Love Inspired Historical April 2014 Bundle: The Husband Campaign\The Preacher's Bride Claim\The Soldier's Secrets\Wyoming Promises (87 page)

Jake moved into position. “Like this?” he asked, taking off his hat.

Bridger glanced over the scene. The marshal was a fair sight longer than the sheriff, but... “I believe so.”

Jake froze in place, his eyes closed and breath held. He looked dead himself. Then his eyes snapped open, facing up the mountain. Not one muscle moved out of place. A moment later he asked, “Any marks on him?”

“Cuts and bruises.”

“Bruises? Do you remember where, exactly?” Jake's lips moved, but otherwise he remained still.

“He had a good-sized mark on his left cheek, near the eye, and another on the opposite side of his jaw. Otherwise, some scratches.” Bridger wondered why the marshal hadn't talked with Lola. Surely she would have more information than he knew.

Jake rolled to his knees, scrabbling up the hill a ways before gaining his feet. “What about his hands?”

“What about them?”

Jake continued upward, only his outline visible in the diluted light from the drizzly sky above. “No marks on them, bruises?”

Bridger looked back at the spot where he'd found the sheriff, trying to see the details again in his mind. “I can't rightly say that I noticed, I'm afraid.”

Jake nodded from his stance about twenty yards away. “You and your horse ever decide to cut through this way?”

“The trail winds around a far piece above where you're standing, and it's steeper than the section you just climbed. Do you think he fell up there and rolled down?” It didn't seem likely, but then, he hadn't ever considered a man's death much before.

Jake skidded toward him with long, awkward strides, trying to keep his footing. “What do you think?”

“I think if he had, he'd have run into some trees long before here.” Bridger adjusted his hat for a clear view of the marshal's expression.

Jake met him on the trail but continued to scan his steps. “Where'd you find his horse?”

Realization dawned, but it didn't brighten his chances. A cold lump thudded in his chest. He coughed. “I didn't.”

“You suggested a horse threw him but didn't see a horse?” Jake challenged.

His mind reeled. “I assumed his horse spooked, bucked the man off and headed for home. You haven't found it?”

Jake's eyes narrowed and Bridger felt his chances for help from this man crush under the scrutiny. “I did. The livery owner found it outside his stable, looking clean and cared for, two days after you brought Pete McKenna into town.”

Bridger drew to full height and squared his shoulders. “I don't know anything about that.”

Jake brushed his hat before replacing it on his head. “I thought Ike Tyler's men knew most everything going on in Quiver Creek.”

Fire blazed in his gut. “I'm not one of Ike's men.”

“Is that right?”

Bridger bit the inside of his cheek and flexed his fingers, considering his next words. “Yes. I needed a job, and Tyler offered one. That's all. But what he's doing is part of the reason I was so anxious to talk with you alone.”

Water collected in drops over Jake's badge, giving it a gleam in spite of the frail sunlight. “What do you know about Tyler?”

“Plenty.” He winced at the heat in his tone. “Enough, anyway. And I'm willing to learn more if it will stop him. But I need your help.”

Jake stepped closer, a curious gleam in his eyes. “What are you thinking?”

Bridger drew a step closer, too. “I'm more interested in your opinion, Marshal.”

Jake leaned to the side, a slow smile pulling his mouth with it. “I didn't think you had any hand in the sheriff's death when I asked you here, if that's what you want to know.”

Relief filled him, like the first draft of fresh air after a blizzard. It hadn't been the intended question, but he appreciated the answer. “So then why did you want me to come?”

“The more I know, the better,” Jake said. “Seeing the place of the crime, even a month later, often tells me information I'd not have found otherwise.”

“You don't believe it was an accident.”

Jake ignored his statement. “But I will say your offer to help with my main investigation is surprising. What exactly do you know about Tyler's operation?”

“I know he cheats people, and he preys on folks in several little towns around here. He controls several businesses and collects money from many of them.” The dam of anger he held toward Ike started to crack. His breath heaved. “I know he's hurting people and needs to be stopped before things get any worse.”

“Do you have proof?” Jake asked, his tone tinged with excitement.

Bridger shook his head. “Maybe. I found a ledger Lola's father kept of transactions he made with the Quiver Creek Business Association—which doesn't legitimately exist, far as I can tell. I think Mr. Martin was gathering proof against Ike. But there's more
.
” He rubbed his face, strain from his time on the trail catching him in a sudden flood. “He's given me a promotion of sorts.”

“Bringing you up the ranks?” Jake asked.

As hard as it is to admit...
“Yes.”

