After Sundown (3 page)

James had taken good care of them, always saw that they had the best of everything.

Now, as one, all three girls looked up at him. Silence reigned.

“He’s got news,” Olivia said, sinking down on the edge of an upholstered settee. “Tell us, Lucas. What have you found out?”

He looked at his sisters, trying to think of some nice, polite, proper way to explain. They had suffered enough in the past week: first James’s death, then the revelation that he’d had a mistress for three years.

After clearing his throat, Lucas settled for just stating the facts plainly. “A stage driver who came in from Independence today thinks he remembers her. A woman on his coach that night matches Antoinette Sutton’s description.” He clenched his jaw. “And she was wearing widow’s weeds.”

Faith gasped at that particular, offensive detail. Callie, who had always been the strong one, put a comforting arm around her. “And where did she go?”

“She’s not going to get
away
, is she?” Eden asked with a look of disbelief.

“No,” Lucas vowed. “The driver said she was headed west. I just came back to collect my things and I’m catching the nine o’clock stage. I’m going to retrace her route.” He glanced at Olivia. “I’ll find her.”

Olivia blinked up at him, a slight tremble visible in her hands, folded in her lap. “Thank you, Lucas. I know you’ll keep us informed.”

“Of course.” Lucas couldn’t think of anything more to say, his eloquence around children surpassed only by his grace and charm around women. “Well, I need to be going.” He began a retreat toward the doors.

Until a tremulous voice stopped him. “You are coming back, aren’t you?”

It was Eden. As he turned around, she stood up—all five feet two inches of her.

“I-I mean,” she continued haltingly, “I know your work is important, out in the territories, but... you will come back to us, won’t you?” She regarded him with tear-brightened eyes. “At least for a little while?”

Lucas felt a lump in his throat, and though he swallowed hard, he couldn’t dislodge it. Suddenly, standing before him was not a sophisticated young woman, but the girl he used to carry on his shoulders around the farm, when he was almost Peter’s age and she was only three.

A girl who had lost too many people she loved and depended on. Who had always looked at him as if he were her hero.

And he realized then that his sisters still needed someone to depend on. They might be financially secure, thanks to James’s will, but that didn’t mean they could fend for themselves. Hell, they were all of marrying age. There should be a man around to watch over them, guide them, keep their suitors in line.

He didn’t know how he could be what they needed.

But he knew he couldn’t fail them... like he had before, when they were all much younger.

“Yes,” he promised. “I’ll come back.” He repeated it as he left the drawing room. “I’ll come back.”

He heard slippered footsteps following him down the hallway. Olivia caught his arm. “Lucas, wait. I must speak with you in private before you go—”

“Olivia—”

“It won’t take a moment. Quincy,” she called to the servant who stood by the door, “would you please pack Marshal McKenna’s things in his saddlebags and bring them down?” She was already tugging Lucas toward her private sitting room.

He gave in and followed, both annoyed and curious at her behavior. While she turned up one of the lamps, he flipped open his pocket watch. “I don’t have a lot of time—”

“I know, I’m sorry. But I thought I should... thought you should know...” She closed the door and moved to a writing desk in one corner, opening the top drawer and withdrawing a sheet of paper.

When she handed it to him, Lucas almost dropped his watch. He forgot the presence of delicate feminine ears and cursed, vividly.

The word REWARD was printed boldly atop a long column of type—with a number at the bottom. “
Five thousand
dollars?”

“I know we discussed this, and you said it wasn’t a good idea, but I-I placed that advertisement in the paper this morning. And they sent it on to a number of other papers. By tomorrow it will be—”

“Everywhere.” He flung the paper aside. “God damn it, Olivia—”

“It’s been a whole week, and nothing has turned up,” she said defensively. “I had to do something. The advertisement will help—”

“A five-thousand-dollar reward will
not
help. A five-thousand-dollar reward will bring out every trigger-happy bounty hunter in ten states. I’ll be lucky if I don’t get shot in the crossfire!” He paced away from her, fists clenched. “It would’ve been better to let her think she got away, Olivia. When she was confident she was safe,
that’s
when she would’ve come out in the open. Now she’ll go to ground like a scared rabbit.”

“Keep your voice down, if you please,” Olivia requested. “I have every confidence in you—”

“No, you don’t.” He spun to face her. “That’s why you placed that ad. Because you thought I wouldn’t see this through. Because you don’t think I give a damn about my family.”

Olivia turned away, and said nothing.

Lucas felt the sting of her condemnation as if she had slapped him. He shook his head, studying her while she studied a fern in front of the curtained window.

