Beautiful Bad Man (22 page)

“You know your pa’s dead?”

The girl nodded, her face taking on the same blank expression as her sister’s.

The sheriff stood for a moment as if unsure, then whacked the side of the wagon with his palm. “Go ahead. Take them and get out of here.”

Cal got out of there.

T
HE ONLY THING
his uncle preached that Cal believed was the certainty of hell. Spending eternity in flames would be worth it if Henry Sutton suffered the same.

The trip back from Fischer made him revise his mental picture of perdition to an eternal wagon trip with a baby, two young girls, and a milk cow.

And a stubborn wife. He couldn’t leave her out.

“Jason and his wife don’t even know they’re coming. They haven’t been married long. Maybe they won’t want three little girls.” She whispered the last.

Cal didn’t whisper. “We haven’t been married long, and I don’t want three little girls.”

“Sssh. Of course we do. Let’s go home first and send word to Jason.”

“No. We’re going to Jason’s, and we’re handing them over.”

“But....”

“It’s what their mother wanted.” There, that ought to end it, he thought with satisfaction.

Not a chance.

“She didn’t know about you. Or me. If she knew, she might have thought we’d be a better choice.”

“I killed their father. You’ve barely promoted me from evil to very bad. Jason is good. He’s as close to a saint as people get. We’re taking them to him.”

“But....”

“Didn’t you promise to obey?”

Hell. A wagon trip with a baby, two young girls, a milk cow, and an angry, not-speaking wife.

From home to Fischer had taken a day and a half. Fischer to the Sutton place took three days. Cal expected the sight to do bad things to his stomach, but nothing looked too familiar. The fencing was new. A few trees had gained a hold along the farm road. The house was no longer white but pale yellow, and the sod buildings were gone as if they had never existed.

A thin young woman with reddish hair opened the door as they approached. She clutched an old Star pistol in shaking hands.

“I’m supposed to shoot this when I see strangers so Jason and Eli know to come, but when I saw a woman and a baby, I — I didn’t.”

Good. Cal didn’t want to see either Jason or Eli. “You don’t need to call them away from their work. I’m Cal Sutton, and this is my wife, Norah. We’ve got Grace Sutton’s girls out in the wagon. She’s dead, and she wanted you to have them.” He handed her the letter.

The woman stared with her mouth open, and Norah pushed past him.

“See? I told you. It’s too much for her. She can’t manage three little girls dropped on her out of the blue.”

To the woman she said, “Don’t let him scare you. That letter does say Grace wanted Jason to have her girls, but they can come with us. You don’t have to feel obliged. We can take them. In fact I’d love to have them.”

He was going to have to push those girls out of the wagon, and maybe he’d leave Norah here too.

Jason’s wife saved him by recovering. “Grace is gone? That will break Jason’s heart, but her children.... Of course we’ll take them. He frets all the time because Grace won’t leave that man and bring them here.”

Emma Sutton put the pistol on a high shelf, and in minutes she and Norah had the girls in the house, seated at the kitchen table, eating sugar cookies. The baby went into a drawer pulled from a bedroom chest, and Emma started worrying about her husband.

“I’ll just shoot the pistol, and Jason and Eli will come, and you can talk. They’ll be glad to see you.”

No, they wouldn’t. “No, thank you. We need to get home before dark. I’ll talk to Jase another time.” Cal had to all but pick Norah up by the elbows and carry her to the wagon.

Free of the cow, he headed the team for home at a smart trot. Norah was speaking to him again, but that wasn’t a good thing.

“You should be ashamed of yourself. That was rude. Worse than rude. We won’t be home until after dark anyway. Those little girls must feel like unwanted baggage, and Emma must think you’re....”

“Devil’s spawn?”

“Stop saying that like you’re proud of it. Stop saying it at all.”

“Grace wanted Jason to have them. They need someone like him. That house is big enough they won’t be laying on the floor like logs. I killed their father.”

“All right! You’re right! They’re better off somewhere else. Happy?”

He put a hand on her knee and rocked gently. “No. It’s not like I want to make you miserable. I just — do.”

