The Outlaw Takes a Bride

by Susan Page Davis

  After a few minutes, she closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window frame. Soon she would be with Mark. Though she had never met him face-to-face, she knew he was one of the kindest, most considerate men on earth. And he knew so much about ranching and cattle. They would make a success of the ranch—she knew it. Mark had written to her that the last winter had been hard, and rain was scarce this spring. But God would provide what they needed. He would sell off his steers, and together they would subsist in the snug little house Mark had described in detail.

  Even living frugally on an isolated ranch would be better than life with the Reverend and Mrs. Winters. Effie’s disapproval had turned to hostility during the past week after Sally announced her departure. When her husband wasn’t around, she had begrudged Sally every mouthful of food and berated her for leaving them without a housekeeper. Sally had set her jaw and completed the long list of chores Effie gave her each day. Telling herself she was doing it for Mark and for their future together helped Sally get through it. She had found it hard to squeeze out time to go and purchase her ticket and collect her pay from Mrs. DeVeer.

  “Shirking your tasks,” Effie had scolded when she returned to the parsonage.

  “I had to finish up some business and buy my ticket,” Sally had replied.

  Effie eyed the package that held her dress goods. “And what’s that? Surely you’re not taking on more outside sewing when you should be tending to things here.”

  “No, it’s not outside sewing.” Sally had scurried up the back stairs and out of earshot, but the last few days of her visit were almost unbearable under Effie’s mean eye and sharp tongue.

  But Sally was here now, on the train to Texas, and the man she loved was waiting for her.

  The man she ought to have married the first time, she thought, and then stifled the notion. If God had wanted her to marry Mark back then, He’d have brought him across her path before she became attached to David. Which wasn’t to say God had wanted her to marry David Golding. Sally now believed that was the worst error of judgment she had ever made. But God had smiled on her now. He was giving her a second chance with Mark Paynter.

  For the next two days, Johnny and Cam worked around the ranch. Johnny found a few extra horseshoes and tools that allowed him to replace the shoe Reckless had lost. They patched the roof over the bunk and then checked the forty-eight cattle to make sure they were all healthy and properly branded with Mark’s MP brand. They discovered the root cellar, which contained a few potatoes and turnips. Johnny made a batch of butter by shaking cream in a jar until his arm ached. Cam heated a big kettle of water over an open fire, and they washed their clothes. They went through Mark’s small wardrobe and decided what things each of them could use.

  On the third day, they knew they couldn’t put off going to town any longer. Cam was getting antsy for coffee, and the other supplies were running low. They ate eggs and pancakes at every meal. Johnny finally admitted he was hankering for something sweet, and they saddled their horses and rode the way they’d been headed when they came to the ranch.

  The sun beat down on them. Johnny hoped it wasn’t too far. They crossed over a plank bridge that spanned a trickle of water. He took that as a sign of civilization. About five miles out from the ranch, they topped a slight rise in the nearly flat range, and Beaumont spread before them.

  They rode in at a slow trot, taking in the offerings of town. To Johnny’s surprise, most of the businesses sat within a hundred yards of a river, and despite the recent hot weather, it flowed along with an impressive water level. Stock pens covered at least an acre of ground, and a large building near the waterfront bore a sign declaring it a rice mill.

  “Rice?” Cam shook his head. “Who’d have thought it was wet enough to grow rice here?”

  They let the horses plod along until they passed a sawmill and came into the retail district. The main street boasted a mercantile, a haberdashery, a bank, a hotel, a boardinghouse, a bakery, and farther along, a train station. Johnny counted three saloons, and he was sure there were others down the road, but Cam had pulled aside and dismounted in front of the first saloon.

  Johnny hitched Reckless to the rail before the building and followed Cam into the low-ceilinged twilight. He let his eyes adjust for a moment and joined Cam at the bar.

  “Them fellers didn’t care who got in the way,” a man was saying to the bartender, who nodded sagely while a few other men leaned on the bar and listened.

  “I feel bad for Frank Simon, getting shot like that,” another man said.

