This Gun for Hire (33 page)

Pitman took his time making a thorough examination. When he was done, he closed his medical bag and said, “Good luck.”

Calico regarded him suspiciously. “That’s all? Good luck?”

He shrugged. “Just saving my breath since what I have to say doesn’t matter.”

“To me,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me. What are you going to tell Quill?”

“Oh, well, I am going to tell him to stay close to you. I cannot predict which way you will fall, but he should be prepared.”

“I think you are being overly cautious.”

“See?” he asked, holding up a hand. “Waste of breath.” He picked up his bag and headed for the stairs.

Calico made a face behind his back.

“I saw that,” he called out.

“You did not,” she said, but there was part of her that was not entirely sure.

*   *   *

When Quill returned to Ramsey’s room, Pitman was sitting in the chair at his patient’s bedside. “That did not take long,” he said. “She didn’t argue with you?”

“I didn’t argue with her.”

Quill nodded. It was a good strategy. “And? What do you think?”

“She has a concussion. She should rest but not sleep. And no, I did not tell her that. I said I would tell you to stay close.”

“Already my intention.” Quill glanced at Ramsey. He was lying on his back again, but his head was turned and his eyes were alert. He was following their conversation. Quill said, “Would you excuse us, Doctor? There is a matter I need to discuss privately with Mr. Stonechurch. It won’t take long. You can wait in the hallway. Just close the door.”

Pitman did not immediately comply. He looked to his patient first. When Ramsey nodded, he got up and left.

Quill waited for the door to close. “Ann,” he said. “It was Ann who visited you in your study, not Beatrice. She offered you something to eat, something she thought would temper your mood, perhaps make you amenable to what she had to
say. Did she have a chance to tell you that Calico introduced her to Boone Abbot before you collapsed?”

“Ann has nothing to do with this.”

Quill ignored him. “I think Beatrice encouraged Ann to go to you, and I think Beatrice suggested that she take something with her. What was it? Toast and elderberry jam? A sliver of elderberry pie?”

Ramsey’s features remain unchanged.

“Whatever it was, Ann took it away when you keeled over. She was genuinely frightened by your collapse, but I think there was some small part of her that suspected the cause, and I believe that would have frightened her almost as much.”

Ramsey breathed deeply, closed his eyes as he coughed. “Where is she? Why isn’t Ann here?”

“She’s gone,” Quill said bluntly.

Ramsey’s eyes flew open. He struggled to sit up, but Quill put a hand on his shoulder and did not let him rise. Ramsey had no choice but to lie down. “Find her. She will be with Beatrice.”

“Yes, I think you’re right.”

Ramsey nodded faintly. Tears stung his eyes. He blinked but did not try to hide them. “Why?” he asked quietly. “Why would Beatrice use my daughter so cruelly? Can she really hate me so much?”

It was not a question Quill was meant to answer and he remained silent.

“No matter what she’s done,” said Ramsey, “I believe she loves Ann. I have to believe that. I have to. You understand?”

“I do.”

“The threats? The attempts to shoot me? That was Beatrice?”

“I believe that if it wasn’t by her hand, then she had a hand in it.”

As soon as he heard himself say it, Quill felt a thread of tension pull his shoulders taut. His head came up and he stared away from the bed and in the direction of the window.
He was not looking at anything in particular, but he was seeing things as he had not seen them before.

Without a word of his intent to Ramsey, he turned and strode to the door. Pitman was waiting in the hallway. Quill waved him in. “Stay with him. The cook and housekeeper will be arriving soon along with several others. Someone is sure to volunteer to sit with Mr. Stonechurch and relieve you. Don’t accept the offer.”

The doctor’s mouth snapped shut so hard that his spectacles bounced and slid down the slope of his nose.

Quill strode out, satisfied Pitman understood. When he reached his room, he changed quickly and strapped on his gun, but before he put on his jacket, he rummaged through the uppermost drawer in his wardrobe. He found what he wanted beneath a stack of handkerchiefs. He palmed the badge and attached it to his vest without looking down.

It felt right. It was time.

Quill shrugged into his jacket then his coat. He checked his pockets for gloves. On the way out the door, he grabbed the Stetson he had only rarely worn since coming to Stonechurch and put it on.

