CHAPTER 5
PA’D SADDLED UP and gone off someplace, in the middle of the night. Bent over a book at his desk in the back of the big schoolroom, Gideon couldn’t take in the words he was supposed to be reading. He just kept remembering.
He’d awakened out of a sound sleep, hearing noises he thought were coming from the shed out behind the saloon, gotten up out of his bed, pulled on his clothes and boots, and headed out there to investigate.
And there was Pa, dressed to ride a distance, fastening his rifle scabbard to the saddle. His gelding, Samson, snorted and tossed his big head, eager to be away.
“You go on back inside, Gideon,” Pa’d said. He wore his round-brimmed hat, and there was a bandana tied loosely around his neck. Under his long coat, he wore a gun belt, with a holster on either side. The pearl handle of one of his .45s flashed in the gloom as he swung up onto the horse.
“Let me go along, Pa,” Gideon had said, at the edge of pleading. “I can get a horse over at the livery stable—”
“You stay here and look after Ruby,” Pa replied. He’d clamped an unlit cheroot between his strong, white teeth, and he shifted it from one side of his mouth to the other, looking as though he might ride Gideon down if he didn’t get out of the way.
If there’d ever been a woman who didn’t need looking after, it was Ruby Hollister. She kept a loaded shotgun behind the bar, and everybody in Flagstaff knew she wouldn’t hesitate to use it. No, sir. She would not be requiring Gideon’s protection.
“At least tell me where you’re off to, Pa,” Gideon had argued.
“That’s none of your never-mind,” Pa had answered, narrowing his chilly blue eyes with impatience. “Now, step aside.”
Gideon stood his ground for a long moment, but in the end, he couldn’t prevail against his pa’s hard stare. “When’ll you be back?” he’d asked.
Pa hadn’t said anything in response. He’d just nudged the gelding into motion with the heels of his boots—not the fancy ones he usually wore, Gideon noticed, but the light, supple kind, made for moving fast, but soled for hard going.
Gideon had moved out of the shed doorway, lest he be trampled, and Pa had bent low over the saddle to avoid knocking his head as he passed through.
He’d vanished into the darkness, the hooves of his horse beating on the hard dirt, the sound growing fainter as he gained the road.
When the cold of that winter night finally penetrated Gideon’s awareness, he’d gone inside. Shed his boots and lay down on top of his bed in his clothes, staring up at the ceiling, knowing he wasn’t going to sleep.
At breakfast, Ruby had been pale and unusually fidgety.
Gideon had been bursting with questions, but he hadn’t dared put a one of them to her. When Ruby didn’t want to talk, the devil and ten red-hot pitchforks couldn’t make her do it.
Now, sitting in the schoolroom, he felt restless, as though there were something else he ought to be doing, and wasn’t.
He thought about Rowdy, the brother he barely knew.
You ever need any help, you’ll find me boarding at Mrs. Porter’s, over in Stone Creek.
A hand came to rest on Gideon’s shoulder just as he was recalling that conversation for the hundredth time, nearly scaring him right out of his hide. He wasn’t commonly the jumpy sort, and it embarrassed him mightily, the way he’d started. He felt his neck and face go warm.
“You’re not concentrating, Gideon,” Miss Langston said good-naturedly, smiling down at him. She was about a thousand years old, short and square of build, a phenomenon that had confounded him until Ruby had explained the mysteries of a lady’s corset. “It’s too early for spring fever, but I’ll vow, you’re already afflicted.”
Gideon tried to smile, because he liked Miss Langston. She was briskly cordial, and never made sly remarks about Ruby or his pa, like a lot of folks did. And she’d attended Rose’s funeral, too, he remembered. Cried into a starched hanky with lace trim around the edges.
“I’ve got some trouble at home,” he confided, keeping his voice down so he wouldn’t have to fight later, out in the schoolyard. He’d never lost a one of those battles, but, as his pa liked to say, there was no shortage of idiots in the world. There was always somebody ready to take him on.
Pa’d had things to say about that, too.
Pa.
“You’d best go and see to things there, then,” Miss Langston said, kindly and quietly. When he hesitated, she prodded him with, “You’re excused, Gideon.”
He fairly knocked his chair over backwards, getting to his feet.
You ever need help—
Did he need help? He didn’t know.
