Wilda's Outlaw

by Velda Brotherton

  “Move out of the doorway, now, child.” Exasperated, she went to the girl and dragged her inside.

  “It’s so hot in here.”

  “Then stand out in the open and let them see you. That’ll get you quickly carried back to Fairhaven where it’s liable to get a lot hotter, I promise you that.”

  The words, much harsher than she’d intended, set the girl to crying. Wilda took her in her arms.

  The Smithy studied them curiously.

  “Mr. Smith?” she ventured, and continued to pat her cousin’s shoulder.

  “In God’s name, girl. What’s happened to you? Where is Joshua? The child here only confused me with her tale.”

  Turning the sobbing Tyra around and seating her on a large stump in the corner, Wilda proceeded to relate the story of Calder’s capture. The Smithy only knew him as Joshua and she set him straight. The truth would serve her better with this man.

  Without pausing, she added, “I hope you can help. I mean, I’m sorry, is it all right for us to come here? I couldn’t think of anyone else to turn to.”

  He cleared his throat. “Of course it is. You startled me, is all. Appearing from out of nowhere like that, looking like a haint. I didn’t know who you was at first.”

  She probably did look a bit tousled, but wasn’t sure about this haint business. Picking straw from her hair, she bobbed a small curtsy. “I do apologize, sir. I’m afraid we, had no place else to go. What is a haint? If you do not mind educating me on your language.”

  “A haint, child, is like as come back from the dead.”

  “Oh, a ghost.”

  He grinned and nodded. “Well, messier perhaps. You look sorely in need of nourishment, child, not to mention a tub of hot water.”

  At his words, spoken with an earnest concern, tears welled and tracked down her cheeks. “Oh, Mr. Smith. I have to get Calder out of jail, or they’ll hang him. I fear I’m in love with him.” She burst into tears, sobbed through them. “I might even have his baby, then what would I do without him?” It wasn’t possible to utter another word.

  “Ah, so it’s that way, ’tis it?” Smith gathered her against his barrel of a chest, wrapping enormous bare arms around her.

  She felt like a child again, comforted in her father’s embrace. Nose buried in the smoky aroma of his apron, she sobbed as she hadn’t since the death of her parents.

  It was all too much. Simply too much, and she could no longer bear it alone.

  “There, now. You just cry, and when you finish we’ll talk. So this Calder fella is Joshua, and he’s in jail, huh? That young man had trouble written all over him, but he’s an honest and hard working fella. We’ll figure something out, don’t you worry.”

  There were more important things to accomplish than bawling like a baby and it was time she stopped. After a huge shuddery breath she was able to speak coherently.

  “I have heard stories of what you call lynchings, and I’m so afraid for him. We have to hurry. But I have no idea where they took him.”

  He patted at her shoulder. “Now you just hold up, little gal. Think about this. You could end up tarred with the same brush if you’re not careful.”

  Oh, this country and its outlandish forms of speech would be the end of her, yet. “Tarred?”

  Tyra spoke up. “Tarred? That sounds ominous.”

  “It very well could be, young’un. Calumet might toss you both in the pokey, for trying to pull a jail break.”

  “But it wasn’t…I mean, not really. Pokey? Jail break?” Frustrated, she peered at him.

  “Jail. Calaboose. Far as he’s concerned yours was a genuine snatching. He’s had a posse out looking for you ever since that high falutin’ Earl or Duke, or whatever, come hollering into town on his bob-tailed pony demanding they scour the countryside for his fiancay. Some of them remittance men is as wild as any coyote, ain’t they? Drinking and shooting and carousing around. They couldn’t wait to join in the fray. Our sheriff Calumet, he won’t take kindly to finding out the snatching was all a hoax. As for your Calder, if he really is an outlaw, well, then…” He shrugged.

  “But surely when I explain everything.”

  “Yes, and I helped her, too, so I’m part to blame,” Tyra added.

  Smith’s glance slid from Wilda to Tyra and back again. She began to squirm. Wasn’t he going to help her after all? What would she do?

  Without saying another word, he headed toward the back of the shop.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Nowheres, jest yet.” He emerged from the shadows carrying a long shotgun.