He made quick work of gathering Calico’s clothes, weapons, and cartridges. Without a doubt, the only impediment to her leaving the house was the fact that she was not dressed for it, and that included her guns.

“Finally,” Calico said when he dropped her belongings on the kitchen table. “Where is my Colt?”

“Under the coat.”

She found it. “Loaded?”

“Mm-hmm. I left the rifle and the derringer behind.”

She nodded, removed her robe, and reached for her drawers. “Are you going to just stand there?”

“Yes.”

“No.” She motioned him to the stairwell. “Go there or I am going into the mudroom.”

He sighed, shook his head. Once he was in the stairwell and out of sight, he said, “Do not expect this accommodation when we’re married.”

She smiled. “Consider me warned.” She yanked up the hem of her shift and shoved her long legs into the drawers.

“You realize that was a proposal, don’t you?”

“You realize I accepted, don’t you?”

“Huh. That was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be.”

Calico rid herself of her shift and pulled a heavy cotton chemise over her head. “Oh, you will have to make a better one later. Even someone like me wants a pretty proposal.”

Quill did not ask what “someone like me” meant. He said, “Ann is gone.”

That riveted Calico. She was half in and half out of her shirt, her fingers frozen on the buttons. “Don’t you think that’s the first thing you should have told me?”

“We would not be any farther ahead than we are now. And we need to think, not react.”

Although he could not see her, Calico nodded anyway. “Tell me everything.”

He did, recounting his conversation with Ramsey, his search for Ann, and finally the conclusion he had reached that had prompted his abrupt departure from Ramsey’s room.

“It’s all connected,” he said. “The shootings, the problems in the Number 1 mine, Ramsey’s suspicions that the men are organizing, and Beatrice’s very personal attempt tonight to kill him.” He stepped into the kitchen when Calico called to him and was brought up short by the sight of her. She did not merely take his breath away; she made his heart trip over itself.

She was wearing the clothes he had chosen for her, the same ones she had been wearing when she arrived in Stonechurch. She’d told him then that she had dressed in that fashion because she was feeling ornery, but that was not the case now. Now she looked fierce, and he suspected she was feeling exactly the same way. Her buckskin trousers hung straight and loose until they disappeared inside her boots. She wore a white shirt similar to his and a dark brown leather vest that hid the small curves of her breasts. She was buttoning her jacket when she glanced up and caught him staring.

“What?” she asked.

He simply shook his head. “Nothing.”

She shrugged and finished buttoning her jacket. She deftly plaited her hair and held the tail against the crown of her head while she slipped on her hat. When she reached for her scuffed and weather-beaten leather duster, she only grabbed a handful of air.

Quill held up the duster. “Turn around. I want to put it on you.”

Calico hesitated, genuinely nonplussed by the gesture. “No one’s ever—” She stopped, gave him her back, and let him be the gentleman he was. Standing there in her man’s shirt and trousers, a Colt at her hip, wearing a vest that disguised any hint of her long curves and a Stetson that hid what she thought of as her one true feminine glory, Calico felt utterly female as Quill helped her with her coat.

When she turned around again, he was waiting for her. He tipped her chin, kissed her lightly once, then again. “You will be careful. You will let me catch you in all the ways that I might need to.” When she nodded slowly, he added, “You understand I mean that more than in the literal sense.”

“Yes.” She slipped her hands inside his duster, laid her palms against his chest. The faint smile that tugged the corners of her mouth upward faded when she felt the press of an oddly familiar but unexpected object under the left side of his jacket. A vertical crease appeared between her eyebrows. Her eyes did not stray from Quill’s as she tapped the slight bulge with her fingertips. “What is this?”

“You know.”

And as soon he as said it, she thought that it was probably true. “I want to see.” When Quill merely shrugged, Calico opened two buttons on his jacket and parted the material so she could see his vest. The badge’s simplicity made a powerful statement. She had seen some badges carved from coins, but Quill’s was not like that. Silver in color, round in shape, a single five-pointed star filled the open center. Stamped in an arc above the star were the words
U.S. MARSHAL
, and on the rim below it was the small stamp of another star. “Was there a reason you did not want to tell me?”

