The Last Wilder

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “Are you all right?” Lisa asked.

  Stacey coughed again to clear her throat. She glanced over at Dane and found him with his back to the room as he looked out the window overlooking the empty field next door.

  “I must have swallowed wrong,” she finally said.

  Ace and his brothers shared a quick, odd look, then peered around at Dane.

  “We get that now and then,” Ace said mildly. “I never saw the resemblance, myself. Did you, Jack?”

  Jack eyed his older brother carefully. His only answer was a shake of his head.

  Trey shrugged. “Why don’t we just adopt him? He’s practically one of the family anyway.”

  “There you go,” Laurie said. “Problem solved. What do you think, Dane? Want to be adopted into this wild bunch?”

  Trey grinned. “Don’t you mean Wilder bunch?”

  “Oh, groan.” Laurie rolled her eyes.

  At the window, Dane’s ears turned an interesting shade of red. Stacey winced. She could only imagine what he must have been feeling just then. Why didn’t he just tell them the truth? This was the perfect opportunity. But he stood at the window, his back stubbornly turned.

  “Come on, now,” Belinda said. “You’re embarrassing poor Dane.” She crossed to his side and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t pay any attention to these idiots, Sheriff.”

  Finally he turned toward the room. There was a good-natured smirk on his face. “Don’t worry, Belinda, I never take them too seriously. But speaking of serious, Stacey’s got some information I think you’ll all want to hear.”

  She was going to kill him. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind. She sent that message to him as clearly as she could with a sharp look. “It’ll keep. This is a family time.”

  “Come on, Stacey,” Rachel said as a contraction eased its grip on her. “Is it about the stranger in the grave? You know who he is, don’t you? Tell us. Please?”

  Stacey shot Dane another look that said, I’ll get you for this. She wasn’t ready. She hadn’t decided on the right words. And now, thanks to him, she was out of time. Eight members of the Wilder family—nine counting Dane—looked at her expectantly.

  Stacey was saved by the labor nurse, who came in and ran everyone out except Grady so she could check Rachel’s progress.

  As one they all went back to the waiting room. If Stacey had thought she was off the hook, she was wrong.

  “So who is he, Stacey?” Ace asked. “The man in our cemetery.”

  Everyone looked at her expectantly.

  She fought a sigh of resignation. “My grandfather.”

  “Here, sit down.” Lisa seemed to be a born caretaker. “Have some coffee and tell us what you can.”

  She was reluctant to begin. They’d been so warm to her, open and friendly, including her in their conversations. She’d never been exposed to a family such as this and she was loath to do anything to upset them. To make them shut her out. How were they going to take what she had to tell them?

  After two sips of coffee, she could no longer put it off, so she began. She told them everything she’d told Dane, about her grandfather ranting and raving that the Wilders had stolen from his family. How he took off one day before she was born and no one ever saw him again. How she didn’t know why her grandmother hadn’t come forward to identify him when his likeness was broadcast on all the television stations in the state.

  “They were pretty poor,” she said. “It was before I was born. For all I know they didn’t have a television.”

  “When he didn’t come home,” Ace said, “wouldn’t she have reported him missing? From there the police should have been able to make the connection. Right, Dane?”

  Dane shrugged. “I would think so.”

  “It could be she was afraid to go to the police,” Stacey said. “She never knew how he died, only that he was found dead on your ranch. Since he’d come here to make trouble, maybe Gran thought he’d found it. I know she never wanted anyone to know who that man in the grave is, but I don’t know why, and I’m breaking my solemn oath to her by telling you this. But I think you have a right to know.”

  “And we appreciate it,” Ace said. “I know it couldn’t have been easy. But since the day Stoney found him out there in the snow, it’s been eating at us that we didn’t know who he was. We’ve always assumed he was just some poor drifter who got caught out in the cold and died. Now you tell us he came here on purpose because he thought we’d cheated his family out of something. Lord knows our father was a hard man, but I never knew of him to treat anyone unfairly.”