“And what the hell happened to ‘let’s handle this quietly’?” he demanded. “I thought you wanted to avoid a scandal—”

“There has already been a scandal. What I want is justice.”

Whether it was something in her voice, or the way she stroked the fronds of the plant, Lucas finally understood. “You want her dead.”

Olivia glanced over her shoulder, and for the first time he recognized the emotion in her eyes: a thoroughly improper, unladylike hunger for vengeance.

“Three years, Lucas. For three years I was understanding. When I first heard the whispers in town, I didn’t believe it. Even after I discovered the whispers were true, I...” Her voice wavered. She took a breath before she continued. “I never said a word. Because after Cordelia was born, I was the one who asked that...” She paused again, lowering her gaze.

Lucas shifted his attention to the flocked wallpaper and almost told her to stop. She didn’t need to explain. He had talked to James’s friends, had already guessed why his brother had taken a mistress. It was a common enough practice among men of James’s social class.

Olivia started pulling dead leaves off the fern. “I suppose it was naive of me to think that he might love me so much, he wouldn’t... go elsewhere. But to carry on with a woman like
that
,” she said bitterly, tearing the leaves into bits until they stained her fingers. “The daughter of a
whore
. To take her on trips, parade her around like some rare prize...”

Lucas felt a muscle flex in his cheek.
That was just James
. Always taking care of the people around him, treating them to the best of everything.

Olivia let the shredded leaves fall to the rug, and her voice became soft. “I was always understanding. But no more. Lucas, if you find her first...” She turned to face him, flicking a glance at the .45 holstered on his hip. “I see no reason why she shouldn’t receive your usual treatment.”

Lucas knew what she meant. “You’ve read too many newspaper stories, Olivia.”

“Are you saying your reputation is undeserved?”

He hesitated, shrugged one shoulder. “I’m saying reporters tend to exaggerate. I’ve faced a few nasty S.O.B.s who preferred to shoot their way past me rather than take their chances in front of a judge.”

“I see.” She was all pale politeness again—except for her blue eyes, which seemed to burn with intensity as she held his gaze. “But it’s possible Antoinette Sutton may resist arrest as well, and the West is an uncivilized place... and I don’t think any questions would be asked.”

Lucas didn’t need her to explain that fact to him, either.

“Don’t worry, Olivia.” He nodded before he moved to the door, his fingers fastening tight around the handle. “I intend to see that she gets what she deserves.”

T
he tiny grave was in a corner of the cemetery, in the shade near a picket fence that might have been white some years ago. Annie knelt in the grass, barely aware of the autumn wind cutting through the calico dress and woolen shawl that Mrs. Owens had loaned her. She looked at the ground, not blinking, not moving, so still that a chirping sparrow hopped within a few inches of her.

The bird flew away in a burst of flapping wings when Annie lifted her hand. She reached toward the scant mound of earth, her fingers moving over it, back and forth, brushing away the leaves that had fallen since her last visit.

Beneath the leaves lay a few sprigs of columbine tied with ribbon, faded by the sun, dried by the mountain air. She picked them up and they crumbled, the petals blowing away on the wind. Annie stared down at the parched stems left behind, unable to remember when she had brought the flowers, or even if she had been the one who placed them there.

It might have been one of the townsfolk. They had all been so kind to her, so filled with sympathy for the “unfortunate young widow” who had been stranded among them two months ago, who had hovered near death for more than a week. Even the doctor hadn’t expected her to survive. While she was still unconscious and fevered, the local preacher had held a ceremony here for her lost little one, gathering a few people for prayers and hymns. They had even provided a small pine cross.

BABY SMITH, someone had carved in the weathered wood.

Annie closed her eyes and hung her head. A low sound escaped her, full of pain that was still as fresh and deep in her heart as it had been eight weeks ago.

She had given her child nothing.
Nothing
. Not life, not the secure, loving future she had dreamed of... not even a real name.

Only a cross on a cold mountain hillside, in a cemetery filled with drunks shot in saloon brawls, miners killed in cave-ins, lawmen who had died trying to bring order to this remote, uncivilized corner of the West.

Hunched over the mound of dirt, Annie covered her face with her hands, and felt the dust of the columbines against her cheeks, and began to cry.

~ ~ ~

The afternoon sun cut long shadows across the grass by the time she stirred, lifting her head, realizing she must have drifted asleep. Since losing the baby, she hadn’t been able to rest at night, would lie in bed staring into the darkness.

Annie wiped at her cheeks and sat up, shivering in the wind. Gray clouds had slid into view, threatening rain or maybe snow. It was hard to tell, hard to make sense of the weather or much else in this place, so high above the world it seemed to belong more to the sky than to the earth.

