The Man from Stone Creek (11 page)

Sam nodded and put his hand on the door latch. “Good night, Maddie,” he said. “And thank you.”

She didn't smile, and that was probably a good thing, because then he'd have liked leaving even less than he already did. “Good night, Sam O'Ballivan,” she replied.

He heard the lock snap into place as soon as he'd closed the door behind him, and it gave him a lonely feeling, standing out here on the back step. He didn't linger and took the long way back to the schoolhouse, passing by the Rattlesnake Saloon. There were plenty of horses tied up out front, including Charlie Wilcox's old nag, waiting wearily to plod back to the shack.

Sam resisted an urge to stop and commiserate.

He'd done enough of that for one night.

 

T
ERRAN TURNED UP
at the schoolhouse the next morning, even though it was Saturday, and his eyes gleamed with secrets when he shoved a bundle into Sam's hands, out front by the well. Maddie had returned the suit coat, as promised.

“How's Bird faring?” Sam asked, watching as Neptune trundled through the deep, breeze-rippled grass in pursuit of a horsefly.

The boy looked around secretively, then whispered his answer, even though there was nobody but Sam and the dog around to hear. “She ate four hotcakes this morning,” he confided. “Maddie says the way she's going, she'll eat us out of house and home before Wednesday ever gets here. Did you send that wire to Denver?”

Sam nodded. He'd taken care of that first thing, after feeding Neptune some more jerked venison and swilling enough coffee to get his eyes to stay open. It had cost him a dollar and a half to dispatch that message. His thoughts snagged on the hotcakes, though, and made his stomach rumble.

Terran fairly swelled with importance. “You think she'll take Bird in? Mrs. Zebediah T. Roundtree and her lawyer husband, I mean?”

Sam shrugged. “I hope so,” he said. He frowned. “You don't miss much, do you?”

Terran's smile was smug. “Next to nothin',” he said.

A
T SUNSET
,
Vierra roused himself, disentangling his arms and legs from those of the woman whose bed he shared, groping his way upward, out of sleepy satiation, clumsily lighting the lamp on the bedside table and contemplating a cheroot.

The woman lay with her face hidden beneath a glimmering curtain of honey-colored hair, her body soft and warm from a long afternoon of lovemaking. For one disconcerting moment, he could not recall her name, knew only that she
wasn't
Pilar Montoya.

He shook off the melancholy that realization brought. He'd gone too deep and waded doggedly back to the shallower regions of his mind.

Oh, yes, he thought, sitting up to rub his face hard with both hands. This was Amadea Rios-Flores, luscious wife of a very old and very wealthy
patron,
imported from Europe and denied nothing, except lovers. If he was caught with her, he would be bound to a post, stripped of his shirt and lashed until he bled to death.

Not a pleasant prospect, though at least it would mean he felt something.

The lovely Amadea stirred on the pillows, turned sleepily onto her back, crooned his name as she stretched.

Footsteps thumped in the corridor.

Suddenly alert, Vierra swore, threw back the heavy linen sheet and swung both legs over the side of the bed.

A loud, husbandly rap sounded at the door.

Vierra snatched up his clothes and took refuge behind the silk changing screen in the corner, peering through the narrow crack between two artfully painted panels—peacocks, with their tail feathers spread—as he scrambled into his pants. Too late, he realized he'd forgotten his boots, and one of them was sticking out from beneath the bed.

Vierra held his breath and waited as Amadea sat up, yawned, realized the problem and pulled the sheet up over her breasts with a small gasp of alarm. Her eyes were wide as they sought him.

Silently he ran through the list of saints, seeking one he hadn't offended with some promise, hastily made and just as hastily broken.

“Come in,” Amadea called in her strange Teutonic Spanish. Her gaze darted to the open window, with its lace curtains fluttering on the hot breath of the evening. No doubt she believed Vierra had already ducked out, the same way he'd come in, by way of the hacienda's sloping, many-leveled roof.

He crossed himself as Juan Rios-Flores opened the door and strode across the threshold, strutting like the vainglorious little rooster he was. Rios-Flores was barely five feet tall, with a balding head, gray mutton-chop whiskers, a belly and a wide nose that looked as if it had been flattened by the bristled side of a horse brush.

He sniffed the air as if scenting Vierra.

St. Jude, Vierra thought. Perhaps he hadn't affronted the patron saint of the impossible—at least, not too seriously.
I will never again sleep with another man's wife,
he promised silently. He didn't believe the vow for a moment, of course, and neither, regrettably, would St. Jude.

