Marrying Miss Marshal

by Lacy Williams

  It had been dark when Danna had brought her up here for the night. If she’d left, she probably wouldn’t have gotten far. But why would she go?

  Questions swirled in Danna’s mind as she raced back outside and clomped down the steps, her boots echoing loudly in the quiet darkness.

  She slipped in between the small space between the stairway that led up to her rooms and the outside wall of the milliner’s building, pausing before she reached the boardwalk.

  Something felt wrong. Call it instinct, call it something else, but her skin crawled and she felt in her bones that something was going on tonight. Something that she hadn’t felt two minutes ago when she’d gone upstairs.

  Taking her time, just like Fred had taught her, Danna peeked around the corner of the building, but the street was empty, the buildings dark. Yet something still wasn’t right.

  Danna crept down the street, taking care to stay in the shadows under the building awnings, keeping her bootsteps muted against the boardwalk.

  As she crossed Third Street, she thought she glimpsed a flash of light from inside the Calvin Bank and Trust. She froze, eyes glued to the front window. Was someone inside? Straining her ears, Danna heard a soft whicker. A horse?

  Everything was still. Then—there. The flash of light came again.

  From this distance, she couldn’t make out any details through the bank windows. She needed to get closer.

  A prickle of unease skittered up the back of her neck, a sure sign that something was wrong.

  She needed to be sure, needed to see into the bank. She crouched down and crept along the boardwalk, keeping close to the front of the grocery. She jumped when something warm bumped into her leg, but was able to stifle a scream.

  “Wrong Tree!” She hissed the dog’s name, and he sat in front of her. He was supposed to be at the livery with Will. “Go home.” He looked up with his tongue lolling and tail sweeping the dirt-packed lane. “Go. Home.”

  He whined, and turned his head away from the jailhouse, toward the saloon across Third Street from the grocery.

  “I don’t have time to deal with you right now,” she hissed, and tried grasping the piece of rope around his neck to usher him a few steps toward the jail, but he immediately turned back toward the saloon, and this time he barked.

  “Hush!”

  Danna released him, ignored him when he galloped away. She had work to do.

  The bank had two entry points that she knew of. The main customer entrance at the front, as well as the employee entrance at the rear. Both of those doors were on the east side of the building, so it was possible someone could be watching both exits at once from the alley between the bank and the doctor’s office next door. It would make it harder for her to get near the building.

  And the bank’s entire front wall was composed of large windows. If they had a sentry inside, there would be no sneaking up on the building from Main Street.

  The closest she could hope to get without being seen was the doctor’s office. And it had no windows that looked toward the bank.

  But it was only one story tall. If she could get to the roof, she could use her field glasses to see into the bank. And she’d have her rifle in case she needed it.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but she had to try. She didn’t have time to track down Chas at the hotel if the bank was being robbed.

  Chas had had a bad feeling all evening that Hank Lewis was in town. This was his third patrol through Calvin’s streets tonight, and he was exhausted, his eyes tired from scouring the shadows and darkness for trouble that might or might not be there. He’d never told Danna about the conversation he overheard at the party, so he’d been taking extra patrols on his own.

  Everything was quiet, the streets deserted, the saloons finally having closed down for the night.

  Then he saw movement on top of one of the buildings a few blocks down.

  Heart pounding, Chas pulled his pistol from his gun belt and ran across Main Street, then jumped up onto the boardwalk. He chose the building on his left simply for its nearness—the other building had an empty lot next to it, and he wasn’t keen to walk across the open land.

  At the corner of the bank building, he paused with his back against the bricks, beside the bank of windows that stretched all the way across the front of the building to its front door.

  Noise from inside the building surprised him into stillness. Scuffling…and voices.

  From this position, Chas couldn’t get a look at the roof of the building next door. It would require him to cross in front of the five large windows overlooking the boardwalk. Was there a lookout up there? Was this a bank robbery?