He couldn’t have explained why he felt so nervous and scared. Something was bad wrong, though. He was sure of it. The knowledge stung in his blood and buzzed in his brain.
He ignored the quizzical stares of the other pupils—they ranged from tiny girls in pigtails to farm boys strong as the mules they rode to town—and shot out of the schoolhouse, down the steps, across the yard. He vaulted over the picket fence and sprinted for the livery stable four streets over.
* * *
ROWDY PLACED AN ORDER down at the sawmill, bought a hammer, a keg of nails, and some other tools at the mercantile, paid extra to have them delivered, Pardner tagging along behind him. Then, figuring he ought to do some marshaling, since he was getting paid for it, he walked the length of Center Street, speaking quietly to folks as he passed, touching the brim of his hat to the ladies.
He looked in at the bank and the telegraph office, introduced himself and Pardner.
He counted the horses in front of the town’s three saloons, and went inside the last one, which happened to be Jolene Bell’s place.
“That your deputy?” a grizzled old-timer asked, leaning against the bar and grinning sparse-toothed down at Pardner, who was sniffing at the spittoon.
“Leave it,” Rowdy told the dog.
Pardner sighed and sat down in the filthy sawdust.
“Don’t see no badge on him,” quipped another of the local wits.
Rowdy smiled. “This is Pardner,” he said. “Guess he is my deputy.”
“He bite?” asked the skinny piano player, looking worried.
“Not unless he has just cause,” Rowdy answered.
The old-timer’s gaze went to Rowdy’s badge, then shifted to his .44. “You a southpaw, Marshal?”
“Nope,” Rowdy said, looking straight at the old man, but noticing everything and everybody at the far edges of his vision, too.
Always know what’s going on around you, boy. Ignorance ain’t bliss. It can be fatal. He’d been raised on those words of Pappy’s, drilled on them, the way some kids were made to learn verses from the Good Book.
“Gun’s backward in the holster,” the piano player pointed out helpfully.
Rowdy glanced down at it, as if surprised to find it such. In the same moment, he drew.
The old-timer whistled.
The piano player spun around on his seat and pounded out the first bars of a funeral march.
Rowdy shoved his .44 back in the holster.
“Come, dog,” he told Pardner, and they went back out, into the bright, silvery cold of the morning.
From there, Rowdy and Pardner proceeded to the Stone Creek schoolhouse. He didn’t have any official business there, but he thought he ought to familiarize himself with the place, just the same.
And he wouldn’t be averse to a glimpse of Lark, either.
The kids were out for recess, running in every direction and screaming their heads off in a frenzy of brief freedom, while Lark watched from the step, wrapped tightly in her cloak, her cheeks and the end of her nose red in the bitter weather.
She didn’t see Rowdy right away, so he took his time sizing things up.
The building itself was painted bright red, and it had a belfry with a heavy bronze bell inside, sending out the occasional faint metallic vibration as it contracted in the cold. There was a well near the front door, and an outhouse off to one side. A few horses and mules foraged at what was left of last summer’s grass—come the end of the school day, they’d be carrying Lark’s students back home to farms and ranches scattered hither and yon.
Pardner lifted himself onto his hind legs and put his forepaws against the whitewashed fence, probably wishing he could join in a running game or two.
“Sit,” Rowdy told him quietly.
He sat.
The dog’s movement must have caught Lark’s attention, because she spotted them then. Made an awning of one hand to shade her eyes from the bright, cool sun.
Rowdy grinned, waited there, on the outside of the fence, while she hesitated, made up her mind and swept toward him, her heavy black skirts trailing over the winter-bitten grass.
“Good morning, Marshal Rhodes,” she said formally.
Marshal Rhodes? The woman had sat in his lap the night before, wrapped in a blanket and not much else, and settled herself against him with a little sigh of resigned surrender that still echoed in his bloodstream.
Rowdy remembered their present whereabouts—a schoolyard, in the bright light of day—and touched the brim of his hat respectfully. “Miss Morgan,” he said. He let the look in his eyes say the rest.
Lark blushed, so he figured she’d understood.
“Surely you don’t have business here,” she said, taking in the shiny star-shaped badge pinned to his coat.
“No, ma’am,” he replied. “Pardner and I, we were just making our rounds. Keeping the peace, you might say.”
