Outlaw Bride (Lawmen and Outlaws)

by Tanya Hanson

  His ear had picked up every Indian dialect and tongue for a hundred miles either direction, and he could cipher any pictograph twice that far away. But translating the written American language could only be done with squints and long pauses. Something his brain just didn’t like to do.

  No way in hell did he want her to consider him some ignorant fool. It was best to keep himself talking.

  “Figure we can sort out all we need to know when we get to the mission,” he announced after breaking camp and helping her up into the wagon. He kept a mug full of the broth to sip. She’d done a damn tasty job of breaking their fast with so little to make it from. While he felt some pride at her accomplishment, he also felt doubt. He’d seen sparks of intellect in her eyes. Had she truly lost her wits or was she trying to pull off some sort of fraud?

  But when she leaned against his shoulder, she fell asleep, breathing innocent as a baby against the creak of the wheels and the murmur of Oak Creek. He liked the feel of her. It was almost like they were a couple for real, camping out along the road with their dog. Then he recollected, with a twinge, she likely had a man of her own.

  His teeth ground together. Likely a man who’d tried to kill her.

  Then Cathedral Rock started calming him down, like it always did, making him feel downright worshipful. Right now looked like he could hold it in his hand. But for the next hour or two it grew big against the horizon. At last, true to its name, it loomed like a giant church over the tiny mission brushed with graythorn and mesquite. The sleeping girl woke up, skittish like a kitten, hearing Sister Adelaide Eugene’s olά as they drove up.

  By now, the day had heated up plenty. The nun’s face was a smiling pink triangle framed by the black veil that hung from a tight frame around her head.

  “Mister Redd, hopefully your travels were uneventful. Who do you have here?” Like always, she kept her hands tucked together inside her sleeves, but her words and face were friendly.

  “Not so uneventful, Sister,” he said, braking the wagon and climbing down. “Found this young lady fainted alongside the road late yesterday. Hope you and those almost-nuns can doctor her up.”

  The nun frowned. “You know full well they’re called ‘postulants,’ Mister Redd. What seems to be the matter, child?”

  But the girl started to scribble on the slate and held it up like she’d done before. He snorted and spoke for her.

  “She can’t talk. I call her Mary.” He met his passenger’s eyes. “This here’s the nun I been telling you about. Sister Adelaide Eugene.”

  “Oh, dear Mother of Mercy!” Sister Adelaide Eugene burst out in astonishment. “Whatever circumstance could have cost you your tongue?”

  His passenger held up the slate again.

  “ ‘No memories?’” the nun read, alarmed. “My dear, have you no recollection at all?”

  The girl shook her head but looked away from the nun’s sharp eyes while she did it. Once again Redd felt that stab of doubt against her mind being enfeebled at all.

  But before he could ask for a private word, the nun shook her head. “Mister Redd, I have no training against diseases of the brain,” she said. “You must seek out a doctor in the nearest town.”

  At that, his passenger tensed, turned pale. And Redd suspected he’d been right all along about this, too. She was hiding from someone.

  Then she wiped the slate clean and wrote something else. It jumbled together before Redd’s eyes and he knew his passenger understood his squint. He looked away, mortified, but grateful that the nun read the message out loud.

  “‘Sister, I am well enough. I would like to stay with you and become a nun.’”

  Even with the sun warming him up, Redd’s shoulders chilled. It was just the thought he’d had himself, about her hiding out here til he sorted things out. But what if she meant it for real? Was it possible she’d been headed here on her own?

  Damn, it would be nothing but a waste, her with those full-grown bosoms meant to pleasure a man and nourish his babe.

  At that thought, something he didn’t let happen too often started up again between his legs. And here he was in the company of a holy woman and one who claimed she wanted to be one.

  Damn. Tawana still lived inside his mind, heart. Every thought. Yet somehow he had caught this young woman’s appeal, her strength and her ragtaggle beauty. He wanted to hear what she sounded like, and when her wits came back, to find out everything about her.

  “Why, my dear, I..I...” Sister Adelaide Eugene sputtered. “I...I don’t think I understand. Our way of life isn’t one to decide upon quickly. There are many preparations and sacrifices.”

