They crossed a covered bridge, its board sides plastered with notices and bright circus posters. The buggy rolled over a small rise, then turned off into the protection of a line of trees and stopped. For several minutes, Luke looked straight ahead, not speaking.
Emily shifted around in her seat. “What happened in town?”
“Looks like Bart went and hired himself a gun. Name’s Kid Haldane. He butted into a conversation Will Baxter and I were having, and he pulled a gun on Will for no reason. I threatened to pull mine to keep him from shooting Will.”
She swallowed. Her face went dead white.
He stared into the trees, not wanting to say the rest. “Will Baxter’s got three little kids. He’s a family man, a churchman. If Haldane had shot Will, I would have killed him, Em.”
“And Haldane might’ve killed you.”
“Not likely.”
“You’re that good?”
He nodded.
She looked dazed. He stared into the cool, green depths of her eyes. Worry for him, mixed with disapproval of what he’d done, moved in the back of them.
He took her hand in both of his. “I know how you feel about me and guns, and I know it upsets you, but I didn’t shoot. I didn’t want to shoot. Instead, I talked him out of it.”
As he said it, an odd feeling of satisfaction welled up. Exhilaration. That piece of him he thought he’d never lose – the part that could so easily destroy another – didn’t surface. He hadn’t wanted to kill Haldane.
She looked at him as if she’d never seen him before. “And Will’s alive because of what you said.”
He let out a long sigh. “And because I had a gun to back it up.”
She smiled, as if the sun had come out behind her face. “A gun you didn’t use. I’m so proud of you.”
Eyes closed, she began praying for him, thanking the Lord and asking Him to show them both the right way.
Luke looked down at her hand in his, surprised and moved. He squirmed, a little embarrassed. Being prayed over in a buggy with a pretty girl holding his hand was a new experience. He closed his eyes to block her out and listened to her words asking forgiveness and comfort for him.
No one had ever prayed for him before.
Then something odd happened.
For the first time in years he knew God was listening. To Emily, yes, but waiting for him, Luke Sullivan, to open his mouth and say something.
He wanted to pray. Oh, how he wanted to pray. But he didn’t know how to begin. He screwed his eyes shut and tried to form the words in his mind.
He felt . . . different . . . surrounded by a faith so fierce he nearly went down on his knees.
God was waiting.
Lord, help me. I don’t know what to say . . .
His plea went winging upward, hanging on to her prayer like the tail on a kite.
A soft feeling of peace wrapped around him.
Emily spread her hand and wound her fingers through his. He squeezed her hand tight. The next time she paused for breath, he added a strong “Amen” out loud, hoping God understood that sometimes a man gets other things on his mind.
He untied the ribbon under her chin holding her hat in place and slipped it off her head. He pulled her to him and looked at her for a long moment. “You know I love you, don’t you?” His voice was quiet.
A small smile lit her face. “I do now.”
Soft, warm arms wrapped around his neck. As soon as she touched her lips to his, he gathered her close and kissed her long and hard.
Haldane stayed hidden in the trees, watching the couple in the buggy. When he’d seen enough, he headed the Appaloosa for the X-Bar-L.
“What do you mean you’ve already met him?” Axel demanded of the tall, light-haired cowboy standing in front of his desk.
“In town, at the pool hall,” Haldane answered, omitting a few details of his meeting with Luke Sullivan. “We chatted a little, you might say. By the way, I don’t like him.”
Axel leaned back in the chair, his face hard. “That makes two of us. He’s an ex-vigilante from Lewistown and more trouble than a nest of snakes.”
Haldane’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Lewistown?”
“Stuart’s group.”
“He’s bad news.”
“Sullivan quit them. You’ll never see them.”
Haldane was quiet for a moment, then looked up. He nodded. “You’re paying me a lot of money, Mr. Axel. Who – and how you want this handled?”
“There’s an old man who knows too much.” Bart leaned forward and studied the wiry blond man across the desk. “Unless I can head it off, I’m going to have a range war on my hands, one I’ll lose. I’ve got a boundary dispute with an orphanage coming up.”