“Our guests will be arriving soon,” Rio-Flores told his pink and thoroughly satisfied wife. His suspicion seemed to be abating, but Vierra didn't breathe or move even the smallest muscle. If he could have willed his heart to stop beating, he would have done so. “Why are you languishing there in bed? The servants require direction.”

“I had a headache,” Amadea lied prettily. She stretched again, beneath the sheet, and made a kittenish sound of contentment. “I am better now.” Her perfect face crumpled into a frown. On her, even that was attractive. “I thought you were in Refugio until tomorrow,” she added.

Vierra had thought the same thing, which was why he'd availed himself to the pleasures of Amadea's sleek, succulent body in the middle of the day.

I'm getting too old for this,
he told himself and the pertinent saint, whom he hoped was bending a kindly ear his way.

“I finished my business there early,” Rios-Flores said, narrowing his little eyes and scanning the room. As his gaze passed over the changing screen, Vierra shivered. The distinctive scent of passion was subtle, but unmistakable, as well, and it would be a miracle if no one in the hacienda had heard Amadea's cries of release. Perhaps one of the servants had passed in the corridor at the wrong time, and reported to
el patron.

Vierra closed his eyes and made another empty vow to St. Jude.
No more married women,
he reiterated.
I promise.

“Get dressed,” Rios-Flores commanded gruffly. And then, mercifully, he was gone, closing the door smartly behind him. Vierra, who had been in many such delicate situations before and could not be sure of his standing with his favorite saint, waited. Amadea crawled out of bed, on the side closest to him, saw his boots lying on the floor and bit down hard on her lower lip. Her eyes came to rest on the changing screen and narrowed. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, the door flew open again and Rios-Flores dashed in.

Wrapped in the sheet, Amadea looked back at her husband over a bare shoulder, simultaneously employing one foot to slide Vierra's boot under the bed.

“You wanted something, darling?” she asked innocently.

Vierra was certain he'd succeeded at willing his heartbeat to a standstill.

Rios-Flores flushed, no doubt feeling the fool. He looked like a fat fish, tossed up onto the bank, straining to breathe. At last, he shook his head and left the room again.

Vierra's knees went weak with relief. He turned his eyes heavenward and crossed himself again.

Gracias,
he told the patient saint.

Amadea, statuesque in her sheet, rounded the end of the bed, hurried to the door and turned the key in the lock.

“Get out!” she whispered as furiously as if Vierra were an intruder rather than a once-welcome guest. “If Juan finds you here, he will kill us both!”

Vierra slipped out from behind the screen, stooped to retrieve his boots and tugged them on. Thanking God, the Virgin, the angels and all the attending saints and martyrs, he planted a light kiss on Amadea's pouting mouth and made for the window.

He would not be back, he decided as he navigated the tile roof, his step as light as a cat's. No, indeed. From now on he would confine his amorous adventures to women who did not have jealous and powerful husbands.

He paused, looked up at the black-velvet sky with its great river of diamonds flowing from horizon to horizon.

Unless, he amended, with a slight smile, the temptation proved too great for a poor, misguided sinner like him to resist.

 

I
T WAS GOING TO BE
a quiet, lonely night, Sam thought as he dragged the copper bathtub into the middle of the floor. He'd shot a rabbit for supper, eaten his fill and given the leftovers to Neptune.

The dog's owner hadn't shown up to claim him, and Sam was troubled about that, but the plain fact of the matter was, he'd been thinking about Maddie Chancelor ever since he'd left the mercantile the night before. Hadn't gotten any sleep to speak of, either, and he'd been in a fractious temper because of it.

He felt restless now, as though there was something he ought to be doing and wasn't. The major's orders had been specific.
Act like a schoolmaster. Don't stir things up too much before time—that'll make folks curious and they'll start flapping their jaws. When you've got those outlaws dead to rights, that's when you make your move.

He took two buckets and carried them through the schoolhouse and on outside, to the well he'd pulled poor Tom Singleton out of his first day in Haven. Filled them both, taking some comfort in the laborious nature of the cranking required, and hauled them back inside to heat on top of the stove.

Things had come to a sorry pass, he reflected as he built up the fire, when the best a man could look forward to was a bath in two inches of lukewarm water. Even his old friend and companion Hercules couldn't be counted on to liven up the night. He felt too fitful to read; there was something on the wind, charging the air like a storm gathering force in the furthest hills, and he was damned if he could guess what it was.

