A Wanted Man (19 page)

Yes,
Rowdy might answer,
and I let the most likely suspect out of my jail five minutes ago. His name’s Payton Yarbro. Did I ever mention that he’s my pa, and I rode with him for years?

Mabel reached him first. “I have just been to see my husband at the undertaker’s,” she said, “and he’s
bent
. Poor Herbert is going to have to be buried
sideways
.”

“I’m sure there’s a solution, Mrs. Fairmont,” Rowdy said. Most likely the undertaker would have to break poor Herbert’s bones or sever a few tendons to straighten him out for the coffin, but of course it wouldn’t have been mannerly to say so.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Sam was drawing nearer. He wasn’t riding with any urgency, but he did look mighty serious.

“I’m not meant to live alone,” Mabel said sweetly. “I’ll need another husband. Are you single, Marshal Rhodes?”

Rowdy stared at her, forgetting all about Sam. He’d only met the woman once, and he’d disliked her instantly. Now, looking at her in the daylight, he was even less impressed. She was skinny, with dark hair and shrewd, greedy little eyes that seemed to pull perceptively at everything she saw.

And right now, she was seeing Rowdy.

“It’s a little soon to be thinking about getting married again, isn’t it?”

She bridled a little. “If you’re worried that you’ll have to raise Lydia,” she said huffily, “you needn’t trouble yourself. I’ve sent a wire to Nell Baker, down in Phoenix, and she’ll be on her way here to fetch that little brat as soon as the roads are clear.”

Well, there was some good news, anyway. Lydia had someone who cared enough to travel all the way from Phoenix to collect her.

“You’ve been busy this morning,” Rowdy said dryly.

Sam was dismounting, near the hitching rail.

Mabel didn’t seem to notice him. “If you don’t want to marry me, just say so.”

“I don’t want to marry you,” Rowdy complied.

Sam approached. Touched the brim of his hat to Mabel, though his gaze was fixed on Rowdy.

“I was sorry to learn of your sad loss, Mrs. Fairmont,” Sam said.

Mabel didn’t even acknowledge the man’s condolences. She just gave a frustrated snort, hoisted her skirts and turned to pick her way angrily across the road, stepping high because of the snow.

“You thinking of getting married, Rowdy?” Sam asked, both of them watching her go. Sam seemed mildly amused, but Rowdy was seething.

“No,” he snapped.

The irritation subsided, though, as he recalled the probable reason for Sam’s ride into town, which must have been no mean enterprise, given the state of the roads.

Rowdy let out his breath. By now, his pa was probably back from the outhouse. He was a famous train robber, almost legendary—most likely, there’d be dime novels written about him anytime now. And there was a good chance that Sam, being an experienced lawman, would recognize Payton from some sketch he’d seen in the course of his duties, or even a written description.

And Pappy might just be spiteful enough to throw himself in front of the train, so to speak, just for the pleasure of seeing his next-to-youngest son locked up in his own jail.

Yes, sir. Pappy would love that.

Rowdy sighed, remembered the coffeepot he’d just filled at the pump. “Come on inside, Sam,” he said. “It’s cold out here.”

A
FTER DRESSING
as warmly as she could, Lark left Lydia in Mai Lee and Mrs. Porter’s care and set out for the Fairmont house. No one answered her knock, and she was wondering if Mabel might be inside, stunned with grief, when a voice called tartly from the road.

“What do
you
want?”

Lark turned and saw Mabel striding toward her. Before she could say anything in response, Mabel spoke again.

“If you think you’re bringing that girl back here,” she said, “you’re wrong. Miss Nell Baker is on the way to get her, and you can just keep her until then!”

Lark’s mouth fell open, and her temper flared.
The woman is in mourning,
she reminded herself.
Be kind
. “I was just coming to tell you that Lydia is better, and to ask for some of her things, since it wouldn’t be prudent to move her just yet,” she said moderately.

“Well,” snapped Mabel, “come in, then.”

She shoved her way past Lark and opened the door.

Lark followed her over the threshold. She’d never been to the Fairmont house before, so she’d had no expectations, but if she had, they wouldn’t have matched what she saw.

There was almost no furniture in the front room, and the floors were bare of rugs and dirty. Discarded clothing—or was it bedding of some sort?—lay piled in a corner, and something moved inside the heap.

“Go ahead,” Mabel taunted. “Look till your eyes are full.”

