The Last Renegade (8 page)

“Would you like to examine it?”

She leaned forward and put out her hand but couldn’t quite reach it. Kellen stood and closed the distance. She thanked him. He remained standing while she looked it over, turning it onto its face almost immediately. She ran her forefinger lightly across the length of the bent pin.

“It’s his,” she said and gave it back.

Kellen returned the badge to his vest pocket before he sat. “I want you to be certain.”

“I’m certain. He told me the pin was bent.”

“Did he tell you how?” he asked. A smile edged his mouth, as if he might know something she didn’t.

“As a matter of fact, yes. His wife bent it when she tried to tear it off his vest.”

Kellen tried to recall what Nat Church had said about his wife.
Wife would’ve tried to stop me
. “She wanted him to be done with the life he’d chosen.”

“That is not surprising. A woman chooses her man. Her man chooses their life. In her place, I might have stomped on the thing.”

Kellen didn’t doubt it. There was no vehemence in her voice, just the stiff backbone of resolve. “He was a widower. Did he tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t tell him you were a widder.”

Her smile was a trifle crooked. “No, I didn’t tell him that.” She absently brushed away a few fiery strands of hair that fluttered across her cheek. “I wrote that I was the owner of the Pennyroyal. I thought that would be enough.”

Kellen was not prepared to reveal that the letters she wrote to Nat Church were the source of almost everything he knew.

Whatever Nat Church’s intentions, Kellen had been charged with going to the Pennyroyal.
Should find her…tell her…she’s waiting
. And now that he knew the content of the letters, it seemed clear that the
she
in wait was Mrs. Berry. Perhaps Nat Church had only ever wanted him to tell Mrs. Berry that he wouldn’t be coming.

Except that it didn’t settle right with him to leave it there. He still wanted to know why a man was dead and a woman was in so much pain she could wound you with a look.

“I wasn’t sure you
were
the owner when we met,” he said. “I knew we would figure it out eventually, and so we have. You can appreciate my caution. Nat Church is dead for lack of it.”

She lowered her head and stared at her folded hands. “I didn’t think I had to warn him. No one knew he was…” Her head snapped up; suspicion narrowed her eyes. “Tell me again how you know what you know.”

“He wanted me to know. He made sure I did.”

“Why?”

“I can’t speak to his reasons. He wasn’t one for explaining things like that. He trusted me.”

“He never wrote that he was bringing anyone with him.”

“Perhaps because he didn’t want you to know that he thought better about doing the job alone.”

“So he chose you?”

Kellen smiled again. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?” The smile disappeared. He picked up his glass, emptied it, then leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. He rolled the glass between his palms. “You played your cards close.”

“Not close enough. He’s dead. Bringing you along didn’t keep him safe.”

“He didn’t ask me along to keep him safe. The job, as I understand it, is to keep you safe.”

She flushed. Her folded hands tightened. “I never asked for that.”

“You asked for protection for the town. You’re part of the town, aren’t you?”

Her flush deepened, but she did not respond to the rhetorical question. “Someone found out that he was coming here and killed him.”

“You have to consider the possibility his murder had nothing at all to do with the reasons he was coming here. He was a lawman.”

“Retired.”

Kellen had suspected as much.

“Retired, yes, but not without enemies. Not everyone hangs, you know. Not everyone is shot dead. Some go to prison, some of them get out, and some of them who get out go looking.” He thought he saw her shiver. He stopped rolling the glass. “Should I start a fire in the stove?”

She shook her head. “No, not on my account.”

He moved the glass to the table as he stood. “Then on mine.”

“Where are you from?” Before he could answer, she said, “And please don’t say you’re not from around here. There is no point in being obtuse when that much is certain. I put your accent east of the Mississippi. Northeast?”

“I didn’t realize it was still obvious. I haven’t lived there for years.” Kellen set about lighting the tinder and nursing the fire. “New England, generally. New Haven, specifically.”

“New Haven. Isn’t there a college there?”

“Yale,” he said. “You’re thinking of Yale.”

“No, I was thinking of Harvard.”

He chuckled. “I don’t think anyone except students and graduates much cares if you confuse them.”

“I think you might be a graduate of one of them.”

