by Lynda J. Cox
Baby’s black nose emerged from the blanket and she sighed.
“Good night, Baby. Good night, Colt,” Amelia whispered, and pulled the door shut.
Chapter Nine
Amelia stood for a long moment, staring. Disbelief and amusement vied within her and she couldn’t hide her smile. Saul, Jenny, and Colt sat on a glider swing at the edge of her herb garden and all three were grinning from ear to ear. Baby gamboled in the sagebrush and scrub grasses near the house, chasing grasshoppers.
The misting rain of the previous day had given way to bright sunshine and a cool breeze. The dark slopes of the Medicine Bow were more sharply defined in the crystal-clear air, seeming to be closer. Meadowlarks celebrated the sunshine with their liquid trilling, matched with the happy chirruping of several small brown sparrows. Drops of water glistened in the sunlight, casting a myriad of tiny rainbows throughout the small herb garden.
“Happy birthday, Amy,” Saul said.
Colt moved over a little on the seat. “Try it out.”
Wordless, Amelia sat down. Saul kicked and set the glider in motion. Amelia smiled at Colt. “Thank you. This is very nice.”
He nodded. “Happy birthday.”
A moment later Colt craned his head to the road approaching the house. His eyes narrowed and his expression froze even as he came to his feet. Amelia twisted around on the seat, and spied Marshal Taylor riding toward them.
She stood, and pulled Jenny off the glider. “Take Baby, go on into the house, and get cleaned up for dinner.” She gave Jenny a hug. “Thank you, Jenny. I was getting a little cross when you wouldn’t let me out of the house all morning, but now I know why. The three of you had a very nice surprise for me.”
Taylor drew rein on his black gelding, nearly on top of Colt. He tipped his hat to Amelia but his gaze was fixed on Colt. “You were in town yesterday, Evans.”
It wasn’t a question. Amelia moved next to Colt.
“Yeah.” His voice wasn’t as icy as the last time, Amelia suspected, because Saul stood a few feet away, watching them with wide eyes and bigger ears.
“You bought a rifle and rounds,” the marshal noted.
“Yeah.” Colt’s voice was quiet.
“It’s my rifle, Marshal,” Saul said. “Colt’s going to teach me how to shoot.”
Taylor’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. “Surprised you didn’t buy him a revolver. That’s your weapon of choice and you seem to be fairly proficient with one.”
The sarcasm in the marshal’s voice sent a chill skittering up Amelia’s back.
“I don’t want a revolver.” Saul scuffed the damp ground with the toe of his shoe, not looking anywhere but at the ground. “Not anymore.”
Colt didn’t say a word, but the air thrummed with his restrained anger. He seemed carved of marble.
Taylor’s gaze slid momentarily to Amelia. “You know about this, Amy?”
Amelia nodded. “Yes, Saul and Colt told me last night when they got home.” She dropped a hand onto Saul’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go into the house and help your sister set the table for dinner?”
“But, Amy…”
Colt snapped his head around to Saul and leveled a cold stare at him. Saul heaved a sigh and shuffled to the house. He closed the door with more force than necessary, and Amelia winced.
“You got a reason to be out here, Marshal, or you just passing this way and decided to drop in?” With Saul in the house, Colt’s acrid sarcasm returned.
“Where was Colt last night, Amy?”
“I was—”
“I asked Amy.” Taylor cut him off. “Where was he last night?”
Amelia glanced from Colt to the marshal. “I went to bed about midnight. Colt was here then, asleep. I woke up at six and the three of them were already awake. Jenny had to keep me in the house until Saul and Colt said I could come out.” She gestured to the new glider. “They were setting the glider in the yard.”
The marshal jerked his head at the glider, his unforgiving gaze leveled on Colt. “You managed that with your arm in a sling?”
“Yeah, I did—with Saul’s help. What’s this all about, Marshal?”
“So there were at least five-and-a-half hours when you can’t account for your time last night.” Taylor leaned an elbow on the saddle horn. “Unless you want to tell me you were sleeping the whole time.”
