A Stone Creek Collection, Volume 2

by Linda Lael Miller

  She was vaguely sore, but this time, there was no pain.

  Lydia crooned, loving the feel of him within her, even though she knew it would soon drive her mad.

  “Does—it—hurt?” Gideon rasped, poised over her, his hands pressed deep into the mattress, holding himself still with a visible effort.

  Lydia turned her head from side to side on the pillow and crooned again, and that one sound, evidently, was Gideon’s undoing. He took her in earnest then, and the bedsprings squeaked gloriously, and the headboard slammed against the wall, and when the friction became too much for both of them, their cries of release mingled in the night air, Gideon’s a low, hoarse shout, Lydia’s a near howl, keening and primitive.

  And when they caught their breath, they both laughed.

  They were covered in plaster dust.

  * * *

  HE ROSE EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, while Lydia was still sleeping.

  The temptation to burrow between her legs and suckle her awake, and directly into the throes of a violent climax, was overwhelming, but he’d save that for another morning. With luck, there would be hundreds of other mornings.

  First, though, he had to go to Flagstaff. Meet with his contact from the head office of the mining company—and resign.

  He’d be back before sunset; in the meantime, he had to trust Helga and her stove poker and, indirectly, his brothers, to keep Lydia safe.

  He had so many plans, but they all began with quitting his jobs—as an agent and as a miner. He didn’t know how he’d find another, but he’d saved a lot of his earnings over the years since he’d started working. He could take care of Lydia, her aunts, Helga and the little dog.

  He dressed quickly in the darkness, took his .45 from the high wardrobe shelf where it had been since he and Lydia had come to this house, strapped it on.

  Unlike the morning before, because he wanted to make sure Snippet hadn’t taken his last breath in the night, and spare Lydia the shock of discovering him if he had, he took the kitchen stairs.

  Helga was up—did the woman ever sleep?—bustling around the kitchen. She had the coffee brewed—the aroma made Gideon’s mouth water—and the dog was still among the living.

  Eyeing Gideon, Helga said, “You really should move that bed away from the wall.”

  Gideon chuckled and nodded, crouched to greet Snippet.

  “I’ll tell the aunts there was another thunderstorm,” Helga volunteered, pouring coffee for him and handing it to him as he stood straight again, “but sooner or later, they’re going to wonder why the grass isn’t wet.”

  Gideon laughed at that, took a sip of the coffee. It was hot and strong and a damn sight better than Rowdy’s.

  By then, Helga had spotted the gun on his left hip. Noted, by the look in her eyes, the easy way he wore it, like it was part of him.

  She went a little pale. “Gideon—Mr. Yarbro—what—?”

  “Call me Gideon,” he said.

  Helga propped her hands on her ample hips. “All right, Gideon,” she replied. “Where are you going at this hour—even the mine is closed on a Sunday—wearing an I-mean-business shooting iron like that one?”

  “There’s something I have to do,” he answered, already edging toward the back door. He still had to get a horse from Rowdy’s barn, saddle it and make the two-hour ride to Flagstaff, and even though he wasn’t supposed to meet his contact until noon, he wanted some time to scout around town a little. And he meant to stop in and see Ruby, his stepmother, at her saloon. Tell her he was married and everything.

  That would please Ruby. In her own way, she’d been good to him while he was growing up. Never blamed him for letting four-year-old Rose, her only child, run in front of that wagon that day.

  “Don’t you want breakfast?” Helga fretted, following him to the door.

  Gideon shook his head, stepped off the porch.

  “But—” Helga protested.

  She went right on talking, but by then, he was too far away to hear.

  * * *

  THADDEUS BAILEY TOOK HIS WORK seriously, and when he hadn’t gotten a single response to his telegrams of inquiry concerning Gideon Yarbro, he’d gone to the streets instead. That was where the most reliable information was to be found, anyhow.

  He’d thrown the man’s name around a little, as bait, in this saloon and that one, and, as if by divine providence, not that Thaddeus believed in such things, he’d finally hooked himself a fish.

