CHAPTER 9
ROWDY COULDN’T FEEL his feet—took it on trust that they were still at the end of his legs and in the stirrups where they belonged—and it was a fortunate thing he’d borrowed an old dray horse at the livery, instead of riding Paint. The nag was slower than cold honey in the bottom of a flat pan, but it plodded stolidly through the ever-deepening snow and seemed to know where the trail was, which was more than Rowdy could claim.
He kept his hat brim pulled down low over his face and wore a bandanna to keep from getting frostbite, but the truth was, his clothes were suited more to Haven’s temperate climate than the high country.
And he kept riding.
Rounding a bend, he came on the buggy, little more than a distinctive shape in the stinging gloom, though the odd stray moonbeam got through somehow. The horse was still upright, and so was the rig, but that was about all Rowdy could discern, until he got closer.
The doctor sat upright in the buggy seat, the reins still in his hands.
And he was dead.
Rowdy’s first thought was of the little girl back at the schoolhouse, though by now she was surely at Mrs. Porter’s with Lark, trying to worry her papa home safe. His second was that he was likely to end up in the same fix as the doctor if he didn’t find a way to keep warm till morning.
He swore, got stiffly down from the livery-stable horse, and stomped his feet in the vain hope of getting his circulation going again. Just to be sure his original assessment was correct, and the doc was indeed dead, he tugged off one glove, using his teeth because his other hand was too stiff, and pressed his fingers to a pulse point in the man’s neck.
Cold as a graveyard statue.
Yep. Fairmont had gone to his Maker way too soon, and left his frozen carcass behind for good.
Rowdy swore again. There was a lantern fixed to the front of the buggy, though it had long since gone out. Praying it had guttered when the wind picked up, instead of burning the kerosene down to fumes, he fumbled to examine it, got a match from his coat pocket and struck it, shielding it with an unsteady hand as he held the flame to the wick. The mingled scents of oil and sulfur stung the insides of his nostrils.
The fire caught, and Rowdy was careful to shut the lantern again before letting out his breath in relief.
In the light of that lantern, the doctor looked even more bizarre than he had in the relative gloom. He’d turned blue-gray, and icicles dangled from the brim of his eastern hat, and from his chin and ears and eyebrows, too.
For the time being, Rowdy had no choice but to leave the man right where he was. There was no saving the doc. Rowdy had his own survival to manage, and that of the two horses.
Recalling his pa’s taunts that he’d had a talent for starting fires on the railroad tracks, Rowdy pulled his glove back on, took the lantern by its handle, and examined the horse hitched to the front of the rig.
It nickered at him, ice clinging to its shaggy hide.
Rowdy freed it from the harness and waded into the snow, now nearly to his knees, looking for dead branches. The work warmed him a little, and he was encouraged by the fierce ache in his feet. His blood was moving again, anyhow.
He laid the blaze right there in the road, and stood by it a while. The horses drew up close to each other, sharing their body heat.
When he’d thawed out a little, Rowdy gathered more deadwood and fed it to the fire, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He’d been lucky up to now, but a good blast of wind would put out the flames, and he couldn’t search for more wood without going too far off the trail.
He hadn’t even considered bringing Pardner along on this jaunt, but he surely wouldn’t have minded his company now—a good dog had kept more than one man alive in a blizzard.
He paced, clapping his gloved hands. Wished he could lie down and sleep, right there in the middle of that old trail. The temptation wooed him, sweet and warm as a willing woman, but he knew if he gave in to it, he’d never get up off the ground again.
So he kept pacing.
Kept the fire going as long as he could.
When it was finally quelled, there was no getting it going again.
Rowdy wedged himself between the two horses, leaning against one or the other of them when his legs needed a rest, and waited for morning.
* * *
GIDEON WAS GONE for such a long time that Lark began to despair of him. Mrs. Porter’s house wasn’t far away, maybe three-quarters of a mile, but in this storm, it might as well have been in Kansas.
Was he lost, with Lydia, blinded by the vicious fury of the snow?
And what was happening to Rowdy? Had he found Dr. Fairmont?
Or had they both perished?
Lark paced, sat down, got up again and paced some more.
And then Gideon returned, with a man’s coat for Lark to wear in lieu of her cloak, which was still damp with Lydia’s perspiration.