  Trey snorted in disgust.

  “Well,” Ace said, “anyone outside the family, at least.”

  Trey snorted again.

  “Okay, he never cheated on a business deal. He wasn’t a cheater, except when it came to his marriage, and since it got us Jack, we can’t, in all fairness, hold a grudge against him for that.”

  One side of Jack’s mouth curved up. “You’re all heart, bro.”

  Stacey blinked. “You’re their half brother?” she asked Jack. Then she pressed her fingers to her lips. “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”

  “It’s all right,” Jack said easily. “It’s no secret. You must be the only person in the county who doesn’t know. Yeah, I’m their half brother. But I don’t think any the less of them for it.”

  Ace let out a hoot of laughter that ended in a pained oomph when his wife’s elbow connected with his ribs.

  “What’d you do that for?” he cried.

  She leaned over and planted a smacking kiss on his mouth. “Because you’re such a dope, but I love you anyway.”

  “I’m the dope? If you’re gonna elbow somebody, go after Jack. He doesn’t hold it against us,” he added, mimicking Jack’s smug tone.

  Lisa jumped in to defend Jack, but Jack told her he didn’t need defending. Then Trey complained that there was always a female around to defend Jack. Even when he first came to live with them, Rachel, only five at the time, had defended him.

  Before the teasing could get out of hand, Ace called a halt and turned to Stacey. “We kind of got off track. There’s one thing you didn’t tell us, Stacey. What was your grandfather’s name?”

  She glanced at Dane, and he gave her a nod of encouragement. “Ralph Conner.”

  There was a sharp, collective intake of breath.

  After a long moment of silence, during which everyone stared at Stacey, Ace finally spoke. “Did you say Conner?”

  “I’m sorry,” Stacey said. “I guess I forgot to mention that what he said your family stole from his family was your ranch. The Flying Ace.”

  “My God,” Ace breathed in wonder. “Then you’re…” A big grin spit his face. “You’re Jeremiah Conner’s what, great-great granddaughter?”

  She nodded once. Why was he smiling? Her family was accusing his family of cheating.

  “Wait,” Ace said. “Your middle name. What is it?”

  “Conner.”

  “Hell, sweetheart.” Ace opened his arms and swept her up in a big bear hug. “Welcome home.”

  Voices swirled in Stacey’s head.

  “Isn’t this exciting?”

  “How romantic.”

  “After all these years, a real live Conner at the Flying Ace again.”

  “Well, close, anyway.”

  “She was there the other night. That counts.”

  “Who would have thought.”

  “Rachel will love this.”

  “Hey! Now we can have that headstone engraved with her grandfather’s name.”

  Amid all the excitement, Stacey caught a glimpse of Dane’s face and nearly wept. Never had she seen such a look of longing on a man’s face. This was his family, yet they didn’t know it. Instead, they were acting as if she were one of them. They were taking her into their hearts and making her feel a welcome the likes of which she’d never known. And all Dane could do was look on and try to smile.

  Since lunchtime had come and gone,
Dane volunteered to make a run over to Main Street for sandwiches. Stacey went with him. No one seemed to question that she would.

  “They’ve paired us,” Stacey said, dumbfounded, once they stepped outside the hospital.

  “What are you talking about?” Dane asked, his mind still back there with the Wilders joking about adopting him.

  “The Wilders,” Stacey said. “When you said you’d go get food, they automatically assumed I would go with you.”

  Dane paused in front of the Blazer. She had his attention now. “Paired us? Why would they do that?”

  “Why would they accept me, more than accept me, the way they just did? Why would they make jokes about adopting you? They’re crazy, that’s all I can figure. But, oh, Dane.” She placed a hand on his arm. “You should have told them. Right then when they were making those lame jokes about adopting you.”

  “No.” He shook his head and moved to open the passenger door for her. “This is Rachel’s day. If I was ever going to tell them, it wouldn’t be today.”