  The girl started to scribble hard on the slate again, but Sister Adelaide Eugene stopped the chalk, gentle. “My dear, if you have no memories, you can’t know if you’re free to take vows. You might be a man’s wife, or a young child’s mother. You may not even share our faith.”

  “Sister.” Redd interrupted, beseeching as polite as he could. He hated to admit it, but he had to. It was a good plan. It really was. “A private word, please?”

  “Of course, Mister Redd.” Surprise lit her eyes.

  He led her away where the girl couldn’t hear. The shelter from the young mulberry sapling wasn’t much, but the wind blew the opposite way and might muffle their voices.

  Politely, he pulled his black Stetson from his head. “I sure wish you’d leave off the mister, Sister. And I advise you to take her in, whatever your rules.”

  “But Mister Redd!” Her face was now a white triangle wrapped in black, and he could see shock in her eyes, hear it in her voice. “I spoke the truth. One doesn’t choose the veil like one orders a new hat from a catalogue! Besides, surely someone is missing her.”

  “I respect all you said, ma’am. Don’t mean to make her a nun for real. Just keep her with you for a time until I can sort things out.”

  “Sort things out? Whatever is going on, Mister, well, Redd?”

  He leaned as close as he dared, her being a nun and him not wanting to be sacrilegious, but he didn’t want even a whisper of his words to travel on the wind.

  “Someone tried to kill her, Sister. Tried to strangle her. Those big boots? She was trying to leave a false trail when she passed out from lack of water. Shock too, I reckon.”

  The nun’s mouth opened but no word came out for a while. Then she breathed out hard and noisy. “Well then, thank the Lord you came upon her and not her foes. So why don’t you fetch a lawman? Surely Pioneer Meadows has a sheriff.”

  “Nope.” He snuck a peek at the girl. She was busy driving the wagon toward the ramshackle barn. “It’s best, keeping her whereabouts secret. The law tends to side with a man’s attempts at keeping his woman in line. My ma died at the hands of her second man when the law scoffed at her complaints.”

  His voice trailed off. The words hurt just to say them. Something like a tear tickled the back of his throat, and he kept his eyes wide so the tragic memory didn’t relive behind his lids.

  “I am so sorry, Redd.” Sister Adelaide Eugene’s face grew whiter yet, but she nodded. “What should we do?”

  “Just what I said. Nurse her yourself. We can’t risk identifying her to some doctor, neither. Not till I find out who her foes are. Likely when her voice box heals, she’ll talk.”

  Just like a regular woman, Sister Adelaide Eugene chewed on a fingernail, then turned nun again quick and stuck her hands inside her robes.

  “I fear you may be right, Redd,” she said. “But as soon as you find out the truth, you must fetch her immediately. And alert the law. I’m certain her loved ones are missing her.”

  Loved ones? In spite of Tawana, Redd didn’t like the sound of someone else loving her. He grabbed for her hand inside the sleeve. “Her loved ones just might be the ones after her. You get that, right?”

  “If it’s true, this can only be a very temporary arrangement.” Sister Adelaide Eugene used a stern voice he remembered from his school days. Pulling her right hand free, she wa
lked him farther away across the pebbles and dust. “I cannot bring any suspicion or danger to my postulants.”

  “Don’t get you, Sister.” Redd swallowed his impatience. His ma had taught him to respect women and this one was a nun on top of it. “I think this girl is in trouble, not bringing it. Don’t y’all offer safe haven or some such to folks needing aid?”

  For a long while, the nun stared where her feet hid underneath her long dusty hem, her cheek twisting with teeth picking at the inside of her mouth. Redd reckoned she was making up her mind about something. Finally she blew out a long sigh.

  “Mister Redd, Padre Cardeñas trusts you, so I believe you to be a man of conviction. What I say next is told to you in complete confidence. Mister Redd, have I your word that you will keep it so?”

  She stared at him like it was the Judgment and held out her hand, using mister. Twice. His heart hammered, same way it had whenever his captain called a charge, for he didn’t know what was coming. “You got my word of honor, ma’am,” he said, shaking her hand hard. “Forever and ever.” He hesitated. “Amen.”

