A Wanted Man (12 page)

He grinned at her. “Do you always talk like that?”

She frowned, puzzled, and swabbed a plate dry after he set it in the second basin, full of clear water. “Like what?”

“Like you’re reading aloud from a page torn out of an etiquette book,” he said.

“I don’t!” she protested.

“Maybe it’s because you’re a schoolmarm,” he teased.

“I’m not—”

“A schoolmarm?”

She turned pink. “I
am
a school
teacher
,” she insisted.

“And what else?”

“
Nothing
else.”

He let his gaze drift over her face, taking care not to venture further south than her chin. Even the hollow of her throat was dangerous territory, covered, though it was, by that high-collared dress of hers. “Well,” he drawled, “there does seem to be every indication that you’re a woman, as well as a schoolm—teacher.”

Her blush deepened. “You are
deliberately
baiting me,” she accused.

“If I gave you that impression,” he said with exaggerated sincerity, “I certainly apologize.”

“You’re not one bit sorry!”

He chuckled. “Guess not,” he said. “It’s a pleasant thing, riling you.”

She stopped all pretense of drying dishes and stared at him. “Why?”

“Your eyes flash, and you get all warm and pink. The way you would if I laid you down and proved to your complete…satisfaction that you surely are a woman before anything else.”

She blinked. For a moment he thought she’d move to slap him, the way she’d tried to in the yard in front of the shack. This time, since he had a plate in one hand and a dishtowel in the other, she might succeed.

Fortunately—or unfortunately, given that he might have enjoyed even that kind of physical contact with Lark Morgan—Gideon chose then to open the door and come back into the house, Pardner with him.

“You can bed down in that room back there,” Rowdy told his brother, with a nod toward the doorway nearby, after a brief interval spent adjusting to the intrusion.

“I’ll sleep over at the new place.”

“I’d rather stay with you,” Gideon said. “I’ve got a bedroll. I can bunk on the floor.”

“Whatever suits you,” Rowdy told him. Gideon was still a kid, for all that he probably believed himself to be a man, and he’d ridden some distance to get to Stone Creek. It wasn’t surprising that he’d be a little skittish about staying at Mrs. Porter’s and being fussed over by a pack of women.

Lark looked from Gideon to Rowdy and back again. “How old are you, Gideon?” she asked.

“Sixteen,” Gideon said, as though that were an august age, worthy of some awe.

Lark smiled at him, laying aside the dish towel. “Well then, if you’re staying in Stone Creek a while, you’d best come to school in the morning. We start at eight.”

Gideon’s blue eyes goggled, then narrowed a little. “I’m not going to school,” he said flatly.

“Yes,” Rowdy said, “you are.”

A thick silence fell.

“Miss Morgan,” Rowdy went on, after watching Gideon try to gulp down his Adam’s apple three or four times, “is your teacher.”

Gideon’s eyes widened.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Gideon,” Lark said pleasantly.

And then she left.

Nothing about seeing
him
tomorrow, Rowdy thought, with a private grin.

But she would. He’d make sure of that—put himself square in her path at least once.

“I don’t want to go to school,” Gideon said stoutly.

“I thought maybe I could be your deputy or something. Both of us could go looking for Pa.”

Rowdy dried his hands, the dishwashing job finished at last. “
I’m
going looking for Pa,” he said. “
You’re
going to school.”

Gideon had the Yarbro temper, all right. It glittered in his eyes and bunched a certain muscle in his jaw. “Does it matter a whoop to you that I just said I didn’t want to?” he snapped.

Rowdy grinned. “Not even that much,” he said. Then he summoned Pardner, who was lounging by the stove again, and fetched down his hat and coat from the pegs by the door. They had a warm, comfortable place to sleep right there at Mrs. Porter’s, but Gideon’s horse was over behind the jailhouse, and so was his bedroll.

Might as well make the move, though the truth was, Rowdy didn’t much like doing it. Lark was here, under this roof, after all, and he wasn’t real keen on the idea of leaving her unprotected from whoever she was so scared of.

He wished he’d told her to wait up and lock the door behind them, but Mai Lee was still out, and she might not have a key.

Maybe he’d just come by later, in his capacity as the marshal of Stone Creek, and make sure the lock was turned.

Gideon plunked his hat on his head and jammed his arms into his coat sleeves as he came down the back steps behind Rowdy and Pardner.

“I think you’re sweet on that schoolteacher woman,” he said.

“Stop thinking,” Rowdy replied. “You might hurt yourself.”

“I reckon you meant that to be funny,” Gideon scowled, clearly not amused. “It wasn’t.”

“Does Ruby know you’re here, Gideon?” Rowdy asked, as they gained the sidewalk, “or is she out knocking on doors all over Flagstaff, looking for you?”

“I left her a note,” Gideon said. “Anyhow, I didn’t come here so I could go to
school
. I came because you said I ought to, if I needed help, and I need help to
find Pa
.”

“I’ve been thinking I might require a deputy,” Rowdy said.

Gideon looked at him with new, and slightly less hostile, interest. Rowdy wondered if the kid was always this testy, or if it was just because he was so worried about Pappy. “I could do it,” the boy said, squaring his shoulders. “Be your deputy, I mean.”

“You might want to hear me out before you agree,” Rowdy told him. “It’s night work, and it pays next to nothing. You’d have to sit in the jailhouse while I’m making my rounds. In case somebody came by, looking for help. That would leave you free to go to school in the daytime.”

“When am I supposed to sleep?” Gideon demanded.

“You can rest in the cell, as long as there aren’t any prisoners,” Rowdy answered, holding back a grin.

“Do I get a gun?”

“No,” Rowdy said. “You do not get a gun.”

“Suppose there’s trouble?”

