A Match Made in Texas

by Margaret Brownley

  The man introduced himself to Rick as attorney-at-law Charles Birdseye. “Time to get to work. I’ve been hired to represent you.” He was dressed in striped, black trousers, matching frock coat, and a short, crowned hat.

  “Lucky you,” Rick muttered. The circuit judge was due any day, and only now did his assigned lawyer get around to meeting with him.

  Birdseye set a chair in front of the cell and wiggled it back and forth as if to make certain it would hold his stout body before trusting it enough to sit. He then opened his brown leather portfolio on his lap. He cleared his throat, and his bulbous nose twitched.

  “Smells like a bawdy house in here.”

  The perfume was a welcome change from the usual jailhouse smells. Unfortunately, it kept the lady and the garments in her hope chest very much on Rick’s mind.

  “Miss Sheriff has no respect for dirt,” Rick said.

  “Miss Lockwood has no respect for a lot of things, including a woman’s rightful place in the home. It’ll take a tough man to tame her, that’s for sure.”

  Rick’s eyebrows rose. Taming Miss Sheriff? Would such a thing be possible? He doubted it.

  Birdseye studied him. “First thing we need to do is get you cleaned up. Hair, beard.” His frown increased as his gaze traveled down the length of him. “Clothes.”

  “I like the way I look.”

  Birdseye pulled a sheet of paper from his case. “If you show up in court like that, the jury might decide to improve your appearance with a necktie.”

  He popped a monocle before his eye and proceeded to read. A generous mustache shadowed thick red lips that moved silently as he read. The wide mouth didn’t seem to belong with his small beady eyes and narrow forehead.

  “Says here that you’re charged with killing one Mr. Cooper.”

  Rick frowned. What kind of lawyer was this? He hadn’t even bothered familiarizing himself with the case prior to their meeting.

  The lawyer folded the paper. “Glad to hear it. The last few cases I handled were boring land disputes. Nothing like a good murder case to liven things up.”

  “How many cases like mine have you handled?” Rick asked.

  “Like yours? Oh, you mean murder cases. None. You’re my first.” He rubbed his hands together with obvious glee. “Can’t wait to get started.”

  Rick had a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling…

  * * *

  Amanda raced out of town with mixed feelings, her deputy by her side. They were followed by no less than a half dozen wheeled vehicles. It was hardly the kind of posse she’d imagined, but they did look impressive if not altogether intimidating.

  The pounding of horses’ hooves and rattling wagon wheels sent folks scurrying for cover. Twice, they had to stop to pull a vehicle out of the mud. This required everyone to scamper about collecting rocks to give the wheels traction.

  Scooter, with the help of an occasional passerby, was then able to push the vehicles free with a thrust of his shoulder and several quotes from good ole Grandpappy.

  Amanda shook her head in amazement. How was it possible to know so many quotes about rocks and mud?

  The moment they reached open land, Amanda urged Spirit into a full gallop. Grazing cattle looked up as they passed. Wild mustangs lifted their tails and galloped away. Prairie dogs popped head first into holes. The mother of a baby buffalo threw back her head and bellowed. A flock of blackbirds took to the sky.

  The last of the clouds drifted away just as they reached the poor farm. Old Mr. Jacobs looked up from working in the field. Instead of the usual grin, a frown creased his shiny dark forehead.

  Signaling her posse to halt with a raised hand, Amanda rode up to the fence and waited for him to meet her there.

  “Lord have mercy, I thought the cavalry was coming,” he said, resting his hoe against a fence post.

  Amanda glanced back at the line of motley vehicles. Some cavalry. “We’re here on business. I’m the new sheriff, and that’s my posse. We’re here to help track down those stolen horses.”

  His eyebrows disappeared beneath the brim of his floppy straw hat. “Well, shoot me a star.”

  Amanda knew from past conversations that the shooting star saying grew out of Reconstruction revivals where many former slaves were converted. To test the authenticity of their religion, the newly converted lifted their arms to the heavens and asked the Lord to shoot them a star.

  She and her posse were authentic, all right, at least by earthly standards, but the only star he was likely to see was the one attached to her vest.

