CHAPTER 7
PAYTON SAT DOWN HEAVILY on the lid of the commode in Rowdy’s bathing room. His hands, with one of his .45s clasped in them by its fancy butt, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, dangled between his knees.
“I’m not little,” Rowdy said gravely, “and given my mama’s reputation, with absolutely no credit to you, old man, I’m not a bastard, either.” He grabbed the towel off the side of the tub, stood and wrapped it around his middle. As his head cleared, he realized he hadn’t heard a sound out of Pardner. “You better not have done anything to my dog,” he warned.
“Worthless mutt just lifted his head and looked at me as I went by him,” Payton said. “He knows I ain’t dangerous.”
“Tell that to the man on that train, the one with half his right arm shot off,” Rowdy said, keeping his voice down on the off chance that Gideon might wake up.
Payton’s expression was pained. He needed a shave, not to mention a scrubdown with a wire-bristled brush, and his hair poked out wildly under the edges of his hat. Given the state of his clothes, he might have been dragged five miles behind a manure wagon.
“I didn’t shoot that damn fool,” Pappy said, indignant at the suggestion.
Rowdy picked his pants up off the floor, pulled them on, fastened the buttons. “Who did, Pappy?”
“Don’t call me ‘Pappy.’ Makes me sound like some old fart with a hitch in his get-along.”
“You are an old fart,” Rowdy maintained furiously, “and if you don’t quit robbing trains, you’re going to have more than a hitch in your get-along.”
“How many times do I have to tell you I’ve given up robbing trains?”
“You rob trains?” Gideon asked, looming sleepily in the doorway, with a sight more admiration than Rowdy would have liked.
“Shit,” Rowdy said.
Payton looked at his youngest son and sighed as he labored slowly up off the lid of the commode. “That was a long time ago, boy,” he told Gideon. “I have changed my ways.”
Gideon’s eyes glowed. “You’re an outlaw?”
“I was an outlaw,” Pappy said, giving Rowdy a baleful glance as he spoke. “Though, sadly, there are those who won’t let me live it down.”
Rowdy snorted at that. Pushed his way past Gideon and almost fell ass-over-teakettle over Pardner, who’d stretched out crossways behind the boy.
“I never heard of any outlaw by the name of Jack Payton,” Gideon mused. Evidently, he followed the doings of such men. Probably read dime novels and penny-dreadfuls. Maybe he even admired cold-blooded, pimply little killers like Billy the Kid.
“It’s about time you knew the truth about me,” Payton told his younger boy, as they all progressed to the center of the house.
“Hell,” Rowdy mocked, grabbing the coffeepot off the stove to pump water into it at the sink, “you probably don’t know the truth about yourself.”
“He’s got a self-righteous streak in him,” Payton told Gideon, jabbing a thumb in Rowdy’s direction. “Just like your mama did. Good woman. She could pray the angels right down out of heaven to fetch and carry for her, but she didn’t have much patience with lesser folks like me.”
Rowdy glared at the old man. “What are you doing here?”
“At least he saved us the trouble of turning the countryside over looking for him,” Gideon said, determined, evidently, to fix his attention on the bright side of things.
Figuring there wasn’t a bright side, Rowdy banged the pot down on top of the stove and scooped coffee into it. Remembered that the brew wasn’t going to boil without a fire under it, cursed, and yanked open the door to jam in newspaper and kindling, then light a match to the works.
Pappy sank into one of the three chairs at the table, long-suffering. Yes, sir, he was misunderstood, mistreated and generally a pity to behold—to hear him tell it, anyhow.
A muscle twitched in Rowdy’s jaw.
“If my own son won’t grant me refuge in my time of trial and tribulation,” Pappy murmured, every line of his face and body bemoaning his sorry lot and wrongly inflicted sorrows, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
He was a regular Job. All he lacked was the boils and a pile of dust to sit in.
