Shotgun Bride (6 page)

T
hey’d ridden to town on a spavined, swaybacked plow horse with singed hide, the sodbuster, his wife, and the child, and as they stood in John Lewis’s office that cold morning, he despaired of going on a wedding trip with Becky anytime soon.

The family’s clothing, probably little better than rags in the first place, was soot-stained and torn, but it was the look in their eyes that stabbed at something in the depths of the marshal’s soul. They’d fought tooth and nail, these people, endured hardships of every sort, made all the sacrifices anybody could rightly expect of them, probably, but now they were beaten, even if they didn’t seem to know it yet.

“It was the McKettricks,” the man said before he’d even given his name. “They burned us out last night. Left their brand on a tree, like they was proud of what they done.”

Tears welled in the woman’s eyes—she was a plain thing, a mere scrap of a female, barely bigger, it seemed to John, than the child she clasped in both arms. “We weren’t hurting anybody,” she said. For reasons John would never understand, folks always thought nothing bad ought to happen to them if they weren’t causing harm to others. It was a noble thought; too bad the world didn’t work like that on its best day.

Belatedly, John recalled his raising in a good Christian home and thrust himself to his feet. He rounded the desk without a word, drew up a chair, and eased the woman into it. The baby, warmly wrapped and wiggly as a pup in a grain sack, made a small sound, part cough, part whimper.

“You folks hungry?” John asked. The man stood behind the woman, ignoring a second chair over by the wall, his hands resting protectively on her shoulders. His jaw was hard, his eyes too old for the rest of him, his body thin and slight. “I’ve got hot coffee here, and I can send over to the hotel for some food.”

The woman swallowed, the man shook his head, quick and fierce. “We ain’t got the money to pay,” he said. “But thanks, just the same.”

“Reckon we don’t have to worry about that right away,” John replied, throwing a chunk of wood onto the fire in the potbellied stove. The woman started at the sound and blinked. Sparks snapped in the chimney, and the good smell of seasoned mesquite filled the room. “You can always chop some firewood for the cook or something. Never enough help over at that place, especially since they started building on.”

The man considered the matter, clearly weighing the semblance of charity against his wife’s need, and his own. To his credit, he chose wisely. “If I can pay our way by workin’—”

John smiled to himself, went to the door, and gave a shrill whistle. That would bring one of the Sussex boys from down the street; they were a posse of snot-nosed rascals, freckled and knock-kneed and wholly wild, but fit to run errands when the need arose. John had a special weakness for the scruffy little buggers.

“What’s your name?” he asked the farmer, when Harry Sussex had been dispatched to the hotel kitchen to bring back whatever vittles might be available. He set a mug of coffee on the desk for the woman, handed another to her husband. “I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance before today.”

“Sam Fee” was the response. Fee’s work-chapped hands trembled as he closed them around the tin mug. “This is my wife, Sarah, and our little one, Ella Susannah.”

Sarah Fee had relaxed a little; she peeled away some of the child’s swaddling and held her against one shoulder while she reached for the coffee John had brought.

“If you’d like to let the baby lie down,” John said, “there’s a cot in the cell there. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s clean enough.”

Sarah looked to Sam. He deliberated awhile, then gave his assent with one sharp nod of his head. Once Sarah had settled the child comfortably, she rejoined the men in the front office, but her gaze kept straying toward the little barred room where she’d left her baby.

“Tell me what happened last night,” John said, refilling both their cups. “Start at the beginning.”

The story was grim, and by the end of it, Becky had arrived with a picnic basket, and a plan. The Fees tried to eat slowly, but they were both famished, and they finished off the ham, biscuits, and fried grits with desperate good manners. John wondered when their provisions had begun to run low. No matter how well prepared the settlers thought they were in the fall of the year, the high-country winters generally starved them out long before spring.

“Much obliged,” Sam said with a red tinge to his jawline. He fixed his sorrowful gaze on John’s face. “We’re grateful for the food, Marshal, but we need to know what you mean to do about the McKettricks.”

Becky’s eyes widened. “The McKettricks?” she echoed. They were her daughter’s kin, and she tended to think well of them. So did John, for that matter, though he’d had enough go-rounds with those roughneck boys over the years to know they were wild as rutting stallions after the same mare. At one time or another, he’d had each of them right there in his jail, drunk, disorderly, or both.

“They burned our place,” Sam told her. His tone was somber, with fury in it, but not a trace of self-pity. These were strong people, used to the hardships of life on the land. Like as not, they’d never known an easy day in their lives.

