In Want of a Wife

by Jo Goodman

  Jane thought about it. “No. We did not walk together. He was suddenly there in my path and then he wasn’t.”

  “Jackson limps. He fell halfway out of his saddle during a cattle drive, got his foot caught in the stirrup, and was dragged a piece before Gideon could help him. He put his knee out. It never set right with him after that.” Morgan shrugged. “The limp’s a good distinguishing feature. Otherwise, it’d be hard to describe them in enough detail to set them apart.”

  “All right, but everyone at the table except Jem offered a name, and each name belonged to someone who lives in or around Bitter Springs. Your brothers don’t, do they?”

  “No. The last I knew they were living in Kansas.”

  “That’s quite a way off. Is Zetta Lee there now?”

  “Not that I know of. I think she’s still in Lander.”

  “So they might have come back this way to visit her.”

  “Possible, I suppose, but there’s no love lost between them and Zetta Lee either. And before you ask, the answer is: I don’t know. Neither of them ever said a word to me that makes me think Zetta Lee had them in her bed. Same as I never said a word to them. There’s enough other reasons they’d as soon choke her as look at her.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “About choking her? I do.”

  “So your brother might be here to see you?”

  “Probably.”

  Jane gave Sophie a little kick and urged her forward when Morgan and his gelding began to move across the ridge. “Where are we going?”

  He pointed to the next ridge where a stand of pines offered shelter under their broad, white canopy. “We can stretch our legs over there, walk around a bit where the snow’s not so deep. I brought some extra shells. I thought you might like to have a chance to shoot.”

  “Are you certain you want to give me a weapon, Morgan? I might well turn it on you.”

  Morgan said nothing.

  Jane pulled Sophie up.

  Morgan looked over his shoulder and cocked an eyebrow at her. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “When you tell why you think it might have been one of your brothers I met in town. There is something missing because it makes no sense. If it is a brother, why wouldn’t he make himself known to you?”

  “Either one of them would have their reasons.”

  “Suppose you tell me one.”

  “The best I can figure is that he doesn’t want witnesses.”

  “Witnesses to what? Greeting you?”

  “Killing me.”

  Jane stared at him, mouth parted.

  “You’re gaping,” said Morgan.

  Nodding, Jane brought Sophie abreast of him. “I am not certain what I want to say to you, Morgan Longstreet, so I am going to sort it out before I say things I shouldn’t.” She took a deep, calming breath. “Right now, for all kinds of reasons, I am in favor of that shooting lesson.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Morgan opened the door for Jane and followed her into Cobb Bridger’s office. They both stamped snow off their feet at the entrance, although Jane was more delicate about it.

  From behind his desk, Cobb dropped his chair onto all four of its legs and stood. He lifted his hat to greet Jane. “An unexpected pleasure, Mrs. Longstreet.” His smile faded as he looked at Morgan. “Let’s just say it’s unexpected.”

  “I was thinking the same,” said Morgan.

  Jane looked from one to the other and shook her head. “Now that you two have observed the niceties of social convention . . .”

  Chuckling, Cobb came around his desk and showed Jane to a chair in front of it. “Would you like to take off your coat?”

  Morgan said, “We’re not going to be here that long.”

  Jane said, “Thank you, Marshal. Yes, I’d like that. After the ride into town, it feels rather cozy in here.” She unbuttoned her coat, but when Cobb stepped forward to help her out of it, Morgan warned him off with a glare and did it himself. Jane pretended she didn’t know what had happened. Instead of taking the chair Cobb had offered, she walked over to where the notices of wanted men, and one wanted woman, were tacked on the wall.

  “Morgan told me about this,” she said. “I cannot decide if it is impressive or merely sad.” She looked back at Cobb. “But I don’t suppose you regard it in either light.”

  “No, ma’am. It’s my job.”

  Morgan said, “She wanted to see it. Make sure I wasn’t up there.”

  “That’s a lie,” said Jane. “I wanted to see it. Period.”

  Cobb said, “Am I getting wind of some kind of domestic dispute here? Because if that’s the case, you probably don’t want me in the middle of it. Mrs. Sterling, now, she’s the one who delights in that sort of thing, and I know she’s at the Pennyroyal because I just came from having lunch at the hotel.”