“I’m your son, too, Pa,” Gideon pointed out. “I’ll help you.”
“Shut up,” Rowdy told him. “Go out and put Pappy’s horse away, before somebody sees it.”
Gideon’s face went hard, but he did as he was told.
Pardner didn’t make a move to follow him but stuck close to Rowdy, like a burr snagged on his pant leg. It lifted Rowdy’s spirits a little, when the dog stayed.
“I asked you not to call me Pappy,” Payton said.
“I asked you not to rob trains,” Rowdy countered.
“I reckon we’re even.”
“You’re not the least bit glad to see me, are you?” Pappy asked, pulling a long face. Then, half under his breath, he scoffed, “Town marshal.”
“If you’re not going to tell me what the hell you’re doing here in the middle of the night, then shut the hell up,” Rowdy said, banging the stove door closed now that he knew the blaze had caught under the wood he’d added.
“I’m in trouble,” Pappy said, all wheedling charm now. “Shovel another spoonful of grounds into that coffeepot. I like it strong.”
“What kind of trouble?” Rowdy asked. As if he didn’t know.
“There’s been a train looted,” Pappy said with a shake of his head, as if to marvel that the world had come to such a state. “Twenty miles or so the other side of Flagstaff. The law is sure to blame me for it.”
“Pappy,” Rowdy said, keeping his voice down in case Gideon came back before time, “I am the law—I’m the marshal of Stone Creek. Did it occur to you that I might just throw your worthless ass in the hoosegow and let things take their course from there?”
“No,” Pappy said, with certainty. “Because if you did that, I’d naturally have to tell whoever might be inclined to listen that you’re my own precious boy, Rob Yarbro, and you showed an early talent for getting in the way of the occasional train yourself.”
Behind Rowdy’s agitation, which was considerable, trembled a new and fragile hope that he’d be able to stay on in Stone Creek a little longer. All he had to do was get rid of Pappy.
“Don’t say that name again,” Rowdy ordered, hauling back a second chair and sitting down hard at the table, across from his pa.
“What name?” Pappy asked innocently. “Rob Yarbro?”
Rowdy set his back molars and glanced uneasily toward the door.
“You don’t call me Pappy,” Pappy bargained craftily, “and I won’t call you Rob Yarbro.”
Rowdy was silent.
Pappy grinned. “Deal?”
“Deal,” Rowdy growled, after a long struggle to release his jaw.
“I came here because I didn’t know where else to go,” Pa said. “I guess I got spooked when I heard about that train.”
“You just heard about it? Or you were there?”
“All right,” Pa admitted. “I was there. Saw the whole thing. Six riders, all carrying rifles, with their faces covered. They felled a tree across the tracks and piled some brush on it, then lit the whole shebang on fire.” He paused and smiled in rueful reflection. “Works every time,” he went on. “But, damn it, that’s my trick. My trademark.”
“When did this happen?”
“Today, a little before noon. I had to ride like the devil to get here, and my poor horse is all but done in.”
“And there was shooting?”
“One of the riders was wounded.” Payton’s expression was bleak, recalling the scene. “The way the bullets flew, I’d say some of the passengers must have been hit, too. Nobody fought back, far as I could tell, when the bandits went in to get the strongbox, and they were in there a long time, too. Came out whooping like a bunch of cowpokes on a binge, and one of them was wearing the contents of some lady’s jewelry box. Reminded me of some of the Indian raids, back in the old days.”
Rowdy swore.
The coffeepot began to rattle on the stove.
“Did you recognize any of the outlaws?” Rowdy asked, and held his breath for the answer.
Not Wyatt, he prayed silently. Not Nick or Ethan or Levi. Please, not them.
“Not a Yarbro in the bunch,” Pa said confidently. “Is that coffee about ready?”
“You said the robbers had their faces covered,” Rowdy persisted. “How can you be sure it wasn’t a family reunion?”