Becky paled a little at Sam’s announcement, and it was all John could do not to go patting her hand and all like that. Fortunately, he knew better by experience; she hated fussing, this woman of his. Liked to stand on her own two feet and fight her battles personally, no matter what came at her. “That can’t be,” she said. “They wouldn’t—”

Sarah spoke up. “The one they call Rafe,” she said flatly, staring into space, “he came by to see us just last week. Told us we were on Triple M land and we ought to move on before there was trouble. Before there was trouble. That’s just how he said it.”

Becky closed her eyes, swayed. John’s resolve not to coddle her wavered, but in the end it held.

“He said we was squatters,” Sam put in. “We wasn’t. Until that fire, we had documents to prove we bought our land fair and square. I showed him. McKettrick, I mean. He said we’d been cheated, that the papers was a fraud and we had no right to the place.”

“Rafe McKettrick,” Becky said, recovering, “would never—”

John caught her eye. Willed her to remember the Peltons, another family who’d settled on McKettrick land. The husband had shot himself through the head, and the wife had lost their child and ended up under Concepcion’s care for a while, before taking the train back to Iowa or Ohio or some such place, where there were folks ready to take her in. Once they were both gone, Rafe had set fire to their cabin and barn and had even the rubble hauled off in wagons, and that wasn’t the only time he’d burned something down, either. On another occasion, in a fit of sorrow and rage, he’d put a torch to the first house he’d built for Emmeline.

“I’ll go out and talk to Rafe and the rest of them,” John said, feeling gray and spent inside, and about a dozen years older than he was. “Get to the bottom of this.”

Becky had rallied, but John couldn’t help wondering when those seemingly endless inner resources of hers were finally going to play out, like a mine that’s been scoured for its last flakes of ore. It made him hurt inside to think she might be using herself up before her time; a woman like her was a rarity, and there would not be another one along soon.

Her smile pushed back the shadows and rivaled the stove for warmth. “Well, now,” she said, “we’d better get that baby out of jail and head on over to the hotel. Sam, there’s plenty for a man to turn his hand to at the Arizona, and, Sarah, I wonder how you’d be at changing beds, watching over the registration book, and waiting tables in the dining room. I can’t seem to keep regular help in that place to save my very life.”

John strapped on his gun belt, checked the cylinder of his pistol to make sure it was loaded, and reached for his hat and coat. The weather was contrary; it could go one way or the other.

Pretty much like this situation with the McKettricks.

R
afe and Kade were trying to pull a lame cow out of a mud bog when John Lewis rode up, toward the middle of the afternoon. He wore an earnest expression, the marshal did, and by Kade’s reckoning, that didn’t bode well. Clearly, the lawman wasn’t just passing by—he’d come on badge business and gone to some trouble to make the journey.

“John,” Rafe said with a nod, still hauling on his end of the rope Kade had fixed around the heifer’s neck.

John nodded back, dismounted, and came toward them. “Give you a hand?” he asked, and without waiting for an answer, he waded right into the mud, where Kade had spent the better part of the last hour, fruitlessly pushing a cow’s ass.

“Obliged,” Rafe allowed, straining on the rope, “but I don’t reckon you came all the way out here just to help us with the chores.”

John gave the critter a good whack on the flank, and she bawled and sucked both her front legs out of the mire, slogging toward dry ground in a few awkward leaps. “I’m here about the Fees,” he said, dusting his hands together as he made his way toward Rafe.

Kade took the rope off the heifer and sent her on her way with a muted shout; she’d find the herd on her own. His attention was on Rafe and the marshal, and he had a real uneasy feeling in the center of his gut.

“Nesters,” Rafe said.

“They say they had just claim to that land,” John replied. “You burn their place, Rafe?”

Rafe’s big shoulders shifted back a ways, and his spine straightened like a ramrod, the way it always did when he waxed indignant. “No,” he said pointedly. “They saying I did?”

John took his hat off, shoved a hand through his stringy hair, and put the hat back on. “What they told me was, you warned them off a week or so back. The Triple M brand was burned into a tree about a hundred yards behind what used to be their barn.” Kade must have looked as skeptical at that as Rafe did, because John went through the fidgety routine with his hat again before saying, “I stopped by there on the way out here and had a look. It’s your brand, all right.”

Kade cursed and drew John’s attention.

“You know anything about this, Kade?”

“Hell, no,” Kade replied. He tossed Rafe an irritated glance; there was no question in his mind that his brother was telling the truth, but folks would wonder just the same, between the McKettrick brand and Rafe’s proclivity for setting things on fire. And their wondering might just tip the tenuous balance between peace and war. “It would be an easy matter to steal a branding iron, John. You know that.”

