Shotgun Bride (9 page)

M
andy paused on the board sidewalk outside the mercantile, watching as the prospective brides placed their separate orders for flour and fresh butter and what fruits they could hope to attain in such a place as Indian Rock. A part of her was amused, watching their foolish scramble to please a lunkheaded man, but another part, one she couldn’t readily acknowledge, wanted to outbake, outfuss, and outruffle every one of them.

She shifted her attention, by force of will, to the objects on display in the fly-specked window—tins of beans, stacked into a colorful pyramid, a basket brimming with wild hazelnuts, wormy for sure, and a pretty calico dress, ice blue with delicate white flowers and a modest trimming of lace on the collar and cuffs.

Mandy coveted that garment, with a sudden and startling wholeness of heart, in a way she had never coveted anything else in her life. She imagined shedding the cumbersome nun garb and slipping into that cool and lovely creation. Imagined brushing out her hair and looking like a woman, instead of one of those penguin birds from way down south, where the mountains were made of ice and the ground was always frozen. She leaned in a little, peering at the price.

One dollar and twenty-five cents. A fortune. She sighed, and deliberately averted her eyes, only to spot something she wanted even more than the dress. A brand-new double-barrel shotgun with a polished wooden stock and an inlay of ivory and of silver filigree. Lord in heaven, it was the prettiest sight she’d ever seen, that gun. She squinted at the little sign propped beside it.

WIN THIS FINE FIREARM.
CHANCES, FIVE CENTS EACH.

Mandy reached into the pocket of her habit and came up with four nickels. She’d earned wages working for Becky Fairmont at the hotel these past few months, but she’d sent most of that money off in the mail, some to Sister Mary Marguerite, to make up for stealing her clothes, some to a landlady, down near Tucson, who’d been good to Mandy and her mother when they had had a hard time making the rent. She’d spent the rest on dime novels.

She gave herself a little shake. She oughtn’t to be dallying on the street, mooning over fancy shotguns and frilly dresses. She needed to see to Emmeline, and to keep an eye out for Gig, lest he take her unawares again. And if she bought anything, it would be a horse, so she could move on.

She’d been lucky so far, but time was wasting, and if life had taught Amanda Rose Sperrin anything in no uncertain terms, it was that luck could turn sour faster than a puddle of milk. If she stayed, she was putting a whole town at risk. On the other hand, if Gig ever got her truly alone, a likely event if she struck out on her own, she’d wish she were dead—better by half to be dragged off by a band of renegade Apaches and tattooed from head to foot.

Walk away,
she told herself.
Walk away from this window and these foolish dreams. Forget about Kade and the strange, sweet things he makes you feel before you get him killed.

“Like the dress?” Kade asked from beside her, scaring her half out of her scratchy woolen socks. So much for keeping her wits about her.

“It’s all right,” she allowed. She felt an ache take shape inside her and grow until she thought her skin would burst from the pressure. She wanted more than that bit of frippery, she realized with wounded clarity. She wanted to be the sort of woman who wore a getup like that, and that was a whole other bit of business. She wasn’t Emmeline McKettrick, or one of those silly creatures looking to bake the best pie that ever came out of an oven, and bent on practicing till they got it right. She was the daughter of Dixie Sperrin, a fallen woman, and a long-gone outlaw husband, two or three men back from Gig, and she’d never be anything else, no matter what she put on when she got up in the morning. “I guess I’d rather have that shotgun than anything, though.”

Kade grinned, and she noticed the little lines around his eyes. They came from a lifetime of laughter, those lines, and something about them made the throb in Mandy’s spirit that much worse. Maybe it was the contrast between being a Sperrin, whatever that was, and being a McKettrick. The whole of the cosmos seemed to lie between those two things.

“What would you want with a shotgun?” he asked, hooking his thumbs under his gun belt. The silver star pinned to his shirt glinted, mocking Mandy, hurting her eyes as it caught the sunlight.

She bristled. “I can shoot.”

He looked pleasantly skeptical. “That so?”

“And ride, too. Better than you, I reckon.”

He laughed and shook his head as though he couldn’t credit the possibility.

“You think I can’t beat you?” she challenged, watching the brides cluster around the counter inside the store, anxious to settle accounts and get to baking. She’s been riding
and
shooting since she was eight years old.

“I
know
you can’t,” he said without the slightest doubt.

She placed her hands on her hips and opened her mouth, and just like that her tongue ran away with her, wild as a yearling foal in a spring pasture. “You want to make a bet, Marshal McKettrick?”

“You’d need a horse.”

