CAROLINE AND THE RAIDER

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Caroline?” Guthrie curved his fingers under her chin, and his gaze was no longer wandering. He stared straight into her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  She swallowed, searching her mind for a way to tell him she loved him, but the effort failed. “You called Annie’s name when you were unconscious,” she said instead. The statement sounded lame, but she couldn’t help that.

  His answer startled her completely. “I saw her, Caroline,” he said. “She was standing at the foot of the bed.”

  Caroline’s eyes were wide. “You were delirious.”

  “Maybe so,” Guthrie agreed. “But she was as real as you are.”

  She reached up to touch his face, subtly testing for fever. “Guthrie, you know you just imagined …”

  He shook his head abruptly. “No. I didn’t imagine her, Wildcat. She was there—she even spoke to me.”

  The pain of knowing Guthrie still loved his lost wife so much, still needed her so badly, was incomprehensible. Caroline turned to walk away, not wanting him to read her emotions in her face.

  But he reached out and caught hold of her arm, gently forcing her to face him again.

  “She said we’re still in danger, you and I,” he told Caroline solemnly. “She also said we belong together.”

  Caroline looked into his eyes and shivered, despite the sunny warmth of the day. “I believe you,” she said, although she really wasn’t sure whether she did or not.

  One side of Guthrie’s mouth quirked upwards in an unexpected grin. “You don’t,” he replied. “But that’s all right.”

  Caroline still gazed at Guthrie, her love stretching before and behind her into infinity. “You belonged to Annie first,” she said, in despair. “Maybe you’ll always belong to her.”

  He smiled sadly and gave her a light, nibbling kiss. “No person belongs to another, Caroline.”

  She wasn’t satisfied; she wanted Guthrie to say he no longer loved Annie and, at one and the same time, she knew he wouldn’t. In a corner of his heart, he would always care for the bride of his youth.

  “I can tell you this much, Guthrie Hayes,” she blurted, on the verge of tears, “I won’t marry a man who loves another woman. Baby or no baby!”

  His jawline tightened, and then he sighed heavily. “I think we’d better drop this subject before we end up yelling at each other. Get your things together, Wildcat. We’re heading for Cheyenne.”

  “You won’t be able to saddle the horses,” Caroline pointed out, folding her arms.

  “William will do it for me,” Guthrie replied.

  Deciding it was no use talking to the man at all—and he was probably loco anyway—Caroline stomped into the house and began packing her things. She had so few that it didn’t take long.

  Soon William had prepared the horses to travel and tied Caroline’s valise on behind her saddle.

  Caroline and Penny embraced.

  “You stop by here if you ever come this way again,” Penny warned, with tears glimmering in her eyes. “William and I will be building on a room for his sister’s boys, so there’ll be plenty of space for company.”

  Caroline kissed her cheek. “Thank you. And I want your word that you’ll look me up if you’re ever in Bolton. Miss Phoebe and Miss Ethel Maitland will know where to find me.”

  With that, Caroline nodded and turned to mount her horse. She’d never dreamed it would be so difficult to say good-bye to Penny Everett, but the two women had formed a lasting friendship during their short time together.

  William and Guthrie shook hands, and then Guthrie and Caroline were riding the trail again, with Tob trotting happily along beside them.

  They rode until nightfall, when they reached the tiny town of Sweet Home. Caroline remembered that Doc Elkins lived there.

  Since there was no hotel, Caroline and Guthrie took rooms at a ramshackle boardinghouse. Caroline didn’t feel up to convincing some suspicious innkeeper that she and Guthrie were married, since they weren’t, and Guthrie’s mood was obviously much the same. They ate solemnly and went off to their separate bedrooms.

  Caroline couldn’t sleep, even though all her limbs ached with exhaustion, so she ventured back downstairs hoping to borrow a book from the prim landlady.

  Instead, she was just in time to see Guthrie leaving the house, freshly bathed and shaved and wearing clean clothes.

  While Sweet Home had no hotels, it boasted half a dozen saloons, and it was fairly obvious to Caroline that Guthrie meant to visit one. He was probably going to drink and smoke and play poker, and maybe he’d even fraternize with one of the loose women who worked in places like that.

