Happily Ever After in the West

by Debra Cowan

  Her heartbeat shivered under her prim shirtwaist and all at once she wanted to unbutton it. What was happening to her? Some thing delicious and unnameable had most definitely occurred, but what?

  He brought his mouth to her ear. “Happy birthday,” he whispered.

  Suddenly she wanted to cry. Tears burned under her lids, but she blinked them back.

  Without speaking, he walked her back to the wagon. Matt helped her up onto the bench, then remounted his black gelding and touched his hat brim. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

  He rode away toward the town.

  Matt did not return. She waited hours until the distant mountains flamed gold and purple with the sunset. What now?

  The children were bored with the word games she had thought up and tired of running relay races and playing hopscotch on the grid she’d drawn in the sandy earth. And they were growing hungry. Ellie herself was wind-burned and jumpy.

  Should she wait, as Matt had instructed? Or should she assume he was not coming back and proceed on her own?

  When dusk fell, shadowing the road, Ellie made a decision. She gave the gray mare some water in her cupped hands and a handful of oats from the bag in the wagon bed, loaded up her fretful students and climbed onto the driver’s bench. With a gentle flap of the reins she started toward the town’s lights winking a mile ahead.

  Gillette Springs looked much like Smoke River except that some of the building fronts needed a coat of paint and there were two saloons instead of one. The wagon clattered past a bank, a barbershop and the sheriff’s office, but Ellie noted the board walkway on both sides of the main street was completely empty. Strange for a town this size. She reined up at the Gillette Hotel.

  “I will need two rooms with two beds in each room.”

  The bony clerk stared at her through horn-rimmed spectacles, then eyed the children. “Sure thing, ma’am.” He handed her a pen and indicated the hotel register. “Are all these children yours, ma’am?”

  “Certainly not! I am unmarried.”

  The clerk’s eyebrows went up. Ellie scrawled her name in the indicated space and let out a sigh of relief. She’d done it. She’d driven a wagon and five students forty miles across the hot, windblown plain. They were all safe and sound. Sleepy and hungry, but safe. Mama was wrong; Ellie was most certainly not inadequate!

  The children lined up behind her began to spread out onto the two leather-covered sofas in the foyer.

  “Are there any messages for me? My name is Stevenson.” Surely someone from Smoke River would be arriving to retrieve the children?

  “Nope. No messages for anybody. Kind of a funny time to show up in town with all the excitement goin’ on.”

  A cold hand gripped her throat. “What excitement?”

  “Havin’ a big gunfight in town. Fact is they’re still trading shots, off and on, and meantime the sheriff’s out with a posse chasin’ a bank robber. That’s why the hotel is full up and nobody’s walking around outside.”

  Ellie’s heart thumped. “Who is ‘they’?”

  “Dunno their names, ma’am. Two men—one of them’s a gunfighter. Big red-haired fella with a scar halfway down his face. I’d guess the other one’s chasing him. That one’s tall and dark-haired and—”

  “Oh, no!” she moaned. It was Matt. He must have run into Royce unexpectedly. Oh, dear God, what if he were injured? Or dead? She felt her face freeze into a cold mask.

  “Aw, don’t worry, ma’am. You’ll be safe enough inside the hotel. Ever’ so often one of them cracks off a shot. We all hit the floor and maybe twenty minutes later there’s another shot from a different direction. Seems like the two of them are movin’ around from building to building across the street from each other, playin’ cat and mouse.”

  “I see.” She tried hard to keep her voice steady. “Could you send up a bathtub for each room, and towels and some soap?”

  “Will do, Miss…” he glanced down at the register “…Stevenson. Dining room’s open until nine, if you’re hungry.”

  “Thank you. And could you get someone to take my horse and wagon to the livery stable?”

  “Wouldn’t risk it, miss. Just leave it in front of the hotel, why don’tcha?”

  Suddenly she was encircled by five grimy faces. “We’re hungry!”

  Looking down at them, she realized her own face was still mud-smeared; no wonder the clerk had looked at her oddly. “Baths first, then supper.” Ellie fished in her skirt pocket for the ten-dollar gold piece she always kept for emergencies, laid it on the hotel desk and accepted both keys.