Lark blushed. She
had
been staring, and that was rude. “If I could just have Lydia’s nightgown, and perhaps a warm dress—”

Mabel laughed and, quiet as it was, the sound had a screeching quality to it. “She doesn’t have much, and what she does have might as well be burned. That’s what snooty Nell Baker will do. Burn it all and tell the whole world how her dear brother-in-law, the
doctor,
married a slattern after her sainted sister died and brought up his
precious child
in a pigsty!”

Lark bit her lower lip, still reining in her temper, still trying to decide how best to respond. “Mrs. Fairmont, I know you’re very upset over your husband’s death, but—”

Mabel didn’t let her finish. “In there,” she said, jabbing a thumb toward one of two inside doorways. “That’s where Lydia sleeps.”

Just the other day Lark had walked Lydia home from school, and the child had rushed in to ask for last night’s soup bone, so she could give it to Pardner. The recollection made the backs of Lark’s eyes sting, and a lump formed in her throat.

What kind of teacher was she? She’d never dreamed the child was living like this.

Lydia was always cheerful, her face washed, her hair neatly braided. If her clothes were a little shabby, well, many of the other children wore hand-me-downs and patched garments, too. Most of them probably didn’t even put on shoes until the weather turned cold, and often they’d already been worn out by an older sibling before the new owner inherited them.

When Lark didn’t move, Mabel flounced through the indicated doorway and came out a few moments later with an untidy bundle in her arms. She thrust the things at Lark.

“Here,” she said sourly. “It’s what she has. Write it up in the newspaper. Have posters printed.”

Lark barely heard her. Dr. Fairmont must have been the one to care for Lydia; it certainly hadn’t been this impossible, wretchedly unhappy woman.

“You can leave now,” Mabel said.

“Mrs. Fairmont, what are you going to do?” Lark asked. Mabel’s surliness surely stemmed from shock over her husband’s sudden death. And perhaps she was subject to melancholia, and that was how the house had fallen into such a state. She might be ashamed to let anyone, especially her stepdaughter’s teacher, see the place, and therefore she was prickly. “How will you support yourself?”

“I’ll marry somebody,” Mabel answered blithely. “I already tried for a new husband, just this morning, but he figures he’s too good for me, that Rowdy Rhodes. I don’t know who he thinks he is. Some drifter, just riding into town with a dog sharing his saddle—”

Lark fought a strange desire to smile. Suddenly, despite all the struggles and the sorrows and the fear, she felt almost elated. “You proposed to Marshal Rhodes?” she asked.

“Yes,” Mabel said petulantly, “and he practically spit in my face.”

Lark bit the inside of her lip and tried to look sympathetic. “I’d better get back to Lydia,” she said. “Thank you, Mrs. Fairmont, and if there’s anything I can do—”

“You can get out of here and leave me alone,” Mabel snapped. “I just lost my husband, you know.”

“I know,” Lark said mildly.

And she left.

W
HEN
R
OWDY AND
S
AM
stepped inside the jailhouse, Gideon was there, but Pappy was nowhere to be seen. Rowdy felt a curious mixture of relief and anxiety.

Where was the old reprobate?

Riding away on Rowdy’s good horse?

Had he taken the money pouch and the saddlebags after all?

Gideon cleared his throat and put out his hand to Sam. “I’m Gideon Rhodes,” he said, without so much as a hitch in his delivery. “Rowdy’s my brother.”

“Sam O’Ballivan,” Sam said. “Glad to meet you.” He must have noticed the slightly bent badge pinned to Gideon’s shirt pocket, but if he did, he didn’t say so.

Rowdy set the coffeepot on the stove, measured in some ground beans and spoke as calmly as he could. “Gideon,” he said, “why don’t you take Pardner out back for a little while?”

Gideon looked mutinous for a second or so, but he was a bright kid. He finally nodded and excused himself. Patted a thigh smartly so Pardner would follow.

And as soon as the dog and the boy were gone, Sam said the words Rowdy had anticipated he would.

“There’s been another train robbery.”

Rowdy kept his expression impassive. “When?” he asked.

“Day before yesterday,” Sam answered. “I just got the telegram this morning. The man who brought it to me said you’d spent the night out in that blizzard, looking for Dr. Fairmont.”

“I guess I didn’t look fast enough,” Rowdy said, and the rueful note in his voice was real. The doc had probably been only a few years older than he was, and despite a bad choice of brides, he hadn’t deserved to die so early.

“Let it go, Rowdy,” Sam said. “You can’t save them all.” He sighed. “Learned that the hard way myself.”

Rowdy shoved some wood into the stove, hoping he’d get a chance to take a gulp or two of the coffee before he had to rush off in pursuit of outlaws he didn’t want to find. Pappy was probably racing for Mexico, and Rowdy planned on heading in the opposite direction.