“I get the feeling that if I said I was, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
“You’re right on that score.” The black gelding took a step forward, forcing Colt and Amelia to move back. “I’ve got a dead man in town, shot with one bullet through the heart, and two of Deb English’s girls swear they saw you in town, around three in the morning.”
Amelia’s heart wrenched. She shook her head. “Two girls from a brothel say they saw him there?”
“I wasn’t there, Amy.” The words sounded forced out and Colt was pale under his tanned complexion.
“Now, I’m thinking,” Taylor went on, as smooth as silk, “if you can manage, even with Saul’s help, to get that glider swing up, you can manage to saddle a horse, spend a few hours with a couple of whores, and even shoot a man dead with your arm in a sling.”
Amelia stiffened. Taylor’s voice had the quality of granite, just as hard and unyielding.
The marshal dipped his head to Colt’s arm secured in the sling. “That the hand you shoot with?”
“No.” Granite clashed on granite in Colt’s response.
“One shot, through the heart, quick and clean. That’s how you like to do your killing, isn’t it, Evans?”
Colt shook his head. “Marshal, you want to make sure Amy tells me to hit the road, fine, you go on and get nailed to the counter and tell her I was in a brothel with a couple of whores last night. But don’t add to the lie and tell her I killed a man when I didn’t. And don’t come here asking her where I was with the expectation that she’ll lie for me, because I won’t let her do that.” Icy anger gave depth to his voice. “I don’t know who did kill that man, but it wasn’t me. I’ve got enough I’ll answer for to the Almighty, don’t add any more that I ain’t done.” He turned to Amy. “I wasn’t there, Amy. I never left the house last night.”
She searched his face, aching at the desperate pleading of his expression. “Hold your hand out, Colt.”
“What?”
“Hold your hand out,” she repeated. Her heart clenched in fear and the hope he wasn’t lying.
He held a perfectly steady hand out to her. Without hesitation or doubt, she took his hand into hers. “He wasn’t there, Marshal.”
Taylor jerked his head back, and then slowly straightened in the saddle. “Now, how do you know that, Amy?”
“I know. He wasn’t there last night.”
Taylor tugged on the horse’s reins, and backed away from them. “No one saw the shooter this time. But I’m patient. I don’t like people being killed in my town, and I will find out who did it. The question then will be if you still rate a new rope with me, Evans.”
He kicked his heels into the black gelding’s sides and was gone.
Colt pulled his hand free of Amelia’s grasp and punched a leg of the glider frame. He spun around. “I wasn’t in town at three in the morning.”
“I know that.”
Her conviction rocked Colt. “How the hell do you know that? What made you so certain all of a sudden?”
The intensity of her smile was enough to dim the sun. “You don’t have the shakes,” she said.
Colt shook his head. “You remembered that?”
“Yes.” She knit her brow. “What did he mean by rating a new rope?”
Colt stared off into the pine-blackened slopes. He squinted against the sunlight glittering on the white granite of the peaks above the tree-line. “It means when he finally gets around to figuring out how to convince the people of this town to lynch me, he’s going to add a final insult by using a rope that’s already been used to hang another man.” Bitterness added a biting t
aste to the words. “Supposed to use a new rope for any man condemned to die by hanging.”
“He’s not going to hang you,” Amelia said, and placed her hand on his arm.
He studied the small hand. “Yeah?” He met Amelia’s gaze before tilting his head in the direction Taylor had taken. “Tell him that.”
Amelia smiled again, a new depth and intensity to those bluebonnet eyes. “I think I will tell him that and a few other things too.”
****
“Amy, I don’t think Colt’s been honest with us.”
Amelia glanced down at her younger brother. At least he had stopped sulking over not being allowed to drive the wagon into town that morning. “What makes you say that, young man? That’s a terrible thing to say about anyone.”
“I just think he’s pretending that he isn’t really a shootist.”
“Why do you think that?” Her heart climbed into her throat, making it hard to swallow.
