Shotgun Bride (26 page)

M
andy watched, arms folded, as her brother nailed a poster to the clapboard facade of the mercantile. SHOOTING EXPOSITION, it read. FRIDAY AFTERNOON AT FOUR O’CLOCK. FREE TO PUBLIC, COURTESY OF JIM DANDY’S WILD WEST SHOW.

Cree turned his head to smile at her. “What do you think? Better than the one I sent ahead of time, right?” he asked. His smile was ingenuous; this was the mischievous Cree she remembered. She’d been silly, she decided, to be so uneasy. Probably it had been all the dying and sickness that had gotten to her, and nothing to do with her brother at all. Sure, his arrival had been unexpected, but then, Cree had always been a pilgrim of the wind.

“I think you’re a show-off,” she said.

He laughed, approached her, touched her hair with one gloved hand. “You’re just jealous. The truth is, Mrs. McKettrick, that you wouldn’t mind doing a little showing off yourself.” He shook a finger under her nose. “I heard about that horse race. Didn’t anybody ever tell you women are supposed to sit with their hands folded, batting their lashes, and never,
ever
put on pants, jump onto a horse, and leave their own husbands in the dust?”

“Not this woman. And he wasn’t my husband then.” The fact was, she’d changed since she’d married Kade—she didn’t mind wearing dresses, putting her hair up, or even batting her lashes all that much. She especially didn’t mind the things she and Kade did when they were alone together, though of course she had no intention of mentioning anything so private.

Cree gazed thoughtfully toward the jailhouse. “I always heard the McKettricks were ranchers. Not lawmen.”

“They are,” Mandy answered, wishing, for the thousandth time in her life, that she could see inside her brother’s head and reason out what was going on there. “Why?”

“Trust you to take up with a town marshal,” Cree said in that same distracted way, as if he hadn’t heard her question. More likely, he’d just decided to brush it off.

Mandy felt a sting of annoyance. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped. “I might expect a remark like that from Gig, but coming from you—” She caught her breath. “You’re not in trouble with the law, are you, Cree?”

He chucked her under the chin, a gesture she had always secretly loved, since affection of any kind had been a rare thing for her, but now, it only unsettled her. “Of course not. I was teasing, Amanda Rose. What’s become of your sense of humor?”

She felt herself softening toward Cree; it had been that way as long as she could remember. He could pull her hair or leave her behind when he went off on some grand adventure, then get around all her objections with a simple grin.

She gave him a little push. “I’ve got things to do. I can’t be standing around watching you put up signs.”

“What things?” He spoke lightly, but she sensed a quietness in him, a deep, listening silence. Vast places lay within Cree, dark and secret landscapes that no one else ever glimpsed, but then, she supposed that was true of everybody.

“Errands,” she said, shaking off the shadows, pleased to have the upper hand for once. She walked a little way past him, then turned to look back over one shoulder. “Join us for supper? Six o’clock, in the hotel dining room?”

He hesitated. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

She stood absolutely still for a moment, seized by some nameless dread. “Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, Amanda Rose, but your fine new husband doesn’t have a lot of use for me.” Having tossed off that disturbing statement, Cree turned and walked away.

Mandy watched him for a few moments, hurting inside. Then, resolved to make use of the day, she headed for the mercantile, her original destination. There she bought books and a newspaper for Emmeline, along with a rainbow of embroidery thread, and all the while she was making her selections, Minnie chattered—wasn’t it something how Becky Fairmont had turned the church on its collective ear by turning up at Sunday service, expecting to worship right along with good Christian folks? Hadn’t John Lewis’s funeral been the best one ever, even with a Catholic overseeing the service? Wasn’t it something that Mamie Sussex, who was no better than she should be, hadn’t lost a one of those thieving brats of hers to the diphtheria? Didn’t it make you wonder what the good Lord knew that they didn’t, when somebody like Emmeline suffered a miscarriage? And what about that fine-looking half-breed, traipsing all over town putting up posters?