Jake's arms darted out, pounding his shoulders with a crushing shake. “This is the break this case has been looking for!” A broad grin split across the man's face. “You're already on the inside. Right now we have some complaints, but any time we go to investigate, folks decide not to talk.”

“They're afraid. You can't blame them,” Bridger insisted.

Jake smacked him on the back. “But you're not?”

“Only a fool wouldn't be,” Bridger admitted. “But once he's out of business, we'll all rest easier. I want to help.”

Jake sobered as he started a restless pace. “Before you agree to that, you need to know we think Tyler's behind several deaths in Quiver Creek already—including the sheriff's.”

“So you don't believe it's an accident?” he asked again.

Jake ticked off the reasons on his fingers. “No sign of a tumble as far as I could see. The body wasn't found until many hours after death, even though this is a relatively well-used trail.”

Bridger's mind pulsed. “So there are too many things out of place.”

“And similar accidents happen to some of the folks filing complaints against Ike Tyler. I'd send the whole citizenry of Wyoming Territory against the man that says Tyler isn't connected to Pete McKenna's death.”

Bridger released a breath into the moist air, long and low. He fought notions of Frank's—and Lola's—threatened safety from his mind. “Tell me what to do.”

Chapter Seventeen

L
ola shook the blanket from the line and folded its worn softness. “He wants to clear his name.”

Grace stopped short, pulling the basket away. “Hasn't he done that already?”

Lola focused on a precise fold in the tablecloth she held. “Of course he has. I'm certain even Jake has no reason to suspect him by now. Bridger went this morning to show him...” She let her voice trail off. “To help him finish his official report on Pete's death.”

But Grace smiled with satisfaction, lips smug and eyes gleaming. She raised the container for the next pins to drop. “I knew from the start.”

“Knew what?”

Lola jostled from Grace's playful push. “I knew he was a good man.”

Lola focused on removing the next linen from the line, thankful the full sheet hid her face a few moments. “I concede your point. Bridger Jamison is a fine and upstanding man. But what does it matter to me?”

Grace tugged on the sheet. Lola grasped the corner before it fell to the dust, but it no longer shielded her from Grace's too-knowing gaze. “Because I see the way you look at one another, and it does my heart good to see my best friend falling in love.”

“Love?” Lola grasped the sheet in a twisted roll, wishing she could wipe the heat from her cheeks. She fumbled with the cloth and her words. “He's been very helpful, and I appreciate that, nothing more.”

“You had supper with him last night.” Grace gave a knowing smile.

“That was business!” Lola plunked the last sheet into her laundry basket and strode toward the door.

Grace stopped her with two hands grasped against her shoulders, the bucket of clothespins bouncing against her arm. “You're not honestly going to stand there and tell me you aren't the least bit interested in him otherwise. We've been friends too long for that.”

Lola twisted for the breeze to blow strands of loose hair from her face. She caught sight of the woodshop door before looking her friend in the hopeful eye. Was Bridger becoming more than she could admit, even to herself? The memory of his smile in the lantern light across the table last night filled her with warmth and spoke truth to her heart. “You're supposed to be too preoccupied to notice such things,” she said, feeling flushed.

Grace sobered. Lola dropped her basket to the ground and wrapped her friend in her arms. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean—”

“I know, and it's all right. But just because I'm grieving doesn't mean I stop feeling joy in seeing other people drawn together.” The hint of a smile pulled her pink lips. “Perhaps it makes me look for it all the more. I'm happy for you!”

Lola picked up the laundry again, glad to have it off the line before gray clouds over the mountains made good on their threat of rain in town. “I know so little about him. I'm not even sure where he stands with the Lord.”

“There's time for that. You're not betrothed...yet,” Grace said, following behind.

Lola winced at the reminder. Her record of courtship carried tarnish already. “I'm not so sure I can trust myself again,” she said, plunking to the step outside the back door.

Grace lowered to the space next to her, and Lola shifted over. “God allows us mistakes to increase our wisdom sometimes. It's not like when the two of you shared a tutor and Ike seemed like the only eligible man on earth.”

She slid away so Grace could follow her inside. “You make it sound as if I were desperate.”

“Maybe you were, then. But look at you now. A beautiful, kind, intelligent woman of business in a bustling territory town where women are gaining opportunities all the time. You've come into your own, Lola. Your papa would be so proud.”

Lola glanced around the tidy kitchen. The sturdy cupboards and smooth sideboard carried her father's keen workmanship and attention to detail. “You make it sound as if Papa's death improved me.” Hurt lingered in her tone and grief ached in her chest.