Lark tried mightily to smile, but she didn’t quite succeed.
He realized, with a start, that she’d expected him to deliver some kind of dire news or maybe even arrest her.
Damnation. He’d figured she was running from a man, but now it struck him that he might have been wrong. Could be she was wanted by the law.
The thought of that gave Rowdy serious pause.
He recalled the way she’d glanced at his badge, and he searched the recollection, as well as her face, for any sign of anxiety.
Meanwhile, a little girl with blond pigtails approached the fence, stuck a hand through to stroke Pardner’s head.
“Lydia,” Lark said immediately, “you should not touch strange dogs.” Her gaze moved briefly to Rowdy’s face. “Some of them bite.”
Reluctantly Lydia withdrew her hand.
“Does he?” the child asked, looking solemnly up at Rowdy. “Bite, I mean?”
Pardner tried to force his head between the fence pickets, looking for another pat.
“Sit,” Rowdy told him.
Pardner sat, but he looked as forlorn as a martyr in a piece of bad religious art.
“No,” Rowdy said to Lydia. “Pardner doesn’t bite. He’s a good dog.”
“I wish I had a dog,” Lydia said. “If I did, he could walk me home, and Beaver Franks wouldn’t chase after me and pull my hair.”
Rowdy crouched, well aware that Lark was watching him, and looked through the fence at Lydia. “My name is Mr. Rhodes,” he said. “I’m the new marshal. Which one of those yahoos is Beaver Franks?”
“That’s him over there, in the overalls and the plaid shirt,” Lydia answered, in a whisper, not willing to risk pointing. “With the freckles and the red hair and the big front teeth.”
Hence the nickname, Rowdy thought. He spotted Franks and narrowed his gaze on him before shifting his gaze back to Lydia. “You want me to talk to him?”
Lydia shook her head. “I only live just a little ways from here,” she said, pointing out the general direction of home. “And, anyhow, I can outrun Beaver Franks.”
“Lydia,” Lark said mildly, “go and tell the others recess is over. It’s time for arithmetic.”
Rowdy raised himself off his haunches.
Lydia stood still for a moment, then reached through the fence again to give Pardner a parting pat on the noggin before turning to scamper away.
Rowdy watched the child join the others, gesturing importantly as she explained, no doubt, that the fun was over and arithmetic was about to descend on them all like a plague. Beaver Franks, meanwhile, watched Rowdy, his broad face reddening a little, his fists tightening at his sides.
Rowdy felt his hackles rise.
Franks might be a schoolboy, but he had the body of a man.
“I can manage Roland Franks,” Lark said, apparently reading Rowdy’s thoughts as clearly as if they’d been written on her blackboard in big letters.
“Can you?” Rowdy asked. “How old is he, anyway?”
“Twenty-two,” Lark answered crisply. “He might not be so troublesome of the children wouldn’t call him ‘Beaver.’”
“Twenty-two?” Rowdy echoed.
“He’s in third grade,” Lark said, with a strange combination of pride and defensive conviction.
Rowdy stared at her, at a loss for words.
“He’s been working on his father’s ranch since he was a little boy,” Lark explained. “He didn’t get a chance to attend school until this year.”
Rowdy opened his mouth, then closed it.
Lark smiled, plainly enjoying his consternation. “Roland’s best subject is reading, believe it or not. He’s really quite intelligent.”
“Twenty-two?” Rowdy repeated.
Lark folded her arms, tapped one foot on the frozen ground. Waited for Rowdy to take the hint and leave.
Pardner gave a sad moan as all the kids trooped back inside the schoolhouse, with Roland “Beaver” Franks bringing up the rear and casting sour looks back at Rowdy over one meaty shoulder.
“It doesn’t bother you that he chases Lydia home and pulls her hair?” Rowdy asked, shoving his hat to the back of his head, peeved.
“I spoke to him about it,” Lark said. “And he stopped immediately.”
“Not according to Lydia, he didn’t,” Rowdy said. He took his grandfather Wyatt’s watch out of his inside coat pocket, popped the lid with a practiced motion of one thumb and checked the hour. Ten forty-five. “What time does school let out?”
“Three o’clock,” Lark answered, already turning to go. “Why?”
Rowdy didn’t answer. He just looked down at Pardner and said, “Three o’clock.”
