Читать книгу A Wanted Man: A Stone Creek Novel - Linda Miller Lael - Страница 12

5

PA’D SADDLED UP and gone off someplace, in the middle of the night. Bent over a book at his desk in the back of the big schoolroom, Gideon couldn’t take in the words he was supposed to be reading. He just kept remembering.

He’d awakened out of a sound sleep, hearing noises he thought were coming from the shed out behind the saloon, gotten up out of his bed, pulled on his clothes and boots, and headed out there to investigate.

And there was Pa, dressed to ride a distance, fastening his rifle scabbard to the saddle. His gelding, Samson, snorted and tossed his big head, eager to be away.

“You go on back inside, Gideon,” Pa’d said. He wore his round-brimmed hat, and there was a bandana tied loosely around his neck. Under his long coat, he wore a gun belt, with a holster on either side. The pearl handle of one of his .45s flashed in the gloom as he swung up onto the horse.

“Let me go along, Pa,” Gideon had said, at the edge of pleading. “I can get a horse over at the livery stable—”

“You stay here and look after Ruby,” Pa replied. He’d clamped an unlit cheroot between his strong, white teeth, and he shifted it from one side of his mouth to the other, looking as though he might ride Gideon down if he didn’t get out of the way.

If there’d ever been a woman who didn’t need looking after, it was Ruby Hollister. She kept a loaded shotgun behind the bar, and everybody in Flagstaff knew she wouldn’t hesitate to use it. No, sir. She would not be requiring Gideon’s protection.

“At least tell me where you’re off to, Pa,” Gideon had argued.

“That’s none of your never-mind,” Pa had answered, narrowing his chilly blue eyes with impatience. “Now, step aside.”

Gideon stood his ground for a long moment, but in the end, he couldn’t prevail against his pa’s hard stare. “When’ll you be back?” he’d asked.

Pa hadn’t said anything in response. He’d just nudged the gelding into motion with the heels of his boots—not the fancy ones he usually wore, Gideon noticed, but the light, supple kind, made for moving fast, but soled for hard going.

Gideon had moved out of the shed doorway, lest he be trampled, and Pa had bent low over the saddle to avoid knocking his head as he passed through.

He’d vanished into the darkness, the hooves of his horse beating on the hard dirt, the sound growing fainter as he gained the road.

When the cold of that winter night finally penetrated Gideon’s awareness, he’d gone inside. Shed his boots and lain down on top of his bed in his clothes, staring up at the ceiling, knowing he wasn’t going to sleep.

At breakfast, Ruby had been pale and unusually fidgety.

Gideon had been bursting with questions, but he hadn’t dared put a one of them to her. When Ruby didn’t want to talk, the devil and ten red-hot pitchforks couldn’t make her do it.

Now, sitting in the schoolroom, he felt restless, as though there were something else he ought to be doing, and wasn’t.

He thought about Rowdy, the brother he barely knew.

You ever need any help, you’ll find me boarding at Mrs. Porter’s, over in Stone Creek.

A hand came to rest on Gideon’s shoulder just as he was recalling that conversation for the hundredth time, nearly scaring him right out of his hide. He wasn’t commonly the jumpy sort, and it embarrassed him mightily, the way he’d started. He felt his neck and face go warm.

“You’re not concentrating, Gideon,” Miss Langston said good-naturedly, smiling down at him. She was about a thousand years old, short and square of build, a phenomenon that had confounded him until Ruby had explained the mysteries of a lady’s corset. “It’s too early for spring fever, but I’ll vow, you’re already afflicted.”

Gideon tried to smile, because he liked Miss Langston. She was briskly cordial, and never made sly remarks about Ruby or his pa, like a lot of folks did. And she’d attended Rose’s funeral, too, he remembered. Cried into a starched hanky with lace trim around the edges.

“I’ve got some trouble at home,” he confided, keeping his voice down so he wouldn’t have to fight later, out in the schoolyard. He’d never lost a one of those battles, but, as his pa liked to say, there was no shortage of idiots in the world. There was always somebody ready to take him on.

