Mail-Order Groom

by Lisa Plumley

  She seemed on the verge of disagreeing. Then she nodded.

  “All right.” Savannah squeezed his hand, her worried gaze searching his. “But this doesn’t feel right. Be careful.”

  Adam didn’t have to promise he would take care. Now more than ever, he had reason to keep himself safe—because he had someone to stay safe for. All the same, he gave a curt nod.

  “Get on the other side of the wagon, away from the station. Keep the wagon between you and anyone you see come out.”

  “Come out? Exactly who do you think will come out?”

  “Please.” Adam checked his firearm. “Just do it.”

  Pale-faced, Savannah agreed. As he’d instructed, she scurried around to the other, safer side of the wagon.

  The horse shifted at its head, undoubtedly longing to be freed of its traces, groomed and fed, as usual. The creature knew they were home and, spotting the barn, it wanted to be comfortably inside it. Savannah patted the horse’s long neck, murmured something to it, then vanished on the other side of the wagon. It was just like her, Adam thought, to spare a moment to reassure the horse, even when they faced unknown troubles.

  With his shoulders taut, Adam made sure Savannah was out of sight, then he advanced toward the station building. The front door hung aslant on its hinges, he noticed with deepening alarm. He could see a sliver of the station’s living quarters in the gap formed between the door and the jamb. Spotting no movement inside, Adam ran stealthily around the corner of the building.

  Here, there were signs of horses. At least three of them. The ground was torn up with hoofprints—and with dank tobacco-juice stains. In all the time Adam had spent at the telegraph station, he reflected, few people had visited there—only Doc Finney and his wife. As an adjunct station, the place mostly relayed messages along the wires instead of taking them down for customers. Three visitors was definitely unusual.

  Frowning, Adam scanned the tree line, then the slope leading up the nearby mountain. He saw no movement amid the ponderosa pines or scrub oak. Even the birds and ground squirrels were still. The road leading to town was empty.

  Proceeding as he’d been trained, he circled the building, trying to assess what had happened. On the far side of the station, another window was smashed. Now that he was close to the damage, Adam expected to see shards of glass on the ground.

  He didn’t. Perplexed, he nudged himself upward. He looked cautiously inside the window, keeping his head as far out of shooting range as he could. If the window had been broken from the outside, as he suspected it had been, there would have been glass on the floor inside the station. There wasn’t.

  Since the station appeared deserted, Adam glanced back to make sure Savannah remained safely out of sight, then headed for the barn. Savannah’s individually named chickens scratched in the grassy ground nearby, chasing bugs. They clucked in annoyance as he strode between them, scattering their flock.

  Holding his weapon steady, Adam nudged open the barn door with his foot. It opened with a creak that made him cringe. He paused, then ducked inside the shadowy interior. The smells of hay and aged lumber struck him first, then a faint, earthy tinge of soil and manure. Outside, the chickens clucked. Sunlight splintered between cracks in the barn walls, giving Adam just enough illumination to see that the cow’s stall was empty.

  The creature hadn’t been in the paddock, either. Frowning anew, Adam hastily checked the rest of the barn. He glanced upward toward the loft…then froze as a voice came toward him.

  It sounded low, but it was getting louder. He couldn’t make out any words. Newly alert, Adam ran toward the barn door.

  Now he heard footsteps, too. With his gun still raised, Adam concentrated on the sound. Only one person. He could handle one person—especially since they seemed to be headed toward the barn. Given the sunny day outside, Adam’s position inside gave him an advantage. Whoever entered next would be temporarily blinded by the dimness.

  More footsteps. Then a low mumble. It sounded like…

  Adam stepped out, his gun raised. “Stop right there.”

  Mose stood silhouetted in the barn doorway. He raised both arms in surprise. The leather lead in his hand jangled. He squinted, his expression showing surprise…then annoyance.

  “Humph. Fine time for you to show up, Corwin, now that all the trouble’s over with.” The station’s helper grumbled, then lowered his arms in disgust. “Put your firearm away, why don’t you, and help me put this place to rights again.”

