by Jo Goodman
“All right. You’ll need a horse. Men will be gathering at the livery. After I talk to Collins, I’ll see you there.”
Raine was grateful that her knees waited for the deputy’s departure before they began to wobble. She took the few steps necessary to reach the trunk at the foot of the bed and sat down hard.
“Are you going to be all right?” asked Kellen.
She nodded. “I just need a…” She did not finish the sentence. She didn’t know what she needed. “Emily and my sister were close. Things that Ellen couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me, she told Emily. They were confidants and good for each other. Ellen could be so serious, and Emily…well, even on short acquaintance, you know that Emily was not.”
Kellen hunkered in front of Raine. He almost took her hands in his and then thought better of it. “Look at me,” he said. She did. “Do you think Emily’s disappearance has something to do with Ellen and the trial? Or as distressing as this is, is this just about Emily?”
“I don’t know. I can’t know that until we find her.”
“Tell me about Daniel Sugar. Do you trust him? Can I?”
“Not if this has anything to do with the Burdicks. He’s their man. You have to remember that. He’ll do right by Emily as long as he doesn’t get a whiff of the Burdicks. If that happens, he’ll point in any direction except theirs.”
“That’s good to know.” He started to rise.
Raine reached out impulsively and caught his fingers. “Be careful.”
By the time Deputy Sugar arrived at the livery, Kellen and the other search volunteers had chosen and saddled their mounts and were waiting for their instructions. They listened attentively to Sugar as he reported on his conversation with Mr. Collins. The station agent had confirmed that neither Emily nor Mr. Weyman could have left town by rail. As all the horses, wagons, and surreys were accounted for, it seemed possible there might be a foot trail, and therein lay the hope of catching up with the missing pair. Sugar was still deliberating the best way to use his volunteers when Matthew Sharp rode into town to report that rustlers had made off with two of his mares. Sugar grasped it was a lead worth following and quickly divided the men into two search parties that would fan out from the Sharp farm.
Kellen elected to stay with the deputy. The search party rode out to the Sharp place and followed the trail until the signs disappeared. At that point, they spilt into four groups, agreed on shot signals in the event they found something, and moved out.
The route that Kellen, the deputy, Walt, and Jem Davis followed took them along the river and into the hills. Kellen had taken a similar path his first day out, but this one was less rugged and therefore more likely to be used by two people who had only partially lost their minds.
Kellen was more concerned they had lost their lives.
Raine sat at a table in the dining room with Mrs. Sterling and Sue. The only hotel guest in residence at the moment was John Paul Jones, and Raine had offered to serve the surveyor dinner in his room because she could not bear an outsider in the dining room this evening. Mr. and Mrs. Stanley had boarded the No. 348 train early in the afternoon. Mr. Petit and Mr. Reasoner had left with Mr. Petit’s photographic equipment soon after they spoke to Deputy Sugar and still had not returned. None of the regulars showed up for dinner. Most of them were taking part in the search, and those who weren’t probably had as little appetite as Raine.
She pushed her spoon through Mrs. Sterling’s meaty stew but didn’t lift a bite to her mouth. The cornbread on her side plate was still untouched. From time to time, she sipped her coffee.
Sue Hage ignored her bowl of stew in favor of chewing on the end of one of her long, yellow braids. Periodically, Mrs. Sterling would pull it away from Sue’s mouth, but it always found its way back, usually within minutes.
“I don’t understand why we don’t know anything yet,” Mrs. Sterling said. It was not the first time she had said it, and when no one answered, she let it go. “Do you think I should take some stew down to the Ransoms? Sarah might like to have something extra on hand.”
Sue stared at her bowl. “Do you think the Ransoms will be any hungrier than we are?”
Mrs. Sterling sighed. “No, but I have to do something. Waiting is always the worst. I told Benton that, and he said he understood, but he didn’t. Not really. Men don’t. The only time they wait on a woman is when she’s in labor, and as soon as it’s over, they puff up, pat her and the baby on the head, and disappear. Then she’s waiting again.”
