Shotgun Bride (14 page)

S
till pensive some five minutes after parting with Mandy, Kade felt a chill brush past his spirit when he went in to see John Lewis in his room at the hotel. Though he was sitting up in a chair by the window, the man’s chest seemed to have collapsed, his lips were blue, and his cheekbones stood out beneath gray flesh. Nonetheless, he troubled himself to smile by way of a greeting.

“Hello, Kade,” he said. “I hear you rounded yourself up an outlaw. Not sure I approve of the way you went about it, though. That girl could have been hurt.”

Kade set his hat aside on the dresser, approached John, and took the other chair. “He’s not talking. Except to complain about the food, of course.”

Lewis gave a raspy chuckle, shook his gaunt head. His hair seemed thinner and grayer than before, like his skin. “The food’s never been much,” he allowed. “It’s better here at the hotel, but Doc tells me the Sussexes would go under without the money Mamie gets from the town treasury for feeding prisoners, so I didn’t give the business over to Becky.”

The mention of the widow Sussex reminded Kade of the boy. “There’s another badge over at the office,” he said. “I’d like to pin it on young Harry. He’s been a help.”

“Good idea. Might give the lad something to be proud of. Those kids have been running wild ever since they came to Indian Rock, but I’ve got some regard for them, all the same.” John paused, struggled visibly for his breath. “It’ll be a good thing when that schoolhouse opens up. Give those little rascals someplace to go when their ma shoos them off, in the morning, at least.”

Kade sighed. He didn’t know much about the Sussexes, or their situation, mainly because he’d never paid them any mind. It seemed like an oversight of some significance, now that he was living in town. “What happened to her man?” he asked. “Mamie Sussex’s, I mean.”

John rearranged his covers, and even that much effort appeared to wear him out. Kade had made up his mind before he came upstairs not to stay more than a few minutes; now, even that seemed too long. “I’m not sure there ever was one in particular,” the marshal said. “Mamie showed up one day, a couple of years back, with those screaming yahoos of hers loaded into the back of a broken-down wagon, and talked the banker into selling her that place on a hope and a promise.”

“How do they live?” Kade asked, frowning. “Seemslike most folks stay over at the hotel, if they need lodging.” Except, of course, for the brides. He made a mental note to go over and square up the bill while he still had the money. The way things were going on the Triple M, he’d be lucky not to end up as a saddle bum; he sure wasn’t getting rich in the lawman business.

John gave him a pointed look. “Mamie sells her favors,” he said quietly.

Kade frowned. “Isn’t that against the law?”

“There are times when a man might just as well look the other way.”

Kade wasn’t much for shutting his eyes to things, but he respected John Lewis more than any other man alive, except for his own pa, and if that was his policy, there must be some good in it. He got to his feet. “Is there anything I can do for you, John?” he asked, turning his hat in his hands.

The words seemed to echo in the room, bouncing off the walls, and the long, thoughtful silence from John only exaggerated the effect. “I’ve got a daughter, Kade,” he said. “Last I heard, she was down in Tombstone, teaching school. I wonder if you’d send for her, as a favor to me.”

Kade paused in mangling his hat. It was natural for a man to want to see his child, he supposed, but something in the way John had made the request made things grind inside him and raised the small hairs on the back of his neck. “Sure,” he said hoarsely.

“I reckon I could have asked Becky to do it, but we haven’t talked about Chloe much, and I’m not sure I have the strength to take up the subject with her at this late date. Not in earnest, anyhow.”

Kade closed his eyes for a moment. “Just tell me where to reach her. I’ll take care of the rest.”

John took a scrap of paper he’d been using to mark his place in a book and picked up a pencil stub from the table beside his chair. He wrote out his daughter’s name and address and extended the paper to Kade. His gaze was painfully direct. “Tell her she ought to hurry.”

“John—”

“Send a telegram,” John said gravely. “A letter will take too long.” With that, he turned his head away and stared out the window, and Kade knew the conversation, and maybe a whole lot more besides, was over.

He met Becky on the stairway, carrying a tray of food for John, and she gave him a wobbly smile.

“It means a lot to him, your visiting,” she said quietly. “Asking his advice about marshaling and the like.”

Kade opened his mouth, closed it again. There was nothing to say, and he was his father’s son; wasting words was like wasting cash money, or water, both of which were always at a premium in the high country.

“I know,” Becky said, her eyes full of bravery and sorrow. “I know.”

He managed a nod. “What will you do?” he asked, after a long time.

Tears glittered along her dark lashes. “T he only thing I can do. Go on.”

