Winning the Widow's Heart

by Sherri Shackelford

  After wiping her hands clean, Elizabeth tugged her apron strings loose. She plucked Rachel’s rag doll from a shelf and handed it to the smiling baby. Chubby hands grasped the soft material and pulled it into her mouth.

  Elizabeth grimaced at the odd toy. Two mismatched arms jutted from the overly round body. A pair of sausage legs strained at the seams. Offset eyes perched above a button nose and cross-stitch mouth. Elizabeth found the resulting combination of uneven stitching gruesome, but Jo had labored for days over the project, and the baby adored her new toy.

  “Let’s go, then,” Elizabeth said, forcing determination into her voice.

  She snuck a glance at the clock ticking on the mantel. They didn’t have much time before the men finished their chores. An hour at most.

  Together she and Jo crossed the clearing, their attention drawn to the blood-streaked snow. Elizabeth adjusted Rachel’s laundry basket on her hip, careful not to disturb the warm blanket stretched over the top to keep out the cold. They paused in front of the bunkhouse door.

  Jo lingered on the porch. “Feels wrong to go inside without Mr. Elder here.”

  Elizabeth took firm hold of the doorknob. “This is my home, and Mr. Elder is an uninvited visitor. There’s nothing wrong with the two of us entering my property.”

  As she breezed into the building, anxiety at odds with her brave words tightened in her chest. Elizabeth sucked in a lungful of air. There was no reason to feel like an interloper in her own home. “See, there’s no reason to feel uncomfortable.”

  Jo followed with a resigned shrug. Elizabeth set the basket on the nearest bunk, almost tripping over a pile of neatly stacked wood on the floor.

  Jo nudged the pile with her square-toed boot. “What do you suppose this is?”

  “Firewood?”

  “I don’t think so.” Jo knelt for a closer look. “He’s cut and sanded all the pieces. Looks like he’s going to build something.”

  Elizabeth plucked a length of wood from the stack. Someone, Jack she presumed, had painstakingly carved a pattern of ivy into the sanded piece. “Why on earth is he in here whittling? It’s not like he can carry something so large when he leaves.”

  Angling another piece of wood to one side to catch the light, Jo leaned in. “I guess maybe he’s bored.”

  Suddenly exhausted, Elizabeth slumped on the bed next to Rachel. She wasn’t the sort to keep a man’s attention riveted. The pile of wood might as well be stacked to the ceiling for all the excitement she provided.

  Had she made a mistake in confiding in Jack? Even though they were destined to part, she wanted him to see her differently. She wanted him to enjoy her company.

  She stuck out her lower lip and blew a breath, ruffling the hair resting on her forehead. He’d listened to her tale of life with her late husband, his expression somber and closed. She’d thought he was concerned, now she realized he was indifferent. Who wanted to spend time with a sniveling woman lamenting her life?

  She didn’t know what he thought about her checkered history, and she didn’t want to find out. Revealing her past had been cathartic, but the truth of her own accountability had made her sick inside. No matter what happened, she was through making foolish, impulsive choices. From this moment on, she’d think before she acted. She wasn’t the only one affected by her decisions.

  Jo moved across the room to peer at the newspaper clippings. “These are all railroad towns.” She glanced at Elizabeth while she jerked a thumb at the wall. “You think the outlaws bought tickets like regular folks? How funny is that? Maybe they just rode into town like carpetbaggers, robbed the bank, then climbed right back on the train with the money.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Elizabeth flashed a grin at the mental image of bandanna-clad men lugging tattered satchels overflowing with money onto a fancy Pullman car. “Someone would recognize them.”

  “I don’t know.” Jo rubbed her chin, lost in thought. “The best place to hide is in plain sight. I can always fool the younger boys with that one. People see what they expect to see, not what’s really there.”

  Once again, something struck Elizabeth as familiar about one of the outlaws. “Jo, do you recognize this fellow?”

  The younger girl grimaced. “They all look the same to me.”