  Morgan shook his head and said flatly, “Jane knows.”

  “She knows,” Cobb said with as little inflection. His eyebrows lifted. “She knows?”

  “Mmm-hmm. She does. I told her.”

  “When?”

  “Not that it matters, but eight or so days ago.”

  “Six,” Jane said as she continued to study the Wanted Wall.

  “I guess it does matter,” said Cobb.

  Morgan shrugged. “Feels like eight.”

  Looking at Jane’s stiff back, Cobb spoke softly to Morgan. “I know that feeling.”

  One corner of Morgan’s mouth lifted. “I bet you do.”

  Jane turned around and faced both men, but she addressed Cobb. “I wonder what your wife would say if she learned you were someone other than she thought you were.”

  Humor tugged at Cobb Bridger’s lips. “It gives me no pleasure to say so, Mrs. Longstreet, but I can pretty much recite what she said chapter and verse. I had a similar problem. That’s why I told Morgan he should let you know straightaway.”

  “You never told me that,” said Morgan.

  “Didn’t I? Could be because I knew you wouldn’t be receptive to hearing it from me. I sure thought about it enough.”

  Jane said, “You two can sort that out later. It certainly seems you have enough in common to forge a sustainable friendship.”

  Cobb scratched behind his ear. “Maybe so.”

  “Jury’s still out,” Morgan said.

  Jane gave her husband a pointed look.

  “Maybe so,” he said.

  Cobb laughed outright and pointed to the chairs again. “Please. Sit down and tell me why you’re really here.”

  Morgan and Jane sat. Both declined Cobb’s offer of coffee, and he did not pour any for himself. He returned to his chair and pushed a book and a few papers out of the way.

  Jane folded her hands in her lap and began. “The last time I was in town, I met someone who Morgan believes might have been one of his brothers. Morgan did not see him, so we can’t be sure.” She described the meeting outside Mrs. Garvin’s shop and how it meant so little to her that she mentioned it only in passing to her husband. “Morgan and I thought you should know in the event that he returns to Bitter Springs.”

  Cobb’s attention shifted to Morgan. “Is that right?”

  “My wife just said so, didn’t she?”

  Jane interjected, “Morgan said he gave you his word that he would tell you if something happened that concerns you and the town.”

  “He remembers what I told him,” Morgan said. “He’s just having trouble believing my word is good.”

  Cobb sighed heavily. “I’m not questioning anyone’s word. I guess I’m a little surprised you’re coming forward when all you have is suspicion. When I tried to get you to go along with me before, you weren’t having any part of it.”

  Jane asked, “When was this?”

  “He’s talking about what happened to Jem,” said Morgan. “He had a lot of questions for me when I got here. He thought then that one or two of the men who beat up Jem could have been Gideon or Jack.”

  “Or part of their gang,” Cobb said
. “Your husband couldn’t confirm it.”

  “I don’t know that they have a gang. In the beginning, there were only the three of us. We were brothers, not much of anything else, not then. That’s how I remember it . . .”

  • • •

  “It’s not like Ham’s safe,” Morgan said, joining Gideon and Jack outside on the boardwalk. They stood there for a time, silent and reflective, in front of the Cumberland Bank in Rock Springs until Gideon thought they should move on.

  “No point in attracting attention,” he said. He pointed to the saloon across the way. “Let’s go to Angel’s. Think this through.”

  They chose a table out of the way even though it was the middle of the afternoon and the saloon offered a lot of empty tables. Gideon and Jack had a pint of whiskey to share. Morgan had a beer.

  “Tell us about it,” said Gideon. “Zetta Lee said it was like Daddy’s.”

  “Last time she was here, it might have been. Or it could be they just look alike to her.” Morgan gave his brothers a frank look. “Or, and here’s what I’m really thinking is the truth, she just said that to get us here.”

  “So what are you saying? We should go back with nothing to show for it?”

  “I didn’t say it, but yes, that’s what we should do.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Jack. “And Zetta Lee sure isn’t going to like it.”