  “Up the stairs, end of the hallway,” the clerk directed. “Both rooms got a view of the street.”

  She herded the children up the wooden staircase and down the partially carpeted hallway. If she weren’t so frightened, this might be a real adventure!

  After baths and squabbles over who got to sleep in which bed, Ellie and the children descended on the dining room. She felt reasonably clean and somewhat refreshed, and she’d managed to wash and braid her hair. But, oh, Lord, her nerves were so jangled it was as if crows were screeching in her head. She had heard no gunshots during the children’s baths, but now she found her attention focused on sounds from outside the dining-room window.

  The plump young waitress tapped her pencil against her pad of paper. “And what’ll you be having, miss?”

  “What? Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”

  The girl rolled her eyes. “I can see you’re a busy mother. So far I’ve got three orders for fried chicken and two for steak.” She waited expectantly.

  “Steak,” Ellie blurted. She would need strength to survive this night.

  All through the meal, she kept one ear tuned to her students and the other cocked for sounds of gunfire. The longer the silence outside stretched, the more irregular her pulse became. It was like waiting for the thunder to crash after a lightning bolt.

  By the time she tucked all the children into bed—Manette and Sarah in one bed and the Ness twins in the other in what Teddy MacAllister termed “the girls’ room,” and Teddy in the extra bed in Ellie’s room—she was worn-out.

  “Sure is softer than a bunch of pine branches,” the boy said in a drowsy voice. He fell asleep almost at once.

  Ellie shed her outer garments and crawled between the sheets of her own bed, so exhausted she could not think clearly.

  She could hear, though. Somewhere out there Matt and Royce were trying to kill each other. She lay sleepless, waiting for the sound of gunfire, until her eyelids would no longer stay open.

  Matt was right—Teddy did snore. The memory brought tears to her eyes.

  Chapter Eight

  Matt flattened his body against the brick wall of the bank and edged forward along the narrow shadowed alley until he had a clear view of the main street. The boardwalks on both sides were empty and silent; the townspeople had had the good sense to stay indoors while he and Royce had exchanged gunfire throughout the long afternoon.

  He scanned the opposite side of the street and what he saw made his entire frame stiffen. What in the—! Ellie’s wagon and the dappled mare stood at the hitching rail in front of the hotel. He’d been pinned down by Royce all day; Ellie must have grown tired of waiting and driven on into town. Damn. She and the children were inside the hotel.

  A ripple of cold fear crawled up his spine. He didn’t know exactly where Royce was at the moment, but he prayed it wasn’t anywhere near the Gillette Hotel. The thought of Ellie and Royce in the same building, even on the same side of the street, made his heart seize up.

  He swiped sweat off his forehead with his sleeve and tried to think. Ellie and the children were at the hotel, safe for the moment. But that wasn’t long enough. Sooner or later a gunshot would smash into that big dining-room window and…

  Wait just a minute. He was no more than thirty feet from the man he’d been chasing for the past four years: why was he thinking about anything other than killing the bastard?

 
; Why was he thinking about that slim, blue-eyed woman inside the hotel? Why was he thinking thoughts that made him go weak in the middle? He shook his head to rattle his brains into sticking to business.

  But her face, mud-smeared all over, her chin jutted out in a challenge, kept intruding. Hell, he was probably half in love with her.

  He closed his eyes and groaned. Maybe more than half.

  Another shot blasted a chip out of the brick wall behind him and he jerked into awareness of where he was and what he’d sworn to do. He knew he had to move. More than that, he had to reach Ellie and those kids before one of them got hurt. Or killed.

  His blood went cold. He raised his Colt .45 and put two shots into the front window of the barbershop, then pounded down the dark, narrow alley and circled around to the back door of the hotel.

  A weight settled beside Ellie on the bed and a warm, smoky-smelling hand covered her mouth. “Don’t scream, Ellie,” a low voice murmured in her ear. “It’s me. Matt.”

  She jerked upright so fast his hand smacked her forehead. “What are you doing here? How did you get into this room?”

