The Rustler

by Linda Lael Miller

  She’d accepted, found a dark and instant solace in the strong liquor, and asked for another. After that, she’d gone to the man’s room with him, and given over the terrain of her body, and been surprised to feel nothing at all when he degraded her. Offering herself to men was an easy way to get more whiskey and sustain the numbness that allowed her to live.

  Kitty had told Sarah all this while she was recuperating from her nearly fatal illness. Sarah had been heartbroken by the story, and outraged that, as a woman and a mother, Kitty had no legal rights at all. Eventually, with Maddie’s help and then Lark’s, she’d begun writing letters to faraway churches and charities, hoping to find Kitty’s daughters. When Kitty found out, she’d asked them to stop. Little Leona and Davina had forgotten her by now, she said, and that was for the best, given what she’d become since losing them.

  Of all the women she knew, Sarah figured Kitty was the most likely to understand what she’d suffered, giving Owen away. She felt an overwhelming need to confide in someone—Kitty, or even Wyatt Yarbro—though she had no intention of doing so.

  Wyatt might think ill of her, and Kitty, who still had occasional bouts with the bottle, might let something slip when liquor loosened her tongue. When she succumbed, albeit rarely, she babbled to anyone who would listen about her little girls. Sarah could not afford to have her spilling the story of Owen’s birth, too.

  The game began, and at first, Sarah’s cards were good ones. The ladies of the Society did not bet with matchsticks or buttons, like the more sedate Canasta club meeting in various parlors around town, but with real money. Sarah kept a stash of coins and small bills at home, in a coffee can tucked away on a pantry shelf, expressly for the purpose.

  Soon, though, luck began flowing in Fiona’s direction.

  And Kitty was still watching Sarah at intervals, stealing surreptitious glances over the top of her fan of playing cards.

  When the “meeting” was over, Fiona flounced off with copious winnings weighing down her handbag, and Mabel left, too, muttering that gamblers always died broke.

  “Guess there was quite a scene over at the bank this morning,” Kitty said when the others were gone, making no move to rise from her chair. She gathered the scattered cards expertly, though, her gaze fastened on Sarah. “A lot of our customers are grumbling that the deputy took their guns away.”

  Sarah didn’t comment.

  “Sarah?” Kitty pressed.

  Sarah met her friend’s eyes. “What?”

  “You want to look out for that lawman,” Kitty said.

  “Wyatt? Why?” A little thrill of apprehension went through Sarah. She couldn’t help recalling the kisses, and how they’d made her feel. “Do you know him?”

  “Met up with him five years ago, out in Kansas City,” Kitty answered. “He’s Rowdy’s brother, folks say.”

  Sarah waited, singularly alarmed, even though she thought she knew what Kitty was about to tell her—that Wyatt was a train robber, and he’d done time in prison for his crimes.

  “Whatever he’s telling you,” Kitty said implacably, “it probably isn’t true.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE DOG HADN’T MADE a turn for the better.

  After stowing all the guns he’d taken off Paddy Paudeen and his crew in the lone jail cell, locking the door, and dropping the key into his vest pocket, Wyatt loaded Lonesome into the wheelbarrow, being as careful as he could, and rolled him outside and down the sidewalk.

  Having met and liked Doc Venable the night before, at Sarah’s supper, Wyatt had confidence in the man. Venable mainly leaned toward people-doctoring, most probably, but surely he knew a thing or two about four-legged critters, as well.

  There were too many horses tied up outside the saloons, Wyatt acknowledged to himself, as he and Lonesome made their procession through the center of town, but he’d averted the immediate crisis, and right now, the mutt was a priority. As they passed the Stockman’s Bank, he noted with relief that Sarah had taken his advice and shut it down.

  He could get Lonesome looked after without shirking his duties.

  They drew some looks, Wyatt and the dog, and a few sheepish smiles, along the way. Wyatt asked the storekeeper, a balding man about as wide as he was high, the way to Doc Venable’s place, and was told he’d find the house directly behind the Spit Bucket Saloon, on the next street over.