“I don’t think I want to get married,” Sue said glumly. “I like Charlie well enough, I suppose, but what if it’s not love? There has to be powerful love there if I’m going to do all that waiting.”
“Charlie’s not a lawman,” Raine said. “He’s a ranch hand.”
Sue took the braid from between her lips without being asked. “That’s a good point. I bet he wouldn’t keep me waiting long.”
Raine and Mrs. Sterling exchanged amused glances before they were reminded of the gravity of the situation. Their eyes fell away and they continued to spoon through their food.
Sue slouched in her chair. “I didn’t think Emily was all that sweet on Mr. Weyman.”
Raine’s eyes darted in Sue’s direction. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, she was real nice to him because he was a regular guest, and sometimes he gave her some coin for just being a pleasure to talk to, but she told me he was a practice piece.”
“A practice piece?” asked Raine.
Sue nodded. “I played them to get better at the piano. I suppose you could say that Emily played men like that. Like she was practicing for her special man.”
Mrs. Sterling whistled softly. “Well, that’s something I never heard before.”
Raine laid her hand on Sue’s forearm. “So you don’t really think she’s run away with Mr. Weyman?”
Uncomfortable, Sue released a long breath and shook her head slowly. “No, ma’am. Now if Mr. Coltrane had shown some interest in her, I think she would have saddled the horse and yelled giddyup.”
Raine and Mrs. Sterling stared at her.
Sue Hage dropped her braid and promptly burst into tears.
It took some hand-holding, soft entreaties, and the better part of a quarter of an hour before Raine and Mrs. Sterling were able to bring Sue back from great, wrenching sobs to tiny, hiccupping ones. Raine offered to escort Sue home, but she wanted to stay, certain she’d know more quickly what happened than if she waited with her family.
“My mother is going to fret about me working here,” Sue said, wiping her reddened nose with a handkerchief. “Father will want to forbid it, but we need the money so he won’t. And please don’t say anything about us needing money. My parents would be ashamed that I told.”
“We won’t speak of it,” Raine assured her.
“Not a word,” said Mrs. Sterling. “Your parents are fine folk on hard times. It was Mother Nature that did them in. The drought. The blizzard. It’s a wonder you all survived when the cattle didn’t.”
“My father doesn’t like putting up fence for the Burdicks, but there’s no other work.”
Raine nodded. “I know. He made a hard choice for his family. It’s all right. We all understand how that is.”
Mrs. Sterling’s chair scraped the floor as she pushed back from the table. “I’m going to make a pot of tea just the way Mr. Reasoner likes it. He sets store by it like it has some kind of healing powers. Why don’t we just see if there’s some—”
Mrs. Sterling was halfway to her feet when she stopped. Her head jerked up, and she cocked an ear toward the windows. The other two women were immediately alert.
“What is it?” Raine whispered. “What do you hear?”
“They’re coming.” She stood and went straight to the windows. “Benton led enough search parties when he was marshal that I know the sound of one coming back.” Raine and Sue crowded around her. “Do you hear?”
They all strained to find the same sound that Mrs.
Sterling heard. Raine felt it as a vibration first, running through the floorboards of the Pennyroyal. Sue caught the deep bass notes of faraway voices.
They hurried to the front porch and stood three across on the lip of the uppermost step. A cold wind fluttered their gowns and raised gooseflesh on their arms and legs, but it did not budge them.
The search party that turned the corner onto the main thoroughfare was eighteen strong. They rode as a disciplined unit, six across, three deep. The troop moved slowly, no one breaking rank, making it impossible for the women to see the lone horse trailing behind until the men were within twenty yards of the hotel.
Raine saw it first. She found Mrs. Sterling’s hand and clutched it. Mrs. Sterling put her free arm around Sue’s shoulders.
The horse was not without a rider, but the rider was slung over the saddle, not sitting up in it. A blanket wrapped the body. It was large enough to cover everything but the wind-whipped double row of white lace flouncing attached to a deep purple flannel hem.