  “Did you see or hear anything suspicious the night the horses were stolen?” she asked.

  “No, sir, Sheriff. None of us saw or heard nothing out of the ordinary.”

  Her gaze traveled the field behind him where the other workers had stopped to stare at the strange collection of vehicles strung along the roadway. “If you think of anything, let me know.”

  “Will do.” He grabbed his hoe and walked away. “Will do.”

  Tugging on the reins, she turned Spirit around and galloped back to where Scooter waited with the others. “The horses were stolen from that paddock. Have everyone spread out on foot. Make them walk an arm’s length away from each other.”

  “What are we looking for?” Scooter asked.

  Good question. It was too late to look for footprints, and even if it wasn’t, the rain would have washed them away. “Cigarette or stogie butts,” she said, trying to sound like she knew what she was doing. “Anything out of the ordinary.”

  With an enthusiastic wave of his arm, he rode away to inform the ladies of their duties.

  Amanda heaved a sigh. She had little hope of them finding anything, but at least that would keep them out of her hair while she questioned the farm’s residents.

  Amanda rode up to the farmhouse, and Mrs. Wendell waved from the porch. “Heard you’re the new sheriff,” she called.

  Amanda dismounted. “You heard right.” She felt guilty for coming empty-handed, but there hadn’t been any time to shop or raid her mother’s pantry. “We’re checking out the scene of the crime now.”

  “You won’t find anything. Not after all this time. ’Sides, those thieves are sneaky as a fox.”

  “Do you mind if I question the residents?” The pasture could be seen from the house. Older people sometimes had trouble sleeping. It was possible that one of them might have seen or heard something.

  It didn’t take long to find that someone did—the old Welshman, Mr. El.

  “How are you today, Mr. El?” she asked. “Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”

  Interpreting his grunt as a yes, she sat in a chair opposite him.

  He pulled out his gold watch, thumbed the case open, and checked the time before answering her questions. For a man living in a county poor farm, he sure did carry an expensive-looking watch. Probably a family heirloom. It bothered her that he never looked directly at her. Rather, his eyes focused on his watch, the window, the floor.

  He claimed he looked outside sometime after midnight the night the horses vanished and saw moving lights in the direction of the pasture.

  “How many lights did you see?” she asked.

  Eyes lowered, he adjusted the steel frame of his spectacles. “Six,” he muttered in a low, croaky voice. “I saw six lights. Or maybe it was eight.”

  The number surprised her. Why were so many men needed to steal three horses? Unless, of course, someone or something interrupted them from stealing the rest. “Why didn’t you wake Mr. Wendell or Mr. Jacobs?”

  “By the time I found my specs, the lights were gone.” He stopped to cough. “Thought maybe I was imagining things.”

  “I see.” Amanda thanked him. None of the other residents had anything to add, and she wasn’t even sure what, if anything, Mr. El actually did witness. He seemed a bit wea
k north of the ears, so maybe he only imagined seeing lights.

  She descended the stairs to the ground floor. Mrs. Wendell was nowhere in sight, but voices drew her into the kitchen.

  Miss Read was sitting at the table teaching Charley his numbers. The boy looked up as she entered and grinned.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to disturb your lesson.”

  “No problem,” Miss Read said. “We’re just about finished.”

  As Amanda turned to leave, something caught her eye. The pantry door was open, and the normally empty shelves were packed with canned goods. Sacks of flour, sugar, and rice were stacked on the floor, along with a toe sack of pecans. A whole ham hung from the ceiling.

  What little money the county provided the poor farm was hardly enough to cover expenses. The Wendells depended on donations to feed and clothe their indigent residents. Judging by the well-stocked shelves, a recent donor had been especially generous. Maybe the church had run one of its fund-raisers, which it did from time to time.

  Whoever was responsible for the windfall earned her gratitude. Now she didn’t feel so bad for coming empty-handed.

  “Amanda!” Mrs. Wendell motioned to her frantically from the doorway. “Hurry! Trouble’s a-brewing outside!”

