A Wanted Man (25 page)

Again Rowdy silently cursed his father. For robbing trains. For living a decade in one place, and a very public one, at that. For the pure, reckless arrogance of using his famous first name as part of his alias.

And then there was Gideon. He’d stood there in Mrs. Porter’s kitchen, right after he’d shown up in Stone Creek, and said his name was Payton, not Rhodes. No one had commented at the time, or since, but Rowdy knew the landlady wouldn’t have missed something like that, and neither would Lark.

Lark.

Rowdy ached inside. He didn’t know which would be worse—leaving her behind with a hasty explanation or none at all, or seeing the look in her eyes when he was arrested for things Rob Yarbro had done.

Robert Yarbro. That was the name on all those Wanted posters, but in its way, it was as much an alias as Rowdy Rhodes.

Whitman studied Rowdy afresh. “He wasn’t as tall as you are,” he said.

For the space of a heartbeat, Rowdy didn’t know what the man was talking about.

“Were you here today, Rowdy?” Sam asked quietly.

“In this saloon, I mean?”

Rowdy nodded.

Gideon had been with him, when they’d all met up on the road earlier, outside Stone Creek. Suppose Sam and the major or—God forbid—Reston, decided to question Gideon?

Rowdy was an experienced liar, a thing he wasn’t proud of but nonetheless had to acknowledge, at least to himself. Gideon, on the other hand, was bound to slip up.

He was just giving silent thanks that Reston was still at the depot, when the man crashed through the swinging doors.

“We found one of them,” he said. “He was facedown in the snow, shot through the forehead. Pockets stuffed full of other folks’ money.”

Having made this announcement, Reston turned and went out again.

Rowdy, Sam and the major all followed, with Autry Whitman not far behind.

The body was draped over the back of a horse.

Rowdy knew immediately that the corpse wasn’t his pa, but there was something familiar about the man’s form, just the same.

Reston stepped up, got the dead man by the hair of his head and lifted, so the lights of Ruby’s Saloon fell on the blood-streaked face. The bullet hole was small and neat, except for the dried blood dribbling down from it.

Bile scalded the back of Rowdy’s throat as he looked into the sightless eyes of a man who’d once been a trusted friend as well as an in-law.

It was Chessie’s younger brother, Seth Alden.

“I
KIND OF HOPED
this Porter fella would show up for his own birthday party,” Gideon confided to Lark, as the afternoon wore on toward evening. He’d just enjoyed his third slice of cake, and the honor of blowing out the candles had gone to Lydia.

Mai Lee and Hon Sing had left the table, Mai Lee to begin cleaning up after their early supper, Hon Sing to return to Jolene Bell’s saloon. Mrs. Porter had gone down to the root cellar, after murmuring about some errand there, and Lydia, full of cake, had already been carried to bed.

“I believe Mr. Porter is dead,” Lark whispered back to Gideon.

Gideon frowned. “Why would anybody throw a shindig for a dead man?”

“I have no idea,” Lark said.

“Maybe he’s not,” Gideon mused quietly. Like his older brother, he apparently enjoyed a puzzle. “Dead, I mean. Maybe he’s just away someplace, and Mrs. Porter figures he might come back anytime, and expect a cake for his birthday.”

Mai Lee turned then, and cast an uncomfortable glance over one shoulder, but if she knew anything about Mr. Porter’s whereabouts, be they above- or belowground, she revealed nothing.

It was cold, musty and dark in the root cellar—Lark had been there earlier in the afternoon herself, to fetch a jar of pickled beets for supper—and she couldn’t imagine what her landlady might be doing down there. She’d been gone at least fifteen minutes, and Lark was getting worried.

“Perhaps I’d better check on her,” she said, starting to rise. Only her dread of the place, she realized with some chagrin, had kept her from going earlier.

Gideon got up. “I’ll do it,” he said.

“I’m going, too,” Lark said.

“Take candle,” Mai Lee contributed, with a little shudder. “Dark like grave.”

Lark found a candle in the pantry, along with a small box of matches, and she and Gideon made for the cellar, reached by way of a trapdoor in the far corner of the kitchen, opposite the cookstove. Dank air rose from what was essentially a hole in the ground, like the cold breath of some subterranean creature.

Lark shivered, handed the candle and matches to Gideon, and let him descend the steps first.

“Mrs. Porter?” she called tremulously, over Gideon’s shoulder. Lark couldn’t recall if her landlady had taken a lantern or a candle when she’d gone down into the dirt chamber earlier, but if she had, the flame had gone out.

There was no answer.

Gideon reached the bottom of the steps and stopped so suddenly that Lark nearly collided with him. The light from the candle he was holding wavered eerily against the damp, root-laced walls. A mouse skittered, somewhere out of sight.