“I know my own boys when I see them,” Pa insisted, a little affronted. “Bare-faced or with a bandanna hiding their features. Anyhow, none of your brothers would shoot anybody.”
“But they would build a fire to stop the train,” Rowdy reminded him.
“I remember when that was your job,” Pa said, smiling fondly. Some men recalled going fishing with their sons, or teaching them to ride or whittle. Payton Yarbro had taught his boys—except, mercifully, for Gideon—to carry out a holdup with finesse, and subsequently evade some of the best lawmen in the country.
The hinges of Rowdy’s jaw ached. “Now what, Pa?”
“I need to rest. Lay low a few days. Then I’ll require money and a fresh horse. You go to Ruby, after the dust of my hasty departure settles, and she’ll make good on whatever you have to spend. Tell her I’ll send for her when I get where I’m going.”
“What makes you think I have money?”
Pa grinned. “You always had the damnedest knack for turning fifty cents into a five-dollar gold piece, even since you were that high.” He raised his grimy hand, palm down, about level with the tabletop.
“You’ve got money.”
Just then Gideon banged in from outside.
“That horse,” he said, “is fair run down to a nubbin. Somebody been chasing you, Pa? Due to your being an outlaw and all?”
“For the last time, Gideon,” Payton said, drawing his trail-worn self up with a scruffy kind of dignity, “I am retired from that life. You think Ruby Hollister would take up with a common outlaw?”
“I think Ruby Hollister might be an outlaw,” Gideon speculated cheerfully, helping himself to the third chair at the table. “I reckon I might like to be one, too.”
Rowdy hadn’t had time to develop a particular attachment to the boy, but he knew what it meant to live outside the clear boundaries of the law, and he wasn’t about to let Gideon take that path if he could help it. “Like hell you will—”
Pa’s words ran right over the top of Rowdy’s, like a bunch of thirsty cattle stampeding for a water hole. “You’re staying right here with your brother!”
Both Gideon and Rowdy turned to stare at Payton.
“Staying here?” Gideon echoed.
“With me?” Rowdy asked.
“Safest place there is,” Pa said, rocking a little in his chair and looking satisfied with his own brilliance.
“I don’t see how you figure that,” Rowdy said. When he’d told Gideon to come to Stone Creek if he ever needed help, he’d meant what he said, straight up and solid. He just hadn’t expected it to be any kind of long-term deal, that was all.
“By now,” Pa explained, with exaggerated patience, “the telegraph wires are buzzing with the news of that train robbery. Come tomorrow morning, Flagstaff will be crawling with railroad agents and rangers—” He halted, smiling, perhaps relishing the image of all that fuss being raised on his account. “And they’re all going to think I’m behind it. Ruby and me, we’ve lived real quiet, on purpose, all these years, but somebody’s bound to pick up the trail at least as far as her saloon.” Again Pa stopped talking, and he had the good grace to frown at what came next. “I don’t want Gideon dragged into this.”
There was a flaw in Payton’s logic—Rowdy was a Yarbro, and if anybody figured that out, like Sam O’Ballivan, for instance, the trail wouldn’t end at Ruby’s Saloon. It would lead right to the marshal’s office at Stone Creek.
“Maybe you ought to go back east early,” Rowdy said to Gideon.
“Doesn’t anybody want me around?” Gideon demanded.
Pardner whimpered, raised himself onto his haunches and laid his muzzle on Gideon’s thigh.
Gideon stroked the dog’s head.
Rowdy felt another pang, one that had nothing to do with the topic under discussion.
“You’ll stay right here,” Pa said to Gideon, though his blue gaze drilled into Rowdy’s as he spoke, “and that’s the end of it.”
* * *
WHEN LARK CAME DOWN for breakfast the next morning, Mai Lee was at the stove, as if nothing had happened, frying eggs and humming a tune. Mrs. Porter was there, too, looking much restored, and busily brushing copious dust from a gentleman’s suit coat.
