, he had to admit that he and Amanda Rose had been striking sparks from the first. Now that he’d seen her in a dress, not to mention a pair of tight trousers, everything was different, turned inside out and upside down. From there—maybe it was desperation—he commenced thinking about how long it had been since he’d had a woman. Too long, by his standards or any other man’s, and he wondered if that was his whole problem. Maybe he just needed to ride over to Flagstaff and make a visit to a certain house on a certain street.

The trouble with that idea was, he didn’t have the luxury of heading for a whorehouse every time he felt the need, now that he was marshal, with a shitload of grief on his hands. And he was plagued by another thing, too: it was Mandy he wanted, and none other, though he flat-out didn’t trust her. She knew too much about the outlaw life for his taste—more than she was telling, by a long shot.

He picked up his enamel coffee cup, fortunately empty, and flung it across the room. It bounced off the stove with a clank.

At the sound, Curry came sputtering out of sweet repose, as rattled as if there’d been a shot fired; there was some satisfaction in that, at least. Since neither of them had much to say to each other, time dragged.

At noon, two of the men from the Triple M came by to relieve him, and he decided he’d have his midday meal at the Arizona Hotel. If he couldn’t take Mandy to his bed—not that he actually
had
a bed, now that he was spending the majority of his time in town, and sleeping in the extra cell—well, he could at least look at her a little.

The dining room was bustling with cowboys, soldiers, and townspeople when he arrived, and Mandy was rushing about, helping Sarah Fee wait tables. The Fees’ baby slept in a laundry basket set across the seats of two chairs. He peered at the kid briefly, then found himself a solitary seat.

“What’ll it be?” Mandy asked as if he were just another cowpuncher, her pencil in hand, notepad at the ready.

He figured she’d douse him with hot coffee if he answered honestly. “What’s the special?” he countered after groping for the words, and shifting uneasily in his chair.

“Liver and onions.” She gave him a curious, searching look, as if he’d suddenly sprouted an extra pair of ears or something. “Are you all right?”

“Never better,” he lied. “I’ll have the liver.”

She nodded and hustled away. He watched her backside as she went and entertained ideas he wouldn’t have dared to think about a nun. He wasn’t a particularly religious man, but he knew there were things the Almighty wouldn’t tolerate from a saint, let alone a sinner like him. He glanced at the ceiling and almost jumped out of his skin when Becky paused beside his chair and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“We’re giving a dance here Saturday night,” she said, and the look in her eyes told him she’d guessed a lot moreof what was going through his mind than he would willingly have revealed. What she said next confirmed it. “I don’t think anybody’s asked Mandy yet.”

Kade felt a thickening in his throat. Mandy wasn’t going to any dance without him, and she sure as hell wasn’t going with another man. “I guess I’d better put in my bid, then.”

Becky smiled. She was a strong woman, contending with trouble and heartache day to day and still planning dances. Little wonder Emmeline had turned out to be such a thoroughbred. “I guess you’d better,” she agreed. “I saw Jeb watching her a little while ago, and I believe he’s thinking along the same lines you are.”

Jeb, of the on-again, off-again wedding ring. Kade pushed back his chair and stood. “That won’t do,” he said to no one in particular, and started for the kitchen.

Mandy was busy loading plates. Liver and onions sizzled in a pair of huge skillets on the stove, and the cook, a Chinese man whose name he couldn’t recall, gave him a look fit to tan leather for invading his territory.

“Mandy.”

She stopped, stared at Kade. “Is something wrong?”

He shook his head. He hadn’t felt this shy, or this awkward, since he was fourteen and asking to walk Miss Alice Jean Gibbons home after a church social. He wondered fitfully whatever had happened to Alice.

“There’s a dance here on Saturday night.”

She looked puzzled. “Do we need a permit or something?”

He had to laugh then, at her and at himself. “I was hoping you’d let me escort you.” He paused, feeling his ears heat up. “To the dance, I mean.”

“Me?” she asked, as if she might have misheard. “Surely one of the brides—”

“I don’t want one of the brides, Mandy. I want you.”

She stared at him, evidently speechless.

“Well?” he prompted, unable to bear the suspense another second. If she refused, he’d just go off somewhere and shoot himself and be done with it.

She considered things further, probably unaware that she was putting him through the tortures of the damned, but possibly enjoying the moment, and finally smiled. “Sure,” she said, and shoved one of the plates at him. “Here’s your liver and onions. Now, get out of my way. I’ve got work to do.”

He stood watching, plate in hand, as she swept past him, bumping the door to the dining room open with one hip. As innocent and ordinary as that gesture was, it left Kade without a doubt in his mind about one thing, anyway.

He was sitting on a wagonload of gunpowder, and it was about to explode.