Lark sighed and walked swiftly away.
When she got inside, she shut the door hard behind her.
Rowdy stayed where he was for a minute or so, pondering the presence of a twenty-two-year-old man in a schoolhouse.
Mentally he added one more item to the list of things he knew about Lark Morgan.
She was dangerously naive.
* * *
PROMPTLY AT THREE, Lark opened the schoolhouse door to dismiss her students, and was taken aback to see Rowdy’s dog sitting patiently outside the gate.
Baffled, she descended the three narrow steps to the ground and looked down the road, first toward town, then, seeing no sign of the marshal, she scanned the countryside.
Apparently, Pardner had come alone.
Children streamed past Lark.
Terran O’Ballivan and Ben Blackstone mounted their horses, bareback, and made for the ranch. Roland lumbered by, muttering a goodbye to Lark as he went, a McGuffy’s Reader clasped in one big hand. The others left, too, the older girls, slates and tablets and schoolbooks clutched to their chests, prattling and giggling about the dance to be held at the Cattleman’s Meeting Hall on Saturday night.
Pardner watched the human parade go by, panting now.
Lydia, as usual, was the last to file out of the schoolhouse.
Pardner gave a welcoming yelp when he saw her, and rose to all four feet.
“He came to see me home, Miss Morgan!” Lydia marveled, in a whisper of high excitement, when she caught sight of the dog.
Troubled, Lark hastily banked the fire in the potbelly stove, gathered up her cloak, lunch pail and lesson books. By the time she’d locked the schoolhouse door, Pardner and Lydia were already well on their way.
In the brief time Lark had known Rowdy Rhodes, she’d seldom seen him parted from that dog, but he was nowhere around now.
Was he sick?
Injured perhaps?
Lark hurried to catch up with Lydia and her canine escort.
“Maybe Mabel will let me give him a bone,” the little girl told Lark eagerly, as she joined the procession.
“We had one in our soup last night, at supper.”
Mabel, Lydia’s very young stepmother, was “no better than she should be,” by Mrs. Porter’s assessment. Lydia’s father, the only doctor in Stone Creek, was a lithe, delicately built man with almost womanly features and—also according to Mrs. Porter—did not wear the pants in his family. Lark had observed, upon making the doctor’s acquaintance, that he seemed dreamy, and somehow detached from the world around him. She’d wondered if he took a tipple now and then, or had a habit of dosing himself with laudanum.
Still a little breathless from hurrying and at once worried about Rowdy and feeling eminently silly for doing so, Lark summoned up a smile.
They crossed the road, woman, child and dog, headed for the row of tiny clapboard houses lining Second Street. The homes were set at some distance from each other, and several had small barns. Milk cows watched their passage, from barren, postage-stamp pastures, with interest.
“You don’t have to walk me home, Miss Morgan,” Lydia said. “I’ve got this dog for company.” She frowned. “Do you know his name?”
“Pardner,” Lark said, feeling ridiculously proud to be the possessor of this information. “Like partner, only with a d. The way cowboys pronounce it.”
“Oh,” Lydia said. “I think Rover would suit him better.”
“I don’t think he’s much of a rover,” Lark answered, still glancing anxiously this way and that, expecting, even hoping, to see Rowdy somewhere close by.
“Marshal Rhodes says he doesn’t wander.”
Pardner sticks pretty close to me, wherever we go. Wouldn’t even chase a rabbit, unless I gave him leave….
“Are you worried about something, Miss Morgan?” Lydia asked, looking up at her in concern.
“No,” Lark lied. “I was just thinking about tomorrow’s spelling bee.”
“I guess you don’t have to know which way letters are supposed to face to say what words they make,” Lydia mused. She was such a serious child, desperate to do everything right.
Lark smiled and touched the little girl’s shoulder gently. “You’re making very good progress with your letters, Lydia,” she said quietly. “You got most of them right today.”
Lydia patted Pardner’s back thoughtfully as they walked.
Soon they reached the Fairmont house, a modest place built close to the road. The yard was rocky dirt, and there were no trees close by. There was no barn, either—no fence and no milk cow.
It made, Lark thought, a bleak visage.
Pardner stopped when Lydia started up the foot-hardened path leading to her front door.
