True to the Law (15 page)

He met women for whom deceit was not merely a tool but a matter of survival. Largely they worked in the cities, sometimes taking positions in the grand mansions as maids. It wasn’t unusual for them to be under the thumb of some man who might call himself their protector, but merely took all of the money and none of the risks. They might be prostitutes, but just as often they were swindlers and thieves, and they were always dangerous.

Cobb stopped walking when he came to the large cottonwood at the edge of the graveyard. He leaned into the tree, resting his shoulder against the scaly bark, and stared at the clear night sky. He missed this starry view when he was in the city. There, gaslight and the hulking structures that were deemed progress made the stars something best viewed from a telescope or in a painting.

He smiled to himself, recalling Tru’s surprise when she realized he had grown up on a farm. His family said that the city had changed him, although when he pressed them, they could not be specific about their observation. He didn’t think it was as much about the city as it was about the job, but his family, with the exception of his father, didn’t understand that either. They thought he had the kind of adventures written about in popular dime novels, absorbing and exciting on the page but not real work in real life. Cobb doubted they could imagine that he was standing in the moon shadow of a cottonwood, thinking of them, thinking of home.

Tru was a woman they would like to meet. He barely grasped the implications of that thought as it wandered through his mind, but then it latched on like it had teeth and there was no shaking it off. That was when Cobb Bridger knew he was face to face with the kind of trouble he hadn’t met before.

Swearing under his breath, Cobb pushed away from the tree. He ducked his head, presented his pearl gray Stetson to the breeze, and started walking.

* * *

Tru could not sleep. She had managed it well enough when she was sitting in the parlor, but once she roused herself to go to bed, she tossed and turned and couldn’t find respite.

She did not want to leave the warmth of her quilts and wool blanket, but neither did she relish the idea of just lying there until morning, and she had counted all the sheep she could bear to. Rising quickly, Tru put on her slippers and robe and hurried downstairs. It took some time to fire up the stove and longer to heat water for tea. She warmed her hands mere inches above the stovetop while she waited and wondered how she would ever survive her first Wyoming winter.

People still talked about the blizzard of ’86 as if it had happened last week. The stories seemed too fantastic to be true, but as Cobb had pointed out to her, stories and the truth weren’t mutually exclusive. The town had been buried in snow. Ted Rush marked the side of his hardware store with a thick blue line to remind everyone how high the drifts had been. On the ranches, cattle died by the hundreds. People slung ropes from their back doors to the outhouses and held on as they struggled to walk between the buildings. Richard Allen, not given to hyperbole, told her once that he couldn’t see his hand at arm’s length. Dr. Kent had not been able to reach his patients. Terry McCormick’s wife lost a baby that winter. Ranch hands died trying to get into town for supplies. Others had toes and fingers amputated because of frostbite. Food stores ran low as no family was prepared for the length of that hard winter. The town’s lifeline was cut off when trains were forced to take shelter in snow sheds along the route. For a time they stopped running altogether.

“It’s only October,” she whispered to herself. Tru didn’t know what she would do when the town realized Mrs. Coltrane had hired a hothouse flower. Bear it, she supposed, because she
would
get her fair share of ribbing. “Bear it,” she said aloud, because she was not going away.

The house creaked. Tru didn’t jump. She didn’t want to move away from the stove. As soon as the tea was brewed, she poured a cup, added a drizzle of honey, and sat at the kitchen table to drink it.

Thump
. Tru almost upended her cup. She caught it in time, steadied it, and then pushed away from the table. “Go away,” she shouted.

The knock came again, softer now.

“I know you can hear me,” she said, rising. “I can hear you. Go away.”

“It’s cold out here.”

“It’s cold in here too. I hear the Pennyroyal is warm. Go there.” Tru was standing on the other side of the door now and glad he could not see she was smiling. She forced some starch in her voice as she glanced up at the rack above the coat hooks. “I have a shotgun, Mr. Bridger.”

“It’s Cobb. And I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Do you know how to use it?”

“It would be all kinds of foolish to keep it handy if I couldn’t.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“And yet, it did not deter you.”

He leaned against the door. “I was hoping you would only use it on varmints.” Her silence spoke for her. “Oh, I see.”

“I’m not sure you do. You would need a leg up to rise to the level of a varmint.”

He chuckled. “Cruel, Tru. Very cruel.”

Tru? Had he just called her Tru? “What are you doing here?”

“I’m talking to you.”

She slapped the door with the heel of her hand in the event that he was leaning against it. She was delighted to hear him say, “Ow!” Her laughter was mildly wicked as she imagined him rubbing his ear. “Are you drunk?”

“No. I wish I’d thought of it, though. I’d be warmer. Or maybe I would just be feeling the cold less. Are you going to let me in?”

She turned the handle and pushed the door open a few inches. “You have to step aside if you want in.” He did, and she gave him a wide berth. “You cannot make this a regular occurrence,” she said, closing the door behind him. “I have to get up early, even if you don’t.”

“Then why weren’t you in bed?”

“I was, and I couldn’t sleep.”

“Neither could I.”

Tru pointed to the cup on the table. “You might try making yourself a pot of tea instead of roaming the streets.”

“Point taken, but Mrs. Sterling doesn’t allow guests in her kitchen, and Bitter Springs doesn’t have that many streets to roam. I walked out to the cemetery.” Without asking if it was all right with her, Cobb took off his coat and hat and hung them up. He followed her to the kitchen table and sat in the same chair as the night before. His lucky chair, he hoped.

“Do you want tea?” She smiled when he pulled a face. “Whiskey, then. Give me a moment.” Tru returned with the bottle and a glass and slid both across the table toward Cobb.

“A little in your tea?” he asked, uncorking the bottle.

She covered her cup with her palm and shook her head as she sat. “Did you win tonight?”

