Jodi Thomas (35 page)

She slipped into the bed, covered herself, then wiggled out of her wet dress. “I would have if I’d had a gun, but the wagon master took all our weapons when he threw us off the wagon train. I guess he figured we’d be dead soon and didn’t want to waste a rifle.”

Her dress hit the floor with a wet plop.

She was good, he thought. Her story became more unbelievable by the second, but she wasn’t backing down. He’d hunted outlaws who were like that, so good at telling lies they made people want to believe them even when proven false.

“What wagon train?” It wouldn’t take him long to trip her up and find the truth.

“The last one to leave Independence for California last summer. They called it the Roland Train with a wagon master by the name of Broken-Hand Harrison. I don’t remember much more. First my husband got the fever a few weeks out, then my baby. They both died while we were moving across Kansas.” A tear rolled down her pale china face. “If Bailee and Lacy hadn’t saved me, I would have died too. I had a fever so bad I didn’t care one way or the other if I woke up every morning.”

“Bailee and Lacy?”

“The two women kicked off the wagon train with me. Broken-Hand thought I had a fever that would spread, so he didn’t want anyone around me, but Bailee let me ride in her wagon.” Her words slowed as she warmed beneath the blankets. “Everyone figured Lacy for a witch just because all the folks she nursed had died, except me. Some said she danced with the moon, but I never saw her do that.”

Sam watched his wife lean her head against the pillow and close her eyes. The sheriff mentioned something about her feeling better since she’d had regular meals, but she looked as fragile as cottonwood seed blowing in the wind.

“What about the one named Bailee?” he said louder than he’d intended.

She jerked as if in the moment while she had paused, she’d fallen asleep. “The wagon master thought Bailee killed someone back east, but she’s a real nice person, even if she does have this habit of clubbing men when she’s angry. Maybe whoever she killed needed killing as bad as Zeb Whitaker did.”

The angel closed her eyes again. Sam watched her grip on the gun relax. He waited a few minutes, then stood and carefully lifted the weapon from her hand and pulled the covers over her shoulder.

For a moment, he thought of returning to the chair. But the empty space beside her invited him.

He spread his blanket atop her and moved to the other side of the bed. When he slipped beneath the covers, he smiled for the first time in a long while.

Come morning, he would probably face the wrath of Sarah for taking up half of her bed. He almost looked forward to the clash. But right now, in the cold dampness of the tiny room with music filtering in from the saloon across the street, he felt almost at peace lying by her side.

Sam turned his head and studied her in the shadows. She was too beautiful to be real. The lady had no idea yet, that she didn’t have a chance of bending him around her finger. No woman ever had, no woman ever would. Within a few days he would let her know how their marriage was going to be. He would set the rules and she’d follow. She’d give him a home to come to, a place to rest between battles, and he’d keep her safe. She’d do his cooking and cleaning, and he’d see that she had enough to eat. What more could either of them want from the other?

Sarah shifted, moving toward his warmth. In sleep she lay her hand atop his heart.

All thought drained from his mind as frail, slender fingers slid through the hair on his chest and then relaxed as though her touch had found a home.

Breathe, he reminded himself. Breathe.

SARAH ANDREWS STRETCHED BENEATH THE LAYERS OF blankets and opened her eyes to sunshine filtered through ragged curtains. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. Shadows dominated the room, except for where one intruding beam of light sliced across the dusty floor to her bed. The air smelled musty and damp, as though the place had been shut away for a time.

She listened as she had all her life. Listened for the day’s approach. “Be still,” she told herself. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound and you might hear dawn tiptoe in.”

Granny Veasey, a neighbor near where Sarah grew up, whispered once that if Sarah sat still long enough, she could hear the changes in the world, the changes in her life. And Sarah tried. She always tried, yet she could never hear them. She sensed change coming, sometimes she swore she almost tasted it, but she never heard anything. Not dawn tiptoeing, or spring yawning, or age lurking.

Granny Veasey was a crazy old fool for believing such things. But, listening became a habit with Sarah, just the same.