Oh, she needed one of those, all right. “You’ve got plenty to spare on the Triple M. I could leave you in the dust riding any one of them.”

He pretended to consider the proposition, but Mandy knew by the light in Kade’s eyes that he was ready to race right then and there, just to show her up. He was cocky, like all men, sure of his supremacy. Good. He’ll be eating crow soon enough. “What about stakes?”

Mandy leaned in a little. “Stakes?”

“Sure. You win, I’ll buy you the dress
and
that shotgun and that will be that. You can do what you want with them.”

Her heart started to thump. She knew an easy mark when she saw one; she’d been picking their pockets for as long as she could remember. She’d done the same to Kade once, though to her disappointment and her relief, he didn’t seem to recall the occasion. “And if you win?” Not, of course, that there was any danger of that happening. Cree had taught her those skills early, and he had taught her well.

“If I win,” he said, “you still get the dress.”

She blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“And you have to wear it,” Kade stipulated, in an undertone. “In public.”

Mandy looked down at Sister Mary Marguerite’s worn habit and considered the matter. “It’s a deal,” she declared after some time, and put out her hand to seal the bargain. What did she care about the terms? She’d be gone in no time, once she got that horse under her and showed Kade McKettrick up as the braggart he was.

“Not so fast, Sister Mandy,” Kade said, ignoring the gesture. “Once you come out of hiding, you can’t go back.
That’s
the deal.” He took her arm, probably noticing, as she had, that the brides were about to emerge from the mercantile and catch him out in the open, and shuffled her down the sidewalk toward the Arizona Hotel.

In front of the doors, which were propped open to the fresh air with rocks left over from the new fireplace, she wrenched free of his grasp. “Did it ever occur to you,” she hissed, “that I might have a good reason to hide?”

“There is no good reason for not being who you are,” he argued mildly. “Now, have we reached an agreement, Sister Mandy, or are you just too damn scared to come out from behind that act you’re putting on?”

Inside the lobby, Emmeline and Becky were having a cup of tea next to a potted palm, talking quietly, their faces pinched and solemn. No doubt John Lewis was the topic of discussion, and Emmeline had forgotten all about the incident with Gig. Mandy wished she hadn’t piqued Kade’s interest by touching on the matter back there at the jailhouse; he was bound to follow up sometime.

Meanwhile, Clive puttered behind the registration desk, while a woman Mandy had never seen before polished a window from the inside, using a wad of newspaper.

“Why does it matter to you what I do or how I dress?” Mandy demanded, exasperated.

“Like I said before,” Kade pressed, a grin hiding in his eyes and teasing the corners of his mouth, “I like to know the truth about things and people. And I am especially interested in the truth as it concerns you. I have a feeling it’s an undiscovered country.”

“Lordy, you are a contrary man!”

“Well, if you’re scared of losing—”

Mandy flushed, felt herself topple right into the trap. “Get me a horse, Kade McKettrick,” she snapped,
“any
horse.”

L
ewis looked like death, stirred up and reheated over a dwindling campfire, but he was sitting up in bed, and he was conscious. By Kade’s accounting, that was progress.

“Badge looks good on you,” John said.

“So far it’s been an easy job,” Kade replied, setting his hat aside and drawing up a chair beside the bed in Becky’s room. He hadn’t wanted to approach Emmeline, frazzled as she was, and ask her what she’d been going to tell John, but he’d have to do it soon. Instinct warned that the lawman trade might turn a bit more complicated after that. “I think maybe you’ve been swindling the town out of your pay for a while now.”

John’s grin was as thin as the rest of him, but it was probably genuine. The marshal was parsimonious with such pleasantries, same as he was with words, but when he talked, it meant something. “I reckon it took me getting sick for the truth to come out,” he joked.

“You feeling any better?”

“Not so you’d notice.”

Kade waited a few moments, settling a booted foot on the opposite knee, dusting something off it with the tips of his fingers. “If you can tell me what I’m supposed to do, it would help.”

“Keep the peace.” The covers were drawn up to John’s chest, and his hands lay folded over them, ghostlike fingers interlaced. “Some days, that means keeping those Sussex kids from stealing penny candy over at the mercantile or hanging around at the livery and making Old Billy’s life a misery. Other days, it means stopping a gun-fight or throwing some yahoo like your brother Rafe into the hoosegow for using his fists a little too freely.”

Kade chuckled. “Rafe’s tamed down some, now that he’s married.” He thought it was downright delicate of John not to mention that he’d spent a night or two behind those bars himself, back in the days of his callow youth.