By the time she’d signed the account book and gathered up her parcels, Mandy’s ears were burning and her resolution to hold her peace had deserted her. “That ‘fine-looking half-breed.’” she said tautly, “is my brother, Cree Lathrop. Becky is probably one of the best people who ever set foot in any church, anyplace, for any reason, and John’s funeral was indeed memorable. If the good Lord takes a shine to anybody, it ought to be Emmeline. As for Mamie Sussex and her children, they’re just trying to get by, and it might be a little easier if folks like you spared them a kind word once in a while.”

Minnie’s mouth was open, and she was red to her hairline. “You, Mandy whatever-your-name-is, are impertinent.”

“McKettrick,” Mandy said crisply. “My name is McKettrick.” She leaned forward over the counter and dropped her voice to a stage whisper. “And, yes, I’m almost certainly no better than I should be.”

Minnie was still sputtering when Mandy left the store.

She took the thread and books back to Emmeline, stayed with her for a little while, then raided the hotel kitchen, putting together a substantial midday meal for her husband, and making sure there was extra, in case Harry was around.

Kade was alone when she reached the jail, except for Gig, of course, who was brooding in his cell. Mandy caught the briefest glimpse of him, sitting on the edge of his cot with his head clasped between his hands.

“I brought you something to eat,” she told Kade, smiling. He was seated at his desk, going over some official-looking papers, and when he looked up at her, she saw a kind of reserve in his eyes, as though he were drawing back from her.

He spared her a responding smile, but it was short-lived, and a little forced, in her opinion. “That was downright wifely of you,” he said, and though she knew he was trying for a light note, the effort missed the mark by a considerable margin. “And I admit to being hungry.”

She busied herself taking the food from the covered basket, setting things out on the surface of the desk. “Where’s Harry?”

“Helping out at home.”

She was glad she’d brought him several servings of the pork roast the cook intended to offer as the evening special over at the dining room, because he seemed pleased. There were biscuits, too, along with mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans boiled up with bacon and onions.

Her heart squeezed painfully as she watched him eat. “You must be missing John a whole lot,” she surmised, pulling up a chair and sitting as close as she thought proper, in the broad light of day.

Kade nodded. “I’ve got a few other concerns, too,” he allowed without looking at her. For him, that was a soul-baring revelation, akin to the speech he’d made before, about her being a wildflower and having shallow roots. It chafed, that part about the roots.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.

Kade pushed the plate away, half-finished, and met her gaze directly. “Yes,” he said, seriously. Then his smile came, blinding and impudent. He leaned toward her and added, in a brazen whisper, “You can give the sun a good push in a westward direction, so it will get dark sooner and I can take my wife to bed. That seems to be the only place I’m comfortable these days.”

Mandy blushed, though the prospect of their lovemaking caused her nipples to harden under her everyday dress. “Kade McKettrick!”

He laughed and reached over to pass his hand lightly over her breast. “What?”

“You’re too bold,” she hissed.

“You’re not exactly hidebound yourself,” he replied, McKettrick-smug.

She blushed again, casting about for a change of subject. “Who’s going to look after this place?”

“Won’t be anything to look after.” His expression betrayed misgivings, as well as relief.

Mandy stared at him, gestured toward the cell. “What about Gig?”

“Army wants him.” He laid a hand on the documents he’d been reading when she came in. “That’s what these papers are about. Captain Harvey and his pony soldiers are taking Curry to the stockade at the fort sometime this afternoon.”

Mandy had no objection to Gig’s leaving, but at least she’d known right where he was at all times, since he’d taken up residence in the Indian Rock jail. He was a slippery son of a gun, though, and even Captain Harvey and his soldiers might not be able to hold on to him. Soldiers, like cowboys, tended to be honorable sorts, working in the open, and outlaws liked to take advantage of that kind of complacency.

“What do you think?” she asked carefully.

He drew his plate back and stabbed another forkful of pork roast. “Two words.
Good
and
riddance.”

“Aren’t you worried about recovering the Triple M’s money?”

“Now that I won’t have to play nursemaid to Curry for the better part of every day, I’ll have time to find it.”

Mandy sat back in her chair, thinking before she spoke, then venturing carefully onto uncertain ground. Kade knew a little about her outlaw childhood, but she didn’t want him dwelling on it, lest it color his current and mostly favorable opinion of her. “They might ambush Captain Harvey and his men. The other members of the gang, I mean.”