  Twenty

  Amanda sprinted out of the kitchen so fast, she almost slipped on the polished wood floor. Once outside, it didn’t take but a second to spot the trouble.

  Her posse was chasing a lone man across an empty field and yelling at him to stop. Divided skirts yanked up to unprecedented heights, the women were gaining fast.

  “What in the world—”

  She dashed down the porch steps, waving her arms over her head. “Wait!” Quickly untying Spirit, she slammed a foot into the stirrups and swung a leg over the saddle.

  By the time she reached the other side of the paddock and slid from her mount, the women had already tackled the man to the muddy ground and were piled on top of him like a stack of tossed books.

  A shocking display of flailing legs greeted Amanda’s startled eyes. Buried beneath the pile of squirming female bodies came the man’s cries for help.

  “Stop!” Amanda grabbed the hand of the preacher’s wife and yanked her off the heap. Slipping and sliding in the mud, she pulled each of the women away from the hapless man.

  Their victim lay facedown in the muck. He didn’t move. Fearing the worst, Amanda shook him on the shoulder. “Sir? Are you all right?”

  Moaning, he stirred. Guns drawn, the women stood in a circle around him, dripping with mud. For good measure, Mrs. Perl even whipped out her knitting needles and pointed them in a threatening way.

  Boots sinking in the sludge, Amanda managed to help the man to his feet. He swayed slightly, and she slid an arm around his waist to steady him. Either he was dazed or drunk. Hard to tell. Maybe he was just in shock. His frock coat sleeve was torn and covered in mud. His black hat was squashed flat as a flapjack.

  Was he a stranger? Hard to know what he looked like beneath the dark ooze. Right now, he resembled some sort of swamp monster.

  Mrs. Mooney stepped forward. Unlike the others, she wore the gooey mess well and managed to look unbearably important despite being covered from head to toe. “As the bank president’s wife, I wish to inform you that you are under arrest.”

  “You can’t arrest him,” Amanda said. “That’s my job.” Wiping her soiled hands against her skirt, she asked, “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  For answer, the man stooped to retrieve something from a mud puddle, and the gun triggers clicked like so many snapping fingers.

  Mrs. Perl held her gun in one hand and her knitting needles in the other. It was hard to know if she intended to shoot him or knit him a sweater. The jewels on Mrs. Granby’s lorgnette winked in the sun as she lifted it to her eyes with a filthy hand. The schoolmarm’s expression would have given even the unruliest schoolboy nightmares.

  Becky-Sue giggled. “Oh, this is so much fun.”

  Amanda signaled for them to lower their weapons. Being accidentally shot by her own posse was a possibility she didn’t want to contemplate. Surrounded by a group of ready-to-attack women, the man wasn’t going anywhere. It didn’t even look like he was armed.

  He straightened and attempted to brush the wet soil off what looked like a book. His face plastered with mud, only the whites of his eyes were visible. He wiped the leather cover with his handkerchief, and Amanda suddenly realized he was holding a Bible.

  “I’m Reverend Thomas Maine and these…these…heathens attacked me for no reason.”

  Amanda gasped. “You’re a minister?”

  The pastor’s wife looked him up and down as if she alone could determine the validity of his statement. Mrs. Granby peered at him intently through her folding spectacles.

  As if in reminder of his standing in society, he bowed slightly. “At your service. I’ve been riding since dawn and stopped to rest my horse when these…these…” He shuddered. “Never have I been treated in such a despicable manner, not even when I accidentally married a bride to the wrong man.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Amanda felt terrible. “I’m the sheriff and take full responsibility.” She motioned the others to put away their guns. “We’re on the lookout for horse thieves, and I’m afraid my…posse got carried away.”

  Scooter came galloping up to them, his horse’s hooves splashing mud everywhere.

  “Is he the horse thief?” he sang out, hardly able to contain his excitement as he practically leaped off the saddle, gun in hand. “Shall I shoot? Shall I shoot?”

  “Absolutely not,” Amanda said, pushing the barrel of his gun aside.

  Reverend Maine gave his head an indignant toss. “I’ll have you know, young man, I am not a horse thief.”

