The Lawman's Bride (Harlequin Historical Series)

by Cheryl St. John

  “Anytime, miss.”

  She hid her stash in her skirt pocket and made her way up the back stairs to change clothing. She needed to get out and get some fresh air. Speculating was getting her nowhere.

  It was unlikely that the marshal would connect any of the faces on those posters to her, but she couldn’t afford to take any chances.

  Willard DeWeise snored loudly from his cell at the back of the building. His dinner tray, licked clean, still sat on the corner of Clay’s desk. Clay picked up a rib bone and whistled low.

  Sam, his aged hound, made his ambling way to Clay and stuck his nose under his hand. “Here, fella. Can’t ya smell it?”

  Clay stuck the bone between Sam’s yellowed teeth and scratched one scarred and floppy brown ear. Sam settled himself at Clay’s feet with a grunt and licked the bone.

  “Why don’t you put that damned dog out of its misery?” Hershel Vidlak, the other marshal asked. “Thing cain’t see, cain’t smell, cain’t take a piss lessen you walk him out and hold it for him.”

  “Why don’t you shut your yap before I put you out of your misery?” Clay volleyed back with his usual lack of humor. It was dark, but the confined office was still sweltering. If the lawmen were cranky, he couldn’t imagine what the rowdies in the saloons would be like.

  He got up and grabbed his hat. “I’m gonna make rounds.”

  “I’m leavin’, too,” Hershel told him. “The missus made a strawberry pie this mornin’.”

  “See you tomorrow.” Clay walked out behind Hershel and locked the door. They walked along opposite sides of the street, Clay checking the stores he passed.

  Discordant music blared from the open doors of the Side-Track Saloon, yellow light spilling across the boardwalk. He pushed open the batwing doors, peanut shells and grit crunching beneath his boots.

  “You workin’, Marshal?” Tubs McElroy, the burly gravel-voiced bartender, wiped beer from the polished bar with an already soggy cloth and paused with his beefy hand on a glass mug.

  Clay rested his boot on the brass rail and thumbed his hat back on his head. “I’m callin’ it a night. Set one up for me.”

  Tubs slanted a mug beneath the barrel spigot and foam ran over his sausagelike fingers onto the floor. He sat the brew on the bar with a whack.

  Clay reached into his pocket for a quarter.

  “Nope.” Tubs held up a glistening palm. “Mr. Dotson don’t let me take no payment from marshals or deputies. Havin’ a lawman sittin’ in stops a whole lot o’ trouble from ever startin’.”

  Clay shrugged and sipped the lukewarm brew. He wasn’t the sociable type. His presence might raise the eyebrows of the regulars, but a stranger to town, like the one he’d come to observe, wouldn’t know this wasn’t his usual routine.

  There were many establishments nicer than the Side-Track for killing an evening if one had a mind to, but this was where the fellow registered at the Strong Hotel as Monte Morgan had chosen to spend the last few evenings.

  Clay glanced into the grainy mirror behind the bar and observed the other men standing on both sides of him, the haze of blue-gray smoke that hung near the low ceiling a ghostly backdrop behind their heads. He turned enough to speak to the man on his right in a friendly fashion, one elbow on the bar, both eyes casually scouring the crowd.

  A few stockmen and herders sat at one of the green felt poker tables, seriously attending to their game. Cowboys, gamblers and soiled doves filled most of the other tables.

  “Heard a new family from Vermont bought the Bowman place,” Clay said, just to come up with something to say.

  The store owner beside him looked up in surprise. Everyone in Newton knew the marshal wasn’t one for small talk. “Bought himself a whole rig over at the livery, he did,” he replied.

  From a platform at the rear of the building, a tall skinny man in faded trousers and a leather vest preached and read passages from his Bible. After several minutes he was replaced by one of the scantily-clad girls, who belted out an off-key rendition of “When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder.”

  “The daughter’s easy to look at,” he went on. “One of these cowboys’ll snatch her up fast.”

