The Bridegroom (28 page)

“You ever think of getting married again, Ruby?” Gideon asked.

Ruby gave a snort, took a sip of coffee from her fancy china cup. “Sure,” she said. “Maybe I’ll just snare me a minister, say. Wouldn’t the congregation love that?” She paused, gave a rich, throaty chuckle at the thought. “No, Gideon,” she went on presently. “At my time of life, any man I’d rope in would be after the contents of my purse and nothing else. Anyhow, your old daddy sure enough ruined me for any other man. He was something, Jack Payton was.”

He’d been “something,” all right. Fully sixteen before he
made the discovery, Gideon had been surprised as hell when he’d learned who his father was. Even more surprised to meet up with his outlaw brothers, later on.

“You been to Rose’s grave yet?” Ruby asked when he didn’t say anything.

Gideon shook his head. “Going there next.”

“I bought her a new marker,” Ruby said, her voice soft and faraway now as she remembered her lost child. “It’s a white marble angel. Best to be had. And those good Christians finally ran out of room in their churchyard and had to move the fence out a ways to accommodate their worthy dead, so now she’s
inside
that cemetery, my Rose, like she ought to have been all along.”

“I’m sorry, Ruby,” Gideon ground out. Any mention of Rose always cut deep, even though twenty years had passed since the accident. The scene was still as vivid in his mind as if it had taken place five minutes before.

“Gideon,” Ruby said firmly, probably reading his expression. “You were
six years old.
You couldn’t have prevented what happened.”

Gideon shoved back his chair. Turned away, hoping Ruby wouldn’t see that his eyes were wet. “Guess I’d better go,” he said, raw-voiced, and he started for the side door, by which he’d entered.

“Gideon,” Ruby said, strongly enough to stop him in his tracks.

He didn’t turn around.

“You want to do the best thing you could to honor Rose’s memory? Be happy with that new bride of yours.
Live,
Gideon. That’s what would please your baby sister most.”

Gideon swallowed, nodded, and left the saloon that had been his home until he was nearly grown.

He always said, “See you,” when he left Ruby after his rare visits.

That time, he couldn’t say anything at all.

T
HE MURDER MADE THE FRONT PAGE
of the early edition of the Phoenix newspapers, and Jacob Fitch, more interested in the financial page, might have merely skimmed the piece, if the words
Copper Crown Mine
hadn’t jumped out at him as if they’d been set in bold type.

The Copper Crown was in Stone Creek.

And so was Gideon Yarbro.

And Lydia.

Troubled on a visceral level, his good breakfast souring in his stomach, Jacob read the article. The victim had been identified, the piece stated, by means of the hotel room key found in one of his pockets, as one Matthew Hildebrand, of Chicago. An employee of the noted mining company, the reporter stated, Hildebrand would be sorely missed by his friends and employers, and was survived by, etc., etc.

Cold to the marrow of his bones, Jacob laid the newspaper aside. Looked
through
his mother, seated across the table from him in the august Fairmont dining room, rather than at her.

This, he thought grimly, could not be a coincidence.

“Are you all right, dear?” his mother asked solicitously. She’d coveted this mansion ever since Jacob had issued the first of several mortgages to old Judge Fairmont, and now that she had it, sans Lydia and her aunts, she was content
with her lot. Her gaze, always shrewd, dropped to the folded newspaper resting beside Jacob’s place, watched as his fingers thumped rhythmically atop it.

The table was Mother’s favorite piece, of all the booty in the house. It was a fine antique, one of the many exquisite pieces the Judge had acquired after the fabled flight from Virginia. If Lydia’s chattering aunts could be believed, the piece had once belonged to Jefferson Davis.

But Jacob could not think of tables and Confederate presidents, nor was he able to utter a word in reply to his mother’s question.

Murder
. A man had been murdered, and he’d been indirectly involved. Not only that, he had personally engineered a
second
murder, one that would soon occur, if it hadn’t already.

As much as Jacob hated Gideon Yarbro, he suddenly, belatedly, realized he’d made a terrible mistake.

“Dear God,” he choked out, at long last. “Dearest
God,
Mother, what have I done?”

Crushing, seizing pain seared him, blazing in the center of his chest and then radiating outward, numbing his limbs, clouding his vision.

“Jacob!” his mother cried, bolting from her chair.
“Jacob!”

He shoved back his own chair, gasping, blind to everything but this horrendous agony, tearing him apart from the inside. He felt himself fall, registered more pain, mild by comparison to the wild spasms of his heart, as his head struck the edge of the table.

He heard his mother screeching for Maggie, the Irish serving girl she’d hired as soon as the foreclosure was complete.