“Amy, I’m not stupid. Marshal Taylor thinks he is—why else would he have come out to the house yesterday after that man was shot?—all the people in church were talking about him, and when we were at Burlington’s, I heard someone say he was. Is he? I think he is, even if Kyla says her dad told her he isn’t.”
Amelia shook her head. No matter how she answered, it wouldn’t be truthful. “Really, Saul, that’s one of the most ridiculous things you’ve asked in a while.” She reined the horse in outside of Burlington’s General Store.
“I’m just telling you what I think.” He stood up, grabbing Jenny’s hand.
Amelia caught Saul’s arm before he bailed from the wagon. “You keep an eye on your sister.” She handed him two coins. “Take her over to Mr. Milton’s candy store. There’s a penny for both of you.”
Saul helped Jenny from the back of the wagon. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“I’ll be right down the street at Marshal Taylor’s office.”
“Are you going to talk about Colt?”
“What we talk about is none of your business, young man. But so you don’t get any more ridiculous ideas, Dolly and Buttercup both need to have a calf. I need to talk to Marshal Taylor about that.” And she had other more important things—things that had nothing to do with getting Dolly and Buttercup bred—to discuss with him.
Amelia strode down the boardwalk, nodding to polite greetings. Mrs. Hamilton and Mrs. Porter stood outside of Wes Carr’s butcher shop with their heads close together. When Amelia approached them, they ceased their conversation and gave her cool nods. Amelia returned the greeting but continued walking.
As Amelia passed, Mrs. Porter murmured to her friend, “Reverend McCollister must be turning in his grave. Amy harboring such a dangerous man.”
“Her mother would be mortified,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “Why, I’ve heard, he sleeps in her bed.”
Amelia ground her teeth to keep silent. She straightened her shoulders, and marched past the two matrons. The devil take you, Donnie Morris. The only way either of them could know that is if you told your mother, and she proceeded to tell the whole town. And while Daddy might be turning in his grave if he knew, it wouldn’t be because Colt is dangerous.
Taylor’s horse, tied to the hitching rail outside of the marshal’s office, dozed in the warm afternoon sunlight. Amelia pushed the door open and stormed in.
“Amy.” Taylor pulled his feet from the desktop and rose. “Is everything all right?”
“No.”
Taylor pulled a gun belt from the coat-tree behind him and began to buckle it around his waist.
“You don’t need that, Marshal Taylor.” Amelia leaned over the marshal’s desk and braced her palms on the desktop. “I know Colt wasn’t in town the other night, regardless of what those…those women may have said.”
Taylor returned the gun belt to its peg, and crossed his arms over his chest. “What makes you so certain?”
“Colt told me that every time he’s forced to kill a man…”
“Forced?” The disbelief in Taylor’s voice grated like sandpaper.
Undaunted, Amelia repeated, “…forced to kill a man, he gets the shakes. He said he has to drink until he passes out for several days because he can’t sleep otherwise. He didn’t touch a drop of whiskey last night, and when I checked on him—like I check on Saul before I go to bed in Jenny’s room—he was sound asleep. He can’t sleep after he’s been forced to kill a man.”
Taylor expelled a breath. “And you believe him?”
“He’s given me no reason to doubt him.” She straightened, and tugged at the front of her dress. “Marshal, the only lie I know for certain he’s told is to tell Saul that he isn’t the famous shootist Colt Evans, that he just has the same name as that man.”
Taylor’s arms dropped. “I would have thought…”
“You thought wrong if you thought Colt would tell Saul he is a shootist. How could any man want a young, impressionable boy to think that killing others is something to be emulated?” Amelia shook her head. “Colt said being a gunfighter isn’t living, it’s more like just surviving.”
Taylor raked his hands through his graying, sandy-brown hair. “Amy, when Jenny was born, your parents asked Rachel and me to look after all of you should anything happen to them. Your father was one of my closest friends, so I take that promise I made to him damn serious. Colt Evans is just trouble—trouble for you and Saul and Jenny.”
“Have you seen him with Jenny?” Not giving him a chance to answer, she plunged on. “He is so good with her and she adores him. Marshal, I know Colt wasn’t in town two nights ago. I know, deep in my heart, Colt isn’t the gunfighter the whole world sees. He’s just a man who had to pick up a gun when he was thirteen to survive.”