  “You’ve been right, calling my colleagues the ‘almost-nuns,’ she said in a tone soft and hard both. “In truth, those three young women have no religious calling, sir. Nor do I.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not a nun, Mister Redd, and ‘Padre’ is a U.S. Marshal. We’re incognito, but we are living our roles as accurate as we can. That way, folks might offer us respect, maybe even confession and trust. He and I are God-fearing folks who believe the truth will set you free. I am a trained schoolmarm who also nursed the sick and wounded during the War of Northern Aggression. Now I’m a widow-woman trying to find the outlaw who killed my daughter back in Butter Creek, Texas. And the ‘postulants?’ They’re all innocent women in trouble, running for their lives. No one knows their truths but me.’

  She looked around the desolate mission like her neck had a wheel. “Such as it is, my ‘order’ is giving them sanctuary.”

  Chapter Three

  Jessy Belle harrumphed and hopped herself out of the wagon, Renegade right behind. She knew very well Cleeland Redd and that nun were discussing her and leaving her plumb out of it.

  The nun’s forehead wrinkled with more than the sun in her eyes. Right now, they were striking some unholy bargain and shaking hands on it.

  So to spite him, she drove the wagon close as she could to what looked like a barn and set to unhitching the mules. She might as well earn her keep. Show him she wasn’t some prissy-faced weakling. So far, all the pitiful buildings seemed made from thick bricks of mud. Likely whoever had set up this place had good reason to leave.

  Nowhere did she see the bright soaring church she’d expected, with arched doors and windows that made pictures with bits of shining glass. There was a steeple and a cross atop a little shack-like thing, but that didn’t ease her disappointment one single bit.

  She turned back for a quick peek at Cleeland Redd, then reminded herself that ladies didn’t stare. Still, the looks of him made her mood better even if he made her mad.

  “How can I help you, ma’am?”

  The voice just about scared the rest of her wits from her.

  A boy who might be just as handsome as Cleeland Redd when he grew up all the way came out of the worn-out barn. He was likely a smidge younger than herself

  Then she remembered she couldn’t talk enough to answer him. Where was that slate? What was a dagnabbed person of the male persuasion doing here in a houseful of nuns? His dark hair and skin sure made him pretty. His black eyes looked her over, but in that way Renegade did, like it didn’t matter how she looked or what she’d done.

  It sure wasn’t at the impure way Ahab’s compadre Rolly Gitts had done since joining the gang two years ago. However, Rolly’s membership had expired last July when a lightning strike killed both him and his horse.

  Jessy Belle missed the horse. Crude and lewd, Rolly had asked for her body a thousand times and never once for her hand.

  Right now the young boy stood there, ogling in a nice way and saying nothing. Likely she ought to let this child know she intended to be a nun.

  From behind him, she saw some females inside the barn. One milked a cow, the other looped rope on a small hook. They looked up at her approach. Renegade spied a cat and ran off.

  They both wore ugly gray dresses, with white kerchiefs over their hair that sat flat at their necks. Nothing like the black batwings that hid the main nun’s hair completely from eyeshot.

  A brown-haired one came over. “Why, welcome. I’m Sister Avery, and that’s Sister Veronica.” She pointed to the cow milker who had yellow hair like Jessy Belle’s and a big smile on her face. “And this…” Sister Avery smiled at the boy, who stood staring when he should be stacking sacks. “This is Guillermo Fernandez. He’s doing handy work until we get all set up. But-” She stopped, shy for a bit. “We’re all hoping he’ll stay on and enroll in our school.”

  He frowned. “Ain’t no schoolboy, Sister. I’m a man.” His voice sounded hard now, but he turned to Jessy Belle with something of a smile. “I’m sixteen. Got no family or home, so help out folks when I can. Call me Will,” he said, holding out his hand.

  Jessy Belle placed hers into his, mannerly as she could. But he didn’t do a handshake. Instead, he raised her hand to his mouth in a most gallant way. His lips tickled, not at all like the nasty flick of Rolly Gitts’ hot sour tongue when he’d tried to steal a kiss.

  Jessy Belle smiled at Will’s gentlemanliness, knowing Cleeland Redd was watching. But her skin crawled when she recalled Ahab having allies everywhere. Worry fluttered in her heart. She’d known many young boys like this, no kith or kin or learning, and nowhere to go but follow an outlaw’s easy path.