“I do know that for a fact,” John agreed, with a long sigh, before voicing Kade’s private worry: “But it isn’t my opinion that’s vexing me. Feelings are running pretty high around Indian Rock these days as it is. A thing like this could set off all kinds of trouble.”

Kade had heard enough. He whistled for his horse, and Raindance ambled over from a nearby stand of grass, bridle fittings jingling. “Best thing to do,” he said, “is go to the source.”

Rafe turned to him, frowning. “What—?”

“Where you headed?” John wanted to know.

Kade put a foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. “Like I said. To the most likely source. Holt Cavanagh.”

“I’ll ride with you,” Rafe said, and whistled for Chief, his own horse.

Kade looked down at his brother, adjusting his hat. “Thanks,” he said, “but you’re liable to make things worse with that temper of yours. Just stay here.”

Rafe was formulating a protest, Kade could see it brewing in his face, but when he moved to mount and follow, John reached out and put a restraining hand on his arm.

“Kade’s right,” he said. “Could be you’re in enough Dutch already, without beating the brush for more.”

“Listen to the man,” Kade told his brother, then he turned Raindance around, headed for the Circle C.

M
andy was reading down by the creek, the hateful habit pulled up around her knees, the wimple beside her on the grass, when Gig caught her by surprise for the second time in as many days. He crept up behind her, took hold of her hair, and jerked her head back hard.

She let out a gasp before she could stop herself.

“All I’ve got to do is scream,” she said, when she caught her breath from the shrill pain, “and every hand on this place will be on you, that quick.”

Gig just laughed, but he must have given the threat some credence, too, because he let go of her hair. Her scalp throbbed. “Looks like you’re coming up in the world, Amanda Rose,” he said. “You throwing in your lot with the McKettricks these days?”

She ignored the question. She wasn’t “throwing in” her lot with anybody. She was the same outsider she’d always been, and that was one of the lesser reasons she hated Gig Curry. “Get out of here,” she said, “and don’t come back.”

He settled himself beside her on the grass, just as if she’d greeted him cordially, as if they were fond companions, and not old enemies. “You don’t want me to leave before I tell you all about your poor mama, do you, Amanda Rose?”

Everything inside Mandy tightened into a single aching knot, fair stopping her breath. She hadn’t seen Dixie in two years, and the last time, down near Tucson, her mother had been real sick. “What about her?” she whispered.

Gig assumed a mournful expression, though the angry mirth lingered in his eyes. “It’s a pity,” he said, “how she’s declined since they put her in that place to be doctored.”

Mandy’s throat ached fiercely.
He’s lying,
her reason said. “What place?” she whispered, because this was bait she couldn’t help taking, even though she knew a hook was hidden inside.

“It’s a sort of home for people like her. Consumptives, they call them. Nothing fancy, but she’s got a bed and a roof and enough vittles to keep body and soul together. That’s more than you and I can say most of the time, isn’t it, Mandy?”

“More than you ever provided for her, too,” Mandy said.

For a moment, she thought Gig was going to grab her by the hair again, or even slap her, but he restrained himself with a visible effort. “Where’s Cree?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” In this case, she was telling the truth, though she knew Gig wouldn’t believe her. Even when the two of them were far apart, she and Cree generally found ways to stay in touch—letters, telegrams, messages carried by stage drivers, peddlers, drovers, and drifters. As it was, she hadn’t heard a word from Cree in almost a year.

“Don’t make me hurt you, Amanda Rose,” Gig cajoled. “I’ll do that, you can be sure that I will, if that’s what it takes to smoke him out into the open.”

She knew Gig wasn’t bluffing. He’d kill her without a flicker of hesitation or remorse—but not if she was of some use to him. “Suppose I did know where he was,” she allowed. “I’d be crazy to tell you, wouldn’t I? You’d cut his gizzard out just to eliminate the threat, soon as he showed himself.”

“I reckon he’d come back if you were ailing or bad hurt,” Gig mused, chewing pensively on a blade of grass and squinting as he watched the late-afternoon light frolic on the waters of the creek. “Or dead. He wouldn’t miss your funeral.”

Mandy felt a chill spill over her. She’d been a fool to stay around Indian Rock this long, pretending her life could be any different from what it had ever been, making believe she might find a way to fit in. If she’d moved on, found a Wild West show to join up with, the way she’d planned in the first place, maybe Gig wouldn’t have caught up with her and she might not be in this fix.