  Chas peeked around the corner and through the window closest to him. He thought he could make out some movement, but the inside of the building was too dark for him to be sure.

  The soft neigh of a horse brought his head up. Were the robbers ready to move out if they robbed the bank? If this was Hank Lewis and his gang, Chas needed to stop them.

  But he didn’t have time to rouse the marshal from her sleep.

  Ducking low, he half-crawled, half-shuffled across the boardwalk toward the front door of the bank, pistol in hand. If he could just get a glimpse inside…see the layout of the bank, or if there was a sentry standing just inside the windows…

  From this angle down low, and farther along the bank building, he could now see the roof of the building next door. He caught a flash of movement. Was that a hat? A glint of moonlight on metal told him there was a weapon up there. Then the figure shifted and he caught a glimpse of a dark braid under the hat.

  Danna? No—it couldn’t be!

  He blinked, straining his eyes for another look, but he couldn’t see anything. Had it really been her, or just an illusion prompted by his imagination?

  Before he could raise his head above the windowsill to try and see inside, a shot rang out, followed by the sound of breaking glass.

  He froze, his mind going back to the day Julia had died.

  Julia fell to the ground at his feet, blood seeping from underneath her crumpled body. He followed her to the ground, moaning her name.

  But she didn’t hear him. She was already gone.

  Danna took her carefully aimed shot and watched the person-size shadow disappear from the bank’s side window at the same time it shattered. Had she hit him?

  She left her rifle on the doc’s rooftop—out of the way of any would-be robbers—and dangled her feet off the edge, then dropped. Landing in a crouch, she spun to face the man on horseback who’d been watching three other horses, in time to see a blur of snarling dark fur launch across the alleyway.

  Wrong Tree!

  Horses whinnied and then thundered off, hoofbeats fading into the night. She hoped the lookout that had been posted with them was gone, too. Thank you, Wrong Tree!

  She fumbled for her pistol, moving toward the broken window. With a little hop, she vaulted the lip and slammed right into a moving body.

  A dog barked. Horses whinnied. Then came the sound of hooves pounding against the dirt-packed streets.

  Chas fought the paralysis—mental and physical—that held him pinned in a ball on the boardwalk. All he could see was Julia’s form crumpled before him; his bloodstained hands…

  “We got comp’ny!”

  The muffled shout shook Chas from the dark place he’d sunk into, his memories of the day Julia died.

  A woman’s shriek brought him to his feet, though it almost cost him his last meal. He shook with the adrenaline and revulsion coursing through him.

  He clutched his pistol against his shoulder, knowing he had to go in there. He couldn’t save Julia, but he could rescue Danna.

  He used his elbow to break the glass in the window, and then rolled over the sill.

  It was even darker inside the building than out. He could make out sounds of scrabbling to his right and started to step in that direction when he was tackled from behind.

  Danna grappled with the man trying to take
her arm off, using both her shoulder and elbow to try to find a bit of leverage. The man grunted, but instead of releasing her shoved her into the wall, and she cried out.

  Her gun had been knocked from her hand when she’d barreled into this human ox, and she could really use it right about now.

  Over the sounds of their struggle, she heard glass breaking and a muffled shout. “Danna!”

  Chas O’Grady? What was he doing here? He was liable to get himself killed!

  The large man’s rancid breath hit her full in the face and she reacted, knocking her head into his. He let go of her arm, cursing.

  She dropped to the floor, scrambling for her weapon. The ox man walked into her, knocking her flat. Where was her gun? It couldn’t have gotten far.

  “Let’s go!” A third voice rang out from behind the wall separating the bank’s teller area from the vault room.

  The man Danna had been struggling with turned, but she swept her leg out and caught his ankles. He stumbled, but didn’t go down. She tackled his knees and he fell.

  Chas and his assailant were evenly matched. He couldn’t get the kid—the man felt young, as if he hadn’t had time to grow to his full size yet—to go down and stay there.