“Well, I am.” He closed the door on the stove and held out his hands to warm them. Glancing over his shoulder at her, he said, “Yale, if that’s your next question. My father is a professor there. Humanities.”

“Humanities,” she repeated. “What does that mean?”

“He studies and lectures in disciplines that elevate humankind. Ancient languages. History. Philosophy. Religion. He enjoys literature above all the rest. Ancient Greek literature.”

“I see.”

He saw her eyes dart to the guns. “I don’t share his interests. It’s a disappointment to him.” He briskly rubbed his hands together and returned to his seat on the trunk. “What about you? I seem to recall that you’re a newcomer to Bitter Springs. Am I remembering that right?”

“I wrote to Mr. Church that I was.”

“Then he might have told me. I still have Finn’s voice rattling in my brain, so it’s difficult to recall where I heard it.”

“Yes, well, Finn knows something about everyone in town. Rabbit knows the rest.”

“They take after their grandfather.”

“Their grandmother. Heather Collins knows it all, and if you forget that, she’ll remind you. I’ve spoken to the boys about the guns. They gave me their word that they won’t tell anyone else what they saw in your bag.”

Kellen was not confident he could trust the boys, but it was clear to him that she did. “Good to know.”

“I came here from Sacramento.”

“With your husband.”

A brief hesitation, then, “After Adam, not with him. He wasn’t my husband until I got here.” Her glance swiveled to the empty glass on the table. “I think I will take that drink if you don’t mind.”

“Of course. Let me see if I can find another glass.”

“There should be one in the bathing room.”

He returned with it in short order, splashed it with a good measure of whiskey, and handed it to her. “How long ago did you arrive in Bitter Springs?”

“Six years ago. Adam won the Pennyroyal in a card game.”

Kellen’s eyebrows lifted. “I’ve heard of things like that. Never knew them to be true.”

“This is true. He won it in a poker game that lasted three days. It came down to Adam and Mr. Israel Dunkirk of the Pacific Coast Railway. They had already cleaned the lint from the pockets of every other man at the table. The Pennyroyal was just one of the holdings he took away.”

“The game was here?”

“No, Sacramento. Adam had no business being at that table, except that he parlayed a small stake into a bigger one and eventually bought himself a seat.”

“He was a gambler?”

“Not as a rule.”

“Lucky then.”

She shrugged. “Not as a rule. I’ve always assumed he cheated.”

Kellen laughed.

“I’m serious,” she said.

“I know you are.”

She laughed then, too, and sipped her drink. “This is good whiskey. Very smooth.”

“Better than the stock in your saloon?”

“Buy a few drinks and decide for yourself.”

“I might.”

“I’ll reimburse you. Room and board. Your drinks. Whatever you like.”

“You’re hiring me?”

“Yes.”

“The same arrangement you offered Mr. Church?”

“I don’t know your experience. Perhaps you aren’t as practiced.”

Kellen refrained from pointing out that he was alive while Nat Church was very much not. Standing, he picked up the Colt with the ivory grip, hefted it once, and then expertly spun it clockwise, then counter, and finally pretended to holster it at his side. After a pause, he set it back on the table.

“That’s all well and good, Mr. Coltrane, but nimble fingers don’t necessarily mean a steady hand. I want to know if you can shoot the eye out of a chicken hawk when he’s circling the henhouse.”

“Probably not. Did Nat Church say he could?”

“No. But it might be useful.”

“If we were after chicken hawks. But we’re not, are we? I was thinking you were after larger prey. The Burdicks, for instance.”

“I’m not after anyone,” she said.

“Protection,” he said. “A peacemaker.”

“Yes.”

“There might be a price.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “I am not naïve.”

Kellen was not certain he agreed. “Someone else has to make the first move.”

She nodded.

“I thought that had already occurred. Didn’t you tell Church there were men already dead?”

“I did, but every circumstance is different, and except for…”
Her voice trailed away. She cleared her throat and finished. “The proof of fault has not been established.”

“Except for?” he asked. “It’s what you don’t say, Mrs. Berry, that holds real meaning. Except for what?”

“Not what,” she said. “Who. Except for Ellen Wilson. I know which Burdick murdered her.”

