When a Texan Gambles (3 page)

“I should just kill myself,” she mumbled old Harriet Rainy’s favorite refrain. But without a gun or a knife, Sarah would have to jump out the second-floor window and drag herself back upstairs, over and over, before the ten-foot fall finally broke her neck.

Harriet Rainy would sometimes add, “But if I killed myself, who would take care of you?” as if giving Sarah an old quilt in the comer of the room were a great burden.

Sarah paced the room. Last night she should have shot the cowboy who married her while she held his Colt in her hand. What kind of man chooses a wife from a jail cell? He either had something seriously wrong with him, or he was as dumb as kindling. If she had shot him during the storm, folks might have thought it was thunder. Maybe she could have escaped with his guns and sold them. Or robbed a bank, assuming she could find one in this town named Used-to-be-called-the-Scot‘s-Stash. Now that she found herself on the path to a life of crime, Sarah saw no need to stop.

She tried to remember what Sam Gatlin looked like. Tall, very tall. And strong. He’d carried her as though she were made of straw. And mean, she decided. He definitely had a mean look about him. Eyes so dark they looked black when he watched her. Though he couldn’t be thirty yet, his jaw was square and set. She’d bet a smile never crawled across his face.

Sarah fell back on the bed. She’d married the devil. It was her punishment for marrying Mitchell Andrews when she didn’t love him. Granny always told her never to marry a man unless you love him something fierce and can’t help yourself, ‘cause men are like apples, they don’t do nothing but rot once you take them home.

Since Granny had never married, Sarah wondered about her advice. When Mitchell took her back to his farm after Granny died, Sarah thought she’d grow to love him. But it hadn’t happened. She didn’t even cry when he died. What kind of heartless woman doesn’t cry when her husband dies?

Sarah shook her head. “Me!” She answered her own question as she continued analyzing her crimes.

“Then I clubbed Zeb Whitaker,” she mumbled. Killing a man, even a worthless one like Whitaker, couldn’t be a good thing to do. Now her sentence would be spending the rest of her life married to a cold, heartless man who stole her one dress. With her luck she’d live a long life.

There was no choice for Sarah other than to believe that Harriet Rainy had been right. Maybe she was a worthless nothing who washed up on the porch one night during a storm.

Someone shouted from down the hall.

Sarah listened. A woman swore and ordered a man out of her room. Footsteps suddenly thundered toward Sarah’s door.

She panicked and pulled the covers over her head. Maybe he wouldn’t get into her room. Maybe, if he did, he wouldn’t notice her beneath the covers.

The door creaked open. Someone stomped in.

Sarah tried to be perfectly still. Maybe if she didn’t breathe, the intruder would simply go away.

“Mrs. Gatlin?” came a man’s voice that sounded vaguely familiar. “I hope this is the right place and that lump in the bed is my wife. I forgot to look at the room number when I left, and guessing which door is not the healthiest game to play around this place.”

Sarah peeked out from under the covers. Sure enough, there he was, the demon she’d married. He didn’t look any less frightening in daylight than he had last night. So big, she could cut him in half and still have two fair-sized husbands.

When she didn’t say a word, he tossed her the bundle he carried.

“Your dress was ruined, so I got you another one.” He watched her closely with his black eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she glared down at the plain brown dress with not even a touch of lace at the collar. It reminded her of old Harriet Rainy’s clothes, simply cut, made of coarse linsey-woolsey. Harriet always combined cotton for the warp yarns in the loom and wool for the weft. Serviceable fabric. Warm. Scratchy. Ugly.

Sarah didn’t want to put it on. Afraid that if she did, she might somehow come an inch closer to sharing old Harriet’s hatred of life.

“They didn’t have much of a selection.” Her new husband waited for her to respond. “It’ll be warm. We need to get going. I’ve ordered a wagon and supplies. With the rain last night, the road may make the journey longer than I’d planned.”