  Since Lonesome seemed a mite embarrassed by all the attention, Wyatt decided to take a short cut between the Spit Bucket and the telegraph office. Careful not to jostle the dog too much while traversing the narrow and bumpy passage, the ground being littered with old whiskey bottles, a lone boot and other debris, Wyatt was taken by surprise when they emerged into the alley and practically ran right over Sarah. She’d plainly just left the saloon; the door was still half-open behind her.

  On taking a second look, Wyatt saw another familiar face peering out at him through the crack—a painted-up female with sorrow-worn features, a skimpy dress made of some shiny green fabric, and piles of dyed red hair.

  Now, where had he seen that woman?

  She pulled the door to before he could ask.

  Sarah, blushing a little, approached. She’d started when she saw him, but now she’d recovered her composure. Mostly, anyhow.

  Upon taking a closer look at Lonesome, her face changed. She drew a half step nearer. “Is—what’s the matter with him?”

  “He’s under the weather,” Wyatt said, watching her with amusement and the usual appreciation of all her physical virtues. She was clearly abashed at being caught sneaking out the back door of the Spit Bucket, but compassion for a dog fallen on hard times had distracted her. “I’m taking him to Doc Venable in the hope that he can dose him up with something, so maybe he won’t hurt so much.”

  Sarah came nearer. He smelled cigar smoke on her, and pondered the possibility that Rowdy had been right in maintaining that she had a tobacco habit. Wyatt didn’t approve, but it added to her appeal in a strange way, too. She was a complicated woman, and there was a lot to find out about her.

  Reaching down, she stroked Lonesome’s head. “Poor thing,” she murmured.

  Wyatt was surprised to learn that he couldn’t hold back the question hammering in the back of his mind. “What were you doing in the Spit Bucket Saloon?” he asked.

  She touched the pocket of her skirt in a subtle, fretful gesture, and then looked him directly in the forehead, neatly avoiding his eyes. “Kitty Steel is a friend of mine,” she said. “I like to visit her sometimes.” A pause, a deep, indrawn breath that made her fine breasts rise for a moment. “Is there an ordinance against that, deputy?” she asked.

  Wyatt chuckled, but when Lonesome gave a pathetic whimper, he sobered again. “No ordinance,” he assured her, inclining his head toward an unpainted house on the other side of the dirt alley. “Is that Doc’s place?”

  “Yes,” she said. Wyatt had expected her to veer off toward home, but instead, she walked beside him.

  Doc appeared in the back door of his house, probably having seen them coming through a window, and descended the steps to open a second door at ground level. “Bring that animal in this way,” he said.

  Wyatt wheeled the dog across Doc’s overgrown yard and inside. Sarah came right along, murmuring soft words to Lonesome. It almost made Wyatt wish he were the one being hauled in a wheelbarrow and in need of copious female sympathy.

  Venable’s office was cluttered, but there was an odd order to the chaos. He patted the examination table, with its worn leather top. Light streamed in through a side window in a wide, convenient shaft. “Set him here where I can get a good look,” he said.

  As careful as Wyatt tried to be, Lonesome gave a whine of pain when he was lifted out of the wheelbarrow.

  Doc Venable waved Wyatt and Sarah aside. “Give us some room,” he said brusquely, fitting his stethoscope into his ears as he spoke.

  Wyatt stood nervously by while the doctor listened to Lonesome’s insides, poked and prodded here an
d there with gentle fingers. Sarah remained beside him, so close their arms were touching.

  “I’d say he’s sound on the inside,” Doc finally said, and Wyatt let out a long breath. “He’ll be sore for a while, though.” The old man frowned at the lash marks on the dog’s back, glistening with the salve Wyatt had applied the night before, and stroked him lightly. Crossing to a cabinet, Doc took out a small brown bottle and brought it to Wyatt. “Laudanum,” he said. “Put a drop or so on his tongue, three times a day. It’ll make him sleep, and that’s what he needs to heal up. If he bleeds or goes into convulsions, send for me right away.”

  Wyatt gulped. He’d squared off with a score of ill-intentioned men just that morning, but the possibility of a medical emergency involving a dog almost undid him. God only knew how he’d react if his horse ever took sick. “Convulsions?” he asked.

  Doc smiled. “Not very likely that’ll happen,” he assured Wyatt. “But he’ll be in no fit state to ride in a wheelbarrow if it does.”