  “Picked the lock,” he whispered. “Keep your voice down. Teddy is asleep in the other bed. Never thought I’d be grateful that boy snores.”

  She started to laugh, then clapped her hand over her mouth. In the faint light through the single uncurtained window she could barely make out Matt’s angular face. His lips were pressed tight with tension and his eyes—goodness, she had never seen such determination in a man’s gaze. Cautiously she reached over and brushed his dark hair off his forehead.

  “I’m not pretty,” he grumbled. “Not even clean, and I apologize. I had to get to you before…” How much did he dare tell her? Oh, what the hell, tell her all of it. He might be dead before morning.

  “Before what?” she prompted. “There has been no word from Smoke River about the children. Their parents must be frantic with worry. They will expect me to keep them safe, Matt, but I admit I am frightened.”

  “Royce is here, in town.”

  “Yes, I know. The hotel clerk told me about the gun fighting during the day. I knew immediately it was you and Royce.”

  “Your horse is out front, Ellie. Still hitched to the wagon. If I kept Royce busy dodging bullets, do you think you could get to the wagon and drive it around to the back of the hotel?”

  “How do you mean, ‘keep him busy’?”

  Matt sighed, and a breath of warm air caressed the shell of her ear. “He’s holed up across the street, in the barbershop, I think. I can pin him down by shooting at him until you—”

  “Until I can get the wagon off the street,” she said in a jerky whisper.

  “I hate like anything asking you to do this, Ellie. It’s not your fight. But I think it’s a risk worth taking. What do you think?”

  “I—I’m not brave, Matt, but I don’t think we have a choice. Do you?”

  “It’s the only way I can think of to keep you all alive. It’s just a matter of time until Royce crosses the street to the hotel.

  All at once Ellie realized something. Matt did have a choice. Twenty-four hours ago his goal had been to capture Royce. Now, when he had a chance to do just that, he had changed his priorities: he’d put her and the children first.

  “We have to do it,” she whispered.

  He leaned over and brushed his lips across her cheek. “You may not feel brave, Ellie, but you are one helluva woman.”

  “Matt,” she breathed. “Don’t get killed. I—”

  His mouth found hers and for a long minute she forgot everything but the gentle insistence of his lips.

  Eleanora Stevenson, you have fallen in love with this most disreputable-looking man whom you have known for exactly two days!

  It was her mother’s voice in her head. She sucked in a breath. Yes, Mama, I have. Courtship is different out here in the West.

  Matt laid something soft and bulky between them. “I brought you some clothes.”

  Ellie grasped a fistful of fabric and lifted. A pair of jeans unrolled and out spilled a man’s shirt, laced at the neck like the one Matt wore, a pair of small-size leather boots and a worn gray Stetson with a drooping brim.

  “I don’t want you to look like a woman,” he whispered. “Too dangerous. Royce likes women.”

  “Where did you get these clothes?”

  “From my saddlebag. They’re mine, except for the boots.”

  “Whose—?”

  “Don’t ask,” he said. “In another hour it’ll be light outside. Then I want you to get dressed and take the children through the kitchen to the back door. Then you go on out to the front of the hotel and drive the wagon around behind.”

  “But where sh-should we go then?” Apprehension made her voice catch.

  “Head for last night’s camp by the river. Someone will send word if— Forget that. I’ll leave a note for the hotel clerk, tell whoever comes for the kids where to find you.”

  He stopped, listening to Teddy’s steady snores from the other bed. God, he was tired. It was probably three in the morning now, and he found himself struggling to keep his eyes open. The room was quiet; no gunshots had erupted for the past hour. Maybe Royce had sneaked out of town

  Ellie lay next to him, not moving. There was no way he could touch her. Her body was underneath the covers and he lay on top of the counterpane. He nuzzled his chin against her ear. Boy, she sure smelled good, like soap and roses and Ellie. This woman was one in a million, beautiful and brave and sweet-scented.

  He closed his lids and drew in slow, deep breaths.

  “What are you smiling about?” she murmured.

  “How do you know I’m smiling?” he replied without opening his eyes.