  Breaking it open, he peered down the enormous barrels. “Ain’t had call to use this big boy in some time, but mayhap we’ll need it fore this day is over.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Well, hell, little darlin’. We’re gonna break your outlaw out of jail over to Hays City. Do my heart good to pull something over on that fat wad of bullshit…er, ’scuse my French.”

  About French, she hadn’t heard any, but the words “break your outlaw out of jail” slammed through her head. First she instigated a fake kidnapping, then had actually considered helping outlaws rob a bank, now she was about to become involved in a jail break. She felt as if someone had caught her in a lasso and was dragging her along behind one of those bob-tailed ponies.

  “Wait a minute. I only wanted to tell the truth and get him free. Not just go in shooting.”

  He made a rude noise. “The truth. And what is that, little lady? That your Calder is an outlaw, that he came to town to commit no-telling-what dastardly deed, that he’s already robbed everyone in Kansas over twenty-one with a purse of money.”

  “Did you know who he was all along? Even when you hired him as Joshua.”

  “I figgered he was not who he claimed. Them that takes a fake name usually is riding on the wrong side of the law. And them that rides on the wrong side of the law got a cast in their eyes. Knew he warn’t no smithy, for sure. Wanted to see what he was up to. Nice enough feller, done the work. But soon enough he was gone and so was you, right after the two of you cast goggly eyes at each other in my presence. I figured you run away together and we’d never see hide nor hair of you again. Ain’t that what you’d a thought?”

  Goggly eyes? A grin curled her lips. She couldn’t help it; he was so outspoken and colorful. “We would have been gone, too, had it not been for Baron’s insistence that I help him rob the bank.” Too late she clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “The bank, huh? Aiming high, I’d say. And dragging a fine young lady such as yourself into their dastardly deeds. Ought to be ashamed.” He rummaged through a wooden box and came up with a handful of shotgun shells. “Thought these was here somewhere. Now I hope you be telling me your feller had nothing to do with those bank robbing plans.” He popped a shell in each barrel and snapped the gun closed, stared at her.

  Shaking her head ferociously, she blurted. “Not and have me with him, he didn’t. He wasn’t really….” She stopped, biting her tongue at the lie. She had offered to help, but it was only a small fib, really. Maybe she could explain. “You see, I mean, it’s only about Rachel and her little ones.” She stopped, gazed at the shotgun. “What are you going to do with that? You’re not going to shoot anyone, are you?”

  “Not ’less they give me no other choice. Who be this Rachel gal?”

  When she started to reply, he held up a hand. “Never you mind. Things is already complicated enough without more storying. Be best if we wait till dusk to ride on over to Hays. You’ll have to go along, hold the horses. Won’t be too hard to bust him outta that cracker box jailhouse of Calumet’s. I tell you this, young’un. He ain’t robbing no bank after I break him outta jail, and that’s a fact. We’ll be plum to Nebraska fore they raise their heads from their pillows come morning.”

  “We? But, y-you have a business here, and you do not know us. Why would you do this for two strangers?”

  A grin crinkled the sooty skin all the way around
his bald head. “I don’t know you, ’tis true, but you’re apt to take it on yourself and get caught. I could tell you stories, little gal, that’d curl your toes, but I reckon I won’t. Suffice it to say I’ve had my share of adventures, not all of them on the right side of the law. I fought in the war on the wrong side, too, truth be known. Leastways, considering who won, I was on the wrong side. Been in Kansas nearly ever since. Longest I ever planted myself in one spot. It’s time I moved on. Anyway, I’m sickened by these no-count English fops. Man has to use up all his years in his own way, not someone else’s.

  “I got me a hankering to set that boy free and send the two of you off to start using up your years. It’ll do my heart a whole lot of good. And I especially got a desire to best that Calumet. He’s a horse’s ass.” He laughed. “There I go again, saying bad words in front of such pretty little gals as the two of you.”

  “Lately, I’ve heard worse. Believe me.”

  “Me too,” Tyra chimed in.

  He cocked his head, looked her up and down. “Where in tarnation did you come by that outfit? It’ll never do for a jailbreak.”

