Shotgun Bride (24 page)

“H
ow’s my little sister?” Cree asked.

Mandy was about to fling off the covers and run to her brother when she realized she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. She watched, barely trusting her eyes, as he crossed the room and sat down in the chair where she and Kade had made love so very long ago. “What are you doing here?” she asked, having regained some presence of mind. “How’s Mama?”

“One question at a time,” Cree scolded, and his grin flashed white as a translucent moon against a dark sky. The lantern had either burned itself out or Kade had extinguished it before leaving the room. “I’m here because you are, mainly. And Ma is—well, she’s puny, but she’s holding on.”

Mandy cast a furtive glance at the door. She was sure Kade would have locked it on his way out. She was also sure her new husband wouldn’t be pleased if he came back and found an uninvited guest in their room, even if that guest
was
her half brother. “How did you get in here?” she asked.

Cree sighed good-naturedly. “Another question.” He waggled the deft fingers of one gloved hand. “Picked the lock.”

Mandy was glad to see Cree, more than glad, but she was somewhat uneasy, too. She told herself it was because of Gig, who’d kill him if he got the chance and never turn a hair over it.

“Are you insane?” she whispered. “Gig’s right down the street, in the jailhouse, and if he finds out you’re here, he’ll tear the bars out with his bare hands and come after you for sure!”

Cree’s handsome face hardened. He wore his gleaming black hair long, and his cheekbones were high and sharp in the poor light straying in from the street. “I’m not worried about Curry. You oughtn’t to be, either.”

“He means to kill you!”

Cree shrugged. “He’s in jail. Not that that isn’t a piss-poor setup over there. I could get out in five minutes.”

“You might get
in
in less time than that, if you’re not careful.” Keeping herself covered with the blankets, Mandy bent over the side of the bed and groped until she’d snagged her dress, bloomers, and camisole. Still beneath the covers, she wriggled into them. “I can’t believe you’d come here, bold as can be, if you knew Gig and his gang were around.”

“I knew, all right,” Cree said, and Mandy was certain he was wearing a smug expression even before she made her way to the bureau, struck a match, and lit the lantern, so she could see his face clearly.

She faced him, her hands on her hips. “No more stalling. I want to know more about Mama.”

Cree hoisted himself to his feet and strolled over to the window, spurs jangling, to hold the curtain aside and look out. It wouldn’t tell him much, Mandy reflected distractedly, since the main street was on the other side of the building. “She’s in a bad way,” he said, without turning around.

“Where
is she?” Mandy demanded. A part of her was listening for Kade’s footsteps in the hall, hoping he’d come back, while another was willing him to stay away. “Gig said she was in a hospital, but I don’t believe him. He couldn’t spend the money.”

“She’s in a place outside of Phoenix,” Cree said, turning from the window at last. “A rancher and his wife took her in. After I gave them a pouch full of Mexican silver, that is.”

Mandy closed her eyes. “Tell me they’re good people,” she pleaded.

“Good as any,” Cree said with another shrug. “I told them I’d be back to look in on her regular-like, and that I expected to find her comfortable and in good spirits.”

It came then, the sound she’d both awaited and dreaded; Kade was walking along the corridor, putting his key in the lock.

Quick as only he could be, Cree reached the window and slipped through the opening as if he were boneless, with no more substance than smoke. Standing there, staring at empty space, Mandy could almost believe that she’d never seen him at all, that she’d dreamed the whole encounter.

Kade stepped into the room and shook his head, smiling a little, when he saw that she was up and dressed. Sunrise was still several hours away.

He took off his hat, tossed it into the chair where Cree had been lounging only moments before, and looked around. For the space of a heartbeat, it seemed as if he’d picked up the other man’s scent, the way a wild creature guarding its territory might do.

“Where have you been?” Mandy asked, because for reasons she didn’t fully understand, she didn’t want to tell Kade about Cree’s visit. Not yet, anyway.

He raised one eyebrow. “Over at the jailhouse. I figured I ought to spell Jeb and the soldiers for a while.” He took in her clothing again, and Mandy, looking down, realized she’d misbuttoned the dress. “Were you planning to go someplace?”

It was a hell of a time to realize that she couldn’t lie to Kade, and an even worse one to admit she’d just had a visit from her brother. “No,” she said, and didn’t explain further.

He sighed, kicked off his boots one by one, and started to unfasten his shirt. “I need some sleep. Lord knows, it’ll be light out soon enough.”

Mandy watched, transfixed, as her husband stripped to the skin and got into bed. He lay propped on the pillows, his hands clasped behind his head, frowning at Mandy as though she were a puzzle to him.

“What’s the matter?” he asked when she didn’t volunteer anything.

She shook her head, raised slightly unsteady hands to the buttons of her dress. “I was just fretting about my mama.” Dixie was sick, and Cree had left her in the keeping of strangers and paid for her care with money he’d likely stolen. Suppose the law was on his trail?

“Tell me about her,” Kade said, watching as she came to the side of the bed, shed her dress, and crawled in beside him, still wearing her bloomers and camisole.

She settled in as best she could, dismayed to discover that she was near tears. She was tempted to tell him about Cree instead, but again some instinct stopped her. “Her name’s Dixie. She’s pretty, and she’s got a gentle spirit,” she said, slowly and softly, feeling calmer now that Kade was near. “She used to sing all the time, except when things were bad between her and Gig. She’s sickly now.”

Kade slid an arm beneath Mandy’s shoulders and drew her closer. “I reckon you must want to see her pretty bad.

She nodded, blinking back tears.

“When this is over, I’ll take you to her.”

Mandy raised herself on one elbow. “I could go on my own.”

“No,” Kade said flatly. “It wouldn’t be safe.”