  A small, thin man in a bowler hat had perked up his ears at the mention of Yarbro, and Thaddeus, ever watchful, had noticed. Bought the man a few shots of whiskey to loosen his tongue.

  An easterner, by his speech and dress, and plainly feeling out of his element in the Wild West, the fellow had finally gotten drunk enough to admit that he was bound to Flagstaff on the morning train. Wasn’t it a coincidence that Thaddeus had mentioned the very man he’d been told to meet up with?

  With a little more whiskey and, later, by slamming the little man up against a wall in an alley and putting a knife to his throat, Thaddeus had learned the rest.

  Gideon Yarbro had been an agent with Wells Fargo and Company, fancy that, and he’d worked for Allan Pinkerton and a railroad company, too. Now, he was in the pay of a Chicago mining outfit—a big one, with deep pockets.

  The little man—Thaddeus never learned his name—was really just a clerk. It was almost a pity to cut his throat, but since he’d surely go prattling to the law, claiming he’d been assaulted, forced to hand over important paperwork to a tall man with greasy hair and a scar on the right side of his face, Thaddeus was left with no choice.

  With something like regret, he used the knife.

  Sidestepped the spurt of blood with a skill born of long experience.

  He considered reporting his discovery to Jacob Fitch, since the man clearly didn’t trust him, then decided against that course of action. Better to wait until he’d completed the job and could collect that other twenty-five hundred dollars.

  Soon as he had it, he’d be headed for San Francisco, where he meant to board the first boat for South America.

  Maybe, he thought cheerfully, he’d even run into the Yarbro twins again. Ethan and Levi, their names were. Offer his condolences on the tragic death of their younger brother, Gideon.

  * * *

  RUBY HAD AGED, BUT SHE WAS still a beautiful woman, with copious red hair and a good figure. And though the saloon wasn’t open for business, today being a Sunday, Gideon could see that it continued to make a good profit. The sign out front, above the swinging doors, had gold-gilt letters, the bar was of gleaming mahogany, hand-carved in some distant and exotic country no doubt, and there were new paintings on the walls. Not of the languishing naked women one might have expected in such an establishment, though—these were tasteful scenes of Englishmen riding to the hunt.

  Ruby had always had class.

  “Married,” Ruby marveled quietly, smiling a little. Except for that hair, she could have passed for a respectable woman, instead of a former madam and present saloon owner, dressed as she was in a tailored blue skirt and jacket with white silk cording stitched onto it in curlicues.

  Society in general might not have respected Ruby, but Gideon did.

  “Married,” he confirmed. She’d had her cook rustle up a plate of bacon and eggs, along with a pot of coffee, when he’d arrived, and he’d been grateful, since the ride from Stone Creek had left him ravenous.

  “I don’t suppose you’d consider bringing this bride of yours to meet me sometime?” Ruby asked, almost shyly. “If you ever get back to Flagstaff, I mean.”

  “I’ll bring Lydia around,” Gideon said.

  “Jack would get such a kick out of you being old enough to get married,” she went on, shaking her head a little, letting the loneliness show in her eyes f
or just a moment. She’d known Gideon’s father, Payton Yarbro, as Jack Payton; he’d used an alias, since he’d been wanted in practically every state in the Union until he’d died over near Stone Creek. Her husband’s past had been no secret to Ruby—they’d had a child together, Rose, and their grief at her death had driven them closer together, not further apart—but to her, the famous train robber had been and would always be “Jack.”

  “You ever think of getting married again, Ruby?” Gideon asked.

  Ruby gave a snort, took a sip of coffee from her fancy china cup. “Sure,” she said. “Maybe I’ll just snare me a minister, say. Wouldn’t the congregation love that?” She paused, gave a rich, throaty chuckle at the thought. “No, Gideon,” she went on presently. “At my time of life, any man I’d rope in would be after the contents of my purse and nothing else. Anyhow, your old daddy sure enough ruined me for any other man. He was something, Jack Payton was.”

