Читать книгу: «Outlaw Wife»

Chapter One

Most weeks not much happened in Bramble, Wyoming Territory. Sheriff John Walker spent his time chasing the truant Mahoney brothers back across the slough to his daughter Cissy’s schoolhouse. Or hauling Frank Clooney out of the Blue Chip Saloon.

When he’d first become sheriff over twenty years ago, John had locked Frank up to sleep off his drunks in the town’s one jail cell. But the jail was part of John’s office, and Frank’s snores were louder than a wounded grizzly. Eventually the two men had come to an understanding. John would put Frank to bed in Frank’s own shack behind the general store, and Frank would consider himself under house arrest there until he was sober enough to walk a straight line out to the privy and back. The arrangement seemed to work.

It did, however, cut down on the town’s jail time. John could hardly remember the last time he’d had an actual criminal behind bars. Bramble was a peaceable kind of town. Of course, the sheriff liked things that way.

He finished his third cup of coffee and sat with his hands on his desk, trying to convince himself to get up out of his brand-new fancy swivel chair and go see Felix Koenig’s milk cow. For want of a better candidate, John had been proclaimed the town’s veterinarian, though he didn’t do much more than read a few books he’d sent for back East and administer a paregoric now and then to ease the pain of the bloat. Animals in Bramble tended pretty much to themselves, just like the people.

The thump against his front door had him lifting his bushy white eyebrows in surprise and crossing the room at a faster pace than he’d have used on his way to Koenig’s cow.

He opened the door wide, then drew in a breath of genuine alarm when he saw the slumped body of Simon Grant. Blood covered his face and stained the entire side of his buckskin jacket. “Good Lord, Simon. What’s happened to you?”

He went down on his knees beside the younger man’s inert body and put a finger alongside his neck, feeling for a pulse. It was reassuringly strong. “Can you hear me, Simon?”

When there was no response, he dragged his friend’s body over to the cot where John slept when he wasn’t in the mood to deal with his landlady’s motherly scoldings.

Simon may be alive, but it didn’t take John long to see that he was badly hurt. The sheriff’s first thought was that he’d been stomped by a horse. But he dismissed the notion as unlikely. There wasn’t a better horseman in all Wyoming than Simon Grant.

“What happened to you, son?” he asked again, his voice cracking with distress. Simon had indeed been like a son to him over the years. He would have been one in fact if things had worked out differently between him and Cissy. He’d better go fetch his daughter now. There was no doctor in Bramble, and whatever had happened to Simon, his injuries were beyond John’s veterinary skills.

He straightened up and started to leave, but a moan brought him back to Simon’s bedside. “Beaten… and…robbed,” Simon gasped.

John’s face tightened. “Someone did this to you?”

Simon gave a barely perceptible nod. “Took… all…the money. Took…Rain Cloud.”

“Never mind the money and the horse, lad. What did they do to you? They’ve beaten you half to death.”

“Kicked.”

John blanched. “Who was it? Did you recognize anyone?”

Simon’s head moved a half inch to each side. “Outlaws.”

John clenched a gnarled fist. “Look, Simon. I need to get help. I’m going to fetch Cissy to start patching you up.”

There was the faintest trace of a smile on Simon’s swollen mouth. “She won’t come.”

“Of course she will.”

Simon shook his head, more forcefully this time, then immediately thought better of it. The movement made it feel as if his brains had spun clear around inside him.

“You underestimate my daughter if you think that hurt pride will keep her from helping you at a time like this, Simon,” John said sternly. “I’m fetching her. You stay right there.”

Simon watched the sheriff leave, moving only his eyes. “I’m not going…any where,” he said with a half chuckle that hurt all the way to his toes. Then the blessed blackness came once again.

His pa must have been right about his hard head after all, Simon decided. By midafternoon he could sit up for minutes at a time before the room started spinning again. He even managed to muster a smile of gratitude as Cissy pressed another cool cloth against his swollen cheek.