“An orphanage? You serious?”
“Place is called New Hope, about five miles from here.
Sullivan runs their herd now.”
Haldane gave a quiet whistle of surprise. Hitching a pant leg up, he sat on the corner of the desk.
Axel swiveled his chair around and stared through his office window at the hot July afternoon and his barn beyond.
“Sullivan’s taking New Hope’s deed and Jupiter Jackson, an old guy with a long memory, into the land office in Billings next Tuesday,” Axel said. “I don’t want either the old man or the deed to get there.”
“How about Sullivan?”
Axel swore and slammed his fist on the desk, his face dark with anger. “He’s been trouble for twenty years. Everything comes back to him. There’s a woman I want at New Hope.
He’s even in my way there.”
“She a pretty young redhead, by any chance?”
Axel shot him a hard look. “Why do you ask that?”
“Because he had a girl with him in town. I followed them into the woods. From what I saw, he’s a lot more than in your way. Any man kiss a girl like that better be planning on marrying her. And from the way your lady friend had her arms wrapped around his neck, I’d say she’s sweet on him.”
Axel stretched across to the brass humidor and unwrapped a dark Havana. He wetted the cigar between his lips and lit it. “I waited months for things to calm down at New Hope with my girl. And now, looks like Sullivan’s gonna get her, too,” he said.
Haldane slid off the desk and looked down at Axel. “Not if he ain’t around, he won’t.”
“But he is.”
“That can be changed.”
Axel puffed the cigar, his cheeks sucking in and out until the tip glowed red hot. “How much?”
“You can afford it.”
CHAPTER
14
Right after breakfast Tuesday morning, Luke pulled up in front of the house driving a green ranch wagon with a bowed canvas top. Emily grabbed a satchel off the porch and ran down the walk. Cheeks flushed, she hopped on the wheel hub and handed up the brown traveling bag. He threw it in the wagon, stretched for her hand, then pulled her up next to him.
“Did you put my things in the back?” She bounced around on the seat and peered inside the wagon at the jumble of blankets and cooking gear and food supplies and extra clothes. He’d never seen her so excited, except for the night he met her. His mouth curved into a broad grin.
“I could drive a herd from here to Texas with less stuff than you have back there,” he said.
“Drive, Mr. Sullivan, just drive.” She flicked her hand with a flourish.
“Hold on, there. Not so fast. Where’s the deed?”
“In there.” She pointed to the brown satchel in back.
He worked on a pair of buckskin gloves, gathered the lines in his hands, and slapped the reins. “Giddap!”
The wagon lurched. The horses moved out on command, taking them down the lane. At the end, harnesses jingling, they swung a wide, walking turn through the gate and onto the road to Repton and Jupiter Jackson’s house.
As soon as they were out of sight of New Hope, Emily propped her feet up on the footboard. She ran a thumb around her hat brim and sniffed, look
ing at him with mock seriousness. Thrusting out her hand to him, she said, “Name’s Clyde, mister. What’s yours?”
Amusement spread across his face as he took the small hand and shook it. He chuckled and eyed her clothes. “You look ridiculous. You know that, don’t you?”
Instead of a dress, she wore a blue denim jacket and boys’ Levi’s, a plaid flannel shirt, and thick-soled work shoes laced to her ankles. Her hair was pinned on top of her head and stuffed under a wide-brimmed black cavalry hat that was too big for her.
“Molly and I thought it was a good idea. No one will ever guess it’s me. If we meet anyone, they’ll think I’m one of the boys from school.”
“From a distance, you just might pass for a boy. But not up close.” His gaze slipped to the telltale fullness of her shirtfront. Bunching all four reins in one hand, he stripped off the bandanna around his neck. “Here,” he said gruffly, “put this on. And button up your jacket. For your information, boys don’t have bustlines.”
“I didn’t think you noticed such things,” she mumbled, her cheeks on fire.
He fixed his eyes on the big swaying rear ends of the horses straight ahead and smiled. “I noticed.”