She couldn’t bring herself to touch the material. Somehow, an inch at a time, she’d finally sunk to the bottom. She had nothing, not even her own clothes to wear.

A tear slid down her cheek. She still had her pride. What little belongings she’d gathered for her first marriage had been burned when the people on the wagon train thought Mitchell sick with the fever. The dress she’d worn last night was all she owned, and it was little more than a rag. But it was better than this.

“Thank you for the offer, but please bring me back my dress. I’ll wash it. My dress will do fine.”

Sam Gatlin raised an eyebrow and looked like he might argue. “I can afford to buy my wife a new dress. I wanted a wife and I plan to provide for you.”

“Not this one,” Sarah whispered. “I won’t wear this one.” How could she ever tell him about the woman who raised her until she’d found someone else to pass her along to? She barely knew his name. She’d never be able to describe memories of running to Harriet Rainy and folding into the skirt of her scratchy dress, only to have the woman jerk her up by the arm and slap her. “I’ll give you something to cry about!” Harriet would shout. “I’ll show you fear.”

Sarah steadied herself, bracing for a blow. He looked like the kind of man who would beat his wife. If so, she might as well find out right now.

To her surprise, he turned and walked out of the room without another word. Sarah pulled a blanket over her shoulders and ran to the window in time to watch him go into the saloon across the street.

He’s a drunk, my mean husband, she thought. That was plain. What kind of man goes into a place like that when the sun isn’t even high in the sky? Mitchell Andrews might have bored her to death some days with his silence, but he never drank before noon.

She stared at the dress still spread across the bed. If she put it on now, she could run. Who knew how many miles she could be away before he sobered up enough to notice? The wagon he had rented in Cedar Point was probably at the livery, and she could drive a team as good as anyone. She could ask which way she could go to get back to Cedar Point. Maybe Bailee or Lacy married a kind man who’d let her stay for a while. Or maybe the sheriff would help her. He said it was her choice to marry. She would just tell him she changed her mind. She didn’t want to marry Sam Gatlin.

Moving closer to the bed, she stared at the dress. It had been handmade by someone without skill. She was foolish not to put the garment on with the room freezing. But she couldn’t. If she did, she’d disappear.

Curling into a blanket, Sarah sat on the uneven window ledge watching clouds crowd out the sun. Noises from the other rooms drifted around her, but she paid them no mind. She didn’t care what happened in this no-name town.

Sarah drifted to sleep, leaning her head against the rain-cooled windowpane.

She longed for the dreams that took her away as they always had. Dreams of color and light. Dreams Harriet Rainy’s cruelty or Granny Vee’s poverty could not touch.

A rap on the door startled her. When she jerked, she almost toppled off the window ledge.

Stumbling, Sarah hurried to the door. “Who is it?” She knew it wasn’t her husband; he would have just turned the knob and entered. That is, if he remembered the room number. Maybe alcohol had already rusted his brain.

“Let me in, hon,” a female voice whispered from the other side of the door. “It’s Denver Delany. I’m the owner of the saloon across the street.”

Sarah knew no Denver Delany, but she opened the door a few inches. “Yes ...” Sarah managed to say before a huge woman shoved the door wide and hurried in.

“There ain’t no time for introductions.” Denver was large enough to be named after several cities, with hair the color of a harvest moon and eyes rimmed in black paint. “You’ll just have to trust that I’m a friend of your husband’s and you got to get him out of town fast.” She pushed her sleeves up to her elbows, as if thinking she was about to have her work cut out for her.

Sarah stared as Denver grabbed the ugly brown dress and headed toward her. “Your man’s been stabbed by a no-good, low-life, cattle-stealing, worthless ...”

The dress went over Sarah’s head, blocking out the rest of Denver’s description.

When Sarah fought her way through to the neck opening, she asked, “Is he dead?”

Denver snorted a laugh. “If he were dead, hon, we wouldn’t need to be getting him out of town, now would we?”

Sarah nodded, as if seeing the logic. “Shouldn’t we be taking him to a doctor?”

