The Gunman's Bride (14 page)

As Bart started down the alley, the crowd parted. Mrs. Wade clung to her son’s dangling hand, while the
physician kept pace. Dizzy and weak, Rosie hurried after them, but when she reached the end of the alley, she felt a man’s hand clamp around her arm.

“Come with me, Rosie,” Cheyenne Bill ordered. “Kingsley won’t want you to see it.”

Rosie shook her head at the stocky man, whose crooked, flattened nose and lopsided mouth frightened her almost as much as the cartridge belts and holsters around his waist. But he left her no choice. “Now, come along, ma’am,” he said. “You look puny as a wrung-out rag.”

Taking her elbow, Cheyenne Bill ushered her down the street toward the edge of town where a small house stood alone. He pushed through a creaky front door and led her into a gloomy room with bare floors and a few sticks of furniture.

“Here, sit on this,” he said, pushing a rickety stool at Rosie. Still rigid with shock and disbelief, she spread her skirts and perched on its edge.

“I’d give you some whiskey, but I quit paintin’ my tonsils a while back.” He laughed without mirth. “That coffin varnish sure is some powerful stuff. It’ll eat its way plumb to yer bootheels.”

He picked up an iron poker and prodded his fire back to life. “Charley Baker oughta hang for what he done.”

“Mannie’s not going to die,” she whispered.

“The boy’s dead already, ma’am, and you might as well get used to it. Somebody’s bullet plowed clean through that target and the board behind it and put a window in the kid’s skull.”

“No!” Rosie jumped to her feet and paced across the
sagging floorboards. “How dare you say such a thing? I saw Mannie barely fifteen minutes ago. He and Bart were going to dig a refrigerator out at the homestead this afternoon. He was laughing and looking forward to a game of hide-and-seek with his friends. He can’t die just like that!”

Bill gave the fire a jab. “That’s how it happens, Rosie. Just like that. Better he went quick than he lingered. I’ve seen folk linger. You don’t want that for the boy.”

Rosie shook her head as tears welled up. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t.”

For a moment the big Indian stood awkwardly beside her, rubbing his meaty, callused palms together in consternation. Then he let out a breath. “Ah, blast it all, I never knew what to do with a leakin’ female.”

Rosie couldn’t speak. Her mind denied it, but she knew Cheyenne Bill had spoken the truth. Mannie had been killed. Killed. Skinny Mannie with his red hair and broad grin, his winsome ways and mischievous smile.

“Why?” she blurted through her sobs.

“Ain’t no good askin’ why,” Bill said. “You’ll addle yer think box tryin’ to figure it out.”

“But I can’t…I just can’t accept it.” She pulled her handkerchief from her pocket and blotted her cheeks.

“Mannie told me…just a few minutes ago…to find Bart. He told me to go see Bart and talk to him.”

“What fer?”

“Mannie said I could cheer Bart up because he’d been feeling blue of late. So I decided to go to the stable—”

“There you go! Don’t ya see it? Young Manford was an angel of mercy sent to earth with a message. When he’d given it, the good Lord called him home.”

“Oh, it’s not that simple!” Rosie exploded. “Mannie’s existence wasn’t based on telling me to go to the stable and talk to Bart! He had so much potential. There was so much that boy could have done. He was a wonderful child and he would have made a fine man.”

“All the same, you better heed his advice. You never know but what I said was true.”

“What do you know about angels? You’re a…a fighter. A boxer. Your whole life is glove contests, not religion.”

“No doubt about it—Cheyenne Bill is a hard, hard man. But anybody with a lick of sense knows about angels. Here they be, all around us, fighting holy wars with the demons of evil.”

Rosie groaned in disbelief, wondering how she could ever escape this obviously demented man. She studied a whiskey bottle on the fireplace mantel. He had said he didn’t drink, but was Cheyenne Bill just liquored up or was he legitimately loco?

“Ain’t you never seen a angel?” he was asking.

“No. Nor a demon for that matter.”

“Maybe I got my brains scrambled in all them glove contests, but the fact is, I seen ’em plenty of times. Both kinds. Take the kid, Mannie, fer starters. You don’t know nothin’ about that young’un before he walks into yer life and makes a change in ya. Gives ya a message. Sets ya on the straight path when you was headin’ off the trail. See what I mean?”

Rosie shook her head. She wondered where Bart was and if he had any idea she was here in this decrepit house with a man who belonged in an asylum.