The diminutive schoolteacher didn’t respond to the gesture. “I must look something fierce,” he said, gently moving her hand away with his.

“You were never that pretty to start out with, Simon Grant, so don’t let your vanity suffer any.”

He would have laughed if he hadn’t already experienced what that felt like along his ribs, which Cissy had pronounced broken. “At least three of them,” she’d said briskly.

John had gone off to send some telegrams about Simon’s bushwhacking. It was the first time he and Cissy had been alone since he’d broken off a twoyear “understanding” that had been understood entirely differently by each of them. “Are we ever going to be friends again, Cissy?” he asked softly.

“So’s I can bake you apple pies every Sunday and be conveniently available as a partner at the socials when it’s too much trouble to find yourself a girl?”

“You do make heavenly pies, Cissy darlin’.” He tried a grin, but it didn’t work. The entire right side of his mouth felt as if it were swollen to the size of a pig’s bladder. It probably looked just about as attractive, too.

Cissy gave a great sigh and slid backward on the sheriff’s tiny cot. “I think you’ll recover, Simon, more’s the pity.”

The tired look in her brown eyes belied her words. He’d only been semiconscious when she’d arrived at the office with her father, but he’d been coherent enough to see that she’d been deeply distressed by his condition. And she’d worked for hours now to get him cleaned up, bathed, his side bandaged. She’d not left him all day, had sat patiently applying wet cloths to his face. A veritable angel of mercy.

For a minute the vision of that other angel flickered through his head. Had he really come that close to heaven?

“You should have been a nurse, Cissy,” he said.

“I might have been. At the time I thought I had my reasons for staying in Bramble instead of heading East to nursing school.” Her reproachful look left no doubt what those reasons had been.

Simon shifted on the cot, then regretted it. “Ahh,” he breathed. “You might as well light into me, Cissy, just like everyone else has today.”

Her expression became contrite. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You don’t need hassling right now.”

She reached toward his cheek with the cloth, but he pushed her hand away. “Don’t worry about it. I’m grateful for your help. Really, I am.” He tried to lean his weight back on his elbows to lever himself off the bed. “Now, if your pa would just get back here with a horse for me, I’ll be on my way.”

Cissy opened her mouth in horror. “You haven’t got the brains of a tortoise, Simon Grant. You’re not going anywhere.”

He slumped back on the bed, convinced by his body rather than Cissy’s words. “I reckon I could set a spell longer,” he gasped.

“You’re not moving from here for the next three days. Maybe more. We’ll send word out to Harvey….”

“No. Don’t send word. Pa’d just fret and probably hurt himself trying to come to town to see me. Chester’s getting too old to bring him in by himself.”

“You need more help out there, Simon.” They both knew that up until a few weeks ago, she’d fully expected to supply that help herself. In fact, assisting Simon with his paralyzed father through the years had been one thing that had interested her in the field of nursing.

“It was different when he had two good strong arms. But since the apoplexy last spring…” Simon shook his head. His father’s left arm was practically useless these days, making it even more difficult for him to get around in his wheelchair. And Simon was terrified that another stroke would take him away altogether. After everything the two had been through, he simply couldn’t imagine life without his father.

“You need more help, is all,” Cissy said. Her tone was brisk, but a touch of sympathy lit her soft eyes.

Simon made a move resembling a nod.

“But right now you should try to sleep.”

“I want to see if your father’s had any word about that gang. They took Rain Cloud, you know.”

It was characteristic that Simon was more worried about his horse than the money he had lost. “I know. It’s a miracle you made it back into town.”

A miracle. Angels and miracles. “It just might have been,” he said thoughtfully. He was sure that he remembered the outlaw called Jake brutally tying his hands and ankles. Yet, when he’d regained consciousness, he’d been free, no ropes in sight. And there’d been a full canteen of water lying on the ground next to him. He would hardly have been able to half walk, half stumble his way into town without it.

It was a mystery. And it made his head throb to think about it.