  Rachel’s dress was a bit tattered. Rachel. Oh dear, what about Rachel? She and Calder couldn’t go off without helping her get back home.

  So she told Smith about their friend and her little ones. He listened without interrupting until she finished.

  “And this poor lass is alone with no man to care for her or her wee ones?”

  Wilda nodded. “Calder’s been doing what he can when they, uh, rob someone.”

  “Like Jesse James? Robbing the rich to give to the poor?” Smith grinned. “Well, that even makes me more favorable to busting him out of jail. She needs a way to git home to St. Louis, this Rachel gal?”

  “Yes, and I wanted to help rob the bank so we could give her the money.” Tears once more filled her eyes.

  “Willing to become an outlaw for a friend, was you?”

  For a moment she thought he was mocking her, but his expression told her different.

  “I’ve been around these parts a good long while, and had no reason to spend my fortune. I believe I just might favor sending this lady and her young’uns back home.”

  “You would? But, you don’t even know her, or me either, for that matter.”

  “Makes nary difference to me. It’d make me feel good to know I done something righteous in my life. We’ll stop by the depot and buy her tickets on the train afore we go to Hays to bust out your man. How’s that sound?”

  For the first time since fleeing Blair Prescott’s gloomy old castle, she felt a ray of hope. She squealed and threw her arms around Smith’s sturdy neck. When she backed away he laughed and so did Tyra.

  “What?”

  “You managed to scruffy yourself up more than before. Black smudges all over you and that rag you call a dress.”

  “I seem to have left my wardrobe behind.” She joined them in their merriment.

  After a moment, he sobered. “Your Duke didn’t do something bad to you, did he? A little gal like you? He ought to be skint.”

  Not about to air the dirty secrets of Fairhaven, and not sure what skint meant, she shook her head. “No, nothing like that. We…well, let’s say we had a parting of the ways. All my belongings are there, and I can’t go back for them.”

  “Well, I reckon we’ll just have to do something about that.” He studied her some more, then glanced at Tyra. “Now, this young’un knows how to dress for a jail breakout. But if you’ll wait right here, and stay out of sight, I’ll be back with duds you can proudly wear on our quest.”

  “Wait. I can’t pay…” But he was gone, as if she hadn’t spoken at all. That she was actually beginning to understand his language delighted her. Duds, huh? How quaint.

  ****

  The lumpy bed smelled like a pigsty, so Calder finally gave up sleeping. Foolish to snooze away what might be his last hours on this earth. Someone had thoughtfully sawed a small opening to serve as a window in the log jail. Not big enough for a man to crawl through, but it did reveal a patch of star-strewn black sky. Kansas might offer its share of torturous weather, but it also displayed the prettiest nights he’d seen anywhere. Maybe that’s because there was so blamed much sky. With no moon, the glittering stars were thick as lightning bugs on a hot summer night.

  Put him in mind of when he was a kid and he and his brothers would sprawl on a pallet after dark pointing out pictures in the heavens and waiting for the glory of a shooting star. They lived in the Ozarks then and homesteads were few and far between. Sometimes after the supper dishes were done, Mama would join them, and he could smell the lye soap on her hands. Papa never had the patience for such folderol as stargazing. If a thing didn’t get something important accomplished, he couldn’t see doing it. A working man was Papa, and he expected his boys to be the same. But Calder was a dreamer, Papa said, and dreamers never done nothing but dream.

  “You cain’t get nothing in this world by just wishing for it, boy,” he’d say, and put him to work behind the plow.

  Calder soon learned that he could dream a lot behind that old horse and plow, not having anything too complicated to think about except gee and haw and keeping the rows straight.

  Tears blurred the stars when he thought of Papa and his brothers, killed by bushwhackers all those years ago. His two brothers held out such promise, Papa always said. And he’d tell him how he ought to be more like them. Turned out they’d never had a chance to fulfill any of those promises. It was still a mystery to Calder why he’d been chosen of the three to live when he was clearly the worthless one of the bunch. Maybe that was why he kept trying to avenge their deaths. Just couldn’t get it out of his system, that guilt over him living when they hadn’t. Maybe, even trying to get himself killed. Surprise filled him up, like a long drink of cold water. If that were true, then he was purely a fool and always had been.