“Angels is angels, and demons is demons,” Cheyenne
Bill was saying as he paced up and down the creaky floor. He grabbed the whiskey bottle and held it out. “This here is my own personal demon. Been fightin’ him near all my life. Ol’ Bart Kingsley, he let the devil’s brood have their way with him fer a while, too. When your pappy told Bart he weren’t no good fer ya, that he was just a dumb half breed who was never gonna amount to a pail of hot spit, that his family tree wasn’t no better’n a shrub, that you deserved a rich life with swishin’ silks and satins and a man who could keep you sitting in tall cotton, ol’ Bart began to listen to them demons awhisperin’ over his shoulder.”

“What?” Rosie whispered. “Pappy told Bart all that?”

“It didn’t matter to yer pappy that Bart loved you from the top of yer head to the soles of yer feet and woulda died fer you without blinkin’ an eye. No, sir, all yer pappy could see was that Bart was half Injun and poor as a beggar.”

“What?” Rosie said again.

“Fact is, Bart hightailed it outta yer life and began runnin’ with the devil’s brood. Sometimes it takes the good Lord a might of doin’ to set a fellow like Bart back on the right trail. So God sent an angel to shoot him in the side.”

“It wasn’t an angel who shot Bart. It was Sheriff Bowman!”

“Don’t split hairs with me, gal. Can’t you understand this?”

“No, I can’t,” she answered bluntly. “You’re speaking utter nonsense.”

Giving her a look of pity, Cheyenne set the empty
whiskey bottle back on the mantel. “Gal, ain’t you never been to church?”

“I always go to church. I understand Reverend Cullen’s been after you for quite some time.”

“Now, there’s a man who listens to the angels!”

“I’m sorry, but I have to go—”

“Wait a minute! I ain’t done explainin’ this. How’re you gonna know what to do with yerself if you don’t understand that Mannie Wade was an angel?” He gave a snort and began pacing again. “Here’s the story. I’m awalkin’ through the woods one day scoutin’ me a rabbit fer my stew pan when I up and see this feller leaning against a tree lookin’ like death warmed over. Lo and behold, I recognize right off he’s a half breed like me. We jaw awhile and he tells me he’s sufferin’ from a gut shot and reckons he’s fixin’ to ride off to the great beyond, no matter that he just found the only woman he ever loved. On and on, this feller talks till before you know it I’m blubberin’ like a newborned babe. Right then I begin to know that this feller is tryin’ to set hisself on the right path. He’s tryin’ to listen to the angels, see?”

Rosie nodded, realizing that for the first time she actually understood his garbled speech.

“So, I aim to help this feller,” Cheyenne Bill continued. “I haul him over to my house and we take up together, him and me. We cook up a story that he’s my cousin, just come to town. We get him a job over at the livery stable, and we commence to takin’ the folks by storm, ol’ Buck Springfield and me.”

He laughed so hard he could barely spit out his next words. “We was listenin’ to the angels, see! So,
everything works out perfect. Then you and him get together, and things is just pretty as peaches…till you up and move out on him. Don’t you understand, missy, that you wasn’t supposed to do that? That weren’t part of the plan, see?”

Rosie stood. “No one ever told me there was a plan.”

“Ain’t you been heedin’ the Reverend Cullen on Sunday mornings?
Of course
there’s a plan. A grand and mighty plan. But you up and wandered right off it. You let all kinds of fears and worries take hold of you as strong as demon whiskey takes hold of me. Figurin’ you could take care of yourself, you hitched up your britches and took off down the wrong road. So the good Lord sent an angel to set you straight. An angel by the name of Manford Wade.”

“Are you saying that Mannie got killed because of me?”

“Now, why would I say a thing like that? I’m just tellin’ you that Mannie gave you a message, and you better take note. Get on back to Bart where you belong. If that husband of yers is gonna be able to keep on listenin’ to angels, he needs you by his side. Fact is, them demons has got loud voices, young lady. Mighty loud. But when Bart Kingsley looks at you, all he ever sees is the angels. Now get home to him, gal. You hear?”

“I’m no angel,” Rosie said. “I never have been.”

“Don’t I know it. What I see when I look at you—well, what I see is a pretty woman—but fearful and ornery, too. But then I ain’t in love with you. Bart Kingsley is.”

“In love with me,” she repeated the words.