Cissy laid a cloth on his forehead, and this time he didn’t resist as she traced her fingers through his hair. “Go to sleep, Simon,” she said soothingly. “I’ll wake you when Father comes back.”

But when he awoke Cissy was gone and the earlymorning sun was streaming in through the jail window. He’d slept the entire night. He closed his eyes and took a quick inventory. From the waist down, he seemed to be in tolerable shape. From the waist up, to put it directly, he wasn’t.

“I thought you were going to sleep till next spring like a mama bear.”

John’s booming voice pierced right through Simon’s temples. Simon took a minute to let the air slowly into his sore chest before answering, “Hell, John. I figured I could sleep in this morning, knowing our fearless sheriff was out rounding up those varmints and getting me back my horse.”

John snorted. “You think I want to end up looking like you? I ain’t that crazy, son.”

Simon rolled his eyes and found the movement tolerable. “Excuse me. I guess I just kind of thought that’s what sheriffs were for. To get the bad guys.”

“Nah,” John drawled. “We leave that to the marshals mostly. After all, they’re the ones who get all the glory in those dime novels the kids sneak into Cissy’s school.”

“So where does that leave my horse?”

“Well, we’ll just have to tell Marshal Wyatt Earp about it the next time he comes riding through town.”

Simon glared. “You’re getting to be an old man, John.”

The sheriff pushed himself out of his chair and walked toward Simon. “And I plan to continue right on that path, lad. Which means I don’t intend to get myself shot or end up like you with my skin showing all the colors of the rainbow.”

Simon lifted his head and looked down at his body. This time the movement was not so tolerable. He fell back against the mattress. “I look pretty, do I?”

“Prettier than a prize pig at the town fair.”

Simon smiled. “Help me up.”

“Cissy says you’re not supposed to move from that bed for three days.”

Simon lifted an eyebrow. “Listen, old man, unless you’re planning to take up nursing in your old age, I need to get up and take a trip out back.”

John looked embarrassed. “Oh.”

“I suppose you could call Cissy back to help me out with a bedpan. That might be interesting.”

“Not likely, you randy bastard.” There was the faintest trace of humor in the sheriffs voice and it felt good to both of them. When Simon had decided that his feelings for Cissy were never going to be more than those for a beloved sister, it had been almost as hard for him to tell her father as it had been to tell her. This was the first time he and John had been able to make any reference to the breakup without the hurt feelings surfacing.

“Well, give me a hand, then.”

Together they managed to get him to the outhouse and back again, but the trip convinced Simon that Cissy had been right, as usual. There was no way he’d be riding for at least a couple of days. Fortunately he’d finished his business in Laramie quickly, not liking to be away from home for long these days. His father wouldn’t start looking for him until the end of the week.

“So what did you find out about the bunch who waylaid me?” he asked as the sheriff helped him settle back into bed.

“Sounds like the Davis gang. Old Seth Davis has been keeping himself and his boys one step ahead of the law for years now.”

“Seth!” In his haze yesterday, Simon had forgotten that he’d heard a couple of the outlaws’ names. “They called the leader of the group Seth. And there was another man named Jake.”

“That’d be Jake Patton. A real mean sidewinder from down South somewheres. Has a reputation for being fast with guns and charming with women.”

“Somehow I missed the charming part.”

“Is he the one who kicked you?”

Simon nodded.

John’s eyes went from Simon’s mangled face to his bandaged ribs. “We’re going to get them, Simon,” he said grimly.

“I thought you said you were too old for chasing criminals.”

“I am. But we’re going to get them just the same.”

He looked out the window at the sound of a commotion out on the street. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“What is it?” Simon knew better than to try turning his head that far.

“If my eyes weren’t too old to depend on, I’d say that looks an awful lot like Marshal Torrance.”

“Did you send him a wire?”

John ignored the question. “And the horse with him looks an awful lot like your Rain Cloud.”