“Mrs. Porter?” he said. “Ma’am? Are you—”

Lark strained to see around his broad shoulder—and spotted Mrs. Porter standing pressed into a corner, under a frieze of cobwebs, her eyes huge. She had brought a lantern—she clutched it in both hands—but the flame had guttered out.

Mrs. Porter blinked several times, as though coming back to herself from some great distance and arriving with a visibly jolting impact. In the next instant, though, she offered a fitful, distracted little smile.

“I was right,” she said cheerfully. “There were no more walnuts. We used them up at Christmas.”

Gideon handed the candle back to Lark, who hovered on the third step from the bottom, and went to Mrs. Porter. Took her gently by the arm.

Again Lark was reminded of Rowdy.

And for some new reason she couldn’t have defined—she knew only that it had nothing to do with missing the dance, or the tear in her bloomers—she wished him back from Flagstaff with such an intensity that it wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d materialized before her eyes.

Well, it wouldn’t have surprised her
immediately,
anyway.

“You feeling all right, ma’am?” Gideon asked respectfully, at the same time steering Mrs. Porter toward the cellar steps.

“I
could
do with a dose of my medicine,” Mrs. Porter admitted, sweetly confused again. “And perhaps a little rest.”

Lark stepped back out of the way, glad to be above the kitchen floor again, away from the spiders and the cold and the inevitable mice. Waited as Gideon ushered Mrs. Porter up the steps, with the easy competence of those who are used to being strong.

Mai Lee and Lark escorted the landlady to her room on the second floor, each supporting her by an arm.

“My medicine,” Mrs. Porter murmured, upon entering.

Mai Lee nodded and took a brown bottle from the bedside stand, which was illuminated by a beam of moonlight, while Lark helped Mrs. Porter to lie down on the bed.

With the older woman settled, Lark lit a lamp, watched as Mai Lee administered a dose of what was surely laudanum, which Mrs. Porter raised herself half off the mattress to receive.

Across the bed Mai Lee’s and Lark’s gazes caught, held, broke apart.

Lark unlaced Mrs. Porter’s shoes and removed them, then covered her with a blanket, found folded at the foot of the bed.

Having never been in the room before, Lark stole surreptitious glances, here and there, taking in the heavy velvet drapes, the massive furniture, the cold stone fireplace. She saw an exquisite mantel clock, its case of painted china, and numerous knickknacks. But there were no photographs or paintings and no visible evidence that Mr. Porter, or any other man, had ever shared these quarters.

Still, Lark felt strangely anxious, as though the master of the house might step out of one of the shadowy corners and demand an explanation for their presence, hers and Mai Lee’s.

“I’ll just close my eyes for a few moments,” Mrs. Porter said, with a benign little sigh. Perhaps she was used to the heavy, almost ominous atmosphere of that room—and it was equally possible, of course, that Lark was merely imagining these disturbing aspects.

Mrs. Porter was soon snoring.

Leaving the lamp burning, Mai Lee and Lark slipped out of the room, moving as quietly as they could, Mai Lee pulling the door shut behind them.

“How long has Mrs. Porter been taking laudanum?” Lark asked, when they were alone in the corridor.

Mai Lee sighed. “Long time,” she said. “Not take Hon Sing’s medicine. It better. Have herbs, brought all way from China.”

They moved toward the rear stairway, leading down into the kitchen.

Lark thought of Hon Sing’s glistening needles, and the way he’d used them so skillfully to help Lydia. Mrs. Porter probably wouldn’t have submitted to that treatment, any more than she would have taken the herbs, and it seemed a shame to Lark.

“Mai Lee,” she said, suddenly able to keep the question back any longer, “what happened to Mr. Porter?”

Mai Lee’s eyes widened. “He gone,” she whispered.

“Dead?”

Mai Lee shrugged. “Not know. One day, here when Mai Lee make breakfast. Put on hat and go to bank. Not see again.”

“You must have heard something,” Lark insisted, but carefully, thinking of Mai Lee’s celebrated ability to gather all the local news and bring it straight home to Mrs. Porter. “Surely people talked, and if there was a funeral—”

“No funeral,” Mai Lee said. “No talk. Just gone.”

“But surely—”

“Just
gone,
” Mai Lee repeated firmly.

Downstairs they found Gideon standing by the door, wearing his hat and coat, Pardner waiting patiently at his side.

“If you don’t need me to go for someone,” Gideon said, “Pardner and I had better be on our way.” His chest swelled slightly. “With Rowdy gone, I figure I ought to make his rounds for him.”

Lark’s heartbeat quickened slightly at the prospect of Gideon patrolling the streets of Stone Creek, alone and unarmed. It was, after all, Saturday night, and there was a dance at the Cattleman’s Hall. Even though she’d only lived in the community a short while, she knew cowboys came from outlying ranches to attend these soirees, and they sometimes visited one or more of the town’s saloons beforehand.