Pa’d had things to say about that, too.

Pa.

“You’d best go and see to things there, then,” Miss Langston said, kindly and quietly. When he hesitated, she prodded him with, “You’re excused, Gideon.”

He fairly knocked his chair over backward, getting to his feet.

You ever need help—

Did he need help? He didn’t know.

He couldn’t have explained why he felt so nervous and scared. Something was bad wrong, though. He was sure of it. The knowledge stung in his blood and buzzed in his brain.

He ignored the quizzical stares of the other pupils—they ranged from tiny girls in pigtails to farm boys strong as the mules they rode to town—and shot out of the schoolhouse, down the steps, across the yard. He vaulted over the picket fence and sprinted for the livery stable four streets over.

* * *

ROWDY PLACED AN ORDER down at the sawmill, bought a hammer, a keg of nails, and some other tools at the mercantile, paid extra to have them delivered, Pardner tagging along behind him. Then, figuring he ought to do some marshaling, since he was getting paid for it, he walked the length of Center Street, speaking quietly to folks as he passed, touching the brim of his hat to the ladies.

He looked in at the bank and the telegraph office, introduced himself and Pardner.

He counted the horses in front of the town’s three saloons, and went inside the last one, which happened to be Jolene Bell’s place.

“That your deputy?” a grizzled old-timer asked, leaning against the bar and grinning sparse-toothed down at Pardner, who was sniffing at the spittoon.

“Leave it,” Rowdy told the dog.

Pardner sighed and sat down in the filthy sawdust.

“Don’t see no badge on him,” quipped another of the local wits.

Rowdy smiled. “This is Pardner,” he said. “Guess he is my deputy.”

“He bite?” asked the skinny piano player, looking worried.

“Not unless he has just cause,” Rowdy answered.

The old-timer’s gaze went to Rowdy’s badge, then shifted to his .44. “You a southpaw, Marshal?”

“Nope,” Rowdy said, looking straight at the old man, but noticing everything and everybody at the far edges of his vision, too.

Always know what’s going on around you, boy. Ignorance ain’t bliss. It can be fatal. He’d been raised on those words of Pappy’s, drilled on them, the way some kids were made to learn verses from the Good Book.

“Gun’s backward in the holster,” the piano player pointed out helpfully.

Rowdy glanced down at it, as if surprised to find it such. In the same moment, he drew.

The old-timer whistled.

The piano player spun around on his seat and pounded out the first bars of a funeral march.

Rowdy shoved his .44 back in the holster.

“Come, dog,” he told Pardner, and they went back out, into the bright, silvery cold of the morning.

From there, Rowdy and Pardner proceeded to the Stone Creek schoolhouse. He didn’t have any official business there, but he thought he ought to familiarize himself with the place, just the same.

And he wouldn’t be averse to a glimpse of Lark, either.

The kids were out for recess, running in every direction and screaming their heads off in a frenzy of brief freedom, while Lark watched from the step, wrapped tightly in her cloak, her cheeks and the end of her nose red in the bitter weather.

She didn’t see Rowdy right away, so he took his time sizing things up.

The building itself was painted bright red, and it had a belfry with a heavy bronze bell inside, sending out the occasional faint metallic vibration as it contracted in the cold. There was a well near the front door, and an outhouse off to one side. A few horses and mules foraged at what was left of last summer’s grass—come the end of the school day, they’d be carrying Lark’s students back home to farms and ranches scattered hither and yon.

Pardner lifted himself onto his hind legs and put his forepaws against the whitewashed fence, probably wishing he could join in a running game or two.

“Sit,” Rowdy told him quietly.

He sat.

The dog’s movement must have caught Lark’s attention, because she spotted them then. Made an awning of one hand to shade her eyes from the bright, cool sun.

Rowdy grinned, waited there, on the outside of the fence, while she hesitated, made up her mind and swept toward him, her heavy black skirts trailing over the winter-bitten grass.