He considered that, nodded again, and went on down the stairs.

There was no sign of Mandy, or of Emmeline, when he passed through the lobby, and that was a disappointment, because just laying eyes on either one of them would have been a comfort just then.

He went straight from the hotel to the telegraph office, where he dispatched a wire to Miss Chloe Wakefield of Tombstone.

“A
dance?”
Emmeline said, exchanging glances with Mandy before turning her attention back to her mother. “You can’t be serious. John is—”

Becky Harding-Fairmont lifted her chin. She was a small woman, but in that moment, she seemed taller than the potted palm over by the main stairway. Her eyes glittered and pink fire glowed in her cheeks. “We need some music in this place,” she said purposefully. “Anyway, it was John’s idea. He says we’re gloomy as undertakers, the whole bunch of us, and he’s sick of our moping.”

Mandy looked away, blinking rapidly until she was sure she wouldn’t break right down and cry. She hadn’t known John Lewis long, but he was a rare man, and his love for Becky was as deep and mysterious as an ocean.

Emmeline got up from her chair and crossed the room to lay a hand on Becky’s shoulder. “Very well, then. If a dance is what’s wanted, there will be one.”

Becky’s lower lip wobbled. “Thank you. I’m aiming for Saturday night. That gives us a few days to get ready.”

Emmeline nodded. Then, on impulse, she took Becky into her arms and hugged her, hard. The sight made Mandy yearn for her own mama, wherever she was. Maybe, by now, Dixie had passed away. She’d been going downhill the last time Mandy had seen her, thin and coughing herself into exhaustion, a false flush of health shining beneath her transparent skin.

Becky was the first to break away. She sniffled and smoothed her skirts. “Amanda Rose, you take a plate of supper over to Kade. He shouldn’t have to eat Mamie Sussex’s cooking on top of his other trials and tribulations.”

Mandy wouldn’t have refused Becky’s request for anything, especially under the circumstances, though she was in no rush to see Gig Curry again, even if he
was
safely behind bars. The prospect of a few minutes passed in Kade McKettrick’s company had its appeal, too. Being around him fed something hungry inside her, even though he usually managed to make her mad.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, trying not to sound too eager. She reminded herself that she was planning to leave one day soon, now that she had Sissy and Gig was behind bars, but it didn’t dampen her good cheer.

There was fried chicken downstairs in the kitchen, and a lot of it. The supper trade in the hotel dining room had been booming since the arrival of Holt Cavanagh’s herd; the drovers were a hungry lot, and they had money to spend, having collected their pay at the end of the trail drive.

Mandy got a heavy china plate from the shelf, loaded it with vittles, ignoring accusatory looks from the Chinese cook, covered the whole mess with an upended pie plate, and set out resolutely for the jailhouse.

Lanterns were burning inside, and Kade was playing checkers with the grubby ruffian of a boy he’d befriended. The child, no more than ten years old, seemed enthralled by the game. A bruise marked his right cheek, Mandy noticed, experience having given her an eye for such things, and young Harry had been weeping, unless she missed her guess.

She’d almost forgotten about Gig, so busy were her thoughts, and when he spoke, she nearly dropped Kade’s dinner right on the floor.

“Well, Mandy girl,” Curry called, as if no hard words had ever passed between them, let alone hard blows, “thank heaven you’re here. This stuff that boardinghouse whore brought over ain’t fit to slop a pig.”

Harry bolted to his feet, visibly scalded by the insult to his mother, his small, scabby fists clenched, and Kade put a hand to his shoulder, wordlessly pressing him back into his seat.

Mandy, who had frozen in her footsteps for a moment, thawed out and got herself moving again. She set the plate down on the corner of Kade’s desk, still covered by the pie plate, and smiled at Harry.

“Don’t pay Mr. Curry any mind,” she said. “He’s a coward and a thief, and his opinions matter about as much, in the scheme of things, as a pile of buffalo chips.”

Harry was still flushed, but he seemed to simmer down a little.

Kade looked up at Mandy, smiled slightly, then turned his attention to the food she’d brought. “Smells like fried chicken,” he said.

“The best pieces,” Mandy confirmed.

Gig started rattling the bars, and Harry’s gaze traveled to the meal Kade was just unveiling.

“I want some of that grub!” Gig bellowed, and nobody paid him any mind.

“I’ll share with my deputy,” Kade said to Mandy. “Looks like there’s plenty.”

Something tipped over somewhere in Mandy’s heart and spilled, warm, down the walls. She was glad she hadn’t stinted on filling that plate, even though the cook had fairly glared the hide right off her when she’d done it.