  Scooter holstered his gun. “You aren’t?” He looked dubious. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “What a pity,” Becky-Sue said, and for once, she didn’t giggle.

  Mrs. Perl stuck her knitting needles into her rucksack. “Well, you sure look like it to me. Why’d you take off like that?”

  Mrs. Mooney scoffed. “We begged you to stop. Why didn’t you?”

  “I’m a preacher, ma’am, and was practicing my sermon out loud when you called to me. I’m used to people begging me to stop preaching, and that’s what I did. Never occurred to me you wanted me to stop walking.”

  Scooter regarded the man with a solemn expression. “Like Grandpappy always said, ‘Crab walk too much, he get in crab soup.’”

  Worried about how she would explain this to the town council members, Amanda muttered beneath her breath, “Or mud stew.”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, a group of disgruntled men stormed into the sheriff’s office, led by Mr. Mooney.

  Amanda looked up from her desk, and her heart sank. What got the town riled up this time? The fiasco with the preacher, no doubt. Just don’t let it be another bank holdup. She hadn’t even had time to track down the last robbers.

  Glaring at her from beneath his black derby, Mooney pounded his fist on her desk, startling her. “As the bank president, I demand to know what right you have turning our wives into a bunch of gun-toting, hysterical maniacs!”

  Next to him, T-Bone wiped his hands on his meat-stained apron. The pockmarks on his face stood out like red polka dots. “If that ain’t bad enough, my wife came home covered in mud. She said she chased down a suspected horse thief.”

  “I can explain—” Amanda began.

  Mooney cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Explain, my foot! I won’t have my wife brawling like a common thug.”

  Amanda folded her arms across her chest. As unfortunate as the situation was, it hardly qualified as a brawl. “I’ll have you know that my posse—”

  “Wives!” Mr.
Granby exclaimed with an emphatic toss of his head. “We’re talking about our wives! I won’t have you turning mine into a raving lunatic!”

  “According to your constitution”—she would never consider it hers until it recognized women as full-fledged citizens—“we women are already considered lunatics.”

  T-Bone glared at her. “That’s why you need to stay at home where you belong and can’t get into trouble.”

  She seethed with mounting rage. Grace and charm, grace and charm, grace and charm…

  “The world would be a better place if men stayed at home,” she said. Thanks to Miss Brackett’s tutoring, she managed to sound amazingly calm despite the boiling pot inside. “At least there’d be less crime.” Some female outlaws did exist, but very few by comparison to men.

  T-Bone’s face turned as red as the uncooked meat in his shop. “Look who’s calling the kettle black. You’ve been arrested more times than the rest of us here put together. You’re nothing but a crazy, harebrained, cockamamie…” On and on he ranted, exhibiting a vocabulary that would impress even Webster.

  Her mouth dropped open. Never had she been so insulted in her life. Glaring at him, she rose slowly out of her chair. “And you,” she said, managing to maintain grace if not charm, “are nothing but a misogynistic…”

  Alarm crossed Mr. Mooney’s face. “Gentlemen and…eh…” He seemed at a loss as to how to address her. “I’m sure we can voice our grievances without resorting to name calling. Mr. Perl…I believe you wished to say something.”

  “I sure as heck do.” Mr. Perl tugged on the knitted scarf around his neck so hard, he looked like he was trying to hang himself. “I walked into the house for my noontime meal, and what did I find? Nothing but an empty table!” Blue veins pulsated in his forehead. “Is it too much to ask that a man expect his meals on time?”

  “That’s nothing,” Mr. Walker said, giving his balding head a shake. “When I asked my wife to fetch my pipe, she told me to get it myself. Said she had better things to do with her time.” He sniffed and wrinkled his thick, cone-shaped nose.

  Reverend Wellmaker discounted Walker’s complaint with a wave of his hand. “You think that’s bad?” A wide-eyed look of righteous indignation filled the frames of his spectacles. “I’ll tell you what’s bad. My wife leaving the house wearing trousers!” He made it sound like she’d broken all Ten Commandments and was working on an eleventh. “It’s unbiblical.”