“You don’t think a man would trek across half the territory, get hisself shot, risk his neck movin’ into a town where he’s a wanted man, settle a homestead and plant sugar beets when he’d have a lot better luck robbin’ a train—all that—if he weren’t in love, do ya?”

“Well…” Rosie grabbed the door handle with a damp palm and gave a push. “Well…well, good afternoon, Mr.… Mr. Cheyenne Bill.”

Grinning his lopsided grin, the Indian tipped his hat. “Evenin’ to you, too, ma’am. It’s been a real pleasure socializin’ with you.”

S
he had just arrived at the schoolhouse when Rosie saw Bart round the corner in his wagon. Lifting her skirts, she ran toward him as he pulled the horses to a halt, leaped down from the board and scooped her up in his arms.

“Oh, Rosie-girl,” he whispered, his words almost a groan. “He’s gone, Rosie. Our Mannie’s truly gone.”

“No, Bart,” she cried. “Please, dear God, let this be a dream!”

They held each other, each wrapped in private grief, yet their tears mingled and their chests heaved as one with racking sobs.

“How can it be, Bart?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, Rosie. I just don’t know.”

As he spoke, Mrs. Kilgore hurried out of the house toward them. “We’ve packed you a bag, Mrs. Springfield. We’ve canceled school until after the funeral on Wednesday. Go on home with you now, honey. You need the rest.”

Rosie gazed into the woman’s red-rimmed eyes.

“Thank you, Mrs. Kilgore.”

“Hurry now, before the sun goes down and the coyotes come out.”

Her words moved Bart to action, and he lifted Rosie up into the wagon. Taking his place beside her, he flicked the reins and set the horses trotting down the street.

They were halfway to the homestead before either could speak. Rosie never knew she held so many tears, but the more she tried to stifle them, the faster they flowed. Her nose turned red and her eyes swelled almost shut. If she had been sick before, she felt ten times worse now. All she could think about was Mannie and his big grin. Every time she shut her eyes, she saw his cluttered school desk, his inkwell and tattered books, his spiky red hair, his ill-formed Spencerian
B
and his bright eyes.

“What did the doctor say?” she asked finally.

“There was nothing he could do. Mannie was gone before I got him home.”

“Did he suffer?”

Bart shook his head. “The suffering is left to us. I swear I’d kill Charley Baker if I could get my hands on him. Don’t look at me like that, Rosie. So would every other man in town. That sidewinder should have checked his target to make sure the board behind it was holding up. Any fool could have guessed it would get shot through. The board was only an inch thick. Baker should have known a .22-caliber rifle would soon cut holes in the board. If I’d been running a shooting gallery, I’d have put a sheet of iron behind the target. A pine board—no matter how thick—is going to give way in
time. Turns out there were sixteen bullets lodged in the wall of the jewelry store at the end of the alley.”

“Sixteen!” Rosie exclaimed. Then she sighed. “Oh, killing Charley Baker wouldn’t bring Mannie back.”

“No, but it would make me feel a whole lot better.”

She sniffled and dabbed her handkerchief under her eyes. “Cheyenne Bill is angry, too. While you were with Mrs. Wade, he took me to his house.”

Bart sat up straight. “His house? He didn’t make you drink any of that home-brewed rotgut, did he?”

“The bottle was empty. He stopped drinking a while ago.”

“
Tried
to stop. Ol’ demon whiskey’s got a mighty strong hold on Bill. I reckon he was talking to you about angels.”

“How did you know?”

“Angels are Cheyenne Bill’s favorite subject. Personally, I think he’s been whacked on the noggin a few too many times.”

“He believes Mannie was an angel sent to tell me to go home with you today.”

“Does he, now? Well, maybe Bill is onto something there. I never knew a better kid than Mannie. If there ever was an angel on earth, it was Manford Wade.”

“Cheyenne Bill said he found you in the woods after you left my dormitory room. He said the two of you cooked up the idea to tell everyone in Raton that you’re cousins.”

Bart gave the hint of a smile. “Bill’s a good man, Rosie. A little off center on some things, but harmless as a fly. That’s why the whole town loves him so, and he’s why they’ve accepted me. Sure, he’s so fierce he
wins just about every glove contest in the area, yet folks invite him to all their birthday parties and neighborhood picnics. They made him leader of the hose company, and they write poems about him in the
Comet.
You mention his name, and everyone sings out his favorite boast,
Cheyenne Bill is a hard, hard man.
Fact is, I couldn’t have a better pal.”