  He’d been “something,” all right. Fully sixteen before he made the discovery, Gideon had been surprised as hell when he’d learned who his father was. Even more surprised to meet up with his outlaw brothers, later on.

  “You been to Rose’s grave yet?” Ruby asked when he didn’t say anything.

  Gideon shook his head. “Going there next.”

  “I bought her a new marker,” Ruby said, her voice soft and faraway now as she remembered her lost child. “It’s a white marble angel. Best to be had. And those good Christians finally ran out of room in their churchyard and had to move the fence out a ways to accommodate their worthy dead, so now she’s inside that cemetery, my Rose, like she ought to have been all along.”

  “I’m sorry, Ruby,” Gideon ground out. Any mention of Rose always cut deep, even though twenty years had passed since the accident. The scene was still as vivid in his mind as if it had taken place five minutes before.

  “Gideon,” Ruby said firmly, probably reading his expression. “You were six years old. You couldn’t have prevented what happened.”

  Gideon shoved back his chair. Turned away, hoping Ruby wouldn’t see that his eyes were wet. “Guess I’d better go,” he said, raw-voiced, and he started for the side door, by which he’d entered.

  “Gideon,” Ruby said, strongly enough to stop him in his tracks.

  He didn’t turn around.

  “You want to do the best thing you could to honor Rose’s memory? Be happy with that new bride of yours. Live, Gideon. That’s what would please your baby sister most.”

  Gideon swallowed, nodded, and left the saloon that had been his home until he was nearly grown.

  He always said, “See you,” when he left Ruby after his rare visits.

  That time, he couldn’t say anything at all.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE MURDER MADE THE FRONT PAGE of the early edition of the Phoenix newspapers, and Jacob Fitch, more interested in the financial page, might have merely skimmed the piece, if the words Copper Crown Mine hadn’t jumped out at him as if they’d been set in bold type.

  The Copper Crown was in Stone Creek.

  And so was Gideon Yarbro.

  And Lydia.

  Troubled on a visceral level, his good breakfast souring in his stomach, Jacob read the article. The victim had been identified, the piece stated, by means of the hotel room key found in one of his pockets, as one Matthew Hildebrand, of Chicago. An employee of the noted mining company, the reporter stated, Hildebrand would be sorely missed by his friends and employers, and was survived by, etc., etc.

  Cold to the marrow of his bones, Jacob laid the newspaper aside. Looked through his mother, seated across the table from him in the august Fairmont dining room, rather than at her.

  This, he thought grimly, could not be a coincidence.

  “Are you all right, dear?” his mother asked solicitously. She’d coveted this mansion ever since Jacob had issued the first of several mortgages to old Judge Fairmont, and now that she had it, sans Lydia and her aunts, she was content with her lot. Her gaze, always shrewd, dropped to the folded newspaper resting beside Jacob’s place, watched as his fingers thumped rhythmically atop it.

  The table was Mother’s favorite piece, of all the booty in the house. It was a fine antique, one of the many exquisite pieces the Judge had acquired after the fabled flight from Virginia. If Lydia’s chattering aunts could be believed, the piece had once belonged to Jefferson Davis.

  But Jacob could not think of tables and Confederate presidents, nor was he able to utter a word in reply to his mother’s question.

  Murder. A man had been murdered, and he’d been indirectly involved. Not only that, he had personally engineered a second murder, one that would soon occur, if it hadn’t already.

  As much as Jacob hated Gideon Yarbro, he suddenly, belatedly, realized he’d made a terrible mistake.

  “Dear God,” he choked out, at long last. “Dearest God, Mother, what have I done?”

  Crushing, seizing pain seared him, blazing in the center of his chest and then radiating outward, numbing his limbs, clouding his vision.

  “Jacob!” his mother cried, bolting from her chair. “Jacob!”

  He shoved back his own chair, gasping, blind to everything but this horrendous agony, tearing him apart from the inside. He felt himself fall, registered more pain, mild by comparison to the wild spasms of his heart, as his head struck the edge of the table.

