Shotgun Bride (8 page)

“W
hat the hell?” Doc Boylen demanded when Kade rousted him from his bed. Back there on the road, he’d gathered John up, thinking at first he’d been shot, though there’d been no report of a bullet and no blood, loaded him into the saddle he’d just pitched off of, belly-down this time, and brought him to town, traveling as fast as he dared. At the moment, Lewis was lying unconscious in the small surgery downstairs, where the doc kept his irregular office hours.

Kade prodded Boylen with the barrel of his rifle to get him rolling. “It’s John Lewis. He bit the dirt a mile or so outside of town.”

Doc finally got everything headed in the same direction and hoisted himself to his feet. He was dressed in a flannel nightshirt with garters on the sleeves, his wild hair was rumpled, and he fumbled for his spectacles. “Somebody take a potshot at him?”

Kade shook his head, impatient, gesturing toward the inside door with the rifle. “I think it might be heart trouble or something like that. No warning—he just went down.”

Boylen sighed, taking his ancient sawbones’s bag from the bureau top as he passed. “He’s plum worn himself out, John has. Too old for that job. Too old for that fiery woman of his.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Kade said, falling into step behind the doc and doing his best to herd him along at a faster clip, “if you’d stop running off at the mouth and do something constructive.”

Doc chuckled at that, feeling his way down the dark stairway by long practice. Kade had already lit a lamp in the surgery, after laying John out on the examining table and covering him hastily with the first thing that came to hand, which was his own muddy coat.

“Go on over and fetch Becky,” Doc said, lifting one of John’s eyelids and peering in as he opened his bag with his other hand and rummaged for the stethoscope. “She’ll have all our hides if you don’t.”

Kade started to protest, saw the sense in Boylen’s words, and banged out of the office, his strides long. The Arizona Hotel was just a block down the street, and the lights were out, except for a dim glow in the lobby.

Becky Fairmont appeared on the landing almost as soon as Kade stepped up to the base of the stairs and yelled for her. Her dark hair trailed down her back, and she clutched a lace-trimmed wrapper around her slender form. From that distance, she looked like a much younger woman than she was, and her eyes were round with alarm.

“Is Emmeline all right?” she asked, and even from that distance, he could tell that she was holding her breath as she awaited the answer.

“It’s John,” Kade said. “He took a spill from his horse on the way back to town from our place. He’s over at Doc Boylen’s.”

Becky uttered a little cry and put a hand to her mouth as an afterthought, but she recovered quickly, whirling to vanish back into her room and reappearing only a few moments later, clad in a misbuttoned green dress and with her hair still down. She blew by Kade like a gust of wind, headed for the door.

“Heart attack,” Doc Boylen said by way of a greeting when Kade and Becky burst into the surgery. John lay gray and motionless on the exam table, and for one terrible moment, Kade thought his friend was gone, and without Kade’s ever telling him he was admired.

Becky rushed to John’s side, clutched his hand. “John Lewis!” she cried. “You listen to me. Don’t you go dying!”

It seemed that John’s left eyelid flickered, but maybe it was a trick of the lamplight.

“What can we do?” Becky asked, fixing her gaze on the doc.

“Not much,” Doc said, looking sad and old and very much the sort of doctor one would expect to find in a half-assed frontier town like Indian Rock. “He’s alive, but just barely.”

It reminded Kade of Emmeline, the way Becky straightened her spine, sucked in her breath, and gave the doc a level look. “Can we move him?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Doc said. “He oughtn’t to be jostled around any more than necessary. He came to once, in a lot of pain, and I gave him a dose of morphine, much as I dared, anyway, and then he passed out again. No telling when he might run down, though, Becky, and that’s the sad fact of it.”

Tears shimmered in Becky’s eyes and Kade would have bet they sprang from an inner well of determination, not just simple grief. She laid her forehead to John’s and wrapped her arms around him.

“You hold on,” she ordered. “You hear me, John Lewis? You
hold right on.”

John made a sound, part gurgle, part murmur. Becky straightened as if struck by some sudden inspiration, went to the chair where the doc had tossed the lawman’s coat after peeling it off him, and unfastened the nickel-plated badge from the lapel. Then, facing Kade, she pinned the thing to his shirt, and though she was looking up into his eyes, her words were directed to John, lying behind her on that hard table, fighting for his life. And losing, by the looks of things.