  Caroline sighed. Considering the way she’d been behaving with Guthrie, she had no room to call any other woman loose. And Guthrie had made no vows before God, for all his pretty words. If he wanted to gamble and carouse, he was well within his rights as an unmarried man.

  Sadly, Caroline made her way into the front parlor. She’d spotted a well-stocked bookshelf there earlier, and now Mrs. Beeker, the landlady, was seated on the horsehair settee, crocheting a doily. She was a sturdy-looking woman with red hair streaked with gray and an ample bosom, which she was probably attempting to minimize with the frothy lace froufrou she wore at her throat.

  Caroline hesitated in the doorway, waiting for Mrs. Beeker to become aware of her, and sure enough the middle-aged woman looked up from her handwork.

  “Good evening,” she said stiffly.

  Caroline nodded. “I was wondering if I might borrow a book—just for tonight, of course.”

  Mrs. Beeker looked her up and down with disapproving eyes, and Caroline wondered how much the woman had guessed about her association with Guthrie. “Help yourself,” she said, at last, gesturing toward the bookcase.

  Caroline hurried across the room and eagerly scanned the titles, most of which were familiar and beloved. She selected a thin volume entitled, The Life of Robin Hood. “Thank you,” she said, pausing again in the doorway.

  Mrs. Beeker didn’t look up from her doily. “Don’t read anything but the Good Book, myself. Those frivolous things belonged to my daughter, Ruby.”

  As so often happened with Caroline, curiosity won out over reason and even discretion. “Ruby. What a pretty name. Did she leave the books behind when she married?”

  The landlady made a disgusted sound. “Ruby didn’t marry anybody. And she died giving birth to a peddler’s brat.”

  Caroline shivered at the vindictive, heartless way the woman had spoken of her own daughter and grandchild. And she pitied the unfortunate Ruby, whose great sin had been that she’d fallen in love. “The baby?” Caroline dared to ask, holding her breath for the answer.

  “He died with her. It was the Lord’s vengeance.”

  Caroline’s face heated with enraged conviction, but she didn’t argue with Mrs. Beeker’s view of the Lord, because she knew it would be hopeless. The God Caroline knew would never take vengeance against a helpless little baby. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. And I’m even sorrier for poor Ruby and her child.

  Mrs. Beeker made another noise, and Caroline fled up the stairs. Returning to her room, with its slanted ceiling and drab wallpaper, she found herself wondering if this bed had been Ruby’s. Maybe the pitiable girl had dreamed of her peddler and borne her baby and died, all within those four walls.

  “You’re being fanciful,” Caroline scolded herself, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed and determinedly opening the book about Robin Hood. She didn’t want to think about Ruby Beeker or the fact that her own experiences might run disturbingly parallel to the dead girl’s.

  Resolutely, Caroline read the first line of the book, but her mind wasn’t on the whispering leaves and fragrant evergreens of Sherwood Forest. She was reflecting on how easily she could end up bearing a child alone, and her fate might very well be the same as Ruby’s.

  “No,” she said aloud, shaking her head. She would go to Chicago, tell people she was a widow, find herself a job as a governess or
a nurse.

  Out of desperation, Caroline forced her attention back to the book. Soon, mercifully, she was lost in the adventures of Robin Hood and Maid Marian and Friar Tuck. She read the scene where Robin lifted Marian onto his horse with him and kissed her three times through. It was so romantic, she thought with a sigh.

  But she’d finished the book and gone through a thousand hells imagining herself bearing Guthrie’s baby alone when she heard his boot heels on the stairs.

  Throwing prudence to the winds, she bounded off the bed, unlocked the door, and wrenched it open. Guthrie paused and grinned at her, his hat in one hand. His other arm was still in a sling, of course.

  “Evening, Wildcat,” he said, and his eyes were dancing with mischief. He knew she was jealous, damn him, and he was enjoying it.

  “Good evening, Mr. Hayes,” she replied coolly. “I was wondering what time you and I would be leaving for Cheyenne tomorrow.”

  “Bright and early,” Guthrie replied. “I’d advise you to get a good night’s sleep—Miss Chalmers.”