  As it turned out, Adam tried to do exactly that. But first he went back to the wagon to collect Savannah and make sure she knew everything was all right. And from there, Savannah wouldn’t hear of him and Mose working on the damage to the station until she’d taken a turn at fussing over her longtime helper…and peppering him with questions, too. They all settled inside the station, with Savannah busy at the stove as she talked.

  “Honestly, Mose. You nearly frightened me to death!” She hurried to the station’s dining table—where she’d stalwartly placed Adam and Mose—with a tinware coffeepot in hand, busily refilling their cups. As though the brew were a bona fide cure-all, Savannah nodded for her friend to have a sip. “When we got here and saw you weren’t around…Well, I feared the worst. I’m so happy nothing truly awful happened.”

  “This looks pretty awful,” Adam said.

  He aimed his chin at the general disarray inside the station. The place appeared to have been thoroughly ransacked.

  Cupboards and drawers were open, their contents spilling onto the floor. Savannah’s cheval mirror was cracked. Her clothing was strewn about. Books and papers and maps lay in chaotic piles. The bedstead had been dragged out from the wall; now the mattress lay atop it at a haphazard angle, the bedding and pillows piled higgledy-piggledy on one corner of it.

  Up near the business end of the station, the situation was a little improved, but only because, as Mose had explained, he’d tackled that cleanup job first. He’d also swept up all the broken window glass, explaining to Adam’s satisfaction why he’d seen none of it on the ground or on the floorboards inside. “Yes, but Mose is all right,” Savannah said in a robust tone. “That’s what truly matters.” She smiled unsteadily at him, then patted his shoulder, still hovering nearby with the coffeepot. “I swear, Mose. If anything had happened to you—”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me. Not this week or ever.” Mose stared into his coffee cup, appearing embarrassed by all the ruckus. “I’m too crotchety to go down without a fight.”

  “Maybe.” Savannah pursed her lips doubtfully. “But you’re not bulletproof! If I’m not mistaken, those are bullet holes in my costume trunk.” She pointed to the offending splintery spots in a nearby chest. “That could have been you, Mose!”

  The big man only shrugged, then exchanged a long-suffering look with Adam. For the first time, Adam felt a sense of camaraderie with him. Now that they were both under Savannah’s official purview, it was clear they’d have to endure a whole lot of well-meaning nurturing.

  “This all happened yesterday?” Adam asked. He knew that Savannah was right in one respect: those bullet holes were troubling. Because shooting up the places the gang looted was the particular calling card of Wyatt Bedell. Adam had no doubt that he and his brothers were responsible for this. “You didn’t see anyone? Hear anyone?” he asked Mose. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.” The station helper nodded. “Like I said before, all I heard was a crazy kind of mooing coming from the cow. I could tell right away she was in trouble, so I hustled out there to see what was wrong. What I saw was that paddock fence, all busted up like you just saw it, and the cow—”

  “Poor Penelope!” Savannah shook her head.

  “—trotting clean up the hill like she’d been herded that way. I didn’t see anybody else. But she was spooked pretty bad. The way she was running, it took me the better part of the afternoon and on into the evening to round her up and get her safely to Mr. Yarnell’s place, down toward Mor
row Creek.”

  Because of the damage to the paddock fence, Mose explained further, he’d decided against leaving Penelope in their own barn after he’d caught up with the cow and harnessed her. Instead he’d relied on the generosity of their neighbor to temporarily house Penelope until the fence could be repaired. Mose had been coming back from milking her when he’d met Adam.

  “I reckon it’s pretty clear that somebody wanted me out of the station,” Mose went on. “I don’t know what they were looking for, and I don’t know if they found it. But they banged up the telegraphy apparatus pretty good while they were here.”

  “I’m just relieved they didn’t get to you!” Savannah gave his grizzled hand a heartfelt squeeze. “If anything like this ever happens again, don’t you wait for an excuse like Penelope getting out, you hear? You just run away as fast as you can.”

  Mose frowned. “I’m not running away from anything.”

  “I want you to! You don’t have to be brave,” Savannah insisted, pouring him more coffee. “You’ve already demonstrated enough bravery to last you a lifetime, Mose. You know what I’m referring to.” She gave him a meaningful look. “I’d say you’ve earned yourself a little surefire safety by now.”