“Cree’s probably a thousand miles from here,” she said. “If he heard I was dead, he’d be right sorry, but he’s not stupid, Gig. He’d guess that you were laying a trap for him.”

Gig took her chin in a bruising grip. “Get him here. Tell him you need him. I just want to talk to him, that’s all. Come to some kind of terms. You do that, I’ll ride out of here, and neither one of you will ever lay eyes on me again.”

“You’re a liar.”

He drew back his hand to strike her.

The click of a rifle being cocked stopped him in mid-motion. “I wouldn’t do that,” Emmeline said, calm as all get-out. Last Mandy had seen her, she’d been in the house, about to stretch out for a nap, but she looked wide-awake now, and her aim was dead-on.

Gig scrambled to his feet, hat in hand, smile anxious and affable. “Now, ma’am, don’t you go shooting me. Sister Mandy and me, we’re family, and we have our little tiffs, it’s true, the way all kinfolks do, but I wouldn’t do this sweet girl any sort of injury. Surely, ma’am, I wouldn’t.”

Emmeline didn’t lower the rifle, and she still had Gig’s head in the crosshairs. “Amanda,” she said, “get away from that man right now.”

Mandy got to her feet, groping for her book and wimple, and rushed to Emmeline’s side.

“Now, ma’am,” Gig rattled on, raising his hands at his sides, to show he wouldn’t go for his gun, “you’ve misjudged me grievously—”

“Get out of here,” Emmeline said with no wavering in her, anywhere. She might hail from the big city, but she was plenty tough, and she knew one end of that rifle from the other, for sure and certain. Rafe must have taught her. “This is McKettrick land. I’ll thank you to get off it right now, and don’t bother coming back.”

Gig gave a sigh, as if he were being martyred, but he took his hat and went, disappearing into the trees down the creek a ways, where he’d surely left his mount. Emmeline lowered the rifle, but she and Mandy both stood still and utterly silent until they heard him riding away, his horse’s hooves clattering on the rocky hillside.

“Tell me who that was,” Emmeline said. “Right now.”

Mandy lowered her head. “He was my mother’s man,” she confessed, ashamed even though it hadn’t been her choice to bring Gig Curry into the household.

Emmeline looked puzzled. “Her husband?”

“Just her man.” Mandy had lied to all sorts of people in her life, mostly out of necessity, and she supposed she’d go right on doing it, but right then, in that time and place, she found she couldn’t wrap her tongue around another tall tale. Not with Emmeline, who’d been so kind to her.

“He came here to do you some harm.”

Mandy avoided Emmeline’s gaze. Shook her head. Dear God—Cree
would
come if something happened to her, set on revenge, and he’d surely get himself killed. One-on-one, her brother could handle Gig any day, but Gig never worked alone.

“Mandy,” Emmeline insisted. “You’re scared to death. Why?”

“Don’t meddle in this, Emmeline,” Mandy pleaded miserably. “Please.” She might as well have been talking to a rock.

“I’m going to report him to John Lewis,” Emmeline said decisively. “We’ll go to town directly and have the rounder arrested.”

“Please,” Mandy repeated, with quiet fervor. “Leave this alone.”

“That would be cowardly. Anyway, I have to tell Rafe.”

“No,” Mandy cried, surprising herself as much as Emmeline by grabbing her friend’s free hand and clasping it. “No, Emmeline—you mustn’t—Gig’s fast with a gun, and he’s mean, and he doesn’t do his fighting out in the open like other folks do. Like as not, he’d bow and scrape to Rafe if he came up against him, then shoot him right out of the saddle one day just for crossing him!”

Emmeline paled. “That’s all the more reason to go to the marshal. Besides, Rafe and I don’t keep secrets from each other. We made a promise.”

Mandy’s knees nearly gave out; she fought to stay on her feet. It would have been better if Emmeline hadn’t come along and saved her from Gig; that way, she’d have been the only one to suffer. If Emmeline brought any trouble down on Gig’s head, a whole lot more peoplewould be drawn into the resulting fray. “I’ll leave, Emmeline,” she said with mounting desperation. “If I do that, none of you will get hurt.”

“I’m not afraid of that low-down scoundrel,” Emmeline said with conviction, trying to help Mandy up and manage the cumbersome rifle at the same time. “And you’re not going anywhere. Now, come on. He’s getting away.”

“Let him go,” Mandy pressed. “I’m telling you, he’s a kissing cousin to the devil himself.”

Emmeline looked solemn, and her eyes seemed to search Mandy’s very soul. “That’s why we we’re not going to let this pass.”