  The bartender nodded. “We all do. The doc says it’ll take him a month or two to get back on his feet.” He sized up Johnny and Cam as he spoke. “You new in town?” he asked Cam.

  “Yeah, I’m out to Paynter’s place,” Cam said with a nod toward Johnny. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, it was three or four days ago now,” the bartender said. “Half-a-dozen hooligans rode in and tried to rob the bank. The fella what owns the grocery came out with a gun to help stop ’em, and they shot him. The sheriff came along then, ’cause he’d heard the gunfire, and he and a couple other fellas ran ’em off, but old Frank won’t soon forget it.”

  “Outlaws,” Johnny looked at Cam.

  “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard about it out to your place,” the first man said, eyeing Johnny.

  The bartender slid two glasses of beer toward them. Johnny put some coins on the bar, and he and Cam carried their refreshment to a table. Johnny hated beer. He’d tried it once, in Denver, and swore he would never drink it again. His mother would be happy if she’d known. But he didn’t want to cause a stir by refusing it today.

  “They must be talking about the ones who killed Mark,” he whispered to Cam.

  Cam nodded. “The timing’s right.” He took a big swig of his drink.

  “We should tell the sheriff.”

  “No,” Cam said. “We can’t. Didn’t you hear? They think you’re Mark.”

  “You think so?” Johnny glanced toward the cluster of men at the bar.

  “Hey, Paynter,” one of them called, “You sure you didn’t see nothing out your way? The sheriff thought they rode in from the north.”

  Johnny opened his mouth. Now was the time to set the matter straight. And the time when Cam kicked his ankle under the table.

  “No,” he said.

  He’d done it now. He had lied. Whether out of shock, reflex, or intent to deceive, it was done.

  “We should go,” he said to Cam in a low voice.

  Cam picked up his half-empty mug. “Hold on.” He glugged down the rest of his beer and eyed Johnny’s full glass. “You leavin’ that?”

  Johnny nodded. Cam reached over and picked it up. He drank half of it down and set the glass on the table.

  “All right. Come on.”

  Outside, Johnny turned on him.

  “Now what do we do?”

  Cam eyed him critically in the harsh daylight. “You do look like him. ‘Course, Mark didn’t have a beard. But I’ll bet you could pass for him even if you shaved. Maybe better’n now.”

  “Stop it. We need to straighten this out.”

  “Too late.”

  Johnny’s stomach heaved, even though he hadn’t drunk anything.

  “I want to see the sheriff.”

  “I thought you’d changed your mind about that.”

  Johnny didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t think straight.

  Cam stepped closer and put a hand on his sleeve. “If that’s what you really want to do, I’ll go with you.”

  Johnny looked up at him. “Really?”

  “Sure. I told you the other day, it’s up to you. Of course, even if the sheriff believes our story, he’s going to wonder where we came from, and how we just happened to show up at Mark’s place the same day he was killed.”

  Johnny’s throat squeezed so tight he could hardly breathe. “Those outlaws. They came into town after they killed Mark.”

  “That’s righ
t.” They stood for a moment, gazing at each other.

  Johnny lowered his voice. “They couldn’t suspect us of committing this robbery in town, could they?”

  “I dunno.” Cam glanced back at the saloon door. “For sure they’d realize whoever shot up the town killed Mark, too.”

  “It might sway them to think we did it all.” Johnny stared into Cam’s troubled brown eyes. Would confessing who he really was put his friend in danger of hanging? Cam had stuck by him through thick and thin. Johnny couldn’t cast suspicion on him.

  He could feel his friend’s agitation, and he didn’t like it. At last he ripped his gaze away. “Come on. We’ve got to get some supplies.”

  “That’s right,” Cam said. “And we’d best not stay in town too long, or people might start asking more questions. You go to the feed store for a sack of chicken feed, and I’ll see if the mercantile across the street has got coffee.”

  “Get some bacon, too,” Johnny said, “and a little bit of sugar.”

  “I’ve only got fifty cents.”

  “Yeah. Well, get what you can.”