Jupiter Jackson lived with his granddaughter and her husband in a cabin deep in a pine woods outside Repton. The old man was ready and waiting in the yard, alerted by the dogs barking long before the wagon came into view. His granddaughter fussed over him, helping him up, while Luke loaded his gear into the back.
“Morning, Emily,” Jupiter whispered out of the side of his mouth as he settled his back against the seat.
Her jaw dropped. “How’d you know it was me?”
Jupiter arranged his new hat on his head and spat over the side. His eyes twinkled at her. “I may be old, girl, but I ain’t blind.”
And she wasn’t dumb. A few miles down the road, she climbed into the back of the wagon and rearranged a few things inside her shirt.
Luke held the horses down to a monotonous, slogging walk that ate the miles slowly but relentlessly, a pace the horses could keep up for hours without tiring.
Emily listened to the rise and fall of hooves and the crunch of wagon wheels. A few months ago, these sounds would’ve been foreign to her. Now they were part of her life, and she found them oddly comforting. She could hardly remember what the clang of a streetcar sounded like.
The voices of the two men droned beside her, discussing the weather. Jupiter’s voice was frail and thin; Luke’s, a deep rumble.
Jupiter scanned the sky overhead. “Probably gonna rain in a bit. Moon had a ring around it last night.”
“Maybe, but I’ve been fooled by that before,” Luke said, smiling past her at the older man.
“One of the few advantages of getting old, my boy, is experience – being able to read the signs of what’s coming at you.”
“I’m in no hurry for that.” Luke threw his head back and laughed, a hearty sound that warmed her and made her smile.
He doesn’t do that often enough, she thought, watching the creases fold in around his mouth.
Luke had taken his jacket off and unbuttoned the collar of the rough blue cotton shirt he wore. Relaxed, hat tipped up on the back of his head, he held the reins loosely in his big hands and let the horses plod along by themselves.
How could she ever understand a man whose lips told her one thing and his eyes another?
Sometimes she thought there were three of him. The one she liked least was the public one, the ex-vigilante, arrogant. Pulling a gun on him was suicide, they said. She’d seen that Sullivan only once, the night he took her off the stagecoach, and that one was squint-eyed and scary.
Then there was the quiet, serious Sullivan who smiled easily and was comfortable with books and figures. That one had talent and brains.
And lastly, there was the private Sullivan, slow talking and gentle. She didn’t know that one well yet and suspected he was like that only with her. Whenever he kissed her, he was a different man. His guard dropped then, the toughness gone, replaced by a teasing playfulness.
The road to Billings stretched for miles across a pheasant-colored countryside. The vast emptiness of the prairie cast a spell, a landscape that swallowed people up. Plains, waist-high with grass, rolled from one horizon to the other, broken here and there with high flat-topped hills.
Much of this land before her belonged to New Hope, the deed said. Between the dirt road and a steep slope off in the distance, a herd of longhorns grazed.
“Are those ours?” she asked Luke and pointed to the herd.
“Should be, but they’re not. They’re Axel’s.” He bit the words off.
“How many does he have?”
“Close to ten thousand head. Most of the other stockmen on this range run under five thousand. New Hope’s the smallest. When I was a boy, we used to run about five thousand, but nothing like that now. The herd is way down.” He swept his arm in a wide arc in front of him. “With all this land, we could run double that and not crowd anyone else out.”
“Sounds like you want to change things.”
“I’m going to, but it takes time. And money.”
Emily turned back to studying the landscape, overwhelmed by the enormousness of the rangeland in question. Uneasy, she chewed at her bottom lip. No wonder Molly expected trouble. They weren’t talking acres of land; they were talking miles of land.
They ate lunch from their laps – cold chicken and biscuits and a jar of pears, and buttermilk for Jupiter and her. Luke hated the stuff, so he drank water. Occasionally, he handed her the lines, jumped down, and walked beside the wagon for exercise. Only once did they stop to rest, letting the horses drink from a rocky little stream before resuming the slow trek toward Billings.