Gig hurled his own supper, a bowl of something, against the wall. “What am
I
supposed to do?”

Kade, having fetched another plate, was busy dividing the spoils. He handed the first one to Harry, who fairly dived to grab it. “Starve, I reckon,” Kade answered, without sparing Gig so much as a glance.

“You think this is funny, Amanda Rose?” Curry demanded. “I see that snippy little smile on your face, don’t you think I don’t! You wait till I get out of here—you won’t have much to smile about then.”

“If you don’t want me to lasso you and drag you two miles behind my horse,” Kade warned idly, still not looking at Gig, “you’ll shut your worthless mouth.”

“You’re gonna pay for the way you treat me, Marshal. Just like Amanda Rose is gonna pay.”

“Where’s my rope?” Kade asked, with his mouth full of fried chicken.

Gig took to rattling the bars again, setting up a fearsome clamor.

Kade jumped three of Harry’s checker pieces between bites of food, and crowned his own man king.

“You want to know who I work for, Marshal Smart-ass?” Gig howled. “You been asking me over and over. Well, now I’m ready to tell you.”

Mandy saw Kade’s shoulders tense slightly under his cotton shirt, but she doubted that Gig knew he’d gotten a rise out of him.

“I’ll tell you who hired me,” Gig went on, fairly spitting, he was so mad. Mandy was briefly afraid he might actually wrench those iron bars right out of the wall and come after them like a bull bison with its backside ablaze. She’d seen his rages before and knew how strong he was when his temper was up. “Your brother, that’s who!”

K
ade’s chair creaked ominously as he turned slowly around to face the prisoner. Harry’s eyes were enormous, and Mandy felt rooted to the floor. She’d learned to read Gig well over the years, by necessity, and she knew when he was blowing hot air. This was not one of those times.

“Holt Cavanagh hired me, that’s who,” Gig sputtered. “He wants to put your pa and his whole outfit out of business, whatever way he can. He’ll do it, too. Serve you all right, runnin’ roughshod over everybody the way you do.”

Kade rose slowly to his feet, overturning the checkerboard and sending the wooden pieces clicking to the plank floor. He didn’t seem to notice.

Gig must not have liked what he saw in Kade’s face, for he backed away from the bars, just out of reach. His eyes flashed with an ugly hatred, though, and he didn’t seem to know that he ought to hold his tongue. “You get blamed for something you didn’t do, nobody’s gonna lose any sleep over it. Everyone knows how you McKettricks feel about squatters!”

“You burned the Fee homestead?” The words were toneless, but Mandy knew an ocean of hot blood was behind them, fixing to break through and boil the hide off everybody present.

“What if I did? You didn’t want them there in the first place!”

“You stupid bastard. You could have killed those people!”

Gig was winding down by then, coming to his senses, looking sheepish in a recalcitrant sort of way. “Mind you, I wasn’t precisely confessing to nothing—”

“Did Cavanagh tell you to burn them out?”

Gig’s frustration took an upturn. “What’s the use of my telling you if he did? He’ll deny it, and leave me twisting in the wind. I was doing his dirty work, that’s all.”

Kade closed his eyes for a moment; Mandy and Harry both watched him, waiting, braced for some kind of eruption. Finally, he spoke, low and quiet and dangerously calm. “What about those dead soldiers, and the stolen gold?”

“I didn’t have nothing to do with that!”

Kade turned, crossed the room, took his gun belt down from its peg, and fastened it on. The cold, murderous rage in his face frightened Mandy more than anything Gig could have said or done.

She hurried over to catch hold of his arm. “Don’t be a fool, Kade. Gig wants you to leave him unguarded, that’s what this is about. If he can get you chasing after Holt, those no-good friends of his might come and break him out of here. And if he can turn you against Holt Cavanagh, all the better.”

Kade shook her off, and the brusqueness of the action made her feel as if she’d been slapped. “Harry,” he said, his voice as flat and lifeless as a snake’s eyes, “go home and stay there.”

“I can’t do that, Marshal!” Harry protested, going pale and casting a desperate glance at Mandy, as if seeking her help. “There’s a man there with Ma. He’s mean. I done already told you that, and you said I could stay.”

Kade let out his breath, laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “That’s right,” he said, with gruff gentleness. All the while he talked, he was looking holes into Gig’s worthless hide. “I remember now. You go on over to the Bloody Basin and ask for Jeb McKettrick, then. Tell him I need a hand with something.”