He had a brief flash of Lydia, swathed in black and weeping.

But not for him.

No, she was not weeping for him.

Jacob Fitch felt his body and soul sunder then, and his last conscious thought flared, brilliantly dazzling, in his mind.

God forgive me.

“W
HERE IS
G
IDEON
?” L
YDIA
asked happily when she came down the kitchen stairs that morning and found Helga at the stove, as usual, and Snippet mewling for his milk.

Helga looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I’m not sure,” she said. “He—he went out, first thing.”

Lydia bent to scoop Snippet from his bed near Helga’s feet. Nuzzled his warm puppy-neck. “That’s odd,” she remarked, her voice light, since the uneasiness Helga’s words roused in her was still only a faint flutter in the pit of her stomach. She was still soaring because of the promises Gideon had made in the night, with his body as well as his words. “The mine is closed today, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Helga said, and the look on her face was so glum, so fretful, that Lydia stopped where she was, even though Snippet’s need to go outside was probably urgent.

“What is it, Helga?” Lydia asked.

“It’s probably nothing,” Helga replied, trying to smile.

“Helga,” Lydia persisted, keeping her voice low so she wouldn’t awaken the aunts.

Still trying to smile, and still failing miserably, Helga shook her head, dried her hands on her apron with anxious grabs at the cloth. “He was wearing a gun,” she finally said. “I asked where he was off to, so early on a Sunday morning, but he wouldn’t say.”

Lydia’s heart raced, and the fluttering in her stomach took full flight, like hundreds of butterflies rising at once. “Most likely,” she said, “he’s gone hunting with Rowdy or Wyatt—”

Helga didn’t answer.

“Did Gideon say anything else about what he meant to do,
Helga?” Lydia persisted, realizing she was clutching Snippet too tightly and loosening her grasp a little. “Anything at all?”

“Just that there was something he had to get done,” Helga said, looking utterly defeated. “I don’t like it, Lydia. It’s been nagging at me ever since Gideon went out that door. I think we ought to tell Rowdy.”

Lydia agreed, but she wasn’t sure Gideon would appreciate her going to Rowdy and raising an alarm. After all, Gideon was a grown man, and even though it was rare for anyone but soldiers and officers of the law to carry a gun, now that the twentieth century was well under way, he might simply have decided to engage in some target practice. “But he didn’t say where he was headed?”

Again, Helga shook her head.

Lydia took Snippet outside, set him down in the grass, waited distractedly while he sniffed and waddled and finally relieved himself. Then she picked him up again and carried him back into the kitchen.

The aunts were up and around by then, wearing their customary mourning dresses, and even though Lydia had seen them in those same garments countless times, that day, the sight disturbed her. Made her think of funerals.

“I’m going to find Rowdy,” Helga said, resolved.

The aunts grew round-eyed.

Lydia gently placed Snippet back in his basket. “No,” she said. “I’ll find Rowdy. You stay and look after things here.”

“Lydia—”

“That,” Lydia said, opening the door to leave, “is my final word.”

She found her brother-in-law in his office, a letter in his hand, his face almost gray, with lines chiseled into it.

Lydia watched from the threshold as Rowdy slowly folded the one-page missive, laid it aside, and met her gaze.

“Lydia,” he said, with an effort at affability, though his voice was hoarse. “What brings you here?”

Lydia’s attention was fixed on the letter. “Bad news?” she asked.

“Yes,” Rowdy answered. “Came yesterday, I reckon, but I didn’t get around to looking at the mail until a little while ago. There’s been a death in the family.”

Lydia’s heart nearly stopped, before reason returned. Gideon had shared her bed the night before, and he’d only left
that morning
. No one would have had time to write and send a letter announcing that he’d died.

“Who?” she asked tentatively.

“No one you know,” Rowdy said. “My brother Nick—Wyatt’s and Gideon’s, too, of course—died a couple of weeks ago, of consumption.”

“I’m sorry,” Lydia murmured.

“We weren’t close,” Rowdy answered, but he still looked as though he’d been trampled by the news. “Not recently, anyhow.”

Lydia bit her lower lip, not knowing what to say. Turned as if to go, turned back. “Rowdy—”

“You obviously came here meaning to tell me something, Lydia,” Rowdy said, with a ghost of his usual easy grin. “What is it?”

“Gideon—he left the house early this morning,” Lydia paused, faltering. Feeling like a foolish, interfering wife. “I wouldn’t trouble you with it, especially now—but Helga said—”

“Lydia,” Rowdy said, crossing the office to stand facing her. “What’s bothering you?”

“Helga said—Helga said Gideon was wearing a gun-belt when he left.”