“You fix your brain on getting well, John,” she said clearly, raising her voice a little, “and don’t be bothering with anything else. Kade McKettrick’s going to look after your town for you.” She seemed to be staring into his very soul. “Aren’t you, Kade?”

He raised one arm to give the badge a polishing swipe with his cuff. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. He didn’t have the first idea how to go about upholding the law, he realized, but he figured on learning, and learning fast.

K
ade sat bolt upright on the jail-cell cot at the sound of his name, wrenched out of a deep and rummy sleep. When he peered through the bars, he saw Sister Mandy standing next to the desk, and the sight of her lifted his spirits a little, though he couldn’t think why that ought to be so.

She was wearing the nun getup, as always, and her hands rested on her hips. “You’ve got no business being marshal,” she announced.

He shoved a hand through his hair, fixed his sights on the potbellied stove next to the far wall, and staggered over to throw on a piece of wood and see what he could do about getting some coffee started. “Well, thank you for putting your two cents in, Miss Mandy,” he said amenably, and with a yawn, “but I can’t see for the life of me where what I do is any of your concern.”

Her cheeks turned a fetching shade of pink. “Don’t be a fool. You’ve got no idea what you’re going up against by pinning on that badge!”

The stove door creaked as Kade pulled it open and bent slightly to peer inside. The fire was stone cold, and he crouched to poke in some crumpled newspaper and kindling from the meager supply at hand. “I mean to find out,” he said, without sparing her a glance. “What are you doing in town, anyhow? I thought you were set on taking care of Emmeline.”

“I would, if she’d stay put,” Mandy replied, still in a fine and un-nunly dither. “When we got word of what happened to Mr. Lewis, she made Rafe bring us straight to town.”

Kade struck a match to the fire he’d laid, waited to see if it would catch, closing and latching the stove door when it did, then straightening. “Is there any word about John?” he asked quietly, reaching for the coffeepot.

“He’s holding his own,” Mandy said.

Kade’s relief was swift and strong; he was glad he had the coffee dregs to toss into the street, the pot to rinse and fill, because that way he wasn’t left standing with all his emotions right there on the surface for anybody to see. He looked up to John Lewis as an uncomplicated, forthright man and a square dealer, and seeing him down and out was a hard thing.

Outside, he dumped yesterday’s brew, worked the pump beside the public horse trough, came back in, and set the works on top of the stove. A canister of coffee sat on a shelf nearby, and he measured in a generous portion.

“You have some business with me, Sister Mandy,” he finally asked, “or did you just come here hoping to send me packing?”

She huffed out a sigh. “Why do you want to be marshal when you’ve got a perfectly good ranch to tend to?”

He hid a smile. “Why do you want to pass yourself off as a nun? You aren’t even very good at it. ‘Good evening, God.’ What kind of prayer is that?”

“I reckon it’s as good as any.” She looked to be teetering on the brink of a first-class, down-home hissy fit, but in the end she brought herself under control with admirable dispatch. “Sometimes,” she said, surprising him, “a body gets herself into something and flat out doesn’t know how to get back out again. Emmeline was bent on having a word with John, but now—”

He regarded her while he waited for the coffee to come to a boil. “I reckon Emmeline will be along presently, then,” he said. “You could start by telling me what’s on your mind.” He considered her, wondered what it was about her that intrigued him so, and stirred things up inside him. “Wearing a regular dress wouldn’t do any harm, either.”

She sat down, if grudgingly. “You think it’s that easy?”

“I don’t think ‘easy’ has much to do with anything in this life. It’s a tough row to hoe, any way you look at it.”

Another sigh from Mandy. “Maybe so, but it sure would be nice if, once in a while, things didn’t have to be such a bloody struggle.”

Kade chuckled. The coffee was beginning to bubble a little, which meant there was hope for the day. “Best to keep your knuckles bare and ready.”

She frowned. “Do you always look on the melancholy side of things?”

“Yep. I like to know what’s there. Don’t get taken by surprise so often that way.” Kade pushed the brew to the back of the little stove to settle a bit, then rounded up a couple of battered tin mugs. “Have some coffee?”

She shook her head and stood. “I’d sooner drink watered-down creek mud.” She let out an audible breath. “You aren’t fixing to listen to reason and take that badge off while you still can, are you?”

“No. When John’s ready to take it back, that’s when I’ll give it up. Might be a while before that happens.”