The women held each other up. None of them spoke. None of them could. The party approached and stopped in front of the Pennyroyal.
Deputy Sugar lifted his hat a fraction and gave them a nod. “Could use your help before we take her to her ma.”
Raine stared at him. Her worst fears realized, she couldn’t draw a breath. Beside her, she felt Mrs. Sterling begin to tremble. Sue could not stifle a deep, wrenching sob. Raine was surprised to hear herself say, “Of course. Bring her in through the saloon. We’ll wash and dress her properly.”
At Sugar’s signal, Jem and Jake Davis dismounted and went to the rear to lead the mare carrying Emily’s body forward. They unstrapped her from the saddle and eased her off. Jem carried her in his arms. He was dry-eyed now, but Raine saw evidence in clustered upper lashes and red-rimmed lower ones that he had been weeping.
Raine knew she spoke, but it was as if she were standing outside herself, disconnected from her own voice, confronting this horror as a distant observer. “Put her on a table close to the bar, then go. We’ll take care of her.”
Dan Sugar disbanded the search party, but no one left. Some of the men dismounted and stretched their legs. They didn’t allow their horses to break formation. Before Raine slipped into the saloon, she noticed that Mr. Petit and Mr. Reasoner had somehow become members of the party.
She stopped Jem on his way out and asked him about it.
“They’re the ones that found her, Mrs. Berry.” Jem looked over Raine’s head to where Mrs. Sterling and Sue were unwrapping Emily’s body. “Came across her while they were on their way up to Apple Pie Ridge. Mr. Petit, he took photographs so Sugar would know how they found her. She’s been cut up real bad.” He added, “It’s not because she fell. What happened to her ain’t natural.”
Raine steeled herself when she heard Mrs. Sterling gasp and Sue make a retching sound. It seemed they had just discovered what Jem was talking about.
“They found a horse tethered close by. It was one of the mares that was taken from Matt Sharp’s place. If it hadn’t been tied up, it would have been long gone. Petit and Reasoner took care of Emily the best they could and headed back to town. My group came across them about five miles northeast of the old Hage homestead.”
“Thank you, Jem. Wait outside. We won’t be long. Her mother’s waiting.”
Chapter Eight
Emily Ransom was laid out in her home where her family could stay with her throughout the night. Friends came and went, brought food and sympathy, and left shaking their heads and whispering, How could this happen to one of our own?
Sarah Ransom had the appearance of a stoic, grim determination in the face of this tragedy. She had buried three other children, all boys, all before they reached the age of two. They were terrible losses, and she had grieved deeply, but they were deaths she could comprehend. Illness struck randomly, without warning, and it dealt most harshly with the young. Sarah accepted that and found comfort that her girls possessed more robust constitutions. But what was a healthy constitution in the face of murder? How did one accept a random strike, or even a deliberate one, when the hand was not God’s, but man’s?
While Ed Ransom sometimes wept openly, Sarah remained dry-eyed. Ed had difficulty speaking, even to accept condolences. Sarah always found the right words but none of the emotion. No visitor to the Ransom home mistook Sarah’s steadiness for strength. To a person, they recognized her fragile state and wondered privately at her breaking point. It would have caused little comment if she had thrown herself onto Emily’s box when it was lowered into the ground.
She did not, and no one was relieved by her restraint.
Emily Ransom was three days buried and the townspeople grieved collectively and alone. In the Pennyroyal Saloon some men drank too much whiskey; others had no taste for it. Civil conversation was often listless, while disagreements excited tempers to flare. Sometimes the saloon was just quiet. Laughter felt wrong and out of place. Speculation, mostly about the murder and the weather, was a presence at every table. Among the speculators, the disappearance of Mr. Weyman pointed to him as Emily’s murderer, and the harsh, bitter wind that carried snowflakes over her grave pointed to another hard winter.
Raine wiped down the bar, erasing the wet stains of whiskey and beer. She poured a drink for Richard Allen and discouraged him from standing at the bar by pointing out that the Davis brothers were looking for a few more players at their table.