  He thought of Wilda and how he wished he could have a life with her. Lying with her gentled his soul, till he didn’t hanker so bad to go out and kill those who’d destroyed his family. She put her soft hands on him, touched his body with those warm, moist lips, tamed him down to his toes, only to turn him into some sort of wild man. He’d never known anyone like her, never known life could be another way than what his had always been. But she was lost to him just like everyone else he’d ever loved.

  Now, he was going to die before he could even fulfill that dream. He went back to the cot and lay down, breathing through his mouth to blot out the awful odor from the mattress. Finally he fell into a sleep haunted by bloody nightmares and coulda-beens.

  When he awoke his belly was as empty as a church pew on a Saturday night. Maybe they were going to save some money and hang him before they had to feed him. Morning came and went with no breakfast, not even a cup of black coffee, and by noonday he still hadn’t seen that Sheriff Calumet. Some lanky deputy had come in a few minutes earlier. Rattling keys like he was all-important, he sat himself down, propped his worn boots up on the desk and leaned back without sparing his prisoners so much as a look.

  “I could use a drink of water,” Calder told him, but the man paid him no mind.

  The old man, who’d been sleeping when they tossed Calder in the common cell the night before, slouched on the edge of his cot, head in both hands, moaning. They’d probably let him out as soon as he could walk. The town drunk, no doubt. It was a wonder half the men who had to live in Hays didn’t carry that tag.

  No matter what he did, his thoughts went back to Wilda. What had happened to her when they dragged her back to Fairhaven and her remittance man? Clearly, she didn’t want to marry the fellow, but it was probably best for her, especially if what they’d done together caused her to be with child. Having a husband sure beat being in Rachel’s position, or for that matter traipsing around the country with an outlaw whose only prospects were a life on the run. Best for her if they strung him up and put an end to all this nonsense anyway.

  If Mama and Papa could see hi
m now, they sure wouldn’t be proud, not even considering his reasons for what he was doing. Papa always said vengeance was a dead-end road, and it looked like he might be right. Besides, he and Baron and Deke had done very little good for the folks they’d set out to help. They couldn’t even ease Rachel’s troubles. He hadn’t been able to help her when all she wanted was to go home to her folks.

  The front door flew open with a bang, the deputy jerked his boots off the desk and came to his feet. Calumet’s huge presence filled the tiny cubicle.

  “Ever thing going okay?” the sheriff asked, hanging his dusty hat on a peg and sliding into the vacated chair that groaned under his weight.

  The deputy, crowded against the barred door of the cell, bobbed his head. “No sound out of either of them. I was fixin’ to turn ole Ed loose, seeing as how he can walk. That other’n just stands there staring through the bars like a dumbfounded hound. Reckon he don’t care much for his prospects.”

  “I sent a wire up to Topeka. They’ll get a judge down here in a few days, I reckon, and we’ll get this boy tried and hung. You had dinner?”

  “Nor breakfast either,” the deputy said.

  “Me, too,” Calder added. “I could use a drink of water. You gonna starve me to death, save the hangman’s fee?”

  Calumet acted as if he hadn’t spoken. “You go on over to Betty Lou’s and fetch us all something to eat. ’Cept for Ed, there. Turn him loose. His old lady can feed him.” He gestured toward the cell, and Calder’s breath caught.

  What if he busted out when the deputy opened the door? All he had to do was shove his way past the skinny fella and run. That fat old fart of a sheriff couldn’t move fast enough to catch him. Probably shoot him down in the street, though. With that distinct possibility lurking in the back of his mind, he stepped back against the wall and meekly allowed his cellmate to leave without a fuss. No sense dying before he absolutely had to. Besides, he was hoping this Betty Lou person would send over some hot biscuits and butter.

  At long last she did.

  A cup of steaming coffee black as tar and a plate with a slice of ham, two buttered biscuits and a bowl of something that resembled paste but turned out to be oatmeal. She made good biscuits, but her oatmeal could use some work. He ate it first so the rest of the meal could take away the taste and feel of the stuff slithering down his throat in lumps. The coffee was good and he drank it greedily.