“Mrs. Porter and that Chinese woman are in a fair tizzy,” Gideon reported, handing Lark the coat and opening the stove door to bank the fire. “Fixing to make soup from a bunch of dried weeds.” He paused, watching as Lark buttoned up the coat. “I’ll ride my horse up close to the steps, if you’re ready to go, and you can get on behind me.”
Just as Lark had never drawn water from a well, she had never ridden a horse, either. She felt suddenly and woefully inadequate for life in Stone Creek, or anywhere beyond her parlor in Autry’s mansion, and even indulged in a brief, distracted regret that she’d ever left Denver.
She’d had plenty of comforts there, and people to do for her.
Water from a tap. Gas lights. A coal furnace. Hot drinks served to her by a maid whose name she couldn’t remember.
And she’d taken it all for granted.
“Very well,” she told Gideon staunchly. “I’ll ride behind you.”
The leap from the top of the steps onto the back of Gideon’s horse proved awkward, because of her long skirts. The cold stung her legs, even through her thick woolen stockings, and she covered them as best she could, clutching at Gideon’s coat with both hands when the horse moved forward with a sudden, slogging jolt.
Lark buried her face between Gideon’s shoulder blades and prayed the ride to Mrs. Porter’s could be accomplished quickly.
It wasn’t.
The snow was so deep that the horse could only move through it by bunching its haunches and springing ahead in a crow-hopping motion that sent Lark’s stomach surging up her windpipe. Once, she nearly bit off her tongue.
What seemed like an hour passed in this jostling fashion, before the lights of Mrs. Porter’s house came into view, faintly golden and snow-muted, like the flames flickering in the streetlamps.
As he had done at the schoolhouse, Gideon rode up beside the back porch and waited while Lark dismounted. Her legs almost crumbled beneath her, and pain shot through the balls of her feet, but she managed to land without falling.
“Best rest this horse awhile,” Gideon said, raising his voice to be heard over the low howl of the wind. Then he swung a leg over the animal’s neck and joined Lark on the little porch.
The door opened behind Lark, and Mrs. Porter grabbed her by a handful of coat and hauled her over the threshold with surprising strength, considering her diminutive size.
Gideon followed, after politely stomping the snow off his boots first. “I need one of those quilts for the horse,” he said. “A length of twine, too, if you have it.”
Mrs. Porter gave him several quilts, plucked from the pile Lydia had been wrapped in, and Mai Lee provided the string. After adjusting his coat collar and pulling his hat down a little, he went out again, ostensibly to blanket the horse and secure the covering with twine.
Lark’s attention was all for Lydia.
The child lay on a cot set up in the middle of the kitchen, within the radius of blessed warmth from the cookstove, but not too close. Hon Sing, Mai Lee’s husband, sat beside her, straight-shouldered, unrolling a small length of embroidered silk on his lap.
Lark drew closer, divesting herself of the borrowed coat, which Mrs. Porter hastened to take from her.
“How is Lydia?” Lark asked, terrified of the answer.
Needles, long and very fine, glimmered in the piece of silk Hon Sing was holding. His hands were poised gracefully over the sewing kit, if that was what it was, fingers spread, like those of a pianist preparing to play a concerto.
“Bad sick,” Hon Sing said.
Lark touched Lydia’s forehead and found it only slightly cooler than when they’d parted at the schoolhouse. The child’s skin felt dry now, but it was still very warm, and her eyes, though open, seemed glazed, even sightless.
Lark glanced curiously at the needles.
Hon Sing and Mai Lee exchanged a few quiet words in their own language. Then Mai Lee brought a chair from the table and urged Lark to sit in it.
“Hon Sing doctor in China,” she said. “Give girl medicine. She not better.”
Gideon returned and noticed the needles immediately.
“What’s he mean to do with those?” he asked.
“Some heathen thing,” Mrs. Porter fretted, pressing a cup of hot tea into Lark’s unfeeling hands and then hovering at a little distance, wringing her own.
If Hon Sing had heard Mrs. Porter’s remark, he gave no sign of it. He took one of the needles carefully from the cloth case, examined it, looking pleased at the way it winked in the lamplight, and poked the sharp end into the top of his own wrist.
Lark flinched, and felt Gideon, now standing near her chair, do the same.
“Not hurt,” Hon Sing assured them.
“Like hell,” Gideon argued.
Hon Sing plucked the needle from his flesh and put it in another part of the case. Then he took Lydia’s hand and inserted the needle with a deft, skilled motion of his fingers.