He didn’t like doing things this way, though. Didn’t like accepting pay for rangering that might go undone, and he surely didn’t like lying to Sam, even if it was only by omission.

Especially not Sam.

Sam O’Ballivan had picked him out of a crowd, standing in front of the jailhouse down in Haven, and deputized him on the spot. Given him a badge and the first honest work he’d done in a long while, guarding a prisoner accused of a brutal murder.

Sam had trusted Rowdy, with no cause to do so.

“I guess you want me to track those train robbers,” he said, resigned.

Fortunately, Sam seemed to take that resignation for plain weariness, but it was hard to tell with him. He’d gone to Haven and convinced everybody but Maddie that he was a schoolmaster, when he was really an Arizona Ranger, on the trail of a pack of outlaws that made Pappy look like a choir leader.

No one who knew Sam O’Ballivan for more than five minutes would risk underestimating him.

“There are a slew of rangers coming into Flagstaff,” Sam said, in answer to a statement Rowdy had almost forgotten he’d made. “Once the trail is a little clearer between here and there, we’ll join them.”

“Any idea where we ought to start looking?”

Sam considered the question, considered Rowdy, too, but his expression was typically unreadable.

The coffee began to perk.

Rowdy’s mouth watered, even as his heartbeat speeded up and something coiled in his belly, the old readiness to either fight or run like hell.

“I figure if we find Payton Yarbro,” Sam said, at long last, “we’ll have solved the problem.”

“
O
F COURSE
YOU’LL GO
to supper at Sam and Maddie’s tomorrow night,” Mrs. Porter said, standing in the doorway as Lark helped Lydia into one of her own nightgowns, having just given the child a sponge bath. Directly after taking her leave from Mabel Fairmont, and coming straight home with the ragged bundle clenched in her arms, Lark had saved Lydia’s aunt the trouble of disposing of the little girl’s pitifully few clothes by stuffing them into the belly of the cookstove.

Lark sighed. She hadn’t wanted anything, in a very long time, as much as she wanted to accept Maddie’s kind invitation—except, of course, for Rowdy Rhodes, and that was a very different kind of wanting.

“Lydia will be just fine here with Mai Lee and me,” Mrs. Porter insisted. “Won’t you, dear?”

Lydia managed a little nod and drifted off to sleep.

“Come and have tea,” Mrs. Porter told Lark, and though she spoke kindly, there was an underlying note of command in her voice.

Lark, her energy renewed after the brisk walk to and from the interview with the recalcitrant Mabel, felt restless. She wanted to march right down to the schoolhouse, fling open the door and ring the bell, announcing to all and sundry that classes were resuming
now
.

There would be no point to that enterprise, of course, since so few of the children—many of whom lived well out of town, along trails and roads buried under snow—could be realistically expected to attend.

So Lark followed Mrs. Porter into her kitchen and resigned herself to sitting down and sipping tea. This was inordinately difficult, since she was besieged by a strange, urgent sense that she needed to prepare for some impending crisis.

Mrs. Porter brought the teapot and the usual elegant cups and saucers to the table. Mai Lee was out on some errand, and they had the place to themselves, though Mr. Porter’s coat, hanging on one of the pegs by the door, neatly brushed and aired, as though he might appear and put it on at any moment, belied the fact.

“Did you speak to Lydia?” the landlady asked, standing to pour tea for both of them and then sitting down. “About Nell Baker’s coming for her, I mean?”

Lark sighed. Toyed with the handle of her teacup. “I asked her if she knew her aunt—though I didn’t say the woman would be on her way to Stone Creek to fetch her as soon as there’s a thaw—and she said she’d never met her. Apparently, Lydia’s father and Miss Baker corresponded.”

“What kind of person do you suppose she is?” Mrs. Porter fretted.

“I wish I knew,” Lark said. Given her druthers, she would have raised Lydia herself, but Miss Baker was a blood relation, the child’s maternal aunt, and as such she would have a legal advantage. “She can’t be worse than Mrs. Fairmont.”

“Mabel Fairmont,” Mrs. Porter said, “is nothing but a trollop.”

“Was it—” Lark paused, bit her lower lip, then made herself ask the question, well aware that contained an implicit accusation. “Was it common knowledge in Stone Creek that Lydia was living in squalor?”

Mrs. Porter straightened her spine, and her gaze was direct. “Poverty is not unusual around here,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that, even though you’ve been a member of our community for a relatively short time. Some of the children in your school don’t have enough to eat, nor shoes or coats, either. We do what we can to help, people like the O’Ballivans and Major Blackstone—and me. But the need is very severe, and then there’s the matter of pride. Most of these little ones would rather starve and go barefoot year-round than accept charity.”