  Caroline drew a long breath and let it out slowly to show that she held him in the purest contempt. “Your advice means nothing to me,” she said haughtily. She dropped her voice to a near whisper. “I’m merely concerned with staying out of prison.”

  He had the temerity to grin. “I’m well aware of what you’re concerned with,” he replied, and the fact that she was aroused when he ran his eyes briefly over her figure only annoyed her more.

  Blushing, she stepped back and closed the door smartly in his face. But she could still hear him chuckling as he proceeded to his own room.

  Caroline not only locked the door, she propped a chair under the knob, too. Guthrie Hayes needn’t think he could come sneaking in by moonlight and have his way with her after what he’d said.

  Half the night she lay there listening for him, hoping he’d knock, hoping he wouldn’t. Dawn came and there was no sign of him.

  Caroline’s mood was black as she washed and dressed that morning, putting on her riding skirt, boots, and blouse. It was certainly no surprise that Guthrie hadn’t come to her—he had probably satisfied his appetites upstairs at one of the town’s saloons the night before.

  At breakfast, he greeted her with a knowing grin. Caroline ignored him, thanking Mrs. Beeker politely for the loan of the book and dutifully consuming her food, which came with the price of the room.

  Half an hour later, she and Guthrie were ready to leave, much to Caroline’s relief. When she said good-bye, the landlady reminded her that God’s fury had destroyed the Egyptian army when they pursued the Israelites and that Lot’s wife had turned to a pillar of salt.

  Stifling a sigh, and quite unsure of what message Mrs. Beeker had meant to convey, Caroline shook the woman’s hand and promised to remember.

  “She thinks you’re a fallen woman,” Guthrie remarked, when they were well away from the grim boardinghouse.

  Caroline shrugged dismally. “And she’s right, isn’t she?”

  Guthrie reached out and grabbed Caroline’s horse’s bridle, bringing her to an immediate stop. “What?”

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Last night, I was worrying that you were with a saloon woman. And I realized that I’m no better than any of them.”

  “Look at me,” Guthrie ordered sternly.

  Caroline’s eyes went straight to his face, though she would have given everything to be able to disobey the command.

  “Any man with a lick of sense would be proud to call you his own,” Guthrie said evenly. “And I wasn’t with any damn saloon woman. I was asking questions about Flynn.”

  Caroline barely managed to hold back a whoop of joy. “Did you find out anything?” she asked, after several moments of struggle with herself.

  By that time, they were riding along the street again. “Nothing I didn’t already know,” Guthrie sighed, uneasily scanning unpainted storefronts and houses lining the road on both sides. “A man answering Flynn’s description paid Doc Elkins to take a bullet out of his thigh early yesterday morning.”

  Caroline remembered the attack by the Everetts’ well and closed her eyes for a moment, while fear closed around her spirit like a mist.

  Chapter

  Caroline and Guthrie had barely left Sweet Home when he pulled off the sling he’d been wearing and tossed it into the scrub alongside the trail. After a glance in Caroline’s direction that dared her to comment, Guthrie began bending and unbending his right arm. As he did this, he grimaced with pain.

  She took the challenge. “Dr. Elkins expressly said—”

  “Be quiet, Caroline.” Guthrie continued to stretch the muscles in his arm. “Catching Flynn is going to be one hell of a job, and I’ll need both hands for it.”

  Caroline let out her breath. Nobody knew better than she did what a waste of time it was to argue with Mr. Hayes once he’d made up his mind. “Will we be in Cheyenne soon?”

  “Probably sometime this afternoon,” Guthrie answered distractedly. He was clearly more interested in the surrounding countryside than anything Caroline had to say and, as he rode, he practiced drawing his pistol. When that ritual was completed, he lit a cheroot and clamped it between his teeth.

  “I guess I’ll send a wire to Miss Phoebe and Miss Ethel when we get to Cheyenne and let them know I’m all right,” Caroline said. Something about Guthrie’s watchful silence made her uneasy.

  “No matter what you tell them,” Guthrie replied, “they’re going to think I kidnapped you.”