The crocheted shawl had fallen to the ground. After a moment, she picked it up and pushed herself to her feet, unsteadily.

Only the thought of getting another talking-to from Dr. Holt made her wrap the shawl around her. She walked toward the cemetery gate. He kept warning her that she wasn’t fully recovered yet, that she was still weak and shouldn’t exert herself. Annie didn’t care.

Not when part of her soul lay buried in the cold earth.

She looked back at the small cross as she stepped through the gate and latched it behind her. The moment her fever had passed and she was able to get out of bed, she had started coming here each afternoon. And still she didn’t understand.

She had taken James’s life. Had failed to give her child life.

Why wasn’t she the one buried here in the middle of nowhere?

She let go of the latch and turned away. A carpet of meadow grass dotted with white flowers and fallen aspen leaves silenced her steps.

It didn’t take long to reach the town sprawled on the rocky mountainside below. Annie might not understand why God had seen fit to spare her life, but she was beginning to suspect that He had deposited her here on purpose, that in some strange way she belonged in this place.

Because she felt like a ghost, just drifting through the days, and Eminence, Colorado was well on its way to becoming a ghost town.

Dirt gathered along the hem of her dress and petticoat as she walked down the main street, past clapboard buildings that needed paint and doorways cluttered by unswept leaves. From what everyone said, Eminence had once been worthy of its name, six years ago when silver had been discovered here—a rich vein that had made several men into millionaires. Thousands of prospectors had poured in and the town sprang up practically overnight, saloons and bawdy houses first, then the land office and livery stable, hotels and mercantiles, later a schoolhouse and a pretty stone chapel with a bell tower.

Then last year, the boom went bust: The silver played out and people started moving on. Now, many of the shops and once-grand hotels stood empty, the population dwindled to a hundred or so stubborn types—homesteaders, a few merchants, a couple of Lutheran missionaries, and some optimistic miners hoping to strike another vein.

And a woman by the name of Smith who wasn’t at all what she claimed to be.

As she approached the livery stable, Annie noticed that the stage had arrived. It came through once a week, bringing mail and a handful of passengers, carrying away more residents who had decided to seek their fortunes elsewhere. The stage and an occasional mule train offered the only connection to the outside world. Even the new Denver Pacific Railroad had snubbed Eminence, declining to build a link because narrow mountain passes made the town inaccessible in winter.

Mr. Ballard, the livery owner, smiled and waved to her as he unhitched the lathered horses from their traces. Annie lifted a hand to return his greeting, though she couldn’t summon a smile. For these few weeks, she had been safe, hidden in this forgotten scrap of a town. But people had been talking about her dramatic arrival—and though news traveled slowly in these parts, it did travel.

And she wasn’t far enough from Missouri.

Strangely, that fact no longer filled her with terror. She had awakened from her fever with only a numb... emptiness in her heart. As if all her fear, all her feelings but sorrow had been burned away, her sense of urgency lost with her baby.

She couldn’t bring herself to leave here. Couldn’t bring herself to part from that little cross on the hill.

Even if she got captured.
What did it matter?

She glanced back at the stage, noticing that it was already empty. The passengers must be quenching their thirst in the saloons or gobbling platefuls of roast chicken and baked beans over at Kearney’s Boarding House. When she looked down the street toward the general store, she also noticed that the mail flag had already been hung out front.

“Damn,” she whispered, hitching up the dragging hem of her skirts and hurrying on. Mrs. Greer would be needing her.

In her rush, she almost tripped on the uneven planks of the wooden boardwalk out front. Through the store’s tall windows, she could see what looked like half the folks in town inside, all eager to collect their letters and newspapers. Annie opened the door and squeezed in.

“Excuse me.” She coughed on smoke from the men’s cigars, the tobacco smell overpowering the familiar scents of freshly ground coffee and the cured hams that hung from the ceiling. Someone had stoked up the potbellied woodstove in the center of the store and a few people gathered around it, warming their hands, while others perused shelves piled with tools and soaps and patent medicines, and barrels and kegs heaped with seeds and buckwheat flour and oranges fresh from California.

Most people, though, pressed toward the back counter where a fancy brass sign hanging from a chain read U.S. POST OFFICE. Everyone was talking at once. Annie tried edging through sideways. “Excuse me, please.”

“Mrs. Smith! A pleasure to see you, ma’am.” Cyrus Hazelgreen, the town’s lone remaining banker, turned to her with a tip of his bowler hat and a gallant bow. “You’re looking well today.”

“Hello, Mrs. Smith,” Mrs. Gottfried said brightly, trying to hold onto her two-year-old son, who was lunging toward a display of glass jars filled with peppermint and horehound candies. “How are you feeling?”