  Wyatt dropped the vial of laudanum into his pocket, where the cell key rested. “What do I owe you, Doc?”

  “On the house,” Doc said, with a dismissive wave. “Way I heard it, my life savings, such as they are, might have gone down the road with that bunch whooping it up in the saloons if it hadn’t been for you.”

  Sarah stiffened. “They weren’t going to rob the bank,” she said.

  Wyatt and Doc exchanged glances.

  “Sarah always believes the best of folks,” Doc said.

  “If Deputy Yarbro runs off every bunch of cowboys that come into my—the bank, we’ll soon be closing our doors for good!”

  Doc chuckled, but the expression in his eyes was serious when he turned to Wyatt. “You be careful,” he said. “Might be in your best interests, in fact, to wire Rowdy and Sam and tell them to hightail it back here and tend to home business instead of gallivanting after a pack of vigilantes.”

  Wyatt missed Rowdy, since their reunion had been so brief, and he was looking forward to handing in his badge and going to work for Sam out at Stone Creek Ranch, provided he didn’t wind up in jail for rustling first, but he wasn’t ready to run a white flag up the pole just yet.

  “I’ll send for Rowdy if I see the need,” Wyatt said.

  Doc took back the laudanum, opened the bottle, wet the tip of his finger with the stuff, and put the droplet on Lonesome’s tongue. “Like that,” he said. “Better give you a tin of salve, too, for these welts of his.”

  Since Wyatt had been using Lark’s salve, as well as her canned milk and preserves, he accepted Doc’s generous offer.

  “I’ll fetch us some coffee while we wait for that laudanum to take effect,” Doc went on, heading for an inside staircase. “You wait here and see that he doesn’t fall off the exam table.”

  Wyatt nodded, conscious of Sarah and the tender way she comforted the dog. If he hadn’t left his hat behind at the jail, he’d have been able to turn the brim in his hands, give himself something to do. Because all of a sudden, despite taking supper at her table and kissing her in the broad light of day, he felt shy as a smitten schoolboy in the presence of this woman.

  She wasn’t looking at him, but he could see that she felt almost as uncomfortable as he did. “Kitty says she knew you in Kansas City,” she ventured quietly, “and whatever you tell me is probably a lie.”

  Wyatt felt as if somebody had struck him behind the knees.

  Kitty Steel.

  She’d niggled at his recollection, watching him from the back door of the Spit Bucket the way she had. Now that the image had had time to percolate a while, he remembered her.

  “I guess you must have been one of her—customers,” Sarah said, when Wyatt didn’t answer right away.

  Wyatt shook his head. “I’ve been with women like Kitty,” he said. He wasn’t a talker, but words were spilling out of him now, like beans through a hole in a burlap sack. “I don’t deny that. But all Kitty and I did was play poker. She was working at a saloon called the Last Dollar, dealing cards when she wasn’t upstairs, and I was living high off the proceeds from a train robbery.”

  Sarah turned slightly, and he saw hope in her eyes, mingled with the fear of believing too readily. “That doesn’t explain why she called you a liar.”

  Wyatt sighed. “She kept talking about her daughters. She’d lost them, some way, and then found them again, she said, and she could get them back if she had a husband. She wanted me to marry her—said I wouldn’t have to do anything but say the words in front of a preacher and sign the papers. I told her I already had a wife—hell, I was on the run. I guess Levi or Ethan—my brothers—must have told her the truth.”

  Sarah absorbed his answer, seemed to resolve something in her own mind. She gave a little nod.

  Doc returned before they could pursue the matter further, carrying a tray in both hands, with three cups of coffee steaming on top. Lonesome began to snore.

  Doc, Wyatt and Sarah sat down in hard wooden chairs.

  The coffee was downright awful, stout and bitter as axle grease, but Wyatt figured the least he could do, after Doc had been so kind to Lonesome, was act as if he liked the stuff. The old man seemed a little downhearted, there in his cramped office. Eager for company.

  Wyatt, for his part, felt restless. He had a town full of potential trouble, and a sick dog to take care of. He needed to be on the street, making sure things stayed peaceful.