  Caroline thought he was probably right, but she meant to send the telegram anyway, in hopes of sparing the elderly ladies any unnecessary worry. She would make it all up to her guardians, somehow, when this whole thing was settled and she could return to Bolton. She sighed. “I seem to have an uncertain future,” she remarked.

  Guthrie grinned around the cheroot. “It looks pretty clear to me. You’ll be in one kind of trouble or another from now until the day you draw your last breath. The thing about women like you, Wildcat, is that you’ve always got to have some kind of crusade to go on. First it was Flynn, and when he’s dangling at the end of a rope, it will be finding your sisters.”

  “Seeking Mr. Flynn’s release was obviously a mistake,” Caroline conceded indignantly. “But there’s nothing wrong with my wanting to find Emma and Lily. They’re the only blood relations I have in the world.”

  “I never said there was anything wrong with looking for your kin. It’s what you’ll be up to afterwards worries me.”

  Caroline sighed. “After I’ve found my sisters, Mr. Hayes, I shall be content to raise children and keep a home.” She was suddenly embarrassed by the implications of that. “O-or teach school, of course.”

  Guthrie didn’t comment, and Caroline wasn’t sure whether she should be relieved or indignant. It would have been nice if he’d assured her that she’d be keeping his home and raising his children but, looking at him, she knew he probably hadn’t even heard what she’d said.

  After a morning of steady riding, they finally reached Cheyenne. It was a lively place, with lots of saloons sending out their raucous laughter and bawdy piano tunes, but there were stores, too, and several small hotels and restaurants. Buggies and wagons lined the streets, and people strode purposefully along the sidewalks.

  Caroline, reminded of Bolton, felt a whisper of homesickness, but she smiled when Tob trotted up to the doors of the Diamond Lady saloon and sat there whimpering for a drink.

  “I’ll get the dog a whiskey and talk to a few people while you’re sending your telegram,” Guthrie informed her, dismounting and tying his gelding to the hitching rail in front of the Diamond Lady.

  Although Caroline didn’t approve of this strategy, she knew there was little or nothing she could do to change it. “I’ll be around town somewhere,” she told him offhandedly.

  To her surprise, Guthrie took exception. “I don’t want you wandering all over Cheyenne by yourself,”; he said, taking hold of her horse’s bridle when
she would have ridden away. “Send your telegram and then wait for me over at the Statehood Hotel. It’s a respectable place.”

  Since an argument would only extend this unpleasant scene, Caroline nodded. “Shall I rent a room for you while I’m there, or do you want to do that yourself?”

  His hand touched her leg once, lightly, and under the denim of her trousers, Caroline’s flesh tingled. “We’ll only need one room, Wildcat. After I’ve seen Adabelle, you and I are going to pay a visit to a preacher.”

  Caroline’s heart soared, then plummeted, Guthrie wanted to marry her only because he thought she was carrying his child, and that wasn’t reason enough. “We can talk about that later,” she said.

  Down the street, at the Western Union office, she dictated a telegram to her guardians, telling them not to worry about her and that she’d explain everything when she got home. That done, she proceeded to the Statehood Hotel and asked for accommodations for one. Guthrie could get his own damn room.

  Having made this decision, Caroline carried her valise upstairs to her quarters while the desk clerk sent a boy to the livery stable with her horse. She unpacked her things, counted her dwindling store of money, and then went back down to eat a modest luncheon in the dining room.

  After that, she went back upstairs and stretched out on her bed for a badly needed nap.

  When she awakened, Guthrie was standing at her feet, freshly shaved and barbered and wearing a new suit of clothes. He looked like a different man.

  “That’s a pretty narrow bed,” he said, one thumb tucked into his watch pocket, “but I guess we won’t need much room considering that I plan to keep you either under me or on top of me most of the night.”

  Caroline blushed so hard that her face hurt. And she hadn’t rested well. “I have no intention of sharing these covers with the likes of you, Mr. Hayes,” she said, sitting up and smoothing her hair back from her face. “Have you been to see Adabelle yet?”

  Guthrie came to sit beside her on the thin, lumpy mattress. “No,” he said gently, taking her hand. “I’m going there now.” He smelled pleasantly of bay rum and peppermint.