  Morgan lifted his beer and drank. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Jesus,” said Gideon, rolling his dark eyes. “You look like you’re about twelve when you do that. If you’d grow some hair on your lip and chin it would take care of that foam for you. I should have bought you a sarsaparilla.”

  “Would have rather had a sarsaparilla. This beer’s sour.”

  Jack said, “Forget about that. Can you do it, Ginger Pie?” He held up his hands, palms out, when Morgan scowled at him. “Sorry, but Gideon’s right. You look about twelve. So, can you?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a Newell and Chester. I don’t have a feel for what it might be like. It could take longer than usual.”

  “What’s that?” asked Gideon. “It takes forty minutes instead of fifteen? We go in at night, like we always do. Bankers don’t expect that. It ain’t been done until we done it, and no one knows it’s us. There is no one looking out for the place come nightfall. We saw that plain enough for ourselves last night.”

  “That doesn’t mean there’s no risk,” said Morgan. “There are still people around. Most of them in and out of this saloon.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the Cumberland Bank. “You haven’t forgotten the proximity, have you?”

  Jack snorted softly. “We ain’t virgins staring at a twelve-inch pecker. We’ve done this before. Three times.”

  “Not with a Newell and Chester. I’m not going in there.”

  Gideon and Jack did not miss a beat. They spoke as one. “The hell you’re not.”

  That night they left Rock Springs with a little more than fourteen hundred dollars from the Cumberland Bank in their saddlebags. No one saw or heard them. Mr. Horatio Cumberland discovered the theft the following morning when he opened the safe to put cash in the tellers’ drawers. He remarked that it was unnaturally thoughtful of the thief to shut the safe after relieving it of its cash contents. No documents were stolen, no jewelry. The office was left tidy, too. He mused aloud that if he had to be robbed, it was better done by a man with a light touch than one with four sticks of dynamite. Mr. Cumberland hired someone that afternoon to stay in the bank at night until the new safe was delivered.

  It had taken Morgan twenty-seven minutes to open the safe once he was kneeling in front of it. He might have done it in less time, but the gun Gideon held to his head while Jack stood guard made his feel for the tumblers a slippery thing.

  The Cumberland Bank robbery was the last time they worked alone. Gideon and Jack decided that they needed help in the event that Morgan could not be counted on to do his part. Gideon did not relish the idea of turning his gun on Morgan again; for that matter, neither did Jack. They agreed it was best done by a third party who had never heard Morgan answer to “Ginger Pie.”

  Morgan opened two more safes for them, one in Leadville, Colorado, the other in Logan, Utah, and still it wasn’t enough. Their number grew to six, and Gideon and Jack had to hold the reins tight on their little group as dissension grew. Zetta Lee, too, thought they could take more risks and make Morgan’s role less important. They set a bonfire in the middle of the night on the Union Pacific tracks west of Rock Springs and allowed Morgan ten minutes to open the safe in the mail car. At eight minutes Gideon started setting the charges. At nine, Jack lit the fuses. Morgan felt his bones rattle when the safe blew. He was standing forty feet away by then, in the flickering light of the distant bonfire, apologizing to the mail clerks for destroying their car. His brothers dragged him off as soon as the payroll money was packed away.

  The postal clerks would tell the Uinta County sheriff and the detectives who rode with the Union Pacific that they felt a little sorry for the redheaded fellow who did his best to crack the safe. Hard to work, they said, under the kind of pressure he faced, what with the six-and-one-half-inch barrel of a Remington pointed at the base of his brain. The clerks said they never feared for their lives; no one ever asked them to open the safe. It seemed the only person that might meet his maker that night was the young’un.

  Morgan’s red hair and youthful features were the two clues that circulated throughout the territories and Colorado. Posses were formed. The Union Pacific sent a special investigator to assist in gathering information. They were still compiling a list of robberies where safes had been cracked when word reached them that the Jones Prescott Bank in Cheyenne had been broken into two nights earlier. It was the freshest trail; they decided to follow.