In late afternoon, Luke spied what he’d been looking for: a sheltered place to make camp for the night. A mile distant, a flat hilltop with a few pines butted against an outcropping of rock. Whistling, calling to the horses, he turned the team off the road and headed them across the plain for the cliff and the trees.
“Whoa,” Luke called, and stopped the team in the shade.
As soon as he had the animals unhitched and picketed, he looked for a spring and brought back buckets of water for the horses. Then he was off again, this time to gather wood and kindling for a fire.
Inside the wagon, Emily bustled around for the makings of supper, digging out the cornmeal and a slab of bacon, clattering through a stack of cooking pots for a knife to slice the meat. She didn’t hear Jupiter the first time he called, but when he beat his fist on the side of the wagon and shouted, “Listen to me,” she stuck her head out.
“Go tell Luke someone’s coming.” Jupiter jerked his thumb in the direction of the road. Kicking up a cloud of dust behind him, a lone rider on a spotted horse was cantering directly for them.
“Maybe he’s just – ”
Jupiter’s eyes snapped. “And maybe he ain’t. Git, I said!”
Alarmed at the urgency in his voice, Emily grabbed her hat and scrambled across the pile of cookware in the wagon, dropped over the back, and darted into the woods, running through the trees. Luke was nowhere to be seen. She turned left and scrambled through a tangle of underbrush leading up to the top of the cliff, yelling, “Luke! Luuuu-ke!”
Only the raucous call of jays overhead answered her. Panting, she leaned against a tree at the top to catch her breath. She cupped her palms and yelled again.
“Luuuu – ”
A hand shot around from behind the tree and clamped hard over her mouth. Instinctively she clawed at the hand over her face and struggled to break loose.
“Shhhhh! I saw him, too,” Luke said softly.
Her knees sagged with relief. He eased his hold on her and came around the tree. Clutching her throat, Emily stared at him and gulped. “I almost had a heart attack.”
“Sorry, but I had to shut you up,” he said, his face tight with tension. “Who’s coming?”
“I don’t know. Jupiter sent me afte
r you.”
From a distance, the horseman’s hat hid the upper part of his face. Although it was warm, he wore gloves – fringed leather gauntlets – and a black jacket buttoned tight at the throat. He rode the black and white horse up close, stopping a few feet from Jupiter.
“Evening, gramps.”
Jupiter narrowed his eyes. “My name is Jackson,” he said. “Jupiter Jackson. I didn’t catch yours.”
The horse shuffled sideways as the rider drew off a glove.
“Who was the boy who ran in the woods as I came up?”
“You didn’t see no boy. I’m alone.”
“You’re lying, old man. Call him back.”
Jupiter stiffened, staring up at the rider. “You better state your business, mister.”
“I said, call him back.” The words dropped like stones. He slipped a Winchester rifle from the saddle boot and pointed it at Jupiter’s chest. Smoothly, he pumped the metal lever out and back, the click of the shell as it chambered sounding unnaturally loud. His finger curled around the trigger.
Jupiter blinked rapidly, staring up at the hard-eyed man on the horse. “Now, mister, get on out of here and – ”
Boom!
The blast hurled Jupiter backward to the ground, his arms out-flung. Feebly, he jerked his legs in a futile attempt to sit up.
Boom!
Emily spun around at the shots. Luke grabbed her, jerked her to the ground, then crawled to the edge of the cliff and looked over. Through the back of the wagon, he saw the stranger tearing open boxes, dumping out bags of flour and cornmeal. On his stomach, Luke inched backward to Emily.
“I’m going down. He just shot Jupiter.” His face was hard, his lips a thin white line.
She grabbed his arm, panic exploding in her mind. “Don’t go, please don’t go.” From his expression, he intended to even the score.
He shook her hand off. “If I tell you to cover me, do you know what I mean?” His eyes bored into hers.
She nodded. “You want me to shoot anybody shooting at you, but I don’t want you to go.”
“I have to. If he doesn’t find what he came for, he’ll come after us.”
The Vigilante's Bride Page 15