“Mr. Porter’s birthday is coming up on Saturday,” she said. “He always liked to make an occasion of it.”
Lark glanced at Mai Lee, hoping for enlightenment, but the cook kept her small back to the room and hummed a little more loudly.
“And of course I’ll have to bake a rum cake. Mr. Porter did favor my rum cake over anything else.”
Don’t ask, Lark instructed herself firmly, glancing at the calendar, with the red circle marking Saturday’s date.
“Thank heaven Mai Lee will be here to help me with the preparations,” Mrs. Porter rattled on. “She and Hon Sing won’t be moving until the ground thaws out enough to plant vegetables.”
Relieved, Lark smiled and helped herself to a cup of hot coffee. “I was wondering if I might put some of my things in Mr. Rhodes’s room, after school lets out,” she said. Then, at Mrs. Porter’s quick glance, she blushed and added, “Since he’s going to be occupying other quarters from now on.”
“He’s paid up to the first of the week,” Mrs. Porter said.
Lark went to the doorway of the spacious room, looked with longing at the fireplace and the feather bed and the writing desk and the small table with two chairs. It would be almost like having her own home again, what with the separate entrance, and she’d be warm.
“I suppose it would be all right if you used the room,” Mrs. Porter mused, sounding less uncertain than before. She was right at Lark’s elbow, but for once, Lark had heard her approaching, so she wasn’t startled. “Of course, if another renter comes along, you’ll have to give it up. I can’t have gentlemen sleeping upstairs, you know. It just wouldn’t be proper.”
Lark smiled down at Mrs. Porter. “I won’t bring everything down,” she promised. “Just my nightdress and my hairbrush.”
Mrs. Porter patted her arm. “That’s fine, dear,” she said.
A loud knock at the kitchen door made both women turn.
Rowdy, Lark thought, with a little rise of her heart.
But it wasn’t Rowdy, she discovered, when Mai Lee answered the door. Roland Franks stood on the step, looking earnest and shy.
“I come to drive you to school, Miss Morgan,” he said, blushing. His ears were red with the cold, and with the embarrassment of presenting himself at a town woman’s door. “Pa said it was all right, so I brung the buckboard.”
Lark could think of no gracious way to refuse. She did not want to give Roland the wrong idea, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, either. Lord only knew how long he’d been working up his courage to do her this kindness.
“That’s very considerate of you, Roland,” she said.
Mrs. Porter, meanwhile, stared at Roland in what might have been alarm. He made even her big kitchen seem small and cramped, and there was a sense that if he moved suddenly, he might send every dish in the room crashing to the floor.
Roland went even redder. Fidgeted with his worn hat, clasped tightly in both hands. “I’ll just wait in the buckboard until you’re ready,” he said, and turned to go out.
Mrs. Porter looked as though she might rush over and lock the door behind him. “Merciful heavens, Lark,” she whispered urgently, “that bear of a man is courting you!”
“He’s only offering me a ride to school,” Lark said.
“I kept my opinions to myself when Beaver Franks signed up for third grade,” Mrs. Porter insisted, “but this—”
Lark reached for her cloak, the lunch Mai Lee had prepared for her, and her lesson and attendance books. “In the unlikely event that Roland has…hopes where I’m concerned, I will tell him as gently as possible that I’m not interested,” she assured her landlady.
“I tell you, he’s looking to take himself a wife,” Mrs. Porter fretted. “And he’s got you in mind for a bride!”
“Don’t be silly,” Lark said. “I’m his teacher.”
“He’s a grown man and you’re an unmarried woman—”
“Please don’t worry,” Lark said.
“But you haven’t even had breakfast!”
In point of fact, Lark was ravenously hungry, but she knew that the longer Roland’s team and buckboard stood in front of the rooming house, the quicker word would spread. With luck she could persuade him to take the back way to school, along Second Street, and they would not be noticed.
“I’ll be fine,” Lark said.