Lark gasped.
Gideon yelped in protest.
But Lydia didn’t make a sound.
“Take that needle out of her right now,” Gideon commanded, and moved to intercede.
Lark stopped him with a motion of her arm.
Hon Sing gave Gideon a placid, measuring look, then proceeded to place another needle in Lydia’s opposite wrist. Soon, she was bristling with little silvery spines. After a few tense minutes had passed, she suddenly sighed, as though relieved of some burden that had been crushing her, and then her breathing, ragged and shallow before, began to deepen and slow.
“Yes,” Hon Sing said quietly. “Breathe now.”
Behind Lark, a little thump sounded. Mai Lee gasped, and Lark spun backward off her chair.
Mrs. Porter lay in a heap on the floor.
Before either Mai Lee or Lark could reach the poor woman, Gideon had hooked his hands under her arms from behind and hoisted her onto her feet.
Dazed, Mrs. Porter blinked and sagged into the chair Lark placed behind her.
“Needles,” the landlady explained, fluttery.
No one spoke in response.
Hon Sing remained where he was, watching over Lydia, occasionally moving a needle from one part of her anatomy to another.
Lark was at once horrified and fascinated. She’d heard of strange Chinese healing practices, but she’d never actually witnessed anything like this.
When Hon Sing ceased rearranging the needles and simply sat silently, with his hands resting on his thighs, Lark approached him. Tentatively extended her hand.
Hon Sing looked at her face, smiled the barest semblance of a smile, and took another needle from the case.
Lark stiffened, biting her lower lip, but when the tip of the needle penetrated the skin on top of her wrist, there was no painful prick. She stared, amazed, and slowly became aware of a pooling sensation surrounding the needle, rapidly coalescing into a heavy ache.
Watching, Hon Sing nodded sagely, as though in response to some private question he’d seen no reason to voice aloud.
Lark’s eyes widened with chagrin. To her, Hon Sing had always been Mai Lee’s husband, an odd, foreign little man who swept and fetched and carried for Jolene Bell at her saloon and slept in the bed under the main staircase in Mrs. Porter’s house.
She would never have credited him with the wisdom he exuded now. In fact, she hadn’t seen him as anything more than a peripheral figure, moving like a shadow at the perimeters of her awareness.
Shame burned in her cheeks, and she swallowed hard. What an ignorant, complacent dolt she’d been.
Without speaking, Hon Sing removed the needle from Lark’s hand, and instantly the ache began to fade.
And so did a lot of Lark’s assumptions about what was true.
* * *
THE SNOW HAD STOPPED a little before dawn, and the sky was clear, though it was still cold enough to turn a man’s breath solid in midair.
The doc looked worse in the daylight than he had in the spooky glow of his road-lantern the night before—and that, Rowdy thought, was saying something. There was no hope of moving the buggy, even with two horses to draw, since it was mired above the wheel hubs in ice-crusted snow. Anyhow, what passed as a road was under at least eighteen hard-crusted inches of yesterday’s weather.
Rowdy pried the corpse out of the buggy seat and carried it, bent double over his right shoulder like a rolled rug. He laid Dr. Fairmont’s remains over the back of his own borrowed horse, since he knew the animal to be of patient temperament, and secured the rigid body with rope.
That done, he mounted the doc’s buggy horse and waited to see if the critter would buck. When it didn’t, Rowdy urged it in the direction of Stone Creek.
With the snow so deep, it was slow traveling.
He had to stop and rest the horses every fifteen or twenty minutes, and he wished he had a blanket or something to cover the doc. It wasn’t that he minded looking at him, but it was an undignified way for a man to make his last ride, and Rowdy would have spared him that, spared the little girl, too, but there was no means of doing so.
Having plenty of time to think, if not much else, Rowdy considered Mabel, the doctor’s wife. He’d met her the night before, when he stopped by to ask if her husband had returned from the Bennington place and pass on Lark’s message that she’d look after the child until morning. She was a piece of work, Mabel Fairmont was. She’d come to the door half-dressed and sloe-eyed and smelling of medicine—probably laudanum.
The doctor wasn’t back, she’d said, with a whining note in her voice, and Lark could keep Lydia forever, as far as she was concerned. The kid was pesky, anyway. She’d asked if Rowdy wanted to come in and visit for a spell.