“I kept my head above water. Jem Davis was the big winner.”

“Oh?”

“He got to walk Miss Harrison home.”

Tru chuckled. “I don’t suppose his feet touched the ground.”

Cobb gave her a considering look as he sipped his whiskey. He felt no need to fill the silence that followed her observation. He thought she seemed comfortable with it as well. Another thing he liked about her. He probably should have been disturbed by the way those qualities were ordering themselves in his mind—but he wasn’t.

“You weren’t at the Pennyroyal tonight,” he said.

“No. Walt brought me chicken broth and biscuits. I sent Rabbit out after school to tell Mrs. Sterling I wasn’t feeling well.” Tru felt her cheeks warming under Cobb’s scrutiny, but she soldiered on. “A lie, but I’m sure you realize that.”

“I had my suspicions. That lie cost you mutton chops. Why didn’t you want to be there this evening?”

She stared at him and gave an audible sigh. “I should think it would be obvious after last night. I didn’t want to see you.”

“Why?”

“You are being obtuse on purpose.”

He pretended to give that some serious thought. Finally he said, “No, there’s no on purpose about it. My mother says I was born thickheaded.”

“Please,” she said feelingly. “Do not mention your mother. I am already more embarrassed than I can properly express.”

Cobb’s slow smile came to the surface. “You will have to trust me on this, but my mother would be more mortified by my behavior than yours. She takes no responsibility for how you were raised, but she knows she taught me better.”

Tru’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. Her eyes met his. “Are you apologizing, Cobb?”

“No. Did it sound as if I was?”

“Perhaps a little.”

“Do you want me to apologize?”

She shook her head the smallest degree. “No. I’m not sure you have anything to apologize for. You told me to warn you off.”

“Is that why you’re embarrassed? Because you didn’t?”

“I don’t know. It’s complicated. I’ve never done anything like—” She stopped, shrugged, and smiled at him unevenly. “I wanted to, though. Not before, I mean. But last night, yes. It’s absurd when you think about it. You and I were strangers until only a few days ago. I suppose I’m embarrassed because it doesn’t feel more wrong. I tell myself it should, but it doesn’t, and I don’t quite understand that. Last night . . .” Her voice trailed off. She bent her head and stared at the ripples in her teacup. “Last night was outside my experience and contrary to how
I
was raised. I needed time to think about that before I saw you again.”

“Have you had enough time?”

She nodded, sparing him a glance. “I have. I wouldn’t have let you in otherwise.”

“Feeling more resolve, are you?”

“Something like that. And if I waver, there’s always the shotgun.”

“Good to know.” He looked around the kitchen. “As comfortable as it is in here, wouldn’t you rather sit in your parlor?”

“Not with you. Besides, you’re leaving soon.”

“I am?”

“Don’t you think that Walt knows you haven’t returned from your walk? He makes a point of looking after the guests. He always has, and I don’t imagine he’ll stop because he thinks you can take care of yourself.”

Cobb had never taken into account that his absence might be remarked upon back at the Pennyroyal. He wondered if he could depend on Walter’s discretion. “Will you be at the hotel tomorrow?”

“No. I cook for myself on Fridays.” She was already shaking her head before he had his expectant expression in place. “Not Friday. Jenny and Jim are coming Saturday for dinner. Jenny’s bringing apple tarts. I’m making a roast with potatoes and Harvard beets. Jenny came by the school today and suggested that I invite you. I told her I would think about it.”

“And?”

“Dinner’s at six.”

It was more than he hoped for when he knocked on her door.

“Thank you,” he said. He finished the whiskey. “I was thinking I might get a horse from Ransom’s tomorrow. Follow the creek and go where it leads me.”

“The countryside is harsh looking this time of year, but it’s not without beauty. The creek will take you to Hickory Lake if you follow it north. You’ll pass Matt Sharp’s farm. His son Aaron is one of my now-and-then students.

“His mother schools the younger children, but Aaron’s allowed to come into town three days a week to take his lessons here. The family is Mormon. It wasn’t always easy for Aaron. There are things about his faith that people don’t understand.”

“What about you?”

“I know almost nothing about it, but my father was an extraordinarily tolerant man. I’d like to believe I follow his example.”

Cobb had no doubt that she did. “What was it like being the rector’s daughter?”

“I wasn’t teased, if that’s what you’re thinking. I told you that I was sent away after the fire. My father needed to rebuild the church, minister to the parishioners, and make his own peace with what happened. I believe he thought Mrs. Winston’s Academy would be a sanctuary for me. It wasn’t, but neither was it unendurable. I made sure that it wasn’t. I wasn’t a model of rectitude and fine manners.”

He regarded her with interest as a picture began to form in his mind. “You were a hellion.”

She laughed. “That was one of the kinder things Mrs. Winston had to say about me. I was regularly called forward to confess to some kind of misbehavior. I took responsibility for things I didn’t do. You can imagine that made me very well liked by my classmates. They thought I was daring.

“There is not a student in my class as badly behaved as I was, and I thank God for it every day.”

“Even Finn?” asked Cobb.

“Especially Finn. That boy is the very definition of mischief. He doesn’t have a mean-spirited bone in his body. The same could not have been said of me. I wanted to make everyone around me as miserable and unhappy as I was, but I had a benefactor who saw to it that my behavior never was as important to Mrs. Winston as the money supporting me. Short of burning the school to the ground or skewering Mrs. Winston with a hat pin, I don’t think there was anything I could have done that would have gotten me expelled.”

Cobb ventured a guess. “Charlotte Mackey?”

“Yes. How did you—” She stopped, recalling what she’d told him about Mrs. Mackey, and reminding herself that Cobb was good at finding the pieces that fit. “Mrs. Mackey wanted to pay my father’s debt—and hers.”