She stayed stiff for a while then relaxed and put her hand over his. “You didn’t do it. I did it to myself. Coveting. We’ll see them again, won’t we?”

“Sure.” It would happen whether he liked it or not, so he might as well agree.

T
HE HOUSE, THE
shed, the corral — nothing showed signs of damage or even any stranger’s presence in the days they’d been gone. Cal’s tight nerves didn’t relax.

Destruction of any of those things would be revenge and retaliation. By the thin light of a new moon, he couldn’t see the fields. If Van Cleve’s men had gathered another herd and driven them over the crops, cloven hooves trampling and tearing the land and the growing plants, it would be more than revenge, it would be destruction of a year’s work and hope, the heart of the farm.

He couldn’t stand it. While Norah fussed around the house, putting things away and deciding what to rustle up for a late supper, Cal took Early for a walk the length and breadth of the land.

At first he held firm to the belief that the darkness concealed damage. Again and again silvery moonlight revealed sturdy young plants reaching for the night sky.

Whether Van Cleve had stayed his hand out of ignorance that the place sat empty or to plan some different kind of harm, Cal didn’t care. The healthy, unharmed plants, the quiet night, and sweet summer air all brought a surge of well being.

Of course letting his guard down also brought the ghosts. Whores laughed and lured. Jake Kepler lied. Men known and unknown cursed and condemned. Henry Sutton joined Abel Whales with assurances of damnation, their zealots’ eyes burning.

Early came from behind, his cold nose against a dangling palm breaking the spell. Cal rounded up the ghosts, threw them in the dark place, and slammed the door shut behind them.

The dark place had no lock. The ghosts would escape again, but not tonight. Tonight there was only Norah, and she’d forgiven him again.

W
ORKING IN THE
garden Caleb had insisted she move close to the creek, Norah admired the ingenious irrigation system he’d dug for her as she did every time she used it. Mabel would change her mind about Caleb if she saw this. Next time the Carburys visited....

As if her thoughts conjured him up, Caleb charged into the yard astride Stonewall, Jeb following loose, and Early bringing up the rear.

“Norah!”

He saw her running toward him, met her halfway, and scooped her up onto the horse as if she weighed nothing. She barely had time to absorb how much it hurt to be belly down across his thighs on a galloping horse before they reached the house. He pushed her off onto her feet, jumped down beside her, and hustled her inside.

“What’s wrong?”

“Early says we’ve got company coming.”

Caleb stood in the doorway with the Winchester, the dog stiff and growling beside him. “Take the Sharps off the wall and lay it on the table. There’s field glasses in a pouch on the side of the case. Let me have those.”

She had never touched the big gun before, and it was heavier than she expected, the elkskin case softer. Untying the flap covering the pouch, she pulled the glasses out and handed them to him. The tension melted off his shoulders as he scanned toward the road. “Looks like neighbors. I’ll catch the horses and put them up.”

He gave her the glasses back, and Norah looked for herself. Sure enough. She saw Archie Carbury and several other men she recognized. Some rode, some drove farm wagons. She put the glasses back in the case and returned the Sharps to its place on the wall, but she noticed Caleb kept the Winchester with him when he went for the horses.

Norah carried the water bucket and dipper outside. The June day was hot, and some of those men had come a distance. Like Jason Sutton.

She waited beside Caleb until the whole lot of them had pulled up in the yard and dismounted or climbed down from wagon seats. Archie took it on himself to introduce the others to Caleb.

“And you know Jason,” he finished.

Caleb nodded and said nothing.

“We’re here because word’s out about what you did out here. One of Van Cleve’s men quit and did some talking in town. They’ve pulled that trick with the cattle three years running, but this year none of us has seen a single cow. The fella who quit said the regular hands refused to try it again. Finding that body hanging the way you left it spooked them. They figure the men drawing fighting pay can earn it.”

Norah’s head whipped from Archie to Caleb. With an effort, she choked back the question forming on her lips.

“This quitter claims he saw me do something with a body?” Caleb said.

Archie grinned. “No one saw you do anything, but for some reason they think it was you, not hobgoblins.” The grin faded. “He’s offered a bounty on you, a thousand dollars for proof you’re dead. We came to see how we can help.”