Rowdy absorbed that, swore under his breath, confirm
ing Lydia’s persistent fear that something was very, very wrong. “Damn it,” he said. “I forgot all about it, but he asked to borrow a horse. Said he needed it this morning, and wouldn’t tell me why.” Although he didn’t say it, Rowdy’s expression told Lydia he had his suspicions where Gideon’s whereabouts were concerned, and that sent a shiver of pure dread through her entire being. “If he felt the need to take along that .45 of his—”

“Rowdy?” Lydia’s voice trembled. “What’s happening here?”

He took her by the shoulders, gently moved her aside, so he could get through the doorway. “I’ll handle it,” he said, his tone abrupt now, stepping out onto the quiet, sunny street.

Lydia immediately followed.
“Rowdy,”
she repeated, much more insistently this time. “What—?”

He called to a boy, who came running, freckled face alight with what must have been hero worship. Along with Sam O’Ballivan, Rowdy was practically a legend in Stone Creek, and probably far beyond. “Yes, Marshal?”

“You go and get a horse out of my barn,” Rowdy said gravely, “and ride like the Apaches were after you for Wyatt’s place. Tell my brother I can’t wait for him—he’ll have to catch up as best he can, and he ought to bring Sam O’Ballivan along, too. I’ll leave word for them at Ruby’s Saloon, over in Flagstaff. You got all that, Jimmy?”

Jimmy nodded. Repeated the instructions almost verbatim to prove it.

“Go,” Rowdy told him.

Jimmy raced around the corner of the jailhouse, for the lane.

“Flagstaff?” Lydia asked, as Rowdy hurried back inside to strap on his own gun-belt. His horse, a handsome pinto gelding, was already saddled and ready in front of the building.

“It’s about a two-hour ride from here, and it’s the only place I can think of where Gideon would go on horseback,” Rowdy explained brusquely. “Phoenix or anyplace farther away, he’d have taken the train or the stage.”

“I want to go with you,” Lydia said, as Rowdy strode past her, resettling his hat as he went.

“That’s out of the question,” he answered flatly, untying his horse from the hitching rail, swinging up into the saddle. “But you can do me a favor, if you will. Tell Lark where I’ve gone and that I’ll be back as soon as I find Gideon.”

Lydia, rooted on the sidewalk, felt another tremor race from her head to her feet, this one so cold it scorched her through and through. There was no sense in arguing with Rowdy—he’d already made up his mind—and besides, no words would come.

He tugged once at the brim of his hat in farewell, reined the horse around, and rode away, first at a trot, then a gallop.

Lydia watched him until he was out of sight, gathered her composure as best she could, and went to relay his message to Lark.

She found her sister-in-law in the kitchen, seated in a rocking chair, a shawl draped modestly over one shoulder as she nursed baby Miranda. Marietta played on the floor at her feet, with a stack of wooden alphabet blocks, arranging them in perfect order and reciting,
“A—B—C—”

Seeing the three of them, presenting a happy domestic tableau as they did, Lydia felt her fear for Gideon—for all of them—intensify. Rowdy had been worried enough, when he’d learned that Gideon was armed, to immediately send a messenger for Wyatt and Sam O’Ballivan and then rush away so quickly that he hadn’t even taken the time to stop and tell his wife he was leaving town. Gideon was in real danger—and now Rowdy and Wyatt would be, too.

“Lydia, your
face
,” Lark said, moving as if to rise from her chair. “Whatever is the matter?”

“H—I—J—K—”
Marietta continued.

“Please, don’t get up,” Lydia told Lark quickly. She stood just inside the back door, as though her feet had turned to stone, wringing her hands, and she knew she must be an alarming sight, since she’d cast aside all decorum, lifted her skirts and
run
along the lane to the Yarbro house. Her hair, neatly plaited and then wound into a bun and pinned at her nape before she left the bedroom that morning, was dangling down her back now, the braid starting to come undone.

Lark used her schoolmarm voice then, the one Lydia hadn’t heard since she was a child, and even then it had never been directed at her, but at the bigger boys who’d dared to roughhouse in her classroom. “Lydia,
sit down
before you drop, and tell me what’s wrong.”

Lydia forced herself farther into the room, pulled out one of the chairs at the table, dropped into it. “Maybe nothing,” she said, trying to sound brave.
Maybe everything.

Carefully, she explained the facts as she knew them—that Gideon had left early, riding a horse he’d borrowed from Rowdy and armed with a pistol. She related that Rowdy had decided to go after him the moment he’d learned that Gideon was carrying a gun, and asked that she come and tell Lark where he’d gone.