The marshal’s jaw clenched. “You’re infatuated with him.”
Amelia flung her head back. “Now that sounds like something my father would say to me. No, Marshal, I’m not infatuated with him. Infatuation is what I felt for Donnie Morris. This is different.”
Taylor walked to the windows at the front of the jail. For a long moment, he kept his back to her. When he finally turned, his face was set in harsh, uncompromising lines. “I’m going to sound like your father again. Has he done anything to you?”
Heat seared Amelia’s face. “That is none of your business.”
“I thought so,” the marshal breathed. “Amy, I can’t say this enough. That man is trouble. He’s going to bring you nothing but heartache. Send him on his way and marry Donnie Morris.”
“No.” Amelia shook with her audacity. All her life she had done what she had been told, never questioning any authority. “I have had to be both mother and father to Saul and Jenny for the past seven months. I had to grow up overnight, become an adult, and make adult decisions. I have no desire to marry Donnie Morris, nor will I send Colt on his way. If he wants to leave, I won’t try to stop him, but I will not make him leave.”
“You think you’re in love with him?”
“If what I’m feeling for him is love, then yes, I’m in love with him.” Amelia held her hands out, palms up. “I just know that Colt Evans is a good man. He has a good heart, with a conscience that tortures him every time he is forced to kill another man. I also know Jenny adores him and Saul looks up to him.”
“Saul looks up to a cold-blooded killer, a man no better than the men who killed your parents. He’s lower than those men. He kills because he can. Your parents were robbed when they were killed.”
“How dare you compare Colt to those animals!”
“I dare because he is lower than them. He isn’t forced into killing. Finish growing up, Amy, and see him for what he is. He’s a cold-blooded killer.”
“So was my father, and you respected him. You called him your friend. But before your friend was Phillip McCollister, the Reverend Phillip McCollister, adored and loved minister in the Methodist Church, my father was Brimstone Phillips.” Amelia marched over to him. “Unless you have a warrant for Colt’s arrest with conclusive
proof he shot and killed that man the other night, don’t you ever come back to my home. Is that clear enough?” She punctuated her words with a finger jabbed at Taylor’s chest. “Don’t you ever come back.”
Stunned with her own daring, Amelia backed away from Taylor, spun on a heel, and dashed across the room.
“Amy!”
Amelia flung the door open and rushed headlong into Rachel Taylor, nearly toppling the smaller woman. Blinking back angry tears, Amelia murmured, “I’m so sorry,” and turned to flee across the street.
Rachel grabbed her elbow. “Amy, what’s the matter?” she asked, her brow furrowed.
Amelia shook her head. She shot a glance over her shoulder at the marshal’s office. “Nothing, Mrs. Taylor. Please, I have to find Saul and Jenny and get home.”
Rachel released her. “Is everything all right out at your place?”
“Why does everyone in this town assume that something is wrong at my home?” Amelia waved at the buildings and the citizens going about their business. “Why does everyone in this place have to assume because I have an injured man at my home that there is something wrong? Why can’t people understand that injured man at my home is no danger to me or to Saul and Jenny?”
“Maybe because that man is a shootist, a known killer,” Rachel suggested gently. “And maybe I assumed such a thing because you flew out of Harrison’s office as if something had upset you terribly.” A grin crossed the other woman’s elfin features. “Should I go box my husband’s ears for something he said to you?”
“Yes,” Amelia muttered. The mischievous smile on Rachel Taylor’s face and the mental image of the tiny woman boxing her tall, imposing husband’s ears took the edge from her anger. She sighed. “No, you don’t need to box his ears. Your husband is only doing what he thinks is best.” Amelia glanced across Federal Avenue.
On the other side of the dusty street, Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Hamilton stood staring at them. Amelia’s hands balled into fists. Anger and frustration boiled out in her words. “Did you ever do anything you knew was the right thing, even though everyone else around you was telling you it was the wrong thing to do?”