She stretched, enjoying the silence. Yesterday had been endless. First, she endured being raffled-off in the sheriff’s lottery. Then a strange man with dark hair and black eyes swept her away, and the sheriff, her friends, even the town melted in the rain.

Sarah glanced around the room, just in case the dark-haired man hid somewhere in the shadowy corners. “No,” she said to herself. “I’m alone. Probably abandoned again.”

It had become a way of life for her. When she had been only a few days old, someone left her on Harriet Rainy’s steps. Sarah imagined her mother had been the one and how she must have held her close one last time before she disappeared. Her mother might have prayed that whoever lived inside the farmhouse would open their hearts to a child, not knowing that Harriet Rainy didn’t have a heart.

Years later, Sarah thought she finally found a place to belong when she married Frank Andrews. A family. The dream of a home of her own. But within a year he succumbed to a fever. Even the baby she delivered shortly before Frank’s death hadn’t stayed with her on this earth. Her tiny daughter left before Sarah had the strength to give her child a name.

A few weeks later, Broken-Hand Harrison deposited her, and two other women, in the middle of the wagon trail to find their way back to civilization. However, after being in Texas for days, Sarah felt sure she was nowhere near finding a civilized world.

Now her new husband, a man named Sam Gatlin, had abandoned her in a shabby hotel room.

It had been raining when they stopped last night, but shed seen what I ittle there was to see of the town. A few stores, a two-story hotel, a saloon and a livery. When she asked the clerk the name of the place, he’d said no one had bothered with a name. The local resident added that the mercantile had once been a trading post for the first cattle drivers and buffalo hunters. Back then everyone called it the Scott’s Stash, but no one thought that was a proper name.

Slipping from the bed, Sarah searched the room. Her husband had taken everything, even the wet dress she’d dropped on the floor beside the bed. Only her tattered, muddy shoes remained.

She didn’t have to be still and listen to life’s changes. They shouted at her this morning. Her situation would have to get better before she could die. She wasn’t about to be buried in her worn petticoat with so many patched holes the hem looked like cheap lace.

“I should just kill myself,” she mumbled old Harriet Rainy’s favorite refrain. But without a gun or knife, Sarah would have to jump out the second floor window and drag herself back upstairs, over and over, before the ten foot fall finally broke her neck.

Last night she should have shot the cowboy who married her while she held his Colt in her hand. What kind of man chooses a wife from a jail cell? He either had something seriously wrong with him, or he was as dumb as kindling. If she had shot him during the storm, folks might have thought it thunder. Maybe she could have escaped with his guns and sold them. Or robbed a bank, assuming she could find one in this town called Used-to-be-called-the-Scott’s -Stash. Now that she found herself on the path to a life of crime, Sarah saw no need to stop.

She tried to remember what Sam Gatlin looked like. Tall, very tall. And strong. He’d carried her as though she were made of straw. And mean, she decided. He definitely had a mean look about him. And eyes so dark they looked black when he watched her. His jaw was square and set. She’d bet a smile never crawled across his face.

Sarah fell back on the bed. She’d married the devil. It was her punishment for tricking Frank Andrews into marrying her when she knew she didn’t love him. He’d been a good man, he deserved more than a wife who cringed every time he touched her. She hadn’t even cried when he died. What kind of heartless woman doesn’t cry when her husband dies?

Sarah shook her head. “Me.” She answered her own question as she continued analyzing her crimes.

“Then I clubbed Zeb Whitaker,” she mumbled. Killing a man, even a worthless one like Whitaker, couldn’t be a good thing to do. Now, her sentence would be spending the rest of her life married to a cold, heartless man who stole her one dress. With her luck, she’d live a long life.

There was no choice for Sarah other than to believe that Harriet Rainy had been right. Maybe she was a worthless nothing who washed up on the porch one night during a storm.

Someone shouted from down the hall.

Sarah listened. A woman swore and ordered a man out of her room. Footsteps suddenly thundered toward Sarah’s door.

She panicked and pulled the covers over her head. Maybe he wouldn’t get into her room. Maybe, if he did, he wouldn’t notice her beneath the covers.