  “Shoot her!” someone shouted.

  “No!” The cry ripped from his throat. The exchange was enough of a distraction for him to lose track of the fight. He registered a sharp pain in his temple and knew no more.

  Danna heard the sound of a body hitting the floor, but she was too busy struggling with the human ox to do more than hope someone on the street would hear the ruckus and come in to help her.

  Something metal clanged against wood. Oh, no! Had the big man somehow gotten hold of her gun?

  He shoved her away and she slid, rolling to one side. Light from a torch glinted off the barrel of a pistol, held in the man’s beefy hand. Pointed right at her.

  She saw the slight movement of his hand as she leapt to her left. The crack of the bullet whizzed close by, but didn’t hit her. She ducked behind the teller counter.

  A deep thud and soft moan turned her head. The light illuminated two bodies lying on the floor. Was one of them her deputy?

  “Get out, get out!” shouted the voice from the back.

  From her vulnerable position crouched on the floor, Danna saw the huge shadow of the man she’d been grappling with move away—the robbers were leaving?

  Two pair of boots thumped against the wooden floors, one with a noticeable drag to one of his footsteps.

  Silence fell.

  Danna knelt behind the desk, trembling. She’d nearly been shot. In all the years she’d worked at Fred’s side, she’d never been so close to dying before—except two weeks ago, when she’d nearly been run over by a stampede.

  She was aware of her heart drumming in her ears, pounding about as loud as the gunshot had been. She couldn’t believe she was alive.

  Another moan from nearby drew her gaze up from her shaking hands. The body closest to her was moving, his head rolling from side to side.

  “Mama,” he whispered.

  She crawled toward him, frowning when her palms met with something warm and sticky on the floor. Blood? She hadn’t been shot, but apparently this man had.

  The body she reached wasn’t her deputy’s, but she saw his tousled head a few feet away and sucked in a quick breath. What had happened? How had he known something was wrong and come in here? Had he been shot?

  A shaft of moonlight filtered through the shattered window and illuminated her deputy’s face, slack and unconscious. No blood marked his body, thankfully.

  The unknown man groaned again and she crouched next to him, kicking away the weapon lying nearby. Even a wounded man could shoot.

  A quick examination told her he was in serious danger. Blood seeped from a wound in his abdomen.

  Danna bit back a cry and reached into her pocket for her bandanna. She pressed it against the man’s stomach, trying to stanch the flow of blood. Wounds in the torso were hard to treat. If she didn’t get help, he might not make it.

  “Marshal?” came a wavering voice from the vault room. Danna wished she’d have found her pistol, but there wasn’t time to locate it now. She kept holding pressure on the man’s wound.

  A light appeared somewhere behind her and bounced and shook on the walls until she could see the face of Zachariah Silverton, the bank manager. Danna swallowed a groan. Zachariah was not known for his calm during an emergency.

  “Silverton, I need you to bring the light closer, then run for the doc. This man’s in a bad way.” She used her marshal’s voice, the one Fred had taught her to cultivate on a laughter-filled afternoon so many years ago.

  “Th-th-they made me open the vault. They held a g-g-gun on me. Said they’d sh-shoot me.”

  Splendid. He was so shaken up he didn’t seem to have heard her. “Zachariah. Zachariah!”

  He started and finally looked up at her. The lantern he held wobbled so much she was afraid he might drop it.

  “Bring the light here. Put it on the desk.”

  He did, his eyes growing large in his face when the light showed the bloody body under Danna’s hands. The lantern banged against the corner of the desk and he nearly dropped it before he settled it on the edge of the nearest desk. He backed away, overturning a wooden chair and almost falling.

  “Zachariah.” She waited until he focused on her face before she went on. “I need you to go find Doc.”

  He nodded, his head bobbing awkwardly as he didn’t look away from her.

  He edged toward the vault room and the door there.

  “Hurry! This man needs help.”