“Are you going to be a bossy husband, Kade McKettrick?” she asked, relaxing into his shoulder. Just then, it seemed the only safe place in the world.

He laughed. “Afraid so.” And then he turned onto his side and kissed Mandy, all the while working the buttons of her camisole, and soon there was no room in her head for thoughts of anyone or anything but him.

I
t seemed fitting to Kade that the day of John Lewis’s funeral dawned bitterly cold. A harsh, sharp-edged wind blew out of the north, and the trees, just beginning to sprout spring foliage, bent in the face of it.

The service was held at two o’clock that afternoon, and half the town crowded into the little church to hear Father Herrera preach over John’s casket. Becky sat, composed and oddly serene, in the front row, with a fragile but blooming Emmeline at her side, listening intently, as though she were absorbing the words through her skin, storing every one away in the innermost chambers of her heart.

Mandy held Kade’s hand tightly, squeezing it every once in a while, and he was thankful for her presence. Angus sat next to him, and he was grateful for that, too.

Kade, Rafe, and Jeb were all pallbearers, as were Holt and Angus and Doc Boylen. When all there was to say had been said, the six of them carried the pine box slowly down the aisle and out onto the street, and the wind stole Kade’s hat right off his head, sent it rolling like a wagon wheel for Harry to chase down and bring back.

The cemetery was at the edge of town, a fair distance away, but the coffin felt light, as though it were empty. Underneath the branches of a stately oak tree, a grave had been dug, yawning dark in the earth.

Kade bit his lower lip, remembering another funeral, as he was sure his brothers were doing. When their mother had died, they’d still been more boys than men, stunned and bereft. Angus, broken by the loss, had been little or no use, but Kade, for his part, had never blamed him. If anything, he’d been moved by the paradox of a man strong enough to let himself fall apart. A circuit preacher named Henry Woods had offered the prayer that day—it was cold, like this one—and they’d laid Georgia McKettrick to rest high on a ridge overlooking the Triple M.

Angus still went there often, though he didn’t say much about it. Kade, on the other hand, had been back only once, the day after she was buried, when he’d gone alone to say he was sorry. Sorry for not being there to round up those strays; she’d have been safe in her parlor if he had and never fallen into the creek, taken sick, and left them all before they were ready to let her go.

Sorry he hadn’t been a better son.

Now, helping to lower John Lewis’s casket into the ground on a loose net of ropes, his throat constricted to such a point that he could barely breathe. Stealing a glance at his brothers, he saw grim composure in their faces and supposed they were grappling with similar memories, all their own. He knew Jeb and Rafe about as well as one man could know another, but the three of them had never talked much about losing Georgia. Secretly, Kade had always believed that they blamed him, at least in part, just as he blamed himself.

The coffin settled neatly into the deep pit, and the ropes were withdrawn, wound into coils, handed off to other mourners. Becky stepped forward to stand at the foot of John’s final resting place and toss in a handful of blue crocuses, salvaged from between dirty patches of hardened snow. She wore a starched black gown and a veiled hat, and her shoulders were fiercely straight.

“I know you said you’d stay close by,” she said clearly, as if she and John were the only ones there, and he able to mark her words, “but it would be selfish to keep you, so I won’t. You go on now. One day, I’ll catch up with you, but in the meantime, I’ll be all right, so don’t you fret about me, you hear?”

Emmeline, standing next to Rafe, gave a small sob, and Rafe slipped an arm around her waist, drew her against his side. She turned, clinging to him, and wept against his shoulder.

Becky lifted her gaze from the grave, raised her veil, and surveyed the other mourners with calm affection.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you all for coming. There’ll be refreshments served over at the hotel, and you’re all welcome to join us.” She touched her lips to the palm of her elegantly gloved hand, tossed the kiss to John. Her mouth moved, making no sound, and then she turned and walked away, a lonely, stalwart figure.

Emmeline wept all the harder, and Rafe led her back toward the hotel.

“Damn sad thing,” Angus said, watching them go. “I declare, some things in this life are just about beyond bearing.”

Jeb laid a hand to their father’s back as he passed, but said nothing. Mandy looked up into Kade’s face, her eyes full of concern.

“Are you all right?” she asked softly.

It was nearly his undoing, the tenderness in her voice. He almost put his arms around her, buried his face in her soft, fragrant hair, but the place was too public for that, and his feelings were too complex and too raw. He managed a nod. “You go on ahead to the hotel,” he said gruffly. “I’ll be there in a little while.”

“I don’t like leaving you.”

He started to raise a hand, again wanting to touch her hair, pinned up in a ladylike arrangement the way it was, and coming loose, tendril by tendril, in the wind. “I have to say good-bye,” he told her.

She hesitated, then nodded her understanding and went off alone, a little behind the others. He watched her until his vision blurred, then turned back to the grave.

Old Billy and a couple of unemployed cowhands were shoveling raw dirt into the hole, and the sound of it striking the top of John’s casket was as bleak as any Kade had ever heard.

He had no words; with all that he’d read in his life, he’d have thought some would come to the surface now, but his head was empty. His heart, by contrast, was so full and so heavy that he feared his knees might buckle under the weight. He held his hat and remembered, because that was all he could do. He remembered a man who had done his job simply and without complaint, never expecting anything more than his pay in return, a man who’d thrown him in the hoosegow more than once for carousing and, when he was younger, given him lectures through the bars. Told him to take hold, stake out a piece of ground for himself, and make something worthwhile happen.

The recollection of those discourses, John leaning against the edge of his beat-up old desk, arms folded, face earnest, himself sitting on the same cot where he’d slept so often of late, sometimes rebellious, sometimes ashamed, brought a faint smile to hover just back of his mouth, not quite ready to come through.

“Good-bye, John,” he said finally, his hat in his hands. “And thanks.”