He’d refused politely, said he had a long ride to make. Tipped his hat to her out of habit, not respect. It galled him to remember it, and he spat.
What would become of Lydia, with her pa gone, and only that woman to offer solace?
Rowdy’s throat ached at the prospect. The child would probably wind up in an orphanage, if she was that lucky. From what he’d seen of her stepmama, it was more likely she’d simply be left behind.
He glanced back at the corpse, bouncing behind him on the second horse, for all that he’d tied the ropes down tight. “Not to speak ill of the dead,” he said aloud, “but you ought to have looked after your daughter a little better than you did.”
That said, Rowdy turned his attention to the hard trail ahead, and his thoughts strayed, as they liked to do, to Lark Morgan.
She would want to take the child in, he knew she would.
But she was a schoolmarm, and on the run from somebody mean enough to spark fear in her eyes whenever her past was mentioned. She wasn’t in a position to raise a little girl, any more than he was.
Rowdy frowned and pulled his hat down lower over his eyes.
Thought about his own mother, and what she would have done in his place. She’d always wanted a girl-child, but rambunctious boys were all she got.
She’d been left on a hardscrabble farm, often and for long stretches, while Pappy was off robbing stage-coaches, then trains, though he always told her he had mining shares, someplace in Oklahoma. She’d had five boys to feed and clothe, and no help doing it—until John T. Rhodes bought the neighboring place, right around Rowdy’s eighth birthday.
John T. was probably still a sore spot with Pappy, even after all these years. He’d been everything Pappy wasn’t, a hardworking, respectable man, with a penchant for books and the fine thoughts they contained.
A book’s like a chariot with wings, Rowdy. It can take you anyplace.
He’d loved Miranda Yarbro, John T. had. But he’d done it honorably. A widower himself, he’d never asked anything of Rowdy’s mother except the pleasure of her company. He’d chopped wood and carried water. He’d shared his corn crops, since the ones Ma and the older boys planted always seemed to fail, and when he butchered a hog or a steer, there was meat in Miranda’s larder, as well as his own.
Whenever Pappy came home from one of his sprees, his pockets heavy with money and his stories taller than the highest building in New York City, John T. stayed clear.
It wasn’t that he was scared of Payton Yarbro, though. John T. was never scared of anybody—he just didn’t like fighting, that was all. Once, Rowdy had seen the man lift a yearling calf clear off the ground.
When Pappy’s money ran out, he got restless, and then he’d light out again. And John T. would quietly take up where he’d left off before the latest homecoming.
Since the nearest schoolhouse was thirty miles away and Ma needed help at home, Rowdy never had a day of formal learning. John T. had taught him to read and work sums, along with Levi and Ethan. Ma had schooled Wyatt and Nick herself, since they were older, coming along before despair and hard work had worn her down, using the Good Book and a pair of slates she ordered through Sears-Roebuck. Scant as their educations were, either Wyatt or Nick could have passed for a university professor by the time they were old enough to vote.
Remembering all this, Rowdy was almost glad to be alone in a barren place, with only two horses and a dead man for company. He could think about Ma without choking up, but recalling John T. was something else again.
In some ways, he’d never gotten past the spring of his thirteenth year.
He’d been helping John T. plow a cornfield one warm spring day, and they’d stopped, in the heat of the afternoon, to rest themselves and the team in the shade of the only tree on the Rhodes place—a single, towering maple, planted by some long-gone homesteader, probably yearning for New England.
They’d drunk from a water bucket brought along for the purpose, and John T. had grinned at Rowdy and said he ought to start going by Robert, now that he was almost a man.
Wyatt and Nick had taken to running with Pappy by then, despite all Ma had done to keep them home, and Ethan and Levi were getting restless, too.
Rowdy meant to stay right there on the farm, run some cattle and raise a few hogs and chicken. Grow corn that didn’t wither on the stalk. He wanted to be like John T., not like Pappy. He’d decided then and there to use his given name, and he’d said so.
John T. had slapped him on the shoulder and looked proud. He’d dipped the ladle into the drinking bucket, and poured the contents down the back of his neck.
Rowdy’d laughed, and reached for the ladle, meaning to do the same.
At first, seeing John T.’s face contort, Rowdy had drawn back, afraid he’d somehow offended the man whose respect he’d wanted above all things in life.
John T. had clasped a hand to his chest and pitched forward onto the ground. Rowdy stood still for a long moment, stricken. When he finally crouched and rolled John T. over onto his back, he knew he was gone.