Rosie fell silent. There were many things she wanted to clear up with Bart—especially Cheyenne Bill’s revelation about the way her pappy had treated Bart many years before—but she couldn’t summon up the energy to speak of it. Such things seemed so inconsequential now in light of Mannie’s death.

What did it matter if the Ratonians found out about Bart’s checkered past? Let them hem and haw about having a former outlaw in town. Bart was a good man now. Why had she ever thought she needed to run back to town and make her own life—setting off down the wrong road, as Cheyenne Bill had called it? The love between her and Bart was far more important in this world than having a teaching job or a clapboard house or a spotless reputation.

As the wagon topped the hill and Rosie could see the silhouette of the low dugout walls, she felt yet another pang of grief deep inside her heart. This farm had been one of Mannie’s favorite places, and Bart had been his hero.

“Mannie thought the world of you, Bart,” she said when he had pulled the wagon up to the barn. “He admired you so. I do believe he thought you were next to God Himself.”

Bart gazed at the indigo mesas in the distance. “He
told me once that he wished…” He stopped speaking and swallowed several times. “Mannie told me he wished I was his papa.”

At that, Bart rolled his big shoulders forward and covered his eyes with his hand. “Oh, God, oh, God, why did You let this happen? I could’ve made Mannie come out to the farm with me earlier today. I shouldn’t have let him play picket. I could’ve…I wish…”

Rosie wrapped her arms around the broad expanse of his back and rested her head against his shoulder while he wept. The tenderness of Bart’s heart suddenly came to her in a flood of remembrance. Cats sitting on his lap while he ate lunch, horses nickering with pleasure as he walked through the stables, the deep cuts of taunting children. Bart was a man like no other she had ever known.

He felt pain more deeply and he loved more fiercely. If her father truly had said the things Cheyenne Bill accused him of, no wonder Bart had fled from her. And if Cheyenne Bill insisted that Bart loved her, surely he really did.

“Bart,” she whispered. “Oh, Bart.” If it was possible to cradle a massive bullock of a man, Rosie managed it with her grieving husband. For a long time she held him, rocking slowly back and forth on the wagon seat while the horses grazed. She ran her fingers through the black hair at the back of his neck and stroked the taut muscles of his shoulders and arms. Gently she kissed his cheek and brushed away his tears.

“Don’t go off again, Rosie,” he murmured finally. “I want you here with me. Don’t you see that? I took care of Mannie the best I could, and I’ll take care of you.”

“I know, Bart.” She cuddled close against him as his arms came around her. “I shouldn’t have stayed away. I shouldn’t have been so scared.”

“Nobody’s going to get me. Nobody’s going to tear us apart. You’ve got to believe that, Rosie. There’s nothing,
nothing,
more important in this world than you and me and what we’ve built between us. Life’s too short not to spend it with the one you love.”

“Bart, do you love me? Do you truly love me?”

“Aw, girl, don’t you know that by now?” He cupped her face and tilted it to the moonlight. “I love you so much, nothing can take me away from you again. Don’t you see how it is? Once, I ran off because I thought it was for the best. Then you ran off because you thought it was best. It’s not other people who come between us, Rosie. It’s us. We keep tearing this thing apart. Why? Why do we do that?”

Rosie’s shoulders sagged. “No, Bart, it’s not you and me doing it. It’s other folk. Cheyenne Bill told me what Pappy said to you that day after he found out we got married. That was why you left me, wasn’t it? Pappy drove you off.”

“I’ll be jiggered,” Bart muttered. “I told Bill to keep that business quiet.”

“Well, he didn’t, and now I know how it really came about. Pappy ran you off with all his talk about you being no good for me.”

Bart kissed Rosie’s cheek and rubbed his nose against the soft strands of brown hair that had tumbled down over her shoulder. “I don’t want you ever to blame your pappy for what happened back then. He was doing what he thought best for you. Besides, he was right. I
didn’t have a single thing to offer you as a husband. You deserved better.”

“What about your love? That was more than enough for me.”

“I loved you back then, Rosie, and I love you now—just as much and more.” He kissed her lips. “Stick close, girl. Now and always.”

“Oh, Bart, I will.” Her heart full, Rosie met his ardent kisses with equal passion. She’d been so long absent from this man, it was all she could do to keep from crying aloud with need. As his mouth claimed hers, his hands caressed her shoulders and back as though to make certain she was real.