“Did you try that yarrow tea I sent over?” another lady asked, studying Annie in the light of the oil lamps suspended overhead. “Yes, I can see you surely did. Much better color in your cheeks today, dearie. It worked a wonder, if I do say so—”

“Yes, thanks, I—”

“Ann? There you are.” Mrs. Owens, who worked as Dr. Holt’s nurse, emerged from the throng at the counter, ripping paper and string from a package in her hands. About five years older than Annie, she had a soft Georgia accent, auburn hair, and wore a fancy silver brooch pinned to her dress today, over her heart. “This is the China silk from San Francisco I was telling you about.” The bolt of emerald-green fabric drew admiring
oohs
from other women who closed in for a better look. Mrs. Owens held it out toward Annie. “The color would look so pretty on you, and there’s more here than I need—”

“No, thanks, but...” Conscious of the borrowed shawl wrapped around her shoulders, Annie looked down, her hands wringing the blue calico of her skirt. “The clothes you’ve loaned me are more than enough. You’ve already been so generous.” She lifted her head, gazing at the women who had gathered around her. “All of you.”

They responded with soft “not at all”s and gentle expressions and friendly smiles, and Annie felt something knot up inside her.

Never in her life had she known the sort of kindness these ladies had shown her the past few weeks. Back in St. Charles, no respectable woman would even
speak
to her. They crossed the street when they saw her coming or looked right through her like she was made of air. She had gotten used to it, growing up, telling herself she didn’t care. Didn’t care about being turned away from the school. Didn’t care about having no playmates except her brother.

But here, everything was different.

Here, no one knew what her mother was, or what she was.

And so Mrs. Greer, who owned this store, had taken Annie in to share her living quarters upstairs. And each of these women had helped care for her—without asking anything in return, without knowing anything about her except that she had suffered a miscarriage and was all alone.

“I-I owe you all so much.” Annie found it hard to speak past a tight, dry feeling in her throat. “I know I said it before, but... thank you.”

One of the women placed an arm around her. “ ’T’ain’t nothin’, Ann, what we done for you. It’s how folks treat folks out here.”

Annie tried not to flinch away, tried to relax and summon a smile. If she had learned one thing about life in the West, it was that women stuck by each other, with a fierce loyalty forged by loneliness, hardship—and the fact that they were outnumbered by men four to one in this rugged place.

And yet she kept waiting for these good, upstanding ladies to whisper and point, unable to believe they couldn’t tell just by looking at her that she was a liar. A fraud. When she glanced down again, the gold ring on her left hand caught the light, mocking her.

She didn’t deserve their friendship. Or their respect.

A stout blond girl emerged from the crowd at the back counter, a baby balanced on her hip. “There ain’t no letter from Joe.” Her lower lip quivered, her eyes full of disappointment.

“The dickens take that scalawag!” one of the women said.

Mrs. Owens placed a gentle hand on the girl’s arm. “It’s been three months for me,” she admitted softly. “Honestly, these men of ours...”

Annie seized the opportunity to sidle away from the group. “Let me check the mail sacks again for you,” she offered.

The women turned to express their sympathies to the girl, Mrs. Owens and many of the others sharing her predicament—left behind in Eminence while their silver-hungry husbands were off chasing the next big strike. Annie overheard one wife mutter a few choice words about men and their “hell-fired habit of always ridin’ off to somethin’ more important than their loved ones.”

As she threaded through the chattering crowd, Annie couldn’t help remembering what her mama used to say: Sooner or later, a man always left you high and dry, usually right when you needed him most. So it was best not to depend on him in the first place. Not to get used to having him around.

Not to give him your heart. Not ever.

Annie swallowed hard. She would never forget that lesson again, not after learning it the hard way.

At last she managed to reach the back counter—but she didn’t see anyone behind the envelopes and packages piled up between the tins of soda crackers and the crocks of honey and jam. “Mrs. Greer?” she shouted above the crowd’s noise.

“Lord amighty, if everyone would just stop yelling—Ann, is that you?” Only the purple ostrich plume in Rebecca Greer’s hat showed until she straightened, rising from the floor with an armful of envelopes that had apparently slid from the pile.

Her pink dress bore several inky fingerprints, her bustle was askew, and her dangling green earrings bobbed as she turned her head left and right before squinting in Annie’s general direction.

“Ah! There you are. I’m managing just fine, dear. You go on upstairs and take a rest. Did you enjoy your walk today?” She released her armful of letters atop the others, then picked one up and held it close to her nose, babbling on before Annie could answer. “By the horn spoons, there’s a peck of mail this week, and half of it addressed to folks who don’t even live here anymore—”