A Wanted Man (17 page)

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.

G
IDEON 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?