  Elizabeth’s shoulders slumped. They did all look the same. The artist hadn’t given the men much detail. She traced her finger along the towns Jack had underlined. The names were all familiar, but Will had been a railroad man. Of course he’d mentioned the names of the towns. She squinted, forcing a pattern to emerge in the dates or the routes the outlaws had taken.

  Jo studied one of the reports, her nose inches from the paper. The type had nearly rubbed off with repeated handling. “As far as I can tell from this account, the people who lost out most were the saloon owners. I mean, they certainly complained the loudest. Says here they were counting on all those railroad boys getting their money and spending it on liquor.” She planted her hands on her hips. “I bet one of them railroad boys stole that money. They’d have known the bank was going to have extra cash for payroll.”

  A railroad man. Elizabeth ran her gaze along the neatly displayed clippings, taking in the sketched picture of the bank. A sickening dread pooled in her stomach. She recalled the burlap sack in the bottom of Will’s trunk. The initials W.F.

  The last bank robbed had been a Wells Fargo. The bank where the outlaws murdered Jack’s sister-in-law.

  She backed away from the truth, physically and mentally, desperate to deny the evidence. Just because Will had worked for the railroad didn’t make him an outlaw. His money had come from gambling. A lot of men supplemented their income by playing cards. Will was only violent with people weaker than him. She didn’t see him storming into a bank. Towns sprouting up around the rail lines were teeming with unscrupulous people desperate for money.

  There was no reason to believe Will had earned his extra income any other way. “Everybody in that town knew the railroad payday. For all we know, one of the saloon owners stole the money.”

  Considering the motives of transient workers eased Elizabeth’s tension.

  “Yes, but look at this.” Jo motioned to one of the yellowed clippings.

  Elizabeth reluctantly leaned forward.

  “See.” Jo pointed to an article farther down in the paper. “The railroad was building a mighty large bridge. Says here the area swelled by almost two hundred men. And here, look at this. They were digging a tunnel straight through the mountainside. That brought almost three hundred men to town. And where this last robbery took place, the railroad was laying new line through some rough terrain. That’s gotta bring in almost a hundred men.”

  Jo pursed her lips, her expression thoughtful. “You know what I think?”

  “No,” Elizabeth replied weakly.

  “First off, all these robberies took place when there was a big railroad project in the works.”

  The idea that had been nagging Elizabeth suddenly took shape. She grasped for an innocent explanation. “So you think transient workers robbed those banks?”

  “Nah.” Jo shook her head. “I think it was someone looking for a bank with lots of money. See here.” She pointed to the rail schedule at the bottom of the page. “Payday isn’t until the fifteenth, right? But the train doesn’t run until the sixteenth. Only there was a rockslide, which set the schedule back another two days. That meant the money came in late, on the eighteenth. Look at the date the bank was robbed.”

  “The eighteenth,” Elizabeth whispered over the blood pounding in her ears.

  “Whoever planned those robberies knew plenty about the railroad. They knew the schedules, they knew what projects were being built, and they knew the payroll dates. This new line here was scheduled to start on the twentieth. There’s a notice about the ribbon
-cutting ceremony, but the robbery took place a week before the work started.”

  Hope flapped its delicate butterfly wings in Elizabeth’s chest. “Then the pattern doesn’t work. Someone who worked for the railroad would know there was no extra money in the safe.”

  Jo grinned from ear to ear. “’Course the pattern still works. Says here there was a brawl the day before the robbery. According to this article, the men arrived a week before the ribbon-cutting. Whoever robbed that Wells Fargo knew the men were coming into town early. He also knew they’d be receiving a stipend for living expenses before their first paycheck.”

  The butterfly wings ceased flapping. “A stipend?”

  “Yep. They paid my Uncle Pete a whole paycheck in advance when he moved to St. Louis. Called it stipend.”

  Elizabeth’s stomach flipped.

  “It’s all right there in the type,” Jo continued. “The fellow that planned these robberies was no construction worker. He was a fellow whose hands never got dirty. Sending a telegraph to the Santa Fe rail offices would give Jack a few names. It wouldn’t take much to piece things together after that. Just figure out who was running those projects. Simple as pie.”