“What if he ain’t there?” Harry wanted to know. He was already halfway to the door. Mandy reckoned the boy would have gone to hell if he’d been asked, anywhere but home. She’d felt the same way herself often enough as a child, so she could empathize.

“There’ll be somebody from the Triple M,” Kade said. “I’d prefer one of my brothers, but right now, I’m not too choosy. I need somebody to look after things here at the jailhouse for a while.”

Harry nodded and raced out.

Gig laughed, a familiar sound that brought back fearsome memories for Mandy. “Well, now, Marshal,” he said in the insolent drawl she had heard so many times before when he thought he’d gotten himself the upper hand. “I reckon I got your attention this time, didn’t I?”

“I believe I told you to shut up,” Kade answered, and at his tone, Gig wisely backed up another step. “Unless you’ve got something to say about the robbery and the murder of those soldiers, I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”

Mandy went over to the wall and took down John Lewis’s rifle. She cocked it, slid a shell into the chamber, and stood ready for anything.

Kade was staring at her when she turned her attention his way. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked in a lethal undertone.

It took Mandy a moment to realize what he was thinking, that she’d take Gig’s part against him, and when she did, she was mad enough to spit. How could he believe such a thing of her?

Gig apparently misunderstood, too. “Go ahead, Mandy girl,” he said, wheedling. “Shoot him, and get your old stepdaddy out of this hole. We’ll let bygones be bygones if you do, I promise you that.”

Mandy aimed the rifle an inch to the left of Gig’s head and fired, taking out a chunk of the log wall behind him. He leaped to one side with a yelp of fury and terror. “What the—?”

“I’d sooner let the devil out of hell as turn you loose,” she vowed. Recollections came at her like birds startled from a hidden roost: Gig, slapping her mother until she sank to the floor, sobbing and bruised. Cree, no older than eleven or twelve, going after him with a butcher knife, and taking a savage beating for his trouble. Herself, hiding on the floor of a wardrobe in some flea-ridden rooming house, making herself small, with both hands clasped over the top of her head. The remembered terror surged into her mouth, sour as vinegar.

“Put the rifle down, Mandy,” Kade said reasonably. He sounded weary, as if he’d traveled a long, hard way to get to where he was. “You’re liable to hurt yourself.”

Her face felt as hot as a stove lid on a January morning, but slowly, she lowered the rifle.

“I’m sorry for misjudging you,” Kade said.

She looked away from him and would not look back. She wanted to tell him so many things, but he’d never understand what it had been like for her, growing up the way he had as the son of a rich rancher, living in that fancy house, with folks to take his part and books to read, food he didn’t have to steal and clothes that came from a real store instead of a charity box in some mission. And she didn’t want his pity, wouldn’t be able to endure it.

He crossed the room, took the rifle gently from her hands. “Mandy—”

The door crashed open, and Jeb and Rafe burst in, pistols drawn.

“What the devil happened here?” Rafe demanded, when he saw that everybody was still standing up and breathing. “We heard a shot!”

Kade grinned, but something hollow was in his eyes. “Mandy took a pop at the prisoner. Too bad she missed.”

“I
didn’t
miss,” Mandy insisted, even as she cursed herself for being a stiff-necked fool for needing to clarify the point. Her chest swelled with the breath she drew. “I could split a gnat’s wing at a hundred feet, Kade McKettrick, and don’t you forget it.”

Jeb slid his .45 back into its holster and laughed. “I’ll be damned. The little nun isn’t just a horse racer, she’s a regular Annie Oakley. Will you marry me, Sister Mandy?”

Kade didn’t look at his brothers; he was still watching Mandy as if she were a set of numbers that wouldn’t add up. “Is Holt in town?” he asked, addressing Rafe and Jeb.

“He’s over at the Bloody Basin,” Rafe answered, clearly confused. “I just lost twenty dollars to him in a game of poker.”

Kade set Mandy free of his probing gaze at last, crossed the room, and took his hat from the peg. “Stay here till I get back,” he said to both Rafe and Jeb, with a nod in Gig’s direction. “If that jackass tries anything, nail him.”

“Now wait just one dad-blamed minute!” Rafe growled. He was used to giving orders, not taking them, and Kade’s command clearly didn’t set well with him. “You can’t just go waltzing out of here looking for Cavanagh without one damn word of explanation!”

“Apparently,” Jeb observed dryly, when the door slammed behind Kade a moment later, “he can.”

Rafe turned his hot gaze on Mandy. “Explain!” he demanded, so sharply that she jumped.

The effrontery of it made her mad all over again, and she was still shaken to the core. “You watch how you talk to me, Rafe McKettrick,” she warned. Much as she loved Emmeline, she wasn’t taking any guff off anybody, from this day forward. She’d had her fill.