The door creaked open. Someone stomped in.

Sarah tried to be perfectly still. Maybe if she didn’t breathe the intruder would simply go away.

“Mrs. Gatlin?” came a man’s voice that sounded vaguely familiar. “I hope this is the right place and that lump in the bed is my wife. I forgot to look at the room number when I left and guessing which room is not the healthiest game to play around this place.”

Sarah peeked out from under the covers. Sure enough, there he was, the demon she’d married. He didn’t look any less frightening in daylight than he had last night. So big, she could cut him in half and still have two fair-sized husbands.

When she didn’t say a word, he tossed her the bundle he carried.

“Your dress was ruined, so I got you another one.” He watched her closely with his black eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she glared down at the plain brown dress with not even a touch of lace at the collar. It reminded her of old Harriet Rainy’s clothes, simply cut, made of coarse linsey-woolsey. Harriet always combined cotton for the warp yarns in the loom and wool for the weft. Serviceable fabric. Warm. Scratchy. Ugly.

Sarah didn’t want to put it on. Afraid that if she did, she might somehow come an inch closer to sharing old Harriet’s hatred for life.

“They didn’t have much of a selection.” Her new husband waited for her to respond. “It’ll be warm. We need to get going.”

She couldn’t bring herself to touch the material. Somehow, an inch at a time, she’d finally sunk to the bottom. She had nothing, not even her own clothes to wear.

A tear slid down her cheek. She still had her pride. What little belongings she’d gathered from her first marriage had been burned when the people on the wagon train thought Frank was sick with the fever. The dress she’d worn last night was all she owned and it was little more than a rag. But it was better than this.

“Thank you for the offer, but please bring me back my dress. I’ll wash it. My dress will do fine.”

Sam Gatlin raised an eyebrow and looked like he might argue. “I can afford to buy my wife a new dress.”

“Not this one,” Sarah whispered. “I won’t wear this one.” How could she ever tell him about the old woman who raised her? She barely knew his name. She’d never be able to describe memories of running to Harriet Rainy and folding into the skirt of her scratchy dress, only to have the old woman jerk her up by the arm and slap her. “I’ll give you something to cry about,” Harriet would shout. “I’ll show you fear.”

Sarah steadied herself, bracing for a blow. He looked like the kind of man who would beat his wife. If so, she might as well find out right now.

To her surprise, he turned and walked out of the room without another word. Sarah pulled a blanket over her shoulders and ran to the window in time to watch him go into the saloon across the street.

He’s a drunk, my devil husband, she thought. That was plain. What kind of man goes into a place like that when the sun isn’t even high in the sky? Frank Andrews might have bored her to death some days with his talk of farming, but he never drank.

She looked at the dress still spread across the bed. If she put it on now, she could run. Who knew how many miles she could be away before he sobered up enough to notice?

Moving closer to the bed, she stared at the dress. It had been handmade by someone without skill. She was foolish not to put the garment on with the room freezing. But she couldn’t. If she did, she’d disappear.

Curling into a blanket, Sarah sat on the uneven window ledge watching clouds crowd out the sun. Noises from the other rooms drifted around her, but she paid them no mind. She didn’t care what happened in this no-name town.

Sarah drifted to sleep, leaning her head against the rain-cooled windowpane.

She longed for the dreams that took her away as they always had. Dreams of color and light.

A tap sounded on the door, startling her. When she jerked, she almost toppled off the window ledge.

Stumbling, Sarah hurried to the door. “Who is it?” She knew it wasn’t her husband, he would have just turned the knob and entered. That is, if he remembered the room number.

“Let me in, hon,” a female voice whispered from the other side of the door. “It’s Denver Jones. I’m the owner of the saloon across the street.”

Sarah knew no Denver Jones, but she opened the door a few inches. “Yes ...” Sarah managed to say before a huge woman shoved the door wide and hurried in.

“There ain’t no time for introductions.” Denver was large enough to be named after several cities, with hair the color of a harvest moon and eyes rimmed in black paint. “You’ll just have to trust that I’m a friend of your husband’s and you got to get him out of town fast.”