  As long as those guns were locked up, though, he had no reason to expect a disturbance.

  So he drank his coffee and chatted with the doc, and didn’t notice for a long time that the old man’s questions weren’t idle ones. He was sizing Wyatt up, deciding whether he was friend or foe. Most of all, Venable wanted to know what his intentions were toward Sarah, his best friend’s daughter.

  Already high in Wyatt’s private estimation, Doc went up a notch or so. He was looking out for Sarah, pure and simple.

  As things turned out, it was Sarah who ended the festivities. “I’d better get home and see to Papa and Owen,” she said, rising from her chair and causing both Doc and Wyatt to leap immediately from their own. “They’ll be wanting supper soon enough. Will you join us, Doc?” She paused and colored up, probably thinking she’d just roped herself into extending an invitation to Wyatt, too.

  “Not tonight,” Doc said. “There’s a baby due out at the Starcross Ranch and I’m betting on twins. The mother’s a little gal, and she’ll need some help, I reckon. I was all set to hitch up my buggy and drive out there when you and the deputy here showed up with the dog.”

  Sarah nodded, embarrassed, and turned to Wyatt. “You’re welcome to eat with us,” she said quietly. “It’s just leftover trout, but there’s plenty.”

  Wyatt wanted to accept, but he wouldn’t, because he knew Sarah hadn’t planned on including him in the invitation to Doc. He shook his head, muttered, “No thanks.” He had work to do, and he needed to get Lonesome settled down back at the jail so he could tend to his job.

  With Doc’s help, he put a still-snoring Lonesome back in the wheelbarrow and made for the door.

  Sarah followed him, but instead of turning in the direction of her house when they reached Main Street, she stayed right on his heels.

  “Wait,” she said.

  He stopped, turned around, pretending he was surprised to see her there. Actually, though, he’d been aware of her in every part of his mind and body, and maybe the outskirts of his soul, too.

  “I think Lonesome ought to stay with us for a few days,” Sarah told him. “Papa and Owen could mind him, while I’m at the bank.”

  Sorrow balled itself up and rolled over inside Wyatt, to think of giving up that mutt, even considering the critter’s sorry state of health. Still, he couldn’t hang around the jailhouse all the time, playing dog-nurse. Stone Creek wasn’t quite the quiet, peaceful place Rowdy had made it out to be.

  “I don’t like parting with him,” Wyatt admitted, his voice hoarse.

  Sarah’s f
ace softened. “It’s only temporary, Wyatt,” she said. “And you can visit him whenever you want.”

  An excuse to call on Sarah made the idea a sight more palatable.

  “All right,” he said. “But don’t you reckon the boy might get attached to Lonesome and find it hard to turn him loose when the time comes?”

  Sadness moved in Sarah’s eyes, like a shadow under sky-blue water. “Owen’s only visiting,” she said. “His father will be back for him.”

  Something ached inside Wyatt, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the dog. “Oh,” he said, because nothing else came to mind.

  Together, Wyatt and Sarah headed for the Tamlin house, Wyatt swerving to avoid ruts in the street, so Lonesome could snooze on. While they walked, Wyatt wondered what he was going to have for supper.

  He had thirty dollars in his pocket, thanks to Rowdy. He decided he’d visit the mercantile, stock up on sardines and crackers and maybe some canned peaches. While he was in prison, he’d so craved sweet fruit that he hadn’t been able to get enough of it since.

  Soon as they reached the front gate, Owen burst out of the house and came running down the walk.

  “A dog!” he shouted, overjoyed. Then a frown crossed his face as he took in Lonesome’s mode of conveyance, and the well-greased welts striping his hide. “Is he hurt?”

  “He’ll be all right,” Wyatt said. The boy’s pleasure, like Sarah’s presence, lifted his spirits. “Just needs to rest up a bit.”

  “He can’t chase sticks or anything?” Owen asked, disappointed.

  “Not for the time being,” Sarah told the boy, moving to ruffle his hair, then drawing her hand back just short of it. “But you can feed him, and make sure he has fresh water to drink, and help him go outside when he needs to.”

  Owen squared his small shoulders manfully. “I can do that stuff,” he said. “What does he eat?”