  Spots formed in the corners of Elizabeth’s vision. She sank weakly onto the cot next to Rachel. “He’s a smart man, Mr. Elder. I’m sure he’s already thought of that.”

  Her late husband had never dirtied his hands with anything but dollar bills. He’d never been talkative about his job, but his fingers had always been covered in ink stains. He oversaw the movements of workers, or something along those lines. Elizabeth rubbed her temples, desperate to refute the evidence. Yet everything made sense. Will’s absences, his endless supply of money. The wads of bills he’d left behind.

  Her husband had been a bank robber.

  “I see your point.” Jo tapped her forehead. “Even the Ranger’s not that dumb. ’Course, they were probably looking for someone on site. A foreman or a laborer. What if it was a paper pusher? Didn’t Will do something like that?”

  “He scheduled trains and work crews.”

  “You all right, Mrs. Cole?” Jo asked. “You’ve gone real pale.”

  “I’m fine, Jo. It’s nothing.”

  Perhaps Will’s involvement had been periphery. He never even shot game, could he have shot an actual flesh-and-blood person? A sharp pain throbbed behind her eyes. Had the outlaws blackmailed Will into giving them information about the railroad schedule?

  “Look here,” Jo exclaimed. “A deputy even shot one of the outlaws in the leg. Sounds like those boys weren’t very good at their job.”

  “When was that?”

  “Looks like the end of May.”

  Elizabeth unconsciously touched the scar on her arm. The shooting had occurred just prior to Will’s return from Colorado. He’d been angry and out of sorts. And hurt.

  He’d been limping because he’d injured his leg.

  Her husband was the fourth outlaw.

  What did it matter now? Will was dead. His justice was in heaven.

  Jack was searching for Bud Shaw when he should have been looking for both Will Cole and Bud Shaw. Why reveal her discovery at this point? Her husband was beyond revealing his secrets. She certainly didn’t know where to find Bud Shaw, and Will was gone.

  How had she missed the signs of Will’s activities? The truth had been obvious. I’ve made excuses for him all along, that’s why. The first time he’d appeared outside the bakery to accompany her to the market, he’d walked a half pace ahead of her the entire distance. Even from the beginning he’d been leaving her behind. She’d made excuses for him from the start—instead of trusting her instincts.

  Jack trusted his instincts.

  She chanced a glance at Rachel chewing contentedly on her rag doll. The baby studied her surroundings with wise, solemn eyes. As Will’s wife, what were the consequences for Elizabeth, for her child? If the sheriff could seize her land because of Will’s cheating, what would he do if he discovered Will was an outlaw?

  She stumbled out the bunkhouse door into the sunlight, blinking her eyes against the bright afternoon.

  Jo followed her outside. “You don’t look good.”

  “I just needed some air. Go back inside.” She needed time to collect her thoughts, to make decisions for her and Rachel’s future.

  Instead, Jo brushed past her and loped down the shallow stairs. “Say, are you cooking something again? There’s smoke coming from the house.”

  Plumes of smoke billowed from the window across the way. Elizabeth’s heart leaped into her throat. An acrid smell teased her senses. She gripped the porch rail. “Stay with the baby!”

  Desperate to retrieve her homestead documents, she lifted the hem of her skirts and ran. If the house burned to the ground, she still had the bunkhouse and the barn. But without those papers, she had no way of proving ownership. She bolted up the stairs and jerked open the door. A wall of hot air singed her cheeks. She threw her arm over her face against the advancing black cloud and dashed through the kitchen. Fire licked at the parlor walls. Flickering orange sparks danced behind thick heat waves.

  Lungs burning, she felt her way to the bedroom, then slammed the door behind her, blocking the worst of the acrid smoke. She plunged forward and smacked her hip against the dresser. Rubbing at the painful sting, she knelt before Will’s trunk and tugged on the handle.