  Mose shifted in his seat, then gulped back more coffee. He didn’t look at Savannah as he set down his cup. It seemed evident that he felt uncomfortable—and Adam knew why.

  “It would put my mind at ease to know you agree,” Savannah pressed, her knuckles white on the coffeepot. “That’s for sure.”

  Mose rubbed his temple, sitting conspicuously silent.

  “He’s not running, Savannah,” Adam said gently. “No man would. Any man worth being called a man would stay and fight, if he had the chance.”

  Mose nodded. He cast Adam an appreciative glance, then appeared to remember he was “crotchety” and scowled instead.

  “Well, that’s plumb ridiculous.” With her mouth downturned, Savannah headed back to the stove, where she’d already begun assembling a hasty meal of fried eggs, cornmeal mush and stewed, cinnamon-spiced dried apples. “If you can save yourself from something, you ought to do it. That’s simple common sense. It doesn’t make you less of a man to do that.”

  Adam and Mose shook their heads in unison. “Yes, it does.”

  “Especially if a man’s property is threatened,” Mose added.

  “Or his family is in danger.” Adam tightened his hold on his coffee cup, his whole body rebelling at the very thought.

  If he and Savannah had been there when the Bedell brothers had arrived… He hated to think what might have happened.

  No wonder they’d encountered Curtis Bedell on the road to Avalanche, he realized. Curtis had probably been scouting Adam and Savannah’s location—the better to assure himself that he and his brothers would have plenty of undisturbed time to raid the telegraph station. They simply hadn’t counted on Mose.

  Or had they? he wondered. Mose did appear to have been deliberately lured away from the station, Adam considered.

  But that didn’t make sense at all. It certainly didn’t match up with what he knew of the Bedell brothers. Most of the time, the brothers were undeviatingly ruthless.

  Setting aside those questions for now, Adam glanced up at his new wife. “There’s no point arguing about this. If you were a man, you would understand. A man stays to fight. A man protects what’s his.” Hoping to lighten the mood, he smiled. “But I’m powerfully glad you’re not a man, because—”

  “Poppycock! All that talk about staying to fight is just pure nonsense,” Savannah disagreed. “I won’t hear any more of it.”

  “It’s the truth.” Mose drained his coffee, then stood.

  Adam did the same. “I would lay down my life for you, Savannah. There’s nothing you can do to change that.”

  “Me, too,” Mose affirmed in his thundering voice. “I reckon I already have, once or twice over the years. Can’t be helped.”

  Savannah shook her head, stirring the contents of her cast-iron skillet with far more vigor than the food probably required. “What if I don’t want you to do that?” she pressed. “Doesn’t that matter at all? I don’t want either one of you to fight for me.” With her wooden-spoon-holding hand on her hip, Savannah raised her chin. “It was bad enough that Mose was in danger at all. Bad enough that my first-ever glimpse of you might have been my last, Adam, had you not recovered from your injuries. How in the world could I live with myself, knowing either of you put yourselves in danger for my sake?”

  The room turned silent. Skewered by her fierce look, Adam and Mose exchanged shrugs. There was no sense trying to change what couldn’t be changed. Men were protectors. That was all. Adam had filled that role with Mariana and with the clients who hired him, too. He prided himself on that. Any man would have.

  “If I do my job right, it won’t ever come down to that,” he said. “Besides, I’ll be fine. I always have been.”

  “Except when you get shot in the back and left for dead!” Inexplicably fervent, Savannah stared him down. “I will not have either one of you endangering yourselves for me. Do you hear?”

  She shook her spoon, giving them both stern looks.

  “The way I see it,” Mose said in his usual practical tone, “there’s not much you can do to stop us. We’re grown men.”

  Adam agreed. “We’re going to do what we have to do.” He grabbed his hat, then plunked it on his head. He smiled at Savannah. “Try not to get all het up about this. When the time comes, you might like having two heroes fighting for you.”