“I really didn’t mean to imply—”

The landlady softened. Patted Lark’s hand. “I know,” she said. Then, after a pause, she went on. “I’ve noticed the quality of your clothes, Lark. Even the banker’s wife doesn’t have such fine things, nor Maddie O’Ballivan, either, and Sam is wealthier than most people think and generous with his wife. Rooming here, living as you do, well—”

Lark resisted an urge to bolt from her chair and flee, thereby forcing an immediate end to the conversation. She didn’t, though, because Mrs. Porter, for all her little prejudices and intrusive ways, had been kind, taking Lark in as a boarder without references, seeing that the school board provided her with lunches she couldn’t afford to provide for herself, and now even providing sanctuary for Lydia.

Wherever she went, and whatever happened to her in the uncertain future, Lark knew she would always be unceasingly grateful to Mrs. Porter for being so generous and helpful. Lark wouldn’t have had the first idea what to do if her landlady had turned Lydia away. Tears burned behind her eyes, just to think of the desperation she would have felt and what might have happened to the child.

“There, now,” Mrs. Porter said, probably misreading the expression on Lark’s face. “You know I
hate
to pry—” at this, Lark had to hide a smile “—but it’s obvious I’ve struck a nerve. Who
are
you, Lark? Truly? And what are you doing in Stone Creek, of all places, when you so clearly belong in Boston or Philadelphia or some other fancy city?”

Lark wanted to answer those questions. She yearned to. But she didn’t dare. Her situation was simply too precarious and so was Lydia’s, at least until Nell Baker arrived. “I wish I could tell you,” she said, for that was the best she could do.

To her utter surprise, Mrs. Porter subsided. She’d been leaning forward, watching Lark’s face avidly. Now she sat back and sighed delicately. “Perhaps one day you’ll be able to confide in me. I do know this much about you, though—you are a good person, Lark Morgan. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have stood by that poor little Fairmont girl the way you have.”

“Thank you,” Lark said quietly.

There was a brief, tremulous silence.

Then, glancing at Mr. Porter’s coat and the date circled in red on the calendar, Lark said, “There’s a story behind your husband’s absence, isn’t there?”

“I wish I could tell you,” Mrs. Porter said, and though she’d tossed Lark’s own words back at her, there was no flippancy in her tone or manner. Instead, she looked wistful, as though she truly
would
like to explain.

Secrets,
Lark thought.
We all have them.

She certainly did.

Mrs. Porter did.

And so did Rowdy Rhodes. She couldn’t afford to forget that, not for a moment, but it was so perilously
easy
to forget. Especially when he kissed her.

B
Y THE TIME
Sam O’Ballivan left the marshal’s office, having conveyed a message from his wife that Rowdy ought to come to supper at their place tomorrow night, along with Lark Morgan, provided the thaw came, of course, Rowdy was practically sweating blood.

He and Sam had made plans to ride out for Flagstaff as early as Sunday morning, to meet up with the converging rangers, and while that was a prospect Rowdy dreaded, it had been nothing compared to his fear that Pappy might stroll into the jailhouse while Sam was there. He’d lived under an alias for a long time, Pappy had, but he was still Payton Yarbro, from the top of his obstinate head right down to the soles of his feet. He’d fooled a lot of people in his time, including himself, but fooling Sam O’Ballivan, now, that was something else again.

“Where’s Pa?” Rowdy asked Gideon, who had been making a simple pot of coffee the whole time Sam was in the office.

“Hiding out in the lean-to,” Gideon said, looking a little shame-faced to say it. Though he didn’t have the time or inclination to pursue the thought just then, Rowdy wondered what it had been like for Gideon, growing up with Pa and Ruby.

Had “Jack Payton” been a different sort of father than Payton Yarbro?

Rowdy sure as hell hoped so.

Gideon moved to warm his hands at the stove, probably more because he was nervous than cold. “He said to let him know when O’Ballivan was gone. Pa, I mean.”

“Let him sit in the lean-to awhile,” Rowdy said, getting his mug off the desk and helping himself to some of Gideon’s coffee. “A little reflection on his ways might do him some good.”

Hesitantly Gideon grinned. “You’re taking Lark—Miss Morgan—to supper at the O’Ballivans’ tomorrow night?”

“If the roads are clear,” Rowdy said, after a restorative sip of very hot coffee. “And if she’s willing to leave Lydia for that long. There are a whole lot of ifs here, Gideon.”

“You like her,” Gideon said, still grinning.