“Everybody,” Jeb interceded, holding up both hands as if he were Moses about to read from the stone tablets, thus imparting the law to lesser folks. “Calm down.”

Rafe dragged in deep, ragged breaths; his blue eyes bulged, and he looked for all the world like a bull, ready to charge. Gig had retreated to the back of his cell, where he was picking at the splintered wall as if he thought he could dig his way out with a fingernail. Jeb stood watching Mandy with affable interest, his hands resting on those narrow gunslinger’s hips of his.

“I’m listening, Sister Mandy,” Jeb prompted when she didn’t volunteer any information.

It was Harry who answered, Harry, whom they’d all forgotten. He was crouched on the floor, gathering the wooden checker pieces as carefully as if they’d been jewels, spilled from a king’s coffers.

“That feller in the cell,” the boy said, the words coming out of his mouth so fast that they tumbled over each other like stones rolling downhill in a landslide, “he told Kade who he worked for and got him riled up good.”

Mandy held her breath.
Please don’t say any more,
she thought, though she knew it was a forlorn hope.

Jeb and Rafe waited, and the stillness was awful.

“Holt Cavanagh, that’s who,” Harry said, grimly triumphant.

The color drained from Rafe’s face, while Jeb flushed furiously.

“Son of a
bitch!”
Jeb spat.

“I’ll kill the bastard with my bare hands,” Rafe added.

“Hold everything,” Mandy put in hastily, fearing that the both of them would rush out and leave her and Harry alone with Gig. If his friends
were
close by, looking for a chance to break him out of jail, she’d be outgunned for sure, and they wouldn’t let one scrawny little boy get in their way, either. “Curry started all this to make trouble. He’s a bold-faced liar, and that’s his
best
quality.” She took a breath. “He wants the rest of you distracted, at each other’s throats, so he can accomplish some purpose of his own!”

Rafe and Jeb looked at each other.

“You figure Kade’s going to be all right?” Jeb asked Rafe. “There’re a lot of men from the Circle C in that saloon. Somebody might jump him.”

“One of us has to stay here,” Rafe said regretfully, glowering at Gig. He’d done some fancy talking earlier, Gig had, but he didn’t look so sure of himself now. He watched them all, over his shoulder, and went on messing with the hole in the wall, expressionless as a monkey in a cage.

“Only one fair way to decide.” Jeb brought a silver dollar from his coat pocket, held it between two fingers for all to see. “Heads,” he said, and gave the coin a practiced flip before catching it deftly in one palm. He looked at it, grinned, and went for the door. “I win,” he called back.

“Damn the luck,” Rafe muttered with a shake of his head.

Mandy started to follow Jeb, thinking she’d stop by the hotel and fetch her new shotgun before making for the Bloody Basin Saloon. Kade might be marshal, but he was only one man, and she wasn’t going to stand by while he got his brains blown out.

Rafe took an inescapable hold on her arm as she made to slip past him. “Oh, no, you don’t, Sister Mandy. If I have to stay here and cool my heels while my brothers kill each other, so do you.”

Knowing as she did that Rafe’s words could easily be prophetic, Mandy suddenly felt weak. She groped for a chair and sank into it. For a second, she thought she’d be sick.

Harry was putting the checkerboard away, his motions slow and methodical. Like Rafe and Mandy, he was probably trying to keep his mind off what might be going on over at the Bloody Basin.

“Your mama’s sick and dying, Amanda Rose,” Gig said mournfully. “She loves me dearly, you know. She’d want you to do me better than you have been of late, and that’s a fact.”

Mandy felt like crying; she knew Gig was telling a partial truth, the only kind he could manage. Her mother
was
sick and dying in some lonely place, or even already gone. And wherever she was, she
did
care for Gig Curry, God help her. She’d followed him all over the back acre of hell to prove it and dragged her children right along with her.

Rafe went to stand in front of the bars. “Come over here,” he said to Gig, all friendly like, as if he might have changed his mind after all and decided to let him go, with Godspeed and no hard feelings. Gig, bumbling like a blind cellar rat, stepped right up to the door.

In the next instant, he crashed full force into the steel bars. Rafe, who’d grabbed the front of Gig’s shirt in a motion that made lightning look slow by comparison, opened his hand and watched with satisfaction as Gig slid to the floor, out cold.

“That’s enough out of him for a while,” Rafe said, turning to smile at Mandy and the admiring Harry. “How’d you like to get whupped at checkers, boy?”