  Clay nodded, feigning interest in the conversation. Monte Morgan sat with a bunch of well-dressed men who were taking turns listening to the singing and preaching while patting the bottoms of the girls who sat on their laps. Morgan was lean, but Clay sensed whipcord muscle beneath the dark suit, silk vest and string tie. The weapon at his hip was an ivory-handled .45, a six-shooter in an embossed holster. Pretty.

  Morgan’s confident smile and grandiose mannerisms gave him the larger-than-life quality ladies liked. That was apparent by the fawning and almost laughable way they maneuvered themselves, trying to be the one who got his attention. Maybe he tipped well.

  Clay couldn’t put his finger on why the man troubled him. Newton was the home of the Sante Fe roundhouse and hundreds of strangers passed through each week. It was impossible to watch or even check out each one of them. Morgan hadn’t done anything to draw attention, hadn’t so much as tossed a match off the boardwalk. But something about him made Clay wary. Morgan didn’t seem like just another rancher. Clay’s gut instincts had paid off more than once, and he figured he should go through the papers to see if there were clues to this Morgan’s past there.

  Sophie strolled along Oak to Broadway where the darkened park beckoned. There were gas lamps along the street, but in the one square block between Broadway and Seventh, only the moon lit the dark brick walkways, hedges and flowers.

  The park wasn’t much farther than the boardinghouse from the railroads tracks, but it was a good bit farther from the roundhouse where men worked and switched the tracks all night long. Both of Newton’s public parks were in the First Ward, nestled in housing areas and away from businesses, saloons and billiard halls. It was the closest thing to being out of the city she could find, and she loved the impression of peace and privacy, no matter how false.

  Taking a tin of matches from her skirt pocket, she settled on a stone bench still warm from the day’s heat, lit a cigar and blew a smoke ring into the star-filled sky. Hours like these presented more freedom than she’d known in all of her twenty-three years. With liberating calmness, she attempted to clear her thoughts, lying back on the bench to study the night canopy overhead.

  She thought of the coming weekend, of three days she could spend any way she chose. She could take a train to Wichita and shop. She could don a disguise and attend the opera right here in Newton. Her lips curled up at the idea. There was something wickedly gratifying about carrying out a pretense such as the last one she imagined. No one would be harmed in the process.

  Those thoughts led to others of former guises and the reason she had a need for anonymity. The image of those wanted posters swam against the sky, the stars twinkling like the city marshal’s badge. She’d feel so much better if she knew he wasn’t going to shuffle through a stack of papers and wonder why a drawing of a certain female criminal looked familiar.

  She eased the chain from the collar of her shirtwaist and squinted at the face of the dainty watch. Only an hour left until the doors of the dormitory were locked for curfew. Her fingers curled around the sleek leather case in her pocket and her mind raced. She’d secretly let herself back in on more than one occasion. She could do it again.

  She hurried to the northwest corner of the park where she stubbed out her cigar and scuffed dirt over it with the toe of her shoe. One more block to the north and a little farther west, and she made out the wooden-framed jail. No light shone from the windows. Confident in her skills and her ability to talk her way out of any situation, she continued on.

  After peering through the panes of glass into the darkened interior, it took only seconds to work her magic on the lock. The door swung open, and she closed it behind her quickly, acclimating herself to the dark. Snoring droned from a hallway at the rear of the building.

  She drew the shades and lit the lamp on the large
st desk, turning the wick down low.

  A scratching sound and an oomph made her heart leap, and she whirled, expecting to find someone who’d been waiting in the darkness. She readied herself to run.

  A big old dog struggled to its feet from a pallet near the wall, and, with nails scratching the wood floor, padded over to where she stood poised.

  Her whole body slumped with relief. She bent and rubbed the animal’s head and soft floppy ears, and it turned its nose into her hand and gave a halfhearted lick.

  The stack of wanted posters was in plain sight and nearly as thick as the marshal had described. A brass key ring was being used as a paperweight. She gave the dog one last pat and sat, subconsciously noting the leather seat of the chair had been worn to fit the contours of the man. She set the keys aside. In silence broken only by rustling paper, the hiss of the lamp, and the resonating snore from the depths of the building, she turned pages, scanning drawings and descriptions.