  In response, Savannah only appeared exasperated. She looked away from him, then resumed stirring her cornmeal mush with jerky motions. “I just might have resources you’re not aware of, Mr. Corwin. Sometimes I still get my way, by hook or by crook.”

  “Hmm.” His smile broadened as he came nearer. “I’ll just bet you do, Mrs. Corwin. You’ll have to show me sometime.”

  He tipped up her chin, then pressed a kiss to her mouth.

  At first, Savannah stiffened. But then, as Mose busied himself with tidying up the mess, Savannah kissed Adam back. Glad to have a moment’s privacy, he grabbed a handful of her skirts, then hauled her closer while her thick yellow mush bubbled away on the stovetop. He didn’t like being at odds with her—especially about something so vital as protecting her.

  Fortunately his kiss seemed to succeed where logic had failed. When he and Savannah parted, she appeared to have forgotten all about their disagreement. Rosy-cheeked, she laughed, then swept her disheveled hair from her eyes.

  “Well. I can see how you settle arguments!” With her free hand, Savannah gave him a teasing swat. “That’s an…interesting approach, but I won’t get a lick of work done while you’re kissing me. Do you want me to burn all this food?”

  “No, ma’am.” Contritely Adam grinned. “I surely don’t.”

  “Then skedaddle until I’m finished. I’ve got a lot of work to do, you know.” Her gaze skittered past him, taking in the mess that Mose was diligently working on tidying. She shook her head. “It’s going to take a while to clean up in here.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll help you,” Adam promised.

  She burst into peals of laughter. “You’re going to clean?”

  “If that’s what it takes.” After all, if he’d nabbed Roy and his brothers when he’d had the chance, they would not have looted the station. “Do you think anything is missing?”

  Biting her lip in thought, Savannah looked around. She shrugged, then shook her head again. “It’s hard to tell. Whoever did this did a pretty thorough job of wrecking the place.”

  He’d have to be more direct. Tipping back his hat brim, Adam gave Savannah a straightforward look. “I’m asking about your nest-egg savings,” he said. “That’s probably what they were looking for. Is your money still here?”

  Savannah’s startled gaze met his. She frowned. “Why would anybody think to look for my savings here at the station?”

  That was unexpected. �
��If not at the station, then where?”

  He almost wished the money had been at the station. Adam didn’t want Savannah to lose her savings, but he knew he could provide well for her. If the Bedell brothers had gotten what they’d wanted, maybe they would have left Savannah alone for good. As it was, Adam had the unpleasant feeling the gang would be back, one way or the other—unless he confronted them first.

  “How do you know about her savings in the first place?” Mose demanded, shouldering his big body nearer. His gaze shifted to Savannah, intent and concerned…and plainly unhappy. He nodded at Adam. “You told him about your savings?”

  “Only since our first correspondence!” She stirred her cornmeal mush, then put a lid on the pot. “Remember? I told you that a long time ago.”

  Mose cast Adam a suspicious look. Then he relented. He turned to Savannah. “I thought you were going to keep that money a secret, all to yourself. You know…because of Warren.”

  This time, it was Savannah’s turn to appear uncomfortable. She turned away to collect three speckled enamelware plates from the cupboard, her chin held high. “I changed my mind about that. Now, wasn’t there something you boys were going to do, while I finish up in here? I’d say that paddock fence ought to be first to be repaired. Penelope doesn’t like to be away from her own stall. She’s very particular that way. Her milk will suffer.”

  “Who’s Warren?” Adam asked.

  “A crook,” Mose offered in a biting tone, well before Savannah could answer. “A lowdown, no-good, lying son of a—”

  “Warren was a man I was…in business with.” Savannah hurried past Adam with the plates in her hands. Efficiently she set the table. “I made a mistake in trusting him, and I promised myself I wouldn’t ever be so gullible again.”

  “Humph.” Mose scoffed, drawing Savannah’s reproachful gaze.

  “What kind of mistake?” Adam asked, feeling mystified and increasingly concerned. Warren had never been mentioned in Savannah’s letters to Bedell. Now, Adam wondered why. “Gullible how? If he hurt you, I can make sure he pays.”