  He heard his mother screeching for Maggie, the Irish serving girl she’d hired as soon as the foreclosure was complete.

  He had a brief flash of Lydia, swathed in black and weeping.

  But not for him.

  No, she was not weeping for him.

  Jacob Fitch felt his body and soul sunder then, and his last conscious thought flared, brilliantly dazzling, in his mind.

  God forgive me.

  * * *

  “WHERE IS GIDEON?” LYDIA asked happily when she came down the kitchen stairs that morning and found Helga at the stove, as usual, and Snippet mewling for his milk.

  Helga looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I’m not sure,” she said. “He—he went out, first thing.”

  Lydia bent to scoop Snippet from his bed near Helga’s feet. Nuzzled his warm puppy neck. “That’s odd,” she remarked, her voice light, since the uneasiness Helga’s words roused in her was still only a faint flutter in the pit of her stomach. She was still soaring because of the promises Gideon had made in the night, with his body as well as his words. “The mine is closed today, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Helga said, and the look on her face was so glum, so fretful, that Lydia stopped where she was, even though Snippet’s need to go outside was probably urgent.

  “What is it, Helga?” Lydia asked.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Helga replied, trying to smile.

  “Helga,” Lydia persisted, keeping her voice low so she wouldn’t awaken the aunts.

  Still trying to smile, and still failing miserably, Helga shook her head, dried her hands on her apron with anxious grabs at the cloth. “He was wearing a gun,” she finally said. “I asked where he was off to, so early on a Sunday morning, but he wouldn’t say.”

  Lydia’s heart raced, and the fluttering in her stomach took full flight, like hundreds of butterflies rising at once. “Most likely,” she said, “he’s gone hunting with Rowdy or Wyatt—”

  Helga didn’t answer.

  “Did Gideon say anything else about what he meant to do, Helga?” Lydia persisted, realizing she was clutching Snippet too tightly and loosening her grasp a little. “Anything at all?”

  “Just that there was something he had to get done,” Helga said, looking utterly defeated. “I don’t like it, Lydia. It’s been nagging at me ever since Gideon went out that door. I think we ought to tell Rowdy.”

  Lydia agreed, but she wasn’t
sure Gideon would appreciate her going to Rowdy and raising an alarm. After all, Gideon was a grown man, and even though it was rare for anyone but soldiers and officers of the law to carry a gun, now that the twentieth century was well under way, he might simply have decided to engage in some target practice. “But he didn’t say where he was headed?”

  Again, Helga shook her head.

  Lydia took Snippet outside, set him down in the grass, waited distractedly while he sniffed and waddled and finally relieved himself. Then she picked him up again and carried him back into the kitchen.

  The aunts were up and around by then, wearing their customary mourning dresses, and even though Lydia had seen them in those same garments countless times, that day, the sight disturbed her. Made her think of funerals.

  “I’m going to find Rowdy,” Helga said, resolved.

  The aunts grew round-eyed.

  Lydia gently placed Snippet back in his basket. “No,” she said. “I’ll find Rowdy. You stay and look after things here.”

  “Lydia—”

  “That,” Lydia said, opening the door to leave, “is my final word.”

  She found her brother-in-law in his office, a letter in his hand, his face almost gray, with lines chiseled into it.

  Lydia watched from the threshold as Rowdy slowly folded the one-page missive, laid it aside, and met her gaze.

  “Lydia,” he said, with an effort at affability, though his voice was hoarse. “What brings you here?”

  Lydia’s attention was fixed on the letter. “Bad news?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Rowdy answered. “Came yesterday, I reckon, but I didn’t get around to looking at the mail until a little while ago. There’s been a death in the family.”

  Lydia’s heart nearly stopped, before reason returned. Gideon had shared her bed the night before, and he’d only left that morning. No one would have had time to write and send a letter announcing that he’d died.

  “Who?” she asked tentatively.

  “No one you know,” Rowdy said. “My brother Nick—Wyatt’s and Gideon’s, too, of course—died a couple of weeks ago, of consumption.”