  He turned and bolted, shoulder banging into the door frame as he passed out of sight. The sound of his bootsteps faded, and Danna could hear Chas’s deep breathing from feet away, and the wavering breaths of the man underneath her hands.

  Her handkerchief soaked through, she looked around for something else to help stop the flowing blood.

  She needed the doc now. This man was dying.

  Chas heard noises as if from far away. Shouts, voices, then moaning. A ringing filled his ears, his head ached.

  He remembered. Following Danna into the bank, right into the middle of a scuffle—a robbery. Was she alive?

  It took some effort, but he cracked one eye open. Light sent shafts of pain pulsing through his head, but he refused to close his eye, now that he had it open. He rolled his head to one side and saw the broken window he’d busted through before he’d been attacked.

  Where was the kid now?

  He turned his head in the other direction and forced both eyes open. There was a body, lying on the floor. And…Danna leaning over him.

  He closed his eyes against the intensity of his relief. She was all right.

  But the kid didn’t appear to be. What had happened? Had Danna shot him?

  Confusion and pain beat at the inside of his head, muddling everything.

  He tried to lever himself up with one hand, but throbbing pain made it impossible and he slumped to the floor.

  “Stay still for now.” Her voice sounded curt, angry. “Are you hurt?”

  Was he? All he could feel was the pounding in his brain. “Took a wallop on the head.”

  “You must’ve got knocked out just before the man I was fighting with let loose with his gun. It’s a good thing, too, or you might’ve ended up shot like this poor soul.”

  “He got shot?”

  Her lips flattened. “Yes. Not by me.”

  Chas’s throat closed. More bloodshed. He hadn’t been able to prevent it. Gingerly, he sat up, head spinning.

  “O’Grady, stay where you are.”

  Hurried steps pounded on the boardwalk and Chas turned in time to see two tall forms pass the broken window. They clattered inside.

  “M-marshal, I got the doc.”

  A nervous-sounding man hung back, while an older man with a bushy white mustache and full head of silver hair came to Danna’s side.
<
br />   “Can’t get a good look. Need more light,” mumbled the man that must be the doc.

  “Silverton,” Danna barked. “Bring the light down here.”

  Silverton didn’t move. His face was a pasty white, and Chas wondered if he was about to faint. Chas stood, fighting his equilibrium as it tried to keep him on the ground.

  “O’Grady!” Danna barked his name, but the rushing in his ears made it hard to tell if she said anything else.

  He used one hand to hold on to the desk, to make sure he didn’t embarrass himself and fall. With the other, he picked up the lamp and handed it to the doc.

  “You don’t look real good either, son.”

  And Chas blacked out for the second time.

  “—robbed—”

  “Four or five men…”

  “—headed out of town—”

  An irate voice yelled over all the other chatter. “Where’s the marshal?”

  The other voices receded into more of a whispered murmur. Chas forced his eyes open, noting the pain in his head wasn’t as bad as it had been before.

  The bank was lit up now, several more lamps joining the first. A short, balding man stormed through the now open front door, past Chas where he lay half-behind one of the desks, to where Danna stood conversing with a man Chas didn’t recognize and the man named Silverton near the rear of the building.

  “Marshal—”

  She ignored him, continued her conversation with the two other men in low tones.

  Chas pushed himself up to a sitting position.

  The man Danna had ignored obviously wasn’t used to being treated that way, because his face turned a deep shade of purple and he began to splutter.

  Danna nodded at something the doc said and turned.

  “Yes, Mr. Castlerock?”

  Ah. The owner.

  “Marshal, why aren’t you out catching the men who did this to my bank?”

  “Mr. Castlerock, I’ve been tending to a man with a bullet wound in his gut. My deputy is injured. I’m doing the best I can.” She walked past him, toward Chas. “I’ll let you know when I have something to report.”

  The man sputtered, but Danna’s gaze was fastened on Chas as she crouched next to him.