“I’m going to ask Mabel for that soup bone,” the child called from the threshold.
Pardner and Lark waited.
“Where’s Rowdy?” Lark whispered to Pardner.
Of course he didn’t answer, he just looked up at her with warm, trusting brown eyes.
A moment later Lydia reappeared, her small face creased with disappointment. “Mabel won’t give me the soup bone,” she reported.
Lark smiled, anxious to reassure the child. “I don’t think Pardner is disposed to eat right now,” she said, before turning to go. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow, Lydia.”
She felt Lydia watching her and Pardner with a sort of clutching hunger as they walked away.
Lark fretted over Lydia, but her attention soon turned to Rowdy. It was silly to be concerned about him, she scolded herself silently, as she and the dog made their way toward the marshal’s office. He was a grown man—a marshal, for heaven’s sake.
He could take care of himself.
Nevertheless, Lark followed Pardner, who seemed to know precisely where he was going. Mrs. Porter would be waiting at home, with tea and gossip, and Lark knew she shouldn’t be tardy.
Still, she stuck right with Pardner, instead of turning toward the boardinghouse. Her shoes pinched and she was cold and she wanted that tea with a powerful yen. What in the world was she doing, tramping through town behind a dog?
Pardner bypassed the jailhouse, trotting around back.
Lark trekked on.
They passed the little lean-to barn, and Rowdy’s horse was inside.
The sound of a hammer cracked in the brittle air.
Pardner woofed once, happily, and broke into a run.
Lark hurried along behind, hoping no one had noticed her.
Rowdy appeared in the doorway of the tumbledown house on the property behind the jail, grinning. A stack of lumber stood on the ground nearby, and Pardner streaked past it to hurl himself at Rowdy, who laughed and crouched to greet the dog with an ear-ruffling and a few words of welcome.
Lark stopped, dizzy with an incomprehensible degree of relief at the sight of him.
“Afternoon, Miss Morgan,” Rowdy said, standing again. He’d set the hammer down on the threshold to pet Pardner, and now he braced one shoulder against the framework of the shack’s doorway.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Rhodes,” Lark replied, feeling all the more foolish for the blush that burned in her cheeks. She wanted to walk away, but something held her rooted to the spot, like some venerable old tree.
“Anything wrong?” Rowdy asked, still leaning against the doorjamb, though his arms were folded now.
“I was just—I was worried when—”
He waited, damn him, enjoying her misery.
Lark tried again. She must complete her errand here, such as it was, and leave. Just leave. “It’s only that Pardner came to the schoolhouse alone, and—”
“You were worried about me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did. And why else would you follow Pardner all the way back here?”
Lark sighed. “All right. I was worried. Are you satisfied now?”
“Yes,” Rowdy said, with a sudden and dazzling grin.
“Flattered, too.”
Lark finally worked up the will to turn away, only to turn back again. “What are you doing with all this lumber?” she asked.
“Replacing the floor in this old house,” Rowdy said.
“I’d invite you in, but you’d probably fall through and break a leg.”
Lark instantly bristled. “If you didn’t fall through, I probably won’t, either,” she argued, even though she had no desire whatsoever to set foot inside that tilting hovel. There were probably rats and insects in there. Cobwebs, too.
Rowdy’s grin flashed again. He straightened, made a be-my-guest gesture with one hand. His blue eyes twinkled with challenge.
“I don’t have time to dally,” Lark replied, tacitly refusing. Why wasn’t she moving? Heading home to Mrs. Porter’s, for tea and news and a seat near the fire?
“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” Rowdy said. “You were insulted when I said you oughtn’t to come in. Then I invited you, and you balked.” He paused for a long, strangely charged moment. “And when we ‘dally,’ Miss Morgan,” he went on at last, “it won’t be in a cold, dirty shack with the wind blowing through cracks in the walls.”
Lark took three furious steps toward him. “We are not going to dally!” she replied, in a bursting whisper.
He threw back his head and laughed. When he looked at her again, though, the twinkle was gone from his eyes. They smoldered like the banked embers of a blue fire.
She waited for him to speak, which was her second mistake. Coming here at all had been her first, and she had only herself to blame for the consequences.
He was standing in front of her before she actually saw him move.
He rested his hands on her shoulders, searched her wind-chapped face and kissed her.