“Telling me about it instead of trying to collect is a good start.”

“Nobody here wants to collect or see anyone else do it either. If you can beat him, or fight him to a standstill, we all win, so how can we help?”

Norah listened to them bandy it around for a while. Aside from passing on warnings and information, the remaining settlers couldn’t really help. If Caleb had plans, she knew she’d be lucky if he shared them with her much less strangers.

For once she agreed with his attitude. While Archie and a few others exuded genuine goodwill, some of the men stayed quiet, their reservations plain on their faces.

The settlers began to get back on their horses and in their wagons. Jason Sutton didn’t leave with the others. He shifted from one foot to the other a few times, then approached Caleb.

At first Norah saw no physical similarity between the cousins. Dark-haired and swarthy, Jason was almost as tall as Caleb, but he looked thin and bony rather than lean and muscled. On second thought, maybe he would be as tall if he stood straight instead of stooping like that.

A nice-looking man, nothing distinguished him the way the hawkish nose and prominent, stubborn jawline did Caleb. Yet when Jason and Caleb stood close, she saw the family resemblance in the wary dark eyes, the cheekbones below them and winged brows over them.

In spite of the tension between the men, she couldn’t help asking, “How are the girls? I think of them all the time and hope they’re recovering and doing well.”

“They think of you often too,” Jason said somberly. “They talk about how Cousin Norah came and got them. Judith especially. They’d like to see you again.”

“Caleb is the one they should be grateful to,” she said. “When they’re older, they’ll understand that.”

Jason nodded, and no one said anything, the silence uncomfortable.

“I just remembered. I left the sluice gate open and creek water running into the garden,” Norah said. “It was nice to meet you, Jason. I hope we can visit soon.”

As she walked away, she heard Jason say, “I wanted to believe you made it, but I never did until I heard you were back.”

If Caleb answered she didn’t hear. From the distance of the garden she watched the two men, tense and not saying much. When Jason rode away, Caleb never looked toward her. He pulled the horses back out of the corral and returned to the fields.

If he didn’t want to talk about Jason, she wouldn’t try to pry it out of him. She was going to know about the body before bedtime, though. And the bounty. What was he going to do about the bounty?

J
ASON LOOKED LIKE
hell. Like some kind of beaten down farmer trying to eke out a living on land that was all rocks. Cal didn’t know why that surprised him. How had he expected anyone who lived his entire life under Henry Sutton’s thumb to look?

Dead. That’s how. Jason only looked half dead so he’d managed pretty well. Maybe he’d even bounced back some since the old man died.

Seeing him again, listening to him go on about his thoughts over the years, even forcing out an expression of gratitude didn’t change Cal’s mixed feelings. Just as well Jason lived far enough to the north there wouldn’t be much of that. Some things when they were done, were done. Letting sleeping dogs lie and all that.

There were a couple of other things those helpful neighbors had slung around he wished they’d left prone. He should have made Norah stay in the house somehow. She’d be after him about the body until he told her, and the bounty.... He couldn’t come up with any ideas to deal with that except a bullet between Van Cleve’s eyes, and that meant finding a way to do it so Archie’s hobgoblins would get the blame.

He washed up and watched Norah bustling around, putting supper on the table. She’d not only cleaned up but redone her hair and put on his favorite of the new summer dresses she’d made.

So much for his expectation that she’d be banging around, angry and demanding to know about the body. She was focused on the bounty, upset and fretting. He wanted to smooth that worried look away, and what he was going to do was make it worse.

She waited until the food was on the table. Rabbit stew. Very good stew. He wondered how much he’d get down before losing his appetite.

“You weren’t going to tell me about the body, were you?”

“No.”

“What kind of partner is that?”

She surprised him. He met the blue eyes for the first time since he’d sat down, saw only determination. “Not a good one, I suppose. I didn’t want you going on about how we killed someone.”

“We did.”

“We made what they were doing dangerous. We didn’t force them to do it. Van Cleve didn’t force them to do it. They can quit. One of them did.”