“I do believe the Captain and his men are hoping that’s what will happen,” Kade’s appetite had obviously returned, but Mandy wasn’t sure she’d be able to swallow so much as a bite, unless and until she knew for sure that Gig Curry was either locked up in prison for all time, or under six feet of hard dirt. “One thing for sure: the army ought to be ready this time. If they capture that gang, I figure one of them’s bound to talk, if only in the hope of saving his own skin.”

“What if the thieves have already spent the money?”

Kade pondered that, then shook his head. “They haven’t had the chance. They’ve been holed up around here someplace, within striking distance anyway, and if there’d been any significant amount of cash changing hands, somebody around town would have noticed. And commented.”

The theory made sense, but Mandy was still troubled. She tried to put a brighter face on things; maybe she was wrong to feel jittery. “I invited Cree to have supper with us tonight,” she said, testing the waters. “Over at the dining room.”

Kade lowered his fork slowly back to his plate, and something altered in his face, a change so subtle that she almost missed it. He spoke evenly. “Did you, now?”

Mandy stiffened; old affronts, with their beginnings in other people and places, came back to haunt her. “You don’t like him.”

“I didn’t say that,” Kade replied moderately.

“You didn’t have to,” Mandy accused. “Is it because he’s part Apache?” She knew, almost as well as Cree did, how folks felt about mixed bloods. Breeds, they called them. She’d grown up with the insults, the sly looks, the shutting out, not just by the whites, but by the Indians, too. Hadn’t she just encountered that kind of prejudice over at the general store?

Kade stared at her, angry and astounded. “Is that what you think? That I’m the kind to judge a man by the color of his hide?”

Mandy bolted to her feet, sat down again. Fought back tears of frustration and disappointment. She could fool herself all she wanted, call herself Mrs. McKettrick and parade around in fine dresses, but the truth was that nothing really changed. She and Cree would always be outsiders wherever they went.

“Mandy?” Kade prompted gruffly when she didn’t speak.

“Yes,” she answered in a burst. “That’s what I think! You hate my brother because he’s an Indian.”

“I don’t hate your brother.” Kade’s voice was low, seething with suspicion.

“Maybe you don’t,” Mandy accused bitterly, “but you’d just as soon he moved on, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” It was a demand.

Kade didn’t answer for a long time, and when he did, Mandy wished he hadn’t. “Because I think he’s an outlaw.”

“You’re wrong!”

He studied her. “Am I, Mandy?”

“Yes! Yes, you’re wrong, you—you
McKettrick!”
With that, she turned and headed for the door, half hoping that Kade would call her back.

He didn’t.

G
ig Curry, Kade soon concluded, had recovered from his melancholy spell. He gave a hoarse burst of laughter as Mandy slammed out the front door. “Well, Marshal, seems to me the honeymoon is over.”

“Shut up,” Kade said without turning around, “or you won’t have to wait for Cree Lathrop to cut your worthless throat, because I’ll do it myself.”

At the mention of Lathrop, Kade subsided, though grudgingly.

“You’re afraid of Lathrop,” Kade said, turning in his chair to study the prisoner.

“Ain’t scared of nobody,” Curry replied, but the look of him belied his words.

Kade shrugged, though he was still troubled. He knew he wasn’t going to get any more out of Curry, however, so he turned back to the paperwork on his desk. It was an effort to concentrate, with Mandy on the peck.

An hour later, Captain Harvey rode up with a lot of brass-jingling and military flourish, and Kade went out to meet him. The aging soldier and his troops made an impressive picture, filling the street the way they did, with their blue uniforms and their polished buttons.

“Captain,” Kade said by way of a greeting, tugging at his hat brim.

Harvey nodded. “We’re here to collect Curry,” he said with the kind of authority that comes from being obeyed unquestioningly and on a long-standing basis.

“I trust you’ll let us know if you manage to get anything worthwhile out of him,” Kade said.

“You have my word on that,” Harvey answered, his grim expression holding firm. “The United States army wants to recover that money as much as you do.”