The name was unfamiliar to him. He had to ask, “Who is Ellen Wilson?”

“My sister.”

“What will you have tonight, Charlie? A whiskey or a shot of the white lightning?” Raine held up a bottle in each hand and cocked an eyebrow at Charlie Patterson as the cowboy stepped up to the bar. “If you’ve been out no more than three days, I recommend the whiskey. Longer than that, the white lightning.”

Charlie grinned. He had a wide smile and eyes about as large and brown as the calves he drove to their mamas. He was sweet on Sue Hage, but like Emily Ransom, he didn’t know how not to flirt. He winked at Raine. “Give me the white lightning. I was out in the cold all day. It felt like four.”

She laughed and poured. “Take it over to the table by the piano. I’m watching the door tonight, and even if I weren’t, I think Walt talked Sue into playing.”

The smile that wreathed his face settled in his eyes. “Glad to hear it, Mrs. Berry. Surely, now, I’m glad to hear it.”

She chased him off and immediately engaged another customer in conversation. Kellen Coltrane had not made an appearance since he had returned to his room after dinner. In the dining room, he had remained apart, choosing to sit by himself
in spite of overtures by the couple from Springfield and Emily Ransom’s attempts to pair him with Mr. Weyman, the whiskey drummer, before Mrs. Garvin arrived with her two comely daughters in tow. Mr. Coltrane even managed to beat back Mrs. Garvin without using a stick. This was mostly open range country, but her shootist knew how to set up a fence as prickly as barbed wire.

She had spoken to him at dinner, just a few words in passing as she made her rounds. It annoyed her that she found even that brief exchange of words difficult.

Perhaps it was because she had spoken to him of Ellen earlier. He was a stranger, and even after so much time had passed, it still seemed wrong to speak of her sister to someone from the outside. Ellen would have been the first to laugh at the notion that anyone was an outsider. Her sister had welcomed everyone. She had been genuinely kind, friendly to a fault. She had taken it to heart that people should be treated as she wanted to be treated. It had been her idea to hire Walter Mangold, and Raine had never regretted listening to her.

But Ellen’s sweet nature meant she did not always see the wickedness that was around her, and when she saw it, she made excuses for it and tried to be kinder, more generous, as though she could change character that had meanness bred in the bone.

Raine feared little for herself, but it had been her life’s work to fear for Ellen. In spite of her vigilance, she had failed her sister. Ellen was dead.

Kellen Coltrane deserved an explanation. Raine had offered none. Once Ellen’s name passed her lips, her throat closed. She had meant to be matter of fact, the way she was when she and Mrs. Sterling talked about the day Ellen died, but emotion overwhelmed and words failed her. She could not say one more word than she already had. Silence had been her refuge. It had also been painful.

It could only have been more humiliating if she had cried.

She wondered what had gone through Mr. Coltrane’s mind as she sat mute. He didn’t press her with questions, offer sympathy, or in any way indicate that he was uncomfortable. He simply sat there, and she had the sense that he was not waiting
her out, but waiting with her. It was unexpected and oddly calming.

She had finished her drink, found her voice in the bottom of that glass, and promised that she would speak to him later. He didn’t ask her to define what later meant. He stood the same time she did, took her glass, and walked her to the door. He opened it for her. It all seemed rather vague now, as though she had passed time in a dream, and she forgave herself for the passing fancy that she was being courted like a woman who deserved it.

Jem Davis, one of the ranch hand regulars, snapped his fingers in front of Raine’s face. He had hands like small hams and fingers as thick as sausages. He liked to say that as appendages they represented the best parts of a pig.

Raine jerked her head back. “Take your hand out of my face, Jem Davis. What do you want?”

“Two beers and a whiskey for me and my brothers.” He used his chin to indicate the two young men collecting cards at the table closest to the stairs.

“You’re not playing poker with your brothers, are you? Someone always gets hurt.”

“Someone always cheats. At least when we’re the only ones at the table, no one ends up dead.”

“True.” She set him up with his order. “Try not to break anything tonight.”

He laid his money down and picked up his drinks, calling out to his brothers. “Jessop. Jake. The Widder Berry says I’m not allowed to break anything but your heads.”