She sighed again. “I reckon I’ve done all I can to warn you off, then.” She sounded resigned. “I’d better get on over to the hotel and see if Emmeline needs anything.”

“Wait a minute,” he said crisply. “You still haven’t told me why you came here in the first place.”

“No use in it,” she replied with brave dismay. “I can tell you won’t listen any more than Emmeline did.”

Kade was dealing with her going, and what it made him feel, when she opened the door, let out an exclamation, jumped back, and slammed it again.

“What?” he asked, pouring his lonely cup of coffee and venturing a tentative sip. The best he could have said about the stuff was that it wasn’t swill, though the distinction was a fine one.

Mandy’s whole manner had changed; she was grinning, and mischief cavorted in her eyes. “There’s a committee headed straight for us,” she said, wholly delighted by this development.

Kade frowned, confused. He didn’t reckon he’d been on the job long enough to foul up and bring the town council down on his head, though he wouldn’t be surprised to see a delegation of unhappy ranchers. “A committee?”

The door sprang open before Mandy could reply, and Kade counted five disgruntled brides clustered in the gap. They were wearing war paint, carrying parasols for spears, and they looked ready to use them, with little or no provocation.

Marvella, the voluptuous blonde, had evidently been elected spokeswoman. “Kade McKettrick,” she said, pushing past Mandy, “we’re tired of waiting. You’re going to marry one of us, and that’s that.”

Kade’s mouth dropped open, and he nearly spilled his coffee.

“Yes,” agreed the one he remembered as Abigail, flushed with righteous indignation, as they all rushed inside, a human flash-flood of ruffles and ribbons and flowery scents. “We’re not leaving until you make a decision and abide by it!”

For a moment, Kade seriously considered shutting himself up in the jail cell where he’d passed what had remained of the night before, once he’d seen to John, but he didn’t figure that would save him.

“I do need a wife,” he agreed thoughtfully. Rafe might be ahead in the race, with Emmeline wearing his wedding band and carrying their child, but he wasn’t ready to quit on the idea of winning the Triple M, though he allowedas how that would have been the sensible thing to do. The place and the dream simply meant too much to him, and for all the things Angus had taught his sons, he’d left out the fine art of giving up.

Marvella took in the poor surroundings—John’s beat-up old desk, the rough plank floors, the two narrow cells at the back, with their cots and bare mattresses, chipped basins, and slop buckets. “Of course we wouldn’t be living
here
—would we?”

Kade hid another smile behind the rim of his coffee mug. “I reckon the mayor might spring for a room over at Mamie Sussex’s boardinghouse,” he said, knowing the brides were already housed in that unprepossessing establishment, and running up a bill that honor would require him to pay. “The ranch is too far from my work.”

Abigail looked around, assessing. Then, spotting a broom, she commenced sweeping up. “A woman belongs at her husband’s side,” she announced with a churchy little sniff. “No matter where he happens to be.”

Mandy put a hand over her mouth, maybe to stifle a burst of laughter, but wisely said nothing. The glance Kade sent her way was intended to wilt, but it didn’t seem to take.

“It’s going to be a hard matter, deciding between such fine ladies as yourselves,” he said, taking the broom forcibly from Abigail, who was making him nervous with her fussing, and setting it back in the corner. “Maybe there ought to be some sort of—contest.”

Mandy’s eyes widened at that, and Kade knew, sure as Sunday came around once a week, that she’d have told him what he could do with his “contest,” had she been in the running. Which, of course, she wasn’t, what with her claiming to be a nun and all.

“Contest?” Marvella echoed.

“Any wife of mine,” Kade said, riding a crest of foolish inspiration, “will have to be a good cook. I believe we ought to start with pies, since I particularly favor them.”

“Pies,” echoed a rather fetching little redhead with freckles. He didn’t recollect her name. Penny would have suited her, with that coloring.

“Just put the foodstuffs you need on my account at the general store,” Kade said with a generous wave of his hand. “I guess you could use the boardinghouse kitchen, or the one over at the Arizona Hotel.”

The brides looked at each other in silent consultation, then made a herd decision and practically stampeded out the door, making for the mercantile across the street.

“Kade McKettrick,” Mandy said, lingering on the threshold, framed in the light of a glowing spring morning, “you’re either the bravest man alive, or the stupidest.”