He’d sat there, keeping a vigil, until after sunset, when his ma finally came looking for them with a lantern to say supper was getting cold.
Together, she and Rowdy had loaded John T.’s body onto the plow horse’s back and made the slow trip home.
With the help of some neighbors, they’d buried John T. Rhodes two days later, under the lone maple tree out in his field.
The next time Pappy came home, he’d taunted Ma for crying. Said John T. had gotten his just due for coveting another man’s wife, and didn’t the Good Book say, “Let the dead bury their dead”?
Rowdy had expected his ma to finally lose her temper, or at least defend John T.’s honor, along with her own, but she hadn’t. She’d dried her eyes and let Pa kiss her, and acted sweet and docile around him, even laughed at his stories, and Rowdy had hated her for it, with all the misguided passion of a thirteen-year-old boy.
Without John T. there to guide him, Rowdy knew he’d never grow into the name Robert. He’d never raise corn crops, either. John T.’s absence was like one giant toothache pulsing through his spirit, worse every day.
And he couldn’t bear it.
When his pa rode out that time, Rowdy went with him.
He’d never intended to learn the train-robbing trade, he just fell into it, because he was young and because Pa said the railroad barons were the real thieves, driving good folks off their land and laying tracks across it.
After the first robbery, Rowdy had been too ashamed to go home, and when the Yarbro name gathered some notoriety and Pa went by Jack Payton, Rowdy had started calling himself Rhodes.
It had galled Pa plenty, that tribute to John T. Probably still did.
And that was fine with Rowdy, then and now.
* * *
GIDEON PRATTLED like a mouthy woman, that cold, still winter afternoon, and gave his old pa fits in the process.
“And then this Chinaman, he stuck needles into that little girl.”
Payton was busy ransacking Rowdy’s saddlebags. He could feel the law closing in on him, tightening like a noose. Snow or no snow, winded horse or none, he had to hightail it for Mexico.
Gideon babbled on. “And she got better, too, right away.”
Payton upended the saddlebags, and a black leather pouch fell out with a solid, satisfying thunk. He grinned around the unlighted cheroot jutting out of the side of his mouth. Yes, indeed, Rowdy always had money.
“Pa,” Gideon said, abruptly interrupting his discourse on Chinese medicine, “what are you doing?”
“Borrowing something from your brother.”
“That’s stealing!”
“No, it ain’t,” Payton said, impatient. If one of the other boys had talked to him like that, he’d have backhanded them for it. But Gideon was special, if sorely trying at times. “It’s borrowing.”
The dog, resting by the stove, sat up and whimpered. Payton had been shut up with that mutt ever since Gideon had gone arescuing the night before, and he’d had his fill of being followed around and stared at.
“Just because you decided to call it that?” Gideon challenged, reddening a little, in tiresome conviction. Damn, if he wasn’t like Miranda, too, Payton thought. All his sons were, to one degree or another, but she hadn’t had a hand in Gideon’s raising and could not have imparted her influence. “You’d better put that money back, Pa. Right now.”
“You going to make me?” Payton asked. He dropped the pouch back in the saddlebags, and Gideon looked relieved—until he realized the saddlebags were going, too.
“You said you weren’t an outlaw anymore,” Gideon said, moving into Payton’s way when he made for the door.
“And you said you wanted to be one,” Payton retorted. He didn’t like speaking harshly to the boy, but maybe it was the best thing, considering present circumstances. Turn him sour on his old man, once and for all. The ire might carry him right into college and out the other side, with something more to trade on than a fast gun and an even faster temper. “You don’t have the stomach for it.”
He pushed past Gideon, blinked in the bright dazzle of sunlight on snow.
“What about Ruby?” Gideon asked. “What about the horses and that thousand dollars you wanted me to fetch back?”
“When the road thaws out between here and Flagstaff,” Payton called, already halfway to the lean-to, where there was a perfectly good pinto gelding awaiting him, rested and ready to cover a lot of territory fast, “you go see Ruby, then turn in that livery-stable nag. She’ll make it right with old Charlie, Ruby will, and you won’t be hanged for a horse thief.” He went into the lean-to. He’d have favored a less memorable mount than that splashy paint, but borrowers couldn’t be choosers. He commenced to saddling the gelding, patted the horse he was leaving behind. Gideon had followed him all the way out there, and the dog was with him. “You can have old Samson here, for your very own.”