She scrambled for an excuse, some words to persuade him to stay, but nothing came to her, beyond asking him to fetch Hon Sing back from Jolene Bell’s place to look in on Mrs. Porter and Lydia.

He’d guess what she was doing and, besides, Hon Sing might get into trouble if he was called away from his work.

“Be careful, Gideon,” Lark said.

He smiled. Nodded. “Obliged for the fine supper and the cake,” he said. And then he opened the door and went out, Pardner hesitating to look back at Lark, then turning to follow.

Lark immediately grabbed her everyday cloak from its place on the row of pegs near the door, swung it around her shoulders.

“Where you go?” Mai Lee asked, right away, and with a note of alarmed suspicion in her voice. “It dark. Dance tonight. Maybe trouble.”

Lark was already tying the cloak’s ribbon laces under her chin. “I need a little fresh air,” she said, and hastened out, taking care not to slip on the icy back steps.

Gideon and Pardner were just ahead, on the sidewalk, visible in the glow of a streetlamp.

Lark was careful to move quietly, hoping not to attract Gideon’s attention. Pardner turned once, though, and started toward her at a trot.

Lark ducked into the shadows of a neighbor’s lilac bush.

Gideon whistled, and Pardner, after a brief hesitation, obeyed his summons and went on.

The saloons along Center Street were virtually deserted and, after looking that way, Gideon changed directions. Headed for the Cattleman’s Hall, which was behind Stone Creek’s only bank, in the middle of a weedy lot.

Horses surrounded it, in a great, shadowy horde, and the lively strains of a fiddle and a washboard spilled out the open doors of the hall, along with laughter and the stomping of feet.

Gideon proceeded toward the hall.

Lark followed, staying close to the clapboard wall of the bank. She ought to just go home, she told herself. Look after Lydia and Mrs. Porter and perhaps mend her torn bloomers. Instead, she kept going, filled with a mysterious urgency that literally drove her on.

The squeal of a horse made her draw in a sharp breath. At first she thought the animal was hurt, but then she saw it rearing onto its hind legs, its forelegs pawing at the air, monstrously big in the moonlight and the glow of the lanterns inside the hall. The rider on its back was no more than an outline of a human form.

Gideon sprinted toward the hall.

Lark ran after him, no longer caring if he saw her.

The rider ducked his head and rode through the doorway at a gallop.

Pardner began to bark, and streaked after Gideon, who was running full-out now.

Screams and shouts rang from inside the Cattleman’s Hall.

Gideon disappeared through the opening.

Lark ran faster, breathless now. She reached the doorway just in time to see several men trying to catch hold of the horse’s bridle—the animal was terrified, its eyes rolling, its nostrils flared as it kicked and skidded on the dance floor. The rider on its back, obviously drunk, threw back his head and let out a bellowing whoop.

Gideon managed to grasp one of the reins, tried to soothe the horse with his free hand.

The rider swung the horse around, meaning to see Gideon trampled, but he moved swiftly, slipping under the animal’s lathered neck to the other side.

“Willie!” a man yelled. “You get down off that horse before somebody gets killed!”

Lark put a hand to her mouth, frozen in the doorway, trying to see Gideon, but he was behind the horse now, and men were converging cautiously from all sides of the room.

The horse began to kick hard with its hind legs, and everyone jumped back, and in the confusion of all that, the rider called Willie must have drawn his gun. A shot exploded in the breath-hot, fear-heavy room.

Several women shrieked, and Lark would wonder, ever after, if she’d been one of them.

Willie spurred the horse into a run, and Lark barely got out of the way before they shot through the doorway.

And there was Gideon, lying on the floor, with blood pooling through his coat, wounded in the left shoulder. Pardner slinked close and bared his teeth, snarling ferociously at anyone who tried to approach.

Lark hurried toward them.

Pardner whimpered when she landed on her knees beside Gideon, cupping his pale, blood-spattered face in both hands.

“Gideon!” she cried. “Gideon!”

He didn’t open his eyes.

She laid her head to his chest, felt it rise and fall against her cheek, heard the faint, thready beat of his heart.

She looked up. Pardner was pressed up close to Gideon’s side, vicious in his intent to protect the boy from further harm. Lark had no doubt that, mild-mannered as he usually was, that dog could have torn out someone’s throat.

“Get Hon Sing,” Lark ordered, stunned by the calm, reasonable sound of her own voice. On the inside she was screaming hysterically.

“That Chinaman over to Jolene’s?” a man asked, from the blur surrounding the little circle of floor that stayed open around Lark, Gideon and Pardner.