While the tin buckets sat on the stovetop, taking their sweet time to warm, Sam went outside to groom the horse the major had given him, along with a princely sum of money.
You'll need bribes, dealing with them Mexicans,
the old man had said.
And have a care how you handle Vierra. Don't know much about him. Best we could do, though, so you'll have to keep your wits about you.

Neptune, heretofore plaguing the patient old horse, settled his haunches in the deep grass and growled low in his throat. To hear him, a man would have thought he was a wolf instead of a squirmy pup who whimpered in his sleep.

“Hush,” Sam told him, and paused from brushing the horse to listen.

A wagon, coming close.

He smiled to himself, and hope surged up his windpipe to swell in his throat. Maddie Chancelor, come to make a delivery? He hadn't ordered anything from the mercantile, insofar as he could recollect. Maybe she'd gotten tired of harboring Bird while they waited for an answer to the telegram he'd sent, and decided to toss her back in his lap. Maddie was taking a risk, all right, hiding a saloon girl in the rooms above the general store, and he knew she was chafing under the load. If Mungo got wind of the deceit, there'd be hell to pay.

Sam set aside the brush and waited. He'd left his coat inside, since it was a warm evening, and his gun belt was in plain sight around his hips. If his caller
wasn't
Maddie, it might be an awkward thing to explain. This was 1903, after all, a new and modern century, and the world had changed since the old days. Most men didn't wear a sidearm, at least in town, and that went double for schoolmasters.

A buggy rounded the corner of the schoolhouse, a moving shadow in the light of a scant moon and a legion of stars. As it got closer, he saw that the rig was drawn smartly by a coal-black gelding, and there was a fancy woman at the reins.

“Sam O'Ballivan?” the lady inquired, pulling to a stop a dozen yards short of where he stood. She gave the buggy whip a decisive little flick before jamming it into its holder.

Not a social call, then, he decided.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

Neptune didn't bark. Instead he seemed to be lying low in the grass, like a soldier dodging cannonballs inside a beleaguered fort.

“Oralee Pringle,” the visitor announced. The whole buggy shook as she alighted. She was hefty, and dressed in what looked like brown bombazine. The heavy fabric rustled as she approached, and her dyed-yellow ringlets bounced, like her bosom.

“Evening,” Sam said, thinking he might have to revise his previous decision that it was going to be a boring night.

Miss Pringle put out a hand almost as brawny as Sam's own, and he shook it as a matter of courtesy. Round eyes, probably dark blue, peered up at him from beneath piles of lacquered curls. Oralee had been a pretty girl once, he figured, but her best years were behind her, along with a whole slew of rich dinners, given the expanse of the backside he'd glimpsed as she climbed down out of that buggy.

“I've lost one of my girls,” Oralee said forthrightly. “Wondered if you knew anything about her. Bird of Paradise, she calls herself.” The brothel and saloon owner gave a little snort of derision. “Damn near not worth the trouble she causes me. Sent her over here with supper in a basket to welcome you to town, before I lit out for Tucson.”

Sam held her gaze. There were times when a man had to lie, though he'd never favored it. “It was a fine supper,” he said. “And I'm obliged, but I haven't seen the girl since.”

Oralee pondered the reply, and Sam would have bet she didn't believe him. “Troublesome little thing, and too skinny by half for most of my customers. Skittish as all getout. Split Garrett Donagher's head open with a lamp I had sent all the way from Boston. Once he came to, he fair took my place apart, looking for her.”

“Maybe it's a good thing she isn't around then,” Sam said easily.

Oralee narrowed her eyes to slits. “The other girls said Bird was all swoony, after she come back from fetching that basket over here. She took a liking to you, according to them.”

“I'm flattered,” Sam replied.

“You don't look like no schoolteacher I've ever seen,” Oralee prodded.

“You're not the first person to say that,” he said with modest regret. “What do I look like to you, Miss Pringle?”

“A lawman, maybe,” Oralee decided. She glanced down at the .45 riding low on Sam's right hip before shifting her attention back to his face. “Or a gunslinger.”

Privately, Sam indulged his habit of renaming folks for characters in the books he knew practically by heart. From that moment on, Oralee Pringle was Medusa. Those ringlets of hers could turn to snakes anytime, and with little provocation.

“You get a lot of gunslingers through here?” he asked.