Walt sidled over to her. She had given him the evening off since business was slow, but there was nowhere else he wanted to be. “I finished stacking the cases in the back,” he told her.
“Thank you, Walt. You deserve to sit down, put your feet up.”
“Maybe I will. Not just now.” He took the rag from her hand and began polishing the bar. “I don’t see our new guests.”
“I don’t think we will, not this evening.” The rooms recently vacated by the Stanleys and Mr. Weyman had already been filled, but the couple with two young children had no use for the saloon, and the gambler, after learning about the town’s recent tragedy, likely had sense enough to know his play would not be welcome.
“Some folks should be as smart,” said Walt, lifting his chin toward the entrance to the saloon from the hotel. “Looks like Mr. Coltrane left his little notebook behind.”
Raine thought Kellen Coltrane would be treated with less suspicion if he walked into the saloon carrying a gun. Since Emily’s murder, his notebook made people nervous. As much heartache and fear as the town experienced at the hands of the Burdicks, it was made relatively tolerable by its secrecy. To have Coltrane expose Bitter Springs as a town as violent and lawless as Deadwood and the Pennyroyal Saloon as no better than a bucket of blood felt to some like a betrayal. They were guarded now, treating him with wary respect and no warmth.
For his part, Kellen seemed to be oblivious. Or perhaps, Raine thought, it was exactly what he wanted.
Kellen approached the bar and asked for a whiskey. Raine poured it for him. They did not exchange a word. He pushed a bill across the counter. Frowning slightly, Raine looked at it and then slipped it under her sleeve. Kellen nodded once, satisfied, and took a seat at a table. Alone.
“Would you mind taking over for me, Walt?” she asked. “This was supposed to be your free night, but if you’re going to be here anyway, I wouldn’t mind having some time to myself.”
“Sure. I’ll take care of everything.”
She laid her hand on his forearm and nodded. “I know you will. Don’t let Renee and Cecilia bully you into taking over. Their job is at the tables, not at the bar. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
Kellen kept his eyes on his drink as Raine left the saloon. He did not need to watch her to be aware of where she was in a room. She caught his attention because she tried so hard not to. She smothered her laughter, quieted her voice, and remained polite to a fault. Her manner was even more correct than her carriage, and she already held herself as though a steel rod had replaced h
er spine. Kellen was intrigued. And concerned.
He took his time finishing his drink, and no one came by to ask if he wanted another. He stayed to hear Sue play one Stephen Foster tune and placed a quarter on top of the piano for her before he left.
Raine was sitting in the dark in his room, waiting. When the key turned, she held her breath and released it slowly only after he was inside. The light from the lamps in the hallway had briefly illuminated his figure, but she would have known him regardless. He had a fluid, nearly soundless way of moving that made him seem easy in his skin. He never wasted a gesture. She knew no one else so deliberate or set so full of quiet purpose.
“Good,” he said after closing the door. “You’re here.”
Raine thought she’d made herself invisible by standing in the deepest shadows. She stepped forward. “You summoned me.” She slipped two fingers under her right sleeve and came away with the dollar bill that Kellen had passed to her across the bar. “Now I’m waiting.”
“Move away from the window,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re in line of sight from the alley. As soon as I light one of the lamps, you’ll be visible to anyone standing outside.”
She could tell he did not like having to explain himself. “Don’t you think that’s a—”
“Humor me.”
Raine’s eyes had adjusted to the dark while she waited, and she found the lip of the table and eased herself around it so she could sit on the edge of the bed. “Better?”
“Yes. Stay there.”
Kellen went straight to the table and struck a match. He was expecting the brilliant flare and knew to look away. Raine was momentarily blinded by it. She closed her eyes and rubbed them. When she opened them, Kellen was fitting the glass globe back into place. He moved the chair so he could face her with his back to the window. He took off his jacket and laid it over the back of the chair before he sat. He carefully rolled up his shirtsleeves until they were just below the elbow. From inside his vest, he removed the derringer and placed it on the table.