Kade rather doubted that, since the United States army didn’t stand to forfeit a ranch they’d bled and sweated to build. “Whatever you say, Captain,” he replied with a semblance of a salute.

The big vein in the soldier’s neck stood out. He raised a hand, and two of his men dismounted at the signal, one carrying handcuffs, the other, shackles. Gig Curry’s ride to the fort was not going to be commodious—now
there
was a pity.

Kade turned, led the way into the office, and unlocked Curry’s cell. The pair of corporals dragged him up off the cot and fixed him handily for transport with a lot of clanking.

Curry, far from balking, looked flat-out relieved to be putting Indian Rock behind him, no matter what might lie ahead at the fort.

“So long, Marshal,” he said. “If I ever see you again man to man, I’ll give you good cause to regret the shameful way I’ve been dealt with here.”

“I’m sorry,” Kade said insincerely, “if you found our hospitality lacking.”

Before Curry could dredge up a reply, the soldiers took him by the arms and dragged him through the doorway. To their credit, they showed a complete lack of consideration for the prisoner’s dignity and comfort.

Kade ambled outside and watched, along with most of the town, as Curry was hoisted into a saddle, shackles, cuffs, and all. He did feel a moment of poignant sympathy—for the unlucky horse appointed to carry him.

He almost missed seeing Cree Lathrop standing across the street, his arms folded, his gaze fixed on Curry. A flash of movement drew Kade’s attention, a gloved hand going for the .44 in that well-used holster.

Kade’s own weapon was in his hand in the same instant; he didn’t recall drawing, or even making the decision to do so. For better or worse, Angus McKettrick had taught all his sons to shoot as soon as they could hold an iron steady.

Lathrop saw him, made a show of spreading his arms at his sides, and smiled benignly.

Kade put the .45 away, but he kept an eye on the otherman until Captain Dixon Harvey and his troops had ridden out with Curry in their midst, leaving dust and horse manure in their wake.

Lathrop stepped down off the sidewalk and walked across the street toward Kade, still sporting that smile, strangely empty now; his attitude said he was bent on placating the overanxious lawman.

“You’re pretty fast with that .45,” Cree remarked, facing him.

Kade shrugged. He wanted to find Mandy, try to make things right with her, since they’d parted on unfriendly terms. “You were going to shoot him,” he said. “Curry, I mean.”

“I confess that I was tempted,” Cree admitted lightly, as though gunning a man down, even one like Curry, who barely qualified as human, meant nothing at all. “I wouldn’t have done it, though.”

Kade disliked double-talk and wanted to throw Lathrop against a wall, but he restrained himself. After all, this man was Mandy’s brother, which most likely meant they’d be having dealings with each other right along, whether either of them liked it or not. “Since I had no way of knowing what you intended,” Kade said, after willing his jaw to relax so he could get the words out, “I most likely would have dropped you where you stood.”

Cree sighed. He was wasted with the Wild West show; he should have been traveling with a theater troupe instead, starring in melodramas. “That would have been a shame. Amanda Rose would never have forgiven you, I reckon.”

Kade looked the man up and down. “She says she invited you to supper. Seems like you might be busy doing something else, now that you think about it.”

Cree’s face hardened. “We got off to a bad start, you and me,” he said, feigning chagrin.

“I reckon we did at that.”

“Give Amanda Rose my sincerest regrets,” Cree said with another shrug, as Kade turned toward the open door of the jailhouse.

Kade didn’t look back. “I will,” he said. Then he went inside, banked the fire in the potbellied stove, took the master set of keys from the desk drawer, and locked the place behind him.

He was still wearing the badge as he walked away, but as far as he was concerned, his brief career as a peace officer was as good as finished. All he needed to do was find a replacement, and he’d be back on the Triple M, where he belonged, tending to ranch business.

He’d start by recovering the stolen money. Damned if he’d see the land go, to be broken up into a lot of small spreads, run by Johnny-come-latelies. In point of fact, he’d die first.

Deliberately, he turned his mind to his second objective, selecting a site and building a house for Mandy. He wasn’t at all sure she would stay—Cree’s warning carried weight, and he remembered only too well how her eyes had gleamed when she’d told him she wanted to be another Annie Oakley—but he meant to do everything he could to convince her that her place was on the Triple M, with him.