“Not a good reason. I was taken with the idea that you thought I was a bounty hunter.” He closed his jacket. “And your opinion of the marshals was not what one would call respectful.”

“You’re right. Not a good reason.” She patted the badge through his jacket one more time. “Does Ramsey know he’s being protected by a federal marshal?”

“No. And I don’t think ‘protected’ applies here.”

“Quill. I know I’ve called him the pharaoh now and again, but no one could have suspected Ramses required a taster for his food. This was not predictable. Beatrice Stonechurch falls outside my experience and yours.” Calico could see that he was not prepared to forgive himself so easily. She took a step back and surreptitiously used the table to steady herself when she felt a wave of nausea uncurl in her stomach. “Were you assigned here? Is that how you came to Stonechurch?”

“I have no specific territory. I was tapped for the marshal service because I served in the Army and had a lawyer’s background. I still don’t know who brought my name to their attention. I was just settling down on my ranch when they came to me, and I was not easily convinced.”

“But you agreed.”

“Eventually. They needed someone to lead a posse through territory scattered with renegades. I was familiar with the mountains and the renegades. There was some thought that I was in a position to negotiate a truce.”

“Did you?” The question was a delaying tactic. Calico felt pressure building behind her eyes. Not wanting to call attention to it, she kept her hands where they were.

“I did. We were after Samuel Miller, not Indian hostiles. They did not like him much either.”

“Cutlip Miller. No one likes him. So you’re the one who brought him in.”

“Not alone. I had men with me.”

“Sure. The posse.” Her tone could not have been more dismissive. “And Stonechurch?”

“You were right. I was asked to take it on.”

“Asked?”

“This is not my job, Calico. It’s a diversion. I am a rancher.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I own a spread.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I swear in as a marshal when it suits me.”

“Sure.”

Quill adopted the strategy of least resistance and stopped talking. He placed his hands firmly on her shoulders and nudged her just enough to encourage her to turn around, then he pointed to the mudroom and the door beyond it.

Calico drew a steadying breath and led the way. A silver dollar moon cast enough light to create shadows behind them. The area immediately around the porch was trampled with footprints. They had to walk out a piece to find ones that suggested Beatrice had gone in a particular direction.

“I never saw Ann,” said Calico as they rounded the house to the front. “I barely saw Beatrice.”

Quill pointed out a pair of small footprints facing another, equally small, pair. The prints were surrounded by circles of disturbed snow, indicative of the women’s gowns sweeping the surface. “It looks as if Ann met Beatrice here. She must have left by the front door. We could not have heard her from Ramsey’s room.”

Calico stared at the prints. “I wonder if they had a conversation here. I can’t shake the feeling that in the end Ann did not go without a great deal of convincing. To leave her father . . .” Calico shook her head. “It’s hard for me to conceive that she would do that.”

“Because you would not have.”

“You’re right. I would not have.” She paused. “I didn’t.”

Quill started walking, careful to stay out of the tracks they were following. “There’s no stumbling, no dragging. It appears that if Ann were reluctant, she still went willingly. I think Beatrice has been grooming Ann to play a role in her scheme since Leo Stonechurch’s accident. When Leo died, Beatrice set things in motion. This has been a long
time coming. Ann is the one who served her father the food that caused his collapse. She is innocent; she only thinks she is guilty.”

“It is probably easier for her to take the blame herself than to look too closely at someone she loves. What she did had no malicious intent, but who can say what Beatrice has made her believe? She is scared. I don’t like to think about her so scared.” On her own, Ann might go anywhere, but Beatrice’s presence changed things, made the route she would take with her niece more deliberate. Calico stopped suddenly and tugged on Quill’s sleeve to bring him up short.

“I think I know where Beatrice will go,” she said.

“Horses?” he asked, directing his chin toward the livery.

“No. She might take a mount if she were alone, but Ann doesn’t ride. At this late hour, Beatrice will not ask for a rig, plus Ann’s recent acquaintance with Boone Abbot makes that especially risky.” Calico raised her hand, pointed to the far end of town, and then lifted her arm a fraction higher, indicating the shadowed adit carved into the face of the mountain. “She will be hiding in one of the mine tunnels. If you’re right about her connection to the problems in Number 1, my guess is that’s where she’s gone. She will have friends there.”