  She gave a soft laugh. “Because I’m watching you.”

  His lids snapped open. She had shifted to her side and lay with her jaw propped on her stacked fists, her blue eyes fixed on his.

  “Maybe I’m smiling because I still can. Lately I’ve been feeling, well, kinda undecided about things.”

  She said nothing, just waited.

  “I can track a man from Texas to pretty much anywhere. I can outsmart him most of the time, and probably outgun him, but…it’s kinda funny, I guess, but I’m not sure I’ve got the sand to see this all the way through.”

  “You mean you’ve lost your courage?”

  Matt chuckled low in his throat. “No. I never get scared for myself. But for the past two days I’ve been wondering if it’s worth it to risk getting killed trying to settle an old score. Wondering if somewhere along the line I took the wrong direction.”

  Her eyes widened. “Wrong dir—? Whatever do you mean?”

  “I’m not real sure yet, but…well, there’s got to be more in life than just killing this guy.”

  What he’d just said hit him with a jolt to the pit of his stomach. Someday he wanted to settle down. Have a son like Teddy—smart and curious and responsible. He couldn’t do that if he was dead.

  He clenched his teeth. Right now he wanted to spend more time with Ellie. Maybe a lot more time. Maybe even all the rest of the time he’d have on this earth. But if…

  “Ellie, I’m dead-tired. Can I stay right here for about half an hour and catch some sleep?”

  She didn’t answer, just snuggled her head against his shoulder and laid her arm across his chest.

  Matt woke when Ellie slid her willowy body out of bed. Pink-tinged gray light showed through the window, but his body felt leaden, his mind fuzzy. Maybe he was getting too old for this.

  Teddy was still snoring. He heard Ellie moving around quietly, getting dressed. God forgive him, he cracked open an eyelid to watch.

  She’d slept in her underdrawers and camisole, but it was still enticing to watch her dress. She drew on the jeans he’d brought and slipped the shirt over her head. He’d bet she’d never in her life worn such duds, even when she was a little girl.

  Ellie rolled each leg of her pants up three turns, then peeked
down at herself. Trousers! Never in her twenty-six years had she ever worn a man’s trousers. She flexed both knees. She was beginning to understand why men walked the way they did, sort of stiff-legged with their thumbs hooked in their pockets. She tried stuffing her own thumbs into the pockets of these jeans. Yes, she felt like swaggering.

  She took a step, then two, strolled over to check on Teddy, then swaggered back to comb her hair and braid it tight so she could hide it under the gray hat.

  “Well, hell,” Matt said, just loud enough for her to hear.

  “What?” she whispered. “Am I walking like a man or not?”

  “Honey, don’t ever walk like that when you’re not with me. Might tempt some randy cowhand to jump—uh, lay a hand on you.”

  Ellie dismissed the remark with a slashing motion of her hand. She sashayed around the room in the oversize jeans and shirt, but she still moved like a woman. Looked like a woman.

  “That’s enough,” he said. His voice turned hoarse. “Get the children up.”

  She leaned over the sleeping boy in the next bed. “Teddy.” She shook his shoulder and the snoring stopped, then resumed.

  “Teddy, wake up! Get dressed.”

  Matt headed downstairs to the kitchen to snatch whatever he could find to eat. The last thing he heard was Teddy’s querulous voice. “What happened to my boots?”

  Ellie explained the plan to the children and lined them up at the back kitchen door. Teddy had stopped asking about his boots; apparently he preferred going barefoot anyway. Ellie kept her mouth shut. The boy’s boots were a size too small for her, but she’d stuffed her feet down inside anyway and resolved she would not limp, no matter what.

  Matt stepped forward. “Teddy, you’ll be in charge until Miss Stevenson can bring the wagon around. Then I want you all to pile in the back real quick-like.”

  Teddy gazed up at Matt with worshipful eyes. “We can stay and help you, Mr. Johnson.”

  Matt blinked hard. “Son, that’s mighty brave of you, but you’d best stick with Miss Stevenson. She’ll need protecting until you reach the river and someone from Smoke River comes to take you home.”