Simon rolled over on to his hands to boost himself up enough to see out the window. Sure enough. A man he didn’t know was tying Rain Cloud to the hitching rail out front. She looked none the worse for wear, he saw with relief.

“And I think they’ve got at least some of your outlaws,” the sheriff continued jubilantly. He raced to the door, flung it open and disappeared out into the street.

Simon groaned as he heaved his legs over the side of the bed and straightened up. His side screamed in protest, but he ignored it as he swiftly calculated the number of steps it would take him to reach the door. Six. Seven, maybe. He could do that. And then another two across the sidewalk to Rain Cloud.

He held one hand tightly against his bandage and put the other out to balance himself. He didn’t even want to think about how much it would hurt to fall. As it turned out, they were more shuffles than steps, and it took about ten. Finally he reached the door and leaned heavily against one side of the frame.

When he looked outside, the first sight to greet him was Rain Cloud, lifting her head with a soft nicker of recognition. Then he turned his head and saw her. His vision. The heavenly features and glorious hair. She was real. And John Walker had the barrel of his revolver pressed tight against her head.

“She kicked me,” he explained as he saw Simon’s expression.

“She’s a hellion, all right,” agreed the man standing next to John. He had a double-holstered gun belt on and a tin badge displayed prominently on his black shirt. Simon supposed that he must be Marshal Torrance.

The scrawny outlaw he had thought was a boy was a girl dressed in male clothing. But she didn’t look like a hellion to Simon. She looked young and scared. “Just keep your hands off me,” the girl muttered into her oversize neckerchief. Simon shook his head. He must have been half-asleep not to have seen it. Even in jeans and a heavy wool jacket she was obviously female. The jeans molded around legs that were long and slender. The jacket filled out at just the right places. And then there was that face. He’d been blind not to have realized.

He tore his gaze away from her and held on to the door frame for support as John and the marshal ushered their prisoners past him into the jail.

“I’d rather keep this as quiet as possible,” Marshal Torrance was saying. “The rest of the gang’s still out there, and they might decide to spring these two.”

His back pressed against the door, Simon surveyed the scene. The other man with the marshal was evidently a deputy. They’d caught only two of the outlaws—the old man and the girl. That left the four most dangerous still on the loose. He leaned out the door to look up and down the street. Everything seemed normal.

“They probably think we’re heading back to the territorial jail in Cheyenne,” the marshal continued. “Which is exactly where we’ll have to take them after Tom and I have had some sleep.” He nodded at his companion. “This is Tom Sneed. Deputy marshal.”

John was opening the cell with a big iron key. “We’ll keep them safe for you, Marshal. You and Mr. Sneed can get yourselves a nice rest over at the hotel. Take your time.”

Simon’s eyes were fastened once again on the girl. She saw him looking at her and turned away. “What about the others?” he asked the marshal.

“I don’t know. It was pure dumb luck that we got these two. I’d just gotten Walker’s wire at the stage depot in Prescott when they rode up trying to sell your pinto. We rode most of the night to get here so’s you could identify them. I’ve been trying to get something pinned on Seth Davis for a good long time.” His voice was rich with satisfaction.

The old outlaw shook his head. “Most danged fool thing I ever done,” he said. He looked from the marshal to the girl. “I guess I kind of knew that I’d just about run my course. But my daughter had nothing to do with any of it.”

“Daughter!” Simon and the sheriff exclaimed in unison.

Seth Davis nodded and wagged a bony finger at the papers covering the sheriff’s desk. “Just write down there that it was co-er-shun or whatever fancy legal terms you need. She’s no outlaw.”

The marshal tiredly wiped the back of his hands across his eyes. “The last three robberies attributed to the Davis gang have reported six outlaws, not five. And Simon Grant here can testify that your daughter was riding with them at the time that he was robbed and beaten.”

The old outlaw and his daughter both turned toward Simon. Her eyes were blue and enormous. “Well, I…” he began.

“So, as far as I’m concerned,” the marshal continued, “I’m taking her in. We’ll leave it up to the courts after that.”