  Johnny mounted Reckless and rode down the main street. He wasn’t sure where the feed store was, but he hated to ask anyone. They would think it odd that Mark Paynter didn’t know his way around town. Johnny wasn’t comfortable letting them think he was his brother, but he was now more afraid of telling them he wasn’t Mark.

  He reached the end of the business district. The buildings got farther apart, and houses scattered out into the countryside. He turned back and headed Reckless down a side street, toward the river. He was rewarded by the sight of a livery stable with a smithy attached, and beyond it a feed store. He tied the horse out front and stepped inside.

  Two men were talking near a rough counter. The man behind it looked up and said, “Morning.”

  The second man turned toward him with the nonchalant air of one curious to see who the wind blew in. Johnny stopped and tried not to stare at the shiny star glinting on his vest.

  The sheriff frowned at him. “Paynter, that you?”

  CHAPTER 4

  Of course it’s him,” the store owner said. “Mark’s just growed a beard.” He nodded at Johnny, smiling.

  “Sorry,” the sheriff said. “Didn’t recognize you with the whiskers.”

  Johnny’s heart pounded. “I, uh, was out on the range for a few days without my razor and decided when I got home to keep it.”

  His gut wrenched. He couldn’t undo it now. He’d lied to the sheriff, and he couldn’t take it back. He felt sick. This was worse than having a glass of beer, and he knew it. Ma would be so ashamed of him.

  “Well, I’d best be getting on,” the sheriff said, picking his hat up off the counter. “See ya, Mel.” He nodded at Johnny. “Stay alert, Paynter. Some raiders are on the loose.”

  Johnny swallowed hard. “Do you think they’ve left the area?”

  “Hope so, but you never know.”

  “I’ll be careful.” Johnny felt like a traitor. He made himself turn away and not watch the sheriff walk out.

  “What can I get ya, Mark?” the owner asked.

  “Sack of chicken feed,” Johnny said.

  “Coming right up.” Mel walked around the end of the counter and over to a stack of full feed sacks.

  “Uh, I’ve only got my horse today,” Johnny said, eyeing the hundred-pound burlap sacks. “No wagon.” A buckboard sat beside Mark’s barn, back at the ranch.

  “You want a fifty-pound sack instead?”

  “Probably best. I’ll come in with the wagon soon and get some more. And some oats.”

  “Whenever you’re ready.” Mel brought over the smaller sack, which was still plenty big. “You want that on your tab?”

  “Uh…sure.”

  Johnny took the sack and carried it out on his shoulder. He eased it up onto Reckless’s haunches and tied it in place, feeling even worse. He’d gotten this feed under false pretenses—and how big a tab did Mark have?

  He rode slowly back toward the mercantile on the main street. Cam was just stowing some parcels in his saddlebags. He looked at the sack of feed behind Johnny’s saddle and nodded.

  “Good, you got it. I got the coffee, some bacon, and some beans and cornmeal. And the sugar you wanted.”

  “You had enough money, I guess?”

  Cam shook his head. “When I told the storekeeper I was Mark Paynter’s new hand, he offered to put the coffee and other stuff on Mark’s account.”

  “The same happened to me,” Johnny said.

  “Seems we’ve stumbled onto a good thing.” Cam grinned and swung into the saddle.

  Johnny didn’t like it, but he didn’t say anything, as other people were going in and out of the mercantile.

  When they had left the center of town, Cam glanced around and said, “This is great! You can pick up your brother’s life, assuming no one in town knew Mark too well.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Besides, the sheriff was in the feed store.”

  Cam’s features sharpened. “Oh? Did he speak to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he know you? Or think he knew you?”

  “Not at first, but the owner said I’d grown a beard, and then he seemed to accept it.”

  Cam laughed. “People see what they want to see.”

  Johnny shook his head. “I don’t like it, the whole idea of it. I don’t want to live a lie.”

  Cam sat back in his saddle. “Well, let’s just think about it for a while and see what develops.”