  She’d learned that there was more than one marshal in Newton, and several deputies: so, if someone should catch her here, she would say another had let her in to wait.

  From somewhere in the back, the prisoner gulped air and mumbled in his sleep, startling her. She paused to listen until the monotonous snore resumed. The dog went back to its pallet and lay down with a grunt.

  Two names and drawings caught her attention and snagged her breath from her chest. Gabriella Dumont and Joseph Richardson the caption read. Garrett had been darkening his mustache the last time she’d seen him. He’d had his head shaved, and the baldness had completely changed his appearance.

  She’d have been offended at the drawing of her if she hadn’t been so grateful for the artist’s lack of talent. Plain eyes, plain nose, plain mouth, nondescript hair—the likeness could be any young woman.

  But beneath the drawings and descriptions were the words theft and extortion and a specific list of petty crimes. One word in bold type leaped off the page and brought a sick lump to her throat; the allegation she’d most dreaded and feared: murder.

  Sophie shuffled through the rest of the papers, found two more depicting her and folded the incriminating evidence into her pocket before straightening the pile and returning its order. She set the key ring exactly as it had been on top.

  She extinguished the lamp and raised the dusty shades before stepping out the door. Hopefully anyone returning would think that the last person had forgotten to lock the door. She was halfway to the corner, when an odd whooshing sound stopped her. She spun on her heel.

  Flames rose above the jailhouse from the back wall.

  Chapter Three

  Sophie’s heart stopped, thinking of the prisoner who’d been sleeping in a cell, of the old dog inside. She glanced around, not seeing anyone nearby. Icy dread compressed her chest. Minutes ago she’d been glad the street was deserted; but now she wished for someone to appear so she wouldn’t have to reveal her unexplainable presence there.

  She never did anything impulsively, but instinct took over this time. Running back, she threw open the door and nudged the dog who still lay on its bundle of blankets. “Go outside! Get!”

  She grabbed the keys. A hallway brought her to a row of cells lit through the barred window by the nearest streetlight on Main. Thick acrid smoke filled the entire rear portion of the building, and flames licked at the outside corner. A man she could barely make out through the haze clung to the bars of the cell where he was trapped. He attempted to shout at her, but only coughed.

  Sophie knelt to the cell door and wasted precious seconds wiping tears from her burning eyes. She couldn’t take a breath without her lungs feeling as though they would burst. The waves of heat were terrifying and the acrid smell of burning wood cloying.

  “Get me outta here!” the man shouted.

  “I’m trying!”

  The ring slipped from her fingers and clanged on the floor. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  “Lady, ple-e-ase!”

  Sophie fumbled for the right key and slid it into the lock, twisting until the tumblers rolled and the door swung open, clanging against the next cell.

  The choking prisoner stumbled past her.

  “Is there anyone else?” she called after him.

  He was gone.

  The other doors were slightly ajar, indicating empty cells so she ran toward the front, pausing at a wheezing sound. The dog.

  “Where are you, fella?” She stumbled across the room, smoke billowing from the rear now. Her lungs ached and her eyes burned. She couldn’t draw a breath that didn’t taste like ash.

  “Anybody in here?” someone called from the open doorway.

  “Yes!” She coughed. “I’m looking for the dog!”

  “Get outta there, lady!”

  Following the wheezing whine, she found the animal cowering under the desk. She had to get down on all fours and use every last ounce of strength to catch its front legs and drag the mutt toward her.

  “Lady!”

  The dog weighed as much as she did, and she was out of breath, but she tugged with all her might, inching the trembling animal toward safety.

  The man met her at the doorway, and helped her lift the dog. Together they stumbled away from the burning jail until she collapsed in the middle of the street with the dog across her lap.

  Several men gathered around and stared.

  “Did someone go for the fire department?” she asked, her voice a rasp.

  “Harry went,” was the reply. One by one they turned to watch the fire.