Stepping outside, she saw that the sky was overcast, the clouds heavy with the possibility of snow. Roland sat rigidly upright in the box of his father’s buckboard, his bare red hands clasping the reins.
Seeing Lark, he flushed again, jumped down from the wagon and waited to help her up into the seat.
She had, foolishly, not anticipated this part—the necessity of Roland touching her in the process of assisting her into the conveyance. The seat of the buckboard was on a level with her head, and there was no step or rung, as a carriage would have had.
She was still deliberating on the logistics of the problem when Roland suddenly grabbed her by the waist and swung her up. She landed on the hard seat with a thump that practically cracked her tailbone.
“Oh, my,” she said.
Roland rounded the wagon and climbed up next to her, tilting the rig on its axles with his weight. The ancient team, a pair of shaggy gray farm horses, shifted within their worn harnesses, as if bracing themselves to pull again.
They lurched into motion with a great clattering of wheels and wagon fittings and hooves over rutted ground, and Lark might have been thrown clear if she hadn’t gripped the edges of the seat in both hands.
Roland cleared his throat and then shouted over the din, “I reckon you know there’s a dance at the Cattleman’s Hall this Saturday night!”
Lark barely refrained from squeezing her eyes shut. Oh, no, she thought.
Instead of taking the wide path leading to the schoolhouse, Roland steered straight for the main street of town.
“I’m not much of a dancer,” Roland yelled, making Lark want to cover her ears with both hands. She might have, too, if she hadn’t needed to hold on so tightly to the wagon seat. “But I’d admire to escort you, Miss Morgan!”
They were almost to the jailhouse, and several people passing by on the sidewalks turned to stare at the spectacle of the schoolmarm and the twenty-two-year-old third-grader in the wagon seat beside her, booming out that he wanted to take her to the Saturday-night dance.
Desperate, Lark laid a hand on Roland’s arm. “Roland,” she called, “please stop this wagon.”
Instantly abashed, he drew up directly in front of Rowdy’s office.
“I didn’t mean here,” she said, flustered.
Rowdy should have been off marshaling, rounding up miscreants or something, but instead he came strolling out of the jailhouse, a little grin curving one side of his mouth. His gaze, resting briefly on Roland, was as icy as the creek the town was named for.
“I can’t go to the dance with you, Roland,” Lark said miserably, figuring she might as well get the refusal over with. After all, she’d asked him to stop the wagon.
“Why not?” Roland asked, his face darkening and his hands tightening on the reins.
“Because she’s going with me,” Rowdy said mildly, setting aside the coffeepot he was carrying and coming to stand next to the wagon, looking up at Lark.
He was the first man she’d ever encountered who could communicate with his eyes. They clearly asked, Are you all right?
She felt her face go warm. “Yes,” she said, with a gulp. “That’s right. I’ve already promised to go to the dance with Marshal Rhodes.”
“And anyway,” Rowdy put in helpfully, “it wouldn’t do for a teacher to keep company with one of her students.”
“It ain’t against no laws!” Roland protested. All his shyness was gone, replaced by venomous ire. His small eyes bulged, and even his dull red hair seemed to stand a little on end.
“I’d like a word with you before school starts, Miss Morgan,” Rowdy said pointedly, raising his hands to help her down. Waiting. “About my brother Gideon.”
Lark leaned toward him, fretful and distracted. She should have listened to Mrs. Porter and made up some polite excuse for not riding in Roland’s wagon. She had indeed given the poor man the wrong impression by agreeing in the first place, and now she was in an uncomfortable situation because of it.
Rowdy’s hands felt blessedly strong as he set them on either side of her waist and lifted her easily down from the wagon box. It was odd, how different one man’s touch could feel from another’s; Roland’s grip had an aspect of clutching to it, where Rowdy’s was light and easy.
Despite that, Lark was shaken, placing herself in Rowdy’s hands that way. They were making a scene folks would probably gossip about for weeks.