He was sorting through these thoughts, and others, as he walked down the street, crossed over, and approached the hotel.

He found Mandy bustling around the dining room, serving meals to a crowd of cowboys, and taking their good-natured, if rowdy, joshing in her stride. When she caught sight of Kade, she stiffened and nearly dropped the roast-pig dinners she was carrying in both hands.

“I want to talk to you,” Kade said.

“I’m busy,” she replied, all bristly-like.

He leaned in close and spoke softly, but in all earnestness. “I will carry you out of here over my shoulder, if need be, but you
are
going with me, Mrs. McKettrick. Right now.”

She flushed with obvious indignation, turned and banged the plates down in front of a couple of startled cowpunchers, then ripped off her apron, sought out Sarah Fee, and made her hushed excuses.

A few of the cowhands called out manly encouragement as Kade ushered his furious wife up the stairs, and when they reached the second-floor corridor, she wrenched free of his grasp on her elbow and spat, “I have never been so mortified in all my life!”

He shouldn’t have laughed, but he couldn’t help it. She was a sure-enough sight to behold when her temper got the best of her.

Plainly incensed by his amusement, she drew back her hand to slap him, hesitated, then decided to go through with the original plan. Kade caught her wrist just shy of his face.

“Tell me about your brother, Mandy.”

She glared at him. “You wouldn’t listen anyway!”

He let go of her wrist, spread his hands. “I’m listening.”

She sighed, settled down a little. Kade had taken a seat on the edge of the bed, and he beckoned her to sit beside him. Cautiously, she did. “He might have been in some trouble,” she allowed, “when he was younger, I mean. But he
isn’t
an outlaw.”

“Gig Curry is scared shitless of him,” Kade pressed, watching her face. “Why is that, Mandy?”

She considered her words carefully. It would be so easy for Kade, or anyone else, to misunderstand. “When we were kids, Curry taught us to steal. He
made
us steal. Whenever Cree talked back to him, Gig beat him senseless. He hated Gig—we both did—and he swore a blood oath that he’d kill him one day, for all he’d done to all of us.”

Kade’s expression revealed none of what he was thinking. “Go on.”

“Cree ran away when he was sixteen. Once in a while, he’d come to see me, always in secret, asking about Mama, bringing money. Each time he visited, he was a little stronger and little faster with a gun. He wanted me to go away with him, but I was afraid to leave Mama alone with Gig, so I always said no.”

“But you did leave her, at some point,” Kade prompted. She could still read nothing of his thoughts by searching his face.

She nodded. This was the hard part. “Gig wanted—he started—”

Kade’s jawline clenched. “Touching you?”

Mandy blinked back tears, nodded. “I had to go then, so I lit out on my own. I ended up at St. Jude’s Mission, north of here.”

“I know the place.” Kade had taken her hand, interlaced her fingers with his own. “A priest and couple of nuns, running an Indian school.”

“I fell sick with a fever right after I got there, and the sisters took care of me.” She felt a hot flush surge beneath the flesh of her face. “I repaid them by stealing a habit and a mule and taking to the trail. The mule died along the way, and a passing stagecoach picked me up the next day. The first stop was Indian Rock, and I didn’t have the money to travel any further, so I got off. Becky and Emmeline took me in.”

“Why the nun suit?” The question was blunt, but the faintest note of a chuckle was couched inside it.

“It was what I had. The sisters burned my clothes while I was sick.”

“You could have told Becky the truth.”

“No,” Mandy argued quietly. “I knew Gig was out there someplace, and if he found me…” She shook off the horrors of that possibility, reliving the moment when her worst fears had come upon her that day in the alley behind the Arizona Hotel. “I didn’t reckon he’d be looking for a nun.”

Kade was thoughtful, but he put his arm around her and held her against his side. “From now on,” he said presently, “you don’t have to be anybody but yourself.”

The idea was balm to Mandy’s gypsy soul, but she couldn’t help asking herself the obvious question.

Who, exactly, was she? Dixie’s daughter? Cree’s little sister? Kade McKettrick’s wife? That was when the realization struck her. She’d better find out, before it was too late.