  To busy her thoughts, she turned from Will and set to work on the animals. When Will moved to do it, she shook her head. She couldn’t let him, not with her needing to prove to Cleeland Redd, and the Sister too, that she knew how to be useful.

  Then he was behind her. She knew it even though she hadn’t heard his footsteps. Already she seemed to feel him deep in her bones.

  “This is Sister Mary,” Cleeland Redd announced. “She’ll be joining your order.”

  It sounded so official Will groaned like he’d heard bad news and stalked off.

  “Good morning, Mister Redd,” greeted Sister Avery, tossing Jessy Belle a lovely smile. “That is most blessed news. We will make her welcome.”

  “Make her healthy, too, if you’d be so kind. She’s mute. And more than a bit addled,” he said, gruff, like Jessy Belle didn’t have ears of her own. “Can’t remember a thing.”

  Sister Avery nodded. Although Cleeland Redd had Jessy Bell sound helpless and foolish to her new friends, relief washed over her. Up to know, she hadn’t known if the nuns would turn her away.

  Or worse. Turn her in to the law.

  She could play mute and muddled for a while yet while she plotted her next move. Maybe she found herself in the right place for once. Maybe there was a God after all and He was watching over her. If she could talk, she’d ask these girls to thank Him for her. But likely being a nun now, she’d learn to pray all by herself.

  Cleeland Redd nodded polite-like to the others, but it was mostly dismissal. They started unloading the wagon while Will lit up a cheroot over by a wobbly fence, attempting to be manly. Cleeland Redd took her hand and led her off a ways.

  Her skin tickled at his touch. The yard was rutted with old wagon tracks, and she stumbled into one, which plopped her against his side. Feeling his heat, her breath hitched tight against her sore throat.

  “I’m glad Renegade and I found you in the nick of time,” he said, stopping finally at a clump of snakeweed, “I’m glad to see you pert and hale. And…” His eyebrows rose up like he was surprised, “...glad you know how to tend animals. You can be downright useful around here, and take care of Renegade for me, too. Til I get back.”

  Her eyes questioned him, and he went
on. “Soon’s Sister gets a noon meal down me, I’m off to retrieve a few more possibles she’ll require. My errand might also give me a chance to investigate your circumstance.”

  She couldn’t help tasting fear.

  “Now, now, don’t you fret.” Cleeland Redd’s feet shuffled in the dust. “Even if I find out significant things, I will not reveal your whereabouts. Leastways, not til I come back here and discuss it with you. Honest and truly, Sister Mary. Or whatever might be your true name. You have my word.”

  Honest and truly, she believed him and relaxed a bit. Right then he gave her a sweet crooked smile that set her heart tumbling all the way to her toes. Then it beat way too fast. He might mean all of that now.

  But not if he discovered she was Jessy Belle Perkins who had a price on her head, him being a man who needed cash to fix up his ranch.

  Swallowing hard, glad it didn’t hurt so much this time, she nodded and set to brushing Snapper. He was a fine horse, something that would make Ahab take unholy risks. Likely by now he and his crew were far off and running, though. Mostly they hightailed out of a place when they’d left someone behind.

  No, she hadn’t been the first. And she wouldn’t be the last.

  But once again she recalled the pearls. Shaking the thought away, she felt Cleeland Redd’s gaze on her and liked it.

  “You will do me that favor, won’t you?” he asked suddenly. “Take care of my mutt while I’m gone? Figure to be back in two, three days give or take. He needs to rest up.” He gave that grin again. “I’ll slow down some on the way back to my ranch, but ’Gade will be on foot. Won’t get any spoiling then.”

  She nodded, wishing the dog could stay forever. Cleeland Redd, too, for that matter. It made her sad, him so soon off to his home. Then her mood darkened. Likely a wife to boot.

  Then and there, she made up her mind. She wasn’t any nun yet, and likely a man who talked to a dog like it was people didn’t have anybody back home to talk to.

  She deserved this. Grabbing his forearms first, she planted her arms up around his neck and pulled him close. He gasped in surprise but didn’t pull away.