  The raid on the bank had been made while it was still dark, but dawn was breaking as the robbers were leaving town. There were witnesses, not to the robbery, but to the departure. Two whores sharing a cigarillo on the second floor balcony of the Flower Garden saw six men riding out. Five of them wore a hat. The one who didn’t, the redheaded boy, looked up as they were passing, and smiled at them. They told Benton Sterling, the marshal from Bitter Springs who was part of the posse by then, that looking on that boy’s smile was the purest pleasure they had known, excepting the time they entertained Duke Forte when he came through town with his trinkets and toys.

  It seemed to them, they added, that the boy wanted to be noticed. Why else would he be holding his hat instead of wearing it? Why else would he look up and give them a smile so full of glory it made them blink?

  It was an observation worth considering, Benton Sterling thought.

  There were two more robberies before the law narrowed the search in and around Lander. As best the detective for the Union Pacific could tell, the first robbery for this gang had likely been the Walker Trust. No one had reported a safecracking, not one that was done without explosives, before that. Once they arrived in Lander, it was inevitable that they would finally find Morgan Longstreet.

  The eight-man posse had to admit in court that Mr. Longstreet was more or less hiding in plain sight. They came across him herding cows toward a watering hole on the Welling homestead, and he didn’t raise an eyebrow as they approached. Benton Sterling would testify that Morgan Longstreet not only surrendered his rifle and his sidearm, he looked as if he were relieved to see them.

  That wasn’t true of Gideon and Jackson Welling or the other three men they found working the ranch. Shots were fired before the Union Pacific’s investigator could state why they were there. It seemed the adage was true: a guilty conscience needed no accuser.

  A man named Paul Viola was killed when the deputies returned fire. No one else was hurt. Zetta Lee Welling came out on the porch wearing an ice blue taffeta dress and three ropes of pearls around her neck. She had a shotgun in her hand and a feral look in her eye that stopped every man except Morgan Longstree
t in his tracks. Morgan’s long stride carried him up to the porch while no one else was moving or even paying attention to him. He wrested the shotgun from Zetta Lee’s hands, emptied it, and tossed it into the yard at Benton Sterling’s feet.

  Gideon and Jackson Welling gave up their guns. It was Zetta Lee who encouraged it. Morgan had gone crazy, she told them. Her boys did not need to die because of it. Once their guns were on the ground, the other two men dropped their weapons as well.

  They were taken into custody. The posse searched the house, but they never came across money that would point to the robberies. Zetta Lee told her sons to go with the law and she would arrange for lawyers and their defense. She knew they were innocent. Everyone else would know it, too.

  • • •

  Morgan straight-armed himself out of his chair and went over to the stove to take Cobb up on his offer of coffee. He held up the pot, but he had no takers. Jane’s lips were pressed together. It was how she had collected herself the first time he’d told her the story. He had not wanted her here, but she would have it no other way. It was important to her that Cobb Bridger heard the story in its entirety, not the broad strokes that Morgan had given him when he first came to Bitter Springs. She didn’t trust him to say it all, and Morgan knew she was right. The case she made was dead-on, but it did not follow that he was comfortable owning it.

  She’d had her back up that night, pointing out all the ways in which circumstances mitigated his participation in the robberies. And then she’d set her hands on her hips and told him that he kept his secrets because he would rather have people think the worst of him, or think nothing at all. She even cursed some. She cried a little, too. It broke his heart to see that.

  She never talked once about leaving him, though. She went after him like she was a hammer and he was a nail. It felt good that she cared so much, and when he told her that, she flew at him again, this time calling him a horse’s ass because of course she cared so much. She loved him. Horse’s ass and all.

  Recalling that, Morgan had a faint smile on his face as he returned to his chair. “You pretty much know how it turned out from there, Bridger. Zetta Lee came forward but not in the defense of anyone but herself. She claimed we had stolen from her right after Ham died and that opening his safe was surely what put us on the road to ruin.” Morgan chuckled under his breath, although the sound had an edge to it. “Road to ruin. She really talked like that. Gideon and Jack pointed fingers back at her, but no one took them seriously, especially when I did not support them. I reckon that if they’re around, it’s because they want their pound of flesh.”