  “Then why,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “did you throw me and my grandfather at them? That could have waited for another day. Should have waited. But, oh, no, you needed to divert their attention from you, so you used me.”

  Dane said nothing while he helped her up into the seat. Once he was behind the wheel and backing out of his parking place, he admitted she was right. “I’m sorry. I did use you.”

  He sounded so remorseful that Stacey ached for him. “It’s all right.” She reached out and touched him again, on the arm. Somehow touching him, connecting with him physically, helped steady this shaky feeling inside that had started the minute the entire family flooded into the quiet waiting room. “They’re so overwhelming.”

  “I thought that might be what you were feeling when Ace hugged you.”

  She shook her head, trying to put her thoughts into words. “They each seem to know what the others are thinking. And the love…” She shook her head again. “I’ve never seen a family so filled with love for each other. And trust, and respect. They’re…amazing. Oh, Dane, I wish you would have told them the truth. Will you ever?”

  Last week, yesterday, he would have said an emphatic no. Now, after today… “I don’t know. I don’t know how I can after all this time.”

  She smoothed her hand up and down his arm. Such a simple touch, a gesture of friendship, nothing more, yet it eased the tightness deep down inside him. It almost scared him how glad he was that she was with him, that she’d been with him all day. He was sure that without her, he would have made his excuses and left the hospital hours ago. And he would have missed out on being around the people he cared most about in the world.

  Yes, he was glad Stacey was with him. But it only made him want her more. How was he supposed to deal with this crazy attraction he felt for her, plus the emotions trying to surface from being with the Wilders all day, and catch a ring of cattle rustlers?

  “You’ll find a way,” she said softly.

  For a minute Dane worried that he’d voiced his concerns aloud. Then Stacey spoke again.

  “They’re your family. You need them, and they need you. I’d give anything for a big, boisterous, loving family like that.”

  Dane felt a bittersweet smile coming on. “Didn’t you hear Ace? They’ve already decided you’re one of them.”

  “Not the way you are. Or could be.”

  After Dane and Stacey returned and everyone devoured the beef and turkey sandwiches the café had fixed, they all ended up back in the birthing room for a while. But when Rachel’s contractions started coming faster and harder and she started snarling at her brothers’ lame jokes, the nurse finally cleared the room of everyone but Rachel and Grady. This time, they thought, for the duration.

  But before the contractions had started coming so close and hard, before the snarling, Rachel had demanded to know everything Stacey had told the family about the stranger in the grave.

  After the retelling, Rachel had wondered aloud how Stacey had ever found the cemetery. “I mean, it’s not like it’s on any road map.”

  “Two sets of tracks.”

  All eyes turned to Jack.

  “A couple of times in the past few years,” he said, “I found the tracks of two people. Both with small enough feet to belong to women.”

  “My grandmother brought me,” Stacey confessed. “She wanted to make sure I knew how to find the grave.”

  “But how did she ever find it?” Rachel asked.

  “Come on, honey,” Grady said to his laboring wife. He glanced down at their joined hands with a pained expression. She was clearly about to break his fingers with her fierce grip. “You need to relax.”

  “I am relaxed.” She practically growled the words. “Come on, Stacey, tell. Take my mind off the coming blessed event. And I’d like to get my hands on the idiot that coined that phrase.”

  “It was a man,” Laurie said. “You can bet on it.”

  Ace grinned. “I think the saying refers to the arrival of a new life, not the labor a woman has to go through to produce it.”

  Rachel, Belinda, Laurie and Lisa, spoke at once. “Oh, shut up.”

  “Come on, Stacey, how did you grandmother find our little family cemetery?”

  Stacey shook her head. “I don’t know. When I asked, she just said she had her ways.”

  In the grip of a new contraction, Rachel huffed out one quick breath after another and squeezed Grady’s hand hard enough to make him wince.

  “Get over it, pal,” Belinda told him. “It’s nothing compared to what she’s going through.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Grady protested.