“Oh, Lola,” Grace said, drawing her as close as her expanding middle allowed. “Not that! Not at all! I'm saying there is no great loss without some small gain. God never takes something from us that He doesn't use to draw us closer, to mold us into the people He wants us to become.”

Tears escaped from Lola's clenched eyelids as she held her friend close. She thought over the hurt, grief and loneliness of the months since Papa's death. Over the new sense of confidence and satisfaction in her work, her secret hopes and her plans to somehow find a way into medical school. Would she ever have had the gumption to send those applications to the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania if Papa were still here? Would she have had reason to meet Bridger Jamison?

Lola leaned back, wiping her tears. “Isn't it shameful to be...glad?”

“Oh, honey,” Grace said, drawing a handkerchief across her own damp cheeks, “it's not that. I believe it's what they'd want for us, your papa, my Pete.... They loved us so much, they wouldn't want us to just go on living...but to go on living better.”

A sudden knock at her front door drew their attention. Lola pulled away to answer it. Doc Kendall's eyebrows quirked at her appearance, and she forced a cheerful smile. “Hello, Doc. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Silas doffed his hat with a hasty glance through the door to Grace before nodding a brief greeting. “I'm afraid it's business and not pleasure today, Miss Lola. I came from Myrtle Stiles's place. She'd been feeling poorly, and her ranch hand rode to fetch me. She passed away this morning. Weak heart. The problem is, I've been called to help Mrs. Garrett deliver her baby. She lost her first only a year ago. I have to get there right away. I know it's asking a lot, but can you manage to bring Myrtle into town?”

Myrtle Stiles was no small woman. She weighed nigh onto three hundred pounds and stood almost six feet tall. Lola glanced at Grace, knowing she could offer no help. “Will her ranch hands be there to assist?”

Silas shook his head. “I'm afraid not. I was hoping you could find someone in town.”

Lola's mind sifted through the men she knew who could offer a hand, but somehow she felt less comfortable asking Ike than she had in the past. Still, she pushed the doctor on his way. “I'll find someone,” she told him. “You go on and help Mrs. Garrett. I wish I could be there to assist.”

“I know,” the doctor said. “But duty calls us in different directions this time, I'm afraid. I thank you, Lola.” He hustled off with a quick wave.

“Let us know how things go with the baby!” she called after him. He mounted his horse and tore off through town, black bag bouncing against his horse's flank.

Lola closed the door and turned to Grace. “I'm not sure who—”

“Get Bridger,” Grace said. “He would be back by now, I would think, and he'd be glad to help you. I know it.”

Lola grabbed her cape and satchel, pausing at the mortuary door to gather her things. “I can't! What if he takes my request as a sign of interest? I don't want to push things if it's not what the Lord wants for me.”

Grace stepped toward her, squeezing from the side with one arm draped across her back. “I'm certain,” she said, a smile and a gleam lighting her face. “After all, this is ‘just business,' is it not?”

* * *

Lola slipped into the boardinghouse and listened as the door creaked closed before making her way to Bridger's room. Heavy tread echoed through the crack as she raised her hand to knock. She released her pent-up breath, a smile escaping with it.

They'd had supper together last night, so why such eagerness to see him so soon? Lola squared her shoulders. This was business. She rapped her knuckles against the coarse wood and waited.

Silence.

Lola leaned her ear toward the door. She'd been certain she heard him inside. She waited only a moment before she heard another shuffle. She knocked again. “Bridger? It's me. I'm sorry to bother you, but I need your help.”

A sharp creak of mattress ties sounded muted through the wood, and she regretted bothering him. Dark lines of exhaustion had ringed his eyes last night. And something more—worry, tension...she wasn't sure which. “I'm sorry, Bridger. I know you need your rest, but I didn't know where else—”

The door swung open, filled with the frame of a man much taller and definitely broader than Bridger's lanky build. Her heart thudded once, hard against her ribs. She jerked. “Who are you? Where's Bridger?”

The large man shifted his feet, glancing into the room and over her shoulders with an anxious gleam in his blue eyes. “I'm not supposed to answer the door,” he explained.

So why had he? She sized the stranger up, his strong back, wide shoulders—a large, strapping man who would be able to lift Myrtle Stiles single-handedly. “Who are you?” she asked again.

He bent low, almost as if she were a small child. “You're that pretty lady Bridger works for. I know you,” he said, his voice soft.

“Where is Bridger?” she asked. “What have you done with him?”