Did you see that schoolteacher, riding right through the middle of town with Beaver Franks, bold as you please?
She’s from someplace else, you know. Just turned up here one day in her big-city clothes, and took over the schoolhouse like she owned it.
She’s no better than she should be.
“This ain’t right,” Roland said, glowering, trembling all over like a mountain with a geyser about to shoot off its top from the inside.
“Move along,” Rowdy told him quietly.
“I’ll see you at school, Roland,” Lark said warmly, trying to pretend she hadn’t just made a complete and utter fool of herself in front of all of Stone Creek proper and half the countryside.
Pardner came out of the jailhouse and nudged at the back of her right hand with the cold, wet end of his nose.
Rowdy left Lark standing on the sidewalk with Pardner to round the team.
Roland lifted the reins slightly, as though tempted to run him down.
“I asked you to move along,” Rowdy said from the other side of the wagon.
Roland hawked and spat, missing Rowdy by inches. “She’s mine,” he snarled. “I saw her first!”
Lark blinked. The whole wagon shook, and then Roland was toppling sideways out of the wagon. She rushed around the back only to see her student lying on his back in the road, with his arms and legs spread wide.
By now spectators had gathered.
Roland’s face contorted with hatred, but he was a moment getting his breath—a moment Lark used to pray frantically, albeit silently, that he wouldn’t get up and tear Rowdy limb from bloody limb.
“Roland Franks,” she said, summoning all her authority as a schoolteacher, “you behave yourself!”
He eased himself up onto his elbows, dazed. “You had no call to drag me out of my own wagon that way,” he said to Rowdy, wheezing a little. “I could have got hurt.”
“You will get hurt,” Rowdy said, “if you ever try to spit on me again.”
“You think you can take me—Marshal?” Roland shook himself, but he didn’t get up off the ground. He’d gone a muddy shade of crimson and, despite the cold, he was sweating.
“I know I can,” Rowdy replied, with such cold certainty that a little chill ran down Lark’s spine. He unbuckled his gun belt and handed it off to Gideon, who had been a mere flicker at the edge of Lark’s vision a moment before but had now solidified at Rowdy’s side.
“If you’d like to settle the question once and for all, just get up.”
Roland sat cross-legged in the dirt. “I could be injured,” he said. “It wouldn’t be right to hit a man who’s injured.” His gaze swung, resentful, to Lark. “I ain’t comin’ to school no more,” he added. “I got my pride.”
Rowdy stepped back so Roland could stand.
Roland lumbered to his feet, swayed and then climbed up into his buckboard. He released the brake lever with a screech, slapped the reins down on the horses’ backs, turned the wagon in a wide loop in the middle of the street and headed the other way.
Lark closed her eyes, mortified.
Now, thanks to her, Roland would never read beyond a third-grade level.
“It’s over, folks,” Rowdy told the gawking townspeople, startling Lark by taking hold of her arm and propelling her in the direction of his office. “Go on about your business.”
He all but flung her over the threshold.
“Gideon,” he told his brother, gesturing, “you go over to the schoolhouse—it’s around the next bend and down the hill—and tell the kids today’s a holiday.”
Gideon scrambled to obey.
Lark sputtered. After several false starts, she said, “You have no right to cancel an entire day of school!”
“Miss Morgan,” Rowdy said, grim-jawed, “I just did.”
“By what authority?” How was she going to explain this to the parents? Some of those children traveled miles to attend class.
“By the authority of the Rhodes Ordinance,” Rowdy replied.
“The Rhodes—”
“Ordinance,” Rowdy finished for her. “When I need a law, I usually just make one up.” He gestured toward the open doorway of the jailhouse. “There’s bad weather coming. Like as not, you’d have had an empty classroom anyhow.”
Narrow-eyed, Lark looked past him and saw flat, lazy flakes of snow drifting down, thickening fast to fury.