  A gray cloud curled beneath the door and snaked up the walls while she searched. Her eyes and nose watered. She frantically dug through Will’s clothes until she located the sheaf of papers. Clutching the precious documents to her chest, she surged to her feet. With the room enveloped in a thick haze, she blindly groped her way back to the exit.

  As she touched the brass knob, fiery pain enveloped her hand.

  Glass shattered to her left.

  * * *

  Jack slapped the rump of the sturdy work horse hitched to the enormous stump he and Ely were struggling to pry from the ditch. “We’re almost there.”

  The winds had picked up, whipping at the branches and driving dust into his eyes.

  Ely McCoy tugged on the harness, his massive biceps bulging as sweat trickled down the side of his bearded face. The horse’s forelegs stumbled to find purchase at the top of the rise. The animal tipped and bucked the next ten feet, dragging the stump over the crest before jerking to a halt.

  Ely collapsed onto the ground, resting his elbows on his bent knees. “I’d like to dig up that fool Will Cole and give him a piece of my mind. Then I’d bury him back down again.”

  Jack slapped his hat against his thigh. A cloud of dust billowed from the brim. “I’m not sure how that’s going to help us clear this brush.”

  “Why on earth does a man go to all the trouble of piling trees at the most impassable dip in the creek bed?”

  “I dunno. Maybe he was letting the wood dry. This area is protected from flood. The waterline doesn’t go up the embankment this far.”

  “It’s still an idiotic place to gather brush. Why not just drag the branches up the shallow side?” Ely pressed a hand to his knee and surged to his feet. “That man didn’t have the sense God gave a dandelion.”

  While Jack couldn’t help but agree, he kept his own council. “Either way, we’ve cleared out most of the brush. One or two more trips and the pile will be cleared. The extra wood should keep the widow set through spring.”

  “If I live that long.” Ely squinted into the distance. “Say, that’s awful thick smoke coming from the house.”

  Jack glanced up from his stooped position down the embankment from where Ely stood. Dark gray tendrils lapped at the sky before blustery wind scattered the curling plumes. “Looks like chimney smoke to me. Nothing unusual about that.”

  Jack grasped a bundle of branches a
nd tugged. The pile loosened, sending him stumbling back. He flailed his arms to catch his balance. After bracing his feet against the frozen earth, he straightened, then arched, pressing his fists against a tight muscle in his back. His gaze snagged on a dark hollow revealed by the brush he’d just hauled aside.

  Crouching, Jack peered into the dark entrance of what appeared to be shallow cave.

  “Mr. Elder,” Ely called.

  Jack glanced over his shoulder. “What is it?”

  “I think those boys have gone and started a bonfire.” Ely muttered something Jack couldn’t quite make out. A moment later he hollered, “I’ll be back in a few. I’m going to tan those boys’ hides.”

  “Take your time,” Jack called back, his attention drawn to the cave. He yanked free the dried grass and twigs covering the mouth, revealing a much larger opening than he’d first suspected. With a surreptitious glance over his shoulder to ensure Ely had left to check on the boys, he knelt down and felt his way through the entrance.

  Sunlight illuminated the first five feet. Pitch darkness lay beyond. Jack reconsidered. He’d most likely find a hibernating animal in there, and animals weren’t too keen on being awakened. He slanted his gaze up the hill at the neat pile of brush. Someone had deliberately arranged those tree limbs in front of the cave opening. Someone who didn’t want the entrance seen by passersby. That someone certainly wasn’t a bear or a raccoon.

  Crawling through the entrance, he winced as dampness seeped through his pants, icy cold on his knees. Undeterred, he pushed through the darkness, bumping his hand against a sharp metal corner. Wind whistled past the entrance. Humid, stagnant air settled in his lungs. Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a match.

  With a scrape on his boot, the match sizzled to life. Flickering light exposed dangling tree roots. The shallow ceiling prevented him from standing or even sitting fully upright. The space stretched no wider than a horse stall. A pile of boxes appeared in the dancing shadows before him. As the flames touched his fingers, Jack blew out the match with a muffled curse. He lit another, and strained forward until he could make out the writing.