John’s expression turned serious all of the sudden. He cleared his throat, and his fingers twitched. Kade was past relieved when the old fellow didn’t lapse into a fit, or up and die. He’d had enough of that sort of scare to last him.

“Cavanagh’s got a herd coming in from Texas any day now,” John said. “You know how things have been around here lately—real tense. You’d be in for your share of grief anyway, just ’cause you’re a McKettrick, but your being the marshal, too, might just aggravate the situation.”

Kade had had the same thought, of course, but he didn’t see how he could turn away from the job now without seeing a yellow coward looking back at him every time he passed a mirror. “I’ve never turned away from a good fight,” he confessed, “but I don’t mind admitting that I’d like to see this one pass right on by.”

“If it gets started, it won’t be easy to stop,” John said, his gaze steady and, at the same time, bone weary. “Holt, he might see reason. But he’s got a few troublemakers on his payroll, and so does your pa, and that’s the crux of it. Outsiders, most of them, the sort of men they’d be better off without. When this herd comes in, there’ll be a couple of dozen hotheaded, trail-weary cowboys added to the mix, looking for excitement.”

“If you’ve got any suggestions, I’d like to hear them.”

“Concepcion had the right idea last night at supper.” John settled back on his pillows, his strength close to spent. “You get your father and brothers and Holt together for a palaver, for a start. And it wouldn’t do any harm to swear in a couple of deputies, either. Talk to Sam Fee. He’s a good man in need of a place to take a stand, and he’ll see reason if you tell him none of you burned his place.”

Kade was skeptical, but he didn’t see any harm in having a word with Fee. Seeing how Lewis was fading, he simply nodded and got to his feet, ready to leave him to take his rest. Becky swept in just as he was about to reach for the doorknob, his hat in his free hand.

“I’ll arrange that meeting,” Kade promised in parting. If he had to, he’d hog-tie Angus and Rafe, Holt and Jeb, and drag them onto common ground one by one, behind his horse.

“What on earth have you been up to?” Becky demanded of Kade in a whisper. She was carrying a tray with a covered plate, a cup, and a small china pot of fresh coffee. “My kitchen is full of women wanting to bake pies, throw them out, and start over, and Sister Mandy asked me if I had a pair of britches she could borrow—
britches,
mind you—for a horse race with you.”

Given the serious turn of recent events, Kade supposed he shouldn’t be bothering with things like pie-baking contests and horse races with would-be nuns, but a man needed some diversion. Besides, if the mail-order brides were busy in the kitchen, they’d be out of his hair for a while. He’d have a good time judging the pies, but it seemed best not to think too far beyond that point. “Is Rafe around?” he asked, letting Becky’s questions pass unanswered.

She gave him a narrow look as she set the tray on John’s bedside table. “He said he had some business at the bank,” she said. “Then he planned to head back out to the ranch.”

“Thanks,” Kade said, and departed.

There was no sign of Mandy when he descended the stairs, or of Emmeline, either. He’d talk to her later. He put his hat back on as he crossed the lobby and made his way down to the corner and across to the Cattleman’s Bank.

Rafe was just on the other side of that establishment’s frosted-glass door when Kade opened it, and he did not look like a happy man.

Kade frowned. “Don’t tell me. You meant to rob the place, and they’re fresh out of cash.”

Rafe didn’t smile. “There was a big payment due for those cattle we sold the army last fall,” he said, joining Kade out on the sidewalk and keeping his voice low, “and it hasn’t arrived.”

Kade felt a cold spot form in the pit of his belly. He’d been born and raised on a cattle ranch, and he knew that a clog in the cash flow could bring an operation down in short order, even a large and long-established one like the Triple M. “Maybe it’s coming in on the stage.”

Rafe gave Kade’s badge a contemptuous glance. “We’re talking about almost fifty thousand dollars in currency and federal gold, Marshal,” he said, still talking quietlike and putting a fine edge on Kade’s job title. “They promised us a cavalry escort.”

“I never heard a word about this,” Kade complained, jerking off his hat and then slapping it on again. “Why is that, since the last time I looked, I was still a member of this family?”

“Nobody knew it but Pa and me,” Rafe replied, as if it were all right for the two of them to keep something that important to themselves. “Should have been here yesterday.”

Kade muttered a curse. “Now what?”

“Now Jeb and I and some of the men go out looking for those cavalrymen. And our money.”

“I’m going with you,” Kade said.

Rafe poked him square in the center of his badge. “You’ve got a job to do right here. Try to keep a lid on this hellhole until we get back.”