“He went with that marshal fella up the trail to show him where we found that lawman.” His stilted manner of speaking drew her curiosity.

Confusion swirled in her mind with her eagerness to complete the task at hand. What did this man know about Pete? Why would he be in Bridger's room?
Dear Jesus,
she breathed.
“Who are you?”

“Shh...I'm Bridger's brother, ma'am,” he whispered. He closed the door so only the wedge of his wide face could be seen. “You shouldn't know, though. Bridge'll be mad.”

She understood the feeling. Why hadn't he mentioned a brother? “Bridger keeps you trapped here, all by your lonesome?”

The man nodded. “Just for a while longer.”

Something both simple and foggy in his tone tugged at her heart. Bridger must have his reasons for hiding his brother. Had this lumbering fellow killed Pete? Perhaps accidentally, forcing Bridger's plan for protection?

She stared into his blank eyes. Somehow she sensed this man was too guileless to lie.
Guide me, Lord,
she prayed.

“Did you hurt that sheriff, mister?” she asked.

He slid back and the door opened wider. “No, ma'am. I'd not hurt him anyhow. God says we have to love folks and treat them kind.”

Lola felt her spirit ease and puffed out her held breath. “Then I need your kindness now. What's your name, sir?”

He laughed, shaking his ruddy head. “I ain't no ‘sir.' My name's Frank—Frank Jamison.”

“Well, Frank,” she said, peace and necessity forging clarity to her mind, “I came to ask your brother, but you're a big, strapping fellow. Will you help me since Bridger's not here?”

His dull eyes widened, his gaze shifting. “He wouldn't like it, ma'am. See, we're a scary-looking pair, only I'm even scarier.”

Seconds ticked away on the timepiece at her neck. His desire to help her and escape his prison fought against fear of his brother's reprisal on his open face. She sensed his innocence. Was she taking advantage of that?

Bridger certainly would not be happy, but what right did he have to treat his brother this way, even if it were to protect him? Besides, she needed help he'd be well able to give. “I promise to smooth things over with your brother. What do you say?”

Still he paused, weighing her offer against his brother's ire. Then a smile grew on his face, showing a fine set of white teeth so like his brother's. “If you explain it to him, he'll see I had to, ma'am. Pretty lady like you, he'll have to see I didn't have any other choice.”

* * *

Bridger trudged the steps to his room. Days of travel, late nights and early mornings exacted a toll, but maybe now he could rest. Jake Anderson believed his story, and together they would bring Ike to trial. He had worried the marshal might not allow him to have a part in it, but once they'd developed a plan, Jake had agreed.

Bridger opened the door, the room already dim as the sun slipped down, and tossed his saddlebag on the bed. He had to clear his name. Not concerning the sheriff's death, but for all those people he demanded money and goods from in the course of doing Ike's dirty work. Not to mention he'd never be able to look a man in the eye again if he didn't have a hand in bringing his boss to justice. He'd never be able to face Lola.

Lola...and Frank, he pondered. He slumped to the bed, rubbing gritty hands over his stubbled face. They were the real snags in the plan. Ike already monitored his interaction with Lola. Would he hurt her if they grew too close? The thought brought him to his feet, restless. He poured tepid water into the bowl of the dry sink and rubbed lye soap into calloused hands. No, Ike seemed to care for Lola in his own twisted way. That should provide enough protection for her.

But what of Frank? Bridger shook water and grabbed a dingy towel, wiping dampness across his weary face. He blew a frustrated huff. Trouble just seemed to work its way through Frank first.

But not this time. He owed Frank a big apology. He didn't know how, but the damage Pa had caused his addled brain cleared Frank's manner of feeling for people in a way Bridger couldn't hope to match. If he'd had a stronger sense of people as Frank did, they might not be in this mess at all.

Bridger stared through the window across the rooftops of town, glazed by rays of evening sunlight. Where had his brother gone? He should be back anytime now. Darkness came around six o'clock.

Moments passed. His sole focus on Frank, Bridger paced until the walls crushed against him, oppressive in the darkness. Frank hadn't failed to miss the chime of their grandfather's pocket watch, he reminded himself. Frank would saunter through the door at any minute, and Bridger would be the grateful fool for his worry.

He hung his coat and hat and stretched out on the straw tick with weariness in his bones. “Lord Jesus, we're in a mess. Frank sets a lot of store in talking to You, so I'm trying the same. Keep my brother safe,” he said. “And Lola, too. I'm not asking for myself, mind you. But I sure wouldn't mind the extra help watching over the two of them.”