“Ain’t no doctor for fifty miles. You’ll have to take care of him. Phil, the bartender, is rearranging the supplies in the wagon Sam ordered from over at Mr. Moon’s place.” The huge woman stared directly into Sarah’s eyes. “Can you drive a wagon, girl? You don’t look strong enough to carry a half-full bucket.”

“I can manage.”

Denver pulled her along as Sarah frantically tried to slip into her shoes. “Good. Don’t worry about the doctoring. Just plug up the hole as best you can and give him whiskey until he stops complaining. That’s always been my method of treating gunshots or stabbings. It seems to work about half the time.”

The woman glanced back at the room. “You got any luggage, hon?”

Sarah held her head high. “No,” she answered, daring Denver to say anything. Her bundle of belongings was now hidden beneath the folds of the brown dress.

Sarah changed the subject. “Shouldn’t we doctor him before we try to move him?”

“Hon, if he’s not out of town fast, he’ll be dead for sure in an hour. There’s probably men strapping on their six-shooters right now itching for a chance to gun down Sam Gatlin, and they don’t give a twit that he’s bleeding a river.” Denver paused at the bottom of the stairs and patted her ample bosom in an effort to breathe easier. “Don’t you know? Your man is famous in these parts.”

Sarah wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Her gut feeling told her that whatever his claim to fame, it wouldn’t be good.

Denver towed Sarah out the hotel door as panic flooded Sarah’s brain. “But where will I take him?” She didn’t even know the man, or like him, for that matter. How could his life suddenly rest on her shoulders? She wasn’t sure which way was north from here much less how to take him to safety.

Denver stopped so quickly Sarah bumped into her back. The strange woman turned around and whispered, “You’ll take him to Satan’s Canyon. No one will find you there.” Denver stared at Sarah as though gauging her bravery. “If you can’t get him there, we might as well bury him now, for he’s a dead man if he stays here.”

THREE

SARAH FOUGHT DOWN PANIC AS SHE FOLLOWED DENVER into the saloon across the street from the hotel. The place looked far worse than Sarah imagined such places would look. The odor of rotten whiskey and stale cigar smoke hung in the air like thin, colorless moss. Her eyes watered while she battled to keep from breathing deeply.

The floor was filthy with the worst spot being a three-foot area around the bar’s only spittoon.

When she first peered around Denver, the stained floor was all Sarah saw. Slowly she became aware of people moving through the thick air like shadows on a wall. There were men dressed in the color of dirt and women whose faces seemed painted on. But, mostly, they were shapes without solid form. She heard the clank of glasses, the shuffle of feet, the murmur of questions no one bothered to answer. They skirted her, staying well away, as though they thought she might turn and strike like a rattler.

The door creaked just behind her. The volume of the crowd lowered slightly as the mob turned to register the new arrival.

“Move out of the way, lady.” A boy bumped against her as he elbowed his way inside. “I don’t want to miss seeing someone gun down Sam Gatlin.”

Denver backhanded the boy with one mighty blow, sending him flying. “Have a little respect for Gatlin’s widow.” She smiled down at Sarah and nodded, indicating she’d straightened the youngster out, right and proper.

Without reacting to being called widow, Sarah glanced at the kid to make sure he was all right.

The boy didn’t look hurt, but he appeared terrified as he backed away from a lone man sitting at a nearby table.

“Gatlin!” the boy whispered and joined the other silhouettes lining the room.

Sarah followed his stare. The man who’d married her last night sat so still she wasn’t sure he was real. His dark eyes, full of anger and pain, met hers.

She’d never wanted to run so badly in her life. She didn’t care where. Any place was bound to be better than here.

But she didn’t run. She couldn’t. She was the devil’s wife. No matter what he’d done, or was, she owed him. He saved her from a life in prison and she hadn’t even bothered to thank him. It wasn’t his fault the dress reminded her of Harriet Rainy. He had tried and all she’d repaid him in was trouble.