  The nurse ran them out a short time later, promising that it was almost time.

  “That’s what she said an hour ago,” Dane muttered as the group made its way back to the waiting room again.

  While they waited, Ace asked Dane if there was any progress on finding the cattle rustlers.

  Dane cast a brief glance at Stacey, then nodded. “There is, but I’m not at liberty to talk about it just yet.”

  Ace narrowed his eyes. “Has the sketch artist come, then?”

  “No.” Dane shook his head. “I’ve called him off.”

  “Off?” Ace cried. “What the hell’d you do that for?”

  “Because,” Dane said, “Stacey was able to identify two of the men she saw—the two she said she would recognize—from photographs.”

  “Well, that’s more like it. Why didn’t you say so? Who are they?”

  Dane studied the man who had been his friend these past two years. The older brother he couldn’t acknowledge. “If you knew who they were, what would you do?”

  Ace shared a look with Jack and Trey. Apparently they had discussed the case and had reached some sort of decision, for they didn’t need words. They merely nodded once toward each other.

  Dane widened his stance and folded his arms across his chest. They might be his brothers, but he wasn’t going to stand for any vigilantism, if that’s what they were planning. “I think you better tell me what that just meant.”

  “It meant that we’ve talked about it and agreed that if you want our help, we’re ready and willing to do whatever you tell us to do. If you don’t, we’ll stand back and let you do your job however you see fit. But if we know who did it, and if we happen to run across them—no, we won’t go looking, you have our word on that, but if we happen onto them—we’ll hold them for you.”

  Dane let out the breath he’d been holding. This was better than he’d feared. He’d been worried that they might take off on their own. Knowing who they were after, Dane feared somebody would get hurt. Wilson and James were not going to take kindly to being caught. Dane would just as soon the risks involved remain with him and his deputies, and not civilians.

  “Fair enough,” he told them. “I appreciate it.”

  “Hell, Dane,” Ace said soberly, “we know you’ll get them if anybody can.”

  “Oh, I can
,” he said darkly.

  “You know who they are?”

  “I do. I don’t have a warrant yet, because all I’ve got is one eyewitness who saw them at dusk while she was trespassing on private property. I’ve put the word out on the rig they used to haul the cattle, but so far, nothing has popped.”

  “Stacey’s not enough?”

  Dane shook his head. “No, and they’ve already tried to shut her up, which is why I’m sending her out to your place.”

  “And she’s more than welcome,” Ace said, meaning it. “Are you going to tell us who it is?”

  Dane studied Ace, then looked around the room at the rest of the family. He heaved out a sigh and braced his hands low on his hips. “Since there’s every chance that you might run into one or both of them on a trip to town or something, I’ll say this. If you come across two former county deputies, the two I had to fire when I took office, be real careful.”

  “Hell and damnation,” Jack said. “Ed Wilson and Farley James?”

  “Ordinarily your basic cattle rustler is only after a quick buck. But these two will be armed, and I consider them very dangerous. I don’t want any of you getting hurt. If you see them, you let me know and I’ll take care of it. Do I have your word on that?”

  “If I see either one of those jackals, I’m not about to let them walk away,” Ace said with a snarl.

  “Dammit, Ace, you just said you’d let me handle it.”

  “I said we’d hold them for you. And believe me, it will be a real pleasure. Now we’ve got more reason than just that beating they gave Grady a couple of years ago.”

  “Damn right,” Trey and Jack said together.

  “That is not what I wanted to hear,” Dane said grimly. “You have to let me handle it.”

  The three Wilder men shared another look, another nod, then Ace spoke again. “All right. You handle it. We won’t go looking for them. But if they happen to cross our path in the normal course of business, we’re not letting them walk away if we can help it.”

  Dane knew when to push and when to ease off. Ace, Jack and Trey were not going to back down from their stance, and neither was he. There was no point in arguing about it. He seriously doubted that they would run across Wilson and James before Dane had enough evidence to arrest them. He hoped.