“I don’t want your stupid horse, and you can’t just leave, Pa. You can’t take Rowdy’s money and his horse and even his goddamned clothes and act like there’s nothing wrong with it!”
“You just watch me, boy,” Payton answered, slipping the bridle over the pinto’s head and adjusting the bit. That done, he threw on the saddle blanket, then the saddle. When he’d cinched it and fastened the buckle, he headed for the doorway of the lean-to.
Gideon didn’t move out of his way. His face was rigid, and his eyes flashed. Steam snorted from his nostrils, he was breathing so hard. He might have been quite a hand at the train-robbing trade, given the training and experience.
Payton sighed. “Step aside, Gideon.”
Gideon still didn’t move.
Payton advanced.
And Gideon landed a haymaker in the middle of his face, knocked him flat on his backside, and spooked the pinto so that it nearly trampled him.
“Damn,” Payton gurgled, trying to stanch the blood flowing down the front of his shirt. “You broke my nose!”
“Like I said,” Gideon told him, flexing the fingers of his right hand and looking serious as all get-out, “you aren’t stealing Rowdy’s money or his horse. In fact, as a deputy marshal, I could arrest you. Throw you in that cell in there in the jailhouse.”
Payton tried to smile, which wasn’t easy, given that he felt as if a mule had just kicked in his face, and he was too woozy to get up out of the manure and sawdust covering the floor of that lean-to. “You wouldn’t do a thing like that to your own pa,” he said. “Would you?”
Gideon offered him a hand.
Payton hesitated, then took it.
Gideon jerked him to his feet, wrenched one of Payton’s arms behind his back, and marched him straight for the jailhouse. When had the kid gotten to be so bull strong?
“Listen to me, Gideon,” Jack reasoned, still bleeding from the nose like the proverbial stuck pig. “This is a small town. If you put me in that jail, folks are going to notice, and that will cause Rowdy problems you can’t even begin to imagine.”
“There’s a back door,” Gideon said. He wrenched said back door open and hurled Payton through it. “Let folks talk all they want. And whatever these ‘problems’ are, I figure Rowdy can handle them.”
Before Payton recovered his balance, Gideon was on him again, shuffling him into the cell, slamming the door, turning the key in the lock.
Stunned, Payton stared at his youngest son—his favorite—from between bars with rust spotting them wherever the grimy white paint was peeling off. He’d outrun U.S. Marshals and rangers, Pinkertons and railroad agents, and now he’d been thrown into the hoosegow by a sixteen-year-old boy.
If it hadn’t been so damn tragic, Payton would have laughed out loud.
“You let me out of here, you ungrateful little whelp! I’m going to kick your ass from here to Sunday breakfast!”
Gideon found a rag and shoved it through the bars. “If you could,” he said, “you’d have done it out there in the lean-to.”
Pardner, who had witnessed the whole sorry episode, suddenly gave a little woof and dashed for the front door, jumping up and pawing at it.
“I guess Rowdy’s back,” Gideon said.
“Shit,” Payton said. He jammed the rag against his bloody nose, winced at the pain and sank down onto the only piece of furniture in that cell. “That’s all I need.”
The door opened, and Rowdy came in. Stopped to make a fuss over the damn dog.
“I arrested Pa,” Gideon said, taking a stubborn stance and folding his arms. Maybe he and Rowdy would get into it; the spectacle would be some consolation to Payton, if not much.
“I can see that,” Rowdy replied evenly. He took off his hat, hung it on a peg, then shed his coat, too. He’d put in a hard night, from the looks of him, but Payton didn’t much care. He had his own problems to worry about. “Make some coffee, will you, Deputy?” Rowdy added.
Gideon nodded, grabbed the coffeepot and hurried outside to get water.
“What happened to your face?” Rowdy asked idly. Gideon had left the cell key lying on Rowdy’s desk, and Rowdy looked right at it. Made no move to use it, though.
Hope sprang up in Payton’s heart, just the same. “Gideon sucker punched me,” he said. “Let me out of here. I’ll just leave, and there’ll be no trouble. You have my word on that.”
“You know how I value your word,” Rowdy said dryly.
Gideon came back in with the coffeepot, his face as white as last night’s snowfall. “There’s a dead man tied to one of those horses out front,” he said.
“Just make the coffee,” Rowdy replied wearily.