  They rode back to the ranch in near silence. Johnny put the coffee and other supplies away, while Cam stowed the chicken feed in a barrel in the barn. With sundown, the temperature cooled, and for the first time, Johnny didn’t mind making a fire in the stove. He stirred up some corn bread to go with their bacon and beans.

  Cam smacked his lips over the corn bread. “Nice to have a hot meal.”

  Johnny grunted. “You can cook next time. I made plenty, so we can have some tomorrow without heating up the place again.”

  “Good strategy.” Cam reached for another slab of corn bread. “Your johnnycake’s almost as good as my stepmother’s.”

  Johnny smiled at that, but he hoped Cam wouldn’t somehow rope him into doing all the cooking. Cam had a way of doing the chores he wanted to do and getting someone else to do the rest. But now Johnny was the only other person around to take up the slack. He liked Cam, mostly, but some of his friend’s quirks grated on him. He recalled that back at the Lone Pine, Cam had often come in two-thirds drunk after his evening off. When that happened, it was best to stay out of his way until he’d slept it off. But no one could handle a branding iron as well as Cam, or string wire as tight.

  When they had finished eating, Cam took his plate and flatware to the dishpan and tossed it in with a clatter.

  “Hey! Easy on the dishes,” Johnny said. “We’ll be eating off our tin camp plates next thing you know.”

  “Sorry.” Cam put on his hat. “Guess I’ll mosey out and see how the cattle are doing.”

  “What about the dishes?”

  “What about ’em?”

  Johnny frowned. “Well, I cooked. Seems as if you’d oughta wash the dishes tonight.”

  “There’s hardly any.”

  “There’s plenty. Cooking makes dirty dishes, you know. Besides, they’ll dry on and stick if we don’t wash them up now.”

  “You sound like an old woman,” Cam said.

  Johnny glared at him, feeling the heat in his face. “Sorry, but I like to eat off clean dishes, not ones full of cockroaches and mold.”

  Cam laughed and walked out the door.

  Johnny huffed out a breath in frustration. He felt the way he had when his big brother had teased him or told him he wasn’t “big enough” to do something. Only Mark had always come back and made things up later.

  Mechanically, Johnny poured what hot water was left in the teakettle into the dishpan and ladled in enough cold from
a bucket so he could put his hands in it. Mark had left scraps of soap in a mesh cage on a dish nearby, and Johnny swished it through the water until a satisfying skim of bubbles had formed on the surface. With a sigh, he sank his plate and Cam’s in the soapy water.

  By the time Cam came in, the dishes were put away and the kitchen was tidy. Johnny kept the fire going just enough to keep the cabin comfortable and heat a fresh pot of coffee. Cam stood in the doorway and looked around, nodded, and closed the door behind him.

  “Why you burning candles?”

  “Forgot to get lamp oil.”

  “Hmpf.” Cam sat down on the bench near the stove and pried his boots off. “I woulda done those dishes.”

  “I know,” Johnny said, and he realized he was lying again. Would it get easier every time he did it? He didn’t want to be a liar. Ever. But he was. Today he had lied at least three times. “I don’t want to do it,” he said with sudden decision.

  “What? The dishes?”

  “No. Pretend to be Mark.”

  “Kind of late now, Johnny.”

  “Maybe if I shave, we can start over. Go into town tomorrow and tell them Mark’s dead.”

  Cam shook his head and set his boots aside. “They’d know right away it was you they saw today.”

  “All right then, we wait a few days. A week, maybe. Next time we need supplies.”

  “It won’t work. How would you say he died? If you tell him the outlaws did it, they’d know we lied today.”

  “We could say he got sick.”

  “What kind of sickness takes a man that fast and ain’t catching?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve gotta have a better plan than that.” Cam got up and walked over to the cupboard. He took out the pan of corn bread and lifted a slab.

  “Hey, that’s for tomorrow,” Johnny said.

  “Just one piece.” Cam took it and slid the pan back into the cupboard. He took his clean coffee cup from the shelf and poured himself a cupful then ambled back to the bench and plunked down. “You can’t let your guilt get the best of you.”