“A gun would only complicate matters.”

“
You
carry one,” Gideon argued. He was Payton Yarbro’s baby boy, all right. He’d probably stand flatfooted and argue with an angel sent from Almighty God, just for the sport of it.

“I’m the marshal,” Rowdy reminded him.

“I’ve never heard of a deputy who didn’t even have a
gun,
” Gideon said. “It’s wrong. It’s just wrong.”

“That’s my offer,” Rowdy said. “Take it or leave it.”

“Do I at least get a badge?”

Rowdy chuckled, raised the collar of his coat against a chilly wind. “I think I can scrounge up one of those,” he said. He’d seen an old tin star, partially rusted and with the pin bent, under a stack of musty papers at the jailhouse. “It might need a little polishing and fixing, though.”

They’d reached Center Street by then.

Rowdy counted the horses in front of all three saloons, found the number to his liking and headed for the jailhouse. Opened the door, went inside, lit a lamp on the table he’d be using as a desk.

“You go on around back and see to your horse,” he told Gideon, after finding the badge and tossing it to him. “Then you’d better turn in for the night. You’ve got school in the morning and there’ll be your deputy duties to see to tomorrow evening.”

Gideon frowned, probably wondering if he was being hornswoggled, but when he looked down at the battered old badge in his palm, he finally smiled. It was the first time he’d shown the slightest inclination toward good humor.

“If you’ve got any ideas on where I might start looking for Pa,” Rowdy said, “I would appreciate your sharing them.”

Gideon’s hand closed around the tarnished star, and he looked serious again. “You meaning to saddle up and ride out, once I’m asleep?” he asked suspiciously.

“No,” Rowdy said. “Like I said before, I’ve got rounds to make.”

He intended to visit all three saloons and make sure everybody was minding their manners, and he might walk the side streets, too. After all, there were only two of them—probably not more than twenty houses in the whole town.

Once he knew the place was buttoned down tight, he’d try Mrs. Porter’s back door. If he found it locked, then he’d head on home and maybe try out that fancy copper bathtub.

Gideon tucked his badge into his coat pocket and left.

Pardner started to follow him, stopped, looked back at Rowdy.

“Go on,” Rowdy said to the dog, feeling a strange tightening in his throat. “You go on with Gideon and rest up. You’ve already put in a good day’s work.”

Pardner stood stock-still for another few moments, then he turned and followed Gideon outside.

It was better this way, Rowdy told himself. Pardner was getting old, and though he’d been a stalwart traveler on the trip up from Haven, he wouldn’t be able to keep up on the trail, especially if a fast pace was required.

Tracking Pappy down would take some doing as it was.

No, sir, he did not need a dog to make it harder.

Despite this conclusion, a somber mood settled over Rowdy as he walked the streets of Stone Creek. When he’d done that, he checked the saloons.

Business was slow and, while Jolene and the other owners might not have agreed, he saw that as a good thing.

He tried Mrs. Porter’s kitchen door last.

It was locked, and all the lights were out.

Rowdy’s melancholy deepened a little.

He secured the jailhouse last, laying kindling and newspaper for a morning fire, emptying the coffeepot and pumping water out in front, by the horse trough, to rinse out the grounds.

His horse and Gideon’s were settled in the lean-to barn.

Rowdy went inside the house, wondering what it would be like to have a wife waiting for him. Not just any wife, either.

It was Lark Morgan he imagined greeting him with a warm smile.

He tried to shake off the images, but they stayed with him.

Gideon lay in front of the fireplace, where he’d built himself a blaze, asleep in his bedroll. Pardner had settled right up alongside him, and he lifted his head and looked closely at Rowdy, awaiting a command.

Rowdy sighed. “Good night, Pardner,” he said.

Pardner rested his muzzle on his forepaws, let out a weary breath and closed his eyes.

Damnation, Rowdy thought glumly, it was purely a hard thing to give up a dog, even if the process was gradual.

The boiler in the bathtub room was fed by a pipe leading to a tank on the roof, and it was full of fresh water. Rowdy lit a fire under it, wiped the copper tub out, and got soap and a towel from the box of supplies he’d had sent over that morning from the mercantile.

The water was a long time getting hot, but he didn’t mind that. He used the time to shake out the bedding and check the mattress for cooties.

The bath was worth waiting for.

Rowdy soaked for a while, then scrubbed. It sure beat using one of the public tubs over at Jolene’s.

As soon as the sun came up, he decided, he’d saddle his horse and ride toward Flagstaff. Follow the railroad tracks for a while, and see if he came across his pa.

He leaned back in the tub and closed his eyes.

It wasn’t much of a plan, he reckoned, but he had to start someplace. If Pappy had ridden out in the middle of the night, as Gideon said, and with some haste, he’d probably gone to meet up with his gang.

There were plenty of places in the rugged countryside for outlaws to roost.

The old man had asked about Wyatt and the others when Rowdy paid him a call in Flagstaff, acting like he didn’t know where any of them were. That didn’t mean, of course, that the Yarbro boys weren’t around, waiting to rob a train.

Rowdy swore.

What if it wasn’t just Pappy he had to find? What if Wyatt and Nick and Ethan and Levi were out there, too?

Pappy liked to conduct “peaceable” robberies, back in the old days, but he was nothing if not unpredictable. There’d been two holdups out of Flagstaff in the recent past, and one of them had ended in gunplay. A man had been shot in the arm and maimed.

There was a distinct possibility that Pappy had changed the way he did things. Age mellowed most folks, but it might not have had that effect on Payton Yarbro. The man was a law unto himself.

He had to find Pappy. That was all there was to it.

Rowdy closed his eyes, drifted off to sleep.

Woke to cold bathwater and what sounded like a hard kick to the side of the copper tub.