“Of course I like her,” Rowdy replied, after more coffee. “She’s a nice person.”

Gideon’s eyes glowed, and Rowdy would have bet he was wishing he was older, so he might pursue Lark himself. “You’re taking her to the O’Ballivans for supper,” he repeated, good-naturedly stubborn.

“It’s not like it sounds,” Rowdy argued casually.

“We’re both heading to the same place, so it makes sense to travel together.” He thought of the dance coming up Saturday night. He fully intended to go and have Lark on his arm, if he had to drag her out of Mrs. Porter’s house. No doubt his younger brother would have a few things to say about that, too.

Rowdy sighed.

“You should have seen her with that little girl,” Gideon said, turning wistful all of a sudden. “She’d have done practically anything to get her better.”

Rowdy recalled the small grave outside that Flagstaff churchyard. “Tell me about your sister, Gideon,” he said quietly.

Gideon averted his eyes for a moment, looking straight through Pardner like he was a window, then shifted his gaze back to Rowdy’s face. “Rose died when she was only four years old,” he said, his voice gravelly at the memory. “It was my fault.”

Stunned and trying not to show it, Rowdy set his coffee aside on the desk. “How do you figure a thing like that?” he asked. “You must have been pretty young yourself.”

Gideon’s throat worked painfully. “I was six,” he said, remembering. He found a chair, dragged it close to the stove and sat sideways on it, still staring through Pardner. “I was supposed to watch her. Ruby told me to watch her.”

Rowdy debated a moment, then approached and laid one hand on his brother’s shoulder. “What happened?”

Gideon braced his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his palms, his fingers raking through his thick, light-brown hair. “Rose had a kitten,” he said bleakly, his voice muffled and hoarse. “We were playing on the sidewalk in front of the saloon, Rose and me. I got to looking at this horse that was tied up to a hitching post, and while I was doing that, the kitten must have wriggled out of Rose’s hands.” He paused, looked up at Rowdy with such abject misery that Rowdy would have gone back in time and lived that moment for him if he could have. He would have taken what he knew must have come next and all the pain that went with it, and borne it himself. “She chased the kitten into the street before I could stop her,” Gideon went on, forcing the words out. “And she got run down by a wagon.”

“I’m real sorry that happened, Gideon. I’m sorry it happened to Rose, and to you.” And what about Pappy? Rowdy reflected, with a sudden and unaccustomed sorrow. How had the loss of his only daughter, at such a young age, affected him? “But it wasn’t your fault. You were
six
. If you’d tried to run after her, you probably would have been killed, too.”

Gideon swallowed again, tried for a smile and fell about a mile short of attaining it. “The kitten survived, though,” he said, as if Rowdy hadn’t spoken at all. “Ruby gave it to a rancher’s wife, for a mouser. It’s old now, for a cat, anyhow.”

Rowdy squeezed Gideon’s taut shoulder once before letting go. “You visit Rose’s grave a lot, don’t you?” he asked.

Gideon nodded. “Every day,” he said. “It’s hard, being so far away, but I figure I need to get used to that, if I’m going to be a deputy.”

Rowdy’s throat tightened, and he shoved a hand through his hair. He couldn’t help recalling his last visit to his mother’s grave—she was buried a mile or so from John T.’s resting place. He’d gone to tell her he wasn’t riding with the Yarbros anymore. And there was another grave that came to mind, as well, outside Laramie, Wyoming. There were two people buried in that coffin, one of them younger than Rose.

“I guess a lot of us have a trail of graves behind us,” he mused. “Ones we’d like to go back to but can’t.”

There was another silence.

“You reckon Pa’s all right, out there in that lean-to? It’s got to be cold, and his face probably hurts.” Gideon paused, smiled wanly, maybe at the memory of yesterday’s one-sided brawl, or maybe at some recollection of Rose.

“I’ll go and look in on him,” Rowdy offered quietly, because Gideon was red around the eyes, and probably needed a few minutes to collect himself. And because, suddenly, he needed to know how his pa was faring.

Pappy was sitting on an upturned crate, watching the three horses, Paint, Gideon’s livery-stable mount and his own black gelding, chew on hay.

“Is that ranger gone?” he asked.

“He’s gone,” Rowdy said. “Gideon’s worried about you. Says your face probably hurts.”

“It hurts
plenty,
” Pappy complained. “Thanks to him. Things have come to a sorry pass when a man’s own son roundhouses him for no reason at all.” But Pappy was nothing if not mercurial. In the next instant, a proud grin cracked the old outlaw’s bruised and swollen face. “He packs a hell of a wallop, though. I’ve gotta say that for him.”