  She coughed until her chest ached. Sophie moved the dog aside and used the hem of her skirt to wipe her running eyes.

  When she could squint, she glanced around. The prisoner was nowhere to be seen. Sophie collapsed backward in the dust. Of all the luck.

  What seemed like an eternity was only minutes as she waited. Finally the firemen turned out with their horse-drawn wagon holding barrels of water.

  Marshal Vidlak and another deputy arrived and helped Sophie out of the street and over to a patch of dry grass. “You’re one o’ them girls from the Arcade, ain’t you?”

  Sophie glanced at the man and nodded.

  The younger deputy had gone back for the dog and laid him beside where Sophie sat. The poor animal sounded as though it couldn’t catch a breath.

  “I’m surprised that damned dog made it out,” the marshal said. “Cain’t walk further’n two feet at a stretch.”

  “I pulled him out,” Sophie said.

  “The hell you say.”

  “Sam!” came a concerned shout.

  The dog’s head jerked up.

  “Sam!” Unmistakable, that voice.

  “Over here, Clay,” Marshal Vidlak returned.

  Clay ran toward the gathering and hunkered down on one knee, looking from the dog to the girl with the soot-streaked face.

  “Lady here saved your worthless mutt,” Hershel said.

  “You saved Sam?” Clay turned his attention to the rescuer. Her midnight-dark hair was loose and falling over one shoulder. Even though the black streaks on her face melded with the darkness, he recognized her. “Miss Hollis?”

  She nodded, turned her head aside and coughed so hard, it sounded downright painful.

  “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she replied with a hoarse voice.

  Sam’s breathing didn’t sound so good, but he licked Clay’s hand. Clay studied the smoke and ash rising from the nearly destroyed jail where the firemen were directing the water. He couldn’t turn the thought of Willard DeWeise over in his mind without bile rising in his throat. He glanced at Hershel, and the two men shared an uneasy look.

  “Hell of a way to die,” Hershel said with a grimace.

  Clay’s gut knotted.

  “If you’re talking about your prisoner, he got out,” Miss Hollis croaked.

  Clay turned and stared down. “He what?”

  “He got out,” she repeated.

  All three lawmen turned to listen.

 
; “I—I was—” A racking cough halted her explanation. “I was in the park.”

  Her voice was so low and raspy, they knelt to hear.

  “The park across from the First Ward School?” Clay asked.

  She nodded. “From the corner there I saw the flames. I ran this way. As I got closer, I saw the man you arrested from the lunch counter that day running out the door.” She pointed to the south. “He went that way.”

  Clay was relieved to hear the man hadn’t turned to a cinder inside the jail, but the question of how he got out of a locked cell was damned puzzling.

  “I heard the dog whining, so I just went in and helped him out.”

  Clay and Hershel exchanged another baffled look.

  “How the Sam Hill did DeWeise get out of that cell?” Hershel asked aloud.

  “Someone had to have unlocked it,” Clay surmised. “One of the deputies.”

  They turned and looked at the building. If one of the lawmen was still inside there, he was dead now.

  “Account for all the men right now,” Clay ordered the young deputy.

  “Yessir.” John Doyle shot away from them.

  Miss Hollis attempted to get to her feet, and Clay helped her up with one hand under her arm and one around her slim waist. Her hair smelled like smoke. Few people would have risked their life for a dog’s. “Bet you were sorry you risked your neck once you saw the old mutt,” he said.

  She glanced up, but when their eyes met, she looked away. “No.”

  Another bout of coughing bent her at the waist.

  “I’m takin’ her to Doc Chaney’s,” he told Hershel. “You make sure John reports back so we know if anyone’s missin’.”

  “No. I’ll be fine,” the young woman protested.

  “Don’t be foolish.” He called to one of the bystanders, “That your wagon? Give us a lift over to the doc’s, will ya?”

  He assisted her into the back of the wagon, then settled the dog in. Clay jumped up beside them and nodded for the driver to move the horses forward. “Drive past Doc Chaney’s place on Seventh. Most likely he’s at home.”