Just as hungry for him, she allowed her fingers to search out the warm skin beneath his collar and the broad, hard muscles of his chest. “Take me inside, Bart. I’ve been needing you so much.”

His mouth moved over her neck and cheek as he lifted her out of the wagon and carried her across the moonlit yard to their front door. Inside the dugout, he set her on their bed and stretched out beside her. Oh, he was a beautiful man. His green eyes caressed her as he reached for the buttons at her neck.

“Rosie-girl,” he murmured. “I love you better than life itself.”

She smiled, wrapped her arms around his chest and allowed her eyelids to drift shut.

It had once seemed impossible to Bart that he would ever have his Rosie so near his heart again. But as time passed he began to believe that he had been wrong.

Rosie let her option on the house elapse. She took Mr.
Kilgore’s advice and used her savings to buy a small buggy and a gentle horse. Early each morning she drove her rig to town while Bart rode just ahead. At the school she continued to teach the children she had come to love as if they were her own. The death of Manford Wade had affected everyone deeply, and it took time for the students to resume their carefree behavior. But eventually they went back to their usual antics, and their teacher was obliged to cook up a new round of her very popular after-school punishments.

Bart’s sugar-beet crop promised a good income. Thanks to his careful thinning, good irrigation and diligent measures against blister beetles, leaf spot, black root, root rot and curly top, the plants had flourished. During the cool nights and warm days of the New Mexico summer, the long, silver-white taproots were growing toward a prime weight of two pounds or more each. Their crowns sent out brilliantly rich greens, each leaf a good two feet long. Bart planned to sell the leaves and crowns for livestock feed. The farm demanded so much of his time and energy that he knew he soon would have to quit his livery stable job just to keep up with his own fields.

With Rosie’s earnings, they bought another milk cow and the lumber to build a two-bedroom addition onto the top of their soddy. Bart finished digging the refrigerator alone, and he gradually filled it with venison, wild turkey, quail and rabbit. The kitchen garden began to yield a bountiful harvest, and the eggs Rosie sold in town brought in enough extra income to fence off the garden from hungry varmints.

Rosie started to grow healthier almost right away.
With Bart’s teasing and her own comforting home so close at hand, she perked right up. As she felt better, her worries about Bart being carted off to jail subsided for the most part, and they began to attend a few of the Gate City’s social functions.

May brought frequent rain, but they drove into town on the twenty-first for the grand charity ball at McAuliffe and Ferguson’s Hall. The New Mexico Livestock Association hosted a ranch dinner four days later, and the
Comet
announced the building of a new Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway passenger depot. To everyone’s sorrow, on the fifth day of June, Sheriff Bowman died suddenly of a lung hemorrhage. He had been married just two years and was but thirty-six years old. The town mourned the county lawman, but Rosie couldn’t deny her relief that any investigation of Bart’s background surely would cease.

By mid-June three men had tossed in their hats for the vacant position of county sheriff. As Bart’s sugar beets grew and Rosie’s students learned their parts for the recital, the town scheduled a big hunt, formed a football club and made plans for the coming Fourth of July celebrations.

With all these public events to attend, Rosie decided it was high time for Bart to work on his manners. She sewed new shirts, trousers and ties, and taught him to wear them properly. As she learned to cook, she taught him how to pronounce English pea soup au gratin, roast sirloin of beef au jus and salmi of duck.

At night in bed they rehearsed polite conversations about the weather, current local and national news and the state of political affairs—anything to keep Bart
from regaling polite company with his favorite jokes, as he had been known to do on more than one occasion. Usually, however, Rosie’s nightly lessons on morals and manners deteriorated into teasing, laughter and eventually such sweet passion that she forgot anything else.

On Sundays they went to church, sometimes taking a nervous Cheyenne Bill along with them. Rosie taught Sunday school, and Bart volunteered to help landscape the church property.

In fact, Rosie realized one noon as she was driving her horse and buggy away from the schoolhouse, she and Bart had settled into a life so full of contentment and peace that it almost frightened her. Every day held more promise than she’d ever known in her life. Each night in Bart’s arms she felt more and more at ease with the world they were building.

The only wrinkle in the whole picture was her health. Though it had improved considerably, she still felt that something might be seriously wrong. Mourning Mannie, she had missed an appointment with Dr. Kohlhouser, but as time passed, she scheduled a quick lunchtime visit while the children played tag and picket under the supervision of Mr. Kilgore.