Lark made a startled “mmmm” sound, when their mouths collided, and then he was really kissing her. His tongue moved against hers, and his lips—well, his lips—
Drunken heat flashed through Lark. She trembled, and stood on tiptoe, and kissed Rowdy Rhodes right back.
When they finally broke apart, Rowdy looked stunned.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered. Hatless, he shoved a hand through his hair.
“Well, that was a gallant thing to say,” Lark retorted.
He laughed again, quietly this time, but the baffled expression lingered in his eyes. “Go home, Lark,” he said. “Go back to Mrs. Porter’s place, right now. If you don’t, I can’t promise I won’t take you inside my nice, warm marshal’s house, kiss you until your clothes melt, and have you like you’ve never been had before.”
Lark started to speak, then stopped herself, because she had no idea what she’d say. Her cheeks ached, and so did every inch of flesh beneath her somber black woolen frock, her camisole and petticoats, and her bloomers.
Mortification gave her the impetus to turn on one heel and start to walk away. Fury made her turn back again, though, with a hand shooting up to slap Mr. Rowdy Rhodes for his outrageous impudence.
Kiss-you-until-your-clothes-melt, indeed.
He caught her by the wrist, easily stayed the blow she’d fully intended to deliver, and with all her might, too.
“Go home,” he said.
“Let go of my hand,” Lark replied tartly, breathless.
Slowly, staring into her eyes, Rowdy opened his fingers and released her.
Lark’s hand fell to her side.
There was nothing to do but go home.
Feet as heavy as if they’d suddenly turned to bedrock, Lark straightened her cloak, patted her hair, pivoted smartly on one heel and walked away with all the dignity she could muster.
She’d only covered a few yards when he halted her with a single hoarse word.
“Lark?”
She stiffened her spine. Did not turn around.
He chuckled, and she actually felt the sound, ruffling the fine hairs at her nape. “I’ll see you at supper,” he said.
She made a strangled sound of pure fury and left.
Pardner followed her as far as the street, gazing up at her in piteous concern.
She paused, sighed and patted the dog’s head. “Thank you for walking Lydia home,” she told him. “Unlike your master, you are a gentleman.”
* * *
ONCE LARK WAS OUT OF SIGHT, Rowdy let out his breath and muttered a curse. He shouldn’t have kissed her like that. Shouldn’t have said the things he’d said.
Oh, he’d meant them, all right.
Meant the kiss, too.
But now, because he’d said what he had, it was all going to happen. He would make love to Lark Morgan. And then his pa would rob a train, or a Wanted poster would come in the mail, with a sketch of his own face on it, and he’d have to hit the trail.
It had happened before.
It would happen again.
Rowdy thrust a hand through his hair. He was fed up with running, and in that moment, if Sam O’Ballivan had been standing in front of him, he probably would have turned himself in, just to be done with it.
But what would happen to Pardner if he did that?
What would happen to Lark?
He was asking himself those things when an old white horse trotted around the side of the jailhouse with Gideon on its back.
Seeing Rowdy, Gideon visibly gathered his resolve, reined in the horse and swung down out of the saddle. There was some gear tied on behind, wrapped in an ungainly bundle, and the boy wore an old wool coat and a brown hat pulled low over his face.
Pardner approached to sniff at his hand, and Gideon grinned at the dog and mussed Pardner’s ears, but when he turned to Rowdy again, his expression was serious as an undertaker’s.
“This where you live?” he asked.
“This is where I live,” Rowdy confirmed. “I guess somebody at Mrs. Porter’s must have told you where to find me.”
Gideon nodded. Swallowed once. “You said to come if I had trouble.”
Rowdy approached his younger brother, laid a hand on his shoulder. “What happened, Gideon?” he asked.
Gideon flushed. Chewed a while on what he wanted to say, maybe figuring how to put it. Finally, he said, “Pa took off last night, in a big hurry. Wouldn’t say where he was going, and wouldn’t let me go with him.”
Rowdy closed his eyes. No, he thought fiercely.
I’m not ready to run again.
I’m not ready to leave Lark.
Damn you, Pappy.
Damn you.
“Did I do right to come?” Gideon asked warily.
Rowdy nodded. Smiled. “Come on along with me,” he said. “I reckon you could do with some supper.”